Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05

by The Voice of the Mountain (v1. 1)

  12

  On the way back to the headquarters room down in the cave, Harpe began to talk, and sounded right cheerful. It was some way like a military funeral, where they play you to the burying ground with “The Dead March,” and then after the firing squad and the bugle, they play you away again with the liveliest march music they know. Harpe looked up through the cloak of tree branches and allowed that if rain came, it was needed right then. Then he said, “Let the dead past bury its dead.” I knew the poem he quoted from, but I didn't remind him that another line says, “Trust no future, howair pleasant.” For he seemed like as if he trusted the future to be pleasant.

  When we got into the main room, he picked up that Judas book bundle from the table. He held it and felt it over and over.

  “It's been sewed up in skins and maybe fabrics, layers of them to protect it,” he said. “Probably nobody has looked at it for centuries. Now, my friends, it's nearly time for lunch, but you'll excuse me if I eat alone while I work.”

  To the braided hide rope he went, and tugged. Into his hand came a big sandwich of some sort, and I wondered myself where it came from. He tucked the goatskin bundle under his elbow and pulled the rope again. There, he had a bottle of beer. It looked shiny dark in the bottle.

  “You’ll excuse me for a time,” he said again, and went to the red curtain and in past it and out of our sight.

  I followed him in, and went past his shut door to my own room at the end of the hall. I was dirty and sweaty, and I washed my hands and arms and face with lots of soap. Then I came out again into the main room, Alka and Tarrah stood there. They hadn’t moved from where they’d stood before.

  “I suppose we should eat, too,” said Alka tiredlv. “Will you bring a tray, Tarrah?”

  Both of them went to the rope Alka tugged on it, put something on Tarrah’s tray, tugged again, put on something else, tugged the third time. Tarrah brought the tray to the table, with three big sandwiches. Alka went in past the green curtain and fetched out a half-full bottle with a cork in it. In her other hand she fetched three clay cups

  “This is a good Chablis, a very good Chablis,” she said, a-setting the things on the table '‘I’ve enjoyed part of it, and I’d like to share it with you.”

  We all sat down. I picked up my sandwich and took me a bite of it. It was smoked tongue and lettuce and some sort of dressing on buttered white bread. I took me another mouthful. Likely that was a right good sandwich, but at the time I didn’t know. We’d all had us a rough morning to bury Scylla.

  Alka poured us out her wine in the clay cups, Tarrah tasted hers. "It’s delicious,” she said, though she was sad-faced to say it. We went ahead and ate and drank, and we talked.

  "Scylla could be so difficult,” said Alka. "She could be short and sharp, and she thought that she was better than Tarrah or me, because she was here first. But I did like her. I truly did.” "So did I,” Tarrah put in. "Truly. And, John, you said you were sorry for her. You spoke so beautifully beside her grave.” "She hated my guts and the marrow in my bones,” I said, as I took the last bite of the sandwich. "I reckon she couldn’t help being thataway.”

  “She resented you,” said Tarrah. “Maybe she resented Ruel, too.”

  “That's probably true,” said Alka. “She wanted her own way, and who of us ever gets our own way about anything?”

  “She sure enough didn't seem happy to me, not the least bit,” I said, a-sipping that good Chablis wine. “I wondered myself if she air was happy in her whole life.”

  “Now that you speak of it, I don't suppose she was,” said Alka, and toyed with her cup. “Oh, Scylla could be harsh. But not truly harsh to Ruel. She was afraid of him. I suppose we all are.”

  “I'm not,” I said, because it was there for me to say. “Hark at me, ladies, I climbed up here to find out why Cry Mountain cried. I'm here now because I reckon a man would be a plumb country fool to go out the gate yonder, amongst what waits for him. Harpe reckons I'll be of some use to him, but me, I don't reckon to be.”

  “Hush, John,” Tarrah begged to me. “He's in there, but he can hear what you say if he wants to.”

  “Let him hear what I say, I've got to say it.”

  “What if he should come out here and punish you?” Alka sort of whined, in a way that wondered me if she'd air been punished for something that Harpe didn’t like.

  “If that should happen,” I said to her, “I'd do the best I can. My best might just to turn out to be good enough.”

  The moment I said that, in came Harpe. He grinned at me, a dry grin. It might could be that he had heard what I'd said, but if so he did naught about it, maybe he would save up for later.

  “I've been busy,” he said. “Scholar's work is hard. I’ve been sweating over Judas's writing in there, as I sweated digging the grave for Scylla. Suppose we have a little taste of liquor.”

  He sat down with us. He'd fetched along his jug of blockade, and he poured in our cups for us, and poured one for himself. “Cheers,’” he said, the way I’ve heard Englishmen say, and drank. I tasted at mine. It was sharp and it bit, but it bit just right. I realized I was glad for the bite, for that burying had made me feel right gloomy.

  “I’ve always felt that making excuses was a confession of guilt,” Harpe went on in his smooth, easy way. “And maybe I do feel something of guilt about how I behaved at the funeral we gave Scylla. But remember, her death was her own idea. She used a very special poison she stole from me, and she died with a curse on her lips. Yet, when John spoke his words of peace over her, I found myself hoping that she’d have peace. I even felt peace within myself, and it was a happy feeling. I’ve thought it over, and I say again, let the dead past bury its dead. What do you say to that?”

  None of us said aught. We only just looked at him.

  “Silence gives consent, Oliver Goldsmith tells us,” he said at last. “I hoped for that, looked for it. I begged the question, so to speak, but I wasn’t really abject in my begging. Let’s change the subject.”

  He drank again, a good pull at his cup.

  “The Gospel According to Judas is in Greek,” he said then. “Not very good Greek, I’m afraid—Judas must have had a hit- or-miss education. But from the very first sentence, it’s an arresting document, a priceless one.”

  “What does it say?” I inquired him, but he waved that away.

  “I’d hesitate to tell anyone that,” he allowed. “But, as I say, the Greek is slipshod. We must remember that Judas wrote it in a hurry, in a matter of hours, and then went and hanged himself because things had gone wrong for him. And that old, old parchment is faded and cracked and brittle. I’m steaming it slightly—I have a Bunsen burner in my room, to heat water for the steam. And I can use a preservative I have here somewhere/’

  He knocked back the rest of his drink and got up and went to his shelves. For the first time I saw that there was a drawer at the bottom. He pulled that open and pawed round in it and fetched out a little corked-up bottle.

  “This is what I need/' he said, and off he went back of behind the red curtain again. He went in a quick hurry, like somebody who’s got behind in the work he must do. Alka and Tarrah both looked on me. Alka’s eyes behind her glasses were puzzled. Tarrah looked more or less scared.

  “I never knew him so busy before,” said Alka, deep and soft within herself. “He’s finding out something in there.”

  “Did he air tell you ladies about the Gospel According to Judas?” I asked of them.

  “I heard him mention it once or twice, but that’s all,” said Tarrah. “Mentioned it once or twice before you came. He has a great gift of silence when he wants to use it. That’s when he’s at his most frightening.”

  “I take it he frightens the both of you,” I said. “Yet you let him fetch you here.”

  “I was in trouble, up there when I was in the library,” said Alka. “The law was beginning to notice me. I was glad to get away at the time.”

  “So was I in trouble where I was,�
�� Tarrah put in. “Big trouble. People wanted to kill me. If Ruel Harpe hadn’t come when he did, I wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale.”

  “He brought you here to be his helpers,” I summed it up for them. “Was that his only reason?”

  Alka smiled, but it was a smile as tight as a guitar string. “What you mean is, did he want us for love, for sex,” she said. “No, John. He found that when he went out into the world. I doubt if I ever expected it, but there was none. Maybe Scylla expected it. Maybe that drove her to killing herself,”

  “Love," Tarrah spoke the word out. “I don’t think I ever expected it from him, either. John, I can speak honestly to you. When you came here, 1 thought you’d been brought for me. It hasn’t been like that, though.’’

  “No, ma’am,’’ l agreed her, without a-seeing air point in a-telling her why I’d been able to back away from her.

  She leant toward me, her hands clasped together on the table. “I don’t hold that against you, John,’’ she said. “I’m not going to hate you, and I promise I won’t kill myself to make you sorry.’’

  “I do purely hope not,’’ I said, and meant it.

  “Why should Ruel Harpe need either of us women?’’ said Alka. “He can go to any country on earth whenever he chooses, take whatever woman pleases him. He roams the world, John, he’s been in far places.’’

  “Well,’’ I said, “so have I. That was on a sort of government- sponsored tour—the Army. I’ve been in some far places myself.’’

  “What was it like?’’ Tarrah asked me.

  “It happened to be a war,’’ I replied. “A thousand fell at my side, and ten thousand at my right hand, but it didn’t come nigh me. Somebody or other said one time, war is expensive and in bad taste. I’ll just add onto that, war is terrible. When Sherman said war was hell, he didn’t know enough swear words.”

  “Were you afraid in the war?” Tarrah wanted to know. “I can’t imagine you being afraid.”

  “Well then, just stretch your imagination, Tarrah,” I told her. “Sure enough I was afraid. If a man in a war isn’t afraid, he doesn’t have much sense. I was afraid a big sight of times.”

  “What about those times?” she kept after me. “The times you were afraid?”

  “In those times, I just kept on a-fighting, though I well knew how crazy-headed war is. I fought on. Afraid or not, a man’s got to be a man.”

  They were both quiet to listen, a couple or three breaths of time, and both of them looked on me with their wide eyes.

  “And as for Ruel Harpe,” I went ahead, “there’s not much of a future in a-being afraid of him. I take it that you ladies fear him, but I don’t and I won’t.”

  “Not so loud, John, not so loud,” Alka begged to me. “If he should hear—”

  “I say nair word I wouldn’t say to his face,” I interrupted her, not at all politely. “But this time, I do hope that he and I understand one another. He knows by now that I don’t fear him, and he knows that I’m not without help. I have two-three powers of my own.”

  “Oh yes,” breathed Tarrah. “That’s true. You’ve fought other fights in your time, and won, and that gives you strength.”

  “And method,” said Alka.

  “So I’ve heard tell. I go ahead in the faith that it’s true.”

  “You’re right that Ruel recognizes this in you,” said Alka, and took a taste from her cup. “He wants to persuade you, not destroy you. He counts on you as an ally.”

  Tarrah shuddered her shoulders at that, and I looked at her. “Now I know for sure you don’t love him,” I said.

  “No, it’s not love,” she said back. “It’s fear, John, what you’ve been talking about. Fear is stronger than love. He told us both that, Alka and me both, when he brought us here.”

  “There might could be a lot in what he said about that,” I said, “but I don’t know for sure, I just don’t know. I’ve seen love come in stronger than fear in my time. Likely it depends on who loves and who fears.”

  “That sounds like the truth,” whispered Tarrah. Her chair was close to mine, but she didn't nudge me with her foot or her knee. “A real human being can afford to love deeply, but mustn't fear deeply,” she said.

  “Or must whip fear somehow,” I said. “Must whip fear right down to its socks.” I thought that over. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” I said then.

  “Roosevelt said the same thing,” said Tarrah. “Franklin D. Roosevelt.”

  “And Henry David Thoreau said something like it, before Roosevelt,” said Alka.

  “Whoever said it was right,” spoke Harpe, a-coming in past the red curtain. “I'm glad you're all here, because reading that villainous Greek writing of Judas can make a man lonely.”

  He sat down with us, picked up the jug, and poured himself another of his shots of blockade.

  “What does Judas say?” I asked as I’d asked before, but Harpe shook his head to me.

  “That's something I can’t impart just yet, but he says terrifying and wonderful things, in what I take to be only a preface to what follows,” Harpe replied me. He studied me. “John, you're sullen, you're surly. Whatever you seem to hold against me, you shouldn’t. You have no reason. So why not be happy?”

  “Why must I be happy?” I returned to him. “That old man Yakouba trusted me, and you made me thieve from him.”

  “I did nothing of the kind,” he smiled. “Yakouba is one of the wise men of the desert people, and he knew that he couldn't quite trust me. But when he saw you, he felt that you were trustworthy, and you were—you are. It was I who did the thieving, if you insist on calling it that. I transported you bodily across the sand and the sea back to Cry Mountain, complete with the book.”

  “Which you should ought to give back to that poor old man/*

  “Never that,” Harpe said. “What would he ever do with it except hide it? It's in the proper hands now, and in those hands it will do wonders. So let's be friends, John. Take a drink with me.”

  “No, I thank you,” I said.

  He narrowed his eyes. “That might be an insult, but I won't accept it as such. You’re too valuable to me and I'm too valuable to you, whether you admit it or not. A highly interesting future is coming to us both, an amazing one.”

  “There may be a lot in what you say,” 1 said.

  “Surly again,” he crooned at me. “But I daresay I know of something that will cheer you up.” He finished his drink. “Now, back to work. Wish me luck.”

  “Luck,” said Alka, and she was the only one of us who spoke. Nor did she say “Good luck.” Just “Luck.”

  “Thank you, my dear.”

  He tramped away to the red curtain and past it.

  “He always thanks you,” said Alka. “He's good at thanking. He has a gentleman's manners.”

  “Yes, he has,” 1 agreed her. “You can't take that away from him.”

  “You can't take anything away from him,” said Tarrah, flat in her voice, and got up. She headed for the tunnel to the outside. She went fast, almost she ran. Her hair fluttered.

  “Where’s she a-going?” I wondered Alka.

  “Why don’t you go and find out?”

  “Sure enough,” I said. “I'll just do that thing. It feels kind of indoorsy in here just now.”

  For the air did feel close. Maybe Harpe did that to it, a-studying so hard. I got up and followed Tarrah out of there.

  I came into the open amongst the trees, those big, quiet trees with their leafy branches that shaded all the top of Cry Mountain from heaven's sight. I looked on the stockade. There was a move out there, amongst more secret trees. It was something dark and tall itself, something a man wouldn't much care to study. I looked another way, and there I saw Tarrah over toward the cleft in Cry Mountain's rock. She knelt down there, her knee and thighs a-showing from under her short skirt. I made out that she was by Scylla's grave.

  I ambled over there to her. She was a-putting flowers on the fresh dark earth we’d dug up
and then shoveled back in. The flowers were broad white ones, sort of like dogwood flowers, but they weren't—they didn't make a cross shape, didn’t have that little dark bunch like nails you see on dogwood. And their stems looked like vine stems, not like twigs off a tree. I didn't know air such a flower, nowhere in the mountains. Maybe it was something that just only grew up there.

  Tarrah was a-laying out a pattern of them, like a five-pointed star. She looked up at me from where she knelt.

  “I thought I'd do this for Scylla,” she said.

  “You mourn for her,” I guessed. “Maybe she was your friend, after all.”

  She got to her feet, and slowly shook her head no.

  “Scylla wasn't my friend,” she said. “She wasn’t anybody's friend—didn't know how to be—not even how to be her own friend. She was raised a witch up north, the way I was out in the West, but it must have been a harder raising than mine. I doubt if there was much love in her witch society. At least, she didn't show any.”

  “How did she truly feel about Harpe?” I inquired her.

  “Well,” said Tarrah, “she’d snap at him, almost rebel against him. But she was afraid of him, and showed it. When she died, she didn’t curse him, she cursed you.”

  “It doesn’t seem like to me that her curse hurt me,” I said.

  “You’re able to fend it off,” said Tarrah. “John, that was an awful curse—frightening. I don’t dare repeat one word of it to you. But, as I say, she was afraid of Ruel Harpe. Like all of us. We’re all afraid of him.”

  “Not me, I’m not,” I felt I had to say. “And well he knows it by now. He shows that he knows it, he’ll make a joke about it now and again.”

  She looked hard at me. I saw her eyes shift in her head as they looked at one of my eyes, then the other. Then she turned her face down to study Scylla’s grave.

  “You prayed peace for her,” she said. “I hope it works.”

  I walked off where the stockade ran, and she came with me. Out there amongst the treetops, we heard the humming song of that swarm of big bees. On the ground, across the crumpled root of a tree, something black and fuzzy seemed to slip, like the biggest caterpillar you air saw in your dreams. The Flat, that was. I’d seen one one time, on Yandro Mountain. Up high somewhere, I heard something I couldn’t make out to see. It went gong-gong, gong-gong. That had to be a Toller, what you hear tell is the biggest thing that flies; though I don’t know what it looks like exactly. And big and little shadows deep in amongst the trunks and brush, all a-looking where I stood almost against the weathered poles of Harpe’s stockade. You could look right, you could look left, you could look back yonder, and things skulked in the trees, behind the trunks, and some up in the branches. They seemed like as if they slipped out of sight just before you had a clear look. Inside there, we were hemmed in with them, besieged by them; Harpe’s sentinels that he’d brought there by magic, to guard his fortress.