A figure marched toward them, nearly as massive as his wagon.
“I’ll take that list now,” said Dinah Berryhill’s protector, Corporal Alexander Waverly.
CHAPTER 54
Contest
I
THERE WERE TWO of them and one of him, but he had a knife in each hand, and that made up the numbers. Jonathan sat up slowly; Abigail, still stunned from the impact, lay still.
“Don’t get up,” the red-haired giant said. “Stay on the ground.”
“I thought you were her bodyguard.” Jonathan rubbed grime from his face. “I thought you worked for the Berryhills.”
Waverly’s grin was fierce. “Work for those nigras? I pretend to work for them. Took the oath, too. No better cover in this city.” He pounded his chest. “I’m with the Confederate secret service.”
“What secret service? Your side lost!”
“Turns out, we’re not done just yet.”
“What are you saying?” Jonathan had trouble taking in the swift change of circumstance. “Are you the … the conspirators?”
Waverly ignored this. “Where is the list?”
“What list do you mean?”
“The one that if I don’t have in my hand in half a minute I am going to slice out Miss Canner’s intestines and make you watch me strangle her with them.” He saw Jonathan tensing, shook his head. “I’m faster than you, I’m stronger than you, and I can throw a knife very straight.” He opened his coat, showing a large Colt revolver. “And if the knife misses, there is always this.”
Abigail was stirring. Her eyelids fluttered, and she moaned.
“Intestines,” said Waverly, his voice itself somehow sharp and slithery in the night. He took a step toward her, carefully keeping out of Jonathan’s reach. “Such a juicy word.”
“You’re insane,” Jonathan breathed.
The corporal seemed unbothered. He stooped beside Abigail. “Maybe so. But you are going to tell me where that letter is.” He held one of the knives up, turned the blade this way and that, catching the dull reflection of the fog-shrouded moon. “With enough time, I can make the strongest man in the world tell me what I want to know. And you are not the strongest man in the world.”
“The letter was in the carriage.”
“You’re not much of a liar.”
“It was—”
“Fine. Go get the letter, and bring it back. I’ll wait here with Miss Canner. If you’re not back in a minute and a half …”
He tossed the knife in the air. It flipped, and when he snatched it from the air, the point of the blade was an inch above Abigail’s stomach.
“Well,” said the corporal, “I guess you know what happens next, right?”
Her eyes fluttered open.
“Don’t move,” said Waverly and Jonathan at once: Jonathan’s voice by far the louder.
She obeyed, the gray eyes wide, and terrified. The blade flicked the front of her coat, and she stiffened.
“The list,” said Waverly.
“I have it,” said Jonathan.
“I think Miss Canner probably has it.” The knife flicked.
“Wait!” Abigail cried, breath coiling whitely. “You’re a Confederate! Why do you want the list of conspirators? What difference can it make now?”
“What difference?” Waverly thumped his chest. “What difference? These are the men who will decide when to remove the Northern boot from the Southern neck, and we’ll have the evidence that they conspired against their own ape of a President! They’ll be dancing to our tune soon enough!” He smiled coldly. “Now, come on. Tell me where the list is, so you can go home to your aunt.”
“You’re going to kill us anyway,” said Jonathan.
“I’m going to kill you a lot more slowly if you don’t give me the list.” Without warning, he stabbed Abigail in the hand.
She shrieked, rolled over, grabbed her wrist.
He turned to Jonathan again. Flipped the knife again; caught it; pointed one blade at him, the other at her. “And that was just a pinprick. I can make her dance and sing for us—”
Abigail was on her back. One of her hands was injured. The other came up, very fast, and crashed an iron spike against the side of Waverly’s head.
He did not go down; he was stunned, but did not so much as drop the knives.
Jonathan was already pulling Abigail to her feet. He struck Waverly now, with the board he had been cradling, and this time the giant went over, but only onto his hands. He dropped one of the knives, shook his head, began to recover.
Abigail scooped up the fallen knife, and they ran for the carriage; they could unhook the horse and—
A shot rang out, then another, missing them but felling the steed.
They ran deeper into the railyard.
II
They crouched behind a freight car. Abigail wanted to climb in and hide, but Jonathan vetoed the idea: surely that was the first place the giant would look.
“What do you suggest, then?”
“That we separate.”
“Why would we do that?”
“Because you have the letters. If I can get him to chase me, you can escape.”
Abigail looked at him. “You don’t have to try to impress me—”
“It’s the only sensible course. Wait while I divert him, then go.”
“But—”
“You know I’m right,” he said.
She put a hand on his arm. “Jonathan, I—I want to tell you—”
“Later,” he said, and, shoving at her, ran noisily in the other direction. Abigail continued crouching as Jonathan kicked up gravel, bumped into a pile of crates, and noisily cried out as if hurt.
Too noisily.
She heard footsteps approaching from the darkness, precisely where he had run, and they were too heavy to be Jonathan’s. Still holding the knife, she slid beneath the freight car; and saw Jonathan sprawled in the snow twenty yards away.
“Come on out,” said Waverly, directly beside the car.
She went very still. Her wounded hand throbbed.
“You know I’ll find you. Make it easy on yourself. Come out.”
Abigail rolled out the other side, raced over the next track, where a line of open coal cars sat, waiting to be unloaded. Nanny had taught them that the railyards were dangerous places, full of various criminals and drunkards who slept beneath the trains. But the night mist was cold and silent.
“Come on, girlie. Just give me the letter and you can go home.”
She ducked behind the open coal car, peering into the darkness, but could see nothing except the lights of the stock house up the hill and the station beyond. In this frozen, swirling rain, no shout would carry. Even the gunshots were unlikely to have been overheard. And although she still had the envelopes tucked in an unmentionable place, she was quite certain that the mysterious inviolability of her sex would cause the former Confederate spy not a moment’s hesitation. He would strip her naked if that was what it took to find the letters.
Worse, he might not kill her first.
She spotted an empty bottle, wondered whether it would do as a second weapon. She was not really sure how one swung a bottle to do damage. In Peterson’s Magazine, scoundrels did it with ease, because at least one story per number was bound to feature a bar fight. Men were always breaking bottles over each other’s heads. But Abigail, shivering with cold and terror, could not work out a way to do it. Corporal Waverly was, after all, a foot and a half taller than she. To bring the bottle down on his head, she would have to be higher than he; but if, say, she climbed aboard one of the cars, even if she were able to mask her presence, and even were the corporal so foolish as to stand beneath her, she would be too busy hanging on for dear life to get any leverage.
The knife then.
The crunch of ice under a man’s foot sent her scurrying farther along the train. She was almost at the engine. She could smell the smoke. Staying low, she moved forward, feeling her way with fingers on the
frigid steel. If there was smoke, the boiler was stoked, and if the boiler was stoked, someone would surely come to check on it. She remembered Octavius Addison telling her once that they ran them at low pressure on nights like this, to keep the machinery from freezing.
Low pressure.
High pressure.
One of the useless facts Octavius had shared as they rode around the city: On cold nights, the engineers ran the boilers on low so that they would stay warm but not begin to build up too much steam. There was a small relief valve open at night: use a larger one and the fire would go out. The relief valve was adequate for low pressure. At higher pressures, however, a larger valve was needed.
Otherwise, the boiler would explode.
Abigail found the ladder, climbed up into the cab. The noise of the boiler drowned the clatter of her shoes. Her hand was shrieking. She peered at the controls in the darkness. She recognized almost nothing. Octavius had said something about the throttle.…
She located the throttle lever; pushed, then pulled. The lever resisted. She found a flange blocking the way and shoved it aside. Another pull. Suddenly the hiss was louder. She pulled harder. She was not sure what all the dials meant, but when she felt the steel begin to shudder, she knew the pressure was building. She did not know how swiftly. She only knew that she had to get very far away, very fast.
She jumped down, and there was Corporal Waverly, his ear partly severed, blood pouring down the fiery-red beard.
“The letter,” he said. “Now.”
Abigail backed away, along the engine. She still held his knife. “Last chance.”
She shook her head. Waverly came at her. She led with the knife, the way Michael had taught her, but she was slow and clumsy, and he hopped aside without difficulty. Even had she made contact, she suspected it would have been like trying to stab a rhinoceros.
“Don’t do that again,” he said.
He grabbed for her, and this time Abigail sliced downward, catching his wrist, which spurted blood. Waverly looked at the cut. He seemed impressed, but not frightened: he had been stabbed before.
“I warned you,” he said, and, with a sigh, swiped at her with his huge hand. The almost casual blow knocked Abigail to the ground. She could not catch her breath.
Waverly leaned over her, and that was when the boiler exploded.
The sound deafened her.
The corporal crouched and spun, and a piece of metal caught him in the face; and Abigail, with what strength she had left, drove the knife into his thigh. As he began to turn, Jonathan, a trickle of blood on his own forehead, smashed a plank against Waverly’s ear.
The giant went down.
But, again, only to his knees.
He shook his head, blood flying, and punched Jonathan in the groin. The young man folded to the ground. Waverly kicked him in the chest, then turned to Abigail. He grabbed her leg, dragging her toward him. Jonathan managed to get a hand on the giant’s neck, and bent his head back. Waverly stood with a roar, and threw him off.
“Enough,” he wheezed, and drew the Colt.
The crack of a gunshot seemed to surprise him, for he spun around and clawed at his back. A second shot missed him and nearly hit Abigail, but the third put the corporal down on the frozen mud.
Looming from the darkness were several figures in dark uniforms. Two of them held rifles.
A scrawny, familiar figure emerged from the shadows between two freight cars. He was carrying a large pistol, and looked straight and confident and not the least bit nervous.
“The boiler was an excellent idea,” said Mr. Plum. “Otherwise I might not have found you in time.”
Jonathan stooped for the Colt that had fallen from the giant’s twitching hand.
“Please don’t do that,” said Plum.
“Who are you working for? Grafton? Belmont? Who?”
Plum ignored the question. He was crouching beside Waverly, checking for signs of life, and finding none.
Abigail had managed to sit up. “I think he’s on our side,” she said, shakily.
“Why?”
“Because unless I am mistaken, those are Union soldiers approaching. And General Baker is with them.”
CHAPTER 55
Conspirators
I
THERE WAS EVEN an ambulance wagon, where they patched up Jonathan’s forehead and Abigail’s hand. There were soldiers and police and quiet men not in uniform who were evidently federal detectives. And the part that worried Abigail most was that she had no clear picture of how long they had been watching before they intervened; she wondered whether, had Waverly managed to kill them both before being stopped, Baker would have been entirely disappointed.
“So Plum works for you,” said Jonathan, as a surgeon cleaned the gash on his head. “He used to be at the War Department. I suppose Grafton thought Plum was giving him information from the files, but it was the other way around, wasn’t it? Plum has been working for you all along. Keeping an eye on Grafton.” A grimace of pain from a stitch. “And maybe on Dennard & McShane as well.”
“Mr. Plum is a valued member of the Service,” said Baker, primly.
The subject of their conversation was several yards away, conferring in hushed tones with the detectives, and it was plain from their deference that Plum was the one giving orders.
“I suppose that Plum arrested Mr. Grafton for you,” said Jonathan. “Everyone thinks he’s missing, but you have him locked up somewhere, don’t you? Undergoing interrogation? Or was he just shot?”
But Baker preferred not to answer questions. His illness had left him pale, and a good deal thinner, but his contempt was undiminished. “When we reached Mrs. Sprague’s, we were told that you had just left. We searched the area, but it took us some time to imagine that you might have gone into the railroad yard.”
“You must have heard the explosion,” said Jonathan.
“That’s what brought us running.”
“But I don’t understand,” said Abigail. “Why were you looking for us to begin with? And why on earth did you think we had been to see Mrs. Sprague?”
Baker smiled blandly. “I have my sources.”
Someone was watching. That was the only answer. One of Baker’s detectives had followed them from the office to Kate’s house, then gone to summon the general, only to return and find them gone.
“I believe you have something for me,” said Baker.
“Something like what?” asked Abigail, innocent.
“I am quite sure that Mrs. Sprague gave you Chanticleer’s deposit.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“The letters she was holding. She gave them to you.”
Abigail knew her friend. “Did Mrs. Sprague tell you that?”
“Yes.”
“Actually, General Baker, I don’t believe you.”
He wanted to hit her; that was plain. He wanted to grab her, shake her, place her under arrest, drag her off for interrogation. But he dared not touch her, and they all knew it. Not only because she had just made a deal with the President of the United States; but also because Jonathan Hilliman was there to watch, and there were families whose wrath one did not risk.
General Lafayette Baker believed, albeit mistakenly, that the Hillimans were still of that ilk. Furious, he strode away.
Mr. Plum joined them. “Now would be an excellent time for the two of you to depart,” he said softly. “I fear that the general’s recent illness has left him highly irascible.”
They had questions, of course, but Plum offered no answers.
“If we are not going to give the list to General Baker,” said Jonathan as he drove a freshly borrowed carriage across the Island, “what exactly are we going to do with it?”
“Use it as evidence.”
“The Chief Justice will never admit the letters into evidence.”
Abigail’s eyes were shut. “We are not going to ask him.” Her voice was crisp. “Don’t you see, Jonathan? Corporal Waverly kept asking about the l
ist. Singular. General Baker mentioned the letters. Plural. The corporal didn’t know there was a second envelope. Baker did.” Her bandaged hand waved away his questions. “We have been making a false assumption, Jonathan. Perhaps when we have examined the list of names, we will know where we went wrong.”
II
They sat in the kitchen of the house Abigail’s father had built, the list of conspirators—“potential conspirators,” Abigail kept warning him—on the table. The list ran to four pages, in an aggressively slanted copperplate that she did not recognize. The two of them sat side by side so that they could read the names together by the light of a single sputtery lamp, the candle within almost down to the nub. Jonathan had argued that they would be safer at the Bannerman manse, or even the office, but Abigail said she wanted to go home. And she had run upstairs to check on Nanny and Louisa before allowing him to slit the envelopes. When she returned, she placed a derringer on the table and leaned a shotgun against the wall.
Jonathan said nothing.
The thinner envelope contained what appeared to be two pages from Stanton’s private diary. The first entry, dated a year and a half ago, began with the observation that the writer was beginning to harbor reservations concerning “certain policies pursued by the President whom I loyally serve.” Jonathan was about to comment, when Abigail slipped the pages from his hand and put them away.
“The other is more important,” she said.
They turned to the list of conspirators: “Potential conspirators,” she cautioned again. “People they considered approaching.”
There were about forty names, and over half were unfamiliar to her. Jonathan pointed out a few industrialists whom he knew by reputation.
“I would like to know whose handwriting this is,” she said.
Some were politicians. James Blaine was on the list, along with five other members of the House. No Senators.
But …
“Oh, Jonathan.”
He had found it already. Was staring. Trembling. The name was sixth down on page three, in that same beautiful hand: “Elise Hilliman.”
The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln Page 54
