Altered America (10 page)

             
“Madame Michaels,” I said, for this was the alias she had adopted under my orders, “so good to see you again.”

             
“I declare! Thomson Stockworthy, isn’t it? I believe we met in New York.”

             
“Indeed, Madame. Your memory serves you well. How is your husband?”

             
“Oh, fine. He’ll be joining me within the hour. Perhaps we could reminisce until then?”

             
After displaying our ruse for those who might overhear, we retired to a corner of the room out of reach of prying ears.

             
“What news from the North?” I was anxious to know. I had exchanged various coded missives with Kate via the telegram wires, but such sensitive information was difficult to convey even in such a manner.

             
“They are none too pleased with the British, to put it mildly. In every tavern and every hotel from here to Boston I heard seditious rumors. And eventually I made contact with the Unionists.”

             
“The Live Free or Die sect?”

             
“Larger still. The movement has grown near mainstream. They speak of uniting the colonies as sovereign states under one flag. And as you suspected, they have done so under the nominal leadership of Mr. Abraham Lincoln.”

             
“You saw him?” I asked.

             
“No. They say he is away negotiating with the French. But more importantly, he will next go to the Southern Colonials.”

             
“Jefferson Davis and his Confederates?”

             
“If that is what they call themselves; Confederated or United, it is all the same.”

             
“And if the Confederates and the Unionists join forces, they may well be able to overthrow the local British government, especially if the French make good their promise.”

             
“Yet...” Kate remarked.

             
“Yes?”

             
“Even with Mr. Lincoln’s leadership, I feel the Unionists remain somewhat lost.”

             
“In what way?”

             
“They seem not to know when to act or on what signal. Nor are they truly capable as a trained army, though many train in French territories even now. Mr. Rivers is investigating.”

             
“I see. I must return to Georgetown and inform the prince. Continue to gather what information you can and coordinate with Rivers, Roch, and DeForest. It is most essential, however, that you report only to me.”

* * *

              The next year was a tense one. The prince refused to believe that a ragtag group of Colonials could stand against him, and though he may have been correct, it was my job to plan for the worst. Though it was not truly my place, I tried to convince him to soften his stance on the Colonies and give the Americans a greater presence in their own rule. Yet he was too busy proving his ability to keep the Empire under control, to prove to his mother his ability to be King and Emperor. The particular image of monarch that grew in his mind, however, would not seem to be appropriate in a modern age and in the face of a disgruntled populace.

             
Nonetheless, there were many Loyalists, and Georgetown itself was largely secure. There was an extensive military guard, of course, but they could not gather the kind of inside information I and my agents could. We were the ones who listened to the ground, who knew the comings and goings and the American popular voice.

             
One particular piece of news primed the powder keg. At the dawn of 1865, Lincoln was captured. He had broken the terms of his exile and was accused of consorting with traitors. To add insult to injury, he was caught in Richmond, Virginia, quite near Georgetown. He was charged with sedition, treason, and plotting to overthrow the government. This time, he was sentenced to death.

             
Fresh waves of dissent ran through the populace, reverberating in every ear I had to the ground. I had to warn the prince.

             
“Your Highness, I must speak with you.”

             
“Can it not wait, Mr. Pinkerton?”  He had seemingly lost all the noble qualities I had found in him only a few years before. Perhaps it was his command of increased troops, his married life, or the fact that his wife was now expecting with child.

             
“No, Sire, I am afraid it cannot.”

             
“What is it, then? And be quick about it.”

             
“The people are in uproar, Sire.”

             
“Hardly uproar, I should think. A few dissident groups can do nothing against us. My troops uproot such weeds wherever they uncover them.”

             
“I fear you do not realize the magnitude of the dissent, your Highness. My agents tell me—”

             
“If you and your agents have not been reporting the activities of the dissidents to my troops, then you are in dereliction of your duty.”

             
“I must sort information and report when I see a genuine threat, Sire. And the potential execution of Mr. Lincoln has caused such a threat. I would recommend clemency where he is concerned.”

             
“There shall be no such clemency. Mr. Lincoln has twice betrayed his empress and my own royal personage. The penalty can be nothing less than death.”

             
“But Sire, that action will place your reign in America in grave jeopardy. If you were merely to imprison him, and allow Mr. Johnson to become Chief Minister in Lord Palmerston’s stead, it would go far in assuaging the American people.”

             
“The American people are British subjects, not some independent nation to be reckoned with on international terms. They shall do as they are told.”

             
“Then Sire, please take this last piece of advice. Send your wife with unborn child back to England. I cannot guarantee her safety if she remains.”

             
“We shall take it under advisement, Mr. Pinkerton. Now leave me be.”

* * *

              It was April. Lincoln was scheduled for execution in only a few days’ time. Prince Edward sent Princess Alexandra away, ostensibly to visit family in Denmark. Meanwhile, my agents had witnessed trained forces at both Union and Confederate Command, though no formal agreement had been reached between the two groups and still no signal on either side arranged for an uprising. If it were to happen simultaneously, British reign in the Americas would surely collapse.

             
Instead of attending the execution, the prince decided to attend the theatre, to see a play by the unlikely title “Our American Cousin.” His military guard was posted outside, but my plain-clothes agents protected the internal theatre. Agent Roch was on guard just outside the prince’s private booth. I, meantime, was at a hotel across the street, coordinating the effort and watching the street.

             
I summoned Roch to me as the play began.

             
The period of my longest and most complicated infiltration was at an end and there was no alternate course of action. The Unionists and Confederates needed their signal. I had hoped that such drastic an action would not be necessary, but...

             
“Do not return to your post,” I told Roch. “Instead, take this coded message to Agent Wilkes at the back of the theatre. He will know what to do.”

             
I handed him a slip of paper on which I had written a phrase, three simple words that would light a long-primed powder keg and start a revolution:

             
Sic Semper Tyrannus

Ship of Souls

by Erik Bundy

             
How came Eleri from the pitiless sea to Godston?  It was Thonir, the sea raider, who saw a dragon ship adrift on the swells, its square sail drooping, no oars showing along its sides.  Thonir, ever fearless, ordered his men to row him to the long ship.  Stored on board they found silver cups and candlesticks, brocades, and three sheep.  Thonir knew then it had crossed the wide ocean after a raid on the west coast of Ireland.  The true treasure was the high-prowed ship itself.

             
They found silence within its bowed sides, no crew, no hand on the side rudder, only a mother frozen to death and her naked infant, its lips and fingers blue.

             
Thonir pried the cold babe from its mother’s stiff embrace and blew warm breath into its mouth.  The girl child heaved its chest and, strengthless to cry, mewed.

             
One of Thonir’s crew closed the dead woman’s eyes and screamed.  He writhed on the deck planks, clawing at his face.

             
“Look not on her,” Thonir yelled to his crew.  And with his face averted, he groped towards the dead woman and opened her eyes so no one would see the tattoos on her eyelids, the blinding runes witches wore to protect their sleep.

             
Thonir’s second-in-command nodded at the babe.  “No good can come of this.”

             
“She has my breath in her now,” Thonir said.

             
He killed one of the sheep, slit open its belly, and stuffed the babe inside it for warmth.  Another ewe provided milk for the girl, whom he called Eleri after his own mother.

             
Thonir turned back ashore and sailed upriver to Godston, a Viking settlement in the land of the Croatan.  There he offered the infant to the Sibyl, who refused it outright and told him to take the child to Snake Kenna.  And so, Eleri came to live beyond the fields on the edge of Bellow Woods in the wattle-and-daub cottage of a witch.  Wolves brought them rabbits, squirrels, and groundhogs for meat.

             
When Eleri was twelve, Snake Kenna apprenticed her to Warhelm, a dwarf carpenter.  He had come to the land of the Croatans on the first dragon ships.  Some said he had killed a brother dwarf.  Others said trolls had massacred his family.  No one knew for certain, because Warhelm kept his history locked within himself.  What Godston knew was that the dwarf was a skilled carpenter, though disease now knotted his blunt fingers.

             
Warhelm treated Eleri as a slave and only began to teach her his trade when she was fourteen and hardened by back-aching work.  Her only friend was a ghost named Briamursk, a shepherd boy killed during a revenge raid before peace came between the Norsemen and Croatan.  He was mute and offered only wispy companionship and haunting songs blown on his reed flute.

             
At night Eleri would slip from her cottage and walk, unafraid of spirits or wolves, to Godston’s meat market where sheep carcasses flecked with maggots hung on iron hooks.  There she danced while Briamursk piped.

             
On Eleri’s eighteenth birthday, bald Warhelm told her she need come no more to his workshop.  He had taught her the properties of each wood and practiced her in the skills needed to build or carve what folk wanted.  He promised to send her the work a master need not do or tasks he found uninteresting, which was nearly half of what was asked of him.  Warhelm chose his work with care now that arthritis pained his fingers.  So, at eighteen, Eleri began accepting coins and barter for her own carpentry, and continued to learn occult knowledge from Snake Kenna, the one she called mother.

             
Then gray-bearded Thonir came limping to their cottage with the sun rising on the horizon, its blaze over his right shoulder.  He stood in the grassy yard and waited to be welcomed.  Near the door lay curled a gray squirrel, flies feeding on its bloody throat.

             
Eleri stepped out carrying an empty, earthen milk jug.  She saw Thonir, frowned, saw the wolf-gift curled at her feet, picked up the squirrel, and retreated inside the cottage.  Two minutes later, Snake Kenna came outside, wearing the black shawl she always wore when she faced company.

             
“So, you’ve come.”  Her voice had no welcome to it.

             
“As you see.  The village sent me.”  He thrust his head forward, scowling, and beckoned with his chin at her low thatched roof where moss and wildflowers grew.

             
“Let the blue sky hear what you have to say,” Snake Kenna told him.

             
Thonir touched the oak handle of his
seax
knife.  “This is no way to receive a guest.  We have known each other since childhood.”  He squared his shoulders.  “Why do you insult me so?  I bring wealth to our folk and fear to our enemies.  And yet you forbid me welcome in your cottage?”

             
“Thonir, you glory in being a sea raider, but that is nothing above a thief and a killer.”

             
“War is the way of the world.”

             
“If men gave birth, they would love killing less.  Better you were a farmer.  Don’t think to cross my threshold.”

             
He growled, never looking directly at her eyes for fear she might close them and blind him with her runes.  “No one but you would dare receive me with such contempt.”  He shrugged his broad shoulders.  “But that is your way.  Yet you take gifts from wolves.”  He pointed at the squirrel’s blood beside her door.  “Have you not accepted Eleri, booty brought to you by me, a sea wolf?”

             
Snake Kenna stood resolute with sunlight glinting in her gray eyes. “True wolves are held in honor here, not you.  State your business and be gone.”

             
Thonir stood tall with his legs planted firmly on the bare earth, his face solemn with purpose.  “You know of the waspish ghosts that haunt Godston, of the dead who refuse to travel onwards.  Dogs howl all night.  No one sleeps or dares go outside after sunset.  The sound of a reed pipe shrills ever in the darkness.  Your daughter knows of them, for she dances with them.  Rid us of this plague, of these ghosts.”

             
Snake Kenna asked, “And what does the Sibyl say?”

             
Thonir scowled at the thought of the man in woman’s dress, the one all warriors found repulsive, yet feared; the one who had gone to Hel’s cold abode, yet returned.  “The Sibyl says, ‘The one you seek lives near Bellow Woods and knows the night smell of Godston.’”

             
Snake Kenna spat on the ground.  “Then let my daughter name her price.”

             
“Eleri?”  Thonir peered inside the hut, behind the open door, knowing she stood listening in the shadows.  “It was for your help I came, not hers,” he said to Snake Kenna.  “I am told she knows things, but we want the mistress not the student.”

             
“Hah,” Snake Kenna said.  “The Sibyl talks of her, not me.  Are you so surprised?  She came to us from the dead, and in her bones, Eleri still knows their ways.”

             
“If that is your answer, let her not hide like a trembling rabbit.  Let her come out into the sunlight.  I mean her no harm.  It was my lungs, the breath of a warrior, that put life back into her cold body.”

             
“You are overly proud of breath that reeks of blood and the smoke of burning homes,” Snake Kenna said.

             
Eleri stepped outside, her gaze direct and unafraid.

             
When Thonir looked Eleri up and down, appraising her, Snake Kenna glared at him.  “She’s not a slave girl for sale.”

             
“I would never sell a daughter of Godston.  You insult—”

             
“The price for my help is marriage,” Eleri told him.

             
Her mother started, then laughed viciously.

             
Thonir, veteran of hundreds of bargains, waved this demand away.  “Husbands come scarce when you can place no dowry on the table.  And you have witchery in you.  What family will accept you?”

             
As if she had not heard him, Eleri said, “And I won’t accept some old man with more hair in his nose than on his head.  My husband must be lively.  I want vigorous children.”

             
“Name another price, daughter, and we will have something to talk of.”

             
Eleri shrugged, turned, and went back inside the cottage.   Snake Kenna smirked at Thonir.

             
He kicked at the knee-high grass with a leather boot.  “She knows not how to bargain.”  He turned and strode away.

             
Two days later, Thonir returned and accepted Eleri’s price.  He had found a willing suitor for her.

* * *

              “They think to cheat me,” Eleri said.

             
Her mother waved away this objection.  “He’s bullish enough and willing.  And though he comes from Thonir’s violent seed, he is gentle and will never raise his hand against you.  There’s little more you can ask of a man.  Most of them are savage.”

             
“He’s sightless,” Eleri cried.

             
“So you will never accidentally blind him when you earn your runes.  And he will need your eyes.  That will clasp him tightly to your cloak.  And—don’t interrupt me, listen—sightless, Synaur sees more than most farmers.  It is time you sent these ghosts onwards?”

             
“I wish to keep Briamursk here.”

             
Her mother clucked in disgust.  “So you keep a dead mute by you, but spurn a living blind man?  How can you not have learned better than that from living with me?”

             
“They’re not the same, Mother.”

             
“Truly said.  Briamursk slips through your fingers like cold smoke.  Synaur is warm, will plow and grow a field of rye into fullness, and will touch you with love.”

             
“What if my children are born blind?”

             
Snake Kenna shook her head, for she knew the truth of it.  On the dragon ship, Thonir had touched the dead witch’s runes without harm to his own eyes, but the spell had entered his fingers.  It had stricken his line, for his son, Synaur, had stumbled and struck his head against the blacksmith’s anvil and lost his sight as a child.  Thonir took some comfort from having thrown the dead witch open-eyed into the hissing sea for fish to feed on.

             
Snake Kenna said, “His blindness was given him because Thonir touched the runes.  The spell likely did not pass into his loins.  If it has, I can counter it.  Let that not be your reason for rejecting Synaur.”

             
“Thonir shall not cheat me,” Eleri said.  She picked up a small ax and left to chop kindling before her angry step-mother blinded her temporarily to teach her sympathy.

             
The following day at dawn, Eleri came outside carrying a pewter water jug and found Synaur waiting in the yard for welcome.  He held a stick in one hand and clutched field flowers, their petals and leaves wet with dew, in the other.

             
“I have come to talk with you, Eleri,” he said.

             
She didn’t think he knew the sound of her footsteps, but he might know her mother’s walk, and so knew it was the daughter who had come out of the cottage.  She swallowed her disappointment.  “You are welcome, Synaur.”

             
“Am I?”

             
“You are,” her mother called from inside the cottage.  “Come to beer and breakfast.”

             
Eleri went to the Twisted Lizard, a stream, where she washed her face, braided her hair (though Synaur would not see it), then filled the pitcher.  When she came back into their windowless cottage, she saw Synaur walking their long room, tapping the plank floor with his laurel walking stick.  He circled the stone hearth in the room’s middle and found their table.  He sniffed at the cold mutton, barley bread, cheese, and beer set out for him.  He laid his flowers down and held a hand toward a lamp on the table.

             
“I heard it gave you light, but I didn’t know it also gave you warmth.”

             
Eleri said, her voice vibrant with pride, “The base was carved in Greenland from soapstone.  It is smooth black stone with gray swirls in it like smoke.  The wick is a red serpent with a glowing head.  It lies in animal fat and eats with its body, not its mouth.  My mother has seen it burn twice and rise reborn from its own ashes.”