The Tavery twins made their manners, Frank with a bow and Francine with a curtsy.

“You do us well and we say thankya,” Roland told them.

An identical blush suffused their astoundingly creamy complexions; they muttered their thanks and prepared to slip away. Before they could, Roland put an arm around each narrow but well-made pair of shoulders and led the twins a little way down the walk. He was taken less by their perfect child’s beauty than by the piercing intelligence he saw in their blue eyes. He had no doubt they would make his map; he also had no doubt that Callahan had had Rosalita fetch them as a kind of object lesson, were one still needed: with no interference, one of these beautiful children would be a grizzling idiot a month from now.

“Sai?” Frank asked. Now there was a touch of worry in his voice.

“Fear me not,” Roland said, “but hear me well.”

Eight

Callahan and Eddie watched Roland walk the Tavery twins slowly along the rectory’s flagstoned path and toward the dirt drive. Both men shared the same thought: Roland looked like a benevolent gran-pere.

Susannah joined them, watched, then plucked Eddie’s shirt. “Come with me a minute.”

He followed her into the kitchen. Rosalita was gone and they had it to themselves. Susannah’s brown eyes were enormous, shining.

“What is it?” he asked her.

“Pick me up.”

He did.

“Now kiss me quick, while you have the chance.”

“Is that all you want?”

“Isn’t it enough? It better be, Mister Dean.”

He kissed her, and willingly, but couldn’t help marking how much larger her breasts were as they pressed against him. When he drew his face away from hers, he found himself looking for traces of the other one in her face. The one who called herself Mother in the High Speech. He saw only Susannah, but he supposed that from now on he would be condemned to look. And his eyes kept trying to go to her belly. He tried to keep them away, but it was as if they were weighted. He wondered how much that was between them would change now. It was not a pleasant speculation.

“Is that better?” he asked.

“Much.” She smiled a little, and then the smile faded. “Eddie? Is something wrong?”

He grinned and kissed her again. “You mean other than that we’re all probably gonna die here? Nope. Nothing at all.”

Had he lied to her before? He couldn’t remember, but he didn’t think so. And even if he had, he had never done so with such baldness. With such calculation.

This was bad.

Nine

Ten minutes later, rearmed with fresh mugs of coffee (and a bowl of pokeberries), they went out into the rectory’s small back yard. The gunslinger lifted his face into the sun for a moment, relishing its weight and heat. Then he turned to Callahan. “We three would hear your story now, Pere, if you’d tell it. And then mayhap stroll up to your church and see what’s there.”