“You are my mate,” he said. “You have been tried—tempted, perhaps. But I believe in you. You swore once to believe in me. Do you remember? Come with me, Dolores. Let me fight your way up to the Fields as I fought mine down. Have courage to come.”
“I’d only hold you back,” she sighed.
“The harder the fight, the dearer the victory,” he urged. “And we should be together. Does that mean nothing to you? Whatever your fate, I should feel honored to share it—to serve you through Eternity in atonement. Where faith lives there is love.”
“Faith?” A rasping sob shook her—or was it a laugh? “Faith, he says, is the fear of fools.”
“Faith is fear? I do not understand.”
“Yes. Fools pretend faith because they fear. But nobody really believes in anything down here. Everybody fears—fears despair. He’ll never let me go. You must leave me if you can. Lean low and listen. Later you’ll understand.”
She caught his arm; shook like a reed with her whisper.
“God sacrificed his only begotten Son, they say, to try to save the world. You must sacrifice your hope of me to try to save——”
“Damn you!”
The curse was addressed to the king—the first Dolores ever had heard from the lips of John Cabot. Satan had approached soundlessly; with his charged forefinger and thumb had flicked the intruder on the brow.