by David Mellon
Augustin whispered, “Why doesn’t she get the guard?”
“Do you think she could?” George replied, as the woman managed to make the final step down.
Augustin moved Adi behind them.
“Hello, Johanna,” said George.
“Well, George, what a surprise,” said the duchess.
“Yes, I’d imagine it is.”
“And Augustin. You’re looking well. Your name came up recently. I can’t recall . . . something Tudie said.”
“Was that before or after you put her in the dungeon?” asked Augustin.
Johanna smiled vaguely and tilted her head a little to see behind the men.
“And the young woman. I knew you’d be here,” she said to Adi. “In your imaginative little costume.” She tried a laugh but suffered another coughing fit instead.
When she recovered, she said, “Forgive me. I seem to have caught a bit of a cold.”
Augustin held up the jailer’s key ring on his finger.
“I suppose so,” said George. “Safest thing for now.” Samuel nodded. He and Augustin advanced toward the duchess.
Holding her hand up to make them wait, she coughed a few more times into her fist. Then pulling a pistol from her coat pocket, she fired and struck Augustin in the thigh.
Augustin spun around with a howl and fell back into George’s arms. They both went down. Samuel moved to cover them.
“You’re making me nervous, Samuel,” she said, motioning with her pistol. Glowering at her, he sat down next to George.
Adi dropped to her knees next to Augustin, who was moaning and cursing and struggling to get to his feet. George held on to him.
“Stay down, Gus.”
Adi tore open the khaki around the bullet hole and examined the wound, as best she could in the feeble light.
Though there was substantial bleeding, the bullet hadn’t hit the bone, nor the femoral artery—that was most important. And it seemed to have passed through cleanly, though she wouldn’t be able to tell for sure until she examined him properly.
Adi looked up to see the duchess pointing her gun with dreamy fascination at each of them, one after another. “If I can shoot them,” she murmured, her eyes following the bit of smoke rising from the gun barrel, “does that mean they’re not a figment of my imagination?”
Adi unbuckled Augustin’s belt, pulled it free, and wrapped it around his thigh. Taking a bit of gauze from a vest pocket, she placed it over the wound and cinched the leather tight.
That would have to do for the time being.
Augustin winced and squeezed the girl’s hand.
“It’s okay,” he said with a dreadful grimace of a smile. “Happens to me all the time.”
Looking to George, he said, “You didn’t tell me she could dress a wound.”
“Who knew?”
A squeak from the jailer distracted the duchess. She looked over. He struggled against his bindings.
“God, he’s an ugly man,” she said to no one in particular. Raising her pistol, she fired twice randomly in the direction of the cell. The bullets went wide, but the jailer tumbled his chair over in a panic, shouting into his gag.
Cheeks dangerously flushed, Johanna undid the buttons on her coat. Steam rose into the cold air from the nightgown she wore beneath.
She began to pull things from her inside coat pockets: papers, spectacles, bits of jewelry. She let them all drop to the floor. Finally, she found a little aquamarine tinted bottle. With her teeth she pulled the glass stopper and spit it to the floor. She pointed her gun at Adi.
“Goddammit. Why is it . . . the only person I want to talk to . . . can’t speak!” She coughed as though she might crack open her narrow chest. “On your feet, little one!” she rasped.
She took a swig from her bottle, and watched as the girl got up.
Adi exchanged a look with George, as if to say, how much longer are we going to let this woman call the tune?
George gave a little nod.
The duchess grabbed Adi by the arm and pushed her up against a stone column a few feet away.
“All right. We’ll do this your way.” With arms shaking, holding the pistol in both hands, she pressed it to Adi’s forehead. “Yes or no questions. Do you know where my son is?” she said quietly.
Adi shook her head as best she could with the barrel pressed against her.
“Do you know what happened to him?”
Adi shook her head again.
“Did you leave this house with my son?”
Adi nodded.
“Were you . . . involved with him?”
Adi couldn’t prevent an expression of repugnance at the notion.
“My son, not good enough for you?” said the duchess, seeing the look in the girl’s eyes. “As if you would ever be so fortunate—you repulsive little—My son was—” A fit of coughing took her.
From behind, George reached out and removed the gun from Johanna’s hand. She tried to grab it back, hitting and scratching at him. He held her for a moment, but she tore away with what little strength she had left and stumbled for the stairs.
Samuel moved to go after her, but George shook his head. “Let her go.”
• • •
In April of 1917, America finally joined its allies, Britain, France, and Russia, in the war. But along with the more than two million troops came a new player in the drama.
The best guess was that the virus came from an American army base in Kansas. A nuisance when it first appeared in the spring of 1918, by August of that year, through mysterious transformation, it had become more deadly than any disease in the history of mankind.
For the sake of morale, the major players in the war censored news of the epidemic. Spain, being neutral in the war, was not so inclined. This gave the world the impression that the contagion was worse there. Hence, it came to be known as the Spanish flu.
The pandemic was all over by the following spring, but not before it killed more people than the Black Death in the Middle Ages, estimates ranging from twenty to one hundred million people. From Boston Harbor to the Fiji Islands, from tiny villages to the largest of cities, there was nowhere on earth not affected.
And that was certainly true of the battlefields and trenches of the war. Soldiers, their immune systems already weakened by malnutrition and fatigue, their lungs damaged by mustard gas, crowded together in barracks and ships and holes in the ground; they were particularly susceptible. More of them would fall to influenza than would die in combat.
• • •
By the time George, Samuel, and Adi managed to get Augustin to the top of the stairs, they found the duchess crumpled in the doorway leading to the courtyard. The fever, like the madness, having done with her, had fled, leaving her cold and dead as a stone.
The royal guard had done likewise. The virus had run through the barracks like a wildfire. Faced with an adversary that could not be battered or imprisoned, the men that had not died outright stole what they could quickly lay hands on, and fled into the night.
George and his friends discovered a desolate courtyard, an empty house, and an abandoned front gate, all quiet as a tomb.
Ironically, the only good thing the miserable woman had done was to imprison the family deep underground, safe from the fever burning above.
• • •
George and his friends managed to get Augustin squared away in Samuel’s quarters next to the garage. With a bed, a proper bandage, and an injection of morphine salvaged from the plundered office of the house physician, he was losing consciousness quickly. He kept repeating, “No time, no time, get her to the abbey.” He waved his hand vaguely in Adi’s direction. She nodded in agreement.
“As soon as you shut up and go to sleep,” replied George, tucking him in. He turned back to Samuel. “What do you mean the cars don’t run?” said George. “None of them?”
Samuel began to remove debris from atop his makeshift desk, trying to be orderly about it. “Oh, to hell with it,”
he said, and swept everything onto the floor.
George and Adi were too exhausted and rattled at three-thirty in the morning to comprehend what he might be doing.
“A couple of weeks ago,” continued Samuel, “when we started getting news that the war might actually be ending, she,” he nodded to the courtyard, “really began to lose it. Thought everyone was against her, which was definitely true. That was when she started putting the old ladies and children in the cells. The gates were locked, and she had the guards take away all of the estate’s vehicles. Everything! You couldn’t find a bicycle. The few horses we had left—well, the thugs took them, every one.”
Samuel saw the look in Adi’s eyes, as she took in this latest calamity.
“But,” he said, raising a finger. “As my father used to say, ‘there’s more than one way to kill a cat than choke it to death with cream.’ Though, somehow, when I say it, it doesn’t sound so good.”
George cleared his throat.
“Just this, Your Grace,” he said, sliding the top of the desk to the floor, revealing a large gray tarp-covered shape that had been holding up the back side of the table. He took hold of the cloth, and “Voilà!”
There was Samuel’s 1913 700cc Flying Merkel motorcycle—as bright and shiny and orange as a slice of a ripe cantaloupe.
Chapter 38
At first Thomas thought the sound was the echoing of his own footsteps on the country road. He stopped to listen. The footsteps ceased but, it seemed, not exactly at the same time as his.
Except for hunting owls and a scurrying hedgehog, Thomas had had the way to himself since George and Augustin had dropped him at the crossroad. The half moon followed him up and down for a time, before it was overtaken by billowing black clouds.
There was the sound again. Unmistakable this time, even with the wind picking up. As he was coming up the hill, he looked behind him down into the darkness and could just make out a shape, black against black.
“Good morning, friend,” called the shadow.
“And to you,” replied Thomas. He unsnapped his holster.
“Didn’t mean to startle you.”
“I am surprised to find anyone on the road at this hour.” Thomas waited, his hand upon his pistol, as the shadow caught up. He gave the man a minute as he was clearly short of breath.
“The abbey?” inquired Thomas.
“Yes,” said Coal. After a moment, they continued on together.
“I suppose,” said Coal, “the abbey’s about the only place one would be heading on this road.”
Thomas glanced over, but in the darkness he could discern almost nothing.
“You could be taking sheep to pasture in Dupre,” said Thomas. “Except, of course, you have no sheep. And it is three o’clock in the morning.”
“It is that,” agreed Coal.
Coming around the bend, they could make out the abbey silhouetted on top of the cliff. Not too much farther.
“I wonder . . .” said Coal, stopping to catch his breath again. “You seem an honest man,”
Thomas stopped. “Are you all right, sir?”
“Yes, fine, thank you,” said Coal, though he didn’t sound at all well. “I wonder . . . as you are on your way to the abbey, if you might do me a great kindness?” Coal reached into his pocket and removed a small package, tied up in paper and twine. About the size of his hand. “I’m delivering this to the abbot. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble . . . ?”
“I’d be happy to,” said Thomas.
“If you don’t want to wake them, I’ve left parcels before, to the right of the front gate, in the niche at the feet of Saint Alberic.”
“I know the spot. I may be seeing the abbot, I could deliver it to him.”
“Even better,” said Coal. “Well then, I’ll be off. Good morning to you.”
Thomas continued on his way. From the top of the next rise, when the drizzle began to fall, he looked back, but there was no sign of the man.
• • •
Samuel’s motorcycle was about as far from the French army motorbikes she had ridden as a falcon was from a duck.
But there was a problem. This was a racing bike. It was built for speed. There was no seat behind for a passenger. No side car.
Out in the drive, Adi stood next to the bike up on its kickstand, the orange paint gray in the moonlight. It was more elegant than the ones she’d ridden, but the works looked much the same. Where was the oil dripper, though, she wondered.
George and Samuel stepped into the garage, going on about ways they might affix something to the frame for a second seat.
There was no time for this. By a miracle, they were free from the prison, the duchess and the guards all swept away before them. She was not taking it for granted.
She opened up the watch. Merde! Two hours and forty minutes! She shut the watch and looked at the motorcycle.
She knew the quickest way to win this argument.
Leaning down, she turned the gas on and twisted the throttle forward. Throwing a leg over, she started pedaling. She closed the exhaust valve, and with a bang, fired up the engine.
George’s and Samuel’s heads shot around the doorway.
They watched her adjust the carburetor.
“I’m going to get to the point, eventually,” George said as they walked over to the bike, “where I’m not surprised anymore.”
“Yeah, maybe,” said Samuel.
• • •
Xander woke up and wiped the drool from his forearm.
For as long as he’d been at the abbey there had been the joke about Brother Andrew falling asleep at his post in the gatehouse.
“Hard to imagine a place more likely to put you to sleep than this box,” thought Xander.
It had been his bright idea to coerce (all right, blackmail) Brother Andrew into letting them man the gate for a few days. What better way to be the first to witness the arrival of the abbot’s brother.
If indeed the abbot actually had a brother. It was clear from the look in Brother Christopher’s eyes every time the subject came up that there was something about this brother he wasn’t telling them.
It then occurred to Xander, “Something woke me up.”
He listened for a moment. What was that?
Turning the wick down on his little lantern, to better see out into the dark, he leaned forward and peered through the one tiny window in the guard cubicle. He heard a footstep—
A face filled the window. Xander yelled and smacked himself in the head with his hand.
“Oh!” said Thomas. “So sorry. I wasn’t sure if anyone was in there, I tried knocking on the, um—Are you all right?”
“Yes,” said Xander, rubbing his temple. “Just scared myself.”
“Not your fault I’ve shown up at this ungodly hour.”
“Are you Abbot’s brother?” Xander blurted out. “Damn,” he whispered. “Supposed to let Brother Christopher ask.”
“What?” replied Thomas. “No, but I do have business with the abbot. And I do have”—Thomas slid the parcel out of his coat pocket and held it up to the opening—“a package to deliver. Though I know an hour before morning prayers is a terrible time to be waking him up.”
Xander’s eyes got big as saucers. He grabbed the lamp to see the parcel more clearly.
Thomas peeked in through the little window at the young man raising the wick back up on his lamp.
That can’t be, he thought. Granted, I haven’t seen a picture of the boys in four and a half years and they would be that much older. Not to mention, whichever one he might be—he couldn’t possibly be the first person I run into here! But, I’ll be damned if that’s not—“Xander? Or Xavier?” asked Thomas.
“Yes. Xander,” he replied. “Do I know you, sir?” Xander was even more surprised when the man before him began to laugh, slapping the ledge on the window.
“No, you don’t know me, Xander,” said Thomas. “But I know you. Or, at least, I know of you. From your—from Adi.”
Xander stared. “Did you just say Adi?”
“I did.”
“She died a long time ago.”
“Well, Xander,” said Thomas, trying to put this delicately. “It’s hard to say if anyone is alive after this war, and I haven’t seen her in several years, but I know for certain she was alive and well and searching for you, after you were told she’d died.”
Xander furrowed his brow and chewed on a fingernail. “I have to . . . you should . . . Don’t go anywhere.” With that, he was through the little door behind him and gone.
“Well,” said Thomas, wiping the drizzle from his forehead, “I guess I’m waiting here.”
• • •
There was another problem with the motorcycle.
“I was afraid of that.” Samuel switched off his flashlight. He tapped a fingernail on the little gauge. “A quarter tank. At most.”
Adi reached for the kill switch on the handle bar. Samuel stopped her. “It’ll take more to start it again than you’re gonna save.” He handed her a leather flyer’s helmet and goggles and gloves. They were all large, but they would do.
“We can’t siphon some gas out of . . . something?” said George.
“I’m telling you, they took everything.” Samuel tapped the flashlight against the tank. “It might be enough.”
“It might not,” said George adjusting her goggles around her helmet. “Then where’s she going to be?”
“Closer than she is now.”
George looked into her eyes. “You won’t let me go for you.”
Adi shook her head.
“Listen, the Madelins . . . downriver. They still have horses, I’m sure . . .” He looked over to Samuel, who looked doubtful.
“All right. Damn it. Go then.” He stepped away from the bike, and then immediately stepped back.
“It’s just—the thing is, Adi—you’re not so good at being somewhere when you say you’re gonna be.”
Adi pulled the goggles down over her eyes and pushed the bike forward off its kickstand. It started to stall until she adjusted the throttle.