The Six Messiahs

I am being tested, Innes realized. Well, Arthur told me the man was peculiar. He studied the desk, glanced into its pigeonholes as if trying to sneak up on them unawares. Scrutinized the inkwell. Lifted the ink blotter; found a slit cut in its side.

'Aha,' said Innes.

'No; looked there; empty,' said Jack.

Innes stepped back to gain perspective, put his hands on his hips, and his right elbow knocked the lamp off the desk. It shattered as it hit the ground; small flames from the oil pooled on the floor. He stomped them out, nearly catching his boot on fire and plunging them into darkness again.

'Bother,' said Innes, not at all comfortable being in the dark so near to a recently dead body. 'Sorry.'

Jack switched on the portable light, illuminating the broken shards on the floor.

'You've done it now,' said Jack.

'I said I was sorry....'

'No: you found them.'

Innes looked down and saw papers among the pieces of the lamp.

'Well, it had to figure, didn't it?' said Innes, happy to take the credit. 'I mean, the lamp right at hand. So little time.'

Jack picked up the papers and studied them under the light: one a printed list of participants in the Parliament of Religions. The other a handwritten note.

'Everything all right?' asked Presto, reentering.

'Quite,' said Innes, trying unsuccessfully to peer over Jack's shoulder at the note.

'What are you standing in the dark for?' said Presto.

'I was searching the lamp,' said Innes. 'Accidentally knocked it over.'

'This man in the hall has that same scar on the inside of his left arm: a circle broken by three lines. What have you got there?' said Presto, moving closer.

'At the regrettable cost of Brachman's life,' said Jack, pointedly, 'the answer we've been looking for.'

'I want your opinion of my friend Jack,' said Doyle quietly.

Walks Alone looked at him for a long moment. Then she nodded. 'He is very sick.'

'Tell me how,' asked Doyle.

She chose her words carefully before continuing; she sensed the concern this man had for his friend, and she did not want to upset him unnecessarily. 'I can see the sickness in him: It is like a weight, or ... a shadow in here.' She pointed to her left side. 'In him it is very powerful.'

They were sitting before a fire in Doyle's Palmer House suite, Walks Alone cross-legged on the floor near the hearth, Doyle in a wing chair, savoring a brandy. An exhausted Lionel Stern lay asleep on the davenport, the crate holding the Zohar resting on the table between them.

'You sound like a doctor, Miss Williams,' said Doyle.

'I was taught by my grandfather; he had strong healing power. But our medicine is very different from yours.'

'In what way?'

'We believe sickness comes from the outside and enters into the body; it can hide there for a long time, and grow, before it makes itself known.'

'How so? I'm a doctor myself,' said Doyle, genuinely curious, deciding to confide in the hope of receiving the same. 'That is, I was trained as one. And I do believe some people have an inborn talent for healing. I wish I could say I was one of them. I worked hard at medicine but it never came particularly easy to me.'

'So you became a writer of books instead.'

'One has to put bread on the table, don't they?' he said, with an apologetic smile.

'I am sorry I have not read any of them.'

'Quite all right; it's a bit of a relief, actually. So, you are considered a doctor among your people, Miss Williams?'

Walks Alone waited again. She trusted this man for some reason; unusual for her to trust a white. He seemed as ignorant about her ways as all whites did, but he offered her a straightforward respect she was not used to receiving. He had strength but did not need to make a big show of it like so many whites did. She wondered if people were like him in his home country; she had never met an Englishman before.

'Yes,' she said.

'And you can see so plainly that my friend is sick?'

'More: His life is in danger.'

Doyle sat up straighter; he took her seriously. 'So this is a physical illness.'

'The sickness is in his spirit now, but will go into his body one day. Soon.'

'Could he be cured before that happens?'

'I would need to see him more before I could say.'

'Do you think you could help him?' 'I would not like to say now.'

'How would you treat this sickness?'

'The sickness needs to be taken out of him.'

'How would you do that?'

'In our medicine, as a doctor, you remove sickness from a person by inviting it to leave them and come into your body.'

'That sounds as if it could be dangerous for you.'

'It is.'

Doyle studied her by the firelight; solemn and heartfelt, staring at the flames. The modest, confident strength she radiated. He remembered Roosevelt's eye-popping diatribe against the American Indian and shuddered at the thickheaded compendium of cliches he himself had been carrying around about them. If Mary was any example, they were clearly different from whites—the product of a different culture, even a different race—but that was no reason to fear or despise her. And in spite of the bias of his conventional training, yes, he could believe she had the power to heal.

'What do you do with the sickness once you've taken it from them?'

'I send it somewhere; into the air, the water, or the earth. Sometimes into fire. It depends what kind of sickness it is. This is what we learn to do.'

Doyle recalled Jack's stories about the En-aguas in Brazil. 'You use various herbs and roots to help you, medicinal compounds.'

'Yes,' she said, surprised that he knew this. 'Sometimes.'

'What causes this kind of sickness? You say it comes from outside.'

'When the world is made unsound, it creates more sickness. This goes out from the world and into the people.'

'And how did the world become sick?'

'People have made it so,' she said simply. 'When the sickness goes into them, it is only returning to where it came from.'

'So before man you believe that the world was whole?'

'It was in balance, yes,' she said. Before the whites came, she thought.

He looked at her openly, honestly. 'So if a person becomes sick, you believe it is only a reflection of what is already inside them.' 'That is true most of the time.'

'Miss Williams, I ask you to tell me plainly: Is there a chance that you can heal my friend?'

'That is difficult to say. I do not know if that is what your friend wants.'

'What do you mean?'

'Sometimes a person will become attached to the sickness; sometimes they come to believe the sickness is more real than they are.'

'Is that what has happened to my friend?'

'Yes, I think so.'

'So he could not be healed. Not by anyone.'

'Not when the attachment is so strong. Not unless he decides that is what he wants. He is too much in love