Dead Reckoning

by Lackey, Mercedes;Edghill, Rosemary

  Shepherd must have it. If he carried it on him she was sunk, but the key for this lock wasn’t small. He might keep it in his bedroom. Or his study. She was pretty sure he had a study where he could go to be alone, because she didn’t think he wanted to spend all his time being holy for his faithful followers. And he wouldn’t want to come out here to a hole in the ground every time he wanted to take a holiday from being the Fellowship’s “Blessed Founder.” If everyone else slept in the dormitories, there’d be plenty of room inside the house.

  She tucked the lockpicks back into their tube, and the tube and the keys into her reticule, picked up the candle, and got to her feet. I can still be on my way before dinnertime. She wanted to believe that. But thinking it was too much like whistling past the graveyard.

  * * *

  Gibbons tried not to watch the clock as she paced up and down the wooden floor of her laboratorium. She only succeeded part of the time. When the last of her distillations brought her no closer to the answer she was looking for, she was forced to return to her mental resources.

  The problem was, it was very difficult to concentrate when she kept picturing Jett getting into trouble. What if none of the keys fit the lock? What if Jett couldn’t manage the lockpicks? Gibbons had learned the trade from an expert house-invader; picking a truly professional lock took more than a little expertise with a hairpin. What would she do then?

  White Fox watched her pace. She noticed he stirred once or twice, as if to say something to her, then subsided again. He probably knew very well that nothing he could say would change her internal agitation, and having been trained in patience by Natives, he knew better than to flog that particular dead horse.

  That’s a lesson most white men could stand to learn, she thought, then added, with some wry irony, including me. Front door or back? That was an easy one. Sister Agatha had come to the front door only because Jett had rung the bell, and she’d seen for herself the women weren’t encouraged to stray from their drudgery. She eased the door open. The house was quieter than a church on Monday. She pushed her bonnet back off her hair as she called up a picture in her mind of all the rooms she’d been in the last time she was here, and turned left at the parlor instead of right.

  She opened each door cautiously as she came to it. A couple of the rooms were bare to the walls; one of them had been the library, but the bookshelves were empty. A couple were still being used as bedrooms—the ones with boarded-over windows. All that was in those was a narrow iron bed and a couple of clothes pegs on the wall. By now, Jett knew, she would have been shaking like she had a fever if she hadn’t spent month after month training herself out of it. A doctor might practice his profession with shaking hands. A gambler and gunslinger couldn’t.

  She realized she’d found what she was looking for the moment her feet touched carpet instead of tile. None of the floors so far had been carpeted, but most ranchos had carpet everywhere—Turkey carpets from back East for the wealthy, rag rugs or Navajo blankets for the regular folks. She didn’t know which Lamar Chapman had had back when Jerusalem’s Wall had been the Lazy J, but the runner under her feet was as lush and thick, patterned with the same intricate weaving of shapes and flowers as the one she’d once had in her bedroom. Back when she was a girl. She clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle her panicked giggling. She was a girl now.

  Again.

  There were two doors with carpet in front of them. She opened the first and slipped inside. Bedroom, and obviously Brother Shepherd’s bedroom. It had a door that led through to the room next to it. She knew the bedroom was near the end of this wing. The room next door was probably his as well. Jett wondered how many of his “fellowship” had ever seen these rooms—and if they had, how they explained it to themselves. It had a thick Turkey carpet on the floor, and a cherry tester-bed plumped up high enough under its velvet cover she was willing to bet it contained a featherbed or two. There were night tables on both sides of the bed, carved with garlands and flowers to match the bed-frame and set with gilded knobs, and there was a highboy bureau, too. The windows were hung with heavy velvet curtains—pushed back—and the washing table with its inset bowl and china pitcher matched the bed. The shaving set beside the bowl—mug and brush and straight razor—were ivory and silver gilt and fine porcelain. There was an oval mirror hung on the wall above it, too, the first mirror she’d seen anywhere at Jerusalem’s Wall. Someone here must know about this, Jett thought. I’m going to bet Br’er Shepherd don’t fetch his own wash-water of a morning.

  She searched the room quickly, but all she found was that Brother Shepherd had a taste for fine things—and probably as much clothing as the entire rest of the fellowship put together. Soft flannel night shirts, and woolen ones; fine linen shirts and a taste for good whiskey, because there was a bottle and a glass in the bottom drawer beside the big gilt-paper box of chocolates.

  She didn’t notice her fear giving way to anger until she had to stop herself from picking up the whiskey bottle and slamming it against the wall. She’d been afraid when the zombies had attacked Alsop. She’d been scared both times she’d come to Jerusalem’s Wall. But now …?

  One Sunday after Mass, Philip had told her Catholics were raised on sin, and unfortunately for Philip, their brother Charlie heard him. Charlie went straight to Papa and ratted him out and Philip had to eat his meals standing up for a few days. Philip had said he was sorry, but he’d never said it wasn’t true. Then the War came, and Jett had always tried to keep the Commandments in her heart even after she knew she’d broken pretty near all of them. It had been an actual heathen—the first Jew she’d ever met, and she’d thought they were all bible people and not real—who told her there was really only one Commandment for everybody. Don’t lie. There was lying with words, and lying with deeds, and lying with thoughts, and out of all of them, Jett had decided that telling folks one thing and doing another was probably the worst. It was hypocrisy, and even the Greeks about a thousand years ago had a word for it (they were pagans, not heathens, so she guessed the difference was whether you were dead or not). Black heart and Sunday manners, Tante Mère had called it. Jett couldn’t think of anything worse.

  That was what Brother Shepherd was. Bad enough he was raising the dead and killing everyone for hundreds of miles around. She thought she could have maybe understood if he’d really thought he’d been Called to do it. But he preached about giving up worldly things and pretended he was too holy to even eat, and all along he slept in silk and velvet and gorged himself in secret. She would have walked out of his bedroom right this minute and called him out except for what Gibbons had said. If they didn’t figure out how he was making zombies—and made sure nobody else could get their hands on that recipe—they’d just be leaving a stack of gunpowder kegs around and waiting for someone to walk by and light the fuse.

  She opened the door that led to the next room. The moment she stepped through it she was sure the key was here, because it had to be here if it was anywhere. The room was at least twice the size of the bedroom, and twice as fancy, too. It had a couple of carpets on the floor, and more heavy velvet draperies at the windows pulled back to show off the curtains underneath, so she could see the windows were more of those French doors. There were paintings with big gilt frames on the whitewashed walls, and glass-fronted bookcases under them, and a desk almost as big as the bed in the other room, carved all over except for the top. On the wall behind the desk there were about half a dozen crosses, and every last one of them looked as if it belonged in a church. The sight of them made Jett a little queasy. She couldn’t imagine anyone bad enough or crazy enough to loot a church, whether it was a real church or just a Protestant one.

  The air smelled of dust and books, and there was a faint sweet scent beneath both. Incense. It made her more nervous than before, as if this room really was the holy place it worked so hard to resemble. She hesitated for a long moment, unable to step into that room. She told herself this was her best chance at the key, that if she d
idn’t find it she’d light out of here and not stop until she was back in Alsop. Maybe Gibbons could think of something else.

  Only Jett knew Gibbons couldn’t, and that was what made her walk to the desk.

  It had all the usual things on it—gilt writing set, humidor full up with good cigars, a couple of crystal paperweights, a lamp that was glass and brass instead of plain tin. There was a little silver box containing mysterious tarry black balls that smelled sick-sweet, and a bigger porcelain one that was full of incense.

  The drawers were locked, and she was just reaching for Gibbons’s lock picks again when she heard the knob on the hallway door rattle and saw it begin to turn.

  Jett moved instantly. Bad enough to be caught in here. Worse to look as if she’d been trying to steal something. She got herself around to the front side of the desk and had her hands clasped in front of her by the time the door opened. It wasn’t Brother Shepherd.

  “What are you doing in here?” the woman asked sharply.

  She was dressed in the same kind of shapeless faded calico dress Jett had seen on Sister Agatha. Her hair was gray, her apron was dingy—not dirty, but not white—and her skin had a gray tinge to it, as if her life was so hard even the wrinkles in her face weren’t enough to tell about it.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” You’ve got about ten seconds to come up with a real good lie, a cold calm voice inside her said. “I heard—I heard tell there was a preacherman here, and I—I got me a bad need, ma’am!”

  This wasn’t her voice, not her words, but Jett recognized them anyway. Back in Orleans Parish, the Desbiennes had been a no-account passel of swamp trash who couldn’t raise a crop up out of the ground if Jesus Lord had commanded it to come forth, and Mama had nursed their brats through fever and their women through childbed and rode out there at least once a month with a hamper of food and took Jett with her. Mama said it wasn’t charity or compassion if it was easy, but Jett had hated to go.

  “This is Brother Shepherd’s private study,” the woman said harshly.

  Jett put her hands over her face. “Oh, miss, I didn’t mean to go where I don’t belong, truly, but I heard—I heard he’s a powerful good man!”

  The woman’s face softened. “He is. Brother Shepherd speaks with God’s holy angels daily. Come here, child.”

  Jett walked slowly across the carpet and stopped, head down. When the woman reached for her, she flinched automatically, but all the woman did was untie the bonnet-ribbons at Jett’s throat.

  “I am Sister Catherine,” she said, handing Jett the sunbonnet. “What’s your name?”

  “J—Jayleen,” Jett stammered. It wasn’t a Bible name by any stretch, or even a proper name. It was the name of the eldest Desbiennes girl, and it was all she could think of. “Please, Miss Catherine! My brother’s awful sick, and he’s like to die if he don’t get prayed over right quick!”

  “Missus, Missus, come quick, the baby’s come early and Mawmaw’s like to die if you don’t come right quick.…”

  “You must not use those honorifics here, child, for we here of the Divine Resurrection have rejected the evils of the world,” Sister Catherine said. “I am Sister Catherine. And I will call you Sister Jayleen.” She put a hand on Jett’s arm and drew her out into the hall, shutting the door firmly behind them. “You did wrong by sneaking in here this way. You should have come openly. Brother Shepherd would never turn away a soul in need.”

  “I was a-skeert, Ma—Miss—Sister, ma’am,” Jett stammered. She thought of Phillip, laughing at her because she’d been caught in a lie by Tante Mère: You have to believe it yourself, Pippa, before you can make anyone else believe it. They’ll believe you if you believe you, that’s the first rule. It wasn’t hard to let the tears come after that, or to scrub at her eyes until they were red. “My brother … he isn’t really sick,” she whispered.

  Sister Catherine had been leading her back up the hall. They’d almost reached the front parlor when she stopped.

  “Does he drink?” Sister Catherine demanded. “There is no sanctuary here for drunkards and libertines.”

  “No,” Jett whispered, her throat closing with unshed tears. “Oh, please, please, sister, he’s done gone and got hisself shot and he, and we—we’re rebs, ma’am. He never swore. They’ll hand him over to the Army iff’n they ketch him.”

  Tyrant Johnson had issued a general amnesty to Confederates two years ago—pardoning them for the “crime” of fighting for their own country—but to claim that pardon, a Southerner had to swear an Oath of Allegiance to the Union. Without swearing that oath, you were a criminal in Yankee eyes, unable to vote, own property, operate a business …

  But if you swore that oath, you were a traitor.

  “The things of the world have no place here,” Sister Catherine said, so calmly Jett wasn’t sure she’d heard her. She started walking again. Jett followed. She forced herself not to look back at the study door. “Sister Jayleen” was interested in Brother Shepherd, not his possessions.

  The kitchen of Jerusalem’s Wall was familiar enough, even though Jett had never been in it: cookstove, pantry shelves, dry sink, wet sink, and a long marble counter down the middle. There wasn’t much you could remove from a kitchen and still have a kitchen, after all. Jett saw there were two women were standing at the counter, rolling out tortillas. A couple of pots of something were simmering on the stove.

  “This is Sister Jayleen,” Sister Catherine announced. “She’s come to join us.”

  One of the women looked up. It was Sister Agatha, and for a moment Jett held her breath, but Sister Agatha’s gaze passed over her without recognition.

  “Bet she hasn’t come alone,” the other woman said cynically.

  “Sweetness and humility are the flowers we grow in Our Savior’s garden of Righteousness, Sister Ruth,” Sister Catherine said reprovingly. “If Sister Jayleen has had a true calling to come among us, our Blessed Founder will see it.”

  Sister Ruth returned to her work, her mouth folded in a thin line of disagreement.

  Jett stood nervously at the edge of the kitchen as Sister Catherine went to the cupboard and took down two battered tin mugs. She picked up the kettle keeping warm on the back of the stove, but as she poured, Jett saw the liquid was thick and dark. If drinking more of that Revealed Herb Tea is the worst that happens to me here, I’ll count myself lucky, she told herself.

  Sister Catherine handed Jett one of the mugs and motioned to Jett to follow her out of the kitchen. She led Jett to an alcove just off the dining room. Jett thought its purpose might once have been to hold cooling racks for cakes and pies, but its window had been bricked over, and now it was a gloomy place. There were benches on either side of the doorway. Jett sat as close to the wall as she could get. Sister Catherine sat beside her.

  “Now,” Sister Catherine said calmly, sipping her tea. “You must tell me all you know about our Blessed Founder, Sister Jayleen, and how you came to us.”

  “I guess I can’t, ma’am—Sister,” Jett said, bowing her head. The metal cup in her hands was uncomfortable to hold, but the pain was something to concentrate on. “I guess I heard about him a lot of places before I heard a name. We tried—Brother’n me—to join up with a wagon train up north of here. They wouldn’t let us stay above a day or two. We didn’t have any money.” She took a deep breath, willing herself to believe so she could convince. “We headed on south, because he’d heard they didn’t care if you’d sworn. And I heard there was a righteous man living here in the desert.”

  Sister Catherine nodded, as if she’d heard exactly what she’d expected to hear. “God has spoken to Brother Shepherd,” she said. “You doubt and fear. Don’t be ashamed. Once I did, too. Do you believe in the Resurrection?” she asked abruptly.

  “I …” The question caught Jett off guard. What was the right answer? “I guess I’m as good a Christian as some, Sister Catherine.”

  “On the Day of Judgment, Jesus Christ our Lord will raise up both the living and
the dead to weigh their souls and cast the wicked down into Darkness. But He will not come with a great fanfare, so that the wicked may lie and pretend to righteousness. No! He will come so softly and quietly that many—even among those of us here—do not realize He is already here.”

  “Oh, Sister Catherine,” Jett said. She’d wondered why Brother Shepherd let Sister Catherine enter his private rooms just as she pleased, and now she thought she knew why. Brother Shepherd was bad crazy in the smart way. Sister Catherine was just crazy.

  Jett suspected she knew why. “I am sorry for your loss, Sister Catherine,” she said softly.

  Jett was all too familiar with bereavement and the terrible toll the death of a loved one took on those left behind. Louisiana had been one of the Seven, the first seven states to secede. It had gone out in January of 1861. New Orleans—and Orleans Parish—had fallen to the Yankees fifteen months later. Yankee occupation had meant they got the bad news quickly. The casualty lists: husbands, fathers, sons who had gone off to fight and would never come home again. Many of the bereaved had turned to planchette writing, desperate for a last word from those who’d gone on ahead. Others had just gone quietly mad, insisting a husband, a son, a father was alive—coming home soon, already here, never left.

  “You’re a good girl, Jayleen,” Sister Catherine said, patting Jett’s knee. “But I have no need to grieve! Brother Shepherd has promised my David is to come back to me very soon. Would you like to see his picture?”

  She didn’t wait for Jett’s answer before bringing out a locket she wore beneath her dress. She opened it and held it for Jett to see. There was a daguerreotype picture of a man on one side and of a young boy on the other.

  “That’s my David. My angel baby. Henry and I always hoped for children, but for years we were not blessed. I’d given up hope when the Lord took mercy on me. But he punished me for my doubt as well. From childhood David was frail and ill—but a good boy!—and the doctors told us he had an incurable consumption. This time I didn’t despair, and again my prayers were answered, for I saw a newspaper article saying it was merely the heavy wet air that troubled him so, and the desert would make him well again. Henry was against it, but I prevailed upon him at last. What mother wouldn’t fight ten lions for her child? And once we had begun our journey, I discovered Henry meant us to press on to California, but I knew we must not. Like you, I’d heard rumors that Christ our Lord had returned to Earth. Oh, I did not know who He was, then! In fact, He does not yet know his true nature, for God does not send burdens we are too frail to bear, and it will be a hard task for Him to sit in judgment upon the nations. But we must not speak of such things yet. All that matters is that David has been made well again.”