OUT OF THE DARK CORNER

Maximus had been standing just inside the hall doorway, watching Cort, and when he knocked over the pulpit and ran out the far entrance, Maximus made his way past Alistair and Ahnna and through the side door of the church. Joimus, seeing her husband's head pass quickly by the large window to her right, hurried up to where Alistair lay.

"What's happening?" Ahnna asked, still crouched beside Alistair.

"Something's up with Cort. I'm not sure what. Maximus went to check." She looked down at Alistair. "How is he doing?"

"It was too much. I tried to tell him yesterday, but he was determined to have a service today."

Alistair lay, his eyes closed, breathing the oxygen. He made a little sound down in his throat, something that sounded like 'sorry.'

"He keeps saying he's sorry," Ahnna sighed. "It's all right, my darling. Like Maximus said, there is nothing for you to be sorry about. You tried. It just hasn't been that long since you left the hospital."

He said something else that sounded vaguely like 'sit up.'

"You want to sit up?" Ahnna asked and he nodded his head.

Joimus and Ahnna helped him lean his back against the wall. "Cort?"

"I don't know," Joimus answered, shaking her head. "He was reading from the 91st Psalm and suddenly looked ill."

Maximus reached Cort just as Claire did and they knelt, one on either side of him. He had his elbows on the ground, his fingers clenched tightly around his forehead as though it might explode. When Maximus lay his hand gently on his back, Cort straightened, his eyes full of tears. He looked blindly from Claire to Maximus. "Dead," he gasped. "They killed them, the children, the nun, Michael."

"Oh…Cort!" Claire murmured, not knowing what to do for him.

"Fire," he continued. "Burned it...with the children inside...burned it." He began shaking his head back and forth. "Oh, God...oh, God...oh, my God."

He shouldered he way to his feet, scrubbing his hands across his face, his eyes desperate, filled only with the image of Michael's staring dead eyes. "No," he gasped. "No...." and before either of them knew what he was doing, he began to run, cutting across the lawn, disappearing into the thick line of trees just beyond.

"What...what happened?" Claire cried.

Maximus stood, looking at where Cort had disappeared. "He remembered."

"He remembered...that? That's what happened to him?"

Maximus nodded and began to walk slowly in the direction of the trees. "Hurry!" she urged. "Find him!"

"I will follow," he said, "but not closely. He needs time."

"Don't let him get hurt!" she cried.

"He is as hurt as it may be possible for him to be," the General said softly, crossing the grass. He paused, looked back at her. "Please, Claire, tell my wife what I am doing."  Then he, too, disappeared among the trees.

Claire went around to the side entrance, trying to avoid the clumps of people by the main door. She made her way to the little hallway and as soon as Alistair saw her, he asked again, "Cort?"

"Maximus says he has regained his memory. He...he spoke of...of children being killed...of something being burned. Then he ran into the woods. Maximus is following him, Joimus. He wanted me to tell you that."

Alistair closed his eyes. He'd figured that whatever Cort was suppressing was terrible and his lips began to move in a silent prayer for him.

Cort stumbled, not caring where he was going, only wanting to leave Michael's eyes behind him. But he couldn't. They had come out of that dark corner and spread themselves in the light of his day and he could never not see them again. He crossed the road, crossed a small stream, aware of neither, fell once, fell twice, unaware of that as well. A burning roof was crashing down. That he was aware of. And screams. And pain and the laughter as the cross toppled. Finally he fell at the edge of a little meadow, fell hard on his face then rolled to his back, lying there his fists pounding on the sides of his head. "No," he repeated over and over and over. "No...no...no."

That was how Maximus found him. Coming quietly up beside him, the General sat in the grass, waiting. After a few minutes he said, his voice low and even, "You are not alone."

Cort stopped his pounding, but kept his fists pressed to his head, not able yet to respond. "You can't...possibly...understand," he muttered after a while.

Maximus smiled to himself. "I know it does not serve to take away your pain, my friend, but I can."

Cort dropped his hands, opening his eyes. "I'm not from here," he almost moaned. "I'm not from anywhere near here."  His brain was being flooded now with his very alienness to this time and place.

"Nor am I," Maximus said calmly.

Cort turned his head to look at the General, whose eyes revealed, in truth, an understanding that baffled Cort. Then Maximus repeated, "You are not alone, my friend."  He'd said that very thing recently to Robert.

"You...you lost your memory?"

"No, but I lost my time and my place. I lost," he tipped his head, looking up at the sky, "not less than everything." His gaze returned to Cort. "As you have." And then, without self pity, he told Cort about the dark smoke of his burning villa on the horizon, of finding the hanging, blackened bodies of his wife and his son, of being sold into slavery.

Cort listened quietly, taken for a moment out of himself until he realized that somehow his pain had merged in a strange commonality with that of the man who was speaking and the words 'you are not alone' took on value and meaning. Then he told Maximus of the mission and the children and the fires and all the senseless killing.

Maximus extended his hand and Cort took it, gripping it hard. "Out of all the world," Cort said, "I found myself on your land...you found me on your land. There has to be some...reason."

Maximus smiled. "There is always some reason, my friend. We may not know it, may never understand it, but the reason is always there."