The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits (7 page)

But as soon as he comes into the room, stooped, dazzled by the light of her wax candle, he forgets his question. Friend Mother is waiting, open-eyed.

She locks him up in her arms.

Afterwards he shudders as if with cold.

"Hugh," she repeats in his ear, her breath savoury with smoke, "when I first heard you preach that sermon in Glasgow, my soul swelled with righteous love, and it was clear to me all of a sudden that I must leave my worthless husband and be a witness for heaven."

He clings on, speechless. He is thinking of his former wife Isabel asleep in the garret above, surrounded by her Sisters.

"But I cannot do this great work alone. I need one man by my side, the chosen one, and d'you know what the name of that man is?"

"Hugh," he whispers, fearfully.

"Hugh," she repeats, making a glad chorus of the word. "Now Jon't fret." She strokes his thinning hair. "You know there can be no adultery, for marriage is no more."

"Aye."

"Marriage is a bargain with death and with hell, and such bonds are not to be boasted of or clung to any longer."

He nods.

"We are partners in the great work. We can do no wrong," she assures him.

And he tries to believe her.

riend Mother is fresh-skinned, tireless; the Bread of Life is all the food she needs.

But resentment stirs among the Buchanites. Some have gone missing. And it has been noticed that Hugh goes to Friend Mothers room at night. His wife-as-was speaks bitterly to him in a corner. "Isabel," he says sternly, "look to your own soul, for the time is short." After that they don't exchange a word.

By the end of a fortnight there is sickness, too, locked up in Buchan Ha. Some are not well enough to walk up Templand Hill at sunset for the hymn-singing. There are cramps, fevers, strange swellings. One of Hugh's children-of-the-body, the boy, vomits up whatever molasses-water Friend Mother gives him. She whispers soothing things in the boy's ear, but he turns his head away. "They will nevermore hunger or thirst," she tells him, "those who are washed clean in the blood of the Lamb."

Patrick Hunters daughter appears to be dying; her fever is high, her breath is weak. She has deliriums, sees devils in the ceiling. Friend Mother shakes her head over the girl, and says it is a lack of faith among them that has let this sickness in. Finally she produces a handful of oatmeal from the end of an old sack.

The girl turns her face away in revulsion. "Friend Mother," she gasps, "I need no earthly food."

"Dear lass, dear good lassie," says Friend Mother, and gives her another sip of molasses-water instead.

But then Elizabeth Hunter breaks her long silence. She staggers to her feet and says, "We've fasted long enough. June's near over. If Christ was going to come, he'd have done it by now."

Patrick Hunter belts her with the back of his hand for her blasphemy. The sound silences them all.

Friend Mother comes up close to the woman. For once she is not gentle. "You value your poor flesh, do you? I tell you this, you besom, the time is very close. If you desert us now, Christ's fire will melt all the flesh from your bones."

Elizabeth Hunter is clutching her cheek. "Whatever about myself," she weeps, "I'll not watch my daughter and my son and my husband die of famishment before my eyes. Patrick," she roars at him, "this is self-murder, so it is, and the murder of your own bairns!"

But he turns his face from her, and so do the boy and girl; when she tries to lift the children in her arms they are dead weights. So Elizabeth Hunter goes off with no companion but Katherine Gardner who used to be her maid in the old days. Katherine begs Andrew Innes to come too, but he spurns her. Hugh watches them go, then turns to count the Buchanites: barely forty of them left. Too few, too few; what kind of welcome party will they make for the Lord?

There is no day or night anymore, only this damp, warm, blanketed floor where the remaining Sisters and Brothers lie curled up together like worms. Their breaths are sharp; their faces are sunken. Friend Mother is all sweetness, all patience with their imperfections.

In bed, she interprets the Book of Revelations. "It has come to me that you are the one called the Great Man Child, my beloved," she tells Hugh excitedly. "Is it not written that the woman shall give birth to the Man Child, and the dragon shall seek him out, but he shall be so well hid that the dragon will not find him?"

Hugh smiles up at her, as when he was small and his mother used to tell him stories about bogeys in graveyards. He is drifting, vague, almost asleep. And then he smells bacon.

At first he thinks it is another of the hallucinations of hunger, one of those ghost scents that have been troubling him recently. But no, it really is a bit of lean, purple bacon. She has it in her hand; she touches it to his mouth. He jerks away as if burnt.

Friend Mother is smiling. "Hugh, don't you recall what the Prophet said?
Eat that which is good, and let your soul delight in fatness!
"

"The others are starving," says Hugh hoarsely. He begins to understand. So that's how she still looks so strong, so alive.

"For a little while more, aye," she says sadly, "they must be cleansed in preparation for Christ's Coming. But for the leaders there is exemption."

"Exemption?"

"Yes. You and I must watch over the Brothers and Sisters in their weakness; it is our sacred task. Our strength must not fail, even for one night." She chews the dried bacon with relish, and reaches under her bed again. Her hand comes up with a whole slice of bread, and she puts it between his lips.

Helpless, Hugh sucks it, chokes it down.

Out in the world it is the month named July, but inside Buchan Ha time has little meaning anymore. They live in suspension, in the eternal moment of waiting.

There is a terrible banging on the door, one morning, and Elizabeth Hunter's voice, shouting "Open up in the name of the law!"

This goes on for half an hour, with the Buchanites droning their hymns in an effort to drown out the banging on the door, till Friend Mother gives Hugh a weary nod. Being the only one with enough strength left for such tasks, Hugh unbars the door and lets their former Sister in.

She has three constables with her, and a warrant to take her family away. The Buchanites stare at her with their dark-rimmed eyes. Patrick Hunter is enraged by his wife's treachery. "Bitch," he spits at her as the constables haul him out into the daylight. The Hunter girl is so weak, she has to be lifted on a rail.

Friend Mother stands by the door, arms folded, watching. "You think merely of your children's bodies, Elizabeth Hunter," she remarks. "I lost some infants myself, back in Glasgow; it pleased God to take them, all but three. At first I complained, much as you do, but now I know their souls flew free."

At which point, Elizabeth goes for Friend Mother's eyes, shrieking, and has to be pulled off by half a dozen Buchanites. Hugh is deeply moved to see that his Brothers and Sisters can still summon some strength to protect their beloved leader.

She is stern, that night, preaching to the Buchanites where they lie. "Look into your hearts. If ye be not pure and holy yet," she tells them, "ye will be like imperfect clay jars that explode in the furnace."

The next day the constables come back with another warrant. This time Hugh lets them in at once, to stop the noise of the pounding. They take away two more children, Thomas Bradley and his sister Mary, who is very weak and raves of goblins as the constables carry her out.

Then Katherine Gardner arrives with an angry knot of Nithsdalers and claims to be with child by Andrew Innes, at which there is a great groaning among the Buchanites. Hugh peers into the young man's face, but cannot decide whether the claim is true or a mere trick. Katherine Gardner demands that they deliver Andrew up to her, lest he die of hunger, and her baby have no father. Friend Mother, blank-faced, inclines her head at last. So the fellow goes off with Katherine and the constables, long-faced, in somebody's jacket that is too small for him.

Hugh suspects Andrew of feeling relieved; rescued. It is a sad fact that weakness lies like a maggot in the hearts of most of the Buchanites. Only Hugh loves Friend Mother as she should be loved.

The next day, when the constables bang on the doors of Buchan Ha, it is with a warrant to seek out
any corpses of man or woman or infant who might have been starved or otherwise foully put to death,
but though they search in every dusty corner of the building, they find nothing. Hugh stands with his fingers pressed together like a church. "See, there is no more death," he tells them; "now will ye not believe?"

That night when they are private together in the little room, Friend Mother touches Hugh but he is unmanned, soft as a child. He lies between her legs, his head pillowed on her thigh. The hairs are coarse as mountain grass. This is where he came from, Hugh thinks, dizzy with revelation. All life, all salvation comes out of this cave. A scent drifts up like sharp cheddar, like something baking.

"Take. Eat. This is my body," she whispers. "I am the Bread of Life, and he who eats this bread shall live forever." Her hand on his head. She gives him to feed.

One evening, Friend Mother comes into the long dim hall where the Buchanites lie in a waking sleep, too weak to brush away the flies that occasionally light on their faces. She claps her hands, and the sound is like gunshot. "Are ye ready?" she cries out. "Are ye prepared to be translated from flesh to spirit, as a word is translated from a foul gibberish into a holy tongue?"

They are startled, roused from torpor. Hugh stares up at her; she has given him no warning of this.

"Are ye ready for translation?"

"Aye!" they answer in a jagged chorus.

"But the forty days are not over," says Hugh confusedly.

She throws him an impatient look. "Christ's days are not measured like ours. I say again, are ye ready?"

"Aye!" goes the general roar.

"If ye are truly ready, Christ will come."

And suddenly Hugh knows it is true. The spark lights in his chest and flames up. He leads the roar: "Come, Christ!"

"Soon ye will be eating from the Tree of Paradise," she tells them, her voice almost singing.

"How soon?"

"Very soon. Watch and wait," she says, sitting down and lighting her pipe with composure.

Hugh sits at her feet, staring up at her, tense with excitement. "See," he whispers to the others, "Friend Mothers face shines with the glory of Christ." She is so sure, she is so radiant, how can he ever have doubted?

"Come, now," Friend Mother says at midnight, clapping her hands again to wake them. "Time to shed your trinkets. Ye won't need them on the journey."

There is a clattering like rain as the Buchanites fumble at their watches, rings, and lockets, hurling them onto the floor. John Gibson stamps on the crystal face of his grandfather's watch.

"Take your shoes off," she says now; "wear your old slippers for lightness, or bare feet would be best." On an impulse, Hugh runs over to the clothing chest. Time to put on his minister's gown, bands, and gloves: his final costume.

At her nod he unbars the door for the last time. They leave it swinging wide. She leads them up Templand Hill by moonlight in their slippers. The countryside is deserted; the green corn stands stiffly in the fields. They go slowly, a caravan of emaciated scarecrows, dragging the weaker Brothers and Sisters, but there is exultation in every face.

They have dragged their stock of wooden pallets with them, on Friend Mother's orders, and now they understand. "Build me a platform," she cries out. "A high platform so I can see Christ's Coming, at sunrise."

A shriek goes up.
Sunrise.
She has named the hour. At last, at last, thinks Hugh. His cheeks are wet; he finds himself weeping like a boy. The long trial is over.

The Buchanites stack up their pallets crazily, making a rough platform as high as their heads. Hugh waits, then heaves his own pallet on top, for Friend Mother's sacred feet to stand on.

"Bless you," she says, "bless ye all," and takes—of all things—a scissors out of her pocket. "Drop your hats, your bonnets. All your hair must be cut off," she instructs, "except for a tuft on top for the angels to catch ye by, to draw you up."

"Draw us up into heaven?" asks Hugh's small son, sheltering in Isabel White's skirts, and for a moment Hugh remembers what it was like to love his children—love them greedily, as his own. But there's no more time for that.

"Aye, hen," Friend Mother tells the boy. "At sunrise, there will be a light brighter than any light has ever been, and we will all be wafted into the land of bliss; we alone who are worthy, of all the folk that walk the earth!"

She cuts the hair of each man, woman, and child. It falls like dandelion seeds around them where they lie on the grass, suddenly weak again, as the night closes in around them. By the last of the moonlight, Hugh watches the transformation. Friend Mother comes to him last; he welcomes the feeling of lightness as the scissors move over his scalp.

Most of them sleep, in the end, but Hugh lies awake beside Friend Mother, his hand in hers, his blood thumping in his veins like a drum. He looks at her but her eyes are closed. He measures the slow creep of the stars.

Towards dawn she wakes, and mounts her platform like a cat, unaided. Hugh thought she might have asked him to share it with her, but really there is only room for one on this precipitous structure, and besides, Christ is coming for all of them; no one will be left behind. Hugh leads his Brothers and Sisters in the chant he has composed in the night. As the first tinge of gray light lifts the sky they clap their hands, they shout it out, panting with excitement.

Oh! hasten translation, and come redurrection!
Oh! hasten the coming of Christ in the air I

Halfway down the hill, a crowd is gathering; Nithsdale men and women, gawking up at the freaks. What matter, Hugh tells himself; no one can hold back the Buchanites now.

Oh! hasten translation, and come resurrection!
Oh! hasten the coming of Christ in the air!