by Andre Norton
And, when the stout body nearly toppled from the chair, Persis was forced to set down the candle and resettle the housekeeper as comfortably as she could. Her charge did not even mutter in answer, and Persis had no idea as to how to rouse her.
She went to Molly. Again unconsciousness defeated her. While the coldness within her grew. This was no illness, the girl began to believe—rather it was planned. Had they been drugged? That queer taste of the drink which still lingered somehow in her own mouth—but she had swallowed very little of that. She looked around for any evidence that Mrs. Pryor or Molly had been served such—but there was nothing but water in the carafe on the bed table.
Shubal—Without much hope, Persis went to the next chamber. She was not surprised to find the old man sleeping as heavily as the other two. But why—?
She could find no answer to what seemed to her the strangest happening in this house. Lydia and the Captain were gone, these three so deeply asleep she could not hope to rouse them. What had happened?
It took all her courage to move toward the staircase once more. Every few steps she paused to listen. The silence was like the dark, it fed her imagination—too well. She dared not lose control, she dared not!
Step by hesitant step she went down into the hall onto which her own chamber opened. The doors of both the Captain’s and Lydia’s rooms were wide open as she had left them, and she hurried by what seemed like caverns of darkness, to descend once more.
The outer door onto the veranda was closed and there was no light—not anywhere. Irresolute, Persis paused—she needed more than just a single candle which flickered now and then to threaten her with complete dark. She lit the lamp standing on the table in the front hallway. It was more awkward to carry, but the wider glow from it was heartening.
Now hesitatingly she began a systematic search of the rooms, only to discover dark emptiness. The drawing room with its wealth of salvaged luxury, the dining room—its table bare of any sign that anyone had eaten here—the small room which she knew Captain Leverett kept as his office.
It was when she stood in the doorway of that, holding the lamp high enough so that the light would reach as far as possible, that she saw what fed her fear.
There was a strongbox pulled to the middle of the floor, its lid thrown open on emptiness. And on the desk, papers had been swept from pigeonholes so that some had shifted to the floor. Robbery!
But such a suggestion did not fit somehow, or at least she was missing some important fact. Robbery on an island controlled by Captain Leverett—with no escape possible—that would be the act of a madman. But—where was Captain Leverett? Her heart gave a quick, hard beat.
Suppose he had heard—suppose in his one-armed condition, weakened by his ordeal, he had struggled out of bed and confronted the invader? What would—? Persis refused to allow her imagination looser rein.
Robbery here—and the portfolio gone—the drugging of the household—or those she had so far found—someone had known a great deal—had dared much. And only one person came to mind—Ralph Grillon!
With Lydia also gone—
But how could she have agreed to the despoiling of her own brother? Lydia might be angry with Crewe for his interference in her life, but Persis could not readily believe that a sister could so betray a brother. Unless Ralph had far more influence over her than they had even guessed. But why then had he tried to use her, Persis, to reach Lydia?
She closed the door of the office firmly and moved toward the kitchen quarters. Mam Rose, Sukie, the other maids—if none of them were there—then she must find her way to the hotel and rouse the men there. Even to be able to plan that act heartened her.
Persis pushed open the kitchen door. Here there was light, for a fire burned low. But no sign of those she sought. Except—
The girl froze. Something moved on the hearth, uncoiling as might a serpent. A head was raised and eyes caught and held hers in a straight gaze.
Askra!
The Indian woman was not wearing her mask. But she moved deliberately as if she knew that her will would keep Persis exactly where she was.
Slowly Askra raised an arm which was nearly stick thin, the fingers at the end of it seeming like roots pulled unwillingly from the soil. She made a gesture between them, not beckoning Persis to her, but rather as if some ritual existed in their night meeting.
Then Askra spoke.
“The old ways—what think you of the old ways, white skin?” She held her head a little to one side as if she were indeed a bird of prey, her heavy nose a beak poised to strike.
“What old ways?” Somehow Persis was able to summon up her courage to the point she could ask that question. But within she understood—that dream! Only how could this old woman know what she had dreamed?
Askra did not even answer that question. Her contemptuous eyes said Persis knew, that she would force the girl to admit that knowledge.
“Sacred place, a long time the gods breathed here,” Askra continued. “Then the gods turned away their faces; they sent wild ones who were not of the People. And those slew until the blood colored the ground, the sea. But no good came to them of that killing—for the gods looked not to them afterward. Those answered only to us—us of the People!” She balled her fist to strike at her flat chest. “I can still call the gods and those eaters of snakes know it! I can summon up the call. When I so do those who have eyes and ears open in their dreams—they can see and hear. Even as you did.”
Now she advanced a step or two. “You have that in you which answers to old troubles, ancient ways. Were you of the blood—then I would open the knowledge to you. But you are not of the People—therefore that which should be a gift for you is rather a burden heavy to bear. You shall dream, but that dreaming you cannot control.”
“I will not—!” Again Persis pushed her courage to what seemed to her to be the highest point she could reach.
“You cannot stop it.” There was malicious satisfaction in the old woman’s eyes, the girl thought. As if Askra could and would use terrifying dreams as weapons against those of that other race who had supplanted her people. But Persis needed information, not warnings.
“Where are they all—the Captain—Lydia—?” She was surprised, pleased that she could insert such a fierce note into her demand.
Askra’s deep-set eyes no longer held her pinned; rather it was as if the Indian woman herself was momentarily at a loss.
“There has been evil walking here.” Again she made one of those gestures which had meaning for her if not for Persis. “I heard—I came—He who has been a friend is in danger.”
Inspiration moved the girl to a quick question:
“Captain Leverett?”
The Indian witch produced from within her blouse a small bag of leather thonged together, from which dangled the stubs of worn feathers, a loop of small shells pierced into beads. This she held between palms pressed closely together, raised level to her mouth as she blew upon it, and murmured in so low a whisper that Persis could make out only the faintest of sounds.
“What has happened to Captain Leverett?” Persis demanded again—louder, in an attempt to break through the other’s preoccupation, get some sensible answer.
Askra eyed her over that bag. But any emotion in her dark eyes was unreadable. Then she said:
“He will die.”
The words were so baldly spoken and with such finality that, for a long second, they did not even make an impression on Persis. Then the lamp wavered in her hand.
“What do you mean!” She advanced threateningly on the woman as she would not have done a moment or so earlier. It was plain Askra knew something. “What has happened here?”
“His enemy came and found doors opened for him. There are always those who believe lies, because they desire to do so. They have taken him because they want what he has—”
“Indians!” Persis remembered the warnings from the cutter. But surely Indians would not have left them—she, Mrs. Pryor, the servants sl
eeping—they would not—
“Those!” Askra’s return was scornful. “They do not dare to beach their canoes on this land. They know that I have the calling of the Old Ones and that even now I can bring their ending. No, it is among his own household that he should have searched for danger. Yet to it he was as blind as the Great Chief long ago when he was warned that the younger wife, taken from the outlanders—the evil ones—had not been cleansed of their darkness. Even as she betrayed her lord, so has the Captain been betrayed.”
Askra’s words fell into a sing-song pattern and she swayed back and forth, the bag now clasped tightly against her breasts. “Ahhh—men are ever foolish when they look upon a woman, deeming that because she has perhaps less strength of arm than they possess she is not to be feared. The Great Chief died of his folly and after him, there was death here again, and by a woman’s hand, so that those who took this land held no profit from it. You carry death—it lies now between your breasts. I, Askra, can smell it. Old death, old blood. And that would not have come into your hand had you not summoned it.”
Persis shrank back until one of her heels scraped against the bottom of the three steps leading to the kitchen. She was fast losing any command of the situation she might have once had. This old woman with her compelling eyes, her measured speech, was such a potent force as made even the awe-inspiring dignity of Uncle Augustin seem the strutting of some schoolboy.
Death between her breasts—the fan? Had Askra crept above then to plant the noxious thing between her hand as she slept?
“She was strong, was the Spanish woman,” the Indian continued, “strong in her hate—in that she might have been one of the Old Ones. We knew how to hate–how to use cunning against our enemies. Aye—we knew—until we were betrayed and the gods turned their faces from us because we had become such weak tools for their use. But she—perhaps the gods looked upon her and made her again their hands and feet upon the earth. The captain of the sea sharks she destroyed, shedding blood on this sacred mount, even as was proper. Then the sea she sought herself. But with their chief dead those others were easy meat for the avengers. Yes, she knew. And you know—white skin. If you had not a fraction of the true sight you would not stand here now, her treasure warm against your body. The pattern changes in years reckoned by men, not the gods, to whom the seasons are but beads they slip easily between their fingers, letting this and that one fall when they tire of it. Now it is time for the pattern to change again.
“I am Askra.” She held her head proud and high. “Once those of my blood spoke to chiefs saying do this, do that. And what we ordered and desired was so done. For we had the power of the gods warm and rich in us. The white men came, slaying, breaking down our sacred place—putting slave chains on those who did not cleanly die. And those who escaped, who kept the old gods in their hearts and minds, fled—became wanderers and outcasts.
“But it was given to me that I should return and what small power remained here, that I can summon—if only in dreams. You have dreamed, daughter of strangers—” She came forward until her face was only inches away from Persis. “There is that in you which entered into my dream, just as there is that in you which summoned the knife of vengeance. You cannot escape either—for that is the way of your inner spirit. Is that not so?”
Persis opened her lips to deny vehemently what she only half-understood. But it was as if another within her had taken command, a hidden self she had never realized shared her body, and who was now moving into the open.
“It—it is so—!” The denial she longed to give she could not utter.
Askra nodded. “This is not of my gods, white woman. Therefore, it cannot by my undertaking. What you do now you must do for yourself. There is evil to be faced, and perhaps the death shadow lies at the end of it. But if you seek him in truth, then the road is open to you.”
Persis moistened her lips. She could only sort out of this weird harangue that Askra did know where Crewe Leverett was and that he also lay in danger. She owed him her life—yet that was not entirely why she must act to aid him if she could. There was the warmth of the fan against her body; it seemed to build in her a desperate resolution she never realized she possessed—at least to this degree. She returned to her first question:
“Where is Captain Leverett?”
Askra moved back, toward the hearth, leaving the floor before her clear.
“They have taken him down,” she detached one hand from her bag and pointed, the nail on her forefinger long and near black, toward the floor under their feet.
The cistern! Slowly Persis moved forward, setting the lamp on the long table, stooping to jerk away the rug which usually covered the trapdoor. What was she going to do? It would be better to rouse the men at the hotel—have them handle this.
As she leaned forward without consciously making any decision, her hand curled about the ring to raise that barrier. The light suddenly went out. Startled, she looked over her hunched shoulder. The Indian woman, her figure only partly revealed by the fire light, had blown out the candle flame.
“Would you,” she asked in what sounded to Persis like a superior tone she was quick to resent, “allow them to know that you’ve come?” Then she moved to join Persis, gathering up the braided strip of carpet and making of it a screen to be held between the dying light of the fire and the trapdoor.
Reaching out with her other hand, she twitched at the girl’s full skirt, the petticoats under it.
“These are not good in water, white woman. Best you shed them first.”
Persis fumbled at buttons and ties, stepping out of muslin skirt, of the two petticoats under. Now she wore only drawers, her chemise, stays, for she laid aside, too, the waist with all its bows, laces, and ruffles. Feeling outrageously bare of body, she lifted the trapdoor, straining at its weight, for Askra made no move to help her. Why she was doing this unbelievable thing she could not have said, it was as if she were caught in another dream and there was no way out—she must endure it until the end.
14
It was not entirely dark below. For, when her eyes adjusted after the extinguishing of the lamp, Persis could see a faint radiance on the waters. Also there came the murmur of voices. She crouched on her knees. The visibility was strictly limited from where she now was, but she had no intent of descending recklessly until she could better know what was going on in this dark, smelling of the wash of lapping water.
Though Persis strained her ears she could not catch a single clear word, only the rise and fall of a voice which she thought was that of a man. Narrowly she surveyed the waters below. They washed a little upon that ledge where trails of moisture showed higher reach of the flood. But she was certain that the lamp or lantern which gave so faint a light did not rest on that.
How much could she believe Askra? Suppose she was to venture down into this watery cavern, only to have the Indian witch slam the trapdoor on her, trapping her. Persis’ hands twitched. She doubted her own courage at this moment. To be down there in the dark—with no one but Askra knowing where she was—
Still that same resolve which did not seem a part of the Persis Rooke she thought she knew—that entered into her from the fan dagger. She was conscious of that strange weapon with every move she made, as it impressed its weight and shape, not only physically, but emotionally, against her.
The sound of the voice continued; it might have been a distorted echo from a greater distance. Persis struggled to remember what she had seen on her one trip below—the bathing place. Beyond it the cistern, and also the strange escape tunnel, leading, alongside the turtle pen, out into the canal.
Believing that she was utterly foolish in what she was about to do, but somehow compelled to act, Persis raised her head and once more looked directly at Askra.
“There are the men at the hotel,” she said. “If we call them—”
Askra’s mouth spread into a wide, malicious grin. With one long-nailed finger she drew a line across her own scraggy throat.
&nbs
p; “And before they reach here—what if death comes first? Does white skin live with fear so close to her that it is a cloak she cannot shed?”
She held her head a little on one side, watching Persis with those compelling eyes. “The gods do not try to govern time—it means nothing to them. Only men live by its bindings.”
Persis drew upon all her resolution. She wondered why Askra herself had done nothing to help Crewe Leverett, if the Captain was indeed in danger.
“I serve only the gods—” The Indian woman straightened to her full height. “Only by their commands must I act. They care nothing for a white skin. Such overthrew their temples, drove forth those who believed in them. If I stepped aside from the appointed path, then would I be powerless—”
That the woman believed in what she said Persis understood. But Askra was continuing:
“What I could do, that I have done. Are you not here? For in all this house you were the only one to answer such summoning as I might use.” Once more she raised her hands to sketch a deliberate gesture in the air, one which Persis could not understand. “You have seen, you feel. Those who have gone can, in a little, work through you. But that is all I can give you, white skin.”
Persis realized that she was nodding as if in agreement. Common sense meant going for help. But she was committed, she realized now, to something the common sense in which she had been drilled all her life could neither answer nor understand. She was forced to do this—and, at the back of her mind, lurked always that strange and eerie feeling that she was under some command, just as Askra averred she herself was. There was no escape now.
The girl swung onto the ladder, the wood under her hands felt wet and beslimed, so she hated the touch of it. But she continued to descend step by hesitating step. When she reached the ledge and faced around she saw that the light came from the left, glimmering dimly from the old escape tunnel.
