The air was cool. She smelled dew and springtime and cold ash and budding trees. And blood that was already dry.
For a long moment, she lay still and let the translation complete itself. Then she levered her arms under her.
At once, a forgotten pain laboured in the bones behind her left ear. She groaned involuntarily, slumped again to the stone.
She would have been willing to lie still while she persuaded herself that the hurt did not matter. She was in no hurry to look at her surroundings. But as she slumped, unexpected hands came to her shoulders. They were not strong in the way she had learned to measure strength; but they gripped her with enough determination to lift her to her knees. “Linden,” a man's care aged voice breathed. “Thank God.”
Her eyes were slow to focus; her sight seemed to come back from a great distance. She was conscious of the dawn, the blurred grey stone, the barren hollow set like a bowl of death into the heart of the green woods. But gradually she made out Covenant's form. He was stretched on the rock nearby, within the painted triangle of blood. The light stroked his dear face like a touch of annunciation.
From the centre of his chest jutted the knife which had made everything else necessary.
The man holding her repeated her name. “I'm so sorry,” he murmured. “I never should've gotten you into this. We shouldn't have let him keep her. But we didn't know he was in this much danger.”
Slowly, she turned her head and met the alarmed and wearied gaze of Dr. Berenford.
His eyes seemed to wince in their sockets, making the heavy pouches under them quiver. His old moustache drooped over his mouth. The characteristic wry dyspepsia of his tone was gone; it failed him here. Almost fearfully, he asked her the same question Covenant had asked. “Are you all right?”
She nodded as well as the pain in her skull allowed. Her voice scraped like rust in her throat. “They killed him.” But no words were adequate to her grief.
“I know.” He urged her into a sitting position. Then he turned away to snap open his medical bag. A moment later, she smelled the pungence of antiseptic. With reassuring gentleness, he parted her hair, probed her injury, began to cleanse the wound. But he did not stop talking.
“Mrs. Jason and her three kids came to my house. You probably saw her outside the courthouse the first day you were here. Carrying a sign that said, 'Repent.' She's one of those people who thinks doctors and writers Just naturally go to hell. But this time she needed me. Got me out of bed a few hours ago. All four of them- ” He swallowed convulsively. “Their right hands were terribly burned. Even the kids.”
He finished tending her hurt, but did not move to face her. For a while, she stared sightlessly at the dead ash of the bonfire. But then her gaze returned to Covenant. He lay there in his worn T-shirt and old jeans as if no cerements in all the world could give his death dignity. His features were frozen in fear and pain-and in a kind of intensity that looked like hope. If Dr. Berenford had not been with her. she would have taken Covenant into her arms for solace. He deserved better than to lie so untended.
“At first she wouldn't talk to me,” the older man went on. “But while I drove them to the hospital, she broke down. Somewhere inside her, she had enough decency left to be horrified. Her kids were wailing, and she couldn't bear it. I guess none of them knew what they were doing. They thought God had finally recognized their righteousness. They all had the same vision, and they just obeyed it. They whipped themselves into a tizzy killing a horse to get the blood they used to mark his house. They weren't sane anymore.
“Why they picked on him I don't know.” His voice shook. “Maybe because he wrote un-christian books”. She kept talking about 'the maker of desecration.' When he was forced to offer himself for sacrifice, the world would be purged of sin. Retribution and apocalypse. And Joan was his victim. She couldn't be rescued any other way.” His bitterness mounted. “What a wonderful idea. How could they resist it?
They thought they were saving the world when they put their hands in that fire.
“They didn't snap out of it until you interrupted them.”
Linden understood his dismay, his anger. But she had passed the crisis. Without turning, she said, “They were like Joan. They hated themselves-their lives, their poverty, their ineffectuality.” Like my parents. “It made them crazy.” She yearned with pity for the people who had done this to Covenant.
“I suppose so,” Dr. Berenford sighed. “It wouldn't be the first time.” Then he resumed, “Anyway, I left Mrs. Jason in Emergency and got the Sheriff. He didn't exactly believe me-but he came out to Haven Farm anyway. We found Joan. She was asleep in the house. When we woke her up, she didn't remember a thing. But she looked like she had her mind back. I couldn't tell. At least she wasn't violent anymore.
“I made the Sheriff take her to the hospital Then I came looking for you.”
Again he swallowed at his distress. “I didn't want him with me. I didn't want him to think you were responsible for this.”
At that, she looked toward him in wonder. His concern for her-his desire to spare her the conclusions which the Sheriff might draw from finding her alone with Covenant's body-touched the spring of something new in her; and it opened as if it were blossoming. His face had sagged under the weight of his baffled care; he appeared reluctant to meet her gaze. But he was a good roan; and when she looked at him she saw that Covenant's spirit was not dead. Without knowing it, he showed her the one true way to say Farewell She placed her hand on his shoulder. Softly, she said, “Don't blame yourself. You couldn’t have known what would happen. And he got what he wanted most. He made himself innocent.” Then she leaned on him so that she could rise to her feet The sunlight felt warm and kind to her weariness. Above the bare slopes of me hollow stood trees wreathed in the new green of spring, buoyant, ineffable, and clean. In this world also there was health to be served, hurts to be healed.
When the older man joined her, she said, “Come on. We've got work to do. Mrs. Jason and her kids weren't the only ones. We have a lot more burned hands to take care of.”
After a moment. Dr. Berenford nodded. “I'll tell the Sheriff where to find him. At least we can make sure he gets a decent burial.”
“Yes,” she answered. The sun filled her eyes with brightness. Together, she and her companion started up the barren hillside toward the trees.
With her right hand. Linden Avery kept a sure hold on her wedding ring.
Here ends
The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.
Index