Free again, Neil was a whirlwind in the dark, felling man after man. He was not killing them, as some of them struggled to get up, but he was doing his best to disable them.
A man grabbed Hazel’s arm, and Mr. Escobar leapt to her defense. She elbowed the man in his stomach and then smashed her head hard backwards into his chin. He loosened his grip enough for her to pull halfway free, but another man grabbed her, this one much larger, and enveloped her in a smelly, bearlike embrace. Mr. Escobar attempted to attack this man, but one of the other soldiers reached up and bashed him in the head with the butt of his gun. Hazel yelled in horror as Mr. Escobar dropped to the ground. Stunned, he staggered a few feet, then managed to leap up and race away. Hazel didn’t think him cowardly for fleeing.
It was a little frightening, to see Neil in these circumstances. It was still dark, so she could not clearly see his expression, but he moved like a man altered, changed into a being of speed and strength. She had never seen him like this before, and it made him seem strange and unfamiliar. Alien even. He had warned her, had he not, that he was wanted for his abilities? She supposed she had not given enough credence to his claim, or had thought him merely a scrappy fighter, like the Professor. She had not understood that he was truly different from ordinary men. It frightened her.
A group enveloped him, and when they parted, she saw him silently struggling against three men who held him while other soldiers pointed muskets at him. She watched him as he looked for her, and once he saw that she was standing, he looked around at the men who held them, perhaps assessing their chances of escape. Hazel knew their chances were not good.
The men dragged her toward Neil, perhaps because she was the easier of the two to move.
“Name!” ordered one of the men, holding up his lantern so the light blinded her. She turned her head aside.
Neil made eye contact with her, and though he did nothing more, she knew he wanted her to stay silent. Sage advice.
“Name, I said!” The soldier, like her, had a southern accent. When neither of them responded, he slammed the butt of his musket into Neil’s midsection, eliciting a grunt of pain.
“Leave him be!” she shouted.
“Tell us your name,” he repeated and raised his gun to point it at Neil.
“Hazel Dubois,” she said. There was no sense in making up another name. One name was as good as another, and if her guess was right, the conductor and Alma were locked away somewhere, or dead, but not before revealing what they knew about their small section of the Underground Railroad. Each conductor and passenger would only know the minimum amount, so as to keep the rest of the movement safe, but they knew Captain Dubois’s name.
“And you, what’s yours?” the man asked Neil.
“Samuel Clemens,” he said, but with a wry gleam in his eye of defiance and amusement. Hazel saw nothing amusing in any of this.
The soldier spoke to a boy who looked younger than Hazel. “Private, tell them we have Dubois and her accomplice.”
“Yes, Captain.” He ran off in the direction of town.
The captain turned back to her and grabbed her chin, lifting her face up into the lamplight and turning it side to side. “You’re younger than I imagined. Tell me a little bit about yourself.”
“There’s nothing to tell, sir,” she said and saw the man’s expression change slightly.
“You from the South, girl?”
Perhaps being a fellow Southerner may carry some weight. She couldn’t hide her accent now anyway.
“I’m from Louisiana.”
“Now that, gentlemen, right there, is a true crying shame. A good Southern girl, born and bred, now turning against her own countrymen. Her own kind. A real shame.”
“As her countrymen, I think we have a duty to teach her a lesson,” sneered a soldier with a thick, brown beard. “Maybe back in that cabin.”
“You lay a hand on her, and I will hunt you down and kill you. Brutally,” said Neil. His voice was low, calm and deadly serious. “I will find you, if it takes me fifty years.”
“We’ll do as we please,” said the bearded soldier. “She’s hurting her own countrymen, stealing their paid-for and legal property. She needs to learn a few manners, I say.”
“Now, we’re not doing anything of the sort,” said the captain. “We’re not savages. We’re taking her into town, turning her in to the local sheriff and she’ll be tried in a proper court of law.”
They marched Hazel and Neil out to a narrow dirt road, and then toward the distant lights of Savannah. She glanced around occasionally, hoping to spot Mr. Escobar, but if he was following, he was so stealthy that she could not detect him.
“Will they hang a woman?” one soldier asked another.
“I don’t know, but if not, she’ll wish they had. She’s young. She’ll have a long life in prison.”
“And the man?”
“Him? He’ll be hanged.”
Chapter 28
July 30, 1864
Beaumont, Texas
Hub world
“Aren’t you packed yet?” sighed Miss Sanchez from the doorway. “It’s only two hours until the train leaves.”
Seamus checked his pocket watch. “There’s still time.”
“Not the way you’re going. You haven’t packed a thing.”
“Don’t fuss, woman. I’ll be ready.”
Miss Sanchez set to clearing up some of the papers and items that littered the small area of the room that Seamus used to work on the prosthetic leg. The thing wasn’t complete, not anywhere near to it, but he had decided to bring it along with him and see if he could get it to function eventually. McCullen’s side of the room was much tidier, though he had left out a stack of books and newspapers, perhaps to peruse later. Miss Sanchez tossed some crumpled papers into the garbage. And after Seamus chased the meddlesome woman away from his table twice, she picked up a paper and sat down in McCullen’s favorite chair.
McCullen was out, taking a constitutional walk, and Seamus was glad for his absence. Being trapped with him in a shared space reminded him too much of prison. He was also glad for Miss Sanchez’s presence. She usually didn’t make such a nuisance of herself as today when she messed with his belongings, except when he smoked his pipe and she reminded him, repeatedly, that it was detrimental to his health.
He wondered about her. She seemed to enjoy his company and even like him personally. She did not simply endure his presence as a means to get home. Sometimes, when he made her laugh, she would either playfully poke him with her elbow or bump her shoulder against his arm. And once in awhile, she would stand close, close enough for him to smell the faint, fruitlike scent of her hair. Or she would touch his hand. She never did those things with McCullen. Perhaps, in her world, that was how friends acted. In his world, it meant more.
Seamus sighed and began to pack up his things. There weren’t many, as he had not brought much equipment and obtaining just a few necessary parts for the mechanical leg had been a struggle.
Would missing the synchronicity truly be such a bad thing? Sure, it was his duty to get Miss Sanchez home, but he still had the coordinates to his own world, where she could live quite comfortably. She wanted her own money and property and the right to vote, which he could now, after some thought, understand. If he imagined himself in her place, he could not be content. But despite these things, would spending her life in his world, perhaps with him, be so terrible?
Of course, there was the matter of her nephew. She needed to return home and coordinate the medical treatment that would save the child’s life. Seamus would do all he could for the boy’s sake. But once he was well again, what then?
“Holy hell!” Miss Sanchez shot up out of her chair and slammed the newspaper onto the worktable in front of him, sending a pile of screws clattering to the floor and a spool ro
lling away. The paper was opened to one of the inside pages, and there were several articles. Miss Sanchez jabbed her finger at one titled “Terror of the Confederacy: Pirate Queen Captured. Trial Pending.”
“Why do you care—” he said.
“Look, it’s her!”
He read the article through, and then read it again. A woman, Captain Hazel Dubois, had been captured near Savannah, Georgia, assisting an escaped slave. She and her accomplice, a Mr. Samuel Clemens, were both imprisoned and awaiting trial.
“She came through to this world!” he said. “How did she come through?”
“Neil Grey must have come for her. But why would they come here?”
“Ah, good Lord. She came after us, don’t you see? She must have come to find us. But how?” Seamus ran his hands through his hair and began to pace.
“Well, if she came to find us, then why is she sailing around and helping escaped slaves?” said Miss Sanchez. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
It didn’t, he had to admit. So why was Hazel here? Or was it, perhaps, an older version of her, like the woman he had met in 1961? It didn’t matter, because either way, it was his Hazel. He had to help her.
“Throw McCullen’s things in a bag,” he said. “We’re going to Savannah.”
She looked over McCullen’s possessions and then sighed. “We can’t go to Georgia. We have to be in California.”
“We’ll do that afterwards, if there’s time.”
“If there’s time?” Miss Sanchez said. “We’ve already lost enough time. No. I need to get home, and that’s it.”
“I’m not leaving Hazel to be hanged or to die in prison.”
“You have a time machine. You can come back for her.”
“Or we can get her and then use the machine to come back again and get to California.”
Miss Sanchez glared at him. “I’m stuck here because of you and your little experiment with that peroxide engine. I’ve been as patient as I can, and you need to get me home.”
He looked at her in shock. This was not the Felicia Sanchez he knew. She had cared for Hazel when she was eleven and had been hospitalized. She had been the one to insist that Seamus take in the child and give her a home. She loved Hazel.
“How could you leave Hazel? Answer me that,” he said.
“I’m not leaving her. She gets out, obviously, or neither of us would have met her when she’s older. Besides, Neil Grey is probably with her.”
“You mean this Samuel Clemens person?”
“Maybe. He could have given a fake name. Oh! I think I understand. In my world, there was an author named Mark Twain, the pen name of Solomon Clemens. Maybe this was Mr. Grey’s idea of a joke. Maybe in his home world, his first name was Samuel.”
“A strange joke, as no one would know it unless they were from his world.”
“McCullen and I would know it. That’s assuming that a person named Clemens wrote the same books in his world. But yes, we’re the only ones who would, unless there are other time travelers wandering around.”
“So Neil Grey is jailed with her, and you still want to head off to California?” he said. “That’s inhuman.”
“No, it’s not. Because we know they both get out. And because you can come back and try to bribe the guards or whatever you want to do. It’s not like we can stroll in and unlock the prison anyway. Besides, the Union wins the war. She’ll be freed after it’s over.”
“If they don’t kill her first.”
“We know she survives,” she said. “They don’t kill her.”
“You’re going to go to California then?”
“We are going to California.”
“You and McCullen can go. Take the machine. I don’t care. I’m not leaving Hazel.”
“Don’t be stupid. You’d be stranded here without a machine. You can come back for her.”
“Maybe and maybe not. Who is to say if I can get back to help her? Maybe one can only go through a time once. Maybe Hazel spends twenty years in that place and I can only get her out when she’s older. And there will be a machine available to me: the one she used to get here. You and McCullen can go to Los Angeles. He’ll see to your safe trip.”
He turned away from her and retrieved the screws and spool from the floor, hurling them into a box. He was angry, deeply angry, at himself, at Hazel, but more so at Miss Sanchez. How could she leave Hazel imprisoned, especially after scolding him about slavery being the great injustice of his time? If it was so terrible, then why wouldn’t she help someone who gave everything to help the slaves?
If they could get to Savannah soon, then they could still reach Los Angeles in time for the synchronicity. Everyone would benefit. But if they went to Los Angeles first, Hazel might be executed or who knew what. Was the woman so hell-bent on getting to her own time that she’d sacrifice the girl to do it? Was that the sort of person she was? If so, Seamus wanted nothing to do with her. He saw her from the corner of his eye, simply standing there, watching him.
“Why are you still here?” he snapped. “Go find McCullen. Take the machine. Take the gold. I don’t care a whit! Now get out!”
“Seamus, don’t.”
“Don’t what? I spent six years, six entire years working to find a way to get you back from 1961. I gave up any sort of a normal life, living in that laboratory, for your sake. Because it was my duty. Do you understand that, or is duty some other idea that has gone out of fashion in your time, like manners and modesty? It was my duty to get you home, and you will get home. It is also my duty to look out for Hazel.”
“First of all, it was your fault I’m here in the first place! It’s only fair that you correct the wrong you committed. I’ve spent months of my life in this time, having people be nasty because of my race or treating me like an idiot because I’m female. You screwed up. You brought me through.”
“And am I to do endless penance for it? And should Hazel suffer also? I thought you were some sort of kindly angel, healing the sick. You’re a stubborn pain in my arse, sure, but you weren’t like this, cruel and heartless.”
“It’s not heartless. It’s practical. I need to get home.”
“And there’s that as well. Assuming you can get to your own time and save your nephew, you’re still simply dying to leave us. You won’t even entertain the notion of returning to us. You act as if being stuck here with me and Hazel is like being in the ninth ring of hell. Oh, aye, a comfortable home, food enough to eat and amusements too, but that’s not enough. We’re not good enough, the street child and the convict, for the perfect Miss Felicia Sanchez.”
Tears quivered in her eyes, and he hated her for it, the manipulative woman. Did she think he was going to soften and pat her cheek and tell her that he’d go to California? Well, she had another thing coming. He was going to get Hazel, and nothing, not a woman’s tears or the devil himself, would stop him.
“Get out!” he roared.
She rushed to the door, yanked it open and didn’t bother to pull it closed behind her. Seamus threw things into a trunk and slammed it savagely. McCullen returned a quarter of an hour later, and Seamus informed him that he would be going to Los Angeles with Miss Sanchez while Seamus went to Georgia to see if he could free the Pirate Queen.
“I don’t know about this,” said McCullen.
“You’re fond of Miss Sanchez. I didn’t think you’d mind,” growled Seamus. He hated doing this, entrusting Miss Sanchez to his worst enemy. But it was the only option open to him if he wanted to help Hazel and get Miss Sanchez back to her own time. He felt trapped by his lack of choices, and he felt like hitting something.
“Hazel is not your child, Seamus. Not even your niece.”
“Do you people understand nothing? She’s as much my daughter as any child born to me.”
McCu
llen did not argue, but shook his head, put the last of his things together and set his luggage near the door. At four o’clock, when they needed to leave for the train to California, he took his bags and the trunk containing the time machine and shook Seamus’s hand.
“Best of luck, brother,” McCullen said.
“Safe journey.”
McCullen picked up his bag.
“Before you go,” said Seamus, “tell me. Did you have family? What are you returning to?”
“Yes, a family.”
“Was there a woman?”
The words were out of Seamus’s mouth before he could stop them. If there had been a girl, then she was probably married by now. McCullen had come through from his world when he was only twenty, and he was now in his mid-thirties.
McCullen only smiled. And then the man with whom Seamus had shared so much misery and so much triumph, left. Seamus dropped into a chair, flipping open a copy of Harper’s Weekly that McCullen had left, but finding he could not read it. He tossed it aside.
He was in love with her. Nothing but love could tear at his guts in this way. From the moment the woman had stood outside his house, in her strange clothing with her strange accent, he had loved her. What a fool he was. He had fancied her a kind, noble being, albeit one with a tart tongue and an unnervingly strong will. Instead, here he was, facing what she really was. On one hand, he could tell himself that she wanted to get home to save her nephew. And that was true, as far as it went. But she had not shown any desire to stay with him after she reached her home. He was a temporary means to an end, a way to get home, a friend perhaps. Nothing more. He sat for a long time, perhaps an hour, looking out the window. He contemplated finding a pub, but no amount of drink would dull the hurt.
The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series) Page 48