The question distressed him. Her eyes were wide, staring, glassy. “I think you had a bit of concussion. You may even have a fracture, Marjorie….”
“Maybe I’ve had a religious experience. An insight. People have them.”
He could not argue with that, though he knew Father Sandoval would have. In Father Sandoval’s opinion, religious experiences were something Old Catholics should eschew in the interest of balance and moderation. Once matters of faith had been firmly decided, religious experiences just confused people. Father James was less certain. He let Marjorie lean upon him as they staggered a few steps to the waiting foxen. One of them picked her up and carried her upward along slanting branches and scarcely visible vines to the plaza high above. She could feel foxen all about her, a weight of them in her mind, a thunder of thought, a tidal susurrus, like vast dragon-breathing in darkness.
“Good Lord,” she whispered. “Where did they all come from?”
“They were already here,” said Mainoa. “Watching us from the trees. They just came closer. Marjorie, are you all right?”
“She’s not all right,” fretted Father James. “She’s talking strangely. Her eyes don’t look right….”
“I’m fine,” she said absently, trying to stare at the assembled multitude, knowing it for multitude, but unable to distinguish the parts. “Why are they here?”
Brother Mainoa looked up at her, frowning in concentration. “They’re trying to find something out. I don’t know what it is.”
A foxen bulk completely blocked the door. Marjorie received a clear picture of two human figures being dropped from a high branch. She drew a line across it. In the crowd behind her there was approval and disapproval. The picture changed to one of the two men being released. She drew a line across that as well. More approval and disapproval. Argument, obviously. The foxen did not agree on what ought to be done.
Her legs wobbled under her and she staggered. “Rillibee hasn’t come back?
Brother Mainoa shook his head. “No. His voice went off that way.” He pointed.
She approached the door of the house. The two climbers, their hands and feet tightly tied, glared back at her.
“Who sent you to kill Brother Mainoa?” she asked.
The two looked at one another. One shook his head. The other, Steeplehands, said sulkily, “Shoethai, actually. But the orders came from Elder Brother Fuasoi. He said Mainoa was a backslider.”
She rubbed at the pain in her forehead. “Why did he think so?”
“Shoethai said it was some book of Mainoa’s. Some book from the Arbai city.”
“My journal,” said Brother Mainoa. “I’m afraid I was careless. I must have left the new one where it could be found. We were in such a hurry to leave—“
“What were you writing about, Brother?” Marjorie asked.
“About the plague, and the Arbai, and the whole riddle.”
“Ah,” she said, turning back to the prisoners. “You, ah … Long Bridge. You intended to rape me, you and the others, didn’t you?”
Long Bridge stared at his feet, one nostril lifting. “We was going to have a try, sure. Why not? We didn’t see those whatever-they-are hanging around, so why not.”
“Did you think that was a …” she struggled to find a word he might understand, “a smart thing to do? A good thing to do? What?”
“What are you?” he sneered. “You work for Doctrine? It was something we wanted to do, that’s all.”
“Did you care how I felt about it?”
“Women like it, no matter what they say. Everybody knows that.”
She shuddered. “Were you going to kill me, then?”
“If we’d of felt like it, sure.”
“Do women like that, too?”
He looked momentarily confused, licking his lips.
“Wouldn’t it have bothered you? Killing me?”
Long Bridge did not answer. Steeplehands did. “We’d of been sorry, later, if we’d wanted you around and you was already dead,” he mumbled.
“I see,” she said. “But you wouldn’t have been sorry for me?”
“Why?” Long Bridge asked angrily. “Why should we be sorry for you? Where was you when we got packed up and sent out here? Where was you when they took us away from our folks?”
Marjorie received a new picture of the two prisoners being dropped from a high tree. She drew a line across it in her mind, though more slowly than before “What do all these foxen want, Brother Mainoa? What are they here for?”