Alexander C. Irvine

by A Scattering of Jades

  Blinking, he saw a stout man in a formal morning suit staring at him. It came to Archie that the man was expecting some sort of response.

  “I’m sorry?” he said.

  “I said where does he think he’s going?” the man demanded, his genteel Southern accent sharpened by indignation. “Visitors can’t go into the cave without a guide. This isn’t a charity exhibit.”

  “I don’t know,” Archie said, confused. “He just jumped up and ran.”

  “What was he shouting about? Damn.” The man—he must be Dr. Croghan, Archie realized—turned to shout at the slaves who stood looking down the trail where Steen had disappeared. “Don’t gawk, get after him! Bring him out of there!”

  Returning his attention to Archie, Dr. Croghan noticed the wagon. “Was that Steen?” he asked. “What got into him?”

  “You know him?”

  “He was here last autumn. Bought a mummy we brought out of the cave. Didn’t seem quite right to sell it, but he offered a very handsome price. Who are you?” Croghan looked at Archie suspiciously. “If you want to see the cave, you’ll have to hire a guide. Imbecilic visitors who get themselves killed are singularly ineffective as advertisement.”

  “That’s what I’ve come to do. Hire a guide, I mean. My name is Archie Prescott,” Archie said, climbing down from the driver’s bench. He offered his hand to Croghan, who shook it once and let it drop.

  “Dr. John Croghan. What got into Steen?” he asked again.

  “Honestly, I have no idea,” Archie said, and he didn’t. How much did Croghan know about the chacmool? Not much, Archie decided; judging from his comments, he’d sold the mummy as just another museum attraction.

  “Is Stephen available?” Archie asked. “I only have a short time, and—well, I was told not to go with anyone else.”

  “Were you? Well, notwithstanding Stephen’s reputation, all of our guides do a superb job here.” Croghan looked annoyed that Archie had mentioned Stephen by name. “He’s already leading a tour today, but perhaps tomorrow or Sunday. Take a room and I’ll send him to see you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to see about your addled friend Steen. Good day, Mr. Prescott.” Croghan stalked off toward the trail.

  Archie checked into the hotel and made arrangements to stable the exhausted horse. He made a mental note to search Steen’s wagon.

  Standing in his room, Archie felt at a loss for what to do next. He wanted to act, to force the chacmool’s hand somehow, most of all to find Jane. Where are you, daughter? he thought. Do you know I’ve come for you? But he couldn’t very well set off into the woods searching for her, or just wander into the cave. He had to wait for Stephen. And nothing would happen until Sunday night, anyway. Well, at least I survived the trip, Archie consoled himself. After everything he’d been through, he was finally at Mammoth Cave. Now he would just have to wait.

  The one thing he could do was take a bath, and that he did, scrubbing himself clean of three weeks’ traveling grime and soaking his weary bones until the water cooled and he started to get a chill. When he returned to his room, he felt incredibly refreshed. Even his thigh felt better; the scarred-over wound had stopped aching for the first time in months.

  Archie didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep until a knock at the door woke him. “Just a minute,” he called, groggy from his nap and surprised to see that darkness had fallen. It took him a moment to find his trousers and get to the door.

  A young mulatto, in his early twenties perhaps, tipped his dusty hat and said, “Mr. Archie Prescott?” His clothes were grimed with reddish-brown mud, and so was his hair, which ran in unruly waves down over his collar. My God, Archie thought. He looks like the very double of Frederick Douglass.

  “Yes. You’re Stephen?” The mulatto nodded. “Ah. Wonderful.” Archie realized that he’d forgotten to eat earlier in the day, what with all the chaos Steen had caused. His stomach rumbled loud enough for both of them to hear. “Excuse me,” Archie said sheepishly. “I’m—could we talk over supper?”

  A shadow passed across Stephen’s face, but his voice stayed level. “If you want to take your supper on the back porch.”

  “Oh, God,” Archie said, terribly embarrassed. “I’m sorry; I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Never mind,” Stephen said. He smiled broadly, and Archie found the sudden mood shift somehow unsettling. “You go on and get dressed. I’ll meet you on the porch.”

  “Dr. Croghan said you were a bit pressed for time,” Stephen said, after Archie was settled on the hotel’s expansive porch with a meal and a full mug of beer.

  “I am.” Archie chose his words carefully, unsure how much he should give away in a public setting.

  At this late hour, the porch was deserted except for the occasional house servant banging through the kitchen door. Still, Archie had an odd feeling that someone could easily eavesdrop on their conversation. “I only have until Sunday night.”

  “Well,” Stephen said, “I reckon you won’t have to wait that long.” He took a swallow from a pocket flask and offered it to Archie, who declined even though the smell of liquor drew him powerfully. In hindsight, it was clear that his heavy drinking had contributed to the creeping resigned comfort he’d felt while traveling aboard Maudie, and he couldn’t afford any such laxity now.

  “How’s tomorrow morning sound?” Stephen winked, and drank again.

  “Tomorrow? Excellent, but aren’t you already engaged?”

  “Nothing that Mat or Nick can’t handle. There’s times they go by my name just so a visitor can say Stephen took him through the cave.” Stephen laughed at this, as if he found the idea of his fame ludicrous.

  Archie couldn’t quite believe this sudden good fortune. “Well,” he said, toasting Stephen with his mug. “Tomorrow then.”

  “If you want the whole-day tour, we’ll have to leave by seven o’clock. I’ll meet you in the hotel lobby.”

  At that moment the kitchen door swung open and Dr. Croghan stepped out onto the porch. “Mr. Prescott!” he said heartily, catching Archie, who had been expecting Croghan to question him again about Steen’s bizarre behavior, off balance. Lucky no one saw him up close, Archie thought, or I’d be answering questions about how a blind man managed to make a beeline for the cave like that.

  Apparently Croghan had decided that a paying customer could be forgiven unfortunate traveling companions, though. Looking every inch the wealthy burgher in formal evening dress, he strode beaming to the table where Stephen and Archie sat. Archie conceived an instant dislike for the man.

  “None of my guides have been able to track down Mr. Steen,” Croghan said. “I’m afraid I’m beginning to be concerned. Are you sure, Mr. Prescott, that you can shed no more light on his actions?”

  “I just traveled with the man,” Archie said apologetically. “I didn’t know him very well.”

  “Ah. Unfortunate.” Croghan shook his head. “Well. Have you made arrangements?” He inclined his head toward Stephen. “My apologies for the dining accommodations. If it were up to me, why, I’ve broken bread with Stephen many times, isn’t that right, Stephen?”

  Stephen appeared preoccupied with filling the bowl of his pipe. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Still, certain proprieties must be observed. I’ll tell you the oddest thing.” Croghan hooked his thumbs in his cummerbund and chuckled to himself. “That mummy, the one I sold to Mr. Steen,” his eyes flicked toward Stephen, who didn’t look up, “well, I dreamed about it last night. Dreamed it was back in the cave, of all things, resting in the chamber where Stephen found it. And then Mr. Steen arrives this afternoon, dashing into the cave like an impetuous boy! I suppose old Pharaoh wouldn’t have stumped Joseph with that one, eh, gentlemen?”

  Croghan laughed, and Archie joined in, although the doctor’s story gave him a chill. The dream explained Croghan’s lack of interest in pursuing Steen’s disappearance; apparently the chacmool exerted influence even while it was dormant.

  It wants me in the cave, Archie thought.
It’s removing all the obstacles.

  What sort of ambush was it planning?

  “Or perhaps it’s just an unsettled conscience,” Croghan went on. “I didn’t feel altogether at ease selling the remains of a human being, but Mr. Steen’s offer was extremely persuasive.” Again he looked at Stephen, who lit his pipe and gazed back at Croghan through a cloud of cherry-scented smoke. After a long moment, Stephen shrugged and looked away.

  Croghan turned his attention to Archie. “I’ve heard that Steen sold the mummy to Mr. Barnum,” he said, “in New York. True, Mr. Prescott?”

  “That’s right,” Archie said. “Barnum had it on display in his museum. I saw it there.” Saw it bite the arm off a man and rip out his heart while making dead plants grow again.

  “Well,” Croghan said. “Perhaps some scientific good will come of it. Good night, Mr. Prescott; Stephen.” He strolled down the porch and turned the corner.

  Unnerved by Croghan’s dream, Archie considered again what he could tell Stephen. Stephen seemed lost in thought, puffing absently at his pipe while he toyed with a gold coin, flipping it through his fingers.

  “Ah, Stephen,” Archie finally ventured, “there’s something I’d like to ask you, but … is there somewhere a bit more secluded?”

  A thin, somehow knowing smile cracked Stephen’s studied indifference. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s walk a bit.”

  From the rear of the hotel, a path led into the woods, skirting the edge of a valley that fell away on their right. “There’s a spring down there,” Stephen said, pointing into the darkness. “Comes from the cave. I call it the River Styx Spring, ‘cause …”

  He looked at Archie, his face unreadable in the dim glow from his pipe. “Well, we’ll just wait until you see River Styx tomorrow.”

  After a few minutes the trail ended in a grassy clearing. Perhaps a dozen tombstones were scattered about, simple block headstones bearing dates Archie couldn’t make out. “Supposed to be the guides’ cemetery, but enough of us ain’t died yet,” Stephen said. “Right now it’s slaves, plus consumptives from the sanitorium Dr. Croghan had in the cave.”

  “People lived in the cave?”

  Stephen snorted. “Not for long.” He struck a match, its tiny flame making the surrounding darkness seem deeper, and puffed at his pipe.

  When it became clear that Stephen was waiting for him to speak, Archie cleared his throat. “There’s something in the cave I’d particularly like to see,” he said.

  “And what would that be?”

  “The place where you found the—the mummy.” Archie watched to see if the guide had reacted to his slip, but he couldn’t discern Stephen’s expression.

  “Hmm,” Stephen said. “Ain’t an easy trip.”

  “Well, I think I’m fit enough, if that’s what concerns you.” I wish I could see his face, Archie thought. Like talking to a cipher when you can’t read expressions.

  “That’s not it,” Stephen said. “River might be too high.”

  “It’s important,” Archie said. “It’s vitally important; I have to see that room.”

  “Depends on the river, Mr. Prescott. Some things I can’t do anything about. Why do you want to go there, anyway?”

  Because my daughter’s going to die there and some vast incomprehensible evil be loosed upon the world, Archie wanted to say. Because I want to touch my daughter again, be a father again.

  Instead, knowing that Stephen would detect the lie even as he spoke it, Archie said, “Scientific interest. The mummy hasn’t been studied, really, and—”

  “You a scientist, Mr. Prescott?”

  Tell him yes, Archie thought. How will he know, a backwoods Kentucky slave?

  Except he thought Stephen would know.

  “Didn’t think so,” Stephen said after a pause.

  He knocked out his pipe on the nearest tombstone. “Time to turn in, Mr. Prescott. Seven o’clock comes early this time of year.”

  “I have to see that cavern, Stephen. Please.”

  “Depends on the river,” Stephen replied, and walked away toward the hotel.

  John Diamond badly wanted to be back in the water again. He felt the cold without really being affected by it, but it still made him uneasy, like a fish must feel when it poked its bony mouth through the surface into naked air. “More fish than man, sorry Johnny. More dead than alive,” he moaned softly. When he said fish, a tiny piece of his lower lip came loose and stuck to his front teeth.

  From the bottom of the hill, the still waters of the spring called out. “In a minute,” Diamond said. “Got to look after Rebus.”

  Rebus was worried, Diamond could see that. He walked away from Presto, making straight for the hotel, but fifty yards before he reached the lamplight flooding the hotel grounds, he doubled back into the woods. Diamond shivered, but he couldn’t go back to the water just yet. He had to see what Rebus was up to.

  Presto went on back to the hotel, and Diamond absently touched the stump of his right arm. Seems silly to collect debts from the other side, he thought, but still … you owe me one, Presto. My body’s still mine, and I miss the parts that are missing. The arm didn’t hurt any more—it hadn’t hurt much to begin with—but Diamond had noticed that he was leaving little bits of himself all over Kentucky. Especially when he’d been dry for too long.

  Quiet as a ghost—ha-ha—Diamond followed Rebus back to the small cemetery, then around a side trail that wound down into the valley. He could sense the cave, breathing softly from the bottom of a sinkhole as they moved along its edge. Rebus walked slowly, hands in his pockets; Diamond was glad that he wouldn’t have to hurry. Haste made him fall apart faster.

  The trail looped around and climbed a hill, then began to slope back down. Somewhere up ahead, the mouth of the cave breathed out the chacmool’s stink. Rebus stopped in front of a smaller cave and looked around, sneaking up to a rickety old shack after he’d satisfied himself that he was alone.

  Diamond stayed well back, nestling under an overhanging rock. He watched closely and tried to keep thoughts of water from distracting him. The trees, too, drew his mind away from Rebus. They hung over him full of dormant life, muttering in sleepy voices that made Diamond want to yawn. Under my dead feet, he thought, life is stirring out of a long sleep. Wish I could sleep.

  He realized he’d started whispering, carried away by the torrent of voices from the trees, the ground, from his head where Lupita yammered like a parrot. Shushing himself, he tried to concentrate on Rebus, who took a last look around and opened the shack’s squeaking door. He disappeared inside, shutting the door behind him, and Diamond crept closer, cursing the roaring of watery voices that drowned out the soft words coming from inside the shed.

  One of the voices in the shed belonged to a little girl. She’s here, Diamond thought. Nanahuatzin is here. What can I do now?

  Batting at the air around his head to shoo the voices floating there, Diamond turned and stole back down the path, eagerly answering the insistent call of the water.

  “Your father is here.” Stephen had to force the words out. The girl’s presence seemed to have grown somehow. There was a fineness about her that made him feel clumsy, as if he should only speak when spoken to. And it shone through despite the scabs caking her face and curling under her jaw. They were growing like some sort of fungus, even beginning to cover areas that Stephen would have sworn were unscarred when she arrived.

  This is how it feels to speak to a queen, he thought. Even a disfigured wretch of a queen who won’t see another sunrise.

  “I don’t care,” Jane said. “I’m nobody’s daughter any more. You never saw me before.” She smiled, and her lip cracked and began to bleed. “I was ugly and unwanted. Now I’m important, do you see? Something’s going to happen very soon, something important, and it can’t happen without me. Da could have helped, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t care.”

  Her smile slipped a bit. “He would rather I was dead.”

  “Harsh words, girl,�
� Stephen said. “Why would he come all this way if he didn’t want to help?” And why, Stephen asked himself, are you asking these questions? You’ve chosen your side already—are you going back on it now?

  No, it wasn’t that. He didn’t like one bit what was going to happen to Jane, but there was more at stake than one girl’s life. Did she know what she was looking forward to? Stephen didn’t think she did. But it would be useless to tell her now. The chacmool had charmed her somehow with the gift of its cloak.

  Would it? His conscience piped up, a mocking echo forcing him to face questions he’d just as soon have left alone. At least until Monday.

  If she doesn’t know, his conscience said in John Diamond’s voice, you know what you’ll have to do, don’t you?

  He did. And that was why he couldn’t ask her.

  If what you’re doing is right, you should be able to face it. Sorry, Johnny, it said, I think you’re just afraid of her answer. That’s why you took the mask, isn’t it?

  “Shut up,” Stephen muttered.

  Ask her, then, if you’re not afraid of her answer.

  “Fine.” Stephen took a deep breath. “Jane, do you—”

  “My name,” she said, lifting her chin primly and drawing the cloak about her narrow shoulders, “is Nanahuatzin.”

  Stephen started over. “Nanahuatzin.” He didn’t like the feel of the word in his mouth. It felt potent, as if he were making something real by saying it out loud. “Do you know what’s going to happen Sunday night?”

  “I’m going to leave my body,” she replied promptly. Feathers rustled approvingly and stroked her cheeks. “I’ll miss it, I know. Especially since it’s been healed. I’m pretty again, can you see? But I’m going to the valley, where it’s always warm and always sunny and I’ll be important there. You’ve seen the valley—it’s like heaven, isn’t it?”

  She touched her face where the feathers had caressed her, and Stephen saw scabs growing in thick slabs on the backs of her hands. “I’ll never be cold, never have to beg,” she said slowly, as if chanting a litany. “I’ll never be alone again.” A deep yawn swallowed her last words, and her eyelids began to droop.