The Last Bookaneer (28 page)

“You wish I had?” A mocking laugh.

“Why do I deserve the sorry fate of being your last rival? If you were intent on clearing out the competition, why leave me alone?”

“I didn't think I had to do more.” He let out a sigh that broke through as unusually sincere. “When I heard what happened to Kitty, I was certain you would fold up, that you would leave our line without any effort on my part. You may think me devious, Davenport, and maybe sometimes I have had to be. But I do try to be efficient. One fell swoop. Still, you proved me wrong. You persisted—your soul cleaved in half, perhaps, but persisted nevertheless.”

“What you did to Kitten . . . What were you after that was worth that?”

“The same thing as you, the same as she. The same as anyone who has ever been doubted or told to go away. To prove myself better.”

Davenport grabbed Belial's arm and leaned into his face. “I haven't gone away.”

“You're right, Davenport.” He acted as though he did not even feel the other man's grip. “I thought you would fall to pieces like a poorly bound book. But no. You are more like me than I ever knew.” He slipped his arm out and turned his back, hands in his trouser pockets.

“You've made a mistake this time, Belial. I have you by the throat.” Davenport's voice lost its usual hush completely, the words roaring out with the rage he could no longer contain on Kitten's behalf.

Belial slowed down his pace to listen, but did not turn around.

“Assaulting Vao. Let us pretend the young girl's word would not be trusted. There were witnesses. The dwarf, for one, and me, and Mr. Fergins. You've no doubt seen Tusitala angry. If the chief of Vailima hears that the trusted missionary was attempting to force his will on one of his beloved servants, you'll be thrown out of his sight, probably put in jail to rot. Then you can say all you want to Tusitala about me. At that point, nothing you say would be believed and I would be the only one left close enough to him to get the manuscript.”

“You wouldn't be trying to break our truce, would you, my friend?” He seemed morally troubled by the idea.

“I'll warn you one time. Stay away from Vao.”

Coconuts torn from trees by the wind flew overhead. Both men looked up at the sky. Now it was Davenport who turned and began walking away. The last glimpse he had of Belial showed his features contorted with uncharacteristic ire. I did not hear any of these particulars until late that night, hours after a bloody, soaked Davenport collapsed at the doorstep of Vailima.

 • • • 

“
T
HE SKY WAS FILLED
with branches and coconuts used like missiles by the wind in a war of divine forces. We both fled as the downpour started. The water became torrents around us. I'm afraid his foot got caught in a spontaneous mudslide. Poor Mr. Porter—he truly tumbled. Never saw a man fall so hard, so suddenly.” Belial was telling the story to the rapt household after some of the servants helped him carry Davenport inside.

“Please. I'm well enough,” Davenport said, struggling not to show any discomfort and to shoo away the solicitous natives (and me). There were cuts and abrasions all over his body from his fall, but the pain seemed to me to be concentrated in his right leg.

“How did you ever get back, you poor idiot?” Belle asked, taking his hand. Her eyes were wide and wet.

“Father Thomas found me, and helped me, thank heavens,” Davenport said, and I would venture to say never had my companion wanted to chew and swallow his own words so much.

Belial's grin, inimitable as always, could not have been contained if his life depended on it.

After the mud was washed off him, Davenport was carried to his room and tended to by Vao, who cleaned and bandaged his leg, and Belle, who mostly sat and blinked at him. I had followed them in. He screamed in pain when Belle poured what she said was perchloride of iron on the deepest gash.

“Imagine the luck,” he said to me after we were alone, “that he would be the only man there to rescue me.”

Davenport refused to follow Stevenson's recommendation (command, really) to rest and stay in bed, but he grimaced with pain when he tried just to walk around the room. He claimed he was not tired, simply angry, then passed into sleep in an instant.

From the moment Davenport first told me the details of his confrontation and the fascinating revelations about Kitten's Shelley mission of 1882, my mind returned to Geneva and would not leave it. I was once again in that cottage in the shadow of Lord Byron's, hearing the word from the weak lips of Kitten, the cry of “Belial.” When Davenport woke, I was there by his side and I unburdened myself. “I must tell you something, my friend,” I said, preparing myself for his fury that I had not told him nearly ten years ago.

He slowly moved his face toward me and forced his eyes to stay open.

I blurted out my confession: “It's about Kitten. When we were in that cottage outside Geneva caring for her in her final weeks, she said his name. Belial's. She didn't say anything else about him. Forgive me. I should have mentioned it to you.”

To my surprise, he did not have the reaction I'd expected. In fact, there was hardly a reaction at all. He rolled his head away from me. “I knew that she said his name. I already knew that. I heard her say Belial, too, once or twice. Much of what she said had no connection to anything in particular, you know, when she was in that state. I also did not think much about it when I heard it.”

“Now, what do you think she meant?”

“It is impossible to be sure, Fergins, but now that I know more I believe maybe she came to realize who it was that had led her to the
Frankenstein
novelette. To conclude who would have had the motivation to take her purpose away while at the very same time appearing to reward her. She understood.”

He fell asleep and slept another hour or so. I could have been mistaken, but his thoughts stamped a slight grin on his face that remained as he slept. He was pleased, you see, despite all that had happened to Kitten, that she was so sharp-thinking even in the end to have identified the hidden culprit. He worshipped at the temple of her intellect and I believe it was a comfort to him to know that she left our world with it still shining.

Stevenson and Belle looked in on him later in the morning. I stood up to greet our hosts and give the latest report on Davenport's condition.

“Poor fellow,” Belle said, shaking her head as she kneaded his cheeks. “He looks rather pallid, doesn't he?”

“You talk about me as though I were part of a waxworks display, Miss Strong.”

She laughed from the bottom of her stomach. “You know you are a perfectly unusual man, Mr. Porter,” she said.

Davenport was about to respond when Belial appeared in the doorway, which made Belle jump.

“I beg your pardon for startling you, Miss Strong. Haven't you told them your good tidings, Tusitala?” asked Belial, chuckling a little with anticipation.

Stevenson gave a shrug. “I think Mr. Porter is rather occupied enough with his recovery to care one way or the other what I am doing, Father Thomas.”

“Nonsense!” Belial said, beaming and holding his gaze on Davenport. It was astounding that even in the company of Stevenson—one of the most beloved writers of the modern age—Belial carried himself as though he were the most important man in the room. “It will cheer him up while he recovers. You see, Mr. Porter, our esteemed friend here is nearly finished with his novel.”

“By the end of the week.” Stevenson gave up, confirming the news with childish giddiness and crossed fingers. He seemed weightless as he moved across the room to a window. “I've been averaging two pages a day. I calculate that makes me only half the man Sir Walter Scott was for pages by the day, yet I still will try my best.”

“Do not overtask yourself,” Davenport urged. “For your health, Tusitala, you must also rest.”

“There is no stopping now, Mr. Porter. I feel it all ready to froth whenever the spigot is turned. I shall rest when I am in the grave—or perhaps if we make it to Italy one day. I hope you'll excuse me if my visits to your room are infrequent during your recuperation, Mr. Porter. Pray give it no thought. Your every need will be attended to in the meantime by my family and my family of natives, and I know Mr. Fergins will inform us if there is anything you need.”

“Congratulations, Tusitala,” Davenport said, and I echoed the sentiment.

Stevenson waved this away.

“Shame that you won't be up and around in time to celebrate, Porter,” Belial said to Davenport. “But I know you will have plenty of time with Tusitala once you are better. Plenty of time for leisure once the storms have passed and you've finally gotten back on your feet. It looks as though I will have to be moving on to business at some of the other islands.”

“Of course you will,” Davenport said.

“But I will wait until I have a chance to congratulate Tusitala on a completed book.”

“Again, of course you will.”

“Gentlemen, if you'll excuse me, I am late for a prayer circle with some of the pious young brown men and women. We will pray for your health, too, Mr. Porter. I am going to give a sermon on a Biblical figure close to my heart.”

“Who is that?” I quizzed him.

“An obscure character by the name of Belial. He is interpreted as a minion of the devil by some scholars, but that is wrong. It is ignorance. The name means, literally speaking, ‘one who cannot be yoked,' and it is really every one of us who takes control of our own destiny while others blow in the wind. We may be punished for it, but we would never do it another way. We are all Belials.”

Stevenson watched Belial saunter out of the room, then broke into his own chuckle. “Missionaries. They are always so anxious that we believe in one truth or another. That is their entire calling, I suppose.” He noticed the anxiety I could not hide from my face and he pulled at one of the loose end of his straggly mustache. “Mr. Fergins, are you unwell?”

“I only fear Mr. Porter may not be in a position to finish his own book that brought him here, before we will have to return. With such an injury to recover from.”

Stevenson took my hand. “Remember, Mr. Fergins, that there is always a sunny side, if you look for it. And another thing, don't worry. I have learned one thing in this life. It does not matter much what you accomplish. The only thing that really counts is that you tried.”

“I tried,” Davenport said sadly. “Yes, Tusitala, I tried.”

 • • • 

A
N INCAPACITATED
D
AVENPORT
could never outmaneuver and outrun Belial. The fact is, by the time Stevenson and Belial left the room, I was already in a panic, and as my nerves grew Davenport's steadied.

“There is nowhere for Belial to go as long as these heavy rains continue,” Davenport tried to assure me after we listened to their footsteps descend the stairs. “There's that on our side.”

The incessant rain pelted the roof above us. I was pacing the floor. I spun around to look at him, my eyes wider after taking in his statement. I was at my wit's end with his calmness. “Forgive me for violating the rules of bookaneers' assistants and questioning you. The whole mission hangs in the balance, and you will hope for thunder and lightning? We will rely on the barometer as our weapon?”

He blinked lazily and rolled his shoulders back with a sigh. “What plan would you prefer, Fergins?”

I had to admit I could not think of anything better. Every time I alluded to the urgency of the situation his passivity increased. By the end of the day, his leg was causing him greater discomfort and we spoke less of the impending crisis of Stevenson completing the book and more about his pain. I confess a bit of irrational impatience toward Davenport over his injury, and annoyance at the fact that Vao had to be sent for repeatedly to change his bandages, breaking up our deliberations.

All the hurricane shutters were in use in the house and Vailima was as safe as possible, but airless and dark. The atmosphere was suffocating and had a way of dividing the human mind against itself. By this point, it seemed to me there were only two possible paths to success that remained for Davenport's mission: we either had to find a way to hinder Stevenson's writing, or a way to prevent Belial from being inside Vailima once the book was finished. Our lone advantage was that we were ensconced inside the house, however limited by Davenport's condition, while the other bookaneer, though having essentially free access to the estate at all times, had to go back and forth to the Marist mission to keep up appearances.

Consumed by unriddling our predicament, I could hardly sleep.
If the bookaneer requires assistance on a mission, the assistant must never question anything that may occur.
Davenport's rule kept repeating itself in my ears, but using the freewheeling logic that comes to man only in the middle of the night in the middle of a roaring storm, I convinced myself I was not questioning what had occurred, but what
would
occur, and so shook off all restraints. I put on my dressing gown and stepped quietly and quickly through the hall back to Davenport's door, ready to wake him up if I had to, in order to settle once and for all on a successful revision of our plans.

I cannot say what it was that prevented my knocking. I rolled my fingers into a fist but something stayed my hand. Had I heard some slight sound, a tapered breath, an unfamiliar sigh, warning me away?

I wrapped my arms around my chest as though to protect myself from a biting wind, and turned away. Before I was able to go very far, I heard the creak of Davenport's door opening. I told myself not to look back but I could not stop. I watched as she stepped out and closed the door behind her. Vao was not holding any bandages or medical supplies. Her skin was shiny as always from the oil the natives covered themselves in; framed by my candlelight in that dark hall she actually glowed. Her big brown eyes met mine and she showed surprise, but no shame, no concern; no, there was a hint of elation and intrepidness. She remained still and I could not help doing the same—out of some instinct of politeness not to turn my back on a lady, or from a desire to communicate some thought, again at the time I could not have really said what it was. The entire experience was so novel, I could not guide my face and body to an appropriate response. “He rescued me from the Beast. Now I will rescue him,” I imagined her saying, but she did not say a word in any language, much less in English. I felt myself floating over the scene, looking down and wishing to take her by the arm to remove her before anyone else realized what had happened.