The Book of the Heathen (36 page)

An hour later there was a false alarm. Someone downriver started beating a drum and we all imagined this was a signal sent by our look-out. Torches were lit along the bank and the wharves. Everyone strained to look and listen for anything approaching, but nothing came to us out of the darkness. It was by then almost midnight, and the river, though illuminated along its surface by the broken outline of the moon, flowed swiftly into the blackness of the trees beyond.

Fires were lit around Nash and Frere, and some among the guards took out bottles. I called for Bone to prevent his men from becoming drunk, but his only response was to approach one of the men, take the bottle from him and drink from it himself. The shifting light of the fires showed Nash and Frere at the centre of all this, distanced by their silence and stillness from everything that was taking place around them. I saw how disappointingly different all this was from what Nash had planned for and anticipated. His own belongings had long since been taken from his quarters and stacked on one of the jetties.

I anticipated that Amon might return to me, but he never came. Presumably, he had already calculated the exact point and line of his own departure and path away from Hammad.

Eventually, the drumming downriver ceased, and just as I prepared myself to wait through the remainder of the night, I was alerted to the arrival of others at the far side of the compound. At first I could not make out these newcomers, counting them only by the lights they carried, and then I heard their singing voices and knew that Klein had come and brought with him his congregation so that he and they might witness and delight in Frere's final humiliation.

Both Bone and Proctor commanded their men to keep this crowd away, but Klein himself told the men and women with him to stay back and to arrange themselves into an orderly half-circle behind the seated men. I could not believe that the man and his followers had come so late in the night and with so little warning to us.

Klein approached Nash, and Nash rose from beside Frere and told the priest to keep his distance. Klein raised his hands in submission. He remained where he stood, talking to Nash, and occasionally shouting abuse at Frere. Frere responded to none of this. Behind Klein, his congregation sang one hymn after another. And when they had exhausted their meagre repertoire, they started again, the same few songs over and over. Both Bone and Proctor called for them to shut up, but, despite faltering briefly at these commands, they continued.

I was now more convinced than ever that the time had come to insist that Nash made other arrangements for guarding his prisoner, certain that with so many unexpected spectators and participants he would have little choice but to agree with me. I put all this to Cornelius and Fletcher, but neither man was anxious to intervene. Cornelius, I saw, kept his eyes fixed on Klein and would not be distracted from the man. Fletcher rested the rifle across his lap, his hand on the bolt.

Nash then moved closer to Klein and ordered him to return to his congregation. Amon, I noticed, stood a short distance from the two men and watched them closely. I saw that he was deriving great satisfaction from the night's events, and I began to wonder again why he had come if not to participate in them in some way.

There were times when the congregation fell silent for minutes on end, regaining their breath and preparing themselves for their next outburst. The singers still held lights, candles, lanterns, burning torches, and these rose and fell in the darkness amid their bodies like the lights of a town seen from afar.

I heard Nash shout at Klein to get the singers to withdraw, and Klein shout back that he, Nash, was the one making a public spectacle of Frere. I saw that Klein carried another of his slender canes and that he slashed this back and forth through the air ahead of him as he spoke. The watching soldiers laughed at the two men and shouted their drunken encouragement to one or other of them. Neither Bone nor Proctor attempted to intervene and restore order to the situation.

I looked to Frere and saw that he still sat with his back to all of this, but that now he held his hands firmly over his ears and was slowly shaking his head from side to side as though to deny the existence of everyone around him. He leaned forward slightly until his elbows rested on his knees. And then he folded his head into his chest and held one arm over the back of his head, the other over his eyes. I saw how intolerable all this had become to him, and even as I watched him, silently calculating what I might now conceivably do to lessen his suffering and remove him from the centre of the men around him – men who seemed themselves to be almost oblivious to his presence – Klein pushed past Nash and began beating him across his back and head with his cane. Nash attempted to restrain him, but Klein pushed him away and caused him to fall. Nash rose and pulled out his pistol, standing off from Klein and pointing it. Beside me, Fletcher took his rifle in both hands and slowly aimed it towards the three men. Klein went on beating Frere where he sat, and the singing of the congregation grew even louder, so that I could no longer hear if Frere cried out at each of the blows. The soldiers continued their cheering and shouting, and just as it seemed that Proctor was about to intervene and pull the priest away from Frere, I saw Amon approach him and prevent him from doing so.

By now, Klein had worked himself into an uncontrollable rage and he struck out ever more vigorously at Frere, little concerned where his blows fell, so long as each of them landed somewhere on his unresisting target.

I told Fletcher to fire above the heads of the men, which he did, but the shot had little effect other than to cause each of the participants to pause briefly before resuming, and for a further hesitant ripple to run through the singing crowd. I told him to fire again, but he refused, saying the effect would be the same.

Then Cornelius rose beside me and said, ‘Put a bullet through his head. What difference will it make? Do it now and spare him everything he has yet to come. This is just the start of it all.'

It took me a moment to realize he was talking about Frere.

Fletcher considered what Cornelius said, but kept his rifle pointed into the air.

In a break in the singing I heard Klein's grunts and Frere's muffled cries. Nash shouted again and moved even closer to the priest, his pistol pointed directly at his head. But either Klein remained oblivious to this or he did not believe that the man would shoot, for he went on slashing at Frere.

Throughout all this, I could not understand why Frere did not rise from his chair and defend himself.

‘Do it,' Cornelius said again. ‘Do it.' And before either Fletcher or I fully understood what was happening, he pulled the rifle from Fletcher, pointed it towards Frere and Klein, and fired. His whole body shook uncontrollably, as governed by rage as Klein was, and the weapon trembled in his hands. He drew back the bolt and fired again, and this time, primed by the first explosion, everyone fell silent at the shot and looked anxiously around them to see where the bullet might have struck.

I looked hard at Frere: he remained in his seat with his arms around his head, but so convinced was I that he was about to unfold himself and then fall to the ground that I did not at first see Klein falter in one of his blows and stand frozen for an instant, turning my eyes from Frere to the priest only as Klein dropped his cane, half-turned to look in our direction and then fell onto his knees and then his face, unable even to put out his arms to protect himself.

The men standing closest to all this cried out. Some of the soldiers took up and aimed their own weapons, some towards Klein's congregation, others at us.

A scream rose from amid the hymn-singers, followed by others until it seemed that every single one of the men and women there was screaming. They disbanded and started running in all directions.

Nash stood with his own pistol still extended, and at first it must have seemed to those standing near by that he himself had fired and killed the priest, and several of the militiamen, including Bone and Proctor, ran towards him, their own weapons raised. But Nash ignored them and the wailing crowd, and turned instead to where Cornelius stood beside me with the rifle raised, and looking from the fallen Klein to Frere and then to Cornelius, he swung his pistol and fired without warning. Cornelius cried out, took a steadying step backwards, and in the same instant fired involuntarily towards where Nash stood.

Fletcher and I, alarmed that others might now start shooting in the confusion, threw ourselves to the ground. Cornelius fell backwards beside us and I saw that he had been struck in the face. His hands clawed at the ground for a few seconds and then he lay still. I shouted for everyone to stop shooting.

I looked at Nash, who stood unhurt over the body of the priest, and I waited a few moments longer before rising and walking to where Cornelius lay. He had been struck in the forehead by Nash and his eyes remained open and fixed. Abbot knelt over him, pressed his ear to Cornelius's mouth and then shook his head in disbelief.

Over at the river, Nash returned to Frere and sat beside him. I doubted if either man was fully aware of what had just happened. The pistol fell from Nash's hand and he looked down at it briefly before raising his eyes back to Frere.

Amon and Proctor approached Klein's body. Amon tapped it with his foot several times and then withdrew, satisfied that the priest was dead. He motioned for Proctor to follow him, and after Proctor had called for his men, he and they returned to the waiting boat.

Women from among the congregation ran to Klein, flung themselves over his body and continued their wailing, covering the corpse from head to foot, almost as though they believed their living warmth and fanatic beseeching might somehow resurrect the dead man, inconsolable in their grief and flailing their arms and beating their fists against their own faces and chests. Most had by then thrown off whatever garments they wore and were now pressed naked over Klein, the mass of their bodies red in the light of the fires, and they seemed to me, seeing them at that distance and still struggling to understand everything that had just happened, like scavengers in a frenzy of bloody feeding over a recent kill.

Nash, I saw, had helped Frere upright and had taken his arms from around his head.

Beside me, Fletcher laid his jacket over Cornelius's face and pulled Abbot to his feet.

And out on the water, Amon's steamer drew slowly clear of the shore and moved ever faster into the quickening flow of the middle channel, visible to us only by the lamps it still showed, and I watched it as it went, until even those few dim lights were one by one extinguished and lost and the vessel disappeared completely into the utter and impenetrable darkness of the night.

 

THE END

Also by Robert Edric

WINTER GARDEN

A NEW ICE AGE

A LUNAR ECLIPSE

IN THE DAYS OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM

THE BROKEN LANDS

HALLOWED GROUND

THE EARTH MADE OF GLASS

ELYSIUM

IN DESOLATE HEAVEN

THE SWORD CABINET

 

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin's Press.

THE BOOK OF THE HEATHEN
. Copyright © 2000 by Robert Edric. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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First published in Great Britain by Anchor—a division of Transworld Publishers

First U.S. Edition: November 2002

eISBN 9781466863224

First eBook edition: January 2014