gardens of Klive. “I loved her in that moment. I loved her the moment I saw her. The moment I took her into my arms. As I have never loved before.”
He was not speaking of Stella. He was speaking of Marjorie.
11
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” Marjorie was kneeling in the confessional at the side of the chapel, the evening light falling upon her face The chapel was dusk dim, the light near the altar making a watchful eye in the shadow. “I have resented my daughter. And my husband.”
She was alone in the chapel except for Father James. Rigo was closeted in the winter quarters with Hector Paine. Stella and Tony and Father Sandoval had ridden the mares down to the village to visit Sebastian Mechanic and his wife, Dulia, who was, said Sebastian, the best cook on any six planets. Since the reception, Eugenie had scarcely put her nose outside her house and was there now. As Marjorie had come through the gardens to the chapel she had heard Eugenie singing, a slightly drunken lament with no particular burden of woe. The blues, Marjorie recalled having read somewhere, needed no proximate motivation. Any common grief would do. The ancient song, though not particularly melodic, had entered Marjorie’s ear and now turned there, playing itself over persistently, hating to see the evening sun go down.
“I have lost patience with Stella,” she said. Father James needed no explanation for this. He knew them all far too well to need explanation. “I have had angry words with Rigo…” Words about the Hunt, words about his risking his neck and more than his neck. “I have doubted God…”
Father James woke up at this. “How have you doubted?”
If God were good, Rigo and I would be in love, and Rigo would not treat me as he does, she thought. If God were good, Father Sandoval would not treat me as a mere adjunct to my husband, sentencing me to obedience every time I am unhappy. I haven’t done anything wrong, but I’m the one who is being punished and it isn’t fair. She longed for justice. She bit her lip and said none of this, but instead dragged false scent across the trial. “If God is truly powerful, he would not let this plague go on.”
There was silence in the confessional, silence lasting long enough for Marjorie to wonder whether Father James might not really have fallen asleep. Not that she blamed him. Their sins were all boring enough, repetitive enough. They had enough capital sins roiling around to condemn them all. Pride, that was Rigo’s bent. Sloth, Eugenie’s trademark. Envy, that was for Stella. And she, Marjorie, boiling with uncharitable anger toward them all. Herself, who had always tried so hard not to be guilty of anything!
“Marjorie.” Father James recalled her to herself. “I cut my hand upon a grass blade a few days ago, a bad cut. It hurt a great deal. Grass cuts do not seem to heal easily, either.”
“That’s true,” she murmured, familiar with the experience but wondering what he was getting at.
“It came to me suddenly as I was standing there bleeding all over the ground that I could see the cut there between my fingers but I could not heal it. I could observe it, but I couldn’t do anything about it even though I greatly desired to do so. I could not command the cells at the edges of the wound to close. I was not, am not privy to their operations I am too gross to enter my own cells and observe their function. Nor can you do so, nor any of us.
“But suppose, just suppose, that you could create… oh, a virus that sees and reproduces and thinks! Suppose you could send it into your body, commanding it to multiply and find whatever disease or evil there may be and destroy it. Suppose you could send these creatures to the site of the wound with an order to stitch it up and repair it. You would not be able to see them with your naked eye. You would be unable to know how many of them there were in the fight. You would not know where each one of them was or what it was doing, what agonies of effort each was expending or whether some gave up the battle out of fatigue or despair. All you would know is that you had created a tribe of warriors and sent it into battle. Until you healed or died, you would not know whether that battle was won.”
“I don’t understand, Father.”
“I wonder sometimes if this is what God has done with us.”
Marjorie groped for his meaning. “Wouldn’t that limit God’s omnipotence?”
“Perhaps not. It might be an expression of that omnipotence. In the microcosm, perhaps He needs — or chooses — to create help. Perhaps He has created help. Perhaps he creates in us the biological equivalent of microscopes and antibiotics.”
“You are saying God cannot intervene in this plague?” The invisible person beyond the grating sighed. “I am saying that perhaps God has already done his intervening by creating us. Perhaps He intends us to do what we keep praying He will do. Having designed us for a particular task, he has sent us into battle. We do not particularly enjoy the battle, so we keep begging him to let us off. He pays no attention because He does not keep track of us individually. He does not know where in the body we are or how many of us there are. He does not check to see whether we despair or persevere. Only if the body of the universe is healed will he know whether we have done what we were sent to do!” The young priest coughed. After a moment, Marjorie realized he was laughing. Was it at her, or at himself? “Do you know of the uncertainty principle, Marjorie?”
“I am educated,” she snorted, very much annoyed with him.
“Then you know that with very small things, we cannot both know where they are and what they are doing. The act of observing them always changes what they are doing. Perhaps God does not look at us individually because to do so would interrupt our work, interfere with our free will…”
“Is this doctrine, Father?” she asked doubtfully, annoyed, wondering what had come over him.
Another sigh. “No, Marjorie. It is the maundering of a homesick priest. Of course it isn’t doctrine You know your way around the catechism better than that.” He rubbed his head, thankful for the seal of the confessional. Even though Marjorie needed to take herself far less seriously, Father Sandoval would not appreciate what he had just said…
“If the plague kills us all, it will be because of our sins,” she said stubbornly. “Not because we didn’t fight it well enough. And our souls are immortal.”
“So Sanctity says. So the Moldies say,” he murmured. “They say we must all be killed off so our souls can live, in the New Creation.”
“I don’t mean we’re excused from fighting the plague,” she objected. “But it’s our sins that brought it on us.”
“Our sins? Yours and mine, Marjorie?
“Original sin,” she muttered. “Because of the sin of our first parents.” First parents very much like Rigo and Stella, passionately acting out whatever moved them, without thought. Even laughing, perhaps, as they tore the world apart. Never sober and reverent as they ought to be. Never peaceful. She sighed.
“Original sin?” the young priest asked, curious. At one time he had believed it without question, but he wasn’t sure anymore. There were some other catechetical things he wasn’t sure of, either. His doubt about doctrine should signal some crisis of faith, he thought, but his faith was as strong as it had ever been, even though his acceptance of details was wavering. “So you believe in original sin?”
“Father! It’s doctrine!”
“How about collective guilt? Do you believe in that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are the bons guilty, collectively, for what happened to Janetta bon Maukerden?”
“Is that a doctrinal question?” she asked doubtfully.
“How about the Sanctified?” he asked. “Are they collectively guilty of condemning their boy children to prison? Young Rillibee, for example. Was he sent into servitude because of collective guilt, or because of original sin?”
“I’m an Old Catholic. I don’t have to decide where Sanctity went wrong, so long as I know it did!”
He kept himself from laughing. Oh, if only Marjorie had more humor. If Rigo had more patience. If Stella had more perception. If Tony had more confidence — And if Eugenie had more intelligence. Never mind their sins, just give them more of what they needed.
He sighed, rubbing the sides of his forehead to make the sullen ache go away, then gave her both absolution and a reasonable penance. She was to accept that Rigo would ride to hounds and she was to try not to judge him
