old woman bustled around the bed, but Grace no longer cared. The vibrations in her mind were terribly loud now, and she knew the blood poured forth. Soon she would lie on a bed made only of blood. Mai Lin pulled potions, creams, tinctures, and lumps of incense from the many pouches and sacks that hung on leather strings around her waist and neck. Grace was dimly aware of her grinding something with a mortar and pestle on the bedside table. Within moments, the bitter, sickly-sweet smell of incense wrapped itself around Grace's faint head. Mai Lin whispered soft and mysterious words over her as she had in the middle of the night two times before. Grace did not know the meaning of the chants. She did not hear the word Jesus, nor did she care to. This fact surprised Grace with such force that she let out a cackle, a most unladylike sound the likes of which usually issued forth only from her old amah.
"Death to Lord Jesus!" Grace shouted feebly. "That was what the robbers said, and I say it now, too. Death to the Lord!"
But the instant she repeated it, she feared she would be punished, struck down utterly and forever. She heard thunder raging in the distance and felt certain that a lightning storm would come this way. In a blinding flash of light, she, Mai Lin, and the cottage would be reduced to a smoldering pile of ashes. That was what she deserved. That was what she wanted. It was she, not her husband, who would be carried upward in a holy conflagration.
Three
N ight fires gleamed in the distance, and smoke clung to the horizon, blurring the far-off mountains in a blanket of dark haze. The Reverend pressed on in the direction of the smoke, although the robbers might easily have slipped into one of the ravines or outcroppings that bordered the dirt road. In this maddening countryside there were too many possibilities, as many directions as travelers. It occurred to him that at this very moment the bandits may have been watching him from a rocky hilltop, laughing at his efforts. Or they might have turned away, no longer interested in the father who rode on and on forever in search of his son. For the Reverend understood that he would not stop his journey until Wesley was found.
The old horse was not meant for such swift travel, but the Reverend paid it little heed. He had not ridden bareback since he was a boy on the farm. It did not matter. Nothing mattered except going onward. Off to his right he saw a fire burning, and further ahead on the left a hamlet appeared— a cluster of buildings made of yellow brick, though in the dark they resembled nothing more than dark outlines. He had passed this cluster of derelict buildings before but assumed they were empty and no longer in use. Now from this ghost town came a dim light that the Reverend headed toward.
He let himself wonder what he would do if the bandits were holed up inside. He had no weapon. No sword or gun, not even a rock to hurl or a stick to swing. The Reverend bore nothing except his fury, height, and stature as a Man of God in a land of infidels. That would have to be enough. As he grew closer, he let the horse slow and then come to a stop. He swung down off the sweat-soaked back and kept hold of the reins. He could at least use the element of surprise to his advantage. He would come out of the black night to frighten the devils.
He passed through a broken wooden gate whose fence had long since fallen away. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and he saw the lay of the courtyard: a barn on one side, its roof staved in; a shed on the other, with no door or windowpanes and only darkness inside; and there, before him, an old inn with the windows boarded over. A light shone dimly through chinks in the brick near the back of the building.
The Reverend ducked behind the edge of the barn and tied his horse to a leaning post. He strode across the courtyard with his traveling coat billowing. A rough board with a knot of rope for a handle served as a door to the inn. On the wood were scrawled careless Chinese characters that the Reverend could not