By Gaslight

by Steven Price

  The afternoon came on hot. They rose higher. The balloon turned on its solitary cable like a hat in a slow-moving river and William watched the hill below in perfect clarity. The pale lines of the earthworks, the cannons hub to hub in a long snaking mile along the crest. The soldiers in blue huddled in their lines. And the long slope of the hill with the white road descending down the centre. He could see the twin streams on either side through the trees and the wide field and the shimmering of the forest as if its leaves were made of iron and he knew with certainty that the enemy was massing within. The balloon twisted, the netting on the silk slapped and crackled in the high air. He held on.

  Everything was very still.

  And then it started.

  William felt a distant shudder and boom of artillery. He followed Spaar’s gaze north to a cloud of smoke rising from a knoll in the distance and then the earth at the base of the hill heaved and shattered into a cloud of dirt and then again and then the big Federal guns on their rise started in reply. He could see blue soldiers running into position along the crest of the hill and the light caught and flared in their bayonets.

  Spaar took his eye from the spyglass and studied William with a sober look. It’s beginning, he said. Then he went back to his observations.

  William said nothing. The Confederate batteries sounded unsteadily for a while and then fell silent and William knew they had been destroyed. Then a second battery opened its uneven barrage and the Federal guns shifted their aim and after a time these too fell silent.

  What are they doing? Spaar muttered.

  Even to William it seemed awkward, uncoordinated. And then he heard the faint screaming of men in a fury and he peered over the rotating basket in time to see a wall of grey break at a run from the trees and pour forward towards the hill. There were hundreds, there were thousands of men pouring like a pestilence across that field. The Federals let them come on and held their fire and they came on to the very edge of the field and then the Federal cannons opened fire and obliterated the first wave. The Confederates wavered, men in grey still running and then only a pink cloud and the men gone and others ran through where they had been as the dirt twisted around them and it felt to William at that height horrifying and Biblical and savage to behold.

  My god, Spaar muttered. The basket still spun on its axis and he reached across and fumbled with the cable. He had the signal flags in his hands but had not raised them yet.

  William watched the Confederates come on. A second wave punched out through the trees and the cannons tore into them too but they kept on and he watched them hurl themselves uphill past their writhing brethren almost to the breach and then the Federal infantry opened fire and the rebels collapsed back into their clothes in the tall and mutilated grass.

  All at once Intrepid’s basket wobbled violently and William pitched forward and grabbed at a rope and glared at Spaar.

  What was that? he said. Mr. Spaar?

  Spaar did not answer. He was leaning dangerously out and staring downward and then he crowded over William and watched the ground from the other side.

  They had stopped spinning. The balloon felt suddenly calm.

  And then William understood. They had come untethered. They were in free flight over the battle.

  Mr. Spaar?

  Spaar was gripping the edge of the basket.

  Mr. Spaar? He took hold of the man’s sleeve. Put us down. Get us down now.

  Spaar shook him loose. I can put us down. I just can’t say where that will be.

  You can’t steer this thing?

  No one steers an aerostat, kid. Except the wind.

  The wind.

  Spaar paused and looked at him. This isn’t my first flight, kid.

  William stared wildly down, watching Malvern Hill recede. They had begun to drift over the Confederate lines.

  William, Spaar said. Listen to me. The currents move us in their own directions. We just go up or down until we find the wind we want, and we ride that. We’re perfectly safe up here. When we’re ready to descend we’ll go down fast. It’ll be fine.

  Some bitter thing was rising in his throat and he swallowed it painfully down. He could see the dust and clouds of smoke far below them, the men dying in their thousands. They sailed over a clearing and he could see masses of Confederate cavalry standing at the ready and the slung grey peaks of tents in the trees. The sky overhead was vast and silent and clear like still water. Below them a vulture wobbled, dark and evil, an auspice.

  He stared at the aeronaut. What do you mean by fast? How fast?

  They came down a half mile behind the Confederate lines. The aeronaut had reached up and seized a thick cord and torn the rip-panel open and the balloon had lurched and started at once to plunge earthward. William felt his stomach give out.

  The netting on the envelope was crackling and snapping above them. It seemed to William the floor of the basket was pushing up against him and he could not keep himself steady.

  Get down, kid, Spaar shouted at him. Hold on now.

  He was holding on. He was in the bottom of the basket and gripping its sides fiercely and then something went past him at a high whine like a hornet and then a second arced past and then he understood they were being shot at. He could not see the shooters.

  He raised his face. They were plunging at an angle and still high above the earth and he saw the battlefield to the south and when he looked up he saw the envelope widening and filling like a kind of parachute. There were men shouting and pointing and he saw a regiment of Confederate infantry raise their rifles as one and begin firing but he heard nothing and felt nothing and then they were skimming over the treetops. Something caught in the wicker of the basket and they spun sharply. Branches snapped, slicing the basket like knives.

  He awoke on the ground. Sprawled out and not himself. Both wrists aching. Spaar was kneeling over him with a revolver in his hand and the man’s face was bleeding and for a moment William did not understand how he had got there.

  Well that wasn’t so bad, was it? Spaar murmured.

  William tried to speak but something was in his mouth and he got to his knees and vomited.

  The basket had been torn into pieces and was hanging weirdly from its ropes in the branches of an oak and the silk envelope had snagged and tangled in the high leaves. There was a line of debris on the earth surrounding them, shattered branches, torn leaves. William got to his feet and swayed and his arms windmilled and he sat abruptly and stayed down, the trembling in his legs subsiding. He felt all at once afraid.

  The rebels will be coming, Spaar said. And if they find the aerostat they’ll find us. Spaar pocketed his revolver and ran his sleeve over the cut on his burned face but it did not slow the bleeding. He was looking at William’s hands. Are they broken?

  William turned his wrists painfully.

  Can you move your fingers?

  He moved his fingers a little.

  All right. Come on then.

  It was hot and still in the trees. The basket sawed quietly on its straps. He could hear distant rifle fire, the faint shouting of men. He thought of swimming with his brother Robert in the mountain rivers when they were little and how they would holler at each other submerged.

  William, Spaar hissed at him.

  He opened his eyes. Spaar had taken his revolver from his pocket and was staring through the trees to the east and standing very still. They remained that way for a long moment, straining to hear. No one came.

  We need to hurry, Spaar said. He had started to climb the tree and then he was cutting through the ropes with a small sharp blade and William limped over to help. As the pieces came free and fell with a clatter into the grass he dragged them clear and laid them flat as he could manage. He collected the bracken from the ground and laid it over the garish red and white wicker and he tore up fistfuls of grass to do likewise. Spaar was cursing and the tree was shaking and the netting would not come free. William glanced fearfully around at the trees but he did not see anyone.
Then Spaar swung down and walked around the tree unlooping a rope in its tangles and William came forward and the two of them billowed and dragged and hauled on the silk as if they were snapping laundry from a line. And the thing came free.

  Spaar was breathing hard. How are your wrists?

  They were less sore but his ribs had started to ache and were growing worse but he only shrugged and began rolling the envelope up and stamping it down. They buried it between the roots of the tree and covered it in torn grass and when William looked up he could see torn pieces of coloured silk and webbing in the leaves overhead.

  It’ll do, Spaar said.

  He handed the revolver across to William and then reached into his pocket and pulled out a case of matches and he pointed at the tree. You get up there and you wait. Don’t let that aerostat get into Confederate hands. You get down and you burn it if you must. Understand?

  What are you going to do?

  Spaar wiped again at the cut on his face. I’ll try to get back to our lines.

  William said nothing. Then he held the revolver out. You take it.

  No.

  I mean it.

  Kid, I never shot a gun in my life. Listen. I’ll be back with some help. You just stay put and keep real quiet. You can do this.

  Spaar put a hand on William’s shoulder. Then he turned and walked off into the trees towards the sound of the fighting and soon the dappled sunlight and the shifting trunks of light and shadow had absorbed him.

  It was already late in the afternoon. William climbed painfully into the lower branches of the big oak and sat with his knees propped up and the revolver in his lap and he watched the forest around him. He heard boots passing nearby but no one came in sight and later he heard the sound of a repeating rifle shooting into the leaves farther off but nothing returned its fire. The war felt very far away, the woods felt silent. He saw a buck come into the clearing below and stand with its antlers raised and ears swivelling and then it turned and slid noiselessly into the underbrush. The sunlight shifted like drops of liquid over the grass. William closed his eyes. He told himself he must not sleep. He slept.

  Hello floater, a voice said softly.

  He opened his eyes. The blood loud in his temples. It was dusk and he cocked the revolver and stared below him. There were men in the clearing, six of them, they wore Federal uniforms and the man at the front was squinting, shielding his brow. It was Clovis Lowe.

  You didn’t think I’d leave you to a Richmond tobacco prison, he called up.

  William’s legs were stiff, his ribs hurt. All at once he started to shake and he could not stop. He climbed painfully down.

  Where’s Intrepid?

  William gestured to the brush. The black leaves like twists of iron on their cold branches. The pieces of the basket under the bracken and grass. Then the faces of the soldiers were dissolving in the gloom as they dragged the aerostat clear. He saw a waggon and spectral horse standing some feet away and he said, Mr. Spaar didn’t come?

  Clovis had lit a cigar and was smoking quietly and the light was craggy and grooved on his face and flared at each breath and now he paused. He’s not here?

  Sir?

  Spaar’s not with you?

  He was going for help. He didn’t find you?

  We clocked you as you went down, lad, Clovis said. We been on the hunt all afternoon.

  William could hear the rasp of the silk envelope dragging through the grass, the sharp breathing of the men at their labours in the shadows of that place. No one spoke. All was hushed. The trees surrounding were smoke from some horror that would not dispel and all he saw seemed to wither in that strange darkness and waste away to dust, as all things must in time, to waste away and be washed from this earth.

  William was looking at the columnist feeling an unaccountable sadness and he moistened his lips and coughed into his handkerchief and looked away. How many of us were there?

  If you can recall.

  I can recall. You don’t forget a thing like that. You try not to. Working with my father in the Secret Service were a few of his earliest operatives. Timothy Webster, he was good. He was in charge of the field agents. They captured him as a spy in Richmond in eighteen sixty-two and hanged him as a spy. John Scully and Pryce Lewis were arrested as well. Lewis was an Englishman and fearless. They’d been sent south to try to get Webster back up north. William fell quiet and his thorny eyebrows drew together and then he looked up and said, My father loved all three of those men. There was some talk about Lewis and Scully betraying each other in prison but he never believed it. Who else. Sam Bridgeman was a fine detective but a drunk. He came to the Secret Service from the New York police and knew the business. John Babcock could hit a hawk in flight at two miles. Seth Paine got so reckless as the war went on that my father thought he wanted to get caught. I remember him rolling up his sleeves and showing me his arms, they were covered in scars of his own making. Cigar burns, knife cuts. I think he liked it. Ben Porter and his wife, they were escaped slaves, excellent operatives. The female agents as well. Kate Warne and Hattie Lawson. My father always believed in those two. He and Katie were close for years.

  She was writing fast as he spoke and then she looked up and said, What about Mr. Thiel?

  Gustav. Yes. He worked for my father too. That’s where he learned the trade.

  He later became a rival.

  William shrugged.

  Do you remember any of the balloonists, Mr. Pinkerton?

  The aeronauts. Yes. There was Thaddeus Lowe, I never had much to do with him. He fell sick with malaria during the Seven Days but I’d seen him in camp before that talking with my father. Always wore black, a long black moustache, hollow eyes. Looked like a carnival magician. I think I was a little bit afraid of him. His father, Clovis, was like a twisted nail. William smiled. Like he got pulled out of something wrong and never put right. I liked him. There were others. Jim Allen, he had been ballooning since the fifties. I think he hated Lowe and Lowe hated him. They were all like that, big egos, like actors. There was a Negro I liked very much, Cleveland Coombs. He was a part of the ground crew. I don’t know what happened to him after the war.

  She was watching him closely. He passed a finger and thumb over his eyelids flickering soft as a moth. What you remember is not how it was, he said. I know that much. I close my eyes and I see it and I know it wasn’t like that.

  There was a sadness in her, too. He wondered just what sort of person she was, what sort she would grow to be. He would not live to see it.

  He said, I wish I could have been more help to you.

  No, honestly. This has been very helpful.

  But you can’t write it.

  I beg your pardon?

  Not like it needs to be written. You can’t tell it direct.

  She inclined her head. I’m not sure my editors want the unadorned truth.

  Or your readers.

  Or my readers.

  He was gripping the edges of his armrests and he could feel the trembling in his liverspotted hands. He had grown so old. The war that was raging in France was not his war, the world it would build would not be his world. There was no one left from his world. His brother Robert, his wife, John Shore. His father. All of them gone. He looked up at her and said, Well. I’ll say good night to you now.

  She glanced at him in surprise. Oh, yes. I mean, of course.

  It’s late for an old man.

  I shouldn’t have kept you.

  He stood, he dumped the ship’s blanket on the seat of his chair. Waved a gruff hand at her. Never mind it. Be sure to mention the Agency. Say something nice about it.

  She smiled but remained sitting.

  Was there anything else? he asked.

  She was studying him with her clear eyes and her legs were crossed prettily before her and she looked youthful and alive and her black hair fell in a slash across her face. A shadow crept over the floor like a living thing. She said to him, There’s just one more thing I wanted to ask you.
>
  What is it.

  It’s not about the war. Not exactly.

  What is it.

  It’s about someone your father used to know.

  He stared at her impatiently.

  There is a boy, Mr. Pinkerton, mentioned in several accounts. A Mr. Edward Shade—

  Men Who Do Not Exist

  *

  1885

  LONDON

  TWENTY-FOUR

  All the while deceived, William thought.

  Shaking as he thought it. He had been all the while deceived. He had trudged the darkest alleys of Billingsgate, clasped the man’s hand in friendship, toasted with blood on his knuckles to fathers lost, all the while deceived. Late that night after the seance he had stood at his washbasin, brooding, raking his fingers over his face, amazed, wrathful. Going over it all in his mind to see if it made sense. It did not make sense. And yet he was sure. How Foole must have been laughing. In the morning he walked the great high streets and remembered against his own desire Foole’s quiet smile. He had liked the man. That seemed almost the worst of it. In the afternoon he rode through Hyde Park under an icy blue sky where the gas balloons ascended and descended on their tethers and the ladies gripped the railings in exhilaration, their white coats winking open on the frozen lawns, and he thought of Foole standing over the Saracen, close to weeping. There were leafless trees branched and cold like capillaries in the lungs of the dead and William saw this from the open seat of a rented carriage with a blanket over his knees and a scarf at his throat and he understood he had been waiting for something that had at last arrived.

  Shade.

  He was careful. Over the following days he met his few underworld contacts in dingy courts, he lurked in the file closet at Scotland Yard with his coat off and shirt sleeves rolled. Adam Foole did not exist, had no record, no listed address. He found nothing on the gunsmith’s apprentice Albert either. An old file on Rose Utterson’s illegal activities in the Raj had been marked in pencil in the margins from some background check years ago. He traced the brother Gabriel through court records, the public registers. One name among the solicitor’s clients caught his eye, gave him pause. He did not know if either sibling was a part of Foole’s flash life or whether they knew the truth about him but the one seemed likely and the other increasingly possible.