Seven Stones to Stand or Fall

by Diana Gabaldon

  “That incriminates you,” Grey finished for him. “Yes, I see that. What have you done with him?”

  “I cannot give this man to you,” Accompong said at last. His thick lips pressed together briefly, but he met Grey’s eye. “He is dead.”

  The shock hit Grey like a musket ball, a thump that knocked him off-balance and the sickening knowledge of irrevocable damage done.

  “How?” he said, short and sharp. “What happened to him?”

  The clearing was still silent. Accompong stared at the ground in front of him. After a long moment, a sigh, a whisper, drifted from the crowd.

  “Zombie.”

  “Where?” he barked. “Where is he? Bring him to me. Now!”

  The crowd shrank away from the hut, and a sort of moan ran through them. Women snatched up their children, pushed back so hastily that they stepped on the feet of their companions. The door opened.

  “Anda!” said a voice from inside. Walk, it meant, in Spanish. Grey’s numbed mind had barely registered this when the darkness inside the hut changed and a form appeared at the door.

  It was Rodrigo. But then again—it wasn’t. The glowing skin had gone pale and muddy, almost waxen. The firm, soft mouth hung loose, and the eyes—oh, God, the eyes! They were sunken, glassy, and showed no comprehension, no movement, not the least sense of awareness. They were a dead man’s eyes. And yet…he walked.

  This was the worst of all. Gone was every trace of Rodrigo’s springy grace, his elegance. This creature moved stiffly, shambling, feet dragging, almost lurching from foot to foot. Its clothing hung upon its bones like a scarecrow’s rags, smeared with clay and stained with dreadful liquids. The odour of putrefaction reached Grey’s nostrils, and he gagged.

  “Alto,” said the voice softly, and Rodrigo stopped abruptly, arms hanging like a marionette’s. Grey looked up then at the hut. A tall, dark man stood in the doorway, burning eyes fixed on Grey.

  The sun was all but down; the clearing lay in deep shadow, and Grey felt a convulsive shiver go through him. He lifted his chin and, ignoring the horrid thing standing stiff before him, addressed the tall man.

  “Who are you, sir?”

  “Call me Ishmael,” said the man, in an odd, lilting accent. He stepped out of the hut, and Grey was conscious of a general shrinking, everyone pulling away from the man, as though he suffered from some deadly contagion. Grey wanted to step back, too, but didn’t.

  “You did…this?” Grey asked, flicking a hand at the remnant of Rodrigo.

  “I was paid to do it, yes.” Ishmael’s eyes flicked toward Accompong, then back to Grey.

  “And Governor Warren—you were paid to kill him, as well, were you? By this man?” A brief nod at Rodrigo; he could not bear to look directly at him.

  “The zombies think they’re dead, and so does everyone else.”

  A frown drew Ishmael’s brows together, and with the change of expression, Grey noticed that the man’s faced was scarred, with apparent deliberation, long channels cut in cheeks and forehead. He shook his head.

  “No. This”—he nodded at Rodrigo—“paid me to bring my zombies. He says to me that he wishes to terrify a man. And zombies will do that,” he added, with a wolfish smile. “But when I brought them into the room and the buckra turned to flee, this one”—the flick of a hand toward Rodrigo—“sprang upon him and stabbed him. The man fell dead, and Rodrigo then ordered me”—his tone of voice made it clear what he thought of anyone ordering him to do anything—“to make my zombies feed upon him. And I did,” he ended abruptly.

  Grey swung round to Captain Accompong, who had sat silently through this testimony.

  “And then you paid this…this—”

  “Houngan,” Ishmael put in helpfully.

  “—to do that?!” He pointed at Rodrigo, and his voice shook with outraged horror.

  “Justice,” said Accompong, with simple dignity. “Don’t you think so?”

  Grey found himself temporarily bereft of speech. While he groped for something possible to say, the headman turned to a lieutenant and said, “Bring the other one.”

  “The other—” Grey began, but before he could speak further, there was another stir among the crowd, and from one of the huts a maroon emerged, leading another man by a rope around his neck. The man was wild-eyed and filthy, his hands bound behind him, but his clothes had originally been very fine. Grey shook his head, trying to dispel the remnants of horror that clung to his mind.

  “Captain Cresswell, I presume?” he said.

  “Save me!” the man panted, and collapsed on his knees at Grey’s feet. “I beg you, sir—whoever you are—save me!”

  Grey rubbed a hand wearily over his face and looked down at the erstwhile superintendent, then at Accompong.

  “Does he need saving?” he asked. “I don’t want to—I know what he’s done—but it is my duty.”

  Accompong pursed his lips, thinking.

  “You know what he is, you say. If I give him to you, what would you do with him?”

  At least there was an answer to that one.

  “Charge him with his crimes and send him to England for trial. If he is convicted, he would be imprisoned—or possibly hanged. What would happen to him here?” he asked curiously.

  Accompong turned his head, looking thoughtfully at the houngan, who grinned unpleasantly.

  “No!” gasped Cresswell. “No, please! Don’t let him take me! I can’t—I can’t—oh, GOD!” He glanced, appalled, at the stiff figure of Rodrigo, then fell face-first onto the ground at Grey’s feet, weeping convulsively.

  Numbed with shock, Grey thought for an instant that it would probably resolve the rebellion…but no. Cresswell couldn’t countenance the possibility of being handed over to Ishmael, and neither could Grey.

  “Right,” said Grey, and swallowed before turning to Accompong. “He is an Englishman, and, as I said, it’s my duty to see that he’s subject to English laws. I must therefore ask that you give him into my custody and take my word that I will see he receives justice. Our sort of justice,” he added, giving the evil look back to the houngan.

  “And if I don’t?” Accompong asked, blinking genially at him.

  “Well, I suppose I’ll have to fight you for him,” Grey said. “But I’m bloody tired and I really don’t want to.” Accompong laughed at this, and Grey followed swiftly up with “I will, of course, appoint a new superintendent—and, given the importance of the office, I will bring the new superintendent here so that you may meet him and approve of him.”

  “If I don’t approve?”

  “There are a bloody lot of Englishmen on Jamaica,” Grey said, impatient. “You’re bound to like one of them.”

  Accompong laughed out loud, his little round belly jiggling under his coat.

  “I like you, Colonel,” he said. “You want to be superintendent?”

  Grey suppressed the natural answer to this and instead said, “Alas, I have a duty to the army which prevents my accepting the offer, amazingly generous though it is.” He coughed. “You have my word that I will find you a suitable candidate, though.”

  The tall lieutenant who stood behind Captain Accompong lifted his voice and said something sceptical in a patois that Grey didn’t understand—but from the man’s attitude, his glance at Cresswell, and the murmur of agreement that greeted his remark, Grey had no trouble in deducing what had been said.

  What is the word of an Englishman worth?

  Grey gave Cresswell, grovelling and snivelling at his feet, a look of profound disfavour. It would serve the man right if—then he caught the faint reek of corruption wafting from Rodrigo’s still form, and shuddered. No, nobody deserved that.

  Putting aside the question of Cresswell’s fate for the moment, Grey turned to the question that had been in the forefront of his mind since he’d come in sight of that first curl of smoke.

  “My men,” he said. “I want to see my men. Bring them out to me, please. At once.” He didn’t raise his voice, but he kn
ew how to make a command sound like one.

  Accompong tilted his head a little to one side, as though considering, but then waved a hand casually. There was a stirring in the crowd, an expectation. A turning of heads, then bodies, and Grey looked toward the rocks where their focus lay. An explosion of shouts, catcalls, and laughter, and the two soldiers and Tom Byrd came out of the defile. They were roped together by the necks, their ankles hobbled and hands tied in front of them, and they shuffled awkwardly, bumping into one another, turning their heads to and fro like chickens, in a vain effort to avoid the spitting and the small clods of earth thrown at them.

  Grey’s outrage at this treatment was overwhelmed by his relief at seeing Tom and his young soldiers, all plainly scared but uninjured. He stepped forward at once so they could see him, and his heart was wrung by the pathetic relief that lighted their faces.

  “Now, then,” he said, smiling. “You didn’t think I would leave you, surely?”

  “I didn’t, me lord,” Tom said stoutly, already yanking at the rope about his neck. “I told ’em you’d be right along, the minute you got your boots on!” He glared at the little boys, naked but for shirts, who were dancing round him and the soldiers, shouting, “Buckra! Buckra!” and making not-quite-pretend jabs at the men’s genitals with sticks. “Can you make ’em leave off that filthy row, me lord? They been at it ever since we got here.”

  Grey looked at Accompong and politely raised his brows. The headman barked a few words of something not quite Spanish, and the boys reluctantly fell back, though they continued to make faces and rude arm-pumping gestures.

  Captain Accompong put out a hand to his lieutenant, who hauled the fat little headman to his feet. He dusted fastidiously at the skirts of his coat, then walked slowly around the small group of prisoners, stopping at Cresswell. He contemplated the man, who had now curled himself into a ball, then looked up at Grey.

  “Do you know what a loa is, my colonel?” he asked quietly.

  “I do, yes,” Grey replied warily. “Why?”

  “There is a spring, quite close. It comes from deep in the earth, where the loas live, and sometimes they will come forth and speak. If you will have back your men—I ask you to go there and speak with whatever loa may find you. Thus we will have truth, and I can decide.”

  Grey stood for a moment, looking back and forth from the fat old man to Cresswell, whose back heaved with silent sobs, to the young girl Azeel, who had turned her head to hide the hot tears coursing down her cheeks. He didn’t look at Tom. There didn’t seem much choice.

  “All right,” he said, turning back to Accompong. “Let me go now, then.”

  Accompong shook his head.

  “In the morning,” he said. “You do not want to go there at night.”

  “Yes, I do,” Grey said. “Now.”

  “QUITE CLOSE” was a relative term, apparently. Grey thought it must be near midnight by the time they arrived at the spring—Grey, the houngan Ishmael, and four maroons bearing torches and armed with the long cane knives called machetes.

  Accompong hadn’t told him it was a hot spring. There was a rocky overhang and what looked like a cavern beneath it, from which steam drifted out like dragon’s breath. His attendants—or guards, as one chose to look at it—halted as one, a safe distance away. He glanced at them for instruction, but they were silent.

  He’d been wondering what the houngan’s role in this peculiar undertaking was. The man was carrying a battered canteen; now he uncorked this and handed it to Grey. It smelled hot, though the tin of the heavy canteen was cool in his hands. Raw rum, he thought, from the sweetly searing smell of it—and doubtless a few other things.

  “…Herbs. Ground bones—bits o’ other things. But the main thing, the one thing ye must have, is the liver of a fugu fish…They don’t come back from it, ye ken. The poison damages their brains…”

  “Now we drink,” Ishmael said. “And we enter the cave.”

  “Both of us?”

  “Yes. I will summon the loa. I am a priest of Damballa.” The man spoke seriously, with none of the hostility or smirking he had displayed earlier. Grey noticed, though, that their escort kept a safe distance from the houngan, and a wary eye upon him.

  “I see,” said Grey, though he didn’t. “This…Damballa. He, or she—”

  “Damballa is the great serpent,” Ishmael said, and smiled, teeth flashing briefly in the torchlight. “I am told that snakes speak to you.” He nodded at the canteen. “Drink.”

  Repressing the urge to say, “You first,” Grey raised the canteen to his lips and drank slowly. It was very raw rum, with a strange taste, sweetly acrid, rather like the taste of fruit ripened to the edge of rot. He tried to keep any thought of Mrs. Abernathy’s casual description of afile powder out of mind—she hadn’t, after all, mentioned how the stuff might taste. And surely Ishmael wouldn’t simply poison him…? He hoped not.

  He sipped the liquid until a slight shift of the houngan’s posture told him it was enough, then he handed the canteen to Ishmael, who drank from it without hesitation. Grey supposed he should find this comforting, but his head was beginning to swim in an unpleasant manner, his heartbeat throbbing audibly in his ears, and something odd was happening to his vision: it went intermittently dark, then returned with a brief flash of light, and when he looked at one of the torches, it had a halo of coloured rings around it.

  He barely heard the clunk of the canteen, dropped on the ground, and watched, blinking, as the houngan’s white-clad back wavered before him. A dark blur of face as Ishmael turned to him.

  “Come.” The man disappeared into the veil of water.

  “Right,” he muttered. “Well, then…” He removed his boots, unbuckled the knee bands of his breeches, and peeled off his stockings. Then Grey shucked his coat and stepped cautiously into the steaming water.

  It was hot enough to make him gasp, but within a few moments he had got used to the temperature and made his way across a shallow, steaming pool toward the mouth of the cavern, shifting gravel hard under his bare feet. He heard whispering from his guards, but no one offered any alternative suggestions.

  Water poured from the overhang but not in the manner of a true waterfall—slender streams, like jagged teeth. The guards had pegged the torches into the ground at the edge of the spring; the flames danced like rainbows in the drizzle of the falling water as he passed beneath the overhang.

  The hot, wet air pressed his lungs and made it hard to breathe. After a short while he couldn’t feel any difference between his skin and the moist air through which he walked; it was as though he had melted into the darkness of the cavern.

  And it was dark. Completely. A faint glow came from behind him, but he could see nothing at all before him and was obliged to feel his way, one hand on the rough rock wall. The sound of falling water grew fainter, replaced by the heavy thump of his own heartbeat, struggling against the pressure on his chest. Once he stopped and pressed his fingers against his eyelids, taking comfort in the coloured patterns that appeared there; he wasn’t blind, then. When he opened his eyes again, though, the darkness was still complete.

  He thought the walls were narrowing—he could touch them on both sides by stretching out his arms—and had a nightmare moment when he seemed to feel them drawing in upon him. He forced himself to breathe, a deep, explosive gasp, and forced the illusion back.

  “Stop there.” The voice was a whisper. He stopped.

  There was silence for what felt like a long time.

  “Come forward,” said the whisper, sounding suddenly quite near him. “There is dry land, just before you.”

  He shuffled forward, felt the floor of the cave rise beneath him, and stepped out carefully onto bare rock. Walked slowly forward until again the voice bade him stop.

  Silence. He thought he could make out breathing but wasn’t sure; the sound of the water was still faintly audible in the distance. All right, he thought. Come along, then.

  It hadn’t been precisel
y an invitation, but what came into his mind was Mrs. Abernathy’s intent green eyes, staring at him as she said, “I see a great, huge snake lyin’ on your shoulders, Colonel.”

  With a convulsive shudder, he realised that he felt a weight on his shoulders. Not a dead weight but something live. It moved, just barely.

  “Jesus,” he whispered, and thought he heard the ghost of a laugh from somewhere in the cave. He stiffened and fought back against the mental image, for surely this was nothing more than imagination, fuelled by rum. Sure enough, the illusion of green eyes vanished—but the weight rested on him still, though he couldn’t tell whether it lay upon his shoulders or his mind.

  “So,” said the low voice, sounding surprised. “The loa has come already. The snakes do like you, buckra.”

  “And if they do?” he asked. He spoke in a normal tone of voice; his words echoed from the walls around him.

  The voice chuckled briefly, and he felt rather than heard movement nearby, the rustle of limbs and a soft thump as something struck the floor near his right foot. His head felt immense, throbbing with rum, and waves of heat pulsed through him, though the depths of the cave were cool.

  “See if this snake likes you, buckra,” the voice invited. “Pick it up.”

  He couldn’t see a thing but slowly moved his foot, feeling his way over the silty floor. His toes touched something and he stopped. Whatever he had touched moved abruptly, recoiling from him. Then he felt the tiny flicker of a snake’s tongue on his toe, tasting him.

  Oddly, the sensation steadied him. Surely this wasn’t his friend, the tiny yellow constrictor—but it was a serpent much like that one in general size, so far as he could tell. Nothing to fear from that.

  “Pick it up,” the voice invited again. “The krait will tell us if you speak the truth.”

  “Will he, indeed?” Grey said dryly. “How?”

  The voice laughed, and he thought he heard two or three more chuckling behind it—but perhaps it was only echoes.

  “If you die…you lied.”

  Grey gave a small, contemptuous snort. There were no venomous snakes on Jamaica. He cupped his hand and bent at the knee, but hesitated. He had an instinctive aversion to being bitten by a snake, venomous or not. And how did he know how the man—or men—sitting in the shadows would take it if the thing did bite him?