The Testament of Yves Gundron (23 page)

“Right,” Bradley said, and took a step back toward the crowd. “Good thinking.”

CHAPTER FIVE

THE EXHUMATION

uth was ill before night fell, either from her wound or from the day's events. She lay sweating and glassy-eyed abed, despite my wife's ministrations. I was busy stitching the harness, while Ydlbert's sons prepared the outlying neighbors for the night's somber festivities. Mandrik, afoot, made the rounds closer to town, and was later seen by many perched in a tree, in which he prayed aloud for guidance, and composed a hymn of praise.
¹
Desvres, by report, scythed out the clearing in the abundant summer grove, and cleared out the roasting pit, to which he brought a cartload of cured wood before the shadows began to grow long. Such a civic-minded individual was Desvres. My wife, who had planned to warp her loom and begin making what would clothe us in winter, could do no such thing with an invalid to tend. Heinrik's fields, and Dithyramb's, and Jungfrau's all looked healthier than mine. Even Yorik von Iggislau, who had long since been accused of trying to plant pole beans in his wife and something else entirely in the ground, had wheat whose abundance put mine to shame. I worked on the harness, and tried to converse with Enyadatta, who would not even look at me when she grunted. A dour, humorless
horse she seemed, but perhaps she would be kinder when I ceased comparing her every moment to Hammadi. She had to sense that I thought her second-rate.

My wife bathed Ruth like a babe, with rag, water, and bowl, and dressed her again in the chemise, but to no avail—it was soaked through within the hour. As the sun trailed nightward to the west, Adelaïda plied her with broth, but she only began to shiver. “There's no getting out of this meeting,” she told her patient. “You'll have to be well.”

“I'm fine,” said Ruth, with an affectation of lack of care. “I'll be fine.”

But before long we heard the neighbors' carts clattering past, all taking the road at a statelier pace now my Hammadi had served as example. Ruth looked no better than a shade; indeed, my own dead sister had looked more lively when she'd come to visit a few weeks since. We gave Elizaveta a heel of bread with which to amuse herself, and hitched the cart for the ride. As I secured the traces, Enyadatta turned to cast me a malignant look.

“Devil take you, horse,” I muttered. “It's but your appointed work.”

The evening, praise God, came on cooler than the day, with a breeze blowing mournfully down from the mountains. At Ydlbert's farm none but a lone, dirt-pecking chicken was astir, and from the rise did I see the bonfire, lusty as a bull in springtime, through the verdant leaves. Its light threw the trunks of the trees and the bodies of scores of people, Mandragorans and townsfolk both, into shadow. We drove in silence, listening only to the roar of the wheels against the rutted road and Enyadatta's ceaseless complaint. We heard voices in argument as we approached the grove, but as my cart drew nigh, one by one the voices hushed. At last I stood at the front of my cart, hearing only the wind in the leaves and the meadow grass as it brushed against my wheels, a sea of upturned faces regarding me from the heart of the fire, within the grove.

Ydlbert came forward to help me with the invalid, who fared no better for having been jostled along the road. Not since her arrival had my countrymen regarded her with so thorough an expression of wonder and mistrust. In the light of the fire, I looked at her afresh. In Adelaïda's dress she looked lankier than before, her pale face thinner in the
shadows. But where, but a few weeks before, she had seemed to me so strange as almost inhuman, her face had become familiar; and as she leaned heavily into her crutches, I believed I saw both fear and determination in her eyes, and could not help feeling protective of both.

“Father Stanislaus,” she said, bowing her head toward him where he sat, wound up tight. She nodded also to the attaché. “People of Mandragora. You know why we're gathered here.”

The full moon, like a luminous bowl of milk, began to rise over the tops of the trees.

“The government of my country has sent two emissaries—”

“Emissaries of Hell!” Jungfrau shouted. Jepho Martin, rather more pertinently, cried, “Speak English!”

She drew in a long breath. “My countrymen want you to give back the bodies of John Boogaerts and Thomas Ulyanov. This is a serious matter.”

“Aye,” yelled Jude Dithyramb, “when the soul's eternal slumber is at stake.”

A murmur of agreement rippled through the assembly.

Adelaïda clucked to herself. I did not want her sending Ruth ill wishes, but dared not say so.

“Yes, for the soul's sake. But for more immediately practical reasons as well. Partly because the government of my country is much larger and more powerful than you can likely imagine.”

“How big?” Jowl asked, before being slapped across the mouth by his mother.

Ruth pinched her sweaty upper lip with her sweaty hand. “Imagine that there were a hundred cities of Nnms, with so many Archdukes, and someone even greater to keep them all in line. And that's not big enough to convey what I mean.”

“He who rules the rulers of the world is He whom we call God,” Stanislaus interjected. Thin though his voice was, the force of his convictions carried, and a tentative ripple of applause came forth.

“If they want the bodies back, they'll get them, no matter how much you protest. And I want to argue that you should cease protesting now—that you should give them back the bodies, and send them on their way.”

Stanislaus rose slowly in his place, his chin pulled down into his
neck for fortitude. His ivory cassock grew bright in the firelight, quite eclipsing his slender and tentative face. “Ruth, the exigencies of this life are many, and many its woes.”

“Amen, brother,” shouted Dithyramb.

Jepho said, “For Christ's sake,
speak English
! All of you!”

“But on such a topic as this, I cannot give even an inch of way to your opinion. The rulers of earth live and die like ordinary mortals—”

“Bite your tongue,” said the attaché.

“—but the Ruler of Heaven, whose ways are eternal, has decreed the sanctity of earthly remains.”

“You mean that if they move them,” Ruth asked, without a trace of sarcasm, “God won't be able to find them on Judgment Day?” I longed to steer her toward a less volatile argument, but also feared to stand thus against the wishes of my countrymen.

“More or less. That the soul and the body will be unable to find one another at the Rapture, and the soul will then be unable to be brought to bliss.”

My brother began to sing, passionately:

“Mandrik!” I shouted. “This is no time.”

“Only an illustration,” he snapped back.

“I don't know much about religion,” she said modestly. Just don't, I thought, tell them you're a Jew. “Though I do, unlearned though I am, have faith that God is all-powerful, and that He'll know where the bodies are when they're reinterred. And I believe that if the bodies are exhumed with the appropriate respect, there's no sin in moving them back to their home soil.”

Stanislaus held his tongue a moment, but Wido Jungfrau, his whiskers quivering, answered for him. “Don't you see it's wrong?”

“You cannot go digging bodies like you would a shrub,” added Dithyramb.

“Bugger! Since when have you time for shrubs—pah!” yelled Miller Freund.

“There are larger—”

“This is blasphemy!” screamed Jungfrau to a chorus of “Hear!”s and “You tell it to her, brother !”s, and a single “Piss off, Miller,” from Dithyramb.

“Larger issues are at stake.” Ruth's voice strained over the general hum. “Please. Hear me out. I am listening to your arguments—please listen to mine.”

Stanislaus turned to face the crowd. “As Christians, men, it is our duty to let her speak.”

“Thank you,” she said. Her whole weight leaned into the crutches, and she swayed slightly back and forth under the effort. “There are larger issues at stake, issues which affect us all. Please. Will you listen?”

In reply, the fire crackled as its logs burned and settled in; the trees shuddered. Perhaps as in my family there are seers, in hers there had been an orator or two—for despite the wretchedness of her appearance and the unpopularity of whatever she was about to say, she held the crowd rapt.

“I did not arrive here by accident. I was looking for you. I wanted to find out how you do things here, because it's so different from how we do things at home. So markedly, unbelievably different.”

“Are all your people as strange as you?” Dirk asked, but the usual tone of combat was gone from his voice.

“Yes, if you put it that way, and no. If they could see you, Dirk, they would think you as strange a man as ever walked the planet. They would think that of all of you.” She paused briefly, dripping sweat like snow melting in the sun. “I have to tell you that I think it's important to bring the story of Mandragora back home with me. I believe that the differences between your home and mine are fruitful, that they'll explain to all of us what we have in common, and that, more important, your story might show my people what we've strayed from, what we once had and have since lost.”

She treated the ensuing silence as a lack of argument rather than, as I believed it to be, an utter lack of understanding, and continued. “I have tried not to be impertinent, or to pry where I wasn't wanted. I have hoped to earn your trust.”

“You're not much of a bother,” Yorik mumbled.

“If that's so, Yorik, then I hope you will trust me now. The truth is, Lieutenant Commander Bradley and Lieutenant Fiske want to get
home as quickly as they can. But they won't leave without those bodies.”

Jungfrau said, “I don't care a jot about your lieutenants. Why should I care what they want?” and Stanislaus urged him to hush.

“Because there was something dangerous in the plane.”

Again a silence fell over the gathering, as heavy and dark as midwinter. Ruth's crutches creaked under her shifting weight.

Mandrik said, “Explain what you mean, Ruth.” He watched her mouth carefully.

Stanislaus said, “Dangerous in what way?”

I felt the crowd's interest pulling toward her.

“They have taken whatever it was and put it in the helicopter, but they won't take it away until we give them the bodies. I don't know what they have, but whatever it is, from what I gather from Lieutenant Commander Bradley, it could be the most terrible curse that has ever been placed on you.”

My breath came short in my chest. “Ruth, you're the one who'd never spit to ward off danger. I thought you didn't believe in hexes.”

“This is different.”

“Aye,” called Wido, “because she brought it herself.”

“I did not bring it with me. Believe me, I had nothing to do with this.”

“Nothing but your compact with the Devil.”

“Wido, I don't know what they've taken out of that plane, but it can kill us both without regard for our beliefs. I am trying to protect myself as well as protect you.”

Stanislaus's eyes were cloudy. “Ruth, I understand that this is serious,” he said, “and I have no doubt that your motives are pure. But these countrymen of yours have come to rob graves, and I cannot see how we could allow that.”

“Father Stanislaus,” she said gently. “Has anyone ever dug up a grave before? Here, in Mandragora?”

“No,” he replied.

“Then you don't know for certain what the consequences are.”

His Adam's apple bobbed furiously. “No, exactly as I don't know for certain the consequences if I murdered Jude Dithyramb, because I've never done it. But I know it's a sin.”