by James Morrow
“Kindly tell them I’ve been given to know that the Shelley Prize is no longer worthy of our efforts. We are perforce abandoning the hunt for the Tree of Life.”
The thought of making this announcement in the vicinity of Miss Kirsop filled Malcolm with foreboding, and he was equally loath to share the news with Dartworthy and Runciter—but he did as Miss Bathurst requested. All three former members of the moribund Transmutationist Club reacted in a predictably physiological fashion, their tirades mixing bile, venom, spleen, and spittle.
“Runciter expects you to write him a promissory note for two thousand pounds, just as though you’d won the prize,” Malcolm reported to Miss Bathurst at the start of their Thursday afternoon rendezvous. “Dartworthy insists that, having dragged us to the core of a hostile continent, you’re now obliged to bring us the rest of the way to the Encantadas. Miss Kirsop says you’ve betrayed your most devoted disciple.”
“Inform my colleagues that I regret whatever inconveniences I may have caused them. Once well enough to travel, I shall return to England and follow the Presence wherever it might lead me. As for the immediate future, in my prayers tonight I mean to remember my father, my brother, and you yourself, Mr. Chadwick.”
For Malcolm one truth was now excruciatingly clear. He must tell Miss Bathurst about the Great Winnowing. By way of rehearsing his presentation, he apprised Dartworthy, Runciter, and Miss Kirsop of the Oxford Diocese’s designs on the Galápagos fauna, eliciting from each a torrential indignation. Not until the following Monday, however, standing in the church before the twinkling galaxy of votive candles, as she made ready to light another 200-réis investment, did he find the courage to broach the subject with Miss Bathurst herself.
“I owe you a full accounting of Bishop Wilberforce’s reaction to your bid for the Shelley Prize,” he said. Miss Bathurst lifted her pale, pinched face. Their gazes locked. “Even as we speak, an English brig, the Antares, courses towards Galápagos, Captain Adrian Garrity in command. Her passengers include the Reverend Simon Hallowborn—yes, the very Hallowborn who maligned you in the Evening Standard—plus ninety-two convicted criminals, all of them condemned to a Charles Isle penal colony overseen by a Christian utopianist who styles himself Emperor Orrin Eggwort.”
“You speak of Mephistropolis,” said Miss Bathurst knowingly. “Prior to our departure Algernon and I visited the map room of the British Museum. What has a penal colony to do with the Shelley Prize?”
“Upon reaching the archipelago, Mr. Hallowborn will present himself to Governor Stopsack on Indefatigable, after which the ninety-two convicts will take up machetes and garrotes, and then…”
“Yes?”
“There is no delicate way to put this. They will massacre—”
“Massacre?”
“All of your illustrative specimens, the rector having convinced the prisoners, and perhaps himself as well, that the ancestors of those birds and reptiles were created by Satan. Needless to say, I’m persuaded that Bishop Wilberforce and Mr. Hallowborn care only about preventing the animals from ever appearing at Alastor Hall.”
Miss Bathurst’s complexion changed from a marbled pale to a morbid white. Her breathing devolved into gulps and gasps, as if her malaria had abruptly returned. “I have difficulty believing my opponents would go to such monstrous lengths.”
“Dartworthy was likewise flabbergasted, also Runciter and Miss Kirsop.”
“You should have told me of this ghastly plot many weeks ago.” Her eyes burned with the same implacable fury as when her Athena had bested Dartworthy’s Poseidon in the equatorial pageant.
“Back in Oxford, Wilberforce extracted a vow of silence from me,” said Malcolm, sensing that his excuse sounded as inadequate to Miss Bathurst as it did to himself. “Even after trading my Anglicanism for Deism, I hesitated to speak to you of the Great Winnowing.” He approached the plaster crucifix and casually brushed the Nazarene’s bleeding feet. “I hope you won’t judge my inertia too harshly.”
“Infinity’s angels are tolerant of human foibles. My own forgiveness will take longer.”
For a protracted minute Miss Bathurst spoke not a word. Slowly, methodically, eyes fixed on the helices of sanctified smoke rising from the altar, she grasped the mother flame and lit a candle. “Tonight I shall pray for Captain Runciter,” she explained. “I would also ask the Presence to bless Bishop Wilberforce and Mr. Hallowborn, but I doubt that I can summon the requisite charity.” She lit a second candle. “Instead I shall pray for Mr. Wallace, whose mechanistic theory of life may prevent his ever seeing the light of eternity. I shall likewise beseech the universe on behalf of … I cannot decide.”
“Why not pray for the scientist who burdened you with a mechanistic theory of life?”
“A felicitous thought.”
“An Englishman, I assume. Yes, Miss Bathurst, I’m trying to trick you into revealing his identity.”
“No need for trickery, Reverend, now that you’ve turned against Wilberforce. My teacher was Mr. Charles Darwin of County Kent, an honorable man—and the father of the child for whom I prayed on Wednesday. He never had the slightest ambition to enter the contest. Indeed, he will not allow the definitive version of his argument, a tome called Towards a Theory of Natural Selection, to be published until after his death. I copied the original sketch without his knowledge.”
“The Charles Darwin who wrote The Voyage of the Beagle?”
Miss Bathurst nodded and, firming her grip on the mother flame, touched her blanched cheek with her free hand. A pensive expression stole across her alabaster face. “Tell me, where do you place the Antares at present? Could Hallowborn have reached Galápagos by now?”
“Unless the storms around Cape Horn have been unusually tame this year, I suspect he’s not yet free of Tierra del Fuego.”
“I must ask a favor, Reverend. On leaving here, please go to the docks and find Alfonso Torresblanco of the Pulga Feliz. Inform the capitán that although my brother and Mr. Pritchard have absconded, the rest of us will guard his cargo with our lives. Tomorrow you will gather up Ralph, Solange, and Runciter and bring them to the Jacaré Vermelho at noon. In thwarting Simon Hallowborn, I shall need all the help I can get.”
Malcolm doffed his straw hat, then rubbed his brine-soaked brow with his palm. “Miss Bathurst the connoisseur of the cosmos is an impressive woman, but suddenly I see glimmerings of her prior self, the natural-born schemer. Truth to tell, she’s the one I prefer.”
“Though the conniving Chloe had certain virtues, she was in every way inferior to the person I have become.”
And with that remark Miss Bathurst fingered her ruined hair, pursed her pallid lips, and lit a candle for Charles Darwin.
* * *
Apprehensively Chloe entered the smoky Jacaré Vermelho, wending her way amidst the domino players and arm wrestlers. Joining her erstwhile shipmates in the far corner, she soon realized that this reunion was unlikely to prove convivial. Apparently her companions had arranged to arrive ahead of her and imbibe large quantities of alcohol, the better to sustain their hostility towards their former guiding light. By the evidence littering the table, Ralph and Captain Runciter had already consumed half a bottle of caxaça rum, whilst Solange and Mr. Chadwick had nearly drained a flagon of caxirí beer.
“Tell me this infinity folderol is a joke,” said Solange, refilling her mug with caxirí. “Tell me you’re still determined to deliver God’s funeral oration.”
Chloe hummed softly to herself, serenity spreading through her flesh. “A sacred entity rescued me from death and blessed me with exceeding peace. Thenceforth I became its apostle.”
“And prisoner,” said Solange.
Runciter sucked down a large measure of caxaça. “Religion is a wonderful thing, Miss Bathurst,” he said, sounding as though he had a clothes-peg on his tongue, “but rather less wonderful when it compromises your friends’ financial security.”
“You were cured by quinine, not the cosmos,” said Ralph suc
cinctly.
Ignoring the mariner’s flippancy, she squeezed Mr. Chadwick’s wrist and asked, “Will Capitán Torresblanco still accept our services?”
“He was unhappy to learn that your brother and Mr. Pritchard have quit the crew of the Pulga Feliz,” said the vicar, nodding, “but then I repaired his mood with a mil réis note from our treasury.”
“God and the cosmos aside,” said Runciter, “the raw fact is that you signed a contract with Ralph and myself, an agreement making us partners in a potentially lucrative business venture, and suddenly you’re trying to weasel out of it. That’s hardly the behavior of a Christian or whatever it is you’ve become.”
“Owing to my epiphany, I now understand the worthlessness of wealth,” said Chloe.
“Piffle,” said Solange.
“Hear me, dear friends,” said Chloe. “I am going to Galápagos. With any luck, I shall get there ahead of the Antares. When the convicts disembark, they’ll find me waiting for them, ready to foil the Great Winnowing.”
“By what means?” asked Mr. Chadwick, sipping his coppery beer.
“In time a plan will be revealed to me.”
“Heralded by a flock of cherubs blowing gold trumpets,” said Solange, slurring her words, “and a gaggle of seraphs fluttering silver wings.”
Appropriating a stray beer mug, Chloe filled it with the dregs of the caxirí flagon. “If Mr. Hallowborn intended merely to kill a great many reptiles and birds, I might allow him his disgraceful conspiracy. But he means to engineer the massacre of a dozen species at least. Extinction is God’s prerogative alone. And so I must put a question to you. Are we all still kindred spirits?”
“Meaning what?” said Solange, clucking her tongue.
“Will you become charter members of the Encantadas Salvation Brigade? On Wednesday morning, might we gather aboard the Pulga Feliz as planned, having agreed that there are higher causes than sneering at God and growing rich?”
For a full minute no one spoke, so that Chloe’s skull reverberated with the mournful thrum of a solitary guitar, the clacking of the caboclos’ dominoes, and the shouts of drunken ribeirinhos encouraging the arm wrestlers.
At last Ralph gulped a draught of rum and cast his vote. “Very well, my fair philosopher, I shall join your latest mad endeavor, but only because I believe that, by the time we reach the Encantadas, you’ll again be wanting to claim the gold.”
“I, too, shall enlist, darling Chloe, and for the same reasons as Ralph,” said Solange. “At your core you remain my she-devil.”
“All right, Miss Bathurst, I shall continue to go upriver with you, and over the mountains, and beyond,” said Runciter. “Evidently Ralph and Miss Kirsop expect you to recover your wits, and who am I to argue with their prognosis?”
“On to Galápagos!” shouted Mr. Chadwick, lifting his beer mug.
“On to Galápagos!” echoed Chloe, raising her own caxirí.
The beverages of Ralph, Solange, and Runciter remained fastened to the table.
“I care not a fig whether you lift a glass with me today,” said Chloe. “What matters is that you made the right decision, and for that I applaud you, as would a child named Miss Annie, who loved the tortoises once in my charge—creatures who would likewise appreciate our resolve to save their brethren: Tristan and Isolde of Charles Isle, Boswell and Johnson of James Isle, Perseus and Androm—”
“I shan’t celebrate your high-mindedness,” interrupted Solange, “but I’m not above drinking to a tortoise.” She raised her beer and cried, “To Isolde!”
“To Boswell!” shouted Runciter, committing his caxaça to the ritual.
“To Perseus!” proclaimed Ralph, waving his rum glass about like a baton.
Chloe glanced at the adjacent table, where a grinning aviador dealer engaged two ancient Brazilians, impoverished pirahíba fishermen most likely, in a game of faro. The players studied their pasteboard proxies—a knave of hearts and a queen of diamonds—with a yearning so desperate it was obvious they’d made foolish bets on the next turn of the cards: perhaps they’d wagered the following month’s catch, or maybe their cottages, or perhaps even their fishing boats.
Placing the beer mug to her lips, Chloe silently entreated the Presence to keep both innocent old men from harm, then drained her caxirí and, turning, surveyed the dazed faces of her fellowship, in whom she was well pleased.
8
Recruited into an Unlikely Army, Our Heroine Ponders the Doctrine of Just War and Savors the Virtues of Hallucinogenic Snuff
Like prudence, reticence, and a fondness for fools, maternal instincts did not figure prominently in Chloe Bathurst’s psyche. At no point during her pregnancy ordeal at age seventeen had she taken pleasure in the thought of a babe at her breast, and despite her affection for Mr. Darwin’s brood she could easily imagine getting through life without once giving birth. For all this, her epiphany in Manáos had arguably partaken of procreation. She had left her sickbed carrying a foetal faith, and she dearly hoped that in the months to come she could keep the gestating creature from harm.
Amongst its enemies, sad to say, were her own traveling companions. Shortly after the Pulga Feliz began steaming west along the Solimões (the name by which skippers and traders knew the upper Amazon), Solange tormented her with the vicar’s Bible, splayed open to the eleventh chapter of Matthew. “Look here, darling,” sneered the courtesan. “The offspring of your sacred entity thinks nothing of consigning whole cities to a fiery furnace—men, women, children, and lizards.” As the engine-boat cruised past Codajás, Mr. Chadwick persuaded Chloe to once again lend him the transmutation essay, and that evening he came to her and said, “I hear in these pages not only the ring of truth but the death rattle of a delusion.” Two days later, the Pulga Feliz having dropped anchor in Tefé to take on boiler wood, Ralph taunted her with a lewd wink and said, “Would you care to join Dr. Quondam and myself for a glass of crianza in a private room in the Hotel da Golfinho?”—the infuriating implication being that in embracing the Presence she was indulging a transient whim and remained a sensualist at heart.
“So squalid a proposition would have beguiled the Covent Garden Antichrist,” she replied, “but Miss Bathurst is unmoved.”
“Two arms and six tentacles, my fair philosopher.”
“You are not a cad, Mr. Dartworthy. I shall thank you to stop talking like one.”
Although getting her friends to appreciate her revelation was clearly a doomed enterprise, she remained hopeful of achieving an equally formidable goal: beating Simon Hallowborn to the Encantadas. Alas, while the Pulga Feliz eclipsed Capitão Gonçalves’s packet-steamer in size and bulk, her boiler and sidewheels were much smaller, making her amongst the slowest vessels on the Solimões. Seeking to counter the Pulga’s inefficiency, Chloe implored the Presence to increase the boat’s speed, even as she asked the same of Capitán Torresblanco, a tall, ox-eyed, Caracas-born bravado who recalled the gruff but noble gladiator Milius in The Last Days of Pompeii. After apprising Torresblanco of the plot against Galápagos, she urged him to keep the throttle open, shorten the provisioning stops, and jettison such weighty inessentials as the supplemental anchor and the replacement sidewheel. He replied that although he also wanted to reach Iquitos quickly, her ideas were without merit, and he would entertain no more such suggestions whilst yet master of the vessel she was privileged to serve.
Rebuffed by both her capitán and (as far as she could tell) the cosmos, Chloe decided to give herself completely to her bicho da seda duties. As with her employment aboard the Rainha da Selva, she took an aesthetic satisfaction in thwarting one sort of insect, the mosquito, with threads created by the larvae of another, the silkmoth. But no such pleasures accrued to her second daily obligation. According to Torresblanco, at any moment brigands might attack the Pulga with the aim of stealing their cargo, which meant that, come the noon hour, Chloe was required to slather herself with a particularly foul-smelling variety of mosquito paste, take a rifled musket in hand,
and occupy the afterdeck until four o’clock, guarding the ziggurat of crates whilst imagining herself killing—or being killed by—river pirates or renegade Indians.
For nearly two weeks the contents of the crates remained a mystery. Not until the Pulga was within a hundred miles of the Peruvian border, cruising past São Paulo de Olivença, did the capitán deign to discuss their cargo. Whereas the smaller boxes held artillery shells, gunpowder, revolvers, and Lepage carbines, the central crate contained a brass cannon that Torresblanco and several amigos had recently dredged up from the bottom of the Rio Negro, a relic from their days commanding troops of rebellious mestizo migrant workers—the cabanos—in the 1835 uprising. Once it was clear that the gruesome Cabanagem revolt would end in defeat for the workers, Torresblanco had dumped his army’s largest cannon into the river, lest the Brazilian government use it to massacre the remaining insurgents.
“Am I given to understand we’re headed into a war zone?” asked Solange in a tone of alarm.
“Correct,” said Torresblanco, feeding a cashew to his pet parrot, Miguel, a macaw fluent in profanity.
“What sort of war zone?”
“The sort in which a cannon would prove useful.”
“Mierda!” squawked the parrot.
“Are we to assume that hostile forces might start shooting at us?” asked Ralph.
“In a war zone, an exchange of bullets is not an uncommon event,” said Torresblanco.
“Confound it, sir, must you be so frugal with the particulars?” demanded Runciter.
“For the moment, sí, including those particulars that account for my frugality.”
“Capitán, I am deeply offended by your news,” said Runciter. “How dare you imperil my company in this fashion?”
“If you mad English explorers wish to avoid danger,” said Torresblanco, “I suggest you stay within the borders of your own belligerent country.”
“La puta madre que te parió!” cried Miguel.