That first night at the inn, she had walked out into the small courtyard and seen stars overhead. City stars, she had thought, were a rarity in London. Her mother had followed her out and thrown one end of her own cloak around Evelyn’s shoulders. They had stood there wrapped in the shared cloak while her mother pointed out the constellations.
Evelyn’s chest tightened and her heart hurt. Her mother, the time traveler, the spy, the keeper of secrets… where was she?
“Evelyn, darling,” Cara interrupted her thoughts, “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that no one outside our immediate group knows about the whole time travel business. Verity is really quite brilliant, and Jimmy is a dear, but I fear they would look at our little endeavors askew if they knew.”
Evelyn laughed at Cara’s practiced understatement, but sobered remembering her father’s grim countenance when she and Hugh confessed to eavesdropping on their conversation the night of the tavern fire. The story that her father related was certifiably insane, but in some strange way it explained a lot about her mother and her own life. Her Uncle Odell’s appearance made a whole lot more sense as well; if time travel could make sense, which it didn’t.
“You needn’t worry, Aunt Cara.” She shook her head with conviction. “I don’t want to sound like a lunatic.”
“Yes, well, there’s that too. But mostly, we don’t want them endangered further. This ‘syndicate’ and ‘Godfather’ have Odell worried. These are terms that are apparently used to refer to criminal behavior in the distant future. And the unidentified murder victim…” her voice trailed off, and Evelyn nodded with uneasy concurrence.
The news of the murdered woman had traveled quickly through the city and nearly everyone had a theory or opinion on who she might be and why she was found tortured and tied-up in the Schuylkill. The brutality of the murder and the fact that it remained unsolved put an extra edge on a city already tense with political intrigue.
They had arrived at her house, and Cara came in with her, saying, “Just a quick cup of tea and chat with your father before I head home.”
“He wouldn’t want you going home unescorted anyway, Aunt Cara,” Evelyn replied, and they both entered the foyer to the sound of laughter emanating from the back of the house. She could distinguish in the jumble of voices those of her father and Hugh.
“It sounds like they’re in the kitchen.”
They entered that room and were treated to a picture of social jocularity that would not have been out of place in one of the city’s more riotous taverns. Odell and Ava had been trying to delicately remove hot roasted potatoes from a spit onto the heavy wooden tabletop, when one had rolled off and been caught by an unthinking Odell. He had yelped and thrown the potato up into the air, unwittingly initiating a game of quite literally “hot potato.” It had made several rounds of the laughing group before landing at Cara’s feet just as they crossed the threshold.
She looked down at the squashed potato and then back up with raised eyebrows. “Now, you couldn’t possibly have thought I would attempt to catch that?” she declared to the group in general, a hint of laughter in her voice.
Since the last throw of the potato had come from her very own husband, Hershel cleared his throat and replied, “Certainly not, my dear, it was an extremely inaccurate throw. I was actually aiming for Odell.”
Odell’s position being far removed from the doorway, this statement resulted in renewed laughter among the group.
Evelyn looked at them suspiciously. “Have you been drinking?”
This produced even more laughter while Gabriel wiped his eyes to say seriously, “Just some ale, my dear. Nothing of a stronger nature, I assure you. I think we are all feeling a bit lighthearted, because Ben has agreed to Odell’s plan.”
Evelyn and Cara were both quick to express their relief.
“How?” Evelyn asked. “You weren’t very hopeful just this morning.”
Gabriel shook his head uncertainly. “I’m not entirely sure. He left the meeting very indecisive, but came by the house not an hour past to say he was in and start planning for the trip north.”
While the trip to Quebec would no longer take place, what Odell had proposed would still require a journey, but only to New York. The man Franklin would meet was Joseph Louis Cook who was already a supporter of the cause of independence and was the colonists’ best chance at convincing the Six Nations to side with the revolutionaries.
“When will he leave?” Cara asked.
“That is yet to be determined,” Odell responded, looking up from buttering and salting the potatoes. “He needs to speak to various committee chairs. The shift in focus is abrupt, but we can make a good argument for abandoning the Canadian venture. It never was a viable option, even without our knowledge of history.”
“I think the biggest hurdle will be convincing the others of broadening the coalition to include the native population,” Ava added without looking up from grinding the pepper. She and Odell stood close and their movements were in perfect sync, him with the salt and butter and her with the pepper. Cara, an astute reader of body language, was intrigued.
“It may be the biggest hurdle to this part of the plan,” Hugh asserted, “but it is not the biggest impediment by far.”
They all knew what he was talking about. Through the incessant prodding of Odette and Gabriel, as well as his own conscience, Benjamin Franklin had freed his slaves several years earlier. But there was still a part of him that clung to a tribal-racial worldview, a part of him who feared the black man. So Odell’s plan of using their underground network to supply weapons and tactical information for the purpose of fomenting slave rebellion in the southern colonies was met with vehement protest on Franklin’s part.
“Yes,” Gabriel agreed. He had been conscientiously cutting equal pieces of Mrs. Daniels singular egg and cheese pie and placing them on small plates. “Ben’s initial reaction was not promising, but he did appear calm at the end.”
Spooning helpings of roasted potatoes onto the plates, Odell said, his brow furrowed with doubt, “Calm, but not entirely acquiescent.”
“I think it comes from the enormity of the task before him,” Hugh replied with understated perception. “He is the only one who knows what slavery will do to this country and must convince the others without revealing his foreknowledge. He must ask them to accept a breach between men like themselves and agree to an alliance with those many of them deem inferior. I don’t envy him the task.”
Gabriel looked at his young protégée with respect. “I knew there was a reason I kept you around.”
Hugh smiled shyly with pleasure at the compliment and assisted Evelyn with laying the silverware and napkins. They had all gathered around the kitchen table, and the business of passing plates and filling glasses overrode conversation. Once everyone was settled in their chairs with full plates, Cara cleared her throat and announced, “We have some news as well.”
Of the group, only Gabriel and Hershel were aware of the spy ring commissioned by Franklin. Odell, Ava, and Hugh sat in astonished silence as they were initiated into the secret.
Cara had barely finished when Odell exclaimed, “Doctor Franklin commissioned this? Unbelievable! That old man is everywhere!”
“Ben recruited Odette,” Gabriel explained. “And she, in turn, brought in Cara and Verity Turner. While Ben has the greatest admiration for your sister’s abilities, I think even he was surprised at how adept both Cara and Miss Turner proved at spy craft, even after Odette’s dis—departure.”
During Cara’s recital, Gabriel had kept a tight rein on his emotions. After establishing the legitimacy of Mister Thornton’s operation, Gabriel had agreed to allow Evelyn to keep working for the butcher, but only if her tasks were confined to trailing suspected loyalists and mapmaking. This unexpected turn of events was making him entirely too uneasy. His mind churned over the possibilities. Evelyn was smart and clearheaded, but this latest incident showed plainly what poor training could lead to. Perhaps it
was better she be supervised by Cara and Verity, and now Fancy. Nevertheless, he felt keenly the lack of his wife’s council and fought down the frustration and longing that never failed to bubble up inside him when he thought of her.
“I believe your astonishment at Doctor Franklin’s involvement in this venture has somewhat overridden the most important aspect of my wife’s report,” Hershel admonished.
“Oh yeah, the traitor,” Odell recalled, and then added with a touch of pride in his niece, “Nice going with the trap streets, Odellia.”
Evelyn blushed and they all laughed.
“We’ll have to inform the butcher and Ben—,” Gabriel began.
“If you could wait on that,” Cara interrupted, “I think it best that you leave it to us to flush out the spy.”
Gabriel looked at her questioningly.
“We really have no idea who this person is,” she told him. “Mister Thornton I don’t doubt, but he could be entrusting the wrong person or persons with vital information. Give us a few days to sort through this before you go to them with our suspicions.”
He saw the wisdom of her plan and nodded reluctantly. “A few days, after which I’ll have to let Ben know.”
She smiled her thanks.
Ava got up to retrieve a plate of sugar and almond jumbals from the counter, and Odell followed suit with the platter of sliced and dried fruit. They put them down among the clutter of empty plates and set to clearing the table.
Evelyn picked up a slice of dried apple and contemplatively plucked at a hard seed casings still clinging to the meat. “How do they choose?” she mumbled half to herself.
“Choose what?” Hugh bit into a sugar nut jumbal.
“Drop sites,” she replied. “Why the churchyard? A grave?”
“Someplace out of the way, yet still visited,” Cara surmised. “And one is always reluctant to disturb a visitor at a gravesite.”
“It was sad.” Evelyn sighed.
“What was sad?” Ava asked.
“The boy… Sewal Brandon. He was only four when he died.”
Several heads snapped in her direction
“Who?” they said as one.
She looked up, surprised and puzzled at this reaction. “Sewal Brandon, the boy in the grave where I found the packet.”
“It could be a coincidence,” Cara said in a shaky voice to no one in particular. “After all, is Brandon so unusual a surname?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Odell replied grimly.
“But he is dead,” Cara insisted. “We all saw the body. People cannot come back from the dead. Not even time travel can do that. Can it, Odell?
Twenty-Two
CHARLES DRAKE STOOD on a precipice hundreds of feet above the city. He had never believed himself afraid of heights—until now. The 3-D holographic map sent to Ettie’s palmavox had not done their dizzyingly terrifying route justice. Crossing narrow catwalks, ascending rickety fire escapes and ladders, swaying sickeningly across suspension bridges, and traversing narrow ledges had all combined to stretch his muscles and nerves as tight as a bowstring. Worse still were the masked faces of the grim guardians of each seemingly random barrier they encountered.
Their journey onto the labyrinth rooftops of New York City had begun inauspiciously. There was a delay of several days before Ettie was able to even make contact with the man Odell insisted she seek out. After finally receiving his communiqué, a map detailing their path across the rooftops was further delayed by tactical re-routing through several rebel and criminal networks before finally appearing on her palmavox. With it had arrived instructions on how to navigate the different checkpoints and rival gangs that ruled the rooftops.
Community was too gentle and cohesive a word for the society that had sprung up far above the city streets. Initially the refuge of thieves and outlaws, it soon became home to political dissidents and society outcasts of all stripes. There was enmity and suspicion among the different groups and an anarchic environment prevailed. Anyone venturing through their domain without leave might find themselves held for ransom or worse, thrown from the ledges onto the streets below.
It never failed that some spoiled and drunken offspring of the nobility succumbed to a dare from his friends to infiltrate the rooftops. Whether he would escape with his life or be found splattered on the concrete below seemed an outcome determined entirely by chance. Each death was succeeded by calls to wipe out the vipers’ nest, demanding police patrols and military action. But they were rarely heeded. Most people remembered all too well the one attack on the rooftops nearly twenty-five years earlier that had diminished their numbers by very few at the cost of destroying vast swathes of the New York City skyline. It seemed that attacking your own infrastructure was a bad idea, particularly since those who inhabited it could use it to their advantage.
So most of respectable society chose to ignore the rooftops, and the wealthy paid an exorbitant price to protect their persons and property. They never explored the possibility of opening political discourse to dissenting opinions or of any democratization that might entice the denizens of the rooftops to reengage with lawful society.
Some of this went through Charlie’s mind as he stood beside Ettie and looked down from the ledge-side “office” of an individual by the name of Hound Dog. Obviously an alias, the man nonetheless had a rather hang-dog expression with large droopy eyes and a prominent nose.
The ledge was really a platform between two closely situated buildings. It lay barely six feet below the eves of the overlapping roofs. Charlie stooped slightly to stand beneath it. Hound Dog had stretched a large piece of canvass over the top, creating a space that was only a little sheltered from the wind.
There was some electrical rigging that tapped into uncomfortably exposed wires where Hound Dog had plugged in a small space heater. He sat behind an old metal library desk, and a hurricane lamp burned dimly as he squinted at the screen of Ettie’s palmavox.
“Dust and coal fire, I can’t see a damn thing!” he exclaimed in that laconic manner often attributed to cowboys. He pulled out a drawer and dug around in it, retrieving a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses. He adjusted them on his face before turning his attention back to the palmavox.
“It looks legit, but the professor’s not really one for company. You’ll have to wait here while I check.”
He stood up and had to stoop nearly double being startlingly tall and extremely thin. Two long strides brought him to the brick wall behind the tarp where he climbed up a steel ladder attached to the wall and was gone.
“Wait here?” Charlie grumbled irritably as a strong gust of wind buffeted the canvass shelter. “What do we have to wait for? You have the pass right there on the palmavox.”
Ettie looked at him sympathetically. Her nerves were also ragged and raw. The journey over the rooftops had taken longer and was more perilous than she had imagined. Unlike Charlie, she had always been aware of her fear of heights. She was strong and flexible and knew that the physical exertion was well within her capabilities, but the knowledge of great height ate away at the edge of her consciousness and robbed her of balance. She had spent the last two hours not only physically challenged but focused mentally on the task of ignoring the danger.
The figures lurking in the shadows and skulking just outside her peripheral vision didn’t help matters. Masked guards at each checkpoint just served to reinforce the sinister and unknown nature of the territory they were traversing. Hound Dog’s was the first face she and Charlie had seen since embarking.
Hundreds of feet in the air on top of some of the city’s tallest buildings, perhaps now they felt secure enough to reveal themselves. Ettie knew though that their security was really never the issue. She was well aware that neither she nor Charlie would leave the rooftops alive unless they were deemed either useful or harmless. Since harmless was likely out of the question, she had better find a way to make them useful.
Hound Dog descended back down the ladder and stopped jus
t under the canvass to pull a handkerchief from his pocket and blow his nose. “Wind howls like the devil up here,” he said, and then gestured to them to follow.
Ettie and Charlie exchanged a quick look and followed Hound Dog toward the ladder, but instead of leading them up it, he veered off to the side into a very narrow passage that they had not noticed.
“Why aren’t we going up the ladder?” Ettie asked.
The passageway was barely wide enough for them to walk without turning sideways, and Hound Dog was unable to make any gestures with his hands. He shrugged his shoulders instead and said, “Just some misdirection. We have our little procedures here, always on the lookout for spies and such.”
“Are you referring to us?” Ettie questioned incredulously. “Because there is no way anyone could have followed our trail without being spotted.”
“Maybe not.” Again the shoulder shrug. “We have lookouts posted all over the rooftops, though many are from different factions. So we have to be careful.” He nodded decisively to himself and added, “You could have a tracker or homing device on you.”
“Then why not just search us?” Charlie asked, perplexed.
“Didn’t have to,” he replied, “We scanned you while you were waiting.”
The tunnel-like passageway came to an abrupt end. Before they could pursue any questions regarding the scan, the steel door in front of them opened upon a particular sight. It was a large circular room with a peaked roof that reminded Ettie of a yurt. The ceiling was beamed, and along the entire length of the curved walls were book shelves. Long, narrow windows interrupted the continuity of shelves at regular intervals. Round and rectangular tables of differing sizes were situated throughout the room, and both men and women sat reading, writing, or talking quietly in groups.
“What is this place?” Ettie asked.
“A library.” Hound Dog raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated fashion as if stating the obvious was a major hardship. “It’s our entry point into the university.”
Twin Speex: Time Traitors Book II Page 23
