The Golden Minute

by John Birmingham

  Not all the engineering works were martial in appearance and utility. Indeed, most were not. This was a seaport, a mercantile town growing into a city, and as conspicuous as were the defensive installments, they were a small part of the greater whole. On his last visit Smith had not strayed much beyond the room he took at the Lion, having learned it was best to keep himself to himself. Now, afforded this sweeping vista, he saw old Boston anew; the sea banks wharfed out at great cost, with much labor; the commercial buildings of the city quite beautiful and large, many fairly set forth with brick, tile, and slate, while others were no less grand for being constructed in the old fashion from timber, daub and stone. And all apparently laid out to some grand design and orderly placement within seemly streets that put to shame the knotted mess of San Francisco in his own, much later time.

  The outer gates to the city stood open, but a guardsman still challenged them upon approach. Smith was glad to let Koffler negotiate their entrance. The professor gave every impression of enjoying his pantomime as a traveler in need of lodgings for the night, and they passed through the barricade with no difficulties beyond a stern admonition to have no truck with Quakers or Baptists, and to respect the enforced quietude of the common thoroughfares after even’fall.

  The neck of land connected greater Boston to the continent like a long stretch of taffy and, according to the professor, protected the town from wolves, snakes, mosquitoes and savages. Three or four miles in compass, and unnaturally square in form, the isthmus was a boggy, sandy stretch of ground that Smith expected would oft be drowned by the highest tides. The city militia had taken care to lay their guns for enfilading fire up and down its whole length. He shivered slightly at the idea of having to attempt the defenses. It would make for a gruesome butcher’s yard. A second line of barricades secured the eastern end of the causeway, and here they were reproved to take no rum among the inebriates of the waterfront and to have a care that attendance at the meeting house was compulsory for all souls within the boundaries of settlement, visitors not excepted. The Baptist meeting house, however, an infernal den on the north end, had been nailed shut and the worshipers arrested for profaning the very air when they attempted to convene outside.

  Smith said nothing.

  He was no Baptist, but he had not set foot inside a place of worship since Martha had passed, and he did not intend to resume his devotions in the company of these notorious howlers.

  They dismounted inside the gate.

  “I will be a short while reacquaintin’ myself with the best route to our lodgings,” Smith said as they walked the horses up a wide, pebbled avenue that appeared to run the length of the island. The buildings on both sides of the high street were handsome and all joined up, as in a Chicago or New York of later vintage. They passed some ladies dressed modestly in plain and practical garb of linsey-woolsey, their heads covered with cap and even wig. Gentlemen in dark jackets of black and brown hurried about their business, often tailed by servants, whom Koffler identified as the harried-looking types in simpler undyed linen shirts, knee-length breeches, and woolen socks.

  As they progressed farther into the main part of town, where the buildings were grander, and more often constructed of strong mortar and quarried stone, Smith noted that a few women did draw quietly outraged glances for their plumage of colored silk and quite superb feathers planted in piles of hair raised up high and fixed in place by invisible supports. Smith assumed they were whores. There were always whores.

  “They are not prostitutes,” Koffler explained. “They are English. Probably officers’ wives.”

  The professor was frowning at the women, but not in disapproval of their costumery.

  “What’s up?” Smith asked. “You look as out of sorts as a wet dog at a parlor social.”

  They threaded in between two wagons passing in opposite directions, one coming from the wharves, piled high with salted codfish, the other overtaking them from landwards and hauling fresh-cut lengths of bright yellow lumber.

  “There should be no regiment in town at this time,” Koffler said, looking worried. “But over there, look, see a cadre of Redcoats, and they appear quite driven in their duties, no?”

  Smith followed Koffler’s pointing finger to look down a cut through an alleyway, where half-a-dozen soldiers in the unmistakable red uniforms of the English oppressors were engaged in searching a hay wagon by the expedient method of driving their bayonets into the silage with force enough to kill a Frenchman, let alone a German such as his companion. He felt his insides turning over like a badly loaded wagon.

  “There was no mention of this in Ms Cady’s journals?”

  Koffler’s brow creased deeply, and he shook his head.

  “No. However, we have heard tell of the woman Bradbury and a female companion leaving port this eve. But I shall check…”

  He handed Smith the reins of his horse and strode over to a man in a long cape and wide-brimmed hat, who leaned against the awning of a commissary, smoking from a pipe. They conversed shortly, an exchange that ended with Koffler bowing slightly in appreciation of the stranger’s assistance.

  He returned, looking no happier.

  “We have the right date,” he said, instantly relieving Smith of the creeping fear that they had arrived years too early or too late to make a rendezvous with Cady. “She should be in Boston right now. At the tavern where you planned to stay, initially. And perhaps she is.” He dipped his furrowed brow in the direction of the Redcoats. “But they should not be here.”

  “So what are they doin’?” Smith asked.

  Koffler’s face was a mask when he answered.

  “They are looking for an escaped witch.”

  Smith experienced the next few seconds as a tumbling mayhem akin to coming off a horse in the middle of a stampeding herd.

  “The Magistrate Granville has called on the army,” Koffler said, “to proffer aid to the civil power, to recapture a Goodwife Cadence Smith, escaped from the custody of the Court of Oyer and Terminer in Salem these days past.”

  “So she’s alive? And she remains free?” Smith asked, his voice low and urgent. He did not ask why she was calling herself by his name but it did give him a dizzying moment.

  Giving into rare exasperation, Professor Koffler threw up his hands.

  “How am I to know? None of this was written. We are on a blank page now, composing the plot as we go.”

  The German had apparently succumbed to an air of frantic despair that Smith had not seen from him before.

  “Then, sir, I suggest we get scribblin’,” Smith said, taking Koffler by the arm and giving him one hard shake, “and we compose an ending to this tale as befits our wishes over the connivance and perfidy of any others.”

  “Of course, of course,” the German agreed, seeming embarrassed by the temporary collapse of his morale. “We must hurry to the inn and determine if Miss Cadence awaits us there.”

  Koffler had it from the smoking man that the Red Lion was a ten-minute walk north towards the Common. The tavern was easily found, sitting across from a giant oak of tremendous age. The lodge was just as Smith recalled from his stay just afore he ventured to Seattle for his fateful encounter with Ms Cady. A long whitewashed public house of pleasing symmetry and modest decoration fronted the pebbled street, offering a view within through transomed windows. An inner court, fringed in flagstones, was accessible to an overnight guest through an archway tall enough to admit even the largest of carriages. The steeply sloped gray slate roof boasted four flowerpot chimneys, all of them happily huffing out clouds of woodsmoke from the large cooking hearths in the common areas and, as Smith recalled, from smaller fireplaces within the better rooms.

  He had spent some of Wu’s gold to rent just such an accommodation when he was last here, and he was glad of the expense now. He had developed the somewhat shameful habit of simply skipping out on hotel bills in those eras and places where the innkeepers did not require payment up front in return for the key. In spite of all th
at had happened in the time since he had met Cady, it was still just over a week since he had lodged here, and the proprietor would doubtless recall a scofflaw who had stiffed him on a bill so recently.

  “We do not look the part of respectable merchant men,” Koffler advised as they approached the tavern.

  Hitching his mount to the rail in front of the saloon doors, Smith took a moment to quickly straighten up his clothing. The rain and numerous river crossings had washed away all but the faintest traces of the blood and gore that had painted them so fiercely after the skirmish with the Wabanaki fighters, but there was no presenting themselves as dapper gentlemen of the commercial class. They looked a pair of cutthroats, and Smith too worried that the Red Lion would not have them.

  Koffler, now recovered from the shock of losing his place in a script he had long committed to memory, assured Smith he would dicker with the management in the universal language of profit and more profit, offering to pay twice the daily rate for two gentle fellows of substantial means but accursed bad luck, beset upon the highway by brigands who had made off with their luggage, but not with his heavy coin purse. Smith watered the horses while the German spoke to the innkeep, who was more than happy to accommodate them, further offering to put them in touch with such craftsmen as they would need to replace their stolen chattels.

  That was good news, but Koffler was not smiling when he returned.

  “Miss Cadence is not here,” he said. “She has never been here.”

  28

  De Klerk did not join them in the little rowboat which carried their party to shore. Mistress Bradbury’s fixer preferred his own transport, but what that was Cady never learned. As soon as Garvey agreed to Bowditch’s escorting her to the tavern, she bounced. Without bags to pack, there was no reason to delay. Wrapped in the hooded oilskin that did as much to protect her from prying eyes as it did from the damp chill of the night, Cady sat on a hard plank in the middle of the rowboat while Bowditch and the gaffer pulled at the oars. The officer’s injured arm visibly pained him, but he matched the other man stroke for stroke.

  The gaffer was the same murderous old scrote who’d kicked her groper half to death, thrown him overboard, and then offered to haul the carcass back in with a whale hook through the ass. He reeked of butt cheese and early-onset dementia, and he seemed to have taken a grandfatherly liking to Cady, which was not just deeply disturbing but totally fucking inexplicable—until Bowditch explained that she had saved him during the fight with Quarrel’s men; macing some asshole who’d been about to chop ‘the old gaff’ into sushi, giving him a chance to ‘run the retchlesse villaine through’.

  “Bringing people together,” Cady said quietly. “That’s what I’m all about.”

  Their journey through the inner harbor was not pleasant. The little boat, which they called a ‘pinnacle’, or something like that, bobbed and jolted about on the cold, unruly chop. Cady huddled deeper into her borrowed oilskin coat and twittered on about how grateful ‘her husband’ would be for their help, and the riches and swag and loot boxes ‘her husband’ would bestow on all who had aided her, and just how fucking big ‘her husband’ was, and how many villains he had personally run through with his unusually large fighting knife.

  The gaffer rowed and muttered and made cartoon pirate noises while Cady tried to plan out her next couple of moves. She didn’t know why Mary wanted to meet her at the Red Lion, or even if a meeting was likely. De Klerk hadn’t been forthcoming beyond the general demand she do as she was told. Frankly, despite the horror of the fight with the pirates or raiders or whatever the hell they were, Cady was beginning to think she might be safer with Garvey and his men on the Herald than she would ever be on land. Garvey in particular seemed the level-headed sort to value a payday over everything else, and she knew she could use that greed to look after her own interests.

  Especially if she could somehow retrieve the ‘profane artifacts’ in her backpack.

  Cady huddled in the rowboat, her butt cheeks clenching onto the hard wooden seat as if to save her from being pitched into the water by the violent motion of the swell. If the magistrate Granville was in Boston, she reasoned, her swag bag of twenty-first century goodies had almost certainly traveled here with him. An Apprentice would want to disappear the lot, but not before she hung on the evidence of her witchcraft. If she could just get it back, just one or two things…

  A Kindle, an iPod, a power source…

  She could use the information to…

  What?

  She wasn’t sure. But that was the thing, wasn’t it? She wasn’t sure about anything now. Especially not whether Smith would ever get back to rescue her. She could be stuck here in this bullshit Handmaid’s Tale of a century forever. If she couldn’t escape the dark ages, she would just have to change them. Enlighten some motherfuckers.

  The gaffer burbled away incomprehensibly as they approached a stone quay, lit only by a single burning torch. He sang the same ditty over and over again.

  “Heave and ho, room below, row the boat, Norman, row!”

  Lieutenant Bowditch had earlier given up on conversation to save his breath for the hard work of rowing in the difficult conditions. Now, as they approached a flight of stone steps that seemed to climb out of the harbor, he moved past Cady with surprising agility to lasso a sort of wooden hitching post and pull them in the last few feet. She sat as squarely in the middle of the boat as she could, scared to move an inch, in case she capsize the tiny vessel. Bowditch, however, moved as though he was gliding across a dance floor, while the gaffer eventually just hopped out into the freezing, waist-deep water to drag them alongside the quay.

  “Right ye be, missee,” he said, holding the side of the boat with one gnarled and massive hand while he offered the other to Cady, to help her ashore.

  Her legs wobbled and she dared not stand up completely for fear of going ass over tit into the drink, but with the gaffer’s help she made it to solid ground with only a little soaking of her boots and jeans. She felt like a child as he lifted her clear of the water and the boat, but she also felt the care he took, not just to keep her dry, but to handle her in such a way as to respect her… modesty.

  They would definitely think of it as ‘a lady’s modesty’ here.

  She was glad not to get groped again. Or soaked.

  Bowditch came ashore immediately behind her, immersing his boots and pants almost as deeply as the gaffer’s. Neither man complained about the icy water or even seemed to notice it.

  “You will tarry here,” he ordered the older man, “until we return or I send word.”

  “If it be your worship’s pleasure, Mister Bowditch, I’d just as like wait on you in the nearest tavern and warm my shivering arse before the fire.”

  Cady half-expected Bowditch to bark an order back, demanding he do as he was bloody well told, but instead he surprised again, smiling.

  “An excellent idea, Gaff.”

  He gave the man a few coins and clapped him on the shoulder. “Do not get weeping drunk, but do not stint yourself a drink. We have old friends and comrades to toast, aye?”

  “Aye sir, we do. And thanking you. And you, missee. I owes you the breath in me body, I do. I am at your service, ma’am.”

  He bowed and Cady found herself oddly touched by the gesture, even if his breath smelled like the toxic fumes coming out of Satan’s own chemical toilet.

  The waterfront district was dark, but not entirely without light or life. Cady counted four taverns or inns alight with candles and flickering torches, and heard the low murmur of men’s voices from within. She also heard music, simple tunes played on flutes or reed pipes and singing which reminded her of the shanties the Herald’s men belted out as they went about their duties and chores on the ship. But the night lay heavy on them, and if the darkness was not complete, it was oppressive. She could feel the weight of the benighted world pressing in on them.

  “The city watch are zealous as they walk the round, good lady,” Bowditch sa
id quietly. “We must have a care not to come afoul of them or it will mean the stocks for us.”

  “Do you know where you’re going?”

  “I do, if you will follow.”

  He led her away from the quayside with its smells of salt fish and brine, away from the tavern lights and the lapping wavelets at the water’s edge. The singing faded behind them, replaced by an unnatural quiet in which their footsteps, crunching through the pebbles of the local streets, seemed too loud to hope they might go unnoticed.

  “Most of the city takes the first sleep now,” Bowditch said quietly. “They will come to wake during the midnight hour, but this is not a town of roisterers. We have an hour, maybe two, to achieve our end.”

  She wasn’t sure what he meant by ‘the first sleep’, but the streets were eerily devoid of any traffic. London she recalled as being even more alive after the sun set, in spite of the soupy fog reducing visibility to a few feet. But London had thousands of gas lamps, of course. Colonial Boston slumbered under starlight. The storm clouds of the previous days had scattered on a blustery wind, and Cady was surprised how well they could navigate by moon and stars alone. In the widest streets, on the white gravel of the roadway she could even see her shadow. The night-watch carried oil lamps, which marked them out from afar, making it that much easier to negotiate a passage through the old town without detection. She could even enjoy the risk of it—after recognizing the advantage they had in moving without illumination. It was like playing Metal Gear Solid, but hard core. Without NVGs or respawns.