by D. J. Butler
When the weeping washed the last of the sleep-fog from Bill’s brain, he assessed his situation. Bayard breathed deeply and raggedly, the phlegm in his nose and throat making a noise like several forests being simultaneously sawed to the ground. The candle was out of Bill’s reach. The thing Bayard had been carrying, though, lay in shadow beside Bayard’s body, on the near side of him. If it was a pistol, or even a long enough knife, Bill might still have his justice. He crawled forward and stretched as far as he could, grabbing the object with the tips of his fingers and caressing it to himself.
He found he had requisitioned a bottle. A full bottle. A tall, square, full bottle of Kentucky bourbon. Bill took it in his trembling hands and retreated to the wall. “Honor in defense of innocence,” he murmured.
He drank, and considered.
The bottle was not long enough to strike Bayard with it. It was too heavy to conveniently turn into a bladed weapon by smashing it. But Bill could throw it. Bill was weak and his arms were chained, but Bayard was still, and would never be an easier target.
Bill drank some more, not to stiffen his resolve but because he hated to waste good whisky. Even on killing a varmint like Bayard. It wouldn’t do to totally empty the bottle though, so he cut himself off after a few long sips, and tamped the cork back into place.
Bill was a pistol man, really, but a soldier fights with the weapons he has to hand. Bill attempted a few positions and decided that his best shot was to rest the weight of the long chain over his shoulder. This forced him a couple of steps further back from his target, but it took most of the burden off his throwing hand.
Bill practiced a couple of dry casts; each time he swung the sloshing missile, he imagined it hurtling down in a straight line, a comet of high-proof justice, cracking Bayard’s traitorous skull open. Maybe then the talking deaf-mute Hop would find Bill a key, and he would escape. And if Bill wasted away and died in the belly of the Incroyable, he would die satisfied.
He was ready. He checked the other prisoners; but for the recurring moans, they might be dead.
One more practice cast, and then Bill threw the bottle.
Thunk.
The bottle hit Bayard on the shoulder and back, missing his head entirely, and dropping with a slosh to the floor.
“Damn me.”
If only he’d been wearing his lucky hat, Bayard Prideux would be a dead man right now.
He considered grabbing the other bottle, the one hidden in the water pail, and throwing it, too, but he didn’t have the heart.
He sat and might have wept again, except that Bayard stirred. “Ah…eh….” The French former Blue tumbled over, away from Bill and further out of his reach. He rubbed his shoulder and rolled up, stiffly and woozily. The two men sat facing each other.
“I regret, Bill,” Bayard said blearily.
“To hell with your regrets, suh!” Bill spat.
Bayard took this calmly through his stupor. “I mean, I am sorry.”
“To hell with your sorry, too.”
“Do you not feel remorse? Do you not ever sorrow for ze wrong choices you ’ave made?”
Bill said nothing. His remorse was none of Bayard’s damned affair.
“I do,” Bayard confessed.
Bill bit his tongue. How could he get Bayard to come close enough so that Bill could strangle him?
“I am so lonely,” Bayard said. “’E surrounds me with deaf-mutes and idiots, I speak to no one. Even ze ’ore he sends me once a month is a tongueless Choctaw. All my communication with ’er is animal, and degraded.”
Bayard was as much a prisoner as Bill was.
“I am not ze man I once was. I am not a man at all anymore, Bill. Captain Lee. I am not permitted to even be a man, I am nothing. ’E leaves me nothing. I gave ’im wealth, and ’e gives me only isolation and darkness.”
“Who, Bayard?” Bill just wanted to keep Bayard talking, get his guard down, and draw him close enough to murder him. “Who gives you nothing?”
“Ze chevalier, of course.” Bayard moped, and Bill sneered inside at the other man’s misery.
“I thought the chevalier was your friend.”
“’E should be. I made ’im a rich man.”
Bill’s brain caught on this statement in surprise. Bayard had been a penniless soldier, a failed poet, some bankrupt Louisiana planter’s youngest scion sent off to make his unhappy career as a soldier. He had treated the military mostly as an opportunity to raise hell. He had gotten into the Blues by some family influence, Bill remembered, and not because of wealth. None of that made Bayard particularly unusual, and neither did it suggest any way in which he might have brought the Chevalier of New Orleans wealth.
“What are you talking about?” Bill asked. “The Chevaliers Le Moyne have always been rich.”
Bayard shook his head and patted the floor about him in the darkness. “Ze Chevaliers ’ave always ’ad ze ’ead of ze New Orleans government,” he said, “and land. Generally, zey ’ave ’ad no cash.”
Bill nodded; he knew how that was. “And taxes. The chevalier collects taxes and tariffs and tolls of all kinds.”
“Yes,” Bayard agreed. “But zen ’e must pay for many things with zis money. Ze gendarmes, and ze magistrates, ze public buildings, and so on. Zis is ze curse of ze great man. Taxes do not make ’im rich.”
Bayard continued to grope in the dark.
“What are you doing?” Bill asked.
“I ’ad a bottle. Where’s my bottle?”
Bill gritted his teeth and said nothing.
“Zere it is.” Bayard found the whisky and took a long drink, wincing visibly. “I seem to have ’urt my shoulder.”
“You fell,” Bill told him.
“We all fall,” Bayard said.
“Some farther than others, suh,” Bill muttered, his heart dark.
“I told ze chevalier, you know.” The Frenchman took a drink.
“Told him what?”
“I told ze chevalier I was a murderer. ’Ow did you say it? Zat I was a foresworn man.” Drink. “Of course, I was obeying orders. And I did not tell ’im everything.” Bayard winked.
“No, suh? What treachery, tell me, did you conceal from the chevalier?”
“No, Bill.” Bayard clucked his tongue. “I did not conceal ze treachery. I told ze chevalier zat I stole ze king’s regalia. But I did not tell ’im where I ’id it.” He winked again.
“You hid the regalia?” Bill and the other House Light Dragoons had never found Kyres’s sword, orb and crown.
“Oui. Yes. Anyway, I wrote down in ze letter where I ’id zem, but in a riddle, in a way ze chevalier will never understand.” Bayard winked again several times, exaggeratedly, his eye a fluttering yellow-black butterfly in the candlelight.
“Hell’s Bells, suh, stop winking at me. I am not your beau. What orders? Who gave you orders?” Surely Thomas Penn had been behind the murder of his brother-in-law Kyres Elytharias, but Bill had had no proof—only Thomas’s immuring of his sister and his own rise to the head of the Penn family and election to the Imperial Throne.
“A great man. A great man ’oo zen turned on me.”
“Thomas, I suppose. And your exile to this rotting pile of planks was your punishment?”
Bayard laughed and drank again. “Zis was my reward. I came ’ere to New Orleans fifteen years ago fearing for my life, and I asked to enter ze chevalier’s service. I told ’im everything, I wrote down everything in a letter zat ’e ’olds, and ’e took me into ’is service and protected me.”
“Here? On this hulk?” Bill was incredulous.
Bayard nodded.
“You’ve been here for fifteen years?”
“Most of zat time, yes, on zis ship. Occasionally, ’e permits me to go ashore. Only occasionally. I do not miss it so very much, you know.” Bayard spat. “Zis city is full of witches and crazy people, always Papa Legba zis and Grande Al-Zan zat, cut me off ze ’ead of a chicken to ’ex my neighbor and make me a doll for good mojo at ze r
aces.”
“And he surrounds you with the deaf and the stupid,” Bill said thoughtfully.
“It keeps me protected,” Bayard said.
“It keeps you imprisoned, suh.” Suddenly and painfully, Bill felt a twinge of sympathy for the other man. “What did the chevalier do with your confession?”
Bayard hesitated, and took another drink.
“How did you make him rich? You didn’t give him the regalia, did you, Bayard?”
“No, zat would ’ave been foolish.”
“More foolish than writing him a letter with the location in a riddle?”
“’E will never decipher it,” Bayard sneered. “Ze regalia are safe from ’im.”
“He told somebody, didn’t he?” Bill probed. “About the murder.”
Bayard nodded.
Bill snorted with surprised laughter at sudden insight. “You told him that Thomas Penn put you up to it, didn’t you?”
Bayard took another slug of the bottle.
“You came down here to New Orleans with this sordid tale of treachery and murder, you blamed the new emperor, and the chevalier has been blackmailing His Imperial Majesty Thomas Penn ever since!”
“’E won’t get rid of me,” Bayard said. “I am in ’is service.”
“He won’t get rid of you because you’re his witness. And he keeps you chained up here with the deaf, the stupid, and the damned to keep safe his very precious, very profitable secret!” Bill laughed out loud. He now had a weapon to use against Bayard.
The Frenchman drank again.
“Bayard, I’m surprised at you.” Bill spoke softly, to try to insinuate himself into Bayard’s sodden brain as the voice of sagacity—the wise serpent, the enemy offering advice that is nevertheless not to be ignored.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know how a weasel like you can hold such a powerful moneymaking opportunity in his hand and not see it,” Bill said.
“What, blackmail ze emperor?” Bayard shuddered. “I would not dare. Ze chevalier can do it because ’e ’as men and land to keep ’im safe. ’E is ’ere in New Orleans, far from Philadelphia.”
Bill harrumphed. “Not the emperor. Give me the bottle, you coward. You don’t deserve whisky.”
Bayard corked the whisky bottle and slid it across the floor to Bill. “I am no coward, and I am also no fool.”
Bill suppressed the urge to hurl the bottle again. Instead, he took a long drink—the whisky was almost gone. “Blackmail the chevalier,” he said, slowly and distinctly. “Tell him you want money, or you will publish his crime. You could get better lodgings than this, suh, even in isolation. You don’t have to live like a condemned man.”
Bayard was silent, considering.
“Come on, man! He could get you a whore with a tongue, at least!”
“Ze ’ore is not so bad,” Bayard protested. “She ’as culture, she is from a good family. ’Er brozer is ze right hand man of ze chevalier ’imself, du Plessis.”
“I am no expert in what passes for a good family in New Orleans or among the French,” Bill admitted. “But none of my sisters was ever heard to be called a whore.”
“It would never work,” Bayard said faintly.
Bill shrugged, letting his suggestion play out in Bayard’s head.
Bayard’s eyebrows shot up. “’E would kill me.”
“He needs you. Just write him a letter and tell him that you want your fair share of the riches he’s getting from Thomas Penn.”
Bayard looked very serious. Bill laughed inside in anticipation of the little worm threatening the chevalier and getting crushed for his trouble.
But then Bayard lurched to his feet. “No! Don’t you understand? ’E doesn’t need me, I wrote ’im a letter fifteen years ago, and I told ’im everything! Don’t you see? I told ’im my guilt in writing, and if I make trouble now, ’e doesn’t need me! If I demand money, ze chevalier will kill me! Or even if ’e does not kill me, ’e may simply not protect me, and I will be in danger!”
“From Penn?” Bill snorted. “The emperor is very far away.”
“And ze ozer!” Bayard shrieked. “In danger from Penn and ze ozer!”
“Zee Uzzah?” Was Bayard shrieking the name of some Biblically-minded Dutchman? “Do you mean the other?” he asked, but Bayard was already staggering away; his flight was so precipitous, he left behind the candle.
The conversation hadn’t gone quite as Bill had hoped, but all was not lost. Bill swallowed the last of the whisky and grinned. Maybe he could get Jacob Hop to bring him paper, ink, and a quill, and he would write the chevalier himself…on Bayard’s behalf. If he could provoke the little French viper’s master to action against him, he might be able to see a little justice. That would be something to be proud of, something Charles would be proud of, even if Bill ended his days as a rotting carcass in the belly of the Incroyable.
But who was the other of whom Bayard Prideux was so afraid?
* * *
“Prepare yourself,” Sarah said. “I think the schnitzels are about to kill another cat.”
“Aw, the melodies ain’t that bad,” Cal said. “I only wish I knew what the words meant.”
“I think I’m just as happy not having any idea,” Sarah disagreed. “If I knew they was going on and on about the Serpents War and Albrecht von Wallenstein, with Queen Adela Podebradas divorcin’ the Holy Roman Emperor by choppin’ the head off his emissary and him divorcin’ her back by chopping off her very own head, and so forth, I believe I’d still find it tiresome.”
“I dunno,” Cal mused. “If they’s a song about them fellers as got themselves threw out a window, that might could be hilarious.”
They lay wrapped in their bedrolls on the keelboat cabin’s roof, looking up at the bright blue sky of an early morning. The boat was long and thin, bowed up fore and aft to sharp points, and filled in the middle with a long cabin consisting of a single room.
Fore, the keelboat’s prow was carved into the shape of a horse’s head, which Cal had commented at least half a dozen times must be a sign for them of good luck, since the Elector had carved Sarah a walking stick with the same shape. He’d even mentioned the coincidence to the Germans in Natchez-under-the-Hill, when he was trying to talk down their suggested price—in the end, the last of Crooked Man’s moonshine had gone a long way to alleviating the cash burden of their fare—and the blond men had seemed duly impressed.
Aft, it ended in a thin pole, from which snapped the flag of the Duchy of Chicago, seven horizontal stripes, yellow and black. Over a hundred fifty years now, the descendants of old Albrecht von Wallenstein had ruled in Chicago. That made their arms safe colors for a Mississippi riverboat to fly.
The half-dozen Germans who poled them downriver (supplementing the money they planned to make selling their cargo of carefully-packed cheese and beer) sang as they worked. Since there were always at least two of them at the poles, Sarah had been hearing volksmusik belted out by iron lungs for twenty-four hours straight, and expected to hear it for another solid forty-eight. It was already pounded so deeply into her brain that when the Germans’ dog, a big, indolent wolfish-looking creature, opened its mouth to yawn or stretch its jaws, she imagined it singing o Wandern, o Wandern, du freie Burschenlust, whatever that meant.
Thalanes sat upright nearby; the beastfolk were elsewhere on the boat, lurking quietly in some corner. They had paid for their own passage, with gold coins Sarah didn’t recognize.
“I would have liked to sleep in,” the monk said. He still looked better than he had on the Natchez Trace. Maybe he was less worried about pursuit. Or maybe he felt better because he didn’t start every morning with tiring gramarye.
“I reckon they sing so’s other boats can hear ’em,” Cal volunteered. “In the fog, for instance, and at night.”
There were plenty of other boats. Keelboats were common, but Sarah had seen many flatboats too, and a few Memphite barges. Sails and multiple banks of chained rowers combined pushed
the sharp-prowed Memphite ships with staring hawks’ eyes painted on either side of the keel at speeds that surprised Sarah, even against the current.
“They did sing all night,” Thalanes confirmed with a weary smile, “though they had the decency to lower the volume. Ever so slightly.”
“Why don’t we see big ships?” Sarah asked. “The river’s so wide, it’s like a sea. Why all the small boats, and no big ships?”
“It’s wide, all right,” Cal agreed, “but it ain’t deep. Some places you can practically walk across on foot, I heard.”
“That’s true.” Thalanes yawned. “Now, who’s going to make me some coffee?”
“Don’t go wearing yourself out with gramarye when we don’t need it,” Sarah admonished the monk.
“I want the coffee,” Thalanes said, “precisely so I won’t feel worn out. But I promise, I don’t plan to do anything with it but drink it.”
“I wouldn’t half mind some myself.” Calvin rolled out of his blanket. “I’ll go tell Hans and Franz and Dieter we’re gonna use a corner of their stovetop.”
He rattled down off the cabin roof, scooting the singing dog out of his way with a friendly push, and tried to find one of the Germans who spoke English. That was a surprisingly difficult task, in part because the six Germans were all family and looked, to Sarah’s eyes, identical.
Dieter alone stood out for the fact that he dressed all in black and never smiled—Sarah had initially assumed it was for some profoundly German reason, like a family curse or a broken vow or a murdered love. At sunrise and sunup, though, Dieter stood in the water beside the prow, cut the palm of his hand, and rubbed small amounts of his own blood into certain angles of the horse’s head.
A runemaster, then. A vitki. Ohio River Germans were Christians and their wizards were called brauchers, but Sarah had read that their Mississippi cousins were mostly pagan, and consulted wise men who carved runes. And here was an apparent vitki in the flesh.
“You could pass on the little brown devil bean this morning and try some sleep instead,” Sarah told Thalanes. She tried to sound wise rather than fretful.
Thalanes looked to be sure that Calvin wasn’t too close and spoke softly. “Something is following us.”