Matthew was aware that the crowd’s noise had quietened. A shadow fell over him, and spoke. “Na unhuh pah ke ne!”
Two men grasped Matthew, careful to avoid his injuries, and helped him to his feet. Then Matthew turned toward the speaker, but he knew already who’d given that command.
Nawpawpay stood four inches shorter than Matthew, but the height of the judicial wig gave the chief the advantage. The waistcoat’s gold stripes glowed in this strong sunlight. Add to that the intricate tattoos, and Nawpawpay was an absorbing sight as well as a commanding presence. Rachel stood a few feet behind him, het eyes also the color of Spanish coins.
“Forgive my people,” Nawpawpay said in the tongue of kings. He gave a shrug and a smile. “We don’t often entertain visitors.”
Matthew still felt faint. He blinked slowly and lifted his hand to his face. “Is…what you’ve done to…Shawcombe…the white fish…part of your entertainment?”
Nawpawpay looked shocked. “Oh, no! Surely not! You misunderstand, Demon Slayer! You and your woman are honored guests here, for what you’ve done for my people! The white fish was an unclean criminal!”
“You did such to him for murder and thievery? Couldn’t you finish the task and display some mercy?”
Nawpawpay paused, thinking this over. “Mercy?” he asked. He frowned. “What is this mercy?”
Evidently it was a concept the French explorer who’d passed himself off as a king had failed to explain. “Mercy,” Matthew said, “is knowing when…” He hesitated, formulating the rest of it. “When it is time to put the sufferer out of his misery.”
Nawpawpay’s frown deepened. “Misery? What is that?”
“How you felt when your father died,” Matthew answered.
“Ah! That! You’re saying then the white fish should be slit open and his innards dug out and fed to the dogs?”
“Well…perhaps a knife to the heart would be faster.”
“Faster is not the point, Demon Slayer. The point is to punish, and let all who see know how such crimes are dealt with. Also, the children and old people so enjoyed hearing him sing at night.” Nawpawpay stared at the pond, still deliberating. “This mercy. This is how things are done in Franz Europay?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, then. This is something we should seek to emulate. Still…we’ll miss him.” He turned to a man standing next to him. “Se oka pa neha! Nu se caido na kay ichisi!” At the last hissed sound he made a stabbing motion…and, then, to Matthew’s chagrin, a twist and a brutal crosscutting of the invisible blade. The man, who had a face covered with tattoos, ran off hollering and whooping, and most of the onlookers—men, women, and children alike—ran after him making similar noises.
Matthew should have felt better but he did not. He turned his mind to another and more important subject. “A courage sun,” he said. “What is that?”
“What the water spirit gives,” Nawpawpay answered. “Also moons and stars from the great gods.”
“The water spirit?”
“Yes.” Nawpawpay pointed at the pond. “The water spirit lives there.”
“Matthew?” Rachel asked, coming to his side. “What’s he saying?”
“I’m not sure,” he told her. “I’m trying to—”
“Ah ah!” Nawpawpay wagged a finger at him. “The water spirit might be offended to hear mud words.”
“My apologies. Let me ask this, if I may: how does the water spirit give you these courage suns?”
In answer, Nawpawpay walked into the water. He set off from shore, continuing as the water rose to his thighs. Then Nawpawpay stopped and, steadying the wig on his head with one hand, leaned over and searched the bottom with the other. Every so often he would bring up a handful of mud and sift through it.
“What’s he looking for?” Rachel asked quietly. “Clams?”
“No, I don’t think so.” He was tempted to tell her about Shawcombe, if just to relieve himself of what he’d seen, but there was no point in sharing such horror. He watched as Nawpawpay waded to a new location, a little deeper, bent over, and searched again. The front of Woodward’s waistcoat was drenched.
After another moment, the chief moved to a third location. Rachel slipped her hand into Matthew’s. “I’ve never seen the like of this place. There’s a wall of trees around the whole village.”
Matthew grunted, watching Nawpawpay at work. The protective wall of trees, he thought, was a further link between the village and Fount Royal. He had a feeling that the two towns, untold miles apart, were also linked in a way that no one would ever have suspected.
The nearness of her and the warmth of her hand put their lovemaking in mind. As if it were ever really a stone’s toss from the center of his memory. But it had all been an illusion. Hadn’t it? Of course it had been. Rachel would not have climbed up on a pallet to give herself to a dying man. Not even if he had saved her life. Not even if she had thought he was not much longer for this earth.
But…just a speculation…what if by then it was known he was on the road to recovery? And what if…the doctor had actually encouraged such physical and emotional contact, as an Indian method of healing akin to…well…akin to bloodletting?
If that were so, Dr. Shields had a lot to learn.
“Rachel?” Matthew said, his fingers gently caressing her hand. “Did you…” He stopped, not knowing how to approach this. He decided on a roundabout method. “Have you been given any other clothes to wear? Any…uh…native clothing?”
She met his gaze. “Yes,” she said. “That silent girl brought me a garment, in exchange for the blue dress that was in your bag.”
Matthew paused, trying to read her eyes. If he and Rachel had actually made love, her admittance of it was not forthcoming. Neither was it readable in her countenance. And here, he thought, was the crux of the matter: she might have given het body to him, as a gesture of feeling or as some healing method devised by the doctor, who sounded to Matthew to be cut from Exodus Jerusalem’s cloth; or it might have been a wishful fantasy induced by fever and drugged smoke.
Which was the truth? The truth, he thought, was that Rachel still loved her husband. Or, at least, the memory of him. He could see that, by what she would not say. If indeed there was something to be said. She might hold a feeling for him, Matthew thought, like a bouquet of pink carnations. But they were not red roses, and that made all the difference.
He might ask what color the garment was. He might describe it for her exactly. Or he might start to describe it, and she tell him he could not be more wrong.
Perhaps he didn’t need to know. Or wish to know, really. Perhaps things were best left unspoken, and the boundary between reality and fantasy left to run its straight and undisturbed course.
He cleared his throat and looked toward the pond again. “I recall you told me we’d travelled an hour after the Indians came. Do you know in which direction?”
“The sun was on our left for a while. Then at our backs.”
He nodded. They must have travelled an hour’s distance back toward Fount Royal. Nawpawpay moved to a fourth location, and called out, “The water spirit is a trickster! Sometimes he gives them freely, other times we must search and search to find one!” Then, with a child’s grin, he returned to his work.
“It’s amazing!” Rachel said, shaking her head. “Absolutely amazing!”
“What is?”
“That he should speak French, and you can understand him! I wouldn’t be more surprised if he should know Latin!”
“Yes, he is a remarkable—” He stopped abruptly, as if a wall of rough stones had crashed down upon him. “My God,” he whispered. “That’s it!”
“What?”
“No Latin.” Matthew’s face had flushed with excitement. “What Reverend Grove said to Mrs. Nettles, in Bidwell’s parlor. ‘No Latin.’ That’s the key!”
“The key? To what?”
He looked at her, and now his grin was childlike too. “The key to proving you innocent! It’s
the proof I’ve been needing, Rachel! It was right there, as close as…” He struggled for an analogy, and touched his grizzled chin. “Whiskers! The cunning fox can’t—”
“Ah!” Nawpawpay’s hand lifted, muddy to the wrist. “Here is a find!” Matthew waded into the water to meet him. The chief opened his hand and displayed a single silver pearl. It wasn’t much but, coupled with the fragment of pie dish, was enough. Matthew was curious about something, and he waded on past the chief until the water neared his waist.
And there! His suspicion was confirmed; he felt a definite current swirling around his knees. “The water moves,” he said.
“Ah, yes,” Nawpawpay agreed. “It is the breathing of the spirit. Sometimes more, sometimes less. But always, it breathes. You find interest in the water spirit?”
“Yes, very much.”
“Hm.” He nodded. “I didn’t know your kind was religious. I shall take you to the house of the spirits, as an honored guest.”
Nawpawpay led Matthew and Rachel to another hut near the pond. This one had walls daubed with blue dye, its entrance cloaked by a fantastically woven curtain of turkey and pigeon feathers, rabbit fur, fox skins with the heads still attached, and various other animal hides. “Alas,” Nawpawpay said, “your woman can’t have entrance here. The spirits deign only to speak to men, and to women through men. Unless, of course, the woman was born with the spirit marks and becomes a seer.”
Matthew nodded. It had occurred to him that one culture’s “spirit marks” were another culture’s “marks of the devil.” He told Rachel that the chief’s custom required her to wait while they went inside. Then he followed Nawpawpay.
The interior was very dim, only one flame burning in a small clay pot full of oil. Thankfully, though, there was no eye-searing smoke. The house of the spirits appeared empty, as far as Matthew could tell.
“We speak respectfully here,” Nawpawpay said. “My father built this, many passings of seasons ago. I often come here, to ask his advice.”
“And he answers?”
“Well…no. But then again, he does. He listens to my problem, and then his answer is always: Son, decide for yourself.” Nawpawpay picked up the clay pot. “Here are the gifts the water spirit gives.” He followed the flickering flame deeper into the hut, with Matthew a few paces behind.
Still, there was nothing. Except one thing. On the floor was a larger bowl full of muddy water. Nawpawpay reached into it with the same hand that held the pearl, and then his hand reappeared muddy and dripping. “We honor the water spirit in this way,” he said. As Matthew watched, Nawpawpay approached a wall. It was not pinewood, as the others were, but was thickly plastered with dried brown mud from the pond.
Nawpawpay pressed his handful of mud and the pearl into the wall and smoothed it down. “I must speak to the spirit now,” he said. And then, in a soft singsong chant, “Pa ne sa nehra cai ke panu. Ke na pe pe kairu.” As he chanted, he moved the flame back and forth along the mud-caked wall.
There was a red glint, first. Then a blue one.
Then…red…gold…more gold, a dozen gold…and silver…and purple and…
…a silent explosion of colors as the light moved back and forth along the wall: emerald green, ruby crimson, sapphire blue…and gold, gold, a thousand times gold…
“Oh,” Matthew gasped, as the hairs stood up on the back of his neck.
Held in that wall was the treasure.
A pirate’s fortune. Jewels by the hundreds—sky blue, deep green, pale amber, dazzling white—and the coins, gold and silver enough to make the king of Franz Europay gibber and drool. And the most stunning thing was that Matthew realized he was seeing only the outermost layer. The plastering of dried mud had to be at least four inches thick, six feet tall, and four feet wide.
Here it was. In this dirt wall, in this hut, in this village, in this wilderness. Matthew wasn’t sure, but he thought he could hear God and the Devil joined together in common laughter.
He knew. What was put into the spring at Fount Royal was carried out by the current of an underground river. It might take time, of course. Everything took time. The entrance to that river, there somewhere in the depths of Bidwell’s spring, might only be the diameter of Lucretia Vaughan’s pie plate. If a pirate had taken a sounding of the fount before lowering bags of jewels and coins, he would have found a bottom at forty feet—but he would not have found the hole that eventually pulled everything into the subterranean flow. Perhaps the current drew more powerfully in a particular season, or was affected by the moon just as were the ocean’s tides. In any case, the pirate—most probably a man who was only smart enough to loot vessels, but not to vessel his loot in a sturdy container—had chosen a vault that suffered the flaw of a funnel at its bottom.
Spellbound, Matthew approached the wall. “Se na caira pa pa kairu,” chanted Nawpawpay, as he slowly moved the flame back and forth and the small sharp glints and explosions of reflected light continued.
Matthew saw in another moment that the dried mud also held bits of pottery, gold chains, silver spoons, and so forth. Here the gold-encrusted hilt of a knife protruded, and there was the cracked face of a pocket watch.
It made sense that Lucretia Vaughan’s pie dish would go to the doctor, as some sort of enchanted implement sent from the water spirit. After all, it was decorated with a pattern that they most likely had figured out was a human organ.
“Na pe huida na pe caida,” Nawpawpay said, and that seemed to finish it, as he held the flame toward Matthew.
“The courage—” Matthew’s voice cracked. He tried again. “The courage suns. You say the white fish stole one?”
“Yes, and murdered the man to whom it was given.”
“May I ask why it was given to this man?”
“As a reward,” Nawpawpay said, “for courage. This man saved another who was gored by a wild tusked pig, and afterward killed the pig. It’s a tradition my father began. But that white fish has been luring my people with his bad ways, making them sick in the mind with strong drink, and then making them work for him like common dogs. It was time for him to go.”
“I see.” Matthew recalled that Shawcombe had said his tavern had been built with Indian labor. And now he really did see. He saw the whole picture, and how it fit together in an intricate pattern.
“Nawpawpay,” Matthew said, “my…uh…woman and I must leave this place. Today. We have to go back from where we came. Do you know the village near the sea?”
“Of course I do. We watch it all the time.” Nawpawpay wore an expression of concern. “But Demon Slayer, you can’t leave today! You’re still too weak to travel that distance. You must tell me what you know of Franz Europay, and I also have a celebration planned for you tonight. Dancing and feasting. And we have the demon’s head, carved out for you to wear.”
“Urn…well…I—”
“In the morning you may leave, if you still desire to. Tonight we celebrate, to honor your courage and the death of that beast.” He directed the light to the treasure wall again. “Here, Demon Slayer! A gift for you, as is proper. Take one thing you see that shines strong enough to guide your hand.”
It was astounding, Matthew thought. Nawpawpay didn’t realize—and God protect him from ever finding out—that there were those in the outside world, the civilized world, who would come through the forest to this place and raze it to the ground to obtain one square foot of dirt from that wall.
But a gift of fantastic worth had been offered, and Matthew’s hand was so guided.
forty-one
AS THE SUN SETTLED and the blue shadows of evening advanced, Fount Royal slumbered in a dream of what might have been.
It was a slumbering that prefigured death. Stood the empty houses, stood the empty barns. A scarecrow drooped on its frame in a fallow field, two blackbirds perched upon its shoulders. A straw hat lay discarded on Harmony Street, and had been further destroyed by the crush of wagon wheels. The front gate was ajar, its locking timber thrown aside
and left in the dirt by the last family who’d departed. Of the thirty or so persons who remained in the dying dream of Fount Royal, not one could summon the energy of spirit to put the gate in order. It seemed madness, of course, to leave the gate unlocked, for who knew what savages might burst through to scalp, maim, and pillage?
But in truth, the evil within Fount Royal seemed much worse, and to secure the gate was like locking oneself in a dark room with a beast whose breath stroked the back of the neck.
It was all clear now. All of it, very clear to the citizens.
The witch had escaped with the help of her demon-possessed lover. That boy! You know the one! That clerk had fallen in with her—had fallen into the pit of Hell, I say—and he overcame Mr. Green and got her out. Then they fled. Out into the wilderness, out where Satan has his own village. Yes, he does, and I’ve heard tell Solomon Stiles saw it himself. You might ask him, but he’s left town for good. This is the story, though, and guard your souls at the listening: Satan’s built a village in the wilderness and all the houses are made of thornwood. They have fields that seethe of hellfire, and they grow crops of the most treacherous poison. You know the magistrate’s fallen sick again, don’t you? Yes, he has. Sick unto death. He’s near given out. Now this is what I hear: someone in that mansion house is a witch or warlock themselves, and has fed that poor magistrate Satan’s poisoned tea! So guard what you drink! Oh my…I was just thinking…what a horror to think on…may haps it wasn’t the tea that was poisonous, but the very water. Oh my…if Satan had it in mind…to curse and poison the fount itself…we would all die writhing in our beds, wouldn’t we?
Oh my…oh my…
A breeze moved across Fount Royal on this warm and darkening eve. It rippled the waters of the fount, and kissed the roofs of lightless houses. It moved along Industry Street, where it had been sworn that the phantasm of Gwinett Linch had been seen, hurrying along with its rat sticker and its torn throat, warning in a ghastly cry that the witches of Fount Royal were hungry for more souls…more souls…