Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [90]
‘To be forgiven for my crimes. To be a good man, like yourself, reverend.’
‘A drink, McCreedy. Water?’ The reverend stands and shuffles, uncomfortable with the virtues of piety pressed upon him. ‘Or something to take the edge off the journey?’
‘Rum,’ answers McCreedy. Not for one moment has he taken his eyes from the reverend.
‘Now then, where did I put that key?’ The reverend is patting down his frock and rummaging in the pockets. ‘Ah, of course.’ He pulls out two necklaces from his chest. On one dangles the silver cross, the other a small key. He moves behind the pulpit, bends and unlocks the door. ‘Only hidden to protect our heathen subjects from temptation. Will port suffice?’ Next to the flask are a bible, a muslin bag of moulding cheese, a musket, and a small bag of shot.
McCreedy takes the flask without a word. He unhinges the stopper and gulps.
‘Steady now,’ warns the reverend. ‘I want the story from a sober narrator.’
McCreedy wipes the rum from his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘You having some yourself?’
‘A little early in the day for me.’
‘I think you should have a drop.’
A look of panic flashes across the reverend’s face. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he demands. ‘And stop this fooling.’
The reverend does not take the offered flask, and McCreedy, smiling, knowing, takes another gulp.
‘You did kill him, didn’t you?’ The reverend’s question hangs in the stifling heat. McCreedy finishes the flask and tosses it across the plank floor of the church.
‘With a dirty blade.’
The reverend is both pleased and puzzled by the admission. He frowns at first, and then breathes a sigh of relief, an understanding that his only trouble is the guilt of his assassin. He sits on the raised stage of the chapel and faces the murderer he hired with the promise of redemption, not pots of silver or gold.
‘Now, McCreedy. A sinner you may have been, and delivered here in manacles at the request of the Crown for good reason. But the Lord knows His earth is a brighter place without that cannibal darkening our days. He may have paraded himself as a Christian at one time, and I admit we were fools to believe we could turn a savage to the light so soon, but contend not that this was a man sly to the point of sorcery.’
McCreedy takes his canvas pack from the plank floor and sets it down beside him on the pew. He unfastens the straps and reaches in and pulls out the leather journal of the Fijian.
‘Seen this before, reverend?’
The revelation of what events and commentary may be recorded takes the breath from the reverend’s speech. He stutters and stammers. ‘The journal! From the voyage out there to …’
The reverend stretches out to clutch the book, but McCreedy hovers the prize just beyond his reach.
‘McCreedy!’ shouts the reverend. ‘Give it here now.’
McCreedy lets the reverend snatch the carrot from the stick. The reverend pulls the book to his chest, as if it were his beating heart, and he would surely perish if anyone remove it from his person.
‘For once, McCreedy, your ignorance of the written word has done you a favour. Consider it a blessing that such satanic scribblings have kept their tongue.’
The reverend allows the book to leave his chest. He begins to turn over the cover, then quickly snaps it shut.
‘Will you join me in a prayer, McCreedy? Some words to thank the Lord for the safe return of this burning book. And of course the health of your good self.’
McCreedy suggests that the reverend first hear of what happened. ‘The tawdry details, reverend, they are a burden I have to share.’
‘Tell, tell all. Should we not revel in an evil banished?’
‘After I went to the guest house. After I hid in his room and observed him readying himself for the evening. After a man you pronounced as a flesh-eating banshee fought me tooth and claw for his life, I needed comfort beyond prayer, a physical embrace frowned upon by our Lord.’
‘You took solace in a whore.’
‘That I did, reverend.’
‘What does that tell us of flesh and loneliness? That