"But when it cleared…"

"She was healed?" Rachel said.

"She was healed."

"Completely?"

"Every wound she'd had was gone. Every sore, every blister. She was healed from head to foot. Even the first bite, on her thigh, had been washed away."

"And the riverman?"

"Well of course he'd gone too," Galilee said lightly, as though that part of the story wasn't very important to him.

But it was to Rachel. "So he sacrificed himself," she said.

"I suppose he did," Galilee replied. Then, as though he were more comfortable addressing this question in the body of his story, he said:

"Jerusha's father believed that the whole thing had been brought about by his own lack of faith; that God had visited these torments on his Jerusha in order to make him realize that he needed divine help sometimes."

"To make him pray, in other words."

"That's right."

"And if it was indeed the work of God, then it was effective work, because Jerusha's father became a very religious man. He spent all his money building a cathedral right beside the river, where the creature had first been seen. It was a magnificent place. Vast. An eighth wonder. Or it would have been if it had ever been finished."

"Why wasn't it finished?"

"Well… this part of the story's very strange," Galilee warned.

"Stranger than the rest?"

"I think so. You see it was the old man's idea that the water from the river should supply the font in the cathedral. This met with some opposition from the local bishops who insisted that the water could not be used to baptize babies because it wasn 't holy water. To which Jerusha's father said… well, you can imagine what he said. These were already sacred waters, he told the bishops. They'd healed his Jerusha. They didn't need somebody mumbling Latin over them to make them holy. The bishops complained to Rome. The Pope said he'd look into it.

"Meanwhile, work went on laying the pipes from the river into the nave, where a beautiful font, carved in Florence, had been set.

"I should explain that this was very early spring. The snows in the mountains had been heavy that winter, and now that they

were melting the river was high and white; more violent than it had been in living memory. People working on the cathedral could barely hear one another, even when they were shouting; the din was so great. All of which may explain what happened next…"

"Which was what?"

''Jerusha 's father was taking a tour around the cathedral, and happened to be approaching the font when somebody-perhaps misunderstanding some instruction-let the water flow through the pipes for the first time.

"There was a noise like an earthquake. The cathedral shook, to its highest spire. The stone flags laid over the pipes-each one of them weighing a ton or a ton and a half-were thrown up into the air like playing cards as the waters washed down the pipe toward the font-"

Rachel could see all this quite clearly: her head was filled with noise and chaos. She felt the walls shaking, heard people screaming and praying, watched them running in all directions, hoping to escape the cataclysm. She knew they wouldn't make it; even before Galilee had said so. They were all going to die.

"-and when the water came up through the font it came with such force, suchpower, the font simply shattered. A thousand pieces of stone flew-"

Oh this she hadn't seen-

"-like bullets, some of them. Others big as cannonballs."

-she'd imagined the roof collapsing on everyone, the walls caving in. But it was the font that was going to do the most damage-

"-splitting open skulls, piercing people's hearts, slicing off their arms, their legs. AH in a matter of seconds.

"Jerusha's father was the closest to the font, so he was the luckiest, because he was the first to die. A huge slab of stone, decorated with a cherub, slammed into him and carried his body out into the river. He was never found."

"And the rest?"

"It's as you imagine."

"They all died."

"Every single one. Nobody working in the cathedral that day survived."

"Where was Jerusha?"

"Back at her father's house, which had fallen into terrible disrepair since he'd begun to build the cathedral."

"So she survived."

"She, and a few of the servants. Including, by the way, the boy who'd swept the ashes from the hearth.

"The one who'd led the riverman to her bed."

There he stopped, much to her astonishment.

"Is that it?" she said.

"That's it," he replied. "What more could there be?"

"I don't know… something more…" She pondered the question. "Some closure…"

Galilee shrugged. "I'm sorry," he said. "If there's more to tell I don't have it."

She felt faintly annoyed; as though he'd led her on, tempting her with clues as to what all this meant, but now that she was at the end-or at least as far as he claimed to be able to take her-it wasn't clear at all.

"It's a simple little story," he said.

"But it hasn't got a proper ending."

"It's as I said before: you could make it up for yourself."

"I said I wanted you to tell me."

"I've told all I know," Galilee replied. He glanced toward the window. "I think it's about time I was going."

"Where?"

"Just back to my boat. It's called The Samarkand. It's anchored offshore."

She didn't ask him why he had to go, in part because of her irritation at the way he'd finished his story, in part because she didn't want him to think her needy. Still she couldn't help asking:

"Will you be coming back?"

"That depends on you," he said. "If you want me to come back, I will."

This was said so simply, so sweetly, that her irritation evaporated.

"Of course I want you to come back," she said.

"Then I will," he replied, and then he was gone. She listened for him moving away through the house, but she heard nothing-not a breath, not a footfall. She slipped out of bed and went to the window. Clouds had come in to cover the moon and stars; there was very little light on the lawn. But her eyes found him nevertheless, moving quickly down toward the beach. She watched him until he disappeared. Then she went back to her bed, and lay awake in the darkness for an hour, listening to the double rhythm of her heart and the waves, wondering idly if she'd lost her mind.

She woke at first light and headed straight down to the beach. She'd hoped to find The Samarkand moored close to the shore-perhaps even see Galilee on deck-but the bay was deserted. She scoured the horizon, looking for a sail, but there was no boat in sight. Where the hell had he gone? Just a few hours before he'd asked if she wanted him to come back, and she'd told him unequivocally that she did. Had that just been a sop to her feelings; a way to extricate himself from her presence without having to say goodbye? If so, then he was a coward.

She turned her back on the water and started up the sand toward the house. A few yards from the path she came upon the remains of the fire Galilee had made the night before: a black circle of burned timber and ash, the latter being slowly spread across the beach by the breeze. She went down on her haunches beside the pit, still quietly cursing the fire-maker for his inconstancy. A bittersweet smell rose up from the embers: the acrid smell of dead fire mingled with a hint of the fragrance she'd carried into the house with her the night before: the aroma which had set her head spinning and put such strange pictures behind her eyes.

Was it possible, she wondered, that her first instincts had been correct and Galilee had been some kind of hallucination, a waking dream induced by an inhalation of smoke?