They pointed up the beach. “He coming. Tonight. Docdoc come.”
I sighed with relief. “Then I’ll walk along to meet him.”
The twins nodded, but not happily. Willy picked up his butterfly net, and they ran in erratic circles in front of Illyria, after butterflies I could not see. I walked along by the ocean, trying to understand what it was they had been trying to tell me. That Cousin James should be in Jefferson where he could be in touch with Washington, with the Bureau of Navigation, did make sense. The twins, of course, would not understand this, would misinterpret his absence …
When I met Ronnie we would go to Little Nyssa and ask Saintie. She would know where Cousin James was.
I was not far from the twins’ cottage when I saw horse and rider, and my heart leapt. But Finbarr, who had been walking close beside me instead of, as usual, loping around me, growled long and low in his throat, growled as he had when Uncle Hoadley came to my room.
Not Ronnie. Tron. Tron on the thin pale horse I had seen his mother leading up the beach; Tron, followed by a small group of Black Riders.
No, no, please no.
Before they reached me, Ronnie galloped out of the dunes and jumped down from Thales to stand beside me. “Stay close to me, Stella.”
Tron rode past us without pause or greeting, then wheeled around and splashed through the shallow waves to rein up beside us. He leaned down and patted Thales on the rump. “Let’s go.”
“All right, Tron, what is this?” Ron asked.
“Don’t you know? Thought I were expected.”
Ron spoke slowly and quietly. “Let us say that though you are full of surprises, Tron, I am hardly surprised to see you.”
“Who told you?”
Ron said nothing.
“Grandmother?” Still Ron did not answer. Tron gave his deeper version of his mother’s tinkle. “I wouldn’t presume to question you about you sources, brother dear.” His voice and words again echoed Uncle Hoadley. “For one who’s been in other climes for so long a time you doing pretty well. Potions and lotions, drinks and dreams, stars and shadows: how it happen that you pay them so much mind, little Docdoc.”
“That’s enough, Tron. What do you want?”
“Don’t like it when I talk Illyria, do you, Docdoc. Tron can do it just like you, only Tron mostly don’t choose to. Granddam wants her. Come on.” Tron snapped his fingers, and the group of Black Riders moved closer. “Bring her. Let’s go. Shall the little Mrs. Renier ride with me or with you?”
“Neither,” I said. “It’s late, and I’m going back to Illyria.”
“Oh, no, you’re not, little Mrs. Renier, ma’am.” Tron’s voice was lazy and casual now. “When either of our grandmothers wants something, Ronnie and I hops.”
“And if I don’t?” Ron asked.
“Think it over,” Tron said. “Matter of fact, you’ve already thunk, ain’t you? Why else’re you here, like a knight in shining armor. If you don’t come along with her now, you know perfectly well we’ll get her another time when you not around to protect your precious Mrs. Renier. Does Docdoc ever get a call to use a magnifying glass? Try it sometime, Ronnie, try it. Surprising how much you see if you look at people through a magnifying glass. All kinds of things they think they hiding show up. Things what need to be burned away. Tron look at the whole world through a magnifying glass. Come on, now, brother, let’s get going.” He cracked his whip and one of the men kicked his heels into his horse and rode up to us.
Ron pushed the horse’s head aside. “Get back.” Then, “Come, Mrs. Renier.” He helped me up onto Thales, saying, “Tron’s right. If I come with you now perhaps I can protect you. Even if I could get you back to Illyria that wouldn’t stop him another time.” He swung himself up in front of me.
“No funny business,” Tron warned. “It don’t wuth it.”
“Tell your men to go,” Ron said, “or we stay here.”
Tron laughed, but cracked his whip again, calling out commands in a guttural speech I could not understand, and the horsemen dispersed into the scrub.
I held tightly to Ron’s waist. His body was strong and firm and warm. I looked for Finbarr but could not see him.
We approached the twins’ cottage and the light was warm and golden from the windows, but before we reached its comfort, Tron turned from the ocean and led us up a barely visible trail across the dunes and into the jungle. The horses pushed aside bushes and vines, and we had to bend over to escape low-hanging branches. I could feel Ronnie’s heart beating, quick and strong. I wondered if he could feel mine, and sense my fear. Yet, strangely, it was not panic fear, but that heightened state of awareness which comes with excitement and challenge.
Tron reined in his horse until we caught up with him; our legs touched. He flung his words at Ron. “Chosen sides?”
Ron said nothing, though I felt a stiffening in his spine.
“Going to have to, little brother. Can’t have it both ways.” Then, to me, “Don’t fret, Mrs. Renier, ma’am. Nobody going to hurt you lessen I give them leave. Ole Massa Hoadley not the only one to have Riders at his beck and call. What Ole Massa Hoadley can do, little old Tron can do, too. Tron be more like Massa Hoadley than Ronnie here.”
“You’re both mad,” I said. Ronnie reached back to touch me in warning.
Tron said, “You don’t do what I says, my men going to get you and have their pleasure with you. That what happen to little girls what go poking their noses where they got no business. Like in the War Room.”
“Except—” I said—“there isn’t any War Room, is there?”
Tron’s giggle was shrill. “You’re so-o right, Mrs. Renier, ma’am. Ain’t never was nothing there. No map of Kairogi. Only little old Tron cleaning up, like we cleans all the rooms of Illyria every summer. That what Mr. Hoadley want you to think. But you going to think what Tron want you to think.” He pulled ahead of us again and we moved slowly through the underbrush. When we reached the creek we tethered the horses and Ronnie helped me into the waiting dugout. Tron paddled. We moved in darkness under the locked branches of cypress and water oak. An owl cried and I started, rocking the boat. Ron steadied me.
When we reached the clearing a red glow from a fire in the central fireplace stained the water. Tron beached the canoe, and the little waiting boys pulled it up onto the sand. Swarms of insects attacked us with a wild shrilling and biting. An acrid smell hit us like a cloud. “Be it ever so humble,” Tron sang, “there’s no place like home. This be where Ronnie and me got borned, in one of these stately mansions.”
From the central hut the Granddam emerged, silhouetted in the doorway, a wooden torch in her hand. One of the boys helped her down the rickety wooden steps and she shuffled across the tamped dirt floor of the clearing. Ron kept one arm around me. “You will stand alone, missy,” the old woman said.
Ronnie did not move his arm. “Tell us what you want, Granddam.”
“Us, hah? Take your arm away from her.” She spat at my feet.
With a tremendous effort I moved from Ronnie’s protection and stepped forward. “What do you want?”
The old woman crouched down by the fire. Beyond her, in the flickering light, a group of men and women from the encircling huts watched us silently. I felt emanating from them a hostility I had never encountered before. The old Zenumin patted the ground beside her. “Sit.”
I sat on the hard-packed dirt. Ron squatted beside me.
The old woman pulled a pipe out of her pocket and lit it. Firelight did not warm grey of hair or skin. Greyness clouded her yellowed eyes. A small puff of grey smoke came from the pipe, and a heavy smell. She held the pipe out to me. I shook my head.
Suddenly Belle stood there by us holding a tarnished tray on which were four bowls filled with something hot and fragrant, and yet with an undertone of something sharp, ammoniac. She placed the tray between her mother and me. The old woman handed me a bowl. There was nothing but to take it. She gave one to Ronnie, one to Tron. Taking the fo
urth bowl herself she held it up, as though offering a libation. “Drink.”
I hesitated.
“Drink ye all of it.”
I held the steaming bowl to my lips.
Ronnie, looking at me, drank slowly, deliberately.
Tron drained his bowl and set it down on the tray.
“Finish,” the old woman commanded.
I obeyed. It did not taste very different from the teas Honoria and Saintie had given me. I tried to convince myself that it was only my imagination that felt a different purpose behind the brewing of it. I put my bowl down at the same time as Ronnie.
“Now, Granddam,” he said, “tell Mrs. Renier what you want.”
She grinned, showing her sparse, yellow teeth. “Why should I want anything? What Mrs. Renier have the Granddam need?”
“You tell us,” Ron said.
“Us. Who’s us, little black doctor? Or be you black any more?”
“Granddam, why did you want Mrs. Renier and me tonight?”
“You? Who said nothing about you? Told Tron to bring her. Nobody want you.”
“But I am here. And I want to know what all this is about. Now.”
She slapped the dirt in front of her with the wrinkled palm of her hand. It made a dull noise, like a muffled drum. “Don’t need your whiteman’s medicine, black boy. Granddam knows more’n any white doctor. What call you got to give white medicine to my people?”
Ron spoke quietly, dispassionately “If they come to me, Granddam, it’s after they’ve been to you. And you’ve failed them.”
“You ever fail them?”
“Everybody fails sometimes, Granddam. Maybe that’s something I’ve learned that you haven’t. We don’t always have to succeed.”
“You be sorry you laugh at my medicine.”
“No, Granddam. I do not laugh. I take it very seriously indeed. Now, why don’t you tell Mrs. Renier why you sent for her?”
“Tron.”
“Yes, Granddam?”
“Sit.”
Tron squatted across from Ron.
“Tron say Mrs. Renier got a way with her. You got a way with you, missy?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I slapped at an insect which was buzzing at my face.
“Tron say you got a way, and Tron never say nothing without he got something behind it. Tron say you got a way with our Ronnie. And you got a way with Honoria.”
“I love Honoria.”
“Love—” She threw the word away, then spat on the ground as though spitting on the word. As Belle had spat on my shadow. “All right, missy, I tell you what you going to do. You want to keep what you got swimming around like a little fish inside you, you want to keep your baby, you do what I tell you. You go home, missy, and you get Honoria to give you her treasure. You don’t want your baby to die in you, that what you’re going to do. I give you till tomorrow starshine. Then Tron coming for you, and you bring the jewels. Everything. Bring.”
My child stirred within me and fear dimmed my eyes, dulled my ears.
“You do not do what I tell you,” she said, “these curses shall come upon you.” She began to rock back an forth, intoning in a terrible shrill whine, “Cursed you’ll be in Jefferson and cursed in San Feliz, and cursed your baby’s star.”
I dimly heard Ronnie’s voice. “Get up. Stella, stand up.”
“The dark god shall curse you and you shall have vexation and boils and emerods and pimples and perishings because of your magics and your spells and your whorings with my grand—”
Ronnie’s hand was on my elbow, he pulled me to my feet. “Stella. Get up. Help me. Stand.”
“The dark god will curse you with mildew and mold and sunburn and flies and buzzards—”
Somehow I was standing, moving across the compound. Somehow Ronnie managed to get me into the canoe. I think he picked me up and lifted me in. I could see nothing but the grey smoke of the old woman, hear nothing but the grey whine of her voice. “Your womb shall wither and your breasts shall shrivel—”
Ron gave a mighty shove away from the shore and the canoe moved into the dark waters. The black cursing followed us. “And it shall come to pass, that as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you, so my Lord, the Other One, will rejoice over you to destroy you—”
Ron paddled swiftly. The Granddam stood at the water’s edge, intoning after us, “When you wakest up you’ll wish it was night, and when you see night you’ll wish for day for the fear of your heart and the terror of the things which I curse you to see …”
The voice faded away like dirty smoke behind us. I clung to the gunwales and was sick with terror. We moved through a timeless river of slimy fear. Then we saw a glint of moonlight, and the horses. Ron ignored Tron’s pale horse and helped me onto Thales. “Put your arms around my waist, Stella. Hold onto me.” I obeyed. I closed my eyes and pressed my face against his shoulder. “Stella,” he said. “Mrs. Renier.” Gently he loosened my frantic clutching. We were alone on the beach. I did not see the Black Riders. Only the beach in the cleansing starlight. The moon, my second Illyrian moon, had set.
“Ron—Ronnie—can she hurt my baby?”
“Not unless you let her.”
“What about that stuff she gave me to drink?”
“She could give you something which would hurt. But she isn’t ready to yet.”
“Why not?”
“Not while she thinks you can get Honoria’s treasure.”
“Ronnie, what am I going to do?”
“We’re going to Little Nyssa.”
I told him about Cousin James, and the twins’ anxious, incoherent rhymings.
“All the more reason to see Saintie.”
At Little Nyssa all was dark. He knocked and knocked until he roused Saintie. Without preamble she said, “I dreamed me a dream.”
“Mr. James is not in Jefferson, is he?” Ron asked.
She shook her head.
“Where is he?”
“Illyria. I dreamed him.”
“Where?”
“A room empty, hidden. He tied. Bound. Tell Honoria. She know where to look. Mr. James knowed something like this going to happen. He tell me if he not home for dinner I got to send to Jefferson. He tell me who to ask for, give me a letter. They be an instrument to send messages on, like the drums in the scrub, the drums white folk can’t hear.”
“You got the letter to Jefferson, then?”
“I send Sonny. He get the letter to the man Mr. James say. Then I send the message my own way. Somehow or other, somebody going to know. Mr. James say, ‘Saintie, if Mr. Hoadley thinks I know what he up to, he do anything to stop me.’ Only Mr. Hoadley don’t know Mr. James, do he? Mr. Hoadley think he got him stopped by tying him up.” Then she spoke directly to Ron. “God will bless you and send you courage to do what you has to do.” She turned to me. “And you, Miss Stella. Do not try to find the answer yourself to what you has to do. Wait and have faith, and you will be told what to do.”
“Who will tell me?”
“The Lord will let you know when the time comes.”
Thales moved slowly along the beach. His smooth, serene stride did not jolt me. To my surprise we rode past Illyria. Ron said, “I’m going around up through the dunes to the stable, and in the back way. We don’t want anyone to see us.”
“But they’ll be expecting me back from my walk. It’s terribly late and they’ll be anxious again. Let me off here and I’ll go on in and then meet you in the kitchen.”
Ron halted Thales. “Not the kitchen. Somebody’s apt to come in. Honoria’s and Clive’s room. What are you going to tell Mr. Hoadley?”
I dismounted. “I’ll lie. Ronnie—what are we going to tell Honoria and Clive?”
“The truth.”
Uncle Hoadley was, indeed, waiting for me. The aunts had gone to their rooms. Before he could say anything I plunged into apology. “… so I lay down on one of the dunes, the way you sometimes do, Uncle Hoadley, to wat
ch the stars, and I fell asleep. I’m terribly sorry. It was exceedingly thoughtless of me.”
He sat on the porch, his face in shadow, his hands gleaming long and pale as they lay loosely on his knees. “I’m not sure I believe you, Stella.”
“Why not? I find, since my sunstroke, that I fall asleep at the slightest provocation.”
He took a cigar, clipped it with the gold cigar cutter on his watch chain, lit it, slowly, deliberately. “Stella, were you with Ron?”
“What is this about Ron? Just because he’s half Renier doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s like the rest of the Renier men.”
The arc of the cigar was arrested in mid-air.
I continued coldly, without compassion. “Actually, I was with Tron.”
Uncle Hoadley put his face in his hands. “Stella, if I said or did—when I was drunk, was not myself, if I said or did anything offensive to you, I beg your pardon.”
I could still feel nothing towards him but fear and distaste. I did not respond.
“I carry a heavy burden. Sometimes I am not strong enough. I want to put it down, just for a few minutes.”
I went to the screen door. “But I really was with Tron, Uncle Hoadley.” I went in.
9
When I got to Clive’s and Honoria’s room, Ron had already told them. Honoria was sitting on the bed, her seersucker robe pulled tightly around her. Her large feet in the felt slippers somehow looked utterly vulnerable. “There is no treasure,” she said.
“But—”
“It all gone. How they think we kept and fed all them people? It all gone, long since.”
“But they think—Tron, and the Granddam—”
“And others think it, too,” Honoria said. “Dreams of treasure don’t die easy. Mr. Hoadley, he think it. He after me again. He sick. This my home. Don’t he know that? Clive’s. Mine. All of us. If we have never left Africa, then—but we was brought here, and it is our home.”
“Oh, Honoria, I know, I know!” I sat on the floor at her feet and pressed my face against her knees. “And the twins—I promised the twins—”
“You will keep your promise, Miss Stella,” Clive said.
My mind raced like Wally’s lizard running around the silver-wood of the kitchen table. “But as long as they think there’s a treasure—”
The Other Side of the Sun Page 34