City of the Saints

by D. J. Butler

  “Shut up!” Tam hissed. “No, he didn’t!”

  A steam-truck, small and boxy and ugly, smashed through a hedge to Tam’s left and surged up onto the green grass surrounding the beehive-cake house. Tam was so surprised he nearly jumped out of his seat, but quick motion wouldn’t do. He kept his nerve, and as the truck pulled up in front of the shattered window, he crept from the bench with all the rat-like stealth and grace he could muster (and if prosperity was a sign of God’s grace, what more blessed creature was there, anyway, than the lowly rat? no doubt it was due to his fervid adherence to the first commandment, be fruitful and multiply). Tam dragged the boy with him, and squatted down behind a row of rosebushes to watch what was happening.

  From his new vantage point he could see in through the window and the first thing he saw was Sam Clemens. Clemens’s hands were tied behind his back and a big man, one of the armed men Tam had just seen come into the building, maybe, pulled a sack over his head.

  “Jesus, Brigit, and the Duke of Wellington!” Tam cursed. He didn’t love the man, but he liked him, and by any fair calculus he probably was in Clemens’s debt. Besides, in any scenario where armed thugs were tying up a man to take him prisoner, Tam’s natural sympathy was with the prisoner.

  Almost any scenario.

  Then the men with guns dragged Clemens out the shattered window and threw him into the back of the truck.

  The kidnappers had other prisoners too, and Tam saw their faces as they were bagged and then tossed on board. There was a big black fellow in a very fancy suit and cravat and there was the crazy-looking bastard with beard and buckskins and then there was another face he recognized, at least from calotypes.

  “Fookin’ hell,” he muttered. “The bastards’re kidnapping Brigham Young.”

  What now? Tam wondered. He didn’t have time to plan, he knew, he had to act. He needed to follow the truck, but if it left the city, any pursuit would instantly be visible.

  He needed to get on the steam-truck.

  He could let the boy go—he’d just have to go after the dwarf later.

  Except no, wait a minute, Coltrane was still there in the bushes, and Tam couldn’t have the little bugger shooting him in the back while he was trying to mount a rescue for good old Sam Clemens. Bloody-damn-hell.

  The steam-truck was a wheeled platform with two metal sheds on it, one shed being the glass-windowed wheelhouse and the second being a cargo space. Between the two was an iron furnace beneath a boiler and beside it a tender with a short-handled shovel strapped to its trapdoor lid. The wheelhouse was empty and no one else was about the truck—all the men were inside, wrestling with the prisoners, and now was the moment to act.

  Tam dragged the boy with him, across the garden space and toward the truck. As he approached it with long steps, Jedediah Coltrane stepped out of the bushes. He had unboxed his machine-gun and now he raised the hateful thing in Tam’s direction.

  Tam drew a Husher and pressed its muzzle against the boy’s temple.

  Don’t even try it, you stupid little fooker, he mouthed at the dwarf, and then he clambered up the short iron rungs to the front platform of the steam-truck, by its squatty little wheelhouse. The boy cooperated.

  Coltrane glared at him with desperation and shifted his grip on the stubby rifle.

  “I’m brave,” John Moses called out softly to the dwarf, “don’t worry.”

  “Don’t worry, you dumb fookin’ midget,” Tam hissed, “he’s brave.” He grinned threateningly at the dwarf. “I’ll come back for you later, you hear?”

  He holstered the Husher, grabbed the boy tight under one arm, and climbed up a second ladder that took him to the roof of the truck’s cargo compartment. He was careful to hold the boy in front of his own body, in case the dwarf decided to risk a shot.

  The dwarf’s indecision ended when the truck gate slammed shut and the armed men came walking out toward the wheelhouse end of the truck again. He faded back into the shrubbery but Tam felt his hard, piggy little eyes still staring in his direction as he yanked the boy flat on the truck’s roof. It was a wide, flat space and there were mooring rings to hold on to. Just to be on the safe side, he unbuckled the boy’s belt and re-buckled it again through one of the rings. No sense losing your hostage, is there, whether to escape or the accidents of an overzealous turn?

  “The safehouse?” a rough voice asked. “Or the ranch?”

  Boots thudded dully on metal as men climbed aboard.

  “Nah, Hatch, I got a better idea,” answered a whiny, nasal voice. “Lee’s gonna find out we ain’t followed his instructions precisely to the letter and we need to get somewhere he won’t expect to find us. And helldammitall, we know Rockwell ain’t home, so I reckon we ought to go to his place.”

  There was the harsh laughter of men and then the groan of the steam-truck shifting into gear.

  “Give me back my hat,” Tam snapped, and took his porkpie back from the little kid.

  “I think it’s time to lay our cards on the table, Captain Burton,” Poe said.

  The two of them stood in the plascrete well, under tens of thousands of staring eyes but alone. The Apostles huddled on the stage with Lee and Cannon, the Virginians had filed out, and in the aisles it was a slow, somber, but still chatting, every-man-for-himself of Saints filing out the doors.

  Burton crossed his arms, looking every inch the muscular and demonic defier of convention, the flouter of taste, the explorer who would go where he willed, and damn the consequences. What did Queen Victoria think of the Kingdom of Deseret that she had sent such a man? What did she think of Americans generally? “Agreed,” the Englishman said. “Start with your real name.”

  “Edgar Allan Poe,” Poe said.

  Burton furrowed his brow in doubt. Poe removed his smoked glasses and his hat, and smoothed his hair down. Burton cocked an eyebrow.

  “Poe,” he murmured. “By the Sapta Rishis, I think you might be telling the truth. I see your nose has shrunk.”

  “I am and it has.”

  “Nevermore!” Burton shouted, then laughed at his own joke. Poe smiled weakly. “But you’re dead.”

  “The rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated,” Poe said. “Deliberately so. I am in United States Army Intelligence. When … enemies … attempted to kill me, and very nearly did so, with no small amount of public spectacle, my superiors and I simply let them think they had succeeded.”

  “Shame to end such a writing career,” Burton tut-tutted. He was taking the revelation well, Poe thought. “Ten years ago, wasn’t it? And I thought the Hajj was a long time to be in disguise.”

  Poe shrugged. “No one reads fiction, anyway.”

  Burton considered this. “So why tell me who you are now? What are you doing here and what is it you want from me?”

  “You are Her Britannic Majesty’s special envoy to the Kingdom of Deseret, are you not? Surely your task here relates to the looming secession crisis? If the southern states secede, Brigham Young—the Kingdom—will have a decision to make and Her Majesty must care about the outcome.” Poe didn’t need the confirmation, but he waited for Burton’s slow nod anyway, as an indication that the man was following and anticipating his train of thought and willing to engage in an open discussion.

  “Yes,” Burton drawled.

  “The secession is a fact,” Poe continued, satisfied. “The South will secede, not willy-nilly but en masse, as a new and separate unity. Maybe it already has seceded. War may or may not be in the offing. It is very likely, I think, that it is. English cotton mills, the mills that grind out prosperity for her entire Kingdom, take in cotton from the southern states. Victoria cannot want war and if there is war, she must enter on the side of the states with which her mill owners are economically aligned. The question, then, becomes, what will Deseret do?”

  “That isn’t my question,” Burton growled.

  Poe hesitated. “What’s your question?” he asked.

  “I don’t need a lecture about the economy of
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I want to know what game you’re playing. My question is: whose side are you on, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe?”

  “Quite.” Poe sighed. “I never would have approached you, Captain Burton, except that my cover is blown. The Mormons know who I am. Specifically, their agent, your lady friend, Roxie, has recognized me.”

  “Roxie!” Burton looked surprised, but even more, he looked disappointed.

  “I guess you may have already had your suspicions about the woman.”

  “Quite.” Burton’s face settled into a glare sandwiched between beetling brows and a jutting granite jaw. With his scars, he looked like a real goblin.

  “You should suspect her. It was she who poisoned me, nearly killed me and ended my writing career, a decade ago in Baltimore.” He omitted to mention that his putative murder had also scuttled his then-impending marriage, turning his fiancée, a perfectly decent and happy woman, instantly into a grieving widow. Poe felt a slight twinge of regret, like he was betraying a confidence to Roxie in telling Burton these things.

  But that was insane. He owed her no confidence. If anything, he owed her a bullet in the forehead.

  Only he kept thinking of their meeting in his cabin in the Liahona that morning, when Roxie had had him at her mercy and hadn’t killed him. Remember this, she’d said.

  Surely, she was playing him. Again.

  “Are you Sam Clemens’s man?” Burton asked, shaking him from his reverie.

  “No,” Poe said. “Clemens and I are both in Army Intelligence, but he and I never worked together and I don’t believe he even knows I am alive. He remains, as far as I know, a loyal Union man.”

  “And you are a secessionist.”

  “I’m a Virginian. Like other Virginians, I will serve my state when its leaders feel they must withdraw from a union that is noxious to its interests, that will tariff it and vote it into submission and poverty. Like all Virginians.” Like Robert.

  “Your mission was secret. Your cover is blown. Now you join with me … why?” Burton looked genuinely puzzled as he wrestled with the situation. “To jointly persuade the new leadership of the Kingdom of Deseret to enter the war on the side of the South? But they seem amply persuaded of that course of action already. Clemens with his single bullet appears to have accomplished more than you and I together ever could, whatever blandishments we might have had to offer.”

  Poe shook his head, wondering what blandishments the Englishman had been sent to offer to Brigham Young. “I’m not persuaded. There are … plots … here. Men are machinating and I fear they are machinating for war. There is a rush to blame the United States. I am a Virginian, Captain, but like you … like all reasonable men, I hope … I would have peace rather than war. I reveal myself to you because I need an ally and because I hope that you may possess information I do not. Secret things are being done here, terrible secret things, and I don’t know what they are.”

  Burton shook his head. “I have no information,” he said somberly. “But Sam Clemens doesn’t strike me as a murderer.”

  “Brigham Young isn’t dead.”

  It was Roxie’s voice, it came from behind him and it caught Poe off guard. Again.

  He whirled, prepared to defend himself, but Roxie stood relaxed, casual, non-threatening. With her was her younger companion, the girlish young woman with the curly brown hair and the freckles.

  “Do you mean he unexpectedly survived the shooting?” Burton asked.

  “Someone was shot all right, but I don’t think it was Brigham,” the younger woman said. “I had to kiss two of Brigham’s sons and beat hell out of one of his house Danites to get the information, but they all said the same thing. He was in his office with the Mexican Ambassador and the Yankee. There was a shot and then some of the Danites, including some pretty senior fellows, came in, and disappeared with Brigham. There was blood on the carpet, but no body left behind.”

  “So Cannon’s version of events might be true …” Poe pondered.

  “Danites are … as they are painted in the penny dreadfuls?” Burton was hesitant, for once. “Tarring and feathering newspapermen? Stuffing ballot boxes at the Gallatin County elections? Gunning down Governor Boggs in a dry goods store in broad daylight? Massacring Indian tribes to remove them from fertile farmland? Robbing wagon trains of emigrants bound for Novy Moskva or California? Hanging federal agents? Slitting the throats of the wounded Missouri men at Crooked River?”

  “The degree of exaggeration,” Roxie answered him, “is not as great as you might think.”

  “They’re President Young’s bodyguards?” Burton continued.

  “Roughly,” Roxie said, with a hint of a smile at the ambiguity in her answer.

  “So this information is completely inconclusive,” Burton said. “It could be that Clemens made an attempt and his bodyguard whisked the President away. Perhaps it was Clemens who was shot.”

  Poe shook his head. “Then we wouldn’t have had this emergency meeting and the announcement of Young’s death. If Young is alive, then this is a coup d’état, Captain Burton, and you are in the uncomfortable position of the ally on the scene at the time.”

  “You and I both.” There was a gleam in Burton’s eye that seemed to say that he wasn’t entirely unhappy to be in the situation.

  Poe laughed. “True.” He turned to Roxie, loath to trust her but unwilling to discount her information. “Do you know which … Danite … took President Young?”

  “You know him, as it happens,” she informed them. “It was Bill Hickman, with some of his boys.” She nodded to Burton. “You may remember him as the low-life, backstabbing snake who almost shot your friend.”

  Poe shuddered. He remembered Hickman, and it made a dark sense. Hickman and Lee plotted to take power. They anticipated the arrival of the Yankee Clemens, they arranged to kill or kidnap Young and blame it on the United States. Then in the moment of the Kingdom’s bereavement Lee stepped forward to reassure the Mormons that everything would be alright, he and the Third Virginia Cavalry would protect Deseret and its Saints from the nasty evil Yankees.

  The next President of the Kingdom of Deseret wouldn’t be Orson Pratt.

  It would be John Lee.

  And his first act would be to take the Kingdom to war.

  “Fearnley-Standish isn’t my friend,” Burton muttered, a little grimly. “Arguably, he may be my colleague.”

  “What do you want, Eliza?” Poe hardened himself, chased out the strange, almost-forgotten feelings of vulnerability and need.

  “I think you’re right, Edgar.” Her voice was soft, warm, encouraging, gentle. He willed himself to keep his eyes open and his focus tight on her, his mind tough. “Annie and I are inconvenient to the new overlords and we will soon be rendered harmless. We need your help to find and rescue Brother Brigham, to overturn this coup, and to avert the war.”

  “I’m appalled the Kingdom could get itself into this state of affairs,” Poe said. It was an unfair comment, but he saw that the knife was in and part of him wanted to give it a hard twist. “Aren’t you its top spy, Eliza? Have you been asleep while this revolution has been building under your very nose?”

  “That isn’t fair!” Roxie’s protégée snapped.

  “Hush, Annie,” the older woman told her.

  “I will not hush!” the girl objected. “The only reason I haven’t already kicked his teeth from here to his precious Baltimore is because you’re sweet on the pucker-faced little cogitator!” Poe flinched and prepared himself for a kung fu kick.

  “Enough!” Roxie ordered, but her companion charged on.

  “Listen, you!” She jabbed a finger in Poe’s direction, her crinoline crackling slightly with the energy of her motion. “Just because Brigham Young gets good advice doesn’t mean he’s going to take it! He’s President of the Kingdom, not the all-seeing and almighty God Himself! Roxie warned him Lee and Hickman were up to no good, Porter Rockwell warned him, too, but he just liked and trusted Joh
n D. Lee way too much to believe us!”

  Poe felt duly abashed, though he wasn’t sure that he should. “Is that true?” he asked Roxie.

  “It’s true.” She cracked a crooked smile. “Brigham Young is not the all-seeing and almighty God.”

  Poe felt mollified, but Burton showed the proper masculine hardness that Poe wanted to evince. “And why should I help you, Roxie? Why should we help you?” Poe met his gaze and they nodded to each other, each reinforcing the other’s resolve. “This is a mess and it may be a crime, perhaps a coup d’état, but I don’t see that it’s my problem.”

  Roxie nodded humbly, though the brown-haired Valkyrie behind her looked stubborn and almost angry, as if she might at any moment explode into action and make good on her threat to kick Poe to Baltimore. “I had hoped that you would do it for your Queen, Captain Burton,” she said, and then she turned to look at Poe. They locked eyes, and her lip trembled. “And as for you, Edgar …” Tears pooled above her lower lashes, and one slipped free, cascading mournfully over her high, austere cheek. “You have no reason to do it. No reason at all. And yet, I hope you will.”

  What a consummate actress she is, he thought. A very devil in a corset.

  And what a consummate fool am I.

  “Yes,” he said, “I’ll help. My mission is to treat with President Young.” He smiled ironically. “And I have no taste for plotters.”

  Burton looked suspicious. Perhaps he had private reservations, but he kept them to himself. “Fine,” he harrumphed. “Where do we start? Hickman? The Danites?”

  Orson Pratt? Poe wondered, but he said nothing.

  As if prompted by Burton’s question, Burton’s diplomat colleague materialized. Another observer might have laughed at Absalom Fearnley-Standish in his long coat, waistcoat, cravat, and top hat, especially given that a crescent-shaped piece of the top hat’s brim had been sliced neatly out of it, giving him a nibbled-upon appearance. Poe, though, saw his erect posture and his fussily-maintained outfit and admired the young man’s ongoing struggle to maintain civilization and manners, despite his coarse environment. He hoped Fearnley-Standish persisted. In his right hand, pointed at the floor but obviously loaded and capped, he carried a long, worn revolver.