Enoch dismounted and used
a narrow-bladed knife of Indian manufacture to slice through the ropes on my wrists. I worked my fingers and when the pins and needles went away gripped the horn and swung down to the ground. Hebron, who still showed no weapons, stepped aside from the door, motioning me to enter ahead of him. I climbed the steps and obeyed.
The interior of the lodgeâit was too big to call a cabinâwas darker than outdoors, lit only by scattered candles and a hurricane lamp suspended from the rafters by a rope smeared with glistening tar. As my eyes adjusted I made out the oblong shapes of long trestle tables arranged in rows on either side of the door with a wide aisle leading between them to the back. The room was apparently a combination meeting place and dining hall; the odor of roasted meat and old grease was too strong to have come from just the tallow candles.
At the end of the aisle, the head of a moose at least as large as the one Philippe and I had shot, but whose antlers spanned a good eight feet, decorated the wall above a door cut from the
boards that surrounded it. The reflected glow of the room's tiny flames in the glass eyes, and the crawling play of shadows, made the head seem as if it were still alive. Knowing that it wasn't didn't do a thing to prevent my stomach from tying itself into a clammy knot.
I followed Hebron to the end of the aisle, where he tapped softly on the door. There was a muffled response from the other side. He took off his hat, exposing a receding hairline of tight curls with silver glittering in them, and jerked his chin. I understood and removed my badger headpiece. The great room was unheated; dank cold touched my scalp. He pulled open the door and once again stood aside for me to go through first. I did so, and was blinded by the light.
I had been to St. Louis, where the finer homes, hotels, and saloons were lit by gas, bright as day where the proprietors were not overly concerned with the cost. None of these establishments was brighter than this room. Candles of every shape and sizeâsome tall, thin, and aristocratic, others short and squat as toads, still others carved into human silhouettesâburned on trays and in jars on pedestals and shelves and along a narrow raised platform against the far wall, dripping wax onto the black cloth that covered the last, filling the place with light and the smell of hot wax; no tallow here. The smoke rose and roiled around among the rafters, which like those in the great hall were fifteen feet above the floor, with no ceiling to contain the heat. Even so the room was warm enough from just the candles to make me unbutton the bearskin I was wearing. The walls were undecorated, bare logs with a window on either side covered by more black cloth. The room was less than half the size of the other, which made it plenty spacious, but the atmosphere was as oppressive as if I were standing in an airtight closet. It made my skin crawl and made me drowsy at the same time. It was well past midnight,
but the effect would be the same at high noon. In here the sun would rise and fall without notice or importance.
The least impressive thing about the room was the old woman who sat in a spindle-backed rocker in front of the platform, a shrunken Negress with a cap of white hair wrapped in a worn and ragged shawl, a thick steamer rug draped over her knees and hanging down to cover her feet. Her face was as brown and wrinkled as a shriveled apple and showed no life beyond a pair of rimless spectacles whose thick lenses seemed to gather the light from the candles. When she moved her head slightly, the flash raked my eyes as if someone had swept a bull's-eye lantern across them. Apart from that she might have been carved from the same wax as the candles, and beginning to melt from the heat.
A stretch of silence went by, during which I heard a thousand wicks burning. When she opened her mouth to speak, I saw the pink of her gums. She had no teeth.
“What is your name?”
“Murdock.”
She shook her head, semaphores flashing off her spectacles. “What is your
Christian
name?”
She pronounced the
h
in
Christian
and flicked her tongue off the floor of her mouth on the r. She had not learned English in America or Canada.
“Page.”
She repeated the name silently, her lips touching on the P. Her hands moved then, sliding a small book bound in tattered black cloth from beneath the rug that covered her lap. It might have been a pocket Bible. Tissue-thin pages slithered between fingers as wrinkled as ill-fitting gloves. She moved her lips as she read. Finally she looked up, adjusting her glasses.
“A name of French derivation. I assume you know what it means.”
It wasn't a Bible. “My father told me my grandfather was through using it.”
“It means âattendant on a noble.' Which noble do you attend?”
“That would be Judge Blackthorne.” When she went on staring at me without response I said, “Harlan Blackthorne.”
Pages slithered.
“Prussian. âFrom the land of warriors.' This is appropriate?”
“Oh, yes, ma'am.”
“My name is Queen Fidelity. You will address me by my full name at all times.”
“What does it mean?”
“âFaithfulness.' I assure you it is appropriate.” She put the bookâand her handsâback under cover. “Brother Hebron, see that the three people who accompanied Page Murdock are made comfortable.”
Hebron said, “I'll tell Brother Enoch.”
“See to it yourself. I wish to have a private audience with Page Murdock.”
“That's not a good idea.”
A cross of white light leapt off the spectacles. “Your opinion of my ideas is of no interest to me. Move them into Chapter Six.”
“That's my cabin!”
“I said I wish them to be comfortable.”
The silence that followed was twice as long as the first. No two buffalo bulls ever butted heads with more determination. Hebron blinked first. The door closed softly behind him.
“The people of Shulamite are former slaves and the sons and daughters of slaves,” she said when we were alone. “It is a small
community now. Most of the original settlers returned to America after emancipation. Those who voted to remain did so because they would not reconcile with a nation that would allow this monstrous evil to exist for two hundred and forty years. They are at war with the United States.”
“They're short on manpower if they mean to make any kind of fight.”
“It is a defensive war. They do not invade. They slay invaders.”
“I fought for the Union.”
“You fought for the Union. You did not fight to end slavery.”
“It's the same thing.”
She touched her spectacles. I was a difficult student. “All the other civilized nations volunteered to abandon the practice of taking and keeping slaves without having to shed blood over the issue. It took a war to show you the evil, and even then you fought only because you were attacked.”
“You don't know that about me.”
“Nor do they.” She spread her hands, showing the pale palms. “For four years the enemy wore gray. Now they must go by skin alone.”
“You consider that fair?”
“They did not set the precedent. You did.”
It was like arguing with that warrior Judge Blackthorne.
“What about my friends?”
“Your friends are Métis. The free African community of Shulamite is not at war with the native peoples of the Dominion of Canada. They will be free to go in the morning. Tonight they are guests.”
“And me?”
“Your fate is in the hands of Brother Hebron and the Committee
of Public Vigilance. I never interfere with them unless I am invited.”
“Aren't you their leader?”
“Brother Hebron is their leader, with the assistance of the committee. I advise the residents of Shulamite upon spiritual matters only. I am
mambo
here.”
“Mambo?”
“Priest, healer, exorcist, sayer of the sooth. I also organize public entertainments and train the choir. We have a soprano who shows promise for the spring planting services if his testicles do not drop before then.”
She sounded exactly like the Reverend Royden Milsap of the First Presbyterian Church in Helena.
“You're a preacher,” I said.
“I am
mambo
.”
“Christian?”
She shook her head.
“Voudoun.”
My ignorance must have showed on my face, because she opened her mouth in a toothless pink grin I can still see when I close my eyes.
“Voodoo,” she said.
“Brother Hebron will take
you to your quarters.”
It was a dismissalâand a disappointment. In view of her late announcement of her religious denomination, her own disappearance in a puff of green smoke would have been more appropriate.
I left Queen Fidelity alone with her book of names and found Hebron waiting for me in the gloom of the great hall. His mood went with the atmosphere. He didn't take to having been turned out like some kind of servant, particularly with me as a witness. He made no remark as he escorted me back down the front steps and, accompanied by the members of the Committee of Public Vigilance, across a stretch of snow-covered field as flat as a parade ground to a tiny building constructed of the same pine logs as all the rest, with a slant roof and no windows. The moon had risen and the entire settlement was lit as brightly as at noon.
The door was secured with a plain block of wood that turned on a nail. Enoch turned it straight up and down and the door fell open on leather hinges. Hebron relieved one of the others
of the lantern he had been carrying earlier and waited for me to go in first.
The inside smelled dankly of decaying wood. When Hebron entered with the lantern I saw that it was a storage building for rakes and hoes and a wicked-looking scythe like the one Death carried in fanciful illustrations in the copies of the
New York Herald
that arrived at Judge Blackthorne's chambers once a month in bales. Bushel baskets nested inside one another in one corner, and jars of nails and square bottles of horse liniment lined a shelf built across the back wall. Even without the clutter there would have been barely enough room for Hebron and me both to stand inside. Brother Babel would have poked out a log with an elbow the first time he had an itch to scratch.
“Lean back against that wall and fold your arms across your chest.”
I did as directed, using the only wall that wasn't supporting some piece of long-handled equipment. He hung the lantern on a nail, gathered a double armload of tools, and thrust them through the door at Enoch, who turned his head toward Babel, the biggest man in the groupâin
any
groupâwho stepped forward to take them.
That exchange told me most of what I needed to know about Brother Enoch. A second-in-command who passed the menial work on to others wasn't planning to remain second-in-command forever. I wondered if having figured that out was going to do me any good.
Hebron looked at the bushel baskets and the jars and liniment, decided apparently that they were harmless in my possession, and gave me the presidential stare.
“You'll sleep here tonight. I wouldn't advise anything bold and reckless, like trying to kick your way through the door. You and the door will both be shot full of holes at the first blow. I
won't lose any sleep over you, but making and hanging a new door takes time and it's already a twenty-four-hour-a-day job bringing a settlement this size through the winter.” He stuck a foot outdoors.
“Can I trouble you for my bedroll?” The floor was bare earth and frozen hard as stone.
He considered the question. He was a thinking leader. I'd heard that was what had cost Jefferson Davis the Confederacy.
“I'll see what I can do. This ain't the Palmer House.”
That was the first chink that had opened in his carefully constructed English. He saw that I noticed and if a black man can flush I swear that's what happened. “Mind what I said about those guards.”
Once again I caught him on the fly. “What will they do to me that won't be done tomorrow anyway?”
“You don't know that. Neither do we. We'll decide tonight. In any case I never knew a man who wouldn't put it off until later if he could.”
He left, taking the lantern with him. The door thumped shut and the block of wood squeaked into place. I was alone in the darkest place I had ever been.
I stood my fur collar up against the dank cold and explored my options.
I groped for one of the square bottles and pulled the cork with my teeth. The sharp fumes stung my nostrils and made my eyes water. I dug out the little oilcloth bundle I kept in a pocket, removed a match, struck it against the rough bark on a log, and touched it to the bottle's thick rim. A blue flame flickered.
I blew it out, stuck the cork back in, and returned the liniment to the shelf. If I splashed the contents over the wall at the back of the building and set the logs afire, the flames just might have burned through before dawn, by which time I'd have
choked to death from the smoke. Even if I survived and got past the guards, I'd have to make my way to a horse, and since I had no firearms or provisions, the Canadian wilderness would only finish what the flames and the guard would have started. I pocketed the matches and sat down on the skirts of my coat with my back against the wall and my knees drawn up to my chest for warmth. The building wasn't big enough for me to stretch out even if I'd wanted to.
When the door came open it startled me from a doze. I didn't know how long I'd been out. Hebron was back with the lantern and my bedroll.
“Don't get up.” He hung up the one, tossed the other on the ground, and upended one of the stout bushel baskets to serve as a stool. When he sat down and pushed his hat back with a knuckle, he appeared more relaxed than he had since we'd met. He looked at me with the machinery of his thoughts working behind his face. Then he unbuttoned a pocket on his flannel shirt and drew out a leadfoil pack of ready-made cigarettes and a box of matches.
He held out the pack. I shook my head. “I never got the habit.”
He speared one between his lips and set fire to it. He counted the cigarettes remaining in the pack before he put it away.
“I've had good reasons to wish I'd done the same,” he said. “No matter how careful I am about it I always run out a week or so before one of us makes the monthly trip to Fort Chipewyan for supplies. Some winters the month between runs ninety days. Then there's the cost.”
“I never heard anyone who uses tobacco complain about the price.”
“That's three cents a pack that could be spent on candy for the children. Life up here is hard for the small ones. It's like
burning up the one thing they might have to look forward to.”
“Cheaper to buy the makings and roll your own.”
He let the cigarette droop and held out his hands. The palms were shiny with callus and the knuckles were swollen as big as walnuts. I understood then why he didn't carry a gun; he'd have had to file off the guard to get one of those fingers close to the trigger.
“Rolling your own requires dexterity. I took rheumatism cutting cane in Mississippi for fifteen years. Some days I can't bend my hands around a pick handle.”
I didn't say anything to that. The lantern was putting out heat, but the air inside the building felt as cold as it had at the start. He was being too friendly. Anyone can manage to work up affection for the soon-to-be extinct. Sometime while I was asleep a decision had been reached.
“How long have you been behind a badge?” he asked me then.
“Coming on six years.”
“I guess a man has to be able to take care of himself to hang on so long in that line. Deputies especially; they get all the muddy work. I know a little about that. I was a sergeant with the Tenth Cavalry.”
“I figured something on that order. I rode cavalry during the war.”
“I was infantry then. Thirty-sixth Colored. I was among the first to sign on with the Tenth when they were putting it together.”
“That was after the war. Then you didn't come up here as a slave.”
He flicked a scrap of glowing ash at the ground, then returned the cigarette to its groove in his lower lip. “No, I didn't.”
Seeing the barricade across that road, I asked him if the
Committee of Public Vigilance had settled my case.
“We're going to put you in with Brother Babel. You know which one Babel is?”
I nodded. “Pike's Peak with a hat.”
“The last time he changed hands as a slave, he sold for a thousand dollars. That's five times what a prime specimen of healthy buck brought on the Virginia market. It was a bargain. The first time he tried to ride a mule it bucked him. He got up, shook the dust off his pants, picked up the mule, and threw it. That's not a story. I saw him do it.”
“I'm supposed to fight him with what?”
“Your hands.” He spat out smoke. “It was Brother Enoch's idea.”
“I was pretty sure I wasn't popular with him.”
“Nothing personal. There was nothing personal about taking slaves either.”
“Where'd he get this idea?”
“He was just a boy when Sherman burned the plantation where he worked with his mother. His father went down the river to auction before Enoch was old enough to remember what he looked like. Whenever two bucks got into a fight, the overseer broke it up and told them to work out their differences in the barn. He invited his friends and took bets, just like at a cockfight. Usually one of the brawlers took a beating and gave up. Occasionally one died. When that happened, the overseer had to pay the owner of the plantation for the loss of a good field hand, but he usually made enough laying bets to make a profit even then.”
“Then the free African community of Shulamite is just a plantation with the colors reversed.”
“What did you expect, some kind of noble experiment? Everything we learned about governing we learned from the white man.”
I said nothing. He smoked the cigarette short enough to singe his fingers, then dropped it and pressed it out with the toe of his boot. “I didn't vote in favor of it, if that means anything. I wanted to shoot you and be done with it. I've got no stomach for drawing things out.”
“What did Queen Fidelity say?”
“She never takes a hand in these things unless she's invited.”
“How did you wind up with a voodoo witch for a priest?”
“All the Negro ministers we knew preached the white man's gospel. Voodoo belongs to us. I can't say I care much for it. The ceremonies give me a headache and are a waste of good chickens besides. When I cut one up, it's to eat. But then I wasn't much of a Christian, either. Turning the other cheek is what got us over here to begin with.”
“Whose decision was it to name you all after cities in the Bible?”
“Not all. Some of us hung on to the names we used in the States. The women especially. Those who decided to change chose the Old Testament. It got Jesus out of the picture and the names were easier to pronounce than African. Queen Fidelity's the only one here who ever even saw that place. She left Capetown, where the competition was too thick to make a living, and got run out of Philadelphia and Baltimore by witch burners. She came up here from the American territories ten or twelve years ago. You need women to make religion take and there weren't enough of them down there.” He dug out the cigarette pack, but just to play with; the cigarettes stayed inside. “She spends most of her time casting spells to help the crops.”
“Do any good?”
“Most of the Shulamites seem to be of that opinion. I suspect we'd have the same number of droughts and blights and bumpers with or without her dead chickens, and have that many more
eggs to eat without. A lot of our people came straight up here on the Underground without learning anything of the world on the way, so it makes as much sense to them as the miracle at Cana. My thought is anyone who could make wine out of water ought to have figured out a way to come down off that cross.”
“I've been wondering where you took your schooling.”
He showed his teeth in an idiot's grin.
“Ain't all us nigras as dumb as rocks, boss. I had me the benefit of a master who taught the classics at Jefferson before he retired to the genteel ways of the gentleman farmer. I reckon I was his pet. He showed me how to read the Bible in English and then Caesar in Latin. It got me out of the canebrakes, so I didn't put up no holler. I dipped me a toe in Homer, too, but he was all Greek to me. Hee-hee.”
His imitation of a whiny coon set my teeth on edge. “You don't have to do that. I'd have asked the same of any white man this side of Chicago who talked like Matthew Arnold. Most of them can't manage
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.”
“I beg your pardon. We aren't equal no matter what John Brown said. When someone says something
you
don't take to, you've got the privilege of thinking he just doesn't like you. I've got to figure in being black as well.”
“I wish I could say for sure your being black didn't have anything to do with what I said.”
“You're honest, and that's a fact.” He took out a cigarette this time and lit it. “Who'd you ride with in the war?”
“Rosecrans.”