by Steve White
In the stillness, he thought he heard the front door open and close. Through the dining room back door came a mutter of voices, the first sounding like it was issuing a peremptory demand, the second possibly Mosby’s, although the words were indistinguishable.
Jason glanced left and right at his men. Nesbit, immediately to Jason’s left, was shivering … and, Jason thought, not just from the cold. He was the only one of them without military training, and his limited experience in the seventeenth-century Caribbean had not prepared him for this kind of nerve-wracking wait. Jason opened his mouth to say something soothing.
Somewhere nearby, a dog’s bark suddenly shattered the quiet. Startled, Nesbit’s finger tightened convulsively on his trigger. His colt crashed, jumping in his nerveless hand and sending the shot high. Jason instantly grasped his arm and wrenched the revolver from his grasp. But it was too late.
Pandemonium broke out in the back yard. The Union troops, already keyed to a pitch of tension as they usually were at night in “Mosby’s Confederacy,” had no idea where the shot had come from. They began firing their revolvers wildly, in all directions. There was a sound of shattering window glass, a female scream, and a shout from within: “I am shot!”
This time it was definitely Mosby’s voice.
There was the sound of a commotion from within, and the light was extinguished. The cavalrymen between the barn and the house ceased their shooting and, after a moment’s bewildered inaction, ran around the house to the front, where an officer was bawling orders. A new light appeared, in the windows of the bedroom adjoining the dining room.
“Come on,” Jason whispered. “Carefully!” he added with a glare at the sheepish-looking Nesbit. In a crouching gait, the time travelers scrambled across the yard and flattened themselves against the rear wall of the house. Jason peered cautiously over the windowsill.
Mosby lay on the floor, the front of his blue flannel shirt soaked with blood in the abdominal area. He was holding back the flow with what Jason recognized as a bonnet Sarah Lake had been wearing. Sarah was hastily stuffing his uniform coat with its telltale rank insignia under the bed. The rest of the family, and Tom Love, stood watching. A sound of stomping cavalry boots was heard from the hallway.
“They’re coming back,” Mosby whispered. “I have to give an imitation of a man about to die.” He put his hand in the blood and smeared it on his mouth, as though he was hemorrhaging from within.
The door crashed open and a choleric-looking Union officer wearing major’s insignia stormed in, with several of his men crowding in behind him.
“I surrender,” Tom Love said instantly, handing over his revolver. “Don’t harm the family.”
The major ignored him. The redness of his face suggested that, aside from anger, he had been fortifying himself against the chill night with frequent nips from a whiskey flask. He leaned over the prostrate Mosby. “I am Major Frazar, 13th New York Cavalry. Who are you?”
“I told you before, sir,” grated Mosby in tones of agony. “Lieutenant Johnston, 6th Virginia Cavalry.”
“Yes, so you did.” Frazar definitely sounded a bit befuddled. He kneeled down, examined Mosby’s wound, then stood up unsteadily. “The bullet entered his abdomen two inches below and to the left of the navel. No point in taking him in,” he added callously to Ludwell Lake. “He’ll be dead in twenty-four hours. I’ll leave him for you to dispose of.” He turned on his heel and departed. A pair of his troopers followed, taking Love with them.
The others were about to leave, when one spoke up in an Irish brogue. “Those are rare fine boots, bejesus. I fancy this boyo won’t have much use for ’em.” The others evidently agreed, for they removed Mosby’s boots—and his trousers for good measure—before departing. The Lakes were left alone with Mosby, silently listening to Frazar’s troop remounting and riding off.
As soon as the sound of the cavalry column had receded, Jason rose, motioned to his men to follow him and reentered the house through the back door. Then, just in time he halted, flattened himself against the dining room wall and hastily motioned the others to silence as a lone Union trooper reentered the bedroom, revolver in hand. The Lake family shrank back from him.
“I thought I’d stay behind a minute or two and make sure of this Reb,” he man said. “And see what I can … collect here.” He looked around at the household goods, his eyes finally settling on the two Lake daughters. Then he aimed the revolver at Mosby.
Jason silently slipped through the bedroom door behind the man. Frazar might still be close enough to hear a shot. With his right hand, he grasped the wrist of the Union cavalryman’s gun arm and twisted it back and up. Simultaneously, before the man could cry out in pain, Jason’s left arm went around his neck, which a sharp, twisting sideways jerk sufficed to break. Jason lowered the limp body to the floor as his men crowded in and the Lake family stared openmouthed.
“Captain Landrieu,” greeted Mosby, weakly but without the pain-choked rasp he had simulated for Frazar’s benefit. “It seems I owe you my life. And I’m glad to see they didn’t get you and your men.”
One of whom is partly to blame for all the blood you’re leaking, thought Jason. I guess saving your life was the least I could do. “May I see your wound, sir? I have some experience with such things.” He knelt beside Mosby and examined him with an eye trained in twenty-fourth-century first aid.
Drunk or not, Major Frazar had correctly located the entry wound. If the bullet had penetrated the peritoneum, the membrane lining the walls of the abdominal and pelvic cavities and investing the viscera, then peritonitis would soon set in and Mosby would indeed have only about twenty-four hours to live. But Mosby’s overall aspect made him think that the colonel must have had a freakish stroke of good fortune. The bullet, after entering the abdomen, must have passed above the fascia, the sheet of fibrous subcutaneous tissue, and been deflected, passing around the abdomen to the right side.
“I think you’re going to live, Colonel.” Actually, Jason’s inner voice gibed at him, you know he will. Or at least you’d better hope he will. “But you’ve lost a lot of blood and need medical attention as soon as possible, to get the bullet removed.”
“And in any case, we’ve got to get him out of here,” blurted Ludwell Lake, wattles shaking with agitation. “They’ll burn the house down if they come back and find out who he really is. We’ll bury … that,” he added, indicating the dead Union trooper. “Fortunately, there’s no blood.”
“One of my men, George Slater, is boarding at ‘Rockburn,’ Mrs. Aquilla Glascock’s home,” Mosby whispered. “It’s only a mile and a half to the southwest of here.”
“Sarah, go get Daniel,” Ludwell Lake ordered. “Tell him to bring the oxcart around and line it with straw. Ladonia, get some quilts.”
“We’ll help, sir,” said Jason.
“Send one of your men to the wedding, Captain, to tell them where I’m going to be,” said Mosby in an increasingly faint voice.
“Private Aiken, you go,” said Jason. “And … tell Dabney we’ll rendezvous at Rectortown. You remember Mary Bowser’s description of the place we’re looking for there?”
“Yes, sir.” The young Service man hurried off. At least, Jason assured himself, he’d be able to keep track of Aiken’s whereabouts as well as Dabney’s.
Sarah Lake presently returned with a young black boy, presumably one of the family’s slaves. They wrapped Mosby in the quilts and carried him carefully out to an oxcart with two calves hitched to it and laid him in the straw. Jason and his three remaining companions mounted up, said their farewells to the Lake family and rode along as the boy led the cart down the farm lane.
“Do you know the way, boy?” Jason asked. He seemed very young.
“Oh, yes, Cap’n.” The boy smiled. “Daniel Strother’s the name. I can get the Cunnel where he’s goin’.”
Jason would never forget that mile-and-a-half trek through the wintery night. He and the other time travelers took turns relieving D
aniel Strother of the task of leading the calves that pulled the cart with frustrating slowness. But they dared not put the semiconscious Mosby across a horse. Even the bumps in the road—and it seemed to be mostly bumps—might be too much for his wound.
Finally they arrived at “Rockburn.” As the Ranger George Slater and Mrs. Glascock’s slaves carefully moved Mosby off the cart, the Colonel stirred into consciousness and he spoke to Jason.
“Thank you, Captain Landrieu. You’ve placed me under a debt which I only hope I live to repay.”
“Think nothing of it, Colonel.” Then something occurred to Jason. “But there is one favor I’d like to ask of you.”
“Name it.”
“Remember what I told you about the special mission for General Lee that brought me and my men here? As I intimated, it’s rather confidential. It would be best if my presence here doesn’t become generally known. So when you relate this night’s events, please omit any mention of my part in it.”
“My lips are sealed.” Mosby managed to smile. “Even if I live to write my memoirs, Captain Landrieu will not appear in them.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Jason. Behind him, he heard Nesbit’s sigh of relief. Then Mosby was moved inside and Jason swung back into his saddle. As he turned the horse away, he saw Daniel Strother looking up at him. “Are you going to be all right?”
“Ah’m fine, Cap’n. And … Cap’n, I think you’ll be wantin’ to head off down the road to Rectortown now.”
Jason jerked on his horse’s reins, bringing his horse to a whinnying halt. “What did you say?”
“Yes, Cap’n, Ah think there’s somebody you want to meet there. An’ he wants to meet you.”
Afterwards, Jason was sure it was the sheer counter-irritant of the sleet that prevented him from being paralyzed by a sense of unreality. “You mean … ?”
“That’s right, Cap’n.” Daniel Strother looked up, with an expression very different from the cheerful diffidence it had worn up to now. “You see … Ah know Gracchus.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Rectortown was a tiny place, only about twenty houses, a few stores, and what passed for a “hotel,” all in the angle formed by the Manassas Gap Railroad as it turned southward. The most prominent building, and the place’s chief reason for existence, was Alfred Rector’s warehouse alongside the tiny railway station.
It was the hamlet’s smallness that Jason was counting on—along with his implant’s locator function—to enable them to rendezvous with Aiken and Dabney when those two arrived. It was hard to get lost here.
It was almost eleven o’clock when they rode into Rectortown’s main street—really its only one—and there was no one about. The sleet had abated, but it was very cold. They rode up to a small building—little better than a shack—beside the warehouse. No doubt about it, this was the place described by Mary Bowser. Jason was too tired and chilled for caution; he dismounted and knocked on the ramshackle door. It creaked open, and a late-middle-aged black face looked out. Within, a youngish black woman held up a lantern, in whose flickering light shadowy figures—two women and a small boy—could be glimpsed.
Jason had expected to have to deal with abject fear at the sight of a white man in a Confederate uniform at the door. What he saw was more accurately described as mere apprehension, with an undercurrent of expectancy. It puzzled him.
“Yes, Cap’n?”
Now Jason threw even elementary caution to the winds. “Are you Gracchus?”
The man laughed softly. “Oh, lord, Cap’n, what a question! No, no, Ah ain’t Gracchus. Marcus is my name. But,” he added, and in his voice the expectancy trembled on the verge of overcoming the apprehension, “ain’t you got somethin’ to show me?”
This simply isn’t right, Jason told himself. Any more than it was right for that boy Daniel Strother to know about me. What’s going on here?
But anything’s better than standing out here freezing.
Without a word, he handed Marcus the note Mary Bowser had written in Elizabeth Van Lew’s cipher code.
Marcus’s eyes grew round. “Ah cain’t read, and Ah definitely cain’t read this. But Ah know what it looks like. And Ah know you’re the one Gracchus been expecting.”
It was Jason’s turn to stare, and again he thought of Daniel Strother. “‘Expecting’? What are you talking about? Did Mary Bowser somehow get word up here from Richmond?”
“No, Cap’n, it’s not that. It’s … well, Ah don’t rightly understand it. But Gracchus will explain everything.”
“Is he here?”
“No, but he ain’t far. We’ll have to send the boy for him.” Marcus stuck his head out the door and glanced anxiously around. Seeing no one, he motioned to Jason. “Y’all come inside.”
“Can’t you just take us to Gracchus?” asked Jason as they crowded into the tiny room.
Marcus gave him an odd look. “Better not, Cap’n. Even this late at night, there might be somebody out an’ about. So Ah cain’t be out after curfew. But the boy, he can sneak around like a ’possum. And even if he is caught, he won’t get in no trouble.”
Nesbit spoke up. “Do you mean you people here are … slaves?”
Marcus raised his head and met Nesbit’s eyes squarely. “No, suh. We ain’t no slaves. We be free. But the Black Code …” He trailed off as though that should explain everything, and gave muttered instructions to the boy, who looked to be no more than six or so, and handed him Mary Bowser’s note. The boy nodded and slipped out the door.
“What about Gracchus?” Mondrago inquired. “What if he’s seen outside?”
Marcus chuckled. “Don’t you worry none ’bout Gracchus. He can really sneak around!”
He seemed disinclined to further conversation, and the four time travelers warmed themselves as best they could around a small, crude fireplace. The two women—one about Marcus’s age, the other young—stared at them with the same expression Marcus had at first worn. Jason decided that the apprehension was unavoidable, given their Confederate uniforms. But he couldn’t understand the element of seeing something long anticipated—almost the fulfillment of a prophecy. At any rate, they were as silent as Marcus, and while they waited Jason mused over the seeming incongruity of some of the names. But he remembered Dabney mentioning that those slaveowners who had the advantages of a Classical education sometimes bestowed Roman monikers on their slaves. And he seemed to vaguely recall that “Gracchus” was the name of a Roman family that had been champions of freedom …
A scratching at the door interrupted his thoughts. Marcus opened it, admitting a blast of cold air. The boy hurried in, followed by a man who instantly held all of Jason’s attention.
He was medium-tall, well-built and in his thirties, with a thin black beard, tightly curled like his hair. His clothing was of the usual rough sort, made of homespun fabric, but included a warm-looking coat. His skin was a richly deep, dark brown, and his lips were full, but there was a certain quality to his strong, predominantly African face—a straightness of features and lack of prognathism—that suggested European genes. That face wore the enigmatic expression Jason had become used to here, but in his case it held an additional element, a quality Jason could not define, as though this man was seeing something he had longed to see but could scarcely credit his eyes.
“You must be Gracchus,” he said tentatively.
“I am known by that name.” The speech was not that of the local blacks. It sounded educated, and held a lilt that awakened Jason’s memories of Jamaica.
“I’m Captain Landrieu.”
“Yes. We expected that you would use that name.”
“Expected” again! “Did Mary Bowser—?” Jason began, but then halted awkwardly, unsure of how freely he could talk in the presence of Marcus and his family. “Is there somewhere we can go to talk privately?”
Gracchus shook his head. “I already took a risk, coming here at this time of night. I shouldn’t press my luck.”
“Marcus mentioned
something about the ‘Black Code.’”
“Yes. If we were slaves, it would be the Slave Code. But we’re free.” Gracchus laid an ironic stress on the last word. “So we’re subject to the Black Code instead. We have a curfew. And at any time of day, any white man who sees us in the street can tell us to go home and stay there. And we can’t meet in unsupervised groups. Or bear arms. Or testify in court, except as a party to a civil action. Speaking of courts, there’s a different—and harsher—scale of legal penalties for us. And, in general, we can’t act ‘uppity.’” He checked himself. “But you don’t need to hear all that.” He turned to Marcus and had a short, muttered conversation. Marcus nodded, and shepherded the women and the boy through a small door beside the fireplace, which gave access to a tiny shed built against that side of the shack.
As the door closed, Gracchus turned to Jason and smiled.
“I trust Marcus completely. But he doesn’t need to know everything. And we need to be able to talk freely.”
Actually, Jason had been wondering how open he could be even in private. He could hardly say to this man that he was here because a fellow time traveler would, in April, learn of the shadowy organization Gracchus led. But he had to start somewhere. “We do indeed. First of all, I’m very mystified by some things I’ve been hearing tonight, starting even before coming to this house.”
“Feel free to ask me any questions you have, Commander Thanou.”
“Well, to begin with, earlier tonight a slave boy named Daniel Strother—”
Then Gracchus’s last two words registered on Jason with the force of a sledgehammer.
For several seconds, dead silence held the squalid little room, as Jason tried to collect his shattered thoughts.
“I see I’d better start at the beginning,” he finally said. Whatever that means in the time travel business! he gibed at himself. “By ways which need not concern you at the moment, I learned of an organization which could be contacted through Mary Bowser. I have done so, as is proven by the cypher note the boy showed you. I went to this trouble because I had also learned that your organization and the one to which I belong might be in a position to help each other, because we may have common enemies. By the way, what is your organization called?”