The Crossing (17 page)

He followed this with such a swipe across her cheek that her neck cracked backward and her world dissolved into one violent explosion of fiery red. Sharp pain retrieved her just in time to have him grind her face into his musty trousered crotch. She could not breathe, pressed so roughly up against his clothing, and her ears rang with a shrill buzzing.

Then, just as unexpectedly, he flung her from him, sending her sprawling out across the floor. “
Woe unto them! for they have fled from me: destruction unto them! because they have transgressed against me: though I have redeemed them, yet they have spoken lies against me
,” he bellowed.

Maryam tried to focus, but her world was blurred and ringed with pain—and she a writhing, hated insect left trampled on the filthy floor. But even this was not enough to stem his wrath. He kicked her in the soft part of her belly, driving all the air from her and, as she curled defensively into a ball, he drew back his foot to strike again.

Above the braying of the crowd one solitary voice rang out. “No! Stop!” Maryam coiled toward the sound. There, alone in a far aisle, Ruth stood her ground. So shocked were those around her their voices died away, and all that was heard in the great expanse was Ruth's small tremulous voice. “In the Holy Book the Lamb tells us:
Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful. Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven
.”

Father Joshua looked at Ruth intently while the hush grew in the room like one collectively held breath. Then a smile twisted his lips. “Out of the mouths of babes…” He nodded to himself, tapping his foot upon the stage as though keeping time with his passing thoughts. “You're right, little angel. Our rage is spent and our Lord is merciful.” He crossed to Maryam, who shied away and tucked her knees up to her chin to protect her vulnerable stomach from another blow. But now he reached a hand down, offering to help her up. “Come, sinner, back into our fold.”

She refused his hand, scrabbling unattended back to her feet. It was almost as if Father Joshua was tired now, his bluff
had been called. He gestured to the servers who had brought her in. “Take her to her room for now. Lock her in and let her make her peace with the Lord.”

The servers filed straight-backed down the aisle and flanked her, escorting her back off the stage. Behind her Father Joshua didn't miss a beat, rallying the congregation in song. “
When the Bridegroom cometh will your robes be white? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?…
”

Maryam dared not glance around her as she walked the long aisle; could not bear to read the faces of these scavengers who'd wished her dead. But as for Ruth…dear Ruth, who'd stood up for her so bravely in her time of need, she'd not forget.

Curled up on her bed, nursing her bruised and aching belly, Maryam heard the key turn in the lock. She roused herself, ready for another fight, but it was Hushai's kindly face that appeared in the gap as the door was pushed open.

He padded into the room, a laden tray in his hands.

“So you return, little one. You've caused quite a stir.”

Maryam relieved him of the tray, laying it down on the bedside table. “So much has happened in so little time,” she told him, taking his hand and leading him over to the bed to sit. “I found my father, but he rejected me.”

“So I have heard, child, from Mother Deborah. I am so sorry for your pain.”

“You've spoken with Mother Deborah?”

“Indeed. I have known her since she was small. A good woman and one you can trust.”

“Did she disclose our plan?” Maryam peered at his wrinkled old face, alert for any shift or gesture that might contradict his answer.

“That's why I'm here.” He turned to her, as though he could see her through his milky eyes. “Joseph has been primed with toddy by Lazarus, to counter any resistance. It seems they are wasting no time—you are to come with me directly once you've had this meal.”

Despite her eagerness to save Joseph, the news still hit her like a second kick in her guts. “Mother Deborah will be there? I need someone to monitor how much they take.”

Hushai reached out, finding her hand without effort and patting it to soothe her nerves. “She and I, little Sister. It seems she has convinced them I'm so elderly my knowledge of the process is no longer a threat.” He paused, shaking his head. “Sadly, things are not so good for Brother Mark.”

“Oh no!” Her heart raced, powered by her guilt. “Tell me, quickly, what they've done.”

Hushai sighed. “When your disappearance was discovered there were some rumblings, but nothing bad. But when news came that you'd approached your father in Aneaba and it was recounted what you said, all hell broke loose. Meanwhile, Brother Mark faithfully kept his word to watch for you, but he was discovered and questioned under—difficult—circumstances, and his guilt laid bare. He was tied up to the handrails on the upper deck and publicly lashed.”

Maryam's hand shot to her mouth. “No!”
She
had done this dreadful thing to him. It was her fault. “Does he still live?”

The old man's face rippled with emotion. “His spirit is not broken but his body suffers cruelly—the wounds are deep.”

She could not hold back the bitter tears. “Take me to see him, Hushai? Please. I must ask forgiveness for inflicting this pain.”

“He will see you when he's ready, child, and meanwhile I must prepare you for the taking of blood. Eat and drink your fill now while I wait outside. There is another who would speak with you, and I will watch to see you're undisturbed.”

“Another? Who?”

But already he was rising and making for the door. “Ten minutes only, then we really must go.” He slipped outside, Maryam struggling to pull herself together. Poor Brother Mark. How could she have asked him to run such a risk?

She had no chance to dwell upon this further: her dearest Sister slipped through the door.

“Ruth!” Maryam threw herself at her friend, forgetful of her aches and pains, and embraced her with such ferocity neither could breathe.

“Enough!” Ruth protested, pushing her off. She held Maryam at arm's length, studying her. “I knew no good would come of this.”

“You've not been punished for speaking out?” This fear had pressed on Maryam since Ruth's selfless act.

Ruth shrugged. “Mother Elizabeth stood up for me—said I was one of the most loyal Sisters she'd ever known. Father Joshua seemed quite impressed—in fact, he's invited me to dine with him at the Captain's table tonight.”

Maryam could not keep from shuddering. What Ruth read as kindness and approval, she saw in a much more sinister light. What if Father Joshua planned to breed with Ruth himself? After the last few weeks of unfolding this unholy city's secrets,
nothing would surprise her. The very thought of Father Joshua's old-man hands on her friend, his mouth, his ugly probing
thing
, disgusted her. She had to convince Ruth to come away—somehow break down her brainwashed trust.

She wrapped her arm around Ruth's waist, and sat them down upon the bed.
First things first
. “I found my father, Ruthie. My mother is dead.”

Ruth hugged her again, her smile as pure as tide-washed sand. “Maybe now that you know this you will find some peace.”

“Never!” Maryam burst out, images of the shrieking, strutting Father Joshua—and then her own betraying father—inside her head. “I
will
escape.” She lowered her voice, staring intently into Ruth's eyes as the words tumbled from her. “It is not the Lord who calls the shots here, Ruthie, it is Father Joshua and all his kind. They do not care for us—they long only to have power to keep us all enslaved.” Ruth's eyes widened uneasily as Maryam continued. “I have the means to get away. You, me, Brother Joseph, Hushai, Mark. Mother Deborah and Rebekah, too, if she is brave enough to take the chance. There is another world out there, a world where—”

Ruth pressed her hand over Maryam's mouth. “Are you mad? The Lord sent the Tribulation to destroy the world. Only we were saved, by His great grace. Outside you will find only death and destruction—Hell on earth. Here we are safe.”

Maryam peeled away Ruth's hand. “Safe? To live our lives like animals, primed for the kill? As worthless slaves? This is no life. I want more.”

“I want, I want. Can't you hear yourself? This is Lucifer speaking through your mouth.”

“Not you, too? Please, please don't listen to what they say.
I'm going to leave this place and take you with me, even if I have to tie you up and drag you off.”

“But we are Chosen—”

“Chosen for what? Our blood, that's all they care about. Think about it, Ruthie, use your head. If we're so special, why did Father Joshua beat me and humiliate me, when all I did was leave the ship? And why lash Brother Mark for this? They've killed dear Sister Sarah and many others of our kind. Rebekah and our older sisters here are bred to death. That'll be your lot, Ruthie. I'll not stay to see you dead.”

Ruth reared up, pacing the room in her agitation. She shook her head side to side, as if arguing inside herself and losing ground. Such confusion and distress filled her face that Maryam truly wanted to weep. If she lost Ruthie, her dearest Sister for so long, was there even any point in trying to leave?

She rose now, too, grasping Ruth's hand to press the small blue stone into her palm. “In a moment they'll be fetching me to take my blood. There's every chance I won't make it through—the balance between life and death is very fine. Swear to me, please Ruthie, on our special stone, that should I survive you'll come away with me so we can live. The Lord would not want to waste our lives like this, He'd want us to be safe and free. To spread His
real
message—about mercy and forgiveness.”

The stone lay cupped in Ruth's hand like the bright blue iris of a living eye. It glowed up at them, urging, seeking some magical response. Ruth did not speak; she just stood there staring down at it, silent tears descending her flushed cheeks. It was much to ask of her, Maryam knew. Like the faithful Ruth of the Holy Book, her Ruthie's heart was one with the Lord.

Ruth closed her fingers over the stone then opened them,
blinking the eye. When she finally responded, her voice trembled. “If it really
is
the Lord's will that I accompany you to keep you safe…then I will come.”

She looked up through her tears into Maryam's eyes and a smile wobbled on her lips. And as she spoke again, it was the Ruth of the Holy Book whose words she used. “
Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge…Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried too.
”

The anga kerea toddy burned all the way to her stomach. Maryam did not resist taking it this time; she wanted its mind-numbing qualities to help block her terrible apprehension and to thin her blood so as to speed its flow. Time was of the essence now. Joseph lay in a drugged-out sleep below her and Mother Lilith prepared the hypodermic needles for the exchange.

Mother Deborah stroked Joseph's pale sweaty forehead as she watched Mother Lilith sterilise the equipment. She glanced up at Maryam, her tired eyes full of concern, and murmured softly so Mother Lilith would not hear. “I promise I won't leave you, child, until you wake.”

“How is Joseph?” Maryam whispered back, her tongue already thickening and her brain starting to fog.

“If the transfusion is big enough, it should have some positive effect. That's as much as Lilith will say for now.”

“Sorry?” Mother Lilith said, looking up from her task. “What was that?”

Mother Deborah smiled. “It was nothing. I was merely praying for my son.”

Mother Lilith seemed to accept this, nodding as she laid the last of her equipment on the trolley and wheeled it over to the bed where Joseph lay. Maryam tried to watch the process going on below her but as his blood started slowly filling up the bowl beside him on the bed and Mother Lilith began to attach the second tube to his other arm, her brain started swimming
around inside her head, losing focus and drawing her down into the deep, confusing toddy-induced sleep.

She fought it hard, fearful these would be her last few thoughts upon this earth. Should she pray for forgiveness now? Repent her sins? Every cell of her childhood conditioning screamed at her to make her peace and yet…and yet…her rage with the Lord, her disbelief that such atrocities were meted out in His name, took the words and spun them around.
Father, I forgive you for your sins
…. She almost laughed aloud at this absurdity, just as the needle pierced her skin and burrowed in along her fragile vein.
By the sacred power of His Blood
…what was it now? Her blood. Her power. Her life pouring away in this thin streaming flow of red….

“Mother!” she cried out. Both Mothers turned, but it was neither of these two white women she so frantically searched for in her drifting state. Instead, she was rewarded by the image of the gentle brown face of one who once loved her, loved the little Nanona, there amidst a miraculous aura of white light, holding wide her arms to welcome her. And in this peaceful, surreal world Maryam ran to her, her heart beating ever faster in a race with time, collapsing into her mother's reassuring soft embrace…

Something roused her, wrenching her reluctantly from her mother's arms. Who would do this cruel thing, when she was so happy here and so content? It infuriated her.
No! Leave me here! There is no better life for me back in the world. Just let me die.
But the hand shaking her so insistently would not cease.

“Maryam, you must wake now. Answer me. Give me some kind of sign.” The voice was frantic, drilling into her like a sand-hopper into the sand. “Come back to us, child. You must not die.”

The urgency pressed on her and she tried to free herself of the need to respond. Her body was a slab of stone, cemented to the very bedrock of the earth, and would not move.

“Open your eyes, girl—do not give up on us now.” It was a woman's voice, a voice she knew she should recognise, but the effort to put a name to it was just too great. There was nothing left in her—no blood, no substance. Better to go back to that happy place, the place of light…

Cold water splashed her face and she startled, her eyes jolting open. Mother Deborah's pale face hovered over her, tears freely running down her cheeks.

“Oh, thank the Lord.” She leaned down over Maryam, gently kissing her. “I thought that we had lost you, too.”

Too? The word took flight inside her mind, stirring up an agitation she could not decode. Someone else had died? But who? Then the answer struck her with the force of a mudslide and she pushed up through her lethargy to say his name. “Joseph?” Could it be possible that she'd bled her life away and still he'd died?

“No my child. He sleeps still but has not been lost.” Mother Deborah placed a warm soothing cloth on Maryam's forehead and wiped her brow. “You have given me quite a fright, though, I must admit. I've been trying to rouse you for the last hour.”

Maryam closed her eyes again, no longer able to resist the summoning back to sleep. “Thank you for caring,” she managed to murmur to Mother Deborah, before nothingness shrouded her mind.

“You must drink something, little one. Wake up!” Hushai's crackly old voice broke through the shroud and she felt herself being gently lifted and a cup placed to her lips. She swallowed automatically, the water a soothing balm to her desperately dry mouth. “We must get as much fluid back into you as possible now, otherwise you'll not survive.”

Again he offered her the cup and again she drank. The leaden weight of her body had not abated, but now her mind began to clear.

“You saw the blood-letting?” she asked, then realised the stupidity of her question. Of course he could not have seen it: he was blind. “Sorry, I mean—”

Hushai chuckled. “I sensed the blood-letting, and it was frightening to experience, believe me.” His voice lost its joking edge. “She took so much from you I feared you'd die. And then you started going into shock.”

“Shock?”

“I've nursed enough injured people who then bleed to death to know the signs of deadly blood loss. Believe me, child. The Lord was on your side today.” Once more, he raised her head and offered her water to drink.

“Not the Lord,” she spouted carelessly, her bitterness clear in her voice. “He has deserted me. And I Him.”

“Child, child, do not say such things, even in jest. Now is not the place or time.” He placed the cup beside her bed and quickly strode across the room. She watched him crack the door open and tilt his head, listening. When he returned he leaned in close to her ear, whispering urgently. “They have posted a
guard outside the door, and I will only be able to attend you when he takes a break or I can find some way to distract him from his post. It seems that, though you are so seriously weakened, they worry still.” He drew up a chair and sat beside her, his voice so low she strained to hear. “Do you realise no one in living memory has ever broken free before? It has rattled those in power—caused great unease. If one can think this way, they fear others will follow suit.” 

Maryam found this difficult to comprehend. “No one else?”

Although Hushai smiled, his milky eyes somehow still managed to convey great sadness. “Once, long ago when I was young, my friends and I started to scheme. But we were discovered before we could execute our plan and severely punished for our crime. My friends they crippled and kept as slaves, down in the basement of the ship, and me…”

Despite her dreadful tiredness, Maryam rose up and took his hand. Somehow she guessed the horror he'd endured. “
They
blinded you?” Even to say it shook her to the core.

He nodded, his fingers warm in her bloodless hand. “I was barely older than you are now. At the time I thought my life was at an end. But, eventually, I came to see their actions as a gift. From great suffering can come new gains—I realised I did not require my eyes to see the truth of human folly nor to ease the suffering of those in need. I have waited all my life to find another with the spark to take a stand. I thought once it might be young Lazarus.” He shook his head. “But his rebellion has soured into an angry rage.” For a moment he said nothing, blindly staring off into a distance Maryam could not even guess at. Then he sighed. “In my youth there was no one who dared to aid us, so I vowed that if I ever found another willing to take up
the fight, I'd be there to lend a hand. I've waited far too many years for you to come along. I will not let them beat me twice.”

“But how can you swallow down such cruelty and serve them, knowing what they've done to you all this long time?”

“Faith, my child.”

How could he be saying this
? “You still have faith?”

“There are many different kinds of faith. Mine, I take not from the Rules that fetter us. I look to the mountains and the sea, the sun and moon, the distant stars. We are all bonded together with this hallowed earth on which we stand—our old ones understood this well. My faith is in the part of every living thing that fosters life and acts from love.”

His words moved her in a way she hadn't known before, but still the crushing tiredness refused to release its hold. She dropped his hand, exhausted by the effort required to think and speak. Would she ever rise above this lethargy? Find the energy to run? She closed her eyes, ready to sleep, when Mother Deborah's words rang again inside her head.

“One thing more, Hushai, before I rest. Has someone else I know died?”

Hushai startled. “How could you have known this, child?”

She wanted to answer him, to explain Mother Deborah's words. But now a shrug was all that she could muster.

He sighed. “I was hoping not to tell you this until you had regained more strength. Not one, but three, have died during this fateful day. Your Sister Rebekah's unborn child came far too soon and did not live. Her grief was just too much for her. She took her life.”

The news struck Maryam like a lightning bolt.
Rebekah dead by her own hand?
Anger flared inside her, exploding with such force she groaned. “And the third?”

“I'm afraid to say it's Brother Mark.”

No! Not Brother Mark!
“But how?”

“His wounds infected so quickly there was nothing I could do to help. I failed him and it pains me more than I can say.” The old man's voice crumbled away, his chin quavering as he struggled to regain control. “They say that before the Tribulation such infections were treated with ease, but now…” He shook his head.

Maryam started trembling, her body too weak to counter the assault of her distress. “Then I have killed him. I'm the one who caused his strife.” How it hurt to say the words aloud, forcing them past a throat swollen with guilt and grief.

She curled into a tiny ball, her arms wrapped round herself, trying to hold together as her plan for freedom fell apart. She could not go through with it now—too many people's lives would be held hostage by her selfish desire to escape.

“Do not blame yourself, little one. Mark knew the risks and took them willingly to see you free. Those of us who once dreamed of slaying our Father to seek the light, like our ancestor Nareau the Wise, gladly walk back into the Emptiness so long as we have lived to see someone younger and stronger take up the torch. I, too, will die a happy man now, knowing you will bear that torch across the sea—and one day use it to ignite freedom in the hearts of all our people here.”

Maryam gasped. So he knew about the planned escape?

Hushai had sensed her unease. “You forget that Mother Deborah and I are friends,” he reassured her. “Your secret is safe. But can you not see how much this means? You light the way.”