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.Them white people going come looking.They going send them nigger policemen.''How they goin' know where she is ?' Cleave demanded.They done give up the trail, anyhow.''They goin' come again,' the man insisted.'They mus'.Man, they ain' going leave no white woman in these mountains.'Cleave chewed his Up, looking down at Meg.'Help me,' she whispered.'Oh, please help me.''We goin' let the mamaloi decide,' Cleave said at last.The watchers exchanged glances.'Yeah, man,' said the man who had objected to Meg's presence.'That is the thing.The mamaloi going know.''So that is what we goin' do,' Cleave said.'When the mistress done get better, and can walk.Then the mamaloi going decide.You all gone now, and leave she.'They hesitated, then drifted away, about whatever business occupied their time.Meg leaned back in her hammock with a sigh.The first crisis had been surmounted.But there were others, looming close at hand.'I do not understand,' she said.'Who is going to decide my fate?''I got for take you to the mamaloi,'' he said.'When you can walk.Is the mamaloi going decide.Is the mamaloi must tell us what to do.Is the mamaloi what is our mistress.'And therefore, she reflected, by implication the mamaloi was her mistress, if she would seek shelter here.The mamaloi.She knew the meaning of the word well enough: A mamaloi was a voodoo priestess.She knew the legend of how her great-great-grandfather, Matt Hilton, had fallen in love with a mamaloi, had nearly wrecked the entire West Indies in his hunt for her.That mamaloi had been sold into slavery by Robert Hilton, to prevent his cousin destroying the family in his, to Hilton eyes senseless, passion.And yet, so the story went, she had borne no hatred, where certainly she had sufficient cause.And when the slaves in the French colony of St Dominique had risen in revolt in a long orgy of rape and murder and mayhem, it had been the good offices of the mamaloi which had saved the life of Great-Great-Grandmother Suzanne, Matt's wife.So, mamalois were not necessarily evil things.But at the same time, Meg remembered with a shudder, it had been that same mamaloi who had ordered Suzanne's sister, Georgiana, to be torn to pieces while she still lived and screamed.So then, mamalois were creatures of instinct.Or creatures able to communicate with the gods, and tell their wishes.That was what Cleave would believe.And believing that, he would do as the mamaloi commanded him, however much he might wish to keep the white woman in his village.However much.It was late afternoon, and he was back beside her hammock, bringing her cassava bread, and some baked fish, and avocado pear, and bananas.She was so hungry it tasted like a banquet.And why should it not be a banquet? she wondered.She was free of Hilltop.It was all but twenty-four hours since her escape.Oriole would be desperate with anxiety, that she might be dead, that her rule of Hilltop might be imperilled.But when her body was not left stranded on the rocks where the river debouched onto the beach before finding its way into the sea, they would know that she had to be alive.And as the villagers had warned Cleave, they would resume their search.'Will you not eat with me ?' she asked.He hesitated, then broke off a piece of fish, slowly conveyed it to his mouth, sucked his fingers.Meg licked her lips, masticated slowly and painfully.'I wish you to know,' she said, 'that whatever the mamaloi decides must be done with me, I am grateful to you for having brought me here today.I will never forget that.'Cleave ate some more fish.What was going on inside that mind, she wondered.Where was the boy who had sought her body?She ate her avocado.'Did.did Jack bring me here because the mamaloi told him to ?' she asked.'Jack didn't listen to no mamaloi,' Cleave said, 'Jack was a hougan.'A voodoo priest.'And now there is no hougan in this village?' Cleave shook his head.'Why are you not the hougan? Meg asked.Oh, she thought, if only he could be the hougan; my troubles would be over.'I ain' knowing that,' Cleave said.'You wan' some more?''No, thank you.' She finished the last of her food.Cleave stood up.'You wanting a drink? I got rum.'Her turn to hesitate.But how she wanted to drink that rum again, to feel her mind go whirling up into the mountains, perhaps to regain the tempestuous confidence of her girlhood.Perhaps to want his fingers, again.She could not be sure, now.'Yes,' she said.‘I would like a drink of rum.' She smiled at him.'It may do me good.' He nodded, left the hut.It was growing dark now, and the mosquitoes were starting to buzz.She slapped one, watched the splodge of blood on her arm, looked out at the clearing and the village.Wherever the people went during the day, they were mostly home by now.They sat around and smoked pipes or primitive cheroots, and drank, rum she supposed, and sang to themselves.A fire had been lit, and flickered in the centre of the clearing.Why wasn't there a feast, and a dance, in honour of her coming? she wondered.Because they did not wish her here, now.They had changed, after all.They were no longer Jack's people.Now they belonged to the mamaloi, and wished no white woman to complicate their lives
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