First, in the south. This would explain both why the Black Arawak had so suddenly, and so unlike them, abandoned their traditional fishing-grounds in the south: and headed north. And why the Baymen would not, why they really, really, would not, consider shifting themselves to the southern fishery. “Slowly heading north. ” Well, one such show, and the north-central fishing-grounds were going to be emptied, too. For sure.
How long had this all been going on? Harlow had no dates, as such. But he had at least something like a date. The Bloody Captain, Bloody Man, Captain Blood, had been appearing since about the time, he said, “When we di fight de ’Painiard oet by St. Saviour C’ve.”
For hundreds of years the Great Barrier Reef had served to protect this obscure corner of Central America from the otherwise all-conquering Spaniards. In theory, at least, by logic, certainly, the Spaniards must have realized that something, Something must lie the other side of the great Reef. something other than “Chaos and the void.” But, with so much else to concern them, savage and perhaps not-so-savage empires teeming with gold, hills of almost solid silver, shires and shires of well-tended arable land: whv should they have concerned themselves over-much with the question of, Something lost beyond the reef.?
Besides. The English knew the only channels through the reef.
And the Spaniards didn’t.
But, of course, they had tried to find it.
They got as far as St. Saviour's Cave, once. In those days, St. Saviour’s Cave was co-capital with King Town. There had been a battle there. Or, there had not. National historians were divided on the point. Legend, however, legend said that there had been a battle there. And the date assigned to this battle, legendary or otherwise, was sometime in the 1790s.
There was nothing, or almost nothing, nowadays, on St. Saviour’s Cave. Time and the sea and the savage winds had torn at it. It had once been a green and lovely isle, with stately houses, with taverns, a church, a graveyard. Now it was perhaps a third of its former size. Sand dunes covered it. Heaps of ruined coral lav- decomposing, stinking. Here and there a piece of a long-dead tree lay, roots up. Sometimes the rare antiquarian might discover a slab of marble, carven long ago in London, with a funerary inscription on it. And that was it. That was all. That was St. Saviour’s Cave.
If, however, Bloody Man had headed there before.
“Well,” Limekiller said. “It is the Church which sent me here
“Yes, mon. Yes, Jock.”
“And so I am going to lay the whole matter right in the arms, or the lap, maybe, of the Church. Right, Harlow?”
“Well, sah. ”
“What do you think?”
Harlow was small and Black and thin and strong as wire-rope. He nodded his head, slowly, slowly. “No bet-tah place, me teenk, b’y. Een fock, me b’y: No oddah place. ”
The Archbishop said: “It has been one of my sorrows that I’ve not found the way of being of more service to the Arawak people, Mr. Limekiller. To be sure, they are not quick to give their confidence, as a rule, to outsiders. Perhaps one shouldn’t wonder, considering their history. Still. Still. Perhaps it is because I am not White enough. Or, again, perhaps it is because I am not Black enough. It is the pity of history that such things should matter.”
Archbishop Le Beau was, in fact, what the Bavfolk called “clear,” meaning in terms already beginning to sound archaic in North America, a light Coloured person. He was, in fact, almost exactly the color of an old papyrus.
And he said: “Well, Mr. Limekiller, you are not the first to tell me this story. But you are the first to tell it me in the present tense and in regard to so near a point in time and space. We do have a duty. In regard, of course, to the people of this coast who are so stricken with fear. And also. and not, I believe, not less, to this poor, wretched wanderer. I must go out there. Even a few years ago, even five years ago, I should have gone out alone. I cannot do so now, I must have help. Would you be afraid to go with me? To help this wraith, and to give him the rest which he has been so long seeking? I am not. But then, of course, sir, I am old. I am very, very old. ”
For a moment, during which no one else said one word, the aged priest seemed deep in meditation. Then he said, “There have always been those who clearly believed that any souls which have fallen from Grace — as this one’s clearly has — are irremediably damned, and that ‘their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched. ’ But I am not one of those. Others say, that such a soul is, becomes, more or less automatically the captive of the Fallen Ones, about whom perhaps the least said, the better; for they are not likely to submit to having Grace restored to him. They may fight, you know, my sons. They might fight back, for they have had him in bondage a long, long time: they might fight back. And as to what weapons they may use. who dares consider?”
He made a gesture. Somewhat, he straightened his age-bent body. Then he looked up and around.
Jack was not happy at the notion. Not at all, not at all. And neither was Father Nollekens, whom they had found at Point Pleasaunce when they arrived. Feast of all was Harlow happy. But it was Harlow who spoke first.
“May-be, Your Grace, we tehk alaang wan rifle?”
‘“Not by might and not by valor, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.’ Besides, of what use? You would surely not suggest anything like a silver bullet? This is not an enemy, this is a soul in torment.” Harlow said no more.
The archbishop continued. “I am a Christian man, and so I do gird myself in the armor of Christ.” He held out his hand to a small, black case. “There are the sacraments. I never go very far without them. It is my viaticum, my victuals for the journey. One never can know when, or even how, it may be needed.”
Limekiller said suddenly, “You think it will protect you — us! Maybe it will —”
The old man looked at him with something which was not entirely approval and which was certainly less than reproach. “Another citation from Scripture, sir. ‘Let not him who putteth on his armor boast as him who taketh of it off.’”
There was in all this a certain Something which Limekiller did not understand. But Father Nollekens did, or thought he did.
“But, sir,” he said, leaning forward, “But Your Grace, there is no provision for this!”
“Well, then the Lord will provide.”
“But, yes, but Your Grace: it has no precedent.”
“Neither had the Resurrection.”
The small Black priest clearly felt he was not winning, but he tried once more. “Ah, but Your Grace — Have you no fear of the discipline of the Church?”
The archbishop looked at him, and stroked his white, white beard. “My dear boy — Forgive me. My dear Father. When one is eighty years old and a retired archbishop in a Church which never had an Inquisition and which has no pope, one may answer your question very easily: No.”
He gave the same answer to the next question, which was Jack Limekiller’s. “Do you think, Archbishop, that he. that it. that the person we’re talking about. may be heading for St. Saviour’s Caye?”
“Certainly his destination of desire is the Holy Saviour, but not, I think, that Caye. No.”
The night breeze blew through the windows of the small house, which, blessedly, were screened. The Bayfolk commonly had the habit of turning up their gasoline lamps to full power, thus producing a great amount of both light and heat, and then closing the solid wooden shutters of their un-screened windows in order to keep out the “flies” which the light attracted; as for the heat of the lamps, well, that made the nights no hotter than the days. Screens cost monev, true: and when they had the money to buy the screens, they didn’t. They had other things on their priority lists. The room was simply furnished, and, which pleased Jack also, nothing in it was made of plastic.