House of Corruption (29 page)

They heaved to raise the ladder. Natives pulled from below and all strained at their tug-of-war. One native pulled a blowpipe to his mouth, fitted a dart, and inhaled; Savoy fired his pistol. The bullet struck the man in the throat, dropping him to the floor with a wet cry.

His fall loosened the natives’ collective grip—Grant and Savoy pulled up the ladder, slammed the trapdoor shut, and slid closed the iron bolt.

***

Reynard did not know how long he lay there.

High above, past the torn ceiling of the chapel, stars peered with hazy indifference. His shoulder blades and spine registered the sharp bumps of stones. Dust caked his mouth and eyes and ears, and a faint echo throbbed in his head as if his skull had been crushed and sloppily reassembled. It hurt to breathe.

I fell.

He forced himself to sit. Pain fired in his legs as he straightened his knees but he needed to move, now, move and gain his bearings. Nothing seemed to be broken, but then perhaps his brain had yet to register it.

How the hell did this happen?

He lay in rubble: broken pews and rotten books and soil and grass and moss and broken boards, the entire contents of the dead chapel poured into the basement. He recalled the loud cracking as the floor disintegrated, gunshots, the sensation of his stomach leaping into his throat, Miss Carlovec’s screaming...

Kiria.

He found her, sprawled nearby. He crawled to her side and, with a gentle shake, tried to rouse her. He touched her neck and felt her heartbeat—the pulse under his fingertips stirred his blood—so he carefully lifted her head and brushed grass and dirt from her hair. She coughed.

“Can you move?” he asked.

“What—?”

“The floor collapsed, and we fell. Anything broken?”

“I do not know,” she said.

Voices in a strange tongue drifted from above, getting closer. With effort he pushed himself to his feet, took a step, and helped Kiria to rise. She clenched her teeth, expelling heavy breath, but she did not cry out and refused when he offered to carry her. They saw no stair to the main floor, and the detritus offered no safe climb; their only recourse lay in a shallow stair that dropped to an even lower basement.

The voices entered the chapel.

Reynard helped her down the steps. At the bottom they found another door—this one of bolted iron—and he shoved his shoulder into it, pushing as quietly as he could through a thick, resisting layer.
Perhaps they think we are buried
, he thought,
think us dead
.

Kiria’s hands clutch tight onto his arm.

We are trapped down here
.

“I cannot see,” she whispered.

Reynard’s eyes adjusted to what vague, diffused light might possibly manage in such a dark place. Debris lay at his feet—bits of burned cloth and wood, crumbled stones, shattered glass bent into grotesque shapes. A shaft of broken board, a strip of charred cloth, his kerchief and a match provided a simple torch. They stood in a large cellar of brick, the walls and ceiling blackened like the innards of an enormous kiln. By the scattering of glass and ashen wood, he guessed it had once been a wine cellar.

Scattered along the floor lay clumps of heavier ash with fragments of burnt cloth and blackened bone. Kiria nudged one pile with her boot and a burnt skull rolled free. She shuddered and fell back.

Dead.

The charred remains of at least twenty or more bodies lay scattered, burnt like so much kindling. Some lay huddled in fetal positions. Others lay twisted, their skin ashes upon charred bones. Some were nothing but stains upon the floor. Reynard imagined the monks’ screaming, as if their emotions splashed and dried upon the walls. He smelled their burnt skin, their fingernails, left behind in gouged scratches at the back of the blistered door.

“The monks…” Kiria started, stricken. “Who would
do
this?”

Reynard inhaled. “Do you smell it?”

“I do not want to go further.”

The torch’s feeble light revealed the far wall—crude brick-and-mortar, a rushed job by the sloppy set of the bricks, stained like the inside of a fireplace. The torch revealed a deeper blackness at the wall’s base; he knelt, tossed aside a few blackened stones, and discovered a shallow hole. The fire flickered with a faint rush of air.

“It opens to another chamber.”

“Reynard.”

“I think I can—”

“
Reynard
.”

He followed her gaze. Twenty men stood in the room. Where before there was darkness and silence and evil memory, now the cellar was crowded with dead monks, each draped in their burnt stoles and cassocks. They stood silent with empty sockets and scarecrow limbs. Some retained scraps of charcoal flesh upon their broken bones, while others kept aloft as if by invisible threads. They gaped with broken jawbones and scorched teeth. Reynard tasted old death, far more ancient and vast than those remains glaring in the dark.

Kiria clutched her mouth as if to scream. The nearest corpse raised its skeletal arm toward her, then to the hole.

“
Persecutus
,” it said. A chorus of dead voices rose in unison: “
Persecutus
.”

“Let us do as they say.” Reynard dropped to his belly.

“
Persecutus
!”

Kiria dropped to her stomach and crawled into the hole after him.

29

“Mister Savoy.”

Savoy opened his eyes. It was still dark. He found himself stretched out on his back beneath the bell, his head resting on his arms. When had he fallen asleep? He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

“My apologies,” he said.

Grant kept midnight vigil beside the open window overlooking the ruin of Saint Dismas, rifle stretched across his lap. He wore his overcoat draped over his shoulders, his left arm bandaged from shoulder to elbow. The Dayak’s spear left a clean incision, and though tended with Savoy’s antiseptic and field dressing, neither discussed the possibility of infection in that unhealthy climate.

He motioned for Savoy to approach the window. The belfry provided a clear view across the entire compound, high enough that they could see over the trees all the way to the river. Through the dark they saw a glimmer of lights—a paddle-wheel steamboat slid against the shore off the Kinabatangan, puffing a white column of smoke. Its windows were aglow, its deck patrolled by men with rifles. Its whistle blew three, distinct blasts as deckhands leaped onto Saint Dismas’ dock and lashed the boat into place.

Savoy poked his head outside. He opened his mouth to shout for help before a stone cracked against the wall; fell voices gibbered in the dark beneath him.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Grant said.

“But that ship—?”

“Funny those natives don’t seem to care.”

Soon a horse and wagon emerged from the jungle to the west, rattling along a dirt road, the reins clutched by a single driver. It arrived as the deckhands finished unloading a fair stack of crates and barrels. The driver descended and engaged in brief conversation with a man—the captain, they guessed—as the deckhands loaded the cargo into the wagon. When they parted company, the steamboat did not linger. It puffed a head of steam and continued downriver. The driver and his wagon, still without lantern, returned back up the road and into the jungle.

“Who could that be?” Savoy said.

“Someone,” Grant said, “who does their business, at night, with all those natives about.” He leaned back against the wall, tucked up his knees and closed his eyes. “If you’ve any idea what to do when the sun comes up, you let me know.”

Grant’s breathing deepened, slowed, his head nodding. Savoy returned to his nest beneath the bell. Every sound in the night made him twitch. The first hour in the belfry, the natives outside had taunted them with cries like maddened animals. Stones came clattering next—first pebbles, then larger rocks cracking against the tower wall. Grant did not seem to notice. He had cleared his rifle’s jam and cleaned the chamber. When their unearthly cries started again, he had removed his harmonica and began an enthusiastic rendition of
Oh Susanna
. The natives redoubled their assault.

Used to drive th’Apaches crazy
, he had said.

It was quiet now, but Savoy knew those depraved men lingered, prowling, waiting like jackals. He rummaged in his pack, removed a candle and lit it with a match. Cupping the light he lifted it over his head, illuminating the vaulted ceiling. Wooden shelves lay stashed above the crossbeam, filled with earthen bowls and casks and burlap sacks, provisions long since spoiled by moisture and vermin. The north window facing the cliffs provided an unremarkable view but, unlike the south window, sported a shallow ledge. When he dared poke his head out he found a rusted iron bracket and a few links of chain bolted to the outer wall, the breeze tugging at the remains of a broken rope.

Saint Dismas was more than a monastery: stored provisions and a place to descend the tower, if necessary; the crenels and slim windows and castle-like arrangement of the cloister; the watchtower positioning of the belfry (a room, he noted, with its bolt on the
inside
of the door). It had been a fortress, a bulwark now utterly destroyed.

How long can we hold them off?

His thoughts turned to Reynard and Kiria, crushed beneath the chapel, telling himself to smother his grief. Reynard had survived worse scrapes. He begged God would protect them, somehow. He begged God Lasha was still alive, but he feared what terrors she might have endured. He feared worse that she was not there, lost or dead or worse. In his experience, there were worse things than death.

From his notebook he removed Dr. Stronheim’s letter, though he had long since memorized the words:

Whited sepulchers beautiful outward, inside lie

dead men’s bones. Then Simon Peter having a

sword drew it ... Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put

up thy sword into the sheath: The Cup which my

Father hath given me, shall I not drink it ...

What did it mean now, here, after all that he learned in the last few months? What had Ernst tried to tell him?

That ye may put difference between

unclean and clean ...

Unclean.

He considered the ash and the cracks in his palms stained with dirt and blood. He rubbed his hands together, hoping to scrub them clean, wondering if the men he had killed down below had women, children—now abandoned in some isolated longhouse, crying for husbands and fathers who would never return.

He glanced at Grant, still asleep. The apostle Peter was also willing to endure such odds, to defend his Lord without question, even if he did not fully understand what was to come. He wished he had half of Grant’s courage, his willingness to shoulder a cause that ultimately served others.

“Why did you stay with us?” he asked.

Grant’s eyes snapped open. “What?”

“Forgive me. I just...” Savoy looked at his pistol. “I did not expect such a reception tonight. Not like this. I do not understand why you stayed with us.” He shook his head. “Yet if you hadn’t, I would probably be dead by now.”

Grant smiled. “Probably.”

“I never,” Savoy said, “never thought I would have to...”

“You were defending yourself.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“It never feels right.”

“Is that why you are wanted in Utah?”

Grant fell silent, long enough that Savoy regretted the question. “He was a drunk,” he finally said. “He deserved it. Some people do.”

“Why?”

“My wife.”

“Surely your feelings are justified,” Savoy said.

“I should’ve seen justice done, Mister Savoy. He should’ve stood before a judge and been hung. Instead, I tracked him down. Shot him six times. I reloaded and shot him six times more. If I go back to Utah, I’ll be the one to hang, and rightly so.” He lifted his canteen and took a drink. “Sometimes you have no other choice. Sometimes you do. I came to see Miss Lasha gets home safe. It won’t fix what I’ve done, but it’s something.”

“Yes,” Savoy said. “I know how you feel.”

Mahonri.

Grant opened his eyes. When had he fallen asleep? It felt only seconds since they had been talking, and now Savoy lay snoring in a heap beneath the bell, a crumpled letter in one hand and his pistol in the other.

Irritation twisted his stomach. How long had they slept without keeping watch? Wasn’t the old man supposed to…

Here
.

He rubbed at his head to dispel the hangover of sleep. He had not dreamed or spoken about Emily for years and yet, now, felt her lingering at the edges. Even his brief mention to Savoy felt like another man’s story. She was still a palatable memory, but sometimes he wondered if she existed at all. Once, a year ago, he had forgotten her name, and it frightened him so badly he was tempted to cut the letters of her name into the palms of his hands.

He considered Lasha LaCroix with her smiling eyes and raucous laughter, of Kiria Carlovec and her distant, exotic beauty like a statue in a fancy museum. He thought of that poor, hysterical mother with her squalling baby in Marseille.

Did Emily look or sound like any of them?

He strained to focus on her face. She would take his calloused hand when they walked or knelt in prayer; he always felt so tall and raw and leathery next to her. She would smile and hold his hands and look up at his face and love him forever. She would hold him close in those private and tender moments, and he would look at her and wish he loved her as much. He wished he had done more, said more, felt more. 

Bones ached in his arm and shoulder and ribs, the tokens of a hard road that had made him think that
yes
, Mister LaCroix was right, his journey to Borneo was just another way to escape from himself. Or was it Emily’s memory, manifested as Lasha LaCroix, tempting him to catch it before it disappeared? Perhaps getting killed by a headhunter was preferable to the noose? Or, if he was lucky, saving Lasha might atone for that which had no repentance?