October Skies (20 page)

Beyond the heat shimmer, his eyes drifted onto the now utterly still mass of tan hides.

 

The last of the oxen froze last night. That is it now; they’re all dead. Which is a merciful relief, for us as well as them. The occasional pitiful bellowing in the freezing cold of night was an awful sound that I was struggling to ignore. The oxen froze from the outside of the herd in. One imagines if they were human, or perhaps more intelligent, they would have taken turns, shuffling those on the edge to the middle to recover some warmth. But they didn’t. The last one to freeze to death was at the very centre of their huddle.

No doubt he’ll also be the very last one we butcher to eat.

 

His eyes focused beyond the carcasses - to the rounded snow-covered hump that was the Dreytons’ shelter, and he wondered what was wrong with Dorothy. Sam and Emily had spent some time around the campfire with Ben last night. Sam had talked about his mother, how worried he and Emily were about her. She had sunk into some kind of stupor of despair, unwilling to step outside, unwilling to talk, unwilling to eat.

Ben wondered if she’d managed to hear Preston’s drug-induced outburst. He wondered if she’d been troubled by what she’d heard. It was quite clear that, for Dorothy, for many of these people devoted enough to leave everything, risk everything to follow him out into the wilderness, Preston was the very centre of their universe. To hear him talk like that . . . what was it he’d said?

They’re just my words, not God’s?

Ben didn’t believe for one moment that God came down every night to have a chat with Preston. He looked at the half a dozen men and women gathered outside the church shelter, stamping their feet and rubbing their hands to stay warm.

But these people undoubtedly do believe that.

They believed in him completely, that every stricture, every instruction, every word he had thus far penned in what Sam had referred to as the Book of New Instruction, were words directly from God’s mouth.

What else had he said?

What if they know? What if they find out what I am?

In the minds of these strictly faithful people, Ben knew there was a special place in hell for someone who might lead them astray - for a false prophet. And yet, given what he knew of Preston, the genuine courage he’d demonstrated, the genuine compassion he had for people, Ben didn’t believe for one moment that the man’s motives were suspect, that he was a charlatan.

Those drug-induced words were nothing more than a momentary crisis of faith, a hallucination, the babbling of a feverish man. He wondered whether it might help if he were to pay Mrs Dreyton a visit to explain this to her; that it was just the laudanum she had heard talking.

 

Ben stared out into the moonlit darkness. The snowy carpet on the ground and the pillows of snow on every laden branch seemed to glow phosphorescently by the quicksilver light. He was relieved that his turn on watch was made easier by a clear sky and an almost full moon. Beside him the bowl of Keats’s pipe glowed as the old man pulled on it.

‘Hmm,’ the old man’s voice quietly rumbled. ‘So what’ll you do with all them words you been writin’ down?’

Ben shrugged. ‘I’d like to get them published back in England.’

Keats laughed quietly. ‘You mean like a proper book?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘You s’pecting to get rich with this book o’ yours?’

‘Oh, probably not,’ he replied with a faint smile. ‘It would just be nice to see my story printed. Perhaps even in a newspaper. ’

Keats was quiet for a while. Ben watched the glow of his tobacco floating in the darkness, bobbing gently. ‘You got the bear in yer book?’

‘Of course.’ Ben smiled.

Keats laughed quietly. ‘Bet you writ about yerself bringin’ it down like some big ol’ hero, eh?’

‘Hardly. I wrote about how terrified I was,’ Ben replied with shame in his voice. ‘I wrote about how all I could do was stand frozen to the spot, like a fool.’

‘You writ ’bout me shootin’ it in yer book?’

‘Yes.’

‘You made me sound all brave an’ heroic?’

Ben nodded.

‘Good. I ain’t never been in a book before. The ladies’ll like that,’ he snorted.

‘Do you think it’s dead?’

‘The bear?’ Keats grunted. ‘Ain’t no bear worries me. It’s ’em Paiute out there.’

‘You think they’re still out in those trees somewhere?’

‘Reckon so.’ Keats pulled on his pipe and the embers glowed and crackled gently. ‘One way or ’nother, they’re certain we’re all going to die. I reckon they’ll be waitin’ on that so’s they can come scavenge what they can find.’

‘Were you scared when you and the others ran into them?’

‘Scared?’ Keats considered the question for a moment. ‘Well now, my blood was up. Don’t want to die just as much as you, Lambert.’ The pipe glowed and Ben caught the aroma of tobacco smoke wafting past him. ‘Thing is,’ he continued, ‘them Paiute ain’t afraid to die. Hell, they can’t wait to die an’ join their ancestors in some milk an’ honey land.’

‘It makes a man dangerous, that.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Belief in a paradise after death. The stronger your belief, the more dangerous you are.’ Ben shrugged. ‘Or at least that’s what I think.’

Keats digested that for a moment. ‘I guess I’d have to agree with you on that, son. A man should value life enough that he’s always afraid to die.’

They listened in silence to the sounds of the woods; the creak of laden branches and ancient swaying trunks, the hiss of a gentle breeze through the tops of the trees.

‘That mean you don’t believe in the Almighty, Lambert?’

Ben often wondered if he did. ‘I don’t know. The more I learn of the mechanics of this world, the less room I can see in it for something like the hand of God, if you see what I mean.’

‘Not sure I do.’

‘I have a book in my trunk, a medical textbook. I bought it in London before I set off. You can see, looking through it, that we know how the body works now, what each organ does for us. But before we knew these things, we believed our bodies were simply clay that God had breathed life into. Do you see? It takes just a small amount of knowledge to undo so much of what we’ve been told to believe for centuries and centuries.’

‘I dunno . . . seen things in my time that no medicine book gonna explain.’

‘Of course, not everything can be explained. But it seems to me, every week in the medical and scientific journals I used to subscribe to back in London, there is more and more of God’s mysterious work that we can unravel and discover the hidden cogs and gears within.’

Keats thought about that for a moment. ‘Hmm, mebbe so.’

‘To answer your question, though,’ Ben continued, ‘I’m not sure I do believe in a God, not any more.’

‘Shit,’ Keats cackled, then slapped him on the back. ‘You see that bear ’gain, bet a nickel you’ll start praying, eh?’

I probably would.

He smelled another waft of tobacco smoke and then Keats hawked up and spat. ‘Guess I better go and check in on our other watchers,’ Keats grunted. ‘I’ll be back shortly,’ and the glow of his pipe and the outline of his form disappeared into the darkness.

Alone, it was quiet save for the rustle of a fresh breeze through the trees, and the hiss of shifting powder snow. His eyes combed the tree line, a dark wall of foliage just a dozen yards away, drawn instantly to every little rustle of movement out there.

Hurry back, Mr Keats.

It was funny. Back home in West London, in the fashionable and affluent area of Holland Park where his parents had purchased a considerably generous town house for him, he would have turned his nose up in disgust at the sight of the grimy, gaunt and bristly old man. He would have considered him as something less than human; part of the sea of urban misery that loitered suspiciously amongst the back streets and tradesmen’s entrances of Soho, Covent Garden and Piccadilly Square. He had the same grime-encrusted and weathered face that filled the pungent main thoroughfares of the East End.

But right here in this clearing, in the middle of this dark and forbidding mountain forest, he trusted the man with his life.

Ben heard the light crunch of snow underfoot coming from behind him. He spun round to see a dark form standing a few feet away.

‘Who’s that?’ he whispered.

The dark form took another step closer and then stopped. Then he heard the softest whisper. ‘It’s Mrs Dreyton.’

‘My God, what’re you doing out at this time, Mrs Dreyton?’

‘I . . . I . . . need to talk to someone.’ She took a step closer to him. By the wan light of the moon, her face appeared almost as pale and luminescent as the snow, her eyes dark pools of torment. ‘You were there. You heard him.’

‘Preston?’

She nodded. ‘I . . . I’ve been to see him.’

Ben smiled. ‘That’s good. He was asking after you today.’

‘I told him what I . . . what I know now.’

‘What?’

Her voice broke and she sobbed. ‘I gave him everything. My life, my love . . . my body, my children.’

‘Mrs Dreyton?’

‘I thought, through him, God was touching me. Touching Emily and Sam.’

‘Dorothy, what you heard him say the other day was nothing more than the product of the medicine, of a fever—’

‘No.’ She shook her head solemnly. ‘I see now his lies have led us to this place. He’s no prophet.’ Dorothy’s hands went to her face. ‘Oh, God, forgive me for following him.’

‘Dorothy, what did you say to him?’

‘That I know he is a liar . . . and a thief.’

‘A thief?’

She looked up at him. ‘What he has was not gifted to him, it was taken.’

He held out a hand to comfort her. But she shied away.

‘What? What is it he has, Mrs Dreyton?’

‘God will punish him for that,’ she cried. ‘God will punish him, and punish us all for following him.’

‘What is it that he has?’

She ignored him. ‘We have to leave here, Mr Lambert. We have to leave soon, before it’s too late. My children trust you. I trust you. Will you help us?’

‘What? We can’t leave here now. We’ll freeze, or starve, or—’

‘God’s vengeance will come down on us.’ She reached out and grabbed his arm tightly. He could feel the steel grip of her hand through three layers of clothing. ‘Do you believe in eternal torment, Mr Lambert?’

‘What? No . . . no I can’t say I—’

‘Because that’s what awaits Preston, in the very depths of hell.’ She looked back at the other camp. ‘Or maybe it’ll come to us . . . here in this forsaken place.’

‘Mrs Dreyton, you’re not making much sense to me.’

She shook her head. ‘Maybe . . . maybe, if I tell the others, warn the others,’ she muttered, turning away from Ben, ‘I’ll be forgiven.’ She stepped away from him, crunching back across the snow.

‘Mrs Dreyton?’ he called to her softly, but she was gone.

Had she really accused Preston of being a liar and thief?

Ben wondered for a moment how Preston would react to his most devoted follower denouncing him as a false prophet. And realised, with a shiver of unease, that it would lead nowhere good. Not for anyone.

 

Shepherd smiled at the people out in the basketball court, waving to them as a rousing rendition of ‘Abide With Me’ was being belted out by the Munston Homes Choir for God, stepping as one from side to side and clapping their hands to the infectious rhythm.

Booking them had been a good idea. His campaign co-ordinator, Duncan, had said, ‘You can’t beat a good ol’ Baptist choir for feel-good factor.’

He was right, of course. The rally had gone spectacularly well. Originally it had been booked into a local school. But support was growing for the campaign so fast that Duncan’s team had quickly needed to upgrade the venue to the sports hall of a nearby college.