Strange Conflict (33 page)

Two speckled chickens were now handed to him. He elevated them to the east, to the west, to the north and to the south, calling upon the Grand Master, while his assistants knelt down and he waved the squirming chickens over their heads. He next presented the birds at the altar dedicated to Legba, took both birds in one hand and a firebrand in the other, with which he set off three heaps of gunpowder which had been placed round the cornmeal design. Kneeling, he kissed the earth three times and the whole congregation did likewise. Suddenly the drums began to beat and some of the adepts began to dance. The Priest broke the
wings of one of the chickens, then its legs, holding the throat so that the bird could not cry out in its pain.

Marie Lou turned away from the sickening sight. When she looked again she saw that the second bird had suffered a similar mutilation and that both had been placed on the altar, where, in spite of their broken limbs, the poor brutes were fluttering and squirming.

The Priest kissed the ground again and wrung both the birds' necks, putting them out of their agony; after which the corpulent Mambo took them from him and roasted them over a slow fire. When they were done they were put in a sack and to the accompaniment of a great deal of drum beating, chanting and stamping of feet the sack was carried outside and tied to Legba's tree.

To the uninitiated visitors the ceremonies that followed differed little except that grey roosters were sacrificed to Papa Loco and a white cock and hen to Dambala, while in all cases but the first the heads of the birds were bent back and their throats cut so that when held by the feet the blood could be drained out into a crock. To Marie Lou's disgust, the Houngan each time drank deeply of the hot blood, allowed each of the drummers a taste, then flung the bowl as far from him as he could, whereupon the assistants raced after it and milled about it like a rugby-scrum, fighting to secure a finger-lick of the wonder-working blood.

As the ceremonies proceeded the Negroes became more and more excited. From time to time one of them appeared to become possessed and, foaming at the mouth, danced until he dropped. At intervals the leading dancers stopped and demanded rum. The Houngan make a pretence of refusing them but on each occasion went inside and fetched a bottle. After each tot of the fiery spirit the dancing became more frenzied than ever, but there was nothing mysterious or frightening about the services as they were being conducted in the strong afternoon sunlight.

Just before the sacrifice to Dambala there was one untoward episode. Two women in black had sneaked into the compound and were standing quite near the visitors. One of the Houncis spotted them and told the Priest; upon which he rushed at them and drove them away with threats and curses. When he had quietened down a little, seeing that everybody spoke to him quite freely in the middle of his
rituals, de Richleau asked him what the women had done. He replied in his broken French that they were in mourning and therefore had no right to attend a Dambala ceremony, which was for the living. Their association with recent death caused them to carry with them, wherever they went, the presence of the dreaded Baron Samedi.

‘Lord Saturday,' whispered Marie Lou to the Duke. ‘What a unusual name for a god!' But the Doctor caught what she had said and turned to smile at her.

‘It is another name that they use for Baron Cimeterre. You see, his Holy Day is Saturday. And it is a sort of joke, of which the people never get tired, that my name, too, is Saturday.'

Had the scene not been so animated, and the rituals so interesting, in spite of their cruel and disgusting side, Marie Lou and the Duke would have found it almost impossible not to fall asleep where they sat, in the shade of a tall fence, and with their backs propped against it, but the beating drums and wild chanting acted as a tonic to their tired nerves.

Almost unperceived by them, dusk fell, and to light the compound the Priest's assistants ignited torches of freshly cut pinewood. The scene now savoured of an orgy, as although the rituals were still going on, with the Priest kissing the sword and the flags and waving aloft his
ascon,
the Voodoo symbol of power, which is a sacred gourd decorated with beads and snake vertebrae, the whole congregation had given themselves up to the wildest extravagances.

The rum had made most of the Houncis and Canzos three-parts drunk and the drums had completed their intoxication. The women ‘cramped' and shook themselves before the ‘shuckers' until they fell quivering upon the ground, but they were not allowed to lie there. The men grabbed them up to continue their insane whirling. Now and then one of the congregation became possessed, raved, foamed at the mouth and collapsed in a fit, but their faces were bathed in rum to revive them. Clothes were torn away until many of the dancers were stark naked. Hot, sweaty bodies collided and limbs became locked in rhythmical ecstasy. The dancing grew more and more abandoned until the Doctor whispered to the Duke that as they had Madame with them he thought that they had better go; so they went
out to the car and returned, through the soft, velvety darkness, by the winding track that led down the hill.

It was just on eight when they reached the house and Marie Lou and de Richleau were both hoping desperately that they would find Richard and Rex waiting for them in the living-room. If the plane had got in by sundown they should have had ample time to come up to the house. But they were not there. With bitter disappointment the Duke realised that his worst forebodings had been fulfilled. The others had not been able to secure a plane in time to leave Kingston before five o'clock, so there was now no hope of their arriving before dawn. Another whole night of sleepless watching would have to be endured.

Dinner was served almost immediately they got in, but during it de Richleau and Marie Lou could hardly keep awake sufficiently to make intelligent conversation. They had spent nearly five hours watching the Voodoo rituals and although the sight had kept them awake through a bad period of the afternoon the noise and clamour had also added to their exhaustion. After the meal both felt that they would scream if they had to continue small-talk with their genial host so they pleaded extreme fatigue after their long day in the heat to which they were not accustomed, and excused themselves.

As soon as they were in the Duke's room they looked at each other in dismay. They had now been awake for some thirty-eight hours yet there was not the slightest prospect of help reaching them for another ten at least, and how they were to face the second night neither of them knew.

Grimly the Duke set about charging another carafe of fresh water. Just as he had finished, Marie Lou burst out in a hoarse whisper:

‘I can't go on—I can't—I can't!'

‘You must,' said the Duke firmly. ‘Another few hours and we'll win through.'

‘I can't!' she moaned, and suddenly gave way to a fit of heartrending sobbing.

He let her be for a few moments then put his hands on her head and, concentrating all his remaining strength, began to charge her. In his exhausted state it was now very difficult for him to call down power and he could do little more than pass on to her some portion of the resistance
which still animated his own consciousness. Yet this ancient ceremony of the laying-on of hands took effect. Her hysterical weeping ceased. She felt soothed and comforted. She was still unutterably weary but the danger of an immediate collapse had receded.

‘I'm sorry,' she murmured, mopping her reddened, half-closed eyes. ‘I'll manage somehow. But we haven't got to settle down in the pentacle yet—have we? It's only just after nine, and the shorter the period we have to remain sitting there the less strain it will be.'

‘That's true,' the Duke agreed. ‘We're now both so tired that it would prove fatal to relax, but I don't think that we shall actually need protective barriers for another hour or so.'

‘Then let's go for a walk,' Marie Lou suggested. ‘It's the sitting still for hour after hour which is such a ghastly strain.'

De Richleau had given her much of his own remaining strength. He was sitting, bowed and limp, on the end of the bed, and he shook his head. ‘I'm afraid I'm not up to it at the moment, Princess. I must remain absolutely still for a while to conserve my energies against the coming ordeal, and if you don't mind we won't even talk for the next half-hour.'

‘Would it be asking for trouble if I went for a stroll on my own?' she inquired. ‘I must occupy myself somehow and I'm far too tired to read. If I stretch my legs now I'll be better able to endure our long session once we get down to it.'

He hesitated for a moment. ‘It's unwise for us to separate for any length of time, but if you don't go far …'

She smiled. ‘I'm much too weary to want to walk any distance. I only thought of taking a turn round the garden.'

‘Very well,' muttered the Duke; ‘as long as you remain within call. It would really be better if you took your stroll up and down the verandah, where there's a certain amount of light from the windows.'

She touched his cheek for a second with her finger-tips, as she said: ‘I won't be long.' Then she walked out through the wire-gauzed swing door of the room into the stillness of the tropic night.

At first she strolled slowly up and down outside the row of guest-rooms; then she increased her beat until it took her
as far as the big living-room in the centre of the low house. Its doors were open, the lights were still on, and the Doctor was sitting reading, with his back towards her, at the far end of the room. He did not turn at the sound of her soft footfalls, probably imagining it to be one of the house-boys who was passing.

She went a little further. The next room was the dining-room; then came the Doctor's bedroom. There was another big room beyond it; then the servants' quarters, which occupied the end of the house that was nearest the road to Port-au-Prince.

There was a single light burning in the room beyond the Doctor's bedroom and she paused to look through the window.

Evidently it was the Doctor's study. In it were many books, a long horsehair couch, some rows of test-tubes in a rack along one wall, and a number of instruments. There was nothing there at all to differentiate it from the working-room of any man engaged in medical or scientific studies—with one exception—a huge map which covered the whole of one wall. It was a large-scale Admiralty chart of the North Atlantic.

Marie Lou stared at it, then she gently pushed open the wire swing door and tiptoed into the room. Her mind was working furiously. She was recalling a number of things that had occurred in the past two days and which had seemed quite natural at the time.

The Doctor had been out in his launch fishing when their plane had been wrecked. For hours he had not come to their assistance; yet he
must
have seen it crash. He had rescued them only when they had already been sighted and were about to be picked up by the native fishing-boat. Yet now, it seemed inconceivable that he had not been aware that they were there, less than half a mile away from him, in imminent danger of drowning.

Then his name—Doctor Saturday. Lord Saturday was one of the aliases of the dread Lord of the Cemetery, the chief of the evil Petro gods. Why was the Doctor, too, called Saturday? Many of the natives and Mulattoes in the island had a whole string of names which they had received when baptised by the Catholic Church to which they paid a purely nominal allegiance; but others bore only a single name,
from having been dedicated to one of the Voodoo gods at birth. Perhaps the appellation had started as a nickname, given to him years ago when his fellow-islanders had realised that he was devoting himself to strange and horrid practices.

And now this large-scale chart of the North Atlantic. The fact that it had a number of little flags stuck in it, marking places right out in the open ocean, clinched the matter in her mind beyond all doubt. The Doctor had come out in his launch to make certain that they were all dead, but since his attack upon them had failed he had taken them to his home in order that he might have them under his physical eye and be ready to seize the first suitable opportunity to strike them down.

He had not commented upon their exhausted condition but he knew of it and was biding his time. Their genial host was none other than the enemy whom they had come so far to seek, and he was sitting only two rooms away from her now, like a spider in his web, waiting until sleep should overcome them.

With a sudden surge of terror she realised that he might come in at any moment and find her there. She must get out—at once—and warn the Duke. At the very instant she was about to turn she heard steps approaching and the wire door swing open behind her.

Marie Lou stood there, rooted to the spot. Temporarily all memory of her tiredness had left her. She was held fixed by sheer terror. There was a prickling at the back of her scalp and the palms of her hands were wet.

The Doctor must have heard her pass the living-room after all, and since she had not re-passed it he had come out to see where she had got to. Now that he had found her there he would realise at once that she had learnt his secret. The cards would be on the table. From the beginning he had been fully aware of the reason for their visit to Haiti so it would be utterly useless for her to pretend that she did not appreciate the significance of the big map at which he had caught her staring. Facing it still, she wondered frantically what he would do. Dreading that he might strike her down from behind, she wanted to swing round; but she dared not, for fear that immediately she did so he would be able to hypnotise her.

She wanted to cry out, but her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth for what seemed an interminable interlude. Then, like a douche of cold water down her spine, Simon's voice came: natural, good-humoured, cheerful.

‘Marie Lou! Thank goodness we've found you.'