Dawn's Early Light

by Pip Ballantine

  Bill leaned over. “Veteran,” he muttered. “Surprised the old codger has lived this long.”

  “He’s a man, Bill. Not some horse that should be put down on account of a crippling wound.”

  He took another swig of his beer. “Take a good look at ol’ Merle, and tell me that what he’s got is something resembling a life.”

  War was something this child of the even deeper south—namely the Pacific Ocean—had never experienced. Peering into the eyes of this old man, however, she could only guess at the horrors he had seen. Wellington sometimes wore that look in unguarded moments.

  Eliza waved over the bartender, such as he was, and bought the bottle from him. “Leave this to me,” she muttered to Bill, and strode over to the corner.

  He had the look of a beaten, but still very angry dog. The pity Eliza felt welling inside her vanished when Merle locked eyes with her as she approached. His hand slid down his good leg. The snarl growing on his face, and her own instincts, warned her of some kind of pistol there. Her own hands were full, but she could drop the glasses and bottle in a moment to pit her speed of youth against his advanced years and experience.

  Not tonight, she thought as she cast a warm smile his way.

  After a moment, his hand slid back into view, his eyes, grey as the ocean, still fixed with hers. A smile twitched in the corner of his mouth as he raked her form up and down. “What do you want, girl?”

  His gaze shifted abruptly from her to the glasses and bottle she set in front of him. The hardness softened slightly on seeing how very full the bottle was.

  “I hear you’re Merle,” she said, taking a seat next to him. He was busy staring at the whiskey still sloshing inside the bottle. “I also hear you know what goes on around here.”

  Merle reached for the bottle, but just then his gaze travelled past her. Immediately he seemed to deflate. Eliza turned in that direction to see a knot of men muttering among themselves, their callous nods and gestures towards their corner making her skin prickle. She breathed easier when Bill appeared, offering another round which they graciously accepted. Just before they turned away from view, Bill looked over to Eliza and winked at her.

  “Is that true?” Eliza asked, turning back to Merle.

  “Maybe,” he grumbled in reply, his eyes boring into the worn table under his hands.

  “How long have you called the Outer Banks your home?”

  “Since before you entered this world, girl, I can tell you that.”

  Eliza nodded, filling one of the small glasses. She looked Merle over. Whatever was in this tiny glass could have been what Axelrod and Blackwell used to clean their contraptions. It certainly couldn’t hurt this old-timer.

  “That means you’ve seen a lot,” she said, sliding the drink closer to him. “Maybe even some things you shouldn’t.”

  He snorted, picked up his drink, and raised it to his lips. “You think anyone here believes a crazy old man? Believes in Blackbeard’s Curse? Even with what I’ve seen . . .”

  A curse? Perhaps as credible as hauntings, but sometimes a lead could spring from wives’ tales and superstitions. “Maybe it’s because you’re talking to the wrong people.”

  His gaze hardened again. “What’s that s’posed to mean?”

  “It means, Merle, that these men haven’t seen what you’ve seen, have they? They’re too young to have fought in the war. Some people can’t believe in anything spectacular because they have small minds, small lives.” Merle downed the drink quickly, the glass knocking softly against the table. She poured him another shot. “They don’t like to imagine anything exists beyond their own little world, but you . . . well, you know better.”

  The lines around Merle’s face deepened as he frowned up at her, searching her face for some sign that she was stringing him along. Eliza held his gaze unflinchingly.

  Merle tilted his head and nodded as if acknowledging that. “Like how you were only on your second shot before coming over here? How many has that beau of yours had? Seven?”

  Eliza’s mouth bent into a grin. “Nine.”

  “Nine?” The old man gave a rough bark she could only assume was a laugh. His fingers wandered over to the glass and tightened on the shot, once finding it. “Guess all this shit bourbon here is finally taking a toll on me.”

  Eliza poured herself a glass, just in case. “You mentioned a curse.”

  He leaned forwards over the table and gestured her in closer. “It’s real, you know? Blackbeard’s airship, Devil’s Shadow, went down here. He was en route to Ocracoke, but had to stop at Corolla for a quick refuel. There was a ship moored offshore. He thought it was Queen Anne’s Revenge, but it wasn’t.” He exchanged his now-empty glass for Eliza’s. “Not sure who it was that done it, but Blackbeard’s airship fell from the sky that night. A ball of flame that lit the Currituck Banks for miles.”

  While akin to a fantastic yarn to chill children in front of a hearth’s fire, Merle’s story actually had merit. Early airships in the nineteenth century were truly experimental, usually a long gondola with several balloons suspended overhead. Pirate vessels were particularly dangerous as the easiest lighter-than-air gas to purchase through underground channels was hydrogren, hence why airships were not so common in the Golden Age of Piracy.

  “Are you sure this wasn’t the Fire Ship of New Bern you were seeing?” Eliza asked.

  A bushy eyebrow crooked at that query. “I may be a damn drunk, girl, but I know the difference between where I live and Ocracoke. Next time, know your geography as well as your local lore.”

  Eliza often talked with folks who had seen and heard things that would earn them anything from a dubious reputation to confinement in an asylum. He carried with him the look of a haunted man; but in that bold statement, he displayed a cold sobriety.

  “So Blackbeard crashed off Currituck then?” she pressed.

  “Folks all swear it’s the Graveyard of the Atlantic?” Merle hissed. “What’s happening is more than just shallow shoals.”

  Eliza swallowed and glanced back over her shoulder. Bill and his new friends were still working through a pair of bottles; but if he were trying to keep a pace with these gents, he might be losing feeling in his legs at any moment.

  She turned back to Merle, fixing her eyes with his, as if it were only them in Quagmire’s tonight. “Go on. Tell me what you saw.”

  He tugged on her arm and bent towards her ear. “A sword of flame, come rising from hell itself, blasting ships from the sky and cuttin’ vessels in half. Saw it with my own eyes the other night. I had just come home when Blackbeard’s sword plucked an airship out of the sky. I thought it was just the drink . . . then I saw the bodies wash up. It was as if Sherman had come back . . .” His voice trailed off as tears spilled from his eyes.

  Eliza reached out and took Merle’s open hand. He had not asked to be a witness, but there was a real chance he was drinking harder than before to erase recent memories. He had seen enough death for one lifetime.

  A quick blink, and his face twisted into a chiselled grimace. “Next morning, the corpses were gone, but like all the other ghosts of the Carolinas, they’ll be back.”

  She refilled his glass and nodded. “Where did you see this?”

  “Off Corolla, near the lighthouse,” he grumbled.

  With a heavy sigh, she slid the bottle within his reach. She eyed the god-awful bourbon for a moment, hoping he would have no recollection of their talk, or much of anything else for that matter. “Keep an eye out for Blackbeard. We need alert folk like you around here.”

  The old man nodded excitedly, and downed the shot glass in his grasp. Turning on her heel, she strode back to Bill and the collected locals. One glance into Bill’s glassy eyes and she knew that this evening was just going to get longer.

  “We need to go,” she whispered to Bill.

  The men around him whoope
d and whistled. “Gonna get something sweet tonight, Billy boy!” one of the sailors blurted.

  Perhaps the melancholy of the old soldier had sucked the evening’s amusement from her. Because Eliza could not stop herself from rounding on the offending sailor. “Why don’t you just shut your flapping gums, mate!”

  Laughter coupled with feigned shock at her retort filled her ears. The sailor stepped up to Eliza, his jocularity turning sinister in an instant. “You gonna shut them for me, missy?” he snarled. “I can think of one way to occupy my mouth with you.”

  Bloody Americans. They really didn’t know a warning when it bit them in the arse. “Now how can you follow through with that,” she began, “when you have a split lip?”

  He leaned in closer. His breath stank. “What split lip?”

  Bill, the collected sailors, and the assorted deckhands never saw Eliza’s palm heel strike, but they did see the sailor’s head snap back, his mouth and chin covered in his own blood.

  “That one,” she spat.

  The men surrounding them were no longer smiling. Bill burst into a hearty chuckle as he gave Eliza a playful rap against her corset while the circle of sailors slowly closed the space around them. “Now settle down, Lizzie. We’re just havin’ a laugh. No harm. Right, boys?”

  “Your little missy, Bill, needs to learn her place,” another sailor spoke, his eyes fixed on Eliza.

  “Mate,” she seethed, “if you even tried—”

  The man exploded, sending his glass hard to the floor. “Am I talking to you, whore?”

  Now the silence was thick, pressing against Eliza’s sides, threatening to squeeze her last breath out of her. Every eye was on them.

  Bill hooked his thumbs in his belt buckle, shaking his head ruefully. “I was about to do that, Enoch,” he said, “but you had to go on and be rude.” He looked over at Eliza and she gave a little gasp. The glassy eyes were now quite clear, quite focused. “How about you apologise?”

  “How ’bout you go to hell?” he snapped, stepping free of his group. His stance was hardly steady. Must have been trying to match Bill shot for shot.

  “Just apologise to Little Lizzie and everything’ll be back to the way it was,” Bill urged, taking off his hat.

  Eliza’s gaze jumped from Enoch, back to Bill. Did this horse’s ass call her “Little Lizzie” just now?

  “Why? She somethin’ special?” he growled back. “This trollop got a special way of sucking—”

  Bill’s head launched forwards and the crunch of Enoch’s nose was clearly heard, providing those in Quagmire’s their only warning before he flipped a nearby table, sending glasses and bottles flying everywhere. A single shot glass slapped into the OSM agent’s grasp, and he threw it at a dockhand reaching for a pistol, knocking the man off balance. Bill then leapt on a lone chair left behind by the toppled table, and jumped into the throng of men with whom he’d been sharing convivial drinks. His battle cry—Eliza had heard it called a “Rebel Yell”—served as a ceremonial cannon, signalling the beginning of tonight’s entertainment.

  A few of Enoch’s friends closed on Bill in quick order, but there were others around that were either siding with Bill in defending “Little Lizzie’s” honour or simply itching for a good brawl. By the time Bill was free, thanks to a few gallant strangers, Enoch was back on his feet, towering over the OSM agent. Bill hooked the tip of his boot under a bottle at his feet, and kicked. The glass slapped into his hand, which he in turn slapped across Enoch’s face. If this had been a comedy troupe at a music hall, the bottle would have shattered for comic effect. As this was a tavern somewhere on the American East Coast, the thick glass remained intact. The dockhand’s jaw wobbled inside the man’s skull as rivulets of blood shot out of the man’s mouth.

  The blow should have landed the man out cold, but Enoch spat free a tooth and then brought a beefy fist round to Bill. Enoch’s uppercut lifted him off his feet and sent him back to a chair that collapsed under him with a loud snap. Eliza winced a fraction, hoping what she had heard had been the chair and not Bill’s back.

  Bill certainly wasn’t stopping to check. He bounded to his feet, grabbed up the closest empty chair—most were empty as the brawl now held everyone’s immediate attention—and swept it in a wide arc, knocking the four men charging at him back a pace or two.

  Ministry orders dictated, as this was a goodwill operation, that Eliza should have jumped into the growing chaos and helped her fellow agent out, but their first meeting in San Francisco gave her a moment’s pause. That, and she was quite enjoying watching from outside the event how Agent Bill Wheatley handled himself. The man was quite a machine.

  Her enjoyment was interrupted by massive arms wrapping around her from behind. Whatever kind of clumsy attack it was, it was over as her boot heel drove down hard into the attacker’s foot, earning her a whiskey-accented scream into her left ear. She then turned and slammed her fist into the man’s nose. Brief as the skirmish had been, it attracted the attention of a table full of dockhands. One of them, a man with slicked-back blond hair, drew a bowie knife similar to Bill’s from his jacket.

  Now, officially, she was no longer watching the fray but following orders.

  Eliza loved a good bowie as much as the next woman, but the knifeman was just waiting to join the evening’s diversion a little too enthusiastically. She took a step back, and felt her own foot brush against an empty bottle. Considering Bill’s fancy footwork, Eliza hooked her toe under the bottle, kicked it up into her hand, and threw it at the man, all in one swift sequence. This time, the glass did shatter against the man’s head, and he dropped the knife with a yelp—which turned into a scream when Eliza took three quick steps and side-kicked him backwards into his friends.

  The thunderclap froze everyone in place. Eliza turned to see Merle crack open the blunderbuss-style shotgun, ejecting its spent shell that rolled across the tavern floor to disappear in the dingy shadows.

  “The girl was kind enough to buy me a drink,” he announced as he slipped in a replacement shell. “Now I’m a drunk war veteran with a loaded blunderbuss. That makes me dangerous.”

  “You got two shells, old man,” a sailor mocked.

  “Keep talkin’ and I’ll just have one,” he warned. “Consider this a southern gentleman’s thank-you, miss. Now I think you and the beau ought to leave.”

  A night out with a colleague, a bar brawl, and a lead. The night with Bill had not been a complete loss.

  “Well, this has been delightful,” Eliza said brightly against the quiet. She turned back around. “Bill,” she called, “you done?”

  Bill’s left cheek was a dark red, leaning with every moment to purple. The sailor behind him bent down, picked up Bill’s Stetson, and shoved it into his shoulder, crushing the hat’s crown.

  “Jus’ a minute,” he slurred, forming his crumpled Stetson back into shape. Once his hat was resting as he thought it should, Bill thrust his elbow behind him, sending the sailor to the ground. “Okay, I’m done.”

  She jerked her head towards the exit. By the time they were back out in the night, music had resumed, conversation was returning, and Bill’s demeanour had gone from aggravated to extremely satisfied. Outside a blast of ice-cold wind hit them in the face, but after the humid dark of the public house, this was quite refreshing. Eliza led the way back up the sandbank, and towards the road they had walked down earlier in the evening.

  “You Americans are making me homesick, you know that?” With a look back at Quagmire’s, she turned back to where Bill’s horse waited patiently. “Well, come on, Bill, we’ve got a morning ahead of us tomorrow.”

  “Hold on,” Bill said, trailing behind her. “The old man was really on to something?”

  “I know that look. Merle may sound crazy, but he saw something. Tomorrow morning, we do what we do best.”

  He motioned with his thumb back to the pub. “I tho
ught that was what we do best.”

  The clouds slipped away from the moon with timing that Bill could not have worked better if he had placed an order for it. The smile she caught from him, even with the swollen jaw, was both charming and wicked. She stretched. “That, my heavily bruised counterpart, was merely a prelude.”

  “I look forward to the opening act,” Bill said, his voice low and husky.

  Eliza could not help herself as she laughed into the night. “You know, Bill, I am starting to like you . . .”

  He tilted his head up and laughed, matching her stride for stride. “All part of my wicked plan.”

  SIX

  Wherein the Atlantic Surrenders a Secret

  “And exactly how much alcohol had this supposed lead of yours enjoyed last evening?” Wellington asked, engaging the motorcar’s hand brake.

  Eliza tilted her head, considering. “He was on his third, maybe fourth, shot . . . from my bottle . . .”

  “Hardly seems reliable,” Felicity offered from the tumble seat.

  Wellington watched carefully as Eliza shut her eyes and took a long quiet breath. Meticulously, she placed the goggles around her neck, which he knew did not bode well. They both turned to Felicity, who was wearing the pink driving cap Wellington had donated to keep her curls in check. She looked silly, but quite endearing.

  “Were you there last night, Miss Lovelace?” Eliza asked, her voice steady.

  “No,” the librarian replied.

  “Then I suggest you refrain from the assessment of the investigation before you hear all the facts.” Eliza turned back, with her eyes narrowed in a dangerous fashion. “Both of you.”

  “Felicity has a point,” he dared. Even as her ice blue eyes bore into him, Wellington continued. “The man is a war veteran, and I have no doubt he suffers a great deal with what he’s seen in the battlefield.”