by James Morrow
Mr. Chadwick, meanwhile, essayed the role of diplomat. As Hood’s ambassador to both Her Majesty’s Galápagos Protectorate and the Empire of Duntopia, he employed the Lamarck, Léourier at the helm, to visit Stopsack every Tuesday and Eggwort every Thursday. Come evening, Chloe would stand on the lee shore and watch the clattering airship touch down, sending a dozen annoyed sea lions retreating into the surf, and then Mr. Chadwick, disembarking, would deliver yet another dispatch she did not want to hear.
By the vicar’s account, Stopsack had washed his hands and cleansed his conscience of the whole Covenant affair, refusing to allow that in condemning two British subjects to the whims of a monomaniacal American expatriate he had woefully exceeded his authority—refusing, even, to acknowledge that Cabot and Quinn were in prison. As for Eggwort, although he insisted that the arsonists would be “dragged before the bar to answer for their impiety,” he declined to specify a date for their trial, nor would he explain how such a proceeding might occur on an island devoid of courts, barristers, and judges. Naturally Mr. Chadwick kept asserting that the arsonists were innocent of blasphemy, the incinerated vessel being naught but an aboriginal totem. Eggwort invariably replied that, having trod its boards and touched its sails, he knew the lost Covenant was the original Genesis ark. Mr. Chadwick’s requests to visit the prisoners were met with Eggwortian rigidity, the Emperor claiming that Kommandant Hengstenberg never permitted outsiders to enter Mephistropolis, for such intrusions always led to riots.
Upon returning from his fourteenth audience with Eggwort, Mr. Chadwick approached Chloe and said, “I bear two pieces of news, one felicitous, the other not,” his ashen complexion and quavering voice attesting to the dreadfulness of the second development. “Brace yourself, Miss Bathurst. Eggwort has issued an edict proclaiming that throughout Duntopia the crime of blasphemy is henceforth punishable by death.”
Suddenly she was back in the sky above the Peruvian savannah, plummeting towards the Jequetepeque valley as the condors slashed the balloon. Punishable by death? Subject to the gallows, like Pirate Anne? The chopping block, like John the Baptist?
“Oh, what a foul piece of work is that man!” she seethed.
“Utterly abominable,” said the vicar.
“Now tell me the good news.”
There was indeed a pearl of great price in the offal that Mr. Chadwick had dumped at her feet. Come Saturday morning, Eggwort would be willing to meet with “the false prophet Miss Omega” on Barrington Isle, a formation that (being equidistant from Hood and Charles) he regarded as neutral ground. If the parlay proved productive, he would arrange for the trial to occur posthaste.
“Which means that, if the jury acquits them, Dartworthy and Miss Kirsop will walk free of Mephistropolis,” Mr. Chadwick explained.
“Does Eggwort really believe he has the right to hang our friends?” she rasped.
“No less than he believes the Covenant was Noah’s ark,” said Mr. Chadwick.
Heavy of heart, unquiet of mind, Chloe retreated to her shack. In recent days she’d contrived to offset the dreariness of the place, adorning the walls with the scarlet shells of sally-lightfoot crabs, the windows with passionflower garlands, and the table with a bouquet of cactus flowers set in an empty Madeira bottle. She’d never been so appreciative of these appointments, for each now had its part to play. Slowly, methodically, she tore the crab shells from their pegs and ground them to powder beneath her boot heel. Sic semper tyrannis. She pulled the garlands from the windows and ripped them to shreds. Thus to all emperors.
Lifting the bouquet of cactus flowers from its vase, she seized the stems directly below the petals and with her free hand rotated the blossoms. Satisfied that she’d choked the flowers to death, she let them slip from her hand, musing on the curious fact that there was no word in the English language, or any other tongue as far as she knew, for the corpse of a plant.
* * *
When the designated hour arrived and the Lamarck’s company touched down on Barrington Isle, not far from a population of high-spined land iguanas, Orrin Eggwort was waiting for them, having traveled from Charles in the Cumorah. He’d brought along four wives, each armed with a holstered pistol riding on her hip. Throughout the crossing, this contingent of his harem had doubtless hoisted the canvas and worked the helm, though for the remainder of the afternoon they would evidently function as his bodyguard.
The Emperor guided Chloe, Mr. Chadwick, and Léourier to a dry lake bed perhaps a furlong beyond the tide line, explaining that in days of yore rival pirate bands had periodically assembled here to negotiate pillage and rapine rights. To enhance the congeniality of these gatherings, the pirates had hewn furniture from the freestanding rocks, transforming the lake bed into a kind of outdoor moot hall—the perfect venue for deciding which gangs would get to plunder the Ecuadorian coastal villages, which would provide the Peruvian tin mines with Indian slaves, and which would attack the royal treasure galleons plying between Manila and Acapulco.
“Though the pirates certainly never envisioned its becomin’ the site of the pretrial colloquy in The People of Duntopia versus Edward Cabot and Bianca Quinn,” Eggwort added, lolling on his stone settee.
“You may use such exalted terms as ‘pretrial colloquy’ if you wish,” said Mr. Chadwick, perched on his lava chair, “but you know this proceeding enjoys not a shred of legitimacy. Nowhere else in Christendom might a man be executed for blasphemy.”
“The same holds true for pagandom,” said Léourier, shifting on his pumice sofa. “Only in the Mussulman countries will sacrilege send a person to his death.”
“Then the Mussulman countries got a thing or two to teach us,” said Eggwort.
“Consider this, Your Excellency,” said Mr. Chadwick. “Having populated Mephistropolis with ninety British subjects, Her Majesty is poised to assert jurisdiction over Charles Isle. Continue persecuting the illustrious Edward Cabot, and the Crown will have no choice but to shut down Duntopia, your Ecuadorian deed notwithstanding.”
“Given the British Empire’s proclivity fer gettin’ its way most ever’where on the planet, I reckon my deed will end up wrappin’ mackerel no matter what. But first I’m gonna fight the good fight fer God’s honor.”
“Your good fight is a travesty of justice,” said Mr. Chadwick.
“‘A travesty of justice,’ I like that. An ideal worth strivin’ fer—wouldn’t you say?—so very Duntopian.” Rising from his settee, Eggwort poked his sternum with a rigid thumb. “In keepin’ with our goal of maximum travesticity, I hereby appoint myself chief magistrate. The job of chief prosecutor, meanwhile, will go to Jethro Tappert, our Associate Emperor. Fer the jury we’ll be recruitin’ twelve prisoners from Mephistropolis.”
“And who’s to function as chief counsel?” Chloe asked Eggwort.
“You applyin’ fer the post, Miss Omega?”
In a shadowy sector of her brain the seed of an audacious idea coalesced. “I intend to join the defense team, yes, but in the role of expert witness. Meanwhile, Mr. Chadwick and Capitaine Léourier”—she bestowed furtive smiles on the vicar and the aeronaut—“will become the advocates for our anthropologist and our aerialist.”
“Very well,” said Mr. Chadwick, without conviction.
“Bonne idée,” said Léourier, scowling.
“I’ll fill the vacancies as you wish, with one provision,” Eggwort told Chloe. “Your expert testimony must be outlandish enough—I’m talkin’ unadulterated Book of Mormon flummery—to keep Mr. Tappert and myself amused. Fer example, you could insist that the Covenant was burned by the brownies, with Cabot and Quinn appearin’ on the scene only because they hoped to put out the fire.”
The audacious idea germinated, sending forth roots and branches. “Or perhaps I could demonstrate that—” Rushing from her brain to her larynx, the sounds she wished to utter became lodged in her throat like a bone. She closed her eyes and coughed the syllables free. “That God does not exist.”
Gales of laughter
coursed through the Emperor. “Perfect! He don’t exist! As outlandish a notion as a Latter-Day Saint could wish! Naturally Psalm Fourteen, verse fourteen, comes to mind, don’t it, Rebecca?”
“‘The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God,’” the sultana recited.
“Because if there is no God,” added Chloe, “then He couldn’t have ordered Noah to build an ark, which means the sunken vessel wasn’t remotely sacred.”
“Astonishin’!” trilled Eggwort. “Travesticity on stilts! Miss Omega, I insist you make such ratiocinatin’ the be-all and end-all of the blasphemers’ case!”
“Naturally Capitaine Léourier and I must meet straightaway with Professor Cabot and Miss Quinn,” said Mr. Chadwick.
“’Fraid that’s out of the question,” said Eggwort. “Visitations spark riots—ask the Kommandant.”
“In every civilized nation on earth, a lawyer is permitted to consult with his clients,” said Mr. Chadwick.
“I’m sure you’re right, Padre,” said Eggwort, “exceptin’ you ain’t no lawyer, and only an idiot would confuse Duntopia with a civilized nation.” He fixed on Chloe, his lips parting to display two decks of gleeful teeth. “‘No God’—your heart won’t be in it, am I right, Miss Omega? Even a false prophet must have her pride.”
“I may be a false prophet, but I am faithful to the light of eternity,” said Chloe.
Yes, my heart won’t be in it, she thought.
Eggwort faced his eldest spouse and said, “It’s all too delicious, don’t you think?”
“Delicious, yes,” said Rebecca evenly.
“Certainly not distasteful,” said Sarah.
Chloe’s stare drifted towards the beach, where the male frigate birds paid court to prospective mates. Their hearts were in it. In fact, their method of commending themselves to the opposite sex—large red breast-pouches that rhythmically inflated and deflated—suggested nothing so much as joyous, throbbing, externalized hearts.
Eggwort said, “Forty days hence—a good, round, Noahistic sort of number—forty days hence, the good Lord willin’ and the crick don’t rise, we’ll all gather at the tabernacle, there to cross swords in Duntopia versus Cabot and Quinn.”
Chloe closed her eyes and pressed a fist against her stomach. Was she truly prepared to malign the Presence in a futile effort to deliver her friends from the gallows? Of course she was—though the situation was causing her a magnitude of remorse such as she’d often feigned (as when Pirate Anne had left her baby at the orphanage) but never before felt.
“And now I must return to Minor Zion and reassume my horizontal throne,” said Eggwort.
“Rank hath its privileges—and privilege its rankness,” said Mr. Chadwick. “See you in court, Your Excellency.”
* * *
Having appeared sixty-eight times as Pansy Winslow in Lanterns on the Levee, Chloe retained vivid memories of the scene in which the Southern belle’s lover, a gambler named Travis McQuaid, was dragged into the woods one night by a half-dozen fellow cardsharpers for allegedly using a marked deck. The gambler vilified the subsequent hearing, calling it “this monstrous kangaroo court, this unholy drumhead tribunal,” but his denunciations were unavailing. As the sun rose over Mississippi, the mob slipped a noose about his neck and hung him from an ironwood tree.
Once again a kangaroo court had entered Chloe’s life, and yet she could imagine no other means by which Ralph and Solange might be spared the fate of Travis McQuaid. “The universe holds but one entity that cherishes me,” she told Mr. Chadwick, “and now I am forced to betray it.”
“I cannot speak for the universe, but know you are cherished by the former Vicar of Wroxton.”
“I appreciate your sentiments, Reverend. Alas, I’ve come to believe that human affection, like human flesh, is grass. Only divine love endures.”
“If you’re alluding to Ecclesiastes, it’s the Earth that endures. Divine love, in my experience, is a far less reliable commodity.”
“Bring me the sandalwood box.”
Upon receiving “An Essay Concerning Descent with Modification” from Mr. Chadwick, Chloe retreated to her shack. Hour after hour, she perused the thirty-five pages by every imaginable sort of light—the blaze of noon, the glimmer of a candle, the beam of a kerosene lantern, the glow of the moon—all the while availing herself of Léourier’s epená, though the resin failed to ameliorate her misery. Whatever its outcome, this trial would send her in search of forgiveness. She must ask absolution not only of the God of her epiphany but also of the Galápagos fauna—for dismantling the Jehovah hypothesis would mean framing all the world’s birds and beasts not as benefactions from the Presence but as the accidental efflux of an indifferent machine.
When not pondering the essay, she prepared a catalog of the essential illustrative specimens, one page per creature—a bestiary she came to regard as the dramatis personae of her testimony. Two exhibits posed transportation difficulties. Carefully she explained to Cuniche that she needed to ferry a pair of tortoises to Charles Isle, lest Señor Dartworthy and Señorita Kirsop go to the gallows. Although her logic eluded him, Cuniche translated Chloe’s desires for the other Huancabambas, whereupon Ascumiche, Yitogua, and Rapra volunteered their services. Later that afternoon, Léourier flew Chloe and the tortoise team to James Isle, where the Indians took hold of a domeshelled female and deposited her in the gondola. Burdened with five human beings and a tortoise that weighed more than an anvil, the Lamarck would not budge until Léourier inflated the silk balloon to full capacity, and even then the ship performed poorly, gliding barely ten feet above the waves throughout the crossing to Charles Isle.
Shortly after the Indians unloaded the prodigious creature, releasing her in the same Mount Pajas lava field where the saddlebacks roamed, three of Eggwort’s wives appeared before Chloe and Léourier.
“Lady Omega, we’re hankerin’ to have a talk with you,” said Rebecca. “You should know where us sultanas stand in the matter of the forthcomin’ trial. Even if you’re a false prophet like Orrin believes—”
“Somethin’ we got no way of knowin’,” said the pregnant Naomi.
Rebecca continued, “And even if the sunken ark was the genuine and boney fide article—”
“Somethin’ else we got no way of knowin’,” said Sarah.
“Well, despite all that, we don’t think your friends deserve to hang,” said Rebecca. “The upshot is that we’re placin’ ourselves at your disposal.”
Though perplexed by the sultanas’ offering, Chloe could sense no ulterior motives therein, and so she shook the hands of her new factotums and said, “Lady Omega gratefully accepts your assistance, Mrs. Eggwort—and Mrs. Eggwort and Mrs. Eggwort.”
“Just tell us what needs doin’,” said Rebecca.
“Beyond tortoises, my expert testimony will incorporate several varieties of lizard and bird,” said Chloe. “May I depend on you to mind them? Zookeeping is an honorable trade—I once practiced it myself.”
“We’ll tend your exhibits as faithfully as a sheepdog guardin’ the fold,” said Sarah.
“I can’t imagine Monsieur Eggwort sanctioning this turn of events,” said Léourier.
“We’ll tell him Miss Omega’s testimony can never reach a pinnacle of outlandishness without she’s got a passel of live critters at her fingertips,” said Rebecca.
“And if he don’t buy that argument,” said Naomi, “we’ll tell him his remainin’ days as a priapically happy emperor are fewer than he imagines.”
The following afternoon the tortoise team loaded a slopeback male from Indefatigable into the airship’s gondola. Being lighter than his dome-shelled cousin, the creature proved easier to convey across the channel, but Chloe still felt a sense of accomplishment when the Lamarck landed on Charles.
Having struck the tortoises off her list, she turned her attention to the lizards. It took her and Léourier a full day to supplement Duntopia’s indigenous red marine iguanas with two small blacks from Tower Isle and two
multicoloreds from Narborough. Collecting the terrestrials—a short-spined specimen from Hood and a high-spined specimen from Barrington—also consumed Chloe’s energies from dawn to dusk. Rebecca ingeniously provided each creature with a calico neckband on which she’d embroidered the name of its native isle. The collars gave the lizards a clerical appearance, as if they’d been called by their Creator to save the souls of fellow reptiles.
“Orrin now knows we’re in your employ,” Rebecca informed Chloe.
“I assume he wasn’t overjoyed.”
“Never seen him so riled,” said Naomi with a tilted smile.
“But when he realized the nine of us was fixin’ to make him a monk,” said Sarah, “he throwed up his hands and shouted, ‘Let it be known I gave Miss Omega every consideration under the sun!’”
“At your earliest convenience, I should like you to hunt up two exhibits,” Chloe told the sultanas. “A live puffer-fish and a human skeleton.”
Rebecca announced that she knew where to find the second commodity: decades earlier a man had been hanged from a catclaw tree in Storm-Petrel Cove—most likely a pirate who’d fallen out of favor with his colleagues. “The birds and worms made short work of him. But how do them bones figure in your scheme fer enchantin’ the jury?”
“My testimony turns on transmutationism,” said Chloe. “This theory invites us to ask, ‘Why does God go to all the bother of existing?’”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” said Naomi, “but if you succeed in vexatin’ Orrin, that’s good enough fer us.”
Before leaving Duntopia, Chloe visited the Colnett barrel. By her calculation sufficient time had elapsed for Algernon to have reached England, rescued Papa, and entrusted the news to a whaling master bound for the Horn and points north. Sorting through the heap of printed matter, she indeed encountered a version of her name, though the message couldn’t have originated with Algernon, who would never have addressed a letter to KLOWEE BATHIRST ON THE GUVNOR’S EYELAND.
