Ashes of the Earth

by Eliot Pattison

  Hadrian was beginning deeply to resent the moments like this, moments when Buchanan pretended they were still old friends. “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  The answer brought an odd quiet. The governor paced around the corpse. “That thing burrowing into his hand,” he murmured in a tone of disgust. “Get rid of it.”

  Hadrian hesitated, then raised the lantern over the blackened hand. Something long and thin extended from its closed fingers. He realized that what Buchanan had mistaken for a worm was an encrusted strand of leather. As he pulled it, a flat oval slid out of the dead man’s grip, an amulet of some kind. Hadrian spat on it and wiped it clean, revealing a piece of copper crudely etched with a doglike figure standing on two legs. It could have been a wolf. It could have been one of the voracious martens the new generation had taken to calling tree jackals. As he extended it to Buchanan, he recalled the strange words spoken by the leader of the gang that morning.

  “What does it mean?” he asked.

  Buchanan stared at the amulet with a worried expression before tossing it into the shadows. “Nothing. A coincidence, a piece of trash that tangled with the body.”

  “Jackals run with ghosts,” Hadrian ventured, echoing the boy’s words to Kenton.

  Buchanan’s eyes flared and he looked over his shoulder as if suddenly frightened. After a moment he muttered a low curse and leaned on his shovel. “He drank too much at the banquet, the fool. It was before we opened the public bathhouse.” As Hadrian continued digging, Buchanan spoke in a slow, deliberate voice, as if rehearsing his official explanation. “Afterward he came here to use the public privy near his mother’s cottage, tumbled over the side, and sank in. He was drunk and that railing on the back was never high enough.”

  Hadrian stopped his work, staring with new foreboding at the now fully exposed torso. “He did collect a little salvaged steel.”

  “What are you talking—” The words died in the governor’s throat as he lifted the lantern and spied the blade of reworked metal between the man’s ribs. “Noooo!” he moaned. “No,” he repeated after a moment, in a steadier, contemplative tone, as if rejecting what he saw. He stared at the makeshift blade so long Hadrian went back to work, freeing the man’s legs.

  At last Buchanan straightened, stripped off his jacket, and laid it over the body. “I’ll get a canvas to roll him in,” he announced. “And a cart to carry him to the harbor. Find some stones for his shroud.”

  “He was murdered.”

  “You will row him out half a mile and drop him in.”

  “Jonah and I will need to study his body, to understand what happened.”

  “He was martyred in the service of the colony. There are all kinds of dangers lurking in the ruined lands. Everyone knows how many of our scouts never return. The world resists being rediscovered.”

  “He was murdered,” Hadrian repeated.

  “We don’t have murders. We have never had murders in Carthage.”

  “No history. No murders. What’s your next decree, no more disease?”

  “You, Hadrian,” the governor growled, “are in no position to—”

  The sound of the bells rose slowly through their words. First one, then another as the alarm was taken up across the town. Hadrian and the governor darted up the trail to the top of the ravine.

  “God, no!” Hadrian cried as he spied the flames on the hillside half a mile away. Spotting the governor’s bicycle leaning against a nearby tree, he spun about and shoved Buchanan against Sergeant Kenton. “Find Jonah!” he shouted as he mounted the bike, ducking as the policeman recovered enough to swing his truncheon at him. “He’ll know which books are the most important to save! He has places there where he stores colony treasures!”

  Weaving through the crowd of frightened onlookers, he cycled past the fire brigade frantically trying to lay hoses from the nearest cistern. As he threw the bike down and darted into the burning library, men and women were beginning to empty buckets of water on the flames, while others were carrying out books and furnishings from the lower floor. Holes licked by flame were already appearing in the cedar shake roof as Hadrian bounded up the stairs toward the workshop. As he reached the chamber, he froze, a desolate groan escaping his lips as he collapsed onto his knees. Hadrian had found the colony’s most important treasure.

  Above his burning worktable, Jonah’s body swung from a rafter.

  CHAPTER Two

  HADRIAN WAS NOT aware of moving, only of realizing suddenly that he had grabbed the bucket from the stunned policeman who appeared at his side. He tossed the water on the table, dousing its flames, grabbed the knife that lay there, leapt onto the table, and cut the rope on the rafter.

  He was on the floor beside Jonah an instant later, cradling him, pulling off the noose. The old man seemed to gasp and, with frantic hope, Hadrian laid him flat and pushed his abdomen before realizing it was just the dead air escaping his lungs. Through the tears that filled his eyes he saw men and women streaming into the room, emptying more buckets of water.

  “Hadrian,” a woman in a long white apron called in an anguished voice, “let me help you take him outside.”

  But Boone lashed out, shoving her away, raising his fist to warn off others. He lifted Jonah in his arms, cradling the grey-whiskered head to his shoulder as he carried him out. Collapsing onto the grass, he took one of the ink-stained hands in both of his as a long sob wracked his body. The end of the world had come again.

  Through his fog of pain he became gradually aware of a company of prisoners being marched double time onto the grounds, of a fire hose sputtering then filling with water to spray the building, of Lucas Buchanan shouting orders then gasping as he saw Jonah. He watched, numbed, as prisoners hauled armfuls of books out of the building, then he struggled to his feet and joined the effort.

  An hour later, his arms and face blackened with soot, he stood and watched the smoke rise from the smoldering library. Half the roof was gone but the rest of the building had been saved. Police whistles trilled as more onlookers arrived, clogging the street. Sergeant Kenton shoved Hadrian toward the rank of prisoners being formed for the march back to the prison. He resisted for a moment as Kenton put manacles on his wrists, then saw that Jonah’s body was gone and, as if in a terrible dream, let himself be led away.

  HALF THE INDIVIDUAL cells in the long two-story stone building housing Carthage’s prisoners were usually empty. Most of the inmates, convicted of mere misdemeanors, were kept in shared barrack cells where they could easily be checked by guards between card games. A few of the youngest now hooted as Hadrian was shoved into their midst. He was something of a hero to them, not just for being the oldest of the repeat offenders, but also for his well-known feud with Kenton. The remaining prisoners stared coolly at him. They were old enough to remember he’d held office in the government of Lucas Buchanan.

  A young prisoner tossed a tattered, soot-stained towel to Hadrian and stepped back from a basin of grey water. Hadrian was the last to wash up. Over a dozen men had already used the water to clean themselves after the fire.

  “They’ll get the roof back up in a week, Mr. Boone.” Nash was a habitual burglar from one of the outlying farms, who had been a pupil at the school when Hadrian still ran it.

  Hadrian covered his face in the filthy towel for a moment. Jonah’s dead countenance seemed to be everywhere, even when he closed his eyes. He clenched his jaw, struggling not to weep. Most of the prisoners were grinning at him, mocking him, when he looked up.

  Collapsing into the deep shadows of his bunk, he felt his grief gnawing away at his heart, and for a long time he lay as if paralyzed. Then, with great effort, he pushed the pain back. There would be only one way to deal with this agony, only one way to carry on his life. He had to understand what happened, had to find those responsible. Replaying the terrible scene at the library workshop in his mind’s eye, he went over it again and again, finally considering the flames and the pattern of destruction. The papers on the top of the des
k had just begun to ignite when he arrived, but two stacks of shelves had already burnt so intensely they’d set off the roof above. Under the desk had been shreds of colored paper, which he had furtively collected, and below the burning shelves had been the remains of the two oil lamps Jonah used for writing at night, a dozen feet from the desk. They could not simply have been knocked down by Jonah’s flailing feet. Rather, they’d been lifted from his desk and thrown against the shelves. The papers on the desk had been lit by a stray ember.

  Left on the desk had been the unfamiliar heavy knife Hadrian had used to cut the hanging rope. His palm and fingers were slightly burnt where he had held the knife. He studied the pattern of reddened skin. The hilt had been brass and disproportionately thick, the blade also was very thick, with a cupped guard around the hilt. It had not belonged to Jonah.

  He sat up, looking for Nash. The other prisoners were in their bunks, but the young thief had washed his socks and was trying to dry them over the solitary candle lantern on the table.

  “Swords,” Hadrian said as he approached him. “Who has swords? Why would one be cut down into a heavy knife?”

  Nash shrugged. “Everyone loves a sword when one turns up in salvage or the black market. But then they get it home and realize it isn’t so useful. Practical men, they’ll grind them down to a useful size.”

  “What kind of practical men?”

  “Farmers,” the youth offered, then considered the point a moment. “Fishermen, millers, maybe butchers and carpenters, even—”

  A low singsong whistle cut Nash off. He scowled at the brutish man sitting on a bunk near the door. “Fuck you, Wade,” the youth spat, then turned so as to put his back to the bearded prisoner.

  “If you wanted to get into the library at night,” Hadrian continued, “how would you do it?” The whistle continued, and Hadrian looked back at Wade. It was a prisoner’s taunt, a warning about those who sang out secrets.

  “But, Mr. Boone,” Nash said, “I would never . . . not the library. My momma goes there. She’ll come into town, all those miles, just to borrow a book.”

  “But just suppose.”

  Nash bit his lower lip. “I would bet old Mr. Jonah never locked those doors on the upstairs balcony he used for experiments. Wouldn’t be hard to put a ladder up there. But probably no need. The librarian works late a lot. She leaves the front door open for people to return books.”

  Hadrian gave the boy a grateful nod and returned to his bunk. He was so deep in thought he failed to notice the shreds of paper until he sat on them. He shot back up, straining to see in the dim light. There were dozens of paper strips. As he scooped up several and took them to the lantern, Nash retreated uneasily.

  With a shudder he saw they were fine vellum, some covered with a classical typeface, others with the bright inks of a map. Low, gravelly laughter rose from near the door.

  He threw the shreds in Wade’s face as he reached the big man.

  “You stole a book tonight!” he spat.

  The cell’s bully held up an elegantly bound volume entitled World Geography 1900. “I liberated a month’s worth of ass wipes. Stuff they put in the latrines is like sandpaper.”

  “It’s irreplaceable!” Hadrian clenched his fists.

  “So’s my arse!” Several men in the adjacent bunks joined in Wade’s jeering.

  “It belongs to the colony.”

  Wade, a fisherman imprisoned for slashing his opponent in a bar fight, opened the book to a page captioned Lands of Asia featuring a color plate of the Great Wall. With glee he tore the page out, jerking a thumb toward Hadrian.

  “Our distinguished visitor is still full of hisself,” the burly prisoner declared as the other prisoners surrounded Hadrian. “I think he suffers from a misunderstanding of what is important in this world.”

  Hadrian felt hands close around his arms. “Himself,” he said. “Of himself. You should have stayed in school, Wade.”

  Wade guffawed again. “Maybe his highness is just hungry,” he quipped with a nod. It was a signal. Hadrian was flung to the floor. Three prisoners knelt on his arms and legs, another clamped his nostrils shut.

  Hadrian held his breath as long as he could. When, at last, he opened his mouth, gasping for air, the wadded page was shoved inside. One of the men seized his chin and worked his jaw, opening and shutting it so that he chewed the paper, leaving him gagging and choking. He crawled to the piss bucket and vomited up the ruined page.

  When he finally collapsed onto his bunk, Hadrian faced the wall and clamped his hand against his chest. They did not know he still had a dozen salvaged pages inside his shirt.

  IN THE MORNING Hadrian was left in the cell as the other prisoners were marched out on work detail. Wade had sneered, making a slashing motion across his throat when the guard announced Hadrian was not to join the detail. They all knew he was the governor’s favorite dog for kicking, and Buchanan would be in a kicking mood. He paced the cell, pausing at Nash’s bunk as he saw its bloody blanket. The young thief had been beaten in the night.

  He gazed out the window at the smoldering library on the ridge above, expecting the lock on the door to rattle open at any moment. Then he realized Buchanan would have been up most of the night and not be seeing anyone until the afternoon. He lay on his pallet, trying to sleep but seeing Jonah’s body hanging from the rafter every time he closed his eyes. He paced the cell, tested and rejected the old porridge left for breakfast, now cold and thick as paste, then paused by Wade’s bunk. It took him only a moment to find the old book, hidden in the horsehair stuffing of the pallet. He considered whether to hide it elsewhere, or even to throw it through the hatch on the door for a guard to find, then leafed through it and studied the beautiful hand-painted maps, nearly twenty in all. If Wade couldn’t find it, he would beat Hadrian. If a policeman found it, he would probably take it for his own latrine. Hadrian began tearing out the maps and stuffing them into his shirt.

  He stood at the door for several minutes, pressing his cheek against the barred hatch to watch down the empty corridor, then used wood splinters to pin the filthy towel over the hatch. Jammed in his sock were the pieces of parchment he had scooped up from under Jonah’s table when he had gone back to fight the fire. He extracted them and arranged them, inked side up, on the table. He started with the outside edges first. As he connected the brown and purple vine that wound its way around an inch-wide border, framing a little sailing ship at the bottom, he realized the page was familiar. It was from Jonah’s secret journal, the page he had seen him working on the day before.

  It was a work of art, painstakingly detailed. Only the right-hand border was incomplete. Two semicircular pieces had been torn away, leaving two gaps on that side.

  The elegantly inked text in the center of the page read like a poem:

  Over the golden water this dawn could be seen the ten steamers of the fleet, the wanderers all returned home. The harvest fair continues, with wagons in from distant farms and children wide-eyed over giant pumpkins. Pipe and fiddle music rose with the moon last night. The dance stage was a joyful drum echoing down the valley.

  Up from the meadows rich with corn, clear in the cool September morn. Round about them orchards sweep, apple and peach trees fruited deep. Fair as the garden of the Lord.

  It was a poem, or at least the last paragraph was. Hadrian puzzled over the words. They sounded vaguely familiar, but incomplete. The last couplet was not finished. He pushed the edges closer together, as though new words would appear, not knowing what he had missed but with a rising suspicion that there was something else, a hidden message. Jonah Beck had delighted in the mysteries of language, in word plays. The passage on its face was a lyrical description of the major event of the past week. It could have been published in the daily paper. Yet it had been part of Jonah’s secret journal, had been quite deliberately destroyed. He paused, looking out the window. But when? During his murder, or just before?

  Hadrian separated the pieces and slowly reassembled th
em, taking several to the window to hold them in the sunlight, marveling again over their artistry. He knew from experience that Jonah might spend as long as a week on a single page, working on it in the late afternoon and evening as one of his many pastimes after long days bent over blueprints and designs. While he had not exactly hidden his journal from Hadrian, he had never spoken of it in detail. Hadrian had always assumed it was simply the old man’s account of daily life in the colony.

  Fatigue swept over him as he stared at the page in frustration. Gathering up the pieces, he stretched out on his pallet.

  IT WAS NEARLY noon when a square-set figure roughly tapped Hadrian’s stomach with his truncheon. “You need to clean yourself up if you’re going to see the governor,” Sergeant Kenton growled, pushing Hadrian down the corridor to the horse trough outside. When he finished, Kenton tossed him a yellow armband, the mark habitual criminals were required to wear in public. The sergeant wore an expectant expression as Hadrian slid the band over his sleeve. He had not yet punished Hadrian for the day before. Kenton was biding his time, waiting for the governor to draw first blood.

  When Kenton left Hadrian in Buchanan’s office, the governor acknowledged him only by shoving a thin newspaper across his desk. The colony did not have enough paper to circulate the news to all its citizens. Only senior officials received personal copies, with the remaining ones posted on boards scattered about the colony.

  With an angry heart Hadrian quickly read the first article, its headline announcing the suicide of legendary scientist and Council member Jonah Beck. Police arrived moments too late to resuscitate him but then discovered a fire that had tragically broken out elsewhere in the building. Courageous efforts saved the structure and most of the book collection. Governor Buchanan had declared the next day an official day of mourning, with a state funeral at noon.