Kennedy shrugged & blew his nose into his fingers. “He was a dirty cry-baby, Joseph. Best forgotten.”
I nodded matter-of-factly. “What had he done, exactly?”
“He tuh! tuh! traded us, Joseph,” Kennedy replied, shaking his fist at me. Something in it made a rattling noise, like pennies clattering in a cup. “He traded us for thirty bits.” He scowl’d at me, then broke into a grin. “Thirty-twobits, actually.”
We’d come to a door leading down into a cellar. Kennedy duck’d in swiftly, muttering to himself, & I follow’d after. After three or four steps it was black as fresh-poured pitch to every side.
“Mr. Kennedy!” I call’d, stretching out my arms.
“Over here, Joseph. Quietly.”
After three more steps I came to a row of barrels that seem’d to run unbroken from one wall to the other. “Mr. Kennedy?” I whimper’d. In the blink of an eye I was dizzy with fear at the thought of being parted from him. I did not question this new-found attachment of mine — this filial a fection for a murderer — against my nature though it surely was. I had no “nature” to speak of any longer — there was only the act, the abetting, the decision I had made. Already it fill’d my mind with its finality & sleekness. God could perhaps forgive, but he could never undo what Kennedy & I had done — of that much I was certain. My fate had been solder’d to Kennedy’s own. Had I lost him there, in that relentless blackness, I’d simply have laid down & waited to be lynch’d.
Just then, however, Kennedy appear’d out of the dark & took hold of me by my wrists.
“Have yourself a wash,” he said, dragging me to the nearest of the barrels & plunging my hands into a cool, astringent liquid.
“What is it?” I gasp’d. It stung my palms & knuckles fiercely.
“Briarberry wine,” Kennedy said, letting go of my arms. “If you’ve sport to wash off you, Joseph, buh! buh! briarberry wine’s your trick.”
“Briarberry! But it stains worse than anything,” I protested. “& it stinks.”
“Clever hen!” Kennedy sing-song’d, still in high humor. I soon heard him splashing it on himself as if it were rose-water. “If the Nick gets ahold of you, all they smell or see’s the souse. That’s what it’s for, Joseph. See?” I fancied I could hear his lips pull back into a grin. “Come along, now! Let’s return us to the temple of our familiars.”
We made our way back without incident. The Child was asleep in the room’s only bed, breathing in soft, melodious whistles. Parson didn’t look to have moved an inch.
“Stulti sunt hic,” Parson said as we came in.
“Get pissed, blood-sucker,” Kennedy retorted.
“A question,” Parson said, unperturb’d. “I wonder, Mr. Kennedy, if you know what a ‘priapy’ might be?”
“Go to hell.”
“A priapy, Mr. Kennedy, is a high ecclesiastic official of the Roman Catholic Church, whose important function is to brand the pricks of the Pope’s bulls with the words ‘Priapus Romae.’ He enjoys a princely revenue & the friendship of God.”
Kennedy said nothing for a brief while, during which he appear’d to be asleep. Then, drawing a weary breath, he lower’d himself onto a chair & said—“& a cunt, you clot of puh! puh! pig-shite, is a Baptist of the feminine variety led out to same said pasture by her fancy minister and made to squat down, present arms, &—”
“I don’t doubt it, Mr. Kennedy!” Parson said happily. He hummed to himself a moment. “Did you come across our creditor?”
“I did.” Kennedy lean’d forward on the stool, dug a finger into his nose, withdrew it, inspected it, then gestured toward the Child. “Rouse him, would you, Joseph?”
I look’d toward the bed. Asleep the tiny creature was so immaculately childlike, so otherworldly in his calm, that it seem’d a shame he didn’t go to bed in front of his audience as the finále of his speeches. In spite of this grace about him, however — or perhaps because of it — the thought of laying hands on him fill’d me with unease. Awful as the others seemed, as much as I fear’d them, their significance paled in the presence of the Child — I felt no kinship toward them, no devotedness, no love.
“Go on, Joseph,” Kennedy mutter’d, fidgeting with the collar of his coat. It was a filthy, ragged a fair, its buttons fashion’d from all manner of odds & ends — bottle-caps, bits of tea-cup, the gnaw’d end of a pipe. A life as one of the Child’s retainers clearly didn’t bring much in the way of worldly privilege.
Trying to undo one of the buttons, Kennedy put a gouge into his finger & cursed. “Wake him up already, Joseph, for the love of Sam! Up & give him a puh! puh! poke!”
“Mill him vigorously with thy palm, Mormon,” Parson intoned.
I took a few steps toward the bed. The Child’s breathing had a restless sound to it now, as if he were already half-awake; the notion came to me that he might be shamming sleep, to test me. For some reason this made me bolder. Bending over him, I saw the balls of his eyes flitting back & forth under their glossy lids, his thin lips quivering with each breath. An odd thing happen’d then — suddenly it was I who was powerful, knowledgeable & sly; the Child, by contrast, was as helpless as his name implied. I’d reinvented myself once already that night — the eager sniveler from Nauvoo, Illinois had been quietly put to death. I was free of my old life, burnt clean by violence, like a coal-scuttlepulled clear of the fire. Was any role not mine for the taking, if I chose?
I laid my hand on the Child’s shoulder. As soon as I did so Parson darted back into his corner like a mouse into its hole.
The Child’s eyes clapped open like two shutter’d windows. “Is it you, Brother?” he said tenderly, his eyes wet with wonder.
“It’s Harvey,” I answer’d. “Or Smith, if you prefer. Mr. Kennedy and myself—”
Before I could finish the Child gave me a kick that sent me tumbling backwards. He was fully clothed under the blankets, boots & all; the print of his heel burn’d as fiercely against my ribs as if it had been etch’d there.
“Suh — suh — suh—!” I gasp’d, struggling for breath.
“Shut your mouth, boy,” the Child said sedately, hopping down from the bed. “Leave the stuttering to Stuts. It suits him better.”
I shut my eyes tight, expecting another kick; but instead I heard his voice saying a fectionately to Kennedy—“Judging from the reek of briarberry, I would say you found our man.”
“I did, the motte-licker.”
“Did you come to terms?”
A pause. “Weren’t nothing on him. Not a cent.”
“And in his rooms?”
“His rooms was in the Puh! Puh! Palace Hotel alley.”
Cautiously — simperingly — I open’d my eyes. The Child was directly above me. He was looking past Kennedy now, perhaps at Parson in the corner. “You mean to say that you brought nothing back? Not a blessed thing?”