Resurrection (Blood of the Lamb) (19 page)

As she read on, the words gathered force around her. Unstable…Cruel…Evil…Not one kind word for the woman whom the proverb slighted as the wrecker of marriages, a temptress who could turn a good and pious man away from the Lord, as though he played no conscious part. “…Rejoice in the wife of thy youth, As a loving hind and a pleasant doe…”

“Indeed,” Natau said in a weary voice. “How I miss my wife.”

Maryam's heart ached at his words. “Tell me of her,” she said, and closed the Book. She could not continue, the words shifting in their meaning as she read them to reveal a message that spoke not of the joys of fidelity but of mistrust for all who were not men. How had she never seen this other interpretation before?

As she waited for her father to answer, she practised Aanjay's teachings to still her mind. Observe each breath, both in and out, and do not let your mind wander from this. Undoubtedly good advice, but doing it successfully was quite another matter.

“So beautiful and good,” Natau murmured, the effects of the toddy slurring his words. “I never had to raise a hand to her; she knew her place…” He shifted, groaning as the movement pained his leg.

“How did she die?” Maryam asked. She longed to hear him say her mother had died of a broken heart after being wrenched from her tiny daughter—not merely taken by the ravenous Te Matee Iai.

Natau's eyes snapped open and met with hers. For a chilling split second she thought that he must know her, the way the
coldness from his eyes leached into her brain. “Punishment from The Lord, for sending him despoiled goods…a daughter who was not fit to serve.”

“You cannot mean that?” The words shot from her mouth before she could hold them back. Foolish. Foolish. He would know her now, she was sure. Would recognise her voice. She laid the Holy Book down at her feet, ready to flee.

But his eyelids slipped down and sealed shut, allowing only one malnourished tear to escape. “Go now,” he murmured. “Leave me be.”

Maryam backed away from his hut, reeling from the venom in his words. He would never forgive her, she could see that now. He would die with hate for her embedded in his heart—and perhaps hate for every other woman who was not his wife. How would he reconcile this at his death? Would the Lord, if He existed, turn him away until he learned again to love? Somehow she doubted it. Doubted everything. For how could she bow to the teachings of the Holy Book if its readings could be used to foster such suspicion, hate and fear?

She stumbled back through the village, barely conscious of the other people around her, until she came to Vanesse's hut. She was stopped in her tracks by the sight of Lesuna sitting propped up on her sleeping mat, picking with her fingers at a meal of freshly cooked fish. Vanesse was sitting beside her.

“Little Sister!” Vanesse called. “Come and meet my dear cousin. It is the first time in five whole days that she has felt up to eating anything at all. The Lord be praised!” She stood up and enclosed Maryam in a happy embrace, whispering in her ear as she did so. “I think your cure is doing her some good.”

Maryam rushed over to Lesuna's side, and ran a critical gaze
over her neck. Although the terrible bruising still consumed most of the skin, it had faded from deep purple-black to a less angry hue—just as it had when Lazarus showed the first signs of cure. And, just as promising, it seemed Lesuna's fever had retreated as well. Her eyes were clear: still ringed with exhaustion, but taking in the world around her.
Thank you. Oh thank you, Filza. You might have saved not only Lesuna's life but mine as well
.

Maryam put her hand up to her bandaged head and tore off the disguise so Lesuna could see her face.

“This is Natau and Safaila's daughter, Sister Maryam,” Vanesse told Lesuna, stepping up behind Maryam to help her unveil.

Maryam's hand faltered in its work. Safaila? For the first time in her living memory she heard her mother's name, and the enormity of the knowledge rose inside her like an expanding bubble of the sweetest air. Safaila…Safaila…at last her mother had a name.

Lesuna smiled weakly, lying back now to take in Maryam's newly revealed face. “Indeed, you look so like her. Nanona…Was that not your name?”

Maryam nodded. Here, finally, was someone who knew her past and was prepared to share it. “Tell me more,” she mumbled, her throat blocking with suppressed tears.

“Only a few moments,” Vanesse warned. “She is still a long way from being well.”

“Of course,” Maryam agreed. “If it is too much…”

“No. I am fine.” Lesuna rolled over onto her side and took Maryam's hand, a tear rolling down her cheek.

Maryam knew, without even having to ask, just what Lesuna
grieved. She was mourning for her own child, Sister Sarah—Tekeaa—who had died at the Apostles’ hands.

“Safaila was everything Vanesse tells me about you.” She squeezed Maryam's hand as she paused for breath. Despite the promise of recovery, she still had far to go. “She was beautiful, and so, so brave. Everyone loved her and Natau most of all.”

She stopped, coughing now. Maryam glanced back over her shoulder at Vanesse, checking whether she should leave Lesuna be.

“One more minute,” Vanesse warned. “Then we must let her sleep.”

“She never complained when you were Chosen,” Lesuna started up again. “But everyone could see how it destroyed her. She loved you so very much. Every day until she died she'd sit down by the sea at sunset and talk to you as if you could hear.” She smiled, her weariness a mask upon her kindly face. “She said you'd always recognise her love in the whisperings of the sea.”

Maryam nodded. She couldn't speak. She seized up the discarded bandage and clumsily wrapped it around her head so she could flee the hut. She staggered through the busy village, oblivious to everything around her till she reached the sea. There, she threw herself into the water fully clothed and swam out from shore as far as she could. Floating on the buoyant skin of water, as though supported in her mother's arms, she mourned this cruel and pointless loss. Her mother had loved her. Had thought about her every day. This was what she'd longed to know. And yet, had she not always known it, deep in her heart? Had she not heard the soothing whispers of her mother's voice each time she sought out solace in the sea?

High above her gulls reeled in the cloud-strafed sky and, eventually, she felt her pain alight upon the breeze with them
and fly away. Never again would she have to doubt her mother's love. To hear of it from Lesuna's lips was like being handed back her past. Beneath her, there was a subtle shift in the undulations of the swell as a warm eddy of breeze nudged the sea, raising Maryam upward, toward the sun.
I am always with you, Nanona. Always standing at your side
. The words rolled through her, infusing her with warmth, and she recalled the tangible sense of potency and calm that had embraced her in times of great distress.
So it was you
, she whispered back, recognising now that her mother was the source of this precious gift of strength. It was going to be all right. She was home, her mother loved her, and Lesuna seemed to be responding to the cure. If only Lazarus had stayed to witness this momentous change…

Where would he be now, on his trek back to Motirawa? She hoped his mood had lifted as he made his way. Why had she been so hard on him? If she was mourning Mother Deborah's loss then he must be feeling it twice over—Mother Deborah was more his true mother than Mother Lilith had ever been. A strange thought struck her: Lazarus was just like her—grieving for a loving mother figure while trying to shake off the cruelty inflicted by a father who fought to maintain his position of authority as if it were the only goal. She wished he was here now so they could talk this through.

Maryam rolled over in the sea and began to swim back to the shore, also wishing she had shown Lazarus more understanding and kindness instead of driving him away. Next time she saw him, she vowed, she'd make it up to him.

Two days on and Maryam walked toward her father's hut, carrying a bowl of steamed breadfruit and fish she'd prepared for him earlier that morning. Lesuna had continued to improve, her fever and the coughing completely gone. The ugly marks had begun to fade from her neck, and this morning she had taken her first wobbly steps outside. Already, those who had seen her rise from her supposed death-bed had spread the news of her miraculous recovery. At this very moment, Vanesse was swamped with villagers insisting that she reveal the secrets of the cure. Maryam smiled in sympathy. Poor Vanesse. They had discussed the possibility of just such a reaction and had decided to withhold the remedy until the upcoming Judgement day, when Maryam and Lazarus would announce the recipe to one and all. Meanwhile, she would see her father for the last time, then leave for Motirawa after the peak of the midday sun.

She approached Natau's hut reluctantly. The last two visits had found him out of sorts, even though the antibiotics were starting to have some positive effects. The terrible swelling and redness had retreated and the pus was gone. The wound, however, was still far too fragile for him to put any substantial weight onto his leg, and frustration at this, she realised, was the main source of his anger.

She obediently read to him from the Holy Book again, reciting the words automatically so as not to rail at almost every phrase. Where, once, its words had been a source of comfort, now they prickled at her like the burrs of the kakang weed, clinging to her consciousness long after she had escaped his hut. Most of the women in the Holy Book were treated poorly, she'd come to realise—ignored, abused or used as little more than breeding stock to sell or trade. How little had changed since those ancient
words were first laid down. The same suspicions and fears were used to give legitimacy to Father Joshua's evil acts. Now, more than ever, she longed to bring him and all of his Apostles down.

She closed the book at last and offered it back to Natau. “I leave for home today,” she told him, filled with regret that these past three days had brought them no closer: he was a stranger still.

As he reached for the book he pointed to the mark on her arm where the doctors had pinned her broken bone. “What is this?”

“Merely an old scar.” His sudden interest rattled her. Of all the things to ask of her, why this?

“Tell me, where exactly do you come from?” He placed the Holy Book down on the edge of his bed and picked up the wood he was whittling into a small flying bird.

She scrabbled for the answer, forgetting for a moment which village Vanesse had suggested should anyone ask. “Ah…Suvaku, near the northern side of the Baluuka Track.” A small village that was often overlooked in stopovers to and from the Holy City—Vanesse had assured her it was a safe choice.

“Who is your sire?”

“Sire?” She shook her head. “I'm sorry, Father, I don't know what you mean.” Oh Lord, did she just call him father? How could she make such a stupid slip?

“Whose child are you?”

Yours, she longed to spit. Can't you sense that I am yours?

“My father and my mother died long ago,” she said. It was true, in a terrible way, and the act of saying it aloud to the man who'd made it so bruised her heart.

Natau put down his whittling and stared past her, into space. “That is sad. A daughter needs her sire to teach her of the Holy Book and show her right from wrong.”

The sincerity in his tone did little to appease her sudden anger. “I needed no father to teach me this.” Even with her voice lowered, she knew she still sounded strident and stubborn, and instantly regretted it. What was the point? Peace now, she counselled herself. Follow the breath. In…out…in…out…Her head, unbearably hot under its bandages, throbbed along in time, not helping at all.

Her father, however, did not let the statement go. “Every girl needs to be taught her place. A father's job is to maintain—”

“You raised a daughter?” she challenged him, all pretence of calm dropping away.

“My daughter is dead,” Natau snapped back. As he turned his face from her, it was washed by a finger of light from the half-shuttered window and she realised his eyes were watering.

She sprang to her feet. To have him deny her very existence and yet grieve the loss of it was too hard to take. She longed to shout at him, to shake him to his senses yelling:
Look what I have done for you. I've saved your life!
But what would this achieve besides alienating him further? “Forgive me, Brother Natau. I must go.”

He didn't even answer her or turn to say goodbye, just waved a bony hand to shoo her from the hut. She stormed out, convinced this was the end of it, until the memory of Vanesse's advice stopped her in her tracks.
For your own sake, child, I think that you should make your peace
.

Maryam teetered on the threshold of the hut, trying to collect herself before she turned. When, finally, she found a place of calm within herself, she spun around to face him one last time.

“Whatever happens,” she told him now, addressing the
back of his head as he refused to meet her gaze, “know this: your daughter Nanona loved you more than you will ever comprehend.” Loved. She couldn't say love, not now, even though for every one of her conscious years she'd wanted nothing more from him than to hear he loved her back.