by D. J. Butler
The rowers were all men. Etienne could tell, because the Brides were in their full power and looking for women. Unable to find any other than the dockmaster, they poured into her like a fifty-gallon barrel trying to empty itself into a pocket flask.
Adisalem whimpered and shifted from foot to foot.
“Iwi selami newi.” The captain spoke to Adisalem in Amharic, and she spoke back.
If he had merely paid off the dockmaster, Etienne would be nervous about the fact that he didn’t understand what passed between her and the ship’s captain. But he could feel her spirit, taut and yearning, through the fibers of his own body. He knew the need that drove her, and he knew she could not possibly resist.
“I’ll send my men below,” Adisalem told the captain, switching to English.
“Igbos?” The captain shot Etienne a skeptical look. “You don’t find them to be too lazy? Always wanting to laugh and play?”
Etienne grinned and tried to look harmless. “That one is a wrestler,” he said, pointing to Achebe. “I’m too lazy even to play.”
The captain snorted and the mate sneered.
“No cargo to unload here?” Adisalem asked.
The captain shook his head. “Carrying coal down to New Orleans and cotton back up. Nothing to unload on the way.”
Adisalem nodded. “We will be brief.”
Ostensibly, Etienne and his men were Hansards and would now check that the Favor’s cargo consisted only of coal. Of course, it wasn’t true; somewhere buried under the coal was a smaller cargo of gold, sent by the Emperor Thomas Penn to the Chevalier of New Orleans as a blackmail payment.
Probably, Adisalem was bribed by the captain to look the other way. Or maybe she had no idea of the wealth that was being transferred under her nose. Maybe she didn’t care.
Etienne nodded to the deck crew as he passed and ignored the uppermost bank of rowers, who were huddling together under wool blankets and squeezing beneath their own rowing benches. He went belowdecks and saw two more banks of rowers similarly bedding down for the night in the long gallery beneath the orange flicker of several torches.
“Maitre Carrefour,” he murmured as he walked. “I seek your aid tonight in destroying the murderer of my father. I beg you to appear in your cloak of flame. My Brides, Ezili Freda, Ezili Danto, I feel the power that abounds in you both, and I implore you to direct it toward the master of the crossroads. Maitre Carrefour, come to me tonight!”
Four tall, bearded men in Ferdinandian hats and long black coats beat the rowers out of the central aisle with heavy sticks. Etienne nodded lazily to them, too, and avoided meeting their gaze.
“Cargo?” he asked.
One of the men pointed at an open hatch in the floor and steps leading down the lowest chamber of the ship: the cargo hold.
“I will check the rowers,” Philippe said. He and François padded up the gallery, looking left and right under the benches as if they might find anything. Achebe took a torch and descended with Etienne into the darkness.
The cargo hold had no rowing benches, but large wooden boxes. The boxes had no tops and were full of large chunks of black Pennsland coal. In the bottom of one of these boxes, if he guessed right and dug quickly enough, Etienne might find Pennsland gold instead.
“Maitre Carrefour,” Etienne murmured, stepping away from the square of torchlight that shone down through the trapdoor. “Tonight I implore you to ride in fire.”
Etienne was no horse, to be ridden by any of the loa other than his Brides. But he had brought many worshippers to Papa Legba. He knew what the dark loa needed, and he had the Brides to help him.
He felt the pressure of the bottled-up passion of the Brides, swollen between him and the dockmaster, dissipate suddenly, as it was redirected to the great loa of the crossroads. Etienne took the bottle of gunpowder-infused rum from his pocket, filled his mouth, and spat forward. He spat a second mouthful aft, and then one each to starboard and port. He took the torch from Achebe.
“You’re no dockworker.”
Etienne turned to face the source of the voice. Two of the tall, bearded men had come down the ladder behind him. But as the one spoke, Etienne realized that his accent wasn’t Ferdinandian at all.
“You’re the mameluke,” Etienne said. They both spoke French.
The mameluke smiled and drew a curved sword. “Did you think we were standing outside your gambling den, O pagan bishop?”
In fact, I did. But now it was clear that the men posted in front of Etienne’s casino, the ones Etienne had taken to be mamelukes watching over him, were decoys. The real men were here, guarding the chevalier’s life-sustaining gold.
Or rather, guarding the bait; Etienne had walked into a trap.
The chevalier willingly threw away Planchet’s life to set the trap.
Poor fool.
“It doesn’t matter.” Etienne threw the torch onto the coal. It landed atop a pile and lay there guttering.
“What kind of idiot thinks he can ignite a pile of coal so easily?” The second mameluke grinned and also drew a saber.
Achebe squeezed past Etienne and crouched low, his feet and hands wide apart. “I will make you swallow that word,” the wrestler said.
“Idiot,” the second mameluke said again. “Cretin. Moron.”
Etienne took a deep breath, isolating the dockmaster away from himself and feeling the Brides in a mounting frenzy. “Maitre Carrefour!” he shouted. “O Brides, bring the black dog of the crossroads! Maitre Carrefour, I beg you to ride in fire!”
The mamelukes chuckled, but it was a forced sound.
Etienne took a swig of rum into his cheeks and sprayed it on the torch.
A curtain of fire sprang up all around the cargo hold as every single box of coal ignited at the same moment. Etienne heard howling sounds. A blast of air colder than ice blew through the hold as if the ship had disappeared and a wind straight from the pole was burning down the Mississippi.
“Yarob!” The first mameluke shouted, and Achebe hurled himself upon the swordsmen.
They had swords, but their surprise at the sudden ring of fire let the wrestler get inside the blades’ reach. Suddenly, he had one man clutched to his own chest, head and shoulders pinned in a lock. He pushed his captive at the second man, forcing them both back and opening the road to the stairs up.
Etienne ran up the stairs. He slipped a small knife from inside his jacket, prepared to fight, but he didn’t need it. The fire already licked at the walls of the middle gallery, as well, though there were long lines and circular patches where the fire burned around the wood.
The ship’s defensive warding. Naturally, the owner had hexed the vessel against fire, but the spell had been partial. It had assumed an ordinary fire, rather than explosion of the wrath of Maitre Carrefour, fueled by the lust of the Brides, from the ship’s own hold.
The deck crew was abandoning ship, and the rowers with them. Etienne saw Adisalem—released by the Brides—staring stunned at the fire roaring up the side of the ship.
Philippe and François lay on the deck, dead. Over them knelt a third mameluke, bloodied and haggard. Etienne didn’t see the fourth mussulman, and he didn’t wait. He marched down the gangplank, waving away hostile stares of two of the deck crew with a fierce gesture of his knife.
Achebe rejoined him on the dock. The wrestler held a curved sword in his hand and wore a look of grim determination on his face.
They left the pool of light that was Natchez-under-the-Hill and climbed the bluff above, to where Etienne had horses waiting.
“I’s led to expect I’d git a dance.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Sister Serafina had to be helped onto the horse. She had to be wrapped in three blankets Calvin had brought, and rode up the mountain clutching a ceramic pot containing live coals from a fire to keep her warm. Calvin had to lead her horse—over the rougher parts of the terrain, he even had to dismount and walk beside her to be sure she didn’t fall off. Once they finally got up the
draw to the meadows atop Calhoun Mountain, she had to be lifted off her horse onto Red Charlie’s porch.
But when she saw the Cahokian herald, no one had to tell her what to do. She knelt beside the Firstborn and examined him thoroughly.
Olanthes looked worse. Stripped of his clothing and long boots and bathed, he lay beside the fire on a pallet. An angry red wound gaped in his side—the flesh from his armpit to his hip was blistered, swollen, red, and oozing pus.
“I reckon the pus might be laudable.” Red Charlie coughed, probably to avoid gagging. Cal wanted to gag himself from the stench of Olanthes’s wound. “We didn’t squeeze him none, the pus jest came out on its own. Bearin’ away the agents of infection, that’s what they taught us in the Foresters.”
“Horseshit, boy.” Sister Serafina snorted. “Ain’t no laudable pus. Pus is pus, means he’s infected. That’s wet gangrene there, and he’s jest about on death’s own doorstep right now. Iffen his blood ain’t already poisoned, it will be come mornin’.”
“This rider come to me from my daughter Sarah,” Iron Andy said. “You tell us what you need to treat the feller, and you’ll git it.”
“Scaldin’ hot water, lots of it. Knives, and someone to heat the knives in the fire. Hard liquor for him to drink, iffen he wakes up, and to splash on the flesh, and on the blades. A bucket for the parings. Someone to hold him down iffen he moves.”
“The tools are all here,” Andy said. “You ain’t my first Circulator.”
“I’m your best, though.” She smiled at him, and Cal saw blue eyes clear as the noon sky flashing at his grandpa.
“True enough. I’ll heat the knives myself.” Several thin, sharp knives lay on a boiled cloth on a table beside the Cahokian. Iron Andy took one, wrapped its hilt in several layers of cotton blanket to protect his hand, and thrust the blade into the fire.
“We’ll hold him,” Polly said. Red Charlie nodded, and they positioned themselves near Olanthes’s head.
“I’ll need a Bible.” The Harvite looked around at Red Charlie, Polly, and Calvin. “And a reader.”
“We got a Bible,” Polly said. “But…” She looked at Red Charlie dubiously.
“I’ll do it,” Cal offered. Polly handed him the book, which was heavy, and which served Red Charlie mostly as a register for recording births, baptisms, weddings, and Masonic rites.
“You got a good, clear voice?” the Circulator asked him.
“I used to read for corn afore I got the New Light.” Cal shrugged. “It was clear enough for the farmers, I reckon.”
“Then it’ll be clear enough for this feller. Start with the third Psalm.”
The wound had been washed, but Sister Serafina washed it again with water just shy of boiling. She took a heated blade from the Elector and began cutting into the Firstborn’s infected side.
Cal read in his best voice:
Lord, how are they increased that trouble me! many are they that rise up against me. Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. Selah. But Thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head. I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and He heard me out of His holy hill. Selah. I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about. Arise, O Lord; save me, O my God: for Thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone; Thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly. Salvation belongeth unto the Lord: Thy blessing is upon Thy people. Selah.
He’d had an explanation once about what “selah” meant, but he’d forgotten it. Something like amen, maybe. Whatever it was, Sister Serafina seemed to be listening for it, and as Cal pronounced the word selah, she made her deepest cuts.
She dropped the cut bits of flesh into a leather and pine-pitch bucket beside the fire. They hit with soft wet splat sounds.
Cal felt ill.
“Good,” she said. Following Calvin’s gaze, she added, “I’m a-cuttin’ out the dead flesh. Iffen we can git all that offa him without him dyin’, we might jest save this boy.”
She set aside the knife she had just used, and the Elector handed her a new one, freshly scoured by the flames. Sister Serafina seemed untroubled by the heat of the water and the steel. Had age dulled her senses? Or long years of exposure?
“Shall I read it again?” Cal asked.
“Psalm three is the Song of Injuries,” Sister Serafina said. “We may git back to it. For now, read the Song of Afflictions. That’s Psalm ninety-one.”
“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty,” Cal read. “I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.”
“Noisome means stinky,” Sister Serafina said. “Jerusalem iffen that ain’t the truth.”
“I know what noisome means,” Cal said.
“Keep readin’!”
He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day. Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
“St. William Harvey,” Sister Serafina cried, “guide now my knife. As I have stripped my life of all things but service to the children of Adam in the name of Christ Jesus and in thy name, to the restoration of life to all, strip thou from this man his dead flesh, the restoration of his life. Amen.”
“Amen,” Iron Andy said.
Olanthes screamed and tried to sit upright. Red Charlie and Polly both threw themselves onto his shoulders and pinned him.
Cal kept reading.
For He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet. Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.
“We’re comin’ to it now, son.” Sister Serafina’s teeth were gritted. She wrestled with Olanthes, splashing a little corn liquor on his bleeding flesh and pouring much more of it into his open mouth. “Psalm twenty-nine is the Seven Voices. Read this one loud.”
“Give unto the Lord,” Cal read.
“Louder!” Sister Serafina shouted. “Loud as e’er you can, son, so nothin’ else in this room gits heard o’er your seven voices.” She poured more liquor into Olanthes, and then dug into his side. Strips of flesh and skin fell into the bucket beside the pallet.
“Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty.” Cal stood to give his belly and lungs more strength. He raised his voice so he was practically shouting. “Give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The voice of the Lord is upon the waters: the God of glory thundereth: the Lord is upon many waters.”
“Good!” Sister Serafina cried. “That’s one voice!”
“The voice of the Lord is powerful,” Cal read. “The voice of the Lord is full of majesty.”
“Three voices!”
“The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars; yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.”
“Four!”
Olanthes arched his back and screamed.
“Five and six!”
“Please!” Olanthes was weeping. “Please stop!”
Cal’s hands trembled. “The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve, and discovereth the forests: and in his temple doth every one speak of his glory.”
“That’s seven voices,” Sister Serafina said. “Everything speak of glory, now.”
“His be the glory, forever and ever,” the Elector said.
“Glory to God!” Polly cried.
“Glory be!” Red Charlie added.
The chapter wasn’t quite finished, so Cal kept reading. “The Lord sitteth upon the flood; yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever. The Lord will give strength unto His people; the Lord will bless His people with peace.”
At the word peace, Olanthes’s back flattened out and he fell silent. Tears ran down his cheeks and into his ears, but his breathing became regular. Sister Serafina poured the last of the liquor over his side. She had cut away several pounds of flesh; the Firstborn lay open like a deer in the process of being gutted.
“Shall I keep reading?” Cal asked.
“You done well,” Serafina told him, answering a question he hadn’t wanted to ask. “Start again with the Song of Injuries, while I bandage this boy up.” To the Elector, she said, “Your messenger will live. Burn this flesh, lessen you want to infect more of your people.”
“And iffen I want to keep a bit of him, for hexin’ purposes?” Cal could tell by his smile the Elector was joking.
“I’ll cut you off a finger. Won’t nobody else git the gangrene that way. Jest tell me which one you want.”
“I reckon I’ll do without a finger. How can I repay you?” Iron Andy asked.
“Well, Jerusalem,” she told him. “I’s led to expect I’d git a dance.”