The mute who travels with him, the one he calls Maury, suddenly howls up at the sky, an extended, inchoate keen like that of a coyote – representing not hunger nor loneliness nor anything else but some arcane and inscrutable desire cried to the unanswering heavens. One-eyed Moses turns to look at his companion with brief but solicitous care. But the mute hushes again and begins to play with his fingers quietly.
Words, Moses goes on, spoken or un, comprehensible or in, it makes no difference. I used to be one kind of man, and then I became another. And then another. And still another after that. Moses Todd, the painted man. Maybe all of us are painted, all of us circus clowns – and the act moves from ring to ring. I used to be one kind of man, and then I spoke to a monk and I became someone else. And then there was a girl, and the two of us talked, and I became someone else.
He goes silent for a moment, his eyes lost in contemplation of his own past, but then he shakes himself back into the present.
But no, that’s something else – the girl, I mean – that’s a different story. See, words are dangerous for how they proliferate. The plague of the dead ain’t nothin to the plague of language, for it works insidious at your memory and your perception of all things. This story – the one I’m speaking to you right now – it’s about holy things. But the tellin of what’s holy and what’s not – well, that’s a beautiful magic of parlance, ain’t it?
He pauses again, lowering a stick into the fire until it catches and then bringing the flaming end up to his cigar. He puffs three times to bring the weed alight, lets the smoke spill out between his lips and over his beard, and then continues his story.
The brothers sleep in a crib of the horse stables on mounds of dry hay. It looks as though there have not been any horses in the stable for many years. Instead, much of the space is taken with the storage of provisions – barrels of water in anticipation of the dry months, jars of food in anticipation of famine.
They were offered beds in one of the bunkhouses, but Moses declined for the both of them. They have slept in worse than a stable crib, and there is a sour pleasure in sleeping as beasts among these good and righteous people. Moses bites down upon the selfsubjugation, as you would upon a rotten tooth to feel the flare of pious pain.
In the morning when Moses wakes, coughing the dust from his lungs and picking dry hay from his beard, he discovers that his brother Abraham is gone from the crib. He rushes from the stable and through the courtyard where the faces of the acolytes question him without words. Ignoring their expressions, he continues the search for his brother near the picnic tables, by the kitchen house, in the vegetable garden.
He eventually discovers Abraham in the church itself. He holds in his hands a fragment of cloth that has painted on it in watercolours a house and a sunset and a smiling girl. The girl herself stands next to him and beams up happily at his admiration.
This is quite a picture now, he says to her, holding it out away from him in an exaggerated performance of appreciation. You got a deft touch with the brush. I’ll tell you something, this is about as pretty a picture as I’ve seen in years. They should hang this up in a museum somewhere. You know what a museum is?
The girl shakes her head no.
It’s a place where they put all the greatest paintings in the world. And this one here could hold its own against any of those.
He hands it back to her with great delicacy.
You best hold tight to that, he says. Keep it safe. It’s so pretty, someone’s gonna want to steal that away from you.
The girl takes the watercolour back and scurries away.
Behind Moses the monk Ignatius appears. He has been observing the interaction as well.
Your brother doesn’t seem like the man you make him out to be, Ignatius says quietly.
You missed the point, friar, the lesson he was teachin that girl. It was to watch out because pretty things get plucked.
Then Abraham notices the two standing in the wide doorway of the church.
Mornin, he says. Moses can see him bristling under his brother’s suspicious gaze.
Good morning, Ignatius says. I trust you both slept well. I hope you’ll reconsider your arrangements for tonight and take one of the bunkhouses. We have plenty of room.
I think we may be movin along today, friar, says Moses. You been very kind, and we don’t want to take undue advantage of your hospitality.
Leaving so soon? Ignatius says. All the more reason to show you what I need to show you and make you my proposition. You have weapons, I take it?
So Ignatius instructs them to get a couple guns from their car and to meet him at the front gate of the compound.
What do you suppose the holy man has in mind for us? Abraham asks Moses as they dig through the satchels of weapons in the trunk of the car. You think it’s a trap?
It ain’t a trap, Moses says.
Then what?
Moses shrugs.
We’ll know when we know. It ain’t these people who are a danger to us.
What’s that mean?
But Moses doesn’t respond. He hands his brother a rifle and takes a pistol for himself and walks to the front gate of the mission, hearing Abraham slam the car trunk closed and follow behind him.
At the gate, they find the monk Ignatius waiting for them – and next to him the young woman in white robes that Moses noticed at dinner the night before. She has long red hair brushed straight out over the back of the robes, and there’s a quality to her expression that Moses can’t make sense of – as though there were springs in the corners of her mouth that naturally want to draw her face into a sneer were it not for the constant exhausting effort to keep it serene. He estimates her age to be just over two decades – though a pair of decades rich with hazard and life.
Ignatius gestures for them all to follow him out the front gate – and once outside he glances around nervously, but there are no slugs to be seen. In the distance, there are desiccated, sand-blown corpses like features of the desert – and some of them might rouse themselves to action if you were to come near them – but the place is too barren for much life, even the life of the dead.
As they walk around the perimeter of the mission, Ignatius introduces the woman.
Abraham and Moses, I am honoured to introduce you to the canoness, the Vestal Amata.
The which now? Abraham says.
Pleased to meet you, Moses says.
May God grant you life, the robed woman says and gives the brothers an expansive smile.
You talk? Moses says, and the woman glances quickly at Ignatius, who nods forgivingly.
She has had trouble taking to the vow, Ignatius explains. She does her best – especially around the others – but it’s possible that silence is anathema to her nature.
We are all bound to fall in some way, the woman says. Otherwise how would we know rising? My particular dereliction is the spoken word.
It’s okay, Abraham says. We’ve seen worse derelictions, haven’t we, Mose?
Moses ignores his brother and turns to the woman.
What title was that the friar gave you?
She is a canoness, Ignatius explains before the woman has a chance to speak. She serves the church, though she has taken no vow.
The woman lowers her eyes to the ground she walks upon, as though in deference or shame. Still, Moses knows shame, knows regret, and what he reads in the woman’s movements is something different entirely.
Not that title, Moses says. You called her something else.
Vestal, says Ignatius.
Like in vestal virgin?
What kind of virgin’s a vestal virgin? Abraham asks.
Come this way, Ignatius says. Right up here.
They are climbing a small hill behind the mission, and near the top they arrive at a flat area bordered by high jagged rock formations that create an unclimbable wall. At the base of the rock wall is a grotto where the rock recedes under a half-moon overhang creating a low, shallow dell like the mouth of a troll. In the shallow cavern is something that looks like a white marble sarcophagus – and across the mouth of the opening is a long iron gate held in place by two marble columns on either end. Strung between the bars of the gate and along the filigreed wrought iron at the top, there are garlands of flowers gone dead and dry long ago.
What is it? Moses asks.
It was built as a shrine to the Blessed Virgin, Ignatius explains. Look.
He points up to a cavity higher in the rockface, and inside there’s a small statue of the Virgin Mary like the one in the mission church below.
As they approach the grotto, Moses sees two other recumbent figures behind the gate. One is another virgin statue – this one broken at the base and knocked to the ground. The other is the body of a man, prostrate and half hidden by the marble shrine. It is only when they are at the gate, Abraham gripping the bars, that the body of the man begins to move, slowly and with great effort using the shrine to hoist itself first to its knees and then to its feet.
Who is that? Moses asks.
His name is Perry. Douglas Perry. He died five months ago.
What’re you keepin him penned up for? Abraham asks.
We’re not keeping him. When he got sick and knew his end was near, he came out here to die. We didn’t think it was our right to question his final resting place.
As they watch, the dead man lumbers over to the gates and reaches his arm through to the watchers, who back away just out of his grasp. His skin is dark and leathered, burned from the sun, his eyes milky white, his hair pebbly with blown dirt. Otherwise his body is intact – as though he will simply shrivel up and blow away as a dried husk or as the petals of the dead flowers wound through the gate.
Maybe he has obligated himself as the custodian of our shrine, Ignatius says. I like to think so.
What do you want to show us? Moses asks. He is made uneasy by the odd assortment of things – the broken Virgin, the raisin-headed slug, the maw-like cavern, the redheaded Vestal. He wishes to be away from this place.
Without responding, the monk Ignatius moves to the right end of the gate, where there is a hinged door shut with a chain and lock. He uses a key to undo the lock and slides the chain away.
Both Todd brothers ready their weapons and aim them at Douglas Perry, who begins to move slowly towards the door in the gate, clutching at each metal bar as he goes.