Rebels of Babylon (33 page)

By the time he had lost his fight with the spirit, one of his eyes was swollen shut and even one ear was bleeding.

The congregation moaned in desolation. At Queen Manuela’s command, a flock of women lugged the poor fellow off.

She approached me again, once her slave was gone. Her face was terrible. I cannot say if her features reflected awe or
grief or ecstasy. Her soul was gone beyond our common emotions. Her eyes retained no symptom of humanity.

Reaching into the deepest folds of her garment, she drew out a pouch the color of negro skin. In a movement so quick that my eyes could not follow, she scooped out a handful of powder and dusted it over me.

That is the last I remember of the ceremony.

I WOKE WHEN a child tried to pick my pocket. I gave a great jump, as if to avoid the thrust of an enemy bayonet, swinging my arms about.

The lad who had annoyed me leapt away, eluding my blows. Lean and brown and ragged, he had a mischief-maker’s smile in his small, round head. A meager lass stood behind him, prodding the earth with my sword-cane.

Twas morning.

I bellowed to fright a pack of Irish privates. The boy danced off, pausing briefly by his unmistakable sister. Then they fled. Laughing. The lass let go my sword-cane and it fell to earth. Twas only a game, I think, not proper robbery.

They ran grandly, crying out with glee and pretended terror, until the swamp concealed them.

I looked about. My head was thumping like those blasted drums.

And I remembered.

In that unreasoned panic which afflicts a man surprised between sleep and waking, I nearly buckled. Staring about in distress. Looking to see if I had broken the circle.

But the circle was gone. There were only a few truant bits of shell and the freckled earth where the runes had been swept away.

I had a sickly feeling, with a clamoring in my head that recalled my Indian days, before I turned to Our Savior. Back when I was a heedless lad who did not always resist the lures of liquor.

Cold it was, with that morning chill soldiers know. The sky was pearl and mist roamed from the swamps, which stank. Five blackened patches upon the earth were the only relics of the past night’s revelry.

I felt beneath my greatcoat. And found my Colt in place, as well as my purse and my Testament. My fickle watch still swelled my waistcoat pocket. Nor was there any suggestion that the congregants had interfered with my person.

After shaking myself as a hound might have done, I rubbed my eyes and went to retrieve my cane. Stiffness infected my thirty-four-year-old bones, worsening my limp. The earth is an unkind bed for a middle-aged man.

I stooped to pick up my cane. As I rose, I saw her.

You would have thought her out for a morning stroll. Her purple robe was gone, along with her turban. And the serpent. Her face was clean and still above her cape. With her out-of-season parasol, she looked a lady come down in life, not a pagan priestess.

Still, my flesh defied my will and shuddered.

She kept a distance between us, as if we must speak from the opposite banks of a stream. Perhaps that was the case in a deeper sense. For our two shores of faith would never reconcile.

I was unsure, almost unsteady. I wanted coffee and time to arrange my mood, which was snappish. The whole affair seemed shabby and cheap in the daylight. I wondered if I had been played for a fool.

“You,” she said, in a voice not free of weariness, “have a great protector. Papa La Bas, he can’t touch you. You’re a lucky man.”

I am a Christian man. That is my protection.

“She’s very strong, stronger than me,” Queen Manuela continued. Or perhaps I should call her Madame La Blanch again. “She must have died young, your haunt-girl. To be so strong.”

Such nonsense riles me.

“I have questions,” I told her. My voice meant to be stern, but had a wheeze. It had not yet been tested by the day. “I did as I was asked, mum. Now it is my turn to—”

“Five askings,” she interrupted. “You get five askings. Then no more.”

“Who are the ‘fishers of men’?”

“Union soldiers. Pirates. Negroes who hate their own skin. Marie Venin.” She followed the name with a clot of spit. “A white devil-woman.”

“What do they do? Why do the negroes fear them?”

“They steal black folk. Take them away. On ships.”

That baffled me. “But where? To Africa? Why on earth would they—”

She shook her head, as solemnly as if standing over a grave. “Not Africa. Somewheres. The spirits don’t say. They know, but they won’t say. No one ever comes back, that’s all we know.”

She chose her words with the care of a soldier on court-martial.

“But why? To what end?” I demanded. “What would be the sense of kidnapping negroes, for the love of God? They’re worthless now. They’re free.” My head still throbbed. I could not think as crisply as I wished.

“I can’t tell you that. Maybe you already know. The spirits say you know plenty of things. But you fight against knowing them.”

For a moment, I thought she might step closer, to impart an intimacy. She seemed to waver. But she held her ground.

“Palms been crossed with gold, not only silver,” she told me. “Listen now. You only got one asking left. Just one now. I’m not allowed to give you no more than that. Think hard, white man.”

Twas all a hocus-pocus, of course. A way to feed me little bits and pieces. Perhaps, I suspected, to lead me astray again. Likely the pagan revels had been no more than a ruse to steal my time. While wickedness proceeded back in the city.

Skeptical I was, and sore of body. Far from the world of airy spooks, my bowels began to protest my neglect, for they are as reliable as the company bugler.

Yet, I thought me hard before I asked that final question. Only to surprise myself and put a trivial query. Surrendering to morbid curiosity, perhaps to a sort of vanity.

“Was Susan Peabody … a virtuous woman? Was she—”

“She was a woman. Like any other.”

Madame La Blanch shook her head again, as if she pitied me deeply. As if I were a small and foolish man, after all. She made no further mention of great spirits.

“Man who won’t see might as well be blind,” she said brusquely. “Can’t lead a mule who won’t go. Play a fool to make a fool, then see who the fool is.”

Finished with her epigrams—as trite as a fortune-teller’s at the fair—Madame La Blanch strode off. I was dissatisfied and moved to follow her. But she sensed what I intended and turned about.

“You stay put,” she snapped, eyes blazing again for that instant. “You stay right there ’til I’m gone. Then you skedaddle. There’s things in this life you don’t want to know.”

I WILL ADMIT THAT I WAS IN A DUDGEON. I HAD SUBMITTED myself to pagan follies, only to be mocked by a blaspheming negress. Nor was I content with the clumsiness of my questions.

Madame La Blanch had indicted almost everyone in the city, our Union soldiers and pirate gangs, a voodoo rival and even fellow darkies. Along with a “white devil-woman.” It struck me as a crude attempt to employ me in a reckoning with her enemies. All the world could not be in conspiracies.

I marched me back along the trail by which I had arrived the night before. Stabbing the earth with my cane like a sulking child, I grumbled but did not dawdle. For I had an urgent purpose. One that had nothing to do with the fate of Miss Peabody and everything to do with mine own comfort.

I scooted on my way and did not look back.

Why on earth would anyone steal negroes? Slavery was finished and their value had expired. They could be hired in dozens for a dollar. And that might not be a dollar wisely spent.

Nor were we drafting Africans into our army. On the contrary, General Butler, of whom much ill may elsewise be said, had led our efforts to recruit them honestly, meeting with great success before his removal. We had more colored volunteers who wished to wear a blue coat than Washington could regulate or arm. Indeed, many a high, distinguished voice remained reluctant to back negro recruitment, viewing the black man as
worthless in a fight or worrying that we would antagonize Mr. Davis.

Meanwhile, runaway “contrabands” crowded our camps and slept in the city streets, hazarding the general health and, certainly, themselves. Freedom had levied a tax in human misery.

Yet, I would be just: Who among us would not prefer to live in confounding freedom over the certainties of the slave? The worst among us then were men of privilege, who, having kept the African chained and ignorant, complained that he was ill prepared for freedom. I would not raise the black man upon a pedestal, nor do I quite propose him as our equal, but every man deserves an honest chance.

Freedom may not guarantee our nourishment, but I never met a man whom it had poisoned.

I pitied the negroes, but knew not what to do with them. Such matters were better left to wiser men.

Twas all a blather and a bother, anyway. After I had gone a hundred paces, the only thing that mattered was my bowels.

I beg your pardon for my frankness, but history must be recorded truly. I paused on the wretched trail and looked about me. Lazy vapors eased between great trees, caressing the moss. Black water steamed in the cold, its surface as unmoving as the earth. The swamp smelled of an undrained family bath and wet-rag air annoyed my exposed skin. Odd birds called, but hid. I saw no trace of other human beings, but had no confidence that I saw all. I do not like to think my modesty compromised.

An earnest survey found no trace of alligators, which I am told are prevalent in New Orleans.

I found a not unwelcoming spot a few steps from the trail and peeled off my greatcoat. Further actions do not require description. Although I will admit to scanning the foliage for reptilian intruders and such like.

At the very moment of my satisfaction, I felt that I had been bitten hard, indeed. Not by a creature of our American Nile, but by the realization of my stupidity.

I saw it
all.
The sense of things, I mean. I nearly leapt directly to my feet. Which would have been ill judged.

I fear that I used language to abuse myself that never can appear upon the page. My comments upon my unbelievable blindness were so strong that I shall have to answer for them on that day when the sternest questions are posed.

The kindest word I spent on myself was “idiot.”

I tidied myself as swiftly as I could, grateful for the broad and bountiful leaves the Lord provided even in mid-winter. And then I set off at a run, like a hobbled horse at the races, too impatient even to don my greatcoat, fair hurdling with the help of my cane and begging every power in Heaven to let Mr. Barnaby be there waiting, with a vehicle ready.

And waiting he was, the good fellow. With that sour Irish cab man still in thrall.

Mr. Barnaby waved and stepped toward me the instant he marked my approach. Even at a distance, I could read the bright relief upon his face. He cried out, “Tally-ho!” and danced a jig.

As I come up to him, he added, “Bless me, Major Jones, you’re still alive!”

Tears welled in his eyes, though he was jolly.

“I brought you a nice, soft bun,” he declared, “in the ’opes that you could chew it. You must be—”

“No time!” I snapped. “Get in the cab.
You.
” I called to the cab man, “fifty Union dollars if you drive the horses like they’re running at Epsom! Take us to the Customs House, to Union headquarters!”

I stormed the interior of the cab like a rush of fusiliers taking a redoubt. Mr. Barnaby followed me with all the alacrity his doughty girth allowed.

Despite my cajoling and the cab man’s greed, we could not go too swiftly on the trail. I leaned forward on the bench, as if my weight might lend us more momentum.

“What’s ’appened, sir, what’s ’appened?” Mr. Barnaby begged of me. “Did the one we ain’t to name tell you ’er secrets?”

I swung a dismissive paw at the great, wide world. “Later, later. Did you, or did you not, say that slavery is still in practice on the Spanish islands?”

“That it is, sir, that it is! As legal as ever it was hereabouts, and twice as mean or worse, the way they treats ’em. The high-seas trade ain’t legal, God bless the Royal Navy, but what slaves they ’as already got is bound to be slaves forever. Even in Brazil, among the Portugee, it ain’t been abolished, though we pretends to live in civilized times. Why, in Cuba they—”