Galapagos Regained (45 page)

Descending the cinder mountain, she proceeded across a plain broken at intervals by bare trees and leafless thickets, plus stands of prickly-pear cacti, the very variety she'd tended at Down House. The stark terrain culminated in a dormant volcano, its slopes covered by a shawl of formerly molten rock, the static waves rolling across the vale like a sea of frozen pitch. To the west the rigid lava yielded to a tranquil pool, domain of ten saddleback tortoises, some lumbering along the shore, others wallowing in the mud. The thirsty ones waded into the shallows and, submerging their heads completely, imbibed prodigal quantities of mossy water.

“It's a miracle!” cried Solange, dashing to Chloe's side.

“Since when do you believe in miracles?”

“I didn't say I believed in miracles,” said Solange. “I merely noted that a miracle had occurred.”

Acting with unspoken but complete accord, each woman selected a tortoise, then collapsed prone across its carapace. Chloe's creature smelled of ashes, tuff, algae, and muck: a not unpleasant fragrance—in truth quite exhilarating. Briefly she wondered why she felt rather more inclined to embrace this beast than to make a joyful noise unto the Presence. But then she recalled a reflection Mr. Darwin had offered during the fateful Down House luncheon: “I cannot explain myself—only God, wherever He may be, can do that—but I shall attempt to explain my theory.” If a great scientist could be a stranger to himself, then she must be permitted the same foible. Tomorrow she might attempt to decipher the riddle of Chloe Bathurst, but for now it was sufficient to hug a tortoise.

*   *   *

For some while Chloe and Solange lay athwart their respective reptiles, watched over by Cuniche and Nitopari, and they would have continued their devotions had the other masquerade troupers not arrived. Ralph was delighted to find Charles Isle so fecund—“Evidently we've gained Galápagos with time to spare!”—but before he could expand on this sentiment six women came striding across the lava field. Clothed in the sorts of calico gowns favored by the wives of North American pioneers, they were presumably citizens of Orrin Eggwort's experimental community, their sunburnt faces evoking the indigenous marine iguanas, each complexion tinted a different shade of red.

“The Supreme Emperor sends you his howdy-do,” said the maroon pioneer, addressing Ralph. “An hour ago, Orrin and the rest of us watched you drop your anchor in the bay.”

“Lovely ladies, allow me to introduce our company,” said Ralph. “I am Professor Edward Cabot, instructor in anthropology at King's College and master of the good ship
Covenant,
out of Puerto Etén. My fellow British citizens include the aerialist Bianca Quinn, palsied last year in a fall but now fully recovered, and Lady Omega, an English mystic who healed Miss Quinn's broken back. Our Peruvian natives count themselves amongst Lady Omega's followers.”

“Rebecca Eggwort at your service,” said the maroon pioneer, then indicated her five companions and gave their names, the burgundy woman being Sarah, the scarlet Ruth, the strawberry Naomi, the rose Hagar, and the coral Miriam. “Orrin's other wives are back in Minor Zion”—she gestured towards the volcano—“over yonder, behind Mount Pajas.”

“His other wives?” said Solange. “You mean, you're all married to Mr. Eggwort?”

“Happily,” said Sarah.

“On balance,” said the pregnant Ruth.

“Truly happily,” said Naomi, likewise in a gravid state.

“I thought Mr. Eggwort was a Christian, not a Persian,” said Solange.

“You're darn tootin' he's a Christian,” Rebecca replied, “but like many a Latter-Day Saint, Orrin practices the venerable Bible custom of plural marriage. ‘If it was good enough fer David and Solomon,' he says, ‘it's good enough fer me.' At the moment he's on top with nine wives, whereas our Associate Emperor and our Assistant Emperor ain't got but six.”

“Six all together?” asked Solange.

“Apiece,” answered Rebecca.

“If Mr. Eggwort proposes marriage to me, I shall refuse,” said Solange. “I would never share my husband with another woman, much less a harem.”

“We ain't no harem,” said Rebecca indignantly.

“Ah, then you're a seraglio,” said Solange.

“That's right,” said Miriam emphatically. “A seraglio.”

“Which would make you all sultanas,” noted Chloe.

“Exactly,” said Rebecca.

Chloe told herself it didn't matter how many wives the local emperors possessed, so long as they helped her foil the rector.

Ralph said, “Good ladies, we seek word of H.M.S.
Antares
and her illustrious passenger, the Reverend Mr. Hallowborn, who has untoward designs on this archipelago.”

“We know all about the Great Winnowin',” said Rebecca. “The way Orrin heard it from the Governor, last year a couple of parsons over in England took to doin' some serious theologizin' and decided these islands was once the Devil's playground.”

“Mrs. Eggwort, do you think it possible Mr. Hallowborn has arrived and the slaughter already begun?” asked Chloe.

“Heck, no, they wouldn't do no harrowin' without Orrin's say-so. He's the only Supreme Emperor in these here parts.”

An immense serenity spread through Chloe, a happiness such as she'd not known since her epiphany in Manáos. No slaughter. Not yet.

“We should like to meet your husband.”

“Then it will come to pass,” said Rebecca.

For the next half-hour the maroon pioneer and her cohorts guided the
Covenant'
s company through the foothills of Mount Pajas, then around the volcano to a three-story stone keep encircled by a brick wall. Armed with a carbine, a uniformed sentry manned the blockhouse, its wooden tower rising from the grounds like a candle set atop a casket. A gallows occupied the center of the exercise yard, its crosspiece devoid of nooses: the naïve observer might have thought it a device for drying clothes—but Chloe, hanged one hundred and six times as Pirate Anne, knew otherwise.

“Mephistropolis, I presume,” she said.

“Orrin don't take much interest in our penal colony,” said Rebecca, nodding, “exceptin' when Kommandant Hengstenberg stages an execution—then we all turn out to watch. Well, not ever'body. We leave the young 'uns at home. I reckon Hengstenberg's got about two dozen convicts in there, human sludge from the Guayaquil
barrios
. An odd duck, Hengstenberg—odd and old: he deserted from the Prussian army at Waterloo and ain't stopped runnin' since.”

Waterloo, mused Chloe—the battle in which her grandfather had wielded his bayonet before it became Pirate Anne's dagger. “I'm glad you don't bring children to the executions.”

“The other wives and me, all us
sultanas
—I do like that word of yours—we used to think a boy should be at least eight afore he sees a hangin' and a girl at least ten. Orrin, though, he went and had hisself a revelation on the matter, and it turns out Heaven's amenable to startin' boys off at six and girls at seven. You ask me, the Lord God Jehovah is full of peculiar views, but it ain't my place to judge.”

*   *   *

As the tropical breeze wafted across Charles Isle, raising clouds of ash that rode the sticky air like phantom wasps, Chloe, her companions, and Orrin Eggwort's wives continued their march, entering a fissured basin littered with pumice and broken by patches of anemic pumpkins, weary turnips, and feeble sweet potatoes. Men in flaxen shirts and women in cotton bonnets ambled amongst the crops, tending them with rakes and watering cans. Beyond the gardens lay Minor Zion, and minor it was indeed, a cluster of forlorn shacks with thatched roofs and clinker walls, facing a plaza that, being planted with orchids and lilies, was apparently intended to be mistaken for a village green (although the flowers did no more to mitigate the general bleakness than would a nosegay tossed upon a slag heap). Everywhere Chloe glanced, children cavorted, trundling hoops, kicking balls, skipping rope. Scrawny goats and underfed hogs roamed the settlement at will. The only substantial building was a squat clapboard affair, its front yard displaying a sign reading
WHITE HORSE PROPHECY TABERNACLE,
its terra-cotta roof boasting a bell tower surmounted by a wooden cross.

Rebecca directed her charges into the vicinity of Emperor Orrin Eggwort, a bony and angular man wearing a straw hat and red homespun shirt, a braided black beard swaying from his jaw. He lay socketed in a hammock suspended from the porch roof of the nearest hovel, sipping water from a silver goblet whilst reveling in the breeze generated by a triad of palm-leaf fans, the motive power being, in each case, a wife. After introducing this second set of sultanas—Constance, Charity, and the pregnant Martha—Rebecca presented the troupers as “Perfessor Cabot, anthropologist, Lady Omega, faith healer, and Miss Quinn, her beneficiary, all of 'em interestin' and harmless English folk newly arrived from Peru on that big boat anchored in the bay.”

“Welcome to Duntopia.” Orrin Eggwort swept a spindly arm east to west in a gesture encompassing the whole island. “I am master of all I survey.” A bright smile broke through his beard. “Thou hast comely wives, Perfessor.”

“They aren't my wives,” said Ralph. “Did I hear you correctly? Duntopia, not Utopia?”

“Dun—the dullest of all possible colors,” said Eggwort, nodding. “Shall I tell you what's wrong with most communities built from scratch? They strive fer perfection, that's what. They go a-whorin' after excellence. Therein lies a recipe fer frustration, wouldn't you agree?”

“I believe I follow your logic,” said Ralph.

“Here in Minor Zion, we don't eschew ambition—we fight it tooth 'n' nail. We don't avoid mediocrity—we practice it. I daresay that during the past ten years we've achieved the by-Jiminy pinnacle of diminished expectations.” Eggwort clapped his hands. “Cleavewife Rebecca, our visitors look parched.”

The maroon pioneer disappeared into the hovel, returning with an earthenware jug and four tin cups.

“Shortly after I decided to let like-minded folks settle on my island,” the Emperor continued, “I started castin' round fer a religion that harmonized with my personal philosophy. Unless your experimental community's got the Lord on its side, chaos 'n' anarchy will soon come a-callin'.” He flourished a leather-bound volume titled the Book of Mormon. “And then one day I stumbled on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, cooked up a quarter-century ago by a confidence man with the auspiciously lackluster name of Joseph Smith.”

Rebecca decanted the water, providing each of her English guests with a full tin cup, then passed the fourth cup to Ascumiche, instructing him to share it with his fellow Peruvians.

“After Joseph Smith died, the Latter-Day Saints started splinterin',” said Eggwort. “The Prairie Saints stayed in the Midwest. The Rocky Mountain Saints followed Brigham Young into Utah Territory. And the Galápagos Saints—that is, myself, the lesser emperors, and our wives—we come here. Ever read the Book of Mormon?”

“My tastes run more to Omar Khayyám,” said Ralph.

At a nod from her husband, Rebecca refilled Eggwort's goblet, whereupon he began describing how the Latter-Day Saints' sacred text had been set down centuries earlier by Mormon, “a semi-divine personage who spent his life a-listenin' to ghostly prophets and spectral historians,” their preoccupation being the immigrant Jews of the New World. Eventually Mormon etched these sundry revelations onto gold plates in a language “long since chewed to oblivion by the teeth of time.” Then came the momentous autumn of 1823, when the angel Moroni led Smith to a New York mountain, Cumorah, where all fifteen plates lay buried. Though not a literate man, Smith had little trouble deciphering the Reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics, and his friends were happy to act as scribes while he translated the plates aloud.

“And what a wonderfully benumbin' story they tell,” said Eggwort, “page after page of transplanted Hebrews spoutin' Jeremiads, encounterin' Jesus, and fightin' epic battles. Show me a more violent book on the face of the Earth, and I'll by-God eat it.”

Chloe winced internally, disoriented by the resemblance between the Latter-Day Saints' sacred text and her Lost Thirteenth Tribe
scenario
. The question, of course, was whether this coincidence would give the lie to her masquerade or provide it with additional credence.

Eggwort deposited the Book of Mormon in Ralph's hands. “I promise you, Perfessor, exceptin' fer some lines swiped from the Gospels, there ain't a single verse herein a man might call galvanizin', upliftin', or edifyin'. Go ahead—take the test.”

Opening the volume at random, Ralph read, “‘And it came to pass that a long time passed away, and the lord of the vineyard said unto his servant: Come, let us go down into the vineyard, that we may labor in the vineyard. And it came to pass that the lord of the vineyard, and also the servant, went down into the vineyard to labor. And it came to pass that the servant said unto his master: Behold, look here. Behold the tree.' Jacob chapter five, verses fifteen through sixteen.”

“Mormon ain't let me down yet,” said Eggwort breathlessly.

Ralph passed the Book of Mormon to Solange, who cracked the spine, shut her eyes, and set her finger on a verse. “‘Wherefore, all things which are good cometh of God,'” she read, “‘and that which is evil cometh of the Devil; for the Devil is an enemy unto God, and fighteth against him continually, and inviteth and enticeth to sin, and to do that which is evil continually.' Moroni chapter six, verse twelve.”

“See what I mean?” said Eggwort. “It's as if Mormon done writ the whole thing with Duntopia in mind.”

Solange returned the volume to the Emperor. “How clever of Smith to realizeth that Reformed Egyptian should be renderedeth in the English of King James the First.”