On their second pass, Ender saw that she still, stubbornly, was not going to speak to him, and so, as always, he bent first and broke the silence between them.
“The Filhos are married, you know. It’s a married order. You can’t become a full member without me.”
She paused in her work. The blade of the hoe rested on unbroken soil, the handle light in her gloved fingers. “I can weed the beets without you,” she finally said.
His heart leapt with relief that he had penetrated her veil of silence. “No you can’t,” he said. “Because here I am.”
“These are the potatoes,” she said. “I can’t stop you from helping with the potatoes.”
In spite of themselves they both laughed, and with a groan she unbent her back, stood straight, let the hoe handle fall to the ground, and took Ender’s hands in hers, a touch that thrilled him despite two layers of thick workglove cloth between their palms and fingers.
“If I do profane with my touch,” Ender began.
“No Shakespeare,” she said. “No ‘lips two blushing pilgrims ready stand.'”
“I miss you,” he said.
“Get over it,” she said.
“I don’t have to. If you’re joining the Filhos, so am I.”
She laughed.
Ender didn’t appreciate her scorn. “If a xenobiologist can retreat from the world of meaningless suffering, why can’t an old retired speaker for the dead?”
“Andrew,” she said, “I’m not here because I’ve given up on life. I’m here because I really have turned my heart over to the Redeemer. You could never do that. You don’t belong here.”
“I belong here if you belong here. We made a vow. A sacred one, that the Holy Church won’t let us set aside. In case you forgot.”
She sighed and looked out at the sky over the wall of the monastery. Beyond the wall, through meadows, over a fence, up a hill, into the woods … that’s where the great love of her life, Libo, had gone, and where he died. Where Pipo, his father, who was like a father to her as well, where he had gone before, and also died. It was into another wood that her son Estevгo had gone, and also died, but Ender knew, watching her, that when she saw the world outside these walls, it was all those deaths she saw. Two of them had taken place before Ender got to Lusitania. But the death of Estevгo — she had begged Ender to stop him from going to the dangerous place where pequeninos were talking of war, of killing humans. She knew as well as Ender did that to stop Estevгo would have been the same as to destroy him, for he had not become a priest to be safe, but rather to try to carry the message of Christ to these tree people. Whatever joy came to the early Christian martyrs had surely come to Estevгo as he slowly died in the embrace of a murderous tree. Whatever comfort God sent to them in their hour of supreme sacrifice. But no such joy had come to Novinha. God apparently did not extend the benefits of his service to the next of kin. And in her grief and rage she blamed Ender. Why had she married him, if not to make herself safe from these disasters?
He had never said to her the most obvious thing, that if there was anyone to blame, it was God, not him. After all, it was God who had made saints — well, almost saints — out of her parents, who died as they discovered the antidote to the descolada virus when she was only a child. Certainly it was God who led Estevгo out to preach to the most dangerous of the pequeninos. Yet in her sorrow it was God she turned to, and turned away from Ender, who had meant to do nothing but good for her.
He never said this because he knew that she would not listen. And he also refrained from saying it because he knew she saw things another way. If God took Father and Mother, Pipo, Libo, and finally Estevгo away from her, it was because God was just and punished her for her sins. But when Ender failed to stop Estevгo from his suicidal mission to the pequeninos, it was because he was blind, self-willed, stubborn, and rebellious, and because he did not love her enough.