I confess that being now inside a relatively solid structure made me feel better and more like myself. It was still hard to talk over the dreadful sound of the falls, but I had stopped feeling quite so dizzy and sick. That was until Lieutenant McIntyre returned from his search of the other building and asserted, in a worried tone, that we had all better come and see for ourselves.
On the back wall of the large room, a huge red eye loomed at us from the illumination of the lieutenant’s lamp. As the light flickered, the orb appeared to blink. I saw Aleksey cross himself and the woman hold out her hand and make an odd gesture of warding. She had better keep such witchery to herself. Perhaps I was merely jealous because I could think of nothing to ward off the evil of this place and this thing, besides leaving, which I was now intent on doing.
“What can it mean, sir?”
I shook my head at the major’s enquiry.
The lieutenant moved the lamp and urged, “See, here also.” And there next to the painted eye was a cross. Once again, those who believed in something made small gestures for their comfort, for it was a particularly eerie sight. Both symbols appeared to have been painted with blood. And that, in my opinion, never boded well for anything.
It was very dark now. We stood around, illuminated only by the feeble light of the single lamp, our voices drowned by the constant roar. If anyone had mentioned the beast that came out of the water at that moment, I truly believe I would have bolted for Xavier, dragging Aleksey with me, and none of that small party would have heard from us again. Unfortunately no one said a word, and thus my moment to escape the fate that befell me passed me by. Hindsight is such an insidious companion.
Next came the exploration of the cabins.
I wonder if men who live in well-lit homes in England can appreciate how dark and miserable life can be in a cabin in the wilderness. The men who had built this place may have known a lot about God, but they knew very little about building comfortable homes. Fortunately I had learned from masters, so our cabin was dry and airy, and although we had no windows, we had a floor raised above the earth, good ventilation, and a proper chimney with an excellent draw. These rough homes had none of that. They were dreadful and very sad to search through one after the other. Just as Aleksey had once wanted to see, the people seemed to have left in the middle of important things: knitting was cast aside in the middle of stitches, food upon plates, clothes strewn in an untidy way, which no good Christian wife would have tolerated for long. The glimpses we had of these people’s harsh lives made us somber. They had tried to live as good people—clothes well mended, food stored thoughtfully, little mementoes of where they had come from placed with great reverence upon shelves—a tiny piece of pottery, a spoon, a button: treasures they could probably never hope to replace if lost.
Searching those cabins, seeing those things, made us more determined to find out where they had gone. It made these missing people real for the first time.
There was nothing more we could do in the dark, so we individually repaired to suitable places to sleep: the men taking the barracks, and the reverend, his wife, and child one of the empty cabins. Safety in numbers for us, but I did not like sleeping next to either the river or the red eye watching us (as I thought).
When Aleksey finally did speak to me, it was in a very soft undertone, for with six other men variously lying around the long room, he did not want to be overheard. He rolled onto his side on his narrow, uncomfortable cot, facing me and away from the rest of our companions. “What is wrong? Tell me now, for you are frightening me, Niko. Are you still sick?”
“I do not know, and that is the truth. Perhaps I am ill. Perhaps I have taken a fever.”
“No, do not say that! What will I do if you are unwell? I rely upon you to laugh at for being so cross and angry and ill-humored with everyone and everything. Who will I make my sport if you are infirm? You know I hate being kind to you!”
“I know. I’m sorry. I will try to be less ill.”
“Well, good. That is more like it. Truly, you are very contrary to make me come all this way and to put me through such horrors to now flag and wilt like a… wilting thing. Not that I have much experience of wilting things, as you know.”
“Hush, or you will make me laugh, and then I can no longer claim that I am ailing.”
He was quiet for a moment, then asked, “What do you think the symbols mean? Are they native language?”
“Not any that I know, but that is not to say that a native did not put them there.”
“I wonder what they mean. Isn’t this a good mystery: the fort deserted just as I wanted and strange symbols on the walls—just as I predicted. There was even food upon the platters. Was it not a pity that it was not still warm, for that—”
“Aleksey? Shut up.”
He did, but I could still hear his mind working as he lay staring up at the rough bark roof. It was bitterly cold, I did not have my usual warmer, and I was feeling pretty miserable.
All I needed, therefore, was the howling of the damned to begin, which it did just after I had dropped to sleep.
We all sat up with a start or shout of alarm. Major Parkinson actually drew his sword, and the Wright brothers moved instinctively together, as I did with Aleksey. We stood in the utter darkness and listened to the voices. We could not make out what they were saying—can the damned still remember their language in the torments of hell?—over the constant roar of the river and the falls, but they sounded desperate, pleading, terrified. I do not think I was the only man in that room with his hair standing on end or with a surge of primal instinct screaming at him to flee this place. Aleksey wanted to go outside and ascertain if we could see anyone—he was the first to reason that there might genuinely be people lying in the snow just outside in need of assistance. I only agreed because I wanted to check the horses.
We all went, which seemed like the best idea to me.
Xavier was extremely agitated. He was stabled with the other horses and appeared to be alarming them. I knew how he felt. We were all inside the palisade and had fastened and secured the gates as best we could. There was nothing of any import inside the fort therefore. I wondered how the good reverend and his wife and child were taking the howling. It was hard to get a sense of which direction it was coming from, but I put my money on the river.
I think Aleksey would have opened the gates and gone out into the forest to search for the source of the cries, but he was outvoted. Even he must have seen that stumbling around in the dark and snow would be useless. He did climb to the top of the palisade, though, and peered over into the tree line. If he saw anything, he did not tell me. I was being punished for not letting him enjoy his adventure, I think.
We returned to the barracks, but no one made any pretense of sleeping. We gathered closer together, sitting on a few beds. The talk was desultory at first. The roar of the river continued, and it was exhausting talking against it, and the cries went on for some time. Eventually, though, we began to speak, for it relieved the tension somewhat, and I learnt some useful and surprising things.
It was Mary Wright, and not her husband, who had wanted to come to this colony.
I had assumed that as the reverend had been appointed the new pastor, he had been the one to press joining this small expedition. Not so. He had abandoned the idea of living in the outpost at all upon the very recent death of his first wife. Mary Wright, upon her marriage, had insisted he continue with his plan. Being a new wife, a bride, so to speak, the reverend was wont to let her do pretty much as she chose. She had not been at all alarmed at the stories that had circulated about the abandonment of the place and had insisted they join Major Parkinson’s group. I also found it extremely interesting that Mary had, for a very short time between her arrival in the colony and her marriage to the reverend, been a servant in the officers’ mess. Although no one could confirm this, it occurred to me that the rumors amongst the officers about the abandonment of this place—the undisturbed buildings, the blood up
on the walls, the beast from the falls—had started when she had begun to work amongst them.
But the most interesting thing I learnt that night was that the reverend’s first wife had died only a month before this new marriage. This explained the brothers’ antipathy toward Mary, for sure, but it also created a whole new set of questions for me. Although I had not practiced as a doctor specializing in poisons since I had arrived back in the New World, I still had a sense for it. If anyone I had ever met seemed a likely candidate to be a poisoner, then Mary Wright appeared to fit the bill. I was not surprised to hear of the mother’s symptoms: wasting away with no apparent cause, constant fear of something that could not be perceived. I could almost hear Aleksey’s desire to say it—he had gone through a lengthy poisoning with his own father, so I know he must have been thinking as I was.
What possible motive such a young woman could have to tie herself to the old reverend and then to want to come and live in this desolate community eluded me. I sincerely hoped I would not be in the place long enough to find the answer either. I fully intended now to leave as soon as it was light. We had seen what we had come to see—abandonment. I intended to join the general consensus of opinion and abandon the place as well.
I WOKE very surprised that I had actually fallen asleep—albeit a very rough kind of doze, sitting up with my neck at an awkward angle. I saw my companions had fared no better. Except Aleksey.
Aleksey was not there.
I must have wakened even the family in the cabin, so loud did I shout. I certainly woke all the men in the barracks with me. I heard a faint reply and followed the direction of the sound.
Aleksey was in the other building, staring at the marks on the wall. I could have strangled him. Instead I embraced him. He ruffled my hair and said cheerily, “Did I wake you? How are you feeling?”
I said nothing. My throat was raw from the shout and my heart still coming back to its normal beat.
“Say the words, Niko.”
“Here, now?”
“What?”
“You want me to tell you I love you now?”
“No! Not those words! You are so stupid sometimes. These words.”
I answered a little testily, “I have already said they are not words.”
“Yes, I know that, but they can be said. Say them over and over.”
“Oh God, it is not even light, Alek—all right! Eye, cross, eye, cross. There, are you happy?”
“Faster.”
“Eyecrosseyecross….” I saw the direction of his gaze and suddenly got what he had seen. He was looking in the direction of the river—or, more to the point, the island. “Island. Cross. They have crossed to the island?”
“Yes, and I think that is the sound we heard last night—I think people were shouting on the island.” He shrugged. “People should learn to read and write, Niko. It is frightful that everyone is so ignorant. You are the only person I know who can read. Isn’t that shocking?”
He was babbling. I knew why. I knew what he was going to say next, and he knew I knew. “No. Absolutely not. We are leaving now. Do not argue with me about this, Aleksey, for you will not win.”
“I have no intention of arguing with you.”
I sighed in relief and made to turn away just as he added, “I will do exactly as I please and not waste time quarreling with you about it.”
I think we might have got into a real fight about this, but our companions arrived, more decently dressed than I, for I had run very fast in just my shirt when I had heard Aleksey’s call. He immediately told them what he thought the symbols meant and also what he intended to do about them: he planned to cross the river onto the island.
There was universal relief at first that we had not heard poor souls in perdition begging for mercy. Then, to relieve embarrassment, they were more than willing to turn to practical matters such as how we were to actually cross such a fearsome body of water—indeed, how the colonists had done so and, more to the point, why? Why, indeed. The most popular theory was that they came under attack from natives in the forest and took sanctuary on the more easily defendable island. It was a terrible theory, but I could not come up with a better one I was willing to share (mine tended more along the lines of beasts wearing the faces of men and carrying the devil on their backs).
So I was then forced to listen to plans for the conquering of this great river—the river that was flowing faster than a horse can run and that only a few feet farther downstream dropped off the face of the earth. Their plans were not helped by the fact that even when the sun came up, we could not see the island for the density of the cloud that hung over the place from the falls. It was the most miserable, sodden, horrible place I had ever encountered, and when you remember that I had spent some time in a dungeon being tortured and had nearly been impaled upon a stake, and had spent three months on a ship being sold amongst the crew for their sport, you will understand just how much I did not want to be there and how much I did not want to listen to discussions about crossing the river.
I was not feeling well at all.
I could not help thinking about Mary Wright and poison. Had she had opportunity to poison my food? It was not impossible, but then Aleksey usually ate half the food off my plate, and he was not sick. He was very not sick. He had seized on this idea of crossing to the island because, of course, if he did not find the colonists (or at least the solution to their disappearance), then Faelan’s death was meaningless. I knew this.
He was as a man possessed with the need to make something good out of something so awful. I would have said yes, it was appalling, so let us not make it worse, but he was not listening to me. He clearly thought my illness was making me uncharacteristically fretful or something. But when Aleksey wanted something badly enough, he had a habit of getting it. It was as if the universe occasionally agreed with his sense of entitlement and looked down upon a king being thwarted in his desires and altered its course to set things right for His Majesty King Christian Aleksey Frederik Mountberg. I was going to be interested to see how it fixed this.
Unfortunately, Captain Rochester had been a military engineer when in the ranks. Typical. He knew a lot about such things as the safe traverse of flowing bodies of water.. I knew there was a reason why I had taken such a dislike to the man at our first meeting. He cleared one of the tables of dishes and other detritus of a general living area and drew with a piece of charcoal how he intended for us to proceed: we would make a ferry of the cart bed and with the aid of ropes slung from a tree on our side and a tree on the other make our way over.
I excused myself and went to check on Xavier and Boudica again. I was extremely glad that I did, for Martin Wright had just that moment opened the gate to let his father into the fort, and David made a beeline toward the stable. He was staring at Boudica when I ran in. I almost wished he would try something again, for this time Xavier, warned, would attack. He was a warhorse, and he had killed far more men than I assumed this child had.
The boy turned and considered me. “How are you feeling?”
I’m sure I paled, for he smiled, pleased, and pushed past me to rejoin his mother.
It was at that moment that I knew for sure: she was poisoning me. I didn’t know how she was doing it, but there was no other explanation. I felt myself going hot all over, then cold. I shivered. I was seriously ill, and she was poisoning me. I thought about all the sick people I had helped—helped yes, but not returned to the vigorous people they had once been! They were the gray, shadow people now: teeth, organs, skin—all ruined. I put my hand to my head and tugged experimentally on my hair. It seemed as strong as ever, and none came away in my hand. But my mind! Wasn’t it my mind that I could feel most affected? This was not like me: worrying, being afraid. The scene at the falls the day before, falling to the grass, unable to rise… why had I not been the one to go to the edge and peer over as Aleksey had done? God, even the thought of that brought back a wave of sickness, and I held tight to Xavier’s neck, drawing com
fort from his solid certainty. I heard a noise and spun around, my knife in my hand. Aleksey threw up his hands, his eyes wide. “God’s teeth, Nikolai, what is wrong with you?”
I pulled him close to me, close to Xavier’s neck, and whispered, “She is poisoning me.”
He stepped back sharply. He regarded me carefully. I thought he was going to say that I was being fooled by my sickness, that my mind was poisoned by ague alone, but he did not. He nodded and said simply, “We are leaving now. Pack up and saddle the horses. I will go and tell the major.”
I had never loved him as much as I did then. I only nodded and watched him walk away.
I do not, therefore, blame Aleksey at all for what followed. He tried. He did try to leave.
We both did.
Chapter Eleven
BY THE time I had the horses ready to travel, the sun was fully up and the breath of the falls had burnt off the river.
I could not find anyone in the palisade, so concluded they had gone to the river to pursue their idea of attempting to cross it. Now that I knew I was leaving, I actually did feel better and rode with some dignity restored to find Aleksey. I was even planning a sweat lodge in my mind so I could build one when we returned home.
What I could not understand was how she had managed it. She had not eaten with us once since the very first night. Being a woman amongst a group of men unknown to her, she had elected (or her husband had elected for her) to remain with her child and eat in their tent with him. The food had come from the major’s supplies initially, and then Aleksey and I had hunted game, butchered it, and brought it to the fire. We had all sat around watching it cook, and she, once more, had not been present. So how? I remembered the unnerving proximity of the boy watching me as I’d bled the moose, but he had not come close enough to touch either it or me.
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