by D. J. Butler
Perhaps the rain had forced the Lazars to ground.
Sarah sat in the bishop’s tiny study, in one of its three wooden slat-backed chairs. The bishop objected to wealth, which she could understand and respect, but she felt no sympathy for his apparent dislike of simple physical comfort.
Cathy Filmer sat in another chair. Thalanes and the bishop stood, browsing among books as they talked, waiting until it was late enough to go to the pawnbroker’s and redeem William Lee’s guns. The bishop sucked slowly at a small clay pipe, filling the room with the sweet odor of burning tobacco leaf.
Cal sat by the window, putting a fine edge with his whetstone on the silver letter opener, looking out into the gray flood falling from the sky. He had his face turned away from the rest of the party; was he being vigilant, or was he turning his back to her as punishment?
“Death is in some ways the heart of my craft and calling,” the bishop said with a kindly smile, “but I confess that I am unaccustomed to walking dead men. Perhaps my more thaumaturgically gifted colleague, Father Thalanes of the Order of St. Cetes, can illuminate us.”
“I wish I could.” Thalanes arched his eyebrows. “Robert Hooke was called the Sorcerer even in his mortal life, of course—”
“That’s somethin’ different from a wizard, I reckon?” Cal said from his perch in the curtains. So he was listening, at least.
“It’s all the same thing,” Thalanes said, “hexing, wizardry, gramarye, all terms for the same magic practiced by the children of Adam. People just use different names for practitioners to indicate approval or disapproval, or sometimes to denote a specialization.”
“Like illusionist or summoner,” Cathy offered by way of illustration.
“Or necromancer,” the bishop said. “Or warlock.”
“What d’you got to do to git called a sorcerer, then?” Cal asked.
“It has the connotation of someone who dabbles in dark arts,” Thalanes said, “someone who deals with demons, for instance, or specializes in curses, or works death magic.”
“What’s that say about Hooke?” Sarah asked. “Anythin’ in particular I maybe should ought to know about?”
Thalanes smiled. “Robert Hooke was famous in his mortal life for insatiable curiosity. He experimented with summoning, and his lectures at Cambridge apparently inspired young Oliver Cromwell.”
“I didn’t know Cromwell was a university feller.” Calvin scoured at the little blade. “It figures.”
“So was Hooke,” Sarah pointed out.
“What did he inspire Cromwell to do?” Cathy Filmer asked. “I wasn’t aware Hooke was a political man.”
“He wasn’t,” the monk said. “He was a wizard, in practice and in theory. And it was something in his lectures that moved Cromwell to the execution of Jock of Cripplegate.”
“Never heard of him,” Sarah admitted.
“There’s no reason you should have,” Thalanes said. “Jock was a pickpocket and a cutpurse and a second-story man who was sentenced to hang. The only thing noteworthy about him was that it just so happened that Jock’s father was Firstborn, a refugee from the Serpentwars that were just beginning in Bohemia and the Palatinate at that time.
“Cromwell was a gentlemen, with some connections in Parliament, and he convinced the king’s justices to let him carry out Jock’s execution. And he used Jock’s death as an experiment. He captured the energy released at Jock’s death, and used it to perform a magic spell.”
“Poor Jock,” Sarah remembered the explosions of light she’d seen on the Natchez Trace.
“Poor Jock, nothing,” Thalanes said. “Jock was a criminal and a low character and he probably deserved execution. None of that makes what Cromwell did right.”
“So that was the beginning for the Necromancer,” Cathy said. “He learned he could exploit the deaths of Firstborn and he did. He overthrew King Charles Stuart, he knocked over half the kingdoms of Europe before John Churchill finally stopped him. What was it all for? What did he do with the magic?”
“Create his New Model Army, for one thing,” the bishop puffed at his pipe. “Marching wooden men and corpses, creatures of sorcery and evil.”
“Of course,” Cathy Filmer agreed. “He killed Firstborn to create his army to kill more Firstborn to create an ever larger army. But that’s just a circle that never goes anywhere. Was he actually doing anything?”
“Yes, that is a circle,” Thalanes agreed. “I don’t know what his plan was, other than to establish the Eternal Commonwealth. I don’t know whether John Churchill cared enough to ask that question, or if he was happy just to cast the Necromancer out of England. And Cromwell appears to have achieved his own immortality.”
“The Death Wind,” Cathy said.
Thalanes nodded.
“What about Hooke?” Sarah asked. “He was Cromwell’s teacher, and I know he was called Sir Isaac Newton’s Shadow…what else? Why is he called the Sorcerer?”
“I don’t know,” Thalanes admitted. “We should assume that Hooke is dangerous, and that he means to destroy us.”
“Ain’t they a piece of the story missin’ here?” Cal wanted to know. “How in tarnation is Hooke still walkin’ around, and chasin’ after Sarah? Is they some story in which he gits raised from the dead?”
“This is very dark talk,” the bishop said with mild disapproval.
“That’s the Death Wind,” Cathy said. What could she possibly be thinking about this conversation? She sang two lines:
Come with me, my servant fair, onto the holy floor
The Death Wind soon shall catch me up, if you go on before
Sarah shot the other woman a curious look.
“I listen to songs all night at Grissot’s,” Cathy explained. “There are ballads about Robert Hooke and Black Tom Fairfax.”
“Hooke mentioned the Necromancer,” Sarah said in a monotone, and she felt like her voice was the voice of someone speaking far away. “He said my screams would feed the Necromancer, or something like that. So should we assume that Oliver Cromwell is also on my trail?”
“This jest gits worse and worse,” Cal muttered gloomily.
“I do not know why you would expect Robert Hooke to tell you the strict truth,” Bishop Ukwu objected, “or even any truth at all. He was a sorcerer, a heretic, and a murderer in life, and I see no reason to think that death has made an honest man of him.”
“Nor I,” Thalanes hastened to agree. “That he can talk at all surprises me, as I thought—in my admitted absence of experience—that Lazars were mute. But you say he didn’t move his lips, that he seemed to send his thoughts to you directly, so it must have been some sort of spell.”
“Which brings me back to the original question,” Sarah observed archly. “How can he do magic? When I do magic, I draw on my life energy, unless some other source is available, like a ley. How can Hooke cast spells at all? Isn’t he dead? Is he tapping into a ley line all the time?”
Thalanes shrugged. “He must be drawing power from some source. It might be simply the Mississippi.”
“What else might it be?” Sarah asked, feeling a chill shiver in her bones.
Thalanes shrugged and shook his head.
“Beware,” the bishop said. “Be very, very careful.”
* * *
Ezekiel eventually opened the door to Captain Berkeley’s bedchamber himself, after repeated knocking beyond the bounds of decency and any reasonable allowance for a hangover failed to produce the captain. Berkeley was gone, as were his clothing and weapons, and the only sign of him, on a small table beside his bed, were his Tarocks.
The cards sat beside an empty liquor bottle, mute testimony of an all-night vigil and a wrestle with some dilemma. Berkeley had dealt three cards face up on the table and had left them there, so Ezekiel examined them. He didn’t know the Tarocks, but the cards bore both pictures and, underneath, neatly lettered titles.
The first of the three cards Berkeley had left was the Horseman, a soldier with sword and p
istol, mounted on a white horse and wearing a long red coat and a tricorner hat. Ezekiel frowned, noticing that the painted figure strongly resembled Captain Berkeley. Coincidence, but the captain might think otherwise. The second was Simon Sword, and it depicted a blond boy swinging a two-handed sword. The third card was the Priest, a Spanish friar-looking character with a cross on top of a tall walking stick and a bag in his hand. No, on a closer look, Ezekiel saw that it wasn’t a bag that the cleric held in his hand, but a letter, folded and sealed.
Ezekiel cursed himself for not speaking privately with Berkeley the night before, for not pursuing the subject of the bishop’s visit. What was it that Berkeley knew? Some dark secret troubled the captain. Did he just want to defend Thomas from the accusations of the bishop?
Or did he want to defend Thomas from the blackmailing the chevalier?
Ezekiel was puzzled. Berkeley’s absence irritated him, too—this morning, they were to have split up to comb the city for Witchy Eye, pairing each Dragoon with one of the chevalier’s gendarmes so as best to combine local knowledge and Imperial authority. For Berkeley to disappear now was a dereliction of duty.
Or had he left the Tarocks as an explanation?
Obadiah edged into the door behind Ezekiel. He’d come to the Palais with the message that the Blues were ready to search, as ordered, and that a contingent of gendarmes of the same number of men was likewise at alert.
“Where be the captain?” Obadiah asked.
“How should I know?” Ezekiel snapped, and instantly regretted it. “I…” he couldn’t bring himself to apologize to the pagan Obadiah, no matter how much time the man had spent recently digging into his Bible. “I don’t know.”
“Aye, Father.” Obadiah hesitated. “Ought I…?”
“Get out,” Ezekiel commanded him. “Just get out. Go join the Blues and the chevalier’s men and wait for me.”
Obadiah clopped away without another word.
The Horseman, Simon Sword, and the Priest.
Franklin’s Tarock was rank superstition of the worst kind, worse than astrology or hedge-witch hokey-pokery, which at least had some root in God’s created order. The Tarock had no basis but the fevered imagination of Benjamin Franklin and the lascivious whispering of gypsy soothsayers. It made a mockery of God’s election, His grace and His love, and His true gift of prophecy. Ezekiel sneered at the cards.
Devilish gibberish though they were, it was possible that Berkeley had used the cards to leave Ezekiel a message.
The Priest could be him, Ezekiel. Or it could be the bishop. And Berkeley was definitely a horseman, even if the card hadn’t looked so much like him.
Simon Sword? What was the mythical folk-bugbear of the Mississippi supposed to mean? This was a card Berkeley had been rattling on and on about back in Nashville, when it had seemed to the captain that he drew Simon Sword in every reading.
Simon Sword. Ezekiel racked his brain to try to recall the Poor Richard Sermons he had memorized in his first year at Harvard. Simon Sword was a bringer of change, and chaos, and war. Judgment, Berkeley had said.
Simon Sword meant judgment.
Ezekiel gathered up the cards to take them with him.
* * *
They trooped out into the rain under Thalanes’s facies muto incantation. Sarah still felt the drag on her soul of her Mississippi River alarm spell, so she was glad it was Thalanes casting the disguise enchantments, and not her.
“I’m glad you’re with us,” Thalanes told Cathy.
“I’m pleased you find me charming,” she said. “A disproportionate number of my friends are priests. I think they enjoy my elevated conversational style.”
“Oh?”
“That’s one of the things they enjoy, in any case.”
She winked at the little man.
“I didn’t mean that,” he said, reddening. “I don’t…I don’t know what you…look, my order is a chaste one, Mrs. Filmer. I only meant that changing the composition of our group will help reinforce my illusions.”
“Of course you did, Father.” She fixed him with an eagle eye. “I expect you to find my friend Sir William. If you have to make me look like someone else with your gramarye to find him, I’m perfectly happy to cooperate. It won’t be the first time I’ve dressed up for a priest.”
Thalanes coughed, and Sarah wanted to laugh. Since she’d known him, she’d never seen the priest so off-guard and disarmed, and Sarah had certainly tried.
The rain had let up from its earlier downpour, so Sarah eschewed her heavy coat for her purple-and-suns shawl, which had always been a favorite. She carried the sharpened silver letter opener tucked into her belt. She was careful not to let it touch her skin, so it wouldn’t interfere with the watchfulness spell she’d cast on the Mississippi.
Thalanes went first, looking like a gaunt little Igbo monk with his illusory curly black hair and dark brown complexion; then followed Sarah and Cathy Filmer, whose glamour-spun façade was of two dark-eyed hidalgo dames; and Cal brought up the rear, looking heavier than himself, grizzled and paunchy, with bright white hair and a long scar up one side of his face.
The Place d’Armes was nearly empty, and Sarah was silently grateful for the cobblestones as she trekked under the warning stare of King Andy Jackson—the puddles of cold water were better than puddles of mud. The Quarter was calm, the lights all out in the inns, taverns, and dancing halls, and most of the residents drunk or asleep.
But Hackett’s was open for business, its shining glass windows and front door thrown wide.
“I’ll honor the ticket,” Hackett said when Calvin presented it, along with the nine Louis d’or indicated on the ticket’s face, “though it troubles me it isn’t Captain Lee himself to redeem his pledge. Is the captain well? I heard there was some trouble with the gendarmerie.”
As he spoke, Hackett retrieved from behind the counter a brace of long, large-bore horse pistols and laid them on his countertop, then dug out and set beside them a heavy cavalry saber. Sarah hoped she could work the spell she imagined she could, and find William Lee.
“I hope he’s well, too, Mr. Hackett,” Cathy agreed, and her smile put old Hackett at his ease.
“We’re all Will’s friends here,” Thalanes said. “We’re collecting his weapons for him and expect to meet up with him later today.”
“You’re absolutely sure these are Captain Lee’s guns?” Sarah confirmed.
Hackett nodded.
Sarah let Thalanes take his old comrade’s sword, but she took the heavy guns in her hands and led the way out of the pawnbroker’s. The street outside was empty, but she saw no sense in taking any chances, so she turned down a small alley to get behind Hackett’s. This was close enough; for all practical purposes, she was standing where Bill had stood. When she was sure no one was watching, she squatted in a patch of mud.
Should she walk to the river to take advantage of the ley’s energy? The arrival of the Lazars was imminent, and Sarah chose haste over access to the river’s power.
WILLIAM LEE, she scrawled in the mud with her finger, and scratched out the rough outline of a man around the name, head, body, arms, and legs. Rather than wiping her finger clean, she smeared that mud around the open mouth of each gun, tracing two circles of dark wet earth on the steel. Sympathy and Contagion, Sir Isaac’s two laws. Things that appear to be connected, and things that were once connected. She stood, her feet on Lee’s names, and held the pistols by their grips.
She closed her eyes. “Ducem bellorum quaeso,” she incanted, the same words she’d tried the night before over the claim ticket, and she poured her spirit into the guns.
Instantly, the weapons bucked in her hands, twisting and pointing so that she had to clutch them tightly and turn with them in order not to lose her grip, as if guiding a plow pulled by a particularly aggressive mule.
“Ha!” She opened her eyes.
“Congratulations,” Cal drawled, a proud and gently mocking gleam in his eye, “I reckon you’ve jest cre
ated the only two possessed pistols in all of New Orleans.”
She pressed them into his hands. “Jest for that, you git to hold ’em.”
“Whoa!” he called to the pistols as they pulled him to one side. “Now what?”
“They’s jest like dowsing…” Sarah caught Thalanes looking at her with a raised eyebrow and clamped down on her glee. “They should work just like a dowsing rod, Calvin. If you let them pull you, I think they’ll take you to Captain Lee.”
“You should go back to the bishop’s apartment,” Thalanes told Sarah. “We don’t know where Lee is, and it could be dangerous.”
Sarah felt nettled at being given such a strong suggestion, though the monk had a point. She bit back a fiercer retort in favor of a mild objection. “It’s dangerous for me everywhere.”
“You can disguise both your appearances as well as I can, and we’ll meet you back at Bishop Ukwu’s home shortly.” He smiled. “I hope. I only worry that we might find Sir William in a gendarmes’ jail, or someplace worse. If we get trapped, I don’t want it to become worse because you’re stuck with us, and we get overtaken by the Lazars.”
“Have you forgotten the slaver on the Natchez Trace?” Sarah asked. “You sure you want me going off alone?”
“I haven’t forgotten how well you handled him,” Thalanes said, “and I think this is the safer thing to do.”
His efforts to make his suggestion sound reasonable only irritated Sarah, as did his flattery. She steeled herself to reply with a blanket assertion of her authority.
“Please,” the monk added, his voice soft. “I can’t tell you what to do, Sarah, I’m just asking. I really think you’ll be safer.”
Once again, the monk was talking to her as if she were a child!
Sarah gritted her teeth and was winding up to let out a shout when Cathy cut in. “I would like to go to my room and change clothing, if I could. Sarah, would you mind terribly accompanying me?”
All the wind spilled out of Sarah’s sails. She nodded. “Only I ain’t sure I got enough mojo to cast me a facies muto jest now,” she said in Appalachee, a final gesture of defiance.