Mr Wroe's Virgins

by Jane Rogers

  Joanna sits at my bedside I see her then I close my eyes. Her eyes are blue with tiny blond rays in the centre. Her skin blooms white like reflected from snow. Her hair is smoothed back and hairs by her ears float in the air as she bends towards me. I hear her voice in my stomach. It strokes the inside of my stomach with its soft finger.

  In the morning we get food. Then we go to the big room and Joanna makes her voice go high and low like a bird flying. They copy, open their mouths and the bird flies out. Mine does not, it makes a different sound. Joanna puts her hand on my arm, ‘It is all right Martha.’ I keep my mouth closed while they do their noise, my ear follows the path of their sounds which call you to follow.

  Today there is no food. We go to the big room but do not make singing. Joanna looks and brushes our clothes. We go outside. Sky is grey, it is dry. Along lane, over canal, to the Sanctuary. We walk in twos with Joanna leading. Dinah leans on my arm her legs are crooked. No one speaks. We go in the big doors and sit. People come in. Joanna and the others sing, and the musicians make singing. The priest talks and they all talk to God then sing. I watch the flames on sticks, they grow taller. We stay a long time.

  At the house I go to eating room. No food. Each one in her room, they are not working. I go to larder there is food, cheese on the slab, bread, preserves. No one here. I eat. I eat bread the crust is thick and mealy then cheese its moist bitterness lines my mouth. Lick preserve from fingers it is running down in sweet lumps I cannot get enough. I put these in my mouth together, Joanna comes in.

  ‘Martha! No!’

  She takes food away. She makes me sit, she wets a cloth in bucket and wipes me. She daubs at my dress where preserve glistens, she wipes it away so only pale purple spots remain. When she has rubbed and wiped she sits beside me.

  ‘You must not eat today Sister Martha.’

  The taste of cheese lasts longest, it is still in my throat. I wish I got more.

  ‘It is a fast day. Before the feast of the New Moon. None of us must eat.’

  I will get the bucket after.

  ‘Do you understand, Martha? No one is to eat today. Today we remember our sins of the past month: we think about what we have done wrong, and ask God’s forgiveness. We prepare ourselves for the new month, by purifying and cleansing.’

  She stares at me. ‘We will eat tomorrow, sister. On the feast day.’

  She tells me to go to my room. ‘Change your dress.’ She says put milk on the stains. She pours some in a bowl, then she looks at me.

  ‘Not for drinking, Martha. Not for you. To clean the dress. Yes?’

  I speak for her. ‘Yes.’ She smiles.

  I stand. There is more preserve on my sleeve. I lick it off. She looks at me. She shakes her head.

  ‘Were you often hungry – before?’

  ‘Hungry.’

  ‘My poor child – does any of this make sense to you? The church, what the Prophet says?’

  ‘In Sanctuary.’

  ‘Yes – in Sanctuary. But the Sabbath and fast days …’

  ‘No food today.’

  She nods. ‘Good, Sister Martha. You do understand that God loves you? He has brought us here.’ Her eyebrows go in and down suddenly. ‘He brought us here, to do His will. To help the Prophet. To –’ She turns away. Her voice is falling. ‘– To do the laundry and turn the cheeses, to polish the candlesticks.’

  The candlesticks hold flame. Take white muslin, it is soft, dip it in mixture and rub the black candlestick. Black goes on cloth and the candlestick shines silver. I see little people in its surface, and lights, sometimes the room upside-down. She is watching me, she comes back. Her hand on my arm.

  ‘No – it is all right, I am not going to hurt you. You are glad to be here. Even though you scarcely understand it, you accept His will with a better grace than I. Come, Sister Martha. Pray with me.’

  She kneels on the floor and pulls at my sleeve. I copy. She clasps her hands and looks at the ceiling.

  ‘Oh God, forgive Thy servants. Grant us humility. Give us the patience and wisdom to do Thy will, in whatever way Thou designest. Our Father, who art in heaven –’

  She looks at me. ‘Close your eyes, dear Sister Martha.’

  After she says, ‘You could do the garden. Perhaps with Sisters Rachel and Rebekah – perhaps the three of you working together. We will see about it tomorrow.’

  There are seeds in twists of paper but I do not know. I know potatoes. A man has brought a bushel of seed potatoes. They have ploughed the plot for us, all we must do is plant. I say the stones to pick, but two boys have already. We plant potatoes, peas, cabbages, turnips. A woman from the church brings plants named rhubarb, mint, rosemary, bay, thyme, sage. She fetches currant bushes and gooseberry. Joanna says this will be our food. On our table, on plates. Rachel and Rebekah call after me.

  ‘Oh Sister Martha, slow down! Our backs are breaking. We do not have to finish it today.’

  I see the earth. When I bend, I see small moist grains sticking. I see soft hard sand stone and grains of mud which are separate but can be smeared between fingers. I see –

  They shout, ‘Oh come on Martha.’

  My mind is filled with the grain of earth, I cannot move.

  Here’s light. As I walk out the door it comes splashing in my face, wetting up my eyes. Birds go croop-cru, croop-cru. Their sound lies on air soft as grey feathers. Shining leaves, after-dark coloured. Lying on them, silver balls can never be broken. When I tilt it runs down towards me. If I touch it makes two new balls to run, and feel of wetness on my finger.

  The skin. Crossed and re-crossed with lines finer than hairs. Spotted, scarred, on my palms the yellow brown callouses are coming loose. Peel off. But the skin. Red but blue. Blue but brown. Brown but yellow. On one pin-point of me the world’s colours.

  Mist goes up from grass. There are water drops on it. Sky wool white, moves as smoke. White sunshine makes my eyes water. In the yard black mud and cowshit. Silver water in puddles. In hoofprints. Dung is crusted over lighter brown. Still soft underneath. Open the top door, slide my fingers through to lower latch. Cow warm air coming up my nose. She hrrumphs. I take stool, bucket, sit beside her. She stamps, breathes. Put my head in her side. Warm. My ear is pressed to the roar of her innards. Take the teats and squeeze-squeeze. Warm, moving in time. White milk shoots into my brown bucket. Squeeze squirt. Squeeze squirt. It hits bottom and splatters up the sides. White drips run down. Each sight my eyes take in. I feel cow’s heat. I hear her rumbling belly and her jaws chewing, chewing. I touch her leathery teats. I hear shot of milk against leather. I see pearl white drips against dark brown. Seeing hearing touching fills me up.

  Cow shifts her footing. Waiting for me to finish. I clasp my hands around the other teats. Her udder hangs slacker now. Pink furry skin wrinkling like cloth. Bend my head in to her hot side. Squeeze-squirt. The milk is frothing. Pale half-bubbles cluster together; squirt – are sunk. Slide up again. Milk in the pail is moving. Under the pail, straw is yellow. Dark yellow, lined with black. But turn my head and in at the door sun has come. Mist gone up now. Clear yellow sun in a square through top byre door. Lies in a gold square on straw. In itself, in its beam, lights the air. Gold, yellow, black, silver it burns all colours as a fire. Yellow straw in the sun.

  The Prophet is in the room, I am not moving. I am washing the hearth, there is sooty water trickling across the flags, I am not moving.

  ‘Sister Martha?’

  Still, I am a stone.

  ‘I will not hurt you, child.’ He moves the chair. ‘Sister Joanna tells me you are doing well, you are a good worker, she is pleased with you.’

  Cold stone water trickling the Prophet’s voice runs along low like water. Keep very still.

  ‘Are you afraid of me?’

  ‘——’

  ‘Sister Martha? Are you afraid of me?’ He moves nearer.

  ‘Martha – Martha! Stop it! I will not hurt you. Look here – stand up and shake your dress. Leave that, you can mop
it up later. Look, I am sitting here, on the other side of the table. I am not going to touch you Martha, I am not going to hurt you. Sit down over there, just sit and listen to me. Compose yourself.’

  ‘Are you feeling better now Sister Martha?’

  ‘Martha, Sister Joanna tells me you can speak. Answer me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good girl. Good. Can you understand me – Martha?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Now, listen. Firstly I am not going to hurt you. No one here will hurt you. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Now I have some news for you. Your father has been to see me. He tells me his wife – his third wife – has died. He asks if you can be returned to him.’

  No no no no no no no no no. My mouth is frozen, he must hear me.

  ‘Do you wish to return?’

  ‘Ah – ah – ah –’

  ‘It is all right, Sister Martha. Wait. There is plenty of time. Calm yourself.’

  He looks at his fingers he looks at the great puddle of black sooty water sprawled across the flags he looks at the window when will I be able to draw breath?

  ‘Ah. No.’

  He nods. ‘As I thought. Close your mouth, Martha. I have spoken with Sister Joanna and with the Elders. Sister Joanna thinks you were badly treated; indeed, I know it myself. You were dirty and scarred and exhausted. Even worse, you had been kept in brutish ignorance of the ways of God. Is this true?’

  Nod.

  ‘Since coming into my house you have conscientious and obedient. You have partaken regularly of Christian worship and learned to raise your perceptions above those of the animals. You seem to be content; indeed, Sister Joanna tells me you have an appetite for work and for knowledge, and that she is teaching you your Bible.’

  Nod. Nod.

  ‘Therefore I am willing, with the support of the Elders, to refuse your father’s request.’

  ‘Ah – ah.’

  ‘Wait a moment. Let me finish. It is possible he may pursue the matter in law. I do not think it likely; and indeed if he do, the signs that we can offer of your earlier maltreatment and your Christian education since you came to live among us will count hard against him. However, if he do take it to law, you may have to be returned at the end. I wish to warn you of this now, but to assure you that I will do all in my power to protect you and retain you in the Israelite community. God has brought you here for a purpose, my child.’

  ‘——’

  ‘Do you understand?’

  Speak. Speak. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ He gets up, his eyes on me. I must show I thank.

  I go. Near enough for him to. I kneel down. He holds his hand out. I must. Touch.

  ‘Good girl. Now go and change that wet dress.’

  Joanna

  Lord, guide us and help us, as You have already done in so many things. There is peace within the household: the sense of Your purpose strengthens us in our work. Hannah is a great comfort to me, a sister and companion I thank You for. Sister Leah’s skill as a needlewoman redounds to Your glory, in the gorgeous ephods and altarcloths she works upon. Sister Rachel and Rebekah can now read Your holy word, and gain in piety as they gain in knowledge: whilst Sister Martha at last, like a dumb seed which has been sealed in a leathery shell, forces towards the light, grows in the warmth of the sun of love, and is at points at last of casting off that dark shell of brutish ignorance forever. My days are filled with Thy service, and for this I give thanks.

  But times change. Everything in this world changes, and he who seeks to build secure upon it must always fail, for he builds on shifting sands. Yaakov’s communications in the past week have twice reminded us that the time of the Lord is at hand.

  Last night I dreamed a terrible dream. I dreamed that we stood – many of us, hundreds – in a fine peaceful valley, with lush pastures. A child was playing merrily in the brook beside me. On a sudden the hill top burst open, and molten rock, together with flames, smoke, and a shower of burning matter, rained down upon us. Each man or woman ran to save himself, but so continual and random was the hail of fiery rocks that one after another was smitten to the ground with screams of anguish. I raced toward the child, a boy of maybe two years, and stumbled along the course of the brook with him in my arms, while the flames fell in arcs around me, and my eyes hit upon face after familiar face on the ground, rigid with agony or beseeching aid to their injuries, and which I, knowing the safety of the child to be paramount, ignored – though my heart wept to see them. A fiery cinder fell upon my head and set my loose hairs alight in a sudden burst, but the mass of it was still secured in a knot at my nape, and it did not catch. The child in my arms watched the carnage around us with tears in his eyes. It seemed to me that he must bear peculiar power, for we alone were uninjured, still struggling away from the source of destruction – all around us, the ground lay thick with the bodies of my brothers and sisters.

  Before I read to Yaakov, I told him my dream. When I finshed he sat in silence a while.

  ‘Do you interpret this dream, Sister Joanna?’

  ‘I seek understanding.’

  ‘What is your interpretation?’

  ‘That there will be a time – of great destruction. That many will die. This may prefigure the end of the world, when many shall be cast into the fiery pit.’

  ‘And the child?’

  ‘He may stand for God’s redeeming love; or for the souls of the innocent, the young. He may stand for –’

  He interrupted me. ‘The son of God.’

  ‘The son of God?’

  ‘Shiloh. Carrying him, you are saved from destruction. As you protect him, he protects you. What other child has such power? Your dream is of the Second Coming, when Christ shall come among us again to judge the quick and the dead. Your dream reveals the truth of Joanna Southcott’s prophecy, that He shall come again as a child – of woman born.’

  ‘Of woman?’

  ‘Of you. Your dream reveals that you shall be earthly mother to Shiloh.’

  ‘But …’ For a while I was lost to sense, the world seemed to slide into flatness and shimmer like a great spread of water. Then the dear Lord sustained me with a rational thought. ‘Mother Joanna gave birth to a spiritual child. We learned then that it is not a physical child, we must look to the world beyond the merely physical.’

  ‘Are burning rocks physical? Is the pain of hell-fire physical? Did you see physical anguish in the faces of those smitten by the molten rocks? There will be a physical child.’

  ‘But Joanna Southcott’s child …’

  He watched me closely, till I could not speak. ‘Where is Southcott’s child?’ he asked.

  ‘It is the spirit; the spirit of prophecy, passed on among us – an ear to the voice of God – it is our link with her, and through her, God –’

  ‘And who has that ear? Who, especially?’ He spoke angrily, as if I had insulted him. I was lost for a reply.

  ‘Who has that ear? Who is your prophet?’

  ‘I – The Prophet. You.’

  ‘So the spiritual child – is in me; and must be borne of you, Sister Joanna. God’s will is clear, think you not?’

  In the silence of the room I heard the dusk call of a woodpigeon, its voice grey and soft as the evening air outside: in the outside world, which seemed on a sudden to be both precious above all things, and lost to me.

  I have moved into an inner realm of terror, and as I formerly longed for spiritual revelation, I now fight to restrain tears of nostalgic love for the world I am losing, the shape of a cottage roof against the sky, the feel of bark, the sound of carriage wheels upon the highway.

  Lord, is it true? I am afraid.

  Yaakov instructed me to commence the reading: Joel, Chapter III.

  Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down, for the press is full, the fats overflow: for their wickedness is great.

  Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the
Lord is near in the valley of decision.

  The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.

  The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem: and the heavens and the earth shall shake …

  As I set down the Bible he charged me not to speak of my dream to a soul. Then his anger seemed to fall away, and he smiled.

  ‘You are a good woman, Sister Joanna. God loves you. He will make His will plain to you, He will show you His desires. Do not be afraid, for He is with you; in your dreams, in your very heart.’

  Ascending the stairs to my room I could scarce place my numbed feet upon the steps, for I could not tell whether I stepped on solid wood or gaping air.

  I have prayed and I have fasted. I have sought His guidance by day and night. Is this the purpose that lay concealed, curled like a chick in the egg, behind that first request for the succour of the women? Is this truly God’s plan for me? I follow the Mother, Joanna Southcott; her life prefigures mine, my name echoes hers. She, mother of the spiritual child … I to be mother of the physical? But Christ was of virgin birth: Mother Southcott lived and died a virgin. As I am – now – a virgin.

  Yaakov argues that the times are so degenerate and spiritual forces so weakened by the continual battle, that God’s angels lack the power in these late days to penetrate the pall of darkness hanging over our sin-laden earth, and that therefore the act of generation must be carnal, between man and woman. But in that carnality, the spirit will be housed – as Christ born of Mary was made flesh: and as the flesh is gateway for the spirit. I recall to mind Mother Southcott’s prophecy:

  Woman brought to man the Good Fruit at the first

  And from the Woman shall the good fruit burst