Fiddlehead (The Clockwork Century) (35 page)

“Yes, and I’ll expect you to use it.”

“I don’t know if I can,” she whispered. “Watch out for that—yes, there. There’s a step before the door.”

He caught himself before he could fall, smacking one hand against the frame in order to steady his balance. “You can, and you
will
if you have to. This is the cellar? I’ve never been down here.”

“There’s not much to see,” she said vaguely. “Some storage, is all. Canned things, preserves. No books, though.”

“No books?”

She shook her head as she unlocked the door with a key from her apron pocket. “No. Mr. Lincoln says it’s too damp, and he loves them all too much to keep them there.”

“He doesn’t love any of them so much that he won’t build a wall with them, in the hope that it filters out any stray bullets.”

Polly shrugged a little and opened the door. “It’s different for him. He says books saved his life. I guess he figures books can go on saving his life, but he won’t stash them someplace damp and let them rot. They don’t do
anyone
any good that way. And, you have to admit, he has a point.”

The cellar was utterly black, without the first hint of a light. “Polly, I can’t see a thing,” Gideon said as he felt his way down the steps with his toes, scraping them across each board in search of its end, and then lowering them blindly until they stopped against the next one.

“Don’t worry. There’s a lantern at the bottom in case the electric lights go out.”

“Does that happen very often?”

“When there’s weather like this, yes. The gas lamps are more reliable, but Mr. Lincoln says electricity is the future. He’s having the old system replaced, a bit at a time, but he started in the cellar. He said he didn’t want to put the technology anyplace important until it was tested.”

“His love of novelty has always been at war with his innate sense of caution,” Gideon mumbled. “Where’s this lantern? And are there any windows down here?”

“Almost got it. And no, no windows, so no one will see it when we light it up.”

She pulled farther ahead of him, and soon, from the bottom of the steps, a light came up so brightly that it nearly blinded him.

He winced and looked away until she carried it off and his eyes adjusted. Then he joined her in the cellar—a finished, clean space, but low of ceiling and somewhat cold compared to the rest of the house. From down there, the wind was much subdued, as there were no nooks or crannies, loose window panes, or fireplaces for it to scrape against. There was nothing at all to see but foundation stones and rough-hewn shelves holding canned goods, disused kitchen supplies, and seasonal items that would come upstairs when the calendar called for them.

And against the far wall, a nice pine cabinet.

Polly approached it and tugged the knob. It wasn’t locked.

Upstairs, the temporary quiet was broken by more pops of gunfire, some from within, some from without. Gideon counted six shots from the Lincoln compound, and eight from outside it. Waste of bullets, all. A game of spending time and ammunition, seeing who had the most and who could least afford to lose it.

Polly also paused to hear out the shots upstairs. Their eyes met—hers wide and worried, his calculating and angry. The yellow glare of the lantern engulfed them, but not much beyond them; everything past the gun cabinet and the nearest wall of preserves remained cast in darkness. One more muffled bang—from inside, he thought—and then silence.

Whatever was going on, it wasn’t going away. The men outside would find their way inside eventually.

He spied the cellar door, up a short set of stairs. He climbed them and made sure it was locked, then returned to the cabinet.

He nudged Polly aside and reached for the contents. Two rifles and three smaller handguns. At a glance, it looked like a lone Colt and a pair of Remingtons. No surprise there. Old military men often preferred them, and every president counts as military by default. Two boxes of ammunition of varying sizes lurked beneath the guns. He pointed them out to Polly. “Take those and follow me. We’ll sort it out in the library, and get you ladies armed like men.”

“I don’t know if I can kill anybody,” she objected, so softly that, had she been another foot away, he wouldn’t have understood her.

“No one’s asking you to kill anyone. I’m asking you to stand inside and shoot outside, into the darkness.” He made for the stairs, and she tagged along behind him, bearing the boxes and the lantern. “Shoot into the trees, for all I care. Just
shoot,
and it will tell them we aren’t alone, we won’t let them have Nelson Wellers, and
none of us
are going quietly.”

Upstairs in the library he divvied out the available weaponry, leaving out the rifles for the present, since the women had no experience with them, Lincoln didn’t have the reach to fire them, and besides, there was less ammunition to fuel them.

Mary took the Colt. Polly took one of the Remingtons. Mary vowed to teach Polly how to shoot, a prospect that worried Gideon—hardly better than the blind leading the blind—but not so much that he tried to stop her. She understood the mechanics, even if she was a danger to herself and others when she employed them. That was fine. It’d
have
to be fine.

Back to the front door he went, to relieve Nelson Wellers.

“I’m running low,” the doctor confessed.

“There are bullets in the library. Not a magnificent stash, but enough to keep us on the defensive for another few hours yet, at this pace.”

“They won’t give us another few hours.”

Gideon swallowed, and tweaked the edge of the blanket to look outside. He saw nothing at first, and then motion. Two men, and then a third. Then he heard shots at the other end of the house—and more shots answering from within, from Grant. “They’ve found reinforcements.”

“They’ve been free to go and get them. We haven’t. If we can make it to dawn…”

“Then what?” Gideon asked. “Then they’ll be able to see us if we try to sneak away. No. If we’re going to make some great move, we ought to make it before the sun comes up. The president likes to go on about our copious ‘advantages,’ and we can’t afford to squander one.”

“Then what do you propose?” The worry on Wellers’s face was digging in hard, setting lines there and drawing bags beneath his eyes.

“I propose to sit here and think about what to do next.” Another shot, back in Grant’s direction in the far hall. “Go see if he needs help. I’ll stay here and watch the new fellows. If you run past the office, send me Mary.”

“Mary?”

“She’s a wild shot with an ax to grind. I may need to guard the east wing where her husband is.”

“You think she’ll leave him?”

“I think she might trust my aim more than hers. Go and see,” he urged again. As Wellers left, he continued to eye the shadows outside. Yes, more men had definitely been rallied. If someone was shooting at the west wing, they’d added at least two—no, three, because here came another, scuttling through the darkness. It was looking like six to six, if Gideon were feeling optimistic. Even odds, except that it was three able-bodied men, two women, and a chairbound cripple versus six mercenaries.

Mary appeared beside him, her approach announced by the swish and sway of her skirts—and only then did Gideon notice that the wind was dying down. The makeshift curtains were not blowing quite so hard, and the chimneys were no longer being played like a set of organ pipes.

“All right, Gideon.” She was brandishing her weapon in a way that made him nervous, so he gently aimed it toward the floor for now. “What do I do?”

“Mrs. Lincoln, I want you to sit here and keep an eye on the front door, right here—through the edge of this blanket, see? Stay low, and keep from moving any more than necessary. The curtain will move some, because of the wind, but that’s all right; we just don’t want them taking shots at your head.”

She nodded grimly, her eyes narrowed. “All right. And if anyone approaches the house, I shoot!”

“No! Or, yes, you
should
shoot … but like this: If anyone approaches the front door here, I want you to fire a warning shot. Aim it anywhere: the sky, the ground, what have you. If it’s a friend who’s accidentally slipped through, coming to see about the ruckus, he’ll identify himself. If it’s a foe, he’ll shoot back or start making demands. Either way, we’ll hear you, and one of us will come to help. Is that all clear?”

“Crystal clear, yes.” The old lady squeezed her gun with both hands, and sidled up to the wall beneath the window. “Now, go look after my husband.”

He left her, and proceeded down the east wing hall, where the former president remained with Polly. He leaned his head around the corner, saw that all was well, and said, “Polly, I want you to come with me.”

“And leave Mr. Lincoln?”

“Mr. Lincoln,” Gideon addressed the man personally. “Do you have any objections?”

“None,” he said firmly, holding one of the rifles across his lap, despite the previous decision to leave them for later. Gideon wasn’t sure who’d given it to him, or if this was the best choice, given the man’s lack of depth perception and limited use of his hands, but it looked impressive all the same. And, ah, yes: He still had the handgun ready, half concealed by the blankets.

Polly gazed at the man as if she’d do what she was told, but she wasn’t prepared to like it much. “All right, Dr. Bardsley. What do I do?”

He led her out of the room and toward the foyer, to the stairs that led to the second story. “You go upstairs, and go back and forth between the windows. Draw all the curtains if they aren’t drawn already, but do it carefully. Keep from being seen. I don’t want anyone spying your shadow and taking a shot at you.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll do that.”

“And I want you to watch for men who might be sneaking up on us from different sides. If you see such a man, fire a shot through a window in his general direction. Don’t worry about hitting him, just let him know that you saw him.”

“All right. I can do that.”

“I know you can. And don’t try to open a window—just shoot right through it. Glass isn’t that expensive. You’re worth more than the window, you hear me?”

She blushed, and even the dwindling firelight couldn’t hide it. “Thank you, sir.”

When she was gone, Gideon said to Lincoln through the still-open door, “I’m going to check the other end of the hall, then work my way back. If you have any trouble, fire a warning shot, but fire it into those books. Anywhere else, and it might bounce in this little room.”

“I’m not an idiot, Gideon.”

“I’m only thinking out loud,” he assured him. In the quiet that followed, he really should’ve turned and left; but, like Polly, he found himself reluctant to leave Lincoln alone. “Is there … anything I can get you? Anything you need?”

“I need for my friends to believe I’m still a capable man,” he said. “I will be
fine,
and so will the rest of you. With you and Grant defending the place, I’m confident that it will stand.”

Gideon wished he hadn’t said that, even if he agreed. “We’ll do our best,” he said, and he stalked off down the hall, praying their best would be enough.

Twenty

“I thought we’d landed closer to the road than this,” Maria grumbled, tripping over a tree root and scraping her already-raw hand against a trunk when she caught herself.

“So did I.” Henry grimaced with pain, so often that it seemed his whole face was set that way in a permanent expression of discomfort. But a broken arm was plenty of excuse, to say nothing of the assorted scrapes, bumps, and bruises that plagued them both.

Maria ached in places she rarely thought of, and she bled from more injuries than she let on. Besides the cut on her head, under her coat she hid a hard puncture that had made it past her corset stays. She didn’t know how deep it went, and she didn’t know what had caused it. Part of the
Black Dove,
as they’d kicked free of its tumbling wreckage? A tree branch on the way down? Something else, when she’d landed?

The wound was under her rib cage, on the right side. It left a great stain on her dress, so she kept her coat fastened around herself, even tighter than before. Now it wasn’t just the cold. She needed for Henry to believe that she was all right, because if he thought otherwise, he’d attempt to coddle them both and they’d never get anywhere.

Just this once, she was glad for the cold.

It kept her numb enough to keep walking, hiking between the trees and around them. She hoped they were headed in the right direction, but had no way of knowing for certain. She had no compass, only Henry’s gut feeling; and she did her best not to second-guess him, because she had no idea herself.

Finally, they saw a line where the trees thinned. When they stumbled up out of the woods, they found themselves on a road. It amounted to little more than four sets of ruts in places, but the rain that season had been bad, and it was no secret that the Confederacy was low on money. Public works were suffering along with everything else.

No other vehicles or travelers were present, a fact that bothered Maria. She’d hoped to find carts—of the motorized or horse-drawn variety, she did not care which—and use her wiles to flag one down for a lift. She was exhausted and sore. Henry surely was in no better condition, though he also seemed to be hiding the worst of his pain.

So they trudged forward, southbound and surly, until a benevolent farmer heading in the right direction came along. Maria bribed him with sorrowful eyes, and Henry sealed the deal with the few Confederate coins from his pocket that hadn’t rained across the Georgia countryside as he’d fallen to earth.

The ride was faster than walking, and it gave them time to rest, if not recover.

When the farmer took a turn for the west, he left them on the road and they continued on foot, thankful for the help but wishing for more assistance. It didn’t come.

The day grew later, and the shadows grew longer. Maria didn’t know what they’d do when night fell. They had almost nothing in the way of supplies, much less any source of light, and roaming along a road at night was a surefire way to get robbed or murdered … or so she’d always been told.