I just love the people who write reviews. I haven't had a chance to respond individually to the reviews in a while but I love how you anticipate where I'm going with a story arc. Someone made a suggestion for something about 1,000 years in Rory's future and it was spot on what I'd planned! You are all wonderful for taking the time to make suggestions and ask questions and offer encouragement. I never would have managed to get this far without it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!
Rory and Elwyna continued along a generally North Western route. Neither of them knew the exact location of the 'White House', only that it was somewhere to the North of the Wall. As they travelled, Rory found her to be wonderful company and discovered that even his years in Gaul had been surprisingly lonely contrasted with having a constant travelling companion.
Despite her recent trauma, Elwyna's spirits were high. Her conversation was cheerful and she delighted in recounting comical incidents from her village that made Rory laugh. When she had exhausted all her accounts she started to invent comical tales that often involved fairy tricks and riddles told by trolls. Rory was impressed with her imagination and told her frequently that she had a gift for storytelling.
"You should write your stories down." He insisted one morning as Elwyna was removing the makeshift harness she used to secure herself to the top of the Pandorica as she slept at night.
"Waste parchment on silly stories?" She asked, incredulous. "Parchment is for great thoughts and the scriptures. And how would I write such things when I cannot even read, and I not alone. Only the very wise and the very wealthy are taught and they would find no value in such stories."
Rory frowned and shrugged. "You're right. Though it is a pity."
Elwyna grinned. "Perhaps I shall teach my tales to a minstrel and he can set them to tune. Then years from now, when I am but a faint memory you might happen upon them and be reminded of me, yes?"
Rory smiled for her benefit but the matter of fact way she spoke of her death disturbed him. He decided to change the subject.
"Elwyna?"
"Hmm?" She had stopped to pluck a weed from the hedge and was chewing on the stem thoughtfully.
"If you don't mind my asking, why did you leave your husband and your village?"
Elwyna shrugged. "I left because my husband beat me. He was wroth with my father who would not take me back and I was afraid that he might kill me."
Rory had trouble reconciling the words she was speaking and the matter of fact way she was speaking them.
"Why?" He blurted. "Why on earth would he beat you?"
"He discovered I was barren and felt my father had cheated him." She said, again with a nonchalance that Rory found shocking.
"How could he even be sure? You're only 16. You're still a child."
"A child?" Elwyna frowned. "I was first wed at 15 years which is already half my life spent. How long would you have a maid wait?"
With a jolt Rory remembered all the classes in which he'd sat and had a teacher or professor spout out life expectancy statistics. If he remembered correctly around this era the average life expectancy at birth was 30 years. He tried to wrap his mind around that number. By that line, Elwyna was middle aged.
Of course, his mind amended, that was due also to factors such as infant mortality and childhood mortality. So, if you managed to live past 21 you were likely to live to something like your late forties or early fifties but…still.
Rory had lived in this time so long, yet he still thought of 45 or 50 years as a middle age not the age at which one died of 'old age'. He'd acted as physician and advisor to the people with whom he associated and almost all of them had lived to an age in keeping with the standard of his time. It was disconcerting to be reminded that those outside his sphere of influence had such low expectations and lived such brief lives.
"Centurion? Are you well?" Elwyna was looking at him with concern and Rory realized he had stopped walking while he processed his unpleasant epiphany.
"Yes. I apologize." Rory said quickly and Elwyna smiled.
"Good!" She exclaimed and then continued with her story. "Age mattered not, regardless. He knew when he determined my blood never came upon me. He was so angry. He beat me and drug me to my father's, demanding my dowry be returned. But my father refused; in truth I think he had already spent it. My husband threatened my father. He stripped off my dress saying that it was his and my father should not have it then he struck me until I was senseless and threw me in my father's sty."
Rory felt his eyes tear and on impulse pulled the startled girl close in an embrace.
"Centurion?" Elwyna asked, her voice muffled against his breast plate and he pulled her back to see her expression conveyed confusion. "What ails you?"
"Elwyna, in my home such a tale would bring tears to anyone's eyes. Anyone with a heart, leastways. It's terrible! How can you speak of it without bitterness, anger or even sadness?"
Elwyna frowned and shrugged. "It is in the past and it could have been worse. He might have killed me but instead I have won free and am beyond his or my father's reach. I have met you and now I journey to a religious house and have hope of being educated and learning more about our Lord and His purpose for me. How should I ignore these good things and think only on the bad that has past?"
Rory halted again and shook his head. "It's not… it cannot be so simple. You cannot endure such things and then dismiss them so completely."
Elwyna stopped and frowned pensively for a moment chewing on the weed stalk.
"I must confess there are times when I think of his words, it is the words more than the blows that weigh on my waking mind. Sometimes in my dreams I am trapped in his power, yet" Her expression lifted, "when I wake he is gone and you are here in his place. I know you say you have no faith in God but still I think you are His servant. I think perhaps, you are the answer to my prayers. How can I be so ungrateful to ignore my blessings when they are so great?"
Rory sighed, shaking his head in wonder.
"Elwyna, you are a rare and wonderful person." He declared.
She blushed. "No, do not say such things. I am as common a girl as ever there was."
"Elwyna, on this we must agree to disagree." Rory smiled and started moving forward again.
They continued on in a companionable silence for most of the day. Around midday Rory spotted wild carrot greens in the distance and as he and Elwyna harvested them she asked, "Centurion, why do you not believe in God?"
Rory paused and wondered how to explain his feelings in terms she could understand.
"God is meant to be all powerful and good, right?"
Elwyna nodded.
"And yet, there is so much evil in the world. What your father and your husband did to you was evil. What those men tried to do to you when first we met was evil. I have lived over 500 years and I have seen again and again the evil men wreak upon each other." He shrugged. "How am I to believe there is a merciful and powerful God who created such an evil world?"
"You do not believe in God because there is suffering in the world?" Elwyna asked.
"That is a reason, yes." Rory agreed.
"Yet, it is men who caused this suffering." Elwyna said. "I do not understand. You think that men cause suffering and so you blame God or, no, you say there is no God and you refuse to show mercy?"
"You think I should have released the men who attacked you." He stated, no question in his tone.
"I think that perhaps you could have shown mercy, yes."
"Why?" Rory asked. "Why did you let that other go? You know he will just find another poor girl like you and what then? Will there be another like me to step in and intervene? No. She will suffer because I did not stop him."
"Have you the power to predict the future?" Elwyna asked, and for the first time in their acquaintance she seemed angry. "Perhaps you have the right of it and I have condemned some poor unfortunate. But perhaps I have the right of it and by showing mercy I have unleashed a force for good. Perhaps a man who is faced with a just death and spared will change. Perhaps he will strive to be worthy and perhaps through his life others will be touched and moved for good!"
Rory simply stared as the teenager continued to rant.
"You say the world is full of suffering and God does nothing but I think you wrong. God charges us to bring love and kindness and mercy into the world. How can I say I follow Him and not show mercy, Centurion? How can you complain of misery in the world and do nothing to diminish it?"
Rory knelt silently for a moment and then said, "You are right. I am not sure I believe your God exists, Elwyna, but I am convinced that if everyone believed in your God, the world would not be so terrible."
Elwyna snorted. "He is not my God. One does not claim ownership of God. God is just…God."
"I disagree… again." Rory smiled and was glad to see Elwyna smile back. "I believe that the God a man worships often bears a striking resemblance to the man." He reached out and placed his hand on the girl's head. "You are so good, Elwyna. You have such a warm and loving heart. You use God as a justification for your desire to do good and show mercy. Others are not so kind and forgiving and they use God as a justification for their unkindness."
"Then they do not know God." Elwyna staunchly insisted.
Rory chuckled. "You are making my point."
"I am not sure I understand." Elwyna said. "Do you believe or not? What do you believe, Centurion?"
Rory was quiet a long time.
"I believe that there is nothing to be gained in seeking the meaning of all life but only of my life. I do not wish to tell other people what they should cherish. I seek to protect and advance the things I cherish and to question what I cherish and why. I need to question myself and my motives and whether when I act in the way that comes easiest it is the best way, not only for others, but for me as well."
"I do not understand." Elwyna admitted.
"I cherish you." Rory said. "I cherish the goodness in you. I remember caring for others but I have been injured because of the love I had for the people around me. I lost sight of everything but the pain I felt and I'm afraid I began to stop caring…no." Rory shook his head. "No, it is that I stopped believing in others, in the potential for good in others. I put my faith and my trust in the good of someone and I was betrayed. I had faith in the goodness of men and I lost that faith."
"And now?" Elwyna asked.
"Now, I.." Rory smiled. "Now I have hope again." He laughed. "I suppose, I have faith again."
He looked at Elwyna and said, "There was someone in my life who inspired me. I lived for her and to be worthy of her love."
"The one you lost." Elwyna stated. "The one who will be brought back when the Lord redeems the world."
"Yes," Rory confirmed. "She is, oh Elwyna, she is fire! Not just heat but light also. It has been so dark without her."
Rory heard a sniff and looked up to see tears streaming down Elwyna's freckled cheeks.
"Oh don't cry!" He said quickly.
"I can't help it." She sniffed. "It is so unfair that you are such a good man and your love is so true and you are thwarted. I am so sorry for your loss. I wish I could reunite you. She must be amazing to have won your heart."
Rory laughed. "What is amazing is that I won hers."
Elwyna leaned forward and rested her head on a hand that still gripped a large carrot. "I wish I could meet her." She sighed wistfully.
Rory felt a weight in his chest and nodded. "I wish you could, too. You would like her. And she would like you. You have a passion and compassion similar to hers."
Elwyna smiled and for a moment Rory was captivated by her otherworldly serenity.
Then she chomped on the carrot in a manner that brought a certain cartoon rabbit to mind and Rory found himself laughing uproariously while she stared as though he'd gone mad.