Thomasina - The Cat Who Thought She Was God (28 page)

The spokesman nodded in the direction of the wagons. “Back there—if you think you are brave enough.”

MacDhui shifted the whip in his hands so that the loaded stock came uppermost. “Open up!” he commanded, and strode forward. The men yielded a narrow path between them, so close that he brushed against them with his shoulders and smelled their rancor. Lori followed behind him. When they had passed through, the path closed. The gypsies came crowding after.

In his anger and indignation Mr. MacDhui forgot fear. He was so filled with truculence against these people that he felt capable of beating them singlehanded. He found himself wishing that this King Targu were a giant twelve feet tall, so that he might enjoy the satisfaction of bringing him to earth as he had the fellow with the belt.

But Targu was not. Quite the opposite; he was a wizened little fellow with a mahogany-colored face and small, piggy eyes. He was clad in ordinary trousers and wore a shirt without a collar, an unbuttoned waistcoat and a bowler hat. His only distinguishing feature was one large gold earring hanging from the lobe of his left ear. He came walking forward, followed by the rest of the men and women of the band, with a ragtag of children trailing them.

MacDhui asked, “Are you Targu, in charge of this band?”

In a curiously dry and wispy voice the little man in the bowler hat replied, “I am Targu. What is it you wish of me? And why have you struck down one of my young men and beaten Urgchin, my trainer, with a whip? What do you seek here with this red-haired witchwoman who is casting the evil eye upon our children?”

The gypsies had closed about them, hemming them in. MacDhui had a momentary realization of his folly. The innocence of the appearance of the little fellow in the bowler hat, like any Argyllshire farmer on a Sunday afternoon, had deceived him. He knew now that he and the woman beside him had left behind them their world of law and reason and in a second had passed backward through six or seven centuries, Ghazi interlopers in the Medieval kingdom of the dangerous and superstition-ridden Romany world.

Yet there was now no turning back and MacDhui, his brush thrust forward aggressively, said, “Targu; you will accompany me to the police station where I mean to charge you with inhuman cruelty to—”

Whether or not the gypsy chieftain was prepared to countenance murder was never to be known, for at that moment a wild cry rang from the outskirts of the crowd; some word in a foreign language. It was repeated. The gypsies turned and opened a path. It was the booted fellow with the black belt and the smashed nose. His face was a mask of blood. In his hands was a length of chain. Swinging it, he ran at MacDhui with intent to brain him.

It was the press of men about them that saved them first, for the gypsy’s aim was deflected and the chain came down upon the shoulders of another, felling him, but the action triggered the tensions that had been building; clubs and knives appeared, and the next moment MacDhui was fighting for the lives of Lori and himself.

Bellowing like a bull, an arm about Lori, the other wielding the heavy whipstock, he half cleared a way for them before Lori was torn from his grasp and he was staggered by a blow on the head. The whipstock broke as he got his back up against a wagon, but he wrenched an iron bar from an attacker and flailed with it. Yet he knew that his moments were numbered, for the killing lust had seized the mob and they were getting to him like dogs about a beast brought to bay from the side and even above, where some boy climbed the canvas roof of the wagon and rained blows of a stick upon his head, while another sought to stab at his legs from between the wheels.

Winded and gasping, his chest afire from his exertions, his strength draining from him, MacDhui’s sight began to dim, when a new cry, wild and eerie, rose up out of the hurly-burly of shouts, grunts, and the whistling of battle-drawn breath.

“A MacDhui! A MacDhui!”

It was Lori. Somehow she had freed herself and from the nearest of the wagons had plucked a flaming petrol torch with which she advanced, bringing the attack upon the veterinary momentarily to a halt.

The flame revealed her cloak, half rent, spilling from her shoulders, her dark red hair a loose, disheveled aureole about her face. But it was the expression and the light in her eyes that MacDhui was never to forget to the end of his days. Gone was the gentleness. Mouth twisted, eyes ablaze, she was as battle-drunk as any Celtic queen of old, pressing to the side of her beleaguered chieftain.

“A MacDhui! A MacDhui!” She came on, flailing her torch, scattering blazing petrol, opening a path to where the spent man stood wavering and near to collapse. She held him erect with an arm about his waist, keeping his attackers at bay. But as they rallied and again closed in, she shouted her battle cry once more, “A MacDhui!” and then adding, “This for ye,” plunged the torch into the side of the canvas wagon.

In an instant the creeping orange flames were eating into cloth and wooden hoop—the dry material went up like tinder erupting into floating bits of burning material that fired the next wagon and yet another—

The fight was over. The quarry was forgotten in the fire panic. Screaming, cursing, some tried to pull the burning wagons from the circle, others scrambled to withdraw possessions from the flaming caravans, a few formed a bucket brigade from the river.

Unnoticed, MacDhui and Lori moved off behind the wagons until they came to the cages, where the weary man sank to his knees for a moment and the woman knelt beside him.

“Andrew,” she cried, “are ye all richt?” She herself was smudged and smoke-grimed and there was a bruise on her cheek.

“Aye,” he said, “I am but spent.” He knew that he had a nasty crack on the top of his head, which was buzzing as though filled with bees, as well as bruises and welts on arms, legs and body, but nought more serious. “Thanks to you, Lori, or I would not be here.”

She did not see the blood matting the top of his head, for she was looking deeply into his eyes, and the wildness had not yet all gone from hers. “Andrew!” she cried and yet again, “Andrew!” Then she seized his battered face in her hands and kissed his mouth. Thereafter she arose and, turning, ran off like a young deer in the direction of the glen.

He called after her, “Lori! Lori! Come back to me!”

But she was gone, leaving him on his hands and knees, shaking his head to loose the dizziness from it. Behind him the orange glow and the crackling diminished, as the gypsies began to bring the flames under control— MacDhui wondered whether he was dead or alive or dreaming. But as his breath returned, his head cleared somewhat and he grinned foolishly to himself. “Time to be getting out of here,” he said half aloud.

But first there was something to be done. Terrified by the fire, the caged beasts were barking, whimpering, chittering, scolding. Methodically MacDhui removed the staples from the hasps of the cages, opened the doors, and freed them. If they perished, it would at least be in freedom. Then he staggered off in the direction of his jeep.

At the wooden platform at the end of the field where the tragedy had begun, he came upon a small, dark heap. It was the bear and it was dead. He looked down upon the deflated heap of fur and thought how sorry Geordie would be to hear that his bear had lain down for the last time and would bleed no more. He thought, too, that the tears that Geordie had let fall for this poor beast whose plight had touched his heart had been well shed. He wondered whether Lori had passed this way, too, in her flight and had paused to weep. He found himself wishing that he himself could cry. After a moment he turned away and got into his jeep.

At any rate, he thought, as he passed the gypsies still pouring buckets upon the smoking ruins of three of their caravans, the bear had been avenged. A mile down he stopped by the river and bathed his face and bruises and washed the blood from his face and head, noting that it was not a serious scalp wound. Then wearily he climbed back into his jeep and drove toward the town.

Just before he reached the saddlebacked bridge, a car coming in the opposite direction blinked its lights at him and MacDhui noted the third light atop the roof, indicative of the police car. He pulled to the side of the road, as did the other, and Constable MacQuarrie came over to him, swinging a torch. He said, “Ah good. It’s you, sir!”

MacDhui said, “The fire’s out. But I shall have a charge for you against a man named King Targu, and a fat, greasy bear trainer—inhuman cruelty to animals—”

“Och aye,” said the constable. “In good time. But it is upon another errand we have come. ’Tis you we were sent to fetch.”

“Ah, ah—” MacDhui breathed, and felt the dreadful grip of a different kind of fear upon his heart, squeezing that organ as though trying to halt its beat.

The constable looked down and shuffled his feet. “You’re wanted at home at once, sir. Dr. Strathsay— Well, he said to find you and bring you as quickly as ever.”

“Ah—” breathed MacDhui again and then asked the question that took more courage than he had displayed all through the wild night. “Is the child alive or dead?”

The constable could look up again. “Alive, sor! But Dr. Strathsay said we were to find you—”

“Lead me—” MacDhui begged. “Lead me—and in mercy’s name, drive quickly.”

The police car roared about and drove off, wailing its siren. Mr. MacDhui followed, concentrating with all the strength that was left him upon the red eye of the taillight that was leading him to sorrow.

2 5

A
h! What have I done? Have I then played God who am not one? Are all of the old gods dead and magic no more? Is Sekhmet-Bast-Ra but a dream? Am I then no more than Talitha, a stray found in the forest by a red-haired weaver woman who lives by herself and ministers to small things that are sick or helpless?

And who is Talitha, and whence came I? In which world am I to live?

The doom I prepared has failed. Long after the fire in the valley died down that night Lori returned and passed by the rock where I lay watching. She walked unseeing. By the light of the lantern she carried, I saw that her clothes were torn and stained with blood and burned by fire and that her face was wet with tears.

When she had passed I crept down from my rock and trotted softly in her footsteps until we reached the clearing. It seemed as though a spell was on the others. Peter did not bark, but crept on his belly, whining and moaning. Wullie and McMurdock were back on the ground, but as nervous as witches, and spat at me when I appeared out of the darkness until they saw who it was.

Wullie said, “What has happened? Is Lori injured? I saw blood!”

McMurdock, who in spite of his denials always had a lingering suspicion that I was perhaps a god, growled at me, “Is this some of your doing? You’ve been acting very strangely lately, my girl. If you’ve been trying any of your so-called Egyptian tricks, you’ll have me to deal with.”

I did not deign to reply, but went inside.

Lori sat on a bench by the hearth, as she was, smoke-grimed, disheveled, her clothing bloodstained, a bruise mark upon her face, and wept. Her face was buried in her hands and she wept quietly and endlessly. I wished to comfort her, if this might be. I rose to my hind legs beside her and, with the pad of my paw, twice touched the hand that covered her face.

She looked then and gathered me into her arms and held me. Did ever any woman weep so? She did not sob or cry out, but only let fall the warm and ceaseless tears from her eyes.

Once she spoke to me, holding me hard, pressed to herself, her wet cheek next to mine. “Talitha! Talitha! What shall I do? What is to become of me now?”

Ah, had she but prayed to Sekhmet-Bast-Ra, lady of Sept and of the star Sothis, fertile Isis, chaste Artemis, in all of whom I am embodied, I would have emptied the skies to join her tears and importuned my father Ra to dry them—the blessings of heaven and earth would I have showered upon her—

After a time she let me go, arose, took off her torn and soiled garments and washed herself, and never once did the tears leave off from her eyes. Then she did a strange thing. She took from the hearth mantel an oil lamp and with it went to her mirror and there regarding herself long and with a kind of bewilderment, as though the image of herself was one that she had never seen before.

She fingered the bruise upon her cheek again and again, almost as though it were something she cherished. And she looked long and deeply into her own eyes, from which the tears were still falling, then touched her hair and her mouth as though she were not quite sure they were hers. Then she spoke to the image in the mirror as she had spoken to me. “What am I now? What has become of Lori? What am I to do? What am I to do?” Then she prepared for bed, and I, as usual, retired to the hearth.

But that night she called to me from the head of the half flight of stairs that led to the loft where she lived and slept, “Talitha—Talitha—don’t leave me. Come, puss, bide with me tonight—”

I had never been allowed abovestairs before. I went to the foot of the steps and called up to her to make sure that she really meant it.

“Ah yes, puss,” she said, “come to me. I would not be alone.”

I gave the happiness croon and ran up the stairs and jumped into her arms and purred and she rubbed her cheek against my flank.

A bed, a chair, and a chest of drawers stood in the plain, whitewashed room, and a lamp by the bedside. Lori held me in her lap for a moment and looked long and deep into my eyes. She no longer wept. She said, “Tell me, Talitha; you who were once dead. What is it like? Is there peace?”

I did not understand what she meant, for I have been dead a thousand times and a thousand times more and will die yet more thousands, and still my ka will sail in its bark along the River of Darkness between heaven and earth through eternity.

She let me go and I curled up at the foot of her bed. Lori said, “Thank you for staying, my puss. Good night to ye,” and blew out the lamp.

From somewhere in the darkened room there came the most delicious fragrance, and then was gone. What was it? Whence had I known it before? In what age; in what incarnation? What was it that it reminded me of, to set me purring? Was it a memory of temple incense, or some wild herb encountered in a bygone forest hunt?