* * *
It was full daylight when I woke, my leg wedged between two branches, and numb from the knee down. I half-climbed, half-fell from my perch, landing in the shallow water of the inlet. I scooped up a handful of the water, tasted it, and spat it out. Not salt, but too brackish to drink.
My clothes were damp, but I was parched. The storm was long gone; everything around me was peaceful and normal, with the exception of the blackened mangroves. In the distance, I could hear the booming of the big black birds.
Brackish water here promised fresher water farther up the inlet. I rubbed my leg, trying to work out the pins-and-needles, then limped up the bank.
The vegetation began to change from the gray-green mangroves to a lusher green, with a thick undergrowth of grass and mossy plants that obliged me to walk in the water. Tired and thirsty as I was, I could go only a short distance before having to sit down and rest. As I did so, several of the odd little fish hopped up onto the bank beside me, goggling as though in curiosity.
“Well, I think you look rather peculiar, too,” I told one.
“Are you English?” said the fish incredulously. The impression of Alice in Wonderland was so pronounced that I merely blinked stupidly at it for a moment. Then my head snapped up, and I stared into the face of the man who had spoken.
His face was weathered and sunburned to the color of mahogany, but the black hair that curled back from his brow was thick and ungrizzled. He stepped out from behind the mangrove, moving cautiously, as though afraid to startle me.
He was a bit above middle height and burly, thick through the shoulder, with a broad, boldly carved face, whose naturally friendly expression was tinged with wariness. He was dressed shabbily, with a heavy canvas bag slung across his shoulder—and a canteen made of goatskin hung from his belt.
“Vous êtes Anglaise?” he asked, repeating his original question in French. “Comment ?a va?”
“Yes, I’m English,” I said, croaking. “May I have some water, please?”
His eyes popped wide open—they were a light hazel—but he didn’t say anything, just took the skin bag from his belt and handed it to me.
I laid the fish knife on my knee, close within reach, and drank deeply, scarcely able to gulp fast enough.
“Careful,” he said. “It’s dangerous to drink too fast.”
“I know,” I said, slightly breathless as I lowered the bag. “I’m a doctor.” I lifted the canteen and drank again, but forced myself to swallow more slowly this time.
My rescuer was regarding me quizzically—and little wonder, I supposed. Sea-soaked and sun-dried, mud-caked and sweat-stained, with my hair straggling down over my face, I looked like a beggar, and probably a demented one at that.
“A doctor?” he said in English, showing that his thoughts had been traveling in the direction I suspected. He eyed me closely, in a way strongly reminiscent of the big black bird I had met earlier. “A doctor of what, if I might ask?”
“Medicine,” I said, pausing briefly between gulps.
He had strongly drawn black brows. These rose nearly to his hairline.
“Indeed,” he said, after a noticeable pause.
“Indeed,” I said in the same tone of voice, and he laughed.
He inclined his head toward me in a formal bow. “In that case, Madame Physician, allow me to introduce myself. Lawrence Stern, Doctor of Natural Philosophy, of the Gesellschaft von Naturwissenschaft Philosophieren, Munich.”
I blinked at him.
“A naturalist,” he elaborated, gesturing at the canvas bag over his shoulder. “I was making my way toward those frigate birds in hopes of observing their breeding display, when I happened to overhear you, er…”
“Talking to a fish,” I finished. “Yes, well…have they really got four eyes?” I asked, in hopes of changing the subject.
“Yes—or so it seems.” He glanced down at the fish, who appeared to be following the conversation with rapt attention. “They seem to employ their oddly shaped optics when submerged, so that the upper pair of eyes observes events above the surface of the water, and the lower pair similarly takes note of happenings below it.”
He looked then at me, with a hint of a smile. “Might I perhaps have the honor of knowing your name, Madame Physician?”
I hesitated, unsure what to tell him. I pondered the assortment of available aliases and decided on the truth.
“Fraser,” I said. “Claire Fraser. Mrs. James Fraser,” I added for good measure, feeling vaguely that marital status might make me seem slightly more respectable, appearances notwithstanding. I fingered back the curl hanging in my left eye.
“Your servant, Madame,” he said with a gracious bow. He rubbed the bridge of his nose thoughtfully, looking at me.
“You have been shipwrecked, perhaps?” he ventured. It seemed the most logical—if not the only—explanation of my presence, and I nodded.
“I need to find a way to get to Jamaica,” I said. “Do you think you can help me?”
He stared at me, frowning slightly, as though I were a specimen he couldn’t quite decide how to classify, but then he nodded. He had a broad mouth that looked made for smiling; one corner turned up, and he extended a hand to help me up.
“Yes,” he said. “I can help. But I think maybe first we find you some food, and maybe clothes, eh? I have a friend, who lives not so far away. I will take you there, shall I?”
What with parching thirst and the general press of events, I had paid little attention to the demands of my stomach. At the mention of food, however, II’ it came immediately and vociferously to life.
“That,” I said loudly, in hopes of drowning it out, “would be very nice indeed.” I brushed back the tangle of my hair as well as I could, and ducking under a branch, followed my rescuer into the trees.
* * *
As we emerged from a palmetto grove, the ground opened out into a meadow-like space, then rose up in a broad hill before us. At the top of the hill, I could see a house—or at least a ruin. Its yellow plaster walls were cracked and overrun by pink bougainvillaeas and straggling guavas, the tin roof sported several visible holes, and the whole place gave off an air of mournful dilapidation.
“Hacienda de la Fuente,” my new acquaintance said, with a nod toward it. “Can you stand the walk up the hill, or—” He hesitated, eyeing me as though estimating my weight. “I could carry you, I suppose,” he said, with a not altogether flattering tone of doubt in his voice.
“I can manage,” I assured him. My feet were bruised and sore, and punctured by fallen palmetto fronds, but the path before us looked relatively smooth.
The hillside leading up to the house was crisscrossed with the faint lines of sheep trails. There were a number of these animals present, peacefully grazing under the hot Hispaniola sun. As we stepped out of the trees, one sheep spotted us and uttered a short bleat of surprise. Like clockwork, every sheep on the hillside lifted its head in unison and stared at us.
Feeling rather self-conscious under this unblinking phalanx of suspicious eyes, I picked up my muddy skirts and followed Dr. Stern toward the main path—trodden by more than sheep, to judge from its width—that led up and over the hill.
It was a fine, bright day, and flocks of orange and white butterflies flickered through the grass. They lighted on the scattered blooms with here and there a brilliant yellow butterfly shining like a tiny sun.
I breathed in deeply, a lovely smell of grass and flowers, with minor notes of sheep and sun-warmed dust. A brown speck lighted for a moment on my sleeve and clung, long enough for me to see the velvet scales on its wing, and the tiny curled hose of its proboscis. The slender abdomen pulsed, breathing to its wing-beats, and then it was gone.
It might have been the promise of help, the water, the butterflies, or all three, but the burden of fear and fatigue under which I had labored for so long began to lift. True, I still had to face the problem of finding transport to Jamaica, but with thirst assuaged, a friend at hand, and the possibility of lunch just ahead, that no longer appeared the impossible task it had seemed in the mangroves.
“There he is!” Lawrence stopped, waiting for me to come up alongside him on the path. He gestured upward, toward a slight, wiry figure, picking its way carefully down the hillside toward us. I squinted at the figure as it wandered through the sheep, who took no apparent notice of his passage.
“Jesus!” I said. “It’s St. Francis of Assisi.”
Lawrence glanced at me in surprise.
“No, neither one. I told you he’s English.” He raised an arm and shouted, “áHola! Se?or Fogden!”
The gray-robed figure paused suspiciously, one hand twined protectively in the wool of a passing ewe.
“àQuien es?”
“Stern!” called Lawrence. “Lawrence Stern! Come along,” he said, and extended a hand to pull me up the steep hillside onto the sheep path above.
The ewe was making determined efforts to escape her protector, which distracted him from our approach. A slender man a bit taller than I, he had a lean face that might have been handsome if not disfigured by a reddish beard that straggled dust-mop-like round the edges of his chin. His long and straying hair had gone to gray in streaks and runnels, and fell forward into his eyes with some frequency. An orange butterfly took wing from his head as we reached him.
“Stern?” he said, brushing back the hair with his free hand and blinking owlishly in the sunlight. “I don’t know any…oh, it’s you!” His thin face brightened. “Why didn’t you say it was the shitworm man; I should have known you at once!”
Stern looked mildly embarrassed at this, and glanced at me apologetically. “I…ah…collected several interesting parasites from the excrement of Mr. Fogden’s sheep, upon the occasion of my last visit,” he explained.
“Horrible great worms!” Father Fogden said, shuddering violently in recollection. “A foot long, some of them, at least!”
“No more than eight inches,” Stern corrected, smiling. He glanced at the nearest sheep, his hand resting on his collecting bag as though in anticipation of further imminent contributions to science. “Was the remedy I suggested effective?”
Father Fogden looked vaguely doubtful, as though trying to remember quite what the remedy had been.
“The turpentine drench,” the naturalist prompted.
“Oh, yes!” The sun broke out on the priest’s lean countenance, and he beamed fondly upon us. “Of course, of course! Yes, it worked splendidly. A few of them died, but the rest were quite cured. Capital, entirely capital!”
Suddenly it seemed to dawn on Father Fogden that he was being less than hospitable.
“But you must come in!” he said. “I was just about to partake of the midday meal; I insist you must join me.” The priest turned to me. “This will be Mrs. Stern, will it?”
Mention of eight-inch intestinal worms had momentarily suppressed my hunger pangs, but at the mention of food, they came gurgling back in full force.
“No, but we should be delighted to partake of your hospitality,” Stern answered politely. “Pray allow me to introduce my companion—a Mrs. Fraser, a countrywoman of yours.”
Fogden’s eyes grew quite round at this. A pale blue, with a tendency to water in bright sun, they fixed wonderingly upon me.
“An Englishwoman?” he said, disbelieving. “Here?” The round eyes took in the mud and salt stains on my crumpled dress, and my general air of disarray. He blinked for a moment, then stepped forward, and with the utmost dignity, bowed low over my hand.
“Your most obedient servant, Madame,” he said. He rose and gestured grandly at the ruin on the hill. “Mi casa es su casa.” He whistled sharply, and a small King Charles cavalier spaniel poked its face inquiringly out of the weeds.
“We have a guest, Ludo,” the priest said, beaming. “Isn’t that nice?” Tucking my hand firmly under one elbow, he took the sheep by its topknot of wool and towed us both toward the Hacienda de la Fuente, leaving Stern to follow.
The reason for the name became clear as we entered the dilapidated courtyard; a tiny cloud of dragonflies hovered like blinking lights over an algae-filled pool in one corner; it looked like a natural spring that someone had curbed in when the house was built. At least a dozen jungle fowl sprang up from the shattered pavement and flapped madly past our feet, leaving a small cloud of dust and feathers behind them. From other evidences left behind, I deduced that the trees overhanging the patio were their customary roost, and had been for some time.
“And so I was fortunate enough to encounter Mrs. Fraser among the mangroves this morning,” Stern concluded. “I thought that perhaps you might…oh, look at that beauty! A magnificent Odonata!”
A tone of amazed delight accompanied this last statement, and he pushed unceremoniously past us to peer up into the shadows of the palm-thatched patio roof, where an enormous dragonfly, at least four inches across, was darting to and fro, blue body catching fire when it crossed one of the errant rays of sunshine poking through the tattered roof.
“Oh, do you want it? Be my guest.” Our host waved a gracious hand at the dragonfly. “Here, Becky, trot in there and I’ll see to your hoof in a bit.” He shooed the ewe into the patio with a slap on the rump. It snorted and galloped off a few feet, then fell at once to browsing on the scattered fruit of a huge guava that overhung the ancient wall.
In fact, the trees around the patio had grown up to such an extent that the branches at many points interlaced. The whole of the courtyard seemed roofed with them, a sort of leafy tunnel, leading down the length of the patio into the gaping cavern of the house’s entrance.
Drifts of dust and the pink paper leaves of bougainvillaea lay heaped against the sill, but just beyond, the dark wood floor gleamed with polish, bare and immaculate. It was dark inside, after the brilliance of the sunlight, but my eyes quickly adapted to the surroundings, and I looked around curiously.
It was a very plain room, dark and cool, furnished with no more than a long table, a few stools and chairs, and a small sideboard, over which hung a hideous painting in the Spanish style—an emaciated Christ, goateed and pallid in the gloom, indicating with one skeletal hand the bleeding heart that throbbed in his chest.
This ghastly object so struck my eye that it was a moment before I realized there was someone else in the room. The shadows in one corner of the room coalesced, and a small round face emerged, wearing an expression of remarkable malignity. I blinked and took a step back. The woman—for so she was—took a step forward, black eyes fixed on me, unblinking as the sheep.
She was no more than four feet tall, and so thick through the body as to seem like a solid block, without joint or indentation. Her head was a small round knob atop her body, with the smaller knob of a sparse gray bun scraped tightly back behind it. She was a light mahogany color—whether from the sun or naturally, I couldn’t tell—and looked like nothing so much as a carved wooden doll. An ill-wish doll.
“Mamacita,” said the priest, speaking Spanish to the graven image, “what good fortune! We have guests who will eat with us. You remember Se?or Stern?” he added, gesturing at Lawrence.
“Sí, claro,” said the image, through invisible wooden lips. “The Christ-killer. And who is the puta alba?”
“And this is Se?ora Fraser,” Father Fogden went on, beaming as though she had not spoken. “The poor lady has had the misfortune to be shipwrecked; we must assist her as much as we can.”
Mamacita looked me over slowly from top to toe. She said nothing, but the wide nostrils flared with infinite contempt.
“Your food’s ready,” she said, and turned away.
“Splendid!” the priest said happily. “Mamacita welcomes you; she’ll bring us some food. Won’t you sit down?”
The table was already laid with a large cracked plate and a wooden spoon. The priest took two more plates and spoons from the sideboard, and distributed them haphazardly about the table, gesturing hospitably at us to be seated.
A large brown coconut sat on the chair at the head of the table. Fogden tenderly picked this up and set it alongside his plate. The fibrous husk was darkened with age, and the hair was worn off it in patches, showing an almost polished appearance; I thought he must have had it for some time.
“Hallo there,” he said, patting it affectionately. “And how are you keeping this fine day, Coco?”
I glanced at Stern, but he was studying the portrait of Christ, a small frown between his thick black brows. I supposed it was up to me to open a conversation.
“You live alone here, Mr.—ah, Father Fogden?” I inquired of our host. “You, and—er, Mamacita?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. That’s why I’m so pleased to see you. I haven’t any real company but Ludo and Coco, you know,” he explained, patting the hairy nut once more.
“Coco?” I said politely, thinking that on the evidence to hand so far, Coco wasn’t the only nut among those present. I darted another glance at Stern, who looked mildly amused, but not alarmed.
“Spanish for bugbear—coco,” the priest explained. “A hobgoblin. See him there, wee button nose and his dark little eyes?” Fogden jabbed two long, slender fingers suddenly into the depressions in the end of the coconut and jerked them back, chortling.
“Ah-ah!” he cried. “Mustn’t stare, Coco, it’s rude, you know!”
The pale blue eyes darted a piercing glance at me, and with some difficulty, I removed my teeth from my lower lip.
“Such a pretty lady,” he said, as though to himself. “Not like my Ermenegilda, but very pretty nonetheless—isn’t she, Ludo?”
The dog, thus addressed, ignored me, but bounded joyfully at its master, shoving its head under his hand and barking. He scratched its ears affectionately, then turned his attention back to me.
“Would one of Ermenegilda’s dresses fit you, I wonder?”
I didn’t know whether to answer this or not. Instead, I merely smiled politely, and hoped what I was thinking didn’t show on my face. Fortunately, at this point Mamacita came back, carrying a steaming clay pot wrapped in towels. She slapped a ladleful of the contents on each plate, then went out, her feet—if she had any—moving invisibly beneath the shapeless skirt.
I stirred the mess on my plate, which appeared to be vegetable in nature. I took a cautious bite, and found it surprisingly good.
“Fried plantain, mixed with manioc and red beans,” Lawrence explained, seeing my hesitation. He took a large spoonful of the steaming pulp himself and ate it without pausing for it to cool.
I had expected something of an inquisition about my presence, identity, and prospects. Instead, Father Fogden was singing softly under his breath, keeping time on the table with his spoon between bites.
I darted a glance at Lawrence, eyebrows up. He merely smiled, raised one shoulder in a slight shrug, and bent to his own food.
No real conversation occurred until the conclusion of the meal, when Mamacita—“unsmiling” seemed an understatement of her expression—removed the plates, replacing them with a platter of fruit, three cups, and a gigantic clay pitcher.
“Have you ever drunk sangria, Mrs. Fraser?”
I opened my mouth to say “Yes,” thought better of it, and said, “No, what is it?” Sangria had been a popular drink in the 1960s, and I had had it many times at faculty parties and hospital social events. But for now, I was sure that it was unknown in England and Scotland; Mrs. Fraser of Edinburgh would never have heard of sangria.
“A mixture of red wine and the juices of orange and lemon,” Lawrence Stern was explaining. “Mulled with spices, and served hot or cold, depending upon the weather. A most comforting and healthful beverage, is it not, Fogden?”
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Most comforting.” Not waiting for me to find out for myself, the priest drained his cup, and reached for the pitcher before I had taken the first sip.
It was the same; the same sweet, throat-rasping taste, and I suffered the momentary illusion that I was back at the party where I had first tasted it, in company with a marijuana-smoking graduate student and a professor of botany.
This illusion was fostered by Stern’s conversation, which dealt with his collections, and by Father Fogden’s behavior. After several cups of sangria, he had risen, rummaged through the sideboard, and emerged with a large clay pipe. This he packed full of a strong-smelling herb shaken out of a paper twist, and proceeded to smoke.
“Hemp?” Stern asked, seeing this. “Tell me, do you find it settling to the digestive processes? I have heard it is so, but the herb is unobtainable in most European cities, and I have no firsthand observations of its effect.”
“Oh, it is most genial and comforting to the stomach,” Father Fogden assured him. He drew in a huge breath, held it, then exhaled long and dreamily, blowing a stream of soft white smoke that floated in streamers of haze near the room’s low ceiling. “I shall send a packet home with you, dear fellow. Do say, now, what do you mean doing, you and this shipwrecked lady you have rescued?”
Stern explained his plan; after a night’s rest, we intended to walk as far as the village of St. Luis du Nord, and from there see whether a fishing boat might carry us to Cap-Ha?tien, thirty miles distant. If not, we would have to make our way overland to Le Cap, the nearest port of any size.
The priest’s sketchy brows drew close together, frowning against the smoke.
“Mm? Well, I suppose there isn’t much choice, is there? Still, you must go careful, particularly if you go overland to Le Cap. Maroons, you know.”
“Maroons?” I glanced quizzically at Stern, who nodded, frowning.
“That’s true. I did meet with two or three small bands as I came north through the valley of the Artibonite. They didn’t molest me, though—I daresay I looked little better off than they, poor wretches. The Maroons are escaped slaves,” he explained to me. “Having fled the cruelty of their masters, they take refuge in the remote hills, where the jungle hides them.”
“They might not trouble you,” Father Fogden said. He sucked deeply on his pipe, with a low, slurping noise, held his breath for a long count and then let it out reluctantly. His eyes were becoming markedly bloodshot. He closed one of them and examined me rather blearily with the other. “She doesn’t look worth robbing, really.”
Stern smiled broadly, looking at me, then quickly erased the smile, as though feeling he had been less than tactful. He coughed and took another cup of sangria. The priest’s eyes gleamed over the pipe, red as a ferret’s.
“I believe I need a little fresh air,” I said, pushing back my chair. “And perhaps a little water, to wash with?”
“Oh, of course, of course!” Father Fogden cried. He rose, swaying unsteadily, and thumped the coals from his pipe carelessly out onto the sideboard. “Come with me.”
The air in the patio seemed fresh and invigorating by comparison, despite its mugginess. I inhaled deeply, looking on with interest as Father Fogden fumbled with a bucket by the fountain in the corner.
“Where does the water come from?” I asked. “Is it a spring?” The stone trough was lined with soft tendrils of green algae, and I could see these moving lazily; evidently there was a current of some kind.
It was Stern who answered.
“Yes, there are hundreds of such springs. Some of them are said to have spirits living in them—but I do not suppose you subscribe to such superstition, sir?”
Father Fogden seemed to have to think about this. He set the half-filled bucket down on the coping and squinted into the water, trying to fix his gaze on one of the small silver fish that swam there.
“Ah?” he said vaguely. “Well, no. Spirits, no. Still—oh, yes, I had forgotten. I had something to show you.” Going to a cupboard set into the wall, he pulled open the cracked wooden door and removed a small bundle of coarse unbleached muslin, which he put gingerly into Stern’s hands.
“It came up in the spring one day last month,” he said. “It died when the noon sun struck it, and I took it out. I’m afraid the other fish nibbled it a bit,” he said apologetically, “but you can still see.”
Lying in the center of the cloth was a small dried fish, much like those darting about in the spring, save that this one was pure white. It was also blind. On either side of the blunt head, there was a small swelling where an eye should have been, but that was all.
“Do you think it is a ghost fish?” the priest inquired. “I thought of it when you mentioned spirits. Still, I can’t think what sort of sin a fish might have committed, so as to be doomed to roam about like that—eyeless, I mean. I mean”—he closed one eye again in his favorite expression—“one doesn’t think of fish as having souls, and yet, if they don’t, how can they become ghosts?”
“I shouldn’t think they do, myself,” I assured him. I peered more closely at the fish, which Stern was examining with the rapt joy of the born naturalist. The skin was very thin, and so transparent that the shadows of the internal organs and the knobbly line of the vertebrae were clearly visible, yet it did have scales, tiny and translucent, though dulled by dryness.
“It is a blind cave fish,” Stern said, reverently stroking the tiny blunt head. “I have seen one only once before, in a pool deep inside a cave, at a place called Abandawe. And that one escaped before I could examine it closely. My dear fellow—” He turned to the priest, eyes shining with excitement. “Might I have it?”
“Of course, of course.” The priest fluttered his fingers in offhand generosity. “No use to me. Too small to eat, you know, even if Mamacita would think of cooking it, which she wouldn’t.” He glanced around the patio, kicking absently at a passing hen. “Where is Mamacita?”
“Here, cabrón, where else?” I hadn’t seen her come out of the house, but there she was, a dusty, sunbrowned little figure stooping to fill another bucket from the spring.
A faintly musty, unpleasant smell reached my nostrils, and they twitched uneasily. The priest must have noticed, for he said, “Oh, you mustn’t mind, it’s only poor Arabella.”
“Arabella?”
“Yes, in here.” The priest held aside a ragged curtain of burlap that screened off a corner of the patio, and I glanced behind it.
A ledge jutted out of the stone wall at waist-height. On it were ranged a long row of sheep’s skulls, pure white and polished.
“I can’t bear to part with them, you see.” Father Fogden gently stroked the heavy curve of a skull. “This was Beatriz—so sweet and gentle. She died in lambing, poor thing.” He indicated two much smaller skulls nearby, shaped and polished like the rest.
“Arabella is a—a sheep, too?” I asked. The smell was much stronger here, and I thought I really didn’t want to know where it was coming from at all.
“A member of my flock, yes, certainly.” The priest turned his oddly bright blue eyes on me, looking quite fierce. “She was murdered! Poor Arabella, such a gentle, trusting soul. How they can have had the wickedness to betray such innocence for the sake of carnal lusts!”
“Oh, dear,” I said, rather inadequately. “I’m terribly sorry to hear that. Ah—who murdered her?”
“The sailors, the wicked heathen! Killed her on the beach and roasted her poor body over a gridiron, just like St. Lawrence the Martyr.”
“Heavens,” I said.
The priest sighed, and his spindly beard appeared to droop with mourning.
“Yes, I must not forget the hope of Heaven. For if Our Lord observes the fall of every sparrow, He can scarcely have failed to observe Arabella. She must have weighed near on ninety pounds, at least, such a good grazer as she was, poor child.”
“Ah,” I said, trying to infuse the remark with a suitable sympathy and horror. It then occurred to me what the priest had said.
“Sailors?” I asked. “When did you say this—this sad occurrence took place?” It couldn’t be the Porpoise, I thought. Surely, Captain Leonard would not have thought me so important that he had risked bringing his ship in so close to the island, in order to pursue me? But my hands grew damp at the thought, and I wiped them unobtrusively on my robe.
“This morning,” Father Fogden replied, setting back the lamb’s skull he had picked up to fondle. “But,” he added, his manner brightening a bit, “I must say they’re making wonderful progress with her. It usually takes more than a week, and already you can quite see…”
He opened the cupboard again, revealing a large lump, covered with several layers of damp burlap. The smell was markedly stronger now, and a number of small brown beetles scuttled away from the light.
“Are those members of the Dermestidae you have there, Fogden?” Lawrence Stern, having tenderly committed the corpse of his cave fish to a jar of alcoholic spirits, had come to join us. He peered over my shoulder, sunburned features creased in interest.
Inside the cupboard, the white maggot larvae of dermestid beetles were hard at work, polishing the skull of Arabella the sheep. They had made a good start on the eyes. The manioc shifted heavily in my stomach.
“Is that what they are? I suppose so; dear voracious little fellows.” The priest swayed alarmingly, catching himself on the edge of the cupboard. As he did so, he finally noticed the old woman, standing glaring at him, a bucket in either hand.
“Oh, I had quite forgotten! You will be needing a change of clothing, will you not, Mrs. Fraser?”
I looked down at myself. The dress and shift I was wearing were ripped in so many places that they were barely decent, and so soaked and sodden with water and swamp-mud that I was scarcely tolerable, even in such undemanding company as that of Father Fogden and Lawrence Stern.
Father Fogden turned to the graven image. “Have we not something this unfortunate lady might wear, Mamacita?” he asked in Spanish. He seemed to hesitate, swaying gently. “Perhaps, one of the dresses in—”
The woman bared her teeth at me. “They are much too small for such a cow,” she said, also in Spanish. “Give her your old robe, if you must.” She cast an eye of scorn on my tangled hair and mud-streaked face. “Come,” she said in English, turning her back on me. “You wash.”
She led me to a smaller patio at the back of the house, where she provided me with two buckets of cold, fresh water, a worn linen towel, and a small pot of soft soap, smelling strongly of lye. Adding a shabby gray robe with a rope belt, she bared her teeth at me again and left, remarking genially in Spanish, “Wash away the blood on your hands, Christ-killing whore.”
I shut the patio gate after her with a considerable feeling of relief, stripped off my sticky, filthy clothes with even more relief, and made my toilet as well as might be managed with cold water and no comb.
Clad decently, if oddly, in Father Fogden’s extra robe, I combed out my wet hair with my fingers, contemplating my peculiar host. I wasn’t sure whether the priest’s excursions into oddness were some form of dementia, or only the side effects of long-term alcoholism and cannabis intoxication, but he seemed a gentle, kindly soul, in spite of it. His servant—if that’s what she was—was another question altogether.
Mamacita made me more than slightly nervous. Mr. Stern had announced his intention of going down to the seaside to bathe, and I was reluctant to go back into the house until he returned. There had been quite a lot of sangria left, and I suspected that Father Fogden—if he was still conscious—would be little protection by this time against that basilisk glare.
Still, I couldn’t stay outside all afternoon; I was very tired, and wanted to sit down at least, though I would have preferred to find a bed and sleep for a week. There was a door opening into the house from my small patio; I pushed it open and stepped into the dark interior.
I was in a small bedroom. I looked around, amazed; it didn’t seem part of the same house as the Spartan main room and the shabby patios. The bed was made up with feather pillows and a coverlet of soft red wool. Four huge patterned fans were spread like bright wings across the whitewashed walls, and wax candles in a branched brass candelabrum sat on the table.
The furniture was simply but carefully made, and polished with oil to a soft, deep gloss. A curtain of striped cotton hung across the end of the room. It was pushed partway back, and I could see a row of dresses hung on hooks behind it, in a rainbow of silken color.
These must be Ermenegilda’s dresses, the ones that Father Fogden had mentioned. I walked forward to look at them, my bare feet quiet on the floor. The room was dustless and clean, but very quiet, without the scent or vibration of human occupancy. No one lived in this room anymore.
The dresses were beautiful; all of silk and velvet, moiré and satin, mousse-line and panne. Even hanging lifeless here from their hooks, they had the sheen and beauty of an animal’s pelt, where some essence of life lingers in the fur.
I touched one bodice, purple velvet, heavy with embroidered silver pansies, centered with pearls. She had been small, this Ermenegilda, and slightly built—several of the dresses had ruffles and pads cleverly sewn inside the bodices, to add to the illusion of a bust. The room was comfortable, though not luxurious; the dresses were splendid—things that might have been worn at Court in Madrid.
Ermenegilda was gone, but the room still seemed inhabited. I touched a sleeve of peacock blue in farewell and tiptoed away, leaving the dresses to their dreams.
I found Lawrence Stern on the veranda at the back of the house, overlooking a precipitous slope of aloe and guava. In the distance, a small humped island sat cradled in a sea of glimmering turquoise. He rose in courtesy, giving me a small bow and a look of surprise.
“Mrs. Fraser! You are in greatly improved looks, I must say. The Father’s robe suits you somewhat more than it does him.” He smiled at me, hazel eyes creasing in a flattering expression of admiration.
“I expect the absence of dirt has more to do with it,” I said, sitting down in the chair he offered me. “Is that something to drink?” There was a pitcher on the rickety wooden table between the chairs; moisture had condensed in a heavy dew on the sides and droplets ran enticingly down the sides. I had been thirsty so long that the sight of anything liquid automatically made my cheeks draw in with longing.
“More sangria,” Stern said. He poured out a small cupful for each of us, and sipped his own, sighing with enjoyment. “I hope you will not think me intemperate, Mrs. Fraser, but after months of tramping country, drinking nothing but water and the slaves’ crude rum—” He closed his eyes in bliss. “Ambrosia.”
I was rather disposed to agree.
“Er…is Father Fogden…?” I hesitated, looking for some tactful way of inquiring after our host’s state. I needn’t have bothered.
“Drunk,” Stern said frankly. “Limp as a worm, laid out on the table in the sala. He nearly always is, by the time the sun’s gone down,” he added.
“I see.” I settled back in the chair, sipping my own sangria. “Have you known Father Fogden long?”
Stern rubbed a hand over his forehead, thinking. “Oh, for a few years.” He glanced at me. “I was wondering—do you by chance know a James Fraser, from Edinburgh? I realize it is a common name, but—oh, you do?”
I hadn’t spoken, but my face had given me away, as it always did, unless I was carefully prepared to lie.
“My husband’s name is James Fraser,” I said.
Stern’s face lighted with interest. “Indeed!” he exclaimed. “And is he a very large fellow, with—”
“Red hair,” I agreed. “Yes, that’s Jamie.” Something occurred to me. “He told me he’d met a natural philosopher in Edinburgh, and had a most interesting conversation about…various things.” What I was wondering was where Stern had learned Jamie’s real name. Most people in Edinburgh would have known him only as “Jamie Roy,” the smuggler, or as Alexander Malcolm, the respectable printer of Carfax Close. Surely Dr. Stern, with his distinct German accent, couldn’t be the “Englishman” Tompkins had spoken of?
“Spiders,” Stern said promptly. “Yes, I recall perfectly. Spiders and caves. We met in a—a—” His face went blank for a moment. Then he coughed, masterfully covering the lapse. “In a, um, drinking establishment. One of the—ah— female employees happened to encounter a large specimen of Arachmida hanging from the ceiling in her—that is, from the ceiling as she was engaged in…ah, conversation with me. Being somewhat frightened in consequence, she burst into the passageway, shrieking incoherently.” Stern took a large gulp of sangria as a restorative, evidently finding the memory stressful.
“I had just succeeded in capturing the animal and securing it in a specimen jar when Mr. Fraser burst into the room, pointed a species of firearm at me, and said—” Here Stern developed a prolonged coughing fit, pounding himself vigorously on the chest.
“Eheu! Do you not find this particular pitcher perhaps a trifle strong, Mrs. Fraser? I suspect that the old woman has added too many sliced lemons.”
I suspected that Mamacita would have added cyanide, had she any to hand, but in fact the sangria was excellent.
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said, sipping. “But do go on. Jamie came in with a pistol and said—?”
“Oh. Well, in fact, I cannot say I recall precisely what was said. There appeared to have been a slight misapprehension, owing to his impression that the lady’s outcry was occasioned by some inopportune motion or speech of my own, rather than by the arachnid. Fortunately, I was able to display the beast to him, whereupon the lady was induced to come so far as the door—we could not persuade her to enter the room again—and identify it as the cause of her distress.”
“I see,” I said. I could envision the scene very well indeed, save for one point of paramount interest. “Do you happen to recall what he was wearing? Jamie?”
Lawrence Stern looked blank. “Wearing? Why…no. My impression is that he was clad for the street, rather than in dishabille, but—”
“That’s quite all right,” I assured him. “I only wondered.” “Clad,” after all, was the operative word. “So he introduced himself to you?”
Stern frowned, running a hand through his thick black curls. “I don’t believe he did. As I recall, the lady referred to him as Mr. Fraser; sometime later in the conversation—we availed ourselves of suitable refreshment and remained conversing nearly until the dawn, finding considerable interest in each other’s company, you see. At some point, he invited me to address him by his given name.” He raised one eyebrow sardonically. “I trust you do not think it overfamiliar of me to have done so, upon such brief acquaintance?”
“No, no. Of course not.” Wanting to change the subject, I continued, “You said you talked about spiders and caves? Why caves?”
“By way of Robert the Bruce and the story—which your husband was inclined to think apocryphal—regarding his inspiration to persevere in his quest for the throne of Scotland. Presumably, the Bruce was in hiding in a cave, pursued by his enemies, and—”
“Yes, I know the story,” I interrupted.