The Shadow Conspiracy II

by Phyllis Irene Radford

  She peered at the houses, looking for one marked with a rooster. They were plain houses, unlike the elegant homes in Mary’s neighbourhood. At last she spotted a fan light of stained glass over a door. In the centre of the glass was a large rooster, beak and legs gleaming gold against the darker red of its feathers.

  She paused in the street to assess the house, which bore none of the adornments that advertised a brothel. It was slightly larger than the houses to either side, and its grounds were better kept. No light shone out welcoming visitors, but the fan light and the soft glow through curtained windows showed that the house was awake.

  Cautiously she opened her awareness, and almost at once sensed the nearby presence of a powerful soul. It radiated weariness, a trace of discontent, regret. As Marie did not wish for conflict, nor even to be detected, she closed her thoughts again. With a nod, she started up the walk to the door.

  Christophe kept pace, and kept silent. She did not have to look at his face to sense his disapproval. He had been born to a genteel prosperity, unlike Marie. She had fought her way to it, and had not forgotten how to fight.

  Not that she believed he had never been in such a neighbourhood. He was human, and a man, after all. And there were many, many such temptations in New Orleans.

  Marie stepped up to the door of the house and knocked — three sharp raps. She waited, listening. At length, she knocked again, and this time heard footsteps in response.

  The door opened a crack, and a young woman looked out. Marie waited for her to speak, then stepped forward.

  “I wish to see Moma Shanti.”

  “She is resting.”

  “This is important. I need her help. I think I am hexed, and —”

  The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry. She’s been ill, and is seeing no one. Come back day after tomorrow.”

  Marie took another step closer. “But —”

  The woman snapped the door closed. Marie turned around to show Christophe a tiny smile and a nod, then walked slowly back to the street as if dejected. With a backward glance, she saw a woman’s face looking through a gap in the curtains at one window. It was not the woman who had opened the door. She thought it could be Moma Shanti.

  “Bien,” she said softly. “Now we go.”

  The blimp floated silent beside the shed in the Dessins’ back yard, bobbing slightly at the end of its short tether, a ghostly cloud that was too perfect in shape. The silk shimmered and quivered under the pressure of a slight breeze from the ocean. Marie could not help thinking of the improvised balloon that she had helped to create — the balloon that had carried Mignon to freedom. That had been a patchwork raft compared with this elegant vessel. Marie’s pulse quickened at the thought that soon she would be in this ship, flying.

  Mary herself opened the door to Marie and Christophe, showing only mild surprise at their attire. She herself wore a dark dress, simple and practical, but still with the elegance that seemed part of her, a quiet grace.

  “I see you are ready,” she said.

  “Not quite,” said Marie. “Have you a mirror I could use?”

  Mary gestured down the hall to where a large, gilt-framed mirror hung. Marie took from the drawstring bag she carried some bangle bracelets and a scarf of violet and brown, as close as she had to the scarf that Moma Shanti had been wearing at the patisserie. The bracelets she slid onto one arm, the scarf she wrapped around her head, tying the corners in a distinctive way that would be recognised by those who knew of voudon. It marked her as a queen, which was only the truth. If those who saw her mistook her for Moma Shanti, all the better. When she had the scarf arranged to her satisfaction, she turned to see Christophe softly smiling.

  He was not a follower of voudon, no; but he respected her ways, and was not above carrying a gris-gris for luck. She handed him one now and he tucked it into his pocket.

  Turning to Mary, she offered another of the small bundles. “It is a charm to protect you,” she said.

  Mary looked at the little bundle in the palm of her hand, tied with red yarn. She glanced up at Marie. “It is not merely a disguise, then?”

  Marie shook her head, then walked into Mary’s parlour. Mary and Christophe followed.

  Marie chose the table where the little music box had rested — the music box that once again rode in her pocket. On the table she spread a red cloth, and in the centre of the cloth she set a violet candle upon a small dish she had brought in consideration of Mary’s furniture. She scattered sage, some copper beads, and a handful of grapes before the candle on the cloth, then lit it.

  “Hekua Oya, lady of wind, lady of change — watch over us this night. Protect Immanuel Dessins and help us to free him. We ask this in the name of righteousness, blessed Oya.”

  Marie closed her eyes and drew deep breaths, seeking a centre of calm. She settled her soul, and listened to the whispers in her mind.

  A faint sense of Galveston came to her: young city, like her own in some ways, unlike it in many others. So busy, so agitated.

  Distant, to the east and north, she felt the presence of the other queen. Marie avoided brushing near it.

  She silently called upon Oya for strength, then finished her prayers. When she turned, she saw Mary watching her, eyes rather wide.

  “Please tell your servants to leave the candle burning.”

  Mary nodded, then led them to the back door and out to the blimp. Jonas, attired in dark clothing and wearing a pair of goggles pushed up onto his forehead, winched in the tether at their approach and hung weights over the gondola’s railing so that it rested on the ground.

  Mary entered first, then Marie and Christophe. Jonas unfastened the tether, then hopped aboard and cast away the weights. The four of them took up most of the room in the gondola.

  As the blimp began to rise into the night, Jonas lit a small burner beneath an apparatus connected to a fan. Marie watched Mary’s house and yard — the shed, the oak tree — dwindle beneath them. Her heart was racing, but more with excitement than with fear.

  Soon the house and those beside it looked like a child’s toy village. The fan was running, moving them toward the bay. It was quiet enough that they could talk over its sound.

  Marie looked at Jonas. “How long?”

  “Half an hour, perhaps.”

  “Have you flown to Whiteston before?”

  “Not to it, but over it. I have a place in mind to land, but it is a little distance from the dock at the mills.”

  Marie nodded then looked at Christophe as he squeezed her arm. He gestured downward and she gave a slight gasp as she saw the harbour below, docks and wharf and ships all tiny. She swallowed and leaned against Christophe, her heart beating uncomfortably fast. Was this how Mignon had felt as she flew to freedom?

  Soon the wharf was left behind and they were floating over water. A gibbous moon shed glints of light onto the bay, like dancing stars. She would be a shadow to that moon.

  She saw a handful of lights ahead, some bright, like the new gas lamps in New Orleans. Others were more like campfires, and made Marie think of the plantation slaves she had seen, gathered around bonfires at night to sing and dance and forget their troubles for a time.

  The brighter lights were on a small dock and on three large buildings that must be the mills. Jonas cautioned everyone to be silent and flew directly above them.

  The blimp whispered over the Calypso. Marie peered down at the paddle-wheeler. A tiny wisp of steam rose from its funnel. She thought she saw a gleam from one of the calliope’s metal pipes, and then they were past.

  The sound of the fan changed. Marie looked at Jonas, who was carefully turning a valve on the apparatus connecting the gondola to the blimp. A slight hiss followed, then Marie felt the gondola begin to sink.

  Panic made her clutch at Christophe for a moment, then she realised that they were descending slowly, gently. He folded his arms around her, offering silent comfort.

  The airship turned slightly, following the shoreline, and the moon c
ame into view across the water, ghost-white in the velvet sky. A haze dimmed the stars, but could not touch the moon’s pale fire.

  A little way in from the shore, past a broad swamp, was a road. Marie’s gaze followed it to a fenced rectangle of land that she recognised as a cemetery. The blimp steered toward this.

  As the blimp descended, she smelled salt water and then the swamp. A cold feeling came over her that had nothing to do with the air — indeed, it was a fair night. Marie began to whisper a prayer of warding. The cold came from the graveyard, and it was not a normal thing. The fenced ground that should be a place of peace, of rest, was instead a source of despair.

  The gondola touched the ground with a slight bump and scraped along it for a moment. The envelope rocked slightly fore and aft as the ship settled. Marie looked at Jonas, who was fiddling with his equipment, then at Mary.

  “We will wait here, unless we hear you call,” Mary said.

  “A keen,” Christophe said, and Marie nodded. Loud and piercing. A sound for trouble. She hoped instead to be silent.

  “I will bring Immanuel back to you,” she promised Mary.

  Jonas opened the door and Marie stepped out of the gondola. Even though her sandals separated her from the earth, she felt the thrumming of discontent beneath her feet. Ignoring it, she glanced at Christophe and the others, drew her shawl closer about her, then strode toward the lights of the mills and the steamboat.

  The road was rough, with wagon-ruts that were deep enough to hold water in places. With head erect she walked, as the ghosts muttered and grumbled around her.

  I am not here for you, she told them. You must find your own peace.

  It boded ill that there was such discontent in the graveyard. Spirits who had lived well rested well; those who did not shed their unhappiness like clouds of clinging fog. Marie lengthened her stride, the swish of her skirts sweeping clear the path behind her.

  I wish you well. I wish you rest.

  She had thought that the discontent would fade as she drew closer to the mills, but instead it increased, and a note of anger joined it. Confused, she slowed her steps, but then shut herself away from the distraction.

  She was here for Immanuel. Perhaps he would be able to tell her more of the situation here, and from that she would be able to decide whether she could intervene. But first she had to find and free him.

  As she came near the lights, she looked for a watchman on the boat or in front of the mills. She saw none. In this isolated place, there would be little difficulty discovering who was to blame for any mischief.

  She strolled toward the buildings, keeping out of the light. The mills had great, towering chimneys from which smoke and steam billowed, even this late at night. They must run in shifts, Marie thought, with the machinery never still. Sugar plantations often operated like that when the sugaring was underway. Why, though, would it be necessary to keep such a gruelling schedule for the manufacture of fabrics, which was not dependent upon the seasons?

  She stepped into the light and moved toward the Calypso, keeping her shawl wrapped close about her and her arms folded to still her bangles. They were made of light wood, hollowed and painted in Oya’s colours with bits of glass glued on. She had commissioned them especially, and was very glad that she had brought them to Galveston.

  The Calypso lay drowsing, bathed in moonlight. On the lower deck she saw a figure silhouetted against the water: a man, standing alone and silent. Watchman. She thought of Moma Shanti, and strove to copy what that woman would do were she here.

  She was a queen, but wearied and perhaps even ill from recent exertions. Remembering how she had looked at the patisserie, Marie allowed her shoulders to slump but kept her head high as she walked up the gangplank. She ignored the watchman, who in turn ignored her as she went to the first staircase.

  She ascended it slowly though her racing heart whispered at her to run, to hide. At the top she paused, as if resting, to listen. She heard no step upon the stair, and dared to glance back.

  Nothing. The watchman had remained below.

  Drawing a deep breath, she slipped between the benches toward the middle of the boat where the dining salon and kitchen were. Darkness and silence. Marie searched swiftly, looking behind cupboard doors and in the few places she had noticed where a man might be hidden. She found nothing. The kitchen was cold; there had been no grand supper here tonight.

  Standing in the middle of the empty salon, she closed her eyes and listened. No one was here save herself. The only sense of people she felt was from the single watchman below, and from the Texas deck above her.

  Ah, but there, more than one soul was present. A bright cluster of souls in one place, and a broader, less defined awareness that she could not pinpoint.

  Mr. White was up there, entertaining a few friends perhaps, or conducting some business at his leisure. Immanuel had to be up there as well.

  Marie swallowed. She would have to be very careful, very quiet, that was all.

  She walked out to the outer deck again, through the framework of ornate woodwork, into the light of the moon. She gazed up at it briefly, calling on Oya for guidance. She removed her sandals, slid them through her wide belt, and started up the steps.

  The wood was cold and slightly damp underfoot. Marie stayed toward the sides, hoping to avoid a creaking step, though she went steadily in case the watchman observed her.

  Light spilled out from a window in the private quarters on the Texas deck. Marie moved silently up to the wall just beside it, and flattened her back against the wood, listening.

  Men’s voices. She could not quite make out the conversation, but it sounded dispassionate. A business discussion, she guessed. Not an interrogation.

  She gave her attention to determining how many they were, and soon decided there were three. Immanuel must be somewhere else.

  Moving back from the lighted window, she circled the cabin structure in the opposite direction, noting doors and other windows that were dark. She paused at each door, listening with both ears and heart, trying to sense Immanuel. A prisoner would radiate despair, and while she did indeed catch a whisper of that feeling, she could not place it beyond any of the doors where she listened.

  She had gone nearly all the way around the structure when she reached the calliope. On impulse she went to stand before it.

  Immanuel had heard her here, and had made the calliope play a response. She stared at the blank wall behind it, one end of Mr. White’s quarters. She had already decided that Immanuel was not behind that wall. Where, then, could he be?

  “Can you hear me?” she whispered.

  Silence. Then a faint note, low and long, from the calliope.

  Marie’s skin prickled. The sound had been meant only for her.

  “I come from Mary. To help. Make that sound again for ‘yes’.”

  The note sounded again, briefly. Marie glanced up at the pipes, saw a wisp of steam above one.

  “And another sound for ‘no’.”

  A moment, then a tiny, high peep. Relief flooded Marie.

  “Are you Immanuel?”

  Low, yes.

  “Are you a prisoner aboard the boat?”

  A pause, then the low note, followed by the high note. Marie frowned.

  “Are you being kept in Mr. White’s quarters?”

  High note.

  “Below?”

  High note.

  Marie paused, frustration rising. No good could come of an endless guessing game. She must think.

  What did she know? That he was aboard the Calypso, that he could hear her, and that he could control the calliope.

  “Are you in a locked room?”

  High note.

  “No?” Marie frowned. “Do you know where you are?”

  Low note, long.

  “Texas deck?”

  A long pause, then the low and high notes together. Yes and no. What did he mean by that?

  Marie stared at the instrument’s keyboard. Open your thinking, she
told herself. If the answers do not fit into place, then you are trying to put them into the wrong frame.

  How could Immanuel both be and not be on the Texas deck?

  A terrible chill swept through her as she thought of a way. She remembered an attic room, and the light of a soul in the eyes of what should have been a dead machine.

  She leaned forward and spoke in the barest whisper. “Immanuel, are you in your own body?”

  High note, long, building to a shrill whine.

  “All right!” Her hands came up in a gesture of warding, bangles clacking together softly, even as the note ceased.

  Thoughts whirled in her head. Not only had he been kidnapped, but his soul had been placed into...this boat? But why? How?

  “Is your body alive?”

  A new note, midway between the other two, and quavering.

  “Do you mean you don’t know?”

  Low note.

  “Do you know where it is?”

  High note.

  Marie’s shoulders slumped. Rescuing him would not be so simple as she had hoped. She must find his body, bring it to the boat (for she doubted that it was already there), and restore his soul to it, all without attracting the attention of Mr. White or his employees.

  Could she do this now, or should she go away and seek to learn more? No time should be wasted. If she could not act now, then she must leave.

  She looked up at the night sky, seeking the moon, hoping for inspiration, but it was not where she expected to see it. Frowning, she stared at that part of the sky until she discerned movement. A star came out from behind — not a cloud, but Mary’s airship.

  The sound of a door opening drew her attention. More light now spilled across the Texas deck, between her and the stairs. Marie bent low to the calliope so that its shape would hide her, and watched.

  A bluff, somewhat loud masculine voice bade good evening to the retreating guests. “Early tomorrow, remember. I will be in the mill by seven o’clock.”

  Mr. White’s voice. She was sure of it.