Would they follow her? Would it be enough, to speak some words at them and take them along, down the river to the towns of the heathen folk—would they travel with their sticks and axes and bows and guns? Just because the Feeger Oracle said?
She clutched the infant to her breast, let its drying flesh, its needle teeth tease her.
It would be easier, she thought, if she had another—not a false one, but a real Oracle. He might help—keep these folk alive, and strong behind her. Travelling south, with the young… .
“Where,” she said aloud, “is Missy?”
Lily shrugged, and Lothar—who’d been attending near the gate—got to his feet.
“I go look on her?” he asked, and the Oracle smiled on him. “You go fetch her,” she said, and touched her cousin’s brow. “Fetch me that nigger too, if Missy think he’s right for it.”
He bobbed to and fro, and smiled broad, and climbed down into the crowd.
Lily stopped singing and looked at her.
“You think the black man is one?”
“Mayhap.” If Missy didn’t come with some word—then the Oracle would have to preach it herself. Would it be a fair enough sermon for the Son, who had settled up in the rafters of the cathedral, waiting for His due?
She held the Infant tighter, and watched the crowd—and after a moment, she smiled.
“Mayhap,” she said, as she looked to the crowd, and saw the dark, familiar face among so many pale. “Mayhap.”
30 - Rapture of the Juke
Andrew Waggoner mounted the stone steps of the cathedral. Ahead were great gilded doors, filigreed with sunbeams. Beyond those: the Dauphin waited for him.
Andrew was glad. Dimly, he recalled a time when he’d turned away, and he might have thought the Dauphin would not welcome him… that he had spurned Him. This would be enough to cast Andrew down, among the bones of those he’d failed.
If only Andrew had let the Dauphin guide his shaking physician’s hand—how much suffering might he have prevented? How much less misery might he have caused?
“Don’t cry, Doctor.” Annie Rowe stood on the steps to the Cathedral with him, her face glowing in its light. “Christ’ll save you.”
“I’m already saved, Annie,” said Andrew. He didn’t know whether he’d say Christ was saving him, exactly. But Andrew had been saved some time ago—on the mountainside he’d wandered alone, full of doubt and anger, befuddled by the hill witch’s narcotics. He’d come to him, the Being, the Dauphin—the Juke, he thought—and Andrew had turned away, but it hadn’t mattered.
Once touched by the Divine, Andrew carried the spark.
If Annie saw that as Christ… well, all right. The one thing he’d learned about the Juke—the Dauphin—was that he lit that spark differently in every soul.
Now, he bore that spark home. To this great cathedral, swimming with angels, surrounded by a multitude. As he reached the top, one took his hand.
“I’m Lily,” said the Angel, and Andrew looked at her again, and sure enough, it was Lily.
“How about that,” he said, and walked across the platform—the dais—to the Oracle, who stood waiting for him. She smiled radiantly.
“You,” said the Oracle. “You are one. An Oracle too. Yes?”
“I am.”
“You stopped asking questions.”
“I have.”
“Will you speak?”
“I will.”
She unfolded her arms, and indicated where Andrew had been. “Tell them,” she said, her arm sweeping over the crowd of the wretched, lost souls of Eliada. “Tell them how to worship right.”
The last drops of rainfall steamed off Sam Green’s bent back. Jason could just see it from the front doors of the hospitaclass="underline" Green had made it a good way down the roadway to Eliada. His shirt was badly singed, and the flesh of his right hand, which clutched the jar, was slick, an awful mix of bright red and black.
“You see,” said Ruth, who stood beside him, “it is Sam Green. Not your father. Your father’s dead.”
“I see that now,” said Jason. He held Ruth’s hand, and looked at her. The flesh of her brow was slick too, even though she hadn’t yet stood in the rain. That might be fever, maybe exertion, maybe just all that time kept in that hot, airless room. With Sam Green gone, carrying the Cave Germ, there was less need to keep her there, and when she’d insisted on coming with him to follow, Jason couldn’t make an argument otherwise.
Jason squeezed Ruth’s hand, and let it drop. “Hush,” he whispered, and ran down the steps. It wasn’t a long distance, and until he was just a step away, Jason thought he might have gotten the jump on the Pinkerton.
But in that instant, Sam Green spun around, his free hand clenched in a fist.
“Jason!” cried Ruth.
“It ain’t your business anymore, boy,” said Green.
And then Jason was on his back in the mud. His jaw felt like it might never close properly again.
Green stood over him. In the light of day, it was sure clear that Jason’s father hadn’t come up from Hell; but Green looked like he hadn’t been anywhere too different. Half his face was red and peeling, and bloody meat hung in tatters from his right cheekbone. His hair was patched on his scalp. What flesh was intact was sooty and black. He winced as he reached to his belt and drew his revolver. He aimed it at Jason with a steady hand.
Jason kept steady too—steady as his ma would have, as she had…
“You’re aiming to let the germ out—ain’t you?” asked Jason.
“It’s the only way.”
“You know what it does, and you’re still goin’ to do that?”
Green narrowed his eyes. “I know,” he said, and gestured over his shoulder with his head. “I know what they do. The Jukes. I’ve seen it, Jason. You have too. They take men’s souls away. Take them away.”
“There’s a thousand folk yonder. You open that jar, they’re all going to die.”
“That they are,” he said. “But you saw what those things—that Mister Juke—what it can do. Just one of them, not too old… drives a fellow to think he’s seen God. And then it gets bigger—and what do you think happens then?”
“I expect…”
“Everyone thinks they’ve seen God. Everyone,” said Green. “They’ll do anything for that monster. Their souls—the ones entrusted to the True God. And eventually—they’ll run like a plague themselves over the land, mad with that thing.” He drew a ragged breath. “The Devil will rule the Earth.”
“Mr. Green,” said Ruth. She’d come up while they spoke, slowly, teetering in the mud. “What’s happened to you?”
Sam Green squinted at her. The gun faltered. “Miss Harper,” he said. “There’s been a fire… and a fight. I’m sorry to tell you—your father, your mother… They all died in it.”
“And yet you did not.” Ruth’s voice took a brittle quality. “You survived.”
“I fought them off. Best I could. Miss Harper—men from up the hill. Burned the place down—murdered as many as—”
Jason didn’t let him finish. He pivoted on his hip, and kicked out and Green shouted out as his knee buckled to one side. The gun flew from his hand, and landed quietly in the mud.
Jason dove at Sam Green’s middle. “I’m sorry,” he said as he connected, sending the bigger man sprawling under him. The stink of cooked flesh was overpowering, and Green was slippery underneath his shirt, like he’d been skinned. “I know you’re hurt.”
Jason grabbed for the jar, but Green moved it out of his reach with one hand, grabbed Jason by the hair with the other and yanked him back. Jason cried out, and he felt ashamed: Green hadn’t so much as whimpered.