“You can’t mean to bring back the Provis!” Sweat stood out on the governor’s forehead and he clenched his hands together.
“No. They deserve to hang, not rule. There are other ways to govern a state.”
The Black Jacket with the pistol swung it from Hal to Verplanck. Verplanck just shrugged.
“Shooting me won’t make any difference. Actually, it will probably seal your fate. I doubt these men will hold their fire then.”
“And what choice are you giving us?” asked the Black Jacket.
“Put your weapons down,” said Verplanck. “I give you my word that you will have safe passage back to Montreal.”
The Black Jacket ground his teeth but said nothing. He looked to the governor, but there was no help there. The governor had flushed pink; his mouth hung open. No words came out.
“You have no choice,” Verplanck said. “You have forfeited your rule here. At least this way you keep your lives.” His voice sharpened. “Now, release the colonel!”
Hands fell away from Hal; men stepped back. He saw his regiment with their rifles still leveled at the pavilion. Then he looked to Eugen Verplanck.
“Colonel,” said Verplanck, “if you would be so kind as to rejoin your troops and then see to the disarming of these men, I would appreciate it.”
• • •
By late afternoon, the adrenaline of the morning had worn off. The pavilion was gone, as were the governor and his men. The pavilion was packed away for use in some future review. The governor, his retainers and the Black Jackets had been packed into wagons and started on the road north. Verplanck was out of sight as well. He and the other generals had retreated into his tent as soon as the governor was gone and the troops dispersed to their camps.
Hal was left to sit under a tree and stare at the sky. The memory of what he had done scared him silly, even if, somehow, he had not felt scared at the time. He could have died. In fact, every time he replayed the scene, he saw the Black Jacket pull the hammer back and then squeeze the trigger. Hal’s shirt was soaked under his arms.
A welcome distraction was provided by the approach of Fons ten Eyck. Hal was not surprised to see Bel with him.
“I want to thank you,” ten Eyck said, when he reached the tree where Hal was sitting.
Bel said nothing, as silent as the first day he had seen her.
“What he was doing wasn’t right,” Hal said. “I couldn’t not say anything.”
“A brave thing nonetheless,” said ten Eyck.
Hal felt the blush in his cheeks.
“Hal does not like having his bravery mentioned,” Bel said.
Hal felt more heat in his cheeks. He was afraid they were bright red. So, maybe Bel was right and he wasn’t the coward he had convinced himself he was, but he was afraid that if he ever claimed to be brave, the next time something happened he would shit his pants. He looked away to the generals’ tent. Verplanck chose that moment to step outside. He spotted Hal and started to walk their way.
“Ah, the commanding general comes,” said ten Eyck. “There must be another army that needs to be defeated.”
“Fons, let it be,” Bel said.
Verplanck, however, had no such errand in mind. He wanted only to say his own thank you directly to Hal. Then he paused and stretched, clearly wanting a break from whatever was going on in the tent. “It is a debate that goes on forever,” he said, as much to the tree and sky as to the three people he was standing with. “We won’t take the governor back. Everyone is agreed to that. The Stuyvesant and van Rensselaer line is ended here. His position was shaky to begin with. Most of us supported him because that was the only alternative to the Provis we could agree on. That’s over now, and there is no interest in another governor. There are some who fear I want to be a dictator, and some who want that, but I don’t, so that’s out. And so, we go round and round about how to govern Nieuw Netherlands.”
“I can help,” Hal said. The lessons of school days past were in his head and, if he had not studied as closely as he should have, he was sure he remembered enough.
Verplanck smiled. “I should think that you have already accomplished enough for one campaign. Some would say enough for a lifetime.” Verplanck put a hand on Hal’s shoulder. “You’ve changed the world. Leave it at that and leave this matter to us. The Puritans up in Boston vote on who will be governor and, while none of us would ever want to imitate the Holier-than-thous, maybe there is something to it.” Verplanck was smiling when he walked back to the tent.
• • •
Two days later, Hal was back in Nieuw Amsterdam. He still wore the orange uniform, now with decorations on his chest, even if he wasn’t sure he wanted to wear them. He wasn’t sure what he wanted, period.
He went to Fort Stuyvesant, climbed to its highest level and sat on the battlement that faced the Hudson River and the west. It was a warm summer day, with a bit of breeze at the top level of the fort. The sun was bright and the sky was filled with rows of puffy cumulus clouds arrayed in ranks, like a regiment lined up for review. Hal looked out into the west. What was he going to do? Verplanck had made it clear what he thought Hal should do. He had offered Hal a permanent commission in the Army of Nieuw Netherlands. He had said that Hal would have a successful military career, especially given the senior officer vacancies caused by the recent fighting. Hal should make the army his home.
Home. That was his problem, the problem he had shoved to the back of his mind since the day he had gone to warn Bel. What was he going to do about home? Was there anything he could do, or would he have to accept that something weird had happened and this was the way life was going to be? He stared west, looking for inspiration in the sky and clouds.
“Hey, Magical Man!”
The shout tore into his reverie. His head jerked around and he saw Bel coming toward him. “How did you know?” he stammered, then realized that he had given the truth away as plainly as if he had said, “Yes, that’s me.”
Bel walked over to him as though she had done nothing but greet him by name. “A lot of little things,” she said, once she was close enough to speak without raising her voice. “You have a habit of using words or phrases that make no sense. No one has ever heard an accent like yours. There are things you know, and things you don’t, that again make no sense. Oh, you disguise it well, but it is true, isn’t it?”
“You mean that I’m a Magical?”
“Yes, whatever that really means. Where are you from, in truth?”
Hal looked at Bel. There was no one else in sight. There was no use to his stories anymore, he could see that. Not with her. “I’m from here, actually,” he said. “I mean from this land, this same area. But, it’s different—the people, what they have, what they do. Some names are the same: the Hudson River, the island of Manhattan. But a lot of places go by different names.” He searched her eyes for any sign of hostility. He saw none.
“Tell me about it,” she said. “Tell me what your home is like.”
So he did. He spoke of a Manhattan that was part of a city called New York, one that had been Nieuw Amsterdam hundreds of years earlier. A Manhattan that was covered in buildings of concrete and steel that stretched a hundred stories into the sky. He spoke of concrete roads that crisscrossed the land and vehicles with engines that could go from Manhattan to the Water Gap in an hour and a half. He spoke of a land, one nation, that stretched three thousand miles to the west and aircraft that could cross that span, as well as the oceans, in hours. He described a wireless phone, a television, a computer. And then he talked about his parents and his sister, who lived just east and north of Manhattan near a city that was called White Plains, just as it was here.
He had no idea how long he talked. The words poured out and Bel did not interrupt. When at last he finished, his cheeks were wet with tears.
“That’s what I am,” he said. “That’s where I’m from. I have no idea how I got here.”
“You want to go back, don’t you?”
; “Oh, God.” The words caught in Hal’s throat. “I’ve looked for someone who can tell me how. It’s hopeless.”
Bel took a step closer. “Well, maybe it is, but maybe not. I can reach the kind of people you cannot. Will you let me help you?”
It was all Hal could do to nod in return. A chance to go home? A real chance? Bel stood there, wrapped in her usual silence, while he sat for a time without words.
Finally, she spoke up. “Hal, you have told me many secrets today. Even though I guessed the truth about you, I could never have known, could never have imagined, any of what you told me. So, now we know each other’s secrets and I have a question for you, if you will answer it.”
“Of course.” It was an effort to say just those two words, but Hal knew he would answer any question she asked.
“You know my secrets,” Bel said. She put a hand to her face and traced the scars lightly with her finger. Then she turned her head and ran her fingers over the smooth skin that was there. The fingers trembled. “You know the dark and hollow person that I truly am. You know the evil I have done. Do you think it is possible that a man could ever look at me and see . . . a girl?”
She was standing close enough that Hal could reach out and put his hands on her shoulders. He felt muscles quiver under his touch, but she did not run.
So, he drew her closer.
And kissed her.
For a long time.
35
The Way Back
IN THE WEEKS that followed, Hal and Bel crisscrossed the city looking for clues to Magicals. Beyond that, they spent all of their time together except for the occasional hour when Bel wanted to speak to someone who would only see her alone. Bel was still quiet most of the time, but Hal no longer thought of it as strange. That was just Bel. He could feel her presence, even when she was just out of sight.
If the city folk wondered at the sight of Bloody Hal, hero of Gardiner’s Farm, and the woodsranger girl they called weinig moordenaar walking the streets, sometimes hand in hand, they kept it to themselves. They shook their heads, at least when they could not be seen to do so. They whispered and gossiped where it was private. The one thing they did not do was say anything that either Hal or Bel would hear. If rumors of such talk reached the couple’s ears, and they certainly reached Bel’s, neither one cared.
It was mid-summer then, on a bright morning, that Hal woke to a hand shaking his shoulder. He had moved back to the same room in the fort he had occupied before the revolt because it was convenient and because no one had said otherwise. Bel shared the room with him and shared his bed. They would make love, then cuddle together. Bel would talk then, talk in a way she never did in any other place or at any other time. She would talk of the dreams she had, of her private fantasies. They were simple, really. She would have a small farm, all her own, out in the middle of nowhere. She would live there by herself, with only Belisarius for company. Bel was no farmer, so all her crops grew magically. Her favorite part, what she loved most, was getting up to feed Belisarius an apple in the soft light of the dawn.
Hal would listen to her story as long as she would tell it. When it ended, she would get out of bed, wrapped in a blanket, and sit at the little table by the window. She would sit there for hours, in the dark or with a small candle lit. Hal always fell asleep before she came back to bed. Bel, as far as Hal could tell, never slept more than three hours a night, and that was on nights that she slept at all. Sometimes, she went out at night and was not in bed when he woke, just like this morning.
He blinked, trying to banish the sleep from his eyes and mind as quickly as he could. The hand shook him more roughly.
“Wake up, will you?” It was Bel’s voice.
That brought Hal fully awake. She was standing by the bed, dressed as usual in her leathers. An extra two rows of bright pink ribbon they had purchased the other day were intertwined with the leather fringe.
“What’s the emergency?”
“I’ve found something,” she said. “I spoke to someone last night. There is an alchemist shop on Wall Street, near the east end of the city wall. You always hear rumors about dark arts being practiced there. Maybe it’s true.”
Hal rubbed his eyes. “Is it something that won’t be there in fifteen minutes?” he asked.
“A man is expecting us.”
Hal groaned, sat up and looked for his clothes.
“Breakfast?” he said, hopefully, as they were headed out the door.
“Later.”
The shop, when they reached it, did not look promising. It was of wood and the little paint on the wood was peeling. There were gaps between the boards, which meant little at this time of year but would make it frigid in the winter. A crudely lettered sign in yellow paint read “The Honest Alchemist.” The drawing of a flask under the lettering was uneven.
“If his chemistry is anything like his shop, this is a waste of time,” Hal said.
“The man I spoke with said the shop owner had learned about Magicals. I believe him. The owner will have something for us.”
Hal shrugged and reached for the door handle. The hinges squealed and the door tilted askew when it swung open. Inside, the air smelled of garlic and saltpeter. Rows of shelves, from floor to ceiling, were packed with bottles of all sizes and shapes. More bottles, and a variety of flasks, covered the counter space along the back wall. From somewhere, a parrot cawed. A fat man sat behind a desk in the back corner of the room. His skin was dark, almost black. His head was mostly bald. Only a fringe of short, curly hair ran from his temples above his ears and around the back of his head. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, although the day’s temperature had not begun to climb. He squinted at them.
“Well,” he said, “what do two people such as yourselves want from the shop of Honest José Rodriguez?” He slid off his chair and wrenched himself upright with a grunt. “I know, I know,” he said. “Something to make it harder for longer. That’s why you come to the Honest Alchemist, a discreet and out-of-the-way shop where no talk will arise.”
“Spare us the prattle,” Bel said. She stepped close to Rodriguez and whispered in his ear.
His eyes widened. A faint wheeze came out of his mouth. He looked from one to the other as if gauging the possibility of escape. Finally, with a sigh, he gave up that thought. “So, you are the two. My wife said that no good would come of this. Perhaps she was right.”
“She does not have to be right,” Bel replied. “Although I can arrange for her to be right.”
“No doubt.” Rodriguez retreated to the counter and got down on his knees.
Hal looked over his shoulder and could see him work the combination lock of a heavy safe that sat on the floor. The door opened with a click. Rodriguez reached in and pulled out a thick book. He straightened up with a grunt similar to the one he had emitted when he first got off the chair. Then he slammed the book down on the counter. Dust flew everywhere. Hal fought the urge to sneeze.
“Magicals,” Rodriguez muttered. “They want to know about Magicals. Well, what I know is what’s in this book. It is an old book. Do not ask how I came by it. It will tell you that Magicals are real, not just children’s stories or a good subject for a Sunday sermon. They appear, God only knows from where. Or maybe it isn’t God that knows.”
Hal stared at him. For the first time, he was hearing that someone believed in Magicals. “But how do I . . .” he started. “What I mean is, what makes it happen?”
The alchemist raised his eyebrows and met Hal’s stare. “How does it work, he wants to know. I suppose I could tell you magic, or God’s will or the Devil’s work, for all the difference it would make. When you don’t understand something, magic is as good an answer as any. But I’m an honest alchemist, and even if I wasn’t, I know who the two of you are, and your reputations say you’re both too dangerous to lie to. The truth is that I don’t know, and nobody knows.” The fat man wheezed, wiped sweat from his forehead, then pounded the book with a meaty fist. “This is mostly bull
turd, fantasies of feeble minds or worse, like those girls who had a whole bunch of people hanged as witches. But not all.” He turned the book and pushed it toward them so that they could see slips of paper sticking out of it. “I’ve marked the four stories that I’m convinced are real, and I’m suspecting that you know a fifth.”
He waited, but when neither Hal nor Bel said anything, he sighed. “The book will cost you fifty. I’ve marked the places to read as I’ve said. Pay attention to the third story. That one went back to where he came from.”
“Went back?” Hal leaned across the desk. “Then you do know how it works!”
“No, I do not! Read it. All it tells you is that they forced the poor creature to drink this potion savages use, or so they say, to make a man hear voices and see things that aren’t there. When they tired of listening to the babble, they penned him up in the same root cellar he had come out of. They were going to hang him in the morning, but when they went to get him, he wasn’t there.”
“So, they got drunk, fell asleep and he escaped,” Bel said.
“Certainly. And with the only door to an underground room still nailed shut. I told you, I put little faith in most stories, but this one, I believe. It won’t tell you how it works, though. Only, maybe, that a Magical has to go and come from the same place and that, maybe, it helps to be a bit out of his mind.”
Hal was thinking that he had been drunk, very drunk, that October night. “What did they make him drink?” he asked. “Is it in the book?”
Accidental Warrior: The Unlikely Tale of Bloody Hal Page 40
