The Followers

by Rebecca Wait

  For a moment Thomas had been afraid. He felt nothing. There had been a mistake. Then a flicker in his stomach, an explosion like butterflies, pleasurable and unbearable, and heat and light rising up through his body.

  ‘Yes, I feel it!’

  Nathaniel – Nathaniel, the fisher of men – had put his hand on Thomas’s chest and then (had he imagined this, or had it really happened?) Nathaniel had leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth.

  ‘As Jesus chose his disciples,’ Nathaniel said, ‘his chosen followers, so I choose you.’

  The memory brought heat to Thomas’s face, and a weakness to his limbs. It ought to be reassuring, but something was amiss. He closed his eyes. Nathaniel was all edges and angles now. You could see the movement at the surface, but you couldn’t see beyond it.

  Haven’t I fought this? he thought. Haven’t I tried? But this was an immovable enemy. It was different from the doubts he’d battled in the past, those niggling worries Nathaniel said were sent by Satan. It was an absence rather than an intrusion, a hollowness at his core that left him short of breath. It was impossible to articulate his thoughts any more clearly than this, but he knew that something was off balance. What had once appeared pure and good was now seen through a glass, darkly.

  3

  Esther was upstairs in the big house, changing the beds with Ruth. Better to be active than to sit downstairs sewing, trying not to worry about Thomas. The old sheets were bundled into a heap in the corner of the room; they smelt fetid and sweet, of damp skin and secret flesh. Sometimes a picture came into Esther’s mind of Rachael and Seth together, or Deborah and Joshua. The women’s nightgowns pushed up, the men labouring solemnly, faces averted. Did Ruth lie awake in the next room and listen?

  These were the devil’s thoughts. Esther looked across at Ruth to steady herself. No one like Ruth for putting the fear of God into you.

  Together they stretched the fresh sheets taut over the beds. Esther tucked in the corners at her end quickly and neatly, taking private satisfaction in her efficiency, in the sharp edges and crisp finish. She paused whilst Ruth finished her side, trying not to feel smug.

  ‘Do the pillows and duvet,’ Ruth said. ‘I’ll go and make a start next door.’

  Do the pillows and duvet please, Esther thought as Ruth disappeared. She fetched the pillowcases from the chair and began to swaddle the pillows, before turning her attention to the duvet. Ruth always struggled with this, which was probably why she’d made herself scarce. Ruth didn’t like to be seen to struggle. Sometimes Esther suspected her of being prideful.

  A slight shuffling noise, an almost imperceptible rustle, and she froze for a moment. The devil? Not the devil, Esther.

  She crouched down and made herself peer under the bed, then jolted at the sight of two shadowy, hunched forms. She sighed.

  ‘You’d better come out,’ she said. ‘The game’s up.’

  They crawled out shamefaced, Moses and Judith, and stood awkwardly in front of her. Children were so odd sometimes, Esther thought. Would she understand them better if she had some of her own? She tried to be stern; tried to channel Ruth. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘We’re the spies in Jericho,’ Moses said. He looked sorrowful. ‘We were hiding in Rahab’s house.’

  ‘We didn’t know you’d be coming in here this morning,’ Judith said. ‘Sorry,’ she added belatedly.

  ‘You shouldn’t be in here at all,’ Esther said.

  ‘It was my idea,’ Judith said. ‘It wasn’t Moses’ fault. Don’t report him.’

  ‘Moses has a mind of his own, doesn’t he?’ Esther said.

  ‘I do,’ he answered, clearly irritated. ‘And in any case, the actual game was my idea. So if anyone should be reported, it’s me.’

  ‘You need to be more sensible in your choice of game,’ Esther said.

  ‘The Bible is full of possibilities,’ Judith said.

  ‘Right, well, explore its possibilities elsewhere.’ Esther paused, weighing it up. ‘We’ll say this is your warning, alright?’

  ‘Thank you, Esther.’ They went towards the door.

  ‘And go quietly,’ she added, remembering Ruth’s presence along the corridor.

  They tiptoed theatrically out, Moses giving her a quick, grateful wave as they disappeared.

  Esther returned to the duvet. She decided that if Ruth had heard anything, she would have already appeared, full of fury. As she turned the cover inside out and pushed her hands into the far corners, she carried out a quick examination of her conscience. But there didn’t seem any need to report them, especially as Judith was on her last warning with Nathaniel. She remembered Thomas saying after the session, ‘I thought they were hard on Judith. She’s just a child, and she hasn’t been here long.’ Esther had been amazed by the comment and hadn’t replied.

  She took hold of the duvet corners and expertly flipped the cover over it, shaking it out. (She had learnt this trick from her mother, long ago. I may not be able to bear children, she thought, but look what I can do with a duvet cover.) She did up the buttons and laid it on the bed, then went next door to join Ruth.

  The cold gaze was turned upon her as she entered the room.

  ‘You took your time.’

  Esther said nothing, unwilling to incriminate herself further.

  ‘Fetch the sheet, then,’ Ruth said.

  Esther did as she was told. As they stretched it out across the bed, she watched Ruth’s face, those thin lips, the lined forehead, and wondered what she would have thought of her if they’d met in the outside world. Would they have been friends? She considered voicing this question, and the thought of Ruth’s reaction made her choke back a laugh. Would she have been friends with any of them, come to think of it? Rachael and Deborah, she suspected, she would have placed in the category of dull, or, more damning still, too nice. But of course, her younger self had been stupid and sinful and wrong. Perhaps if she’d met Thomas in Gehenna, she would never have fallen in love with him. The idea made her lonely.

  He’d said after the session that he didn’t blame her for acting as the rod – she’d simply done as she was told. But then why was there this distance between them? Where was his usual warmth, his steadiness?

  ‘Hurry up,’ Ruth said, and Esther realized that her hands had stilled where they held the sheet. Briskly, she tucked the corners in at her end.

  ‘Done,’ she said.

  She was almost relieved when the prophet requested her presence that night. For the first time in years, she found she was looking forward to a night away from her husband. It was impossible to be with him without feeling his unhappiness as though it were her own. And in fact, it had become her own. Esther hadn’t known, before she married him, that she would come to feel the truth of the ancient words: This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.

  Watching Thomas sometimes when he was unaware, she saw that shadowed, preoccupied expression on his face and it hurt her. Nothing she said could soften it.

  Nathaniel was languid and gentle with her tonight. He made it last a long time, but although she was tired, Esther didn’t mind. Nathaniel absorbed all her attention – demanded it – and it was a relief. This part of her life, at least, was clear. She would do as God instructed, as she always had, and that was the way you kept yourself safe.

  Afterwards, Nathaniel pulled her to him. He said, ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too.’ It came out automatically, not carrying the rush it once had. But everything felt strange at the moment, so perhaps that was no surprise.

  ‘You’re very beautiful,’ he said.

  Esther didn’t reply.

  He said, ‘I couldn’t guide the others, I couldn’t serve God fully, without your support. I hope you know how much I rely on you.’

  Knowing he needed a response from her now, Esther said, ‘I love being with you, Nathaniel.’

  He stroked her hair. ‘You must prepare yourself.’

  She raised her head.
/>   ‘Something’s on the horizon,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Trust God. It won’t be easy for you at first. Remember how much I love you.’

  Esther wasn’t exactly sure what he meant, but she had an idea. Sarah would succeed where Esther herself had failed. Suddenly, desperately, she wanted Thomas.

  Alongside her, Nathaniel was still speaking. Reciting. She tried to make herself listen.

  ‘Behold, I show you a mystery,’ he said. ‘We shall not all sleep; but we shall all be changed.’

  After

  On the nights when she couldn’t sleep, Judith often wondered how other people managed it. The temazepam no longer had the effect it used to; she had to take two or three pills now even to make a dent, and that tended to wipe her out for most of the next day. Plus it was dangerous on top of whatever else she might have taken. Once or twice, in the early hours of the morning, she’d allowed herself to follow this thought to its natural conclusion. But that would be pretty horrible for her gran. And she didn’t really want to be dead; in her more lucid moments, she recognized that she had no right to that kind of despair.

  (Did I tell you we keep chickens? Moses wrote. Every morning I collect the eggs.)

  Judith lay stiffly each night in her narrow single bed, the darkness slopped with queasy orange from the street lamp outside the window. She willed herself to fall asleep as two o’clock became three, and three o’clock became four. But instead there was just this tension, this sense that she must be ready for flight. Insomnia was murderous: it marooned you for too long with your own thoughts. And it was weird how tenaciously it had taken hold of her. Even after however many nights of this, nothing but a little fitful dozing before dawn, Judith never felt sleepy in the daytime, though her exhaustion was bone deep.

  Her gran said she looked pale, and tried to feed her cod liver oil. People died of insomnia, Judith thought. You couldn’t medicate it forever. Even temazepam betrayed you in the end. Everything did.

  ‘Do you think you’re evil?’ she had asked her mother once, many years back, when she was still too frightened and angry to keep the words silent.

  Stephanie hadn’t answered directly – but how could she have done? She had cried, as she often did during those early visits. Judith had cried too. Then Stephanie had said something along the lines of, ‘I wasn’t myself.’ A meaningless statement.

  It didn’t matter, anyway, what she had said. Judith knew her mother avoided dwelling on questions like this. Stephanie would prefer to fall back on the words of the psychologist at her trial: that many people, when subject to the same pressures, would have behaved in a similar way. But where was the defence in that?

  It was on sleepless nights like this that Judith found herself in the Ark again. It was not simply the violence and terror of the end she remembered, but quieter moments too, roaming across the moors with Moses, or playing one of their stupid games in the forest. It was funny how difficult she had found it as a child to remain miserable for long. Somehow her mind always readjusted itself and cheerfulness crept in again. You seemed to lose that knack as you grew older.

  The others had more of a right to fall apart, she thought, because they’d actually believed, whereas she never had. Moses had so much more to lose.

  In a shoebox at the bottom of her wardrobe were his letters. She knew she should have written back to stop him, but she’d said nothing, and the letters kept arriving. Some strange hopeful part of her had assumed they’d go on forever. But he’d been silent for nearly two years now.

  The temping agency had got back to her at last with an admin role that proved as depressing as it sounded. Day after day, she went and sat in a hot little room at the back of the FE college and punched attendance figures into a database. None of the permanent workers spoke to her – temps, it seemed, were universally despised – but this suited Judith fine. She took her sandwiches out at lunchtime and ate them on a bench in the cold wind, looking onto the concrete yard of a warehouse. Sometimes she took a little something with her to ease her progress through the day, and sometimes she managed not to, finding a perverse enjoyment in the raw blaze of desolation an unmedicated day brought with it.

  ‘Time you sorted yourself out,’ her gran said. ‘Found a proper job.’

  ‘I’m trying,’ Judith said.

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  Judith was going to protest, but her gran had already turned her back to clatter about with the plates in the sink. Judith slunk up to her bedroom.

  Sometimes, without being able to help it, she thought of Nathaniel. He stalked down her attention and pushed his way to its forefront, a pure throb of malice. She’d actually considered going to visit him a few years ago, when she thought she was going mad with fury, to say all the things she’d never been able to say as a child. She’d even got as far as getting the visiting order, surprised and disturbed that he agreed so readily to see her. But she hadn’t gone in the end, and now she was glad. He would have enjoyed it too much. Better to let him fade away, unnourished by attention.

  She would never know now what it had been, what hunger there was in him to dominate and destroy, or whether he’d truly believed he could save them. But she never would have known anyway, she thought. Especially not if she’d asked him.

  Nathaniel sent us a letter, Moses wrote. But I don’t know what it said. Peter put it on the fire before Mum could see it. I don’t think I wanted to read it anyway. His words are dangerous.

  4

  When he tried to explain to Esther what was wrong, alone in their bedroom after supper, Thomas found that however much you’d planned, it didn’t help.

  He said, ‘I’ve been struggling recently.’ But she knew this already, he thought; she was willing him not to say it out loud.

  When she stayed silent, he searched for the words he’d rehearsed, but they’d turned to liquid and wouldn’t keep their shape. He said, ‘I don’t understand it any more. This life. My place in it.’

  He saw the shock rise in her – then saw her force it back down, and present him again with that smooth, clear surface; it always looked natural on Rachael or Deborah’s face, but not on Esther’s.

  ‘You need to ask the prophet to pray for you,’ she said.

  ‘And have another session?’

  Her forehead creased for a moment, then cleared. ‘If that’s what’s necessary.’

  ‘It won’t help.’

  ‘You have to try, Thomas.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘We all have our faith tested sometimes. It makes it stronger.’

  ‘This isn’t about that,’ he said. ‘It’s about this life. It’s about Nathaniel.’

  ‘Nathaniel?’

  ‘I don’t—’ He stopped, feeling himself at the edge of a precipice. ‘I don’t trust him.’ He’d thought he was going to soften these words with ‘the way I used to’, but he didn’t.

  ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘I do. Everything feels different now. I’m seeing things differently.’

  ‘You’re frightening me,’ Esther said, plaintive.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Stop this,’ she said. ‘Let’s just go to bed. You’ll feel better tomorrow.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he said. ‘I’ll feel the same.’

  ‘You’re giving in to weakness.’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ Thomas said. ‘I have to say it.’

  ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why do you have to say everything that comes into your head, whether or not it’s right, whether or not it’s helpful? Don’t we all know better than that? You’re not even trying to fight it.’ She began to cry, and she raised her hand as if she might hit him, but instead she laid it gently, palm flat, across his chest. ‘How can you just give up?’ she said.

  He tried to put his arms around her, but she stepped away. He felt the place where her hand had left his chest like a chill spreading.

  ‘I’m trying to explain,’ he said. ‘This doesn’t feel pur
e any more. It feels wrong.’

  ‘But how can you tell?’ she said with sudden hope. ‘All your instincts are wicked. Remember what God says in Jeremiah: the heart is deceitful above all things. We have to put our trust elsewhere, give ourselves up to God.’

  ‘But is that what we’ve done, Esther?’ Thomas said, with a bitterness that surprised even himself. ‘Haven’t we just given ourselves up to Nathaniel?’

  ‘Stop it.’ She put her hands over her ears like a child.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He reached for her again and this time she let herself be pulled against him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, mouth against her hair. He could feel her trembling. It came to him that if it were within his power to make himself believe again, he would do it; anything to avoid distressing her so much. But faith wasn’t dependent on will alone.

  He steered her towards the bed and they lay down together without getting undressed. They’d exhausted themselves. The only thing left was to go to sleep, and Esther obeyed when he stroked her hair and told her to close her eyes. But Thomas lay awake for a long time, his hand resting on her hip, listening to her breaths as they slowed.

  She has to report me now, he thought. She’ll realize that tomorrow.

  And – I can’t live without her. I can’t leave without her.

  But a couple of days passed without any summons from Nathaniel. Thomas told himself he was surprised, but perhaps he wasn’t, perhaps he’d already understood how much she loved him. He could feel her confusion and suffered with her.

  Nathaniel called Esther to spend the next night with him, so Thomas had to sleep alone. But the following evening, she slipped up to his room after supper.

  ‘I’m with you tonight,’ she said, stopping in the doorway.

  He held out his arms and she came towards him. He thought of all the moments in the past when he’d waited to see if she’d come, his disappointment or joy entirely dependent on hearing her light step on the stairs.