Fiddlehead (The Clockwork Century)

by Priest, Cherie

  Grant watched his old friend shift from the seat by the fire and into his wheeled contraption. He did it laboriously and with apparent discomfort, but then he straightened himself, pulled his preferred blanket over his lap, and settled his hands around the controls. The chair clacked to life, some internal mechanism sparking and spinning, then humming like a very small engine. He aimed himself at the door.

  But then the president stepped forward, blocking his way.

  “No,” Grant said firmly. “No, this is not yours to face alone. I won’t hide in your books while you stare down that woman’s wicked forces. Let me take this one. They won’t be expect me; it’ll throw them off. These are hired hands—and I bet they’re not half so good as their mistress. I’m the goddamn president! I’ll executive order them right back to where they came from.”

  Polly lingered in the hallway. She asked, “What if they’re real policemen, not mercenaries?”

  “Then I still outrank them. And unless they got the chief justice to sign off on the arrest, I outrank whoever authorized them, too.” He wished he’d chosen his words better. They left a bad taste in his mouth. “Abe,” he said firmly, still standing between the man and the corridor. “Let me handle this.”

  When neither Lincoln, the scientist, or the doctor responded, Grant stepped past Polly and strode forward. He took long, fast steps. It only occurred to him then—while navigating the halls of Lincoln’s home—that his idea of comfort amounted to his old habits as a soldier.

  But he hadn’t loved the war.

  He hadn’t loved sending men to die, surrounded by nervous advisors and scouts, or risking his own skin in a too-hot or too-cold tent that could barely call itself shelter while he struggled to read hastily drawn maps as cannon fire shook the camp. But the strategy, the flow and sway of armies, the ebb of forces and might … the rise of victory, and the sickening slide into defeat … He understood that. It made sense to him, somewhere down at the bottom of his chest. He read war the way some men read music, and spoke it like a language.

  Maybe he should’ve been thinking of this as a battle all along. Politics was not merely men in rooms telling lies and making deals, but a war of favors and foes, friends and promises, money and land and lines, and sometimes—he thought of the way Desmond Fowler looked fawningly at Katharine Haymes—matters of the heart as well. Well, of course it sometimes included the heart. If the heart never came into it, why would anyone ever play?

  Polly trailed along behind him, close enough to see what happened, but far enough back to get out of the way if necessary. Another pawn, this one. Vulnerable, but knowing. Willing, but also forced, by virtue of circumstance and loyalties both bought and earned.

  He said a little prayer for her, something fast without any words, because he didn’t have time for anything fancy.

  He reached the front door and whipped it open. The brand-new night and its terrific wind spilled inside the foyer, scattering leaves in a marvelous whirlwind that shook the fixtures and worried the nearest fire. He squinted against the bracing gust, planted his feet square, and locked his shoulders straight.

  “What?” he barked sharply.

  He stood face-to-face with only one man, rather than the two Polly had promised: a very tall, yellow-haired fellow in an ill-fitting policeman’s uniform, purporting to be from the very station that Lincoln had established nearly two decades previously. Though he wouldn’t have said it aloud in front of his friend, it was Grant’s considered opinion that this could be a true and official policeman. It was no great secret that though the force contained some fine individuals, as a whole, they weren’t up to the snuff of Lincoln’s original vision.

  “What?” the man asked back. Stunned, he stared at the president as if now he wasn’t certain how he ought to proceed anymore. He tried again. “What, sir? I…”

  Grant maintained the tone and projection of an old general. He’d carried more authority when he’d been promoted, not elected, so that’s the truncheon he’d swing. Keep the tall bastard on his toes. “What do you want?”

  To his very slight credit, the alleged officer rallied, straightening his posture to emphasize the size difference between himself and the older man. “Sergeant Delman at your service, Mr. President, sir. Didn’t realize you came calling here. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m here on official business.”

  “That’s what I heard,” Grant growled. He disliked this showing off. If you’re tall, be tall. But don’t brandish your size like a bully. “You’re looking for my friend Dr. Nelson Wellers,” he said, exaggerating the relationship. He barely knew the man.

  “That’s right.”

  “What are the charges?” he demanded.

  “Accessory to murder. That’s the charge.”

  “Well, I’m uncharging him.”

  “You’re … I’m sorry sir, what?”

  “You heard me,” he puffed up, responding to the extra inches in height with age and gravitas. “I’m uncharging him. I’m the president. I can do that.”

  “I … I’m not sure that’s true.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “No, sir. Misinformed, perhaps.”

  “I’m not misinformed; I’m the commander in chief. Now, get off this stoop and get on with your business. Look at you, policeman. Some manners you’ve got. Coming to the front door of a great man’s house and trying to arrest his physician. If you had a lick of sense you’d try the side, and be on your best manners! You don’t waltz up and make demands!” The man was starting to shift and fidget, seeking some way out of the conversation or past it, but Grant was on a roll. “Is this how they teach you to approach your betters? Is that how the force is run these days? I will write letters! I will speak with your captain!”

  The big fellow’s eyes narrowed. “No, sir, you won’t. And I don’t have to walk away because you tell me to. I’m here for Nelson Wellers, and I will not be leaving without him.”

  Grant laughed cruelly. “Now you’re the one who’s misinformed. Get out of here before I send you off this property in a pine box.”

  “Are you threatening me, sir?”

  “If you have to ask, I must’ve done a shit job of it. Let me try again.” He pulled out his ’58 and held it with the absolute steadiness of someone who’s held a gun so long, and so often, that it comes as natural and pleasant as holding a woman’s hand. “Get off this stoop or I’ll blow you off of it.”

  The tall man leaned down, looming and scowling. Wind shrieked around him, cut into screams by the angles of the house and the hollow brick chimneys. “You’re the president. You can’t shoot me. And if you try,” he snarled, “you’ll regret it with your very last breath.”

  “You’re not a real copper.”

  With a sneer, the tall man fired back: “And you’re not a real president.”

  Without a second thought, and without a single drink left in his system, Grant pulled the trigger.

  The shot was loud in his ears, even against the violent orchestra of the windstorm. They were close together—only a door frame away, maybe arm’s length, and the space wasn’t tight. Still, it was like he’d fired inside a closet. A simple gunshot—the most familiar sound in the world—sucked all the air out of the space between them.

  For a moment nothing happened. The tall man didn’t react except to hold perfectly still. Grant held still as well, his gun still raised. It flared warm in his hand, but the dry November storm cooled the metal as he held it. A small coil of smoke rose, then vanished as a particularly hard gust of wind shook the house.

  The fireplaces moaned low and tunefully, like monks chanting a prayer.

  The tall man’s uniform was dark, and it was now fully dark outside, so Grant could barely see the damp hole in his belly.

  With slow uncertainty, the wounded man took two steps back, turned around, and reached for the handrail. He missed it, but held out one foot to step onto the stair below the stoop. His knee went crooked, and he fell forward onto the walkway th
at cut through the yard.

  And the moment he hit the ground, someone in the darkness opened fire on the house.

  Moving on instinct and years of training, Grant retreated and slammed the door. He shoved his shoulders against it, and felt that it was solid. It would withstand more than a handful of bullets before he needed to worry about its integrity.

  His ears told him that there were three shooters.

  No. Four.

  The window to the right of the door shattered. Polly screamed. Mary came stumbling down the stairs in her dressing gown, her eyes huge and black.

  Grant pointed at her. “Get back in your room!” Then he shouted at Polly, “Get down—lower. Crawl, goddammit!”

  She swallowed her next scream and dropped to all fours, then scrambled upstairs after Mary.

  Nelson and Gideon burst into the parlor, but they burst carefully, like men who knew better than to fling themselves into the line of fire. Grant was pleased by their caution. It spoke well of them.

  “Down!” he gestured, and both men crouched. Both men also held firearms. Once more Grant fired off a wordless prayer to the Powers That Be, this time one of thanks. He had two soldiers, which was better than nothing. He’d been in tighter spots before. This situation wasn’t unfamiliar—it was only bad.

  Bullets plunked against the exterior and whizzed through the window, crashing against fixtures and punching holes in the wallpaper.

  “Wellers, how many doors lead in and out of this house?” he asked. More loudly than he would’ve liked, but now the storm had new ways to whistle, and the curtains flapped and shredded themselves on broken glass.

  The doctor and the scientist crouched behind the staircase. “Three, including this one!”

  “Is that all?”

  He considered the house and its layout. “There’s the cellar door, and one from the attic to the roof—but those aren’t common knowledge, and I’m quite certain they’re locked.”

  “I’ll keep ’em in the back of my head for now. As for the more obvious points of entry, I’ve got this one under control—you two go secure the others.”

  Gideon scrambled across the floor and disappeared down one corridor. Wellers went back down the hall toward Lincoln, who surely had been secured and safeguarded in some fashion before they’d come running—Grant refused to think otherwise. In the meantime, he held his position behind the door. The gunfire slowed but did not stop altogether. It petered out and punctuated the weather. For one moment of light-headed battle hilarity, Grant thought of popcorn nearly finished in a pan.

  He recognized this rush of energy and giddiness, shook it off, and ducked down low beneath the window, then up the other side, where he flipped the lever to turn off the gaslights. No one wanted bullets flying when the gas was working. Besides that, darkness was his friend.

  The downstairs was pitched into a low murk, but nothing close to the wholesale midnight he preferred. Two electrical lamps shone on in the parlor.

  He cursed the Lincolns for their embrace of technological progress, held his head low, and—keeping the front door between him and danger as best he could—scuttled back into the other room and yanked the switches on the lamps, noticing as he did so that the lights were off down the hall in Lincoln’s library. Only the glow of the fire spilled out past the threshold, and that was good.

  “Abe?” he called, with as much volume as he dared.

  “I’m fine. I dearly want to know what’s going on … but I’m fine.”

  “Abe, you trust me?”

  Without a moment’s pause: “I do.”

  “I shot a man on your stoop, and his friends didn’t take it well: that’s what’s going on. Nelson and Gideon are securing the house. Mary and Polly are upstairs. Is there anyone else home?”

  “No. There shouldn’t be.”

  A volley of shots hailed from outside. When they paused, Grant kept as much cover as he could and smashed out the last of the glass at the bottom corner of the nearest window.

  The outside lights still burned for the moment, but if the assailants had any sense, they’d rectify the situation momentarily. He couldn’t believe they’d left them alight this long. It was an amateur move. Maybe he hadn’t given the police force enough credit: Surely someone in an authentic uniform would know to meet darkness with darkness.

  Keeping his head low, he peered past the curtains. The wind was cold and hard. It stung his eyes, but he didn’t close them; he gazed long and hard across the lawn, back and forth across the boundaries. A row of trees to the east gave cover to at least one man—he saw motion, a shifting of position from this tree to the next one, hopscotching closer. He waited for the man to dash for the next tree, and when he did, Grant fired a shot at him.

  Between the distance, the wind, and his own precarious angle, the odds were against hitting him. But he was good—damn good—and managed to hit a trunk close enough to make the man dive back for his original position.

  One more shot for good measure. Make the bastard keep his head down.

  Three more bullets answered him, but nothing hit close to home. One more windowpane broke. That was a shame, but he’d figure out how to repay the Lincolns later. Maybe he could sue Haymes for the damages. The thought put a smile on his face.

  Now, where were the rest of them?

  A small orchard began where the lawn ended to the west. One or two men might be hiding there, easily. To the north lay the road, and on the other side of the road a ditch. Beyond the ditch, nothing but woods—all of them too far away to provide shelter for anything but a supernaturally skilled sharpshooter. No, the onslaught came from nearer than that.

  He kept a wary eye on the lawn, until one bright assailant finally thought to shoot out the carriage lamps that lit up the sides of the house. It took him a few tries each, but a climactic shot took down the little lantern that illuminated the stoop, and now the playing field was more or less even.

  Another bullet pinged inside the house, striking a tall clock hard enough to rock it.

  Not much to be done about the windows and their frailty, but what about those curtains…? He wanted something heavier than the decorative cotton gauze. Something more like the blanket on the back of the couch in the parlor, come to think of it. Staying in a crouch, he went back to retrieve it, then used the door for cover as he hung it up over the window, blocking their view if not their ammunition.

  But the window on the other side of the door was still a gaping hole in their defenses.

  “Mister President!” Polly whispered. She’d snuck back down the stairs, her shape a doll-like shadow in the gloom. Only then did he realize how small she truly was.

  “Polly, get back upstairs with Mrs. Lincoln!”

  “Sir, I can’t. Mrs. Lincoln came downstairs before me. She’s in the library with Mr. Lincoln. I couldn’t stop her. If you know her at all, you’ll understand, sir, and you won’t yell at me about it.”

  He grinned, though she undoubtedly couldn’t see him. This one had a little spice in her. Good. He would’ve bet against it an hour ago. Maybe he had three soldiers, if you dared give a girl a gun. Well, that Boyd woman had a gun, didn’t she? And that Haymes viper, too. Fine. He had three soldiers.

  “Polly, have you ever shot a gun before?”

  “No, sir, because I’m scared of them.”

  “Are you scared right now?”

  “Deathly, sir. Very, very deathly, if you don’t mind me saying. But I saw you cover the window with the blanket, and I had an idea about the other window.”

  “Excellent. Tell me.”

  “There’s another quilt down here. Robert’s old bedroom.”

  “Can you get it for me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Polly, be careful. But be quick.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, and she was off.

  More shots. These worried him, for they came from the other side of the house. He couldn’t leave his post, so he’d have to trust Gideon and Nelson. He had to believe that
they’d regroup when they were able, but it was taking too long. They should’ve been back already.

  In less than a minute, Polly returned with a quilt bundled under her arm. She collided gently with him in the darkness, partly because it was hard to see, and partly because things had gone quiet, and the poor girl had enough instinct for self-preservation to keep herself quiet, too.

  “Here you go, sir,” she whispered close to his ear. “It’s not too heavy, but it’ll make it good and dark.”

  “Excellent. Here, stand up right behind this door. It’s thicker than a Bible, and it’ll protect you. Hold up that side, and I’ll hold up this side. We’ll hang the ends over the curtain rods, all right?”

  “Yes, sir. I think I can reach it.”

  She had to throw her end of the blanket, but with a foot on the windowsill to give her a moment’s boost, she fulfilled her end of the assignment.

  “Well done, dear,” he said to her, though now he could scarcely see her at all.

  The interior of the house was as black as a tomb, except for soft, warm glows where the fireplaces yet burned—though they did little to warm the space anymore, or light it, either. Not with the windows gone and the wind screaming outside, driving around the eaves and wailing down the gutters. The blankets flapped and let shadows and light flicker through, a second at a time. But the weak glow showed them almost nothing.

  Gideon Bardsley manifested behind the stairs once more, warning, “It’s me—don’t shoot.”

  “Are the other two passages secure?”

  “As secure as we can make them. But there’s nothing we can do about the windows except to cover them up, and avoid letting them see how many of us are inside.”

  “Or how few,” Polly whispered.

  “Now, you’ve been courageous so far. Keep your chin up. We have a handful of men with guns, manning a defensive position with which most of us are well acquainted—myself being the exception, of course. But I’ve been in worse spots than this one, trust me.”