Witchy Eye

by D. J. Butler

  “Thou mayest call me Picaw.” Picaw wasn’t so much a name as a sound like a bird’s cry, picaw!

  “A pleasure.” Cathy nodded again. “Are you one of the persons who sent me young Jacques? He indicated that you might have business concerning my friend, Sir William Lee.”

  “If thou art a friend of the man Lee,” the duck-faced woman said in musical, lilting tones, “come now. He lieth at death’s door.”

  Picaw got several steps’ head start as Cathy recovered from the surprise. Mastery, she told herself. Mastery and grace. She followed the beastwife down the boardwalk to the alley running up the side of Grissot’s. The narrow street stank of boozy piss. There, shadowed from the flickering torch- and oil-light of the street, Bill lay unconscious, with a tortoise-headed beastman crouching over him. Bill’s waistcoat was gone and his shirt and neckcloth were dark with his own blood, oozing through a rude bandage around his left shoulder.

  “We have no healing magics to help him,” creaked the beastman.

  “Carry him,” Cathy heard herself saying, her instincts of control taking over even as the perceiving part of her retreated into a distant, stunned shell, “and come with me.”

  She smiled with all the force of her charm to the smoky common room as she entered, but it was not enough to prevent a stunned hush. Even the banjo and bones fell silent at the sight of the beastfolk following her, Tortoise-head hoisting Bad Bill slung over his shoulder. How far had they carried Bill? Who were they? What was their connection with William Lee?

  Grand Jacques’s eyes bulged, but she pushed past him into the kitchen. The beastfolk followed, Tortoise-head shrugging Bill to the floor in front of the fire.

  Jacques trailed them into the kitchen, protesting. “Monsieur Grissot will not like this.” He was right.

  Cathy sighed. “I have to stop the bleeding, and the fire in my room isn’t lit. Now get me a bottle of whisky. I’ll pay for it and I’ll handle Monsieur Grissot.”

  The bartender stood undecided.

  Cathy sighed. She pulled one of Bill’s pistols from his coat pocket and pointed it at Grand Jacques’s forehead.

  “Don’t get me the whisky,” she snarled, “and I will shoot you!” Her own ferocity surprised even her, but it worked. By the time she had Bill’s shoulder stripped and a couple of kitchen knives lying to be sterilized in the hot coals, a square bottle of whisky had appeared.

  Thankfully, the bullet had passed through Bill’s upper arm without hitting a bone—she could see the entrance and exit wounds clearly. Still, this would hurt, even if she did everything right. It was a good thing Bill was unconscious. She began with a prayer she hadn’t said in years: “St. William Harvey, guide now my knife. As I have faith and seek to follow thee, restore thou health to this suffering child of Adam. Amen.”

  Wrapping its handle in a dishtowel, she picked up a knife.

  * * *

  Bill opened his eyes to pain. He lay in an unfamiliar bed that smelled of flowers and stared at a white plaster ceiling illuminated dimly by cracks of light creeping between heavy velvet curtains.

  His arm was killing him.

  His head hurt, too, but his head generally hurt when he woke up.

  “Franklin’s teeth,” he said. “Where am I?”

  “Why, Sir William,” drawled a familiar woman’s voice. “I finally have you where I have always wanted you.”

  Bill tried to prop himself up on his elbow and collapsed immediately as a jagged shard of agony ripped through his shoulder. He remembered killing the young Frenchman, being double-crossed by his dago employer and shot by the man’s bodyguards, and then, he thought he recalled, meeting some queer figures on the highway. Had he been delirious? He shook his head to clear away the fog.

  He must be in Cathy’s bed; he felt an illicit thrill.

  She sat on a wooden chair beside him. She wore a straight blue frock and no makeup. Perhaps it was the elation and relief of finding himself still alive, but Bill thought he had never seen her look more beautiful.

  Incongruously, for a moment he imagined that she might be covered with fine golden feathers all over her body.

  And then he realized that he was naked.

  “Whatever adventures may have brought me here last night,” Bill commented wryly, “I am saddened to discover that I’ve forgotten the pleasing part. I do note, however, that I appear to be entirely disrobed.”

  “Mrs. Lee need not fear, I’m afraid,” she said, smiling at him. “Although I’ve pierced the veil of your modesty quite ruthlessly, Sir William, and I confess that I’ve made free with your shoulder, I haven’t otherwise abused your person.”

  Bill probed at his wounded shoulder and found both an entry and an exit wound from the bullet, each puckered, cauterized, and tender. “I find myself regretting not having been abused, ma’am. Sin without guilt has always been the secret goal of the Christian man. Someone has very neatly treated my wounds.”

  “Simple Circulator training.” She shrugged.

  “Other than your failure to take advantage of me in the night, I see that I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate.”

  She nodded seriously. “Your beastmen…friends brought me to you. They left once I had stopped the bleeding.”

  So it hadn’t been a hallucination. Bill puffed his cheeks and exhaled slowly. “I wouldn’t have called them my friends. I met them by chance on the highway, and it’s my pure good fortune and much to my surprise that they turned out to be benevolent beastkind, and not maneaters. Did they tell you their names?”

  “The woman is called Picaw,” she said. “The tortoise never told me his name.”

  “I found the woman with the duck face disturbingly attractive,” Bill remembered. He winked at Cathy. “I’ll be grateful to you, Mrs. Filmer, if you can help me forget her.”

  “I don’t know that I can, Sir William.” Cathy arched a suggestive eyebrow in Bill’s direction. “I found her troubling, myself.”

  Bill chuckled and fell to rumination.

  He had no money. He owed the Bishop of New Orleans, what was it, eight looeys? He owed eight looeys today. And he owed Madame Beaulieu another three. He would prefer to lie here in Long Cathy’s bed and enjoy tantalizing conversation, but he needed to get going.

  He sat up, pulling himself with the strength of his good arm and trying to protect his punctured modesty with the bedsheet. The effort made him lightheaded, and he breathed deeply to recover.

  “Mrs. Filmer,” he asked, “does God smile so much upon me this morning that my clothing has been salvaged?”

  “He does,” she told him, “although apparently He hated your shirt, which could not be saved, and which I’ve replaced out of the impeccable wardrobe of Grand Jacques. I’ve cleaned your clothes and darned a large hole in the bottom of your coat pocket.”

  She stepped out to let him dress, which he accomplished with gingerness and muttered oaths, leaving his waistcoat unbuttoned to avoid putting too much pressure on his injury. He found his weapons and he armed himself, though he didn’t bother to load the pistols. There was no need now.

  He took extra care fist-blocking out his hat. It had served him well.

  Grissot’s creaked and hummed with the soft sounds of a tavern’s daily routine in the absence of customers. It all smelled of old wood, and too many people. The hall and stairs were dark, but Bill managed to grope his way through by instinct.

  He saw Long Cathy again in the common room, composed and calm, alone at a small table with a bottle of whisky. Sunlight poured in through the glass windows like an army of avenging angels, burning Bill’s eyes into a squint. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said to her, sweeping his hat. “I find that I must add you to my list of creditors, for laundry, clothing, hospitality, and medical services.”

  “And drink,” she added, pouring him a glass.

  “And drink. Honor,” he said, belting the whisky back. The throbbing in his head and his shoulder both eased slightly. He would have liked to take the whole bottle.
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  “In defense of innocence.” She drank.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Bill said, beginning to feel like himself again. “As it happens, I’ll be visiting Mr. Hackett’s in an attempt to resolve some of my outstanding debts this very day, but I expect that I’ll find you eternally in my ledger on the creditor side.”

  “Bill.” Cathy looked as earnest, as direct, as uncomposed as he had ever seen her. “Sir William. I don’t know what you’re involved in that has you trafficking with beastfolk and being shot, but I urge you to be careful. There is at least one heart in New Orleans that would grieve for you.”

  It took Bill a moment to recover his balance.

  “The beasts are terrifying and strange,” he managed to agree, and he winked at her, “but in my experience, Mrs. Filmer, the Spaniards are much, much worse.”

  He didn’t allow himself to linger—Etienne Ukwu would be up and looking for Bill soon, if he wasn’t already. He kissed her hand, bowed, and squinted out into the warm, bright afternoon.

  No sign of the bishop’s collectors on the street. For that matter, no sign of the gendarmes, or any other of the chevalier’s men. And no sign of the thugs who worked for Don Luis Maria Salvador Sandoval de Burgos. Just the iron grillwork of the Quarter’s balconies, the walls of jasmine and wisteria, and a token population of residents getting ready for the evening.

  Bill headed straight for Hackett’s.

  It was noon, and the pawnbroker’s shop was open. The boardwalk creaked under his boots and a tiny bell above the door jingled as Bill entered. Hackett himself manned the counter, with his fine silver hair, his jolly lined face and the leaping gleam in his slitted eyes. Around the other three walls of the shop were shelves groaning with all manner of pawned objects.

  “Captain Bill.” Hackett dealt with old soldiers on a regular basis, and was known for treating them with sympathy.

  With a heavy heart, Bill laid both his pistols and the scabbarded sword on Hackett’s thick countertop. “Mister Hackett,” he pleaded, “you know I’m not good at figures. I beg you to treat me generously.”

  With very little discussion—Bill could not bear to negotiate when money was at issue—Hackett loaned him six Louis d’or and gave Bill the ticket that would let him redeem the weapons for nine looeys if presented within a month.

  Interest again, dammitall.

  Bill looked at the six gold coins in his hand with ashes in his mouth. It wasn’t even enough to pay off the bishop.

  He’d go get his rifle and pawn that, too. Then pay off Bishop Ukwu and…and what? He hated to be without weapons; Bill had enemies. He needed to find work to let him buy back his weapons and pay Madame Beaulieu. Maybe he could force Don Sandoval to pay what he owed in a week, though how he would persuade the dago to do that without guns, Bill couldn’t imagine. Pure bluster, maybe. If he was lucky, maybe he could find someone else to loan him the money to buy back his weapons from Hackett, and then recover his twenty looeys from Don Sandoval and pay off the new loan. Thinking about money made his head hurt.

  Bill squinted as he stepped onto the boardwalk.

  He made it onto the street.

  He made it to the Pension de Madame Beaulieu. Madame Beaulieu stood in the ferns and seemed a bit nervous as she nodded to him, passing through the door on his way up to retrieve the long Kentucky rifle for pawning.

  Her nerves disquieted him. No doubt she was anxious to be paid, but she had never seemed uncomfortable around him before.

  Bill hesitated.

  Best not go upstairs—Etienne might be waiting, or the chevalier’s men. Bill retreated from the courtyard and stepped back out the front door.

  A heavy cudgel cracked down on the back of his skull. He staggered off the boardwalk onto the dirt and fell face up, seeing nothing but the merciless blare of the sun until Etienne Ukwu’s smiling brown face poked into one corner of his whirling field of vision.

  “Ubosi oma,” Etienne greeted him. “Your time is up. You owe His Grace eight Louis d’or.”

  Bill had lost his hat. His head hurt, and his shoulder, and his pride. He still clutched the six looeys in his hand, and he tried to hold them out to Etienne, fumbling them onto the dirt in an attack of vertigo.

  Etienne’s thugs crowded around as Etienne picked up the coins and counted them. “I know you are not very good at mathematics, Bill.” Blasted iggy accent made him sound cheerful all the time. “But even you must realize that eight is greater than six.”

  Bill gaped like a fish as he tried to form words of explanation, tell Etienne that he had been on his way to resolve the debt at this very moment, but no sound came out. His shoulder felt as if a mule had just kicked him. He pulled the claim ticket from his pocket and tried to show it to Etienne, but he was overwhelmed by vertigo and nausea and he dropped the paper.

  “We have taken your rifle from your lodgings and will sell that to achieve final satisfaction of your outstanding debt to His Grace,” Etienne said. “Which means that I, to my regret, will not be killing you today.” He stooped and picked up Bill’s dropped claim ticket, looked at it and tucked it into the pocket of his waistcoat. “Perhaps Mr. Hackett will wish to purchase it.”

  Mercy from the bishop’s son seemed impossible, and the mere hint of it made Bill nervous. What was going on? Was Etienne about to take off his arm, or torture him?

  But Etienne and his red sash and his men simply walked away, leaving Bill lying on the earth with his head running around him in circles. Bill took a deep breath, managed to sit up—

  and found himself surrounded by blue-and-gold coated gendarmes.

  The chevalier’s men.

  Hell’s Bells.

  “You’re forgettin’ the bears.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ezekiel Angleton had slept poorly.

  Even before that whistling pagan oaf Obadiah Dogsbody had blundered back empty-handed, Ezekiel’s evening had been haunted by strange visions. It had been a long, hard ride from Philadelphia, sharing stale beds with Obadiah in ordinaries along the way, so he’d curled up in his cloak on a bed of leaves and dozed off. He’d slept fitfully, but he’d been interrupted by strange dreams.

  He had dreamed he was someone else, or perhaps something else, and that thing was locked in a body that was as unfamiliar to it as it was to Ezekiel. This was just like the dreams that had trampled through his restless nights on the hard ride south.

  On those previous nights he had dreamed he ran over hills and through forests, encountering no one. Ezekiel had told himself the strange fluidity of the movement and the constant slapping of branches on his dream-face were reflections of his state of mind, dream-mirrors of the uncertain wilderness in which his soul wandered, until he could capture the witchy-eyed girl and end her blasphemy against the Penn family name.

  Last night, dozing beside his fire in the forest and waiting for Obadiah to bring him the girl, the dreams had returned. Moreover, they had become prophetic. In fragmented images split up by his surfacing to the waking world for air he had seemed to follow his servant Obadiah Dogsbody upon the slopes of Calhoun Mountain. There he’d seen Obadiah drink himself stupid and then release the girl, so Ezekiel had not truly been surprised when Obadiah had returned to camp alone.

  It had been a harsh disappointment, but a hurt that brought its own balm. Knowing his dreams had been the vehicle of prophecy thrilled Ezekiel Angleton, and he thought of the next part of his evening’s visions, in which he’d found the Penn girl and her Appalachee beau and had attacked them, wrestling the man to the ground with his bare hands. Surely, this was a great portent for this morning’s venture: as Obadiah had lost the girl, Ezekiel would find her again.

  But what did it mean that in his dream the cracker lad had arisen with a handful of fire like the cherub sealing off the gate of Eden, and had struck Ezekiel in his dream-face, wounding him gravely? Ezekiel rubbed his cheek at the memory of the dream-pain, searing and intense, and of the smoke that poured out of his burning dream-flesh.

 
Was the Appalachee lad Ezekiel’s death? Did his hand hold for Ezekiel the fires of Hell? Did God have no grace to pour down on him?

  At the least, the dream contained both a promise and a warning, and Ezekiel would take great care.

  The Philadelphia Blues had found him early this morning; they, too, had ridden hard from Philadelphia, and only Ezekiel’s earlier start had gotten him to Nashville one day ahead. He had been deep in prayer and the Psalms in the small canvas tent he had made Obadiah pitch for him when a drumming of hooves had preceded the arrival of men on horseback.

  Ezekiel had emerged from the tent, feeling the pleasant stretching burn of legs unkinking after spiritual exercise. His heart struggled with a more puzzled feeling. Wrestling through the strange images of his dreams, he had hounded on their trail through verse after verse, in Isaiah and Daniel and Zephaniah, and finally he had struck upon the eighty-second Psalm.

  Captain Sir Daniel Berkeley had pounded into view at the head of the Blues astride his enormous gray horse. “You’re fast, Parson.” He swung easily to the ground.

  Captain Berkeley was tall and muscular, with a high forehead and aquiline nose framed dramatically by his glossy black perruque. Berkeley must be in his mid-forties, Ezekiel guessed. His Imperial Majesty Thomas Penn had elevated him to the captaincy of the Blues immediately following his own coronation nearly fifteen years earlier, at the same time he had elevated Ezekiel.

  The years since then had mostly been spent in the saddle, either traveling with Thomas or riding on his errand. Berkeley didn’t show the years or the miles. He was lean and hard, he breathed through flared nostrils, and his eyes stared everywhere they looked.

  The captain rode behind Ezekiel now on the huge gray horse of which he was so proud, Obadiah following him, and then the Philadelphia Blues, in Indian file.

  The Imperial House Light Dragoons were the emperor’s personal troops; they were his bodyguard in war and on long journeys, and his special agents at other times. They were mounted gunmen, and each was armed with a brace of long horse pistols, large-bored and designed to kill men in single, accurate shots, as well as the longer Paget carbine. Strapped behind his saddle, each man carried a box of paper cartridges, prepared in advance to speed reloading time. In addition, they carried swords. By tradition, they rode under the emperor’s banner when in his company, and otherwise had no insignia, being recognizable only by their blue uniforms, simple and sturdy for the road, with a dress set embroidered elaborately in gold and buttoned with ivory disks. Even their captain wore no special marker of rank; his men knew who he was. The Blues wore tricorner hats against the rain and long riding coats against the October chill.