Witchy Eye

by D. J. Butler

  “I’m not. I’m from the Ohio. My names is Thalanes, and I’m a priest.” The little man smiled and bowed, and Cal noted that a bald circle—was it called a tonsure?—had been shaved into the top of his head. He said his name THAH-lah-nace, and it was very foreign-sounding, even more so than Ezekiel Angleton. “I was hoping I could ask you directions.”

  “Where you wanna git to?” Sarah asked.

  “I’m looking for Andrew Calhoun.” Thalanes still smiled. “The Elector.”

  “You of the Craft?” Sarah asked. “Iffen you’re lookin’ for a lodge, I reckon they’s one right here in town as’d be easier to find.”

  “I’m not a Freemason,” the little man said. “I’m a priest.”

  “You can be both.” Sarah shrugged. “Freemason’s got to believe in God, don’t he?”

  “I know where Calhoun’s cabin used to be, years ago, but I’ve been up there early this morning and it’s gone.” The little man peered closely into her face, searching, and Calvin wondered whether Sarah felt uncomfortable. He considered intervening, but held himself back—she wouldn’t appreciate his coming to her rescue unless she really needed it.

  Cal rested his fingers on his lariat and wished again he’d brought his tomahawk. He wondered about the Elector’s cabin—it hadn’t moved in Calvin’s memory. Did that make this man a liar, or a friend who hadn’t been to visit in the last decade or more? As for that, the Elector wasn’t hardcore New Light, but he was New Light enough that it was odd to think of him being friendly with a monk. Of course, two decades ago, nobody was New Light. Maybe this monk was someone the Elector knew from the Spanish War.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I was hoping you might be going that way, now that you’ve sold your leaf, and that I might be able to follow.”

  “That’s jest the thing about a cabin,” she told him. “You git uncomfortable where you are, you jest up sticks and move. Best home is a mobile home. Youins might oughtta give it a try out there in the Ohio, instead of them big dirt piles.” Calvin let himself chuckle out loud. Score a point for the Appalachee girl—tell the foreigner nothing, and mock him at every opportunity. He looked at the younguns, and saw they were drinking it up. This was a more entertaining lesson than trying to remember the names of the twelve Free Imperial Towns.

  “The Mounds. Yes, they would take more than a couple of hours to rebuild.” The monk laughed gently, and Cal felt puzzled. Sarah was trying to drive the outsider away with hostility and ignorance, but the man kept grinning as if he was her favorite uncle and they were enjoying a private joke. Whatever Sarah felt, she kept it inside, more credit to her. “So, can you take me to where the Elector lives?”

  “Not exactly,” she lied. “I ain’t no kin of his.” Another lie. “Besides, we ain’t goin’ home right now, we’ll be around town for a few hours.” That at least might be true; they often lingered in Nashville after a market day, and Sarah may well have resolved that she would heckle the Martinite preacher, or do worse to him. She might feel her honor depended on it. She might reckon the Elector Calhoun’s honor was at stake.

  “I see,” the monk nodded, still smiling as if he were enjoying a secret jest.

  “What you wanna do, though,” Sarah told him, “is head down thataway, cross the river, and then git on out through the Jefferson Pike Gate on the other side of town. I heard Old Man Calhoun has moved about thirty-forty miles on up the hills, so you’ll wanna jest keep goin’ and ask directions on the way.”

  Cal was very careful not to laugh this time, which was hard. He buried his face in his armload of tobacco to smother any chuckling that got through. Sarah had just coolly directed the foreigner out the wrong side of town. Well, if he was going to act like there was some kind of secret joke going on, he couldn’t complain when he got one.

  “Thank you,” Thalanes said, still smiling. “You haven’t told me your name.”

  “Sarah Jackson,” she lied. Cal didn’t think he could lie so easily. Of course, if he had to pick an Appalachee name to pretend was his own, Jackson was the one every foreigner had heard of, thanks to Andrew Jackson and his crazy bid to make himself king.

  “Thank you, Sarah Jackson. I believe I’ll enjoy some of Nashville’s entertainments before I go find my friend the Elector. I understand there’s a preacher in town.”

  He smiled, bowed again, and then walked off toward the river in the direction Sarah had indicated.

  The cart was empty now, and Cal jingled the purse again to get the others’ attention. “A shillin’ four.”

  Young Andy whooped. “Small beer with lunch!”

  The tobacco was all unloaded and on the Dutchman’s table. Cal closed up the back of the cart and looped it into place.

  “Small beer it is!” Sarah agreed. “Was he wearin’ them wooden shoes like they do?”

  “I b’lieve you jest sent that there foreigner off to the Kentuck.” Cal laughed. “And to my grave disappointment, no, that ol’ Dutchman’s boots were leather. No wooden shoes, and not even buckles. I graaged him good and hard, though, like you taught me.”

  “He graag you back?”

  Cal nodded. “Maybe next time it’ll be an Acadian and I’ll git to practice my bonjour.”

  Sarah watched the little man walking away and shrugged. “If that fool gits all the way to the Kentuck afore he turns around, he deserves it. You reckon we made enough off that baccy so’s we can buy a little keg of whisky?”

  “As if I’s the kind of feller as’d know the price of whisky.” Cal put on a fake look of reproach and winked.

  “Calvin Calhoun,” she shot back, “you may not know the price of whisky, but I expect when it comes time to buy some, you’ll get it for half price. You’re tight as a Catalan, and you know it.”

  “Why, Auntie Sarah,” he said, “I do my best. But ain’t the small beer enough for you? You plannin’ on gettin’ plastered already and it ain’t yet noon?”

  “Not I,” she answered. “I’m fixin’ to go to church.”

  Serve Your Emperor…

  !! SUPPORT THE PACIFICATION OF THE OHIO !!

  ~ Join the Imperial Army Today ~

  Dragoons : Musketeers : Grenadiers : Pikemen : Artillerymen

  Bonuses Paid for Friends Recruited

  Above the text was a striking woodcut of His Imperial Majesty Thomas Penn, tall, bold and handsome, slicing at a curtain of wriggling snakes surrounding him. Thalanes knew the emperor personally, had known him since he was a nervous eighteen-year-old boy rushing into the Spanish War with a commission purchased by his father, eager to prove himself, and the likeness was a good one. Thomas was dressed like the officer he had been, in a long coat, with a sash from shoulder to hip to hold a cavalry saber, but he wore an ornate crown. The crown had three tall points like the façade of Franklin’s Cathedral and had the Imperial horses, ship, and eagle carved into it in tiny detail. The image was nothing like any real crown Thalanes had ever seen, but it clearly communicated the emperor’s identity. More subtly worked into the crown was the seal of the planet Mars.

  Mars for war.

  Thalanes would have laughed at the recruiting sign, pinned with a heavy iron nail to the side of a cobbler’s shop, if it didn’t make him want to despair. He looked away and continued his amble down Market Street.

  The little Cetean monk enjoyed walking through the Tobacco Fair crowd. He had come south and west from Philadelphia over eight hundred miles in a little over three weeks, on foot all the way. He was a good walker, and he had judiciously supplemented his natural speed with a little gramarye. He’d taken the Old Road West, through the Ohio, which had had the double advantage of being less traveled and lying along a strong ley line, but avoiding the Imperial Highways had added many miles to his journey and confined him to a rougher track.

  Also, it had taken him through the Ohio, and he had seen the Pacification firsthand. He had been away from his homeland for years, tending to Hannah in her immurement, and he didn’t like seeing it again with Imperia
l garrisons at every town and crossroads, the Imperial hand in every pocket and the Imperial boot in every face.

  Hannah would never have stood for such bald-faced evil, nor certainly Kyres. Nor would the young Thomas Penn, the aspiring military hero. But ambition, greed, and power had changed Thomas. He had the will, the means, and a pretext, and the Ohio was under his heel.

  Never mind, Thalanes told himself. His errand was secret, of the utmost secrecy, and he had sped as quickly and as invisibly as he’d been able. Penn’s pet Martinite Angleton was in Nashville, but he didn’t yet have the girl. And he wouldn’t get her.

  Thalanes would not fail his empress again.

  You didn’t fail her before, he lied to himself. It wasn’t your fault. She insisted on knowing, and you only respected her will. Your position as her father confessor bound you to do that, to say nothing of the Rule of St. Cetes.

  Thalanes enjoyed the crowd. Birdsong and rain had done very nicely for companions on his rushed march, but he was happy to smell again the thick, warm, sometimes sour aroma of mankind, the filthy stink of the rich Imperial Town, and the charred air of woodsmoke from its chimneys. He loved the burbling voices, the thump of the wagon wheels, the whinny of horses, and the clink of money changing hands.

  He read the signboards of Nashville’s taverns as he walked. He saw the Heron King, a bird-faced man with an iron crown; the Benedict Arnold, with an image of the war hero, undaunted in the moment of having his horse killed under him by New Spanish lances; and the Oliver Cromwell, with a country gentleman’s face on one side of the board and a helmeted death’s head on the other. Thalanes crossed himself. Some of the children of Eve still adored the Lord Protector of the Eternal Commonwealth as a hero through John Churchill had unmasked him as the Necromancer and driven him from England. Oliver Cromwell had been particularly evil to the Firstborn, but he had killed plenty of ordinary Frenchmen, Dutchmen, and Germans.

  And Nashville didn’t seem to have any taverns named the Wallenstein or the Queen Adela Podebradas, at least not on Market Street. Thalanes sighed. There was a Franklin, though, which was auspicious. The bishop’s famous seal, three letters around a bolt of lightning, was nailed into the frame of the tavern door on either side, in matching iron plates.

  Thalanes spotted another Firstborn, a tobacco buyer with a string of sturdy ponies. He was a fellow Ohioan, Thalanes guessed from his long cloak, knee-high boots and tunic that came halfway down his thigh, but the nod he gave the other man was no greater and no less than the salute he gave everyone else. Thalanes loved all Adam’s children, in their colors and their smells and their busy motion and their relentless creative buzz of choice and free will.

  He stopped at a board-built box, roofless but painted on its front with a rough image of a teacup full of black liquid. The man standing inside the stall wore a short-brimmed, boxy beaver hat, a doeskin vest over a yellow silk blouse, and red corte-du-roi trousers. He looked as stern as the sign, even inhospitable with his thin-bridged nose ending in broad flared nostrils, his high, bony cheeks and his nearly invisible upper lip, but his inhospitality was overpowered by the magnetic smell coming from his simmering pots.

  Algonk of some kind. “Boozhoo!” Thalanes tried a greeting in Ojibwe, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

  “I savvy English, Padre,” the Algonk shot back. “You want to parley? To ballet? You want to chanty and hold hands and share feelings, or you want a cuppa?”

  “Yes, please,” Thalanes said, chastened, “coffee. Black. And I’ll buy roasted beans, too, if you have them.”

  Thalanes paid with a few Philadelphia pennies and tucked the little sack of beans into his satchel with his tiny pot. He stood by the coffee stall and smiled at its Algonk proprietor, sipping the hot restorative into his chest one life-instilling blow at a time. Soon he would feel himself again.

  He noted that the Imperial Town had its peace kept by a substantial blue-uniformed watch, the presence of which was very visible. They were probably all on duty for the fair, he judged. The stone walls surrounding the small town were built like a castle’s, high and thick, with protection for defending musketeers and numerous mounting-poles for anchoring arquebuses in conflict. Big guns spaced along the walls were staffed by leather-caped cannoneers, many of whom were female; the Pitchers were famous for being the only Imperial military service to admit women.

  All of Nashville gave the impression of thriving life and solid security, but Thalanes felt uneasy.

  It was not your fault, he said to himself for the thousandth time. Let no will be coerced. Even the empress had to be allowed to choose.

  He gave the empty cup back, thanked the coffee-man and ambled on his way down the street.

  The Town Hall was a stone building of three stories, a chimney puffing merrily at each end on this busy day. The street was cobbled with small square stones right down to the river and the wide bridge spanning it, but across the street from the Town Hall was a grassy field, not quite shaped into a park and not quite left wild as a meadow, either. In the field stood the promised tent, large and dirty-white, and before the tent glowered Angleton’s servant, the scruffy Englishman.

  Obadiah Dogsbody was thick about the head, neck, shoulders, chest and belly, and thin through the hips and legs. He was unshaven, his three-cornered hat, black coat and knee-length breeches were travel-stained, and he stank with an odor Thalanes didn’t enjoy—hard liquor, hard riding, and a hard heart. He stood in the tent door with one hand on the crosspiece of a broadsword and his other around the neck of a bottle of cheap rum. Tucked into his wide leather belt he also carried a new—and expensive—flintlock pistol.

  Thalanes knew Obadiah from Philadelphia and wondered whether the factotum would recognize him. Best to take precautions. “Faciem muto,” he murmured, touching one finger to his brooch and one to his cheek. He felt the thrum of pulsating power within the brooch as he cast the spell, his own soul’s power, carefully hoarded and stored a bit at a time. Not a powerful spell, especially without any physical components, but a good one, and it should be enough to keep Obadiah or his master from recognizing the Cetean monk. The best spell was the one that accomplished its purpose without exhausting the caster, wrecking his body, or killing him.

  Thalanes nodded at Obadiah, got an indifferent grunt in return, and ducked under the tent flap.

  The stained tent canvas hung down from a horizontal pole like a roofbeam and was propped on further poles at each corner and along the walls. The inside of the tent was empty of furnishings other than a cask of water by the door, a low wooden platform with a barrel set up on its end as a pulpit, and a couple of dirty spittoons. Thalanes savored the fading taste of coffee while he looked at the crowd. Some of the people were residents of Nashville itself, dressed in the nicer shoes and newer clothes of the farmers and merchants who lived down in the valley, but many of the waiting spectators wore the short skirts and long hunting shirts that gave away a true Appalachee highlander. These people grinned with anticipation and the monk inferred that they knew very well that there would be no Barton Stone-style preaching. They had heard young Sarah harangue Obadiah and were here to see more of the show.

  It promised to be quite a display. The girl had her mother’s wit, her father’s courage, and all the stubborn will of her adopted people. How ironic, to race nearly a thousand miles against Angleton to be the first to reach Sarah, and to arrive only to find her, as if by some unerring instinct attracted to self-destruction, harassing the Right Reverend Father.

  Thalanes stationed himself beside the door. He didn’t think Obadiah would recognize her or else he would simply have grabbed her when they met on Market Street. Angleton must not trust his man much—still, better safe than sorry. Thalanes watched the door and the spectators flowing in, looking for the black-haired girl with the bad eye.

  Why was Angleton preaching from a tent? He could think of only one reason, and it made him uncomfortable. Maybe he should have talked to Sarah more openly in the street
, told her his purpose, rather than risking that Angleton might get to her first. He considered, and decided he had made the right move. He thought it was only fair to talk to the Elector first, for all he had done. And the girl was still safe and free, he was watching. Angleton’s mission surely could not be to kill her. Gentle persuasion was not his style, either, but he must be here to find the child, or at most capture her.

  Of course, once in Philadelphia they would kill her, as they had finally killed her mother.

  Still, Thalanes preferred to give her time, so she could learn to trust him. Every child of God chooses his or her own path. Let no will be coerced.

  And it was not your fault.

  “Whisky!” someone said behind him, and Thalanes turned in surprise. There they were, Sarah and the lanky young man with long red hair tied behind his neck—now without his cattleman’s lariat. They had entered the tent and evaded Obadiah, and Thalanes almost laughed out loud at the simplicity of their means; they had pulled up a stake and crawled under the tent wall. Apparently they had rolled a small keg with them, and now they were setting it up beside the water barrel and prying off the lid.

  While an appreciative highlander took the first sip from the whisky, Thalanes kept his eye keenly trained on Sarah. Very discreetly and, he was sure, unseen by anyone in the tent other than himself, she nicked her finger with a small belt knife and squeezed a little of her own blood—one…two…three drops—into the water barrel. At the same time, her lips moved slightly.

  She’s hexing it, the monk realized, and again almost laughed out loud. O Kyres, my heroic, my tragic friend, what a daughter you have! Everyone entering the tent drank from either the whisky or the water, and some circled back to drink again; for the Right Reverend Ezekiel Angleton’s sermon they would all be either tipsy or hexed by Sarah Elytharias Penn.

  Sarah Calhoun, he reminded himself sternly. Sarah Calhoun.