Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 02 (19 page)

 
          
“This
will be good,” he announced.
“Kinnickinnick,
yuh,
and bark of red willow in with the
tobacco.
Strong medicine.”

 
          
“It
was mixed for me by my friend Long Spear,” Thunstone told him. “He’s of the
Tsichah tribe, and he’s a chief and a medicine man, like you.”

 
          
“Strong
medicine,” said Manco again, and carefully filled the pipe. From his pocket he
brought a wooden match, snapped it afire on his thumbnail, and kindled the
mixture in the bowl of the pipe. He drew a lungful of the smoke and blew it out
in a blue cloud. Then he leaned to hand the pipe to Sharon.

 
          
“You
too,” he said.
“For strength, for safety.”

 
          
Sharon
put the stem between her red lips, inhaled diffidently, and blew out her own
cloud. She passed the pipe to Thunstone on the bed. He smoked in turn and
handed the thing on to Shimada, who followed suit and gave the pipe to Father
Bundren. The priest blew smoke and returned the pipe to Manco.

 
          
“Now,”
said Manco, “pray to your gods, all of you.”

 
          
Again
he emitted clouds, to the north, the west, the south, the east, and up and
finally down. The six directions, Thunstone
recognized,
each with its own sacred significance. Sitting silently as Manco accomplished
his
ritual,
Thunstone said a prayer deep within
himself. Shimada and Father Bundren held their heads low; they must have been
praying, too. And Sharon bowed and clasped her hands devoutly. Quiet hung in
the room, for about ten seconds.

 
          
At
last Manco laid his pipe aside and looked around at them. “We are ready now,”
he
said,
in the deep voice that Indians use for formal
pronouncements.

           
“Could we be ready for lunch,
perhaps?” asked Thunstone. “What would you like?”

 
          
“I
leave the ordering to you,” said Shimada. “For myself, I do not feel that I
require much just now.”

 
          
“Nor
do I,” said Sharon. “Nor I,” added Father Bundren. And Manco lifted a brown
hand, as though in endorsement.

 
          
“I
would be glad for just a sandwich,” said Sharon. Thunstone took the telephone
and called room service. He ordered ham and cheese sandwiches and a pot of
coffee. While they waited, they talked of what would happen, of what might
possibly happen.

           
“When I speak this afternoon, I mean
to be frank about the situation here,” declared Shimada. “Maybe I won’t name
names, but I’ll go into interesting details.” He smiled.
“Embarrassing
details, perhaps.
To bring them more into the open.
You will be enchanted with what I say, I promise you.
Yes,
that much of a promise, at least.”

 
          
“I’m
always enchanted with what you say,”
said
Father
Bundren, “just as, so far, I’m not enchanted with what Rowley Thome and Grizel
Fian may say.”

 
          
They
looked at each other, all around the room. Thunstone spoke.

 
          
“It’s
up to us to come to a practical solution of what seems to be a downright
unknown situation,” he said. “Be a brain trust, as Father Bundren puts it. Work
together as a unit, for mutual defense and offense. Find out what they’ll try
next, and head them back.”

 
          
“They
hate us,” said Sharon softly.

 
          
“Hate
is an active principle with them,” nodded Father Bundren. “They not only hate
us, they hate all humanity— they hate each other, they hate themselves. Here
I’m at a disadvantage. As a priest, it’s up to me to love all humanity, love
every living soul. Can love be stronger than hate?”

 
          
“I
would say no to that,” spoke up Manco from where he squatted. “Hate doesn’t owe
anything to anybody.”

 
          
A
knock at the door, and Thunstone opened it. A waiter wheeled in a cart with a
great tray of sandwiches, a coffee pot and cups. Thunstone paid him and gave
him a tip, and they sat down and ate and talked.

 
          
“You
have the right of it,” said Shimada to Thunstone. “We must come to a plan of
campaign here, and carry it out.”

 
          
“It’s
our duty,” said Father Bundren. “Somebody once said
,
duty is the most sublime word in the language.”

 
          
“Wasn’t
that Robert E. Lee?” asked
Sharon
.

 
          
“Lee
was a soldier, and duty was always there to be performed,” said Father Bundren.

 
          
Manco, cross-legged in his comer, bit into a sandwich and sipped
coffee.
“Coleridge had a different view of duty. He felt that duty was
imposed on all of us from childhood, by parents and teachers. And duty, he
said, is a command, and every command is in the nature of an offense. Don’t
stare at me like that. I sit here wearing Indian beads and braids, but I did
graduate from
Dartmouth
. They even gave me a Phi Beta Kappa key.”

 
          
“Coleridge,”
Thunstone repeated. “He seems to have known the supernatural on close terms.
Look at the fear in ‘The Ancient Mariner,’ in ‘Christabel,’ in ‘Kubla Khan,’
which he never finished.
Which begins as a rhapsody and ends
in fear.
”

 
          
“ ‘Beware
, beware,’ ” quoted Father Bundren. “ ‘Close your
eyes in holy dread.’ But we aren’t holding a literary seminar just now. We’ve
got to settle matters with Rowley Thome and Grizel Fian.”

 
          
“Exactly,”
said Manco into his coffee cup.

 
          
The
telephone rang. Thunstone picked it up. “Yes?” he said.

 
          
“Mr.
Thunstone,”
came
the taut voice of Grizel Fian. “I want
to talk to you Maybe come to whatever terms you want to make.”

           
“Where are you?”

 
          
“I’m
here at the
Inn
, I’ve taken a room.
Number
408, on the floor above you.
Will you come up? Are you afraid to come
up?”

 
          
“Not
in the least,” he said. “I’ll come there.”

 
          
Rising,
he picked up his cane. “Will you excuse me for a minute or so?” he asked, “Go
on with your council, I’ll concur in anything you decide.”

 
          
“Where
are you going?”
Sharon
asked him, “Be careful,
please
be careful.”

 
          
“Naturally,”
he said and went out. He sought the stairs and mounted a flight to the corridor
above. Almost at once he saw the number 408 on a door, and knocked. Grizel Fian
opened it. She wore red-brown slacks and top, with a deeply scooped neckline to
show the upper rises of those breasts of which she was so manifestly proud. She
gazed at him with wide-drawn eyes, with a mouth that quivered.

 
          
“Come
in,” she said huskily.

 
          
He
entered the room, looked in all comers of it. He crossed to the bathroom door,
and looked to see that it was empty. He went to the closet and looked into it,
too.

 
          
“No,”
she said, “we’re all alone here.”

 
          
“Forgive
me, but I had to be sure,” he said, with the slightest of smiles.

 
          
She
sat in a chair. He sat in another, his cane in his hand.

 
          
“Suppose,”
she said, “that I made a virtue of necessity and ran up the white flag?”

 
          
“That
would be better than running up a black one.”

 
          
She
fluttered her wide, bright eyes. “You’re being witty, Mr. Thunstone. Let’s get
down to the reason I asked you to come.”

 
          
“I’m
waiting,” he said easily.

 
          
She
made a trembling gesture, palms outward. “A white flag, I said. I asked you to
come and hear me say that. I want to quit.”

           
“I’ve heard someone else say that.”

           
“You mean Exum Layton. He did quit
my organization, didn’t he? And is he happy about it?”

           
“More or less, it seems,” said
Thunstone.

           
“All right, all
right.
What if I were to do the same? What if I disbanded the worship
I’ve conducted here? Gave it up? Confessed I was wrong—”

 
          
“And
what might Rowley Thome think about that?” She tossed her head. Her hair
stirred as if blown in a breeze.

           
“Rowley Thome is here because I
could call him here,” she said. “Call him out of the strange land where he was
a prisoner. I could help you dispose of him again.”

 
          
“Very
likely you could, if you mean what you say.”

           
Her face clamped fiercely into deep
lines. “You think I’m lying,” she accused.

           
Thunstone’s smile grew wide. “I’m
afflicted to say, that’s just what I think.”

           
She was silent then, her eyes as
bright and hard as jewels. At last:

           
“They say you’re a brave man,” she
said between clenched teeth. “Is it brave to insult a woman?”

           
“I make a virtue of necessity, too,”
said Thunstone. “I have something to do in this town and on this campus, and
I’ve learned to smell a trap set for me. You say that I insult you because I
don’t believe you, but I’d be a damned fool if I did believe you.”

 
          
“All
right, it’s war again!” she half screamed at him. “Now you do tell the truth,”
he smiled, still more widely. She sprang from her chair, flung her arms out,
and began to babble what must have been a curse, in a language Thunstone did
not know. He half drew his silver blade. The hilt sang in his hand. Grizel Fian
walked across the floor,
then
swung around to glare at
him.

           
“Get out!” she spat.

 
          
He
rose and bowed. “I’ll be only too glad to.”

 
          
He
went out at the door and closed it carefully behind him. He could hear her
furious voice, but could not make out the words. Back he went and down the
stairs and again to his own room. The others looked up at him as he entered.

 
          
“Well,
now what?” demanded Manco.

 
          
“I
was talking to Grizel Fian. She said she wanted to quit her devil worship and
be on our side. Help us defeat Rowley Thome.”

 
          
“From
what I know of her so far, I’d say she was lying,” said
Sharon
, speaking strongly for the first time since
they had come together that morning. “She was trying to trick you.”

 
          
“I
felt that I had to say that very thing to her,” said Thunstone. “And it made
her angry. She said some kind of curse on me and told me to get out. So I got
out and came back here. You see, they’re still very much at war with us.
War—she used that word to me.”

 
          
“Yuh
, ”
boomed
out Manco. “War. But I come from a people good at all kinds of war. Many times,
we win our wars.”

 
          
“We
came to a sort of decision, and we hope you’ll be with us on it,” Father
Bundren said to Thunstone. “We stay together all the time and try to force them
into the open. Then we do our own best to bring the whole matter to a close,
this very night.”