Time Travel Omnibus Volume 2

by Anthology

  Page gave Morse a sideways look. Page’s back was rigid and his hands were clenched in trembling fists. Brady could almost feel his friend’s rage. “I paint.” Page spoke with a slow deliberation. “I have no need for what will clearly become a poor man’s art.”

  Morse did not seem offended by Page’s remark. “And you, young Brady. Will you use your drive to acquire a talent?”

  Brady stared at the plate and mysterious box. Fifty dollars was a lot of money, but he already had twenty set aside for a trip home. Page did say he had an eye for composition. And if a man with an eye for composition, a lot of drive, and a little talent took Daguerre’s Box all over the world, he would be able to send his memories back to the people left behind.

  Brady smiled. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll take your class.”

  He would postpone the trip to see his parents, and raise the rest of the money somehow. Page whirled away from the window as if Brady had betrayed him. But Brady didn’t care. When they got home, he would explain it all. And it was so simple. He had another improvement to make.

  1840

  That night, Brady dreamed. He stood in a large cool room, darkened and hidden in shadows. He bumped into a wall and found himself touching a ribbed column—a Doric column, he believed. He took cautious steps forward, stumbled, then caught himself on a piece of painted wood. His hands slid up the rough edges until he realized he was standing beside a single-horse carriage. He felt his way around to the back. The carriage box had no windows, but the back stood wide open. He climbed inside. The faint rotten-egg smell of sulphur rose. He bumped against a box and glass rattled. A wagon filled with equipment. He climbed out, feeling like he was snooping. There was more light now. He saw a wall ahead of him, covered with portraits.

  The darkness made the portraits difficult to see, but he thought he recognized the light and shadow work of a Daguerre portrait and yet—and yet—something differed, distorted, perhaps, by the dream. And he knew he was in a dream. The cool air was too dry, the walls made of a foreign substance, the lights (what he could see of them), glass-encased boxes on the ceiling. The portraits were of ghastly things: dead men and stark fields, row after row of demolished buildings. On several, someone had lettered his last name in flowing white script.

  “They will make you great,” said a voice behind him. He turned, and saw a woman.At least, he thought it was a woman. Her hair was cropped above her ears, and she wore trousers.

  “Who will make me great?” he asked.

  “The pictures,” she said. “People will remember them for generations.” He took a step closer to her, but she smiled and touched his palm. The shadows turned black and the dream faded into a gently, restful sleep.

  1849

  Brady leaned against the hand-carved wooden railing. The candles on the large chandelier burned steady, while the candelabras flickered in the breezes left by the dancing couples. A pianist, a violinist, and a cello player—all, Mr. Handy had assured him, very well respected—played the newest European dance, the waltz, from one corner of the huge ballroom. Mothers cornered their daughters along the wall, approving dance cards, and shaking fans at impertinent young males. The staircase opened into the ballroom, and Brady didn’t want to cross the threshold. He had never been to a dance like this before. His only experiences dancing had been at gatherings Page had taken him to when he first arrived in New York. He knew none of the girls, except Samuel Handy’s daughter Juliet, and she was far too pretty for Brady to approach.

  So he watched her glide across the floor with young man after young man, her hooped skirts swaying, her brown hair in ringlets, her eyes sparkling, and her cheeks flushed. Handy had told him that at the age of four, she had been presented to President Jackson. She had been so beautiful, Handy said, that Jackson had wanted to adopt her. Brady was glad he hadn’t seen her as a child, glad he had seen the mature beauty. When he finished taking the portraits of her father, he would ask if he could take one of her. The wet-plate process would let him make copies, and he would keep one in his own rooms, just so that he could show his friends how very lovely she was.

  The waltz ended, and Juliet curtsied to her partner, then left the floor. Her dance card swung from her wrist and the diamonds around her neck caught the candlelight. Too late, Brady realized she was coming to see him.

  “I have one spot left on my dance card,” she said as she stopped in front of him. She smelled faintly of lilacs, and he knew he would have to keep a sprig near her portrait every spring. “And I was waiting for you to fill it.”

  Brady blushed. “I barely know you, Miss Juliet.”

  She batted his wrist lightly with her fan. “Julia,” she said. “And I know you better than half the boys here. You have spent three days in my daddy’s house, Mr. Brady, and your conversation at dinner has been most entertaining. I was afraid that I bored you.”

  “No, no,” he said. The words sounded so formal. How could he joke with his female clients and let this slip of a girl intimidate him? “I would love to take that slot on your dance card, Miss Juliet.”

  “Julia,” she said again. “I hate being named after a stupid little minx who died for nothing. I think when a woman loves, it is her duty to love intelligently, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Brady said, although he had no idea what she was talking about. “And I’m Mathew.”

  “Wonderful, Mathew.” Her smile added a single dimple to her left cheek. She extended her card to him and he penciled his name in for the next dance, filling the bottom of the first page. The music started—another waltz—and she took his hand. He followed her onto the floor, placed one hand on her cinched waist, and held the other lightly in his own. They circled around the floor, the tip of her skirt brushing against his pants leg. She didn’t smile at him. Instead her eyes were very serious and her lips were pursed and full.

  “You don’t do this very often, do you, Mathew?”

  “No,” he said. In fact, he felt as if he were part of a dream—the musicians, the beautifully garbed women, the house servants blending into the wallpaper. Everything at the Handy plantation had an air of almost too much sensual pleasure. “I work, probably too much.”

  “I have seen what you do, Mathew, and I think it is a wondrous magic.” A slight flush crept into her cheeks, whether from the exertion or her words, Brady couldn’t tell. She lowered her voice. “I dreamed about you last night. I dreamed I was in a beautiful large gallery with light clearer than sunlight, and hundreds of people milled about, looking at your portraits on the wall. They all talked about you, how marvelous your work was, and how it influenced them. You’re a great man, Mathew, and I am flattered at the interest you have shown in me.”

  The music stopped and she slipped from his arms, stopping to chat with another guest as she wandered toward the punch table. Brady stood completely still, his heart pounding against his chest. She had been to the gallery of his dreams. She knew about his future. The musicians began another piece, and Brady realized how foolish he must look, standing in the center of the dance floor. He dodged whirling couples and made his way to the punch table, hoping that he could be persuasive enough to convince Julia Handy to let him replace all those other names on the remaining half of her dance card.

  1861

  He woke up with the idea, his body sweat-covered and shimmering with nervous energy. If he brought a wagon with him, it would work: a wagon like the one he had dreamed about the night he had met Morse.

  Brady moved away from his sleeping wife and stepped onto the bare hardwood. The floor creaked. He glanced at Julia, but she didn’t awaken. The bedroom was hot; Washington in July had a muggy air. If the rumors were to be believed, the first battle would occur in a matter of days. He had so little time. He had thought he would never come up with a way to record the war.

  He had started recording history with his book, The Gallery of Illustrious Americans. He had hoped to continue by taking portraits of the impending war, but he hadn’t been able to figure out how.
The wet plates had to be developed right after the portrait had been taken. He needed a way to take the equipment with him. The answer was so simple, he was amazed he had to dream it.

  But that dream had haunted him for years now. And when he had learned the wet-plate process, discovered that the rotten-egg smell of sulphur was part of it, the dream had come back to him as vividly as an old memory. That had been years ago. Now, with the coming war, he found himself thinking of the portraits of demolished buildings, and the woman’s voice, telling him he would be great.

  He would have to set up a special war fund. The president had given him a pass to make portraits of the army on the field but had stressed that Brady would have to use his own funds. As Lincoln told Brady with only a hint of humor, the country was taking enough gambles already.

  Small price, Brady figured, to record history. He was, after all, a wealthy man.

  1861

  Julia had hoped to join the picnickers who sat on the hills overlooking the battlefield, but Brady was glad he had talked her out of it. He pulled the wet plate out of his camera and placed the plate into the box. The portrait would be of smoke and tiny men clashing below him. He glanced at the farmhouse, and the army that surrounded it. They seemed uneasy, as if this battle wasn’t what they expected. It wasn’t what he had expected, either. The confusion, the smoke, even the heat made sense. The screaming did not.

  Brady put the plate in its box, then set the box in his wagon. Before the day was out, he would return to Washington, set the plates, and send portraits to the illustrated magazines. The wagon was working out better than he expected. The illustrations would probably earn him yet another award.

  The cries seemed to grow louder, and above them, he heard a faint rumbling. He checked the sky for clouds and saw nothing. The smoke gave the air an acrid tinge and made the heat seem even hotter. A bead of sweat ran down the side of his face. He grabbed the camera and lugged it back to the wagon, then returned for the tripod. He was proud of himself; he had expected to be afraid and yet his hands were as steady as they had been inside his studio.

  He closed up the back of the wagon, waved his assistant, Tim O’Sullivan, onto the wagon, and climbed aboard. O’Sullivan sat beside him and clucked the horse onto Bull Run road. The army’s advance had left ruts so deep that the wagon tilted at an odd angle. The rumble was growing louder. Overhead, something whistled and then a cannonball landed off to one side, spraying dirt and muck over the two men. The horse shrieked and reared; Brady felt the reins cut through his fingers. The wagon rocked, nearly tipped, then righted itself. Brady turned, and saw a dust cloud rising behind him. A mass of people was running toward him.

  “Lord a mercy,” he whispered, and thrust the reins at O’Sullivan. O’Sullivan looked at them as if he had never driven the wagon before. “I’m going to get the equipment. Be ready to move on my signal.”

  O’Sullivan brought the horse to a stop and Brady leapt off the side. He ran to the back, opened the door, grabbed his camera, and set up just in time to take portraits of soldiers running past. Both sides—Union and Confederate—wore blue, and Brady couldn’t tell which troops were scurrying past him. He could smell the fear, the human sweat, see the strain in the men’s eyes. His heart had moved to his throat, and he had to concentrate to shove a wet plate into the camera. He uncapped the lens, hoping that the scene wouldn’t change too much, that in his precious three seconds, he would capture more than a blur.

  Mixed with the soldiers were women, children, and well-dressed men—some still clutching picnic baskets, others barely holding their hats. All ran by. A few loose horses galloped near Brady; he had to hold the tripod steady. He took portrait after portrait, seeing faces he recognized—like that silly newspaper correspondent Russell, the man who had spread the word about Brady’s poor eyesight—mouths agape, eyes wide in panic. As Brady worked, the sounds blended into each other. He couldn’t tell the human screams from the animal shrieks and the whistle of mortar. Bullets whizzed past, and more than one lodged in the wagon. The wagon kept lurching, and Brady knew that O’Sullivan was having trouble holding the horse.

  Suddenly the wagon rattled away from him. Brady turned, knocked over the tripod himself, and watched in horror as people trampled his precious equipment. He started to get down, to save the camera, then realized that in their panic, the people would run over him. He grabbed what plated he could, shoved them into the pocket of his great coat, and joined the throng, running after the wagon, shouting at O’Sullivan to stop.

  But the wagon didn’t stop. It kept going around the winding, twisting corners of the road, until it disappeared in the dust cloud. Another cannonball landed beside the road and Brady cringed as dirt spattered him. A woman screamed and fell forward, blood blossoming on her back. He turned to help her, but the crowd pushed him forward. He couldn’t stop even if he wanted to.

  This was not romantic; it was not the least bit pretty. It had cost him hundreds of dollars in equipment and might cost him his life if he didn’t escape soon. This was what the history books had never told him about war, had never explained about the absolute mess, the dirt and the blood. Behind him, he heard screaming, someone shouting that the black cavalry approached, the dreaded black cavalry of the Confederacy, worse than the four horses of the apocalypse, if the illustrated newspapers were to be believed, and Brady ran all the harder. His feet slipped in the ruts in the road and he nearly tripped, but he saw other people down, other people trampled, and he knew he couldn’t fall.

  He rounded a corner, and there it was, the wagon, on its side, the boxes spilling out, the plates littering the dirt road. O’Sullivan was on his hands and knees, trying to clean up, his body shielded only because the carriage wall made the fleeing people reroute.

  Brady hurried over the carriage side, ignoring the split wood, the bullet holes, and the fact that the horse was missing. Tears were running down the side of O’Sullivan’s face, but the man seemed oblivious to them. Brady grabbed O’Sullivan’s arm, and pulled him up. “Come on, Tim,” he said. “Black cavalry on the hills. We’ve got to get away.”

  “The plates—” O’Sullivan said.

  “Forget the plates. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “The horse spooked and broke free. I think someone stole her, Mat.”

  O’Sullivan was shouting, but Brady could barely hear him. His lungs were choked and he thought he was going to drown in dust. “We have to go,” he said.

  He yanked O’Sullivan forward, and they rejoined the crowd. They ran until Brady could run no longer; his lungs burned and his side ached. Bullets continued to penetrate, and Brady saw too many men in uniform motionless on the side of the road.

  “The crowd itself is a target,” he said, not realizing he had spoken aloud. He tightened his grip on O’Sullivan’s arm and led him off the road into the thin trees. They trudged straight ahead, Brady keeping the setting sun to his left, and soon the noises of battle disappeared behind them. They stopped and Brady leaned against a thick oak to catch his breath. The sun had gone down and it was getting cool.

  “What now?” O’Sullivan asked.

  “If we don’t meet any rebs, we’re safe,” Brady said. He took off his hat, wiped the sweat off his brow with his sleeve, and put his hat back on. Julia would have been very angry with him if he had lost that hat.

  “But how do we get back?” O’Sullivan asked.

  An image of the smashed equipment rose in Brady’s mind along with the broken, overturned horseless wagon. “We walk, Tim.” Brady sighed. “We walk.”

  1861

  Julia watched as he stocked up the new wagon. She said nothing as he lugged equipment inside, new equipment he had purchased from Anthony’s supply house on extended credit. He didn’t want to hurt his own business by taking away needed revenue, and the Anthonys were willing to help—especially after they had seen the quality of his war work for the illustrated newspapers.

  “I can’t come with you, can I?” she asked as he tos
sed a bedroll into the back.

  “I’m sorry,” Brady said, remembering the woman’s scream and fall beside him, blood blossoming on her back. His Julia wouldn’t die that way. She would die in her own bed, in the luxury and comfort she was used to. He took her hands. “I don’t want to be apart from you, but I don’t know any other way.”

  She stroked his face. “We have to remember—” she said. The tears that lined the rims of her eyes didn’t touch her voice. “—that this is the work that will make you great.”

  “You have already made me great,” he said, and kissed her one final time.

  1863

  Brady pushed his blue-tinted glasses up on his nose and wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. The Pennsylvania sun beat on his long black waistcoat, baking his clothes against his skin. The corpse, only a few hours dead, was already gaseous and bloated, straining its frayed Union uniform. The too-florid smell of death ripened the air. If it weren’t for the bodies, human and equine, the farmer’s land would seem peaceful, not the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

  Brady tilted the corpse’s head back. Underneath the gray mottled skin, a young boy’s features had frozen in agony. Brady didn’t have to alter the expression; he never did. The horror was always real. He set the repeating rifle lengthwise across the corpse, and stood up. A jagged row of posed corpses stretched before him. O’Sullivan had positioned the wagon toward the side of the field and was struggling with the tripod. Brady hurried to help his assistant, worried, always worried about destroying more equipment. They had lost so much trying to photograph the war. He should have known from the first battle how difficult this would be. He had sold nearly everything, asked Julia to give up even the simplest comforts, borrowed against his name from the Anthonys for equipment to record this. History. His country’s folly and its glory. And the great, terrible waste of lives. He glanced back at the dead faces, wondered how many people would mourn.

  “I think we should put it near the tree.” O’Sullivan lugged the top half of the tripod at an angle away from the corpse row. “The light is good—the shade is on the other side. Mathew?”