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Many citizens abused him and showered him with ordure, while others laughed him to scorn. Only one, an apostate priest named Nikolaus, recognized the truth of his vision. Together they formed the original Brethren of Black Swans, and established their own Mount Tabor in a dye-works. Day after day Joachim toured the cities and the countryside, drumming the Last Days, and gradually followers gathered to him. Shepherds and mill hands and unemployed workers, migrants and beggars, they rallied to his call, and waited for the flood of flame to strike.

At first Joachim merely preached repentance, the ways of austerity. On the prompting of Nikolaus, however, he soon began to lash out at the Church. He accused the local clergy of
Avaritia
and
Luxuria
, and foretold dire punishments in the coming holocaust.

The Bishop of Würzburg, he predicted, was going to catch the blackest roasting of the lot, at which the bishop was not best pleased, and ordered him arrested. But the drummer would not go easily. Through the summer of 1546 he continued to travel the Main valley, drumming and preaching as he went. Only when he returned to Mount Tabor did the bishop’s men succeed in pinning him down. A fierce battle ensued, the streets ran with blood and dye, and in the end Joachim was captured, his drum destroyed.

Torture failed to make him recant. Incensed, above all, by the description of the Virgin’s feet bound in rags, the Bishop of Würzburg used him so severely that the drummer was pronounced dead three times, and three times revived, until at last he was burnt at the stake, still declaiming his vision.

Nor did the story end there. The priest Nikolaus had written a full account of Joachim’s crusade, and when he in turn was captured and burnt, the manuscript passed to Emico, who carried it back to Africa with him. For generations the tale remained in hiding, a thing of rumour and fantasy. The manuscript itself was lost or destroyed, and all traces of Emico himself disappeared. Yet somehow the tradition survived, and even spread, travelling from Tunis to Tlemcen and Meknes, Rabat and Mogador, and finally to the Ivory Coast. From there, the slave ships brought Joachim’s memory to the New World, and in that world’s plantations it lingered, one small cult among many, yet indestructible.

It needed one Hosea Tichenor, a freed man of colour, to bring the wheel full circle. A Natchez barber by trade, ardent in the Negro cause, he’d grown up hearing the tale, and saw potential in it. So he wrote
The Deaths of Joachim
, a reference to the three resurrections from torture.

Privately published, its sales were not brisk, and soon afterwards the barber was found with his throat razor-slit. But his
work was not forgotten. Frederick Douglass, for one, was familiar with the Deaths; later, Marcus Garvey was known to quote from them verbatim; and Hannah Bradenton, Luscious Maitland’s godmother, kept a copy on her bedside table.

The volume had meant nothing to the Master then. It was just a storybook, and old-fashioned to boot, with its sacking cover and its scrunched-up type like spider tracks. The only thing that impressed him was the frontispiece—a woodcut of Joachim at the stake, with tongues of fire licking him all over, his legs and arms turned into charred logs. Even then, it was not the suffering that impressed him, or the stoicism with which the martyr endured, but the bunched muscles of his shoulders and neck, the puffy bags beneath his eyes. Put him in trunks and gloves, and you would have sworn he was Joe Louis, and the Brown Bomber, of all men living, was Luscious Maitland’s God.

Only when he was railroaded into Attica, three decades later, did the text itself begin to make sense. Randall Gurdler, the Bishop of Würzburg—what were they, after all, but two faces of one coin? The deaths of Joachim were the deaths of every freed soul but enslaved body: “Watch the story,” he said to Crouch, and joined the prison band on drums.

But there was more. On page 63, Tichenor had written: “Beholt the man who bares the mark, he comes in HEAT, in splender he comes with mitie showting. By his BRAND in flesh then know him, my swans. By his coming make an END, and so be freed.”

It wasn’t much to go on, of course. Tell the truth, when John Joe had tried to read the full text, he had found it tough sledding. All that sin and repentance, and contemplating your own worthlessness, it sounded downright Protestant.

But the Swans, God love them, were entranced. Every word that Joachim had spoken, they treated as holy writ.

His vision of Armageddon, above all. In one of his last sermons, the drummer had pictured The End as a wild party. Mount Tabor would be invaded by a plague of uninvited guests, bringing with them loud music and the gaudiest of finery, all manner of boisterous games. There would be jousting and tumbling, carousing, orgies of fornication. But this revelry would be sham. Underneath their fancy dress, the guests would bear deadly arms. Servants of the Antichrist, at a prearranged signal they would throw off their masks and unleash the fiery flood. Many freed souls would perish then, their leaders perhaps among them. But that was no cause for dismay. Dead or living, if they were worthy, all would be saved. Black swans, they would fly away.

So there it was, plain as plain. Any minute now Randall Gurdler would be making his move, throwing that switch, then Katy bar the door.
Many earthquakes will there be
, Master Maitland said,
and killings in the world, and the sky, the whole sky, will be red, and the blind rain will pour down on the desert, and in the East a star will come in the shape of a moon, and men will prance like racehorses, and women will bet them like men
.

Small wonder, in these conditions, that the Master’s tongue turned sharp at times.
And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it. And shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them
. That was no stroll in the park.

Still, John Joe felt no fear. Looking round the clubhouse in Mount Tabor, all he thought was home. What ease it would be to stay here, lost underground where no parakeets or cockatoos could reach. To sit watching the children playing Power Rangers, and the women hanging out their washing, and Jerzy Polacki fixing the waterbed. Even the sight of the Master’s purple head bent over the Book of Job was solace to him. So was the whisky breath of Crouch.

That man was dancing up a ladder, creating the Seventh Angel from fragments of Mamie Van Doren. Slapping on papier-mâché for the body, Corn Flakes packets and toilet rolls for robes. Skimming up and down the rungs with that shuffle-footed lightness of his, and winking back across his shoulder. “How’s the patent portent?” he asked.

“Mustn’t grumble,” said John Joe.

Master Maitland overheard that, and his head came up with a jerk. “If we don’t grumble, who will?” he said.

“Anna Crow,” John Joe replied.

Instantly guilt stabbed him like a hat pin. He’d promised to do some shopping for her. Pick up a rope she needed for a poetry reading tonight. She’d be waiting for him at Sheherazade, and he had clean forgot.
Never keep a lady waiting
, his mother had always said. Or Anna Crow, either. “A woman’s expecting,” he said.

“Let her expect,” said Master Maitland.

“I only wish I could,” said John Joe.

Out of doors, once he had clambered back up the five levels into daylight, he felt cast out. The man in the hardware store had a boozer’s nose and a quizzical eye, you’d say he was a gobshite. “Would you have a length of rope? Suitable for a noose?” John Joe asked him.

“Would that be for yourself?”

“A friend.”

The way the man cocked his eyebrow, you could tell he had his doubts. Reservations, even. “A young lady,” John Joe explained.

“I see,” the man said. “Will that be cash or charge?”

Sheherazade by afternoon, with the chairs upside down on the tables and Roach Motels in every corner, looked more forlorn than ever. Not even Bani Badpa was on hand. Only Anna Crow in leopard-print leotard and ballet slippers with her red
hair hidden under a mop of yellow ringlets, standing with one arm held stiff against the bar for support, her left foot on point, her right leg pointed at the ceiling. “Did you get it?” she asked.

“They had hemp just, no silk.”

“Hard times all over.” Breathing deep and regular, she thrust her leg upwards, once, and twice, and three times, then turned to catch John Joe staring. There was want betrayed in his eyes, he could feel that. “What’s up with you?” Anna Crow asked, not unkind.

“Could you manage a Starburst at all?”

L
ordamercy that stricken look you’d have thought kidney stones or a hernia at the very least when all he wanted was a candy and not even a self-respecting chocolate bar like a Snicker or a Baby Ruth but a lousy Star-burst at that. “No, I couldn’t,” Anna said, “but you’re welcome to some of my gum.”

At least he had brought the rope. She had felt squeamish somehow about walking in the store and up to Mister Man and asking for his best necktie herself. A bit like buying your first tampon, it was an embarrassment even if you knew it was only nature. Though nature could be a bitch, a stone killer. But that wasn’t the point; what was the point?

At least he’d brought the rope
, that was it.

Don’t start her to talking, she had been going round in circles like this for days. A single dull thought would weasel its way inside her brain and set up housekeeping there. Settle into an armchair with its bunny slippers on and refuse to be budged. Like those godawful songs that drove you mad, flowerpots like
Feelings
or
Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head
or that cretinous jingle on TV,
Dr. Pepper You’re a Part of Me
, she was a martyr to that. Though what part would that be exactly? A muscle, a nerve, her sphincter maybe? Still she kept humming it in the shower, she couldn’t seem to help herself, was she losing her mind?

Perhaps she was. Lord knows that mental frailty ran in the family. Look at her own brother Leon who worshipped Apollo. Or her cousin Driskill that became a mime. One of those whiteface loons that pretended to be a statue on Oglethorpe Square, made her puke, praise the Lord for pigeons. But that was not the point. The point was lunacy and the Crows, you could write a book. Remember her in Shalimar, after all. God help her, she sounded as bad as those flowerpots.
Remember me in Shalimar, Pale hands beside the cookie jar
, but that had been different, a breakdown with all the trimmings, howling at the moon. This time around, it didn’t feel like barking madness, more like bone stupidity, and where was the cure for dumb? How could you go to a medical man and explain to him
I’m a moron, Doctor, a hopeless imbecile, can you give me some pills?
He would look at you funny.

But that was not the point.

The point was she had the rope, now, Shut up. Time to get her ankle out of her ear, and set about her business, dress up for the night ahead.
The Faking Boy
was a poem she’d never done before, and vernacular was never her strong suit, she needed a deep breath before she plunged. Especially after this morning’s fiasco with
La Belle Dame sans Merci
.

She should have smelled a rat when Verse-o-Gram told her it was a birthday gift. What kind of friend or lover would send a poem like that, after all, only a dumped boyfriend trying to scare off his replacement. So she’d found herself reciting to a stud who looked like a young Marlon Brando, except without the fat ass, and a Lady in the Meads wrapped in a bed sheet, and by the smell they’d been at it like minks in heat, when in walked Miss Thing declaiming
I saw their starved lips in the gloam with horrid warnings gaped wide
, perfect timing,
Ah! Woe betide!
that rattle at the window was her tip flying out.

Of course, she should have known she was in trouble the moment she passed Kate Root on the stairs, that woman was doom in blue mules. If anything, her new schtick, this Chatty Kathy act, seemed more sinister than the basilisk eye of yore. At least when she’d put the whammy on you openly, you knew you had been zapped. But this morning was more sinister. Too much perkiness by half, the flushed face and that bird-bright gleam in her eye—Anna sniffed dirty work at the crossroads, a storm of fanshit brewing.

But that was not the point.

The point was, she had a gig to do, a costume to put on. Back through the kitchens she led John Joe, into the storage space with soiled tablecloths and canned chickpeas, and stripped off her leotard, and cooled her skin with a hairdryer, “And how was your day?” she asked, stretching.

“The Master called me Ananias.”

“You poor lamb.” But she hadn’t the patience to hear the gruesome details. Far as she was concerned, the Black Swans were a royal pain, good for nothing but grief. These sects and millennial cults, they always ended in tears if not worse. Just look at Leon, one day an investment broker, the next day handing out pamphlets with a scarlet sun stamped on his forehead in Oglethorpe Square right next to Cousin Driskill, and that was nothing compared to Jim Jones in Guinea, or was it Guyana, or that rock guitarist in Waco. Waiting in the subways until the Rapture hit, you couldn’t call it healthy. Certainly not hygienic. What did they use for bathrooms, she’d like to know, though it might not seem a respectful question with The End so nigh, still you had to ask yourself, at least she did, or had their shit vaporized into spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, being freed souls and all?

She wouldn’t have minded, only she worried for John Joe, which was odd to say the least, but it was a fact, the worm had wriggled under her skin.

Amazing when she thought of it. Considering her reaction the first time she’d clapped eyes on him in poor Godwin’s room that night the roof caught fire,
look what the cat drug in
was putting it mildly, though even then he’d seemed restful. But what she’d never have imagined was how useful he would prove, the man was born to cater.

Some change from Willie fucking D. Strange, no make that bizarre, to think how she’d been lost in lust fathoms-deep for that creep. That preening five-timing carwashing piece of nothing, well, piece of ass, it was true, but nothing else, although his hair, of course, but absolutely nothing else, yet she’d bitten her nails down to the knuckles for him, she had climbed walls,
Anna wants a little kiss
, she’d said that night of the cockfight; had actually spoken those words in front of God and everyone, why the earth hadn’t swallowed her up she would never know, couldn’t stomach her she guessed.