The Island (16 page)

A woman wailed a fierce, vengeful cry.

Maynard tightened his stomach muscles and, holding his breath to prepare for the pain, arched his back and shot his arms upward, hoping to put enough slack in the ropes so he could wiggle his hands free. He failed and fell back, and the fibers in his shoulders were stretched to anguish. He screamed.

“He wakes!” called a voice as the crowd approached the clearing.

“Only to sleep again,” said another. “I’d sooner make the whole passage asleep.”

“But when you reached the other side, you might be lost.”

“Aye, but awake you have to see the face of death, and that’s a fright, they say.”

“No more a fright than the face of your woman.”

They filed into the clearing and stood on its perimeter.

Maynard hung from the rack and looked at them. He was afraid, but pain and confusion had partly detached him from his fear. It was as if he was floating above himself, observing his own terror.

They were all men, all tanned and filthy, their clothing stained with blood and grease. Some carried cutlasses, some axes, and all had at least one knife.

When the ring around the clearing was complete, the men fell silent. The ring parted, and three people walked across the sand toward Maynard.

The leader was a tall man, with a broad chest and a narrow waist, in his late thirties or early forties. His brown hair was sun-bleached and parted in the center of his head. A waxed mustache hung down on either side of his mouth. He wore a dirty white linen shirt with billowed sleeves and hand-sewn hide trousers that stopped just below his knees. His knobby, leathery feet were bare. Two bandoliers crossed over his chest. Each held a flintlock pistol.

Behind the leader was an older man whose graying hair was tied behind his head in a pigtail. He wore a gray robe, cinched at the waist by a wide leather belt, and rubber foul-weather boots.

Several paces behind the men shuffled the semblance of a woman. Her face was smeared with charcoal, her hair waxed in a Medusa cap. She wore a black overcoat, which she clutched tight around her middle. Her eyes were fixed on Maynard—moist, frenzied eyes that did not blink.

The woman scuttled between the two men, leaned over Maynard, and spat in his face. Her breath reeked of rum.

The tall man smiled at Maynard. “You wake.”

“Who are you?” Maynard’s voice was a raspy croak.

“Give him water,” the older man said. “You must never kill a thirsty man. He appears before God without communion. It is written.”

From somewhere behind him, hands reached over Maynard’s head and squirted water from an animal bladder onto his face and into his mouth. He licked his lips and swallowed, and the ligaments in his shoulder complained at the minute motion. He looked at the tall man and asked again, “Who are you?”

“Jean-David Nau. Tenth in a line.”

“Where is my son?”

“With the others.”

“Please,” Maynard begged. “Let him go. He’s a baby.”

“Let him go!” Nau laughed. “Indeed!”

“Don’t kill him!” Maynard felt tears leak from his eyes. “Do anything to me, but don’t kill him!”

“Kill him?” Nau looked perplexed. “Whatever for? Do I kill a soldier before he is old enough to fight? Do I kill a beast of burden before he is old enough to pull? No. He may have a short life, but it will be a merry one, and his end will be of his own making.”

“And me?”

“You,” Nau said flatly, “you will die.”

“Why?”

The older man replied, “It is our way.”

“To hell with your way. Tell me what I can do. Anything. I don’t want to die.” Hearing himself speak, Maynard was surprised at how calm he sounded.

“Do you fear death?” asked Nau. “Death is an adventure.”

As quickly and illogically as calm had come upon Maynard, it deserted him. He screamed, “No!”

“What kind of man are you? Are you craven? You should meet death with dignity.”

“You be dignified. I’ve got one purpose in life, and that’s to stay alive.”

“What do they call you?”

“Maynard.”

“Maynard! A noble name! A warrior’s name!”

“Bullshit. It’s a name. Who are you?”

“I have answered that.”

“No . . . I mean who
are
you? What are you?”

Nau raised his voice so the man around the edge of the clearing could hear. “Hear me! This man is Maynard. Is there man among you who does not know his blood?” The men murmured to one another. “It was his forebear that felled the mighty Teach, called Blackbeard.”

Maynard did not argue. He had no idea who his ancestors were, beyond his great-grandparents, but if survival lay in assuming a false genealogy, he was prepared to claim descent from Jesus of Nazareth or Genghis Khan.

“Your blood is good,” said Nau. “So must your heart be.”

“In that case . . .” Maynard said.

Nau held up his hand, to silence Maynard. “Manuel!”

The skinny boy hurried into the clearing.

“Bring the lad.”

“Aye, Ollonois.”

Maynard said to Nau, “What did he call you?”

“L’Ollonois. It is what the children are trained to call me. Like my father, and his father before him. Back and back and back to the first, who settled this land in the time of the second Charles.”

Maynard knew the name. “He was a psychopath! He used to eat people’s hearts.”

Nau smiled proudly. “Aye. He brooked no silence from prisoners.”

“Indians cut him to pieces.”

“Aye, and so fearful were they that the pieces would join again and come back to haunt them that they burned and scattered them to the four winds.
There
was a man who knew how to die!”

The skinny boy returned to the clearing, leading Justin on a rope leash. Justin’s hands were tied behind him.

Maynard turned his head. He expected Justin to be hysterical with fear, but the boy was glassy-eyed, numb. “Are you okay?” Maynard said.

Justin did not answer.

“Hizzoner,” Nau said to the older man, “tell him.”

The man put a hand on Justin’s head and said, “There is a time to live and a time to die. The sire dies and the son carries his name. A man may die, but his name lives on. A man may die, but his deeds are sung forever. You will witness the rite of passage, and when it is done your name will reflect the glory of the past. You will be Maynard Tue-Barbe.”

Nau raised his arms. “Maynard Tue-Barbe!”

“Tue-Barbe, Tue-Barbe, Tue-Barbe . . .” The chant swelled among the men around the clearing and dissolved into a cheer.

The noise seemed to awaken Justin. He looked at his father, and then at Nau, and he said softly, “Don’t kill him . . . please.”

“Hush!” Nau said. He bent down and scooped Justin up and swung him onto his shoulders.

“He is not yet a man,” said Hizzoner.

“Soon.” Nau spoke to the woman. “Goody Sansdents, how would you it were done?”

Maynard screamed, “I don’t want to die!” He looked up and saw his son teetering on the shoulders of the tall man. Justin gazed down at him and wept silently.

The woman slurred, “Woold him!”

“Nay!” Nau laughed. “I’ll not woold a noble man.”

“I’ll woold him myself, then. Give me the strap. And for a favor, I’ll eat the eyes when they pop free.”

“I say I’ll not have him woolded. He cannot face death without his eyes. He must see his destiny. Build a fire on his belly, and see what kind of man he be.”

The woman argued. “He tore the eye from Roche.”

“Aye, but Roche was not of good blood. A stew of Portugee and zambo.”

“If he be so noble, let me keep him. I need my service.”

“There are catamites for the likes of you. Service is yours for the taking.”

“Catamites!” The woman spat in the sand “This one can give me what Roche could not: a noble son.”

Nau’s grin faded. “He is to die.” He looked to Hizzoner for corroboration.

Hizzoner nodded. “That is the way.”

The woman snatched a dagger from Nau’s belt, dodged around behind the big man, and stood beside Maynard, the knife poised over his groin. “The covenant says the disposition is mine. Thus I dispose.” The woman’s hand flew downward.

Maynard closed his eyes, awaiting a pain he could not imagine.

With a single stroke, the woman slit Maynard’s bathing suit from waistband to crotch. She grabbed his genitals. “This I will have!” She glared defiantly at Nau, then at Hizzoner. “I will breed a line for the future to sing about. It is my right.”

The clearing was silent.

Maynard’s pulse beat against his eardrums. The pains came and went in waves. He saw the woman’s hand buried in his crotch, but he felt nothing from her tight grip: The burning in his shoulders and hips overwhelmed all other feeling.

Hizzoner spoke first. “The covenant rules. It is her right.”

“But the way . . .” Nau began.

“The way is custom, the covenant is law. The covenant says she can dispose.”

“But dispose does . . .”

“. . . does not mean kill, not by the strictest letter.”

Nau was not pleased. With one hand, he removed Justin from his shoulders and dropped him to the sand. He said to the woman, “He may live until the day you are adjudged to be with child. He is your chattel. If he once transgresses, the curse will be on you. With these hands”—he held his fists before the woman’s face—“I will rip your womb from your body and cast it into the sea.”

Made bold by rum and by her triumph, the woman shook Maynard’s genitals. “And if this performs ill service, I will cast
it
into the sea.” She laughed, and a ripple of relieved laughter spread through the clearing.

“You do not die well,” Nau said to Maynard. “What did you do in life?”

“I write.”

“A scrivener? Perhaps you’ll do double service, then. There has been no scribe since Esquemeling.”

“Esquemeling? You know about Esquemeling?”

Hizzoner interrupted, waving an admonitory finger in Maynard’s face. “Ye must know that woman has dominion over you. Do right to the widow. Esdras 2:20.”

“Cut him down,” Nau said, and turned away.

Justin did not follow. He stayed by his father as two men cut Maynard’s bonds and lowered him to the sand.

From the edge of the clearing, Nau commanded, “Come, lad! He’s your father no longer. He lives only as catamite to the hag.”

Barely conscious, Maynard saw Justin hesitate, sensed his dilemma. “Go,” he whispered. “Do anything. Roll with it. Stay alive.” Maynard resisted the fog until he saw Justin obey. Then he fainted.

He did not know how long he slept, for his sleep was restless and bothered by dreams of mayhem terrifying in their realism. At times he was hot, and he felt his face bathed by liquid and his nostrils stung with the smell of vinegar; at times cold, and he felt the scratchy texture of coarse cloth against his raw skin.

He awoke during a night, naked on his back on a mat of woven grass. He was in a grass-and-mud hut, an eight-by-eight-foot hemisphere. When he tried to move, he felt restraints, and he saw that his arms and legs were covered with vegetable poultices. The pain had subsided into a dull ache.

The woman sat beside him, cross-legged on the dirt floor, stirring something in a bowl. She had changed from the black coat into a gray poncho, had washed the charcoal from her face, and had cut off her waxed hair. What remained was a soft inch or two of brownish-blond turf. Maynard could not tell how old she was. Her angular face was creased and cracked from salt air and sun. Her fingers moved stiffly, arthritically, and her knuckles were swollen. But in a humid climate, arthritis often came to the very young. Her breasts—what little he could see of their outline beneath the poncho—were high and firm, and the flesh on her legs was lean. Allowing for the probability that weather and primitive living had aged her beyond her years, he guessed she could be thirty or thirty-five years old.

The light in the hut came from a rubber-covered flashlight that was propped between two bricks on the floor.

He pointed at the flashlight and said, “Where’d that come from?”

“A prize. Roche took it. A rich one it was. Two whole boxes of 6-12. Peaches. Nuts, too. And rum! He was hot for a week. They all were.”

“What happens when the batteries die?”

“They die. Like all things. Others come along.” She passed food to him. “Eat”

It was a slab of fish, raw, salted, and dried, but still slimy.

“You don’t cook food?”

“You’re mad. You think I want to lose my tongue?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Fires are dangerous. A green-wood fire during the day merits a flogging. For a fire at night, they cut your tongue.”

“Why are fires dangerous?”

“You are ignorant as well as craven. They would see us.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“They,” she said. “The others.”

Maynard raised the piece of fish to his mouth. He held his breath and tried to chew it. It was rubbery and caked with grit. He couldn’t swallow. He picked the fish from his mouth and dropped it in the dirt. “I’m not very hungry.”

“I thought as much,” she said. “I’ll fix that by and by.”

Maynard lay back and moved his limbs. The pain was ebbing. “What’s in these?” He patted one of the poultices.

“Spirea.” She poured liquid from a clay jug into the bowl in her lap and continued to stir.

Spirea, Maynard thought. Where had he read about spirea? Morison, Ernie Bradford, Homer? None of them, but Homer triggered the mnemonic. Spirea was a shrub whose bark was used by the ancient Greeks as an analgesic. Nowadays its extract was known as salicylic acid. Aspirin. Where had she learned about spirea?

With careful casualness, he asked. “Is this a . . . religious retreat here?”

“What?”

“Are you folks . . . you know . . . members of a cult of some kind?”

“What?”

Maynard abandoned indirection. “What the hell is this place?”

“You’re still sotted from the pain.”

“Who are these people?”

“This place is our home,” she said, as to a small child. “These people are my people.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Always.”

He looked into her eyes, searching for a hint of a lie or a joke or a tease.

She smiled at him, hiding nothing.