Whiskey Bill had known Belial would be on the island. At first a perverse pleasure dawned on me, because if my conjecture was correct, it meant Davenport had been right about Bill leading him into a trap, though not in the way he had originally expected. Confirming the genius of Davenport’s instinct was something perhaps much more important to me than it ever was to him. It must have amused the old hairless man, a sort of last chuckle of a frustrated life, knowing he was sending two of his brethren into a sort of final, mortal battle. Here was Whiskey Bill’s ultimate role: the Instigator. I remembered what he had muttered to me from his bed. “And he gathered them together into a place called Armageddon.” It was a lesser legacy than he dreamed about, maybe, but it was the best one he could produce given the time he had left.
Upon first connecting the Bible’s passage and note about Belial as the beast, I got up from the chair and ran outside. I still had the book with me. When I realized this, I tossed it away, as though it could curse me. Instantly I regretted my action—it was a Holy Bible, after all, and it was Stevenson’s. But after a frustrating search I could not find where the woods had swallowed it up, and I fretted to myself that it could only be a bad omen, which I then had to reassure myself I didn’t believe in.
Davenport listened to my theory but neither his eyes nor his general expression evinced any signs of life.
“Don’t you hear what I told you, Davenport?” I said with frustration. I was speaking in quiet but urgent tones on one of the verandahs. “I think Whiskey Bill sent Belial—he knew that it would come down to the two of you.”
“What difference does it really make if so?” he asked after considering my conclusion. Then he added, as though a kindness, “I suppose you are after praise for your clever thinking.”
Perhaps the truth did not make a difference in what actions we should take at this point, but it certainly seemed as though it should. I stated as much, but could not satisfy him. We retired to our own rooms without speaking more about it.
In fact, my discovery that Bill had pulled the wool over his eyes shot deeply to Davenport’s core, though in typical fashion he could never say that to me. But he did something more telling. He acted on it, heatedly, even recklessly.
“You convinced that ginger-hackled rascal to send me here,” were Davenport’s words when he confronted Belial the next morning. He had found the faux missionary, white pith helmet on his head, planting flags in the ground, helping to mark the less sturdy trees that the native servants would cut now that the first storm was finally set to land. A light rainfall, which had begun overnight, pattered against the tops of the leaves and into the grass.
“Are you talking about Whiskey Bill? Why would I want you—or any bookaneer—slithering your way onto this paradise and bothering me?”
“Pray spare me the posing, Pope Thomas. If you didn’t convince Bill to send me, then he sent you.”
“He wrote me a letter, Davenport,” Belial admitted. “With the spelling of a child and the mind of a woman. He did give me information about Samoa and Stevenson, and after I had the chance to examine it, it proved correct. Has his health improved? Whiskey Bill’s, I mean.”
“He’s deader than George the First.”
Belial nodded his head somberly.
“Why would he have wanted us both to come after this book?”
“Davenport,” he said with sudden and unexpected enthusiasm, “there is something I found over there that I think you ought to see.”
Knowing he probably should not, Davenport shadowed Belial deep into the woods. When I daydream of the golden age of the bookaneers, I sometimes think of this tableau, of two great enemies pushing through to the edge of the known world. Belial used his long cane to point out a spot in the bush. Davenport moved closer cautiously. Within a tight web of harsh vines and thorns, a nest of human bones on the ground appeared untouched. Crossed over the bones was a long stick, which on closer inspection revealed itself as an elaborately carved spear.
“What do you see?”
“A skeleton.”
“Notice what is strange.” Belial said this as a master would while waiting for his pupil to catch fire.
Davenport stared until the horror of the oddity presented itself. His face darkened. “There are two skulls—but only one skeleton.”
“Right you are! Can you tell what happened? Come closer. You see, this skull has a bullet hole in the front.” Belial used his cane again to demonstrate. “This,” he continued, indicating the full skeleton, “was the body of a heroic warrior. He killed his prey, probably a chief or a son of a chief of a rival faction, and then cut off his head, which brings us the second skull. The whole practice is gruesome to our sensibilities, yes, but remember it is their way, just as your American Indians scalp. All races have their eccentricities about killing each other. He was bringing his trophy back to his village but he had been injured, or was injured during his return journey, and fell here, dying quietly and out of sight. Clutching his spear to his chest with one arm and the head of his rival with his other.”
“How old are these bones?”
“That is hard to say but I would guess ten or fifteen years, back to the battles between the forces of Laupepa and Talavou, two great chieftains from the time, which would have occurred on what is now Tusitala’s land. I am thinking of making a sketch of it to bring back to Christina. My doubting other half will not believe many of the scenes I have witnessed here. This, well, this is a dilemma. Do you think they should be buried together? Would you bury a skull without its body?” Belial’s big eyes flashed. He straightened his priestly collar and took a few steps until he had a view of the estate below. “I’d see it all burned to the ground before we are done.”