第95章 The Keepers' Round

The keepers' round, which was the name the four coasts gave to the second century's great circuit, was a journey begun and ended at the gate. Fenwick had drawn the route in the year of the long earth, the walk from the hall at Pemberton down the buried road to the gate, across the causeway at the low, through the island and the far shore and the coast beyond it, and back, four coasts in a season, carrying the copies of the covenant in the way the first century had carried the water, from hand to hand, stopping at every reading room and every stone and every gate along the drowned road, reading the sentence aloud at each, and the round, first walked by the four keepers together in the year after Arthur died, became the second century's fixed year, the walk that every keeper made in their season and every coast made in its turn, the whole four-coast keeping made visible as a single circuit of lamps and readings and free water. The granddaughter, who had read the sentence to Arthur by heart, was the valley's keeper in the first year of the round, and she walked it with the fourth coast's keeper and the island's and the far shore's, four keepers, four copies, one sentence, and the walking of it was the plain proof of what the gate had kept all along, that a covenant written for the free water is a covenant that walks, and a covenant that walks is a covenant that lives, and a covenant that lives is a covenant that cannot be hidden in a book or sold by a deed or corrected by an office, because it is being walked, aloud, in the open, by the four coasts, every year, and the walking of it was the keeping of it, and the keeping of it was the free water, and the free water was the whole of the law, and the law was on the road, and the road was under the world, and the world was the four coasts, and the four coasts were the keepers' round. Eleanor had died in the winter before the first round, and the valley buried her beside Arthur at the seaward field where the two matched stones stood, and her name went into the register of the readings with the verse that had been her whole life, whoever stands at this gate keeps the water free, and the verse was her whole epitaph and the only one she had ever wanted, and the granddaughter, setting out on the first round with the copies in her hands, read the verse at the gate before she left, and the reading was the first of the first round's hundred readings, and the last of the round, at the gate on the far shore where the fourth coast's keeper lived, was the same verse read by the same voice, and the sameness was the whole of the round's meaning, that a sentence read at the beginning and the end of a circuit of the four coasts is a sentence that holds the whole circuit, and the circuit is the keeping, and the keeping is the gate, and the gate is the free water, and the free water is the whole of the law, and the law was walked, and the walking was the round, and the round went on. The second century kept the round for a hundred years without a miss, through wars that did not touch the valley and famines that did and floods that were the water's own old business, and the reading at the gate on the far shore happened every year by some hand or other, and the copies wore out and were copied, and the copies of the copies were copied, and the sentence remained the sentence, cut in stone and read aloud and walked, and the keepers' round, which had been Fenwick's single route, grew branches as the fourth coast's own far neighbors sent their keepers to join the walk, and the branches joined the branches, and the four coasts' round became the many coasts' round and then the whole sea's round, the sentence read and the water kept free on every shore it touched, and the valley, which had one remembered the long war of deeds and courts as the whole of its history, came to remember it as the small single season it had always been, the brief trouble before the round, the scaffolding before the sentence, and the sentence was all that remained, and the free water ran on, and the keepers' round went on, and the going on was the keeping, and the keeping was the gate, and the gate was whole, and the water was free, forever. The round's first hundred years proved what the sentence had always implied, that the valley and the island and the far shore and the fourth coast were not four houses holding four corners of a promise but one people holding a single road, and the proof was the simplest thing in the keeping, that a walker on the round could pass from the valley to the fourth coast without once hearing the sentence change, only deepen, each shore's accent adding its own weight to the same words the way each tide adds its own weight to the same water, and the four coasts' whole history, the suits and the deeds and the injunctions and the hidden book and the paid price, had been, in the perspective of the round, a single generation's brief forgetting of what the road had always known, and the round had restored it, and the restoring was the keeping, and the keeping was the walking, and the walking was the reading, and the reading was one sentence, carried around the whole sea. The keepers who made the round in their middle years returned to their own gates changed in a way their neighbors could not name and did not need to, because the change was the change every long walk makes in a walker, the discovery that the way out and the way home are the same way, and the valley, which had sent its keepers out for a season each year, received them back each autumn with the plain knowledge that the keeper who returned was the same keeper who had left and also a different one, and both were the valley's, and the valley, which had once believed it owned a gate at the seaward end of a field, understood that a gate that sends its keepers around the whole sea and receives them back is not a gate at all but a hub, and a hub is the whole of a wheel, and the wheel was the round, and the round was the four coasts, and the four coasts were the free water, and the free water was the sentence, and the sentence turned and turned, and the turning was the keeping, and the keeping was the turning. The youngest keeper ever to make the round alone was a girl of the fourth coast, sixteen in her year, who walked the whole circuit in the same season her grandmother had first crossed the causeway, and she read the sentence at the gate of every coast with the same voice for the same words, and at the gate at Pemberton, the oldest gate of the round, she read the sentence twice, because the valley had asked her to read it once for the register and once for Arthur, and she read it twice without being told the difference, because a keeper who has grown up on a road that keeps a gate for a bedridden keeper's last reading understands, without being told, why a sentence might be read twice at the oldest gate of the round, and the second reading, for Arthur, was the first sentence of the third century, and the third century, the valley understood, standing at the gate with the four coasts assembled and the girl's voice still in the air, would be kept the way the second had been, by the walking and the reading and the free water and the one sentence, carried around the whole sea by the keepers' round, year by year, until the phrase, whoever stands at this gate keeps the water free, was no longer a sentence that had to be read aloud to be remembered, but the sound of the sea itself, the thing the four coasts heard in every tide, the kept water, the kept sentence, the kept round, the kept promise, going on, forever.