Historical setting: 584 C.E. The healing room of Eve’s house
Nic tells of the day of the disaster.
“So, you probably don’t remember that day of the horror when you died so dead down in Bordeaux. Brother Joel and I were sitting on the bench outside the guesthouse, and from that distance we were watching the outside of the wall under construction. Shollo and Kairn and a couple other construction workers were on top of the wall using the new winches we mounted up there the night before. We could see the large arm of the crane swing closer to the wall, and the ropes through the top pulleys were taught. Then we saw the huge stone rise up to the top of the crane dangling just past the wall, as the winches were turned and it was brought closer, edging, barely onto the bed of mortar prepared at the top. Everyone from the ground was shouting higher, higher, but from where we were we could see the crane arm itself was not really high enough, and suddenly there was a loud crack like a thunderbolt overhead, then the whole earth shook with the deep thud of the rock fall. One of the winches we had secured just the night before went tumbling from the wall. The men who were working the winches flung themselves down the ropes like monkeys from trees.
“I feared for what I would see when we got to you, but Brother Joel asked me to walk with him as he practiced with the crutch. I told him my fear that you would have been struck by the falling debris.
“He said, ‘God be with his soul.’
“I said, ‘God be with every part of him!’ I had to be distraught to argue with Brother Joel. He wanted to preach me the value of soul in times of stress. Like I wasn’t already wracked with prayers! The spoken ones could have been mistaken for curses.
“August was shouting frenetic orders to everyone as though anyone were listening to a little fellow in a gigantic monk’s robe. The crane was in a million pieces all strewn over the whole area of the wall, and the huge stone was just where the crane wheel had been. The other tread man was sitting on the stones aside, in a bloody tunic waiting for first aid. I knew you had to be under the stone and there seemed to be no concern at all about moving it off of you.”
(Continues Tuesday, April 27)
Lazarus Ink 