When Famularis first informed the group of his plan to attack the slave markets in Indradoon, Nero had joined willingly, largely because it meant he was given a rifle. Also, he had secretly hoped it might offer an opportunity to be recaptured. When the attack had taken place, however, he had found that his person was placed in jeopardy by the reckless exuberance of the trigger-happy slave traders, and any attempt to be recaptured in a sensible fashion had to be set aside.
After the attack, as they were fleeing Indradoon, one of the female slaves caught Nero’s eye. Her name was Akoko. She wore a tight-fitting dress, and as the newly freed slaves marched back to Famularis’s camp Nero had ample opportunity to note from behind that there was a bottom in that dress that moved back and forth in the way a bottom should. Also, when she turned around, he discovered there was a dimple in the front of her dress where her belly button would be. These were the traits he liked in a woman. So, laying his plans in place, he decided he would begin by teaching her how to speak in a civilized manner. This was something he had been accustomed to doing when new slaves were brought to the Merriwether plantation, and by doing this he would have the opportunity to spend some time in her company, which would lead naturally by degrees to a mutuality of affection.
Akoko had other ideas. In her native land, she had been the daughter of a king, and she had acquired many of the habits of royalty, which she was loath to forsake. In her new surroundings she took pains to watch the men of the group very attentively, and she noticed that even though all were equal, when Famularis gave an order, people obeyed. Now, this was the trait she liked in a man. It bothered her that Nero kept coming around trying to be likable. She had little patience for the hand gestures he made accompanied by appropriate sounds in this new language. And when he attempted to point out the various parts of her arm and leg and give them names, he was rewarded with a kick from a leg he’d gotten a little too close to. And she had absolutely no use for the little piles of sticks and pebbles he assembled to teach the numbers from one to ten. She was certain her vocabulary was sufficient to let Famularis know how things stood. In fact, she found that that required little more than removing the upper part of her dress and allowing the beautiful orbs which depended from her chest to bobble and gyrate freely. Famularis agreed that words, no matter how poetic, would only have spoiled the moment.
Nero was oblivious to these developments, supposing only that Akoko was a naturally gifted, if inattentive, pupil who was bound to come around in time. Akoko for her part felt that Nero was a little slow in getting the drift. So she went to Famularis and told him – well, by told him it is to be understood that fully more than half of what she said was conveyed by gestures of the hands and face – but could she have given utterance to her statement it would have been something to this effect, “That guy Nero keeps coming around. I get a creepy skin-crawly kind of feeling every time that man comes near me. If I was you I’d do something about it.”
As this conversation was taking place, Nero was lying in his tent formulating a scheme. Actually, it was nothing that overt; it would be more accurate to say he was allowing himself to daydream. In his daydream he imagined a time when he crept stealthily out of the slaves’ camp and into the surrounding woods. There had been stories given out about slaves wandering away and being eaten by bears, or being recaptured by the heartless slave traders, but he put no stock in those. He knew what was going on. People were escaping and going back to their old masters. And that’s what he dreamed of doing. Once on his own, as his daydream proceeded, he found his way through the woods back to Trento. He wasn’t sure exactly where the slaves’ camp was situated, but he had a feeling Trento was somewhere to the southeast. So he would head in that direction, guided by the sun. Once he struck a road he would be able to follow that and as soon as he got to the outskirts of Trento he would know his way. He would return to the plantation of Master Andrew Merriwether, where he would be welcomed with open arms and where he would immediately start setting to rights everything that had gone awry in his absence.
He was jolted out of this reverie by a young boy who smacked him on the knee and said, “Famularis wants to see you. He says you’d best come now.”
“What’s he want me for?”
“Didn’t say.”
This summons coming just as he was imagining his happy return to slavery gave Nero a bit of a guilty shock. But he quickly recovered. There was of course no way Famularis could know what he was thinking, and the front he’d put on for so long of being an ardent advocate of freedom surely had them all fooled. In fact, as he reflected further, it became clear to him that was the reason Famularis wanted to see him. He was going to be rewarded for his loyal support. So, making an effort to brush his tangled hair into some sort of decent condition, he set off for Famularis’s tent.
When he came there he found Famularis seated in front. It was that time of day, when the sun had just set and the shadows seem to creep upwards from the bushes and the roots of the trees. The fire flies were out in number. The moon would be up soon and this night it would be full. Famularis was scratching the scar on his right hand, token of the oath of blood he’d shared with the traveling man. It had been bothering him lately and this evening was particularly troublesome. He wondered if he had an infection. He rose when Nero approached and the two men embraced. Famularis then led Nero into his tent and motioned him to sit.
“Nero, it’s been too long since we spent some time together,” he said.
“I feel the same,” said Nero, “but I know you have much to occupy yourself with, keeping everyone here at peace and things running smoothly.”
“Freedom has proven to be a burden, there ain’t no mistaking that. But it be one I’m happy to take up.”
“You know I’ve always supported you. Was that what you wanted to talk about?”
“You’ve always been a help when help was needed.”
“Remember how I came through in our moment of glory, when we made the attack on Indradoon? That was something, wasn’ it?”
Famularis put on a thoughtful look and replied, “You know it, brother. What you did that day will not be soon forgotten.” When Famularis had first imagined this conversation, he had thought that somewhere around this point he would introduce Nero to one of his friends, who would lead him a little way into the woods and then shoot him in the back of the head. It was a method he’d used recently to deal with a few trouble makers. He’d put about stories of slaves wandering away and being eaten by bears, or recaptured by the villainous slave traders, so these disappearances hadn’t aroused any suspicion. However, he now decided this would be a waste of precious ammunition. It was a secret known to only a few but there was a serious shortage of bullets. So he settled on a different plan. Patting Nero sociably on the shoulder he said, “I would like to enroll you among the group of warriors we has here. What do you think of that?”
“I am honored, of course.” Nero thought a little more, and added, “I’ll be glad to pick up a rifle again, I can tell you that.”
Famularis did not look at him. His gaze was directed elsewhere, into the middle distance, as though he was thinking through a knotty problem. The truth was his thoughts were becoming muddled with other things. A substratum of darkness was rising into his consciousness. He scratched the scar on his hand again. “A troop of soldiers is entered the forest and camped nearby,” he said. “Be prepared to fight.” He then picked up a hoe lying close at hand and gave it to Nero, saying “There’s no more rifles. Here. Practice what you can do with this.”
“A hoe?” A rich smile spread itself across Nero’s face. “Now I know you’re taking it out of me. What is Nero going to do against General Hobsbawm’s soldiers with a hoe?”
“In the right hands, your everyday garden hoe be a mos’ grievous an’ deadly weapon.”
“Deadly to potatoes, I’m sure. Am I not even worthy of a sword?”
“We hasn’t enough rifles and swords for all. You’s shown yourself to be supe
rlatively valiant. Why do you need a rifle?” And at this point Famularis felt an unfamiliar urge to bare his fangs and bite this stupid clown. He growled a little, and said, “You can do more damage with a hoe than a lesser man could do with a gun.”
Here Nero made another of those impulsive decisions he so often regretted later, and he said, “Famularis, let us speak frankly to one another. I can see through you like a barn with its two doors wide open. You do not fool me. In fact, I’ve been able to see through you ever since the first time your cotton picking scrawny black ass came whining for a glass of water at Massah Merriwether’s back door. You have your eye on Akoko and are jealous of the attention she shows me, so you’ve decided to let General Hobsbawm’s soldiers do your dirty work for you. You’re going to put me in the forefront of the battle where I will have no defense, and if the soldiers’ bullets don’ do me in, you’ll do the job yourself, am I right?”
Famularis hadn’t followed Nero’s little oration through to its conclusion. He was still attempting to digest the bits about the scrawny black ass and Akoko showing attention to Nero, while another part of his mind registered the challenge he had received from that very same sanctimonious just as good as a white man house slave that had refused him a glass of water when he was a boy picking cotton. In his immediate necessity the hoe flew to his hand. The two men engaged in fisticuffs to the extent that they rolled on the ground as Famularis sought to do what damage he could with the business end of the hoe, and the blade on that thing was a good deal sharper than you might have thought. Nero dodged around the tent picking up objects and throwing them, but a berserk fury possessed Famularis, and he was not deterred. After some moments of tussle, Nero, seeing he was getting the worst of it, broke away and went running into the night, his heart pounding and his mind racing. With no conscious consideration of what he was doing, he set out to find Akoko.
Chapter Fourteen
THE FULL OF THE MOON
“I can’t live without you. I’m not a man when you’re not with me. I’m nothing. Can’t you see what you’ve done?” The words gushed forth.
She ignored him, picking up her rawhide shirt and putting her arms through the arm holes. He reached for her and laid his head against her back.
“I’ve neglected all others, turning them away time and again. Any time I am not with you is torment.”
Making a small moue of disdain, she rose and left the teepee. Outside, the full moon climbed slowly through the sky in the east. Joining hands with her sister, they turned towards one another. Their nipples touched, then their lips, sealing unspoken vows. Then, donning robes of antelope fur, they ran under the eaves of the Forgotten Forest, two savage animals chasing the eternal heartbeat of the night.
The trail they followed became a path, transforming before their racing feet into a glade where there were others of their kind, a coven culled from tree and plain, from mighty sycamores and humble junipers, from all about, the living roots and tangled branches of the living web that inhabited these darkened spots, brought to brimming life in the fullness of the moon. At the glade’s center stood a willful malevolence, a dissension, a conflict of all with all, and it took on the appearance of a man. What followed it were women, wailing and prancing in many forms and many voices, driven by eruptions of obscene desire, prickling with drunken terror. The man who led them tumbled them, coupled with them, testing them, trying them, turning them to implements of destructive venom, poisonous agents of rank devastation. And they danced in twining circles, reveling in their power and their need, till all about them the night and the forest and the whole of creation were made instruments of loss and savage desolation.
Woken by a whisper in her ear Katie lifted her head, but no one was there. She looked about. Her bedroom window was etched in moonlight. A stray beam bounced off the sacred tipstaff lying at her side. On the ground next her bed the aged king reposed in slumber. She rose, and stepping over him made her way to the window, which opened onto a balcony overlooking the fortress keep, from which a stair wound downward. She paused. She looked about. All was still. Then, exposing her naked majesty to the night, she descended the cold stony stairs. A marble pathway lay at the stairway’s foot, glowing in the moonlight. She ran along the path, through towering groves of cedar and pine. The untouched primeval woodland spread about her, dark and gloomy in the glimmering light. Coming to the sacred glen in the heart of the woods, she threw her glance upward, trembling in expectant ecstasy.
Akoko was startled when Nero, bloodied by his confrontation with Famularis and the hoe, his clothes torn and rumpled, came charging into her tent. He tried to communicate to her the plan he had hastily evolved. The two of them were to leave the slaves’ encampment that very night and make their way to the estate of Master Merriwether, where Nero would be taken in and returned to his rightful place, and where she would be his honored consort. However, his unkempt appearance and his wild gestures, accompanied by loud repetitions of the simplest words, caused Akoko to conjecture that Nero had gone insane and that she was on the point of being assaulted and raped. Her screams brought others running to her assistance, among them Famularis. As he burst into the tent, bearing the bloody hoe, blood also oozing from the long-healed cut on his hand, he had a feral look in his eyes and was starting to rave, issuing loud and thundering curses interspersed with threats to kill any who stood in his way. At this moment all he knew was anger. All he wanted was to attack, and the crumbling remnants of his rationality found a hook to hang this on.
“Listen to me!” he shouted. “We’s tried to live in friendship with our fellows. We’s tried to live as nature made us here in the forest where there be provision for all. But our enemies is everywhere and they won’t allow this. They’s come to put us in chains again and return us to our masters. We will not permit this! It will not happen!” People came from all over the encampment, running and shouting in the belief they were under attack. “The white men think we’s weak and they can subdue us! But our cause is just! We cannot be overcome!” He felt the ability to kill pounding in his veins. “We will turn on them! We will assault them with destruction and with fury!” The negro slaves, many only half dressed, were quickly arming and setting torches alight beneath the mossy branches of the ancient trees. Under an evil moon, things were stirring everywhere, like a pot coming to the boil. Famularis was becoming a fearsome and hitherto unknown being. Men were shouting and clashing their weapons. Famularis howled. “We will attack them tonight! On the move! At once!” All his flesh, and every limb and joint and point and articulation of him quivered. His skin was rough and hairy. His shins and knees shifted themselves and were behind him. His teeth were long and sharp. The frontal sinews of his head were dragged to the back of his neck. His eyes were rabid pits of focused malice. Falling to all fours he loped ahead of his flabbergasted followers, holding up his right hand – no, his right forepaw. It had been cut, and blood dripped from it. He snapped it forward and with a great rush like a mighty wind he was off through the trees.
The slaves burst on the camp of their enemy in a ragged wave, led by a huge, slavering beast of a wolf. Caught off guard, the soldiers had no opportunity to coordinate themselves. They hadn’t anticipated the slaves’ recklessness, and their hurriedly formed outer ring was quickly penetrated by an onslaught of maddened negroes wielding swords and lances and picks and any number of other implements. But once inside the outer ring, the slaves’ attack dissolved into chaos. They found themselves under heavy, if badly directed, fire and were now engaged in what was little more than a vast brawl.
Famularis, in the form of a wolf, was in the midst of the battle, but his rude crew of followers melted away rapidly behind him. So far as he’d had a battle plan, it had just been to hit and run, but now retreat was going to be a matter of considerable difficulty, and many slaves were bound to lose their lives before they could get away.
The slaves could have been mercilessly mowed down, but Snivel ordered the soldiers to hold back, as they ran
a great risk of hitting their own men if they engaged in indiscriminate shooting. He went about instructing his men to hold their fire, unless they were absolutely certain they were firing at a slave, something that was difficult to determine in the moonlight when masses of men, very few in uniform, were rampaging about. Famularis attempted to find some cover from a low but steep bank of earth, and discovered that quite a few of his followers had had the same idea. However, most of them, seeing the werewolf diving into their midst, broke and ran for safety elsewhere and were quickly cut down.
Famularis’s muddied mind was now thinking more of retreat than of attack. He saw a band of slaves who were trying to get back to the shelter of the woods, but he also saw they had no chance, they were heading directly towards a squadron of soldiers with rifles who at this very moment were preparing to shoot. Quickly he dashed into the open, drawing the soldiers’ fire away from the escaping slaves. Just at this moment the moon was obscured by a passing cloud and the soldiers lost sight of him. He got away as quickly as he could, with the soldiers in frenzied pursuit.
Elsewhere, in an abandoned house, a short man in a broad-brimmed hat roared in fury. He had Fergus tied up and Fergus’s terrified eyes were watching as he grew and dissolved at the same time, rearranging his physiognomy in ways both disturbing and subtle. One eye became engulfed in his head, while the other eye protruded suddenly and rested on his cheek. His mouth was twisted awry till it met his ears. Then his eyes moved back into new sockets, for what he was growing into was nothing less than a fearsome wolf, sharp of claw and fang. Fergus witnessed the transformation with wonder and dismay.
A crowd had gathered in the plaza that fronted Kashahar’s lush and fragrant central gardens. These were theatergoers just leaving a production of the latest drama from the old country which had been performed that night at the Tragi-comique, a tragedy in three acts, depicting a student of natural philosophy who sold his immortal soul to the Devil in return for those worthless baubles, knowledge and power. The audience had been transfixed by the squibs the demons had set off as the unfortunate philosopher was being dragged through the mouth of Hell. It was absolutely the latest thing in theatrical effects. The actors had been abundantly applauded by a well turned out crowd who were now taking the night air and discussing the play’s moral purport.
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