Communion, Chapters 14, 15, & 16

Three chapters today, all full of death and destruction!

Chapter 14

         

      Dorcas fought for breath. Smoke blew under the door, forced by the flame from the next room. She was imprisoned. They had forgotten her, locked her up and left her.

      “Alban!” I yelled. Or Dorcas yelled. I couldn’t tell which of us forced the scream through smoke-seared lungs. She was a nun, and I was inside her, but there was nothing of the cloister in the thoughts of either of us.

      A glow of light hung high on one wall. I dropped us to the floor, where the choking smoke was thinnest, and we crawled, two in one body, toward the brightness. I could feel her questioning relief as we found air that we could breathe. She took this, then, as strangely as I, but we both knew there was no time for questions.

      We found the wall, stone piled upon sharp stone. We stood, our head back into the smoke. Our fists beat against the window.

      “It’s too thick,” I said, and her voice, not like mine, answered from the same mouth, with the same smoke-stained rasp, “Would you die, then?” and we beat harder on the glass until it shattered outward.

      We levered ourselves up on trembling arms and fell through the sharp-edged hole. Glass shards raked torso and legs, but we landed outside. Our fall parted a Saxon defender and a British attacker.

      Both turned their rage on the female body that had interrupted them. The Celt raised a short sword, but Dorcas kicked up and separated him from his weapon. I turned just in time to see the Saxon, hair aswirl, lips contorted in battle frenzy, draw back to deliver a killing stroke. I snatched the falling Briton’s shield and parried the descending blade, but it was Dorcas whose dagger stabbed upward into the Saxon’s undefended belly, Dorcas who got us to our feet and snarled at the terrified Celt. Weaponless, he vanished into the smoke.

      Steel rang against steel around us. The wounded shrieked as blades, cold in the icy rain, stabbed into flesh. Languages fought, as well as men, in the cries of those still fighting, but we were, for a moment, in a tiny island of quiet.

      “What are you, spirit?” Dorcas growled, but quietly, so as not to attract attention.

      A roar of flame smashed the building from which we had just escaped. We dashed to the street. I surrendered control to Dorcas. Two of us trying to direct one body confused us both.

      The narrow lane near the old Roman theatre roiled with fighting men, fleeing children and women. Fire roared all around. The city itself was burning, and I took from Dorcas the knowledge that it was, confusingly, the British troops who had fired it. The Saxons had taken Verulamium years before, and Uther Pendragon wanted it back in British hands.

      “The fool will destroy us to prevent the Saxons having it,” Dorcas said. We pounded along the cracked pavement, dodging obstacles and people. A child screamed in terror, but Dorcas didn’t stop. She must have sensed my dismay at leaving the child unaided, bloody, for she said, “Many will weep before this day is ended.”

      A patrol of Saxon defenders burst from an intersecting street. Dorcas skidded us to a halt. I thought they would kill us, but she called to their leader.

      “Husband!”

      “We are betrayed!” He was huge, heavily armored and muscled to match. A line of blood flowed down his side from a hidden gash. He panted out the words between breaths. “Your townsmen”—he made the word a curse—“opened the gates to them. We are beaten.”

      Dorcas threw herself on her mate. I felt the impact of her fists pummeling his head and the leather armor on his chest. His great arms wrapped around her, and in the smoke, among the dying, he held her close until her fury spent itself against him. The flat of his sword pressed against her back, and I felt the weight of it, the power in his arms.

      Finally, Dorcas pulled away. I saw what she meant to do, then, just as she voiced it.

      She meant to take revenge on the Britons, a revenge against which they would have no defense. The fury she had shown in fighting was as nothing compared to the dark purpose inside her now. Memories rose to the surface of her mind, memories of poisons and philtres, hidden for the day they might be needed.

      She took a last embrace of her Saxon captain.

      He touched her cheek in a final, tender gesture. “Bravely, then, Dorcas. Let Uther go with me to Hades.”

      “He is dead already.”

      With never a backward glance, she ran through the broken town. The north gate was undefended, canted crazily on its massive iron hinges. We peered through, past the old burying ground, which would, if anyone were left alive, find ample use in the days ahead.

      Bodies choked the river dry upstream. We crossed on mud made red and sticky with blood.

      Atop the hill, where the shrine to Alban stood, was the encampment of the Britons. Uther’s pennant, the blood-red dragon against a field of indigo, fluttered above a retinue of noncombatants. Dorcas took us into a wood, out of sight. The cries of battle faded behind the shield of trees.

      Alban, I prayed, but the only answer was from Dorcas.

      “You call on the saint, demon?” She spat. “Where is our defender? Where has he been all these years? If he desired to help us, he has had enough opportunity.” She bent her efforts to climb the heavily wooded hill. “I will send them all to hell.”

      “And go there yourself,” I thought.

      “It is a small enough price, and a better bargain yet if you go with me.”

      We climbed, until she reached the edge of the clearing around the church, where Uther’s camp was pitched just below the same wattle and daub huts I remembered from Bryn’s vision. The wooden church was the same, but aged. Dorcas scouted the clearing. All the attention of the watchers was on the battle below. They were as foolish as the defenders had been, but Dorcas was careful, nonetheless, to make her approach to the old church so that it shielded her from their view.

      Inside, shadow sheltered the old tomb. Dorcas made for it with confidence, knelt at the same small door from which Bryn had brought forth the saint’s bread, and reached inside. Her fingers closed on a bottle, and she drew it out.

      “What?” I asked, but she hid the knowledge from me. “It is enough for you to know that it is deadly, demon. You will not change me.”

      Dorcas went to the sacristy, where the sacred vessels were kept. She knew her way around, and as I thought it, she said aloud, “I have served here many years.” She found a silver flagon, a jug of wine, and a chalice. Then she went outside the church, back into the wood, still shielded from the Britons watching the battle. She knelt at a spring that bubbled joyfully out of the earth. I knew without asking that it was Alban’s spring, the spring that had appeared for the martyr when he was on his way to be executed.

      From the blue bottle she poured a spare six drops of clear, oily liquid into the silver pitcher. The rest of the bottle she emptied into the small pool formed by the spring. She poured wine into the flagon and added a measure of the spring water. Then she held the bottle under the surface, until it bubbled itself full and sank.

      I was powerless to stop her. The small moment of control of her body that I’d had earlier came only because she was panicked, distracted. She held herself safe now from my interference. I could only be dragged along with her as she made herself known to Uther and his retinue.

      “Your mercy, my lord,” Dorcas called to them. “Spare me my life, in the name of blessed Alban. See, I bring wine cooled with water from his holy well.”

      Uther was old, sick, lying in a litter propped up to watch the slaughter below. Around him were a picked group of warriors, the king’s guard. They whirled, weapons at the ready, when Dorcas surprised them.

      Ygraine, Uther’s consort, turned more slowly. “It is my sister,” she told the troops. “My sister the nun, who deserted her calling to wed the Saxon. Come, Dorcas. Let me look at you.”

      Dorcas turned. Ygraine’s presence added to her resolve.

      “Sister, I have grieved you often, and I beg your forgiveness.” Dorcas bowed in submission, sincere, in spite of her murderous intent. Inside her was a wish that she and her sister could be reconciled before death. Some of that odd truthfulness must have shown to Uther.

      “Come, sister.” He held out a trembling hand. His illness left him weak, womanish. Dorcas knelt at the side of his litter and lifted her face to him. He stared into her eyes. Sweat beaded his brow.

      “Could you not have waited for us?” he asked.

      “I lost my faith,” Dorcas answered, again honestly. Her mind held equal measures of her intent and her remorse. “I beg you, my lord, to help me recover it.”

      He reached for the chalice. Dorcas filled it with the watered wine and held it out to the old king.

      “Wait, my husband.” Ygraine placed her hand over the cup. “This is a happy change, if true, but I have known my sister for many a year, and she does not change her nature willingly. Let her drink first.”

      The battle was ended, below. The sounds of fighting died with the defeated. Dorcas brought the cup to her lips.

      “I bring you only that which I want myself.”

      She drank. It tasted only of rough wine mixed with spring water, a taste as innocent as Dorcas’ appearance. She took another large swallow. I tried to spew it out, knowing what I knew, but Dorcas was firmly in control, and cherished the death that was coming. There are only moments left, demon, she thought to me. Be calm.

      The king and his consort watched for any sign of distress. The first twinge of a cramp twisted in our belly, but Dorcas betrayed nothing. Uther took the chalice, drank as a thirsty man will, and handed it to Ygraine. The sun was hot; she shrugged and drained the chalice.

      Dorcas smiled. “I have you, now, my lord king, my sister. Come with me to hell.”

      The agony in our belly made the thrust of the guard’s sword sweet relief. We fell into darkness, clutching our pain to our heart. We did not fall alone.

     

      I lost Dorcas, somewhere on the way. We went in different directions, for different purposes, but I did not lose all of her. Something of the newly married, newly dead nun stayed with me.

Chapter 15

     

      “Oh, wonderful—you’re awake.” Jane’s worried face hovered over me. Beyond her was the glass of the solarium. The sky twinkled with stars, many more than could be seen among the lights of town. The storm had passed, then, along with some chunk of time.

      “How long?” I asked. I had a bad taste in my mouth.

      Jane pressed a cup of sweet, hot tea into my hands, liberally laced with lemon juice.

      “Drink first,” she ordered. “Talk after.”

      The citrusy tea scalded my tongue, but I drank it anyway and held my cup out for more.

      “You’ve been out for an hour, more or less,” El said, behind me. I realized I was propped on a chaise lounge. The two women must have moved me. The last thing I remembered, before Dorcas, was pressing my face against the cold glass.

      “Do you make a habit of passing out like this?” El questioned.

      “She’s beginning to,” Jane said. “It’s the second time.”

      The dying came back to me. It slipped into my awareness like a key into a lock. Tumblers clicked inside me, and I knew the inevitable certainty of my death. Dorcas’ poisoned wine lay sweet on my tongue, and I knew the seduction of the suicide. I wanted no part of it, but it was there, inside me, at once repellent and attractive. I couldn’t sit and make chit-chat.

      “I want to go home.”

      El sat on the edge of the chaise lounge and touched my hand. “Are you certain you’re up to it?”

      I nodded, not wanting to speak, for fear I would tell them what was in my head. It seemed shameful to feel the slipping away, the final lassitude that came with the certainty of my end, at least as I remembered it from Dorcas’s death—my death. Another part—the Clio part of me—shrank from the memory, but there was no place within where I could hide.

      “I’m sorry.” I tried to explain without explaining. The words were jumbled in my head, the shame overwhelming. “Home,” I repeated. “Please.”

      Jane and El bundled me against the fresh wave of cold that had followed the storm and packed me into Jane’s car. While we drove, I peered out the passenger window to the left, chilly until the car’s heater warmed up enough to make a difference.

      Jane, bless her, held her tongue after deciding that I was not sick, merely shaken. We rode in silence towards Saint Albans, through the darkness. We slipped through Hemel Hempstead and Luton like ghosts, passing darkened houses and lighted stores, locked and empty, like spirits who did not belong in the workaday world of sunlight and commerce.

      I clutched at the brooch in my pocket; it stayed rough and pitted to my touch, but it was only a matter of time until again I would be pushed into some other vision, and though I had survived this one, who knew what might happen next time.

      We reached Saint Albans long after most of the town’s denizens had gone to bed. When we pulled up at Jane’s home, the abbey loomed high and bright across the street; the floodlights bathed it in brilliance. Shadow surrounded it.

      “Coming in, dear?” Jane asked. I hadn’t moved from the passenger seat.

      “In a minute.” I forced myself to get out of the car. The air still smelled wet from the storm, the asphalt street glistened with the remaining moisture. “You go ahead.”

      “If you’re sure....”

      “I’ll be fine. I just want—to walk it off a little.”

      “I’ll walk with you.”

      “No!” The urge for solitude was strong on me.

      “But Clio—” Jane’s concern felt like a blanket, smothering and itchy.

      I strode away from her into the night. She followed, but I was younger and more driven. Across the street and into the cathedral close I went. Jane’s voice faded as I moved away from her. I couldn’t go back into the rented room and behave as if nothing had happened. The memory of Dorcas’s surrender to death filled me, the realization that here was the place, now was the time. I didn’t run away from Jane Fern. I ran away from, or tried to, from Dorcas. As long as my feet moved, I felt safe.

      The church’s looming Gothic presence drew me. I circled the old stones. I nestled against the ancient sharp-edged building blocks. My face pressed against the grainy rock, in a shadow of shadows, where the transept met the wall of the long, uncompromising nave. Above my head, weak colored light struggled through glass, but I huddled small in the deep dark below the sill.

      Dorcas’ last chill seeped into me—her resignation, her knowing that whatever came next was the last thing she would know.

      I know I’m going to die some day. There, in the shadow, hiding from the light above me, around me, I recalled the final surrender that comes when the inevitable makes itself known. It came like a shadow even deeper than the one I hid in, knowing darkness like home, comfortable in helplessness.

      I stumbled through the darkness until I came to the place of Jane’s dead monks. I took the brooch from my pocket and laid it on the ground. There was no glow; it remained rough to the touch.

      The brooch was my proof. The saint had sent it to me. Every vision had begun with it. Its change in form and color signaled the beginning of the visions.

      I didn’t want any more. They had been seductive, fascinating, a sort of historical pornography, vicarious, an intrusion from somewhere I wasn’t ready to go.

      Up to the latest, they’d been entertaining, at least. Dorcas, though, was a different story.

      I ripped up a small piece of the sod, dug down a few inches, and slipped the brooch into the darkness of its tiny grave. I patted the sod back in place. Dirt clotted under my nails.

      “Here now—what are you doing?” The voice caught me kneeling over the buried brooch.

      Death had a shape—a large man, muffled against the cold, his back to the floodlights. I knew it for what it was—a dark, evil thing that reached out toward me, its ungloved hand white and bloodless in the black of night.

      “Leave me alone.”

      “Damned if I will. Come out into the light.” He grabbed me, hard, by the arm. “Let me have a look at you.” Eyes peered out of the hidden face, burning me, beady, porcine eyes, filled with a fire that I didn’t understand.

      His face was wrapped in a brown scarf. The chill in the air hadn’t bothered me. It had been one with the chill inside me, until now.

      I knew those eyes. They glowed red in the night.

      “You,” we said together.

      Sexton.

      “You were sacked. Leslie told me.”

      “Aye, but I’ve been un-sacked. What are you doing in my grave-yard?”

      His grip hurt my arm. “Let me go.”

      His fist tightened. The pressure squeezed tears into my eyes. I blinked them back, furious with my body for betraying me when I needed its strength. Sexton pushed, and my knees buckled.

      I fell backward. The wintered turf gave only a thin cushion.

      All the anger Dorcas had felt, her humiliation, her helplessness, the depth of her vengefulness, her ancient cunning and her will for the death of another fueled me, as if I were a fire, and she the tinder. Rage burned through me, the wrath that had killed Dorcas.

      But I was not Dorcas. I was not willing to die, not here, not now. Within my fury calculation bloomed like flame.

      I relaxed and let myself drop before him. A laugh bubbled up from deep in my belly. Sexton was in for a surprise.

      He let go. I waited a second, to see what he would do.

      No surprise there. Sexton laughed low in his throat. He reached for his buttons and undid his coat, then uncinched his belt.

      While his hands were occupied, I rolled to my back and kicked up between his legs with all the strength I could muster. Soft tissue flattened under the impact of my foot.

      His howl split the darkness. He fell, balled up, to the ground. I scrambled to my feet and ran off a dozen steps, until I was hidden again in shadow. If he recovered, I wanted whatever advantage darkness could give me. I grinned against the cold, feeling a bit ashamed, like I’d kicked a dumb animal, but exultant with the thrill of the fight. Breath came cold and deep into my lungs. Sweat popped out on my forehead, despite the chill. My heart pounded, and I was once again fully alive in spite of Dorcas and her suicide. I knew that she and I were not the same.

      Sexton stood up, bathed in the floodlight. He sneered.

      I growled at him. It started down in my belly with a big, deep breath. My lips pulled back against my teeth. The sound came from a part of me that I never knew about. By the time it reached my mouth, it was feral, dangerous, and mine.

      If Sexton was an “animal,” as Mama would have called him, so was I—an animal threatened and ready to fight—anxious to fight—looking forward to it.

      “Clio—Sexton!”

      The voice came from the dark, behind. I couldn’t risk a look. The caretaker loomed over me.

      A figure barreled out of the darkness and rammed into Sexton. The big man fell back at the priestly onslaught. I scrambled to my feet and went after them.

      The fight ended as quickly as it had began. Sexton roared off into the night. I put a hand on Tom’s shoulder.

      “Ow!” He winced. “Are you all right?”

      “Yeah. Your timing was great. Thanks.”

      “You’re welcome.”

      “How did you know?”

      “Mrs. Fern.”

      We both panted for a minute.

      “Did two careers go down the drain just then?” Tom asked.

      “Three, probably.” I wanted to rub his sore shoulder, but I didn’t. “Where did you learn to throw a block like that?”

      Tom grinned. “‘On the playing fields of—’”

      “Eton?”

      “Too rich for my family. But it was a rugby team.” He offered me his arm. I took it. He was an island of safety.

      “Sexton may make trouble,” Tom warned.

      “What can he say?” I worked to keep up with his long strides. “That he tried to assault me and I fought back, that you helped me out?”

      Tom halted, so fast that I went on beyond him a step or two.

      “I am in the presence of a miracle.”

      “What?” I demanded.

      “That anyone so naive would be allowed out of doors unsupervised, let alone given a passport. Sexton has Lady Phelps’ ear. And others’. He doesn’t need the truth, only a motive.”

      For once I managed not to speak what I was thinking. It was a new experience. Tom was right, though. Scandal was just outside the window, looking for a way in. I had a new appreciation for the word. We had done nothing disgraceful, nothing at all, and yet—

      We walked apart the rest of the way to Mrs. Fern’s house. I wanted a home of my own, with no eyes watching my approach. Everyone watched everyone.

      Sure enough, I caught the movement of a curtain as we crossed under the street lamp. I fumbled with my key. Tom stood a discreet two feet away from me. The door opened just as I aimed the key at the lock. The entry framed Jane, already wrapped in her white terry cloth robe.

      “Thank you for bringing her home, Father,” she said. “She’s had quite a day, and I was worried about her. Come in, child.”

      “You’re welcome,” Tom said.

      “Yes, father. Thank you.” He hadn’t questioned; he had only helped, when I needed it.

      “Well, then, I’ll be going. I have the early service in the morning.”

      Jane and I watched him down the steps, across the street, and into the shadows of the cathedral grounds.

      “Are you all right, dear?” she asked.

      For the first time in a while, I thought, but I only said, “Yes, thank you,” before going up the stairs. I felt her eyes assessing me from behind, but she let me be.

      I shut the bedroom door, anticipating the savor of isolation, but it wasn’t to be. Alban haunted me at the edge of consciousness, at the mental equivalent of peripheral vision, coming in and out of focus as I got ready for bed. If I focused my attention on some physical task, I could keep him away from the forefront of my mind. As soon as I started to drift mentally, there he was. I’d hoped disposing of the brooch would keep him away, but it didn’t.

      Finally, washed, brushed, and pajama’d, I lay down on Mrs. Fern’s extra bed and waited.

      Nothing. It’s no wonder that spirits have earned a reputation for being malevolent.

      I resent that.

      “Tough,” I muttered under my breath. Jane was curious about my evening out. I didn’t want her wondering who I might be talking to in my room at whatever godawful hour it was. “You deserve it. What kind of stunt was that, this afternoon? I thought I was dead.”

      Ssh! It’s hard enough to keep her away from the door. She has so many questions.

      “Jane?”

      All of them.

      “You’re avoiding my question.”

      About being dead? That’s not quite right. What happened is, you died.

      “Same thing.”

      Not quite. Do you remember being dead?

      “Well, no, of course not. I was dead.”

      Do you remember dying?

      I stopped to think. I remembered realizing that I was dying—Dorcas, that is. I remembered feeling that last inevitability. I remembered the sadness. The fear was less strong than I had anticipated. I remembered letting my eyes close for the last time, and the strange sense of relief that whatever happened now, I could not control it, and thinking that thought strange.

      “No. I don’t remember.”

      I do.

      “What’s the poi—? Oh.” I saw the difference. “Why are you doing this to me? I didn’t ask for it.”

      Orders. Suggestions might be a better word. Strongly worded.

      Oh, Jesus, I thought—now the hallucinations are being joined by delusions. I’ll be going to the hospital where you don’t have to stay in bed. I can watch the world through chain link windows.

      Now, now, the voice chided. I thought we were past the point where you thought all this was just madness. Didn’t I give you enough of a sign?

      But the brooch was gone, interred, in the dark, under the turf of the abbey’s ancient graveyard. I couldn’t have even found the spot where I buried it, now.

      And my dead saint was still around. Getting rid of my talisman hadn’t gotten rid of him.

      “Alban?” I whispered into the darkness. “Where are you?”

      But there was no answer, throughout the long, long night.

     

     

          

Chapter 16

      Dreams confounded me through the nights. There was no obvious pattern to them. One night I would dream of Jesus erupting through the sky and calling me to account, of being unable to answer. Of stupidly looking for someone through darkness, of falling down Alice’s rabbit hole, of waking up to find myself staring out through the chain linked safety glass of an asylum.

      When I finally woke into reality, I would go to the office, stare at my desk and its electronic toys, then call a cab and return to Jane’s for more dreams.

      I couldn’t make sense of Dorcas’ death or life. I couldn’t explain it to Tom or Jane. Leslie was out of the question. So I took it to Simon.

      He read the pages.

      “Not up to your usual standard.” He’d only gotten two pages in. “I can’t print this.”

      “Why not?” I thought I knew, but I wanted to hear him say it.

      “It’s not exactly self-pity, though there is some of that.” He ran his hand through his yellowish hair then lifted my sheaf of papers. “I can’t sell people this. My advertisers’d have my head.”

      Dorcas had killed herself.

      “She killed herself—I don’t care what the reason was—there’s no more self-destructive act than that.”

      “She didn’t have a choice!” I argued.

      “She had dozens of choices,” Simon said. “She could have run off with her new husband, she could have reconciled with her sister, she could have run away on her own—“

      He cut himself off. His brow furrowed; his mouth gaped open. “It’s not just a story, is it?”

      I didn’t answer. I gathered up my things, including the pages. “I’ll work on it some more,” I finally managed.

      “Clio—“

      But I was already at the door. I went back to Jane Fern’s home and locked myself in my room. Again and again I struggled with Dorcas, with that moment when her death became certain, when I felt her spiraling down, and I wanted to go with her.

      “Clio—“ Jane would come to the door. “I’ve made a pot of tea. Wouldn’t you like some?”

      And we would re-enact our first meeting, strong, sweet tea in her kitchen, and for the moment I would be all right, I could forget, but I couldn’t maintain forgetfulness. As soon as I was alone again, the attraction of that strong, sweet spiral pulled me down.

      I dreamed back in time, always alone now, without my dead saint.

      I missed Alban. When I reburied the brooch, I had hoped that it would make him be silent. At first, it hadn’t. But now that I needed him, now that there was no one who could understand, I wanted him back. Maybe my dreams would be better.

      I dreamed the awful, empty moment when the secretary of the history department called me out of class, her face ashen, and led me through the hallway to a fresh-faced, grim policeman, barely out of diapers.

      “Ms. Griffin?”

      He smelled of death, even in my dream. Death smells of sweat and rot. It’s a strong, sweet smell.

      “Your father—”

      I remember once, when I was a kid, I was walking home from school. Another girl from the neighborhood walked up to me, smiling. She was older, and I wanted to be like her.

      “Hey, girl,” she said, and smiled.

      Then she punched me in the stomach. It hurt more than anything I’d ever felt before. I was paralyzed. I needed air and couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. She took me completely by surprise, then grinned at me while I stood there breathless, immobile, furious and helpless.

      That’s how all this stuff—the visions, the people, the “coincidences,” the brooch—made me feel. More was going on than I had ever expected, and I needed help.

      Finally, there was nothing for it but to go back to Christina. I hadn’t managed a car yet; I called a taxi. It was an expensive trip, but I had no alternative. The driver was—uncharacteristically—silent  during the ten minute drive. I spent the time worrying, but about the wrong things.

      A strange car was outside her cottage, engine running. Tom’s Morris Minor squatted next to it. I hesitated in the cab, not wanting to interrupt if Christina had visitors. I was about to tell the taxi driver to go back to town, when a woman emerged from the tiny house.

      “Dr. Griffin—wait!” It was the physician who had treated me in the hospital. She hurried to the cab. “You know her.”

      “What’s the matter?”

      “She needs to be in hospital.”

      “What’s wrong?”

      “That’s just it—I don’t know, but I think she’s in heart failure. We need to do some tests.”

      I paid off the cabby and followed the doctor inside. Christina knelt at her prie-dieu, below the velvet Jesus. Amphibalus blinked from his spot beside her. After a moment of prayer, Christina looked up at me and smiled.

      “You’ve come. I didn’t expect you so soon.”

      “What’s this I hear—”

      “Ma’am, I know that it’s unpleasant, but you—”

      “Hush, doctor,” Christina said, not unkindly. “It’s not the unpleasantness I mind.” The wheeze, louder than before, punc-tuated her words. Her features had softened, if that was possible, in the swelling of her face. I glanced at her wrists; they were swollen, too. Her ankles hid under her long dress. Her cheeks had risen, so that her eyes were nearly hidden. She was disappearing into herself.

      “You’re ill, ma’am,” the doctor said.

      “I know, but I don’t have the time.”

      “The time?” The doctor’s face was a mask of disbelief.

      Tom emerged from the kitchen with a glass of water that he handed to Christina. His face was damp, his expression distraught.

      Christina looked up to him. “Can you explain things to these two? I don’t—” She wheezed again, deep in her chest. Her face went pink at first, from the effort, then faded to a ghostly blue. She cleared a gob of phlegm from deep inside. “I don’t—”

      “Don’t try to talk.” He helped her to her chair. “Rest for a moment.”

      Tom jerked his head toward the back door. Obediently, we trooped through the tiny kitchen and out onto the back step. Amphibalus dodged through the forest of our feet to run out to the wood. The overcast sky loomed above, gray with scudding cloud. I shivered in the northwest wind.

      “She’ll die if she doesn’t get to the hospital,” Doctor Freckles said. I couldn’t keep calling her that, but now wasn’t a good time for the social graces.

      “Die?” I asked. Even to me, my voice sounded small and breathy, like a fearful child’s. I clamped my mouth shut. My problems grew small by comparison.

      “Yes,” the doctor confirmed.

      “Can you save her?” Tom’s voice was as cold as I felt.

      “Perhaps.”

      “For how long?”

      Doctor Freckles looked off toward the wood. I followed her gaze, but I didn’t see what she did, only the trees and brush that housed Christina’s tiny home. They were bare with winter, as naked as a baby fresh from the womb. They poked toward the gray sky, trembling in the wind, reaching for something even in their lifelessness.

      “I don’t know. Her condition is grave.” The doctor’s words broke through to me.

      “Not long, then,” I said.

      “Probably not,” she admitted. “If we’d been able to treat her before this—”

      I touched her shoulder. “It’s not your fault.”

      Doctor Freckles moved away, closer to the forest. She looked into its depths.

      Amphibalus bounded from the wood to the back door. He yowled, petulant, demanding, even, I think, panicky. I opened the door; the cat ran inside.

      We followed, too late. Christina was gone from the bulky form that lolled, empty now, in her favorite chair. Amphibalus nuzzled her face, meowed once, then slipped down to the floor and ran off out of sight.

      Dr. Freckles touched Christina’s neck for a long moment, then looked to the two of us, eyebrows raised. “We might try CPR, but I wouldn’t. The terror of resuscitation is that it sometimes works too well, and you save someone who would be better off dead.”

      Tom nodded, as if he knew what she meant, but I was in the dark. “Huh?”

      “Brain damage—from lack of oxygen. You get a living, breathing body with no one inside. Higher functions are the first to go.”

      Doctor Freckles wept. She wept with effortless grace, as if sorrow were her familiar companion; she hadn’t even known Christina. Tom stood over Christina and made the sign of the cross with his thumb on her forehead. He prayed softly, and the doctor, tears streaming down her face, made the responses.

      I could not speak. When they began the Lord’s prayer, I thought to join in. My lips moved, but I could make no sound. Christina was dead

      Then, he came to this:

     

            “Depart, O Christian soul, out of this world;

            “In the name of God the Father Almighty who created you;

            “In the name of Jesus Christ who redeemed you;

            “In the name of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies you,

            “May your rest be this day in peace,

                  “and your dwelling place in the Paradise of God.”

     

      I couldn’t stand up any longer. The words comforted them, but I was left out. I slumped into the second-best chair. Tom hovered over me, but I held up a hand to keep him away. Christina’s absence felt like an amputation. I needed her, and she was gone. I was being selfish, but it didn’t matter. I needed her.

      They finished the prayers, while I sat in the chair and stared around the tiny room, anywhere but at Christina. Jesus, from his framed piece of black velvet, caught my eye. You might have left her here a little longer, I thought.

      “Someone should stay,” Dr. Freckles said, “until a hearse can be organized.”

      “I’ll do it,” I heard myself volunteer. “You both have things to attend to, tasks that have to be accomplished before she can rest. Do you have to notify the police?”

      “She died while in my care,” the doctor said. “There won’t be any problems.” She looked at her watch. “I’ll take care of the official details, Father, if you’ll arrange to have the body—”

      Tom nodded. It only made sense for me to be the one to stay. Tom would have to go into town to talk to the undertaker. Dr. Freckles was already late for her work shift at the hospital. I went with her to the door.

      Raw air poured through the open entry while the doctor went out. I stared outside. Tom touched my shoulder.

      “Are you—”

      I shook my head, unable to speak. Christina still sat in her chair, her mouth slightly open.

      It was the emptiness, the difference between Christina alive and Christina dead, that scared me. Those who don’t believe in the existence of the soul must not see its departure.

      The dead go away.

      But then, why did Alban talk to me, and whose lives do I inhabit when I go into one of my trances?

      I must have been in a minor fugue, thinking of Christina’s silence; when I opened my eyes, Tom’s arms enfolded me. I leaned into his embrace, gathering warmth from his flesh, grateful for his strength. There was someone, still.

      We came apart gently, by mutual, silent consent.

      “You need to go.”

      “Will you be all right?” he asked, and the rest of the question, “alone here, with the dead,” was implied.

      “Yes.” Saying it made it true.

      Tom nodded, touched my cheek, and left. I watched him drive off until he turned out of sight. The air still blew cold through the open door. I let it close and turned toward Christina.

      Who knows the true moment of death? It may not be when the heart stops. Even the doctors say it takes a few minutes for the brain to be so damaged. What if she were still in there, helpless and alone? I took her hand. It felt warm, still, but her flesh was silent. I held her until I was sure of her absence. If there had been anything of her left, I didn’t want her to go off feeling unknown, alone.

      I placed Christina’s hands together across her breast. I leaned over and kissed her good-bye. A few tears landed on her face, and I wiped them away.

      After, I wandered through the tiny house. Her bed had not been made. I busied myself neatening up the room. I hung her bathrobe on a hook in the closet and put her flannel nightgown in her spare, nearly empty, dresser. She hadn’t had much—nothing beyond her simple needs. Her copy of Thomas à Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ lay on a bedside table, next—I was relieved to see something unspiritual—to a copy of the Hertfordshire Advertiser. It was folded open to my last article. The crossword had been worked, so Christina hadn’t spent all her time meditating on the mysteries of Christ. She had filled the squares with bold block printing, in red ink. I put the newspaper back where I had found it and made the bed.

      The living room, aside from the body, was neat enough. I went into the lav. Propped against the tiny, tinny mirror was an envelope, a soft buff color.

      Written on the face, in the same red ink, was my name. The script, as bold as the printing in the crossword, leapt across the intervening space. Christina had known that her death was coming, and she had placed the envelope where someone would find it.

      My fingers trembled as I reached for the letter.

      It was unsealed. The red script marched across the unlined page within, a script Christina must have learned in school, regular and dead level on the sheet.

     

      Dearest Clio (it read): Having no blood relations remaining, I find that someone has come just in time whom I feel able to trust with the few things I shall leave behind—have left, by the time you read this.

            Your gift—I know you don’t think of it as something to treasure, and I hope this changes—your gift marks you as one who may find a small use for my belongings, including my cottage. It has already been transferred to your possession, so as to avoid the over-employment of solicitors in probating my will. I would have told you on our next meeting, but it seems that we are not to have one this side of the veil.

            You need solitude, beloved, and if my cell can give it to you, it is better in your hands than in any others I can think of. Please, take this gift from an old woman who sees something of herself in you.

     

      Amphibalus appeared in the doorway and uttered a soft, lonely meow.