Rebels of Babylon (18 page)

He tried again, in a sing-song speech that raised the hairs on my neck. I knew the sound, although I could not place it. Twas both familiar and strange, an incomprehensible blood-relation, as Irish is to Welsh.

A scratching sound arose behind the woodwork. As if the mice were doing acrobatics.

A moment later, the panel began to open. Carefully.

Mr. Barnaby stepped aside, pistol fixed on the opening.

The segment of wall flew wide. A bundle of rags tumbled out to land at my feet.

Twas the tawny lass who had visited that morning. Her tongue it was that I recalled when I heard Mr. Barnaby speak.

She clutched my calf—through my trousers, of course—and let go a stream of gibberish.

Mr. Barnaby lowered his weapon, staring as if witnessing a marvel. His mouth opened like the maw of a fish, but no speech followed after.

“What on earth is she saying?” I demanded. Something beyond my jaw had made me angry. I sounded like a sergeant after his soldiers let him down on dress parade.

My companion ignored me. Shaking his whiskers and dumb as a Delhi beggar-boy.

The girl raised her voice, as soldiers do when the vendors of India fail to grasp their desires. She knew that one of us spoke her tongue and she wanted recognition of her complaints.

I sometimes think the Lord’s punishment upon us for the vanities of Babel was too harsh. I do not mean that disrespectfully, of course. But if we all spoke English like good Christians, the world would be a less confounding place.

I knew not what to do. And Mr. Barnaby seemed inclined to do nothing. But no female should be left in such humility. I bent me down and did my best to raise her, careful to shield my jaw from her flailing arms.

Moving like a sonambulist, Mr. Barnaby glanced inside the compartment. Looking was all the fellow could do. He was too broad of beam to think of entering.

Turning his gaze on my efforts to lift the lass, he made no move to help, but only watched, like a spectator at a puppet show.

When she come up to my level, smelling of sweat and scent, the girl got her first good look at my swollen face. She had not seen me since my collisions with dentistry.

“It’s all right, missy,” I assured her. Although she could not understand a word.

The lass was frantic. I looked to Mr. Barnaby in despair.

“I can’t bleeding believe it,” he said at last.

“What, for God’s sake?”

“I bloody well can’t believe it,” he repeated.

“What’s she
saying,
man?”

Of a sudden, he woke from his trance.

“Oh,” he said, “begging your pardon, sir. She’s says if we don’t go to rescue ’im right now, the Grand Zombi’s going to murder the fellow who tried to save Miss Peabody from the pirates what killed her dead.” He wrinkled his brow. “I believe she’s speaking of a colored fellow, although my Spanish creole’s wicked lazy. She claims this fellow what ain’t dead yet knows all the secrets everyone’s trying to ’ide. She says we still might save ’im, if we ‘urries.”

“NOTHING UNUSUAL, SIR, nothing untoward,” Mr. Barnaby said as we raced down the darkened streets.

Captain Bolt and the girl jounced along with us in the cab. A quartet of soldiers followed in a second vehicle. Although there would be some expense involved, I had decided not to wait on government wagons. As for Captain Bolt, he had been perfectly willing to support our rescue attempt, as long as no funds were required from his own pocket. He did not even ask us for details.

“Really, sir,” Mr. Barnaby said, “such things ain’t unexpected.”

When he wasn’t calling directions to the driver, he explained the hidden door.

“Every decent ’otel in New Orleans ’as rooms with secret entrances,” he assured me. “Although I doubt the St. Charles ’as a quarter so many as the dear, old St. Louis. That’s where things gets bubbling in the Quarter, sir, and bubble up they do. Secret doors and passageways are commonplace as chicory in your coffee. It’s a matter of convenience, sir, of convenience and propriety.”

He leaned from the window and shouted, “Left at the corner,” then resumed. “To keep things all polite like, let’s say that it’s a gentleman in question. What ’as taken ’imself a room for ’is own purposes. And the gentleman may wish to entertain a certain lady with which ’e ain’t legally tangled, and I’ll say no more ’ereafter. As a proper gent, ’e wants a quiet way to introduce ’is ladyfriend into ’is circumstances. Without the eyes of the world upon their doings. Out of consideration, sir, out of consideration! So a narrow staircase in the walls and a proper
bit of deception in the woodwork saves all from unwanted embarrassments. Although it can go ’ard on a lady’s crinolines.”

Recovered admirably from his despond, the good man seemed near feverish with excitement. Of course, we fellows like a bit of a chase.

“There you ’ave it, sir!” he said. “The ’otel’s ’appy, the guest is ’appy, and I’ll say no more about the lady in question. Not that I suggests a lady guest would make use of such devices the way a gentleman might, but I wouldn’t be an honest man if I told you straight out they doesn’t. And mum’s the word ’ereafter, mum’s the word. I’ll not say another word on the matter, since I knows you’re dreadful Christian.”

Had my jaw not been annoyed, I would have expressed my disapproval of such disgraceful arrangements in language that would have scorched the entire city. To succumb to illicit passion is sin enough, but to make its facilitation a matter for architects plumbs the moral depths of Sodom and Babylon.

Captain Bolt sat listening, although I was not certain he understood a great deal. The figure he cut was not one of capability. He chewed tobacco without sealing his lips, a brace of sins that would have appalled my Mary.

The lass sat in the coach’s corner, small as a worried child, thin as the smoke from a poor man’s chimney, and plain as a potato. Nervous of the very air, she seemed to be counting the seconds to our destination.

She startled me, jumping from her seat to point at a passing façade. She babbled again.

“Stop, stop!” Mr. Barnaby called to the driver, who brought the horses up.

Turning to me, my comrade said, “Begging your pardon, sir, but I’m ’aving a bit of trouble understanding ’er. I gets most of it, I does. But she’s a corker.”

The girl leapt from the cab, crying, “Francisco!”

I TRIED TO explain to Captain Bolt that two of his men should rush to the rear of the house, in case anyone tried to flee. But neither he nor his soldiers grasped my meaning. Between the
distortion of my speech, our haste and their mental indolence, they merely followed after me like orphans.

They were big lads, though, with the look of farmers about them. When knocking on the door brought no response, one broke it open easily with his rifle’s butt.

“You’re responsible for any damaged property,” Captain Bolt warned me.

The girl shot through the door as it gave way. The interior was darker than the world without. Twas almost as black as Mr. Barnaby’s mood when he returned with a lamp he had borrowed of our cabman.

“I doesn’t like the ways of this,” he whispered. “The colored sorts gather round when there’s an excitement.” He looked from side to side, but the street remained empty. “They knows something we doesn’t, Major Jones.”

I took the lamp from his hand, but nearly dropped it. Who would have thought that such a frail lass could scream to fright the horses?

Pushing the soldiers aside, I plunged down the hallway, lantern swinging. The dwelling was no shanty, but a proper home with engravings on the walls. You would have thought it fit for any white man.

The parlor was furnished with sensible horsehair chairs and a settee. There was a bookcase, too, and a handsome Bible stand. But I had no time to make a further inspection. The lass screamed again, close at hand.

A pair of curtained doors led to the dining room. Within was a sight to see.

The lass had flattened herself against the wall, agape and trembling. With good reason. The table had been employed for a devilish surgery. A well-muscled man lay upon it. You knew at a glance that he was well muscled, see. He had been skinned like an animal.

A guttering candle stood beside the corpse, perfectly placed to light the scene for visitors. The butchers had known that we—or someone—would come. They had splashed the walls and even the ceiling with blood as a form of greeting.

Twas worse than the regimental parade after we blew the sepoys from our guns.

The lass began to convulse.

“See to her, man!” I ordered Mr. Barnaby, who had stepped in just behind me. The fury the spectacle summoned lent me the power to spit clear words.

He peeled the girl from the wall. She resisted for a moment, then threw herself against him, casting her arms about his waistcoat, reaching as far around him as she could and hiding her face. He did not know how to respond at first. Then he embraced her. As a parent would a child pursued by nightmares. Holding her closely against his chest and patting her with one hand.

Twas then I saw what the lass had seen, just behind the candlelight. Dangling in an archway.

It was a sort of doll. The size of a man. Lumpish and awkward.

My gorge rose and I tasted my stomach’s foulness.

The doll was made of the dead man’s skin. Stuffed and sewn closed again.

“Good Lord!” Mr. Barnaby said.

Captain Bolt, who had followed us when there seemed to be no danger, took one look at the scene and declared, “I’ll be out in the street, if you want me for anything.”

Nor did his soldiers tarry, though one disbursed his supper in the parlor.

It is as cruel a fate as men can devise, skinning a fellow. In India, they douse the fellow’s meat with salt to enhance his suffering.

Mr. Barnaby’s stomach shared the impulse haunting mine own. He began to gag and lost his grip on the girl.

She stumbled back against the wall. I saw a flash of eyes.

She screamed again, more fiercely than before. Locking her hands across her mouth, she slid down the blood-smeared wall. Gaze fixed on the table.

The raw muscles
moved.
Slightly. Enough to turn the head a quarter inch.

Lidless eyes sought any hope of comfort.

I forced myself forward, until I stood beside him with my lamp. May I be spared such a sight as that for the rest of my living days and after death.

A man is a thing of great and horrid complexity, once his flesh is stripped away.

Lipless teeth parted. I saw that they had let him keep his tongue.

Tormented, his eyes could not settle. The girl’s shriek seemed to have wakened him from a daze. Which hardly seemed a mercy. He should have been dead, for life meant hopeless agony.

Demented eyes found mine.

I fought to keep my gaze on his, imagining stupidly that it might be a comfort to him to know he was not alone.

Exposed muscles and ligaments struggled. The poor man wanted to speak, perhaps to pray.

I did what any Christian man would do. Setting the lantern on the table, I folded my hands and recited, “Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow …”

He growled. There is no other word for it. The sound of it shocked me into silence. Looking back, I think that is what he wanted. For whether or not he believed in Our Savior Jesus Christ and the power of prayer to redeem us, he wanted to speak his last words to mortal ears.

“Fishers of men,” he muttered, mad eyes begging attention, “the fishers of men …”

His voice was worse distorted than mine own. But I understood him.

“Yes, yes!” I said excitedly. “That’s right! Think on Christian things, think on Our Lord and Savior Je—”

He growled again, more fiercely. There was such desperation in the sound that no words I have learned can tell its intensity.

“Beware … fishers of men,” he said, and died.

MY DESIRE TO LEAVE THE VICTIM’S HOUSE DISAPPOINTED Mr. Barnaby. He rather liked the rumpus of detective work and seemed to think I should upend the furniture and turn over the carpets. But life is hardly a novel from Mr. Collins. The murderers would have purged the rooms, leaving behind false items to tease and mislead me. If hints of guilt there were, they would have required an eye more diligent and a mind less worn than mine.