Ganymede tcc-4

by Cherie Priest

Overhead, the sound of artillery came in a smattering line of pops, but if anything landed close to the blower, there was too much noise and motion for Josephine, Ruthie, or Gifford to hear it. If bullets landed, they were fired from so far away that they merely dropped into the water, and any larger shells that were incoming, only stabbed at their wake.

  Josephine wished to God she’d thought to bring a flag, not that it would’ve mattered, necessarily. She had to trust that whoever was watching from the fort was aware that this small blower speeding toward the canal was not the transport of any Texians or other officials. She had to believe that the men on guard would assume they were in search of shelter, or to provide reinforcements or information, or for some mission other than sabotage.

  It was either assume this or turn back. If she was right, they’d be allowed under the wall. If she wasn’t, they’d be blown out of the water before they reached it.

  At night, with or without the light that beamed down from above like the angry glare of an archangel, no one would recognize her on the tiny boat. No one would know her, or hear her name even if she had time to shout it.

  Soaked to the bone, she and Ruthie grasped the handholds, and each other, and kept their heads low, as if they could duck out from underneath the penetrating gaze of the light. Faster and faster their destination approached. They neared it at a breakneck speed, dodging left to right and back again, zipping around unnavigable clumps and clusters of foliage, tree stumps, and fallen masonry boulders from the old walls.

  Their mouse hole destination wall grew bigger on the immediate horizon, illuminated by the swishing glances of lights from the air, and by the sometimes-flashes of tracer bullets flicking from ground to sky, sky to ground. Gifford Crooks aimed for the portal and squinted against the spray of swamp water misting into his eyes, flying off the grasses. He set his course, gunned the engine to the outside limit of what it could sustain, and gave it all the fuel the thing could manage.

  Surging with a bounding leap, the blower nearly leaped off the surface of the clotted water, then slapped back against it and moaned, the swamp hissing against its undercarriage.

  Ruthie prayed in French. Josephine held her breath.

  And just before the craft slipped beneath the arch, Gifford cut the engine and let the blower glide forward — holding its course but slowing to jerk them all in their seats. Josephine toppled to the floor and took Ruthie with her. Gifford threw himself down on top of them, sheltering them with his own body.

  The blower drifted from violent night to sudden midnight, emerging on the other side of the mouse hole into a ground-floor warren that was more mud than water. It heaved and skidded sideways up onto the closest bank, lodging itself in the mud and settling with a wet sucking sound.

  The engine died.

  The sudden silence left Josephine shaky; she lifted her head and pulled Ruthie close, just in time to hear the clicks of guns being made ready, and pointed in their direction. Gifford looked up, held out his hands, and said, “Fellas, kindly ignore the uniform. I’m with the bayou boys, and they’ll vouch for me. This here is—,” he started to say, gesturing at Josephine.

  “Miss Early!” the nearest man gasped, and he lowered his gun. He was not a tall man, nor a particularly fearsome one in appearance, but the others deferred to him all the same, and all the guns present were soon pointing at the ground.

  Though he was balding on top, around the sides and back, he had enough hair for a ponytail tied with a bit of leather. His clothes were smeared with gunpowder and soot, which had clearly become the operating uniform for everyone inside the fort. At a glance, they might have all been the same race, or the same army. The same group of burrowing resistance fighters, determined to dig in and raise hell.

  “Mr. Boggs,” she replied.

  He extended a hand to help her out of the blower, and she took it. “Here about your brother, I assume?” Every word was pronounced with the oddly emphasized vowels of the Cajuns. His eyes protruded slightly and his stocky frame was approaching fat, but was comfortingly sturdy as he pulled Josephine onto the firmer surface of packed earth at the mud’s edge, then drew Ruthie up as well.

  “Deaderick, yes. He’s here in the fort, isn’t he?”

  “Where else would we take him? He’s here, and he’s all right for now.”

  “Have you any doctors?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No doctors, no lawyers, no teachers, no judges — or anything else too civilized, I’m afraid. They’ve got us in a pickle, pinned down. But it could be worse.” Mr. Boggs extended a hand to Gifford, too, and soon all three of the small blower’s passengers were standing on something closer to terra firma than they’d known since leaving the riverbanks.

  “How’s that?” Gifford asked.

  “We have fresh water, some food — and ready fishing, right outside the wall — and all the gunpowder and ammunition we can carry.” He returned his attention to Josephine and cocked a head at the other men who’d joined him as part of the welcoming committee. “Listen, ma’am, we didn’t mean to alarm you. We had to check out the newcomers, you know how it goes.”

  “You’d be madmen if you didn’t. You know me — and this is my girl Ruthie Doniker, and our escort, Gifford Crooks.”

  “I seen you before,” said one of Boggs’s men to Gifford.

  “I was here before, out on the island — not in the fort. I fight with the bayou lads, been sent down from Saint Louis. And I got no complaint with Barataria, let me make that real clear up front.”

  “Don’t worry about it, son,” said Mr. Boggs. “You’re with Miss Early, and that means you’re all right. I’m Planter Boggs,” he introduced himself, and then his men. “This is Arthur Tate, Mike Hardis, Frank Jones, and Tam Everly. They’re all that’s left from the crew of an airship called the Coyote Black, which is no longer with us.”

  The man introduced as Frank Jones was very thin, with ginger-colored hair and a pointed beard. He said, “It was one of the first to go, over there.” He waved a hand to indicate something outside the fort.

  And Mike Hardis added, “It went up like a Chinese New Year, though. Took half the dock out. Can’t say she didn’t leave us with a bang.”

  “Still, it’s a shame,” said Tam Everly. “I figured I’d run her ’til it was time to retire. Then pass her off to one of my nephews. Won’t be happening now.” Arthur Tate patted him on the shoulder.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your ship,” Josephine told the lot of them. “But can one of you, or all of you, I don’t care — can someone take me to my brother? I’m so tired, I can hardly hold my head up. But I won’t settle down for the night until I’ve set eyes on him.”

  “Right this way, Miss Early.” Planter Boggs led the way. “And you there,” he said to Gifford. “Get out of those browns before you get yourself shot. You know what the Good Book says about avoiding the appearance of evil, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir, but the evil was a good disguise to get me in and out of town.” He stripped off the jacket and tossed it into the empty blower, but despaired at the vest and pants.

  “Everly, Tate. One of you fellows — can you get him something less … troubling?”

  So Gifford Crooks took his leave, and Josephine and Ruthie followed Planter Boggs back into the depths of the old Spanish fort. “He’ll catch up to us later,” Boggs promised. “Come on now, and watch your step. It’s none too bright back here. We’re doing things the old-fashioned way, without any of those electric torches. Trying to conserve our power, you know how it goes.”

  He reached for a torch of the ancient variety, a wooden club with fuel-wrapped rags knotted around its head and set aflame. The stink of burning petroleum wafted along, carried and deposited in thick black smoke that stained the walls and the low stone ceiling.

  Ruthie stuck close to Josephine, holding her mistress’s elbow as if she was steadying her, and not just looking for an excuse to keep the comforting contact. She asked, “Are we underneath the fort? I d
o not understand. We went under the wall, but…”

  Mike Hardis, a terribly young man with a potato-shaped body but sharp, smart eyes, answered her. “The canal used to be deeper. The Spaniards moved supplies in and out of the fort on flats, all the way from the center inside … out to the bay, and then to the Gulf. But the years have filled it in, as you saw. And now the basement chamber — which is only halfway underground,” he noted as they began to climb a short flight of stairs, “is filled with a century’s worth of tidal mud and backwash. Even so, I can’t say it doesn’t make for a convenient back door. How’d you know to come looking for it?”

  Planter Boggs looked pointedly at Josephine. She answered for herself. “In my younger days, I spent a good deal of time at Barataria, and sometimes in the fort.”

  “I imagine you still have a number of friends here,” Mr. Boggs said as he led the way up the narrow stairwell, torchlight bouncing off the walls around the rounded corners, up ahead of him.

  “Friends and paying customers, if I cared to have them. Most of the men I knew back then are older now, and either wiser or dead. I hope you’ll pardon me saying so, gentlemen.”

  On that somber note, they hiked up into a large common room that was so sealed up, it felt to Josephine as if they were still underground, or mostly so. More firelight burned from every corner, some of it chimneyed away by ventilation shafts and columns of brick — but some of it accumulated within the long, flat room with the ceiling so low that the tallest men were compelled to hunch. Some forty or fifty men eyed the newcomers warily, then opportunistically, upon seeing that two were women. And then a name was breathed, somewhere in a back corner.

  “Miss Early.”

  The whisper carried back and forth throughout the closed, dark nightmare of that cramped and awful place, until the men who stood in their path parted and let them pass.

  In French, Ruthie said into Josephine’s ear, “You’re a bit of a legend to them. I had no idea.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “And still they know of you? You must have been remarkable.”

  “Still am.”

  Cramped and crowded, the room’s walls felt uncomfortably close and the air was stale with smoke, sweat, and the worry of men who knew exactly how much death could be dealt from above and outside. Somewhere off to the west the rat-a-tat-tat of antiaircraft fire shook the fort and was answered by the nearest armored dirigible. Tiny explosions smacked overhead, drilling into the roof and digging into the fortifications. Something heavier landed, and the roof shook. The ceiling quaked and rained mortar dust down on the already silent, already anxious collection of souls below.

  “This way,” Planter Boggs pushed. “Never mind the return fire. They haven’t breached us yet, and we’re holding the worst of it at bay from the corners, and what’s left of the other canals.”

  “And from the walls themselves,” Mike Hardis added.

  Ruthie’s eyes widened. “There are men outside still?”

  “Only the crazy ones,” said Frank Jones. “But they’re launching hand-bombs and taking potshots at the boats that slink up close. Somebody has to do it.”

  Josephine didn’t want to think about it. “Just get us to my brother. Please. Hurry,” she begged.

  “Come through here. It’s this way.”

  Another short set of stairs, half a flight down and then up again, and the small band arrived in what had once been a galley — if the leftover counters, racks for pans, and drawers for cutlery were any measure. It’d been converted to a makeshift clinic of sorts. No doctors, no lawyers, no teachers, no judges. No one in charge, but that was always the way of pirates, and no emergency could change it.

  The galley was a room full of motion, and the only electric lights she’d seen so far blazed with comparative brilliance above old food-preparation tables, which were now occupied by moaning, groaning injured men. Half a dozen dead bodies were piled in a corner, a fact that was only feebly hid by the application of a filthy tablecloth as a shroud. Limp hands and feet jutted out from the pile, and warm, sticky bloodstains showed up where the wounds were not yet finished leaking. Ruthie put her hand over her mouth and tried not to gag. Josephine would’ve done the same — the smell of urine and burned flesh and gunpowder and blood was almost more than she could stand — but she’d spotted Fletcher Josty in the room’s middle, beside a decrepit pump-water sink that, against all odds, was still working.

  The bayou guerrilla yanked and shoved on the handle and water did veritably appear, though it wasn’t as clean as one might hope. Many hands held out bowls, cups, and dirty rags, hoping to collect some of the liquid for refreshment or cleansing.

  Josty pumped furiously, trying to force the men to take turns. “One at a time, you bastards! There’s water to go around, but you have to wait your turn! I can’t make it come out any quicker,” he grumbled.

  “Fletcher!” Josephine cried.

  The room stopped for an instant, as even the eyes of the wounded turned at the sound of a woman’s voice. But another jagged cry rang out and the chorus of aching voices rose behind it, and the sad scene carried on as before, except that Fletcher quit pumping. He grabbed the nearest able-bodied soul and shoved him at the pump, ordering, “Keep that arm moving. Keep that water flowing.”

  Then, as he abandoned that wretched post, he danced between the tables and the sprawled arms and legs. “Miss Early,” he said, looking like he would’ve tipped his hat if he’d had one on. This free man of color was as filthy and smeared with soot as everyone Josephine had seen so far, but she was overjoyed by the sight of him, and it was all she could do to keep from hugging him.

  Instead she grasped him by the shoulders and asked, “Deaderick?”

  “In the cellar, ma’am.”

  “Oh … oh, God…”

  “No, no. He’s still alive, it’s just cooler down there, that’s all, so that’s where I’ve stuck ’im. Some of the men who are stable, and needing to rest … it’s all we could do to make them comfortable. It’s more sheltered, too, I think. If Texas brings in anything bigger, or shoots anything worse, we might be digging for cover.”

  “Then to the cellar. Now.”

  Planter Boggs gave Josephine and Ruthie a little bow and said, “Ladies, if you’ll excuse me.”

  “Of course,” the madam said without looking. She was already trailing behind Josty, and Ruthie behind her.

  And down into the cellar they followed — back to the level where the canals came and went. A large round of artillery connected with a thick mortar wall somewhere to the east. Josephine thrust out an arm to brace herself. The whole world shook, and it seemed like even an old fort built by Spaniards to survive the Second Coming couldn’t stand beneath the onslaught.

  But stand it did.

  And in the cellar, on the old concrete docks that were barely raised above the mud, Deaderick Early lay between two other men in similar states of injury and consciousness.

  She ran to his side, trying to keep from disturbing the others. Without stepping on them or kicking them, she knelt beside her brother and took one of his hands in hers — clasping it to her breast and examining the damage with as much cool reserve as she could muster. She tried to keep the panic out of her eyes when Deaderick opened his own.

  “I knew it,” he said unhappily.

  “You knew what?” she asked. It was a relief to hear him talk, even to hear him complain. But the bubbling red across his chest was not a relief, and his face was blanched and pale beneath the burnish of his complexion. Every muscle from his forehead to his chin was stretched tight with pain.

  “I knew you’d come. Whether or not anyone told you not to. That’s why I told them not to tell you. Josty did it, didn’t he? Damn fool.”

  Ruthie seized Deaderick’s other hand and held it up to her cheek. “Bien sûr she came, you ridiculous oaf!”

  “Christ Almighty, not you, too.”

  “Oui, moi aussi. Now, hush and let us take care of you.” />
  “I don’t need you to take care of me.”

  Josephine released his hand so she could explore the injuries with her fingers. Gently, thoroughly, and trembling, she unpicked his buttons and revealed the sad, masculine attempts at bandaging. An ash-colored rag that might once have dried dishes was balled up and compressed against the largest of two holes, or so she learned upon lifting it. It stuck, blood drying to chest hair, and Deaderick grimaced.

  “Woman, let it alone! If you leave it be, it’ll stop bleeding.”

  Fletcher Josty hovered into the scene and contradicted him. “It hasn’t stopped yet, not for good. Not like the other one. Rick, I’m starting to worry.”

  “Save your worry for yourself, because when I’m up again, I’m going to tan your hide for getting Josie involved.”

  “Oh, shut your mouth. You’ve met your sister, haven’t you? Like we could keep her away.”

  Just then, someone shouted from the far end of the cellarlike nook. “All right, you goddamn pirates have gotten your way. I’m here, and you won’t do any better — not for trying. Who needs attention?”

  “Are you a doctor?” Josephine asked like lightning.

  “Used to be. I’m starting down here and working my way up like the free men of the air have demanded. So tell me,” said the man. “who’s in the most danger? Has no one sorted them out, grouped them by seriousness of condition?”

  Fletcher rolled his eyes and said, “This ain’t no hospital, mister. It’s been all we could do to get ’em out from underfoot!”

  Josephine stood and shoved Fletcher Josty aside. “Never mind him. Get yourself over here, Doctor, if that’s what you are. My brother has two bullets in him, and he needs your assistance now.”

  “Only two? He’s one of the better cases.”

  “I’ll pay you. Whatever you think you’re worth. I … I own a boarding house, in the Quarter. Get over here and fix my brother, and I’ll see to it that you have a week you’ll never forget, do you understand me?”

  “No, but I’m open to the explaining,” he said, coming toward her. He was an older man and, by the look of him, a lifelong alcoholic. The skin across his nose was the color of blisters and streaked with broken blood vessels; his eyes were likewise shot through with red, and his face hung off his skull with a droop like a hound dog’s.