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Kate shuddered. "Don't use that word 'dying'."
"You remember what I said when our old friend Flaxman died last
year?"
"You said you thought you should have gone first."
"And I said I could not think of death as more than the going out of one
room into another. That's what it is, too. Who knows that better than we?"
"Yes. Yes, you're right, of course."
"And now I'm tired. I want to take a little nap. Don't worry, though. We
will talk again before& before I leave."
Kate watched him as he fell into a light slumber. She did not tell him
what else Robert had said. She did not tell him that Urizen, when his
proud intelligence had begun to fade in his changed lizard body, had gone
insane and, with his newly grown teeth and claws, torn Vala, and Ore to
bits. Why tell such upsetting things to a dying man?
*
"We will talk again before I leave."
Reassured by these words, Kate left her sleeping husband and went for
a walk.
She moved as if in a dream, and hardly knew where her feet were
taking her until she found herself turning off the Strand and heading
down Wellington Street toward the Waterloo Bridge.
I'm going to Lambeth, she realized.
She knew she could have stepped out of the timestream and flown
there, could have hovered unseen over her beloved garden, that now
belonged to someone else, but she did not. She still had the ability to do
such things, but did not use it.
But it's a long walk, she thought as she reached the midpoint of the
bridge. Did she really want to see the garden again? Did she even really
want to go downtime and see it as it was in earlier, happier times?
She stopped, went to the rail, and gazed down at the brown river.
There were no earlier, happier times. Even poverty-stricken as she was,
even with her husband dying, she had never been happier than she was at
this moment. And this puzzled her.
Wagons and carriages passed behind her, with a constant rattle,
whinny and clop, but she neither saw nor heard them.
William had taught her so much: to read and write, to draw and paint,
to speak a little in a half dozen foreign languages. Lately he'd taken her,
step by step, through the Bible, helped her to understand deeply all that
she had before believed blindly, with faith but without comprehension.
And he'd taught her one more thing& or had she taught it to him?
Acceptance. He'd taught her to accept things.
She smiled down on the slow water.
A few days earlier, she remembered, William had been working in bed,
finishing the coloring of an etching of "The Ancient of Days" for a
customer, his friend Frederick Tatham. Finally finished, William had all
but thrown the etching at Tatham, crying, "There, that will do! I cannot
mend it!"
Then he'd looked at her and added, with a new joy in his voice, "Stay,
Kate! Keep just as you are! I will draw your portrait, for you have ever
been an angel to me." It had been a good likeness, though he'd drawn it
almost without looking at her. What need was there to look at a face he
knew better than his own?
She murmured, "He mustn't wake and find me gone," turned away
from the rail, and quickly made her way back the way she had come.
*
Still smiling, she'd opened the front door, crossed the dark "Exhibition
Room", and entered the bedroom.
That was several minutes ago.
Now she stood motionless and pale, paralyzed by what she saw. Over
and over she thought, I know he must die, but not like that.
The smashed engraver's table. The shredded books. The scattered tools.
The collapsed bed, soaked in blood. The torn and mutilated corpse. The
deep claw-scratches in the floor.
"Urizen!"
Urizen had been here, seeking revenge against his father, revenge for
having been born!
She spoke softly. "No, not like that."
At last she moved, but only to spring into the place outside of time and
plunge downtime.
Was the corpse still there? The smashed furniture?
Yes.
A little further back then.
Ah, there was Mr. Blake, as yet unharmed, sleeping.
She waited.
Suddenly Urizen appeared in the center of the room, though Kate
would never have recognized him if she hadn't known what happened to
humans in the lizard timeline. He was all lizard now, his white beard and
hair replaced by green scales, his muscular body distorted, caricatured
into a reptilian parody of the man he once had been& but there were
traces. There were still traces of the old Urizen& a gesture, a way of
holding his head cocked slightly to one side. Without seeing her, he
advanced toward the bed.
"Urizen!" she shouted.
Urizen spun to face her, crouching, wary. Did he recognize her?
"Urizen, this is Kate." Her voice was firm.
The creature hesitated, puzzled, then recognition began to dawn. She
thought, The mind is almost gone. But the will, the terrible proud [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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