The New World (6 page)

Then Black Cloud and the Painted Man began speaking about us. We knew this, because by pointing toward the horizon, then behind them into their house, they showed they knew about the silver, and if they knew about the silver, they knew about their prisoners. To judge by the way Black Cloud sneered at our cabin, while the Painted Man threw back his head and rolled his eyes, I thought they must already have settled how they would deal with us—but not yet. At their leisure. After glaring toward us once more, and scowling and stamping his foot, Black Cloud swung away and disappeared into his house, with the Painted Man following.

Natty and I let a few minutes pass, thinking they might make a quick recce of the treasure and then return to us. But when the silence settled more deeply, and a flock of sparrows landed on the veranda of the house and began picking about in the dust, and the shadows lengthened, we left our peephole and settled down by the wall again.

I felt so sure we had only a few more hours to live, perhaps until the evening, when we would be barbecued in the same way as our friend, that I found it astonishing my curiosity about the world should survive. Yet while we awaited our final judgment it was always the most ordinary things that caught our keenest interest. The heat and the mosquitoes. The faint squeak of the oyster-dust shifting beneath our weight. The spider, back at his butchery. Does every condemned man feel the same in the hours before his execution? I expect so, but to anyone who has not suffered in this way, the idea will seem very peculiar.

And this is how Black Cloud and the Painted Man found us, when they decided to give us their attention again. Not cowering in fright in the farthest corner of our prison, or kneeling as we made peace with our Maker, but lolling side by side as we had done every previous day, watching the sun-patterns in the cracks of our walls.

They tore our door open and stood on the threshold; although it was afternoon, the light dazzled me for a moment, then settled into a border of gold that clung around their silhouettes. Neither of them spoke. They stared—and after so many days spent living in dread, I found I was able to meet their gaze. If this was courage I have no idea, but it pleased me to keep my dignity and see Natty do the same.

When Black Cloud eventually broke his silence, he poured his voice very neatly into the ear of the Painted Man, pressing the open palm of his right hand against the necklace to make sure it stayed flat against his chest; I saw it gleam between his fingers. The Painted Man smiled, and nodded, then leaped forward and grabbed us by our shirt-collars, dragging us over the floor and flinging us down at his master's feet. Here, with what remained of the daylight shining directly into our eyes, Black Cloud examined each of us in turn.

He began by seizing my chin—his fingers smelled of charcoal—twisting my head first this way while at the same time running his free hand across my arms and shoulders, sometimes squeezing my flesh through the filthy cotton of my shirt. Although this alarmed me very much, I understood he was taking a rough measurement of my youth and my strength. When he had calculated these things, and no doubt put a value on them, he let me go—but only to grip me by my hair and tug me upright so that he could complete the process by fondling my legs and buttocks.

I lifted my eyes toward the roof of the prison and concentrated on the spiders and other crawling things that lived there, watching how they continued their spinning and eating without paying me any attention. Then I began to think I would keep better control of myself if I did some assessing of my own. I therefore looked down from the ceiling and stared directly at Black Cloud, as if he did not scare me in the least. Although I had scrutinized him as closely as possible when he first arrived in the village, I had felt rather blinded by his decorations and suchlike. Now I concentrated on the man himself.

He was twice my age and six inches shorter than me but much more strongly built, with a deep barrel chest and thick strong muscles like ropes in his neck and shoulders and arms. In England I had heard of athletes who were capable of running for hours at a stretch; this man looked as though he would gallop all day and never feel short of breath. There was a tirelessness about him, a machine efficiency, just as there was also something unnatural about the hardness of his expression. My stare seemed to bounce off his face like a pebble off iron.

The longer I looked, the more strongly I felt Black Cloud belonged to another species than my own, not merely another race. Especially when he decided he had finished with me, punched me in the chest so I staggered back into the shadows, and turned to Natty. Now he seemed even more heartless. After dragging her toward him he examined her as dispassionately as a surgeon, running his fingers over her face and hair, poking them inside her mouth to feel along her teeth, thrusting them inside her shirt to squeeze and pinch her there, then sliding his hands to and fro between her legs.

Because I was standing behind Natty at this point I could not see her face, only that she shifted her weight very nervously, and sometimes rose onto tiptoe to lessen the pressure of his touch. Black Cloud's face, however, was plain to see—when I wished it were not. His fleshy lips had broken into a gargoyle smile; his mouth was ajar and the tip of his tongue was flickering over his lips; his black eyes were glittering. When he thrust Natty away from him at last and gave a horrible grunt, it might have been the beginning of a laugh.

This was followed by a torrent of other sounds—words clashing together so angrily he had to wipe the spittle from his lips when he finished. At which point the Painted Man hauled me forward until I was standing beside Natty and close to his master again. I thought we were about to hear our death sentence. Instead, Black Cloud reached up and began thumping on our heads with his clenched fist. As we sank back onto our knees, with the power of his blows making stars shoot inside my head, he began to speak. Two words, which he repeated in time with his hammering. Two words, which resonated like the notes of a bell.

Black Cloud.

Black Cloud.

Black Cloud.

He had spoken in English! Although my head continued to reel and splinter as the massive hand kept pounding on my skull, I nevertheless clung to this thought. English! Why? Because he must have met traders from Europe, or other travelers such as missionaries and preachers. I could not keep the idea in place for long, but his words themselves burned in me very brightly.

I was right; Natty and I were not alone in the wilderness.

As soon as my beating ended, with Black Cloud breathing heavily and his arms swinging loose at his sides, I wanted to keep with this idea but could not. I was trapped again by the treasure around his neck; the color, the glow, the weight were irresistible to me. All the more so when I noticed for the first time that each of the strips of silver was covered with carvings—of animals mostly: deer and rabbits and snakes and bear and horses all very delicately fashioned, with tiny blue stones for eyes and a border around each of them made of the same blue stones. On the largest pieces, at the center of the necklace, these carvings were bold and definite; in the smaller pieces toward the edges of the fan-shape they were more intricate, even more skillful and marvelous.

I was part of the same world as these creatures—that is the notion I seized on then, and as Black Cloud eventually stepped away from us I knew I was not weaker but stronger than before. He had reminded me that if we could only escape our prison we had no reason to fear the wilderness. We could survive there.

For this reason I did not even flinch when he shouted his name once more, then whirled on his heel and stalked outside into the twilight. I think I may even have smiled when the Painted Man followed, slammed our door, locked it, and kicked it several times to show he would set about us himself when he returned.

As Black Cloud retreated and Natty and I sank back into darkness, I felt sure we were safe for this evening at least. I even remained in good heart when our supper failed to appear, and a rumpus broke out in the village below. Listening to the yells and chatter, I told myself it must simply be the start of a feast: a celebration.

And so it proved. An hour after sunset Black Cloud arrived in the central meeting-place of the village, where drums were already pounding and women cooking over a fire, and sat down cross-legged on an arrangement of furs and blankets that made a kind of throne, with the Painted Man settled beside him. It was clear that all they wanted was to wolf down the next bowl of food their warriors brought them, and the next bowl of drink, and then the next, and then the next, and then the next.

I soon grew tired of watching and turned away from our peephole, but after I had dozed for a while I was awoken by the sound of shouting close to our cabin. Peering outside once more I saw that the meeting-place was almost empty, the fire a heap of embers, and the villagers wandering back to their tents. Black Cloud and the Painted Man were only a few yards from our door, with their arms wrapped around one another's shoulders; I knew from the way they both stumbled over empty air that they were very drunk.

Theirs were the shouts I had heard—oaths and snatches of song such as I knew from late nights at the Hispaniola, when men had sometimes lost their way home entirely and staggered into the Thames. There was no danger of these two disappearing forever, however much I wished it, and however wildly they swung from one side of their track to the other; in due course they confronted the two steps up to the veranda with a solemn thoughtfulness, made their wavering ascent, and found the entrance to the house with another burst of singing.

After they had fallen indoors and the village was silent again, I left my place and lay down beside Natty. I thought she must be awake but we did not speak, only stared into the darkness and listened to one another breathing, while the night-wind swept across the country outside, sometimes rising to a moan as it passed through the cracks in our walls, and at others peppering them with dust.

As always at such moments, when I thought of the world now lost to me, I found myself slipping away to my childhood. The faces of my father, of school-friends, of Natty and Mr. Silver, of his wife haranguing me in her wedding-cake dress, of Captain Beamish and the bo'sun, all appeared in succession, and I was able to stare carefully into each, and pay them due attention. Why was I so deliberate and particular? Because now that I thought my death was closer than ever, I wanted to say farewell to one and all, just as I also wanted to say good-bye to the country near the Hispaniola, which I did by wandering among the outbuildings where my father kept his puncheons for the taproom, and noticing how the muddy green levels beyond them were changed into lilac where they reached the horizon.

As I came to the end of these travels I was distracted by a change outside in the darkness. A very dim sound at first, like sand dropping through an hourglass. Then more definite, so I knew it was footsteps. Then stronger still, and turning into a dry little squeal as our locking-pole was pulled aside.

Black Cloud! That was my first thought. I had been wrong a moment before; drunk or not, he had come to finish us. But I steadied myself. When I had seen him vanish into his house he had been almost unconscious; every movement I could hear now was nimble and quick, so it could not possibly be him, who anyway had no reason to be secretive.

I craned forward to catch the least sound, and for a moment there was nothing more. I took a breath. Still nothing. Then another breath—which turned into a gulp as the air split with a hideous explosion (which was almost no noise at all), and the door opened, and the deep sky appeared, freckled with thousands of stars and a nearly-full moon burning at the center.

“Natty,” I hissed, shaking her shoulder, “Natty.”

She woke at once, but only to roll into a ball again with her knees up and her hands covering her face, because she thought the end had come, and blows were about to hammer down on us. From her groans, it sounded as though her bones might already be breaking.

“It's all right,” I said. “There's no danger.”

She gasped and uncurled herself. She sat up, and reached out to squeeze my hand. It was the boldest sign of our feelings that either one of us had shown for a long time, and in that simple pressure I felt our lives flow back together. We had not been separated from one another after all. We had been living in parallel. Everything we felt for each other, our trust and tenderness, was still as it had always been.

“What?” she whispered.

“I don't know,” I told her.

“Who, then?”

This time I did have the answer, because a silhouette had stepped across our threshold. Thanks to the braids of hair dangling either side of her face, I recognized the child who had brought us our food and drink—until today. Did this mean she would now give us our ration, which she had not wanted to do during the daylight in case Black Cloud disapproved? I thought so until I saw she was empty-handed, and without her mother, and stepping forward more boldly than usual.

Natty and I were bolt upright now, both of us with our long hair in our eyes, and our clothes smeared with dirt and oyster-dust. The child was not in the least perturbed; it was only what she expected. She merely stretched out her hand to touch Natty's face and then mine.

As a sign of friendship this was very welcome, or should have been. In fact the child was extremely anxious, her breath coming in quick little gulps, so I thought she might fly away at any minute, bolting the door behind her.

“Shhhh,” I said, to reassure her.

The child stared wide-eyed, clasping her hands together.

“Will she rescue us?” Natty asked in a whisper; she was more and more like her old self, concentrated and eager. The light was back in her face and the warmth in her voice.

“Perhaps.”

“Let me see,” said Natty, and promptly became so skittish I almost laughed aloud. For instead of continuing to encourage the child with a soft voice and reassurances, she rolled her eyes and stuck her thumbs in her ears, waggling her fingers.

The child half-turned as if about to vanish, but in the second or two of delay she changed her mind. She smiled. She stepped forward and gripped Natty's hands, then slowly leaned closer still, until the tip of her nose rubbed against Natty's nose, when she spoke a single word that sounded like a growl but I thought must be affectionate.

The child then came to stand in front of me, where she repeated the same action and the same word; although the touch of her skin was almost too faint to feel, a charge passed through me that I suppose was gratitude—for the contact; for the kindness.

And after that, the greatest marvel of all. The child skipped away to the threshold, stretching out one arm and pointing at the sky.

There was no mistaking what she meant. She was giving us our freedom, although she did not want to stay and see us find it. As soon as she had raised her arm she let it fall again and melted into the darkness. This happened so suddenly she might as well have been swallowed by a giant or else not have existed at all; I could not hear her feet pattering down the slope to the village, nor when I scrambled upright and stared after her could I see so much as a shadow stirring. Everything lay suspended and silent under the huge bowl of the stars.

Natty loomed at my shoulder, softly closing the door of our prison behind us, pulling the locking-pole across, then whispering, “Come on!” and turning down the slope toward Black Cloud's house. The sight of her darting ahead of me made my heart leap as I followed. This was the Natty I had known from the first, daredevil and free, her own self again. And our direction? I assumed we were going for the ponies, which had already heard us and were churning at their halter-rail—they thought we might feed them.

But as we reached the veranda I found Natty had something else on her mind. Something that came before anything, although she had never mentioned it.

She stopped running and began prowling. She began gliding. She began floating, until we had left the solid earth and come to the front entrance of Black Cloud's house, lifting aside the blanket that served as his door.

We crept inside as quietly as cats, and found ourselves in a courtyard that was open to the sky, with doorways on every side and a temple at the center, well lit by the moon and stars. Carved wooden eagles were perched on the roof, facing north, south, east and west, and a low wall made of wooden stakes surrounded it, each crowned with a human skull. One was caked around the chin with ashes, and I thought must be all that remained of our friend.

I pushed the idea away and continued forward, entering another doorway off to the right which took us into a smaller courtyard. My eyes were jittery now but I told myself to keep steady, to keep paying attention, and a moment later I had my reward. The walls of the yard had been hollowed out to make cavities, all of which were filled with precious things: trinkets and ornaments; headdresses; drums; spears with feathers tied around their necks. And in the largest alcove of all—our treasure. The silver pilfered from the
Nightingale
. All piled very neatly like a stack of bricks.

I felt no surprise. Of course they would keep it here. Of course they would think it was safe, guarded by a god who required the sacrifice of human heads, and who loved fire, and burning, and ash. Of course Black Cloud would keep beside him a man decorated like the Painted Man. Because the Painted Man was a fire spirit. A spirit of the god.

Natty glanced toward the silver but we said nothing; we both accepted that we would never have our treasure again. Besides, she wanted something else, and whatever it was she had decided it lay beyond this courtyard, in the farthest part of the house.

I followed her through the next doorway and stepped into a room with two large windows—both barred with strong pieces of wood—where the moonlight poured through in twin torrents. I was blinded for a moment—and then, when my sight cleared, dazzled again by a wonderful confusion. I saw embroideries with deer leaping across them, and hawks flying, and flowers coiling around one another; I saw rugs heaped on the floor and a rack of shelves with stones and shells strewn all over them; I saw glass bottles; I saw pieces of wood carved into grotesque horns and tusks.

There was no time to think what any of these might mean or where they came from. Immediately in front of us was a large wooden bed that appeared to be floating on the moonlight, and here Black Cloud and the Painted Man lay deeply asleep. They were face to face with their arms draped around one another's shoulders.

They would kill us if they awoke, I knew that; murder us and tear us to pieces. But for a moment my life was not my own, and I found myself creeping forward until I was leaning over them, gazing into their faces.

The Painted Man was still daubed with his red and yellow fire-patterns, but now that I stood so close to him I could see these colors were very cracked and thin. He was no more than a boy, his eyelids quivering as a dream slithered through his mind.

As for Black Cloud: I thought I was staring at Death itself. At my own death, which I would only control if I did not flinch. I therefore held my gaze as though I had all the time in the world, poring over the markings on his neck and cheek, and the gliding muscles in his arm, and the oiled shell of his ear, with a fragment of bone stuck through the lobe.

Was it brave, to look so long? Not at all, as I proved the moment Black Cloud rolled onto his back, blowing out his lips with a wet pop-popping sound. The hair lifted on my scalp in pure fear. But even then I stayed as I was, lingering over the sweat shining in his hair, and the violet veins in his throat, and the bulge of his Adam's apple.

In the end it was Natty who drew me away, whispering my name and wanting my help. “I can't find it here,” she said, hunched over a wooden chest at the bed-end, sifting through its tangle of skins and other trophies. “Where…”

At last I began my own search, my hunt for what we still had not mentioned to one another. And with a kind of magic I found it easily, by opening a plain wooden box that Black Cloud kept at his bedside. The necklace was shining up at me; he had laid it to rest for the night on a cushion of turkey feathers.

I felt my blood surge through me from head to foot as though my whole body had swollen. I did not hesitate for a second. I picked up the necklace and bowed my head and fitted it around my neck, with the knot of its leather tie resting on my nape. As the weight of the silver pieces pressed against me, and I ran my hand across the decorations, caressing the contours of the animals and the hard protuberances of their jewel-eyes and jewel-borders, I thought my skin began to shine.

Natty appeared at my side. “Perfect,” she breathed, putting her face close to mine. She might as well have said I was perfect; she might as well have told me she loved me. I seemed to inhale the word rather than hear it.

“Perfect,” she whispered again.

I looked into her eyes and saw that the glow of the silver had carried into them; it was shining up at me like light reflecting off the bed of a stream.

“I know,” I told her, and wanted to say more. But she did not need any more. She dabbed her fingers against her lips, kissed them, and lightly touched the necklace, to show that she understood. Then she turned out of the bedroom and led me through the smaller courtyard, through the larger space where the eagles kept their vigil, and outside onto the veranda. It was astonishing to see our prison again, squatting on the rising ground to our right, and the village cradled in its valley. We had plunged so deeply into a different world, I thought the old one might no longer exist.

“Wait,” Natty told me, still very practical and busy, then doubled back through the entrance to the house. I could not think what else we might need, but stepped into the shadows of the veranda to wait for her.