Quatrain (8 page)

“I did not expect to find
you
in Laban, either,” I said. “I was told you lived now in Monteverde. That’s a pretty long way to come merely to attend a small-town festival.”

He smiled slightly. “Ariel sent me to Windy Point with a message for Raphael,” he said. “Enough of the other angels were going to Laban that I thought it might be enjoyable. I always think it is good to perform in these small venues, for it is rare that common men and women get a chance to hear the angels singing.”

I had recovered my poise, or mostly. “Why did you leave Windy Point?” I asked. “And go to Monteverde, of all places?”

He was silent a moment. “I found—there were things about Raphael—I disagreed too often with the way he ran the hold,” he said finally. It was clear he was editing out all kinds of calamitous detail. “To stay would have made me complicit in some of his behaviors. I do not want to claim that I am more virtuous than the next man—but I am not capable of living the way Raphael lives.”

This raised my eyebrows practically to my hairline. “I always thought Raphael had the capacity to be utterly dissolute,” I said. “I always thought that if he had been a mortal man, blessed with the same good looks and a certain amount of property, he would have sown bastards across the countryside and finished every night in a drunken stupor. But I believed that the very office of Archangel would have forced him to a higher standard. He is so much in the public eye. Angels from all holds are in and out of Windy Point on a daily basis. He could not possibly be as corrupt as he had the potential to be.”

Stephen actually seemed relieved to hear me put the case so bluntly, for he was nodding energetically. “Yes—so you would think—but he found ways early on to separate the public business of the hold from the private. There are parts of Windy Point that visitors rarely see. And thus there are activities that occur in Windy Point—well. I can only say that if Gabriel and Ariel knew about them, I think they would petition the god to relieve Raphael of his responsibility before his term officially ended.”

“Those are grave charges,” I said.

Stephen nodded. “But I think you know the man well enough not to be shocked.”

“Everything I hear about Gabriel leads me to believe he will be a better Archangel in every sense.”

Stephen nodded again. “He is young, but he has a great deal of presence and self-assurance. I know that Ariel admires him greatly. Some angels will tell you that he is arrogant, and others will complain that his standards of behavior are so high no one can be expected to meet them. I say, after Raphael, no Archangel could be too righteous or too demanding. I plan to be at the Gloria and sing with all my heart the year that Gabriel is installed in that office.”

“That will be an event worth celebrating,” I agreed.

Suddenly Stephen fixed me with his intense gaze again. It was as if, while we discussed Raphael’s flaws, he had forgotten that more personal matters lay between us, but now he had remembered. “And will you go to the Gloria on that day?” he asked.

“I doubt it. I haven’t been to one in years.”

“You haven’t told me yet. Where are you living? What have you been doing? Why are you in Laban?”

“I came to Laban for the festival,” I said.

He almost smiled. “Why are you in this part of Samaria,” he said, speaking deliberately, “and under what conditions do you live?”

“I’m living at a large farm about forty miles from here—a big complex run by a wealthy landowner. About fifty people live there, and every one of us is needed to keep the place running. I mostly work in the kitchen, but at harvest, sometimes all of us are in the fields.”

“I can’t say this is a setting I would ever have expected to find you in.”

Now I smiled. “No, nor the kind of place I would have expected to come to rest,” I said. “But I find I like the work. I like the rhythms of the seasons. I like the thought that my labor contributes to something tangible and meaningful. Something that sustains life.”

It sounded embarrassingly naïve and melodramatic, but Stephen was only nodding. “Yes—I can understand that—it is easier sometimes to get through the days if you are convinced they have a purpose. How long have you been there?”

“Ten years.”

“And how long do you propose to stay?”

I had long ago perfected the art of watching someone very closely without seeming to be paying much attention at all. “As long as Sheba needs me to provide a home for her.”

“Who’s Sheba?”

“My niece. Ann’s daughter. She’s seventeen.”

His brows dipped in a slight frown. “Why are you raising her?”

“Ann died fourteen years ago of a lung infection, and there was no one else to take Sheba.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, but the response was one of those automatic expressions of sympathy; he didn’t seem remotely moved. “Did you reconcile with your sister before she died?”

I gave a short laugh. “No. In fact, I would say our relationship deteriorated after Sheba was born.”

“Was there a reason?”

“Well,” I said, my voice almost breezy, “she told me that the man who had fathered her child was you.”

He simply stared at me.

I elaborated. “She said that when you came looking for me, you were satisfied to find her instead. She said you stayed with her a week, promising when you left to return often—but you never kept that promise. She said she wrote to tell you of the baby’s birth, but you never replied.”

“None of that is true,” he said, finally finding his voice. “Not a word of it.”

I could feel my spirits soaring, for what seemed the first time in seventeen years. I had never known Stephen to lie, whereas Ann had lied all the time. But I had believed her about Stephen. He had left behind a bracelet, patterned with the Windy Point jewels, an item that I had seen on his wrist a hundred times. He had obviously been to her house. Why wouldn’t he have slept with her?

“I told her that angels never cared about their mortal offspring,” I went on. “I told her that she now knew what it was like to live an angel-seeker’s life, and that she should be glad she learned her lesson in a few months, instead of years.”

“I never went to bed with her,” he said, his voice insistent. “I was in her house perhaps two hours before I left again. I never came back because I had no reason to believe that
you
would ever be at that house again.”

“I thought she was telling the truth,” I said simply.

He came a step nearer, though he was already quite close. “And all this time, that’s what you have thought of me?” he demanded. “That I would betray you with your sister—a woman I knew that you despised?”

“I had betrayed you with a man you have come to hate,” I said. “I suppose it seemed like justice.”

“I have never believed in a justice so severe,” he said, sounding almost angry. “You did not understand me at all if that is what you believed.”

I bowed my head. “I left Windy Point thinking I did not understand anyone,” I said. “I had been wrong about so many things. I so easily could have been wrong about you.”

He lifted his hands to lay them on my shoulders. I felt the heat of his skin through my thin shirt; I felt the tension of his body in the convulsive grip of his fingers. “I was angry when you went to Raphael’s bed,” he admitted. “I was devastated when you disappeared. I have spent the last eighteen years trying to convince myself it would be better if I never saw you again. But nothing has ever made me so sad as learning that all this time, you have believed me capable of being so cruel.”

I lifted my own hands to place them on either side of his face. Along his jaws, I felt the faintest edge of roughness from his whiskers, though his cheeks were smooth as a baby’s. “I deserve your anger,” I said. “But don’t waste your time being sad for me. I don’t deserve your compassion.”

“I can’t help it,” he said, stubborn and sincere as always. His arms drew me slowly against his body. “I have never been able to bear the idea that you might be unhappy. I can’t bear the idea that anything I might have done could have given you a moment’s pain.”

“You never loved my sister,” I said. “Just hearing those words washes all the pain away.”

His arms gathered me against his body; his wings wrapped around us both, enfolding us in a cocoon of saturated white. I rested my head against his chest and heard the thunderous hammering of his heart. My arms went around his back, my palms flat against his warm skin, and I felt feathers brush my hands with a whispering touch.

Sweet Jovah singing, if I could stand—just like this—for the rest of my life, I would be unutterably happy.

“I do not know,” he said, and I heard his voice both above me and beneath me, rumbling against my ear, “that it will be possible for me to let you go again.”

I laughed shakily and clung more tightly. “Oh, it is very exciting to meet with an old lover again, and all sorts of crazy feelings are stirred up,” I said in a teasing way. “But then you start to remember her annoying habits—the way she gobbles her food or how she snorts when she laughs—and it turns out you didn’t really miss her all that much. In fact, you start wishing she would go away again very soon.”

He pulled back just enough to frown down at me. “What I remember now is that you would never let me be serious.”

I stretched up enough to give him a quick kiss on the mouth. Just to get it over with—that first kiss after a long estrangement, which can otherwise be so important and so disappointing. “What I remember is that you were always much too serious for your own good.”

“But I mean what I say,” he said. “I do not want to fly out of Laban and fly out of your life.”

There was a time I would have said, “Then take me with you to Monteverde!” and blissfully cut every other tie I had formed. I wouldn’t have minded if I harmed anyone I left behind; I wouldn’t have cared if my headlong action resulted in me being left alone and adrift when my angel protector grew tired of me. I never used to think about consequences or other people’s feelings. Back then, I scarcely thought at all.

“I have never been able to imagine a time that you would be back in my life, even temporarily,” I said quietly. “You have no idea how thrilled and hopeful I am that such a thing might occur. But I must behave rationally and I must think of others besides myself. I cannot abandon Sheba, and I do not want to abandon the farm. And so much time has passed! We may find that the emotions we feel this hour cannot be sustained for another year or even another day. Can we proceed slowly to figure out what we should do next?”

Now he was the one to plant a swift kiss on my mouth. “
Cautious
—it is not a word I ever expected to pair with
Salome
,” he said. “I do not believe that what I am feeling now will quickly fade. But I admit that we face obstacles. And I am willing to work around them with a certain amount of care.”

“You will create a frenzy if you come to visit me at the farm,” I said. “Just a few weeks ago, angels arrived at the hold to perform a weather intercession, and all our young girls went mad with desire. One of them even left with the angels when they departed. I assume she is still at Windy Point.” I shook my head. If she was not, then Neri’s fate was probably even more disastrous than I had described.

I felt Stephen grow tense. “Angels were visiting the place where you live?” he asked stiffly. “Which ones?”

“Hiram, Saul, and the Archangel,” I said steadily.

His arms turned to iron, but he did not fling me aside. “And did you have conversation with Raphael?”

“I tried to avoid it,” I said, “but, yes. He seemed amused to find me in a menial situation, earning my living with such mundane work. He’s the one who told me you had left Windy Point.”

He did not answer, but he looked so wretched that I had to try to reassure him. “Stephen. I hate Raphael. If I knew that I would never have to see him again, I would thank Jovah without ceasing. I know it is my own fault if you don’t believe me, but I never loved him. He dazzled me and I wanted the glory I thought I could have if he kept me near, but long before I left Windy Point eighteen years ago I had come to despise him. The only emotions I felt when I saw him at the farm were contempt and revulsion. And a certain amount of fear.”

He looked down, a little shamefaced. “You think I’m a jealous fool.”

I lifted my hand to pat his cheek again. “I think it is astonishing that you could care enough to be jealous over
me
.”

“Raphael took what I wanted most,” he said quietly, “and threw it away.”

“Then let us make sure he never has a chance to destroy anything else we value.”

“I still love you, Salome.”

“Oh, Stephen,” I whispered, “I love you so much that it hurts my heart.”

We spent the next two hours on that lonely, uninhabited, ordinary stretch of ground, building ourselves a small square of paradise. The sun was hot enough to be uncomfortable, so we moved under the shade of one of the trees. Arms wrapped around each other and wings sheltering us from the slightest wind, we talked, we kissed, we confessed, we forgave. You would think both of us were a little too old for flinging aside inhibitions in a relatively public place, but we even stripped off our clothes and made love there in that blessed and almost holy spot.