Which isn't so, of course: which isn't so. Only in here.

He said or thought Oh. He felt a flight of little laughing putti tumble through the air of his cell and vanish. Oh I see.

For a long time he only sat, and no one observing him—no observer looking into that cell from outside, if such an observer there were or could be—would have supposed that Pierce saw anything more than the same words he had been looking at before. Then slowly he put out his hand, turned it, and looked at his watch, and then at the glow of the garden outside. The bells rang for Vespers, the close of day. He stood; then after a time he sat again. He took and turned over, faceup, the facedown pages of Kraft's book. And began again to read.

* * * *

The abbey where Pierce read and thought was a recent foundation; its church was a great strong Romanesque one, as simple and lasting as the hill it stood on, but not old. It reminded Pierce of the welcoming and comforting structures of stone and timbers built in the wild places by the government just a few decades before, when labor was cheap and hopes were high, the lodges and the nature centers of state parks, the riparian works and dams, places Pierce had loved to come upon as boy when his cousins and he went on travels in summer to other, more American places than the one they lived in. Like those rough but thoughtfully crafted places too were the oak pews of the abbey church, the pale flagged floors, the ironwork hinges and candle stands. In high plain niches were statues, but only the required few, the family figures of Mary and Joseph on either side of the stage where their Son's passion and transformation were daily enacted. They and all the other pictures and devotional objects were on this evening blind and obscure, wrapped for the last weeks of Lent in their purple shrouds.

It was Compline, nine o'clock at night. In the bell tower, the bells swung and their carriages rocked, sometimes carrying the bells around in a complete circle, the circle children think they might make if they push their swings out far enough. At this hour Christ prayed in the garden, on the Mount of Olives. Around him his apostles slept and dreamed of what? If this cup may not pass away from Me except I drink it, then not My will but Thine be done. A problematic scene for trinitarians, Pierce thought. Jesus seemed to grow less sure of himself the nearer the agony came. Just a frightened human after all. What have I done.

Pierce was not, at this night hour, in the dim blank-windowed church at prayers with the brothers. He was seated again in the confessional-like telephone cubby. When the bells ceased he lifted the handset and after a moment's pause dialed a number, not Rosalind Rasmussen's this time. He told the operator that he wanted to reverse the charges. And when the phone was lifted and answered there, he heard the operator ask, Will you accept the charges?

"Yes. I'll accept the charges."

"Hi,” Pierce said then.

"Hey. It's you."

"It's me."

"I thought you wouldn't call. That you couldn't. Except emergencies."

"Well."

"It's not an emergency?"

"No. No emergency."

Silence. She had a way—always had—of leaving phone conversations, going silent, having nothing to say it might be, or pondering or distracted. Unafraid that her interlocutor might think she'd gone, or was mum from hostility or impatience.

"So I had a little breakthrough,” he said at last. She didn't respond, and after a while he said, “I was wrong about it. The book. I had, well, an insight. I think. Today."

"Good. How is it there?"

"It's okay."

"Just okay?"

"I don't know if I can make it. The whole two weeks."

"What."

"Prayer. Bells, every three hours. At every meal we listen to tapes, about meditation. This murmuring."

"Doesn't sound so bad."

"I kind of dread it. I shrink from it. I may be having an allergic reaction to Catholicism. After all."

She laughed. Pierce could hear cries and hilarity in the deep far-off, where she was.

"Like hives,” he said. “I didn't expect it. How are the girls?"

"Jeez, Pierce, they're great. They're so great. You know I went to the doctor yesterday..."

"Yes and what..."

"And he remembered back when they were toddlers and I went to him for a physical and he asked was I getting any exercise. You remember? And I said well gee no not really, and then I said well actually I do. I lift weights. Yeah. Their names are Vita and Mary."

As though cued, Pierce heard the two children racing by, Doppler effect of their cries approaching and receding.

"They're still up?” Pierce said. “It's like nine o'clock."

"Courtney got them in bed but they wouldn't sleep. When I got back from work they'd just nodded off and the car woke them up. Courtney says."

More distant happy shrieking from her world. She wasn't going to tell him more about that visit to the doctor. “How's Axel?” he asked.

"He's okay. He misses you. When you're gone he walks around as though he's trying not to make noise, you know? And he's got this face. The Ghost Butler. Trying to help and not be there at the same time."

"Oh gee."

"He scares the girls. He tries so hard."

"I'll be back soon."

"No,” she said firmly. “You stick. No running home. You do this job. It's what we agreed. Peace and quiet for free. A ... what do they call it? Recourse? Defeat?"

"Retreat.” A room in the Retreat House, plain meals, counseling (optional) and silence. Give whatever you feel you can. A mountaintop in the wooded hills. Perfect, he'd thought, for the job he had to do, the last hard push on Kraft's book, get it to its ending, his house a little loud and crowded, his office at school too. “I don't know. I just don't know."

"Well."

"Can I speak to the girls?” Condemned man asks for a little pity.

"Um sure,” she said. “If they will."

He heard her call out: Kids, it's Daddy. And his heart filled. He heard a confused thunder, thump of feet, and one was shouting in his ear, Vita, joke-chiding him not very intelligibly even as her sister took the phone from her and spoke carefully.

"Daddy?"

He could see clearly the big instrument held to her ear, her hand around it, the missing teeth in her smile.

"Hi, girls. Yes it's me."

"What are the monks doing, Daddy? Are they making jam?"

"Maybe, hon, but it's kind of late. Do you want me to bring you some jam?"

"Are they scary?"

"Nah.” The one pictured on the labels of their proprietary jam jars sort of was, cowled and faceless, stirring his witch's brew: Pierce had showed the girls before he left. The name of their order could be a little unsettling too, it just occurred to him.

"You said you couldn't talk."

"I can. They can't."

"I hope you have a nice time, Daddy."

"Thanks, Mary."

Vita yelling her encouragement too, from too far away.

"Yeah, thanks to you, Vita, too. I love you both."

Pierce's wife, whose name was called Roo, took back the phone.

"That was nice,” he said.

"Yeah. Now get back to work,” she said. “You wuss."

III

CARCER

1

When Pierce returned from Europe to the Faraway Hills it was March, almost a year's trip around the sun since he had first moved there from New York City. He had no home here now, though, as he had had then; no job, no car, no reason to be here instead of elsewhere. He came by bus, of course, all the way to Blackbury Jambs, where the two rivers—the Blackbury and the Shadow—meet in a Y: a fertile valley one way, a rocky tumbled woodland the other.