by James Morrow
“I vote we send ’em to the scaffold,” said Nathan the pickpocket, rising. “Nobody has the right to destroy God’s private property, and that’s the long ’n’ short of it!”
“Bloody hell,” said Ralph.
Much to Chloe’s dismay, the epená was failing to do its job. She remained mired in Galápagos, a place where six not-guilty votes were a statistical impossibility and Her Majesty’s governors never issued pardons.
“I agree with Clarence,” said Walter the forger, gaining his feet. “I appreciate Miss Bathurst’s fervor, but this transmigration business is a cartload of flapdoodle. The defendants must ’ang!”
“Merde,” said Capitaine Léourier.
“It’s not flapdoodle, but it’s not a disproof of God either,” asserted Pete the highwayman. “That said, Miss Bathurst has set me to thinkin’ that the folk who wrote the Bible didn’t hold themselves to the highest standards of truthfulness, especially concernin’ Noah and the Flood, which means I vote for acquittal!”
“That wight can rob me blind whenever he wants,” muttered Solange.
Chloe simultaneously squeezed Ralph’s sinewy forearm and the sea-witch’s slender knee. They had just won a victory. Was it too much to hope for five more?
“I say Pete’s talkin’ sense,” declared Amos the sodomite. “The Tree of Life is a feisty idea, but it ain’t about to give God a bad night’s sleep. It seems to me the big loser in this trial is the prophet Noah, who I’m startin’ to suspect was no more ’istorical than Old King Cole. Yes, the defendants burned a boat that night, but it wasn’t the Genesis ark. Seein’ as ’ow you can’t commit sacrilege against a thing what ain’t sacred, I ’ereby vote for mercy!”
“Buy that man a beardless youth,” whispered Solange.
“I’ll probably roast eternally for sayin’ this, but Miss Bathurst has convinced me that God’s not a deity to be taken seriously,” said Tim the anarchist. “Judge Eggwort, you must set the defendants free!”
“All hail our prince of disorder,” said Solange.
“I’ll tell you what I think,” said Ben the horse thief, clutching the sandalwood box to his chest. “I think Mr. Caedmon has done nothin’ more and nothin’ less than to describe the methods our Creator employed for makin’ all the world’s plants and animals. Given that He’s the spirit of transmutation, He’s got no interest in becomin’ the plaintiff in a blasphemy trial. Ship the defendants back to England, Your Honor. I wish I could go with ’em!”
“I owe that man a romp in the rye,” said Solange.
“Forgive my presumption, Ben, but your logic’s leaky as a sieve,” declared George the train robber. “Yes, a transmutation or two might have occurred here in Galápagos and elsewhere, but that don’t give a person license to burn Noah’s ark. The arsonists must pay for their crime!”
“Faugh,” grunted Chloe.
“George said it better than I ever could,” averred Dick the swindler. “There may be some truth to Mr. Caedmon’s notions, but God is the greatest truth of all. Judge Eggwort, it’s your sacred duty to chastise the ark burners!”
“Four nods towards the noose, four towards Mother England,” whispered Mr. Chadwick.
“When I first came into this courtroom, I believed each and every word in the Bible,” said Jake the fornicator. “Well, Your Honor, that’s still true—which means you must schedule a visit to the scaffold for both these criminals!”
“My opinion of fornication has just been lowered considerably,” said Ralph.
“Unlike some of my fellow freethinkers, I’m not afraid to shout the good news from the ’ousetops!” proclaimed Harry the panderer. “There is no God! There never was a God! There never will be a God! Let these people go!”
“Such a splendid flesh merchant,” said Solange.
“We need but one more friend in the jury box,” noted Mr. Chadwick.
“Now I’m gonna do some shoutin’,” proclaimed Clarence the usurer. “God is alive! Jesus is Lord! Dispatch the blackguards to the Devil’s scullery!”
“He’s not the one,” observed Ralph.
All eyes fell on the remaining juror. Gaining his feet, Joe the poacher spat into his palms and rubbed his hands together. “Durin’ the course of my chosen vocation as an appropriator of superfluous game, I became a votary of the natural world. When Miss Bathurst tells as ’ow all the plants and animals are knitted together in a kind of crazy quilt, I must say I’m impressed, and if God ’ad nothin’ to do with it, then let’s not give credit where credit ain’t due. To wit, I cast my vote with the freethinkers!”
In a spontaneous yet synchronized spasm, the defense team and the accused blasphemers leaped to their collective feet.
“Hoorah!” cried Chloe.
“We did it!” shouted Mr. Chadwick.
“Merveilleux!” declared Léourier.
“God bless the poacher!” exclaimed Ralph.
“Praised be all highwaymen, sodomites, anarchists, horse thieves, and panderers!” trilled Solange.
Judge Eggwort banged on the bench with the frenzy of an unscrupulous undertaker attempting to secure a coffin whose occupant had just stirred. “Silence! There’s entirely too much jubilatin’ in this courtroom! Silence! It appears that the jury has gotten itself stuck midway between an acquittal and the gallows, so now it’s up to me to break the tie. I hereby declare Edward Cabot and Bianca Quinn guilty as charged, and I condemn ’em both to be hanged by their necks until dead. Executioner Ordoñez will carry out the sentence seven days hence.”
“No!” Chloe shouted.
“Outrageous!” screamed Mr. Chadwick.
“Incroyable!” cried Léourier.
The spectators’ pews erupted in an impassioned cacophony. Whilst the three emperors cheered and whistled, along with a scattering of their sons and daughters, the twenty-one wives and a majority of the children filled the courtroom with hoots, hisses, groans, and catcalls.
“Six not-guilty votes to set them free—you said that on Thursday!” a sputtering and livid Mr. Chadwick reminded the bench.
“Innovation is ever on the march here in Duntopia!” retorted Eggwort. “The punishment will be administered Saturday a week at ten o’clock in the mornin’, with all Mephistropolis inmates assembled in the yard to watch!”
Four of Capitán Machado’s guards tromped across the courtroom and, seizing hold of Ralph and Solange, began hauling them out of the tabernacle by main strength.
“My ghost will haunt you till the end of your days!” a livid Ralph told Eggwort.
“My demons will unsex you in your sleep!” cried Solange, weeping.
“The Court is adjourned!” yelled the chief magistrate.
“It’s not over!” insisted Chloe, calling after her friends. “Don’t despair! It’s not over!”
Gradually the commotion passed, and a punctuated hush settled over the tabernacle, the cleavewives exchanging staccato sighs, the children speaking in choked whispers.
Chloe imagined she might salve her despair with a fresh infusion of Peruvian snuff, but she took up the syringe only to set it aside. She folded her arms on the defense table and lowered her head into the sleeves of her white gown. Her tears flowed freely, like meltwater rushing from the Andes into Amazonia.
Somewhere in her vicinity a man cleared his throat and snorted. She lifted her gaze. Ben the horse thief stood over her, chained as always to George the train robber, Dick the swindler, and Amos the sodomite. “Almost forgot to return this,” Ben muttered, pressing the sandalwood box into Chloe’s grasp, then added, more softly still, “When you get the chance, look at the back of page twenty-three.”
And with that cryptic remark he permitted his fellow prisoners to drag him away, their manacles and chains clanking discordantly. To distract herself from the infinite awfulness of the moment, Chloe imagined that the convicts were a gang of mercenary flagellants—sinners for hire, employed by recently deceased Christians to perform penitential acts on their behalf. If that was how the
afterlife worked, then Orrin Eggwort would be well advised to sell his island for gold and pour the doubloons into his coffin, because otherwise, arriving penniless in Purgatory, he would be sentenced to breaking rocks and picking oakum for the greater part of eternity.
14
Although Untutored in Geology and Lacking in Divinity, Our Heroine Presumes to Practice Vulcanogenesis
True enough, Chloe had failed to save her friends—but she could at least do right by the nonhuman players in Duntopia versus Cabot and Quinn: so ran the tangled thread of her disordered thoughts following the catastrophic verdict in Orrin Eggwort’s courtroom. As the perpetual champion of all Encantadas creatures, she resolved to restore the illustrative specimens promptly to their native habitats. Before leaving Charles Isle, she directed the sultanas to fill the Lamarck with all the imported birds and iguanas. By the time Léourier had weighed anchor, the flying-machine’s company included not only the defense team but also three dozen twittering, cheeping, hissing, sibilating exemplars of Derrick Caedmon’s species theory.
“You put up a brave fight, Miss Bathurst!” cried Rebecca Eggwort as the balloon lofted towards the clouds.
“I’m namin’ my next daughter Chloe!” shouted Naomi, laying a palm on her protuberant belly.
“If Orrin tells us to bring the children to the executions, we’re gonna spit in both his eyes!” declared Hagar.
“I’ll be back!” Chloe called down from the wicker carriage.
“Fer the domeshell?” asked Rebecca. “Fer the slopeback?”
“For the domeshell and the slopeback!” Chloe replied. She considered adding, and also for Professor Cabot and Miss Quinn, then thought better of the idea. In the absence of a plan for her friends’ deliverance, it behooved her to refrain from bravado.
The crestfallen defense team spent the day making a circuit of the Encantadas in the Lamarck, dropping off the specimens, then landed on Hood’s Isle shortly after, by the reckoning of the vicar’s pocket watch, 9:00 p.m. Although the Huancabambas had a meal waiting (a pelican stew cooked by Cuniche, a seaweed salad assembled by Nitopari), when the defense team sat down to eat they realized that Eggwort’s verdict had robbed them of all appetite. Instead they drank pisco.
Only after finishing her third glass did Chloe recall the remark Ben the horse thief had made when returning the essay. At some point during the jury’s deliberations, he’d apparently scrawled a note on the back of page 23. She fetched the sandalwood box, imagining she was about to read a love letter. Over the years she’d received many such epistles, some touching, others pathetic, a few impossibly vulgar. Crudely lettered with a stick of charcoal, the horse thief’s words could hardly be described as romantic, but they were not wanting in audacity.
Dear Miss B,
I write this knowin the virdict will probubly go against Perfesser C and Miss Q. From the very 1st, Judge E wanted em to hang. I ment what I sed when explainin my vote. God has no need to chastize blasphemurs. In my view this makes Him a greater, not a lesser, Supreem Bein. Cud it be that you, too, have powers, Miss B? I remember what Guvnor S told Reverend H on the beech. You are a mystik profett.
Heres what you shud do. When the hangins ar about to happin, you and yur friends shud create a stupendis diverzion. I have three suggestshuns: tell the lizurds to attack Capten B’s men, or hipnotize the guards into thinkin their guns have becum snakes, or make the volcayno seem to spit fire.
I say the volcayno illuzion wud be best. During the eruptshin, yur allies here in Mefistropolis will add to the kaos, that is, myself plus the othurs simpathetic to transmutayshun. (I meen Joe, Harry, Pete, Tim, and Amos.) This will distract Execueshuner O and allow you to carry off Perfesser C and Miss Q so that justis can preevale.
Your friend,
Ben Colby
She showed the message to Mr. Chadwick, who read it wearing a frozen face, then passed the page to Léourier. Although an iguana attack was out of the question, likewise mesmerism, the diversionary volcano appealed to Chloe. Such a feat could hardly be more difficult than traveling from Belém to Manáos in a decrepit side-wheeler, crossing the Andes in a rickety flying-machine, or canceling the Great Winnowing.
“I’m intrigued by our horse thief’s notion of staging an eruption,” she said.
“This is Galápagos, Miss Bathurst, not the West End,” said Mr. Chadwick.
“At first blush I would agree with our curé,” said the aeronaut. “At second blush, I see how we might make Mount Pajas explode.”
Léourier proceeded to explain that, although the Lamarck was a hot-air device, he’d occasionally flown ships whose bladders were filled with hydrogen. In learning how to generate that gas in far-flung locations, he’d become fluent in the science of chemistry. “A scheme such as our horse thief proposes, mes amis, would depend on our collecting a quantity of bat excrement, ‘guano’ in the Quechua language. The active ingredient is saltpeter, a nitrate used in making bullets, petards, artillery shells, and—nota bene—fireworks. Were we to launch dozens of guano-fueled skyrockets from the summit of Mount Pajas, plus as many boulders propelled by guano bombs, the effect might be indistinguishable from an eruption.”
It occurred to Chloe that her life was being measured out in volcanoes. During the long run of The Last Days of Pompeii she’d fled Vesuvius over a hundred times. Back at Down House she’d frequently reread Mr. Darwin’s account of the Chilean volcano Osorno. And now she was hoping to bring a moribund Mount Pajas back to life.
“In his travel journal Mr. Darwin tells of bat caverns under Chatham Isle,” she said. “How much guano might we need?”
“By adding the fuel requirements of our rockets to their payloads,” Léourier replied, “then factoring in the bombs and fuses, I would estimate ten pounds. Assuming the Chatham caverns contain significant deposits, we might gather that amount in two or three days.”
“When describing Mount Osorno,” said Chloe, “Mr. Darwin wrote that the spewing lava at first suggested an exploding star, then a luminous tree, its silvery branches reflected in San Carlos Bay.”
“Ah, so the eruption was an omen,” said Mr. Chadwick.
“Mr. Darwin doesn’t believe in omens,” said Chloe.
“An allegory, then,” the vicar persisted. “Today the Star of Bethlehem has been superseded by the Tree of Life.”
“You do Mr. Darwin a disservice,” said Chloe, “for he saw in Mount Osorno what he sees everywhere else in Nature, no allegories or lessons, merely intimations of an impersonal universe, animated only by itself.” Numb with fatigue, she rose from her clinker stool, her imagination fixed on her soft seaweed mattress. “Of course, there are times when a woman thrown into such a world must make her own volcano”—she staggered towards her shack—“rather than waiting for God or geology to do the job. Sleep well, gentlemen, for tomorrow we become connoisseurs of shite.”
* * *
Taking off from Hood’s Isle aboard a cramped and distressed Lamarck, its engine protesting the ponderous load with metallic shrieks and steam-powered groans, Chloe and her friends and disciples flew to Chatham Isle (which from the air resembled an enormous kidney bean). The party landed on the northern shore, near a slopeback graveyard mentioned by Mr. Darwin in his journal, where they seized hold of an empty tortoise shell to use as a guano cistern. After equipping themselves with soup-spoons from the airship’s galley, they hiked over petrified waves of lava to the bat-cavern entrance, whereupon, like Orpheus before them—like Aeneas, Persephone, and by some accounts Jesus of Nazareth—they descended into the Earth.
Shite mining quickly proved as grueling as it was tedious. Hour after hour, the Europeans and the Indians toiled within the stinking, stifling, lantern-lit reaches of the labyrinth, their eyes straining to spot the veins of excrement rippling along the formerly molten walls and twisting across the frozen floor. The Huancabambas took to grumbling, their discontent persisting even after Chloe explained to the two English speakers that the task was vital to the welfare of Señ
or Dartworthy and Señorita Kirsop.
“This work not so bad as what my cousins do on the rubber plantation but still make us feel sick,” complained Cuniche.
“First you say to carry heavy tortoises around will save Señor Dartworthy and Señorita Kirsop,” protested Nitopari. “Now you say to collect guano does the same. What next? We catch a hundred hammerhead sharks and dye them purple with orchilla moss, and then your friends be safe?”
“I simply must ask you to trust me,” said Chloe.
“Long ago we learn not to trust people who wear shoes,” said Cuniche. “This the last task we perform for you, Señorita Bathurst.”
“Fair enough,” said Chloe.
“With God’s guidance, we built a volcano for our prophet,” added Nitopari with an acerbic smile, “and then we did her no more favors.”
Like Job scraping himself with a potshard, each shite miner employed his soupspoon to peel the vital substance from the cavern walls, depositing the gleanings in the tortoise-shell receptacle. Usually the stuff came away in fat and satisfactorily dollops, but sometimes it disintegrated into tiny chips, like flecks of theatrical paint, which the miners had to roll into pellets with their fingertips. The resident bats filled the grotto with demonic screeches, even as the most ornery of them attacked the intruders, clawing at their scalps, so that the miners’ brows became studies in blood, sweat, ashes, dust, and guano.
By late afternoon both cisterns were filled to capacity, a harvest so impressive that Chloe bid everyone relax for the rest of the day. But before they left Chatham, she insisted that the miners launch a trial skyrocket—a test that must be conducted whilst the sun still shone, lest it attract the notice of the prison guards on nearby Charles Isle. After obtaining a hollow strut from the Lamarck’s trove of spare parts, Léourier stuffed the wooden tube with guano, then prepared the nose cone by wrapping a wad in a fragment torn from his map of Patagonia. He placed the finished device upright against a rock and, striking a lucifer match, touched the flame to the saltpeter fuse.
