by Rebecca Wait
Moses stood up.
Ruth said, ‘You don’t need to stand up.’
He sat down again, blushing as the others snickered. He said, ‘The story of Samson and Delilah.’
‘Go on.’
‘God made Samson mighty from birth, but told his parents that they must never cut his hair or he’d lose his strength. But he fell in love with a woman called Delilah and told her the secret about his hair. Delilah betrayed him, and cut off his hair. He lost his strength because he’d broken his promise to God, and the Philistines captured him and blinded him. Then he pulled down the temple and destroyed them all, but he died too. Because the wages of sin is death,’ he finished with a flourish.
‘Good.’ Ruth turned towards Judith. ‘Do you have an example, Judith?’
Moses tensed. He didn’t want Judith to get in trouble again, especially as he really thought she might get a session this time. But he didn’t know how to help her whilst Ruth was staring at them both. Luckily just then there was a wild burst of wind outside which made the windows of the schoolroom rattle. Whilst Ruth turned towards the noise, Moses was able to lean over and hiss, ‘Lot’s wife.’
Ruth turned back towards them.
‘Lot’s wife,’ Judith said.
‘Yes,’ Ruth said, as if she was disappointed Judith had got it right, which made no sense. Moses disliked Ruth, but dislike was sent by the devil, patience and obedience by God.
‘Can you expand on that, Judith?’ Ruth said. ‘Why did you choose Lot’s wife?’
Judith stayed quiet, and Moses began to feel frightened again. But just as Ruth’s lips were going into a hard line, Judith said, ‘She was turned into a pillar of salt.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she sinned.’
‘How?’
‘She didn’t listen.’
‘She was prideful and rebellious!’ Ezra shouted out from his seat at the back. ‘She disobeyed her husband and God.’ Anybody else, Moses thought, anybody who wasn’t Ruth’s son, would have got in trouble for speaking when it wasn’t their turn and showing off. But Ruth just made a little gesture at Ezra to shush him and turned back to Judith.
‘She was prideful and rebellious,’ Judith said.
‘And the wages of sin is death,’ Ruth finished for her. ‘God punishes us if we rebel against His will. We’ve seen this ourselves. We’re fortunate to have a reminder always amongst us.’
Moses looked quickly down at his desk. He could feel the others’ eyes on him, but thankfully Ruth didn’t pursue the subject.
‘Is today’s lesson clear, Judith?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘You’re improving,’ Ruth said. ‘I’m pleased to see you’re learning to be governed by the Spirit.’
She didn’t look very pleased, Moses thought. And neither did Judith.
After the lesson, he and Judith went to the forest and pushed their way through the branches at the entrance. It had been raining on and off all week, and the children were banned from going out onto the moors. The others had stayed in the schoolroom to play Daniel-in-the-lions’-den, but Moses sensed Ezra was in a combative mood and didn’t want to take any chances. He’d said he was going for a walk, and had been amazed and delighted when Judith had said she’d come with him.
Inside the forest, you hardly noticed the rain. The ground stayed dry, few drops making it through the tangled canopy.
‘You remembered,’ he said to Judith, as they picked their way carefully between the trunks and spiked branches, ‘about Lot’s wife.’
‘It’s one of the better stories you’ve told me,’ Judith said. ‘The bit about the pillar of salt stayed in my head. Because it’s so stupid.’
‘It’s not stupid,’ Moses said.
Judith glowered at him. ‘Let’s go to the river,’ she said, and they headed to where the forest sloped downwards. You could always hear the river long before you reached it, the rumble and rush of it, and Moses felt a burst of excitement as they drew closer. When at last they came out into the light and rain, he looked at the river as he always did, torn between fear and wonder. The water bucked against its banks as though it might escape. It made him think of a spitting, rippling monster.
‘The river marks the furthest boundary of the Ark,’ he’d told Judith the first time he showed her. ‘We’re not allowed to go further than here. And anyway, the river’s dangerous.’
‘Can’t you swim?’ Judith had said.
‘It goes too fast and the current’s too strong,’ Moses said. He didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t want to admit he couldn’t swim either. He hadn’t known it was something they did, out in Gehenna. And why would you? People belonged on dry land. Look what happened to Jonah.
They stood in silence for a while, staring at the churning water. The rain had eased off, speckling their clothes and hair with light drops.
Judith said, ‘I can’t believe you’ve never left the Ark. That’s so weird.’
‘It’s dangerous in Gehenna,’ Moses said.
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘It is.’ He didn’t want to argue with her but the truth was the truth, as his mother said. ‘The people out there are sinners. They steal and lie and kill.’
‘My best friend’s out there,’ Judith said. ‘She’s called Megan. When we finally go home, I’ll see her again.’
Moses was about to tell her that she would never be allowed to go back and that Megan would burn in hell, but it didn’t seem a very cheerful thing to say and he didn’t want to annoy her again.
Instead, to steer her in the right direction, he said, ‘I don’t want to leave the Ark. Gehenna is full of sin and all my friends are in the Ark.’
‘You mean the others?’ Judith said. ‘If they’re your friends, why do they always tell you to go away?’
Moses looked at her. He couldn’t tell if she was just saying it to be nasty or if she was really curious. He said, ‘They don’t.’
‘Sometimes they do.’
‘It’s on account of my face.’
Judith snorted. ‘Is that all?’
‘I was marked by the devil when I was born.’ It was a shameful thing to say, especially in front of Judith.
She wasn’t laughing any more. ‘What do you mean, marked by the devil?’
‘Because of the story of my birth,’ Moses said.
‘Is it a good one? Like Lot’s wife?’
‘I don’t want to tell it.’
‘Alright.’ Judith patted his arm, which seemed like a kind gesture, though he could never quite be sure. She said, ‘If my mum won’t take me home, I’ll go on my own. How many miles is it across the moors?’
He had no idea. ‘You can’t go on your own.’
‘I’ll manage.’
‘You can’t go anywhere on your own. You’re a woman. A girl,’ he amended.
‘What?’
‘Women are weak and open to the devil,’ he said. ‘They need to be guarded.’
Judith shook her head. She was smiling, but not in a nice way. ‘That’s so stupid,’ she said. ‘You think women are weaker than men? Men are crap. My mum always said we were better off without them, only now she’s pretending she didn’t. Megan’s cleverer than all the boys at school, and I’m better at football.’
‘Everyone’s weak,’ Moses said. ‘We need God to make us strong. But women are weakest of all.’
‘Stop repeating stuff,’ she snapped. ‘You’re just repeating stuff he’s said. You’re stupid and wrong.’
‘It’s the truth,’ he said. ‘Women need men to protect them.’
That was when she hit him.
‘Is that weak?’ she said. ‘Am I weak?’
He stumbled backwards and put his hand to his face. She had caught him on his cheekbone, and it hurt. Her hand had been half closed as though she couldn’t decide between a punch and a slap, but she’d got him with the knuckles all the same. The blow made his eyes water.
‘I thought only girls were supposed to cr
y,’ she said, but her voice was lower now.
She walked away from him and back into the forest. Moses followed her a little way and then gave up and sat down on a tree stump. He stared at the ground, which was covered with fir needles and moss and broken twigs, until his eyes went out of focus and his thoughts quietened. Then he rubbed his hands over his face to make sure there weren’t any tears left, and got up.
During the Arithmetic lesson that afternoon, he didn’t look at Judith and she didn’t look at him. When it was over she went away with Mary and Abigail.
By the end of the day, his cheek felt swollen. Peter pointed it out when he found Moses behind the barn.
‘It’s almost suppertime,’ he said. ‘What happened to your face? It’s purple below your eye.’
Moses stood on tiptoes to look at himself in the barn’s one small window. He could just about make out the bruise. It showed up more because it was on the good side of his face.
Now Judith was going to get a session, he thought. They probably wouldn’t mind if one of the other boys had done it, but Judith wasn’t a boy, and she was new, and Ruth didn’t like her. They’d punish her. And she deserved it.
He said, ‘Nothing happened to my face.’
‘Did Ezra do it?’
‘Nobody did it.’
‘If it was Ezra, I’ll get him back for you,’ Peter said.
‘It was a tree branch. I ran through the forest too fast and a tree branch hit my eye.’
It amazed him, how simple it was to lie. He began to understand why people in Gehenna did it all the time. The words just fell out of you without you even having to think about them. As he followed Peter inside to lay the table, his eyes went to every corner of the room, wondering if the devil was lurking there, waiting to take him.
And during the meal, when his mother suddenly looked at him and said, ‘Sweetheart, what have you been doing to yourself?’ it was strangely easy to repeat the lie, even into the silence his mother’s words created, even with the prophet’s eyes upon him.
The prophet said, ‘You must be more careful, Moses. We’ll get some ice on it after supper, but it’s probably too late now to do much about the bruising. I hope it’s not too painful.’
This was worse than if he’d asked more questions, because it reminded Moses you obeyed the prophet not because you were afraid of him but because you loved him.
After the evening meeting, Moses went to stand behind the barn again so he could pray for forgiveness. You weren’t supposed to pray with your own words because it created doorways for the devil, so he couldn’t explain to God about the lie. Instead he used the words the prophet had given them for protection against their wicked thoughts.
Satan, I refuse you.
Satan, I refuse you.
Moses repeated it over and over and his mind was finally starting to go still. Then he opened his eyes – and shouted, because Judith’s face was right up close to his.
She shouted too.
‘You scared me,’ she said.
‘You scared me!’ he said. ‘You crept up on me.’
‘I didn’t creep,’ Judith said. ‘I walked normally. You were being all weird with your eyes closed so you didn’t notice.’
‘I was praying,’ he said. ‘Because I lied.’
She went quiet at that, and thrust her hands into the pockets of her dress. ‘Why did you lie?’
It was difficult to answer because it was difficult to know. ‘I didn’t want you to get in trouble.’ That was the surface answer, but what lay beneath it was the important part, and that was the part he couldn’t see.
‘You didn’t have to lie,’ she said, and she sounded angry again. ‘You could have just told them.’
He shrugged, as he’d learnt from her.
There was another long silence. Then Judith said, almost too quietly for him to hear, ‘Sorry I hit you.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘You shouldn’t have said that stuff about girls.’
‘I was only repeating what God said.’
‘You were repeating what Nathaniel said.’
He looked at her blankly, and she rolled her eyes.
Then she said, ‘Tell me another story. Tell me a good one, like Lot’s wife, or the one about Judith.’
Moses thought for a few moments. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you about Jael, who killed the enemy general with a tent peg.’
‘Spoilers!’ Judith said, giving him a push.
He had no idea what she meant, but assumed it was an expression of excitement in Gehenna. He launched into the tale.
2
Although she had been living in the Ark for more than two months now, and was growing better at quietening her former, worldly reactions, Stephanie was shocked when Nathaniel told her he would no longer be sharing a room with her.
‘Sorry, Sarah,’ he said, ‘but the truth is, I’ve always found it hard to sleep properly when I’m sharing a bed with someone else.’
She noticed that he was using the other name again, as he seemed to do more and more often these days. She’d commented on it the week before, saying it felt strange, but Nathaniel had said, ‘Darling, it’s my special name for you,’ and seemed hurt. She hadn’t mentioned it again.
‘I’ll only be just down the corridor,’ he said now. ‘It’s not really anything to get upset over, is it?’
‘But you said when I first came how much you were looking forward to waking up next to me every day. You said that.’ She’d treasured those words ever since. But she sounded petulant now, even to her own ears.
‘No, I didn’t.’ He smiled down at her. ‘I might have said how much I was looking forward to seeing you every day.’
‘You said “waking up”.’
His smile was gone. ‘Why would I have said something that wasn’t true?’
This was difficult to argue with, and she was afraid that she’d offended him again. ‘I’ll be lonely,’ she said more softly.
‘Don’t be silly. I’ll be close by, and so will Esther.’
‘Esther?’
‘She’ll be taking over the other room,’ he said.
It took Stephanie a few moments to process this. She’d never given the spare rooms along the corridor much thought, had taken it for granted that only she and Nathaniel would ever sleep in the small house.
‘I thought Esther shared a room with Thomas,’ she said.
‘Don’t look into other people’s business.’ The sharpness in his voice startled her.
‘But what about us?’ she said.
‘Well, what about us?’
‘I mean – we need some privacy, don’t we?’
‘Privacy from what?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, faltering in the face of his incredulity. ‘Just some private place where we can – be a couple. Without people watching.’
‘I think you’re overestimating the others’ interest in you, my love.’
It could have sounded unkind, but he was smiling now so she knew he was teasing her.
‘It’s just a bit of a shock,’ she said.
‘But I did mention it before, darling. A couple of times. Weren’t you listening?’
She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it. She wasn’t absolutely certain it hadn’t been mentioned.
‘What’s got into you, little one?’ he said. ‘You were never difficult like this before.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It seems weird, that’s all.’
‘We have a habit,’ Nathaniel said, ‘when we’ve lived in Gehenna for a long time, of thinking we know best, of thinking our view on things is always the right one. It’s a habit I can see you’re trying to shake off, but there may be times when you need to try a little harder. I know it’s not easy.’ He looked at her, and she felt herself weak before those searching eyes. ‘Don’t let me down,’ he said.
She shook her head and didn’t speak.
Perhaps dissatisfaction with her attitude was the reason Natha
niel didn’t want to sleep with her as often as he used to. For the first few days after he moved out of her room, he visited her every night, holding her in his arms afterwards until she was almost asleep, and only then slipping back to his own room.
But then there was a night when Stephanie lay waiting for him and he never came. She chided herself the next day for her disappointment. Did she think it would go on like that forever? Give the poor man a break, she told herself, trying for humour. No couple had sex every night. It wasn’t sustainable. But two more nights passed without a visit, and it wasn’t mentioned between them. In the daytime he was as courteous as ever, but also rather distant, she began to think. He would take long walks on his own whilst the other men were at work, and in the evenings he would sometimes remain shut up in the prayer room with Thomas or Ruth for several hours. Stephanie hardly saw him, and even if she did have a moment alone with him, she wasn’t sure how to raise the subject of sex.
The following night, lying alone again as hope turned to disappointment, she grew tired of her own passivity. She didn’t want to seem clingy, but there was no reason why Nathaniel should have to do all the running either. Perhaps that was why he’d stopped visiting; he might think Stephanie had cooled off because she never initiated anything herself. She would go to him now, she decided, and slip into bed beside him. He would be pleased. It would be like the early days again.
She got up and put on the old dressing gown Ruth had given her, then padded along the corridor, already anticipating the warmth of his body against hers.
But at Esther’s door, she paused. There were faint sounds coming from within that at first confused her, then made her blush. A rhythmic squeaking of bedsprings. A woman’s breathy gasps. Thomas must be paying Esther a visit, though Stephanie had assumed they no longer slept together. Perhaps it was an occasional thing. Perhaps Thomas, like Nathaniel, found it difficult to get to sleep with his wife in the room. Stephanie carried on along the corridor and tapped gently on Nathaniel’s door. No answer. She didn’t want to knock more loudly and risk Esther and Thomas hearing, so she gently twisted the handle and opened the door a crack.
‘Nathaniel?’ she whispered.
