A Trail of Fire (33 page)

He might have cried out. Someone laughed.

If he thought at all, he couldn’t do it. He stooped and snatched the thing and rising, hurled it into the darkness. There was a yelp and a sudden scrabbling, then a brief, shocked scream.

He stood panting and trembling from reaction, checking and rechecking his hand – but felt no pain, could find no puncture wounds. The scream had been succeeded by a low stream of unintelligible curses, punctuated by the deep gasps of a man in terror. The voice of the
houngan
– if that’s who it was – came urgently, followed by another voice, doubtful, fearful. Behind him, before him? He had no sense of direction anymore.

Something brushed past him, the heaviness of a body, and he fell against the wall of the cave, scraping his arm. He welcomed the pain; it was something to cling to, something real.

More urgency in the depths of the cave, sudden silence. And then a swishing
thunk
! as something struck hard into flesh, and the sheared-copper smell of fresh blood came strong over the scent of hot rock and rushing water. No further sound.

He was sitting on the muddy floor of the cave; he could feel the cool dirt under him. He pressed his hands flat against it, getting his bearings. After a moment, he heaved himself to his feet and stood, swaying and dizzy.

‘I don’t lie,’ he said, into the dark. ‘And I
will
have my men.’

Dripping with sweat and water, he turned back, toward the rainbows.

The sun had barely risen when he came back into the mountain compound. The smoke of cooking fires hung among the huts, and the smell of food made his stomach clench painfully, but all that could wait. He strode as well as he might – his feet were so badly blistered that he hadn’t been able to get his boots back on, and had walked back barefoot, over rocks and thorns – to the largest hut, where Captain Accompong sat placidly waiting for him.

Tom and the soldiers were there, too, no longer roped together, but still bound, kneeling by the fire. And Cresswell, a little way apart, looking wretched, but at least upright.

Accompong looked at one of his lieutenants, who stepped forward with a big cane-knife, and cut the prisoners’ bonds with a series of casual but fortunately accurate swipes.

‘Your men, my colonel,’ he said magnanimously, flipping one fat hand in their direction. ‘I give them back to you.’

‘I am deeply obliged to you, sir.’ Grey bowed. ‘There is one missing, though. Where is Rodrigo?’

There was a sudden silence. Even the shouting children hushed instantly, melting back behind their mothers. Grey could hear the trickling of water down the distant rock-face, and the pulse beating in his ears.

‘The zombie?’ Accompong said at last. He spoke mildly, but Grey sensed some unease in his voice. ‘He is not yours.’

‘Yes,’ Grey said firmly. ‘He is. He came to the mountain under my protection – and he will leave the same way. It is my duty.’

The squatty headman’s expression was hard to interpret. For none of the crowd moved, or murmured, though he caught a glimpse from the corner of his eyes of the faint turning of heads, as folk asked silent questions of one another.

‘It is my duty,’ Grey repeated. ‘I cannot go without him.’ Carefully omitting any suggestion that it might not be his choice whether to go or not. Still, why would Accompong return the white men to him, if he planned to kill or imprison Grey?

The headman pursed fleshy lips, then turned his head and said something questioning. Movement, in the hut where Ishmael had emerged the night before. There was a considerable pause, but once more, the
houngan
came out.

His face was pale, and one of his feet was wrapped in a bloodstained wad of fabric, bound tightly. Amputation, Grey thought with interest, recalling the metallic
thunk
that had seemed to echo through his own flesh in the cave. It was the only sure way to keep a snake’s venom from spreading through the body.

‘Ah,’ said Grey, voice light. ‘So the krait liked me better, did he?’

He thought Accompong laughed under his breath, but didn’t really pay attention. The
houngan
’s eyes flashed hate at him, and he regretted his wit, fearing that it might cost Rodrigo more than had already been taken from him.

Despite his shock and horror, though, he clung to what Mrs Abernathy had told him. The young man was
not
truly dead. He swallowed. Could Rodrigo perhaps be restored? The Scotchwoman had said not – but perhaps she was wrong. Clearly Rodrigo had not been a zombie for more than a few days. And she did say that the drug dissipated over time . . . perhaps . . .

Accompong spoke sharply, and the
houngan
lowered his head.

‘
Anda
,’ he said sullenly. There was stumbling movement in the hut, and he stepped aside, half-pushing Rodrigo out into the light, where he came to a stop, staring vacantly at the ground, mouth open.

‘You want this?’ Accompong waved a hand at Rodrigo. ‘What for? He’s no good to you, surely? Unless you want to take him to bed – he won’t say no to you!’

Everyone thought that very funny; the clearing rocked with laughter. Grey waited it out. From the corner of his eye, he saw the girl Azeel, watching him with something like a fearful hope in her eyes.

‘He is under my protection,’ he repeated. ‘Yes, I want him.’

Accompong nodded and took a deep breath, sniffing appreciatively at the mingled scents of cassava porridge, fried plantain, and frying pig-meat.

‘Sit down, colonel,’ he said, ‘and eat with me.’

Grey sank slowly down beside him, weariness throbbing through his legs. Looking round, he saw Cresswell dragged roughly off, but left sitting on the ground against a hut, unmolested. Tom and the two soldiers, looking dazed, were being fed at one of the cook-fires. Then he saw Rodrigo, still standing like a scarecrow, and struggled to his feet.

He took the young man’s tattered sleeve and said, ‘Come with me.’ Rather to his surprise, Rodrigo did, turning like an automaton. He led the young man through the staring crowd to the girl Azeel, and said, ‘Stop.’ He lifted Rodrigo’s hand and offered it to the girl, who, after a moment’s hesitation, took firmly hold of it.

‘Look after him, please,’ Grey said to her. Only as he turned away did it register upon him that the arm he had held was wrapped with a bandage. Ah. Dead men don’t bleed.

Returning to Accompong’s fire, he found a wooden platter of steaming food awaiting him. He sank down gratefully upon the ground again, and closed his eyes – then opened them, startled, as he felt something descend upon his head, and found himself peering out from under the drooping felt brim of the headman’s ragged hat.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ He hesitated, looking round, either for the leather hat-box, or for his ragged palm-frond hat, but didn’t see either one.

‘Never mind,’ said Accompong, and leaning forward, slid his hands carefully over Grey’s shoulders, palm up, as though lifting something heavy. ‘I will take your snake, instead. You have carried him long enough, I think.’

AUTHOR’S NOTES

My source for the theoretical basis of making zombies was
The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist’s Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis, and Magic
, by Wade Davis, which I’d read many years ago. Information on the maroons of Jamaica, the temperament, beliefs, and behaviour of Africans from different regions, and on historical slave rebellions came chiefly from
Black Rebellion: Five Slave Revolts
, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. This manuscript (originally a series of articles published in
Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine
, and
Century
) also supplied a number of valuable details regarding terrain and personalities.

Captain Accompong was a real maroon leader – I took his physical description from this source – and the custom of trading hats upon conclusion of a bargain also came from
Black Rebellion
. General background, atmosphere, and the importance of snakes came from Zora Neale Hurston’s
Tell My Horse
and a number of less important books dealing with voodoo. (By the way, I now have most of my reference collection – some 1,500 books – listed on LibraryThing and cross-indexed by topic, in case you’re interested in pursuing anything like, say, Scotland, magic, or the American Revolution.)

The Space Between

Introduction to

The Space Between

This is an odd one. I could tell from the final chapters of
An Echo in the Bone
, wherein Michael Murray arrives from France, freshly widowed, to be there for his father’s approaching death, that this was a very vulnerable man, and one wide open to the winds of fate.
Echo
wasn’t his story, though.

Neither was it Joan’s story, though she too is plainly headed for adventure when she masterminds her escape from her mother’s Highland home, bound for a convent and determined to become a nun – though she’s never seen either a convent
or
a nun.

If you have a widower and a postulant headed off to Paris together, plainly you can expect Something Interesting to happen – and it does, but this story doesn’t belong only to Michael and Joan.

Did you ever wonder what happened after the Comte St Germain collapsed in King Louis’s Star Chamber, in
Dragonfly in Amber
? Step into the space between and find out.

The Space Between

Paris, June 1778

He still didn’t know why the frog hadn’t killed him. Paul Rakoczy, Comte St Germain, picked up the vial, pulled the cork and sniffed cautiously for the third time, but then recorked it, still dissatisfied. Maybe. Maybe not. The scent of the dark grey powder in the vial held the ghost of something familiar – but it had been thirty years.

He sat for a moment, frowning at the array of jars, bottles, flasks and pelicans on his workbench. It was late afternoon, and the late spring sun of Paris was like honey, warm and sticky on his face, but glowing in the rounded globes of glass, throwing pools of red and brown and green on the wood from the liquids contained therein. The only discordant note in this peaceful symphony of light was the body of a large rat, lying on its back in the middle of the workbench, a pocket-watch open beside it.

The comte put two fingers delicately on the rat’s chest and waited patiently. It didn’t take so long this time; he was used to the coldness as his mind felt its way into the body. Nothing. No hint of light in his mind’s eye, no warm red of a pulsing heart. He glanced at the watch: half an hour.

He took his fingers away, shaking his head.

‘Mélisande, you evil bitch,’ he murmured, not without affection. ‘You didn’t think I’d try anything
you
sent me on myself, did you?’

Still . . . he himself had stayed dead a great while longer than half an hour, when the frog had given him the dragon’s-blood. It had been early evening when he went into Louis’s Star Chamber thirty years before, heart beating with excitement at the coming confrontation – a duel of wizards, with a king’s favour as the stakes – and one he’d thought he’d win. He remembered the purity of the sky, the beauty of the stars just visible, Venus bright on the horizon, and the joy of it in his blood. Everything always had a greater intensity, when you knew life could cease within the next few minutes.