Fiddlehead

More shots erupted outside, and were answered by Gideon Bardsley from within.

“I’ll get back there and help him,” Grant said, giving up on the idea of signaling for aid. “Wellers, when you’re done here, make a pass of the back of the house. Bardsley said he’d secured it, and I believe him, but they’ll be circling so we need to circle, too.”

“I can help,” Polly said. “I can … I can sneak out through the cellar. Take a message to the District office, if you need me to.”

“That’s very brave of you, dear,” Grant said kindly. But with the lights out and armed gunmen surrounding the place, it’d be a suicide mission at the very best, and he wouldn’t have it on his watch. “But let’s not resort to such drastic measures yet. The Lincolns need you here now. Abe, maybe you ought to give her your gun and let her stand guard.”

“I’ll give it to Mary, when she’s satisfied with the blockade. She’s an excellent shot, and I don’t know about Polly’s prowess with a weapon.”

“I’m no good at all,” Polly admitted.

Mary Lincoln said to Grant, “Polly’s idea might be a good one. Draw her up a message, and let her run with it.”

“No.” He was thinking of Betsey Frye, who’d last run errands for him. He couldn’t do that to this girl, too. “Not yet. They’re getting the lay of the land, watching the house from every angle. They’ll shoot her if they see her.”

“They might shoot me even if they don’t. They’re tearing up the house right good, Mr. Grant,” she said, some kind of terrible plea in her eyes.

She was afraid, and she wanted to run. Grant understood, but he also understood that if she ran, they’d chase her. “How about this,” he started, but when another gunshot rang out from the front door where that colored scientist was valiantly holding down the fort, he spoke more quickly. “Let us figure out how many there are and where they’ve stationed themselves. At some point they’ll dig in and call for assistance, but not quite yet. They’re still trying to decide how many of us are in here, and how strong we are, and how determined we are to hold our ground. There’ll come a window, Polly—a window when it’ll be safer than it is right now. When that window comes, I’ll give you the note and send you running, and trust you with all our lives, if you think you’re up to it.”

She nodded gravely.

He turned on his heels and dashed back down the hall, knowing he’d lied to her, but that it was necessary. The truth was, he’d only send her if it got so bad she was just as likely to die on the road as in the house. They’d see her in a heartbeat, even if she found a good dark cloak.

The Lincoln crew was already outnumbered—heavily so, he suspected—and he guessed they’d already sent for assistance; he knew it in his bones, like Abe sometimes said. In another few minutes—maybe more, maybe less—they’d be farther outnumbered and outgunned. But in an hour the situation would have settled into whatever form of havoc it would ultimately take, and then … then he’d either need Polly, or he wouldn’t.

No. She was safer inside. They all were, for now. That could change in an instant. Then again, it might not.

He counted the variables.

Someone would’ve heard all the shooting, that was a virtual certainty. Who would they summon? The real police? Some local night watchman? Neighbors or friends? It was as likely as not that someone would rouse the nearest Pinkerton office. Everyone knew that Lincoln relied on them—his affiliation with them was the stuff of history books—and the District office was one of the largest outside of Chicago, second only to New York. They weren’t the law, but they were lawful, so long as they were paid.

All right, then. Let it be mercenary against mercenary, and may the best army win.

But until reinforcements arrived by the gift of fortune or could be flagged down, Grant had a fortress to secure. And despite the peril to himself and to his friends, and the potential damage to his legacy for murdering a man on a stoop, and the fact that the fate of the nation—the fate of the continent, as Bardsley liked to remind him!—was on his shoulders … for the first time in months, he was sober. He was certain. He was ready.

He knew exactly what he was doing.

Eighteen

“Can you see it anywhere?” Maria asked, scanning the horizon for the other dirigible.

“Along the road ahead of us, I think. We’ll catch up to it soon; we’re flying faster than that big old cargo cruiser, even with the thruster working funny.” Henry adjusted his grip on the controls, his fingers moving stiffly with the chill and repetition. They should’ve been halfway to Atlanta by now, but the flight felt like it was just beginning.

They were both cold and uncomfortable, and still shaky from the firefight they’d left behind them and weather that simply wouldn’t cut them a break. But the clock was ticking, and a weapon of unparalleled, poorly understood destruction was crawling toward the Confederacy’s biggest metropolitan area.

Though Maria desperately wanted to beg Henry to land, for God’s sake, and let her walk around for a minute—to get the feeling back into her feet, if nothing else—she said nothing except, “Then let’s see how fast this poor little dove feels like flying.”

He upped the pressure and changed a gear setting, and the craft lurched forward, listing to the left but keeping a straight course along the road that dragged out below them.

Traffic down there had dwindled to almost nothing. They were now a ways out of Chattanooga, and not close enough to Atlanta for anyone to be bustling along, save for a few farmers moving supplies to and from markets. As her eyes examined the path through the spyglass, she said, “If they’re anywhere in front of us, they’ll stick out like a sore thumb. There’s nothing down there at all. Nothing interesting, anyway.”

She turned her attention to the sky, scanning it until she spotted a dark pinprick several miles ahead. “That military craft, on the other hand…”

“What do you think it was up to?”

“Could be anything.”

“Even Union agents with a Southern ship, looking out for their own,” Henry suggested, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

“Yes, a decoy ship, like we discussed. I wonder if that would do them any good.”

“Having a cargo ship along for the mission? I can’t imagine it’d hurt.”

“No,” she agreed. She removed the spyglass from her face, then jammed it down her scarf, into her bosom. She shuddered with the shock of cold metal against her naked skin. “In fact, if the gas bomb covers as much range as we’ve been told, they’d need a ship to take them far away, and fast. A cargo cruiser might cut it.”

“I don’t know. Maybe, but … what are you doing to my spyglass?”

“Warming it up. It’s practically sticking to my eyebrow.” She shivered at the press of the metal. “The simplest, most obvious answer might be the right one: It could be a CSA ship heading for Atlanta. There’s a big military base there, yes?”

“Dobbins, yes. Specializing in aircraft.”

“Well”—she retrieved the glass, rubbed the eyepiece shiny, and stuck it back up to her face—“if the simplest answer is the correct one, then we may have found ourselves a fantastic new ally.”

“If we can get them to talk to us. Or listen to us. Hey, do you think Troost got through to the base?”

“If he did, the cargo ship’s not evidence of it. That cruiser’s going toward Atlanta, not flying out of it at top speed searching for a doomsday weapon.”

“Good point.”

“Thank you. I want to believe in your friend Troost, I really do; I find shady men to be the most effective, as often as not. But he’s right about the wires. The lines between North and South are feeble enough when the weather is good and the troops are clear. We don’t dare assume that Haymes’s agents haven’t performed some deliberate act of sabotage to keep the information out of military hands until it’s too late. Besides, the taps are only as reliable as the people who man them. No”—she shook her head—“we have to assume that reinforcements aren’t coming. If they do, we can be pleasantly surprised. By the way, I think the ship has stopped—we seem to be catching up to it.”

Henry squinted hard against the sky, and against the wind that warped around the glass screen meant to keep it out. “Yes, you’re right. Have they landed or dropped anchor yet? I can’t tell if they’re moving.”

Past the spyglass, she observed, “No, but they’re settling down now.”

“Right on the road?”

“Get us closer and I’ll be able to tell you.”

She eyed the damaged thruster and wondered if they’d move faster if it worked better, but as far as she could tell, it mostly just caused the craft to pull to the left. Her impatience was matched only by the chill she felt—or could no longer feel, depending on which extremity she considered. If she had toes, she couldn’t prove it by wiggling them, and it was a good thing that the shooting had happened before her fingers had lost all sensation through her gloves. Bending and unbending them was a Herculean exercise in the cold weather, and she had to be quite careful indeed with the spyglass, for the bare metal burned against her skin, even after her bosomly attempts to warm it.

The wind was unrelenting, and so was the spitting, driving rain that came from every direction at once as they tracked the cargo craft through the lowest clouds. “We’ll overtake them in a few minutes,” she said, through chattering teeth. “But what happens then? Do you think they saw us fight with the other craft?”

He was silent. “I don’t know.”

Maria mulled over the possibilities. “If they’re Confederate soldiers, I must believe they would’ve turned around to assist us. We were a legally marked civilian craft, menaced by an unmarked crew that could’ve been piratical, as far as anyone knew. They would’ve turned around,” she said again, more confidently this time. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">