“The Company is going to extract an extraordinary dividend.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Nathaniel pawed at his ear, trying to silence the riotous noises of the world. His horse sounded a plaintive whinny. Landon Chapel and Charles Lee, also mounted, hooted and cheered loudly.
The goose honked. Its legs were tied to the upper crossbar in a simple frame that stretched across one of the plantation’s lanes and the bird flapped its wings in vain, trying to escape. The young men had greased it thoroughly, not to increase the chances of the goose’s survival, which were nil, but to make the game more competitive, and the grease now gave the goose a surreally slick look, its feathers lying stubbornly flat against its body and neck.
Naked fields stretched to either side of the lane. Beyond the fields lay the log homes of Irish field-workers, and beyond those lay forested hills. The earl’s manor stood out of sight on the other side of a low ridge. A thread of smoke rose from the site of the manor, suggesting that the house’s ever-skulking godi Wickens was offering sheep to Woden.
George Randolph Isham galloped hard beneath the honking goose, made his grab, and missed.
“Herne’s bloody horn!” The earl’s son shook his hand. “I’m bit!”
“Careful, George!” Charles Lee called. Charles was the oldest of the young men, old enough to be married, though he wasn’t, and old enough to have a commission in the earl’s cavalry, which he did. He was a lieutenant, and on leave, and spending his time with the younger men of the plantation. His greater years showed in the superiority of his facial hair, which consisted of a long drooping mustache. Under his faded purple coat, he wore brown breeches and a white shirt.
~Cut the throat in one motion. Collect the blood in the stone’s groove.~
“Collect the blood.” Nathaniel shook his head. He had hoped George would pull off the goose’s head. A victory by the earl’s son was the best outcome for everyone. Nathaniel burrowed deeper into the old coat he wore, patched at the elbows, and pulled the oversized tricorner hat down tight. The coat and hat had both once belonged to one of the earl’s footmen, a kind old man named Barlow who had taken special care of Nathaniel when he’d been a boy; on Barlow’s death, Nathaniel had taken to wearing the footman’s clothing, hat and coat both long since faded to a dull blue. No one had stopped him.
George, by contrast, wore a gloriously tailored coat dyed the earl’s color purple. Gold stitching on the outside of both sleeves and up the front traced out branches of the great world-tree, Yggdrasil, and he wore a gold hammer of Thunor on a gold chain around his neck. When he wore a hat, which he didn’t at the moment, it was of the same brilliance as his coat.
Landon wore old cast-offs once worn by George, faded to a duller violet, and the hammer on his breast was pewter.
“Still trying to nursemaid me, are you?” George laughed out loud. “Don’t worry your pretty head, Miss Lee! Even if the goose bites off my thumb, I can still be earl after my father is gone!”
“True!” Charles stroked his long mustachios. They made him look Texian, or maybe Ferdinandian. “If you fall and break your neck in a ganderpull, though, I am less optimistic of your chances. And you should be pleased you still have your father with you, and do your best not to disappoint him.”
“And therefore I am doing my best to plump up every serving maid in Johnsland with a baby Isham…or rather, Chapel.” George sneered at his half-brother, who now swung into the saddle of his own horse to take his turn.
Foster children and orphans were given good-luck names when their true family name was unknown, or could not be admitted in public. Chapel was such a name, and it was Landon’s name as well, though he and Nathaniel were no relations, as far as Nathaniel knew. Temple was another such name, as were Godsbless, Wodensson, Christborne, and Farewell. As such names went, Chapel was vaguely Christian, and it only made Landon and Nathaniel stick out more on the earl’s lands.
“My name is Landon Chapel,” Landon said, “but everyone knows who my father is.”
“Just not your mother,” George shot back.
“I heard a surprising Elector Song in a tavern in Raleigh this week,” Landon said. He burst into sudden melody:
Johnsland has two Electors, my word
One slaughters sheep and the other’s a bird
It was a parody of the Elector Song for Louisiana. Not a very good one.
“Say what you like about Old One Eye, but the earl is father to both of us,” George growled, “and I’ll gladly kill you for his honor’s sake.”
“Easy, George,” Charles murmured.
Landon shrugged. “If you die pulling the gander, it won’t be your get on poor Jenny Farewell who inherits. It’ll be me.”
~His get on Jenny Farewell. Get on Jenny Farewell.~ Nathaniel felt punched in the stomach.
“If I fall and break my neck,” George shot back, “our father’s twenty other bastards will come crawling out of the woods and swamps of Johnsland to make their claims. You’ll be fighting duels the rest of your life.” He took a swig from the bottle of wine. All four of them were slightly drunk. “Or maybe the Chief Godi will just take the earldom for the College.”
~Eat what you kill. Kill not, unless you eat.~
The buzz in Nathaniel’s head from the alcohol didn’t make the voices go away. It also didn’t dull the high-pitched whine he always heard in the background, behind the voices. His sudden understanding why Jenny was pleased to see George abused didn’t help, either. He rubbed his ear and managed not to whimper. “Kill,” he said.
Charles shot him a pitying look.
“Worse,” the young lieutenant said. “You’ll be fighting lawyers.”
“Woden’s nine nights, that’s a fate worse than death.” George finished the alcohol, belched deeply, and tossed the bottle beyond Charles into the now-bare tobacco field. “You’d better hope I survive, little Landy.”
Landon was the shorter of the two, but was muscular. He’d inherited the fine brown hair of his mother, whoever she was, rather than the rich, dark curls worn by George and—in his youth, if the paintings were to be believed—the earl himself. “I’ll protect you from the ferocious goose, George.” He smiled, maliciously. “And then maybe Jenny Farewell will tuck me into bed at night.”
“Shall Jenny be the prize, then?” George wobbled on his feet, then leaned against the fence.
“You might ask Jenny,” Nathaniel said softly. None of the others heard him.
~No! It is murder! I beg you!~
“I beg you,” Nathaniel finished in a murmur.
“The prize is the purse,” Charles said. He dug the small leather bag from the pocket of his coat and shook it, clinking the coins inside together to remind the others of their agreed stakes.
Landon rode past the scaffold and turned his horse around, prepared to begin his run at the goose. The goose, perhaps sensing Landon’s intention, honked loudly.
“Shall the prize be Jenny Farewell?” George laughed harshly. “So be it! I give her to you, my stubby little bastard brother, if you can pluck off the goose’s head!”
“I won’t raise your whelp, of course!” Landon called.
George shrugged. “We’ll call him Chapel and throw him in with the rest!”
The shrug unbalanced the young nobleman and sent him lurching sideways. Charles reached over the fence and grabbed George’s arm, holding him upright.
George pulled himself away and spat. “Hands off me!”
“Relax, George.” But Charles inclined his head deferentially and released the earl’s legitimate son.
George rolled from one foot to the other like a man standing on the deck of a ship, but didn’t fall.
“Go on, then!” he bellowed. “For the purse, for the goose, and for Jenny!”
Nathaniel held his breath, hoping Landon killed the goose. He didn’t want to take a turn.
~Kill me. Kill me.~
“Kill me,” Nathaniel repeated. He felt dizzy. It wasn’t the gander whispering in his deformed ear, but in a way, it was.
“Hee ya!” Landon spurred his mount into a charge. The horse was a long-legged hunter—Landon was a Chapel like Nathaniel, but he was the earl’s bastard, so he dressed in better castoffs and rode an expensive horse. The horse leaped into a blinding sprint and crashed toward the scaffold.
At the last moment, Nathaniel looked away. When Landon’s hunter passed him, slowing, Landon was rubbing his right hand with his left and muttering.
“Let me see that,” Charles called.
“He’ll be fine. Where’s that other flask?” George rummaged through his horse’s saddlebags.
Landon dismounted and showed Charles his hand. It was covered in blood.
“You’ll lose this finger if you don’t get it treated,” Charles told him.
“Fine.” Landon jerked his hand away. “Once I tear off this bird’s head, and swive Jenny Farewell senseless, I’ll have the cook stitch me up.”
“Too late.” George found the flask, unstoppered it, and took a long drink. “She’s already senseless.”
“She is if she puts up with you,” Charles said.
It was a joke, but a joke with a point in it, and George was too drunk to take it well. “Shut up!” he roared.
“George,” Charles pleaded.
“You’re the son of a murderer!” George snapped. “You should have been cast out with him!”
Charles looked George in the eye. “My father was a man of honor. I am not ashamed of him.”
“And don’t you ever forget that I am your earl!”
Charles looked down.
“Will be,” Landon said. “Unless the goose breaks your neck.”
George swung and took a punch at his half-brother. Landon being too far away, George only ended up lurching uselessly forward several steps. When he swayed and looked as if he might fall, Charles swung easily over the fence and caught him.
“Hands off!” George staggered away, leaned against the fence, and took another drink.
“My turn,” Nathaniel offered. He wanted to stop the bickering, wanted peace. Even if the other young men had been completely silent, Nathaniel would still have been tormented by the voices he heard, but if he could reduce the noise in the world to only those voices, he thought he could feel calm. “I’ll kill the bird, and happily take Jenny Farewell. She’d make a good wife for a fosterling like me.”
He climbed onto his mount, which was a rugged hill pony of the sort the Irish ploughmen or house servants of Johnsland might ride. He hoped his words would disarm the others, but George and Landon both looked furious.
~Kill me. Kill me.~
Was it the gander? The voice sounded like a gander’s voice, half-honk. “Kill me,” Nathaniel whispered, helpless not to repeat the words he heard.
All his life, Nathaniel’s left ear had jutted out sideways from his head, a complete mismatch to his right ear. When he heard the voices, blood filled his strange ear, which heated up and itched. He reached up to massage the ear now, hoping the gesture was inconspicuous.
“Well spoken, Nathaniel,” Charles said softly. “Jenny’s a good girl, and would be a good wife for any decent man.”
“Oh?” George spun about, almost falling. “Any decent man? But I will not have her, so I must not be decent, is that it?”
The earl’s son dropped his hand to the hilt of the saber on his belt.
“Impudent,” Landon muttered.
“That’s not what I meant.” Charles spoke slowly, and sounded tired. “We’re all a little drunk, and my words didn’t come out the way I intended them.”
“Try again, then.” George’s voice was icy.
Charles thought for a moment before speaking. “I meant that Nathaniel is a decent lad for thinking kindly of Jenny. You also, I know, think kindly of Jenny. Clearly, Jenny Farewell is far beneath your station and would not be a suitable bride for the future Earl of Johnsland. But she works hard, she’s bright enough to know her letters and a little Cherokee as well, and she’s a comely lass. For Nathaniel, I agree, she would be an excellent wife.”
“Or for you,” George said.
“Certainly.” Charles smiled. “Or for me. And I would try to do right by her, if she were mine.”
“Because he’s a bastard, and you may as well be.”
Charles’s breath hissed through his teeth. Nathaniel was afraid this confrontation was heading toward violence.
“My turn!” He pulled his old coat on tighter. Urging his pony into a canter, he turned at the elbow of the lane and rushed back toward the goose, reins in his left hand and right hand held high. The landscape rushed past him, but it also seemed to revolve around him, and his head felt light.
~Kill me. Kill me. Kill me.~
“Kill me!” he screamed, then bit his own tongue trying to force the words back into his throat.
He didn’t want to kill the gander. But the bird seemed to be begging him. He rode hard, fighting to keep his eyes open against sudden tears that threatened to blind him.
The goose honked one last time—
it turned its neck to thrust its greased head into Nathaniel’s outstretched palm—
crunch!
Nathaniel slowed and then stopped his horse, looking down in shock at the bird’s head that lay twitching in his cupped hand.
“Woden’s beard, I think he did it.” George walked away from Charles toward Nathaniel, reaching up to pull down the other young man’s hand to look inside.
~Thank you.~
“Thank you,” Nathaniel repeated, feeling exhausted.
“Publish the banns.” George snorted as he took the goose’s head. “Jenny’s yours, young Chapel.”
“I guess I’ll be having goose for dinner tomorrow night.” Nathaniel tried to grin big, and affect the bravado the others seemed to feel. Charles smiled back at him. Nathaniel’s ear tingled, so he rubbed it.
“You know, if you left your ear alone, it might not have swollen up to that ridiculous size,” Landon said.
“It’s not that young Nathaniel’s ear is large.” George grunted, climbing onto his own horse, where he swayed back and forth during the pause in his speech. “It’s that it sticks out sideways. Poor bastard looks like a windmill on his left side.”
“I’d have said an elephant,” Landon suggested.
“Master Nathaniel, you should take up merchant sailing,” George said. “If you were pursued by pirates and needed to acquire that extra bit of speed to escape, you could simply turn your nose aft and gather wind in your ear.”
“I’ll cut down the bird and have it sent to the kitchens,” Charles offered. “Why don’t you three retire for the evening?”
“To a cold, unjennied bed?” George harrumphed. “I suppose I could find another girl. Or there’s one of our tenant’s daughters who’s beginning to look ripe enough. The man can hardly object, we’ve just given him ten extra acres to work.”
The earl’s two sons rode back toward the big house.
Nathaniel waited a moment before speaking. “Thank you,” he said. “And I’m sorry.”
“You’ve nothing to be sorry for.” Charles grabbed Nathaniel by the shoulder and squeezed, a grip that made Nathaniel feel respected and trusted. “A man gets dealt good cards and bad in this life, and he doesn’t get to choose which. All he gets to decide is how to play them. And tonight, Master Nathaniel Chapel, I believe you played your cards quite well.”
Nathaniel rode alone to the servants’ building where he slept, trying not to slap his ear every time he heard one of the voices.
* * *
In the middle of the night Nathaniel awoke. The fire was low and the unmarried male servants with whom he shared the room tossed and turned, each on his plank bed.
Jenny Farewell sat on the edge of Nathaniel’s plank. She was wearing the dress she always wore, but she had tied a pink ribbon in her hair. She was crying, and her lip was split and puffy; nevertheless, she was a beautiful girl. Charles Lee is right, I’ll count myself lucky if I marry a girl this fine. Jenny sat at such an angle to the fire that Nathaniel could see, and notice for the first time, the swell of her belly that hid her unborn child.
“Are you mad, Nathaniel?” she whispered.
~The wind here never stops.~
“Never stops,” Nathaniel murmured. The ambient whine raised in pitch. His vision began dissolving into smears of white light.
Jenny caught her breath and her eyes grew wide. “I was…I was told you wished to see me.”
Nathaniel shook his head slowly; the motion aggravated the lights and his oncoming vertigo. He took her hand in his and squeezed it. “I think there’s been a mistake, Jenny,” he whispered. “You should go to sleep. But thank you for looking in on me.”
She nodded, silent tears in her eyes, and left.
As she stepped out of the room, his seizure began.
* * *
Luman Walters took his time and worked with a prayer in his heart. An efficacious himmelsbrief required not only the proper words, but beauty worthy of heaven in the execution, and the concentration of a focused soul in the crafting. He alternately looked over and through the round glass lenses perched on his nose, he held the pen firmly, and his hand was slow.
Really, an efficacious himmelsbrief could only be drawn by a righteous hexenmeister. Luman Walters wasn’t perfect, but he was trying.
On the other side of the office they were sharing, Director Schmidt looked up from the post’s book of accounts and snorted. “Another one, my Balaam?”
“You insist on traveling by boat, Madam Director.”
“It’s not a boat. It’s a canoe.”
“The Joe Duncan is far too large to be a mere canoe.”
“Oh, yes? Is this one of the arcane facts you learned from that old braucher you cheated, the maximum permissible size of canoes? Or have you also done some apprenticeship among the Haudenosaunee? You didn’t seem like you were an honored apprentice when I rescued you from the Seneca six months ago; you seemed more like a man fleeing justice.”
“I didn’t cheat the braucher. I paid him well, and I also paid his granddaughter. I only…played fast and loose with some of their tradition’s rules.”
Notwithstanding Schmidt laughed. “You damned sophist, that’s why I like you.”
The old man had been a great hexenmeister, a braucher in the Ohio German Christian tradition in a farming village outside Youngstown. Luman, then a young man, had been passing through and had asked to be taken as the hexenmeister’s apprentice. He spoke enough German, and a little Latin, he’d said, and he knew scripture.
The old man had explained that he would only pass his knowledge down within his own family, and moreover that tradition required that his braucherei alternate sexes from one practitioner to the next. The old man had many daughters and granddaughters, and was waiting for one of them to feel the spirit and come to him.
Luman almost accepted the dismissal. But the old man’s brusqueness had offended him, and besides, the braucher was blind and nearly deaf. It had been a simple task to help one of the old man’s granddaughters, Helga, feel the spirit. She had been stitching coats in an Imperial factory in Youngstown, which was a long day’s work that left her fingers pricked and bleeding, so the spirit required very little enticement to come to her.
Then it had been a matter of sitting by Helga’s side during her months of lessons. The wooden-headed little fraülein had never been able to retain a single charm longer than an afternoon, but Luman had soaked up all the old man’s craft.
He’d given Helga the money to pay her grandfather the purely optional but traditional honoraria, and paid her double what her wages had been in the factory. He earned the money at night, using his seeing stone or dowsing rods to help farmers place wells, and sometimes helping parties of money-diggers look for buried treasure. As often as not, the money-digging expeditions failed, generally because buried treasures are cursed by those who bury them, and tend to move away from the diggers. When they succeeded, it was because Luman had the wit to pin the treasure down within a circle of witch hazel withies, an astuteness for which he had not been praised. Once, he’d employed his arts to help a clan of German mystics find a cave within which to await the Second Coming of Christ. Despite his pointing out that his clients would have no need of money following the return of their Lord and may as well give it all to Luman, the mystics had insisted on paying him strictly by the hour.
Studying by day and working by night, Luman had drunk a lot of coffee.
The old man’s heart had given out just as he finished the course of instruction, convinced his granddaughter Helga was a coffee addict, but at least she was on her way to becoming a skilled hexenmeistres, capable of passing on the family’s tradition of god-fearing braucherei.
Since Helga so clearly wasn’t developing magical abilities, Luman had offered her a deal: she could keep all her grandfather’s money, and he would take the old man’s grimoires and other tools.
Helga, bored and by then convinced that Luman was rich, countered with a different deal: Luman could run if he liked, and she would call the constabulary.
He’d run immediately, but he’d taken the old man’s books with him. A man who moved as much as Luman couldn’t carry a library with him, so he’d pored over the books and extracted all their best for his vademecum. Unable to lug the books around and unwilling to destroy them, Luman had deposited them with the doorkeeper of a masonic lodge in Pittsburgh. He’d avoided Youngstown for a decade thereafter.
The Haudenosaunee…well, that was another story.
“You speak as if you don’t value my learning,” he said, affecting an injured tone.
“It is as St. Adam says. The ploughman is not as efficient as the man who only makes pins, but he is a much more interesting person.”
“St. Adam Weishaupt?” He was teasing her, of course. “Adam of the Garden? He was a ploughman.”
She snorted. “St. Adam the philosopher.”
“Someday I shall read his Lives of Wealthy Men and discover what excites you so.”
She said nothing, not even rising to the bait of his deliberately mangling the book title.
“I’m not certain you’ve answered my question,” he reminded her. “I’ve worked hard to learn from so many traditions. Don’t you value my knowledge?” Luman valued his own knowledge very much.
He lived for its further acquisition.
“I don’t mind you sleeping with a loaded pistol beside your pillow,” she said.
“That discourages hostile spirits.”
“So you’ve said. Though I believe you’ve also told me that hostile spirits can be driven out with a writ of divorce.”
“That is an exorcism technique,” Luman said patiently. “The loaded pistol keeps the spirits away in the first instance.”
“I’m not bothered by any of the other odd things you do, because I value what you can accomplish, my Balaam,” she continued. “In all its variety and macaronick glory. Inasmuch as your Faculty of Abrac comes by education, then yes, it is what I value most about you.”
“I was a frail child,” he answered. “The only way I have ever been able to get anything done has been by education.”
“Frail and poor,” she shot back. “If you’d had money, you’d have accomplished plenty.”
“Is that what your Scotsman teaches you?”
Notwithstanding Schmidt harrumphed.
“You know,” he said, “the men have all placed wagers as to where the name Joe Duncan comes from.”
“The name of my canoe.”
“Yes, fine, the name of your canoe.”
“What’s your wager?” Schmidt crawled through the book of accounts with a straight edge as they spoke, and Luman continued brushing out the written blessing onto the fine sheet of paper he’d brought from Philadelphia, one letter at a time.
“Will you tell me the truth if I tell you my bet?”
“Natürlich.” Schmidt’s father had been an Ohio German, one of the Ministerium’s preachers. She claimed that her mother had been a Yankee, and that the two had resolved their inability to agree on a name for their only daughter by opening to a random page of the Bible and shoving in a finger. Exodus chapter twenty-one, twenty-first verse: Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money. Both had been horrified, but also too pious, too committed, and too recalcitrant to back down.
He’d seen one of the factors reporting to her call her Nottie, once. The next day, there was a newly promoted former subfactor in his place.
“Very well. I bet six Philadelphia shillings—a grand sum, you will acknowledge, even if they were the old shillings, bearing Hannah’s face and slightly worn at the edges—that Joe Duncan was the name of your first lover.”
“A curious guess.”
“I’m not betting on your sense of nostalgia, but on your will to vengeance. I think if you were ever jilted by a man, you would want him under your feet forever after.”
“Ha!”
Luman waited. “Well?”
Schmidt set down the straight edge and looked up at him. “Joe Duncan was the name of my first…horse.” She smiled, her cheekbones standing out and her face abruptly looking feminine.
“I lose.”
“Sorry.”
“But you realize, this doesn’t resolve the mystery at all.”
Schmidt returned to the book. “Now you and the men can bet on why I named my first horse Joe Duncan. Do you feel confident enough to repeat the same wager?”
Luman considered. “I shall think about it, after I have finished this himmelsbrief, rolled it into an oiled case, and pasted the case inside the Joe Duncan, to replace the one that was soaked as we came over the Ohio Forks.”
“Is this the same text as the last one?”
“Of course. They’re letters from heaven. Heaven dictated the text, and to change it would be to destroy the power of the thing. A lumanwaltersbrief, God knows, would do you no good.”
“How much good did the last himmelsbrief do? It was destroyed by a little rain and being knocked about in some rapids, after all.”
“Yes, the letter was destroyed.” Luman stabbed the quill pen through the air at Director Schmidt. “But the Joe Duncan was not, eh? Your first horse the Joe Duncan was not.”
“And a teufelsbrief?”
Luman hesitated. “Well, yes, there are letters from hell, too. But…”
There came a knock at the door.
“Enter!” Notwithstanding Schmidt called.
The door opened and one of the Ohio Company traders stepped inside, quickly shutting the door behind him to keep out the late October chill. He removed his coonskin cap and rubbed some of the heated office’s air into his face. “There’s an Imperial chaplain here, Madam Director. He wishes to see you.”
“Chaplain? What do I need a chaplain for? I’ve got money, and I’ve got a wizard.”
The trader hesitated, toying with the cap in his hand. “He says he was father confessor to the emperor.”
Schmidt frowned. “Is his name Angleton? A Covenant Tract man?”
The trader nodded. “The two dragoons who came into the stockade yesterday confirm his story. He was chaplain to the Imperial House Light Dragoons, Madam Director.”
“If the dragoons corroborate his story, why not send him directly? Why this shuffling notice? Am I some pasha, only to be approached by supplicants on their bellies?”
“He looks…strange, ma’am. He’s filthy. He stinks of the graveyard.”
“Give me a moment,” Schmidt said. “Then send him in.”
The trader stepped outside and Schmidt called out, “also, send in the post superintendent. I’m ready to reconcile accounts with him.”
The trader nodded and shut the door.
Notwithstanding Schmidt picked up two pistols lying on the table near her and refreshed their firing pans. Pushing chairs under the table beside her to both her left and right, she laid a pistol on each chair. Out of sight, but within her reach.
Luman blew dry the last of the ink. “Madam Director, will you indulge me?”
“Not if you want to bring the canoe in here.”
Luman laughed. He laid the heavenly letter out flat on the desk before the Director, then carefully laid two of the post’s account books on top of it. The letter became invisible, but visibility was not necessary for such a letter. Indeed, himmelsbriefe were often nailed within the walls of houses, or above doors, to do their work without being seen.
Luman stepped to the side, near the fire, and crossed his arms.
The door opened abruptly and a tall man strode in, slamming the door shut again behind him. “Director Schmidt, yaas?” he said, in a nasal whine.
The newcomer was pale, with a hawkish nose between piercing, close-set blue eyes. He was thin and wore the black steepled hat favored by some of men of Boston and Hartford. At his waist hung a medieval-looking long sword. More strikingly, he wore a brown coat that looked on the verge of rotting entirely from his body, and his tongue and one ear were blackened, as if with charcoal. His eyes were sunken and dark.
And he did stink of the grave.
Something else bothered Luman, too, though he couldn’t quite have said what.
“Madam Director is the usual form of address,” she said. “Ma’am, if you know me well enough. But we’re in the Ohio, and I won’t stand on ceremony if you won’t.”
“Madam Director,” he said.
“Right Reverend Father Ezekiel Angleton,” she answered, “if I remember correctly.”
“I’m gratified you remember me. We’ve met.”
“In Horse Hall. You had just returned from an expedition to Acadia with the emperor. And again I think in Cambry. You were preaching a stirring Martinite exhortation not to accept employment with any Ophidian master.”
“Yaas. The Celts are entirely too quick to imagine themselves as magical creatures; that makes them sympathize more than they should with the Eldritch. You have a good memory.”
She smiled.
Luman realized what was bothering him about the chaplain; the man had burst in nearly at a run, and yet wasn’t breathing hard.
In fact, despite the long conversation he was carrying on with the Director, he didn’t seem to be breathing at all.
Luman reached into his coat and took his Homer amulet into his fist. It was a thin iron lamella hanging around his neck on a fine chain, and he knew the three lines of Greek inscribed onto it, between two tiny stylized crocodiles, by heart. Hos eipon taphroio dielase monychas hippous. Book Ten of the Iliad, all the ancient writers agreed, had special power. The amulet was good against enchantments and demons and ensured victory, the grimoire Luman had copied from his Memphite initiator even before his time in Youngstown assured.
“What can I do for you?” Schmidt asked, her smile dropping. “I’m actually quite busy, but I’m sympathetic to the needs of a fellow Imperial, especially one down on his luck.”
“Down on my luck?”
“You may already know that a few of the dragoons from your company have straggled into this post in the last twelve hours or so. I haven’t heard a full, coherent story yet from any of them, but I gather that the Imperial House Light Dragoons have come to misadventure. Happily, I believe you weren’t accompanying the emperor at the time, and His Imperial Majesty is safe at home in Philadelphia.”
“Yaas.” Angleton straightened out and removed his hat, holding it to his breast as if in salute. “Yaas, Madam Director, you’ve heard true. I come to you because I need additional assistance for my errand. The emperor’s errand.”
Andras t’aspairontas en argaleesi phonesin.
“The emperor could assign you men to assist, if he wished. If he is sparing, it may be because he finds himself somewhat short on manpower.”
Angleton rubbed his eyes. “Thomas doesn’t know my present need.”
“Thomas?” Schmidt arched her eyebrows. “Well, I’m afraid it’s out of the question. I have orders myself, you see. I’m recruiting additional men into the ranks of the Company Regulars, and I also bear letters patent from the emperor allowing me to take management of Imperial Militia units, which I am doing. And I and my men are marching west. And I can’t spare any of them. Not one.”
“You’re building an army.”
“I’m reinforcing the Pacification of the Ohio. As ordered.”
“I have orders, too.” Angleton jammed his hat back onto his head.
“Yes, what are they? Perhaps our errands are compatible, and I can help you in some way.”
“I’m bound for Johnsland,” the chaplain said. “The emperor has sent me…that is, I seek to capture an enemy agent. An Ophidian, a traitor.”
Autoi d’hydro pollon aponizonto thalasse.
The iron lamella tingled in Luman’s grip.
“You know, many Ophidians are loyal subjects of the Empire,” Schmidt said mildly. “They pay taxes, engage in trade. Some of them work for the Company. I know you Martinites did good work in the Serpentwars, but you might be well advised to moderate your rhetoric now.”
Ezekiel Angleton sprang forward, hands reaching for the director—
she thrust her own hands under the table, but she was too slow—
Luman jumped to intervene, but he was too far away and much smaller than the Yankee—
and then Angleton reached the edge of the desk and fell back, as if he had struck a brick wall.
Notwithstanding Schmidt blinked like an owl. Luman arrested his charge and stared.
Roaring, the Yankee cleric hurled himself forward again, and again bounced back.
“What is this?” he shrieked.
“This,” Schmidt said, producing two pistols from under the table, “is confirmation that I receive value for money from my hexenmeister.”
Ezekiel Angleton froze, stared at the pistols for several long seconds, and then retired to the door. He wrapped his coat about himself, adjusted his hat, and drew himself up to his full height. “Forgive me, Madam Director. I haven’t slept these two nights, and I’m not myself.”
“Forgiven. I still can’t spare you the men. Good luck in Johnsland. Watch out for your Celts, while you’re there. I hear the Cavaliers’ Irish servants still sink the children of Adam into the bogs and sing their druidic chants. For that matter, who can say what sacrifices the earl’s own godar really offer on those bloody rock-heaps?”
“None of my affair,” Angleton said. “I follow St. Martin Luther.”
“And lust for Firstborn blood.”
Angleton nodded sharply and exited, leaving the door open.
Director Schmidt laid down her pistols, moved aside the account books, and examined the himmelsbrief lying on the table. “This is indeed a beautiful piece,” she observed. “I rather think I’d like you to make another one…one I could wear, say, in the lining of my coat.”
“One for you, Madam Director,” Luman Walters said. “And a second for me.”
The post superintendent, a big-nosed man named Weber, stepped into the office.
“Ah, Herr Superintendent,” Schmidt said, pronouncing the S like a Z, in German fashion. “I have reviewed your journal accounts and recalculated the post’s capital surplus. I must say, your mathematics were very nearly exact. That tends to suggest that you are an honest man, and even competent.”
Weber looked at Luman and chuckled nervously.
Luman smiled back and checked his stock of fine Philadelphia-bought paper. He had himmelsbriefe to produce.
“Also, your working capital seems to be tightly managed. Now get the post’s cash, please,” Director Schmidt continued. “We will need to reconcile the accounts to cash on hand. The Company is going to extract an extraordinary dividend.”
“Don’t worry, though,” Luman added. “In return, I’ll hex the trading post to drive additional business here. I have all the orange wax I need to cast the spell, but I’d appreciate it if you could procure a rooster—the bird will die, you understand—and a copper coin earned by the post in ordinary trade. And please show me a spot where you don’t mind me hiding something in the wall.”
* * *
Ma’iingan left his canoe buried under a drift of autumn leaves high above the river the Zhaaganaashii and the Haudenosaunee called the Ohio. He marked the location discreetly in the bark of nearby trees, but he wasn’t too concerned; he had made the canoe himself, in a few hours’ work, and he could make another if he needed to.
He had spent most of his journey in solitude. He shared a pipe of asemaa with Sauk and Fox hunters when he encountered them, to assure them of his peaceful intentions. He spoke Zhaaganaashii and he made a point of saluting all travelers when he passed, but he didn’t need to trade—with his bow, or occasionally with his German rifle, he killed deer and other game to feed himself. He also found his own water, and he built his own shelter when necessary. And he knew his path from the vision his spirit guide, his manidoo, had shown him.
Ma’iingan simply didn’t need to speak to anyone else.
This left him time to think. His manidoo had told him that the healer he sought would need Ma’iingan’s help. What help would he need? Was the room Ma’iingan had seen in vision a prison cell? Ma’iingan had never been in a prison, and the People didn’t administer such things, but he had seen them from the outside, in Waukegan and Chicago. If the healer needed food, water, or shelter, Ma’iingan could help.
But the spirit had said the healer was laid low by illness. What would the healer need, that Ma’iingan could provide?
Ma’iingan climbed through mountains the inhabitants called the Appalachee. He saw Shawnee, and Zhaaganaashii, and when the Shawnee settlements gave way to the brick and wood houses of the Cherokee towns, Ma’iingan knew he was getting close.
On the day when he could finally smell—faint and far away—the great waters of the ocean, Ma’iingan found the healer.
He stumbled into a hunt. Only it wasn’t a hunt such as Ma’iingan knew, with the quiet stalking of a herd of deer, the hunter taking a knee with his bow and waiting patiently for the right moment to receive the sacred gift of the earth and the forest. Instead, it began as an avalanche of fur.
Rabbits passed Ma’iingan first, running uphill. Behind the rabbits came foxes and raccoons, but these weren’t pursuing the rabbits; they too were pursued.
Ma’iingan heard the baying of dogs and Zhaaganaashii curses. He didn’t think he was the intended prey, but a distracted hunter might shoot him anyway, so he quickly scrambled up the nearest tree, a tall white pine. Perched high in the pine’s branches with his legs wrapped around the trunk, he carefully maneuvered his bow into one hand and a single arrow into the other, hiding the arrow alongside the tree trunk.
The Zhaaganaashii were arranged like a chevron of flying geese, only they flew backward. The loose arms of the chevron consisted of men and boys in coarse cloth, holding sticks. They were the source of the yelling and they struck bushes and trees with their cudgels, driving the animals ahead of them.
Between the two arms came a group of four Zhaaganaashii men in more elaborate clothing, with longer hair. All four of them wore long purple coats, faded and worn to different degrees. At least one of them was scented with perfume Ma’iingan could smell from the top of the tree and over the pine sap.
“This is beneath me, really,” one of the men said. He had curly dark hair and carried a musket, but carelessly. Of all of them, his coat was the brightest purple. “I should be hunting the stag.”
“True, George,” said the oldest of the group. He was younger than Ma’iingan and bigger, with a broad chest and shoulders that would make him a fierce fighter. “But Landon and Nathaniel could use the practice.”
“As could you, Charles,” George sniffed.
The boy with long brown hair laughed. Rudely, Ma’iingan thought.
“Yes,” Charles agreed. His answer was slow and sounded good-natured, but Ma’iingan heard a note of anger in it. “Especially with the musket. All the shooting I do these days is with the pistol, you know.”
“Do I know?” George snapped. “Do I?”
“Easy, George,” Charles said. “I only mean that in the cavalry, I don’t get to shoot long guns much. Carbines and horse pistols.”
“Yes, you remind me that you’re in the cavalry. That my father has been good enough to pay for your commission, while I have not yet got mine! Thank you, Charles, for that reminder!”
“You’ll have it soon enough,” Charles said.
“Yes,” the brown-haired boy said. “And you shall be captain, at least. Maybe colonel. And Lieutenant Charles Lee here will run your messages back and forth to other important commanders and to your many mistresses, and see that your laundry is done to your liking.”
Ma’iingan didn’t follow all the words, but he understood that the young warriors were talking about rank and who took precedence over whom. This was a much more complicated question among the Zhaaganaashii than in the People’s war bands.
“Don’t you start, Landon,” George snarled.
“What?” The brown-haired youth, Landon, staggered sideways under George’s glare. “I am only pointing out that you’re the important one here!”
“I’m important, so I won’t see any real fighting, is that it? I’ll be a coward, the kind of commander who has more mistresses in his camp than victories to his name?”
Ma’iingan now noticed that the fourth boy was continually worrying his left ear. He cringed at each new demand or accusation from George, as if he could only barely keep from running away at a full sprint. His left ear jutted out obliquely from his head, barely visible under a large three-cornered hat, and it burned a dark, angry red. The boy’s coat was too large for him, and he seemed to be constantly shrinking into its folds, as if trying to hide.
“Run fast, run free!” Then the fourth boy turned and Ma’iingan saw his face; this was the healer. He was the youngest of the three, maybe as old as fifteen winters, and he looked as if he were about to burst into tears.
“George,” Charles said. “We all love you and respect you. I, for one, will be happy to fight under your command, when the time comes. And though they are not stags, I see two rabbits running up that patch of sandy earth over there—would you like to take the first shot?”
“What are you saying, that you think George will miss?” Landon nearly shouted this, pushing so close to Charles they almost butted noses.
The healer struck his own ear repeatedly. “Don’t let them shoot me!”
“I think George will hit the rabbit,” Charles said. “And if he doesn’t, he won’t be the first excellent marksman to fail to take a target.”
“I want Landon to take the shot.” Even from the top of the tree, Ma’iingan could see George’s vicious sneer.
“I can hit it,” Landon said after a moment.
“Of course you can,” Charles said.
“Of course you can.” George was still sneering.
The healer, who must be named Nathaniel, fell slowly behind. He whimpered softly.
The rabbits in question had moved on, but there was another target. “I’ll shoot that raccoon over there,” Landon suggested. “The one trying to hide under the dogwood.”
“That’s a long shot,” Charles said.
“He can hit it,” George said.
“I’m sure you’re right,” Charles agreed. “I don’t think I could, but you’re both better shots than I am.”
Ma’iingan listened to the three young men talk about their raccoon, but his eyes were on the healer. The young man—boy, really—stood thirty feet from his friends, bending over his own knees and breathing deeply.
What was wrong with him?
Landon raised his musket. The weapon was of high quality, perhaps not quite as high as Ma’iingan’s German gun. Landon’s aim wavered slightly, but the raccoon was not so very far away. Ma’iingan considered shooting the animal with his bow, and relished in his imagination the looks of surprise on the youths’ faces as an Anishinaabe hunter stole their prey from under their noses, right out of the sky.
But he didn’t do it. Mostly because, with all the tension among the three oldest, they might respond by shooting him instead.
Bang!
Landon’s gun went off and the raccoon lived, scampering away beyond the dogwood tree and disappearing farther up the slope.
“Damn you!”
“Theology has never been my forte, but I believe neither my father’s godar nor Parson Brown contemplate the possibility of either damnation or salvation for raccoons.” George delivered this speech with a smirk that made Ma’iingan want to climb down out of the tree and punch the young man in the mouth. “They’re vermin.”
“No, I don’t mean…not the raccoon!” Landon shook his gun in a vaguely threatening gesture.
“Oh?” George asked. “If the raccoon is not to be damned, then who is?”
Landon looked trapped, but then he swung his weapon like a club at Charles’s head. “You!” he shouted. “Damn you, Charles Lee!”
Charles sidestepped the attack. “Hell’s Bells, Landon, stop it, you’re embarrassing yourself in front of the beaters.”
Ma’iingan looked to the people who had been driving game from the bushes with sticks. They had indeed stopped, and were looking at the three young men with a mixture of fear, surprise, and amusement.
“It’s your fault. You made me take that shot!” Landon swung his gun at Charles’s head.
This time the older, bigger youth simply caught the weapon. He yanked it from Landon’s hands and threw it aside, then pushed his attacker to the ground with a single shove.
“You are too old to give in to your temper like that, Landon Chapel,” Charles said gravely. “And you do not have the station to protect you from the consequences when you do.”
“No?” George said drily. “And who would have such station?”
Charles snorted. “Do you never grow tired of this game, George?” Without waiting for an answer, he took the healer under his arm and walked away downhill. Nathaniel pawed at his ear repeatedly as they went.
Giimoodaapi’s healer was indeed laid low by illness, and Ma’iingan still had no idea how to help him.