The Incorruptible — Act V
The Resolution
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Act V
Summary: Now an outcast from the town, Justina searches for her father. Merritt and his followers build a ship to sail away from apocalyptic judgment.
Scene i Beside the haunted wood. Enter Justina and Rosh. ROSH: The prophet put it in his ear that you were out there with the lad, and since we have no other leads, our prime suspect right now is you. JUSTINA: What motive would I have to kill someone who wore my father’s robes? Tell me the sheriff doesn’t think I really could have shed his blood. ROSH: The sheriff thinks the same as me, except the prophet’s roused a mob that’s clamoring to see your head served on a china plate. He’s said, the slain boy’s blood cries out to God, and lacking justice, judgment comes upon the town. His followers are in the dry docks, knocking planks for the hull’s frame so they can sail before the eighth of May arrives. But some are loathe to cross the sea. They’d rather offer up a goat so they’d appease the deity who’d sink this town. And they’re the ones who won’t be mollified until I’ve slammed the jailhouse bars on you. JUSTINA: Then you have come to bring me in. I won’t resist except to plead my innocence in all of this. I am rejected everywhere and without cause. But that’s not true, I’m welcomed as a prisoner. If I must be Andromeda, and forced to stand on sea-torn crag, It’s just as well. Show me my chains, Rosh. I have nowhere else to go. ROSH: Make no mistake, I wash my hands of their intentions. Innocence, the Vesper said, was made to know our sorrows once and for all time. I won’t drink judgment on myself and let the lawless ones abuse someone I know is without flaw. But keep yourself from town until the prophet and his mob have fled and left us finally in peace. I’ll keep you in my prayers, Justine. Exeunt Rosh. JUSTINA: Rosh thinks I am a spotless lamb, yet I’ve been bruised by Merritt’s hands. But no. I cannot justify myself. He profited from flaws I thought I could leave unexposed and unconfessed yet somehow heal. It’s I who let those faults expand to an abyss, a sinning man boldly caress my frail crevasse, and that same man profane God’s gift. How could I face my father now? He was ordained to loose such grace on sin, but I must meet his eyes, admit what I have done, and hope a holy father would forgive his daughter for the carnal things he’d keep from his imaginings. But where is he? I fear that touch of absolution is withheld with an intractability beyond a father’s stern reproach. I’d risk a father’s wrathful speech if afterwards came mercy’s touch. A GIRL’S VOICE: [from within the woods] Have mercy on me, please. Oh help! JUSTINA: A girl has wandered in the woods and found the death she knew was certain. Or else the spirits taunt my pride, that I could once again transgress the boundary separating life and death and save some poor lost soul. Stepping in there, I’m guaranteed to meet my adversary’s imp, and if I am not right with God— which is another certainty— that spirit’s tally will condemn the deeds and thoughts I’ve not confessed, and I will have a graceless end. THE GIRL’S VOICE: The dusk is coming. What else? Wolves? A fallen tree has trapped my leg, and I don’t want to die alone, in gloom. Who’ll tell my family I’m gone? JUSTINA: If my confessor knew I had the opportunity to reunite a family but feared perdition after death and chose to let her die instead, would he applaud my selfishness? Or say, “Envy sheds tears with mourners but cannot stand the fortunate”? I’ll save her life, and we’ll rejoice, or else the two of us shall die. [Justina searches the forest.] I’m coming now. Where are you, girl? You must call out, but quietly. They say a spirit seeks the lives of those with the audacity to set foot in these curséd woods. THE GIRL’S VOICE: You’ve risked the spirit’s wrath for me? JUSTINA: Your cries could be my own. I’ve lost the only parent I have left. If there’s but one who waits for you, I don’t care if the spirit waits for me. How close does my voice sound? THE GIRL’S VOICE: I am a little further still. It’s not too late to turn away. JUSTINA: I won’t leave my good deed half-done and be the worse for my retreat. The spirit’d find me then, no doubt. THE GIRL’S VOICE: The spirit greets whoever comes— Enter Spirit. SPIRIT: Whether they mean ill or good. JUSTINA: So ends my curiosity about the woman of these woods, Though I forbade my legs to seek the truth about the spirit’s fame. SPIRIT: How do I seem now that you’ve seen? JUSTINA: Beautiful as the tellings go. SPIRIT: And yet you do not bow to me. JUSTINA: I honor those who do God’s will. SPIRIT: Does any will what God does not? They say he has such sovereignty that even thoughts cannot exist unless he formed them long ago. JUSTINA: All things have their contingency in him, who’s without change. Though spokes may whirl chaotically, naught breaks the hub’s control, and constancy is greatest where the spokes draw near and almost cease to be distinct from hub in energy. And yet the further from the hub’s center those spokes extend, the spinning wheel spokes strain their form; the image blurs and mocks the hub’s perpetual repose, which will not change its course. And such are those who’d shirk God’s will: freely they choose to chase their tail. SPIRIT: Some say he is a tripled-star that pulling in all things consumes. Those furthest from its gravity would be, in that case, the most free. JUSTINA: The coldest and the most alone and ever in the dark. But spirit, it’s said you’d bring me to the grave or else would grant me some desire. If you’ll forgive that I don’t bow, there is a yearning in my heart. SPIRIT: I know what you would ask of me, and I can give you what you wish. Along the mountainside, a copse of trees that drop no leaves and bear black branches flanks a rivulet. A thatched and unhinged door laid ’cross a granite mouth you must remove. That which you seek is in the cave. JUSTINA: Your answer puts me in your debt, at least that’s what the tales all say. What is the fee that I must give? SPIRIT: You’ll find the debt’s already paid by one who lost a treasure there. Your journey’s long. If you remain, you’ll see what comes when things don’t change. Exeunt. Scene ii The Dry Dock. Men work on the side of an unfinished wooden ship. Enter Merritt and the Beggar. MERRITT: The progress on the ship confirms the spirit’s vision. BEGGAR: Did you doubt that what you’d seen came from above? MERRITT: A man can doubt the how or when without doubting the one from whom the vision came. Prophets despair from time to time, and I’ll admit, when I declared the date we’d sail, and then no charterer would part with any ship they’d harbored here, I thought that with this town we’d sink. But look how swiftly these men work! BEGGAR: Death sentences that can commute to hard labor inspire men to swing their hammers well and saw with feverish intensity. If we can raise the mast today, we’ll be seaworthy by the eighth. [Enter Rosh.] And here comes one of little use. What do you bother us with, Rosh? MERRITT: A splash of courtesy to chase a bitter greeting, Beggar. Rosh, have you detained the criminal or brought us news of where she’s gone? ROSH: The Vesper’s daughter is at large. She’s looking for her father’s steps, though no soul knows where he has been. MERRITT: Well said. Perhaps it is too late for civil justice to prevail and thus avert calamity. So be it. We’re not unprepared to board our ark, Geminae Fati, our refuge from the coming curse. ROSH: I came to speak to that effect as well. The acolytes have said— BEGGAR: We’ve banned those superstitious monks from town. What they say is forbidden. ROSH: Perhaps their bodies, but their words are not so easily dismissed. I’m here as messenger, no more. I don’t concern myself with how you treat the message that I bring. MERRITT: What have they said? ROSH: They say they’ve had a vision that concerns the date you’ve planned to disembark. Not one vision in isolation but collectively the spirit gave each one of them the same dark dream. MERRITT: And it concerns the eighth of May? ROSH: That’s right. A forecast if you will. You look back at the almanacs, May eighth has always brought with it a day as clear as one could hope. This year the winds move counter clock, so say the Vesperites, at speeds that’d tear the roofs off houses, split the masts of greenwood ships, and top Goliath’s head with tidal surge. BEGGAR: It’s too early for hurricanes. On the off chance a storm arose it would still wear its sleeping cap and be a drowsy, mild gale no child would fear to fly his kite. ROSH: That’s what the history books say, but to the east, horizon’s dark with clouds that mount the upper reach of sky. The next few days, the sun won’t so much rise as just appear midday and fall into the west. The hammering of your vessel’s matched by folks now boarding over glass. If I weren’t too busy chasing ghosts, I might just bunker down myself. Exeunt Rosh. BEGGAR: It does look rather ominous. MERRITT: You always said they’re sorcerers, BEGGAR: But how’d they call a cyclone down? MERRITT: The same way Jambres threw his staff to writhe as serpent on the ground. Are you surprised that judgment comes just as I said it would? The day is once again confirmed. Go tell the men to reinforce the hull. I tell you, we will split right through that storm and out the other side. We have been warned so we won’t meet that hurricane with trembling feet. Exeunt Beggar. Merritt gazes into the offing. MERRITT: The perilous day arrives at last with clouds whose form would boast for Jove. Yet something like an inner voice comes testifying they will fade. I can’t reverse the word of God without betraying that I’ve borne a different spirit’s ordination. To do so, I would lose my power as well as influence and wealth. Would my constituents not raise my head from shoulders, finding doubt upon my lips because a cloud gyrated like a prostitute against the far-off firmament? And when that drizzle reaches shore and all the skies above are blue as any sunny day in May, already headless, tied to mast, they’d let me in these dry docks rot. So, vapor in the sky, look on this brazen basilisk, the sign by which I can command all things, and bow before my upraised palm that I may tread the ocean’s calm. Exeunt. Scene iii The Vesper’s tomb. All is dark within. The bodies of Thomas and the Vesper stretch out on the ground. Dim light slips in at the back of the stage as the branches that blocked the cave’s entrance are removed. Rain patters outside. Enter Justina. JUSTINA: Father? Are you within this cave? [aside] Outside, the earth’s made new with rain but something putrid haunts each breath I take, hangs in this stagnant air. Justina takes small steps into the cave and, finding Thomas’s body with her foot, bends down to him, covering her nose with her cloak. JUSTINA: Oh, Tom, who put you up to this? Why have you taken Connor’s robes and killed a boy whose innocence women and men both eulogized so thoroughly? That was your whim, not fate or providence’s aim. A jealous thought decayed your soul and now it has consumed your flesh. As Justina backs away from Thomas’s body, her heel bumps the Vesper. She hesitates but does not turn around. JUSTINA: It would have been so beautiful to look upon the one I know. I cannot bring myself to turn from where that other body fell. Everything in this dim grotto that is not him is beautiful. If I could pretend he hadn’t earned this unfair wage, nor been laid low, I could still hope for his return. I’d make sure his wine glass were full and from my parlor there would flow a melody so beautiful. But now I know he’s in this charnel, lying here dead beside his foe, and I can’t bring myself to turn. He told me by a parable that holy men thus buried grow from death to something beautiful. The dirt by God himself is turned. Justina turns and throws herself atop the Vesper’s body. JUSTINA: I know you’ve gone to your reward, and yet your body is preserved so that I disbelieve your death. So incorruptible, your hands are warm to touch, your fingers bend, and in your palm— Justina sits up and examines a small object in the dim light. JUSTINA: I’ve found a pearl. The dimness plays upon this eye so that it seems familiar, but you were never one for gems on earth. You sought a victor’s wreath as one who met the lion’s teeth would feel the Lord place on his head. Why would you clutch this pearl in death? Oh God, don’t think I rob the grave. [She riffles through Thomas’s robes.] I know as one recalls a dream, this pearl, moon-bright against the dark, has a fraternal, lightless twin, and both were signs of judgment’s rule. [Justina finds the second pearl in Thomas’s robe.] And here’s the pearl of Erebus, the second eye of future sight which sees the end of all the damned, whereas its sister has ordained transfiguration for the blessed. Is this the haunted memory that made you drive your love away, Merritt? Your vow was brought to naught as you stood helpless by and saw my father slain by his own robe, and then when you avenged my love, with rod brought down the dagger’s cloak, were you ashamed to find your son? Love covers up a multitude of sin, and thus you hid this crime to keep unstained your Thomas’ name and to sustain Justina’s hope. What’s done for love, I can forgive. Now that I’ve learned the truth, what need is there to flee? The guilty one, although your son, has paid his price, and I release you of what you could not control. The eighth of May is nigh, and I must stop your ship. Exeunt. Scene iv The Port. Hurricane winds batter the scene. The backdrop shows the silhouette of Merritt’s ship offshore. Enter Merritt, the Beggar, and Rosh. The roar of the storm makes shouting necessary for communication. ROSH: These winds cannot be bargained with, Merritt. Your captain knew as much. He thought if he abandoned you, you’d send your people back to port. BEGGAR: It is a crippling gale that blows. MERRITT: Then as a cripple’s crutch, this staff will bolster us. The hull is full of faithful men who do not doubt the spirit’s prophet or his cause. Get in the boat, dear beggar. Soon you will find peaceful shores, or else be crushed when that typhoon breaks land. ROSH: You’d be a fool to do it, Beggar. The sea will swallow you as earth once gulped the rebel Korahites. I’d not be caught adrift the dead or counted with those in the pit. I’ll leave you two to bury your own. Exeunt Rosh. BEGGAR: Speak to me some comfort, sir. This gig seems less fitted to fly atop these waves as cut a path straight to the deep. These waves take strides as soldiers sieging battlements, with jackboots posed to crush our hull. MERRITT: Who is the master of these waves? Whose voice arose before the roar of tides and seasoned them with salt? The same who gave me as a hook to spear creation’s first-formed beast— Leviathan—this shepherd’s crook. The same who delegates his power to certain men, that they may speak the heptagrammaton and tread among the dragons of the sea unharmed and tell the wind to calm. The one who looks for purity has searched and found a righteous man, affixed this scepter in my hand as star to lead you to my throne. Enter two townsmen holding Justina captive. They shout across the stage. TOWNSMEN 1: Prophet, we’ve caught the murderess! How shall we raise her to atone for Connor’s death before the storm. MERRITT: [Aside to Beggar] Get in the boat and grab an oar. When I jump in, we’ll row like mad. Exeunt Beggar. The townsmen drag Justina across the dock to Merritt, as she struggles against them. MERRITT: Be quick, Justine. What’s your complaint? JUSTINA: I know why you recoiled from me that night you called and cast me out. Justina looks up and Merritt draws back with his hands in front of his face, as though blinded by a great light. JUSTINA: I wear forgiveness on my lips. Merritt, I’ve guessed the reasons you have hid the truth. Just let me live and you and I can be restored. MERRITT: Turn her away from me. As God suffereth not to look on sin, neither can I behold Justine. The townsmen turn her so she cannot look at Merritt. TOWNSMAN 2: Give us your word and you’ll be rid of her and our town will be saved. MERRITT: The sheriff’s man just left the docks. If he were here— JUSTINA: I’d tell him what the two of us both know. Tom killed the Vesper and his acolyte, and he lies in my father’s grave. TOWNSMAN 1: The prophet’s son, a murderer? Can’t be. A holy man must have an ordered home, so says the book. MERRITT: My son has never laid a hand upon the Vesper. And of this cave, I assure you I am ignorant. JUSTINA: I did not say a cave. MERRITT: You did. These two men here will swear on it. TOWNSMAN 1: A cave or grave, I can’t be sure. MERRITT: Our time is short, and Rosh is gone. We must take justice in our hands. Justina struggles to look at Merritt, but the men hold her fast. JUSTINA: Surely the prophet would not let these men destroy the one he’s said that none could see her misery and turn away without a curse dispensed from the celestial tent? If you’ll not tell these men the truth, then I say all your love is false. You have avenged the Vesper’s death upon your son and are ashamed. TOWNSMAN 2: What’s that she says about his son? TOWNSMAN 1: I’m trying to keep it straight. She says, the prophet’s son killed Vesper and his acolyte. But Merritt killed his boy and hid him in a cave. MERRITT: The ramblings of a lunatic. What right have you to accuse? What proof? JUSTINA: The deeds of murderers and thieves heavenly scrolls illuminate. Not with his finger but his eye, God sees in colors prisms lack the moment Tom struck Vesper down, the moment, too, you killed your son. MERRITT: You’re right to say my love was false, for you, Justina, not my son! To say I am his murderer blasphemes the spirit’s chosen one. You drove him out by spurning him, are cause and motive for his death, and if the sheriff’s man were here, I’d have you bound with weights and tossed into the sea. But that won’t bring my Thomas back. So let me be. Don’t bother me with empty words. JUSTINA: Do you deny you killed your son? MERRITT: What’s to deny? You’ve lit the charge, but th’ powder in your cannon’s wet. A murderer would kill you now, and I am but a minister who walks just as the spirit leads. JUSTINA: Was it the spirit led your son to take my father’s life? TOWNSMAN 2: Let’s go. Did we forget the hurricane’s approach? TOWNSMAN 1: Before we sacrifice the girl, I want to know what right she’s got to make audacious claims. MERRITT: I was ordained to wield this rod and whosoever would not bow in life was bowed in death. JUSTINA: That’s how you justify the malice held in your son’s heart when he struck down the holy man whom I still love? MERRITT: Don’t speak this falsehood ’bout my son. He did not strike the Vesper down. [to the townsmen] Get rid of her, and do it where the sheriff’s man won’t interfere. The townsmen begin to drag Justina away. Merritt turns toward where the beggar went to prepare the boat. JUSTINA: It can’t be…Merritt’s pearls were there. My father and his son are dead. A strong gust of wind allows Justina to break free from the townsmen. The wind is fierce. Justina struggles against the wind as she approaches Merritt. TOWNSMAN 2: I think it’s best we wait this out at home, where at least the fire burns and we’ll stay mostly dry. TOWNSMAN 1: Aye! Exeunt Townsmen. Justina grabs Merritt’s jacket. MERRITT: Let go of me, or with this rod I’ll show you how your father died. JUSTINA: You swore to me, as lovers swear they’d rather die than issue pain to their beloved. You played the part of lusty Jupiter who spoke comforting words to mother earth when his infernal brother raped their daughter: “You will see your girl again.” And that small comfort, half a year, the king of gods procured because his love for her was true. But you are not that lover Jove. You’re Tereus, that Thracian king who promised his Athenian bride that he would soothe her homesick heart, bring Philomela safely ’cross the sea so sisters could embrace, but harboring perversity, he hid her sister in a hut, defiled her virginity, and cut out Philomela’s tongue as though god were, like Justice, blind. But why did you kill your own son? MERRITT: You were the one was meant to die! That’s what the spirit prophesied, and if I’d let this basilisk fall in its proper place, you’d lie beside your father in that cave, and I’d have Thomas at the stern as we sail to our paradise. Justina releases Merritt but follows him as he walks away. JUSTINA: If you get on that ship, you’ll die. You, the beggar, and everyone. MERRITT: A little water on the wind cannot restrain the gift of fate. I’ll see that all my people live. JUSTINA: If you could resurrect the dead, your son’d be waiting on that boat prepared to die again. You know your basilisk is powerless. MERRITT: The Vesper, you’ll recall, was man. At my command, man made him beast. Now I have turned the beast to stone. And not to make too fine a point, if not for you, your father’d live, the acolyte and Thomas, too. I thought your father’s love was strong enough, his daughter could persuade his censure to be tolerance. But I was wrong. The Vesper’s love for you was weak. Consider that When you are drowning on this beach. Exeunt Merritt. JUSTINA: You cannot pass your guilt to me. I’ll keep the Vesper’s pearl, but Tom’s black pearl will be a mark upon you. Justina throws a pearl off stage. She falls to her knees but lifts her head to the sky. JUSTINA: I did not know if you would hear my cries before, but martyrdom has stationed you fore heaven’s throne. Father, forgive my insolence and intercede on my behalf. That prophet robbed me of a true confession, but if you in death still find me guilty, then absolve me now, for I am penitent. What’s loosed in heaven will be loosed on earth, and what is bound constrains the debtor for eternity. So do not let that prophet stand, but on a broad and slippery path let he who loves destruction stumble into the hidden nets he laid. Father, you know my foolishness, but if it’s not a sin, consume him at the table he has set and make his bed the ocean’s gut! [Justina takes the pearl and affixes it behind her ear.] Saint Longin Sotnik bore the lance that pierced Christ’s side. Though it recalled to him his shame, the blood of Christ upon its tip had covered him, body and soul. I weave this pearl, a relic, in my hair so I might not offend the seraphim whose flashing swords they must unsheath and raise against my enemy. Cast the false prophet in the sea. Exeunt Justina. A golden light emanates where she left. Enter Rosh opposite. ROSH: The Vesper’s daughter is back, they say. The prophet killed his only son and gave the boy a cavernous grave. Meanwhile, they lock themselves at home, and I’m the one who wears the welts of birdshot rain on cheek and chin, who scrabbles ’top the macadam while they lie shivering ’neath their quilts. I hope their houses’ timbers shake, their chinking bursts from planks. Might hear the cyclone’s sooty caterwaul pounce ’cross their roof, down chimney flue; they’ll no more feel the wounds of war than does the injured soldier’s bride receiving a letter from the front. [Rosh raises his hand to shield his eyes from the rain.] But there she is, at the pier’s end, standing within some haze of light. Justina! Ho! Step back from there! A gale force wind sends Rosh to his hands and knees. He struggles to his feet, clutching his jacket about him. The golden light from offstage extinguishes. ROSH: She’s gone. Gone, too, that circled glare had haloed her. Don’t die now, girl. [Lightning flashes over the bay.] May eighth has never been so black at the third hour. Between the storm’s thin legs, so dim is Merritt’s ship it looks near on to half-erased. Who’s that I see within those clouds? Over the prophet’s ship, the clouds begin to swirl and shift. Lightning flashes ever more frequently. Soon, the form of a man’s face appears. ROSH: I’ve seen those gaunt ascetic cheeks for years, roaming near haunted woods. Above the waves, that bleak, black mass has cut an icon—Vesper’s face. His maw inhales a mighty breath so that I fear those pursing lips. Winds even fiercer than before howl over the bay. Flashes of lightning periodically illuminate the backdrop. A waterspout descends from the clouds, landing not far off from the prophet’s ship. Rosh struggles to keep his footing. ROSH: That cyclone over Merrit’s ship is towering like the cedar-tail of that great beast God fashioned first when he said, let the sea be filled. The sky and stage go dark. A raucous splintering is heard, and when the lightning flashes next, the waterspout has split the prophet’s ship in two. The sky crackles continually as the waterspout ascends into the clouds, and Vesper’s face disappears. ROSH: That ship bore women. Children too. God rest their souls. They couldn’t know the prophet’d lead their men to death. [The golden light offstage returns.] That haze again below the pier. Justina! Ho! Where are you now? Exeunt Rosh. He returns dragging Justina onto the dock. The golden light extinguishes as she returns. Justina is dripping wet. The rain and wind begin to die down. ROSH: Come to, you little Vesperess. It’s clear that you’ve been in the deep, and now you’ve been expectorated back to mostly dry land, like the one God sent the Assyrians. Yes, God has heard your prayers, I think. JUSTINA: [coughing water from her lungs] He’s heard and has attended them to the extent that he is wont to do for an unrighteous man. Better that I had died beneath the waves, as Noah’s generation drowned in this baptismal fount we call the world. God spared the earth their further sinfulness, but I, so recently confessed, am cursed to foul creation once again. ROSH: Why must the children bear the sins their fathers worked? Why’d God withhold his mercy from those innocents? It seems a beastly thing to kill mere babes. And now, the prophet’s ship, unlike that ark whose door was shut against the cries of knee-high mites, has sunk, and with it, families whose young were not responsible for Merritt’s villainy. All dead. This ark was emptied like a womb, and God was the abortionist. JUSTINA: If Noah barred the door to babes, what right have you to blame the Lord? When God descended into hell, a corpse himself, he turned his key and freed from katachthonic gloom whomever it pleased him to free. Are you so sure your innocents were not among the shades that fled the grave? They found a better life than Noah in his the vineyarding. ROSH: They still did not deserve to die. JUSTINA: We all deserve to die. And will. I did not plan to live with guilt upon my conscience, but to stand before the bema seat of Christ, that he might find what little gold there is beneath this mess of dross. And standing in your judgment, Rosh, I see my full impurity— I prayed for Merritt’s ship to sink. ROSH: I’d not believe such bitterness could poison one as pure as you. Justine, if you petitioned God to fill those blameless lungs with salt, you spoke from ignorance, or madness. JUSTINA: How common madness is then, Rosh. I spoke with hatred in my heart and ripped the scales from Justice’ hand. I will not say I balanced right. My animosity opposed true recompense. The tilting scale made retribution seem too light. How could mere justice satisfy my longing for all that I’ve lost? A thousand Thomases could die and not restore my father’s life. To whatever Lamech’s curse contained, I added vengeance unrestrained. I killed those children. Women. Men. You’re duty-bound to take me in. My hope lies in the gallows now. Rosh walks to the edge of the pier, stares out at the bay. The storm has completely calmed. Returning to Justina’s side, Rosh raises her from the ground. ROSH: How could I tell a jury you, a girl, commanded wind and sea? They’d have me tried for lunacy if I described how Vesper’s face, written in cloud, blew the east wind, which funneled down and smote that ship. No, girl. God clearly granted this. I’ve no choice but to set you free. Justina collapses at Rosh’s feet and buries her face in the hem of his coat. JUSTINA: It isn’t right that I am forced to live. When Samson placed his hands upon the temple’s pillars, pushed, and killed—along with Dagon’s priests— that little Philistine, his guide, he did not bear the weight of guilt. He met that smallest comfort, death, assured his hands would never touch another ass’s jawbone, back would never heft a city’s gate, and nostrils would be spared the scent of burning foxtails and manure. There were no sleepless nights in Dan, no tiny voice that asked why he should lay his head upon a cushion whereas a child’s body broke that day, and all because he’d laid his head upon Delilah’s lap. Am I to be denied that peace? ROSH: You’re putting that to me? I don’t pretend to know the mind of God as Merritt did. No, I don’t claim to understand his reckonings. I fear to ask why I’m alive, lest he’s forgotten and should look to remedy that oversight. Why you’re alive is well beyond the mysteries I’m tasked to solve. Each one must take the lot God gives. Whatever demons torment you, there’s bound to be more with the tide, and I’ll be wrestling those ashore. JUSTINA: I’m sorry, Rosh. I am a wretch whose sins she covered up with sins. In death, my father is preserved, but I must live with festering guilt. There may be days when all I’ve done remains concealed, as are the dead beneath this bay; so much the worse when that dark-tresséd tide comes in bringing the bloated, rotten flesh— what’s left of it—and I must grasp the disfigured dead for burial. I could live a hundred years and never see my torment end. ROSH: Perhaps this is a wound that time and dedication to the dead, their memory, will help to staunch. But first, the other mystery: the Vesper and the prophet’s son. The way I’ve heard the story told, they’re lying in a cave somewhere, and you’re the only one who knows the way. Is it indelicate to ask that one as fair as you return to where those two decay? JUSTINA: To see them dead is nothing more than I deserve. The prophet’s son has lost his former handsome face, but as God said, he has not let the grave corrupt his holy one. I’ll take you to their bodies, Rosh, so you will know the grace of God did not abandon Vesper’s tomb but wed him to eternity— Vesper, the bride, and Christ, the groom. His beauty is as obvious as Rachel’s was to Israel, whereas a spirit-enlightened eye must see how plain my maidenhood, and how corrupt. I’ll tend the train of Vesper’s gown as Leah did, that when my wedding night arrives, a veil might hide a soul so vile her only hope to consummate is as unworthy substitute. Perhaps he’ll look with wine-drunk eyes, imagine beauty where there’s none. ROSH: An earthly king desires to seek the truth that lies behind the veil; God’s glory is in faults concealed. Still, take me to the mausoleum, that storehouse of the prophet’s sin. Whatever God in heaven wills, we must do right by the deceased and have the prophet’s son interred. As for your father, I defer to you—let him remain at rest within that cave if you see fit. JUSTINA: The brightness of my father’s face will never fade; within his tomb, the candlelight will never dim, for I will tend to every wick. Perhaps the dark will loose its hold on me and flee before his light. But I suspect gloom’s stake has pierced my flesh and soul so thoroughly, its wound will not subside. Though powerless, a piece remains. I’ll feel that splinter’s ache for all my life until redemption comes, with it, a knife. So be it. Fruitless words won’t change heartache to holiness, won’t stop despair. I’ll guide you through the valley, Rosh, and we will both ascend the mountain top. Exeunt Justina and Rosh. End.