In The Service Of The Queen (The Gunsmith Book 1)

by C. K. Crigger

  The shop had gotten cold, so I went over and tossed another stick of wood in the fire, releasing a fog of tamarack-scented smoke before I slammed the stove door shut. Both the smoke alarm and the carbon monoxide unit stayed silent.

  Caleb trailed after me. “Come on, Boothenay. Tell me what brings you out of your trance. If I’m going along with this, I’d kind of like to know how to pull out.”

  “Look, I can only tell you how the deal has worked before, except for just now, of course. Just now I found the power to take control.

  Always before the magic threw me out when the story was over. Once, I got tossed before I wanted to go.” I thought of Beth, knowing I’d left some of those strings untied.

  “This is a learn as you go thing for me,” I went on. “I don’t have any teachers, no one to set a precedent. I wish I had all the answers. I don’t, but I believe that as long as I obey the rules, the magic will take care of me.” I didn’t tell him that according to every word I’d read on the subject of magic, the shedding of blood was an essential part in almost every ritual. So far I’d been lucky enough not to have spilled my own, a further spur if I’d needed one, in my determination to keep my own consciousness this trip.

  “In other words, there are no guarantees.” At the end of this observation, Caleb gave a sudden, jaw-cracking yawn before he had time to get his hand in front of it. I realized he must have been up all night and was only now coming off shift. No wonder he was a little cranky.

  “You don’t have to participate, you know,” I said. “Only some kind of idiot would embroil himself in a rickety situation like this.”

  “An idiot resembling yourself?”

  I ruefully agreed. “Afraid so. There doesn’t seem to be much I can do except go along with the magic.” Other than learn to use the power, I added to myself. “But you’ve got a choice, Caleb, even if the magic is pulling at you. All you need to do, in order to resist, is to stay away from me. You call the shots—your decision.”

  I sat down in Dad’s chair and started rocking. From this vantage point, I watched Caleb pace, his mind working so hard I could almost see the little brain particles oscillating. He absent-mindedly warmed his butt at the wood stove about every third round of the room. When he ceased trying to wear a trench in the floorboards, he insisted I show him how to load a flintlock gun. I knew I had him hooked.

  “You do know how to load one, don’t you?” he asked. “Seeing as you’re the expert.”

  “Well, sure. I also know how to shoot one, “ I said, though truthfully, I don’t get a lot of practice. Even if muzzleloaders are not my idea of an everyday target plinking gun, some people think so, and I definitely wanted Caleb to know his way around one.

  I rounded up everything I needed in order to show Caleb how to prepare a flintlock for firing. We weren't going to take any chances with the power by using his blunderbuss to practice with, however, and I took down a display piece from the wall. The gun, a beat-up, old Brown Bess that didn’t stir me in the slightest, had served well in its time.

  “First,” I said, “you take a measure of powder.” I opened a loading kit of the type I supply to my customers, and began a demonstration.

  Caleb watched intently.

  “This is totally different powder than what they had in 1811, by the way. Clean and so highly refined there’s barely any smoke. During the wars in that time, there would be so much smoke over the battlefield people would actually turn black. The soldiers fired blind into the melee because mostly they couldn’t see to pick a target. Not that they could’ve hit much with the common guns the army had anyway. They had guns like this one—” I indicated the Bess as I ended my presentation.“—not a quality gun from Richards or Manton.”

  As soon as I’d loaded the gun, I knocked out the primer, pulled the ball with a special tool I had, and cleaned the thing out. “Ready to try?”

  I asked.

  He hesitated a moment, hefting the old musket, feeling its balance before saying, “Might as well. I’ve got to learn sometime.”

  Caleb bent to his work, concentrating on accurately pouring the powder down the barrel. He took a precut cloth patch in which he centered a round .71 caliber lead ball. Then he took the ramrod from the clips under the barrel and pushed it down the muzzle until the ball was seated.

  “This takes some muscle,” he said, surprised.

  He brought the hammer to half cock and pushed the spring-loaded frizzen forward so he could fill the flashpan with some 4F grain powder, finer stuff than we used in the main charge, then closed the pan cover. I made sure the flint was properly set between the jaws of the hammer, and told him that was that. It had taken him three minutes.

  “Not bad,” I said. “Except your blunderbuss is treated more like a shotgun by using multiple shots. All flintlocks load in a similar fashion, though your pistols may be breechloaders. Some of them are.”

  Caleb looked at me like I’d just broken into Chinese. He grunted.

  “Also, that was pretty slow. A little practice would probably be good.” Lecture over, I moved away from his shoulder so I wasn’t hovering over him, but stayed close in case he needed my advice.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, saluting.

  Just so he didn’t become a smart ass, I had him withdraw the ball and charge from the Brown Bess, and made him start all over. He was a quick learner, but he was yawning so much we soon gave up.

  “I’ve got to get on home,” he said. “I worked graveyard at the hospital last night, then another four hours at the clinic this morning.

  I’m the first to admit I’m too pooped to think, let alone use any judgment.”

  I thought he was apologizing for his earlier behavior, using tiredness for an excuse. I admit I was afraid he’d leave, start thinking things over and decide to forget the whole thing—which was probably the smart choice. What would I do if he did?

  “I’m going to sleep on it.” Caleb shrugged into his coat. “Right now, I’m thinking I must be crazy, but… Tell you what, though. I’ll bring the pistols over in the morning. Just be sure you don’t go off on your own before then.”

  “All right,” I said. “Do you want to take the musket with you and practice loading?”

  “Do you trust me?” He asked, grinning.

  “I trust you,” I said. Unconditionally—God only know why.

  Oh, yes. I had him hooked. But I crossed my fingers, to make sure, when he declined the loan of the Brown Bess. “I don’t plan on going anywhere by myself,” I assured him. “I’ll wait until I hear from you.”

  As I escorted Caleb out through the shop, I noticed that, despite the bad weather, Scott’s place resounded with the ringing of the phone. A couple of noisy customers were arguing the merits of two different models of rifle.

  Caleb had parked in the middle of a snowdrift. Testing his new truck, I decided, as I watched him drive away. He must have been fairly satisfied with its performance since the 4 by 4 walked out of the deep snow without any trouble. I still had the smile on my face when Scott hung up the telephone and called me over.

  “That was Sonja,” he said. “I asked her to see if she could find anything on your Marshall and Beth.”

  I went blank for a moment. “Who…?”

  “Sonja…Sonja.” Scott said impatiently. “For God’s sake, Boothenay, don’t you ever pay attention to anything outside of your fricking voodoo? Sonja is the head of the reference department at the county library.”

  “Oh. So?” In truth, I felt rather impressed. I’d thought of Sonja, in the one passing impression I’d had of her, as merely another of Scott’s brainless babes.

  “Just because she’s hot, doesn’t mean she’s stupid.” He zeroed in on my thoughts as accurately as though we were twins. “Now, do you want to know what she found out, or don’t you?”

  “You mean she traced them?” Excitement kindled in my belly. Did I want to know or didn’t I? Something in the way Scott put the question made me feel a little apprehensive.
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  “Yeah, she thinks so.” Scott put the phone on the recorder and steered me away from his pair of arguing customers.

  “I could probably go the rest of my life without knowing, couldn’t I?” I asked, trying to smile. “You don’t think I’m going to like the end of the story.”

  “I know you aren’t. But I think you ought to know. It might make a difference in whether you keep on with this magic shit.”

  I frowned at his terminology, but straightened my shoulders. “So lay it on me.”

  “Sonja found reference to the capture of an accomplice of John Brown’s who had been accused of murdering an army sergeant. The accomplice had been questioned about the killing of a couple of settlers—the sergeant’s name is listed as S. McSylvan.”

  “Not McSylvan,” I interrupted. “The one I—Beth—killed was named McSylvie. He said so himself.”

  “Be quiet and listen,” Scott said. “According to the record Sonja found, the accused man’s sister came forward and admitted to killing McSylvan herself. She told the court the sergeant had tried to rape her and she killed him in self-defense. She is quoted as saying, “I can take care of myself. I don’t need anyone to protect my honor. I didn’t mean to kill him, but I’m not sorry he’s dead.”

  The words sounded like my Beth all right. “And?”

  “Too late. The judge and jury didn’t buy her story. They didn’t believe a little woman like Elizabeth Hinckley had the ability to hit a man hard enough to kill him. Besides, she couldn’t produce the weapon she said she’d used.”

  Elizabeth Hinckley. Her name struck at me. “What do you mean, she couldn’t produce the gun? She had it right there.”

  “Maybe she just wouldn’t then. Maybe the two of them thought Marshall would get off if the jury believed he had killed McSylvie to protect his sister. The gun connected him directly to John Brown and the Hinckleys knew a jury would convict him for that association, if nothing else. He—they both said they threw the gun in a lake, probably thinking nobody could prove otherwise.”

  “I suppose Marshall didn’t envision being convicted for the one thing he didn’t do,” I said, thinking back to what I’d known of him. His sister had saved him and when he tried to return the favor, everything went to pot. “How long did they give him?”

  Scott’s face wore an expression of pity. “They gave him about as long as it took to build a scaffold.”

  “They hanged him?” For a moment I felt Beth’s fear, her pain, as close as if once more we shared the same heart and mind. “Oh, no.”

  Scott put his hand on my shoulder, a warm touch, steadying me with his rough sympathy. “And they gave her a six month sentence for perjury.”

  “Six months!” She’d had so little anyway. Pity for her welled up in me. “God, Scott. Do you think I made that happen? Is it my responsibility?”

  “I don’t know. Sonja said the trail ended there. She said it’s unusual to learn that much about such obscure characters, so I don’t expect you’ll ever find out for sure.”

  It’s easy to speculate on the maybes and might-have-beens—what I didn’t do, what I should have done. And yet, the thought remained. I couldn’t believe in a completely random event. I just couldn’t. Beth and I had fit together in the same skin too well for the whole thing to be chance. Whether or not I knew why, whether history had taken note, then forgotten to record it, my being there had made a difference to Beth in a way that made sense. I had to believe that. And I had to learn from it. Had to.

  Because, for better or for worse, this power was part of me. A part I could no more resist than I could resist life itself.

  And because tomorrow I had an appointment with a queen.

  Chapter 7

  Another snowstorm hit during the night. Reflected light poured straight into my bedroom, the brightness rousing me around one in the morning. I was awake until just before daylight when I heard Dad stirring in the kitchen making coffee. I heard the door open for Gabe as he went out to whiz. About then I dropped into a comatose slumber that lasted all of forty-five minutes.

  Of course the snow, or the snow’s radiance, was not the true cause of my sleeplessness. My own guilty thoughts were. Sooner or later, I knew I’d have to reveal the details of this travel-through-the-ether thing to Caleb before I got him involved in something he couldn’t escape. I had a few ethics, after all, and to let him participate without being properly cautioned was not the thing to do. And I must tell him this morning.

  If he bothers to come back , my little subconscious voice said.

  The results of Sonja’s research made me wonder how much blame for Beth’s trouble should be laid at my door. Not that I ever really had much say in the way things turned out. The magic used, then discarded me before I ever got to use my own initiative. Logic said what happened always happened long before I ever arrived on the scene.

  Anyway, the only active part I’d played in Beth’s story was in lending her a little physical strength. Well, okay. Maybe some attitude, too. I’m getting quite good with the attitude thing.

  The point is, Caleb had a right to be told what might happen if the magic came undone. The guns themselves were the first clue, since guns are objects of violence in the first place. For a particular gun to have been imbued with a story at all is another clue. Power does not cling where there is no drama. And, of course, the blood. I had yet to live within a spell that did not require blood. Caleb himself was witness to that.

  So guilty conscience was only half the reason I hadn’t slept. The other half came from sheer excitement. Someone like me doesn’t get to hobnob with a queen everyday after all. This same excitement jolted me out of bed and into the shower with a catnap substituting for a night’s sleep. I could hardly wait for whatever came next.

  The clothes I pulled from my closet, and the scent I dabbed at my pulse points indicated my faith in Caleb’s continued interest—in his blunderbuss’ story, as I told myself.

  When I drifted into the kitchen on a wave of Eternity perfume, Dad looked up from the paper he was reading and sniffed, his import clear.

  He resumed reading, smirking a little, as if the lead article was moderately funny. However, since the Spokesman-Review’s headline screamed something about a woman’s body being found half-buried in the snow behind a welding shop, I didn’t think that was the cause of his amusement.

  “Well,” I said, in answer to his smirk. “This is Sunday. I don’t have to smell like gun solvent all of the time, do I?”

  “I didn’t say a word.” He let the smile show. “I didn’t say a word, did I, Gabe?” he asked the dog.

  Gabe thumped his tail as I bent to pet him.

  “You didn’t have to.” I reached into the glass-fronted cupboard for a mug, at the same time glancing out the window at the weather. I saw a world purified by the overnight storm. A mantle of fresh white glittered on berms the plows had already pushed to the side of the parking lot. Caleb’s white truck almost disappeared into the background when he drove up and parked at the rear of the shop.

  With an unaccountably clumsy motion, I knocked my coffee mug against the side of the cupboard. Even though I’d been expecting him, hoping he’d come—fearing he’d come—my stomach still felt as if it’d squeezed up, tense as a tennis ball.

  When I leaned over the kitchen sink for a better look, I saw Caleb’s steaming breath condense in the bitterly cold air. His dark hair curled over the collar of his sheepskin-lined denim jacket as he withdrew a small case from behind the truck seat. He’d brought the pistols. I knew he’d decided to take the risk.

  “Is that Doc?” Dad asked, seeing my sudden stillness.

  “Yes.” I whispered the word.

  Dad sighed. “I hope you know what you’re about, Boothenay. I surely hope you do.”

  “Me, too,” I said and, abandoning the mug on the counter top, ran downstairs to open the back door for Caleb.

  I’d spent last evening listening to Dad tell me a dozen different times, in a dozen differ
ent ways, that I shouldn’t even consider dragging Caleb into one of my conjurations. “Too dangerous,” he’d said. “Do you really want to take on the responsibility of a man’s life?”

  “Well, not when you put it like that. If only you could understand, Dad. If only you knew what it’s like when the power takes hold, when you feel it singing in your veins and along your nerves and you know you can live in another life for a while. When you can step outside of yourself and be so much more.”

  He said, sounding as if he was angry, “Oh, I know some, child.

  Your mother taught me. I was never enough for her. She needed this power, too. Just don’t expect me, or any other man, to like playing second fiddle to magic. I know why they burned witches.”

  “Dad!” I cried in shocked protest. I was angry, too.

  He knew he’d gone too far. My eyes must have blazed, for he muttered, “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I just don’t want anything to happen to my only daughter, and I’m worried about the nice young fella you’re getting ready to drag along with you. Frankly, I’m scared you’ve taken on more than you can chew.”

  Frankly, so was I, but that was something I’d rather die than admit.

  A retreat to the sanctity of my bedroom seemed the wisest answer to Dad’s arguments, so I acted sensibly for a change and disappeared.

  Caleb waggled the gun case at me by way of a greeting and asked,

  “Where do you want me to put these? Shop or house? Where are you fixing to do your magic act?”

  Being too wrapped up in the fact he’d returned at all, I hadn’t given a thought to the logistics. The quick lilt in my heart at first sight of him showed I still wasn’t thinking—not about magic anyway. I tried to ignore the cause of this excitement and concentrate on his question.