by Wilbur Smith
“Perhaps—” Lascaux gasped. “Perhaps there is a way.”
Constance paused. She gazed up at him, eyes wide and brimming with gratitude. “You mean it? We shall be married?”
Lascaux hesitated. Constance took his balls into her mouth and sucked on them gently. “You know if we were married, I could deny you nothing,” she whispered. “As my husband, you could make me do anything you desired.”
Lascaux shuddered so hard she thought he might climax at that moment. She eased away, watching his tumescent prick throb with frustrated longing.
“We shall be married,” Lascaux gasped.
Really, Constance thought, as she took him in her mouth, men were not hard to govern. All a woman had to do was swallow her pride.
There was a handsome cathedral in Chandernagore, but they did not have the wedding there. Lascaux did not want a big ceremony. “You know how the others tease me for falling in love with an Englishwoman,” he explained. Instead, they found a sea captain in one of the taverns by the riverbank, and had him marry them on his quarterdeck, according to maritime law. There were no guests—only a Swedish boatswain who stood witness—and no reception. But Constance gave Lascaux a wedding night he would never forget.
A month later the newly-weds embarked for France. From the stern rail, Constance watched India dissolve into the horizon and did not feel the slightest tug of regret. She wondered what had become of Theo, if he had been killed in the fighting, or escaped, or died of fever. The question hardly mattered. When she had needed him most, Theo had failed her.
Instead, she turned her mind to France. She practiced her French until she was fluent. She peppered Lascaux with questions: about his family, his home, the weather, the society, the fashions. Partly this was because she knew he would expect it of an eager and dutiful wife, and she wanted to please him. But it was more than that. France loomed in her imagination as a sort of Promised Land, a place where she could forget who she had been and remake her future.
But the more Constance asked, the more Lascaux withdrew. He had less and less appetite for conversation. As they passed Spain and beat across the Bay of Biscay, he sank into gloom. The night before they docked at Lorient, he did not even respond to her advances in bed.
“Is something wrong?” Constance asked.
He turned away from her. “The colonel is insisting that I go to Boulogne as soon as we dock. A fool’s errand, but there is no arguing with him. I am sorry, my love.”
“But you are due your leave.”
“He insists. It will be only a week or two. I will find you lodgings at an inn, and return as soon as I can.” He rolled over and kissed her forehead. “You will barely notice I am gone.”
The ship docked at Lorient on the morning tide. Before dawn, Constance was dressed and on the poop deck, breathing in the air of her new home. It was cool and damp, like nothing she had ever known in India. Soft grass grew on the banks of the Blavet estuary, while beyond she could see well-ordered fields full of green. A ripe new world.
A crowd had assembled on the quay to greet the ship’s arrival. Constance scanned it, wondering what sort of people she would meet in this unfamiliar country. Surely they could not all be as dull as Lascaux.
One person in particular caught her eye. “Who is that woman waving at you? The fat one with the ugly child on her shoulders.”
Lascaux, standing beside her, didn’t look. “She must be one of the sailors’ wives.”
“No—she is waving directly at you. Look.”
Reluctantly, Lascaux turned to where Constance had pointed. The boy on the dock put both arms in the air, waving them frantically. Lascaux replied with a small, embarrassed twitch of his hand.
Constance looked between the three of them: the woman, the child and Lascaux. Closer now, she could see that the boy had wiry dark hair, and a pouting mouth that was a perfect miniature of Lascaux’s.
She saw everything.
“That is your wife.” She gripped the rail until her knuckles went white. “Your son.”
Lascaux said nothing.
“Do you deny it? Shall I ask her myself?”
Lascaux’s mouth flapped open. He made a sound in his throat, like a toad. “I did not know she would come,” he croaked.
The key had turned in Constance’s heart again. The fury flooded into her. It took an effort to keep her voice down, so she would not humiliate herself in front of all the passengers. “Why did you marry me, bring me here, if you already had a wife?”
“You made me do it,” said Lascaux, feebly.
“And what did you intend to happen when we returned to France? Did you think you could keep this from me? That I would be satisfied to live as your mistress? Or were you going to leave me at the inn here, and never return?” She saw the truth in his eyes. “You would have abandoned me, like some weeping Penelope waiting for her gallant husband’s return.” She shook her head. “I have been such a fool.”
“You must understand—”
“Hold your tongue.” Constance thought quickly. “How much money have you?”
Lascaux blanched. “What has that to do with anything?”
“How much?”
The day before, the regimental quartermaster had given the soldiers their back pay for the last six months. “A thousand francs.”
“Give it to me.”
“That is impossible,” Lascaux protested. “My family depend on that money to live.”
“Perhaps you should have given more thought to your family before you married me.”
He put out his chin. “I refuse.”
The ship shook as the hull bumped against the pier. The spectators gave a huzzah. Down on the wharf, Constance could see Lascaux’s wife staring at her husband. She had noticed him deep in conversation with Constance, and had a dark look on her face.
“If you do not give me the money, I will go to your colonel and inform him that you are a bigamist. Then I will go and introduce myself to your other wife. She will be fascinated to hear what you got up to in the exotic Indies.”
“You would not dare,” whispered Lascaux. He had turned away from Constance, and was waving at his son with jerky movements, like an automaton.
“You have not the least idea what I would dare to do. I have survived torments you could not imagine.” She leaned closer. “Give me the money, and you will never see me again. You can go back to your dumpling wife and your fat son and pretend to yourself you never knew me. Or lose everything.”
“Half,” he pleaded. “Leave me half of it at least.”
“You may keep a quarter. And that is my final offer.” She dropped her hand to the crotch of his trousers and tightened her fingers around the bulge until he had to blink back tears. “What is it to be?”
Constance stepped off the ship with a spring in her step, seven hundred and fifty francs richer, and a free woman. Lascaux’s wife watched her with narrowed eyes. As Constance walked past, she jostled the woman’s shoulder so hard she nearly dropped her child.
Constance offered the woman her most dazzling smile. “My apologies, madame. Do give my fondest regards to your husband. He is magnificent.” Without waiting for a reply, she moved on, leaving behind a furious wife, a bawling child, and a stammering captain, whose reunion with his family was not at all what he had dreamed of.
Constance did not look back. At a dockside inn she found a stagecoach drawn up, waiting for passengers off the boat. It would leave in half an hour.
A middle-aged man in a bright scarlet coat stood outside the inn, smoking a pipe and watching the shipping. The style of his dress, the cut and weave of the fabric, was so instantly familiar from Chandernagore that Constance guessed he must be a merchant with the French East India Company.
He tipped his hat to Constance and gave her a smile. His teeth were black from too much sugar. “Where are you bound, mademoiselle?”
“Madame,” she corrected him. “I am a married woman.”
His smile faltered, but only
a little. “Your husband is a lucky man.”
“He is dead.”
“My condolences.” The merchant did not sound very sorry.
“He was lost at sea.” Constance did not sound very sorry either. “It happens.”
“Then perhaps you will permit me to escort you to your destination.” He saw her hesitate. “Of course, chivalry demands that I should pay your fare.”
The merchant’s breath was stale with tobacco and he wore far too much perfume, but Constance did not mind. Even with seven hundred and fifty francs in her purse, she would have to be frugal in this new country. And a woman must make compromises to get what she needs. “That is most kind.”
He hooked his arm through Constance’s. “May I have the honor of your name?”
She thought for a moment. Lascaux was a liar, a coward and a bigamist. The marriage was a fraud: she would not bear his name one moment longer. But neither could she go back to being plain Constance Courtney.
“I am Constance de Courtenay.” It had a pleasing French ring—maybe too much, judging by the merchant’s impressed reaction.
“Are you related to the Courtenays of Burgundy?”
“Only distantly,” she said vaguely. “My mother was English.”
“How exotic. And where are you going?”
She was in an unknown country, without friends or property. She needed somewhere she could make a new beginning, reinvent herself. Somewhere to leave behind her past and forget forever the broken woman who had crawled out of the Black Hole.
There could be only one destination.
“I am going to Paris.”
Theo would never have believed that men could travel so quickly through a trackless wilderness. The Indians went on, hour after hour, with a lolloping stride that never seemed to tire them. Soon Theo’s feet were blistered raw, his boots shredded on the rocky ground. Agonizing pain ran through his body. He tried to keep up, and when he couldn’t, the Indians took the rod between his arms and dragged him along.
As best he could guess, they covered fifteen miles that day—and more the next, through laurel thickets that made the going hard even for the Indians. They camped at night without fires, and though they shared their rations equally with the prisoners, there was never enough to stop the ache in Theo’s stomach.
And always nagging was the desperate fear of what they meant to do with him.
On the fourth day, they reached the top of a cliff. The leader signaled a halt. He was the man who had faced down the corporal’s musket. From what he had overheard, and whispered conversations with Gibbs, Theo learned that his name was Malsum. The feathers in his hair were battle honors, and there were more than Theo could count.
Malsum advanced to the cliff edge and let out a long, keening call. Before it had died away, he repeated it again, and again, a string of cries that echoed off the valley below.
“Each halloo signifies one scalp they have taken,” Gibbs said to Theo.
Answering shouts came from the bottom of the cliff. Muskets were fired into the air. The returning warriors descended the cliff path, emerging into a clearing where their village stood. More Indians came out to greet them, with many women and children among them.
The Indian village was ringed by a rough palisade. Inside, low wooden sleeping platforms covered with straw roofs surrounded a curved longhouse, made of arched saplings roofed with bark. Animal hides were strung on poles to dry; others hung from the frames of the buildings.
Theo took a closer look. They were not animal hides hanging from the buildings but human scalps.
Malsum and his men dragged the two prisoners to a patch of beaten ground outside the longhouse. An old man wrapped in a blanket sat cross-legged on a bearskin. He had a porcupine quill through his nose, and many strands of shells around his neck.
“That is the sachem,” whispered Gibbs. “He is the chief of the village.”
The sachem spoke formally with Malsum. Much of it seemed to be ritual, recited from memory, but Theo sensed an underlying battle going on beneath the exchange.
The sachem struggled to his feet. He examined Gibbs closely, then turned to Theo. His face was wizened, his eyes clouded with age, yet when he looked into Theo’s eyes, Theo felt he was peering deep into his soul. He spoke—low words that had no meaning to Theo. He surmised he was being asked a question, that his life might hang on the answer, but he had no words to reply.
The chief turned away. A decision had been taken. Gibbs was dragged to a wooden post and tied fast against it. Theo was led to one of the wooden platforms. The ropes around his hands were tied to the frame, but he was able to sit down. His captors left him, joining the crowd that had gathered around Gibbs. Malsum was cleaning his knife on his loincloth. Nearby, a woman tended a glowing bed of coals with a pot sitting on them.
Malsum cut Gibbs’s clothes away. The Indians peered at his nakedness. In a blur of strokes and hands, he flashed his knife around Gibbs’s head. Gibbs screamed. A ring of blood oozed from his skull. Malsum clenched a fistful of hair, twisted it around and pulled.
With a sucking sound, a floppy scrap of hair and skin came away, leaving a bloody tonsure. Gibbs’s screams were diabolical, echoing endlessly across the empty wilderness.
Malsum thrust his trophy in Gibbs’s face, then held it aloft in triumph.
Gibbs’s screams never stopped. Even with his head sliced open, he was still alive. A woman brought the clay bowl that had been sitting over the coals and passed it to Malsum. Malsum upended it over Gibbs’s head. Hot sand poured into the open wound. Gibbs writhed and jerked like a madman. He banged his head against the post, trying to dislodge the burning sand or to dash his brains out. The bonds would not let him move.
The torture lasted for hours. Every person in the village took their turn, even the children. They cut and tore pieces off his body; they burned him; they drove nails into his flesh. Theo closed his eyes but could not block the terrible sounds. The question gnawed at him: what will they do to me?
The sun set. The Indians built a pyre around the post and set it alight. Gibbs was still living: Theo saw his body moving in spasms as the flames consumed him. He had never thought he would count it a mercy to see a man burned alive.
He barely slept. When he did, his dreams were so terrible he was glad to wake from them—until he remembered where he was.
At dawn the Indians seemed in no hurry to attend to him. They brought him a bowl of maize meal and meat, which he devoured. He wondered at the significance of this act of nourishment.
Mid-morning, the Indians gathered in front of the longhouse. Many were armed; even the children carried sticks. Again, Malsum and the chief seemed to be at odds. Malsum spoke angrily, stamping his feet and beating his chest. The chief faced him down, yielding nothing. Theo wondered if they were discussing his fate.
A decision was reached. It evidently dissatisfied Malsum, which gave Theo hope, until he saw what was going to happen. The whole population of the village lined up in two rows opposite each other, making a corridor in between. The warriors held their tomahawks and war clubs, while the women and children brandished sticks and cudgels. A woman untied Theo’s hands. A man handed him a birch pole, about six feet long.
All eyes turned to Theo. The Indians beat their clubs and sticks on the ground, raising clouds of dust and chanting a strange song. Theo gripped his staff. He saw what he had to do, even before the chief pointed to the space between the lines. They wanted him to run the gauntlet.
The line was almost a hundred feet long. There was no way he would survive the ordeal. But he would not let them say he died a coward. Indians were approaching with sharp sticks to herd him forward. Without waiting for them, he walked to the line of his own free will. He raised the staff in both hands and took a deep breath. He felt as if he was standing on the edge of a cliff.
He stepped in.
The first blow almost knocked the staff out of his hands. He twisted to block it, but that left his other side exposed. A sti
ck jabbed him in the kidneys and sent spasms of pain through his back. He staggered forward. A small boy stuck out his leg, tripping him. Theo stumbled and would have fallen if he had not caught his weight on his staff. That meant he was in no position to stop the next hit, a sharp crack across his shoulders. Another buckled his knees. An impact almost broke his arm. They came from every direction. No matter where he turned he couldn’t defend himself.
The end of the tunnel was far away. He had not gone three steps. He sank to his knees.
But through the haze, he realized something strange. No one was striking his head, where he was most vulnerable. Was that to prolong the ordeal, so that he did not pass out too soon?
Leaning on the staff, he pushed himself up. The weight of blows raining down on him almost forced him back to the ground, but he hunched his shoulders and pushed through the pain. He flailed the staff wildly. One step, then another. He saw a club sweeping in to his ankles and hurdled it, making three more strides.
Every inch was an ordeal, every step forward a triumph. But they were hard won victories. A mist of pain threatened to overwhelm him. An Indian warrior swung his war-club at Theo’s ribs. Theo barely had strength to thrust out his staff to block it.
The staff snapped. And in that moment, Theo saw his chance. Taking the two halves, one in each hand, he windmilled them about so that the Indians had to get out of his way. Space opened around him. Summoning the last of his strength, he charged forward. There was light and space ahead. Ten paces away. Five. He was almost there.
A towering figure stepped into his path. Even in the fog of battle, Theo recognized Malsum’s face. He was unarmed. Theo swung the two halves of the broken staff at him, but Malsum caught them and twisted them out of Theo’s hands. He knocked Theo’s legs from under him. Theo dropped like a stone. He tried to rise, but Malsum kicked dust in his eyes. Theo clutched his face, leaving himself exposed.
A blow struck the side of his head and his vision went black.