“Buchanan also senses things are changing. Even in the colony people are becoming too independent-minded for his liking. He gives speeches in Council about how vulnerable Carthage still is, how it constantly totters at the edge of destruction.”
“Uttering such phrases is just part of who he is. We are the shadow that gives meaning to his light. If he didn’t have a real threat, he would have to invent one.”
Hadrian studied his friend with fresh worry. “Meaning he has a real threat now?”
Nelly returned his steady gaze without speaking.
“Things are going to be different,” he said. “He’s been looking for a reason to clamp down, to secure more power.” He looked away, apology now in his tone. “One of his policeman was murdered, Nelly. The night you escaped.”
Her breath choked. She dropped into her chair.
“Who helped you at the prison?” he asked. “You were on that steamboat that sailed out at dawn, you must have been.” He sighed in frustration when she didn’t answer. “Buchanan wants to be able to call it a budding insurrection. It’s the opportunity he has been waiting for. He will use the exiles as his scapegoats and take more power as a result. If he can’t destroy you, he’ll simply annex you and throw all your leaders into prison.”
Nelly looked out the window into the darkness. “Every night since I heard of Jonah’s death I’ve had the same nightmare. I’m in a chair on a porch, rocking in the dark. Jonah appears and puts his hand on my shoulder. Not Jonah. His ghost. He says he forgives me for his death. It makes no sense. It tears my heart out.”
Once more Hadrian had the sense that it was Jonah who’d set in motion the machinery that seemed to be grinding them all up. He recalled the ominous message Jonah had sent to her. “What did he mean, Nelly, about the shifting of the world being upon us?”
“I told you I didn’t know. But it wasn’t a message I could ignore. Shenker had just come back into camp from one of his travels. He said we had to go, right away, he promised to go with me. We signaled immediately that we were coming.”
“You mean with the tree on the ridge.” She did not respond. “But I think you had some idea of what he wanted.”
“Something about the medicines, that’s what I assumed.”
“You said you made a list of illnesses.”
“Carthage needs medicines too. I think he thought that working jointly to heal the sick would bring us together.”
“What illnesses? What were the ones you told him about?”
“Influenza. Dysentery. Typhus. Snow blindness. Dropsy.”
“Snow blindness?”
“It’s what they’re calling a new disease among our young. They go into intermittent comas. Their eyes go all white. Three or four have died.”
Hadrian stared at her in silence. “In Carthage,” he said, “we call it an industrial accident.” He began to explain what he knew about the death of Jamie Reese. “It had something to do with the murder of that policeman, I am sure of it,” he concluded. “What was it, Nelly,” he pressed, “why did Jonah have to see you so urgently?”
“Don’t you think I’ve been trying to understand ever since I saw you with his body that night?
“You saw me?”
“I was in the crowd, with my cloak over my head. I was about to run inside to look for him when you came out carrying him. Shenker pulled me away, said police would be swarming over the building soon.”
“But you had been watching the building, waiting for a safe time to go in to Jonah. Surely you saw something.”
“We were waiting in the shadows for more than hour. Two families came out carrying books. A delivery boy took in what looked like a tin of food, ran out a few minutes later. A police patrol went by. I’ve replayed it in my head again and again. There was nothing suspicious.”
“You watched the rear door too?”
“Shenker did. Whichever entry cleared first we would use to go to Jonah. A janitor left, he said. A garbage wagon was emptying bins.”
“His funeral was two days later. Where were you? Not at his house. I was there.”
“I was there too, long enough to see through the window that it had been ransacked.”
“Where were you?” he asked. “Maybe I can find witnesses who will help, at least make it clear you didn’t kidnap the owner of that house.”
“Sanctuary is where you take it,” came her cryptic reply.
It was daybreak by the time Hadrian gathered his backpack and had checked on Emily’s mare, praying that Nelly’s influence would keep the horse from exile stewpots. He moved up the rutted road away from the harbor, toward the plateau where most of the camps’ population lived. Kinzler’s improvements faded quickly as he walked away from the waterfront. A scarecrow in a field resolved itself into a woman who pried with a stick at frost heaves, looking for potatoes that had escaped the blight. At the other end of the field a pig, less discriminating, rooted among a pile of the diseased tubers. A goose waddled by, extending a broken wing.
A tall man, thin as a stick, struggled with a shovel in the rocky soil at the edge of the cemetery. With a sagging heart Hadrian saw the row of fresh graves, most marked only with makeshift pine crosses or upended flat rocks. Beyond lay a row of shabby cottages whose roofs at least signaled the benefit of the new salvage trade. Two were covered with large sheets of plastic cloth, another with a mosaic of automobile license plates wired together like shingles.
He thought he recognized the face of a man walking with a cane and lifted his chin in tentative greeting. The man glared at him, then hobbled on. The haggard face would inhabit his nightmares now.
Hadrian had been the most persistent of all the founders to seek out other survivors, ignoring the warnings of Jonah and Buchanan when he had pressed farther and farther toward the ruined cities. There had been ten in the last group he had found, wandering along a stream in search of roots and amphibians to eat. Every one of them had been sick, damaged by radiation or the diseases of the malnourished. They had not welcomed him, they had thrown stones at him. He had to call out from behind a tree trunk to explain who he was and where he wished to take them. He’d emptied the food from his pack and watched them devour it like animals, then retch most of it back up as the fresh grain and meat hit their ravaged stomachs. They had encircled him, staring with wild, hateful eyes, as if he were responsible for their plight, then they had jumped him, ripping his clothes, kicking him until an older woman with a crutch had beat away his attackers. Once in Carthage, half had died within weeks. The other half were exiled months later. He had stopped searching for survivors.
He sat on a stump, watching the morning chores and remembering. Jars of night soil were being emptied into communal sewage pits. A child ran past him. A bird trilled from the forest. A goat bleated from a shed by the trees, waiting to be milked. Another child ran past him. Hadrian paused as a third child emerged from a house at a trot. The children were all running to the goat shed. No. He stood, watching more closely. They were being summoned by the bird in the woods.
Two minutes later he was crouching by the shed, watching as they gathered around a lanky, fair-haired boy sitting by a rolled-up blanket. Dax looked worn from his travels but seemed to take strength from the children, who were anxious to share the tattered magazine he produced from his bedroll. Only when he pushed the roll to the side did Hadrian see the canvas pouch hanging from his shoulder, the size of a courier bag. He crept back into the shadows. The boy had beseeched the dead Jonah for words to carry and now he had some.
There was a patient, almost gentle air about the boy as he entertained the little ones, a kindness Hadrian hadn’t seen before. Dax had the manner of an older brother. Hadrian rose, about to descend toward the group, when the wind died and he caught a snippet of the conversation. The boy was explaining a glossy photo of an airliner with children waving to it. “On the other side each of us gets a big silver bird,” Dax said, “and we flies inside it beyond the sky, all around the world, just’cause
we can.”
He sank back into the shadows. Minutes later he returned to the woods and began to parallel the boy’s path as Dax rose, leaving the magazine with the bewildered children. Toward the harbor, a man cleaning a stable waved at the boy and Dax handed him a folded piece of paper before trotting to a woman at a laundry tub. She joyfully accepted an envelope, then gave him a grateful hug.
Hadrian strode ahead to a point where he could see the waterfront. Two men at the boathouse watched the dusty road as if expecting the boy. Two others were splitting firewood and stacking it by the dock. Dax paused as he crested the hill, looking first at the waiting men and then beyond them before breaking into a desperate run. Hadrian strained to see what so worried the boy, cupping his hand over his eyes to look toward the rising sun. Then the morning wind pushed the cloud cover stretching toward the north. It seemed but a thread in the sky at first but as he watched it grew steadily bigger. One of the steamboats was coming.
When he looked back, Dax and the men who had awaited him were disappearing into the mysterious compound on the little peninsula. Hadrian abandoned his caution and began running toward the water’s edge.
Gasping for breath, squeezing his throbbing arm, he watched from the shadows as the guard at the gate was called inside the palisade. The man returned wheeling a wooden barrow bearing a single wooden keg. As the man headed with his cargo toward the boathouse, Hadrian moved along the shore until he was directly across from the rear of the palisade. Spotting a gate open in the rear wall, he lowered his pack and entered the water at a run.
Moments later he leaned against the log wall, dripping wet. He hadn’t been spotted but soon would be in plain sight of the approaching boat. He slipped through the gate into the nearest shadow, nearly gagging from the acrid odor that filled the confined space. It was a small lean-to piled with kegs, several of which were leaking their contents. He dipped a finger in the pool at his feet and sniffed. Turpentine. The year before a farmer living between the camps and Carthage had opened a mill to process the pungent solvent from the pine trees on his land.
He stole along the rear of the nearest building. Through its window he saw stacks of supplies inside, most in kegs and rough crates, with pieces of salvage hanging from pegs. Voices rose, and he heard the crackle of the wheelbarrow on the gravel. He ventured a look around the corner and watched as another keg was carefully loaded, as if it might explode.
Through a window of the largest building Hadrian glimpsed Dax, a frightened, guilty expression on his face as he gazed at the men gathered around a chair in the center of the room. Only when Shenker raised his hand to slap the figure in the chair did the others step back enough for Hadrian to see.
Jori Waller’s face was already swelling from her beating. Blood trickled down her chin.
“When are the others coming?” Shenker was shouting loud enough to be heard outside. “Buchanan didn’t send his slag bitch for nothing!”
Hadrian retreated along the wall, desperately scanning the grounds for a means of distraction. Rags were piled against the wall of the storage shed. A smoldering brazier sat near the gate where it had warmed the night guards. He snatched up several rags and darted back to the lean-to, dipping them into the puddle of turpentine. Watching as the next keg was wheeled from the compound, he ran toward the gate, tossed the soaked rags on the brazier, and disappeared into the shadows along the far wall.
The explosion of flame brought frantic cries from inside the main building. As the blaze licked around the gateposts, three men ran out, shouting, clearly frightened the flames would soon reach something else.
Shenker, standing just inside the door, gave a surprised gasp as Hadrian slammed his shoulder against him, knocking him to the floor. He had his knife open and had cut half of the ropes on the sergeant’s chair before the men from outside returned, with fury in their eyes and clubs in their hands.
HE WAS ON a train, holding his grandfather’s hand as he nodded off to the regular hissing, chugging sounds of the wonderful antique locomotive. He could smell the hot dog the boy in the next seat was eating. His grandfather had promised him ice cream when they reached the station.
Gradually other sounds and smells began to stir Hadrian from his slumber. He groggily nestled into his grandfather’s shoulder. Suddenly something cold and slimy pressed into his cheek. He sniffed and nearly gagged from the stench of putrid water and long dead fish, regaining consciousness in a fit of coughing and retching.
Someone pulled his shoulder up, lifting him out of the foul air along the bottom of the dark chamber. He shook his head violently from side to side, trying to regain his senses, feeling now the throbbing aches on his shoulders and back where he had been beaten.
“If that’s how you rescue me,” came a hoarse voice, “remind me to apply for a new hero.”
“Sergeant?” He struggled with his words. “You weren’t supposed to be in the camps.”
“I didn’t know where the boy was bound when I started following him. You said he was carrying secret messages. I certainly didn’t know he had discovered me tracking him.”
“Dax turned you in?”
“I am such a fool.” Her tone was bitter. “I watched him hail someone working at a field by the woods, watched the two of them speak, even saw the stranger run toward the waterfront. I never imagined it was about me. They gave him a fresh loaf of bread and some dried herring after four of them cornered me at the edge of the village. That’s what I’m worth. A fish sandwich.”
A sudden violent lurch that sent Hadrian reeling against the wall left no doubt where they were. On a boat that was out in the swells, straining its engine. “What direction?” he asked as he looked at the partially open hatch overhead. Without a ladder they had no way out.
“North.”
“You should have turned back when you saw the camps, Sergeant. You have no idea what you stepped into.”
“And you do?”
“They are conspiring to take over Carthage. Buchanan and his police have become their sworn enemies.”
“That’s the trouble with you old survivors. You overdramatize everything. Feast or famine. Utopia or apocalypse. If this was a war, I’d be dead.”
“The most convenient killing ground is the middle of the lake. Did they take your gun?”
She gave a resentful nod.
“In the old days a policeman losing a gun had to get it back to restore his honor.” Hadrian regretted the words even before he felt her baleful stare.
Waller muttered a curse and stepped to the far side of the hold, making sure with a stomp of her boot to splash bilge water on Hadrian. He leaned against the bulkhead, knees bent, burying his head in his folded arms. He could not understand why he always felt compelled to taunt the woman.
The sturdy vessel was steadily picking up speed as she moved out of the shoreside currents, settling into a rhythmic heaving motion as she crested low swells. After several minutes he rose and began studying the beams and planks, running his fingers along joints that seemed familiar. He suddenly froze and surveyed the hold and what he could see of the wheelhouse through the hatch. The Anna. It was impossible. Yet he was certain he recognized the boat, recalling how he had joined in her construction years earlier when Jonah had become impatient to install his first steam engine.
He felt the sergeant’s stare and turned for a moment. “The tenth boat,” he said. “You were right. It turned into a phantom. The Anna never sank, she was stolen.”
Jori replied with a grim nod.
Jonah and Hadrian had both felt a personal loss when the Anna had been reported lost, though by then the shipyard had grown more sophisticated, had moved on to larger and more functional workboats. The Anna was small and fast. A smuggler’s dream.
His mind raced as he tried to understand how her loss could have been fabricated. He’d attended the hearing, had heard how a sudden gale had overtaken her as the crew had shut down the engine to repair a leaking pipe. He closed his eyes, recalling the witne
sses, the two heroic survivors who’d clung to an overturned dinghy for two days. They were Fletcher and Jamie Reese who, with unfortunate timing, had agreed to leave the Zeus to fill in for an ailing crew member. They had testified that the two other men on board had drowned, and so a wreath had been laid for them in the cemetery. Flynn and Wheeler. He remembered the governor calling out their names in the roll of the colony’s heroes. Jonah had given a speech.
Suddenly he went still. On his last journal page Jonah had written how he had seen all ten boats of the fleet. Wanderers all returned home. Jonah had known, had deliberately recorded the truth, as if it would have been meaningful for someone who understood his secret journal. Hadrian had not fully appreciated the journal. It held secrets within secrets.
Hadrian studied the bulkhead that divided the hold, a new wall erected to create a separate compartment in front of the engine room. He touched his pocket and to his surprise found his knife still there. Settling on a large knot in the wooden planks, he began chipping away at its edges.
Ten minutes later he had his eye pressed to the open knothole, gazing into a small chamber with an elevated floor. The hatch cover overhead was ajar, allowing enough light for him to plainly see six of the small kegs that had been wheeled out of the compound, carefully secured with rope to cleats on the wall. He felt a touch on his shoulder and straightened to let Waller look.
“What could the camps make that would be so valuable to some impoverished fishermen in the north?” she asked.
“Gunpowder.”
“No,” the sergeant shot back. “I went to the library two days ago, looked in the old science textbooks. Nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur is what is used. The sulfur is yellow and stinks like sour eggs.”
“All of which they could find if they look in the mountains. You forget that many of the original exiles were scientists. Jonah had no trouble setting up a gunpowder workshop when they needed it to blast channels for the water works.”
Ashes of the Earth Page 17
