Abruptly, without any signal that I could see, the toneless chant broke off. The whole procession sank down as one, the crowd sagged like collapsing canvas. Wolf and human alike crouched huddled with arms above their heads. Only one was left standing, at the rear of the gathering, one I knew damn well hadn’t been there a moment ago. With the unhurried movement of a ritual the cowled figure glided forward over the backs of his prostrate followers and stepped delicately up onto the flat fire-scarred rock. The drums stammered and yelped, the arms stretched out and the cowl fell back. Like the moon glinting from behind black cloud the cold sallow face of Don Pedro gazed down upon his followers.
I could see him clearly, still with that faint half-smile. An instant of breathless silence was shattered by a burst of animal noise, a deep rebellious lowing that set off a cacophony of other calls. Chickens squawked, something bleated – sheep or goats, maybe – and at least two dogs were yelping. It didn’t sound one little bit absurd; it was unnerving as hell. If they were what I thought they were …
Don Pedro spread his hands and snapped his fingers once, explosively. In a flurry of robes the leading Wolf scuttled up to join him on the altar, and others behind him, Caribs and whites and blacks, almost all towering over the little figure. It was he, though, outlined in the light, who seemd like the one fixed point, and they as insubstantial as their shadows on the stone, hunched and shivering. He sang out, in that lisping voice of his
Yet it sounded harsher, more powerful than the thunderous, ecstatic whisper of the crowd’s response.
Then slowly at first, in a peculiar throbbing rhythm, they began to clap, growing stronger, faster till they drowned out the drums. ‘The battérie maconnique,’ murmured the Stryge softly. ‘The Knocking on the Door –’
‘Party gettin’ under way, huh?’ said Jyp tautly.
Don Pedro closed his eyes an instant, as if in anticipation. Then he took a tall pitcher from one of his acolytes, and turning to face the front, the fires and finally the rock behind, he lifted it and shook it gently in salutation – to the compass points, it looked like. Then abruptly he yelled something, and dashed a stream of what the pitcher held against the white stone. It looked like blood, flushing red-brown; but then, leaning unconcerned out over the flames, he tipped a stream into the left-hand fire and swung it around into the right. An arc of blue fire hissed up across the front of the altar. He raised the pitcher to us – and hurled it, spraying, through the flames. We ducked aside as it fell and shattered amongst us, leaving a comet’s trail of droplets that blazed and stung. The crowd roared, the drums rolled in celebration, and the cries of the startled animals rang louder than ever. A sickly stink filled the air; it was rum he’d burned, and pretty powerful stuff.
The drumbeat quickened. On the altar the acolytes bobbed and hopped around their god-figure, flinging out libations of rum and flour and what looked like wine. The crowd clustered forward, holding up their hands in the supplication of the starving for the symbolic food, barging and trampling, twisting this way and that like snakes following the charmer’s pipe. Among the crowd a woman screeched, a frightful tearing sound that was something more than protest, and sprang out before the altar, whirling, leaping to the beat, cavorting in the tangle of her robes till she looked no longer human in the firelight, more like some wind-tossed bird. Suddenly a tall black man was dancing, flinging himself against the stone at Don Pedro’s feet. Behind him a shorter white man swayed like a withy, graceless and boneless, lank hair streaming. Wolves bayed in their horrible voices and joined the dance, their heavy boots shaking the ground; and once they were in the whole crowd began to seethe and swirl like a heating pot. Only our Carib guards stayed aloof at the edge of the clearing, shuffling and circling in slower circles of their own, shaking their heads and tapping the ground with their spears. But as the dance swirled past one shrieked aloud, ducked down and came stamping forward, tattooed legs splayed, spear outthrust in a menacing, posturing mime. The drums yammered frenzy at him as he hopped and stabbed, and his fellow Caribs began to quiver and jerk and shudder like the rest. Bottles gleamed in the hands of the dancers, tilted high, passed from hand to hand indiscriminately and, near empty, were flung to crash against the white stone. The acolytes had to dodge them, but Don Pedro only smiled and stood, arms outstretched like a priest’s in blessing – or like a puppet master with many strings.
Then he gestured, a strange circular movement slashed sharply across – once – twice. The crowd fell back, still dancing. An acolyte sprang down and tipped maize flour from a bowl on the ground before the stone, and as he poured his shuffling feet traced the same design, a circle quartered by two lines.
Men and women burst out of the crowd swinging fluttering bundles – chickens, dangling helpless by their feet. Up towards the stone they held the birds, swinging them in time to the dance; and suddenly a long blade caught the firelight in Don Pedro’s lean yellow hand. Across, back it licked, and with an exultant yell the acolytes flung the headless bodies, still flapping and struggling and spattering blood, high in the air to crash in their death-throes into the quartered circle. Don Pedro flung his arms above his head and sang out
The crowd howled and swung forward, Carib, Wolf, white and all, dancing and reeling from side to side. A young black woman seized one of the headless thrashing things and tearing open her robe sprayed its blood down her naked front; then she pressed it to her breasts, swaying and singing. And in her high clear voice I began to catch words I knew
Carrefour – that was crossroads in French. And Legba – My fists clenched. Not a French word – a name, one I’d heard before. With a shout like breathless laughter the crowd drew back, pointing. In the open space before the blood-spattered design two or three figures limped and hobbled on sticks they plucked from the fire. One, a plump middle-aged mulatto, came lurching past us, leering and blinking with rheumy eyes. But as mine met them I felt a cold thrill of excitement. There was no real resemblance – it was more like an expression that flickered across that wholly different face, and a strange one at that. A grimace, twisted, distorted almost beyond recognition – but all the same it was unmistakable. It was the look of the old musician from the New Orleans street corner – from the crossroads. And Legba was the name Le Stryge had given him …