Queen Aché slid down the debris and landed on the deck with a stumble that was almost graceful. Hicks came next, slithering and cursing, although he managed to jump over the gap and land on his feet.
Queen Aché brushed herself down. "Try to show no fear when Major Shroud appears. He is one of the walking dead, but like all zombis he doesn't know it. He believes that he is still the same man that he was when he was sealed in his coffin, so you must talk to him as if he is a normal person. While you are doing that, I will present your plaza to Chango and see if I can draw his attention away from protecting Major Shroud's head."
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"Sounds like a plan to me."
"One thing, though ... whatever you do, make no attempt to kill Major Shroud until I tell you that Chango has left him unprotected. Otherwise, you will be directly attacking Chango and Changó's anger will be terrible."
"You got it."
They walked along the deck to the fathomless hole where the planks had rotted away. Decker leaned forward and swept his flashlight from side to side. He could make out some of the timbers of the lower decks, and some coils of rope, and a bulging bundle of gray slime that must have been a bale of cotton, but no sign of a casket. "I guess I'll have to go down there and look for it."
"For Christ's sake, Lieutenant, be careful."
"Hicks, old man, this is part of the job."
Although most of the interior of the ship had been gutted by wood rot and boring beetle, there was still the skeleton of a corroded iron companionway clinging to the right-hand side. Decker inched his way toward it and managed to reach out and get a grip on the uppermost railing. The deck planking splintered wetly beneath his weight, but he paused and took a sharp breath, and then he managed to swing himself around and perch both feet on one of the steps.
"You stay there," he told Queen Ache and Hicks. "I'll shout out if I find anything."
He descended the companionway a step at a time, testing each step to make sure that it wouldn't give way. It was at least twenty feet down to the remains of the next deck, and it looked so rotten that—if he fell—he would probably fall right through it, and down to the next deck, and the keel, if the Nathan Cooper still had a keel.
It took him nearly five minutes to climb down to the bot‑
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tom of the companionway. He looked around, trying to orient himself, and trying to work out which way the ship had been docked. The likelihood was that it had been sailed into Shockoe Creek prow-first, and since the sides of the ship tapered off to his right, the hold was probably amidships, to his left.
Holding up his candle in his left hand and his flashlight in his right, he crossed the deck toward a darkened, dripping passageway. The floor was heaped with dead crabs in various stages of decay, like the chopped-off hands of hundreds of massacred children, and the stench was so strong that he couldn't stop himself from letting out a loud, cackling retch. He carefully stepped his way aft, his shoes slipping and sliding, and the flickering flame from his candle made it look as if the crabs were still alive, and crawling on top of each other.
As he neared the end of the passageway he heard a loud, flat, clattering sound. He reached a wooden door with broken hinges, and wrenched it open. Beyond the door was more absolute darkness. He stepped out onto a rusted iron platform and found himself in the Nathan Cooper's hold. Water was cascading down from the hatches above, and that was what was causing all the clatter. Rainwater probably, thought Decker, from the overflowing storm drains along East Main Street. The hold was hung with dozens of heavy-duty chains, which swung and clinked together as the water poured down them. Decker was uncomfortably reminded of the hold of the spaceship Nostromo, in Alien. Chains, and water.
He directed his flashlight downward, systematically sweeping the floor of the hold. At first he thought that it contained nothing more than some stoved-in barrels and a stack of packing cases, but then he shone it right over to the far side, deep into the shadows, and he saw a heap of timbers
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and rubble, and a large grayish green box, a quarter buried in bricks, tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees.
He transferred his candle to his flashlight hand, and hefted out his revolver. Then he carefully swung himself around and climbed down the iron ladder that led to the floor of the hold, testing each rung as he went. He had almost reached the bottom when he stepped right up to the top of his sock in stinking, freezing-cold river water. "Shit," he muttered. The hold was flooded more than a foot deep. Definitely no chance of salvaging his loafers now.
Holding his candle and his flashlight high, he waded across the hold toward the grayish green box. Ripples spread across the water and splashed against the broken barrels. Beneath the water, the deck was greasy with weed, and he was only a third of the way across when he slipped, and soaked the legs of his pants right up to his knees.
He stopped for a moment, but he didn't say anything. There was nobody to blame but himself. But if Hicks had been here, he would have been shouted at for ten minutes nonstop.
At last he reached the box. Now that he could see it close up, Decker didn't have any doubt that it was Major Shroud's casket. It was huge, more than eight feet long, hand-beaten out of thick lead. A face was embossed on the top of it—a slitty-eyed, almond-shaped face with a mailbox mouth. It looked like the tribal faces that hung on the wall in the Mask Bar.
At first, Decker thought that the casket was still intact, but when he waded his way around it, he saw that one side of it was heavily corroded, pitted and pustular like gangrenous flesh, and split wide open. He bent down and shone his flashlight inside. He could make out bunches of dried herbs and mummified apples and little wooden figures, but no sign of Major Shroud's body.
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He looked around but he couldn't see anything else apart from mounds of black sludge from the river bottom and more shoals of dead crabs. He paddled his way back toward the ladder, not knowing if he was relieved or disappointed. But he couldn't forget what Cathy had warned him about. If he didn't get Major Shroud first, then Major Shroud was going to get him.
He started to climb the ladder, but he was only halfway up when he felt a sharp, cold draft and his candle was suddenly snuffed out. Cursing, he holstered his revolver, and searched in his pockets for his cigarette lighter. He flicked it once, but it wouldn't light, so he flicked it again and again. It still refused to light.
He was still flicking it when he became aware that the cold draft was growing even chillier—so chilly that a curtain of icy vapor began to pour down from the edge of the iron platform above him, like dry ice off the edge of a stage in a rock concert. He looked up, but his glasses were fogging up and everything was blurred. He took them off and wiped them on his necktie, and looked up again.
At first he saw nothing but vapor, but when he lifted his flashlight he thought he could see the vapor forming a shadowy outline, as if somebody was standing in it. For an instant, as the vapor curled around, he even thought he could see the impression of a face—a face formed of nothing but frozen air. A living death mask.
"Major Shroud, is that you?" His voice sounded small and flat, barely audible over the promiscuous clattering of the water and the clink-clink-clink of the swaying chains.
"Major Shroud? I've come down here to help you. Do you understand that? Do you understand what I'm saying?"
He climbed one more step up the ladder, and then another. "Major Shroud? Or is it Changó I'm talking to? The great and all-powerful Changó, king of the city of Oyo? I