“What’s wrong with you?” she muttered under her breath. “Why, for God’s sake?”
She’d got the paper halfway open—far enough to see her own name. Very carefully, she broke the last of the dried blood and spread the stained and crumpled paper out on the table.
Dearest Bree,
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be here, but I have the strongest feeling that here is where I should be. It wasn’t quite “Whom shall I send? Who shall go for us?”—but something close, and so was my answer.
Slowly, she sat down on the bed, with its clean, safe counterpane and spotless pillows, and read it again. She sat for a few minutes, breathing slowly, deeply, calming herself.
She was by no means a Bible scholar, but she knew this passage; it turned up at least once a year in the readings at Mass, and the young priest who had taught religion at her school had used it when talking to the eighth-graders about vocations.
It was from Isaiah, the story in which the prophet is awakened from sleep by an angel, who touches a hot coal to his lips to cleanse him, to make him capable of speaking God’s word. She thought she knew what came next, but she rose and went down the quiet hallway to the library, where she knew she’d seen a Bible in the shelves. It was there, a handsome book bound in cool black leather, and she sat down and found what she was looking for with no trouble.
Isaiah, chapter 6, verse 8:
Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.
She could feel her lips moving, repeating “send me,” but they moved silently and the words rang only in her own ears.
Send me.
She sat down, the open book heavy on her knee. Her hands were sweating, but her fingers were cold, and she fumbled, turning the page.
Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate.
“Jesus Christ,” she whispered. Roger had heard that call, and he’d answered it. She swallowed painfully, past the lump in her throat.
“You’re an idiot,” she whispered, but it was herself she spoke to, not him. She’d told him that she’d do everything she could to help him, if he was sure that being a minister was truly his vocation. She’d been schooled by priests and nuns; she knew what a vocation was. Only she hadn’t, really.
I’m sorry, he’d written in his note to her.
“No, I’m sorry,” she said aloud and, closing the book, sat for a few minutes, staring into the fire. The house was quiet around her, wrapped in that peaceful hour before the preparations for supper began.
She’d imagined him doing what he did on the Ridge, though more officially: listen to people who needed someone to hear them, advise the troubled, comfort the dying, christen children, marry people and bury them … but she hadn’t imagined him comforting men dying on a battlefield, in the midst of cannon fire, nor burying them afterward and coming home bloody, with a stranger’s shattered teeth in his pocket. But something had called to him, and he’d gone to do it.
And he had, thank God, come back to her. Come in need of her. She blew out a long, slow breath and, rising, went to slide the Bible back into its place.
Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?
“Well, there’s a rhetorical question,” she said. “There isn’t anybody else who can do that for him, is there?” She took a breath, and clean air from the sea came in through the open window.
“Send me.”
100
The Power of the Flesh
Savannah
THE SIEGE WAS LIFTED, the city largely untouched by battle, save cannonball holes and minor fires in the houses closest to the fighting. Savannah was a gracious city, and its grace was still evident, as people resumed their lives with very little fuss.
John Grey picked up the handkerchief that Mrs. Fleury had just dropped for the second time and handed it back, again with a bow. He didn’t think it was flirtation—if it was, she was very bad at it. She was also a good quarter century his elder, and while she was still sharp of both eye and tongue, he’d noticed how the spoon rattled in her saucer when she’d picked up her teacup earlier in the afternoon.
If her hands were palsied, though, her mind was not.
“That girl,” she said, pursing her lips toward Amaranthus, who stood on the other side of the room, in conversation with a young man he didn’t know. “Who is she?”
“That is Viscountess Grey, ma’am,” Grey said courteously. “My brother’s daughter-in-law.”