An Embarrassment of Riches (34 page)

“I think ‘Stinkard' is their word for an Indian,” I proposed to Uncle.

“'Parently so,” he agreed, “but then who, or what, are these?” he indicated with a tilt of his head our three inquisitors.

“Who are you?” I put to the trio.

“We are the Wejuns, like no other men; pale skin, blue eyes, fair heads, as thee mightst ken.”

“From where do you come?” Uncle asked them.

“From whence, wherefore? Why, from the sun, our lord, whom to his bosom did the moon embrace. Thus gold and silver 'twined to form the cord, that nourished our gentle Wejun race.”

“Very well, but how came thee here, to this very place?” Uncle pressed them, falling into their queer method of rhyming speech.

“To this, our town, that we call Paradise?”

“Paradise…?”

“Aye, that is what we call our rivery home. Fair-tempered isle where summer always be; where hoary-visaged winter is unknown, and ripened fruits abound on every tree. Came we from such another Paradise, tho' further north and easteringly methinks, in times of our forefathers, Wejuns wise, driv'd hither by the ruddy man who stinks.”

“Does the name of England mean anything to you?” I inquired. The three again shared glances, and the old one chuckled deep in his throat.

“Aye, England,” he said, “is that blessed peaceful isle, that floats among the seas of heaven's stars, from whence we Wejuns come but for a while, and fly back to when from this vale depart.”

“England is your heaven?”

“'Tis one and same—”

“Our everlasting bliss,” Redbeard and Yellowbeard said by turns.

“Then, you are Englishmen!” I declared.

“Once we were and be we once again,” the old man agreed in part. “But while in Paradise we Wejuns stay, goodly Wejun womenfolk and men, until comes our final breathing day, and then to England off we fly away!”

Our interview with this trio halted here while the old feather-cloaked wizeer or sachem or whatever office he held sat upon his haunches studying Uncle and myself. Outside the jail hut a dog yapped, children's voices rang, and the aroma of roasting meats wafted on the breeze.

“Spaniels these are not,” our auditor at last pronounced us.

“Then what?” Redbeard asked.

“Pray say what?” Yellowbeard appealed.

“I shall put it to them: who be you?” the old man said.

Uncle and I now commenced to attempt an explanation, with results on the whole disappointing. They had not the slightest notion what constituted the United States of America—nor America the continent, save as a part of the vast reaches they called “the world” where “Paradise,” their island, was located. Of Europe, they knew nothing. England, it must be evident from the foregoing exchange, was not an earthly place in their scheme of things, but rather an heavenly abode. When Uncle paused to ask them, “Are thee Christians?” they stared blankly back, as though we had asked if they were Chinamen, monkeys, or men from the moon.

“We be Wejuns,” they simply stated.

They had no more idea of who they might really be than so many wild Shannoah. In fact, their self-knowledge was actually less than the red Indians', all of whom have elaborate mythologies explaining their origins. These “Wejuns” knew only that they had come from somewhere “north and easteringly” at some time previously, precisely when, they knew not. They knew, however, that whatever they might be, they were not red-skinned savages—the “Stinkards” of their lore. I grasped, at length, that the “Spaniels” whom they accursed and reviled, and accused us of being, were nothing more or less than the Spanish, whose hard-bitten outposts must have stood in the vicinity, and who must have treated the Wejuns with their customary cruel barbarism in guarding the frontier of their threadbare empire.

Of our War of Independence, these Wejuns knew not a jot; of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, they were entirely ignorant; of history extant, from Homer to Bonaparte, they were as innocent as the birds of the air. While they indulged us in hearing about these things, it was with looks askance, as of the deepest dubiety. I think it was their way to simply enjoy a good yarn, whosoever the spinner, and so they let us prattle on about the wonders of civilization. And it was only when we ran out of wind that the old fellow asked us, “How came you two upon the King's English?”

“What king?” I replied, trying to ascertain if they themselves knew—upon which utterance Yellowbeard cuffed me smartly on the head with his silver bracelet.

“Knowest not the King when seated 'fore it?” he admonished me and struck again.

“
Thee
art King?” Uncle professed surprise as well, but did not earn a slap, perhaps in deference to his age.

“Aye, I king Merkin of the Wejuns am.”

“King Merkin…?”

“Avert your eyes when you speak Merkin's name,” Redbeard scolded us for this breech of protocol.

“And let us hear your own again, ye twain,” Yellowbeard said.

“William Walker.”

“And Samuel Walker.”

“Both walkers! Well, away from home ye've walk'd,” Merkin remarked drolly.

“William and Samuel, a Wejun ring do have.”

“And yours?” I asked the two attendants of Merkin.

“Here, Lovelace, Earl of Fishes, to my right,” the old man pointed with a gnarled finger, then to his other side, “and Robin, Duke of Owls, leftishly sits.”

“Your most obedient servants,” Uncle told them, bowing his head, and I did likewise. They seemed pleased to hear it.

These obeisances made, the three of them stared with satisfaction at the two of us, and I was about to request that they remove our rawhide hobbles when the crackle of gunfire rang out followed by the cries of “villain!” and “murder!” My heart sank as I imagined one of the tribesmen had foolishly slain his kinsman while playing with our firearms. But then another cry was heard, “What Spaniel treachery!” and I at once surmised that the Wejuns were at that moment in the toils of a surprise attack from their hated enemies. Our three auditors hurried outside, and we followed behind them.

Wejuns were scattering in all directions. At the far end of the village a cottage roared in flame, its thatched roof burning like bedstraw. I could feel the heat on my face at an hundred yards. To the side of the conflagration, sunlight glinted off the polished helmets and gorgets of a score of Spanish soldiers, firing with impunity upon the disorganized tribesmen. Several Wejuns already lay dying in the dust. A few reckless Wejun warriors charged their adversaries with spears and bows. One was struck in the head, his brains flying apart like the pulp of a shattered muskmelon. Another was gut-shot, then hacked to pieces by Spanish sabers as he sank to his knees. A ball whizzed by my ear.

Our rifles lay upon the ground, where they had been abandoned as useless. I hastened to fetch mine and at once charged it. Then, hardly considering the consequences of my action—for America was not at war with Spain—I took aim at a glinting helmet and fired. The Spaniard crumpled. The Wejuns at once looked to me in awe and supplication.

“For goodness' sake, cut these hobbles off my ankles!” I beseeched them, and one of them did. “You,” I pointed to another. “Fetch the cask of powder that was in our pirogue.”

“Speakest not in Wejun's fair iambics?” he remarked disapprovingly.

“This is no time for poetry,” I told him. “Fetch the lead balls, too.”

“Thy servant …” he replied and hurried off.

“Thou apes! Thou cankerblossoms! Get thee gone!” old Merkin shook his fist at the distant invaders. A ball caught his leg and he collapsed in a heap of shiny black feathers. “O…!”

“Get him off the field!” I commanded two idle, horror-struck youths, who dragged him into a hug. “Bowmen, form a line. A line, I say!”

“Ball and powder, sire,” the Wejun I would know as Gaybob arrived back on the scene.

“Break the kegs! Bowmen, draw and fire!”

The bowmen fired a hail of arrows. One found its mark in a Spaniard's neck and he fell. The Wejuns cheered.

“Well done,” I said. “Draw and fire again!”

The arrows kept the Spaniards from advancing. It was my impression amidst all the mayhem from their perpetual whipping boys, the Wejuns, that the first sign of order in the Wejun ranks confused and demoralized them.

“Have you any idea at all how to charge and fire a fuzee?” I asked Robin, Gaybob, Lovelace, and the others. They shook their heads, though a beardless lad younger than I mounted one of the pieces and pointed it at the enemy, making musket noises with his mouth.

“Kssh! Kssh!”

“That's the idea,” I said. Uncle was already busy, ramming a ball home. “Form ranks behind the archers, ye fusileers!”

The bowmen kept up their rain of arrows. The Spaniards were pinned down beside the flaming cottage. A cinder, meanwhile, had leaped on the breeze to a cottage on their other flank. Their helmets glinted wavily through the heated air. All our pieces were now charged and passed down the line.

“Fire at will, men,” I said.

“No, not at me, pray, but at the Spaniels!” a fresh-faced boy cried.

“Art Will?” Uncle asked. The boy gulped and nodded.

“Fire at the Spaniels,” I corrected my order. “At your pleasure.”

They did. The rifles crackled and blue smoke wafted over our heads. Across the village one Spaniard dropped in the dust where he had crouched. Another one screamed and seized his throat. Bright blood squirted between his fingers. Their return of fire had practically ceased and they had begun creeping backward. Uncle and I charged the guns again and handed them around. Another fusillade and three more Spaniards dropped. The remaining enemy jumped to their feet and now retreated in earnest. Their attack was suddenly turned to a rout.

“O happy hour!” Robin cried, and the others whooped in glee.

“Run, cavaleros, run!” Gaybob shouted.

“To your father, Satan, hie ye, Spaniels vile!”

“And turn your tails in cowardly Spaniel style!”

“After them, men!” I said. The whole company charged as a unit, running through the heat and smoke down the length of the village, then out of it and into the oaken glades, where the Wejuns overtook the less fleet enemy and commenced a wholesale slaughter of them, swinging the butts of their empty rifles into the faces of the poor Spanish wretches, clubbing them, stabbing them with spears, slicing them open with their own sabers.

“Take prisoners!” I tried to command them, but my orders went unheeded amid the orgy of bloodshed and revenge. One poor devil, his face already a bloody pulp, begged on his knees to be spared—
“A nombre de Dios, señors!”
—but an instant later the bright steel blade of a Toledo sword appeared through the front of his tunic, and he fell forward in the leaves with a thud.

“Hostia … hostia … hostia…!”
another one shrieked as three Wejuns rained blow after blow upon him. Uncle was some minutes in catching up with us in this glade of slaughter, but he too failed to stay the tribesmen's wrathful butchery. I had never seen a group of people so intoxicated with bloodshed than the Wejuns on this day. By the time it was over, so many hacked pieces of human bodies lay scattered on the ground that one could only venture a guess at the precise number of enemy dead.

The victors knelt on the ground or leaned against trees, panting for breath in exhaustion. A spirit-sapping sun blazed down from above. Flies began to drone over the bloodstained ground, their buzzing the only sounds heard besides labored breathing. Then, one by one, the men staggered over to where Uncle and I stood, dropped their weapons, and knelt in fealty to us.

Uncle turned from the tribesmen, not scornfully, but as a man who cannot bear the truth of a horror he has taken part in. His back humped in sorrow and regret, he walked alone back toward the village. It was the first time since our War of Independence that Uncle had taken up arms in order to deprive other men of their existence, and I believe it went somewhat hard on him.

They wanted to feed the Spaniards to the alligators. I insisted that, whatever their crimes, they be buried like Christians. Of course, not only did the Wejuns lack any notion whatever as to what constituted a Christian, but they insisted that to bury the butchered wretches on their island would serve only to install a gang of evil spirits in their home. By their lights I could see they had a point, and since I was not about to take up the role of missionary and catechize them all, I decided to let them have their way. And, at the tail of the island, across from the swamp where a squadron of alligators dwelt, we found the boat that the Spaniards had landed in—a weather-beaten, leaky, shallow-draught river sloop, obviously decades in service without an overhaul, whose tattered sails were patched with as many fragments of cloth as a Bennington quilt. Yet, at the first sight of her, my heart's sails filled with the wind of hope, for we now had a way to make the Gulf!

The Wejuns were some hours at the job of disposing of the enemy, for there was much plunder upon their persons that they wanted, in the way of helmets, daggers, gorgets, rings, and even purses of money, though the Wejun's concept of currency was less than a child's—in their aboriginized scheme of things, the purses were leathern bags containing magical tokens, like a Shannoah medicine pouch. One other piece of nastiness turned up: I saw several of the men taking scalps from the dead, even from disembodied heads. No doubt this was a custom they had adopted from their adversaries in the generations since they had reverted to a state of near-savagery, but I demanded that they stop it at once.