Fyrea's Cauldron

by William Maltese

  At fifteen, Jannette was tall for her age. In fact, she was almost as tall as Marie who stood at five-foot-six in stocking feet. She had mocha-colored skin that was clear and smooth. She had dark black eyes, and a black skullcap of kinky, close-cropped hair. She spoke pleasantly sing-song English. Though she spoke only when spoken to, she didn’t give the impression (like Madeline was forever doing) that she was fearful the ground would open up at any moment and swallow her.

  Throughout the interview, Marie did notice how Jannette had a tendency to finger the wooden charm on its leather-thong around her neck. Marie recognized the figurine as a smaller version of the one Marie had found attached to the bush by the pool, and which had made its “human” appearance on the veranda on the night of the torch-light procession.

  Marie was tempted to query Jannette about her religious views, but she decided against it. She remembered the old adage about religion and politics being verboten as subjects for polite conversation. It was undoubtedly best to let people do their own “thing”, as strange as that “thing” might be.

  However, it was the sighting of Jannette’s necklace which caused Marie, shortly after lunch, to decide to go in search of the pendant she remembered having dropped by the water. She had a horse saddled at the stables and started off. So indelibly had events inked the route into her brain, she doubted she would ever forget it, even if never required to travel it again. Although the path led through thick strands of trees and tangled underbrush, Charles had assured there were no longer any dangerous animals remaining on the island to hide in them.

  “A couple of fat boars are rumored still to exist on the other side of the mountain,” Charles had said when Marie had first voiced concern about the possibility of wildlife within the dense underbrush. “Aside from those, though, there are only the birds. Snakes, I guess, never managed to survive the swim to get here.”

  When Marie reached the pool, it looked just the same. Any sinister aura it now possessed was present only because Marie’s imagination worked overtime.

  She spent a good thirty minutes searching for the dropped pendant without finding it. She had covered the area so thoroughly, she was sure she would have located it if was still there. So, someone must have picked it up within the last twenty-four hours. Not that there was anything suspect in that. After all, Marie had found it only after someone else had, whether inadvertently or not, discarded it.

  She wasn’t even sure why she was so disappointed that her search proved unsuccessful; unless, as she suspected, she had been out for a souvenir. It would have been something to pull out, one day, to show her children and grandchildren; so, everyone could have a good laugh about the night Marie was scared out of her wits by torch-carrying natives on her lawn (no mention likely ever made of Charles’ seizure and his attempted strangulation of his new bride).

  Accepting defeat, finally, and getting a little jittery (was she actually seeing Lucie Bruay and that old hag’s two gladiators hidden behind every bush and tree?), she un-tethered her horse and decided to do a bit of additional exploration before heading home. There was nothing pressing back at the house. She had already gone over dinner plans with Karena, having decided it was time the cook showed skills beyond cold-meat plates, breakfasts, and the occasional picnic basket.

  There were several trails from which to choose, and Marie ended up letting her horse decide, while Marie merely concentrated on staying oriented. The last thing she needed or wanted was to get lost.

  Having never done that well in school botany and biology classes, she still amused herself by trying to identify various species of indigenous plant life.

  If she wasn’t mistaken, there were mahogany and cedar trees. There were several varieties of palms; she counted at least ten different kinds before she finally left off. She thought she saw acana, cottonwood, and possibly rosewood. Lemon, lime, fig, and orange trees were, of course, easiest to identify, probably because they had telltale flowers and/or fruit ripening, in one stage or another.

  Flowers were too numerous to try and classify. They hung in vibrant swaths of color, or in isolated dots, or drops, or drools, from the branches and vines, on all sides: purple, white, and green orchids; purple-red bracts of bougainvillea; red, yellow, and creamy hibiscus; exotic passion flowers in which several colors often fought for dominance within one large and impressive bloom.

  She reined in her horse, because of some picked flowers: a large pile of them in a small clearing just off the trail. Left to decay in the heat of the tropical sun, the rotting blooms emitted an odor of thick sweetness that assaulted her senses with an almost physical force. The smell recalled visions of Marie as a small girl, standing frightened to death in small water closet, a broken bottle of perfume spilled at her feet.

  Her eyes caught movement within the bows of surrounding trees where literally hundreds of black wood Fyrea figurines hung from leather thongs.

  * * * * * * *

  Made ill at ease by having stumbled upon what might well be a site of some pagan religious significance (maybe even the spot at which culminated the previous evening’s torchlight parade?), Marie was made more sensitive to the possibility of trouble the minute she dismounted, back at the stables, and handed her horse over to Theodore. Her intuition was bolstered by Charles’ sweat-covered horse being cooled down off to one side by another of the grooms.

  “My husband is back?” There was no reason why he shouldn’t be home at that hour; but, there was no way he would have overheated his horse without good reason. Marie would have considered such thoughts pure paranoia, but, considering the things that had happened over the last couple of days....

  Quickly, she headed for the house, after making neither heads nor tails of the mumbled reply Theodore had given her. She wondered if all the natives had taken to communicating via undecipherable grunts.

  Charles met her at the doorway.

  “Marie, I’m glad you’re here.” He took his wife’s arm and guided her into the den, sliding the doors closed behind them.

  So far, he seemed normal, if obviously concerned about something. Marie was determined to keep an eye out. If she had learned nothing else since her arrival at Château Camaux, it was to keep on guard—even with her own husband.

  “Something happened?” Her question was obviously superfluous; what she should have asked was: “What happened?”

  “It’s Father Westbrook,” Charles said. “Maybe you’d better sit down.”

  “Father Westbrook? What about him?”

  “He was drunk when you saw him, yesterday: isn’t that what you said?”

  “Very drunk, I should have said if I didn’t.”

  “He left here alone?”

  “If he had anyone with him, I certainly didn’t catch a glimpse.”

  Charles sighed, went to the same decanter Father Westbrook had used the previous evening (the priest’s mess since cleaned up), and poured himself a drink. He motioned with the decanter by way of asking Marie if she wanted to join him. She shook her head. She had enough trouble keeping focused without clouding her brain with alcohol.

  Charles took his snifter and came around to the couch. He patted the cushion next to his.

  “Come and sit down,” he said.

  Marie convinced herself that whatever he had to say, it had nothing to do with another of his strange attacks; he was too lucid.

  “It’s all rather macabre,” he said, taking a sip from his glass.

  “What happened?”

  “Apparently, he passed out last night on top of a volcanic steam vent, as far as anyone can tell. There’s also the decided possibility that his horse threw him.”

  “A volcanic steam vent?” Marie blanched noticeably. No denying the wretched vision Charles’ description conjured, but she wanted him to put even more definition to the unbelievable horror.

  “You’ll find the vents all over this mountain,” he said. “They start up in one place, disappear after awhile, move on to someplace else a week or so late
r. A couple of years ago, we had a cluster of them appear in the basement of the hardware store in the downtown Villeneuve. Actually, they’re usually of more help than hindrance, by way of offering escape valves for any buildups of pressure beneath the ground. Without them, I suspect, all the native praying by torchlight and offering up of gifts to Fyrea wouldn’t do an ounce of good.”

  “When did they find him?” Although Marie had found Father Westbrook obnoxious, she certainly wouldn’t have wished him this kind of end.

  “Early this afternoon. The horse he borrowed from Gil Mason was grazing close by. I was just out there. It wasn’t very pleasant.”

  “I can well imagine.” Marie felt decidedly queasy.

  “I suspect the police will be here any minute.”

  “Here?”

  There was a rap on the door of the den. Marc announced a police car had just pulled to a stop in the driveway outside.

  CHAPTER SIX

  AUSPICIOUS SIGNS

  Considering the potential for a disastrous evening inherent within the discovery of Father Westbrook’s body, and the arrival of the police car at Château Camaux, the exact opposite occurred.

  The police, who Marie expected to be around all afternoon and late into the night, asking her questions about the Father’s visit the night before, were only at the house for a few minutes before Charles drove off with them to the site of the father’s demise.

  “I’ll only be a little while,” he had promised, giving Marie an affectionate kiss in parting.

  Marie, though, had seen enough movies to know that no one ever went away with the police for just “a little while.”

  She only regretted not having had Karena prepare cold plates for that evening. Too late to inform the cook, though, of any menu changes, Marie couldn’t picture herself managing a sit down, alone, to eat potage aux concombres, salade mimosa, quenelles de poissons, and pigeonneaux sur canapés. She steeled herself to make the best of it.

  As it turned out, Charles was back in plenty of time for the evening meal. If his lead-up to dining had been too grisly to inspire ravenous eating, he managed to do justice in savoring everything, especially the fantaisie bourbonnaise served warm with heavy cream and washed down with Veuve Clicquot.

  Accompanying Marie to her suite, he asked, rather like an embarrassed suitor, whether he might come in for awhile. The two ended up making love in Marie’s big, four-poster bed, after which Charles mumbled drowsily that it suddenly seemed one long walk to his rooms and wondered if Marie would mind if he spent the night right where he was.

  “I’ve been wondering why we have separate bedrooms,” she said, smoothing a stray lock of black hair from her husband’s brow; his eyes were lost behind closed eyelids which rested long and exceptionally black lashes against his cheeks. “Maybe, we could do some rearranging, do you suppose?”

  “I’d like that.” His voice was thick with approaching sleep. He rolled toward her, slightly, and Marie felt the powerful length of his muscled body against her left side. He threw one of his well-muscle arms easily across the top of her breasts and left it there.

  During the following moments, her husband sleeping in bed beside her, Marie experienced seeming perfection. She seemed to have suddenly discovered the epitome of what married life should always be. She was happy in her marriage. She was happy to have come to Saint-Georges. She was happy to have surmounted whatever difficulties to arrive at this particular moment.

  Then, as probably should have been expected, it was all spoiled in a mere couple of seconds, leaving Marie empty and slightly ill.

  In that, Charles mumbled something in his sleep, something which Marie had first mistaken for the same undecipherable gibberish everyone, at one time or another, mutters when reality is fled and the dreaming state begins. Then, though, he muttered it yet again, distinctly and unmistakably—the name of a woman...not Marie.

  Cécile.

  Marie tried to console herself with the realization that Charles had, at least, waited until he was asleep. Had he spoken the woman’s name while conscious, perhaps even in a moment of passion, Marie doubted she would have ever forgiven him. She would have been more apt to forgive him, even then (he might well have been entering a nightmare for all she knew), but she suddenly remembered the last time he’d mentioned that same name. Funny, Marie had disregarded that initial mention, until now, when she had been so certain, at the time, she would never forget anything that happened that afternoon by the pool.

  “Cécile, you are going to be the ruin of both of us, you know that, don’t you?” Charles had said, just before stepping up to Marie and wrapping his large and powerful hands around her neck. Then, there had been something about Cécile, “a witch who had broken all of the rules because of her lust to seduce him,” condemning them all to destruction.

  Marie searched her memories for all of it. Had she, the first time around, attributed his voicing of that woman’s name to temporary madness, during Charles’ seizure? Had she thought the specter of this woman, whom her husband had once mistaken for her, wouldn’t come back one night, like it had, to haunt her?

  “Are you a witch, Cécile?” Charles had asked. “Are the two of us working together to conjure a hell upon this earth?”

  Now, he dreamed of this woman. His sudden groan of accompaniment proclaimed the definite possibility that his dreams weren’t all that pleasant, but that was of very little consolation to Marie. For whatever the reason, another woman (dream phantom or not) was in bed with them. Marie resented the other woman being there. Marie resented Charles for having, again, made Marie aware.

  She took Charles’ arm and moved it out of contact with her body. When he made an automatic move to replace it, she slipped from the bed to avoid him. She reached for her robe and wrapped it around her, suddenly chilled.

  She walked to the window, pushing aside the heavy drapes so she could see outside.

  The grounds were empty: nothing like she saw the night before. No shadows were sent dancing by torch flames. No natives were marching in a serpentine to heap a mountain of flowers beside some forest trail, and to string amulets of the pagan goddess, Fyrea, from the branches of jungle trees.

  As Marie watched, as if by seeming magic, a huge cloud ascended toward the sky from the trees. It was a mass of blackness, much like smoke, and Marie was drawn helplessly back, once again, to think of fire, as she had last night when she had come awake to see shadows cavorting on the walls.

  This time it wasn’t fire, not even from hundreds of torches. It wasn’t even smoke she saw but....

  Birds. Hundreds...thousands...of ibis, heron, guacharo, parrot, buzzard, grouse, quail, toucan....

  Marie opened the window, and the sound of all those simultaneously beating wings was a low thunder riding the night air.

  She stepped out on the balcony, watching, fascinated as the birds moved en masse, this way, that way, and, then, suddenly veered in a long swooping movement toward the right and out to sea, leaving behind an intense stillness that was almost palatable.

  Marie wondered how many people had been awake to witness that marvelous exodus. The marvel of it had completely erased, for a moment, Marie’s very reason for having been where she’d been to see it.

  She brought her right hand to her forehead, turning her fingertips wet with her perspiration. Her negligee and robe were damp and sticking to her body, much like the flowing drapery clung to an exquisite Greek sculpture.

  It was hot and getting hotter. It was heat without even a hint of a breeze to relieve it and its accompanying high humidity.

  So quiet! Marie’s ears strained to catch even one faint whisper of something. When sounds finally commenced, they were made even more disturbing because of the total silence which had preceded them.

  No mistaking the whinnying horses. If Marie hadn’t known there weren’t any wild animals on the island, she would have guessed a bear, or wildcat, had gotten into the stables.

  Suddenly, the fact the birds had taken fli
ght but seconds before took on decidedly ominous implication that Marie wasn’t able to define, although something told her she had been given sufficient pieces of the puzzle if she could only correctly fit them into place. It was something vaguely remembered about how birds roosted in darkness but very seldom flew after nightfall.

  She returned to a room whose blackness was even greater than the night outside. She walked to the bed and sat on the edge of it.

  “Charles?” She put her hand on his bare shoulder and shook him. “Charles?”

  At first, she thought he wouldn’t hear her, or respond. Then, she thought she was probably silly even to wake him. Yet, something continued to insinuate that the horses still made a fuss, even though the fallen-back-into-place curtains succeeded in muffling their sounds.

  Charles mumbled something, opened his eyes, and, seeing Marie, smiled up at her.

  “Something’s wrong with the horses, Charles.” She felt a little ridiculous. Why should she wake him because of the horses? Weren’t there people paid good money to take care of just such things that occurred, day or night, in the stables?

  “Wrong?” he asked. Sleep hadn’t yet left him. His mind hadn’t yet cleared sufficiently to register what she’d said.

  “They’re making quite a fuss,” Marie said. “I was just out on the balcony, and I could hear them.”

  “The horses?” Charles stretched for his wristwatch removed earlier and placed on the stand by the bed. “What time is it?”

  “About two.”

  “In the morning?” Simultaneously, he verified on his watch. He came to a sitting position, buckling the leather watchband around his wrist.

  “Then, there were the birds...,” Marie began, and, then, stopped. She couldn’t quite put rhyme, or reason, to why the sudden exodus of fowl seemed important.

  “What about the birds?” Charles asked. If he had been asleep but minutes before, he was fully awake now.