Fire Watch Part 5

"They will be so overjoyed they will quite forget what they have gone to the cemetery to do." He smiled disarmingly at her. "They will quite forget to bury me."

Anne backed against the door. "I won't let you," she said.

"Dear Anne, how will you stop me?"

She had not locked him in, not since the funeral. She had left the door unlocked each night in the hope that he would come out. "Leave the door open," he had shouted after her, but he had not opened it himself. When she went back the door was still shut, as if she had locked him in. "I will lock you in," she said aloud, and clutched the key inside her m.u.f.f.

Elliott laughed. "What good will that do? If I am a ghost, I should be able to pa.s.s through the walls and come floating across the cemetery to you, shouldn't I, Anne?"

"No," she said steadily "I won't let you."

"No?" he said, and laughed again. "When have you ever said no to me and meant it? You do not mean it now." He took a step toward her. "Come. We will go together."

"No!" she said, and whirled, opening and shutting the door behind her in one motion, pulling on the k.n.o.b with all her strength till she could get the key into the lock and turn it. Elliott's hand was on the k.n.o.b on the other side, turning it.

"Stop this foolishness and let me out, Anne," he said, half laughing, half stern.

"No," she said.

She put the key in the m.u.f.f, and then, as if that had taken all her strength, she walked a few steps into the sanctuary and sank down on a pew. It was the one she had sat in that day of the funeral, and she put her arms down on the pew in front of her and buried her head in them. Inside the m.u.f.f, her hand still clutched the key.

"Can I be of help, Miss Lawrence?" Reverend Sprague said kindly. He was wearing his heavy black coat and carrying The Service for the Burial of the Dead. The Service for the Burial of the Dead.

"Yes," Anne said, and stood up to go to the cemetery with him.

The coffin was already in the grave. The dirt was heaped around the edges, as dry and pale as the gra.s.s. The sky was heavy and gray. It was very cold. Victoria came forward to greet Reverend Sprague and speak to Anne. "I am so glad you came," she said, taking Anne's gloved hand. "We have only just heard," she said, her gray eyes filling with tears, and Anne thought suddenly, He has already been here.

Victoria's father came and put his arm around his daughter. "We have had word from New London," he said. "My son's ship was lost in a storm. With all hands."

"No," Anne said. "Your brother."

"We still hope and pray he may not be lost," Victoria's father said. "They were very near the coast."

"He is not lost," Anne said, almost to herself, "he will come today," and she did not know of whom she spoke.

"Let us pray," Reverend Sprague said, and Anne thought, Yes, yes, hurry. They all moved closer to the grave as if that could somehow shelter them from the iron-gray sky "In the midst of life we are in death," Reverend Sprague read. "Of whom may we seek for succor, but of thee, O Lord?"

Anne closed her eyes.

"For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ." It was beginning to snow. Reverend Sprague stopped to look at the flakes falling on the book and lost the page altogether. When he found it, he said, "Pardon me," and began again. "In the midst of life ..."

Hurry, Anne thought. Oh, hurry.

Far away, at the other side of the cemetery, across the endless stretch of grayish-brown gra.s.s and gray-black stones, someone was coming. The minister hesitated. Go on, Anne thought. Go on.

"That every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.'"

It was a man in a dark coat. He was carrying his hat in his hand. His hair was reddish-brown. There were flakes of snow on his coat and in his hair. Anne was afraid to look at him for fear the others would see him. She bowed her head. Reverend Sprague bent and scooped up a handful of dirt from the edge of the grave. "Unto the mercy of Almighty G.o.d, our heavenly Father, we commend the soul of our brother departed and commit his body to the ground, earth to earth-" He stopped, still holding the handful of earth.

Anne looked up. The man was much closer, walking rapidly between the graves. Victoria's father looked up. His face went gray "Unto the mercy of Almighty G.o.d we commend the soul of our brother departed," Reverend Sprague read, and stopped again, and stared.

Victoria's father put his arm around Victoria. Victoria looked up. The man began to run toward them, waving his hat in the air.

"No," Anne said. With the toe of her boot she kicked at the dirt heaped around the grave. The dislodged clumps of dirt clattered on the coffin. Reverend Sprague looked at her, his face red and angry. He thinks I murdered Elliott, Anne thought despairingly, but I didn't. She clenched the useless key inside her m.u.f.f and looked down at the forgotten coffin. I tried, Victoria. For your sake. For all our sakes. I tried to murder Elliott.

Victoria gave a strangled cry and began to run, her father close behind her. Reverend Sprague closed his book with an angry slap. "Roger!" Victoria cried, and threw her arms around his neck. Anne looked up.

Victoria's father slapped him on the back again and again. Victoria kissed him and cried. She took his large hand in her small gloved one and led him over to meet Anne. "This is my brother!" she said happily. "Roger, this is Miss Lawrence, who has been so kind to me."

He shook Anne's hand.

"We heard your ship was lost," she said.

"It was," he said, and looked past her at the open grave.

Anne stood outside the door of the choir room with the key in her hand until her fingers became stiff with cold and she could hardly put the key in the lock.

There was no one in the church. Reverend Sprague had gone home with Victoria and her father and brother to tea. "Please come," Victoria had said to Anne. "I do so want you and Roger to be friends." She had squeezed Anne's gloved hand and hurried off through the snow. It was nearly dusk. The snow had begun falling heavily by the time they finished burying Elliott's body. Reverend Sprague had read the service for the burial of the dead straight through to the end, and then they had stood, heads bowed against the snow, while old Mr. Finn filled in the grave. Then they had gone to tea and Anne had come back here to the church.

She turned the key in the lock. The rattling sound of the key seemed to be followed by an echo of itself, and she thought for a fleeting second of Elliott on the other side of the door, his hand already on the k.n.o.b, ready to hurtle past her. Then she opened the door.

There was no one there. She knew it before she lit the candle. There had been no one there all week except herself. Her small heeled footprints stood out clearly in the dust. The pew where Elliott had sat was thick with undisturbed dust, and in one corner of it lay the comforter she had brought him.

The toe of her foot hit against something on the floor, half under the pew. She bent to look. The packets of food, untouched in their brown paper wrappings, lay where Elliott had hidden them. A mouse had nibbled the string on one of them, and it lay spilled open, the piece of ham, the russet apple, the crumbling slice of cake she had brought him that first night. A schoolboy's picnic, Anne thought, and left the parcels where they were for Reverend Sprague to find and think whatever it was he would think about the footprints, the candle, the scattered food.

Let him think the worst, Anne thought. After all, it's true. I have murdered Elliott. It was getting very cold in the room. "I must go to tea at Victoria's," she said, and blew out the candle. By the dim light from the hall she picked up the comforter and folded it over her arm. She dropped the key on the floor and left the door open behind her.

"So there I was, all alone," Roger said, "in the middle of a rough sea, my shirt frozen to my back, not one of my shipmates in sight, when what should I spy but the whaling boat." He paused expectantly.

Anne pulled the comforter around her shoulders and leaned forward over the fire to warm her hands.

"Would you like some tea?" Victoria said kindly "Roger, we're eager to hear your story, but we must get poor Anne warmed up. I'm afraid she got a dreadful chill at the cemetery."

"I'm feeling much warmer now, thank you," Anne said, but she didn't refuse the tea. She wrapped her hands around the warmth of the thin china cup. Roger left his story to jab clumsily at the fire with the poker.

"Now then," Victoria said when the coals had roared up into new flames, "you may tell us the rest of your story, Roger."

Roger still squatted by the hearth, holding the poker loosely in his rough, windburned hands.

"There's nothing else to tell," he said, looking up at Anne. "The oars were still in the whaling boat. I rowed for sh.o.r.e." He had gray eyes like Victoria's. His hair in the firelight was darker than hers and with a reddish cast to it. Almost as dark as Elliott's. "I walked to an inn and hired a horse. When I got here, they told me you were at the cemetery. I was afraid you'd given up hope and were burying me."

His smile was more open than Elliott's, and his eyes more kind. His windburned hands looked strong and full of life, but he held the poker clumsily, as if his hands were cold and he could not get a proper grip on it. Anne took the comforter from around her shoulders and put it across her knees.

"You haven't eaten a thing since you got home," Victoria said. "And after all that time in an open boat, I'd think you would be starving."

Roger put the poker down on the hearth and took the cup of tea his sister gave him in both hands. He held it steadily enough, but he did not drink any. "I ate at the inn where I hired the horse," he said.

"How did you say you found the horse?" Anne said, as if she had not heard them. She held out a slice of cake to him on a thin china plate.

"I borrowed it from the man at the inn. He gave me some clothes to wear, too. Mine were ruined, and I'd lost my boots in the water. I must have been a sorry sight, knocking at his door late at night. He looked as though he'd seen a ghost." He smiled at Anne, and his eyes were kinder than Elliott's had ever been. "So did all of you," he said. "I felt for a moment as if I'd come to my own funeral."

"No," Anne said, and smiled back at him, but she watched him steadily as he took the slice of cake, and waited for him to eat it.

People quote The Revelation of St. John a lot these days. (They also call it Revelations, which should give you a clue as to how careful they are with their quotes.) They don't quote everything, though. For some reason, busily predicting the day and hour of the Second Coming, they completely ignore, "For the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect."They also ignore what happened to their prophecies before. They all turned out exactly as predicted, but in a way no one expected, and most of them turned out to have meant something entirely different from what they had imagined. "The Son of Man is come to save that which is lost," Matthew says, but what exactly does that mean?

Lost and Found

"Is it the end of the world?" Megan asked. "Losing your cup, I mean?" Finney had come up to the Reverend Mr. Davidson's study to see if he might have left it there and found Megan at her father's desk, pasting bits of cotton wool to a sheet of blue paper.

"No, of course not," Finney said. "Its only annoying. It's the third time this week I've lost it." He pulled the desk drawers open one by one. The top two were empty. The bottom was full of construction paper. He limped around the desk to a chair and dropped down onto it.

He watched Megan. The top two b.u.t.tons of her blouse were unb.u.t.toned, and she was leaning forward over the paper, so Finney had a nice view of her bosom, though she was unaware of it. She was making a botch of the pasting, daubing the brown glue onto the cotton instead of the paper. The glue leaked through the cotton wool when she pounded it down with the flat of her hand, and sticky bits of it clung to her palm. The face of an angel and the body of a woman and she could not paste as well as her nursery church school cla.s.s. It was her father the Reverend Mr. Davidson's voice one heard when she spoke, his learned speech patterns and quotations of scripture, but the effect was strong enough that one forgot she recited them without understanding. Finney constantly had to remind himself that she was only a child, even if she was eighteen, that her words were children's words with children's meanings, inspired though they might sound.

"Why did you ask if it were the end of the world?" Finney said.

"Because then you might find your cup. 'Of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.' When is Daddy coming home?"

Finney's foot began to throb. "When he's finished with his business."

"I hope he comes soon," Megan said. "There are only the three of us till he comes."

"Yes," Finney said, thinking of the other teacher, Mrs. Andover. A fine threesome to hold down the fort: a middle-aged spinster, an eighteen-year-old child, and a thirty-year-old ... what? Church school teacher, he told himself firmly. His foot began to ache worse than ever. Lame church school teacher.

"I hope he comes soon," Megan said again.

"So do I. What are you making?"

"Sheep," Megan said. She held up the paper. White bits of the cotton wool were stuck randomly to the blue paper. They looked like clouds in a blue sky. "My cla.s.s is going to make them after tea."

"Where are your children then?" Finney said, trying to keep his voice casual.

She looked at him with round blue eyes. "We were playing a game outside before. About sheep. So I came in to make some."

St. John's at End sat on a round island in the middle of the River End. The river on both sides was so shallow one could walk across it, but it was possible to drown in only a foot of water, wasn't it? Finney nearly had.

"I'll find them," he said.

"The lost shall be found," Megan said, and patted a bit of wool with her hand.

He collided with Mrs. Andover on the stairs. "Megan's let her cla.s.s out with no one to watch them," he said rapidly. "She's in there pasting and the children are G.o.d knows where. My boys are out, but they won't think to watch out for them."

Mrs. Andover turned and walked slowly down the stairs ahead of him, as if she were purposely impeding his progress. "The children are perfectly all right," she said calmly. She stopped at the foot of the stairs and faced Finney, her arms folded across her matronly bosom. "I set one of the older girls to watch them," she said. "She has been spying for me all week, seeing that nothing happens to them."

Finney was a little taken aback. Mrs. Andover was so much the Oxford tour guide, prim blue skirt and st.u.r.dy walking shoes. He would have thought a word like "spying" beneath her.

"You needn't worry," she said, mistaking Finney's surprise for concern. "I'm paying her. Two pounds the week. Money's the root of all loyalty, isn't it, then?"

"Sometimes," Finney said, even more surprised. "At any rate I think I'll go make sure of them."

Mrs. Andover lifted an eyebrow and said, "Whatever you think best." She turned at the landing and went into the sanctuary, Finney started out the side door and then stopped, wondering what Mrs. Andover could possibly be doing in there. She had not had a pocket torch with her, and the sanctuary was nearly pitch-black. He hesitated, then turned painfully around, using the stone lintel for support, and followed her into the sanctuary.

At first he could not see her. The s.p.a.ces where the stained gla.s.s windows had been were boarded up with sheets of plywood. Only the little arch at the top was left: open to let in light. The windows had been the first to go, of course, even before the government had decided that a state church should by definition help support the state. The windows had been sold because the cults could afford to buy them and the churches needed the money. The government had seen at once that the churches could be a source of income as well as grace, and the systematic sacking had begun. The great cathedrals, like Ely and Salisbury, were long since stripped bare, and it would not be long before the looting reached St. John's.

St. John's will becrammed with spies, Finney thought. The Reverend Mr. Davidson, Mrs. Andover's girl, the government spies, and myself, all working undercover in one way or another. We shall have to sell the pews to make room for everyone. He stood perfectly still, balancing on his good foot. He let his eyes adjust, waiting to get his bearings from the marble angel that always shone dimly near the doors. The little curved triangles of sky were thick with gray clouds that absorbed the light like Megan's cotton wool absorbed the brown glue.

He caught a glimpse of white to the left, but it was not the angel. It was Mrs. Andover's white blouse. She was bending over one of the pews. "I say," he called out cheerfully, "this would make a good hiding place, wouldn't it?"

She straightened abruptly.

"What are you looking for?" Finney said, making his way toward her with the pew backs for awkward crutches.

"Your cup," Mrs. Andover said nervously "I heard you tell Megan you'd lost it again. I thought one of the children might have hidden it."

Mrs. Andover was full of surprises today. Finney did not really know her at all, had not really thought about her presence though she had come after he did. Finney had ticketed her from the start as a schoolmistress spinster and not thought any more about her. Now he was not certain he should have dismissed her so easily "What are you doing here?" he said aloud.

"I was not aware the sanctuary was off-limits," she snapped. Finney was amazed. She looked as properly guilty as one of his upper form boys.

"I didn't mean to be rude," he said. "I was only wondering how you came to be here at St. John's."

She looked even guiltier, which was ridiculous. What had she been doing in here?

"One might wonder the same thing about you, Mr. Finney." She looked coldly at his stub of a foot. "You apparently came here through violent means."

Very good, thought Finney. "A shark bit it off," he said. "In the River End. I was wading."

"It is no wonder you are so concerned about the children then. Perhaps you'd better go see to them." She started past him. He put out his hand to stop her, not even sure what he wanted to say. She stopped stock-still. "I shouldn't question other people's fitness to teach, Mr. Finney," she said. "A lame man and a half-witted girl. The Reverend Mr. Davidson is apparently not in a position to pick and choose who represents his church."

Finney thought of Reverend Davidson bending over him, his shoes wet and his trousers splattered with water and Finney's blood. He had propped Finney's arm around his neck, and then, as if Finney were one of his children, picked him up and carried him out of the water. "Either that," Finney said, "or he has jesuss unfortunate affinity for idiots and cripples. Which are you, Mrs. Andover?"

She shook off his hand and brushed angrily past him.

"What were you looking for, Mrs. Andover?" Finney said. "What exactly did you expect to find?"

"Hullo," Megan said as if on cue. "Look what I've just found."

She was holding a heavy leather notebook full of yellowing pages. "I was looking for some nice black construction paper to make shadows with," she said. "'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.' I thought how nice it would be if each of the sheep had a nice black shadow and I looked in the bottom drawer of Daddy's desk, where he always keeps the paper, and this is all that was in there. Not any green at all." She handed the notebook to Finney.

"Green shadows?" he said absently, thinking of the drawer he had pulled out, full of colored paper.

"Of course not," Megan said. "Green pastures. 'He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.'"

He wasn't really listening to her. He was looking at the notebook. It was made of a soft, dark brown leather, now stiffening at the edges and even peeling off in curling layers at one corner. He started to open the cover. Mrs. Andover made a sound. Finney looked over Megan's bright blond head at her. Her face was lined with triumph.