Never sleep, p.12
Never Sleep, page 12
“And if it’s going to happen anyway, why not make a little money off it?”
“Purser’s been a way to fatten yourself at the generals’ trough since the first army marched through the first market and all the farmers doubled their prices. Hell, if I didn’t know how to cook a book, I wouldn’t be worth half a damn to my posting in the first place.”
“You are a rogue and a scoundrel, Lieutenant Hill.”
She said it with a smile, but he nodded gravely. “I am. And you are a wild woman of dubious honor. Like knows like. I’ve heard things.”
“From Anna Cain?”
He laughed. “From Anna Cain.”
“She does so love to tell my story for me.”
“Wasn’t sure what to believe . . .”
“Come now, Lieutenant. I can’t give the whole game away in a single night. You’ll get bored of me.”
“That, madam, I very much doubt.”
There was a silence then. The rowdier denizens of the public house had either passed out on the floor or quit Gunner’s Hall to pass out somewhere else. Kate and Hill looked at each other, grinning stupidly. The night was self-evidently over, but neither of them wanted to say so out loud.
“I guess there’s nothing left to do but go upstairs,” he said.
“What’s upstairs?”
“The remains of what used to be the legendarily vile Fourth Ward Hotel. I let one of the rooms from Mrs. Gunner for when I don’t feel like making my horse carry my drunken carcass back to Fort McHenry.”
“I meant, what’s upstairs?”
“You’ll see.”
She grabbed the whiskey bucket with both hands, emptied it into her mouth, and slammed it down on the table as hard as she could.
“Whatever it is,” she said, “it better be fucking Russian.”
The following morning Kate awoke to the sight of Hill’s sleeping face, mouth pursed slightly below his mustache, and was pleased to find she did not regret waking up by his side. That already put him in the (short) positive column of her ledger of conquests. She reflected that ever since she went to work for Pinkerton, all her relationships were like this, with men and women, sexual and platonic—intense to the point of abject greed, as if a lifetime’s worth of experiences should be sucked out in a very short amount of time.
Lady Detectives: A minimum of five cases must be successfully concluded before you should allow yourself to bed any of your contacts. Do not ask how your humble author calculated this figure; instead, rest assured that she reached it after a long and exhaustive study of the subject. Bedding one’s fellow operatives should be avoided altogether, on pain of heartbreak, and loss of face among one’s colleagues. Of course, in all things, do as your author writes, not as she does.
Neither Kate nor Hill had bothered lighting the lantern when they stumbled in, giggling, the night before, so it wasn’t until she woke up the following morning that she plainly saw the room with its wardrobe, writing desk, and washbasin. It could have been a poet’s cell. Edgar Poe’s?
Kate pulled her drawers back up and laced her corset back over her long-skirted chemise and buttoned up her gown before neatly making her side of the bed. She then sat on the covers against the headboard and jostled the lieutenant’s shoulder until his eyes opened.
“You’re still here,” he said with a sweet surprise that made her heart break a little.
“So are you. Don’t you have revelry or something?”
“Reveille, Flora, it’s called reveille. It’s French for ‘too damn early.’”
“I stand corrected. Don’t you have reveille?”
Hill groaned and sat upright, swinging his feet over onto the floor. “One of the other advantages of being a subsistence officer is that as long as you keep your commanding officer well supplied with his favorite claret, one’s absence from reveille is—well, if not condoned, then certainly largely ignored.”
“In that case, I don’t know about you, but my bottle-ache is absolutely murderous and in desperate need of breakfast, or failing that, small beer.”
Hill managed to stand upright and slip his suspenders over his shoulders. “Sadly, Gunner’s Hall doesn’t open its doors until noon, otherwise the drunks would never leave. You’ll need to find a bill of fare elsewhere. Reveille or not, I should be getting back to McHenry. The pig man’s request is complicated, and the quicker I start to settling it, the quicker I get paid.”
“You know, for someone who claims neutrality in the struggle of the mud farmers of Maryland against the abolitionist elite, you do seem in quite a hurry to further their cause.”
“Because the only cause I support is my own.” He picked his jacket off the floor and dusted it with his hand. “Can you imagine how long it took those backwoods sister-fuckers to scrape together fifteen thousand dollars? I’ve got to get as much of that in my pocket as possible before they run out and spend it on something more practical, like a hot-air balloon to the moon.”
Kate wouldn’t mind knowing who was financing them either—not to mention the identity of their “colonel”—and neither would the Chief. Fortunately, this gave her an excellent professional excuse to keep seeing the lieutenant, which was exactly what her every instinct and desire were prodding her to do anyway. “Our time together has come to an end, then. Thank you for a positively scandalous evening.”
He had that grateful look again as he slipped his jacket on. “The first of many, I would hope.”
“You would.” She kissed him on his scruffy cheek and opened the door. “Feel free to call on me at the City Hotel.”
His grin grew wide as she walked out. “That’s me you hear singing beneath your window.”
“I’ll make sure my chamber pot is full!” she called from the hall.
Kate let herself out by the side stairs and walked until she crossed the bridge over Jones Falls by St. Vincent’s Church. In a small hotel lobby, she had a cup of coffee and some scones and perused the morning’s Sun. “The Movements of Mr. Lincoln” had become a regular column that had crept closer and closer to the front page the nearer the president-elect drew to Baltimore. The latest report was just below the fold on page one, from Pittsburgh:
Mr. Lincoln is still on the move, making wayside speeches, solemnly assuring his admirers that there is “nothing going wrong that really hurts anybody,” and that the crisis is merely an “artificial” one.
Stashed on page eight was the Sun’s less ballyhooed version of a different but related journey:
Important from montgomery
The trip of Mr. Davis from Mississippi to Montgomery was one continuous ovation. He made twenty-five speeches on the move. Upon his arrival in Montgomery, the president-elect of the Confederacy told the crowd, “All who oppose us shall smell Southern powder, feel Southern steel.”
Kate shook her head at Lincoln’s naivety. One side was crying artificial crisis, the other genuine powder and steel. She thought of all the terrible things in the world that happened simply because too many people refused to believe that they could happen.
After breakfast she ducked back into the Chief’s South Street headquarters. When Pinkerton looked up from a telegram and did not immediately blurt out something about a presidential calamity that had not yet reached the papers, Kate gained some small relief.
Without taking off her coat or setting aside her purse, she announced, “At the Winans’ I discovered that the organizer of the fire-eaters in the upper classes is, I swear I’m not joking, the barber at the City Hotel. His name is Ferrandina.” Kate spelled the name for an aide, who had started taking notes. “The predictable crew was in attendance at the Winans’ party. The Cains, the Webbs. A New Orleans speculator named Howard . . .” And an artillery lieutenant from an old Maryland family named Hill, she did not add.
“Well done, Mrs. Warn,” the Chief said. “Of course, do not think that this is the first time I have heard the barber’s name. Is there anything else?”
“Ross Winans has built a steam gun.”
“He’s built a what?”
“A steam gun.”
“What in the world is a steam gun?”
“It appears to be a rapid-firing gun powered by centrifugal force rather than gunpowder.”
Kate enjoyed watching the Chief’s face when he had absolutely no idea what to say. “Does it work?”
“Oh, yes. Lethally so. I had a turn firing it myself.”
After a moment, Pinkerton said, “Why, that’s completely barking mad.”
Kate spread her arms. “Allow me to be the first to welcome you, Chief, to the United States of America, the world’s largest open-air asylum.”
At lunchtime Kate went to Mount Vernon Hill and rapped on the Cains’ mansion door.
The tall butler opened the door and bowed before her. “How may I help you, Mrs. Mahoney?”
“Morning, Joseph. I hope you are well?”
“I woke up this morning and the world was still here, so that’s something.”
“If only we could find universal agreement for that position. Is your mistress at home?”
“That she is.”
“Then could you please tell her that I would request the pleasure of her company for lunch, or failing that, a brief visit, to catch her up on what she missed from the end of the salon.”
“Of course. If you would wait here.”
He let Kate stand in the parlor of the manse while he disappeared up the stairs. The grandfather clock ticked idly, and the field hands in the painting of the plantation looked just as pleased with their lot as the last time she saw them. Joseph was such a quiet and gentle-stepped man that she did not know he was once again standing by her side until he spoke, making her jump a little.
“Apologies, madam, Mrs. Cain is not at home at present.”
Kate looked up the stairs. “But you just said that she was.”
“I was mistaken.”
“You don’t strike me as a man who makes mistakes, Joseph.”
The placid lake of Joseph’s expression was unmarred. “I am not, by nature, no.”
“Therefore, all your errors are quite intentional.”
Joseph responded simply by going to the door and opening it for Kate. “May the rest of your day be agreeable, Mrs. Mahoney.”
“Thank you, Joseph.” She stepped outside to the stoop. “Do you know a better time for me to call?”
“No,” Joseph said, and closed the door in her face.
When she was halfway down the hill, she said, “Shit,” out loud.
Lady Detectives: If your Chief learns you have jeopardized your best contact for a tumble with a good-looking mustache in uniform, your neck shall be cleft from your shoulders.
Hattie awoke the morning following her successful midnight sojourn to the smell of bacon.
The pop and sizzle of frying eggs pulled her from the covers even on this frigid morn and got her into her chemise, corset, and drawers, which she covered in a pine-green gown with brown fringe below the collar. Downstairs she found Dawson in his shirtsleeves flipping breakfast on the griddle over a fire.
“Don’t be impressed,” he said when he saw her. “This is about the most sophisticated cuisine I can muster.”
“That’s not why I’m impressed,” she said.
He toasted some bread in the pan with the bacon fat. They pulled the table and chairs close to the stove to steal as much of its heat as they could while they ate.
“How was Baltimore?” she asked between bites.
“As expected. Our secessionist friends have more money than brains. I’m still having a hard time figuring out how seriously to take all their warmongering. But here, I ran into your ‘sister,’ who asked me to pass this along to you.”
He handed her a letter on Barnum’s City Hotel letterhead. Hattie read:
Dearest Sister,
I would be delighted to meet with you at your earliest convenience. Can you come for lunch this Saturday? I will be at President Street Station to meet the 9:20 PWB. I can show you the sights and share with you all the gossip, both of which are ample.
Yours,
Flora
“Mmm.” Hattie had completely forgotten she had sent her original letter, and frankly, going to visit Mrs. Warn on Saturday at this point could prove a bit of an inconvenience. “Could you pour me some coffee? I am afraid I had a restless night.”
“I didn’t wake you when I came in, did I?”
“Oh, no. By then I was dead to the world.”
“Here you go.” He was walking the steaming mug over to her. “Hattie, I just want to say—my conduct toward you. I fear, perhaps, we have gotten off on the wrong foot.”
“Why, whatever do you mean?”
“What I’m trying to say, moving forward, I—”
She would have given anything to hear what this stammering was leading toward, were it not for a sudden pounding at the front door, which she had been looking forward to more. Mr. Dawson opened it to reveal an ashen-faced Broddle leaning in the doorway.
“Eustace, my sister,” Broddle gasped. “I need help today, Tim. There’s been an accident.”
“Oh no,” Hattie chirped. “Whatever could it be?”
The firm of Wood Brothers in New York City is scrupulous in the manufacture of carriages—but still, nobody’s perfect, and sometimes the nut attaching the seat to the main cab loosens a bit more than it should. And sometimes, you don’t realize that until it’s too late, and you start out to market on a steep hill, along a bumpy road, and the nut and the bolt work their way free, and suddenly you’re not sitting on the bench anymore, but are in the air, with the horses spooked and sprinting away from you, and you throw your hands out instinctually because you’re trying to break your fall, and you break your slaver wrists instead, and your dumb bitch slaver head smashes against a rock, and even though all your brains manage to stay inside your slaver bitch skull, you’re still in a slaver bitch coma, and your slaver bitch brother hears about it and has to go run and tell his coworker Mr. Wilson that he’s going to be late for the yard because it’s just him and his dumb slaver bitch sister, they don’t have anyone else except a sick cow and the hogs that haven’t been sold off yet—don’t you see?
She listened to Mr. Broddle tell Mr. Dawson all this in a considerably more conventional fashion and nodded and gasped at all the right parts.
“Shouldn’t someone tell the reverend?” Hattie asked abruptly.
“Who?” Mr. Dawson said.
“The reverend?” Mr. Broddle blinked.
“Yes, the Reverend Cutter,” she said. “He did seem to depend on her so, acting as his sight during his tent revival preaching and such.”
“Yes, yes, that’s good thinking, Hattie. I bet that’s where she was headed when she made her wreck.”
“I’m sure you have much to take care of, Mr. Broddle, sir. If you could spare a horse off your team, I’d be happy to go to the Grange and let him know myself.”
“Have you been to the Grange?”
She nodded.
“The Grange?” Mr. Dawson looked between the two of them as if they were speaking a newly invented language. “What is the Grange? Who is this Reverend Cutter?”
She was already standing and throwing on her furred cape. “Can you explain it all to him, Mr. Broddle? I believe I’ll take that horse now.”
Hattie didn’t stick around to savor the stunned look on her partner’s face. While he had been mucking about with whitewash and hog prices, she had made arrangements to sit at the right hand of the Father, exactly where an avenging angel should be.
Broddle’s horse effortlessly retraced the route to the ruined plantation, down a low, steep gully outside town.
“Stop and signify,” demanded a voice from between the trees.
“It’s Harriet Wilson. I bring news from Mr. Broddle about Miss Broddle. The reverend will want to know.”
“Go on then,” said the trees.
Even though the morning was cold, the Prophet sat by himself outside on the conjunction between two square foundations of toppled stones, gripping his staff with both hands and staring off into some unknowable future. His men, about a half dozen, ate stale cornbread around a campfire a considerable distance away as if fearing to disturb him.
Hattie rode fearlessly up to the Prophet and dropped to the frozen ground. He cocked an ear at her.
“Reverend, I doubt you remember me from the service the other day, I’m Mrs. Harriet Wilson.”
“But I thought your friends called you Hattie,” the Prophet purred.
“Yes, that’s right. I bear some unfortunate news about Miss Broddle. She’s had a terrible accident. Her carriage. She . . . won’t be coming to help you today.”
“But you are here.” He reached out a weathered hand.
She took it. “I am.”
“I woke this morning to a dove cooing in the trees, returning early from her winter home. I took it to be the Lord telling me he planned to lighten my burden. And here you are. Praise God.”
The Prophet squeezed her hand. She noticed, for the first time, an overlooked bit of grease stuck to her fingernail, leftover from her ministrations with the carriage nut in Broddle’s barn the night before. She was surprised she hadn’t missed more spots, considering she had washed her hands back home in the dark.
Part Three
The Goddess, Nemesis
The old woman with the basketful of cockades was still working the platform at President Street Station when Kate arrived to meet Hattie’s train. To Kate’s eye, the crone was not doing nearly as brisk a business in “States’ Rights” as she had been a week ago. More travelers ignored her than not. To a hopeful way of thinking, this was because the embers of war were cooling. To Kate’s correct way of thinking, on the other hand, it was because everyone had already made up their mind. Martial desires had hardened, and there was no tactical advantage to advertising which side you were on.
