Fiddlehead (The Clockwork Century)

by Priest, Cherie

  “Less than that.” Gideon sighed. “It’s the same story over and over, like some nightmare I never awaken from. I begin underground and fight until I rise, only to find myself underground again. Slave quarters to university. A basement to the … the illustrious Lincoln estate. And tonight, out from the basement again, but headed to prison—or, more likely, for a tree or a bullet.”

  Lincoln replied, “Let’s not forget: you’re here, you’re alive, and you’re not in prison yet. There’s room for improvement, but the situation could be considerably more dire.”

  “So what should we do?” Wellers asked, staring into the fire.

  Gideon spoke firmly. “We keep the story out of the papers.”

  The doctor let out half a laugh. “And how do you propose we do that?”

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead. Give me a minute.”

  “I don’t disagree, mind you.”

  “Good, because we must prevent the story from going public, and thereby prevent Haymes and her … her minions from discrediting me. We must get someone to defend my character, and remind the nation of the truth in my editorial. We need a credible person—you, perhaps, Mr. Lincoln—to write a follow-up to my editorial letter, underlining the key points and alluding to evidence that exists, and is confirmed, and will be revealed in good time.”

  Lincoln shook his head. “Gideon, you make it sound … well, not easy. But you make it sound doable, and it isn’t. Not the way you present it.”

  “You won’t write a letter?”

  “I will, absolutely. I’ve supported you from the very start—from the very first plans you drew for the Fiddlehead. I believed in you then, and I believe in you now—not just because I know that you’re incapable of having killed those people.” He adjusted himself in his chair so he could face Gideon more fully, make absolute contact with his one good eye. He did not blink as he said, “If you were not right, and powerful, and dangerous, they would not have resorted to this. But because you are right, and powerful, and dangerous, they have. And they’ll resort to worse before they’re finished. I can feel it in my bones.”

  Nelson Wellers wrung his slim hands together and swallowed, then ran his fingers through his hair. “He was with me when the murders were committed. He has an alibi.”

  “Yes,” Gideon said it fast, as the puzzle piece fell into place. “Yes, that’s true. From a doctor and an agent of the law, after a fashion. We can prove I’ve done no wrong. I should’ve let them arrest me!”

  “Gideon, no. You were right to slip away while you could. I sensed it the moment they arrived. They didn’t want to interview me, or have me offer any statement on your behalf. And when they realize that I can vouch for you, they’ll come for me. I…” He looked around, his gaze darting from corner to corner. “I shouldn’t stay here. I’m a danger to you all.”

  “Wellers, settle down,” Gideon groused. “No one’s coming for you. I’m the problem here. if anyone should go, it ought to be me.”

  “But I’m willing and ready to plead your case and take the stand on your behalf. That’s why they’ll need to be rid of me. If they kill Gideon,” Wellers said sharply to Lincoln, “they make him a martyr—they make his message louder. But if they kill me, he has no defense and he’ll be shrieking his message from a jail cell, like a madman. I need to send a message to Chicago. I need to summon a replacement.”

  “You’re abandoning us?” Gideon asked with disbelief.

  “No. Absolutely not. But I can’t speak on your behalf if I’m dead, and I won’t stand for anyone else getting caught in the fray. Certainly not you, or Mary or Polly,” he said firmly to the old man.

  “Now don’t say anything rash. Furthermore, don’t do anything rash,” Lincoln said in a calming voice. “They can’t kill us all. They won’t kill us all, even if they catch us. The police won’t be back for another hour or two, I shouldn’t think; and although Haymes has agents who are willing to break the law, they may not have arrived yet, and surely they won’t come for you here. Not yet. Not yet.” He murmured the words like a mantra. “We have time to think. Time to plan for—”

  He was interrupted by a knock on the door, hard and fast, a steady bang of the metal ring.

  All three men froze in place, exchanging a violent lightning of glances.

  The doctor said, “Gideon, hide.”

  And Gideon said, “No.”

  “No one’s hiding, not yet,” Lincoln said, his timbre a plea for patience and order. It was a plea for time, but even that great man couldn’t wring more from the moment than was already granted.

  Down the hall a man came running, all heavy footsteps and rambling, long-legged pace; and behind him trailed the lighter, frantic footsteps of the serving girl. In the library, all three men drew guns, prompting Gideon to wonder where Lincoln had hidden one, and how he used one with those twisted fingers.

  He analyzed the situation with his ears.

  Polly’s following behind him, whoever he is. He didn’t break inside, he knocked. He is alone except for the girl, who can’t catch up to him. This might not be what it sounds like.

  “Abe!” the newcomer shouted before he reached the library. That one word blew the tension from the room like steam through a kettle whistle.

  “Grant?” the old president asked, just in time to spy the leader flinging himself around the doorjamb.

  “Abe, they’ve killed…” He stopped when he saw Gideon and Nelson, who lowered their guns but did not put them away.

  “I know,” Lincoln told him. “Your housemaster, and his wife, and the girl who stole those papers. I got your message half an hour ago, and I’m very sorry to hear of it. Is everything … otherwise all right?”

  “No, it’s not. Nothing’s all right. This is about you.” He pointed at Gideon. “And me. They’ve done this to us, not just to those poor people they’ve killed out of hand.”

  “They wish to discredit me,” Gideon said stiffly.

  “Oh, that’s not all they want. No, no, no. I’m afraid not.” Grant walked to the far window. He held his hand against the glass to guard his eyes from the glare. Seeing nothing outside, he reached up to draw the heavy velvet curtains shut. He turned around. “They want to keep me cowed, as surely as they want to make you look like a murdering maniac. Maybe they want to make me look mad, too. I had to escape two Secret Service men in order to arrive here unseen. At least I believe I haven’t been seen…”

  Lincoln said, “Dr. Wellers is confident they want him dead, too. It’s quite a party here tonight.”

  Gideon explained, “Wellers and I were together when the murders happened.”

  “Then he might have a point,” Grant said. To Lincoln, he added, “You need to guard this man’s life with … with your life. The four of us,” he said, so out of breath from his trip, and from the revelations that had brought him there, that his speech caught in his throat, “are all that keeps them from milking the Union nearly to death, and slaughtering thousands for the profit.”

  Gideon put his gun back in his coat and clenched his fists. He measured his words against his fury and rising fear, and cast it all at the president. “Goddamn, but you’re being shortsighted, sir! If the war runs on, it won’t just be Atlanta that falls to the plague. Remember the Fiddlehead. Remember the numbers, and the predictions: the continent will fall within the decade if we cannot stop this madness and force a conclusion. Possibly the world!”

  Nelson Wellers laughed ruefully. “It’s not enough to save our own skins, or the entire nation.” He sighed. “No, we must save the world as well. All from this library.”

  Lincoln gave a crooked shrug. “There are worse places from whence to mount a defense of civilization.”

  Grant seemed to agree, but he was flustered, and he rambled. “They threatened me, Abe. Not just me, but Julia—they’ve threatened her. That terrible woman, that dragon in a hat. She’s the one who did this.”

  “Where is Julia now?” his old friend asked.

  “
Baltimore, but that’s not far enough away to keep her safe from Haymes.”

  Gideon’s nails dug into his palm. He fought to keep from hitting something for emphasis, but managed to restrain himself for only a few seconds before taking a swing at a bookcase. He knocked it so hard that it rocked precariously, then settled.

  “For God’s sake!” he shouted. “Have you not heard a thing? Baltimore won’t be far enough. New York won’t be far enough. Mexico won’t, and Argentina won’t. Canada won’t. The Department of Alaska won’t! There will be no place in this hemisphere far enough away to protect anyone from this walking plague!”

  Nelson Wellers positioned his lean frame between Gideon and the other two men with his hands up. “You’re right. We know you’re right—we’ve already said as much. But in the short term, we must take what action we can.”

  “We don’t have time for the short term!”

  Wellers gave up, flung his upraised hands into the air, and finally hollered back. “You’re the one who wants to stop a damn news story before morning! You’re wanted for murder. That’s a short-term problem, now, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Gentlemen!” Lincoln tried to roar, but it came out as a cough. Grant went to his side, and Nelson looked back to make sure that it wasn’t any worse than that.

  Gideon did not back down. He mimicked Wellers’s tone when he said, “They want you dead. That’s a short-term problem, too, now, isn’t it?”

  “Short term for you—somewhat longer for me! But yes, fine. It serves my point,” Wellers said, struggling to calm himself. “I would prefer to survive. You would prefer to stay out of prison. The Union must be preserved. The war must end. The weapon must be stopped. The walking plague must be addressed. We need stepping stones, Gideon. Stepping stones.”

  Gideon argued, “How are we supposed to stop it? We don’t even know where it’s headed.”

  “Executive order!” cried Grant. “I do still wield some authority, you know. I’m only the president, as I’ve been reminded more than once in the last week.”

  “Then why not send an executive order now?” Wellers asked plaintively. “Recall the project, bring the weapon home.”

  Grant fidgeted like an angry man, pacing with a stomp. “Because no one will admit that it exists. I can’t recall the project; I have to recall the mission itself. And I can’t find it.”

  A disquieting pause fell, and then the doctor said, “Someone will. Someone has to. Maybe … maybe Troost’ll hear something.”

  Lincoln finished his coughing fit, then rallied himself to speak. “We’ve heard nothing from him since yesterday morning, and no mention of Maynard.”

  “If anyone can track it down, he can,” Wellers said with desperate confidence.

  Gideon didn’t argue, but he worried all the same. Troost was one of a kind, but he already had one mission on deck: bringing the Bardsleys to safety on the northern side of the line. He could swing the impossible, yes, absolutely. But how many impossible things could he juggle at once?

  Grimly, he warned, “We can count on Kirby Troost to do his job, and more. But right now, we need a plan. We need to get our story straight and our actions in order before Haymes makes her next move.” He straightened the bookcase he’d knocked ajar in his moment of anger, nudging it back into place and setting two books aright. “We need to send word to our operatives before the police find their way back here, as they inevitably shall. And when Troost finishes evacuating my family, he’ll be back. We must be certain that we are ready for him.”

  Fifteen

  On Monday morning, Maria awoke to a knock on her hotel room door. She threw her coat over her dressing gown and fished around on the cold wood floor for her slippers, but couldn’t find them, so she gave up and tiptoed from rug to rug, turning up the heat as she passed the radiator. “I’m coming,” she called sleepily. She wondered what time it was, but could see through the crack in the curtains that it must be an hour past dawn at least. She hadn’t meant to sleep so late.

  Henry Epperson was staying right across the hall, so she assumed that it must be him, but when she opened the door, she found an errand boy of perhaps ten or eleven years old with a stack of telegrams in his fist. “Are you Miss Boyd?” he asked. She nodded. He thrust the loose papers forward. “Here.”

  “Thank you,” she said, rubbing her eyes. Seeing that the boy lingered, she added, “One moment, dear.” Her bag was sitting next to the washbasin. She stuffed her fingers into the side pocket and pulled out some pennies. “Here you go.”

  She closed the door behind him and sorted the messages by the time they’d been sent—which was trickier than it should’ve been, as they were entirely out of order. But once she’d corrected the situation, she knew she needed to rouse Henry immediately.

  She located her slippers, which had been kicked beneath the bed. She pulled on a pair of socks before donning them, not caring how silly it looked and doubting that anyone would notice. Across the hall she went, where she rapped her fist heartily, repeatedly on Henry’s door. “Henry? Are you up yet?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said through the door, then opened it with a smile. “I’ve got some coffee in here. Can I talk you into sharing?”

  “Coffee sounds wonderful.” She stepped past him as he held the door ajar. “But there’s no time to dillydally!”

  He looked confused. “Not even for coffee?”

  “An errand boy brought me these.” She showed him the notes. “They’ve been piling up overnight, apparently. One in particular is marked for urgent, immediate delivery, but it would seem that the taps aren’t manned as thoroughly as one might wish.”

  Henry shook his head. “The military missives get first handling. Civilian messages get processed whenever the intake officer feels like sorting them out.”

  “That’s a bum deal if you need to send a note in a hurry,” she complained.

  “Far be it from me to argue with you. So what’s the rush?”

  She fed him the telegrams one by one.

  SUMMARY OF NURSING NOTES RECEIVED STOP AGREE ON ALL POINTS REGARDING GAS AND WEAPONS PROJECT DESIGNATED MAYNARD STOP WILL EXPECT REPORT ON ROBERTSON UPON YOUR RETURN FRIDAY STOP UNCLE A

  MAYNARD IS ON THE MOVE STOP AUTHORIZATION GIVEN SANS UNCLE G STOP TARGETS CIVILIAN NOT MILITARY STOP ALERT OUR COUSIN KT TO WITHDRAW TO OTHER SIDE OF MD IMMEDIATELY STOP YOURS DR W ON AUTHORITY AND APPROVAL OF UNCLE A

  “MD?” Henry frowned.

  “Mason-Dixon, I should think,” she replied. “But Project Maynard … if Troost was right, now’s the time to really worry.”

  Oh, I’m already worried plenty,” he said, and fiddled with the small slip of paper. “Civilian targets. That’s not good.”

  “It’s not a surprise, either. Everything I’ve heard of Haymes suggests she’s utterly soulless. But it doesn’t stop there. Look, here’s the next one.”

  DO NOT RETURN TO DC STOP FIND OUR COUSIN KT FOR ASSISTANCE STOP MOST LIKELY TARGETS LARGE CITIES STOP MAYNARD COULD CLEAR A SQUARE MILE STOP RESULTING CLOUD MAY TRAVEL MILES FURTHER STOP WILL SEND WHATEVER HELP WE CAN MANAGE STOP

  “I don’t even know who sent this one,” she said in a whisper. “Dr. Wellers, I expect, though it might be Dr. Bardsley.”

  Henry didn’t dwell on that part. “Oh, God,” he said again.

  “We need to find Kirby Troost, unless you think ‘KT’ stands for anybody else. But it’s his job to get Gideon’s family out of the South. I’m not sure how much assistance he can be to us until he does.”

  He smiled weakly. “Only because you don’t know Kirby. He can handle more than one task at a time, and you can bet he’ll have some ideas and some connections. He always does. Come on—get yourself dressed, and I’ll get us a carriage. A clean carriage,” he emphasized, meaning one that wouldn’t need a driver.

  “Five minutes, and I’ll meet you downstairs.”

  In five minutes she dressed herself, threw on her boots, and lit a tiny fire in
the enamel basin to destroy the telegrams. When they were reduced entirely to ashes, she grabbed her tapestry cloth bag and dashed down the stairs to find Henry standing beside a tiny cabriolet with a puttering, sputtering engine that shook the whole frame as it idled.

  “After you, ma’am,” he said, holding the door open and offering his hand for her to climb up inside. She took it and ascended into the narrow cab, adjusting her skirts so he could shut the door. He crawled up into the other side, shut his own door, and adjusted the levers and wheel. He wrenched the vehicle into gear and it rambled forward, then he hit the brakes to avoid hitting a newspaper seller who’d dropped something in the road. “Sorry!” he shouted out the window. “Sorry,” he said again, and set the car moving forward, more carefully this time.

  “It’s a shame there’s no glass in these windows, don’t you think?” Maria asked with a shudder. She tightened her coat and twisted her gloved hands up in her scarf, but that wasn’t enough to make her comfortable, not with the wind rushing inside the cab.

  “Not such a shame if you’re keen to keep breathing. The exhaust creeps up from the engine—that’s why the windows are fixed this way. It’ll warm up a bit as we go, I promise. Heat also creeps inside, especially at your feet.”

  They drove a few blocks east, which was not at all in the direction of Lookout Mountain—a fact that Maria knew because she could see its craggy, winter-bald point off to the south. She was on the verge of asking why they were taking this path when Henry explained, “We have to get past the wall, and the nearest gate is over here. Under different circumstances, I’d take the long way around to cover our tracks … but we’re short on time, and I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen anyone following us.”

  “No, we’ve been fortunate so far,” she said, with more confidence than she felt.

  Before long, the wall loomed up close.

  It was a sheer, flat, inscrutable thing—a vast construction designed with traditional military precision and lack of finer detail. A massive half-moon over a hundred feet high, it was painted Confederate gray, partly as a patriotic statement, partly to protect it from the elements, and partly because gray paint was cheap. A wide double gate hung open, with one lane of traffic spilling slowly inward, and one lane of traffic proceeding outward at a somewhat faster pace.