“Doesn’t Cahokia have doctors?”
Chapter Three
At Sarah’s insistence, Cathy Filmer had been made one of the Ladies of Tendance, the seven women who were permitted to pass through the veil of the Temple of the Sun and enter into the presence of the Serpent Throne. One had to be clothed and anointed to enter—otherwise, the eunuchs and the other Ladies had warned Cathy repeatedly, the Serpent Herself would strike Cathy dead on the spot. Therefore, generally speaking, a Lady only entered the Holy of Holies when it was her day to do so, to refill oil lamps, to clean and polish with the special implements designed for the purpose, and, on festal days, to clothe the goddess.
Which meant clothing Sarah in sacred garb.
Cathy’s day was Sunday, but when she heard Sarah was injured, she quickly had herself clothed and oiled to enter Sarah’s presence and provide whatever support she could. Sarah lay murmuring in deliriums on the throne, so Cathy stood in the corner, hands folded and heart heavy.
The other Ladies of Tendance had had the same response, and all seven stood crowded about the sanctuary, or the upper end of the temple nave.
Three of them, of course, perfectly keeping their vows of silence.
Kodam Dolindas, the King of Tawa, also waited on Sarah. Kings, one of the eunuchs gave Cathy cattily to know, were allowed to pass through the veil at will. The King of Tawa wore no shoes, which Cathy took to be a sacred geas. Perhaps his being subject to such taboos was connected with his ability to pass into sacred space.
He also stepped into the sanctum as if he belonged there. When the Ladies of Tendance entered, they knelt first and touched their foreheads to the floor.
The King of Tawa was a magician. With Cathy and other Ladies watching, he stood beside the Serpent Throne for hours, singing songs with strange melodies over Sarah, resting his fingers gently on her bandaged eyes, and twice hushing her when her sleeping murmurs crossed into whimpering. During this time, the Ladies brought him wine and water as requested, and burned the incenses he asked for, and twice joined him in song, the three with vows of silence humming along.
The rain on the temple roof and the distant thunder, rolling in along the nave, provided an unsettling accompaniment.
A physician was sanctified at the door by lesser priestesses, attended by eunuchs, and brought forward. Not a Circulator, but a man Cathy had seen during the siege, a man who had studied physick in Memphis. He couldn’t pass through the veil, and the King of Tawa wouldn’t send Sarah out, so the healer stood on the steps outside and spoke with the king, whispering back and forth information about Sarah’s condition.
With a baffled and frightened expression on his face, the physician eventually retired.
Then the King of Tawa withdrew from the sanctum. He asked one of the Ladies—the youngest and freshest—to remain on watch, and invited the others to come with him. As he parted the veil so that he and the Ladies could leave, the seven flames of the Serpent Throne dimmed.
The Cathy Filmer of six months earlier would have felt dread at the sight of the throne acting of its volition. Cathy Filmer, Handmaid of the Virgin, Lady of Tendance of the Serpent Throne, bowed her head to acknowledge and revere the goddess’s act.
At the King’s request, Maltres Korinn convened a meeting in the council chamber of the Hall of Onandagos. Also at the King’s urging, Maltres invited the Ladies of Tendance.
Cathy sat with five other Ladies around a table, beneath a stained-glass window depicting the goddess’s tree of life, now awash with rain. Bill stood behind her, which made her feel more than a match for the Lady Alena and her cadre of eunuchs and her acolytes. Cathy was so distracted by Sarah’s illness that she almost forgot the fear and uncertainty that gnawed at her own heart.
She carried a letter, against her skin. The Earl of Johnsland had written it and sealed it, and it had been delivered by the earl’s emissary, Landon Chapel. The letter informed Cathy that Landon was her son, and that Landon himself did not know the fact, and gave it into her discretion to inform him or leave him in the dark, as she saw fit.
When she looked at the young man, she wasn’t surprised in the least; he resembled Cathy, with a little of the earl thrown in. She wasn’t fearful of Landon’s reaction, but she was terribly afraid to tell Bill. If she told him about her child, what else would she have to tell him? And would he cast her aside when she did?
Also standing were the Metropolitan Zadok Tarami, with his tall white eyebrows; the wizard Luman Walters, with dark, curly hair and spectacles; and the dark-skinned princeling of the plains, Gazelem Zomas. Maltres Korinn stood at the head of the table, leaning on his staff of office, with its iron horse’s head; tall, with cheeks pocked with childhood scars, and dressed in his habital black, he brooded above them like a vulture. Beside Korinn stood the king.
“The queen is dying,” Kodam Dolindas said.
Zadok Tarami leaned forward, his face stricken with grief, and mumbled a prayer.
“Do not discount my queen yet, suh,” Bill said. “I have seen her defeat greater odds than any mere illness. She faced down the Chevalier of New Orleans, the Sorcerer Robert Hooke, and Simon Sword in a single encounter.”
Good, loyal Bill. Cathy’s knight, and Sarah’s.
The king nodded. “I do not discount her. I am astonished that she is alive at all, and I attribute it to personal reserves and sheer resilience. But she has broken her own body with her efforts.”
“What do you mean?” Cathy asked.
Dolindas smiled gently. “I can give you metaphors. She has burned her candle too fast, at both ends simultaneously and perhaps also in the middle. She has drawn too much water from the well. She had mined too deep and too fast.”
“A good metaphor clarifies,” Cathy said. “I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”
“Are you saying my queen has used up all her ability to perform magic?” Bill asked.
The king looked up at the circle of tree imagery above him; the light filtering through seemed to come to rest like a bird on the king’s face. “I mean that it is easy to think of magic as a spiritual and intellectual act, drawing on spiritual reserves,” he said, “and such a concept is not false. A spiritually rooted person makes a strong magician. And it is also true that the spirit and the mind and the body are connected, so that the energy channeled through the mind and spirit also marks its course across the body. The performance of magic brings fatigue, and can leave the magician ill. It weakens tissues and drains vitality, physically as well as spiritually.”
“Sarah has harmed herself,” Luman Walters said. “The acts she performed to save the rest of us—the ascent to the throne, the miracles of fertility, the sign of the flowering staff, the consecration of the Sunrise Mound, the flying rowboat, the confrontations with Cromwell, the opening of the gate of Eden—all of it. It was harming her all along, and now it is killing her.”
“This is bad news for the city and the kingdom,” Tarami said.
“And the empire,” Gazelem murmured.
“Harming her body, yes,” the king said. “Whether it is fair to say she harmed her self is an interesting question.”
“I am not interested in the philosophy of it,” Maltres Korinn said. “You have convened us because there is something that we can do for her.”
“Do not be so quick to disdain philosophy,” the King of Tawa said. “If we are to heal a thing, we must first properly identify and understand It. I do not know that there is a way to heal the queen’s body, but I believe that her self can be saved. And healed, and even exalted.”
“What of the earthquake?” Cathy asked.
Dolindas directed a penetrating gaze at her. “What of it?”
Cathy wasn’t entirely sure how to articulate her thought. And what would Sarah want, or permit, her to say? “Since her ascent, Her Majesty has strongly…identified with…the city. She is aware of what happens in the city, she feels the city as she feels her own body. Is it not possible that it is the earthquake that has injured her?”
“Perhaps it is a factor,” the King of Tawa said. “Perhaps her injury caused the earthquake, and her exaltation will prevent further quakes.”
Gazelem Zomas frowned.
“I am trying to be patient,” Bill growled, “but what you are saying sounds dangerously close to theology.”
“It’s not close to theology,” the king said. “It is theology. Sarah Penn will die. But the Queen of Cahokia may be raised to an angelic state, in which she may continue to give us guidance and assistance.”
Stunned silence.
“There is an anointing to the purpose,” the king said. “It is royal lore, part of the patrimony of the Ohioan kingdoms. You may have heard it by its name, the Serpent Daughter Anointing.”
The Lady Alena’s face tightened, giving her the appearance of deep concentration.
“What does this ritual entail?” Cathy asked. If there truly was some ritual that she, or the king, or the seven Ladies, could perform, then she was in favor.
“It is an ancient practice.” The king knit his fingers together and stared into them. “Not done in this century, or the last. But once, the goddess ruled on earth through a king or queen, and through the Angel of the Throne. The Angel Metathronos, in some ancient texts.”
Korinn looked as if he would fall over, and leaned more heavily on his staff. “Is the Angel of the Throne not a way to talk about the monarch as an anointed person, the monarch as agent for the gods?”
“Yes,” Tarami said quickly.
“Yes,” Dolindas agreed. “But not always.”
“‘Give heed to the Angel of the Throne, for he is as a god unto you,’” Tarami recited. “That’s in The Law of the Way, and it is Onandagos, instructing his people to obey their duly-appointed monarch.”
“It is,” Dolindas agreed. “But the exact same words appear in a poem called The Wisdom of the Dead, which is in the Onandagan Florilegium. In The Wisdom of the Dead, the words are spoken by a dying king to his daughter, who is to rule after him. If the queen is to hearken to the Angel of the Throne, then the queen cannot be the Angel.”
“Those texts are not in my breviary,” Tarami said. Was he resisting? Admitting defeat? Or simply acknowledging his own lack of expertise?
“I know,” Dolindas said. “But Saul was not condemned for seeking the advice of Samuel. And when Solomon sat upon a throne, he set his mother upon a throne beside him. And her name was Bath-Sheba, the Daughter of Seven.”
Tarami said nothing.
“There may be other options,” Walters said.
“Waste no time,” Dolindas urged. “If we are to raise Sarah to become the Angel of the Throne, we must convene all the Kings of the Ohio. It is the kings who will perform the anointing, along with Sarah herself. Oil and perfumes must be made according to recipes that have been safely guarded, but not used, for many years. Garments of light must be prepared, according to patterns that were given from the beginning, and kept secret by the queens and kings of the Firstborn.”
The Lady Alena shifted repeatedly in her seat. The Lady’s fidgeting made Cathy, if anything, more conscious of her own body, and she was careful to keep her poise. Was Alena distressed? Anxious? Enthusiastic?
Her eunuch said nothing.
“Is it merely luck that brings you to us now?” Bill asked the king.
Kodam Dolindas smiled. “In a time of crisis, the man who himself does not need help must become one who gives help. Perhaps it is bad luck that I have come as late as I have.”
“We will not delay.” Maltres Korinn tapped his staff on the floor. “I’ll send messengers to summon the other five kings.”
“The empire has begun to issue Trustworthiness Certificates and passports,” Bill growled, “which are aimed to restrict travel. We may find we are smuggling five kings, rather than summoning them.”
“Then we shall send smugglers to do the work,” Korinn said.
“I will add my messages to yours,” Dolindas offered.
“The Hansa,” Walters suggested. “If we could have their assistance with this, it might greatly forward the labor. Or perhaps Chicagoans, to ferry the kings across the Great Lakes, rather than bringing them overland.”
“The Swords of Wisdom,” Bill growled. “They are in all the Seven Sister Kingdoms.”
“I take my leave,” the king said. “To write to my fellow kings and also to my own people.”
He departed with a determined stride.
“Those bare feet must be uncomfortable in winter,” Bill murmured.
“A taboo that is easy is no taboo at all,” Cathy told her betrothed.
“Ladies,” Maltres Korinn said, looking at the Lady Alena, “please resume watching over Her Majesty. Let me know immediately of any change.” He shifted his gaze. “Mrs. Filmer, if you would please remain for a moment.”
The Lady Alena stared darts at Cathy before she left, the other Ladies and the eunuchs in her wake.
“You have said nothing, Gazelem,” Korinn said.
“I have nothing to say about the Angel of the Throne,” Gazelem Zomas said. “It is a new idea to me.”
“But you look deep in thought.”
“I am considering whether I know any other remedy for the queen,” Zomas said. “And I am also…thinking of another matter.”
Korinn didn’t even look curious about the unspecified other matter. “Luman,” he said, “what alternatives are you talking about?”
“Nathaniel Penn,” Walters said. “He is a healer of great power. I do not know his limitations, but he may be able to help.”
“How would you contact him?”
“The queen seemed to be able to do so with ease,” the former Imperial wizard said. “I shall attempt with what means I have. And I shall do so immediately.”
Korinn nodded, then was silent for a moment. “Do we have any other options?”
Silence.
“Forgive this question,” Zadok Tarami said. “I know that, coming from me, of all people, it could be misunderstood, but I must nevertheless ask. If the queen dies…who succeeds? Will we be returned to the chaos we struggled through before her arrival?”
“If the queen dies,” Maltres Korinn said, “chaos will be the best we can hope for.”
* * *
Nathaniel was returning across the starlit plain with his two familiar spirits on the back of his horse when he heard a voice.
~Medicum quaeso,~ it called. ~Medicum Nathanielem quaeso.~
Nathaniel knew no Latin, but the call felt as if it were directed at him. He changed course, heading westward. They rode, hearing the voice calling still and feeling the thudding of the horse’s hooves like a drumbeat pattern on the horse’s back, until they arrived at Cahokia. Nathaniel had never seen his father’s city in the flesh, but he recognized it in this place easily.
On flat ground between two mounds, Luman Walters sat on a wooden chair beside a wooden table. On the table, two candles flickered; the man rubbed a plain brown stone between his fingers and stared into it.
~Medicum quaeso,~ he said again.
~I’m here,~ Nathaniel said.
~Medicum Nathanielem quaeso,~ Walters said again, staring into his egg-shaped stone.
~He’s saying ‘I seek the healer Nathaniel,’~ Jacob Hop said. ~I think he’s casting a spell.~
~Do you know Latin now?~ Nathaniel asked.
~When you’re not here, he studies languages,~ Wilkes explained.
A germ of an idea sprouted in the back of Nathaniel’s mind, and he tucked it away for consideration later. ~I’m here!~ he shouted.
Luman hesitated, cocking an ear.
Nathaniel reached out and fluttered the fingers of one hand through a candle flame, causing the flame to dance.
~Ah ha!~ Luman Walters leaped to his feet. ~Nathaniel, thank you! We have a catastrophe here!~ The wizard raised the brown stone to his eye as if to look through it, and turned his face toward Nathaniel. ~There you are!~
~What do you need, Luman?~
Luman smiled, a soft grin that was rueful and even a little sad. ~Sarah is ill. Can you heal her?~
~Sarah!~ Nathaniel called. ~Sarah!~
Luman Walters winced at the sudden cry, but there was no answer from Sarah.
~Where is she?~ Nathaniel asked.
~On the Great Mound,~ the wizard said. ~In the Temple of the Sun. In its sanctum sanctorum, if that matters.~
Nathaniel galloped to the only mound that could be the one Luman was referring to. It was the tallest mound in starlit Cahokia, and it had strange trees growing on its slopes. Trees with faces, trees that seemed to watch as Nathaniel and his two spirit companions raced up the slopes of the pyramid—
only to find no one at the top.
Atop the pyramid sat a small garden, neatly furrowed, planted with beans and squash and corn and tomatoes. But there was no sign of a gardener, and no sign of Sarah.
He turned to race back, and found Luman Walters standing right behind him, staring through the brown stone.
~Do you see her?~ Luman asked. ~Can you heal her?~
Nathaniel shook his head. ~Wherever she is, she’s beyond my reach. What’s wrong?~
~She’s dying,~ Luman said. ~Burned herself out with gramarye.~
~Doesn’t Cahokia have doctors?~
~Yes. They can do nothing for her. Only perhaps, there may be a Firstborn solution.~
~What does that mean?~
~It means we’re going to try to make Sarah into an angel,~ Luman said.
* * *
The Heron King’s child grew rapidly.
Within a week, it stood five feet tall. Within a month of its birth, it towered over Chigozie.
The child looked like the Heron King—well muscled, covered with fine white feathers that shone with iridescence when the light struck them just right, and possessing the large head, elongated neck and sharp beak of a river heron. His first meal was a mouthful of flesh torn out of his mother’s warm corpse, and thereafter Ferpa, who took special care of him, fed him fish from the Missouri river.
He refused grain and milk and roots and vegetables. He refused fish that had been cooked. Within a week, he refused fish that wasn’t brought to him live, and then he took to hunting on the river for his own meals.
In addition to fish, he learned that he could eat snake.
Ferpa took special care of the boy, and Kort watched over Ferpa. Chigozie noticed the large bison-headed beastman watching the cow-headed beastwife who was his counterpart whenever she was in the child’s presence.
Worried he might harm her?
The child needed a name. At eight days of age, which seemed propitious to Chigozie, he, Kort and Ferpa carried the heron-headed child down into the Still Waters, into a pool deep enough that Chigozie was submerged up to his waist. Long discussion the night before with the Merciful and with the Zoman outrider Naares Stoach had ended with no conclusion, so as Chigozie stepped into his place in the pool, he was still considering possibilities. Benjamin, son of the right hand. Daniel, who did not resist, but went peaceably into the lions’ den. Matthew, who recorded Jesus’ commandment to turn the other cheek. Like a wheel of fortune in his brother’s casino, the names rolled past his eyes in sequence.
The discussion had, though, dwelled at length on the child’s need for baptism. Seeing the Heron King’s child eat the flesh of his own mother had shocked Chigozie, and what felt like the appropriate remedy was to baptize the child, asking for aid from the powers of Heaven in restraining the child’s innate wickedness and violence. To be baptized, Chigozie had explained to Kort and the others sitting with him, was to die and rise again, a new creation. It was to enter the waters of chaos and emerge remade, free of former guilts and clean and ready for a new life.
“The river,” Kort said. “The river and the dry land.”
Chigozie had nothing to say to that, so he merely smiled.
Kort, looking across the ravine at Ferpa, rocking the child to sleep, asked why he was not baptized, and Chigozie had no good answer. In his heart, he feared the answer was somewhere in the space bounded by several sentiments, not all equally noble. First, he had a feeling, never verbalized, that the Merciful were not quite the same as the children of Adam. In the same way that he would have felt uncomfortable baptizing a dog, he did not feel at ease baptizing a man with a dog’s face. Second, perhaps more flatteringly, he found that on some level he didn’t feel the beastkind needed baptism. They seemed more like children to him, like innocents. On the other hand, he knew some of the things Kort had done, and he knew that if Kort were a child of Adam, Chigozie would enjoin not only baptism, but serious repentance, upon him. Third, to his shame, the idea simply hadn’t occurred to him.
He had promised he would baptize Kort.
Within minutes, he had had to promise that he would baptize any of the Merciful who desired it. This proved to be all of them. Stoach, when urged earnestly that he, too, should consider baptism, had waved a hand to dismiss the idea. “I’ve done my god time. It was good while it lasted, and it was enough for me.”
Chigozie briefly met Stoach’s gaze as he stepped into the water. Stoach looked away.
God of Heaven, Chigozie prayed. Give me a good name for this dangerous child. And redeem the child from its nature.
Kort and Ferpa joined him in the pool, holding the Heron King’s child between them. The bird eyes looked at Chigozie, reflecting his own image back at him in glittering black pools.
“By the authority vested in me by this community,” Chigozie intoned, “I christen thee Absalom.”
Absalom.
The name hadn’t even been among the possibilities he’d discussed with the Merciful. Was it an ill omen? A good one? It meant father of peace, or perhaps my father is peace, and Chigozie certainly liked the idea that peace was part of the name of the Heron King’s son. An assertion, contrary to fact, that the child’s father was peace might act as a shield against the fact that the child’s father in fact appeared to be war and destruction incarnate.
Kort and Ferpa bowed their heads.
“I baptize you,” Chigozie said, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
He cupped his hands and filled them with the warm, sulphurous water. Raising them together, he poured water over Absalom’s head.
Absalom shrieked, a strangled sound of hideous rage, and attacked Chigozie.
A single thrust with his beak struck Chigozie in the shoulder. He fell back, blood mingling with the warm waters that closed over his head.
He kicked, his feet striking nothing, and then hands grabbed his shoulders, dragging him from the water. The cold air on his skin shocked him, but he still couldn’t breathe. With dry air on his face, he felt himself drowning—
and then the person who had pulled him from the water turned him and struck his back. Chigozie coughed water from his lungs, sucking air back into them in its place. The Zoman outrider held him and continued to thump him between the shoulders, but Chigozie couldn’t tear his eyes away from the pool.
Absalom hurled Kort from the pool. The big beastman was four times the size of the Heron King’s son and it didn’t matter; he bounced off the steep ravine wall, tumbled down onto rocks, and lay dazed.
Ferpa seized Absalom from behind. She seemed to have hooked a leg behind the child’s leg, because he was off-balance and shaky. She bore down on him from above, leaning her weight across both his shoulders and pushing him down…down…
Trying to force him into the waters of creation.
“No,” Chigozie said, but the sound was weak because his lungs still held water. He tried to stand, but Kort rose before he could, and leaped back into the pool.
The Merciful stood staring, in distress and fascination.
At the last moment, when it appeared that Absalom was about to break the surface of the water, he twisted, and pushed Ferpa under instead. He slashed with his beak, aiming for her throat—
and Kort caught the blow.
He wrapped the fingers of one enormous hand around Absalom’s beak, squeezing it shut. Absalom hissed in rage, twisted his body, yanked his head back, and tried to open his maw, to no avail. Finally, he grabbed Kort’s fingers and thumb with his own hands, trying to pry open the beastman’s grip.
Kort bellowed in anger, but Absalom didn’t flinch.
Kort grabbed the beak with his second hand, wrapping his fingers around Absalom’s fingers and squeezing. Ferpa emerged from the waters shaking her head and bellowing. She made sounds that sounded like squeals of protest, but there were no words in them that Chigozie could understand.
Chigozie coughed up more water and managed to stand. “Peace!” he cried. “Blessed are the merciful!”
If Kort heard him, he gave no indication.
The Heron King’s son ripped one hand free. As Kort maneuvered the bird-headed boy into the deepest part of the pond, Absalom punched Kort, twice in the belly, and then in the loins. Kort flinched, flinched again, and then roared in anger.
Just when Chigozie though Kort might force the boy underwater—and Chigozie was considering whether it made sense to recite a baptismal prayer, whether it would mean anything to God or anyone else in these circumstances—Kort headbutted Absalom. He cracked his thick bison forehead down on the crested heron skull. The contact made a noise that Chigozie felt in his bones, and then the beastman hurled the boy from the pool.
Absalom rattled across the boulders at the edge of the water, then drew himself up into a crouch at the base of a cliff. He bled from several wounds, and so did Kort. They stared at each other for long seconds, and then Kort turned to Chigozie.
“Baptize me,” the big beastman said, and knelt in the center of the pool.
“This is madness,” Naares Stoach said.
Chigozie tottered into the pool, limbs shaking. Again, he cupped water in his hands. “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” He poured the water over Kort’s head.
Kort rose, eyes gleaming, and he gripped Chigozie in an embrace.
Absalom emitted a sullen chirp and didn’t move.
“Now me.” Ferpa entered the pool.
One by one, the Merciful entered the pool, and one by one, Chigozie administered baptism to them.
When he was finished, the Zoman outrider was gone.
Absalom, though, remained. When the last of the Merciful emerged from the Still Waters, Chigozie stood and looked up at the Heron King’s son. Absalom stood, straightening to his full height, and stared down at the wet priest.
“The water is warm.” Chigozie extended a hand. It was a ridiculous gesture to make to a monster who had attacked him as well as the beastkind who nurtured him.
Absalom stared at Chigozie with cold, glittering eyes, for nearly a minute. Then he opened his mouth and spoke, with a voice that was shrill as the war cry of an eagle and pierced Chigozie to his core.
“You may place your Adam-name upon me, priest, but that is all that you shall do. I shall not be remade, not by you, and not by anyone else of your kind.”
Then Absalom fell silent, crouched, and didn’t speak for weeks.
When Chigozie next looked for him, Naares Stoach was gone.
* * *
Charlie Donelsen spat tobacco juice through one of the many gaps in his teeth. His aim was true and his shot was long, as they sang of the Lion of Missouri, and he launched the brown gob across the wooden trestle table and hit the roots of an azalea bush in violet bloom.
“I heard tell as Gaspard le Moyne has jest up sticks and left.” The Donelsen Elector’s voice was so high-pitched, he probably had to drop it an octave if he wanted to sing.
A band, with hurdy-gurdy, banjo, and snare drum, rollicked through a long foot-tapper while the preacher, a long-haired young man with a sweaty face who stared at the ceiling of the tent every time he opened his mouth, sang the lead. Cal clapped along with the music, politely, but not too loud.
He and Donelsen stood in a Sunday tent meeting, near the back of the hot part of the crowd, the part that danced and sang and felt the spirit, and therefore made a lot of noise. The cooler New Light enthusiasts clustered around the punch and cookies tables at the back of the large tent. They met here because the noise would cover their conversation, and because it ought to make any spies the emperor sent after them stand out like bulls in a herd of sheep.
Olanthes Kuta stood by the tent entrance, holding a glass of punch but not drinking from it. He looked every bit the Ohioan foreigner in his long tunic, leggings, and high boots, to say nothing of his pale complexion and the straight sword hanging at his belt. On the other side of the tent door stood one of Charlie Donelsen’s boys, a young man named John, who had a long knife in each boot and two pistols at his waist.
You’ll need a lawyer at the judgment, hallelujah
You’ll need a lawyer at the judgment, hallelujah
Don’t matter who you are, you’ll need Jesus at the bar
You’ll need a lawyer at the judgment, hallelujah
A woman in gingham, with a chin that poked out past the tip of her nose, cried “Jesus, represent me!” and swooned into the arms of her neighbors. Barton Stone followers made up part of this New Light crowd, and they expected this sort of thing.
“I been in that palace,” Cal said. “That’s a lot of sticks to move.”
“I expect he left the palace behind,” Donelsen reckoned. “New Orleans had become an inhospitable locale for him.”
Cal had heard of Le Moyne’s departure—the Philadelphia news-papers had been full of it. “Treason, I guess. Impeaching him ought to be a cakewalk.”
“Problem is they’s too many places to send my boys to.” Donelsen spat again. “Got some of ’em watchin’ out for me here, some of ’em watchin’ the family, but where else do I send ’em?”
“Sarah Calhoun’s still fightin’ the beastkind on the west bank of the Mississippi,” Cal said. “Not to mention the emperor’s armies massin’ in the Ohio. Lord hates a man as won’t help his kin afore he goes a-helpin’ strangers.”
Logan Rupp joined them, mouth full of cookies and a glass of punch in each hand. He beamed. His blocky physique and the powdered sugar in his abundant jaw whiskers made him look like Father Christmas.
Donelsen nodded enthusiastically. “That’s a true sayin’, and Sarah’s closer kin to me’n Tommy Penn, that’s for sure. She’s closer kin to me’n the Memphites, or Kimoni Machogu, or either of them fellers as is runnin’ the show down in New Orleans. But sometimes, you got to deploy your forces in a manner that ain’t obvious. Indirect force. Where do I send my boys so as to do the most good for Sarah, not to mention the Donelsen family, and the empire in general?”
“I met that feller in New Orleans,” Cal said.
“Bailey?”
“The other one. The bishop. Only he wasn’t bishop then, he was a gangster.”
Donelsen laughed. “I expect he still is. Hell, if they wasn’t always a fine line between a bishop and a gangster, they wouldn’t be no New Light.”
Logan Rupp swallowed his mouthful of cookie. “Ah, it makes me feel right at home, hearing the word feller.”
Charlie Donelsen’s eyes flashed irritation. “I thought you’s a Philadelphia lawyer as got lost and accidentally wound up among the honest folk of Nashville.”
Cal chuckled. “No, Charlie, he’s tellin’ us he’s a Jew.”
You’ll need a friend in Jesus, hallelujah
You’ll need a friend in Jesus, hallelujah
Come the day you die, you’ll meet Jesus in the sky
You’ll need a friend in Jesus, hallelujah
Rupp frowned and took a deep drink of punch. “I have nothing against any honest member of the Israelite nation, as I have nothing against any honest member of any other kindred. But I have no notion of how you can have arrived at such an erroneous conclusion, or, if I may be permitted to employ a common colloquialism of my adopted hometown, Nashville: How do you reckon that, Cal?”
Cal shrugged. “Simple. “The word feller makes you feel at home. Feller is a biblical word. Who wrote the bible, Logan? Mebbe it ain’t written in your law books this way, but in Sunday School they taught me as it was the Jews.”
Logan Rupp snorted. “Feller is not a biblical word.”
“Bet you ten shillin’s it is.”
“Just because you heard one of your Kissing Campbells talk about what a feller ought to do to gain the Kingdom of Heaven from the preaching stump does not mean that the word feller is in the bible.”
“I ain’t much of a reader,” Cal admitted. “Ain’t really read but the one book. Still, I remember it pretty well. I bet you twenty shillin’s the word feller is in the bible.”
Rupp glowered.
“What you got to lose?” Charlie Donelsen barked. “You got your room and board with Cal, don’t you? You’re gittin’ paid, ain’t you? Hell, you might win twenty shillin’s. Iffen you’re worried Cal ain’t good for it, I’ll stand guarantor.”
“The word feller is not in the bible.” Rupp spoke deliberately, carefully enunciating each word. “I’ll take your bet.”
Cal spit into his palm. Reluctantly, Rupp did the same, and they shook hands.
“Well?” Rupp asked.
“Isaiah fourteen,” Cal said. “Since thou art laid down, no feller is come up against us.”
Logan Rupp’s eyes bulged out and he slowly turned purple.
“Easy there, Rupp,” Donelsen said. “You’re a young man yet to die of a burst blood vessel.”
You’ll need someone to back you, hallelujah
You’ll need someone to back you, hallelujah
Your soul is deep in pawn, you’ll need him to go your bond
You’ll need someone to back you, hallelujah
“I didn’t mean that kind of feller,” Rupp rumbled.
Cal shrugged. “Jerusalem, then you should a said so. You ain’t got to pay me now, Rupp, tomorrow’ll do. Iffen you’re feelin’ tight for cash, I’ll jest take it off your bill.”
Logan Rupp ground his teeth. “I feel…pleased to have such a cunning client.”
“I ain’t your client,” Cal said, “Iron Andy is. And I wouldn’t call him clever so much as terrifyin’. But what’re you doin’ here, Rupp? I didn’t figure you for a churchgoer.”
“Speaking of Andrew Calhoun…” Rupp reached inside his jacket and produced a folded sheet of paper. It was battered and yellow, and some of the ink on it had bled, as if the paper had been exposed to rain. “We’ve received a message from him.”
“What, by post?” Cal frowned. “That seems odd.”
“It was some Calhoun I don’t know.” Rupp shook his head. “He left the letter for you, but he wouldn’t stay. He said he had to get back urgently to Calhoun Mountain. I gather big things are happening, so I came right here with the letter.”
“You ain’t read it, then?”
Logan shook his head.
Cal took the letter and turned about slowly, looking for unfamiliar eyes on him. He saw more swooners, and dancers, and the sweaty young preacher rattling through another verse. He unfolded the letter and read it.
Calvin Calhoun
I have information to communicate to you about your aunt, which may also affect your bill of particulars in the Assembly. Meet me on the Feast of the Ascension in Youngstown, at a tavern called the Blue Goose.
Andrew Calhoun, Elector
He’d never received a letter from his grandpa before, but Lord hates a man as can’t adapt to the times. Being New Light, Cal didn’t always have the strongest grip on saints’ days and feast days, and he didn’t rightly remember when the Feast of the Ascension was.
“Charlie,” he said. “Remember me a bit of calendar. Feast of the Ascension, that’s what, forty days after Easter?”
Charlie Donelsen nodded. “May twenty-fourth this year.”
“A good omen.” Rupp nodded. “Ascent into heaven after the forty-day ministry.”
“Good to know you ain’t totally godless, Rupp.” Cal grinned, but he was distracted.
“What happens on the Feast of the Ascension?” Rupp asked.
“You and I got a meetin’,” Cal said. “You and I and Olanthes Kuta.” He beckoned to the Firstborn warrior, who discreetly checked the tent door and then walked his direction.
“The Elector’s coming to Philadelphia?” Rupp frowned. “But I thought the whole point of his proxy was that you would do the work here.”
“We’ll meet him in Youngstown,” Cal said. “Which don’t leave us much time. Better git packed.”
* * *
One of Eggbert Bailey’s great keys to what success he had achieved so far in life was that he needed very little sleep.
A man who could sleep three hours a night and feel fully rested could drive his men to work hard when they had slept only five. A man who was awake until after midnight and up again well before dawn could easily handle the necessary administrative tasks, answering logistical questions, solving disciplinary riddles, and dashing off required correspondence, without cutting into the time he needed to drill his men, command, and strategize. And a man who was alert for over twenty hours a day, every single day, had time to explore his commandeered headquarters while most of his men slept.
Technically, the commandeered Palais that had belonged to the Chevalier of New Orleans was shared between Eggbert Bailey, commanding New Orleans’s gendarmes, and Bishop Etienne Ukwu, its…complicated…spiritual head. Ukwu, the son of a saintly Christian cleric, was not only an ordained Christian priest, but also a houngan asogwe of the Société de Mars Vengeur—Eggbert knew this last, because he himself had seen the bishop invoking Papa Legba before a congregation of swaying worshippers.
Some of the Igbo of the city, including the bishop’s bodyguard Achebe Chibundu, seemed to regard Ukwu as something more than a priest. His ally, the Igbo hôtelière Onyinye Diokpo, if anything, encouraged the whispers.
It was easy to share power with the bishop, because his desires and Eggbert’s seemed aligned. Ukwu remained hell-bent on destroying the chevalier, who was now camped with the armies of New Spain on the other side of the river. Ukwu expressed gratitude for the protective wall of the Mississippi River, but also frustration that the same river—and the hissing, hovering hedge of basilisks that infested its lower reaches, the worst infestation of the creatures in decades—stopped Bailey from sending raiding parties.
Or assassins, which is what Ukwu really wanted.
So the bishop helped the city’s teeming hordes find various forms of spiritual comfort, and pushed Bailey to find ways across the river, and worked his arcane rituals in secret.
What Eggbert Bailey wanted was mysterious even to Eggbert himself. He had joined the bishop’s revolt against the chevalier, secretly organizing dissatisfied, underpaid, overdisciplined gendarmes into a hard-fighting corps at the center of a larger army of raw recruits and men who simply worked for salary. That army had, so far, held the river against the Spanish in the west, and the northern walls against a pack of violence-maddened beastkind that had crashed against New Orleans the same night that its chevalier had betrayed his trust and marched against it with a foreign army.
Before he’d become a gendarme keeping the peace for the chevalier, Eggbert had been a sergeant in an army that had invaded, briefly taken, and then lost the city. He’d turned his coat in the retreat, after Jackson’s execution, to survive, but until that moment he’d been a believer in Andrew Jackson—Old King Andy, as the ballads called him now. He had marched on his birth city of New Orleans expecting to take it and live under the King of the Mississippi, who would distribute the wealth of the city’s banks and traders to his soldiers, as well as to the poor.
But now…he felt incomplete. Eggbert Bailey had turned his coat back around and driven out the chevalier who had killed his former commander. Did that recover his honor? And even if so, to what end?
Should he make himself King Eggbert Bailey? That didn’t feel right.
What would Andrew Jackson have done? He wasn’t sure, and as he stalked the Palais and the streets of New Orleans at night, in his surplus hours, he asked himself the question over and over.
Late one night, on the second floor of the Palais, he found the bishop’s Creole accountant, Monsieur Bondí, sitting at a desk and reading correspondence ledgers.
The Creole sweated at any temperature, and the stains made the sleeves of his shirt look yellow in the lamplight. He was a short man, chubby, with skin the color of cinnamon and wavy hair that seemed to sweat right along with his skin.
Eggbert threw himself into a wooden chair before the desk. Eggbert’s appearance was in stark contrast with the accountant’s—he was tall, broad shouldered, and muscular, with a head and mane like a lion, as well as sharply chiseled facial features several shades darker than the Creole’s. He wore a blue uniform coat, though without insignia of rank—his men knew him by his height and hair and rolling bass voice. But the Creole, looking up, showed no sign of intimidation in the warrior’s presence.
“Have you had enough of drills and mess?” Bondí asked in French. “I could use an assistant, if you are bored. Or are you looking for firewood? I can spare the desk, but none of the papers.”
Eggbert laughed. “You work long hours.”
Bondí shrugged. “I work.”
“Looking for money the chevalier might have hidden away?”
“We already knew the chevalier was low on cash. I’m auditing his assets, preparing formal accounts and tracking where…some of the money came from. And I’m also looking for anything I can sell.”
“I believe the Spanish have cash,” Eggbert suggested. “They might be willing to send us this year’s treasure fleet, if we gave them the city. Call in the Lafittes and their navy, spike the guns in the river forts, and the Spanish will come calling promptly.”
“His Grace already offered them the city,” Monsieur Bondí said, “though I believe it was in exchange for the head of Gaspard Le Moyne.”
“They said no?”
The Creole nodded. “But they thought about it. Next time we offer…perhaps they’ll think about it longer.”
Eggbert looked around the room. The walls were lined with shelves, groaning under the weight of ledger books. “What is this room? The chevalier’s archive?”
“I believe it belonged to his intendant,” the accountant said. “Or his seneschal, is what I believe you Jamaicans would have called him.”
“René du Plessis,” Eggbert said. “A man with his fingers in many pies.”
The Creole gestured expansively at the shelves.
“And Jackson?” Eggbert said impulsively.
The Creole’s casual, welcoming smile didn’t change, but his eyes tightened slightly. “Are you looking for your own service records?”
“If my name were on a list of Jackson’s soldiers in the chevalier’s possession, I never would have survived five years in the chevalier’s employ. I’m looking…I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
Meaning? Direction?
“You’re right, I haven’t found anything like muster lists or payroll.” The Creole pointed to a bookcase in the corner. “There are a few half-empty ledgers over there, with correspondence from the Jackson days. No treasure maps or manifestos, I’m afraid, and definitely no paternal blessing directed at you.”
Eggbert looked at the shelves and steepled his fingers, trying not to look too anxious. “Have you read them?”
“I read them first, actually.” Bondí ran his fingers through his hair. “For the short time he ruled the city, I thought Jackson might have found himself in exactly the same situation we’re in, looking for cash.”
Eggbert nodded. “Anything interesting?”
“Jackson wanted silver. If the correspondence in those books is a complete record, then he was obsessed with it. I knew he hated banks—and accountants—but I never realized how much. The man sent letters to Potosí, to the Viceroy of New Spain, to the Georgia Jews, and even to the Old World, all asking for silver, and offering to trade cotton and tobacco and even land at a huge premium.”
“You need cash to pay men.” Eggbert thought of the whippings, pillories, and beatings that had kept the gendarmes more or less in line for the payless month before the revolt.
The Creole shrugged. “You can pay soldiers in any medium of exchange that whores, taverns, and greengrocers will accept. Paper money usually works just fine, and gold is always sufficient.”
Eggbert Bailey frowned. “You’re saying that Jackson wanted silver. Not cash, not money, but specifically the metal silver.”
The Creole nodded. “He preferred it in bullion form, if possible. When you stamp silver into a useable coin, it goes up in value—it costs more. Jackson wanted as much silver as he could get, as cheaply as he could get it.”
“Hmm.”
“I thought you knew,” Bondí said.
“As a younger man,” Eggbert said, “I was mostly a doer of deeds. Only recently am I beginning to become a man who has to understand things.”
“He even reached out to the Emperor Thomas,” Bondí added. “Jackson discovered certain secret payments the emperor had been making to Le Moyne, and wrote to suggest that they should be continued. I believe that letter is likely what caused the Imperial troops in the region to be sent down here and turned against Jackson.”
Eggbert Bailey stood slowly. Across the hall from the room where Bondí worked was a window, and through it he could look across the city, over the western walls of New Orleans the Mississippi River, and see the spangle of yellow sparks that made up the campfires of the armies of New Spain.
What would Jackson have wanted with silver?