“Take care with Chumley’s,” Smith warned him. “The double crowned one. It’s loaded.”
“Of course.” He passed both pieces back to Smith.
“As written, they are similar, but not identical. The piece you took from the Apprentice has two crowns and two hands on the face. Miss Cadence often speculated about their significance.”
“Well, she had a good long time to do her speculatin’,” Smith grumbled. “After I done left her here.”
Koffler smiled.
“She is here, Smith. And she is alive and not long resident here. I am certain of it.”
A light rain began to fall, and drops collected on the brim of Smith’s hat, the same one he always wore. Koffler had not talked him out of it, and did concede it was so dirty and battered it would most likely not draw unwanted attention around these parts.
“It is late in the afternoon here, according to both watches,” he said. “I suggest we head east. We will make the coastline and can decide then whether we should next steer north or south.”
“You seem awful confident for a man standin’ deep in a forest without so much as half an idea of where that forest might lie and the extent of its boundaries.”
“Oh, this forest is vast, Smith. The virgin woods of New England were. But we are in Massachusetts, I am sure, and probably not far from the bay if, and I emphasize this, if you were not mistaken in fixing the point of your arrival and our departure in Berlin.”
The marshal bristled at that.
“I ain’t no fool, Professor. Takin’ my bearings was the first thing I did. We did not leave no more’n five or six feet from where I stepped out of New England and into Berlin. Only those workmen stopped us from placin’ our boots on the exact spot.”
“Then be confident we are not far removed from Salem Village, Smith. Let us head east, find the coast and navigate to the nearest settlement. Miss Cadence may yet be detained locally.”
Smith’s hopes strained at the leash to hear that, but he got them reined in.
“What chance we can bust her out of the hoosegow?”
Koffler finally frowned.
“That I cannot say. I am an academician, Marshal. Between us, you are the one with the much greater knowledge of busting into and out of hoosegows, I am sure.”
Smith shivered. The rain was coming down harder, bringing with it a chill that wanted to cut through the layers of his increasingly damp, primitive clothing, and cut him to the bone.
“Well, ain’t nobody ever broke out of my custody,” he said. “But that don’t mean it cain’t be done.”
Koffler had insisted the compass in Smith’s possibles bag was too impossibly advanced to carry with them to New England and it had remained behind in Berlin. Smith was not so inconvenienced by the loss that he was unable to navigate without the instrument. Using the sun, when they could see it clearly, and the hands of Chumley’s watch, he was able to orient himself to the east. They moved in short hops, settling on some landmark—a fallen tree, a large rock—and walking to it, before taking another sighting. It made for slow, frustrating progress, and Smith regretted leaving his modern equipment behind. He had his Bowie knife, the gold and silver Cady had bought, and the pistol which rested in the small of his back.
Otherwise they were as pioneers in a strange land.
Professor Koffler moved with surprising agility for a man of his age and circumstances. City folk, in Smith’s experience, were experts at sitting around in comfy loungers, but not much for the active life. Perhaps climbing up and down the bookcase ladder in his library kept the professor nimble. He flowed through the forest with untroubled agility, stepping over rocks and deadfall, avoiding crevices and negotiating the loose footing of steep slopes with no more effort than he might expend walking to a cafe for a plate of little cakes with fancy cream. Smith was not taxed to keep up with him, but he was impressed that any effort was needed to stay in touch.
“I would prefer not to spend a night out of doors,” Koffler said in answer to a question Smith had not asked. “If I am right and we have returned shortly after your last departure, these woods will not be safe.”
“Woods are never safe,” Smith said. “Most places lackin’ four sturdy walls and a door with a good lock ain’t to be lingered in, if’n there’s a choice to the matter.”
Koffler stopped climbing just afore they crested a ridge line that was lightly forested with ancient oak and sycamore; the red and yellow leaves of the sycamore in fall contrasting sharply with the evergreen foliage of the oaks. Smith could hear the gurgling of a stream nearby beneath the twitter and trilling of the native birds, none of which were familiar to his ear. Smith’s familiarity with the world of feathered critters ran to buzzards and carrion crow, but not much more.
“These forests were contested during a series of wars with the local Indian tribes,” Koffler explained. He was not even slightly puffed. “They fought in their own stead and as hirelings and allies of the French Catholic colonists in Canada. The militia band which fired on you outside of Salem were almost surely returning from one such campaign.”
Smith had enjoyed a clear advantage in arms and surprise in that encounter. His Winchester outranged and outshot the primitive muskets the colonials had carried. But unfortunately he no longer enjoyed that advantage. The German pistol pressing into the small of his back under his shirt was a well-made and maintained sidearm, but it would not have the reach or the stopping power of his repeating rifle. He wondered what had become of it. It would be a wonder to the denizens of 1692, but not so utterly alien that they couldn’t understand its workings and even make an attempt at constructing their own.
“They probably saw Cady and me laid up then, spyin’ out the town,” Smith conceded. “Took us for brigands or enemy scouts. Gonna make it harder to get around town, I reckon, shakin’ the trees and such in search of her.”
“Indeed,” Koffler allowed. “I suggest that I enter the village alone, Marshal. Make enquiries and report back to you.”
“I do not like the sound of that plan at all, sir.”
Koffler shrugged.
“You do not need to like it, Smith. You need only accept the logic of my proposition. You are a singular fellow in appearance. And I don’t have to speculate as to the disorder and unsettling alarm your inexplicable appearance and disappearance occasioned among the folk of Salem. I have the written testimony of Miss Cadence in the archives of the Society and the public alterations to the historical record that your intercession in the witch trials, however tangential, has occasioned. You dare not set foot in Salem Village. They will be alive to the fear of outsiders, and you are the very outsider they fear! Furthermore, these are a people deranged by imagined demons and imps, and here you would come transported into their midst by a power you cannot explain but which you yourself would characterize as magical in nature.”
Smith felt the need to push back at that.
“The watches ain’t no magical artifacts,” he said. “Ms Cady explained them to me as purely technological doohickeys. As mysterious to us as a normal watch would be to an ignorant savage, but no more…”
He trailed off as the first blast of his indignation receded.
Koffler was right, of course.
Salem would be a small hamlet of a few dozen farming steads, and even in the best times the approach of a stranger would be a cause for wariness, if not outright alarum.
“All right then, Professor,” he said. “You done got the best of the argument. I probably should not be seen in town. But how will you pass yourself off? I purely hope you ain’t expectin’ I will just give up these watches. I mean no offense, sir, but I do not know you. I tell you true that I could make an argument for your being no friend of Ms Cady or myself. You could be another Chumley, out to secure these timepieces for yourself and your master.”
Koffler smiled as if Smith were a favorite pupil struggling with a difficult equation.
“Miss Cadence was aware you would have such m
isgivings. Your suspicions are not only guileless, they are to be applauded. The Watchmakers do hunt you, Smith. They hunt us all. You were a confounding nuisance to them, but Miss Cadence was a threat most grave. Her foundation of the Society also marked the founding of a rival power to those who would fashion themselves as the keepers of time. Of all times.”
Koffler was finally looking a little weary now, as though he’d made the mistake of stopping on a long trek and needed not just to rest but to find the will to keep going. He leaned against a large, mossy green boulder, took out a flask and sipped from it.
“Schnapps,” he said, offering Smith the container. “Would you like some?”
Wary, the lawman demurred. He had warmed up uncomfortably on the hike, and he now removed his heavy twill jacket. Weighted down with small packets of food and little items of equipage, including the precious watches, it felt good to unburden himself of the damp coat. He hung it carefully from a branch.
“The fact is, were I an agent of the Watchmakers,” Koffler went on, “I could have let the Gestapo take you. You would have disappeared into their cells, vanished without a trace. It would solve whatever problem you have caused the time keepers by your remaining at large. There are many, many ways to die in the Reich, my friend. If your death was required, I could have slit your throat while you slept in my library. Or poisoned you at breakfast. I could have let the brownshirts kick you to death, no?”
He capped the small, metal bottle and returned it to a pocket.
What little warmth and light made it through the autumnal forest canopy were fading. Smith could feel himself cooling quickly, but he did not put on his jacket just yet.
“I did not do any of that, however, did I?” Koffler asked.
Smith sketched a small nod, but said nothing.
“I am bound by my oath, Marshal Smith. You have your oath of office, and I have mine. To the Society. To Miss Cadence. I am honor bound to do all in my power to reunite you.”
A soft wind rustled the leaves overhead and gave Smith’s jacket to swaying a little in the breeze. Gooseflesh stood out on his arms, and something small but fast scurried through the underbrush. Koffler smiled again.
“I do believe you will find her, and that would fulfil the purpose of my life. To bring you together and to see her released from this exile.”
Dusk was falling quickly. They would soon have no choice but to camp in the forest.
“There is daylight enough to reach the stream you can hear over the hill,” Koffler said. “It will flow down to the sea, and quite likely into the small bay of Salem’s main settlement. It is a sea port, small but busy and quite separate from the farming village. You will be able to pass unnoticed there in a way not possible in the smaller hamlet.”
Smith regarded the professor neutrally.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “How will you negotiate our business?”
Koffler smiled again.
“My English is quite good,” he said clearly, but with a heavy accent.
No magical timepiece needed to translate that.
Smith retrieved his jacket from the branch where it hung, and they set out again for Salem. He had much to contemplate, but two words kept repeating in his head, driving out all other considerations: the parting salutation on the letter he had opened back at the Esplanade Hotel.
Love,
Cady
22
It was only later that Cady scolded herself for letting her guard down with Pip. After all, he was just a kid. Even clanking with edged weapons, covered in blood, his face gashed by an ugly wound, he remained a little boy who helped her back to Garvey’s cabin, produced a small flask of brown liquor from somewhere, ordered her to drink deeply, and bedded her down with a rough blanket on the bunk under the window she had previously avoided out of fear.
Exhausted, shocked, fucked up beyond all hope of a makeover, Cady let herself be led.
She swayed and occasionally staggered with the motion of the ship, only half-attended in a dull fashion to the sounds of fighting which still reached her. She’d had enough. She was starving, short of sleep, exhausted. She fought the weight of her eyelids for less than a minute before passing out. It was hours before she woke again, and she did so with a start, frightened by her own foolishness.
She’d completely fallen to pieces in front of that kid, who might look like he’d stepped off the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, but who’d proven himself as much a killer as anybody on this floating abattoir.
He could have been an Apprentice.
Cady came awake, gasping and flailing blindly at the darkness in front of her, haunted by memories of Chumley emerging from the London fog with a butcher’s knife in hand and murder in his eyes. For a confusing second she was back there, in the dark and cold of Victorian London. And then she dropped back into the real.
If she’d been in London, Smith would be here, and he wasn’t. He was gone.
Smith was gone, gone, gone…
“Mistress Smith?”
It was Pip.
She almost screamed, but he was sitting on a stool, his face roughly bandaged, simply waiting on her by the light of a crude lantern. If he’d been an Apprentice she’d be dead.
“Sorry,” she croaked, before gagging and coughing.
The boy hurried over, not at all bothered by the motion of the ship. He offered her water in a soft container that Cady realized with a small surge of nausea was probably stitched together from something super fucking gross like a sheep’s stomach or some generic animal ass.
Didn’t matter. She guzzled down one mouthful after another. The water was brackish and warm and tasted of death and toilets, but Cady kept drinking.
“If you are agreeable, Mistress Smith, the captain would see you at the soonest convenience,” Pip said when she was done.
“Am I in trouble?” she asked.
The boy stared at her as though she’d spoken in a foreign language. Maybe she had, to his ear.
But his face suddenly lit up after a long, uneasy moment.
“No, mistress. Captain Garvey is grateful of your aid with Quarrel’s brigand curs. Mr Bowditch attests that you do fair imitate the actions of a tigress!”
The boy blushed and dipped his head.
“I too have told the captain so, and all the crew with breath still in their bodies because of you will avow the truth of it. The gaffer himself attests he is be-lived and among us still only because of you—and that hurry-durry old tarpaulin has survived more fights than I’ve seen days, ma’am.”
Cady was quiet for a second.
“So Quarrel is gone?” she finally asked.
“No!” Pip said in high excitement. “We have taken his ship the Sournois as a prize! What a well-favored turnabout is that! Quarrel and his men alone will be worth head money of more than a hundred pounds. And in the Sournois’ hold, mistress, tobacco and rum and wool such that every man will have no less than three years pay of it.”
Cady nodded through her cluelessness. “Okay. I mean, good. You got any of that rum, kid?”
Pip smiled and passed over a flask. The liquor tasted nothing like the shots of Captain Morgan she remembered from college, drowning the liquor with Coke and ice before she grew up and got some fucking dignity about her drinking. It was spicy rather than sweet, and it burned the throat and set her head to spinning before the last mouthful had settled in her gut. Cady almost fell on her face when she stood up, but that was as much about the pitching of the deck as the instant helicopter ride she took inside her own head.
“I’m sorry, Pip. I don’t want to be a pain, but is there anything to eat?”
Again, it took him a moment to translate, but he did work it out.
“The galley has porridge for all who can swallow it and live,” he said. Cady wondered what the fuck was up with the catering on this ship.
Pip saw the look on her face, and explained.
“Surgeon Beeton does not allow men with gut
wounds to eat or even drink until the doleful taint is healed, mistress. He says it fairly hurries them with a full belly to an early burial.”
“I see,” Cady said. She thought ‘the doleful taint’ sounded like the worst gay porn superhero alter ego ever. “Gross but fair,” she said. “I’m fine, kid. And hungry.”
“I will get you a hot bowl, mistress, but see you to the captain first.”
“I’m good with that. Where is Garvey?”
“He has command, Mistress Smith. We approach Boston shorthanded and still reefed for the nor-easter.”
“So… he’s at the… wheel thingy?” She mimed steering the ship.
Pip grinned as though she was joking. “You are a jester, mistress.”
He led her in to the short passageway where she and Bowditch had fought—and killed—three men.
How long ago? She started to check her watch, but recalled it would be of little use, and she didn’t fancy exposing it to view anyway. She was sure to have some explaining to do about the ‘poison’ she’d used against the pirates. Probably best not add to the mystery surrounding her by showing off her dad’s old Timex. Garvey and his crew didn’t seem nearly as bugshit on the topic of dark magic and witch’s brew as the holy retards back in Salem, but Cady would bet these sailors had a whole world of superstitious bullshit all of their own.
She averted her eyes from the human ruin of close-quarter battle below decks. It was dark enough that most of the offal and gore was lost in shadow and weak lantern light. Eyes fixed on a spot somewhere above Pip’s dirty tousled head, she followed him topside. Emerging into the fresh pre-dawn breeze was like stepping out of prison. A blustery wind carried away the copper stench of blood and the deeper, loamy stink of voided bowels. There was a truly surprising amount of human shit to walk through inside the ship, but crashing waves and hours of rain appeared to have washed a lot of the gruesome carrion from the exposed upper deck. The sun had not yet risen over the horizon, but the storm clouds had broken up and the gray light of morning revealed the aftermath of battle.
The Golden Minute Page 20
