Canaan's Tongue (19 page)

Clementine Gilchrist.

HE HADN’T MOVED FOR THE WHOLE TELLING of it and neither had I. He stared down stupidly at his hat. He’d told the story like a fable, or like the history of a saint—; he’d told it like an entertainment. He wasn’t telling it to me at all. He was a character in the fable, and so was I. His telling made us flat as paper.

“That’s fine, Virgil,” I said to him when he’d finished. “But my babe died two hours after she came out of me. On December seventh, at six-thirty in the morning.”

A little breath crept out through his teeth. I could see it even though it was close and dim in the little room. He looked at me.

“She—?” he said.

I got to my feet. “That’s right, Virgil. Her name was Cecilia Ann.”

Conspiracy.

IT ENDED WITH A BETRAYAL, Delamare says. What doesn’t? Soon after the war began, the Trade was interrupted. Not destroyed (as nothing so profitable can be killed by any war, religious revival, or act of Congress) but temporarily dissolved. Even this came as a shock to us, however. It was a surprise even to the Redeemer. He’d done his best to get the war begun, thinking we’d fall comfortably through the cracks, only to discover that war, once got in motion, was a grander thing by far than our humble corporation. Little by little our confederates, associates, and stock-holders were caught up in it, to one side or the other—; a goodly number of them forgot, for a brief but shining moment, about the usefulness of money. “It’s a natural wonder, Oliver,” the Redeemer would murmur sadly, and I couldn’t but agree. In the end, however, it wasn’t pollution of the network by high-mindedness (or by fire-eating) that shut the Trade down. The river itself—our long-time co-conspirator—betrayed us.

It should have been clear from the start that the Mississippi would see a heap of action, and that this, in turn, would hamper our own fleet—; but all of us, especially the Redeemer (whom I came to know better and better, as Virgil Ball fell out of favor), had a religious faith in its deviousness. We knew it better than the navy did, we reasoned—; in any case, it was vast enough to give shelter to us all. And it could have done so easily, had it chosen to. Instead it took the opportunity to be rid of us, with no more effort than a horse might make to brush away a fly.

First came the news that the Confederate forts at the Delta had fallen—; then, on the first of May, New Orleans itself. New Orleans! It was impossible to credit, but it was so. Freakishly high water and the mildest of currents had allowed Union gun-ships to pass beyond range of the forts and take the city with ease. Similar losses up-river were pushing the Dixie navy southwards—; the two halves of the fleet were being pushed into a corner. Soon they’d meet, back to back, for a last desperate stand.

As chance—or the river—would have it, they met at Island 37.

By that time, of course, the Trade was long since departed, leaving a chosen few behind to sweep dust over its tracks. That I’d been selected for this dangerous task—out of a host of strikers and agents— nearly burst my heart with pride. There was talk of a property of the Trist family’s at the mouth of the Cane River, “Geburah” by name, where the inner-most cell of the gang was to have its rendezvous—; the Redeemer wanted to watch the war go by, it was said, with his nearest and dearest beside him. When I’d made so bold as to ask the Redeemer himself, on our last walk together, if I could join him there, he had bowed to me (to me!) and said the idea seemed a right pretty one. The heavens had opened for me in that instant.

As I made my sweep of 37—setting fire to store-houses, dumping perishables into the river—it was all I could do to keep my wits and sense about me. Images of Geburah shone behind everything I beheld like light through a painted window-shade. I saw the property precisely, down to its smallest detail. The great house would be spacious and sunk slightly into the earth, so that as you rode up the long, straight avenue of oaks it seemed to rise out of the ground to meet you, like a ship pulling out to sea. Not a pirogue or a river-boat—; not even one of the iron-clads that had free run of the Mississippi—; a genuine sea-going schooner, fully rigged, its sails already great with wind. My fancy would entertain no less.

The oaks would part reluctantly as you rode up, falling aside in steady pulls, like the curtain in an opera-house—; and there it would stand, revealed to full advantage. A warm pink mass of sun-bleached brick, with a double colonnade in the old Greek style. Behind the colonnade, three paces back, a double run of porches. No different than a dozen estates I’d been chased off of with my bag of silver engagement rings, and all the more beautiful because of it—: this time I’d be welcomed as an honored guest. The Redeemer himself, his face aglow with affection and relief, would rush down to the landing to receive me. I even dared to imagine, in my most private fancy, that he might welcome me as his prodigal son returned.

It was a miracle, as it happened, that he welcomed me at all. From one moment to the next, it seemed, Island 37 was engulfed by the entire Dixie fleet—: the two halves closed over it like two fingers snuffing out a light. I was apart from the others just then, on a wooded spit of land pointing west toward Louisiana—; and it was this that saved me. My escape was effected by dog-paddling between the gun-boats and provisions-steamers, giving a heart-felt thanks to Providence for the time I’d spent on the river as a boy. The others were overtaken on the Panama House landing, and some in the Panama House itself—; I heard the sound of gun-play as I swam. I kept my face forward, eyes fixed unwaveringly on the shore. I pissed myself in fright, like a child of six or seven—; but the river cleaned me and swaddled me in its current, and carried me safely across to Louisiana.

To my true and certain knowledge I was the only one to get clear. I took this as yet another sign that Fortune had weighty plans for me, the details of which I could scarcely divine—; certain was only that the Redeemer featured in them. On the Louisiana bank I found a canoe provisioned and waiting, and I set out at once for the mouth of the Cane River. I had no doubt that the canoe had been left for me expressly. With every stroke toward Geburah my sense of destination grew.

By the time I reached it, seven days later, I was all but swooning with excitement. It took just one glance at the Redeemer’s face, however—stiff, surprised, and not a little dubious—to pluck my feathers in an instant. My patron obviously hadn’t been waiting with impatience and concern for me to make my journey—; in fact, he didn’t seem to have been expecting me at all.

As for the house, it was nothing like I’d pictured it. In place of the pied brick-work and noble colonnades, I found a narrow, graceless box—a glorified casket, or a packing-crate—leaning doubtfully toward the Mississippi out of an anemic swath of park. The woods to either side deadened any prospect of the river, while the lawn leading apologetically down to the water served only to advertise our hiding-place to every passing boat. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why the Redeemer had chosen as he did—; and our infrequent strolls together did nothing to enlighten me.

On the day of my arrival, as I’ve said, he was preoccupied and gruff. In place of a hero’s welcome he simply patted me on the shoulder, spun about, took Parson by the arm, and argued with him the rest of the day behind closed doors. From that moment on, he frankly avoided my company, stopping by my room once a week with the air of a school-boy compelled to do his sums. My mood grew steadily darker. I’d left 37 the very darling of the Trade, or so I’d fancied—; I arrived at Geburah to find myself its butler. How could I have failed? Had I been slandered by some rival? Had my store of good fortune been used up in escaping the Dixie navy? I was hapless for an answer.

The answer, as often happens, proved a simple one. As the weeks passed, I came to see that I’d not so much fallen out of favor as out of step, and the rest of the Island 37 Gang along with me. Now that we’d followed him into exile, it seemed, the Redeemer wanted nothing more to do with any of us. Parson alone retained his confidence. He moved between the Redeemer’s quarters and his own, up in the attic, as matter-of-factly as a nurse—; the rest of us, of course, trusted him as much as we would a copper-head. For my part, I felt utterly unmanned by my sudden fall from grace—; but I was clever enough to hide it from the others. They still considered me the Redeemer’s favorite, and I did nothing to discourage them. In my mind, however, I was anxious and bewildered as a child.

AS MY ESTRANGEMENT FROM THE REDEEMER GREW, so too did friendship of a sort with Virgil Ball, my fore-runner both as favorite and outcast. Virgil was a genius at listening, I discovered—; what’s more, he gave excellent advice. When I’d first met him, back on 37, I’d been not a little frightened—; later, as my own star rose, I’d thought of him with something akin to pity. Now I saw him as a kind of cipher, as much a riddle to himself as to the rest of us, but well worth puzzling over. In time, a silhouette of sorts—as in a cameo brooch—emerged from behind the trappings of the fool.

It was plain to see that he was in love with the Chartres Street trollop, Clementine Gilchrist, who kept to herself in a drafty, L-shaped boudoir on the second floor. I considered this the driving humor of his heart until I discovered, a short time later, that love was not what kept him at Geburah at all. He wished the Redeemer—and, by extension, all of us—a speedy and extremely violent end. At the same time, however, he wanted this end to interfere with the workings of the Trade as little as possible. He could imagine no life outside of it, he told me.

This was not the least of Virgil’s paradoxes.

His scheme (for of course Virgil had a scheme) was revealed to me through a series of casual asides, so subtly and yet with such insistence that I soon understood them as a deliberate appeal. Without offering anything, on his side, but his stone-faced attention and his trust, he was asking me to harbor his secrets for him—; even, perhaps, to abet him in his plan. And it was one of the greatest shocks of my nineteen years on this earth that I found myself—just as tacitly, at first, and just as indirectly—agreeing to his terms.

Soon his hand lay open on the table. The part I was to play was this—: to convince the Redeemer to look into Virgil’s blighted eye. That was all. Virgil had been waiting for a session for months on end—; normally the Redeemer could go no more than a fortnight without one. It was their custom, Virgil explained, that the two of them be alone—completely solitary and immured from the least distraction— when that eye of his worked its wonders. He was sure the Redeemer would choose to conduct him away from the house—; down to the landing, perhaps, or off into the woods. This was all that he lived for any longer—: one half-hour, perhaps less, with the alpha and omega of his hate.

After a few weeks more, when I’d finally come to accept that I’d been left behind on 37 like a half-eaten cup of porridge, I gave my assent to Virgil’s plan. Perhaps I acted childishly, out of injured self-opinion—; my pride has ever existed in false proportion to my station. But there was more at play than that. To betray the Redeemer meant to become—if only for an instant—his full and indefatigable equal—; even, in a sense, his better. And I wanted to become the Redeemer’s better with all my body and my brain.

ALL OF THE ABOVE IS FOOLERY. I have no idea why I conspired with Virgil Ball to murder that man, who to me was as a pharaoh resurrected from the clay . . .

The Omega and the
Gifle.

MY CHANCE CAME AT LAST ON THE TWELFTH of October, Virgil says.

I was sitting on a cot in my slant-ceilinged cubby, picking stones out of the treads of my India-rubber boots, when Delamare appeared in the open door. I invited him in but he paid me no mind. His shirt was mis-buttoned, which itself was cause for wonder—: I’d never before seen him with a hair out of place. His expression, however, was tranquil as a lamb’s.

“He’ll be coming up to see you,” he said. “He’ll be coming up directly.”

My heart spasmed in my chest. “That’s fine,” I replied. I knew straight-away, of course, that he meant Morelle.

“Watch out for Harvey. I passed him on the stairs.”

“I will. Thank you, Oliver.”

“No need for that,” said Delamare. He lingered in the door a moment, looking neither at me nor away. Nothing about him bespoke conspiracy—; he showed as much emotion as a heifer in a pen. My mind gradually flooded with disbelief. Could Morelle truly be coming, that same damp autumn afternoon, that I might take him into the woods and kill him? The thought was utterly preposterous. No scheme of mine had ever run half so well.

“I’d best be off,” Delamare said, stepping out into the hall.

“Stop a bit, Oliver!” I whispered. But he’d already shut the door.

I was woefully ill-prepared to receive my visitor. My revolver had been left behind at Shiloh—; an antediluvian musket, its barrel longer than my leg, was the nearest thing to an instrument of death that I possessed. I turned in a slow circle, giddy and short of breath, in the exact center of the room. How on earth was I to do it?

My eyes finally lit on the grime-covered pier-glass next to the room’s sole window. It was dull and cheaply made, but the cypress tree outside was reflected in it like a Turkish dagger. Without another thought I laid it on my bed, threw my quilt across it, and shattered it with the butt-end of the musket. It made no more noise than a tea-cup dropped onto the floor. I threw back the quilt, chose a likely-looking sliver, and slipped it into the pocket of my vest. No sooner had I done so than a knock sounded on the door—: Morelle’s knock, swift and self-assured. There was nothing for it but to let him in.

I found him standing somewhat stiffly in the hall, sporting the same Napoleonic cap he’d worn when I’d first laid eyes on him. I opened my mouth—to thank him for coming, perhaps, or to invite him in—but I could manage nothing better than a grunt.

“Virgil!” he said, beaming up at me. He pronounced my name with an odd emphasis, as though introducing me to some other.

“Thaddeus,” I said hoarsely. I had never before called him by that name.

He gave a quick nod, as though I’d returned some manner of pass-word, then turned briskly on his heels. “Come along, Virgil! A conference!”

I pulled my boots on as quickly as I could and followed him. He led me matter-of-factly out of the house and across the lawn, making a bee-line for the woods, as if he were impatient to be murdered. I did my best to keep up without appearing over-eager—; I’m sure I failed grotesquely. It made no difference, however. No-one happened upon us, no one got in our way, no-one called after us from the house. The world seemed as ready as I was to be rid of Thaddeus Morelle.

He spoke not a word till we came to a small, damp clearing, oblong in shape, with a fallen tree at either end of it. We were perhaps a mile from the great house and as far again from the river. Dusk had yet to fall, but in that close, somber place it seemed the last minutes of twilight. Morelle sat me down on a moss-eaten stump and stood directly across from me, studying my face. The false twilight deepened. Time shuddered, gave a barely audible sigh, then halted altogether.

I’d begun to think we might remain in that attitude—a
tableau
vivant
of mutual distrust—until the last day of judgment, when all at once Morelle thrust his hands into his waist-coat and drew forth a candle-stub and a tin of sailor’s matches. His close-set eyes never left my own.

“Is it right?” he asked, as tradition demanded.

The words had a different meaning, in that little glade, than they’d ever had before—; and I had a different answer. “It’s right,” I said.

I could hear his surprise when at last he spoke. “It’s right?” he repeated. “Exactly as it stands?”

Our ritual had been fixed from the beginning. I was to say it wasn’t right, no more, no less—; and he was to re-arrange things till it was. I said nothing further now, and he continued to stand stock-still above me, breathing whistlingly through his nose. I might easily have attacked him then—: we were perfectly alone, at least half a mile out of ear-shot, and there was a new quality to Morelle, a sort of dull uncertainty, that did a good deal to embolden me. But I wanted to move through the steps as we’d always done. I believed in my gift now— believed in it as fervently as I’d once doubted and disparaged it—and I wanted to catch another glimpse, however fleeting, of what the future held. Perhaps I’d see the Child from Shiloh—; perhaps I’d see myself, or Clementine. Perhaps I’d catch a glimpse behind the scaffolding of the Trade at last, and see with my own eyes what was hiding there.

I was adrift on these and other musings when there came the dry rasp of wood against wood and a match flared to life within an inch of my left eye. The pain was worse than it had ever been. What was more, I saw nothing to reward me for my suffering—: no figures, no landscapes, not even the customary shapes. Only a pulsing web of faint red lines, the precise hue and texture of my pain.

“What is it?” came the Redeemer’s voice, as if from the top of a ravine.

“Nothing,” I answered, digging my fists in to my eyes. “There’s nothing there at all.”

As soon as I’d spoken the match-flame was blown out.

“Of
course
there isn’t!” Morelle chirruped. He was suddenly in the very best of spirits. “How
could
there be, Kansas, when there never was before?”

I rose wobblingly to my feet, my eyes and brain still addled from the light. “I’m tired of your parlor games, Thaddeus. If you have something to tell me, tell it to me plain.”

He lit another match and brought it to his face. “That peeper of yours never had a gift, dear K.” He covered his left eye with his hand. “Unless you count blindness, of course. Blindness can be a blessed gift. It prevents
you,
for example, from seeing the
gifle
headed in your direction.”

“The which?” I said.

His clapped his hands. “The
gifle,
sirrah! The
gifle
! The custard-pie!”

I felt the old haplessness returning. “But our meetings,” I protested. “Your
tables,
Thaddeus—; the matches, the shapes—”

“Were a way of getting you to do the unthinkable for me—; nothing more. And you
did
do the unthinkable, Virgil, didn’t you!” Slowly, gloatingly, he worked his thumb into his nose. “It was Parson’s stroke of genius, naturally. ‘Ball is a believer,’ he said to me. ‘Use him.’ And Parson was right, as always.” He gave a low whistle. “I must say, Kansas, for a rationalist you sure were an easy fish to fritter. The development of your mystic abilities took a single afternoon!”

The match-flame sputtered and expired. My thoughts flew back to that star-crossed run to Memphis—: the Yellowjack, the coffles, Trist’s box of samples, the Pendleton Hotel. Would I have made the run— would I so much as have considered making it—if my own eye hadn’t spoken for me? And there had been countless such instances, great and small, from our meeting at Stoker’s Bluff to the present hour. I might never have entered Morelle’s service at all, in fact, if he hadn’t made such a fuss over my affliction. Over my old, fat, imperfectly blind left eye, ugly as the devil’s arse by candle-light.

And yet, I thought, forcing myself to return his pig-eyed leer—: your power over me remains imperfect. There’s one point that you haven’t troubled to consider.

“I
did
have a vision, Thaddeus. On board the
Hyapatia Lee.
Have you forgotten? I had a vision, and you had no part in it. You were a hundred miles up-river that night, with all your tricks and
gifles.
”

“Oh! Not so far away as that, dear K. I had a rendez-vous that same evening, in point of fact.” He lit a third match, regarded it a moment, then let it drop. “At Madame Lafargue’s.”

I must have known all the while, in some back larder of my brain, that Morelle was the caller Clem had been so keen to escape. I must have known, as it failed to move me now. I simply shrugged my shoulders.

“I had a vision, Thaddeus. I saw the world—
this
world, not any other—and it made sense to me at last. I saw myself surrounded by it, engulfed by it, spinning in it like a pebble in a creek. And then I saw the muck about me in the water—: I saw the Trade.” I brought my fists out of my pockets. “I even saw the two of us, it seems to me, together in this glade.”

Morelle guffawed. “Seen the
future,
have you, and all under your own steam? Far be it from
me
to take it from you. But do me this small favor—: look at your face in the pier-glass tonight, when you shuffle back to your cubby, and ask yourself what blessed good it’s done you.” He raised a hand carefully, palm upwards, as though cradling a tea-cup—; then he turned it over. “I’ll never understand you, Kansas. Your blindness was the only gift you had—the
only
one, do you hear?—and you tossed it in the gutter.”

He turned his back on me, then, with a world-weary shrug, as though mortally exhausted by my idiocy. My right hand stole into my waist-coat pocket and took hold of what was hidden there. “I don’t think I can look into that pier-glass anymore, Thaddeus,” I said.

Something in my voice made him stop short—; but he chose not to turn about. He was never to look me in the eye again.

“I can’t say I blame you,” he said at last. “You’re done for.” He ran a finger along his collar. “It’s in my
nature,
sadly, to be the end of things. Where I exist no other thing can flourish. No other ambition—; no other intrigue—; no other love.” He sighed. “Most importantly that, perhaps. No other love.”

This was more than I could stand. “I’m not the only one to suffer from hallucinations, you shanty-town Napoleon,” I spat out. “I’m sick of your damn self-religion.”

He clucked at me. “Religion, dear K? Not at all. Our Lord Christ Jesus, if you recall, proclaimed himself the alpha and omega of all things—; I aspire to the omega only.” He shook his head. “You’re done for,” he said again, stifling a yawn. “But don’t fret—: the Trade, dear Virgil, will survive you.”

“Contrary-wise, you won’t,” I said, driving my weapon into the flesh above his collar.

Morelle let out a single bright squeak, as of a mouse crushed under a boot-heel—; then he dropped face-forward into the moss. That was all. I crouched beside him and turned his head toward me. His face wore a look of uncomplicated horror. He spasmed soundlessly for perhaps a minute, spat out a purplish froth, and died. There was no magic in his passing, no nobility, no wit.

For a time I neither moved nor spoke, staring down at the corpse to fix the fact of it in my mind. I was amazed at how convincing, how self-evident his killing seemed. The world had tipped for an instant, had shifted in its cradle slightly to acknowledge the great change, and that was all. That was all—; but it was all-encompassing. The long and blood-besotted reign of that tiny monster over my life was ended. And I myself, bungler that I was, had brought it to a close.

“Who’s the omega now,” I said into the quiet, “if not Virgil Ball?”

As if in answer, a twig snapped close behind me. An unmistakably human sound. At any other time, my heart would have leapt into my wind-pipe—; just then, however, I felt exalted and serene. The world had shifted in its cradle, after all. Past experience did not apply.

I turned my head slowly in the direction of the sound. A man was there, half-hidden by the nearest trees. He was a clot of heavier darkness, a silhouette at best—; but I recognized him straight-away. It was Goodman Harvey.

He said nothing, did nothing, only let himself be seen. His mute-ness was both an overture and a threat. I’m beholden to you, Virgil, he seemed to be saying. I’m grateful to you for ending my bondage—; and you must be grateful to me. Be grateful to me, or I’ll tell.

There was nothing for it, I realized, but to kill him.

“Come over here, Harvey,” I said. I said it softly. But he turned and disappeared into the pines.