The Boatmaker (20 page)

Over the next few days, the holes deepen. Using chocks and block-and-tackle, the brothers raise the poles and slide them in. First one pole, then the other, is raised and earth filled in around it. When the work crews are finished, the poles stand side by side, each two feet across and twenty feet tall. By the time they are raised, the boatmaker, preoccupied with his own struggles, is paying little attention. He has decided he must go to Father Robert again, to confess his doubts and his questions.

When he is finally ready, he walks up the path to the stone building slowly, his sandals pressing down the dry summer grass. The New Land is well supplied with water from the spring and from the stream that runs near the pastures, but at the height of summer the grass turns brown and brittle; it crackles under his soles. He has no clear idea
of what he should say to the priest beyond knowing that he needs to confess his doubts. He thinks Father Robert could answer his questions, some of which go far beyond salvation to touch on worldly matters. But his thoughts are confused, and he is hesitant to question the priest.

He walks into the shade of the entryway and up the stone stairs, worn in the center by decades of footfalls, most recently those of Father Robert in his elegant black boots and the monks in their sandals. At the top he sees the door is open a few inches. He stands at the door, feeling all force drain from his body. He raises his hand to knock, but the door opens farther before his knuckles reach wood. Father Robert is in the doorway seeming pleased, though not surprised, to find the boatmaker standing there.

“Father . . .”

“Come in, my son,” says the priest, gesturing toward the now-familiar chair and moving to the side table to pour glasses of springwater. The boatmaker sits holding his glass with both hands, trying to find the place to begin. He looks at the secretary behind the priest, with its rhythm of dark and light wood, its hidden craft.

“Father . . .”

“I know, my son. You have come with questions.”

The boatmaker is so startled he feels as if the priest can see right through him to the chair he is sitting on.

“And I am here to answer your questions. Now is the time. Many things have led to this moment. Many preparations have been made.”

The boatmaker opens his mouth to speak, but the priest speaks first. “And you are ready for us. Ready to join in the birth of the New Christ.”

“The New Christ?”

“Yes, the New Christ. I know you have been reading the Gospels, particularly Matthew. I hope you don't mind if Neck tells me these things. He has a great love for you, Brother George. The state of your soul is of consequence to him—as it is to me and to all of us.”

“I don't mind,” the boatmaker stammers, utterly perplexed.

“Good. Now let me explain the New Christ—and answer the questions you have come with. You know by now that Our Savior was foreordained in the Old Testament. He was not original: He was a reconsecration, a new Adam, who made good the sin of the Old Adam and paid the debt for all mankind.”

“What I wanted to know . . .” says the boatmaker, struggling to bring the conversation back to his own questions.

“You know some of the Old Testament now, and the New. You read them from the outside, as most do. But
there is a great secret, brother, that is not given to all, even to those who call themselves Christians—especially not now, in these dark, fallen times. There is another way of reading: from the inside. And if you read the Book from the inside, with eyes that can see, a great secret is revealed. And that secret is that the sacrifice of the Son of Man did not end in Palestine in the first century AD. It continues in our own times—
as a living matter
. Not in the pages of a book—even the greatest of books, the Holy Book—but as
flesh and blood, living and dying, here and now
.”

The priest's voice becomes a subdued version of the voice that gave the sermon on despair: quieter but very passionate.

“The sacrifice must be renewed to lift the darkness of a new age. And you, my son, are an essential part of the renewed sacrifice Our Father has offered us: the New Christ on the New Land.”

The boatmaker is stunned into silence, deeply confused. These are mighty answers indeed—but they are not answers to the questions he carried with him into this office. And what the priest is saying is so momentous he cannot begin to comprehend it.

Suddenly he is ashamed of the questions he entered this room with. He must let go of them. He must put aside his doubts, his despair, and do whatever the priest
asks of him. If he does, in the end he will find answers to everything he has asked—and much more.

At this realization, the boatmaker feels as if he will break down and weep for the second time in his adult life. But he is sure such a display would be letting Father Robert down. He composes himself and listens, obedient.

The priest feels the change, and his paternal heart softens. He wants to stand and embrace the rough little man, but he cannot possibly allow himself to do that. Instead, he proceeds to explain, as gently as he can, what lies ahead. He smooths his blond hair, takes out his handkerchief and blows his nose to hide his emotion. His heart is overflowing, swimming in proud, hot gratitude. He puts the handkerchief back and continues calmly.

“We have been waiting, and now the time of renewal is at hand. Your dream is one of the final missing pieces of the puzzle. Now that you have had this dream, your life will change. You will be preparing for the moment of rebirth, the sacrifice of the New Christ.”

“Why has this happened?”

“I will tell you as much as you need to know—and no more,” says the priest, the question returning him to his authoritative daily self.

“In every era there is a struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. It happened in the
beginning, between Satan and Adam. It happened again when the Jews freed Barabbas and chose the crucifixion of Our Lord. Now the forces of darkness are again rising and undermining our nation. And the Jews are again at the center of it. The House of Lippsted, who make this beautiful furniture”—the priest gestures with his thumb over his shoulder at the secretary—“have crept into the heart of the kingdom. Through his insatiable need for the money to support his schemes for
progress
, our weak and foolish king has delivered himself into their hands. Behind closed doors, the debt of the Crown to the House of Lippsted grows and grows. They take pains to conceal it, the king and his Jews. They have broken the debt up into many small pieces—each owed to a different subsidiary of the House of Lippsted. And they believe that that way the size of the debt will remain hidden.

“But nothing remains hidden from the eyes of God!” says Father Robert, bringing his palm down on the surface of the desk.

As he feels the heat in his palm, the priest fears for a moment that he has gone too far, even for a private conversation. The division of the Crown's debt into splinters to conceal its size has never been made public. That information comes from a network of spies loyal to The
Brotherhood that reaches all the way to the palace. It would be disastrous for the network to be exposed.

Father Robert pauses, breathes in, rubs his palms together. He feels himself calming. He is almost certain that the man from Small Island is not shrewd or worldly enough to understand the implications of what the priest has said.

The boatmaker is barely listening to what Father Robert is saying about the details of the king's debt to the House of Lippsted. The man from Small Island has crossed a threshold: He will join the priest's plan for the New Christ.

“How do I fit in?”

“You have come to us when the moment is ripe,” the priest says, now feeling quite secure. “There have been signs—many signs—already. Our Father is merciful. When the forces of darkness are strongest, a new Redeemer comes. Now that you have been shown to us, we will show you the rest.”

The priest watches to see the effect of his words. The boatmaker is silent. He has decided to give himself to this new purpose. All he wants now is to be taught how to serve.

“Now I will show you how powerful the love of your brothers is for you,” the priest says, rising and moving to the window behind the side table. “Come and see.”

The boatmaker gets up, sets down his glass and goes to stand next to the priest. Father Robert puts a wrestler's arm around the boatmaker's shoulder and points with his other hand down across the square. Suspended on the poles the brothers raised in front of the chapel are Crow and White. Their arms are wrapped behind the poles, and thick ropes are tied around their chests and legs. Their eyes are open as if they are surprised. There are no marks on them. Their faces are pale. It is not easy to tell how long they have been dead.

CHAPTER 15

The day after seeing Crow and White the boatmaker is moved out of the hall where the brothers sleep. Neck leads him to a small building tucked behind the chapel. He has never paid much attention to this building, which faces the woods stretching away to the border of the New Land. Neck shows him to a small single room.

“You have been chosen to give everything. What an honor. Beyond an honor.” The neckless man would like to be in the boatmaker's place, would like to give even more than he already does to Father Robert and the New Land. But he knows envy is a sin; he pushes the thought away.

The walls of the boatmaker's new room are whitewashed, the pine floorboards unfinished. On the wall above the narrow iron bedstead is a crucifix. He is given a new robe, finely woven, whiter than his old one and never worn before. There will be no more work in the fields for
him. Taking off his old robe, stained and gray, putting on the new one, he feels himself enter a new life. It seems as if everything he has experienced—Small Island, the woman of the town, the Mainland, money, the Jews, the New Land, the lettuces, the hare, the dream of the salmon—was intended to bring him to this moment.

He sees that in each of his experiences he has been different: sometimes meek, sometimes hard, usually silent, occasionally talking too much, often gullible, sometimes suspicious, sometimes drunk for long periods, at other times achingly sober. All these versions of himself have played their part in bringing him here; he is grateful to each of them.

He no longer eats with the other brothers. Twice a day a silent monk comes to his door carrying a wooden tray that holds a glass and a bowl or two. While the brothers in the refectory continue to have vegetables every day and often eggs, along with their grains, in his narrow room facing the woods the boatmaker's diet diminishes day by day. At first there are summer vegetables: eggplant, tomatoes, squash and greens, served with barley. Then the vegetables thin out and disappear, first the tomatoes, then the eggplant and squash. Finally his beautiful lettuces stop appearing, and nothing remains but stewed barley, washed down with cold springwater.

The boatmaker knows he is being prepared for something, but he does not know what the task will be. His understanding of what the young priest told him just before he saw Crow and White staring from their telegraph poles is unsteady, transient. Sometimes he thinks he knows the sacrifice that will be required, at other times he is lost in confusion. He works to humble himself.

His only work is reading the Gospels and praying to the crucifix on the wall over the bed. When he can pray no more, he waits for the silent brother with his wooden tray to arrive. From time to time, between his two meals, Neck comes in. For the boatmaker, these are the best times, because Neck is willing to explain a little.

Neck tells the boatmaker he is one of four brothers, each of whom has a mystic and sacred seal set upon him. Now that the seals have appeared, a revelation is at hand that will change the Mainland, then spread out to transform the world, as the death of Jesus did, radiating from Jerusalem. Father Robert has not yet been given the full meaning of the seals: There is more to come before the revelation is complete. But the priest is busy, going frequently to the capital for meetings. Neck is vague about the people the priest meets with in the city and what they discuss. But it is clear that, young as he is, Father Robert has spent years laying the groundwork
for this change—and the New Land is only part of the picture.

The boatmaker wants to know more about all of it: the bigger picture the New Land is part of, the men the priest meets with in the city, the other three brothers, the seal each one bears, the nature of their task. But he knows he must be satisfied with what he is given. If he asks directly, Neck goes silent.

Over time, his eagerness for answers fades. The diet of barley gruel, water and prayer has left him at a distance from the things of this world. He stays in his cell, reading the Gospels and waiting for his task to begin, praying for the strength to do whatever is asked of him. Despite all the steps he has taken on this road, he is not certain that he has completely vanquished his own stubbornness, the spiritual pride concealed within despair. And so he prays harder, eats less.

On a hot day toward the end of summer, Neck comes to his cell with a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. While the boatmaker has changed during his time on the New Land, the neckless man has remained exactly the same since the boatmaker first saw him, entering the hospital room behind the priest. Neck has never offered more than he is able to give, never appeared when he was not welcome, never tried to explain more than he understands.