Maud remembers

He wasn’t here.

Maud stood transfixed for a breathless moment, here where his cradle should have been, and then she began to whimper. Without his voice to guide her, she had to figure everything out herself, and it was so hard.

He wasn’t here, because he was dead. She remembered now.

Father Brandt had said that she mustn’t cry, because her baby was with the Lord, and she would see him again someday, when she died and went to the Lord herself. 

But Father Brandt did not know that she never would. For if God spared not the very angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment… what then of her?

Her husband was not here either. He might have helped her… he always tried to explain things to her so that she might understand, even without Harold. But he was not here, though the rising sun had only just began to touch the hilltops in the distant west.

She remembered now. The Lord had taken Harold from her because she had rejoiced in her sin. She had kissed Colban.

Harold had not been in the room, but he had known. He had shrieked at her for hours. Thereafter he refused to nurse at her breast, for she had corrupted herself.

Then he had died. She remembered now. 

That was why he was not here. That was why he had fallen silent. That was why she felt so lost. Because she had forsaken the Lord, He had also forsaken her.