The Alleluia Files (15 page)

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.

Although now she was as exhausted as, in the whole course
of her tumultuous existence, she could ever remember being. Every muscle in her body shook with fatigue, and her mind was dull with horror. She checked the fire burning at the corpses’ door and then returned to the cottage she would share this night with Peter. Lying on a thin carpet of other people’s belongings, she fell soundly asleep before she had time even to review the events of the day.

Cold woke her once in the middle of the night, and she got up to replenish both fires. Peter moaned once, softly. She gave him more water and checked his bandages. No blood appeared to be seeping through. Perhaps that was because he had no more blood left. She didn’t know. She couldn’t tell. She stumbled back to her bed and slept again.

In the morning, she divided her time between tending to Peter and digging the grave. She cooked an apple in her stew pot and mashed it up, spooning the sauce into her patient’s mouth. He ate it; another good sign. Back outside, she dug deeper into the ground, until she hit what felt like bedrock. Then she moved outward, making the hole wider, big enough to hold another row of bodies, or two.

By noon, Peter was beginning to move choppily on his bed, and the grave was completed. She fed him more broth, and ate a substantial lunch before attempting her most woeful task yet. And then slowly, methodically, not letting herself think about it too much, she dragged one body after the other from the cabin to the grave, and buried her friends.

She was sweating and weeping as she heaved the last shovelful of dirt onto the fresh mound. She struggled for breath as she drove the spade in the dirt and leaned against it, all strength gone. She should say something; there should be a formal farewell. The dead should not have to leave this world until their names were spoken one last time.

She said all twelve names very slowly, paused to think, and then named them again, one by one. “Daniel. You could talk all night without stopping, and we laughed at you for your fierceness, but I wish I could take some of your fierceness right now into my heart. Dawn, you were well named, because when you walked into a room, it was as if sunrise repeated itself. Martha. You taught me how to skin game and cook it over an open fire, so that I would never go hungry and neither would anyone around me. Evan … I spoke to you maybe three times
in my life, but each time you said a kind word. I will try to remember that kindness.”

She pronounced six more names, six more eulogies. She paused to ran her hand over her forehead. Her hair stuck to her damp face and then to her damp hands. Two to go. “Kate. You were the serious one. People said I was so solemn, but for you, everything was intense. Everything mattered. Everything was either right or wrong. I’ll miss your certainty. And Ruth. A friend for any time, in joy or sorrow. Now a memory, for today and forever.”

She folded her hands across the worn wooden handle of the shovel and leaned her forehead against her knuckles. And sobbed like she had not sobbed at any point in her life that she could remember.

By nightfall, Peter was thrashing about enough that Tamar was actually alarmed. She didn’t want him to hurt himself or dislodge his bandages. He had opened his eyes several times, though he did not seem to recognize her, but he was conscious as he took his food and he watched her as she fed him. But sleep would not come to him again, or at least quiet sleep, and she was afraid.

To calm him, she began to sing. Music had been one of the many things most Jacobites disdained—because music was the medium through which the angels prayed to their mistaken god—and yet a few wayward melodies had found their way into Tamar’s head and stayed there. Well, you could not live in Luminaux and be completely indifferent to music, and she had always found its power to be surprising and complex. The right song could enhance a mood or change it utterly; a few pensive bars mourned over by a violin could set her to dreaming, a riotous flare of woodwinds could send her dancing. It was not just the angels who could draw power from music.

What she sang now was a melody she had heard a few times in the streets of Luminaux, a sweet, wordless tune that had somehow gotten entangled in her ears and settled down for good at the back of her throat. From time to time over the past year, she had caught herself humming its wandering notes, and so it had stuck with her through repetition as well as charm. It was a lullaby or a love song, something gentle and romantic, and as she sang it now Peter settled and grew still.

There were no lyrics, so she made them up. “Sleep now, Peter, sleep my friend. Tamar watches over you. The stars turn over you. The earth turns under you. All will be well….” Silly words, meaningless phrases, but they fit the melody and they seemed to give him peace. He grunted once more and clumsily turned to his side, and then he fell into a deep sleep.

Tamar was right behind him. The past few days—few weeks—of physical exertion and emotional turmoil had left her completely drained. She had no reserves of energy or mental agility left. Tomorrow … so much to do. She must look for food, hunt if she had time, search the unlikely spring bushes for bark and berries. Her own supplies were low and she hadn’t found any extra food in the Jacobites’ storeroom. Perhaps the Jansai had taken those provisions as well. Well, she knew how to set traps, and Ileah wasn’t far from a mountain-fed stream; perhaps, if Peter was well enough, she could leave for the better part of the day to fish for food. She’d need a rod then, and some kind of fishhook…. Her thoughts darted more slowly from task to plan, and she drifted off to sleep.

Peter was better in the morning, but not exactly well. As she fed him another mashed apple, he looked her straight in the eye and said, “Tamar.” She was so excited that she almost dropped the spoon, but when she cried out his name in response, he merely looked away, across the room. But it was a good sign; she knew it was a good sign. When he fell back asleep, she hurried outside and stood for a moment in the doorway, looking around.

The stream was west. Slightly east was wilder country, where she might expect to find rabbits and squirrels. She could set a couple traps first, look for the few edible plants that might be available at this time of year, come back to check quickly on Peter, then head off toward the river by noon. Even if she was gone five hours, he should be well enough. She would return in time to feed him once more before he slept again for the night.

Of course, she would need a rod, and if she had time, she might be able to fashion a bow—of course, she didn’t have arrows—but there might be game birds, now that she thought of it, because she could hear wings overhead, and she turned quickly to see if it was grouse, pheasant, geese, or—