by Kage Baker
“Why, señor?” I asked, folding my hands in my lap and looking expectantly at him. Now would come his explanation of the piracy business.
“There will be certain American gentlemen with Alfred,” Edward said, sitting up to face me, “who are under the impression that Her Majesty’s government will assist them in a privateering venture in aid of the Confederacy, and that my colleagues on the island have been preparing a base for them from which they may prey on the Pacific Mail steamers. This is, of course, not precisely the case; but we aren’t anxious that they should learn the truth immediately.”
Asbury Harpending, that was the fool’s name.
“It will be useful, in the event that they are caught,” Edward continued, “to have the venture assumed to be a purely Confederate conspiracy. We will endeavor to supply them with all they need to make a fearful reputation for themselves, and with any luck their depredations will help push the War of Secession to a speedy conclusion. With funds from the San Francisco Mint cut off, Lincoln will surely sue for peace.”
And California would be up for grabs, isolated on a distant coast.
“At this point,” Edward said, smiling a cold smile, “there will be certain changes of plan suggested for the privateers. It is to be hoped, by that time, that Southern gentlemen will form only a minority of the crew—having been replaced gradually by gentlemen adventurers of Californian birth, whom I shall have recruited with your able assistance, my dear. We can also expect fresh numbers of my countrymen, once the American hostilities have ended and they can move with greater openness.”
He leaned forward and spoke more quietly, and so smoothly. “But there will be an interval during which great tact and persuasion are called for, to convince the enthusiasts of the erstwhile Confederacy that a change of loyalties is in their best interests. It will fall to me to attempt this conversion, on a case-by-case basis. Those Southern gentlemen who cannot be induced to exchange the Stars and Bars for the Union Jack will meet with unfortunate accidents, and I regret to say that the arrangements for those accidents will also fall to me.” He looked into my eyes, reading my reaction.
Yes, I know, it was murder he was talking about, but of tobacco-chewing bastards who trafficked in black slaves and had the temerity to dress up their shame in plumes and epaulets. I’d seen those belligerent Southern boys in the bar of the Bella Union. Someone might urge mercy for their kind, but it wouldn’t be me. I nodded for him to continue.
“Shortly thereafter, my dear, you and I will have a number of journeys to make,” he said. “If we can persuade certain persons of certain things—for example, that a league of amity between Great Britain and Mexico would benefit both parties—then various and assorted efforts by several persons in several countries should bear fruit. That being the case, happy days will ensue. And I will at last be more than Alfred Rubery’s long shadow, and you will be whatever you choose to be, in whatever country you choose to reside.”
“I may choose to travel, señor,” I said, giving him my most meaningful look. He smiled and settled his tall hat more securely on his head, for the wind was blowing strongly now. Souza politely ignored us, leaning on the tiller.
I had no doubt Edward could talk Confederate privateers into supporting the cause of Britain, or persuade Benito Juarez that Her Majesty desired to assist him. The mystery, to me, was why a man with his abilities hadn’t gone further. But being illegitimate put the wrong sort of stripe on his old school tie, and that carried so much negative weight with the English. It meant that superb men like Edward lived and died in obscurity, while their nation was run by second-rate boobs who’d lose that empire he was working so hard for. Eventually. Years from now.
Or would they?
This particular plan was already defeated—there would be no British-backed privateers stalking the Pacific Mail—but what about the other part of the plot, involving some discovery the British had made on the island? How would Dr. Zeus become involved? There was every indication that England—in that far-off future when it was no longer even the United Kingdom—would somehow slip into the director’s chair at Dr. Zeus. And Dr. Zeus did rule the world. Secretly, of course. Would they be able to do this because of what they’d found on Catalina Island in 1862? And what could they possibly have found?
“I’ve never been to this island,” I said. “Though of course I have heard the stories.” This was a prompt, but it didn’t work.
“What stories would those be, my dear?” Edward asked, extending his hand and clasping mine.
Damn. I sped through reference files. Any old farrago of nonsense would do to get the conversational ball rolling.
“The Indians used to believe that there was once a great continent here in the West, which drowned in much the same way as we believe Plato’s Atlantis did,” I said. “The Indians claimed there were white men who lived there, extraordinarily tall. They called the place Lemuria.”
Edward looked puzzled. “Unusual name. Were there lemurs there as well?”
“I’ve no idea. In any case, these islands in the channel are thought to be the highest mountaintops of the submerged continent, the only part to survive the deluge. The white men who lived there were unable to prevent the sinking of their world, but they were mechanically brilliant—so the stories say—and produced engines of genius that far surpassed the modern railway or ironclad warship.”
Ha, Edward reacted to that, if only in the pulse of his blood. His face showed nothing, however. “What an extraordinary story,” he said. “I suppose it’s all nonsense, though.”
They had found something, and he knew about it. Was it some kind of technology? But whose? There had never been any real Lemurians.
I shrugged. “The Indians used to tell fantastic tales. The priests discouraged it, of course, as a lot of superstitious nonsense.”
“As well they might,” Edward said. “Though there is a growing opinion that the mythologies of primitive peoples ought to be collected and studied. Conquering races tend to destroy such things, to their own loss. Science now indicates that what were once thought to be fantastical myths may well have some basis in historical fact.”
“For example?” I asked, sitting forward in anticipation.
He removed his tall hat and pushed his hair back from his forehead before setting the hat on his head again. “In Dover, I was recently shown the complete skeleton of an antediluvian monster, fossilized in solid rock. Educated persons had dismissed accounts of dragons as no more than fairy stories. And yet here was the leviathan himself, and any reasonably observant peasant must conclude it was a real creature that had lived once. And so it had: not galloping after knights and virgins, but sporting in vanished seas.”
“An ichthyosaur,” I said in disappointment. He wasn’t going to tell me what they’d found on the island.
“That was its name, to be sure,” he said, squinting at me in the sunlight. “Don’t tell me you were trained in palaeozoology as well!”
“No, of course not,” I said. “I saw an article in a San Francisco newspaper.”
He nodded slowly, a speculative look on his face. “I do look forward,” he said, “to the leisure for more of these conversations with you, my dear.”
So much for artlessly digging information out of him. How much did he know about what had been found? I was never to find out. But I daresay you know, señors.
The sun was well up now, the little boat sped on and on, and with each hour the island became more than a blue outline. We could see the steep canyons and vast mountains in the interior. We were going directly across, in the shortest line, to the west end of the island: not near the future site of Avalon, but to the double harbor where the Union Army would build its barracks soon. From the sea, you might think Catalina was two islands here, a little range just west of the main mass; but they were connected by a half mile of level isthmus just above sea level, making a neck you could cross in five minutes’ lazy walk.
It looked brown and dry, terribly over
grazed by sheep—not like a place you’d find fascinating endemic species of plants. But, then, there was more to this island than met the eye, wasn’t there?
Edward took out his field glasses and scanned, and I scanned right with him. A few miles west of the isthmus was where the construction was going on. It was no simple field camp. I could see where they were preparing gun emplacements, and really the little bay they’d chosen was superbly suited for a defensive position. Neat field shelters and some kind of equipment, too, though it didn’t look like anything connected with mining. A couple of plumes of smoke: small tidy breakfast fires, I’d bet, preparing kippers and whatever else Englishmen were eating for breakfast these days. I shuddered at the memory of the sardine tacos. Could I see the mysterious Silver Canyon from here?
No, it was back on the windward side of the island. Well, perhaps I’d have a chance to explore the area on foot.
I became aware that Edward had turned beside me and was peering at the far western end of the island, up the coast from the fortifications. I turned too.
There was a ship out there, rolling at anchor, her sails furled.
“Ah,” said Edward with satisfaction. “Now, what should this be but the good ship Chapman, bearing her crew of traitors and pirates? And the slightly competent Alfred Rubery. Have the boatsman change course. Let’s go cheer on the gallant Confederate cause, shall we?”
I gave the order to Souza, but my heart was in my mouth. That couldn’t be the Chapman, because history had recorded that Rubery and the other conspirators were caught before they could leave San Francisco Bay. They should be in jail cells by now. So there was no way the Chapman could be arriving here at its appointed rendezvous, right on schedule. But if that ship wasn’t the Chapman, what was it?
“Why is she just sitting out there, señor?” I asked. “Oughtn’t she have moored in the bay before the camp?”
He shrugged. “Alfred may be following orders at last. He was to wait until I came aboard before taking her into the bay. I’d have been here by now, if all had fallen out as planned. So there he waits, like an obedient boy, for me to bring the valise and further orders. I daresay he’ll be glad to see the money. It’s rather difficult to recruit a crew on promises.”
I scanned the ship. There was a crew on board, but at this range I couldn’t tell much more. Nothing to do but sit and wait as we sped across the blue water; nothing but access the historical record.
I hurried through data files. What was the source Imarte found? The Great Diamond Hoax, here it was. And other stirring incidents, supposedly, in the life of Asbury Harpending. Just who was Harpending?
Liar, traitor, and swindler, according to historians; scion of a fine old Kentucky family of wealthy landowners, according to himself, as well as a philanthropic speculator, developer, and crusader for truth. In this year of 1863 he was only about twenty-one, though, with a long career of shady dealing before him.
I sped through the chapters. Here were the abortive attempts to stage a Confederate uprising, failed because of hysteria, lack of nerve, and the discovery of the Comstock lode. Just as Imarte had said. Here were the gallant Confederate sympathizers attempting to regroup with an eye to privateering, under the leadership of Harpending. Here Mr. Rubery entered the picture—callow British youth (I’ll say) with a sympathy for Southern aristocracy and a love of adventure. Even Harp-ending made him out to be something of an idiot; though I wondered how much of the privateering scheme had come into shape after they met and not before, and whether Harpending was really their leader.
They spent money feverishly, buying the Chapman, buying cutlasses, cannons, firearms, and ammunition, and probably a Jolly Roger and cocked hats too. There was no mention of Rubery’s making a trip to Veracruz to obtain more funds, but he must have done so, with a stopover in Los Angeles on his way back. Thanks to Cyrus Jackson’s jealous passion, Rubery fled back to San Francisco empty-handed; and not only had he left the money behind, he’d come away without the list of contacts who would have helped the next part of the plan along.
For here it was in print: the conspirators were unable to find a navigator anywhere in San Francisco. They’d made inquiries, they’d had friends and acquaintances make inquiries for them; and word had evidently gotten around to the authorities that a band of young men with known Confederate sympathies was looking for an able-bodied navigator likewise eager to overthrow the Union government.
So one came forward, courtesy of the San Francisco Police Department, a man named William Law (surely a broad hint if ever there was one). The conspirators took Law into their confidence. He signed on readily and just as readily took all details of the plot to Captain of Police I. W. Lees.
Lees, being a wise man, opted to wait until all the birds were in the net. If Edward could read this, his hair would go gray. Law went along with all the preparations and agreed to be on board the Chapman well before her scheduled sailing time of eleven o’clock in the evening of March 14, 1863. That had been the meaning of the coded telegram Edward picked up the following day.
At ten o’clock on the 14th, I had been sitting in front of the cook-fire, listening to Juan Bautista play his guitar. Edward had just arrived from Veracruz and was settling into his room at the Bella Union. And Alfred Rubery and Asbury Harpending were just going on board the Chapman and discovering that Law was nowhere to be found.
Was this enough to warn them off? No, they left a sentry to watch for Law and went to bed in their bunks on the Chapman. The trusty sentinel dozed off too, it seemed, because the next thing they knew, it was broad daylight on March 15 and the U.S. warship Cyane had her guns trained on them. Boatloads of marines were bearing down on them from all sides, to say nothing of a tugboat full of San Francisco police.
And then? Off to Alcatraz with them for interrogation, at just about the time Edward was watching me undress.
News of the foiled plot went out over the telegraph that same day, to the whole world, as Edward and I lay in bed together. If we’d been in any other city, we’d have heard the newsboys crying the story under our windows; but we were in a coaching inn on the edge of nowhere, and we never knew a thing.
What did Rubery tell the police, under interrogation? Something to occasion those two Pinkerton men to go hurrying into the Bella Union as Edward and I approached it that evening? Were they tipped off by an alert telegraph operator, who compared the names on Edward’s yet unclaimed message with the names in the breaking story? I cringed inside. No wonder there were bounty hunters after us the following day. Everyone must know now, Queen Victoria on her distant throne must know by now. Everyone knew but Edward.
I fast-forwarded through the details, desperate to see what would happen. The conspirators would be convicted of treason. Possibly because it would seem so obviously a stupidly boyish game, they would be sentenced to fines and imprisonment instead of death. Alfred Rubery’s Parliamentary uncle would step in and wheedle a free pardon for him from Abraham Lincoln. Rubery would be thrown out of the country all the same, though, shipped out on one of the Pacific Mail steamers and transferred to a British vessel at Panama.
And that would be the end of the matter.
No villainous British plot to invade the state would ever be publicly uncovered, no scandal of foreign nationals preparing fortifications on Catalina Island. No mention at all of an Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax.
And yet the secretary of war would know enough to send the Army to Catalina. How would he make the connection between a bunch of silly young men wanting to play pirates for the Confederacy, all the way up there in San Francisco, and the activities of certain Britons on an obscure island off the coast of Los Angeles? All Harp-ending ever said in his memoirs was that they had a general plan to base themselves in some islands off the coast of Mexico. But then, he hadn’t known about the whole plot, had he? And had he protested when he discovered the use to which his pirate ship was to be put, my smiling Edward would have been there to slip an inconspicuous knife between his ribs.<
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Did the authorities tell Alfred Rubery that he faced the prospect of being shot as a spy? He must have sung like a damned canary.
We were near the ship now, and there wasn’t a soul on deck. She looked as deserted as the Mary Celeste. I realized, as we drew near, that whoever had anchored her in that particular little cove chose the spot with coy discretion: we were able to spot her from the open sea, but the men at the British camp on the other side of Arrow Point could have no idea she was there.
There were men on board, alive, alert, and waiting for us.
“Edward,” I said, “this isn’t right.”
He didn’t lower his field glasses, for he was studying the ship intently. “Not right? Moral qualms, my dear?”
How could I tell him what 1 knew? “Not that—there’s something the matter here. Why isn’t your friend on deck, watching for you?”
“That’s a good question,” he said, slowly adjusting the long focus. “How can you tell there’s no one on deck at this distance, my dear?”
It was like a faceful of ice water, señors. He hadn’t mentioned what he was seeing, and he knew I had no field glasses of my own. There was a sadness in his face when he lowered the glasses to look at me, but a certain shivery distance, too.
Nothing to do but brazen it out.
“I have trained eyesight,” I explained, as though impatiently. “I was raised to count cattle on hills five miles away, señor. Can’t your English shepherds do the same? Look.” I pointed to the ship. “See the stain on her jib sail? See the red rag tied to her wheel? The three belaying pins on that rail there at the left, and the five at the right? Look there, that’s a brown pelican lighting on her aft deck now. Stupid creature expects someone to toss it a fish. Do you see it, señor?”
“Yes,” he said, looking through the glasses again.
“And do you see a living soul on deck?”
“No, my dear, I don’t.”
“And does that seem reasonable to you?”