Ashes of the Earth

by Eliot Pattison

  “New Jerusalem,” Hadrian began. “That’s what they call the camps now. The promised land.” He choose not to offer every detail of his past month but spoke of the smugglers, the Anna, Kinzler’s mysterious walled compound, and his discovery of St. Gabriel. He spoke for nearly an hour, accepting more tea, then thick-sliced brown bread and butter. He hesitated about proceeding when he recognized the pain and anger on the faces of his audience. But there was no real surprise. They had harbored suspicions of the truth.

  At last he rose to stand at the window and survey the grounds outside. “How often have you been meeting like this?”

  “Three or four times,” Emily said. “Why?”

  Hadrian tossed onto the table the Bookstick butt he’d retrieved from the snow. “Someone has been watching. He wore police shoes. There may be several on the force who smoke these but only one I know for certain.”

  The farmers cast worried glances at Emily. “Bjorn!” she exclaimed. Then she rose and pulled shut the curtains. “Buchanan is furious at us. He selected Van Wyck’s replacement but we have withheld our approval.”

  “The head of the millers’ guild,” Hadrian confirmed with a nod. “On what grounds do you protest?”

  “Officially, we need none. The vote has to be unanimous, or we go to a full election.”

  Why, he asked himself, was it suddenly so important for the millers to be represented on the Council? “Unofficially?”

  Emily grimaced. “The drugs are spreading. I have half a dozen patients with hallucinations or in comas. Buchanan has started proceedings to exile anyone whose eyes bleach out. They’re mutants, he says, technically covered by the expulsion laws.” She glanced uncomfortably at the tall farmer to her right. “Wilmot’s daughter is one of them. And no one knows anything about this man from the miller’s guild. He came in from some distant farm, was raised to guild master overnight when the last one died unexpectedly. There was talk of bribery.”

  “The last one,” Hadrian said. “A man named Hampden.”

  Emily nodded. “He died more than a year ago.”

  “A few months later the head of the shipwrights’ guild also died. Both of heart attacks. And both their replacements have been raised to the Council.” He reached into his coat and pulled out the two death reports.

  The doctor, recognizing the format of the pages, slowly reached for them. “What have you done?” she demanded, heat rising in her voice. “You can’t just—”

  “I didn’t cut these from the death lists. Someone else did. And the jackals have been trying to find them ever since.” Hadrian quickly explained what he knew about the reports. “They were hidden at a house behind the square. White clapboard with a stone chimney and a white fence.”

  Hadrian watched as Emily’s face tightened. “I know who lives in that house,” she grimly declared. “He’s on duty at the hospital tonight.”

  Thirty minutes later Hadrian sat with Emily in her office at the hospital, a large leather-bound book opened in front of them on her desk. They had quickly located the official death reports. The pages were not missing from the book although the two pages in the ledger were in a different handwriting. Both had been signed by Dr. Jonathan Salens, owner of the house off the square.

  “It makes no sense,” Emily said after reading through the notices in the book. “Salens signed the original reports in the book and someone made duplicates over the names of two other doctors.”

  Hadrian pushed down on the ledger book, pressing the pages flat to the binding. “No,” he said after a quick inspection. “These pages from his house were the originals. They were cut out and the new ones replaced them.” He pointed out how new sheets had been inserted and secured with expert stitches. “No one would notice. No one would care. Routine reports. Routine deaths signed by one of your doctors.”

  “Except Salens was not the examining doctor,” Emily growled. She consulted a pocket watch. “He should be out of surgery now,” she said, and pushed back her chair to leave the office. Hadrian bent and reread every word of the reports, then took a seat in the shadows behind the door.

  Emily returned moments later, engaged in pleasantries with the thin, black-haired doctor he’d seen tending Jamie Reese weeks earlier. Salens, he recalled now, had quickly moved away when Hadrian had asked about the fisherman, had been the one who had reported Reese’s death as an industrial accident. The atmosphere abruptly changed as she closed the door and pointed to the ledger on her desk, opened to the first of the reports. “Fabricating official records is a crime.”

  “So the police found the painting,” Salens said in a tight voice. “I told them not to trouble themselves when they asked about it.”

  “If there is any hope of you not becoming a hospital janitor by this time tomorrow, you’d better start explaining right now.”

  Salens sank into a chair. His good looks seemed to fade as Emily dropped the two stolen pages beside the ledger. “Two men died of natural causes,” he said cautiously. “The reports in the ledger are accurate.”

  “You did not conduct the examinations. Why then is your name on them?”

  When Salens did not reply Hadrian stepped from the shadows. “Because the changed reports are in his handwriting.”

  Salens stared at Hadrian with resentment. “I wouldn’t sign another doctor’s name,” he said stiffly. “That would be wrong.”

  A bitter laugh escaped Emily’s lips.

  “They are the same reports,” protested Salens.

  “No,” Hadrian said. “There are several differences. In your reports you left out the fact that each ate at the same restaurant before his death. The Blue Gander. And you made sure a symptom was left out of the official record. Blue-black discoloration of the skin along the forearms.”

  Salens stared into his folded hands. “They both died of cardiac arrest. None of what is written is a lie.”

  “It became a lie by its omissions,” Hadrian corrected.

  “Who told you to do this?” Emily demanded.

  “No one.”

  “Very well,” Emily said. “I will send for the police. Lieutenant Kenton would find such a case of great interest. The governor will probably know by morning.”

  “No!” Salens exclaimed. “You can’t!”

  “Then who told you to do this?” Emily pressed. “What else have you done?”

  “It isn’t like that,” Salens said. “I never . . .” He glanced up at Emily with a desolate expression. “There was a girl at the tavern behind the Blue Gander. A working girl. I’d lost a lot of money to the owner at the poker games there, more than I could afford. I was going to lose my house. The owner said he had a way for me to pay it off, said he had a girl, his best girl, who would be out of work for months if something wasn’t done.”

  Emily threw up her hands. “If she were sick she could have come to the hospital.”

  Salens looked down.

  “I don’t think she was a waitress, Emily,” Hadrian inserted. “She worked in the rooms upstairs.”

  Emily went very still. “Surely you wouldn’t . . .” her voice cracked. “God no, Jonathan,” she moaned. New births were vital to the survival of the colony. Performing an abortion, or having an abortion, was not simply a felony, it was tantamount to treason to many minds.

  Salens’s voice was filled with pleading now. “You don’t understand. These girls would be taken to herbalists or black-market midwives. God knows what damage would be done. One of her friends died of hemorrhaging last year.”

  “You did this and then the owner used it against you to get the death reports changed,” Hadrian stated. “Who was it?”

  He knew the answer before it left Salens’s lips. “He has grown rich from the fishery these past years. He fancies becoming the richest man in the colony. Talks about building a mansion that will rival that of the governor.”

  “Fletcher!” Emily spoke the name like a curse.

  A knot was forming in Hadrian’s gut. “Was it he who hosted the dinners
before Hampden and Bishop died?”

  “I don’t know,” Salens murmured. “I suspect so. He just said he would turn me in for what I did to the girl if I didn’t fix the ledger.”

  “He told you what to write?”

  “He told me what to delete.”

  The silence was like thin ice.

  “What were you thinking?” Emily asked at last. “Why keep the original pages?”

  When Salens did not speak, Hadrian offered the answer. “Insurance. If Fletcher sought his help again, he’d have the leverage to say no.”

  Salens sighed.

  “Did he?” Hadrian demanded. “What else did he ask for?”

  “He told me to check certain records in the laboratory, to change the inventory sheets so nothing would be missed. I told him no one had time to keep accurate records and he dropped it.”

  “But you checked anyway,” Hadrian suggested. “Out of curiosity.”

  “Records are kept, but only of current inventories to see when stock has to be replenished. There were some levels of an antiseptic that were lower than normal.”

  Emily approached Salens, hovering over the young doctor like a vengeful fury. “Of what exactly?” she demanded.

  “Silver nitrate.”

  She struck him on the cheek with her open hand, hard, then pointed to the door. Salens’s face lost its color. He did not speak as he left the chamber.

  “I don’t understand,” Hadrian said.

  “He did,” Emily spat. “The heart symptoms could have been induced by any number of agents that are freely available in the colony. A concentration of yew, rhubarb, bloodroot, or half a dozen other herbs could have done it. But they can vary widely in their effectiveness, and most could be reversed by a good doctor. The discoloration along the arms means silver nitrate, which isn’t available anywhere but in our lab. We make our own. The effects of ingestion would be irreversible. It would have guaranteed death.”

  CHAPTER Thirteen

  THE ZEUS WAS the largest of the skipjacks left to winter in the ice, tied at the end of its solitary wharf. The thin crust of snow on her deck crunched as Hadrian stepped on it. He looked back at the clapboard house by the shipyard that had become the refuge of the jackals, then at the distant dock where ice freighters were launched, the only wharf where men seemed to be working. No one seemed to have noticed him, no one had followed. Perhaps no one had even seen the dim cabin light he had sighted when scanning the harbor through the telescope in Jonah’s workshop.

  His heart leapt as a cat jumped out of a shadow and disappeared down a companionway. He noticed movement on the lake, an iceboat speeding toward the docks, and quickly followed the cat into the darkness. The hinges of the cabin door gave a low groan as he stepped inside the chamber. The solitary candle lantern on a large table revealed an oddly disjointed chamber. On one wall drawings were tacked, artful charcoal renderings of cats and fish and sailing ships, some of them fanciful images of huge square-rigged men-of-war. On the opposite wall, between portholes, were nailed the leathery skins of several sturgeon. The far end of the table held a small arsenal. A long-handled ship’s hook leaned beside a pole with a spearhead. On the table lay two clubs, a knife, and one of the heavy cleavers used for chopping off fish heads. Beyond the weapons, a small brazier smoldered beside a pile of blankets.

  As he inched along the table, another cat emerged from under it, hissing a warning. The pile of blankets began to stir. One of them suddenly rose and extended a knife at him.

  “If you came to steal, I’ll slice you belly to brisket!” the figure warned.

  Hadrian wasn’t sure whether to laugh or run away. The sturdy stranger who threw off the blanket was fully a foot shorter than himself but had the most muscular build, and most leathery skin, of any woman he had ever met. He held up his hands, palms outward. “I only seek a word, Captain Reese.”

  “Tell him to go fuck himself. And his tree dogs too.”

  Hadrian ventured a step closer. “I don’t know who you mean. My name is Hadrian Boone. It’s about Jamie. I just wanted to—” Her fist slammed into his jaw before he could finish the sentence. She was suddenly all arms and legs, pounding him, then kicking him as he dropped to his knees.

  “Goddamned scrub!” she snarled. “How dare you show your face!”

  As Hadrian tried to raise his head a cat leapt onto his neck. When it began to sink its claws into his skin he rolled into the pile of blankets, knocking it off and burying his head. Captain Reese jumped on him and pummeled him through the blankets.

  He fought for breath, finding a gap in the blankets. “I never hurt your son!” he shouted. “I tried to help him! I am trying to find his killers!”

  The pounding did not stop immediately, but slowly it diminished. When it finally stopped he ventured a look and saw his attacker on a stool, wearing a stunned expression. “Killers?” she murmured. “My Jamie died because of the hospital. You and that bitch doctor are why he died. Everyone says so.”

  He silently rose to his feet and straightened his clothes. Three cats were on the table now, staring at him. “Then everyone is lying.”

  “My name is Hadrian Boone,” he began again. “I am . . .” he had no idea how to describe himself anymore. “I am trying to help. I am fighting the same people your son was fighting.” Blood trickled from his lip.

  “Jamie weren’t any fighter,” his mother said. “He was the hero from the Anna.” She leaned back, opening a porthole. Her hand extended outside and returned with a ball of snow. Hadrian accepted it and pressed it to his bleeding lip.

  “There was a police investigation into Fletcher’s smuggling. I think Jamie had begun to realize, like I have, that the smuggling was a cover for much worse things. He was going to help with the investigation. But Fletcher found out.”

  “No. He had an accident. The hospital should have cured him but it didn’t.”

  “Captain, how did Jamie wind up on the Anna? Did he ever speak to you about the sinking?”

  “Fletcher said my boy had no future on a sailing ship. It near broke my heart but when Fletcher needed an extra hand I let him go off to see what those steamers are like. All soot and noise. It was just his second trip out when she went down.”

  “But surely he told you about it.”

  “Sailors don’t talk of such things. Bad luck. Two died, two survived. I went to church for the first time in years when he came back alive.”

  “The Anna never went down that day. I saw her, I sailed on her last month. Fletcher staged the sinking. He didn’t want your son as a sailor, he wanted him as a jackal. But Jamie had second thoughts. Because he had a good upbringing,” Hadrian suggested. “Because you taught him right from wrong. So Fletcher saw to it that Jamie went out on another of his boats, then they forced drugs into him. The drugs put him into a coma. The only thing the doctors did to hurt him was to tell two of Fletcher’s men that he would probably recover. They came back in the night, from the jackals’ house, and suffocated him with his own pillow.”

  Captain Reese stared into her rough, callused hands. A big grey cat moved to her side as if to comfort her.

  “Fletcher and the men in St. Gabriel killed your son.”

  In the long uneasy silence Hadrian lowered himself into one of the chairs.

  “St. Gabe is a wicked place,” she said at last.

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Only to take on cargo. Ordered by Fletcher. I told him I already had a full hold and he said that wouldn’t be a problem.”

  Hadrian studied the woman, sensing invitation in her words. “Fletcher’s steamers take the smuggled salvage.”

  The captain went to a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. When Hadrian declined his glass she poured her own, then turned his upside down and dribbled some of the spirits onto the upturned bottom. The grey cat eagerly licked it up.

  “Fletcher hates the sailboats. Keeps trying to use the guild to shut us down. All the ’jacks are owned by independen
t captains, no one who kisses his arse. But he knows what I think of the government, so he asked me to haul something special. I’d walk ten miles barefoot on the ice to rile that son of a bitch Buchanan. I think the police were sniffing around his smuggling operations. No one ever pays attention to the skipjacks. We come and go without any hoopla. No wood to take on, no smoke to show our path. Last month when he asked me to start carrying some of those men from St. Gabe, I asked for payment. He nearly hit me. Said the payment I get is not having jackals burn my hull to the waterline.”

  As she spoke raucous cries rose outside. They both bent to a porthole to see a small crowd on the main wharf, cheering a procession coming from the iceboat that had just docked. Four men with ice poles were herding someone in a cloak toward town.

  “Pay me shit and they rake in a thousand for a little afternoon cruise,” the captain muttered.

  The figure fell as a pole prodded a shoulder. When the prisoner rose, the cowl slipped away. With a shudder Hadrian saw her bald head.

  “Buchanan will have to schedule the execution between ice bullet races if he wants it done this week,” Captain Reese said.

  “How did they get her so easily?” Hadrian wondered out loud.

  The captain shrugged. “Word is there was some kind of trap out on the lake. No one is going to outrun an iceboat.”

  Hadrian fought his emotions as he turned back to the table. “Wooden boxes,” he said. “That’s what you hauled first. Boxes full of shotgun shells. They would fit easily under this table.”

  Reese drained her glass and poured another. “I never said I looked inside them.”

  “Jamie did. Inside the boxes, and inside the shells. It was why he suddenly was interested in talking with the police.”

  “No. You don’t compass it. The government goes too far. People have to defend themselves. It’s only right the fishermen have shotguns.”

  “Jamie discovered that most of the shells contained drugs. Lying about the Anna’s sinking, helping with the smuggling, that was just part of getting ahead in the fishery. But shipping illegal drugs into Carthage was different.”