Chapter 94 The Reading of the Free

The reading of the free, which is what the four coasts came to call the annual reading of the first leaf aloud at the gate, began in the third year of the second century, and it began the way all true beginnings begin, unceremoniously, with Arthur's daughter carrying the covenant out of the hall at dawn and down the long earth to the seaward field where the two matched stones stood, and the fourth coast's keeper meeting her there by the gate with the fourth coast's own copy, and the two of them reading the sentence together, whoever stands at this gate keeps the water free for all who come to it in need, aloud into the wind, and the reading was the first of the yearly readings, and the yearly readings became the valley's oldest custom and the fourth coast's oldest custom and the whole four-coast keeping's one fixed point, the single sentence read aloud by every keeper who came, into the open air, at the gate, on the low, with both hands holding the book. Fenwick, who had drawn the map and surveyed the long earth and measured the two stones, was made the first custodian of the readings in that third year, and he kept the record of them the way he had kept the record of the suits, in a book of his own, and the book grew a page a year, and the pages were the four coasts' whole commentary on the first leaf, each year's keeper writing in the margin what the sentence had meant to them in their year, and the margins, which began as the fourth coast's careful annotations, became after a decade a palimpsest of the four coasts' shared reading, an every-year gloss on the one sentence that the gate had been keeping since before any of the four houses had names, and the gloss, Fenwick said at the end of his custodianship, was the proof that the sentence meant what it said, because a sentence that means what it says can bear a hundred years of marginal reading without wearing thin, and the sentence had borne them, and the bearing was the keeping, and the keeping was the reading, and the reading was the free. Arthur grew old at the gate the way the water grows old at a shore, by remaining, and his daughter became the keeper of the valley in her season, and the fourth coast's keeper became hers in the exchange of the wards, and the two of them kept the gate together for forty years, and the keeping of it was the reading of the sentence and the walking of the long earth and the opening of the gate at dawn and the closing of the register at dusk and the four-coast feast at midsummer and the whole patient round of the second century's ordinary, and the ordinary was the whole of the wealth the first century had fought its long war to defend without knowing it, and the wealth was the free water and the four coasts and the long earth and the two stones and the one sentence, and the sentence was enough, and the reading of it was enough, and the valley, which had once believed it owned a gate, understood at last that a gate that is kept is a gate that keeps, and the keeping of it had kept the valley, and the reading of it, every year, at the gate, in the open air, on the low, with both hands, was the entire covenant, spoken, received, and passed on. The oldest keeper of the fourth coast, grown bent and slow in her ninety-third year, came across the causeway for the last reading she would ever attend, and she stood at the gate with the two copies in her hands and read the sentence one last time, and her voice, which had been strong in the first reading and was thin in the last, carried the same words the same way, and the valley and the fourth coast and the island and the far shore stood at the gate through the reading and understood that the sentence had not changed and had never needed to change, that the one sentence was the whole of the law and the law was the free water and the free water was the keeping and the keeping was the reading and the reading was the passing on and the passing on was the proof that the gate had been kept true, and the old keeper handed the fourth coast's copy to her granddaughter and the handing was the end of her keeping and the beginning of her granddaughter's, and the beginning was the same as the end, the one sentence, read aloud, at the gate, in the open, held by four coasts, forever. The reading of the free acquired its own small rituals in the years after the old keeper's last crossing, the way any true building acquires its furniture, and the rituals were, Eleanor said, exactly what the sentence needed and nothing more, the carrying of the copies out of the hall at dawn, the walking of the long earth by the keepers in their season, the setting of the two books on the matched stones at the gate, the reading aloud, into the wind, with the whole four-coast assembly standing on the low causeway in the shallow water, and the shallow water was the whole of it, because a gate read in dry boots is a gate read at a distance, and the valley had learned, in the second century, that the keeping is done with wet feet, in the water, at the gate, in the open, holding the book in both hands. The rituals grew observance slowly and shed none of it, and the verdicts of the first century, the suits and the deeds and the injunctions and the long legal artillery of ownership, fell away from the reading like the temporary scaffold it had always been, until what remained at the gate on the yearly morning was not a family's charter or a company's claim or a court's settlement but the sentence alone, read by the four coasts, into the wind, on the low, with both hands, and the sentence, read free of all its scaffolding, showed the plain shape it had always had, that the water is free and the gate is the keeping of it and the keeping is the four coasts and the four coasts are the reading and the reading is the free, and the free, Arthur understood, standing at the gate in his age with the book in his hands and the four coasts before him, was the whole of the long earth's meaning, that a road kept free is a road walked and a road walked is a road lived and a road lived is a people and a people is the free water and the free water is the keeping and the keeping is the sentence and the sentence is enough. The valley kept the reading through the years that Arthur grew too old to walk the long earth, and the reading then was carried to him, the copies brought up to the hall and read at his bedside by his granddaughter, who had learned the sentence at her grandmother's knee and read it by heart, and the reading by heart was the final proof of the keeping, because a sentence that can be carried in on the breath of a child to a bedridden keeper is a sentence that has been kept so truly it has entered the body of the people, and the body of the people was the keeping and the keeping was the gate and the gate was the water and the water was free and the free was the whole of the covenant, and Arthur, hearing the sentence read to him one last time by his granddaughter, in the room where his father had hidden the book and he himself had paid the price of the hiding, closed his eyes on the free water and the long earth and the four coasts and the two stones and the sentence, and the closing was the ending of his keeping and the passing of it whole to the four coasts and the granddaughter, and the valley, keeping the reading for the first time without him, understood that the keeper had become the kept, the way the gate had always kept him, and the keeping went on.