that it was unknown in England and Scotland; Mrs. Fraser of Edinburgh would never have heard of sangria.
“A mixture of red wine and the juices of orange and lemon,” Lawrence Stern was explaining. “Mulled with spices, and served hot or cold, depending upon the weather. A most comforting and healthful beverage, is it not, Fogden?”
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Most comforting.” Not waiting for me to find out for myself, the priest drained his cup, and reached for the pitcher before I had taken the first sip.
It was the same; the same sweet, throat-rasping taste, and I suffered the momentary illusion that I was back at the party where I had first tasted it, in company with a marijuana-smoking graduate student and a professor of botany.
This illusion was fostered by Stern’s conversation, which dealt with his collections, and by Father Fogden’s behavior. After several cups of sangria, he had risen, rummaged through the sideboard, and emerged with a large clay pipe. This he packed full of a strong-smelling herb shaken out of a paper twist, and proceeded to smoke.
“Hemp?” Stern asked, seeing this. “Tell me, do you find it settling to the digestive processes? I have heard it is so, but the herb is unobtainable in most European cities, and I have no firsthand observations of its effect.”
“Oh, it is most genial and comforting to the stomach,” Father Fogden assured him. He drew in a huge breath, held it, then exhaled long and dreamily, blowing a stream of soft white smoke that floated in streamers of haze near the room’s low ceiling. “I shall send a packet home with you, dear fellow. Do say, now, what do you mean doing, you and this shipwrecked lady you have rescued?”
Stern explained his plan; after a night’s rest, we intended to walk as far as the village of St. Luis du Nord, and from there see whether a fishing boat might carry us to Cap-Haitien, thirty miles distant. If not, we would have to make our way overland to Le Cap, the nearest port of any size.
The priest’s sketchy brows drew close together, frowning against the smoke.
“Mm? Well, I suppose there isn’t much choice, is there? Still, you must go careful, particularly if you go overland to Le Cap. Maroons, you know.”
“Maroons?” I glanced quizzically at Stern, who nodded, frowning.
“That’s true. I did meet with two or three small bands as I came north through the valley of the Artibonite. They didn’t molest me, though—I daresay I looked little better off than they, poor wretches. The Maroons are escaped slaves,” he explained to me. “Having fled the cruelty of their masters, they take refuge in the remote hills, where the jungle hides them.”
“They might not trouble you,” Father Fogden said. He sucked deeply on his pipe, with a low, slurping noise, held his breath for a long count and then let it out reluctantly. His eyes were becoming markedly bloodshot. He closed one of them and examined me rather blearily with the other. “She doesn’t look worth robbing, really.”
Stern smiled broadly, looking at me, then quickly erased the smile, as though feeling he had been less than tactful. He coughed and took another cup of sangria. The priest’s eyes gleamed over the pipe, red as a ferret’s.
“I believe I need a little fresh air,” I said, pushing back my chair. “And perhaps a little water, to wash with?”
“Oh, of course, of course!” Father Fogden cried. He rose, swaying unsteadily, and thumped the coals from his pipe carelessly out onto the sideboard. “Come with me.”
The air in the patio seemed fresh and invigorating by comparison, despite its mugginess. I inhaled deeply, looking on with interest as Father Fogden fumbled with a bucket by the fountain in the corner.
“Where does the water come from?” I asked. “Is it a spring?” The stone trough was lined with soft tendrils of green algae, and I could see these moving lazily; evidently there was a current of some kind.
It was Stern who answered.
“Yes, there are hundreds of such springs. Some of them are said to have spirits living in them—but I do not suppose you subscribe to such superstition, sir?”
Father Fogden seemed to have to think about this. He set the half-filled bucket down on the coping and squinted into the water, trying to fix his gaze on one of the small silver fish that swam there.
“Ah?” he said vaguely. “Well, no. Spirits, no. Still—oh, yes, I had forgotten. I had something to show you.” Going to a cupboard set into the wall, he pulled open the cracked wooden door and removed a small bundle of coarse unbleached muslin, which he put gingerly into Stern’s hands.
“It came up in the spring one day last month,” he said. “It died when the noon sun struck it, and I took it out. I’m afraid the other fish nibbled it a bit,” he said apologetically, “but you can still see.”
Lying in the center of the cloth was a small dried fish, much like those darting about in the spring, save that this one was pure white. It was also blind. On either side of the blunt head, there was a small swelling where an eye should have been, but that was all.
“Do you think it is a ghost fish?” the priest inquired. “I thought of it when you mentioned spirits. Still, I can’t think what sort of sin a fish might have committed, so as to be doomed to roam about like that—eyeless, I mean. I mean”—he closed one eye again in his favorite expression—“one doesn’t think of fish as having souls, and yet, if they don’t, how can they become ghosts?”
“I shouldn’t think they do, myself,” I assured him. I peered more closely at the fish, which Stern was examining with the rapt joy of the born naturalist. The skin was very thin, and so transparent that the shadows of the internal organs and the knobbly line of the vertebrae were clearly visible, yet it did have scales, tiny and translucent, though dulled by dryness.
“It is a blind cave fish,” Stern said, reverently stroking the tiny blunt head. “I have seen one only once before, in a pool deep inside a cave, at a place called Abandawe. And that one escaped before I could examine it closely. My dear fellow—” He turned to the priest, eyes shining with excitement. “Might I have it?”
“Of course, of course.” The priest fluttered his fingers in offhand generosity. “No use to me. Too small to eat, you know, even if Mamacita would think of cooking it, which she wouldn’t.” He glanced around the patio, kicking absently at a passing hen. “Where
“Here,
