The Alleluia Files
“Why did she move away?”
“To marry.”
Edward looked up. “Really? Maybe I know her husband. I grew up in Stockton, you know.”
Sweet god singing. Worse and worse. “His name is James Shelton. I don’t know that he was raised there, though. I think he moved to Stockton to take a job.”
Edward raised his eyebrows. “Not much commerce in Stockton. Unless he’s in banking. There’s a branch office of the Exchequer in Stockton, you know.”
“Banking. I think that’s it,” Tamar said faintly.
“Do they have children?” Sophie asked.
“One. Born a couple of months ago. That’s why I wanted to visit.”
Sophie clapped her hands together (a gesture she must have copied from her mother). She appeared to be one of those unfortunate women who became sloppily romantic at the very thought Of holding an infant. “Oh, how wonderful! What did you buy her for a baby gift?”
“I didn’t have time to get one. We left on such short notice—”
“Oh, but you have to bring them something! Their first baby!”
“I’ll pick something up in Stockton. See what they need.”
“No, no, you should have something in your hands when you arrive. Maybe if we have time tonight or tomorrow night, we can find something in one of these little towns along the way.”
Tamar’s protests were quickly overruled, and she inwardly seethed for the rest of the meal. As if she had any additional dollars to be throwing away on the fictional child of imaginary friends! She had best guard her tongue every minute for the rest of the journey.
The meal once over, they experienced another strained few minutes as they ascended the stairs to their rooms, side by side in the well-lit corridor. Tamar headed straight for her door and unlocked it, making no comment to Sophie. “I’ll be right in,” the girl said, and Tamar nodded. She closed the door behind her but left it unlocked, and true to her word, Sophie entered a few minutes later.
Tamar had already gotten herself ready for bed and climbed under the covers. Sophie moved moodily around the room, brushing out her long hair and sighing before the mirror.
“It’s very hard to be seventeen,” she burst out at last, setting down her brush and turning to face Tamar.
Oh, dear god, no, Tamar thought, but Sophie rushed on before Tamar could stop her. “No one realizes that I am a grown woman—that I know what I want and am perfectly capable of taking care of myself and making wise decisions. Everyone tells me, ‘Oh, when you’re older, you’ll understand, you’ll see why we didn’t want you to do such and such. You’ll thank us for making you do thus and so.’ But they’re basing everything on their own lives! On their own experiences! They don’t realize that mine are so much different! My feelings are so much different than theirs.”
Tamar didn’t quite have the heart to flounce over in bed and face the wall, but she did close her eyes. Sophie appeared not to notice. “From the time I was quite young, I was very mature. I helped my mother with my younger sisters and brothers—and I worked, too! I know how to be responsible with money and I know how to hold together a household. Do you know how much it costs to feed five people for a week? I know, to the penny! And yet everyone says I am too young to marry. They even think I’m too young to fall in love.”
Don’t ask my opinion, Tamar warned her silently. Don’t invite my comments. I’ll tell you, I swear I will.
“Don’t you think it is one of a parent’s duties to know when to let go?” Sophie went on, unheeding. “Don’t you think a mother should realize when her daughter is old enough to be responsible?”
Tamar’s eyes flew open. “My mother and father were murdered when I was a baby,” she said flatly. “I was raised by friends of theirs who didn’t have enough time to take care of their own children, so I was passed from hand to hand according to who had a free moment to spare that day. By the time I was ten, I was deciding where to live, what to eat, and who to trust. By the time I was seventeen, I had taken a lover, been abandoned by a lover, seen a friend kill herself, seen a friend kill another man. I think if you’re seventeen, and you have a chance to be your mother’s daughter for another year, or another minute, you should take that chance. Life on your own is not nearly as glorious as you might think. It is hard, it is bitter, and every minute of it wears you down. That’s what I think.”
And in the absolute silence that followed, she closed her eyes again and turned on her side. Sophie did not say another word, but switched off the light and climbed into bed. Tamar fell instantly asleep.
So she was not surprised when, the next morning, all of the awkwardness of the previous day returned. On the front seat, Sophie sat as close to Edward as his grip on the reins would allow, whispering endearments or gossip in his ear. Tamar sat with one elbow on the back of her bench, watching the countryside roll back behind them. If her life had depended on it, she could not have come up with a single conciliatory thing to say.
Dinner that night was more relaxed, because they shared a table with a family of six traveling southward to Luminaux. Sophie, of course, instantly commandeered the baby, while Edward talked road conditions with the patriarch. Tamar concentrated on her food. When she was done, she excused herself and went up to her room.
Again, she was half-asleep before Sophie entered. The girl stood uncertainly in the middle of the room.
“I hope I didn’t wake you up last night,” she said. “I’m a restless sleeper, and my sisters have often complained that I talk through my dreams.”
“Didn’t hear a thing,” Tamar said. “I fall asleep instantly and never wake up again till dawn. Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Sophie said. “I’ll try to be quiet.”
So of course Tamar simply had to turn over and feign sleep right away. Sophie waited a good half hour, sitting motionless on her own bed, before rising to her feet and tiptoeing from the room. The door made almost no sound as she closed it behind her. Tamar grinned in the dark and allowed herself to drift off to sleep.
After that, things went a little better. Edward seemed more at ease and Sophie simply glowed, radiant with the retained fire of passion. Tamar couldn’t help envying her a little—youth, innocence, and happiness; it seemed unfair that someone should have all three—but it was no part of her plan to thwart the young lovers. She did not care what they did in the dark as long as, by daylight, they continued on toward Stockton.
The third day, Edward had even mellowed enough to ask Tamar if she was still interested in driving. No doubt he merely wanted an opportunity to put both arms around his beloved as they cuddled in the back of the wagon, but the offer suited Tamar just fine. Accordingly, she took a hand at the reins, and the next fifty miles passed a little more pleasantly.
“You drive well,” Edward told her that night over dinner. “It’s a little odd for a woman to be so used to handling a team.”
Tamar grinned. “I can do a lot of odd things,” she said. “I can drive a horse. I can shoe a horse. I can cook a meal for fifty. I can make a campfire, and I can repair an electrical line, if it isn’t too far gone. I can drive a truck if I have to.”
“You must have lived a strange life,” Sophie said, her face shadowed by the memory of what Tamar had told her the other night.
Tamar looked at her and shrugged. “It was my life,” she said. “It seemed natural to me. But I admit there are things about your life that appeal to me more.”
It was on these terms of tentative goodwill that they continued the trip into Stockton, They arrived at the little town a few hours after noon on the fifth day of their trip, and Edward carefully negotiated the narrow streets.
“Where do you want me to let you off?” he asked. “Where does your friend live?”
Tamar had debated this point for most of the morning, and now she answered with partial honesty. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “My friend lives a little outside of town, and I’ll be traveling on to find her.??
?.
Sophie shot her a quick, troubled look. “We could take you to her farmhouse, or wherever she lives,” she offered.
“No,” Tamar said. “But thank you.”
“We plan to leave for Luminaux again in four days,” Edward said over his shoulder. “Where should we pick you up again?”
“I won’t be ready to return that quickly,” Tamar said gently. “So just go back without me.”
Now Sophie looked even more troubled. “My mother will be unhappy,” she said.
“I know. She’ll think I lied to her. But I think you will be as responsible without me along as you have been with me.”
“I meant—she likes you. She’ll be sorry you’re not coming back. Or do you plan to come back sometime?”
“Not anytime soon, I’m afraid. Tell her I’m sorry. She was always kind to me.”
“Are you sure we can’t take you to this friend’s place?” Edward persisted. He had pulled the cart to a halt and now was turned on his seat to look back at her. Like Sophie, he looked grave and worried.
“I’m sure.”
“Is there really someone you’re going to?” Sophie asked.
Tamar smiled. “Yes, there’s really a person and a place I’m going to,” she said. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
And before they could voice another concern, she had gathered up her belongings and hopped from the cart. It was not her wish to be rude, so she waved good-bye a few times as she began easing her way down the sidewalk. Edward merely nodded, but Sophie lifted her hand and waved dispiritedly, as if she was watching her best friend say farewell for the last time. It was a strange experience, Tamar found, to have virtual strangers anxious over her welfare. It was not quite as annoying as she would have expected.
There were several hours of daylight left, and she had no reason to dawdle in Stockton, so she set out immediately on foot. Ileah, she judged, was forty or fifty miles due south; she could not possibly make it there before nightfall, but she would get a good start. And she didn’t need to be wasting any more money on hotel rooms. She could camp out for the night.
Accordingly, she settled into a steady pace, not too taxing, and headed southward. This side road was not nearly as good as the northeastern highway had been—indeed, it was little more than a trail, and it obviously saw very little use. Which was good for Tamar, excellent for the Jacobites. She was not much of a tracker, but she studied the dusty road, trying to determine if other travelers had passed this way recently, or if she would be the first to arrive at Ileah. She thought she discerned hoof-prints in the dirt; soon enough, she would know.
She made a cold camp when it got too dark to see, and slept on a patch of grass that looked softer than it really was. Her bones hurt when she rose in the morning. She cleaned herself up as best she could and continued on. The morning sun was barely strong enough to chase away the chill she had acquired from sleeping on the ground, but by noon, walking had made her hot enough to wish for a cool breeze. She was remembering now why she had always hated traveling on foot.
But shortly after noon she was in sight of her destination. From a couple of miles away, she could see the poorly built stone cottages clumped together around what looked like a central green. At this distance, she could not see movement or hear noise—or even see smoke, which was odd. Ileah had never been wired for electricity, so any heat or power would have to come from fire. But there did not appear to be a single drift of smoke coming from any of the buildings, not even when she drew close enough to hail the settlement. Was it possible she was the first one here after all?
But no, she saw as soon as she came within sight of the green. Other Jacobites had arrived early. And the Jansai had followed them.
There were maybe ten bodies strewn helter-skelter across the center park, heads at abrupt angles, arms outflung before them on the ground. Blood was everywhere, on their clothes, on the grass, rusty brown in the pale brown dirt. Tamar moved between them with a sleepwalker’s unreality, bending down at each still form, checking for a pulse, checking for breath. None of them was living. She whispered their names as she moved between them—“Daniel, Dawn, Martha, Evan, Kate, Ruth”—because someone must mark their passing, and mark the site of their deaths. Not Jovah, of course—there was no god; he did not care who lived and died. But someone. The nameless deity the Edori worshiped. Someone. No one should die a death that went completely unrecorded.
Dazed, she moved through the rest of the sanctuary, searching for more of her friends. In one of the otherwise empty cottages, she found two more bodies. Almost all the other buildings were deserted.
But in the last hut she checked, she found another body. And when she put her hand to the red-stained chest, she felt the rib cage rise with breath. Her own lungs nearly collapsed from shock.
“Peter!” she cried, kneeling beside him on the dirt floor. “Peter, can you hear me? It’s Tamar! Can you hear me? Oh, the false god save us, what can I do, what can I do … Peter, I’m going to clean you up and try to patch your wounds. Just lie still, I’ll do what I can….”
She flew back outside, to the dilapidated well in the center of the green. One of these early arrivals had pushed off the cover and found a usable bucket, and tied it to the stone edge of the well with a long rope. Tamar flung it down and heard it hit water, and hauled it up as fast as her hands could pull. The water was icy cold and would no doubt send an injured man into trauma, but it was all she had.
She spent the next two hours examining Peter, binding his wounds, rolling him onto a thin mat, and silently praying to a nonexistent god. Every time she caught herself asking for divine assistance, she clamped her mouth shut and forced her mind back to her task, but over and over again the words began cycling of their own accord through her brain. Conran had said once that it was easy to be an atheist in a kind world; it was when affairs were desperate that every man’s inner strength was tested. She had never quite believed him before.
Peter appeared to have been both bludgeoned and stabbed; it was hard to tell whether the concussion or the wound had been worse. By the fact that the bleeding seemed to have stopped completely, Tamar judged that it had been many hours since the attackers had arrived. By the fact that Peter was still alive, she guessed that it had not been more than a day or two since they had passed through. Perhaps theirs were the horse tracks she thought she had seen on the road from Stockton.
On a normal day, she would have had nothing resembling medicine in her backpack, but she was still carrying the vial of manna-root salve that Ezra had given her. She spread the last of it on the dozen open cuts along Peter’s neck and chest and arms, then bound everything up with the cleanest clothes she could find from the items in the cottage with him. Not sure if it was a good idea or a bad one, she trickled some water down his throat. If he didn’t throw it all up, she would follow that later this evening with broth. She knew that a man could live days, sometimes a couple of weeks, without eating; she also knew the weaker he was, the more likely it was he would die.
Next a fire, because he was chilled straight through, and lying on the ground for a day or two had done him no good at all. She went outside again and dragged back branches and logs, enough to get a good blaze started. The cottage had been built to accommodate a central fire; there was a small circular hole in the middle of the roof. Or perhaps a century of neglect had caused the ceiling to cave in. In any case, the smoke could escape easily, and Peter could be brought as close to the flames as she dared.
After that, there was little she could do for him except allow his body to heal. She searched through the possessions the other Jacobites had left in one of the abandoned cabins till she found some cookware, then she put some dried meat into a pan of water and let this simmer over her fire. Dinner for the wounded man, if she could induce him to eat it. She didn’t think she could swallow a bite herself.
It was afternoon before she had finished all these tasks, and she stepped outside the cabin for a moment to take a breath
of air. And survey the scene before her. Twelve bodies in all. She did not think she could dig twelve graves, but the Jacobites were a clannish group; they would not mind lying side by side, body to body, whispering to each other through eternity of the atrocities they had seen in their lifetimes. A communal grave would do for them.
Accordingly, she next searched for a shovel among the boxes and backpacks and duffel bags that had been piled up in the cottage apparently chosen as a storage room. Someone had carried a fair collection of belongings on a small, wheeled cart (pulling it by hand, no doubt, since there didn’t seem to be any sign of horses here; of course, the Jansai could have appropriated any animals they found). On the cart she found a shovel and an ax and an array of knives. Someone had come prepared for chopping out a new life in a primitive settlement.
On the west edge of Ileah, Tamar began to dig. The ground was still tough from winter frosts, and she found it harder going than she had expected. And nothing would be worse than stacking bodies in a grave and finding that it was too shallow. Doggedly, she continued, till her back ached and her arms trembled, and the light began to fail. Well, she would have to finish it tomorrow.
But she could not leave her friends all night to the vicious curiosity of night animals. One by one, she pulled the ten bodies from the green to the cabin where the other two had fallen, and she built a fire in the open doorway. Here they were as safe as she could make them.
From time to time she returned to check on Peter and to give him more water. Every once in a while, when she lifted his head, he would mutter feebly in an incomprehensible tongue. She wasn’t sure; she thought that was encouraging. She spoke to him as she wiped his face and tilted water down his throat: You’re doing so well, I’m sure you’ll be fine, one more drink, in the morning you’ll be so much better …. She didn’t know who she was reassuring, the man on the pallet or herself.
In the evening, he did swallow a few spoonfuls of broth, and opened his mouth for more when she paused, afraid to overdo it. She was so heartened by this that, once he fell back into a troubled sleep, she made herself eat the rest of the soup. She was not hungry, but starving herself would serve no one. She must keep up her strength.