John Wray - Canaan's Tongue

This was not the least of Virgil’s paradoxes.

His scheme (for of course Virgil had a scheme) was revealed to me through a series of casual asides, so subtly and yet with such insistence that I soon understood them as a deliberate appeal. Without offering anything, on his side, but his stone-faced attention and his trust, he was asking me to harbor his secrets for him—; even, perhaps, to abet him in his plan. And it was one of the greatest shocks of my nineteen years on this earth that I found myself — just as tacitly, at first, and just as indirectly — agreeing to his terms.

Soon his hand lay open on the table. The part I was to play was this—: to convince the Redeemer to look into Virgil’s blighted eye. That was all. Virgil had been waiting for a session for months on end—; normally the Redeemer could go no more than a fortnight without one. It was their custom, Virgil explained, that the two of them be alone — completely solitary and immured from the least distraction— when that eye of his worked its wonders. He was sure the Redeemer would choose to conduct him away from the house—; down to the landing, perhaps, or off into the woods. This was all that he lived for any longer—: one half-hour, perhaps less, with the alpha and omega of his hate.

After a few weeks more, when I’d finally come to accept that I’d been left behind on 37 like a half-eaten cup of porridge, I gave my assent to Virgil’s plan. Perhaps I acted childishly, out of injured self-opinion—; my pride has ever existed in false proportion to my station. But there was more at play than that. To betray the Redeemer meant to become — if only for an instant — his full and indefatigable equal—; even, in a sense, his better. And I wanted to become the Redeemer’s better with all my body and my brain.

ALL OF THE ABOVE IS FOOLERY. I have no idea why I conspired with Virgil Ball to murder that man, who to me was as a pharaoh resurrected from the clay. .

MY CHANCE CAME AT LAST ON THE TWELFTH of October, Virgil says.

I was sitting on a cot in my slant-ceilinged cubby, picking stones out of the treads of my India-rubber boots, when Delamare appeared in the open door. I invited him in but he paid me no mind. His shirt was mis-buttoned, which itself was cause for wonder—: I’d never before seen him with a hair out of place. His expression, however, was tranquil as a lamb’s.

“He’ll be coming up to see you,” he said. “He’ll be coming up directly.”

My heart spasmed in my chest. “That’s fine,” I replied. I knew straight-away, of course, that he meant Morelle.

“Watch out for Harvey. I passed him on the stairs.”

“I will. Thank you, Oliver.”

“No need for that,” said Delamare. He lingered in the door a moment, looking neither at me nor away. Nothing about him bespoke conspiracy—; he showed as much emotion as a heifer in a pen. My mind gradually flooded with disbelief. Could Morelle truly be coming, that same damp autumn afternoon, that I might take him into the woods and kill him? The thought was utterly preposterous. No scheme of mine had ever run half so well.

“I’d best be off,” Delamare said, stepping out into the hall.

“Stop a bit, Oliver!” I whispered. But he’d already shut the door.

I was woefully ill-prepared to receive my visitor. My revolver had been left behind at Shiloh—; an antediluvian musket, its barrel longer than my leg, was the nearest thing to an instrument of death that I possessed. I turned in a slow circle, giddy and short of breath, in the exact center of the room. How on earth was I to do it?

My eyes finally lit on the grime-covered pier-glass next to the room’s sole window. It was dull and cheaply made, but the cypress tree outside was reflected in it like a Turkish dagger. Without another thought I laid it on my bed, threw my quilt across it, and shattered it with the butt-end of the musket. It made no more noise than a tea-cup dropped onto the floor. I threw back the quilt, chose a likely-looking sliver, and slipped it into the pocket of my vest. No sooner had I done so than a knock sounded on the door—: Morelle’s knock, swift and self-assured. There was nothing for it but to let him in.

I found him standing somewhat stiffly in the hall, sporting the same Napoleonic cap he’d worn when I’d first laid eyes on him. I opened my mouth — to thank him for coming, perhaps, or to invite him in — but I could manage nothing better than a grunt.

“Virgil!” he said, beaming up at me. He pronounced my name with an odd emphasis, as though introducing me to some other.

“Thaddeus,” I said hoarsely. I had never before called him by that name.

He gave a quick nod, as though I’d returned some manner of pass-word, then turned briskly on his heels. “Come along, Virgil! A conference!”

I pulled my boots on as quickly as I could and followed him. He led me matter-of-factly out of the house and across the lawn, making a bee-line for the woods, as if he were impatient to be murdered. I did my best to keep up without appearing over-eager—; I’m sure I failed grotesquely. It made no difference, however. No-one happened upon us, no one got in our way, no-one called after us from the house. The world seemed as ready as I was to be rid of Thaddeus Morelle.

He spoke not a word till we came to a small, damp clearing, oblong in shape, with a fallen tree at either end of it. We were perhaps a mile from the great house and as far again from the river. Dusk had yet to fall, but in that close, somber place it seemed the last minutes of twilight. Morelle sat me down on a moss-eaten stump and stood directly across from me, studying my face. The false twilight deepened. Time shuddered, gave a barely audible sigh, then halted altogether.

I’d begun to think we might remain in that attitude — a tableau vivant of mutual distrust — until the last day of judgment, when all at once Morelle thrust his hands into his waist-coat and drew forth a candle-stub and a tin of sailor’s matches. His close-set eyes never left my own.

“Is it right?” he asked, as tradition demanded.

The words had a different meaning, in that little glade, than they’d ever had before—; and I had a different answer. “It’s right,” I said.

I could hear his surprise when at last he spoke. “It’s right?” he repeated. “Exactly as it stands?”

Our ritual had been fixed from the beginning. I was to say it wasn’t right, no more, no less—; and he was to re-arrange things till it was. I said nothing further now, and he continued to stand stock-still above me, breathing whistlingly through his nose. I might easily have attacked him then—: we were perfectly alone, at least half a mile out of ear-shot, and there was a new quality to Morelle, a sort of dull uncertainty, that did a good deal to embolden me. But I wanted to move through the steps as we’d always done. I believed in my gift now— believed in it as fervently as I’d once doubted and disparaged it — and I wanted to catch another glimpse, however fleeting, of what the future held. Perhaps I’d see the Child from Shiloh—; perhaps I’d see myself, or Clementine. Perhaps I’d catch a glimpse behind the scaffolding of the Trade at last, and see with my own eyes what was hiding there.

I was adrift on these and other musings when there came the dry rasp of wood against wood and a match flared to life within an inch of my left eye. The pain was worse than it had ever been. What was more, I saw nothing to reward me for my suffering—: no figures, no landscapes, not even the customary shapes. Only a pulsing web of faint red lines, the precise hue and texture of my pain.

“What is it?” came the Redeemer’s voice, as if from the top of a ravine.