The Gathering Storm (Zion Diaries) by Thoene Brock & Thoene Bodie

Author:Thoene, Brock & Thoene, Bodie [Thoene, Brock]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

Jessica did not move or attempt to rouse me as I slept where I had fallen. The tile was cold and hard. I opened my eyes. Jessica's head leaned against the wall as she dozed. Lightning flashed through the

~ 198 ~

still open blackout curtains. She started and awakened. The sitting room was like a photograph, washed in monochrome silver.

Thunder followed like cannons. The downpour pounded on the roof, cascaded down the windows.

"The rain," Jessica said.

"I knew it was coming." I wondered about the men fighting in France. Were they cold? Was it raining there?

I regretted I had not gone to the Abbey to pray with Eva.

"What time is it, Jessica?" I croaked.

Just then the clock chimed nine times.

"Nine o'clock." She shifted her position.

I sat up slowly but did not rise. We sat together on the tiles, resting our backs against the wall of the entry.

The house was dark. The city was dark. But London did not sleep. Anti-aircraft gun emplacements crowned the brow of Primrose Hill Park. Members of the Home Guard kept watch over the great city. Air-raid wardens prowled the streets in search of even a glimmer of light escaping from behind blackout curtains.

The clock, like Jessica's steady heartbeat, measured my life in time before and after the telegram. How many seconds, minutes, hours, since Varrick died? All the time I had been living, I had imagined him alive too. He had not died when the first rumor of his death reached me. I had been right not to believe that.

During the long months of our separation, I thought of him thinking of me, desiring me in the night, and I had been content in a restless sort of way. I could not imagine my beloved's blood spilled out on a field. Hadn't Papa taught us that righteousness and truth are stronger than evil? I had been certain happiness would win out in the end. It had to be. Life for me was still the stuff of fairy tales before the message.

I had been happy not knowing the truth, hadn't I? My ignorance had left me with reason to carry on.

False hope had, in the end, laid me out flat. He had not died when first I heard it, but he had still died!

What hope remained to give me purpose?

~ 199 ~

Every twilight we had gathered in the great echoing stone hall of Westminster. How many times had I looked up and thought I heard the agonized prayers of generations now beyond their earthly grief? The ancient ones who had whispered heartache before I lived were now reunited in heaven with the men they had prayed for and lost. When the harmony of the Psalms died away, had I not heard their voices echo in the vaulting? Someday, I thought, another generation would sit in the Abbey and hear my prayers emerging from the stones. What truth would a generation yet unborn hear in the echoes of my life?

For me, Varrick's death had not taken place in France. My husband had perished this very night before my eyes.

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