The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [112]
"But I would not cooperate. The pain somehow remained manageable, and I had grown to fancy this free life of mine; I was in no mood to give it up so easily, so I continued to protest my innocence. Hands are extremely personal parts of our bodies, aren't they? Their abuse made me very, very angry. Finally, when I feigned an unconsciousness from which I couldn't be revived, they slipped the irons off and dragged me from the room.
"I kicked the first one, here, the bridge of the nose. A kill. A second tried to pull his gun; I sent him crashing out a window and followed him out before the others could fire a single shot. His body cushioned my fall. As alarms sounded and shots missed me, I ran to a corner of the yard where they stacked provisions. A stairway of barrels took me to the top of the wall and over.
"The prison was set on a peninsula, ocean on three sides. I made it to the jungle before they cut off the road. They were reluctant to follow me at night; their pursuit fell away the deeper I went. Undergrowth became too thick; I took to the river, upstream with the incoming tide. When dawn broke, I was miles inland; they would never find me. Now the pain began; I gathered medicinal herbs—roots, some bark; using my teeth, primarily—to treat my hands, numb the pain. Infection set in quickly in that dank, humid air. I couldn't chance a return to the city for a doctor; my friends, the En-aguas, the native people upriver, had knowledge of these things. Six days to reach them. By then I was half-dead. Spiking fever. Delirious."
Jack laid his hands out on his knees, fanned the remaining fingers, looked down at them dispassionately.
"Their medicine man cut off the two most damaged fingers.
Saved the others; I have no memory of it. When I woke two days had passed. My hands were covered with salve, bound with a compress of leaves. They asked no questions, I told them nothing; brutality was routine in their view of the outside world. Two months passed before I was strong enough to travel. Three of them paddled me downriver by canoe, disguised as a priest; the birth of Father Devine. They would take me north to Porto Santana, where I would take a tramp steamer to the Indies. But first I had business in Belem.
"With my friends' help, we filled the bottom of a wagon with black powder stolen from the military depot. Then I tracked down Rina in Belem. Working in a brothel. Drugs, looks decaying, her little life already failing towards a sad predictable finish. I took her out of there, tied her to the seat of the wagon, a gag in her mouth. Never said a word to her: What was there to say? There were no words. I looked into her eyes for a long time. She understood perfectly.
"At dark we sent two mules trotting towards the prison with the wagon behind; guards saw Rina on board and took the wagon inside their gates. They didn't see the burning fuse concealed beneath the floorboards and with her screaming no one heard it hiss. But you could hear the explosion for fifty miles."
Sparks paused, swallowed a deep breath. Circles under his eyes, black as paint. Was there regret behind his words? Doyle couldn't hear it, only the throbbing of his own heart.
"I was on board that ship the next morning, carrying papers taken from a man who had died upriver: a Dutch businessman, Jan de Voort. My story: traveling home after an accident ruined my hands. Another white European consumed by the jungle. Shall I go on?"
Doyle nodded: Who knew if Sparks would ever expose this wound again? Hold your tongue, he told himself. Remember how a patient left to ramble so often unwittingly reveals the secret of his ailment. He refilled his glass, hoping Jack would not notice how severely his hands trembled.
"I took my time moving north through the islands: Curacao Antigua. Hispaniola.