The Six-Gun Tarot (13 page)

For an instant, Maude considered telling him what she could do. How she could kill Bick before he had a chance to raise an eyebrow; vanish like desert dew as the sun arose ascendant. Poison him, cripple him, rob him, curse him. She was fairly confident she could still do all that. She had let so much of the training go, slip away like sand, a few precious grains at a time. But she knew she still carried enough of The Load to deal with a scoundrel like Malachi Bick. She remained silent. It would do no good. Arthur would forsake her help, and berate her for what he’d see as a childish flight of fancy. She shook her head. She had promised Gran Bonnie that she would never end up like this. She had worked so hard, for so long, it was strange to look back now at what she had been and not understand in the slightest how she had arrived here now.

“If you flinch,” Anne Bonny said with a wicked grin, “you die, girl. Be still.
Still
.”

The blade hummed as it left the old woman’s hand. Maude felt the breeze, smelled the oiled steel as it flew past her cheek and felt it pluck the grape from between her lips. The blade and the grape thudded into the cypress tree Maude was standing in front of with a heavy hollow sound. The blade, still quivering, was half-buried in the tree.

“Good,” the old woman said. “You didn’t piss yourself that time. Good.”

A break in the training; they were sitting on a makeshift bench of deadwood along the private beach behind Grande Folly. The sky was blindingly blue. Gulls screeched in the distance, competing with the rumble of the waves. There was still an early spring chill, but the vigorous calisthenics that Anne put her through had driven it away. Maude munched on a hunk of sourdough bread from the lunch pail Isaiah had delivered some hours ago. She washed it down with great gulps of cold water from a tin cup.

“What is the source of all disease?” Anne asked as she admired the gulls’ aerial dance.

“It is a distorted reflection in the human soul, of its divine beauty,” Maude responded casually, enjoying the bread. “Sickness of the body, of the mind, is the soul seeking, and being thwarted in emulating the divine nature inherent in all human beings. This incongruity in the inner spiritual reality causes disharmony within the sheath of the soul, and therefore illness.”

“Now,” Anne said, “explain it to me simple, like I was a child, or a man.”

“All disease, all illness,” Maude said, popping the last bite of bread into her mouth and talking around it, “is born in a sickness of the soul. And we cure it by healing the soul.”

“Good,” Anne said, nodding. “Cite your source.”

“The heresies of the Yellow Empress,” she said, burping gently. “The hidden passages of the Cong-Fu of the Toa-Tse; 3000 B.C.” She stood up from the log, “Can we do more running on the sand now? I want to try not to leave prints again. I think I almost have it.”

“Yes, you do,” Anne said. “And no, we are not. This old crone is done with running for the day. Sit down; I need to show you something.”

Maude sat.

“Anne, when am I going to learn how to shoot? You’ve taught me all about other kinds of weapons, but not guns.”

Anne shook her head. “Guns. We’ll get to them, lass. Eager little thing now, aren’t you? Now that your eyes are open.

“To be honest, girl, guns really aren’t that important. Guns are like men—only useful for a little while. They can go off at a moment’s notice when you don’t want them to and they make a lot of damn fool noise doing it. They tend to fail on you when you need them most. Don’t rely on them.

“Trust yourself, your weapons, your talents. Remember how I showed you what sharp nails can do? Taught you how to disguise their potency, how to hide your claws in plain sight? You can open a man’s throat with them, quiet, quick. Hell, you can usually get a man to give you his throat to cut, with the right words, the right theatre. You can coat your nails with poison—”

“Oh, I know the two best alkaline-based contact poisons to use!” Maude interrupted. “There’s—”

“Not today,” Anne said. “No poisons, no guns. No, today we talk about the whys. First principles.”

Maude calmed herself. The day was getting warmer and the sun felt good on her skin. A lazy swarm of bees darted around some of the hydrangeas that grew wild at the edge of the sand. Everything felt like it was made of light and warmth.

“What,” Anne asked, “do you think is the reason I’m teaching you all these things, as they were taught to me?”

“So I can take care of myself, and help others,” Maude said.

“Why?”

“Because you hate men and they are evil and hurt the world?”

Anne shook her head. “No. No. Gods, no. This is one of the hardest things to teach and it should be the easiest.”

Anne looked out at the sea. She seemed to listen to the gulls. She nodded and turned back to Maude.

“Men,” she began. She stopped, sighed and turned angrily back to the sea. “Damn it.…

“Men,” she tried again. “Are part of the same world, the same design, as you and me, as the sea, the gulls, the sky. We need men and they need us. We are part of the same tapestry. Pull on one thread and the pattern is destroyed. Men are not evil. What men have done, some of that is evil. Men have driven themselves mad, lost and tangled in their own warped pattern, their own pain. And like every other animal in pain, they lash out, blindly.

“The tyrant-father of Heaven, the one Who created, hated and drove out the first woman, yoked men with a horrible curse, far worse than any imagined to have been handed down to Eve. Men were told they were masters of this world, of their mates, of the beasts and fish, of the land and sea and sky. How ridiculous! That’s like telling a little boy he’s in charge of the house when his da is gone. It’s silly!

“And like that little boy, men have tried to live up to the unreasonable demands of their mute, wayward, celestial father. They have enslaved and dominated, conquered and killed, all in the name of shepherding, of protecting, of ruling the world. They spend their lives trying to do what they think is right, what their father on high would want of them. The bastard.”

Anne sat next to Maude and fished one of her strong, bony hands down the front of her blouse tugging at a chain at her neck, pulling it free.

“I don’t hate men. I hate the madness that engulfs them. I hate that they rage and struggle and storm so damn loud that they can’t hear the voices around them, the voices that are here to guide them, to teach them and nurture them. I hate they try so hard to please their father they ignore the Mother.”

She pulled the chain over her head and held it up for Maude to see. It was old, worn. The links were flat and made of dull, crudely forged iron. Attached to the chain was a small vial, about five inches long, wrought of the same dull iron and smooth yellowed bone, enmeshed in a filigree web of silver wire. The vial was capped with a plug cut from a bloodred ruby the size of a large man’s thumbnail.

“And that is why I teach you, why I was taught, why one day you will teach another woman. Because it is our duty, now that we are awake and aware and fully capable of controlling our destinies, to look out past our own noses and protect the Mother, protect our sisters who still huddle in darkness and bondage, and even to protect the damn fool men who have made such a wreck of this world.”

Anne placed the vial in Maude’s hand. The girl shook her head.

“The Mother?” Maude said. “I don’t understand.”

“Ah.” Annie smiled. “All life come from the Mother. She is the sky and the sea, the moon and the mountains. Green trees, red blood. She is all that and we are all her children.

“It is our duty, our burden, to protect her, to use all of our gifts, all of our training, all our heart, blood and soul, in defense of the worthy and the weak, because we, as women, were created to protect, to nurture, to defend and to counsel. We alone were given the wisdom and the ferocity to heal the world.”

The old woman clasped her own hands over the girl’s, closing Maude’s fingers over the vial. The artifact was warm, almost hot, to the touch.

“This,” Anne said, “is the essence of The Load, the code you will live by. The Load has been followed by an unbroken line of women running back to Lilith herself. Protectors and healers, assassins and poisoners. Oracles, witches, kingmakers and courtesans. We are all that and so much more.

“And this,” Anne said, squeezing Maude’s hands tighter over the vial, “is the moon blood of Lilith herself. Given to me, in this very vessel, by a EweWitch on the plains of Africa. She taught me the ways of The Load and trained me as I now train you. She was over four hundred years old, having been granted extraordinary longevity and health by drinking the blood of the first woman. She kept it in a skull chalice and I drank my draught from it. She gave me this vial to take out into the world and pass along to a worthy successor. You, Maude, you are that successor.”

Maude’s eyes widened, her mouth opened, but no words came. It was like a dream in sunlight.

Anne smiled and nodded. “Yes, when the time is right, when you have completed your training and I deem you ready in body, mind and soul, you shall drink from this vial and become one of the line of Lilith and you, too, will carry The Load, all the rest of your days.”

Maude stood, the vial still in her hands. “I’m ready. Now.”

Anne laughed, plucked the chain away from the girl and returned it to around her neck. “The hell you are! But you are on your way, Maude; you are on your way.”

The sun sparkled off the blue waves far out in the ocean, like diamonds, and Maude felt all the doors in her life fly wide open, again.

Arthur returned down the hall. He carried the small pistol he usually took with him when he went away on trips. He was loading the gun and mumbling to himself. Maude was about to ask him where he was going when there was a sharp rap at the door. Arthur froze, the blood drained from his face.

“It’s him,” he whispered. “Bick.”

The knock was insistent. Arthur slid the gun into his coat pocket. Timidly, like a child, the banker approached the door. A sensation seized Maude suddenly. The same feeling she had when Gran had dropped her into the well with the copperheads and told her to bring her back three of the snakes, alive.

Arthur opened the door. He blinked into the gathering darkness.

“Hello, Malachi,” he said, sliding his hand into his coat pocket. “What brings you out this hour?”

Malachi Bick’s form was swaddled in shadow, as if a piece of the night had torn itself loose and taken a human form.

“We need to talk, Arthur.” Bick’s voice was honeyed smoke. The sense memory in Maude flared—the sensation of utter dread, of feeling the dry, ageless, breath of reptiles fan her neck as she descended into the unknown dark of the well. For just an instant, her training fell away and she was truly frightened and she did not know why, which only intensified the feeling.

“I have received distressing news,” Bick’s voice continued from the shadows. “We need to talk, Arthur. I need to know if it is true.”

A hand, meticulously manicured and wrapped at the wrist in a white silk cuff, appeared out of the shadows, crossing into the light bleeding out of the open doorway. It beckoned.

“Now,” Bick said. “Alone.”

Arthur gave Maude a quick glance—a combination of terror, pleading and his best effort at reassurance. It was a pathetic gesture. The human being frightened beyond his capacity to reason past it, the little boy begging his mother to make the bad thing go away, and the man trying to assure his mate all would be taken care of. The look made Maude love him, made her need to help him, protect him, even as it disgusted her. Somewhere Gran was laughing at her again.

Arthur stepped out on the dark porch with Bick, his hand still in the pocket, still clutching the gun the way a little boy might hold himself in fear or anxiety. With his free hand he closed the door. The iron lock clicked and the darkness was gone and Arthur with it.

Eventually Father returned from his trip. He was surprised and a little disappointed that Maude didn’t want to leave Grande Folly and Gran Bonnie. He had naturally been worried about his daughter being in the care of a woman with such a reputation for eccentricity. However, after Gran explained to him that the girl simply was desirous of learning more about her mother’s history and childhood, Martin had agreed to allow Maude to stay. She loved her father and had missed him, but after the training, after learning of The Load, there was no turning back.

For Martin’s part, he loved his daughter but was grateful she had bonded with a female figure, even one as decrepit and unconventional as Gran Bonnie. He visited his daughter often over the next few years and Maude made a point to spend as many holidays with her father as she could. As he grew older and his health began to show the cost of so many long, hard voyages, Maude began to care for him as well as seeing to Anne as much as the old woman would allow it.

November 1850. It was a cold morning, bitter. Maude Cormac Anderton sprinted across the white dunes of the beach of Grande Folly. She was nineteen and she left not a single mark of her passing in her wake. She slowed, stopped, before the old woman who sat on the log that had become Maude’s classroom. Anne raised a pistol, an ugly, heavy thing with a brutish, flaring, snout of a bore.

“Loaded or unloaded?” Anne said.

“Loaded,” Maude replied, sipping in air but controlling her breathing so as not to gulp or gasp after the five-mile run. She had not allowed herself to sweat yet either, since Gran had not yet given her permission. “From the weight you are exhibiting by holding it, looks to be.… 54 caliber.”

The old woman said nothing and Maude knew she was correct.

“You ready to catch it?” Anne said, aiming the pistol at the girl’s chest.

Maude was fifteen feet away. She tried to ignore the faint tremble in the old woman’s hand. She nodded. “Yes, but it won’t fire anyway. Too damp out here today.”

“Oh, is it now, you smart little cherry?” Anne growled. Maude ignored the sexual epithet; it passed over her, through her, and did not touch any of her. Anne had taught her the secret of language and how it could bind as well as liberate, if you let it touch you. “And what, pray tell, makes you think I was daft enough to not keep this in a dry, secure place while you were flouncing up and down the beach?”