The Royal Handmaid (19 page)

Rena had been kissed before, but now she felt stirred in a way that shocked her. She sensed his desires too, which revealed themselves in the strength of his arms, and when his lips touched hers, a thrill passed through them both. It
almost frightened her that she had the power to stir him so. She too was giving in to feelings she didn’t want to identify. Finally she put her hands on his chest and stepped back. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

Travis said a very strange thing then, something she did not understand, nor could she forget. “Don’t be afraid of life, Rena.”

“I’m not afraid. I just don’t want you mauling me.” Turning quickly, she moved away, furious with herself. She was aware that he had stepped beside her, and she turned and said almost bitterly, “You’d take advantage of a woman, wouldn’t you?”

“Rena, don’t be afraid to open your mind. Stretching it would do you good.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m telling you now not to touch me again.”

“I probably will.”

“I thought you were at least a gentleman.”

“No, you knew I wasn’t a gentleman.”

“And I was right.”

He stepped closer to her and took her arm. “Come along. I’ll take you back to the camp.”

But fear got the better of her, and she yanked her arm away. “No, I’ll wait here until they get back.”

“All right. You want to sit down?”

“No.”

Rena whirled away from him and walked back to the cliff. She did not go to the edge, however, but waited at a safe distance, listening to the two far below laughing as they collected the eggs. Hearing Travis walk up behind her, she said, “I could have gotten back up myself.”

“Maybe.”

Rena did not know how to talk to such a man. He was different from Dalton. He was different from any man she had ever known, and finally she changed the subject and began speaking about the food situation, about building another shelter, about anything. She was desperate to keep
the conversation going so there would be no more awkward moments of silence between them. “I’ve noticed that the crew is getting a little out of hand.”

“Yes, things are a bit different.”

“They need to show more respect.”

“I think in a place like this we’ll have to do more to get their respect.”

Rena pursed her lips. “What are you talking about?”

“Your dad paid them before. They
had
to show respect. They were like the serf tugging his forelock when the mistress of the manor came before them. But that won’t work anymore.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Travis. You’re not making any sense.”

Travis frowned. “Rena, have you ever read the part of the Bible that talks about being submissive when serving others?”

“Of course I have.”

“Well, have you ever read about Jesus washing the dirty feet of His disciples? Does that mean anything to you?”

Rena fell back on the theology she had learned from the professor about this matter. “It was different in that day. It was a custom.”

“That may have been, but it wasn’t a custom of the master to wash the feet of the servants, and that’s exactly what Jesus did. He washed their dirty feet. And I think He did it for a purpose.”

Rena wanted to change the subject, but she was caught by his words. She looked at him and demanded, “What are you talking about?”

For a moment Travis did not answer, and Rena was conscious only of the sound of the wind as it whipped along the top of the cliff and of the faint voices far below. She did not want to continue the conversation with Travis, but she could not help it.

“When I was in Guatemala,” he finally went on, “I worked with some Indians called the Maya.”

“I know who the Maya are.”

“They didn’t believe in Christianity, but the old chief listened to me try to preach. I didn’t think I was doing much good, but he was listening more than I thought. Then he put me to a test.”

“What kind of a test?”

“I read to them from the Bible about Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. The chief came to me one day and said, ‘Are you like Jesus?’ ”

“ ‘I try to be,’ I told him.”

“ ‘Good, then you come with me.’ He led me to a hut, and I smelled the filth before I got there. When I stepped inside it was dark, but I could see a sick man, almost a skeleton. And he was filthy, Rena. I don’t think anyone had made any attempt to clean him up. I knew what the chief was going to say, and he did.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘You wash his feet.’ ”

Travis stared off into the distance.

Finally Rena asked, “What did you do?”

“What do you think? I knew I had to show the chief that I believed what Jesus said. I didn’t have any choice. So I got some water and soap, and I bathed him, put fresh clothes on him.”

“Did the chief get converted?”

“No, he didn’t, but the sick man did.”

Rena stared at Travis for a moment, then said, “I think you’re trying to tell me something here.”

“I’m only trying to say that most of us have a problem with pride, Rena. Pride was the sin that led to the devil’s downfall, and think it’s at the root of most of our problems.”

Rena felt a surge of resentment, but she could not answer, for she knew that Travis had touched on a painful area of her life. She turned away from him and said, “I’m going back to the camp.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“No, I’ll go alone.”

Travis watched her go.
She’s got so much going for her,
he thought sadly,
but she’ll have to suffer much hardship before she finds out what God’s looking for.

****

Oscar prepared a fine meal that night. In addition to the tropical fish, Dalton had prepared a goat to roast. And there were plenty of the bird eggs that Chip and Meredith had gathered.

Rena looked around at the others as they were eating and felt a twinge of remorse. Travis had said no more to her after he had returned from the cliff, but she found herself remembering his embrace and the kiss. She was angered by it and knew that she would have to blot it out of her mind, but that was proving to be difficult.

She sat beside Abby and noticed that the woman ate almost nothing. When the meal was finished, Abby rose without a word and started toward the shelter. Jimmy started to rise too, but Rena said, “Let me talk to her, Jimmy.”

Rena could see that the tender young man was torn by his wife’s attitude. “You talk to her, then. She won’t listen to me.”

Rena went to the women’s tent, where she found Abby sitting alone, bent over with sorrow in every line of her body. Sitting down beside her, Rena put her arm around the woman and said, “I hate to see you like this, Abby.”

Abby lifted her head, and Rena saw the absolute misery in her face. “I never should have come, Rena. I should have gone back home with Jeanne while I had the chance!”

“Don’t say that.”

“I don’t think God ever called me to be a missionary. I think I just got caught up in it all. It sounded so exciting, and now it’s just awful.”

“We all get discouraged at times.”

“But not all of you are going to have a baby out in this
place with no doctor, no medicine. There’s no hospital. I’ll die, Rena! I’ll die!” she declared and dissolved into tears.

“No, you won’t. We’ll take care of you.”
Karl has got to help,
Rena thought.
He’s the only one who can.
Rena sat beside the weeping woman and found that, although she had always been able to speak freely in any situation, she could think of nothing to say to Abigail Townsend.

****

Lanie and Pete volunteered to do the cleaning up after dinner. They carefully preserved everything that was left over to save for another meal. Pete was not usually very talkative, but he found it easy to talk to Lanie. As he scoured the pots and dishes with sand, he watched her as she worked beside him, admiring her red hair and long limbs. He noted that the hardships here had not discouraged her as they had some of the others. Turning, she found him looking at her, and she grinned at him. “What are you looking at me for?”

“Sorry,” Pete said, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

A smile touched the corners of her lips. Pete noticed that she had a long, composed mouth, and her throat looked like ivory, with a summer darkness laying smooth over her skin.

Lanie said, “You know why I like you, Pete?”

Pete was startled. “I didn’t know you did.”

“Couldn’t you tell?”

“Well, not really.”

“I like you because you’re so tall. Well, I guess that’s not the only reason, but it’s one of the reasons.”

Pete laughed. “So if I were short, you wouldn’t like me at all?”

“Sure I would, but all my life I’ve hated being so tall. I shot up like a weed when I was in my teens. When I went to dancing school, none of the boys wanted to dance with me because they had to look up at me.” She put one of the knives down and picked up another and began rubbing it with a piece of worn canvas they used for a cloth. “I guess I let it get to me.”

“You seem just right to me.”

Lanie gave him a surprised look. “That’s because you’re tall.”

“I guess so. But, anyway, I know how you feel.”

“I don’t think you do.”

“Yes, I do. I always hated being so dumb.”

“You’re not dumb, Pete.”

“I’m pretty slow.”

Lanie shrugged. “I think that’s not bad all the time. People who do things quickly sometimes do them badly.”

“I always thought I’d marry a smart woman,” Pete mused. “She’d be smart and I’d be dumb, so between us we’d average out.”

The remark amused Lanie, and she shook her head as she smiled at him. “You know between us, we’re just right. Just the right height, and I guess our IQ would be average.”

The conversation turned to life on the island. “Do you worry about getting off this island?” Lanie asked.

“I try not to, but I think about it, of course.”

“Travis is the only one who seems to be content—and Chip, of course. But those two would be happy anywhere, I think. I envy them.”

“We just have to trust God,” Pete said simply.

Lanie felt a sudden wave of affection for this tall man. He was not the smartest man she had ever met, but he certainly was kind, and she felt secure with him. “That’s right,” she said quietly. “We have to trust God.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

A Bar of Soap

“I wish we’d been able to get some soap off of the ship before it washed away.”

Rena pulled her fingers through her hair, and a grimace marred her face. “I never knew how much I loved soap until I had to do without it.”

Captain Barkley had been whittling some pegs out of hardwood when Rena burst out with this. He leaned back and said, “It’s not as easy as running down to the store, is it? Or having a servant do it for you.”

Rena looked at the captain. He was wearing only a pair of trousers, and his upper body and face had been turned a ruddy bronze by the tropical sun. They had been on the island since early September, and their notches in the tree they used for a calendar indicated that it was now early December.

“I wasn’t complaining, Captain. I was just making an observation. I never thought I’d see the day when soap would be so important.”

“Why don’t you pray for some?” A whimsical expression crossed the captain’s face. “Doesn’t that Bible you read say you can ask for anything you want?”

Rena knew the captain was not a Christian, but he had never made fun of anyone’s religion that she knew of. Still she answered with some asperity. “I don’t think it means exactly that, Captain.”

“Why doesn’t it say what it means, then? That’s one thing that’s always troubled me about the Bible. I just never
understood it. Now, you take navigation. Numbers mean something, and they can’t mean anything else. But what little I’ve studied of the Bible makes me wonder how anybody ever could get any sense out of it.”

“A soul isn’t exactly the same thing as a navigational chart.”

“You’ve got that right, Rena. Don’t pay any attention to me. I guess I’m just getting crabby.” He pulled his fingers through the whiskers that had not been cut since he last shaved. “I always said I’d never wear a beard, but that razor of mine’s getting dull, and I don’t like pulling whiskers out with pliers.”

They were interrupted when Travis came up carrying a load of breadfruit in a net. The captain said, “It looks like you got a good harvest there, Travis.”

“We’re not going to starve,” Travis said cheerfully.

As Travis hung the breadfruit on a limb of the tree that Rena and the captain were sitting under, Barkley grinned and said, “We’re having a theological discussion here.”

“Is that right? What’s the topic? Are you trying to figure out what the gray beard of Daniel’s billy goat stands for?”

“Nothin’ that important. Rena here was just wishing for soap when I told her that the Good Book says, if I remember rightly, all she has to do is pray for some.”

Travis’s eyes grew smaller, and wrinkles appeared out at the corners, as they always did, when he grinned. “What did you tell him about that, Rena?”

“I told him it doesn’t mean that exactly.”

“And I was tryin’ to figure out why Jesus didn’t say exactly what He meant.”

Travis laughed. “I’ve often wondered that myself.”

“Don’t encourage him, Travis,” Rena said. “He’s making fun of what we believe in.”

“No, I’m not,” Barkley said, shaking his head, “but I’ve really wondered why the Bible’s so hard to understand.”

Travis sat down at the base of the tree and looked at Rena.
“I think sometimes we’d be better off if we did just take the Bible for what it says.”

“You mean like praying for soap?” Rena said. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, if God can make the world, He can give us a little bit of soap, I would think. Although personally, I can think of some things I’d rather have than soap.”

“That’s because you’re not a woman and don’t have to put up with this long, gritty hair.” Rena grabbed her hair and ran her hand through it again. “Oh, I’d give anything for just one bar of good, sweet-smelling soap!”