by Tanya Allan
I was tired, as we had been up all night, but not as tired as many under the same conditions. Actually, I felt great, as my body seemed to relish the burst of adrenaline that was coursing through it with the anticipation of action.
Indeed, I felt akin to how I recalled feeling just prior to a military operation in the twentieth century, but at least I didn’t have to jump out of an aircraft over hostile territory.
The hostiles were out there somewhere, so I felt pleased that my revolver was strapped in a holster under my voluminous dress.
“Frost, he’s already here,” Soames said, looking and behaving like a conspirator.
“Where?”
“In the waiting room. There’s only another woman there, so you can’t miss him.”
Nodding, I entered the office. Soames didn’t follow me, for obvious reasons.
The waiting room was a barren square room, with plain wooden benches along two walls. There was a hatch into the next room on one wall, and the door through which I had entered on the fourth. I made my way over to the hatch, to see a busy clerk in the father room, so I glanced round at the other occupants of the waiting room.
The woman was middle-aged and overweight, dressed in widow’s black, including a black bonnet. She sat next to a large trunk and three smaller bags. She looked up at me, expectantly, but looked away when she didn’t recognise me. She looked rather miserable, and I guessed she was waiting for a companion.
The other occupant was tall man in his late thirties. He didn’t look at me, as he had his hat over his eyes and was pretending to be asleep. His breathing was not deep enough for sleep, and he appeared tense. Dressed in a green coat, breeches and scuffed boots, he was nondescript in appearance. I had yet to see his face.
I waited for the clerk. He had my booking, so acknowledged my payment and asked me to sit.
“The coach will be here in five minutes, ma’am,” he said.
Thanking him, I simply sat down along the bench from the woman, where I could keep an eye on the man I thought was Frost.
The coach arrived a few moments later. It was a solid affair, with rudimentary springs and a pair of horses coupled to the shaft. It was not designed for speed or extreme comfort, but it looked as if it might get us to the destination, eventually.
Various helpers appeared to stow the luggage on the roof, which was then wrapped in a tarpaulin. The coachman placed a small stool by the door and helped us in. I sat next to the woman while Frost sat opposite me. At the last minute, another man appeared. Breathless and sweaty, he sat down next to Frost. Judging by Frost’s reaction, this was not anticipated.
“Boy; nearly didn’t make it,” said the newcomer, with a smile as he wiped his brow with a large white handkerchief.
“I’m Augustus Brown,” he said. “Gus to my friends.”
He insisted in shaking hands with us all.
Frost introduced himself as Michael Fox, which made me smile. Augustus Brown’s arrival forced us all to share a little of ourselves with each other by way of introductions. The lady was Marjorie Struebens, recently widowed and travelling to stay with her sister some one hundred and twenty miles away in Harrisonburg.
“I’m Mrs Jane Fonda, travelling to join my husband in Indiana.”
Frost’s eyes narrowed slightly, while the others didn’t react at all.
I settled down and reviewed what I knew.
Roger and I had poured over the map for a long time, working out the most appropriate place that was close to the river and would support an ambush best. The map wasn’t ideal, and Roger had told me that we should have had more time so as to scout out the land before the event.
“We have until tomorrow morning,” I had told him.
“Then we must only make our best guess,” he said, and that is what took almost all night.
The roads around Washington were reasonable, for the time, but it didn’t last. Very soon, we were bumping our way on a country track, being jolted hither and thither. I estimated that the ambush would take place when we were about a half hour out of the town, so as we went past that time, I began to worry.
It was a relief when it finally happened, for any longer and I’d be too far from my reinforcements.
The coach started to slow, and then amid much curses and swearing from the coachman, we pulled up to a halt.
“What are you playing at, this is the mail coach?” he shouted.
The reply was a single shot fired above his head. I looked out the window to see two men on horseback and with pistols drawn. It was like something from the movies.
I felt the cold steel of a knife at my throat.
“Out you get, your ladyship, and not a squeak, if you please. I’d hate to cut your pretty neck!” Frost had a knife to my neck, millimetres from my jugular.
I stepped out of the carriage, but as I did so, Augustus decided to play the hero, and started to intervene. Frost simply kicked the man in the chest, so he fell backwards, hitting his head on the wooden frame.
“Keep quiet and no one gets hurt,” he said, just as he pushed me from the carriage.
“Is she armed?” said a voice I recognised. Knowing his background, I could just hear the vestiges of his original French accent, although his time in England has obviously dulled it somewhat.
“Monsieur Armes, quel surprise,” I said, which disarmed him. I glanced at the third man.
“Mr Soames, it seems you chose which side you wanted to be on?” I said.
He said nothing, just sat on his horse holding a pistol. I thought he looked very uncertain of himself.
Suddenly, a coarse jute bag was thrust over my head, and I felt cord being wrapped around me. My arms were pinned by my side, so I could do nothing.
I felt myself being man-handled onto the back of a cart, and then movement as the cart was driven away. I assumed the conspirators left a note or message with the coachman.
Frost must have been driving the cart, for I could hear two sets of outriders, presumably Soames and Armes. My acute hearing caught a little of the exchange between the two riders.
“She didn’t seem surprised to see us,” Armes remarked. “Are you sure we can trust you?”
“I said nothing. I swear.”
“Then why isn’t she worried?” Armes said.
I was lying on the back of the cart, struggling against my bonds. I managed to reach my pistol in the holster, but due to the amount of clothing I wore, I couldn’t extract it from the holster.
After a short journey, Frost drove the cart into off the road and into a building; I could smell horses, so I assumed it was a stable.
“Get her out, and don’t untie her,” said Armes. They dragged me out of the cart, and made to walk, still with the bag over my head, through a door and plonked into a sitting position on a chair. More cord was wrapped around me, successfully pinning my hands to my sides, so I had no way of releasing my gun. The one saving grace is that none searched me, each, perhaps assuming that one of the others had.
“Leave the bag. The less she knows about where we are the better. And gag her, we don’t want her calling out.”
“Monsieur Armes, you should know that you will never get away with this,” I said, through the bag.
Someone pulled off the bag, giving me a quick look at my surroundings. I was right, as this clearly was a stable, and had been used recently, if the smell of fresh horseshit was anything to go by. The three men looked down at me. Armes looked angry, Frost uncertain and Soames very worried.
“You are right to look worried, Mister Soames, for in a very short while your betrayal will be taken into account by people far less forgiving than I. You made your choice, but it’s not too late to redeem yourself…”
A not too clean rag rudely silenced my speech as it was thrust into my mouth, with another wrapped around my face, securing it in place. Then the bag was replaced.
“I told you, you should have killed her,” said Frost.
“And I told you why we can’t do that.
If she dies, then she would be back here with reinforcements, and all our plans are for nothing. We are on the verge of a great victory, so the last thing we need is her and her friends interfering.”
Come on, let’s get the boat ready.”
The three men then left me, I could hear their voices just outside, but could not discern what they were saying. My hearing was better than before, but not that good.
I hoped that Roger and his troops were close by. I had no way of knowing exactly where we were, but knew that I must be somewhere close to where Roger and I decided their safe house would be. We were close to a river, so that had limited the possibilities considerably. I heard their feet outside on wooden boards, like a jetty perhaps. So they had already got the boat, and all they had to do was get me onto it, and if that happened, my chances of rescue decreased with each moment.
They came back in, but rather than untying me, they picked me up still attached to the chair. I still could not get to my weapon.
“Shit, she’s heavy,” grumbled Frost.
“Stop complaining; just get her onto the boat.”
They swore and grumbled, so I threw myself around, trying to unbalance them. I certainly succeeded in annoying Armes.
He hit me hard on the back of my head. I guessed he thought hard enough to knock me unconscious. He didn’t take my improved skull and bone structure into account. It hurt, but did not render me senseless as expected. I now had an advantage, so I slumped, feigning unconsciousness.
“That’s better, why didn’t you do that earlier?” asked Frost. I was beginning to seriously not like this man.
“You can never underestimate her resilience. If she dies, then we will draw more shit than if we fall into a sewer.”
“Then at least she’ll be out long enough for us to do what we have to do,” said Soames, nervously.
“I just hope to hell you never said anything, for if she has managed to get the word out, we’re as good as dead,” said Armes.
“Then we come back and finish the job. As you said, there are advantages to dying,” added Frost.
“It’s not as easy as that. We’ve already stretched the budget beyond acceptable levels, so they won’t easily accept a failure at this stage. Besides, we have a short window of opportunity, so if we don’t get in there in the next two days, we’ve lost the final chance, and there’s too much at stake to fail now.”
I felt the uneven swaying that signified that we were now on board a substantial river craft. That meant they were in the open, which made them more vulnerable now than at any other time, besides, they were all struggling with me tied to a chair, so none of them would have a firearm ready, so if anything was to happen, it had to be now.
They almost dropped me twice; the second time was when someone let go, possibly to open a hatch or doors. As the two remaining hold of me struggled, I lashed out with my feet and threw myself as hard as I could to the left.
This had a more profound effect than I had anticipated.
Firstly, I heard a shout and a large splash as one of the two men holding me fell over the side into the water. The chair, on which I was strapped, landed on one of its legs on the deck and promptly broke with a pistol-like crack, spilling me onto the deck, so I rolled, still bound to the remains of the chair to the side of the boat. The bag was still over my head, and the gag still prevented me from crying out. However, my legs were free, and I could feel my arms were less restrained than before.
I heard Armes swear in a mixture of French and English, but then things became confusing.
I thought I heard a shout of, “No!” Followed by sounds of a scuffle, which ended with a shot being fired close to me.
I then heard the sound of many horses at the gallop, shouts and several shots.
I was determined that none of the conspirators should be killed, for then they would be straight back again to try again, whatever it was they were going to do.
I managed to free my left hand, so instead of going for my gun, I ripped off the bag from my head.
Soames lay inches from me on the deck. His shirt front was reddening visibly as his blood exited the bullet hole in his left shoulder. He was staring at the blood and mouthing the word, “No!” over and over again.
Armes, having fired both his pistols, was running down the length of the barge, such as it was, towards the stern and a gangplank. That meant that Frost was the one who had fallen over the side.
Glancing towards the bank, I saw a troop of cavalry pounding towards the barge, with my husband at the head.
I looked over the side to see Frost swimming for the opposite shore, where three troopers waited with swords raised. Ripping a length of petticoat from my clothing, I stuffed it inside Soames’ shirtfront, grabbed his spare hand and said, “Keep direct pressure on that. Otherwise you will die.”
Then I was off after Armes. My skirts hampered me, so I took but a moment to rip most of them off, leaving my lower legs almost completely bare.
I then tore after the escaping agent, drawing my pistol as I ran down the deck. The barge was not that long, fifty feet, so he was already at the far end, crossing onto the bank. The soldiers were gaining rapidly, but were still some distance away.
I could see that he would attempt to get into the stable, locate a firearm and try to kill himself yet again. I was determined not to let that happen. Aiming for his legs, I stopped, raised my pistol, and fired two shots. The second nicked his left knee and he tumbled to the ground. I was already running towards the gangplank. As I crossed it, I saw Armes, try to stand on his leg, but it buckled under him, so he half ran, half crawled towards the stables. Another second or so and he would be out of sight.
I dared not shoot, for fear of killing him, so I took a deep breath and ran as fast as I could. I had not really attempted to see what this body was capable of under extreme conditions, so I just went for it.
Now, I’m not sure what the one hundred metre record is these days, but I reckon that if someone had a stopwatch, I’d have broken it by at least a second, and I’m not talking about the women’s record.
I reached Armes inside the stables, just as he was reaching for a scruffy looking carpet bag.
“Not this time, sunshine!” I said, kicking him delicately on the temple.
Unlike me, his head was not as hard, and he really was unconscious. For a moment, I thought I had killed him, but on checking his pulse and breathing, I relaxed. I took the bag, opened it and gasped.
I was not the only person who had constructed a more modern firearm. Armes had somehow managed to have constructed what appeared to be a fully functioning Colt 45 M1911. To give it the full title, it is a single-action, semi-automatic, magazine-fed and recoil-operated handgun, originally designed by John Browning and has been carried by US military personnel from 1911 right up to the present day (Not actually the one I was experiencing in 1817). I had one myself, and it was one of two things in my life that were beyond value to me; the other was my Ford Mustang.
It disappeared into what remained of my clothing.
I examined the bag further, to find documents (mainly in French), maps and shipping schedules. There was also a small time transmitter, similar to the one in Abingdon. I knew I had to get these back to the Centre. At the bottom of the bag was a map of Washington, with details of the government buildings.
Using similar ropes to the ones with which they had bound me, I trussed up monsieur Armes and took a look at his wounded knee. I had managed to get a lucky shot into his kneecap, so this man wasn’t going to be running anywhere very fast ever again. It wasn’t terminal, so I placed a crude bandage around it, and had a quick look around the rest of the building. In one corner were seven large barrels containing what appeared to be gunpowder.
With the documents I left in the bag, there was sufficient to hold the men on suspicion of conspiracy to blow up the US government. I smiled, sometimes in the future that might not be such a bad idea, but just now it would be disastrous.
“Jane, Jane, are you here?” I heard my husband calling.
“In here, my love!”
Roger and three troopers entered the stables with drawn swords. Roger had a pistol in his left hand and a sabre in his right.
“It’s okay, I got him,” I said.
“Okay? What’s that mean?” Roger asked.
“Oh, I heard some of the farmhands using it last year. I thought it means everything is all right,” I said, cringing at my gaffe. I have no idea when the word originated, but in a moment of distraction, reverted to my original mindset.
“My God, is he dead?” Roger asked, bending down to examine Armes.
“No, I think a wild shot nicked his leg. So I was able to catch him and tie him up. There’s some gunpowder over there, and some documents in that case. They were planning to blow up the government buildings, I suspect.”
I said this for the benefit of the young officer and troopers that accompanied Roger.
“It is essential that this man is not permitted to attempt to take his own life, for I am convinced he would wish to do so when he regains consciousness,” I said.
They picked up the unconscious man and carried him out of the stable.
We were alone.
“Well, are they all taken alive?” I asked.
“Aye, but it doesn’t look good for the one on the boat. What happened to him?”
“I think he had second thoughts as to where his allegiance lay. I suspect he was attempting to intervene and Armes, that’s the one I snared, Armes shot him.”
“I saw you shoot Armes. That was an amazing shot. Did you have two barrels?”
I produced my revolver and handed it to him. He took it and examined it.
“This is a wonderful design, is this what they have where you’re from?”
“This, my love, is a very crude and basic design that has been superseded by far more efficient models made from much lighter and effective materials. However, compared to the pistols that you have, it’s a leap forward. You must never let anyone see it.”
“Then you keep it. I can think of no one else I’d trust with it,” he said, handing it back. That too disappeared under what was left of my skirts.
