by Cave, Hugh
32
MANNY WILLIAMS SANK TO ONE KNEE AND LIFTED Mother Jarrett's long black fingers to his lips. "Reverend Mother, this poor boy hurt bad. Me beg you lay you hands on him."
Standing in the front room of Bronzie Dakin's house, the tall woman in the white robe frowned at Cob. "Don't I know you?" she asked. "Aren't you from Seaclose?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Dercy Dennis's boy?"
"Yes, ma'am. Me name Cornelius."
"Of course." She stepped past Manny and took the lad's hand. "What is wrong? Oh-oh, I don't need to ask, do I?" As she looked at the horizontal welts on the boy's bare chest, her black-opal eyes flashed with anger and her voice became steely. "Who did this to you?" There was a growing evil abroad in St. Alban, she told herself, and the time had come for it to be dealt with.
"Them did whip me, ma'am."
"Who whipped you? What for?"
"It a long story, Mother," Manny muttered, rising. "You can help him first, please?"
"Of course. Come into the bedroom, both of you."
She was alone in the house, Mother Jarrett explained as she instructed Cob to remove his borrowed pants and lie on the bed. Bronzie had gone to a shop in the village, taking her son Gerald with her.
"And how Gerald is?" Manny asked.
Mother Jarrett sat on the bed to examine Cob's wounds. "He knows who he is again, and what he is doing. But about Bronzie I am worried, Manny. If Georgie is not found soon, it will break her heart."
"Me don't sure she should want himfound," Manny said sadly.
"What?"
"Please, Mother—help this boy here. Then me tell you all me know."
The hand that healed Peter Sheldon's face worked on young Cob now, while Manny looked on. For half an hour Mother Jarrett gently massaged Cob's body, concentrating on the marks left by the whippings—some of them inflicted, had she but known it, by the man standing there watching her and silently praying for her to demonstrate her power again. When she finished, the lad was asleep.
She walked back into the front room then, motioning Manny to follow. Respectfully the pig hunter waited for her to sit before easing his tired body onto a chair.
"So, Manny?" she said. "You know where Georgie is?"
He told her what he knew of the missing scouts, the missing soldiers, and the place called the Devil's Pit.
"And you think Georgie is one of the devil's disciples now?"
"Him was not on no cross being tormented, Mother. Him was one of those with the guns."
"You saw this?"
"The first time me was made to whip Cob, the one holding the gun on me was Georgie, Mother."
Mother Jarrett gazed at him in silence for a few seconds, and then said in a low voice, "I must think what to do about this, Manny. Go back into the bedroom, please. Shut the door. Wait there with Cob until I call you.,'
"But, Mother, me must do something quick about Squire and the English lady!"
"I need a few moments alone, Manny."
With a shake of his head Manny turned and went into the bedroom, obediently closing the door behind him.
Still seated, Mother Jarrett clasped her long-fingered hands in her lap and lowered her head. She closed her eyes. It was one of the positions she habitually assumed when meditating, but the exercise she engaged in now was more than mere meditation. She sought to call into play a power she had acquired years before, in India, at the feet of a certain Maharajji who was one of that country's most revered holy men.
As she willed herself into a trancelike state now, her face slowly lost its anxiety and acquired an expression of euphoria. It began to shine, as though from an inner brilliance. Then a smile appeared upon her lips.
The room in which she sat—this room in Bronzie Dakin's small house in the mountains of St. Alban—slowly filled with mist and expanded. Its fading walls fell away and it opened into a vast, gleaming world of space in which Mother Jarrett moved so swiftly she felt dizzy. When the dizziness passed, she found herself striding along a dusty mountain road that smelled of flowers and wore a pattern of purple tree shadows.
But these were not St. Alban's mountains. High peaks in the distance were white with snow, and never had there been snow in her Caribbean island. Below the road, too, were railroad tracks, and along them ran what looked more like a toy train than a real one. Its little locomotive belched black smoke that drifted back above a flatcar and two passenger cars that it struggled to haul up the grade. Behind the grimy windows of the two passenger cars were faces—far too many for so little space!—and to the roofs and outsides of the cars clung additional riders. And the sound of the train's passing, the constant bleat of the locomotive's whistle, stirred memories in Mother Jarrett's mind.
She had ridden this very train on her first visit to the man whose counsel she now sought. It was one of several that had brought her here from Calcutta. That had been many years ago, long before she learned from Maharajji how to travel from place to place by other, swifter means.
How much easier had been her visits to him since that first one! At least half a dozen times, with no endless waiting in airports, no more riding on India's always crowded trains, she had come here to pay her respects or to ask for his help. Now here she was again. Just ahead, snug against the hillside on her right, was his ashram.
The time here was not the same, of course. InBronzie Dakin's house, where her other self still sat with closed eyes, the time had been—still was—early morning. Here the hillside and ashram were bathed in soft evening light. It was because of the difference in time that she had chosen to make the road her destination rather than the ashram itself. Maharajji changed gatekeepers often and might have one now who would not know her. If so, the man might be upset by the sudden appearance of a stranger inside the grounds.
Lengthening her stride as she approached the temple-school itself, she recalled how she had once tried to describe it to a friend in St. Alban, after telling the friend about her being one of Maharajji's pupils. Impossible, of course. You could make a simple St. Alban person understand that certain of India's people were revered as saints and had supernormal powers. No problem there, in a country whose ancestors had brought with them from Africa a belief in powerful voodoo gods. And even the statement that certain higher saints could will themselves to be in more than one place at the same time—even that her friend had accepted. But that a "Great King" would be content to live out his life in a plain, peasant-style building in a far wilderness, with only oil lamps for light and a well for water. . . no, no! Great Kings dwelt in palaces!
Mother Jarrett smiled at the memory as she stopped at the ashram gate and knocked. For the last hundred yards of her journey the gatekeeper had been watching her, she knew. Now he rose from a chair on the veranda and came along the path toward her. Not the chaukidar she remembered, but an older one.
Not, of course, as old as Maharajji himself. He was said to have known Christ—which was yet another thing her friend in St. Alban had refused to believe, though many here were convinced. Certainly he talked with Christ now. One of India's most revered saints would not lie about such a thing.
"Good evening. I am Mother Jarrett, and I have studied under Maharajji. Now I need to talk with him."
The gatekeeper peered at her face. "Mother Jarrett? Ah, yes. Maharajji is expecting you."
"Expecting me? How—"
"Please follow me."
He opened the gate for her, and then led the way to the house. Off the veranda were four doors, all of them closed. He led her to the third one and tapped it lightly with a knuckle. At a word from within he opened it and motioned her to enter, then closed the door behind her.
The man she sought was alone in the room's semidarkness. Garbed in only a dhoti and a blanket, he sat cross-legged on one of the wooden platform beds they called tuckets—almost the only furniture the room contained—and gazed at her with the understanding eyes she so well remembered.
"Greetings, Mother."
"And t
o you, Maharajji. How did you know I was coming?"
"I felt you thinking about me." He motioned to her to come and sit beside him, and then waved toward a tray of food that must have been placed there on the tucket for her visit. She should have brought a gift of food to him, of course. But if he had felt her thinking about him, he would know how little time she had. She even dared to shake her head when he urged her to take some pomegranate seeds.
She did lean forward, though, to place a gentle hand on his bare feet. To touch the feet of such a saint was to touch those of God.
"Maharajji, I need your help."
He frowned. "You need my help? You who are so much closer to God than I am?"
"I am not closer, Maharajji."
"I say you are. I merely taught you a few things you did not know." His frown said he meant it. "Tell me, are you wholly here or is my India sharing you with your homeland?"
"Only sharing, good friend." She smiled. "I came without a railway ticket this time, as you taught me."
"But not hanging on to the outside of the train, eh?"
He referred, of course, to those who came to him that way because they had no money for the fare, and his old, withered lips could still smile at the thought. "So tell me, Mother, how can I help?"
"You talk with Christ, Maharajji."
"He talks with me."
"I need his help. I face a struggle that will be too much for me without it. "
"Tell me," he said, and eased his frail body back on the tucket to listen.
She told him what Manny Williams had told her—about the Devil's Pit in the mountains of her island, and what was going on there. Not once did he interrupt.
When she had finished, he reached out to touch her hand. "Go back while you can still help those people," he said. "When, your time of need comes, I will be there for you in spirit."
"And—will His spirit be there with yours, Maharajji?"
"Do not doubt it."
"Then farewell, good friend."
"Farewell, Mother."
The walls of the Maharajji's room dissolved in mist, and again Mother Jarrett felt herself moving swiftly through a shining world of space. When the sensation of dizziness passed and she opened her eyes, she was back in Bronzie Dakin's cottage. Giving her head a shake to clear it, she rose stiffly from her chair and called, "Manny! Come now, please!"
The bedroom door opened and Manny Williams stood there gazing at her.
"Manny, tell me. Can you find your way back to that place you told me about? Through the waterfall?"
"Yes, Mother. But if them on guard—"
"Never mind that. Can you take me there?"
The pig hunter looked down at his hands, and they were clenched. "Mother, don't is supposed to be some soldiers here? Some that Sergeant Wray did send for?"
"No soldiers have come here, Manny. If any went into the mountains, they went some other way. The sergeant himself has gone to the capital."
"And you would dare try alone to stop what happening in that place? You would stand up to Satan by you'self?"
Mother Jarrett moved her head slowly up and down. "With God's help, Manny, yes."
"And Mr. Grant?"
"As for him—"
The front door opened then and Bronzie Dakin came in, followed by the boy who for so long had lain in torment on the bed where young Cob was now peacefully sleeping. Mother Jarrett acknowledged the woman's entrance with a mere nod, but gazed with strange intensity at the son.
Then, "Yes, Maharajji!" she whispered, moving her head up and down again. "Ah, yes. Thank you!"
33
“YOU MUST BE HUNGRY, SHELDON."
It was Linford Grant's fourth or fifth visit to the room in which Peter was being indoctrinated. Peter had lost count and knew only that with each appearance he hated the man more. Loathing was an acid in him now, corroding his reason.
According to the watch on his wrist he had been chained to the ring on the floor for sixteen hours. Was that why they had allowed him to keep the watch? So he would know the full length of his torment?
Sixteen hours of being forced to sit or lie naked on cold, damp stone in a room where that hellish green glare had etched itself on his eyeballs. There were certain positions he could no longer endure even for short intervals because of the soreness in his bones. As for hunger, he had suffered acutely for a time but was now consumed by thirst.
"Give me some water," he begged his tormentor.
"I keep forgetting to bring any. But if you would be more reasonable, I might go for some." Wearing his brown scout uniform again, Grant hunkered just out of reach and peered at Peter's face, perhaps searching for a sign of surrender. He was unhappy, it seemed. He had not expected Peter to resist for so long.
But Peter knew his resistance was nearing an end. The presence in this room kept making itself felt, no longer with mere recitals of its accomplishments, but with far more subtle pressures. He even wondered whether his increasing hatred for Grant might not be part of the plan. Certainly if he were handed a whip and told he could safely use it on the scout leader, he would do so with furious pleasure. And wasn't it one of their objectives to make him delight in violence?
There had been one shining moment in the endless hours of despair and pain. Four hours ago Grant, striding into the room, had stood over him seething with rage and said, "I have something to tell you, Sheldon. Your friend, Emmanuel Williams, has escaped."
"What?" Peter had almost forgotten the pig hunter, but his tired mind reached out to recall the time, ages ago, when he had seen Manny whipping a boy on a cross.
"Escaped, damn him! He has escaped!" Grant shouted.
"So you hadn't won him over as you thought you had. He was fooling you. "
"So it seems. But this is a small island. He won't hide for long. And let me tell you, Sheldon—before he dies, he will wish he had never challenged me."
"Is he the first ever to get out of here?"
"The first since I took charge. But don't entertain any false hopes. If the men who discovered his flight had come to me quickly instead of trying to overtake him, I would have stopped him."
"How?"
"By persuasion, Sheldon. You should know."
"The way you got to me a time or two?" The dialogue, Peter felt, was doing him good, giving him strength. He made a real effort to keep it going. "What I want to know, Grant, is how you've been able to reach me the way you do. Why am I so damned easy for you when, obviously, an older man like Manny Williams is not?"
From a pocket of his brown shirt the devil's advocate produced a small yellow cylinder and held it out between thumb and forefinger. "Do you know what this is?"
"A film?"
"Several of my scouts had cameras, if you remember. One, while taking a picture of the Great House, asked you to stand on the veranda steps."
Peter was incredulous. "You mean you're able to reach into my mind because you have a photo of me on an undeveloped film?"
"Not only of you. Preble and Miss Craig were standing just behind you, and the lad caught them as well." The scout leader's lips curled in what was no doubt meant to be a smile of triumph. "Many things help, Sheldon. You will learn.
"Edith and Preble were not that close to me," Peter challenged. But Grant had gotten to Edith at the John Crow's Nest, hadn't he? She would have killed herself there if—
"The woman and you were closer to each other at that moment than you know." Grant shrugged.
"I say you're wrong. She was standing at least—"
"I don't mean physically closer, Sheldon."
Unable to think of an answer to that, Peter said after a slight hesitation, "You get to me through the photo, then. But you couldn't stop Manny Williams from escaping."
"I didn't know he had escaped until too late."
"I'm glad to hear that. I'm glad to know you have your limitations, damn you. I'll beat you yet, Grant."
"Will you?" The leader's twisted smile had faded. His tone was ominous. "Whe
n I come again, perhaps I'll be sufficiently out of patience with you to find out. You've just given me an idea how to do it."
That had been four hours ago, and for a time the knowledge that Manny had escaped had been for Peter both food and drink. But his despair, when it returned, was even greater than before because of the all-too-brief reprieve.
Unable to concentrate on anything but his thirst and hunger now, in agony from his long confinement in this circular prison where the green light never ceased its whirlpool motion, he at times became totally confused and even forgot where he was.
And every little while the voice in his head sought to win his cooperation by promising power in place of suffering. Power and the endless delights it would win for him.
Then Grant returned, followed by two naked men leading a woman whose wrists were bound behind her. And the woman was Edith Craig.
Peter struggled to his knees and fixed his gaze on her. All these hours he had clung to the desperate hope that she might be safe somewhere. He had last seen her with her fiancé on the veranda of the Great House that early morning, an eternity ago, when Sergeant Wray had told what happened to the soldiers and the Judas named Pennock sat there pretending to be in shock.
Edith had been wearing a robe over pajamas then. Now she wore the khaki shirt and slacks in which she had walked about the plantation with him. She and Alton Preble must have changed when Pennock persuaded them to accompany him. But she was not now the same woman he had left at the house when he drove Wray to the police station. Obviously close to total exhaustion, she appeared ready to sink to the floor if the two men holding her arms let go their grip.
Returning his gaze, she seemed not to know who he was. Perhaps she was not even seeing him.
"You bastard," Peter whispered to Linford Grant.
Again Grant shrugged. "You gave me the idea yourself, when you asked why she responded to the command I sent you at the John Crow's Nest. Now, friend, I believe you will cooperate."
Sensing the terms about to be offered him, Peter clenched his hands and remained silent. His gaze, though, would not leave the exhausted figure standing there.
