Connie Willis - Fire Watch

Finney thought of Reverend Davidson bending over him, his shoes wet and his trousers splattered with water and Finney’s blood. He had propped Finney’s arm around his neck, and then, as if Finney were one of his children, picked him up and carried him out of the water. “Either that,” Finney said, “or he has jesuss unfortunate affinity for idiots and cripples. Which are you, Mrs. Andover?”

She shook off his hand and brushed angrily past him.

“What were you looking for, Mrs. Andover?” Finney said. “What exactly did you expect to find?”

“Hullo,” Megan said as if on cue. “Look what I’ve just found.”

She was holding a heavy leather notebook full of yellowing pages. “I was looking for some nice black construction paper to make shadows with,” she said. “‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.’ I thought how nice it would be if each of the sheep had a nice black shadow and I looked in the bottom drawer of Daddy’s desk, where he always keeps the paper, and this is all that was in there. Not any green at all.” She handed the notebook to Finney.

“Green shadows?” he said absently, thinking of the drawer he had pulled out, full of colored paper.

“Of course not,” Megan said. “Green pastures. 'He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.’”

He wasn’t really listening to her. He was looking at the notebook. It was made of a soft, dark brown leather, now stiffening at the edges and even peeling off in curling layers at one corner. He started to open the cover. Mrs. Andover made a sound. Finney looked over Megan’s bright blond head at her. Her face was lined with triumph.

“Is it Daddy’s?” Megan said.

“I don’t know,” Finney said. Megan’s sticky fingers had marked the cover with bits of cotton and stuck the first two pages to the cover. Finney looked at the close handwriting on the pages, written in faded blue ink. He gently pried the glued pages from the cover.

“Is it?” Megan said insistently

“No,” Finney said finally. “It appears to belong to T. E. Lawrence. How did it get in your father’s desk?”

“Megan,” Mrs. Andover said, “it’s time for the children to come in. Go and fetch them.”

“Is it time for tea, then?” Megan said.

Finney looked at his watch. “Not yet,” he said. “It’s only three.”

“We’ll have it early today,” Mrs. Andover said. “Tell them to come in for their tea.”

Megan ran out. Mrs. Andover came over to stand beside Finney “It looks like a rough draft of a book or something,” Finney said. “Like a manuscript. What do you think?”

“I don’t need to think,” Mrs. Andover said. “I know what it is. It’s the manuscript copy of Lawrence’s book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom . He wrote it after he became famous as Lawrence of Arabia, before he-succumbed to his unhappiness. It was lost in Reading Railway Station in 1919.”

“How did it get here?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” Mrs. Andover said.

Finney looked at her, amazed. She was staring at him as if he might actually know something about it. “I wasn’t even born in 1919. I’ve never even been in Reading Station.”

“It wasn’t in the desk this morning when I searched it.”

“Oh, really,” Finney said, “and what were you looking for in Reverend Davidson’s desk? Green construction paper?”

“I’ve set the tea out,” Megan said from the doorway, “only I can’t find any cups.”

“I forgot,” Finney said. “Jesus was fond of tax collectors, too, wasn’t he?”

Finney went into the kitchen on the excuse of looking for something better than a paper cup for his tea. Instead, he stood at the sink and stared at the wall. If the brown leather notebook were truly a lost manuscript of Lawrence’s book, and if Mrs. Andover was one of the state’s spies, as he was almost certain she was, Reverend Davidson would lose his church for withholding treasures from the state. That was not the worst of it. His name and picture would be in all the papers, and that would mean an end to the undercover rescue work getting the children out of the cults, and an end to the children.

“Take care of her, Finney,” he had said before he left. “‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit.’” And he had let a government spy loose in the church, had let her roam about taking inventory Finney gripped the linoleum drainboard.

Perhaps she was not from the government. Even if she was, she might be here for a totally different reason. Finney was a reporter, but he was hardly here for a good story He was here because he had nearly bled to death in the End and Davidson had pulled him out. Perhaps Reverend Davidson had rescued Mrs. Andover, too, had brought her into the fold like all the rest of his lost lambs.

Finney was not even sure why he was here. He told himself he was staying until his foot healed, until Davidson found another teacher for the upper form boys, until Davidson got safely back from the north. He did not think it was because he was afraid, although of course he was afraid. They would know he was a reporter by now, they would know he had been working undercover investigating the cults. There would be no question of cutting off a foot for attempting to escape this time. They would murder him, and they would find a scripture to say over him as they did it. 'If thy right hand offend, cut it off.’ He had thought he never wanted to hear scripture again. Perhaps that was why he stayed. To hear Megan prattling her sweet and senseless scriptures was like a balm. And what was St. John’s to Mrs. Andover? A balm? A refuge? Or an enemy to be conquered and then sacked?

Megan came in, knelt down beside the cupboard below the sink, and began banging about.

“What are you looking for?” Finney said.

“Your cup, of course. Mrs. Andover found some others, but not yours.”

“Megan,” he said seriously kneeling beside her, “what do you know about Mrs. Andover?”

“She’s a spy,” Megan said from inside the cupboard.

“Why do you think that?”

“Daddy said so. He gave her all the treasures. The marble angel and the choir screen and all the candlesticks. ’render unto Caesar that which is Caesars.’ It isn’t there,” she said, pulling her head out of the cupboard. “Only pots.” She handed Finney a rusted iron skillet and two banged-about aluminum pots. Finney put them carefully back into the empty cupboard, trying to think how best to ask Megan why she thought Mrs. Andover had stayed on. Her answer might be nonsense, of course, or it might be inspired. It might be scripture.

“She thinks we didn’t give her all the treasures,” Megan volunteered suddenly, on her knees beside him. “She asks me all the time where Daddy hid them.”

“And what do you tell her?”

“‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths corrupt and thieves break in and steal.’”

“Good girl,” Finney said, and lifted her up. “What’s an old cup? We’ll find it later.” He took her hand and led her into tea.

Mrs. Andover was already being mother, pouring out hot milk and tea into a styrofoam cup with a half circle bitten out of it. She handed it to Finney “Did you and Megan find your cup?” she asked.

“No,” Finney said. “But then we aren’t experts like you, are we.”

Mrs. Andover did not answer him. She poured Megan’s tea. “When is your father coming back, Megan?” she said.

“Not soon enough,” Finney snapped. “Are you that eager to arrest him? Or is it hanging you’re after, for treasonable offenses?” He thought of Davidson, crouched by a gate somewhere, waiting for the child to be bundled out to him. “If the cults don’t murder him, the government will, is that the game then? How can he possibly win a game like that?”