Ritual. Part 26

'Mr Broussard,' Charlie said, 'I don't know what you know about the Celestines. Maybe you support them, I don't know. But let me tell you that they're holding my son in captivity, and that they're planning to kill him. That's why I need someplace to stay - at least until Friday.'

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'You say Friday? asked Eric Broussard, with unconcealed dread.

'That's right. They're holding a special ceremony. A special Last Supper.'

'It's come so soon?' Eric Broussard asked.

Charlie climbed the verandah steps and stood just a few inches away from Eric Broussard. Robyn came up close behind to give him moral support. She tried to smile at Eric Broussard, to rea.s.sure him that they didn't mean him any harm, but he stared at them both with unmasked fear.

'Mr Broussard - we're not Celestines. You don't have anything to be afraid of as far as we're concerned. But if you know something about the Celestines, anything at all, even if it's nothing more than hearsay or rumour, I really have to know what it is.'

Eric Broussard crossed himself. 'What I know about the Celestines ain't hearsay or rumour,' he whispered. 'I lost my dear wife to the Celestines, let me tell you that, and the manner of her pa.s.sing was too terrible for me to want to think about.'

'Your wife was a member of the Celestine church? She was a Devotee?'

'She was a Devotee, G.o.d bless her poor soul.'

Charlie said, 'Mr Broussard, we've come here to St Landry County to try to put a stop to the Celestines, one way or another. Friday is their great Last Supper. Friday is the day that the thousandth thousandth Devotee gets eaten - or is supposed to; and Friday is the day that Jesus Christ is supposed to come back down to earth.'

'Those people,' Eric Broussard said, shaking his head from side to side. 'Those people. You know what those people are? They're voodoo, that's what those people are! They talk about Christ Jesus, they talk about the second coming, they talk about Jerusalem builded in Louisiana! But all they are is descendants of the voodoo people, the people that point the 274.

baby's bone, and curse you to death! All they are is stealers of other men's souls! I swear to G.o.d I thought I'd heard the last about the Celestines, but when I saw your automobile come through the fields, I thought to myself, I've got a bad feeling about these people coming, I'm going to be hearing about things I don't want to hear about.'

'Mr Broussard, they've got my son,' Charlie appealed. 'My son is supposed to be the thousandth thousandth Devotee, and on Friday they're going to eat him alive so that the Lord can be resurrected in the body of their Chief Guide.'

Eric Broussard raised his head, and there were tears sliding down his cheeks. 'They took my Nancy, those people. They took her away. They took people from all over St Landry County, from Krotz Springs and Bayou Current and Ville Platte. They took people from Acadia County, too, from Iota and Evangeline. Those people went to their meetings and never came back. And if you tried to persuade them to come back, all they did was smile at you and say, "Never you mind, we've found the Lord." That's what my Nancy said: "I've found the Lord." But what kind of a Lord is it that ends a good woman's life by having her cut open her own stomach and take out her own liver and eat it while her eyes is glazing over? My Nancy ate her own liver, Mr Misunderstanding-with-the-Law, and you tell me why I should give you a room, just to be reminded of that?'

Charlie said gently, 'Can we talk inside? I think I'm going to need your help.'

'Ain't you been listening to me?' Eric Broussard shouted at him. 'Ain't you been listening to one single word I've been telling you?'

'Let's go inside,' said Charlie, taking hold of his arm. 'Please, we have to talk about it. Otherwise my son's going to die on Friday, the same way that your Nancy died, and the Celestines are going to go on causing misery and pain for ever and ever.'

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Eric Broussard lowered his head. He was silent for a long time, but then he said, 'Well, I suppose you're right. You'd better come along in. There's some beer in the icebox, no wine like there used to be. I'm sorry if your lady drinks wine.'

Robyn said, 'Don't mind me. I could finish a beer in five seconds flat.'

Inside the house the blinds were all drawn down and the stuffiness was oppressive. Eric Broussard led them through the kitchen to the front parlour, and offered them a large brown sofa to sit on, while he found them a gla.s.s of beer. Charlie and Robyn sat side by side in silence, looking at the green diamond-patterned wallpaper and the shelf above the fireplace cl.u.s.tered with framed photographs of Eric Brous-sard's family, solemn and formally dressed, and all bearing the distinctive Broussard likeness. The breeze that came across the bayou lifted the blind away from the window every now and then, so that it tapped against the windowsill, but it wasn't a strong enough flow of air to penetrate the room.

Eric Broussard came back with a tray and three gla.s.ses of cold beer. 'When I first walked out with Nancy, I used to drink it by the neck. But she would never allow me to do that. With Nancy, everything had to be just so. You don't meet too many women like that any more. These days, anything goes. Women don't have no pride any longer.'

'You must be lonely, living out here all by yourself,' Robyn remarked.

Eric Broussard sat down in a large armchair with dark varnished arms and seat cus.h.i.+ons that had been pressed over the years into grotesque, wrinkled shapes. 'People say that you can get over losing somebody you love. Give yourself time, that's what they say. But, you know something, I've given myself years and years, and I still can't get myself used to living without Nancy. It was worse than losing a leg.'

Charlie said, 'Tell me, Mr Broussard, how much do you know about the Celestines?'

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Eric Broussard drank beer, and made a face. 'As much as anybody I guess. Right at the very beginning, Nancy used to tell me all about them. She tried to persuade me to join her. We could eat each other's flesh, that's what she said. We could share each other's body and blood, just like the holy communion. But, my G.o.d, that made my blood run cold, that's all. I could never understand how she could believe in it all so much.'

'Do you know anything about the second coming ritual?' asked Robyn.

'I know they believe that when a thousand thousand people have gotten themselves all eaten up, their Chief Guide is supposed to eat the thousandth thousandth person, and when he does that the Lord's going to come down and inhabit his body, and a new age is going to start. I seem to recall the Chief Guide don't have to eat all of the thousandth thousandth person, only their brain.'

'Is that all you know?'

'I know a lot, my friend,' said Eric Broussard. 'But it all depends on what you want to hear.'

'I want to know what they actually do, on the day of the second coming.'

Eric Broussard said, 'I don't have any notion whatsoever. As I say, the Celestines used to make my blood run cold. Once Nancy joined up with them, that was our marriage gone for good. Even before she went off to stay with them permanent, she seemed like she was possessed, you know what I mean? She used to say the strangest things, and sometimes she used to be sitting at the dinner table and deliberately bite her own arm, just lift it up and bite at it, and there was blood going everywhere and me not understanding a word of what she was trying to explain to me. "I seen G.o.d!" she used to call out. "I seen G.o.d!" All you could say about her was, she was a woman possessed.'

'Did you ever try taking her to a doctor?' Robyn asked him.

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'Oh, surely, Itried. But the doctor .s. . ,vas fine; just a little overwrought, that's all. He prescribed her some Valium tablets and charged me a hundred-ten dollars.'

Eric Broussard eyed Robyn with bloodshot eyes. 'Let me tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to go upstairs and find my Nancy's Celestine Bible. Then you can look up anything you want to your heart's contentment.'

Charlie said, 'The Celestines have their own special Bible?'

'Sure they do, just like the Latter-Day Saints. They brought it round for me when they came to tell me that Nancy was gone. I was tempted to drop it in the stove, but then I thought that I might need it someday, just to prove to the world what Nancy had to go through. Otherwise, who'd've believed me?'

'We believe you,' said Robyn gently.

Eric Broussard lifted his head. The muted sunlight caught a fingerprint on the lens of his spectacles, setting it glowing like a tiny spiderweb. 'Whatever I do to help you,' he said, 'it ain't never going to bring my Nancy back.'

Nonetheless, he lifted himself out of his armchair and shuf- < fled="" off="" to="" look="" for="" the="" celestine="" bible.="" charlie="" sipped="" his="" beer,="" and="" said,="" 'we="" need="" to="" find="" out="" when="" they're="" going="" to="" hold="" the="" ritual="" -="" whether="" they're="" supposed="" to="" do="" it="" at="" any="" special="" time="" of="" the="" day="" or="" night="" -="" and="" we="" also="" need="" to="" know="" what="" happens,="" so="" that="" we="" don't="" make="" fools="" of="" ourselves="" by="" bursting="" in="" to="" rescue="" martin="" at="" the="" wrong="" moment,="" before="" they've="" brought="" him="" out="" of="" his="" room,="" for="" instance.'="" he="" didn't="" add,="" 'or="" after="" they've="" eaten="" him',="" but="" he="" didn't="" have="" to.="" robyn="" knew="" that="" their="" chances="" of="" getting="" martin="" away="" from="" the="" celestines="" were="" extraordinarily="" slim,="" especially="" since="" the="" police="" and="" the="" fbi="" and="" anybody="" with="" any="" political="" or="" commercial="" influence="" seemed="" to="" support="" them,="" or="" at="" least="" to="" turn="" a="" blind="" eye="" to="" what="" they="" were="">

Eric Broussard returned with a thin book about the size of the New Testament, bound in cheap red leather with a white mitre embossed on the front. 'Nancy said the red leather was 278.

supposed to represent the blood, and the white hat was supposed to be the body.' He pa.s.sed the book to Charlie, and Charlie opened it up, while Robyn leaned closer so that she could read over his shoulder.

On the t.i.tle page, it said, 'The Book of Celestine', and underneath: 'Being the holy words of Saint Celestine V, Pietro di Murrone 1215-^6, concerning the communion of the Last Supper.'

Charlie flicked through the text. There were 120 pages of closely printed text. 'Mr Broussard,' he said, 'it's going to take us some time to read all this; and we do want to study it really well. I'd truly appreciate it if you'd allow us to stay.'

Eric Broussard slowly rubbed the back of his neck. Then he said. 'All right, if that's what you want. But in return, you can go to Sidney's Store for me out on the Normand highway and fetch in some steaks and some groceries and maybe a couple of bottles of liquor.'

'Mr Broussard, you've got yourself a deal.'

'Not quite,' said Eric Broussard. 'You've got to stop calling me "Mr Broussard" and start calling me "Eric" instead. Either thator"Tabac-Sec".'

Charlie reached over and shook Eric Broussard's hand. 'Eric, I think we're in business.'

They lifted their beer gla.s.ses and drank a silent toast to an adventure that would probably prove to be dangerous, painful, and frightening.

Eric Broussard wiped his mouth with the back of his sun-wrinkled hand, and said, 'You want a double bed or two singles? I've got clean sheets for both of them. The double bed creaks pretty bad, on account of all the weekending couples we used to have here, but in times of stress I always say that it's better to have somebody to hold on to, don't you?'

They ate a supper of steaks and fried eggs and Bulgar wheat salad, with straight Jack Daniel's as an accompaniment, and 279.

then after supper Eric Broussard produced his German accordion and sat on the kitchen chair and played slow, bluesy, but inarguably Cajun melodies of love and dancing and crayfish, and many other subjects close to the Cajun heart.

'I play better out of doors,' he said, when he had finished. 'There's something about the plein-air that makes the music resonate. I like to play out of doors wearing a big wide hat to keep the sun off of my face and the rain off of my cigareet. That's why they call me "Tabac-Sec".'

They thanked him for his cooking and his music, and then they went upstairs and showered and undressed and climbed into the big double bed which creaked as friendly and amusing as anybody's honeymoon bed in any honeymoon hotel. Charlie sat propped up with pillows drinking the last of the whiskey and reading the Celestine Bible. Robyn lay close to him and closed her eyes and rested. The north-west wind blew across the bayou and whistled lightly through the cracks in the window frame, a soft complainte of its own.

Most of the Celestine text was rambling evangelism and complicated prophecies about 'the Lord who smiteth all those whose faces are set against His Glory; and all those who wors.h.i.+p artifice and deceit,' and 'in the Days of the Ethiopian whose descendants shall number fifty times fifty millions, a drought shall descend upon the lands of their forefathers and their suffering will be heard in all corners of the world.'

It quickly became clear, even under Charlie's inexpert scrutiny, that the Celestine Bible had certainly not been written by Saint Celestine himself, but possibly as much as five hundred years later - even as late as 1775. There was a reference to the 'Lands that were given by deed to those who had been cast out of Acadie.' If Charlie remembered an article he had read not too long ago in the Reader's Digest, those who had been cast out of Acadie could only mean those French colonists in Nova Scotia who had been dispossessed by the British after the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. In those days, Nova Scotia had 280.

been called Port Royal, or 'L'Acadie', meaning pastoral paradise on earth. The French had been uprooted from their paradise and sent back to France, or to Guadeloupe; or even as far as the Falklands; but they had been invited back to America in 1775 when the French sold Louisiana to the Spanish. The new Spanish governor had been worried that his small population would not be able to resist a takeover by the British, so he had offered the one-time Acadians a free pa.s.sage back across the Atlantic and free land deeds so that they could settle in the south-west.

Charlie found another more glaring anachronism. Although there was no direct mention of cannibalism, there was an endless obsession in the text with human flesh and blood and its relation to the words of the Last Supper. From what M. Musette had told him at Le Reposoir, the Celestines had only taken to eating real flesh and real blood after their sojourn with the Caribs on the island of Sainte Desiree - and that had been after the French Revolution in 1789. So it was conceivable that the Celestine Bible had been written in the early part of the iSoos, or even later.

Robyn fell asleep, and Charlie felt her breathing softly and deeply against his arm. Eric Broussard had been right: it was good to have somebody to hold in times of stress. He finished his whiskey, and went on reading, although he would have given anything to be able to close his eyes. A little after one o'clock in the morning, he came across the pa.s.sage that he had been looking for . The Return to Earth of Our Lord Jesus Christ as Prophesied by the Angels.

The verses read: 'And the Day shall come when one thousand times one thousand shall have taken communion with Christ our Lord, save only for twelve disciples, one disciple from each parent church. And the twelve shall be brought to the appointed place known as the place of the poor, in the company of elders and Guides, and there they shall take communion with Christ our Lord in solemn memorial to the Last Supper. And they shall take 281.

communion one upon the other, until there is but one; and he shall be numbered one thousand times one thousand.

' Then shall the elder of the Guides take communion with the twelfth of these disciples, and he shall become the vessel in which those souls now reside, one thousand times one thousand. And in so doing he shall become a worthy vessel in his turn for the second coming on earth of Christ our Lord, and he shall be transformed. And all of those who have kept the faith of the true communion shall be rewarded on this earth as well as in the next.

'For know you by these secrets that the fifth day was the one on which he was vanquished, but his day is the sixth day, and on that day you shall be given your just reward.'

Charlie read the verses again and again. There was no doubt that they were referring to the ceremony that was supposed to be taking place on Friday at L'Eglise des Pauvres, the Church of the Poor. Twelve Devotees from twelve Celestine churches would be brought down to Acadia as representatives of the twelve disciples - only the Last Supper was going to be worked in reverse. Instead of the Master giving them His body and His blood, they were going to give Him theirs, and the process that had led up to the Crucifixion and the Ascension was going to happen backwards. At least, that seemed to be the Celestine theory.

The last verse puzzled Charlie a little, because it was the only verse that didn't appear to make explicit sense. It had the character of a riddle, but there was something about it which sounded peculiarly like a warning as well, although Charlie couldn't quite a.n.a.lyse what it was.

Certainly there was a mention of 'secrets'. And the next phrase was odd - 'the fifth day was the day on which he was vanquished.' Presumably this meant Good Friday - but no Christian believed that Christ was vanquished on Good Friday - rather that he finally triumphed over evil. It was also noticeable that in this one paragraph 'he' was spelled with a lower- 282.

case 'h'. And what did the writer mean by the sixth day being 'his day' - the day on which you will be given your just reward?

Maybe it was that term 'just reward' that Charlie found vaguely threatening. It seemed to have the quality of 'on Sat.u.r.day, you'll get what's coming to you.'

When it came to rewards, too, there was another line that bothered him: 'And all of those who have kept faith with the true communion shall be rewarded on this earth as well as in the next.' To be given a material reward as well as a spiritual one seemed peculiarly at odds with anything that Christ would have promised or a Christian would have expected.

At a quarter of two, Charlie finally put down the Celestine Bible on the bedside table. He switched off the light, and snuggled up close to Robyn. In fact, the bed dipped so much in the middle he didn't have any choice.

By two o'clock he was asleep. He didn't dream. But the north-west breeze stiffened during the early hours of the morning, and rattled the window even more frantically, and one by one it leafed over the pages of the open Bible, one whispering page after another, until it came to rest at the page which said, 'But the sixth day is his day, and on that day you shall be given your just reward.'

While only two miles away, in the darkness, a car turned off the Normand highway and began to make its way purposefully along the dirt track that led to Eric Broussard's house on the bayou.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

Charlie was awakened by a bony hand shaking his shoulder. Involuntarily, he shouted in fright, and sat up so fast that he knocked heads with Eric Broussard, who was leaning over him. Eric Broussard said, 's.h.i.+t, Charlie, that hurt.'

'What's the matter?' Charlie asked him. 'What's wrong?'

'I'm not too sure,' said Eric, in the darkness, 'but there's a vehicle parked in the cypress grove, about two hundred feet off to the east. I heard it coming. Your ears acquire a sensitivity for things like that. But it didn't come right up to the house, like you'd expect. It parked in the trees and now it's just waiting.'

Charlie switched on the light. Eric Broussard was wearing a wonderfully ancient pair of red-flannel longjohns, and big, old, frayed carpet slippers. Eric said, 'If it's the po-lice, I don't want no shooting.'

Charlie climbed out of bed. In doing so, he allowed Robyn to roll into the dip in the middle of the mattress, and that woke her up. She blinked and stared at them and said, 'What time is it?'

'Five o'clock,' Eric told her.

Charlie went to the window and drew back the blind, but it was too dark outside for him to be able to make out anything. All he could see was his own face, as pale as a ghost floating in the night. 'If it's the police, or the FBI, it seems pretty weird that they should park in the trees like that. They know I'm not armed.'

'Who else could it be?' asked Eric.

'Celestines?' Robyn suggested.

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Charlie dressed himself. 'The only way to find out for sure is to go out there and see for ourselves.'

'Charlie,' said Robyn, 'they'll kill you.'

'I don't think so. I don't think they meant to kill us the last time.'

'They shot holes in our car and they didn't mean to kill us?'

Eric stood up. His belly hung slack in his longjohns like a giant canned tomato. 'I can think of a better way. Let me send my dog Gumbo, he'll roust them out. He's half Doberman, half German shepherd, and half bird-dog.'

'That's a dog and a half,' Charlie remarked.

'Sure it is, and that's what Gumbo is, a dog and a half.'

Charlie said to Robyn, 'You'd better get dressed. If the Celestines are really here, we may be in for some trouble.'

Eric went off to find himself a yellow plaid s.h.i.+rt and some bleached-out blue denim overalls, while Robyn dressed in the same skirt and blouse that she had been wearing this morning. She had washed the blouse and it was still slightly damp. 'What are you going to do if it is them?' she asked.

Charlie shrugged. 'Try to give them the slip, I guess. Maybe Eric knows another way out of here.'

'There can't be another way,' said Robyn. 'The house backs right on to the bayou.'