The Wounded Land t2cotc-1 Read online

  A scream like a mouthful of broken glass snatched her to a halt. It pierced the mutter of her sedan. Slivers of sound cut at her hearing. A woman screaming in agony or madness.

  It had come from Covenant's house.

  In an instant, Linden stood beside the car, waiting for the cry to-be repeated.

  She heard nothing. Lights shone from some of the windows; but no shadows moved. No sounds of violence betrayed the night. She I stood poised to race to the house. Her ears searched the air-. But the dark held its breath. The scream did not come again.

  For a long moment, indecision held her. Confront Covenant-demand answers? Or leave? She had met his hostility. What right did she have-? Every right, if he were torturing some woman. But how could she be sure? Dr. Berenford had called it a medical problem.

  Dr. Berenford-

  Spitting curses, she jumped back into her car, stamped down on the accelerator, and sped away in a rattle of dust and gravel.

  Two minutes later, she was back in town. But then she had to slow down so that she could watch for street signs.

  When she arrived at the Chief of Staff’s house, all she could see was an outline against the night sky. Its front frowned as if this, too, were a place where secrets were kept. But she did not hesitate. Striding up the steps, she pounded on the front door.

  That door led to a screened veranda like a neutral zone between the dwelling itself and the outside world. As she knocked, the porch lights came on. Dr. Berenford opened the inner door, closed it behind him, then crossed the veranda to admit her.

  He smiled a welcome; but his eyes evaded hers as if he had reason to be frightened; and she could see his pulse beating in the pouches below their sockets.

  “Dr. Berenford,” she said grimly.

  “Please.” He made a gesture of appeal. “Julius.”

  “Dr. Berenford.” She was not sure that she wanted this man's friendship. “Who is she?”

  His gaze flinched. “She?”

  “The woman who screamed.”

  He seemed unable to lift his eyes to her face. In a tired voice, he murmured, “He didn't tell you anything.”

  “No.”

  Dr. Berenford considered for a moment, then motioned her toward two rocking chairs at one end of the veranda. “Please sit down. It's cooler out here.” His attention seemed to wander. “This heat wave can't last forever.”

  “Doctor!” she lashed at him. “He's torturing that woman.”

  “No, he isn't.” Suddenly, the older man was angry. “You get that out of your head right now. He's doing everything he can for her. Whatever's torturing her, it isn't him.”

  Linden held his glare, measuring his candour until she felt sure that he was Thomas Covenant's friend, whether or not he was hers. Then she said flatly, “Tell me.”

  By degrees, his expression recovered its habitual irony. “Won't you sit down?”

  Brusquely, she moved down the porch, seated herself to one of the rockers. At once, he turned off the lights, and darkness came pouring through the screens. “I think better in the dark.” Before her eyes adjusted, she heard the chair beside her squeak as he sat down.

  For a time, the only sounds were the soft protest of his chair and the stridulation of the crickets. Then he said abruptly, “Some things I'm not going to tell you. Some I can't-some I won't. But I got you into this. I owe you a few answers.”

  After that, he spoke like the voice of the night; and she listened in a state of suspension-half concentrating, as she would have concentrated on a patient describing symptoms, half musing on the image of the gaunt vivid man who had said with such astonishment and pain, Why you?

  "Eleven years ago, Thomas Covenant was a writer with one bestseller, a lovely wife named Joan, and an infant son, Roger. He hates that novel-calls it inane-but his wife and son he still loves. Or thinks he does. Personally, I doubt it. He's an intensely loyal man. What he calls love, I call being loyal to his own pain.

  “Eleven years ago, an infection on his right hand turned out to be leprosy, and those two fingers were amputated. He was sent down to the leprosarium in Louisiana, and Joan divorced him. To protect Roger from being raised to close proximity to a leper. The way Covenant tells it, her decision was perfectly reasonable. A mother's natural concern for a child. I think he's rationalizing. I think she was just afraid. I think the idea of what Hansen's disease could do to him-not to mention to her and Roger-just terrified her. She ran away.”

  His tone conveyed a shrug, “But I'm just guessing. The fact is, she divorced him, and he didn't contest it. After a few months, his illness was arrested, and he came back to Haven Farm. Alone. That was not a good time for him. All his neighbours moved away. Some people in this fair town tried to force him to leave. He was to the Hospital a couple times, and the second time he was half dead-” Dr. Berenford seemed to wince at the memory. "His disease was active again. We sent him back to the leprosarium.

  “When he came home again, everything was different. He seemed to have recovered his sanity. For ten years now he's been stable. A little grim, maybe-not exactly what you might call diffident-but accessible, reasonable, compassionate. Every year he foots the bill for several of our indigent patients.”

  The older man sighed. “You know, it's strange. The same people who try to convert me seem to think he needs saving, too. He's a leper who doesn't go to church, and he's got money. Some of our evangelicals consider that an insult to the Almighty.”

  The professional part of Linden absorbed the facts Dr. Berenford gave, and discounted his subjective reactions. But her musing raised Covenant's visage before her in the darkness. Gradually, that needy face became more real to her. She saw the lines of loneliness and gall on his mien. She responded to the strictness of his countenance as if she had recognized a comrade. After all, she was familiar with bitterness, loss, isolation.

  But the doctor's speech also filled her with questions. She wanted to know where Covenant had learned his stability. What had changed him? Where had he found an answer potent enough to preserve him against the poverty of his life? And what had happened recently to take it away from him?

  “Since then,” the Chief of Staff continued, "he's published seven novels, and that's where you can really see the difference. Oh, he's mentioned something about three or four other manuscripts, but I don't know anything about them. The point is, if you didn't know better, you wouldn't be able to believe his bestseller and the other seven were written by the same man. He's right about the first one. It's fluff-self-indulgent melodrama. But the others-

  “If you had a chance to read Or I Will Sell My Soul for Guilt, you'd find him arguing that innocence is a wonderful thing except for the fact that it's impotent. Guilt is power. All effective people are guilty because the use of power is guilt, and only guilty people can be effective. Effective for good, mind you. Only the damned can be saved.”

  Linden was squirming. She understood at least one kind of relationship between guilt and effectiveness. She had committed murder, and had become a doctor because she had committed murder. She knew that people like herself were driven to power by the need to assoil their guilt. But she had found nothing-no anodyne or restitution-to verify the claim that the damned could be saved. Perhaps Covenant had fooled Dr. Berenford: perhaps he was crazy, a madman wearing a clever mask of stability. Or perhaps he knew something she did not.

  Something she needed.

  That thought gave her a pang of fear. She was suddenly conscious of the night, the rungs of the rocker pressing against her back, the crickets. She ached to retreat from the necessity of confronting Covenant again. Possibilities of harm crowded the darkness. But she needed to understand her peril. When Dr. Berenford stopped, she bore the silence as long as she could, then, faintly, repeated her initial question.

  “Who is she?”

  The doctor sighed. His chair left a few splinters of agitation in the air. But he became completely still before he said, “His ex-wife. Joan.”

  Lin
den flinched. That piece of information gave a world of explanation to Covenant's haggard, febrile appearance. But it was not enough. “Why did she come back? What's wrong with her?”

  The older man began rocking again. “Now we're back to where we were this afternoon. I can't tell you. I can't tell you why she came back because he told me in confidence. “If he's right- ”His voice trailed away, then resumed. ”I can't tell you what's wrong with her because I don't know."

  She stared at his unseen face. “That's why you got me into this.”

  “Yes.” His reply sounded like a recognition of mortality.

  “There are other doctors around. Or you could call in a specialist.” Her throat closed suddenly; she had to swallow heavily in order to say, “Why me?”

  “Well, I suppose-” Now his tone conveyed a wry smile. “I could say it's because you're well trained. But the fact is, I thought of you because you seem to fit. You and Covenant could talk to each other-if you gave yourselves a chance.”

  “I see.” In the silence, she was groaning, Is it that obvious? After everything I've done to hide it, make up for it, does it still show? To defend herself, she got to her feet. Old bitterness made her sound querulous. “I hope you like playing God.”

  He paused for a long moment before he replied quietly, “If that's what I'm doing-no, I don't. But I don't look at it that way. I'm just in over my head. So I asked you for help.”

  Help, Linden snarled inwardly. Jesus Christ! But she did not speak her indignation aloud. Dr. Berenford had touched her again, placed his finger on the nerves which compelled her. Because she did not want to utter her weakness, or her anger, or her lack of choice, she moved past him to the outer door of the veranda. “Goodnight,” she said in a flat tone.

  “Goodnight, Linden.” He did not ask her what she was going to do. Perhaps he understood her. Or perhaps he had no courage.

  She got into her car and headed back toward Haven Farm.

  She drove slowly, trying to regain a sense of perspective. True, she had no choice now; but that was not because she was helpless. Rather, it was because she had already made the choice-made it long ago, when she had decided to be a doctor. She had elected deliberately to be who she was now. If some of the implications of that choice gave her pain-well, there was pain everywhere. She deserved whatever pain she had to bear.

  She had not realized until she reached the dirt road that she had forgotten to ask Dr. Berenford about the old man.

  She could see lights from Covenant's house. The building lay flickering against a line of dark trees like a gleam about to be swallowed by the woods and the night. The moon only confirmed this impression; its nearly-full light made the field a lake of silver, eldritch and fathomless, but could not touch the black trees, or the house which lay in their shadow. Linden shivered at the damp air, and drove with her hands tight on the wheel and her senses taut, as if she were approaching a crisis.

  Twenty yards from the house, she stopped, parked her car so that it stood in the open moonlight.

  Be true.

  She did not know how.

  The approach of her headlights must have warned him. An outside lamp came on as she neared the front door. He stepped out to meet her. His stance was erect and forbidding, silhouetted by the yellow light at his back. She could not read his face.

  “Dr. Avery.” His voice rasped like a saw. “Go away.”

  “No.” The uncertainty of her respiration made her speak abruptly, one piece at a time. “Not until I see her.”

  “Her?” he demanded.

  “Your ex-wife.”

  For a moment, he was silent. Then he grated, “What else did that bastard tell you?”

  She ignored his anger. “You need help.”

  His shoulders hunched as if he were strangling retorts. “He's mistaken. I don't need help. I don't need you. Go away.”

  “No.” She did not falter. “He's right. You're exhausted. Taking care of her alone is wearing you out. I can help.”

  “You can't,” he whispered, denying her fiercely. “She doesn't need a doctor. She needs to be left alone.”

  “I'll believe that when I see it.”

  He tensed as if she had moved, tried to get past him. “You're trespassing. If you don't go away, I'll call the Sheriff.”

  The falseness of her position infuriated her. “Goddamn it!” she snapped. “What are you afraid of?”

  “You.” His voice was gravid, cold.

  “Me? You don't even know me.”

  “And you don't know me. You don't know what's going on here. You couldn't possibly understand it. And you didn't choose it.” He brandished words at her like blades. “Berenford got you into this. That old man-” He swallowed, then barked, “You saved him, and he chose you, and you don't have any idea what that means. You haven't got the faintest idea what he chose you for. By hell, I'm not going to stand for it! Go away.”

  “What does it have to do with you?” She groped to understand him. “What makes you think it has anything to do with you?”

  “Because I do know.”

  “Know what?” She could not tolerate the condescension of his refusal. “What's so special about you? Leprosy? Do you think being a leper gives you some kind of private claim on loneliness or pain? Don't be arrogant. There are other people in the world who suffer, and it doesn't take being a leper to understand them. What's so goddamn special about you?”

  Her anger stopped him. She could not see his face; but his posture seemed to twist, reconsidering her. After a moment, he said carefully, “Nothing about me. But I'm on the inside of this thing, and you aren't. I know it. You don't. It can't be explained. You don't understand what you're doing.”

  “Then tell me. Make me understand. So I can make the right choice.”

  “Dr. Avery.” His voice was sudden and harsh. “Maybe suffering isn't private. Maybe sickness and harm are in the public domain. But this is private.”

  His intensity silenced her. She wrestled with him in her thoughts, and could find no way to take hold of him. He knew more than she did-had endured more, purchased more, learned more. Yet she could not let go. She needed some kind of explanation. The night air was thick and humid, blurring the meaning of the stars. Because she had no other argument, she challenged him with her incomprehension itself. “'Be true,'” she articulated, “isn't the only thing he said.”

  Covenant recoiled. She held herself still until the suspense drove him to ask in a muffled tone, “What else?”

  “He said, 'Do not fear. You will not fail, however he may assail you.'” There she halted, unwilling to say the rest. Covenant's shoulders began to shake. Grimly, she pursued her advantage. “Who was he talking about? You?”

  He did not respond. His hands were pressed to his face, stifling his emotion.

  “Or was it somebody else? Did somebody hurt Joan?”

  A shard of pain slipped past his teeth before he could lock them against himself.

  “Or is something going to happen to me? What does that old man have to do with me? Why do you say he chose me?”

  “He's using you.” Covenant's hands occluded his voice. But he had mastered himself. When he dropped his arms, his tone was dull and faint, like the falling of ashes. “He's like Berenford. Thinks I need help. Thinks I can't handle it this time.” He should have sounded bitter; but he had momentarily lost even that resource. “The only difference is, he knows-what I know.”

  “Then tell me,” Linden urged again. “Let me try.”

  By force of will, Covenant straightened so that he stood upright against the light. “No. Maybe I can't stop you, but I as sure as hell don't have to let you. I'm not going to contribute to this. If you're dead set on getting involved, you're going to have to find some way to do it behind my back.” He stopped as if he were finished. But then he raged at her, “And tell that bastard Berenford he ought to try trusting me for a change!”

  Retorts jumped into her throat. She wanted to yell back, Why should he? You do
n't trust anybody else! But as she gathered force into her lungs, a scream stung the air.

  A woman screaming, raw and heinous. Impossible that anybody could feel such virulent terror and stay sane. It shrilled like the heart-shriek of the night.

  Before it ended, Linden was on her way past Covenant toward the front door.

  He caught her arm: she broke the grip of his half-hand, flung him off. “I'm a doctor.” Leaving him no time for permission or denial, she jerked open the door, strode into the house.

  The door admitted her to the living room. It looked bare, in spite of its carpeting and bookcases; there were no pictures, no ornaments; and the only furniture was a long overstaffed sofa with a coffee table in front of it. They occupied the centre of the floor, as if to make the space around them navigable.

  She gave the room a glance, then marched down a short passage to the kitchen. There, too, a table and two straight-backed wooden chairs occupied the centre of the space. She went past them, turned to enter another hall. Covenant hurried after her as she by-passed two open doors-the bathroom, his bedroom-to reach the one at the end of the hall.

  It was closed.

  At once, she took hold of the knob.

  He snatched at her wrist. “Listen.” His voice must have held emotion-urgency, anguish, something-but she did not hear it. “This you have to understand. There's only one way to hurt a man who's lost everything. Give him back something broken.”

  She gripped the knob with her free hand. He let her go.

  She opened the door, went into the room.

  All the lights were on.

  Joan sat on an iron-frame bed in the middle of the room. Her ankles and wrists were tied with cloth bonds which allowed her to sit up or lie down but did not permit her to bring her hands together. The long cotton nightgown covering her thin limbs had been twisted around her by her distress.

  A white gold wedding ring hung from a silver chain around her neck.

  She did not look at Covenant. Her gaze sprang at Linden, and a mad fury clenched her face. She had rabid eyes, the eyes of a demented lioness. Whimpers moaned in her throat. Her pallid skin stretched tightly over her bones.