Rebels of Babylon by Owen Parry, Ralph Peters Read Free Book Online Page A

a new and terrible fear sweeping all through me. I had seen it turn men cholera-black in India.
    Mr. Barnaby pitied me by the flicker of the cab lamp. “It’s worse than that, it is. If only it was poison alone, we might put things right with a call on the apothecary.”
    I wished to tell him I would not believe any nonsense about spells or charms or spooks. But my powers of speech were disarmed.
    The cab rattled and banged along streets that declined in quality. Sentinels at a guardpost made us halt, but when theyglimpsed my rank, they let us pass. It seemed to me a lax defense for a city.
    The road grew so rough I feared the cab would break its springs or even shatter a wheel. Yet, Mr. Barnaby urged the driver to greater speed. We rocked through the darkness, unhelped by the moon, and only Providence spared us a frightful accident.
    My companion leaned out of the window almost constantly, tilting the carriage.
    “There, there!” he cried of a sudden. “Turn into that yard!”
    The cab jounced to a halt, with the driver cursing.
    “I ain’t going in there,” he told Mr. Barnaby. “And I ain’t going any closer. That’s one of them nigger hant-woman houses. Ain’t it? Anyways, it’s too sumpy.”
    Mr. Barnaby did not waste time on argument, but dragged me from the vehicle. My good leg had begun to behave as meanly as the bothered one. I gasped for breath and my arms were utterly useless.
    Royally frightened I was by then. At the thought of poison seeping through my veins.
    “Oh, dear, dear!” my friend remarked.
    “That’s fifty cents,” the cabbie hollered. “Not including the—”
    “Wait there!” Mr. Barnaby snapped without breaking his stride.
    He moved with such haste that he almost seemed to carry me. I saw the outlines of a shack and the hint of a glow behind some window rags.
    “Don’t let on that you ’as any reservations,” Mr. Barnaby whispered. “Don’t say a word what might be taken ill …”
    He had no cause for worry. My mouth was sealed as if I had the lockjaw.
    “Madame Bette!” he called toward the shanty. “Madame Bette! C’est moi, Barnaby!”
    Now, that was French, a language I don’t trust. I did not like the way things were developing.
    “Can’t you walk any faster?” the fellow begged me.
    I grunted in the negative. I could hardly walk at all.
    A woman appeared in a doorway, lofting a lantern. A negress she was, of the sort they call a “mammy.” Wearing a ragged dress and a turban dishevelled.
    With a great sigh of effort, Mr. Barnaby lifted me onto the porch and set me down before her.
    Her eyes widened. “Perdu!” she muttered. “Il est perdu …”
    “Nothing of the sort,” Mr. Barnaby said, in a voice that had changed utterly. He sounded as confident as a banker’s banker. “You can put ’im right, Madame Bette. I says to myself, I was saying, ‘There’s only one woman in all Loosy-anne can put this one to rights, and that’s Madame Bette.’ I’ve been telling ’im all the way ’ere not to worry.”
    The woman’s features gathered toward her nose in consternation.
    “Been crossed good, eh?” she asked me. I believe I detected the faintest hint of a laugh. “You been crossed terrible, monsieur. Cost you gol’ money, not just jingle-silver, lif’ that crossing off you.”
    “Spare no effort!” Mr. Barnaby told her. “Spare no effort, spare no cost, Madame Bette!”
    Now that is the sort of thing no sensible Welshman would ever say, poisoned or not. A fair price for all must be agreed in advance of any undertaking. But my ability to interject myself was limited.
    Mr. Barnaby held out the stinking bag my abductors had tied round my neck.
    The woman’s eyes showed their whites again.
    “Marie Venin,” she muttered. “That’s her work, how you been crossed.” She grew excited, like Mick Tyrone, my doctor friend, at the sight of a challenging patient. “Allez, allez!” she called, rushing into the shanty.
    I blush to tell you what I