第100章 The Gate Stands Open

The gate stands open at the seaward field in the fifth century the way it has stood open since before the first sentence was cut into the first bark, and the standing open is the whole of the keeping's end and the whole of its meaning, and the valley, the island, the far shore, the fourth coast, the far shore of the far shore, the whole sea, stands at the gate on the morning of the longest day in the year of the ending and the beginning, and no one reads the sentence aloud, because the sentence is the water and the water is running and the running is the reading, and the four coasts and the whole sea stand in the shallow water of the low causeway with their boots off and their books closed and their gates open, and the standing is the covenant, and the covenant is the standing, and the two are the whole of it, at last, one thing, free. Arthur's name is read no more at the gate, because the reading of the names ended with the reading of the sentence, and the names are in the water now, carried by the tide the way the water carries everything it is given, and the water has been given, over the five centuries, the names of all the keepers, Arthur and Eleanor and Fenwick and Devereux and the fourth coast's keepers and the island's and the far shore's and the whole sea's, and the water keeps them the way it keeps the sentence, by being free, by running, by standing open, and the keeping of them is the whole of the fifth century's character, the ordinary, unhurried, unremarked continuance of a people that has become its own gate. The three stones stand at the seaward field, and the first leaf and the fourth coast's commentary and the water's own, and the stones are read by the children who play among them and the gulls that perch on them and the tide that licks them, and the reading is the plainest kind, the kind that needs no voice, the sentence worn into the stone and into the water and into the people, and the wearing is the keeping, and the keeping is the wearing, and the two have been the same thing since the first hand cut the first letter, and the same thing will be the fifth century and the sixth and the hundredth, the sentence, the water, the gate, the free, the whole sea, standing open, running free, kept by being kept, in the water's own time, forever. The girl of the fourth coast, the keeper who had read the sentence twice for Arthur and once for the register and then not at all, grew old at the gate and is remembered at the gate, and her name is in the water, and the water keeps it, and the water keeps all of them, and the water keeps the sentence, and the water keeps the gate, and the water keeps the free, and the water, which has been keeping what it is given and returning what is asked since before the four houses had names, keeps the whole of it still, the five centuries and the six and the hundred, the one sentence, the one gate, the one water, the one people, the whole sea, and the keeping of it is the whole of the law, and the law is the gate standing open, and the gate stands open at the seaward field in the fifth century the way it has stood open since before the first sentence was cut into the first bark, and the standing open is the whole of the keeping's end and the whole of its meaning, and the free water runs through the open gate to the sea, and the sea is the whole of it, and the whole of it is free, and the free is forever, and the gate stands open. And the standing in the shallow water on the longest day was the whole of the fifth century's work, and the work was nothing, and the nothing was the keeping, and the keeping was the standing, and the three were one, the way the sentence and the water and the gate were one, and the one was the free, and the free was the whole of it, and the whole of it was at the seaward field on the morning of the longest day, and nobody read the sentence and nobody needed to, because the water was reading it, and the four coasts and the whole sea were standing in the shallow water with their boots off, and the standing was the whole of the covenant, accomplished at last in the plain ordinary way all true covenants are accomplished, by a people that has become its own gate, standing open, running free, kept by being kept, in the water's own time, and the time went on, and the gate stood open, and the water was free, and the free was forever, and the keeping was the whole of it, and the whole of it was enough, and the enough was the open gate at the seaward field, standing, forever. And so the fifth century opened and the gate stood open and the water ran free and the sentence was kept by being unspoken, and the unspoken keeping was the whole of the covenant's final form, the sentence so fully entered into the water and the people that speech had become unnecessary, the way a river does not need to be described to run, and the valley and the island and the far shore and the fourth coast and the whole sea stood at their open gates on the longest day of every year in the fifth century and heard the water speak the sentence in every tide, and the hearing was the keeping, and the keeping was the hearing, and the two were the whole of the law, and the law was free, and the free was the water, and the water was the gate, and the gate was open, and the open was the valley, and the valley was the world, and the world was the keeping, and the keeping went on, in the water's own time, without ceremony, without a book, without a keeper, the plainest and most ordinary and most perfect form of the great covenant, the sentence living in the water, the water living in the people, the people living in the gate, the gate open, the water free, the whole of it one, forever.