Askra’s words fell into a sing-song pattern and she swayed back and forth, the bag now clasped tightly against her breasts. “Ahhh—men are ever foolish when they look upon a woman, deeming that because she has perhaps less strength of arm than they possess she is not to be feared. The Great Chief died of his folly and after him, there was death here again, and by a woman’s hand, so that those who took this land held no profit from it. You carry death—it lies now between your breasts. I, Askra, can smell it. Old death, old blood. And that would not have come into your hand had you not summoned it.”
Persis shrank back until one of her heels scraped against the bottom of the three steps leading to the kitchen. She was fast losing any command of the situation she might have once had. This old woman with her compelling eyes, her measured speech, was such a potent force as made even the awe-inspiring dignity of Uncle Augustin seem the strutting of some schoolboy.
Death between her breasts—the fan? Had Askra crept above then to plant the noxious thing between her hand as she slept?
“She was strong, was the Spanish woman,” the Indian continued, “strong in her hate—in that she might have been one of the Old Ones. We knew how to hate-how to use cunning against our enemies. Aye—we knew—until we were betrayed and the gods turned their faces from us because we had become such weak tools for their use. But she—perhaps the gods looked upon her and made her again their hands and feet upon the earth. The captain of the sea sharks she destroyed, shedding blood on this sacred mount, even as was proper. Then the sea she sought herself. But with their chief dead those others were easy meat for the avengers. Yes, she knew. And you know—white skin. If you had not a fraction of the true sight you would not stand here now, her treasure warm against your body. The pattern changes in years reckoned by men, not the gods, to whom the seasons are but beads they slip easily between their fingers, letting this and that one fall when they tire of it. Now it is time for the pattern to change again.
“I am Askra.” She held her head proud and high. “Once those of my blood spoke to chiefs saying do this, do that. And what we ordered and desired was so done. For we had the power of the gods warm and rich in us. The white men came, slaying, breaking down our sacred place—putting slave chains on those who did not cleanly die. And those who escaped, who kept the old gods in their hearts and minds, fled—became wanderers and outcasts.
“But it was given to me that I should return and what small power remained here, that I can summon— if only in dreams. You have dreamed, daughter of strangers—” She came forward until her face was only inches away from Persis. “There is that in you which entered into my dream, just as there is that in you which summoned the knife of vengeance. You cannot escape either—for that is the way of your inner spirit. Is that not so?”
Persis opened her lips to deny vehemently what she only half-understood. But it was as if another within her had taken command, a hidden self she had never realized shared her body, and who was now moving into the open.
“It—it is so—!” The denial she longed to give she could not utter.
Askra nodded. “This is not of my gods, white woman. Therefore, it cannot by my undertaking. What you do now you must do for yourself. There is, evil to be faced, and perhaps the death shadow lies at the end of it. But if you seek him in truth, then the road is open to you.”
Persis moistened her lips. She could only sort out of this weird harangue that Askra did know where Crewe Leverett was and that he also lay in danger. She owed him her life—yet that was not entirely why she must act to aid him if she could. There was the warmth of the fan against her body; it seemed to build in her a desperate resolution she never realized she possessed— at least to this degree. She returned to her first question:
“Where is Captain Leverett?”
Askra moved back, toward the hearth, leaving the floor before her clear.
“They have taken him down,” she detached one hand from her bag and pointed, the nail on her forefinger long and near black, toward the floor under their feet.
The cistern! Slowly Persis moved forward, setting the lamp on the long table, stooping to jerk away the rug which usually covered the trapdoor. What was she going to do? It would be better to rouse the men at the hotel—have them handle this.
As she leaned forward without consciously making any decision, her hand curled about the ring to raise that barrier. The light suddenly went out. Startled, she looked over her hunched shoulder. The Indian woman, her figure only partly revealed by the fire light, had blown but the candle flame.
“Would you,” she asked in what sounded to Persis like a superior tone she was quick to resent, “allow them to know that you’ve come?” Then she moved to join Persis, gathering up the braided strip of carpet and making of it a screen to be held between the dying light of the fire and the trapdoor.
Reaching out with her other hand, she twitched at the girl’s full skirt, the petticoats under it.
“These are not good in water, white woman. Best you shed them first.”
Persis fumbled at buttons and ties, stepping out of muslin skirt, of the two petticoats under. Now she wore only drawers, her chemise, stays, for she laid aside, too, the waist with all its bows, laces, and ruffles. Feeling outrageously bare of body, she lifted the trapdoor, straining at its weight, for Askra made no move to help her. Why she was doing this unbelievable thing she could not have said, it was as if she were caught in another dream and there was no way out—she must endure it until the end.
14
It was not entirely dark below. For, when her eyes adjusted after the extinguishing of the lamp, Persis could see a faint radiance on the waters. Also there came the murmur of voices. She crouched on her knees. The visibility was strictly limited from where she now was, but she had no intent of descending recklessly until she could better know what was going on in this dark, smelling of the wash of lapping water.
Though Persis strained her ears she could not catch a single clear word, only the rise and fall of a voice which she thought was that of a man. Narrowly she surveyed the waters below. They washed a little upon that ledge where trails of moisture showed higher reach of the flood. But she was certain that the lamp or lantern which gave so faint a light did not rest on that.
How much could she believe Askra? Suppose she was to venture down into this watery cavern, only to have the Indian witch slam the trapdoor on her, trapping her. Persis’ hands twitched. She doubted her own courage at this moment. To be down there in the dark —with no one but Askra knowing where she was—
Still that same resolve which did not seem a part of the Persis Rooke she thought she knew—that entered into her from the fan dagger. She was conscious of that strange weapon with every move she made, as it impressed its weight and shape, not only physically, but emotionally, against her.
The sound of the voice continued; it might have been a distorted echo from a greater distance. Persis struggled to remember what she had seen on her one trip below—the bathing place. Beyond it the cistern, and also the strange escape tunnel, leading, alongside the turtle pen, out into the canal.
Believing that she was utterly foolish in what she was about to do, but somehow compelled to act, Persis raised her head and once more looked directly at Askra.
“There are the men at the hotel,” she said. “If we call them-”
Askra’s mouth spread into a wide, malicious grin. With one long-nailed finger she drew a line across her own scraggy throat.
“And before they reach here—what if death comes first? Does white skin live with fear so close to her that it is a cloak she cannot shed?”
She held her head a little on one side, watching Persis with those compelling eyes. “The gods do not try to govern time—it means nothing to them. Only men live by its bindings.”
Persis drew upon all her resolution. She wondered why Askra herself had done nothing to help Crewe Leverett, if the Captain was indeed in danger.