He stepped backwards from her, taking three distinct paces.
“Go to sleep,” he said. “You are tired.”
And suddenly, she was.
2
As he slept, Lucas walked through a dream of the ship. The Kronos, a three masted frigate, thirty-eight souls all bound for glory and far off Cathay. He walked alone upon her decks, ten years younger, feeling the grainy salted timber slick beneath his booted step.
The Northwest wind hissed through her sails, tightly bound with frozen line. The hoar frost thickened upon the masts, slithering down the ratlines and grew into icicles that glittered in the midnight sun like countless hungry fangs.
Duvall stood alone in the mouth of the hold, his feet braced wide in a sailor’s stance. His pelvis boldly thrust outward, his head swung back in laughter, his every gesture inviting Lucas down into the familiar darkness.
Lucas thought of Peter’s bones hidden below; all scaled with ice and there was Duvall’s laughter, loud and long and rolling like the shifting of the restless polar floes.
Lucas awoke in darkness with the taste of dead earth moldering in his mouth, staring helplessly down the maw of an ancient savage, drowning in her fetid night breath and behind, his skin twitched and danced eagerly to the touch of a young boy’s hands dead cold upon his flesh.
His scream echoed in the pit of his stomach, catching dryly in the back of his throat and holding there like a strangler’s curse, emerging finally as the husked out impotent croak of a dying reptile.
3
Cold Venus kept watch from her lofty perch as the evening fell. Dark night gods held their collective breath and the wind grew still in silent anticipation.
Life of a sort lurked within the bowels of the waiting valley. It stirred in gentle excitement, goaded by the sight of something approaching, something that walked on two broad feet.
Jonah Duvall left his darkened cabin shortly after the woman fell asleep. Jezebel would see to things while he was gone. Not that there was much that needed seeing to. It-self would take care of it-self.
Hadn’t it foretold of these visitors coming in a dream that he had dreamed these past three nights running? Hadn’t it sung to him and promised a long year’s feast?
The whippoorwill whistled its plaintive cry.
Duvall chuckled softly to himself.
“Go away, old soul-catcher. There are no souls here.”
Each step took him deeper into the darkness. He crushed dead branches, dried pine needles and rotted leaves beneath his cross booted step. This place is more bone-yard than forest, he thought. Autumn surely was the killing season. Death moved closely with life, of a sort, here in the valley.
Soon he stood beneath the tree. His tree. Had he not named it the Duvall tree and there were none who had better claim to it than him.
The tree rose high above all other trees; the oldest and largest tree in the valley. It was a mighty jack pine as old as sin. It stood alone with only its children about it, shriveled little dwarflings swallowed by their father’s sprawling growth, choked within his heavy shadow.
Duvall looked from left to right. His nostrils flared like hungry caverns, sucking in the heavily rosined scent. He whistled a low, clear note in a strangish key, ringing on interminably until his wind yielded to the crushing silence.
From a nearby birch, a young sparrow, roused from its tree-bound slumber, drifted down and lit upon his open palm. It nestled deeply, warm within his hardened hand, its blind eyes still unseeing and lost within smallish bird dreams of swarming fields of insects and grain. He held the bird gently, cupped within its fleshy nest, feeling the throb of its tiny wild heart as it twittered and fluttered against his scar furrowed hand.
How frail, he thought. How delicate.
He smiled into the night, a hollow smile lost within the folds of ravenous darkness. He stared into the endless depths of the jack pine until he found a familiar sharpened limb. He raised his free hand to grasp the jut.
“God sees the little sparrow fall…” he began, and then with a single thrust, he impaled the tiny bird upon the branch.
The bird hung suspended like a bit of feathered leaf. Its eyes flew wide as it bled its life away within the space of a single softly warbled sigh. He wiped his sticky hands upon the tree’s thirsty bark in a futile attempt to cleanse them.
“Damn you,” he said to no one in particular. He spat upon the base of the tree. Afterwards he pissed upon the roots, kicked dirt upon them and spat again.
“Damn you,” he repeated.
Dead needles fell like clots of earth from a sexton’s spade as the jack pine shook itself in the windless night. Nearby trees rustled their branches in leafy applause as Duvall walked away in slow heavy silence.
The following morning Jonah and Duvall went down together into the valley to see Duvall’s Tree.
Chapter Three
Lucas awoke beside Jezebel, unraveled from a night of fitful dreams. He trembled in the early chill, his breath misting about him like smoky clouds. He wished for his pipe but the river had swallowed it.
The old squaw resurrected the embers buried beneath the fire’s dead ashes. She prepared breakfast, moving with heavy grace upon broad bare feet. In the daylight she wasn’t half as ancient as she’d appeared the night before. Lucas guessed her age lay within her early forties.
The young boy was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Duvall. Tamsen sat wrapped within an old bearskin, staring blindly into the mounting flames.
“Hey girl,” Lucas said to Tamsen.
Tamsen sat like a dead thing. She didn’t move when he hugged her. He held her closely, allowing his sorrow to bathe her vacant features.
“Tamsen,” he crooned.
Her eyelids fluttered at the touch of his salty tears. Reason returned like a fatigued swimmer kicking to the surface of a deep pool.
“Lucas?” she said.
Duvall entered from outside, clapping his hands together three times as if to ward off the morning chill. He hummed a monotonous little ditty and performed a bizarre sort of jig. Lucas glanced at the man’s antics. When he returned his gaze to Tamsen, she was cold and silent once more.
“Rise and shine, daylight’s in the wood,” Duvall bellowed, despite the fact that everybody was up. “It is time to break the fast. Morning is burning and we have much to do.”
Breakfast was stew, supplemented with a heavy bannock Jezebel baked fresh that morning. While they ate, Jezebel drained the sheep’s water-soaked carcass. She ran a spit through it and placed the carcass over a low fire to cook. Occasionally she grabbed a scrap of bannock and slathered it with greasy drippings, stuffing it into her mouth contentedly.
“I sent the cub along the shore with the hound to search for your belongings,” Duvall said. “He’ll drag what he can.”
“The boy, his name is…?”
“Cord. At least I call him that. He’s got near as much sense as a stack of wood, so the name seems to suit.”
Duvall ate with relish, growling in contentment like a well-fed bear. His eyes glistened as he chewed, black pebbles glinting in a slow, dark stream.
“Jezebel, she is a fine cook, no?”
“Your wife?”
“My woman,” Duvall corrected.
“Can she speak English?”
Duvall shrugged.
“She speaks poorly but she hears well enough.”
Lucas dug into his stew. It needed salt.
“I met her far north of here in the country of her people,” Duvall explained. “I bought her for a bundle of pelt, a poor rifle and a good axe. She’d been married to a young warrior. He died. I named her as well as the boy. Once you name a thing it is yours.”
Lucas watched her while he listened. Her face remained a murky mask.
“More,” Duvall said.
Jezebel fetched a second bowlful. There was something in the way Duvall spoke that bothered Lucas. The man was lying. Maybe a big one, maybe a small one but Lucas was certain Duvall was l
ying.
“A good deal, don’t you think?”
You’re still lying, Lucas thought.
Duvall’s laughter subsided.
Lucas rooted a little deeper trying to see what might unearth.
“But what happened to her husband?”
A stiffness as slow as grim winter death crept across Duvall’s shoulder and neck.
“You have not been listening. He died. That was all.”
Jezebel’s eyes said nothing. Duvall slid his final chunk of bannock across the surface of his bowl, sopping what remained of his stew. He smiled again, putting the expression upon his mouth as a man might put on a hat.
“Her father threw me a shivaree. That was something to see, all right. They beat upon drums, pans, and kettles – anything that could make noise. Two warriors overturned a canoe and beat it with paddles until the owner objected. The white traders fired their guns and whooped and sang in a goddamned unpleasant manner.”
Duvall laughed an honest laugh.
Jezebel smiled, and for a wonder, spoke.
“Jo-nah killed a deer,” she added.
And then her stolid mask slid back into place.
“That’s right, for the feast. Then I took her into my tent and did what was expected of me. Afterwards there was grog and winter ale and plenty to eat.”
He licked the bowl clean, casting it aside for Jezebel to retrieve.
He’s afraid of her, Lucas decided. For some reason, he’s afraid to even touch her.
Duvall rose to his feet with a single satisfied grunt.
“It’s time to go,” he said. “Are you coming?”
“Where do we go?”
“To the valley, of course. We have much to talk about, you and I. But first, I got work to do.”
Lucas turned his eyes towards Tamsen’s still form.
“She’ll be fine,” Duvall assured him.
Lucas loathed to leave her. Still, there wasn’t much he could do but hold her hand and fret. The new raft wouldn’t build itself.
Duvall prodded his indecision.
“Jezebel will tend to the woman. She is stronger than you think.”
“I’ll need an axe,” Lucas said.
Duvall had two; one for himself and a second that belonged to Cord.
“The axe handle has a strange crook to it,” Lucas said.
“You’ll grow used to it,” Duvall told him.
“It hefts awkwardly.”
“The blade is keen,” Duvall said. “I sharpened it yesterday. It bears a good weight.”
“If I had my tool box I could fashion a better handle.”
“We haven’t time.”
Lucas paused for a final look at his wife. She would not meet his gaze, staring into the fire as if she drew more than warmth from its flickering heart.
2
The memories chased Tamsen mercilessly, giving no quarter.
“Lie still boy,” a hard voice spoke from somewhere within her memory.
She remembered seeing the man spread eagled upon the ground, his hands and feet tied and staked, forming a perfect letter X.
“Get the bag on him.”
The ants crawled on the man’s naked flesh. He moaned with fear, gnawing against the gag of a dirty rag. His wide white eyes were stark counterpoints to his hard ebon flesh.
“Long as you’re calm he won’t bite you.”
The man twisted, his muscles writhing like flesh-bound serpents.
“It likes the dark, don’t it?”
“Long as it’s in the sack it’ll be quiet. Less’n it gets scared or hungry.”
“Maybe it’ll just think it’s with another snake. Reckon it might fuck him?”
“It was long enough for one, wasn’t it? Maybe we ought to have docked it a little. Pruned it down.”
The man began to scream but his cries were lost behind the gag.
“Don’t fret none. If it bites you we can always cut it off.”
A hard laugh, barked into the night.
“Maybe old Delta would suck the poison out. Bet she’d like that.”
The man’s screams climbed several octaves. His eyes squeezed in pain.
“Now you watch this Little Tamsey. It’s for your own good.”
And God help her Tamsen had watched.
3
Jezebel knelt before the fire and turned the mutton. Her knees cracked like dead wood. Bending seemed impossible these days. The time of the birthing drew closer. She rose slowly, placing a protective hand upon her swollen belly.
What will they look like this time?, she wondered.
Her thoughts turned towards the valley.
Her face darkened.
She scraped the dishes clean and rinsed them in a bucket of unclean water. She’d have to send the boy to the river. The bucket was too heavy for her with what rooted deep in her belly.
She whisked at the floor with the willow broom Duvall made her. He’d promised a wooden floor when he first brought her to this place but the promise was a lie. Still, she insisted on the broom. She wanted to sweep like the town women did. She’d seen them sweeping out their cabins on their journey to the valley, six long years ago.
Six years. She didn’t think of them as years but rather as graves dug in the dirt. Six years with more birthings than she had fingers to count. Her hand flitted across her abdomen like a bird nervous about its nest. Her thoughts turned to the valley, and the men below.
She placed the broom in the corner. She rearranged the blankets about the river woman and placed another log upon the fire. The boy entered, bearing a small wooden crate. The hound followed, and sat beside the cold woman, who absently stroked its coarse black fur.
Jezebel spoke to the boy calling him by his own name in his own tongue.
“Was that all you could find?”
“There was more, but it will take many trips,” he answered in English. “It is safe where it is.”
“We need water,” she said. “The goats need milking or they’ll dry up.”
The boy shrugged. “Duvall wants me to help in the field. The goats never give enough milk to suit me. Let them dry up. I’ll bring water when I can.”
She wouldn’t let him go that easily.
“I ache,” she said, kneading her breasts. “They grow heavy.”
“I’m not thirsty, old woman,” his laughter cut like a knife. “Your dugs are stale and unneeded. Let them dry up, as well.”
Years before she’d have slapped him for his impertinence. Now she nodded in resignation. It was futile to argue. He was right. It wasn’t fitting for him to do the things he did for her but the tree’s urgings kept her flow from drying up and there were no smaller children to ease her milk-pain.
The boy would soon be a man. Duvall held sway over his spirit. There would be no help from either of them. Both of them wanted the younger woman. Jezebel had grown expendable.
She braced her hands upon the small of her back, rolled her shoulders and rested her weight upon the splayed palms. She watched in silence as the boy walked down into the valley, following his chosen father’s chosen footsteps.
In the distant woods a tall black deer watched thoughtfully. A carved, wooden shaman’s mask lay empty at its hooves.
4
The valley lay about the river like the hull of an enormous vessel, gouged out by centuries of patient erosion. The river was a shadow of the Greensnake, which thundered beyond the valley’s confines. Both the source and outlet of this smaller, nameless river were hidden by the masking shelter of the trees.
“Do we travel far?” Lucas asked Duvall.
“Farther than you dream,” Duvall answered and would say no more.
The cabin hung halfway up the eastern wall of the valley, perched upon an accommodating ridge. Lucas would have built farther down into the valley, closer to the river. There were no marks of spring flooding or erosion. He wondered at Duvall’s choice of location.
Lucas watched for landmarks from yesterday’s journey. N
othing seemed recognizable. The trail that wormed into the valley was unfamiliar; the landscape protean in its mutability, each twist and turn cursed with a drab sameness, confounding his sense of direction. He kept an eye upon Duvall’s restless back, lest he find himself lost.
“Be wary of your step,” Duvall warned. “This trail sneaks away from you, if you’re not careful.”
Sneak was a good word. Deeper in the valley the trail grew unstable. It blended imperceptibly into the terrain. The dirt hid beneath a thick carpet of pine needles. Each footfall hushed and whispered. Lucas longed for the solid feel of a wooden deck.
Duvall drowned the silence with continued interrogation.
“Where do you come from? What brought you this way?”
“We come from the east,” Lucas answered. He did not trust this man. “A raft brought us. It floated until it didn’t.”
Duvall acknowledged the dry humor with a sharp laugh. The issue was thus evaded. Still, the questions were inevitable. Lucas dreaded their coming and rehearsed more lies. He fled to this desolate wilderness hoping to escape such questions and the averted glances the truth might bring.
They walked in silence until Duvall made his next venture.
“You walk with the roll of a seaman, you carry that axe like one used to its feel and yet you’ve got the high-collared stink of a godsman. What manner of beast are you, Lucas Tanner?”
Lucas laughed good-naturedly.
“I yield. You have wormed it from me. I have served as a ship’s carpenter and attended seminary.”
“For a godsman you strangely lack words. Most priestlings I’ve met wag their tongue on well-oiled hinges.”
Lucas grinned.
“I’m weary from my journey. Give me time. I’m certain I’ll equal, if not surpass, your expectation.”
Duvall joined him in his laughter.
Their conversation was broken by the appearance of Cord, balancing a small wooden crate upon his shoulders. The hound followed close at heel. Lucas recognized the crate as some of his supplies from the raft.
The boy nodded at Duvall, ignoring Lucas completely.
Devil Tree Page 3
