by D. J. Butler
And no gendarme would waste his time, anyway. Men killed each other on Smuggler’s Shelf—that was a simple fact, and the law didn’t very much care. Pistols checked, Bill leaned against the stone to wait.
His client Don Sandoval arrived next, with two bodyguards, on horseback. All three had long rich black perruques and they wore yellow coats and breeches, but only the don wore make-up, his cheeks carefully rouged and a neat moustache penciled onto his upper lip. Mutton dressed as lamb. Bill snorted, but he didn’t say anything. The two bodyguards were scarred and hard-faced, with misshapen noses and notched ears, and they carried two pistols and a long rifle each. One of them was old enough that he might be a veteran of the Spanish War, like Bill, only on the opposite side of the conflict. The other was a relative pup, but in Texia, New Spain, and New Orleans, pups learned to bite at a young age.
The don was a ship-owning trader, soft and weak, and Bill didn’t wonder that he would hire someone else to avenge the insult inflicted by the young frog who had climbed between his mistress’s sheets. He was a bit perplexed that Don Sandoval hadn’t simply had one of his own bodyguards do the job, but maybe the Don overestimated the Frenchman’s skill and preferred not to risk his own man. Maybe the Don didn’t want his men to bear the brunt of any repercussions, if some gendarme decided to take offense to the killing. In any case, Bill needed the cash.
“Will you watch, then, suh?” Bill bowed slightly as the Spaniards dismounted.
“She is a good night for a duel. We will watch from over there,” Don Sandoval told him, indicating a deep patch of shadow beside the bridge.
“Very good, suh.” Bill noted the spot mentally. Odd creature, this dago, with odd notions. He seemed to want to redeem his honor anonymously, which did not at all accord with Bill’s ideas of how things should be done, but the Spaniard would get what he wanted, as long as the Spaniard was paying gold. Bill had learned long ago not to care too much about the strange notions of other men, so long as he got paid.
“Ten looeys after the shots are fired?” Bill willed his employer to remember the bonus he had offered.
Don Sandoval nodded. “And a further ten, señor, if you kill the young man.”
Bill nodded too, keeping his comportment professional. Twenty looeys would see him out of debt and nicely in cash for a while—too bad for the young Frenchman. Maybe his friends would learn a valuable lesson about rich men’s mistresses, and then the boy’s death wouldn’t be a total waste.
The Spaniards took their horses with them and hid.
The sun sank. Bill paced the Shelf in the gloom and waited, listening to the placid gurgle of the river around the stanchions of Bishopsbridge and the harmonies of the frogs and the birds.
The night air was getting colder, and it smelled bad.
Bill’s mind wandered to thoughts of Long Cathy and a wish he wasn’t still bound to a family in Johnsland he hadn’t seen in fifteen years. He felt bad for that wish, and focused his mind on Sally. Sally was a good woman, worth far more to him even than the very good dowry she had brought to the marriage. She’d given him two sons and two daughters, and of those only the one boy had died in infancy, too small and weak to even get a name before he expired in her arms, mewling like a cat.
The girls had both lived, and Charles. Hell, Charles might even have his commission by now. Bill hoped it was in the service of the Earl of Johnsland. However insane the Earl might be, he was better than Thomas Penn.
And he had sworn he would not vent his anger at Bill upon Bill’s family.
Three Frenchman arrived. They clattered down the slope, crashed through a brake of river reeds, and waded into the darkness under Bishopsbridge in the tight yellow embrace of a lantern.
“Ribbit,” Bill called in greeting.
The Frenchmen were young and rich. None of them was wearing the makeup that seemed mandatory in salon society, and that they had been wearing the night before. Bill’s opponent—he knew him by his jaw, bruised and puffy—looked the richest of all, in a silk shirt and elaborately brocaded waistcoat and jacket, but all three dressed like dandies, with plain black cloaks thrown over the top.
“Mistair Lee!” cried the young lover. “I yam ’ere!” His English was ridiculous, but it struck Bill suddenly and painfully that this young man whom he was about to murder was probably the same age as Bill’s own son.
Forget fallen, he thought. It’s a damned world.
Bill swallowed back thoughts of his boy, nodded a salute and approached the foreign dandies. “You are here, indeed, Monsieur le Frog. Shall we mark off ten paces?”
The three men conferred in French, and then one of the friends, shorter and with a round, plump face, spoke. His English was clear, though notably accented. “We believe ze Code Duello entitles my master…er, my friend, to know his offense, and to apologize, if he wishes. We acknowledge zat we have taken ze ground, which in principle precludes any apology until shots have been fired, but my friend informs me zat he does not understand why he has been challenged.”
Bill wasn’t accustomed anymore to transacting violence with gentlemen, and suddenly he wished he had employed more regular process. Well, this was New Orleans, not Richmond or Philadelphia or Paris, and the young monsieur didn’t seem to be standing too unreasonably on his rights.
“Tell your friend, suh, that his offense was to make free with Miss Lefevre.” That much was true. “Miss Lefevre is my mistress.” Bill regretted the lie, but he needed the looeys.
Miss Lefevre was a young actress, well known in New Orleans, particularly for her work in stage comedies. Bill had seen her in something called L’École des femmes, which he understood to mean The School for Wives. The play had been all in French, and considerably less exciting than Bill had been led by the title to believe.
She was also the mistress of Bill’s dago employer.
Bill’s claim to be the actress’s beau occasioned another three-sided flurry of French, and then the plump-faced man spoke again. “My master is surprised that you are so intimate with Miss Lefevre. He acknowledges ze insult and regrets zat it places him at odds with you. Neverzeless, he cannot apologize, as he is in love with ze lady.”
Bill sighed. He needed to kill the Frenchman quickly; he was starting to like the lad, and that would throw off his aim. “Ten paces, then. Your friend fires first, as I expect you know.” The reek of the swamp was even thicker than usual.
The third Frenchman, the lantern-holder, sallow-complected and small, rushed forward. “Please, sir, I beg you! Zis is not just any young man. His fazer—”
“Arrêtez-vous!” shouted the challenged young man. Bill thought that meant stop. The sallow-faced friend fell silent and both he and the interpreter looked at their feet.
Bill hesitated, then decided the brave young man deserved fair warning. “Tell your friend that I’ll be shooting to kill.”
If it were Charles in such a duel rather than the Frenchman, Bill would want the other fellow to warn his son.
Bill laid his coat on the ground carefully and took both his long pistols in hand; the challenged Frenchman armed himself similarly, and Bill noticed that his pistols were a pair of very expensive flintlocks, reflecting the lantern’s light with elaborate gold and silver inlays. The guns were long and light, the pistols of a marksman. Sallow took the lantern off to the side and held it high.
Both men checked their weapons; Bill’s were dry, loaded, and primed.
“Commêncez-vous,” Sallow said, then started counting. “Une…deux…trois.”
Bill marched. He heard the young man’s boots behind him as they paced off ten crunching steps each in the wet sand. Might the young Frenchman be more dangerous than Bill had imagined? He had impressive pistols, and he seemed to know the Code Duello, or at least Plump Face did.
Bill glanced as he paced at the shadows where the Spaniards were hiding, and saw nothing. Even those yellow coats they wore were concealed by the deep darkness under Bishopsbridge.
Bill reached his
ten paces and turned. He let both hands hang at his side. Maybe the Frenchman would kill him. Would that really be so bad? Death would come for him somewhere, and Bill had always expected it to be violent when it came. He’d lived through four years of the Spanish War, with battles all over Texia and the Cotton League and of course the Siege of Mobile. He’d been young then, just a boy. He’d lived through ten years of riding with the Imperial Consort, putting down road-agents, Comanche slavers, beastkind riots, and rapacious banks. He’d lived by the sword, so he expected to die by it, too, just as Shakespeare said…or was it Jesus? Why couldn’t the Frenchman be the one to pull the trigger? Would Bill really miss this dishonorable ruffian’s life?
And even if he won, if he killed this Frenchman, repaid his debts and lived, would he ever return to Johnsland? That he might return on the earl’s death had been a constant prayer for fifteen years. He hoped the old man would finally die and the new earl would revoke his sentence of banishment. But the old man seemed to continue unnaturally, as if he had decided to live forever, just to spite William Lee.
If Bill died, though, he would never have the chance to see his son Charles as a grown man.
The Frenchman raised his pistol to take aim, and Bill saw that death would not come for him tonight. The young man’s arm wobbled as he pointed his gun. He might know how to shoot, might even be a good shot, but he had never before shot at a living man. Bill sighed. He hoped that if his son were in such a duel, he would at least be able to aim straight.
Bang!
The sound of the explosion echoed across the river and bounced back from the underside of the bridge, and the Frenchman lowered his gun. As bad a shot as the Frenchman was, Bill thought, his willingness to engage in the duel to defend his lady’s honor was that much more courageous. And courage was a dangerous, dangerous virtue to possess.
“Goodbye, suh,” Bill murmured inaudibly to the young Frenchman. “I’d be proud to be your father.” Then he took steady aim, pulled the trigger of his long pistol, and blew the young man to kingdom come.
The sound of Bill’s shot echoed for a long time in his ears, while he picked up and put on his coat, replaced his pistols in his belt and his pocket, and then approached the Frenchmen again, his feet surprisingly heavy in the sand. Sallow and Plump Face stood jabbering over the body; he needed them to leave, so he could meet with his principal and collect his evening’s payment.
“May I help you with the body, gentlemen?” he offered, and after some more wild-eyed French chattering between the two of them they agreed that he could. Bill quailed momentarily when he saw the gallant young man’s face, still, serene and unfairly dead, but he forced himself to hoist the deceased man by his shoulders. This was not the first young man he’d ever killed. Why should this one bother him more than any of the others? He’d shot Spanish soldiers in Texia who weren’t old enough to shave and who were barely able to hold up a rifle, and it hadn’t bothered him, because it had been necessary. Bill shook his head to clear it.
Each friend took a leg, Sallow still struggling with the lantern as well, and they huffed and puffed the corpse back up the slope to the highway, where a large coach-and-four waited. The blue-and-gold-uniformed coachman crossed himself repeatedly, nearly losing hold of his short, neat wig as he stumbled down from his high seat to open the carriage door.
The three men shoved the body inside the coach onto the floor and Bill stepped back, brushing off his hands. “This is an impressive conveyance,” he observed, examining the blue paint, the gold trim, and above all the gold fleur-de-lis that decorated its door, glimmering in the light of the lantern. “I don’t have occasion often to mingle with French-speaking society, but I’ve seen the chevalier once or twice, and I have to say, this looks every bit as fine as his coaches.”
“I tried to tell you,” Sallow muttered.
“I take it you gentlemen are of good family?” Bill hadn’t worked much for the city’s rich French families, but he wouldn’t object to doing so, and it occurred to him that at least these young men knew he was an accurate shot, and willing to do the job. Even if they couldn’t give him work themselves, they might be able to provide a reference.
“No,” Plump Face said sadly. “We were his friends and servants.”
“I tried to tell you,” Sallow repeated.
“Yes,” Bill acknowledged, remembering the dead man silencing his friend. “What did you try to tell me?”
“The man you killed tonight, monsieur,” Sallow said, “is no ordinary fellow.”
“Yes, suh.” Bill was losing his patience. “You said that part before. And you mentioned his father. What’s the part that you didn’t already tell me?”
Sallow began to weep. Plump Face looked terrified. Bill resisted the impulse to pull out the horse pistol that was still loaded and shoot another frog.
“What is it?” he coaxed them gently.
Finally, Plump Face spoke. “Our master,” he said slowly, “was ze youngest son of ze chevalier.”
“He might a wept, but He ain’t sent no Electors.”
CHAPTER THREE
Calvin Calhoun wasn’t frightened by guns. He’d been around guns every day of his life and was a good shot with the long rifle—but the sight of the pistol in the preacher’s hand made him freeze.
He was afraid for Sarah, from his long red hair to his big, bony feet. Sarah Calhoun was stubborn enough to go and get herself shot by some Yankee preacher just for the sport of it, and he didn’t want her getting hurt.
After all, she was his aunt.
Most of the crowd gasped or ducked when the gun came up, but a man beside Cal muttered instead—“pallottolam averto,” Cal thought he heard—and brushed his hand as if swatting a fly. Cal recognized the sound of Latin from the many hours he’d heard the Elector marching Sarah through her amo-amas-amat.
Cal turned to look, and was startled by what he saw: beside him the man’s face, unfamiliar and instantly forgettable, slipped off him like shadows in a changing light and revealed underneath the fair complexion and dark hair of the little foreign monk who had wanted to see the Elector.
The Ohioan priest was a wizard. Wizards were rare—even honest-to-God hexers like Sarah were rare enough, though plenty of folk pretended they could hex and were happy to take your copper bits in trade for a bit of pointless mumbo jumbo when you were in love. It wasn’t a coincidence that the man Sarah had taunted in Market Street was now here in the tent.
He was following her.
“You’re sure enough a stranger to these parts,” Sarah called out to the preacher, and Cal snapped his head back around to focus again on the gun. “’Round here, boredom ain’t a mortal sin. And our preachers ain’t so much in the habit of shootin’ their congregations.”
The crowd tried to back away, to the edges of the tent and even out the door—none of these folks saw the drama playing out as any of their business. There were too many people for anyone to easily get away, however, and the throng milled about, poised to explode.
“Mister, we’s jest funnin’ you,” Cal said, raising his voice and stepping forward to try to defuse the situation. That put the wizard into his peripheral vision and almost out of sight entirely, which made him nervous, but you have to pick your battles and the Martinite had a gun.
The Yankee stared at him from the pulpit.
“It’s a kind of a game we play,” Cal tried to explain, “funnin’ priests. No need to get fussed, you can jest consider it your welcome to Appalachee and be grateful ain’t nobody stole your horse yet.”
“Step aside.” The tall priest’s voice was cold. “I’m taking that girl with me.”
“Whyn’t we go across the road to the Town Hall?” Sarah suggested. “It’s tall enough, we could re-enact the Defenestration of Prague, help you relive the glorious roots of your order using the streets of Nashville and your Martinite buttocks.”
“That isn’t funny, child.”
Cal thought it was, and he almost laughed despite his f
ear.
“Oh, it’s funny, all right,” Sarah disagreed, “only it might not be fair. I heard as the two fellers those Bohemians threw out the window in 1618 were the Martinite Jaroslav and Ferdinand’s tax collector. Anyone as has read the Bible knows how partial Jesus is to tax collectors, and you gotta wonder if mebbe, on his own, that old Martinite might not a bounced quite so well.”
“Silence!” The Martinite stepped to the edge of the platform, his pistol trembling.
The pale monk moved up quietly, joining Cal in the line of fire. “You make very bold, Ezekiel.” His voice was calm. “But you aren’t in the Covenant Tract, or in Thomas Penn’s Philadelphia, and there are many people here. Why don’t you put the pistol down?”
Cal thought the gun-wielding priest’s eyes glazed over for a moment, but then he squinted hard and shook his head. Cal heard cursing behind him as the priest’s heavy announcer struggled with the crowd, trying to get into the tent.
“You’re a traitor, monk,” Angleton replied. “You should have stuck to saying prayers over your dead mistress. But my errand isn’t to deal with you. I’m here for the girl, and I’m wiling to take her with me as a corpse.”
Sarah pushed past Calvin and planted herself squarely in front of the Right Reverend Father, hands on her skinny hips.
“Sarah—” Cal tried in vain to stop her. Fool girl!
“Shoot me, then, you filthy Yankee!” She spat.
“Hold on,” Cal said. The priest wouldn’t possibly really try to kill anyone in front of a crowd in broad daylight. Surely someone would step in, or the threat of the town watch’s involvement would stop things before they went any further.
Angleton aimed at Sarah’s chest, his face a dispassionate mask, and squeezed the trigger.
Bang!
“No!” Cal threw himself forward into the acrid blue jet of gunpowder smoke.
The preacher couldn’t possibly miss at that range, but somehow, incredibly, he did. Cal heard a soft thump! over his head as the bullet went high and wide—yards high and wide—and buried itself in the pole that served the preaching tent as ceiling beam.