by Parry, Owen
The gourds and bottles of liquor reappeared. Splashed from mouth to mouth, their contents glazed over chins and down dark necks.
By the time she had drained the last blood from the bowl, Queen Manuela’s features were slimed crimson. As she moved about the crowds, men and women alike caressed her legs below the knee, moaning and begging.
Her eyes were not of this earth.
Now, I have stood punitive hours on parade. I know that a fellow must bend his knees to avoid toppling in a faint. I drew on my soldier’s tricks to remain erect. But queer it was. I had to fight back wave after wave of dizziness, as if I had been plied with their savage liquors.
I did not want to lose my footing or, still worse, my consciousness. I was not certain I would be allowed to rise again.
The world lost its clear edges. They danced and drank, calling to the darkness and each other. The fellow got up as a motley king had fulfilled his liturgical function. He stripped himself down to obscene, excited nudity, then plunged into the round.
Time lost all its dignity and order. It answered to the drums, not the other way round. Some among the dancers reminded me of a corporal who had been gnawed by a rabid dog near the Lahore cantonment. The regimental surgeon ordered the poor fellow bound up, he had no choice. The corporal took a long time to die, reduced to a raging animal, shrieking in pain and anxious to fix his teeth into the flesh of his fellow man. Even the bravest men watched from a distance.
Twas odd. Our regulations would not let us put him out of his misery. There was no provision for such a case, although the lads agreed he should be shot. In the end, some Musselman fellow cut the corporal’s throat in the night. Perhaps it was only to put an end to the screams, which could be heard far away, among the natives. But I like to think it was done from human kindness.
Let that bide. The demonic possession of my fellow creatures was unlike anything I had ever seen before. Even the vigor and savagery of battle has purpose and some wild order. But the dancing, if so I may call it, grew crazed and lurid.
The men and women became less careful of the distance between them. Clothing fell away, what little there was of it. Pairs declined to the earth. Some staggered to the far side of the bonfires, still possessed of a vestigial modesty. The brutes among the crowd dropped where they pleased.
No Christian man should witness such events. Nor did I wish to watch, nor did I gloat. I turned my eyes away from the vilest acts. But I feared to shut them. I feared it as I rarely have feared anything.
And strange it was. I could not dismiss the foulness before me by telling myself that, after all, they were negroes. I had a hateful sense that what I saw lurked below the accident of skin. Lads in my own regiment in India did things to native women that no man among us ever will write down. And they were boys from Chepstow or from Chester. I did not wish to remember those things, but I did. How bright-faced boys tormented brown-skinned lasses during the Mutiny, killing them after their pleasure was all spent.
For all the devilish doings that night, the only creature killed was that poor lamb. At least thus far.
They rushed at me without warning, spurred by some command I did not hear. I had no time to draw my Colt and barely raised my cane.
My pale attempt at defending myself was useless. Crazed and crowding, male and female, spattered with blood and reeking of fleshy sins, they raged about me, dancing and shrieking, shaking tawny fists.
I could no more have stopped them than I could have stood against a locomotive. The truth is I was helpless as a babe.
Yet, not a one put a toe inside the circle.
They howled and screamed, ogling me as if that lamb had merely served as practice. Plunging about and snarling, the mass of them might have torn me limb from limb. They seemed to long to do it.
But not one finger violated the circle. For all their wildness and savagery, they had a certain grace, that I will give them. They danced to the edge of insanity, pressing themselves within a fraction of an inch of that outer ring of shells, artful in their abilities to come ever so close, yet still avoid desecration. Male and female alike, a number revealed their body’s parts to me, mocking, teasing and threatening. Some laughed, while others raged.
I lowered my cane. Useless it would have been to attempt to wield it. There was no sense in provoking them even further. There are times when a fellow simply has to stand erect with whatever aplomb he can muster. It is one of the few things Englishmen are good for, and although I am a Welshman born and bred, I never was too proud to take a lesson.
The negroes smelled of life, proud and unembarrassed.
I cannot say how long the trial endured, but it ended with a sort of ragged swiftness, as one then another retreated from the ring.
Twas then I saw her again. Standing in her purple robe, staring at me directly. As if nothing else in the world could draw her interest.
Her congregation grew sober with a suddenness more unnerving than their exuberance had been. They formed themselves in a great, uneven circle, with me at its center.
The drums relaxed, but did not quit. The rhythm slowed to the pace of a human heartbeat.
With dried gore crusted on her cheeks and her purple robe disheveled, Queen Manuela approached me. I do not know that I have ever suffered such a gaze. I have killed men, face to face, whose eyes had less intensity as we struggled. The dizziness welled up again, until I thought it would topple me from my feet. I leaned upon my cane, but felt as if unseen ropes and cords wished to pull me one way or the other. To tug me down and drag me from the circle.
Her stately progress aroused a greater fear in me than all the shouting and raging of the pack of them. The hands below her sleeves were a raptor’s claws.
But she, too, paused when she reached the edge of the circle. Still, she looked about to devour me whole.
The serpent in her turban rose. Looking toward the fires, not at me.
The priestess began to moan. Until the moan became an incantation. To my relief, she closed her eyes and looked about to swoon. As if a greater power had descended and put her in her lesser, mortal place. I cannot say why, but I felt the way a fellow feels as he bursts to the water’s surface and breathes again. Gasping I was, although I hardly sensed it.
Deliberately, she pulled apart the bodice of her gown, displaying her dugs and muttering at the sky. She rubbed first one, then the other, of her breasts, but their age of excitement was past and soon she covered herself.
She shrieked at me then. I almost tumbled backward. Again and again, she shouted in some foreign, satanic tongue. They were questions, judging by the tone, and I felt compelled to make some attempt to answer. But I recalled, in time, Mr. Barnaby’s warnings.
I only wanted to see some hint of the blessing of God’s daylight.
I could not say how many hours had passed, for time had lost the constancy of angels. We say time speeds or slows, depending on our terrors and excitements, on loneliness and absence from our loved ones. But that, I think, is only an illusion.
That night was different. Time cast aside its laws.
She turned from me and called into the murk beyond the fires. Bidding her slave approach her. He responded slowly, with the stiffness of the ancients. But come he did.
As he neared, he looked to me a giant.
She led him around my circle, anti-clockwise, seven times. Then she spoke to the darkness above the trees.
Her worshippers edged rearward. As if they had been warned of poisonous serpents.
Queen Manuela stepped back herself, but did not break the stare she fixed upon me. She eased toward the altar, but stopped before breaching the circle of her followers. At last, she unwrapped the snake from the folds of her turban.
Holding the creature above her head, then clutching it to her bosom, she finished by displaying it to her left side and her right. She did not replace it in her turban, but released it onto her shoulder. The creature docilely made its own way back atop her head, as calmly as a cat returns to i
ts favored spot by the hearth.
They all chanted together then, the priestess and her flock. They did not dance, but trembled where they stood.
With neither warning nor provocation, the great, stiff fellow broke into a struggle against an invisible opponent. Twas as odd a thing as any I ever saw. The massive negro recoiled as if taking mighty blows from an airy nemesis, then pounded back at his ghostly, unseen enemy. The worshippers watched as raptly as privates at a boxing match upon which they have staked all their back pay. Their eyes were huge and grew wider still as the big fellow tumbled to earth in a death-grip with the transparent wraith he was wrestling.
You will not credit this, although I tell it you. And I will admit that I may have been deceived myself by the madness of the night. But the mighty negro was bleeding from nose and mouth, with claw marks elsewhere, as if he had been pummeled by a creature half-man, half-beast. He did not injure himself, I tell you, but recoiled from magical blows until he oozed gore.
By the time he had lost his fight with the spirit, one of his eyes was swollen shut and even one ear was bleeding.
The congregation moaned in desolation. At Queen Manuela’s command, a flock of women lugged the poor fellow off.
She approached me again, once her slave was gone. Her face was terrible. I cannot say if her features reflected awe or grief or ecstasy. Her soul was gone beyond our common emotions. Her eyes retained no symptom of humanity.
Reaching into the deepest folds of her garment, she drew out a pouch the color of negro skin. In a movement so quick that my eyes could not follow, she scooped out a handful of powder and dusted it over me.
That is the last I remember of the ceremony.
I WOKE WHEN a child tried to pick my pocket. I gave a great jump, as if to avoid the thrust of an enemy bayonet, swinging my arms about.
The lad who had annoyed me leapt away, eluding my blows. Lean and brown and ragged, he had a mischief-maker’s smile in his small, round head. A meager lass stood behind him, prodding the earth with my sword-cane.
Twas morning.
I bellowed to fright a pack of Irish privates. The boy danced off, pausing briefly by his unmistakable sister. Then they fled. Laughing. The lass let go my sword-cane and it fell to earth. Twas only a game, I think, not proper robbery.
They ran grandly, crying out with glee and pretended terror, until the swamp concealed them.
I looked about. My head was thumping like those blasted drums.
And I remembered.
In that unreasoned panic which afflicts a man surprised between sleep and waking, I nearly buckled. Staring about in distress. Looking to see if I had broken the circle.
But the circle was gone. There were only a few truant bits of shell and the freckled earth where the runes had been swept away.
I had a sickly feeling, with a clamoring in my head that recalled my Indian days, before I turned to Our Savior. Back when I was a heedless lad who did not always resist the lures of liquor.
Cold it was, with that morning chill soldiers know. The sky was pearl and mist roamed from the swamps, which stank. Five blackened patches upon the earth were the only relics of the past night’s revelry.
I felt beneath my greatcoat. And found my Colt in place, as well as my purse and my Testament. My fickle watch still swelled my waistcoat pocket. Nor was there any suggestion that the congregants had interfered with my person.
After shaking myself as a hound might have done, I rubbed my eyes and went to retrieve my cane. Stiffness infected my thirty-four-year-old bones, worsening my limp. The earth is an unkind bed for a middle-aged man.
I stooped to pick up my cane. As I rose, I saw her.
You would have thought her out for a morning stroll. Her purple robe was gone, along with her turban. And the serpent. Her face was clean and still above her cape. With her out-of-season parasol, she looked a lady come down in life, not a pagan priestess.
Still, my flesh defied my will and shuddered.
She kept a distance between us, as if we must speak from the opposite banks of a stream. Perhaps that was the case in a deeper sense. For our two shores of faith would never reconcile.
I was unsure, almost unsteady. I wanted coffee and time to arrange my mood, which was snappish. The whole affair seemed shabby and cheap in the daylight. I wondered if I had been played for a fool.
“You,” she said, in a voice not free of weariness, “have a great protector. Papa La Bas, he can’t touch you. You’re a lucky man.”
I am a Christian man. That is my protection.
“She’s very strong, stronger than me,” Queen Manuela continued. Or perhaps I should call her Madame La Blanch again. “She must have died young, your haunt-girl. To be so strong.”
Such nonsense riles me.
“I have questions,” I told her. My voice meant to be stern, but had a wheeze. It had not yet been tested by the day. “I did as I was asked, mum. Now it is my turn to—”
“Five askings,” she interrupted. “You get five askings. Then no more.”
“Who are the ‘fishers of men’?”
“Union soldiers. Pirates. Negroes who hate their own skin. Marie Venin.” She followed the name with a clot of spit. “A white devil-woman.”
“What do they do? Why do the negroes fear them?”
“They steal black folk. Take them away. On ships.”
That baffled me. “But where? To Africa? Why on earth would they—”
She shook her head, as solemnly as if standing over a grave. “Not Africa. Somewheres. The spirits don’t say. They know, but they won’t say. No one ever comes back, that’s all we know.”
She chose her words with the care of a soldier on court-martial.
“But why? To what end?” I demanded. “What would be the sense of kidnapping negroes, for the love of God? They’re worthless now. They’re free.” My head still throbbed. I could not think as crisply as I wished.
“I can’t tell you that. Maybe you already know. The spirits say you know plenty of things. But you fight against knowing them.”
For a moment, I thought she might step closer, to impart an intimacy. She seemed to waver. But she held her ground.
“Palms been crossed with gold, not only silver,” she told me. “Listen now. You only got one asking left. Just one now. I’m not allowed to give you no more than that. Think hard, white man.”
Twas all a hocus-pocus, of course. A way to feed me little bits and pieces. Perhaps, I suspected, to lead me astray again. Likely the pagan revels had been no more than a ruse to steal my time. While wickedness proceeded back in the city.
Skeptical I was, and sore of body. Far from the world of airy spooks, my bowels began to protest my neglect, for they are as reliable as the company bugler.
Yet, I thought me hard before I asked that final question. Only to surprise myself and put a trivial query. Surrendering to morbid curiosity, perhaps to a sort of vanity.
“Was Susan Peabody … a virtuous woman? Was she—”
“She was a woman. Like any other.”
Madame La Blanch shook her head again, as if she pitied me deeply. As if I were a small and foolish man, after all. She made no further mention of great spirits.
“Man who won’t see might as well be blind,” she said brusquely. “Can’t lead a mule who won’t go. Play a fool to make a fool, then see who the fool is.”
Finished with her epigrams—as trite as a fortune-teller’s at the fair—Madame La Blanch strode off. I was dissatisfied and moved to follow her. But she sensed what I intended and turned about.
“You stay put,” she snapped, eyes blazing again for that instant. “You stay right there ’til I’m gone. Then you skedaddle. There’s things in this life you don’t want to know.”
FIFTEEN
I WILL ADMIT THAT I WAS IN A DUDGEON. I HAD SUBMITTED myself to pagan follies, only to be mocked by a blaspheming negress. Nor was I content with the clumsiness of my questions.
Madame La Blanch had indicted almost
everyone in the city, our Union soldiers and pirate gangs, a voodoo rival and even fellow darkies. Along with a “white devil-woman.” It struck me as a crude attempt to employ me in a reckoning with her enemies. All the world could not be in conspiracies.
I marched me back along the trail by which I had arrived the night before. Stabbing the earth with my cane like a sulking child, I grumbled but did not dawdle. For I had an urgent purpose. One that had nothing to do with the fate of Miss Peabody and everything to do with mine own comfort.
I scooted on my way and did not look back.
Why on earth would anyone steal negroes? Slavery was finished and their value had expired. They could be hired in dozens for a dollar. And that might not be a dollar wisely spent.
Nor were we drafting Africans into our army. On the contrary, General Butler, of whom much ill may elsewise be said, had led our efforts to recruit them honestly, meeting with great success before his removal. We had more colored volunteers who wished to wear a blue coat than Washington could regulate or arm. Indeed, many a high, distinguished voice remained reluctant to back negro recruitment, viewing the black man as worthless in a fight or worrying that we would antagonize Mr. Davis.
Meanwhile, runaway “contrabands” crowded our camps and slept in the city streets, hazarding the general health and, certainly, themselves. Freedom had levied a tax in human misery.
Yet, I would be just: Who among us would not prefer to live in confounding freedom over the certainties of the slave? The worst among us then were men of privilege, who, having kept the African chained and ignorant, complained that he was ill prepared for freedom. I would not raise the black man upon a pedestal, nor do I quite propose him as our equal, but every man deserves an honest chance.
Freedom may not guarantee our nourishment, but I never met a man whom it had poisoned.
I pitied the negroes, but knew not what to do with them. Such matters were better left to wiser men.
Twas all a blather and a bother, anyway. After I had gone a hundred paces, the only thing that mattered was my bowels.
