The summer before that, Mercy had fallen ill. At first she would not admit it, though her face lost its roundness and became grey and sagging, and sometimes she would gasp and stand still while a shudder of pain ran through her and spent itself. Probity for a while did not notice, and for another while chose not to, but Pitiable found herself doing more and more of her grandmother’s tasks while Mercy sat on one of the thin upright chairs and told her what she did not already know. By winter Mercy could not even sit and was forced to lie, and the neighbours had come to see why she no longer came to church, but Probity had sent them away, saying that he and the child could manage between them. Which they did, but Pitiable’s days were very long for a child, from well before dawn until hours after dark, keeping the house clean and decent, and seeing to her grandfather’s meals and clothes, and nursing her grandmother.
On a Sunday near Christmas (though the People did not keep Christmas, saying it was idolatrous) there was a storm out of the west, driving snow like a million tiny whips, fiery with cold. Still, Probity put on his leather coat and fetched out his staff and snowshoes, and told Pitiable to get ready so that he could drag her to church on the log sled.
“Let her stay,” said Mercy. “I am dying, Probity. I may perhaps die while you are gone. May the Lord deal with me as He will, but I am afraid to die alone.”
Probity stared at her with his face unchanging, then nodded and tied on his snowshoes and went out into the storm without a word. Mercy watched the door close.
“He had love in him once,” she said. “But he buried it the day your mother left us and set the tombstone on it the day she died. Bear with him, Pitiable. Deal with him as best you may. It will not be easy.”
“Are you really going to die?” said Pitiable.
“As we all are, when the Lord calls to us.”
“To-day? Now?”
“Not to-day, I think. I am better to-day. The pain is almost gone, which is a bad sign. My body has no more messages to send me.”
Pitiable knelt by Mercy’s cot and put her head on the quilt and wept, while Mercy stroked her shoulders and told her she was glad to be going, because she trusted in God to forgive her the small harms she had done in her life. She told Pitiable to fetch a stool and sit by her and hold her hand.
“I have a story to tell you,” she said. “My mother told it to me, and her mother to her, through seven generations since The Trust in God was lost. You remember the story of Charity Goodrich, our ancestress, yours and mine?”
Pitiable nodded. Every child among the People, even those who were not directly descended from her, knew about Charity Goodrich. It was almost the only story they knew, outside the ones in the Bible. They were told that the stories other children knew were superstitious nonsense, inventions of the devil, to distract believers from the narrow path to salvation. Two hundred years ago, three small ships had set out to cross the great ocean. They had been given new names before they left, The Lord is Our Refuge, The Deliver Us from Bondage and The Trust in God. Apart from their crews they carried the People, 287 men, women and children who had determined to leave the country where they were oppressed and imprisoned and burnt for their beliefs, and settle in new land where they could worship as they chose. After a dangerous voyage they were in sight of land when a storm separated them. Two ships came safe into the providential bay which was now the harbour of the town, but the third, The Trust in God, was driven against the cliffs to the north of it and lost with all hands. All hands but one, that is, for five days later a child was found wandering on the shore, unable to say how she had come there. Her name was Charity Goodrich.
“I am going to tell you how Charity was saved,” said Mercy. “But first you must promise me two things. You must remember it so that you can tell it to your daughters when they are old enough to understand. And you must tell it to nobody else, ever. It is a secret. You will see why. Charity Goodrich was my great-grandmother’s great-grandmother. There are other descendants of hers among the People, but I have never asked, never even hinted, and nor must you. Do you understand?”
“Yes, and I promise,” said Pitiable.
“Good. Now this is the story Charity told. She remembered the storm, and the breaking of the mast, and the shouts of the sailors, and the People gathering on the deck, standing all together and singing to the Lord Who made the sea, while they clutched at ropes and spars and the ship heaved and wallowed and waves swept foaming around their legs. Some of them were washed away, still singing, and then the ship was laid on its side and the deck stood upright and they all went tumbling down into the roaring sea. Charity remembered her hand being torn from her father’s grasp, and then a loose sail tangled round her and she remembered nothing more.
“Nothing more, that is, until she woke. A shuddering cold roused her and told her too that she was not dead, but alive. Her clothes were soaked, but she was lying on dry sand. She sat up and looked around. She saw a dim, pale light to one side of her. It was just enough for her to make out the black water that stirred at her feet, and the black rock all around her and over her. Somehow she had been washed up in a small cave whose entrance was beneath the water.
“Beside her was a small sea chest of the sort that the People had used to store their possessions for the voyage. With numbed fingers she opened it and found that it had been well packed, with all its contents wrapped tight in oilskins. There were dry clothes, far too large for her, but she stripped off, spreading out her own clothes to dry on the rocks, and wrapped herself in these others, layer on layer, and nursed her body back to warmth.
“Now she began to wonder what had happened to her and how she had come to this cave. She remembered the sinking of the ship, and herself being tumbled into the sea and tangled in the sail, and remembering that she saw that the sail was lying half out of the water, over against one wall of the cave. So she supposed that some current had washed her in here, and the sea chest too, and the tide had then gone out and left her in air. But why was it not dark? The light came from the other side of the cave, low down, and when she went to look she found that the water washed in along that wall, making as it were an inlet in the waterline, and partway up this was a pool where lay a coiling fish like a great eel, which shone with points of light all along its flanks. It stirred when it saw her and the light grew stronger, and now she saw that it was trapped in that place by a wall of small boulders, piled neatly against one another across the inlet.
“Then she grew afraid, for she could see that the wall had not come there by chance. She searched the cave, looking for a place to hide, but there was none. Only she found that the inlet was formed by a little stream of water, sweet to drink, that ran down the back of the cave. After that she prayed and sang, and then fell asleep, weeping for the mother and father she would never see again.
“When she woke she knew before she opened her eyes that she was not alone. She had heard the whisper of a voice.
“She sat up and looked at the water. Two heads had risen from it. Four eyes were gazing at her. She could not see them well in the faint light, but her heart leaped and her throat hardened. Then one of the heads spoke, in a weak human voice, in a language she did not know, though she understood it to be a question.
“ ‘Who are you?’ she whispered, and they laughed and came further out of the water, so that she could see that they were human-shaped, pale-skinned and dark-haired, wearing no clothes but for what seemed to be collars or ruffs around their necks. She stood and put her palms together and said the Lord’s Prayer in her mind while she crept down to the water’s edge. As she came, the creatures used their arms to heave themselves up through the shallows. Closer seen, she thought they were children of about her age, until she saw that instead of legs each had a long and shining tail, like that of a fish. This is what Charity Goodrich said she saw, Pitiable. Do you believe her?”