Rebels of Babylon (5 page)

My heel crunched broken pottery. Loud as gunfire.

Another bullet struck nearby. Close enough for worry.

Now, that was queer. Whoever had confused me with the gunman could not hit me with the help of a torch, yet had the skill to hunt by the sound of a footstep.

Had I not seen the haplessness of those soldiers with my own eyes, I would have thought at least one of them meant to hamper me.

I had no time to ponder matters further. Another scamper of steps teased me, farther away than the last.

The assassin meant to escape us now, although he had delayed doing so at first. Why might that be? Had my pursuit surprised him? Or had he paused to make good on his kill? If so, why did he fail to fire again?

I did not doubt that his shot had wanted my life, not that poor soldier’s. But why on earth would a killer have been lurking to take my life, when I had already been sealed inside a tomb? Had I been fated for release from my live burial all along? If that was the meat of the matter, why go to the trouble to cook it up so grandly? Only to have an assassin kill me anyway?

And what did this have to do with the late Miss Peabody?

My mind was running much too fast and without sound direction. Time there would be to think such matters through. I had to concentrate upon the chase.

The gunman was seeking a gate in the boneyard wall. I felt it with every awakened instinct soldiering had given me. My only chance of taking him was to guess where the gate might be and cut him off.

I moved in measured dashes, as we did whenever my old regiment cornered Afghanees. Going back to ground before
the enemy risked his powder. Or, in this case, before my fellow soldiers could shoot me.

I sneaked around a crypt and saw the gate a pistol shot distant. Twas hanging open. Lamps shone in the street beyond.

But I had revealed myself in silhouette. A shot punched the air at my shoulder.

I did not drop to the earth that time. For it seemed to me that the shooting was being done by a single marksman to my rear. Who always missed me by about the same distance.

My fellow soldier would need time to reload. And that time was mine.

I ran for the gate, rifle at my waist, as I had charged on the field of Chillianwala. My scarlet coat was gone to the moths and I had a bit of a limp. But the spirit of a fight bids a man to wonders.

I closed on the gate and wheeled about to welcome my would-be assassin. His form loomed up the same instant. Running for dear life along the wall.

For a fatal second, he stopped. Surprised to meet me.

And he did the oddest thing. Instead of trying to shoot me dead, he raised his rifle to wield it as a club.

I shot him. Amidships, as they say. Twas done by training and instinct, not by choice.

Down he dropped. A shadow tumbling backward. When a man falls thus, the bullet has met his spine. His weapon clattered upon the gravel path.

“Over here!” I shouted. “Don’t shoot! I’ve got him! Lads! Over here, by the gate! Bring the lanterns!”

I kicked the rifle farther from the fallen man. Holding my weapon ready to crush his skull, should his fingers hint rebellion.

“Vodu!”
the fellow moaned in terror.

He sounded like a dying man. And he was.

I knew not if his speech was French or something even worse. But his tone was plaintive, begging. You might have thought him a dying Christian begging the Lord’s attention.

“Vodu …”
he repeated, weakened by the expulsion of the syllables.

“Water, is it?” I tried. “Do you want water, man?”

The humility in his voice declared him no more threat to me.

“Vodu … li Grand Zombi …”
he whispered, with sweet life quitting him.

The soldiers clattered up. Their lanterns fought the darkness.

At last, I saw the fellow whose life I had shortened. Twas a negro with skin the hue of a well-cooked sausage. Terror ruled his eyes.

As the lads closed round, I saw him ever more clearly. His face was tattooed with swirls and dots and hachures. He much resembled the giant with whom I had enjoyed a tiff that afternoon. Although this poor fellow was smaller.

A lantern shifted. And the negro saw me.

His dying eyes swelled. Struggling to raise his shoulders, he yearned to flee, as if he had met the devil face to face. But his body was quits with him. Its final vigor was spent pumping blood from his torso.

“Book sand corn!”
he cried. His eyes were horrid, locked in a stare with mine own.
“Book sand corn!”

Then he died.

“You got him, all right,” Captain Bolt informed me.

I resisted the urge to give him and his men a lecture on firing by night when unsure of their target. It would have been ungracious, under the circumstances. After all, they had freed me from a tomb. And no harm had been done. Except to the negro.

“Wouldn’t want to be on your bad side, no, I wouldn’t. Swear to God,” the captain told me. “Let’s us get out of here, all right? Get you back to where you can get rid of them stinking clothes. Boys can take care of the nigger. Shooting at white men like that. And us wearing Union blue, down here to save ’em. Swear to God, they’re every one of them crazy.”

He moved toward the gate. But I did not follow him. There remained an aspect of matters that made no sense.

Unless he is a mighty fool, a fellow with a rifle fires it before he uses the weapon as a club.

“Bring the lantern closer, you,” I told one of the privates.

“He still alive?” Captain Bolt asked, turning back to the pack of us, impatient. He lacked the dutiful nature an officer must display and doubtless longed to return to his cakes and ale. For all I owed the fellow, I could not like him. But plenty such there were in the Union Army. Men whom war had overtaken as they counted sacks of flour or curried mules. Men who lacked the urgency for soldiering. They filled our ranks, but barely filled their uniforms.

“No, Captain. Dead he is. As dead as a salted cod. Still, he may have something left to tell me.”

First, I inspected his weapon. It was a proper rifle, one of our own, manufactured in Springfield, Massachusetts. But it was, as I had suspected, empty of ball and innocent of a cap.

Yet, the fellow had only fired once. All of the other rounds had come from behind me.

“Hold the lantern just there,” I pointed.

The dead man’s pockets were sopping with gore, but I found what I thought likely: Nothing at all. Unless I count a pair of copper coins and a queer sort of charm.

“Guess he’s not going to tell you much, after all,” Captain Bolt said.

I nearly contradicted the fellow, but caught myself in time. There is often a good deal to be said for not saying a good deal. And I had learned a curious thing, indeed. The negro assassin had only possessed a single round for his rifle. Nor had he carried additional powder or caps.

I did not believe his poverty was the reason. The rifle was fine and new. Someone had given it to him. But they had not seen fit to arm him with more than one bullet.

It made no sense. Unless his employers believed that his marksmanship rivaled a tiger-hunter’s. And why on earth had
he failed to run away after that first shot? He must have been given lunatic orders without the power to refuse them.

Of course, that happens in armies all the time. But one expects better judgement of assassins.

What had his employers meant to achieve? If they wanted me dead, why not give the fellow more bullets? Or why not leave me buried in that vault and be done with the matter? Why seal me up, then send our soldiers a message likely to save me?

I use the word “employers” because I could not see why such a fellow would bear me a grudge that spurred him to a killing. Nor should he have known about my living burial. He had been sent by master puppeteers who knew more than I had the wit to ask.

I felt as baffled as Lazarus must have been when he rose from the dead.

All such matters would have to wait. The captain was correct that my clothes were stinking. And my tooth was nagging again.

“No,” I agreed with Captain Bolt, “the fellow had nothing to say to me. It is right you were. And now I think I might do with a proper wash.”

A MIRACLE OF THE MODERN AGE, THE BATHS IN THE cellar of the St. Charles Hotel welcomed a fellow with roiling, boiling water straight from the tap. The mighty edifice shook from top to bottom when the engine ran below and the rumbling might have been mistaken for gunners at their trade on the field of battle. But the water ran hot and not too brown, and the St. Charles baths were as lovely as Heaven on Sunday.

I would have been content to lie in that tub for an hour complete, had a hand not reached through the curtain.

A snake dropped into my bathwater. Rather a large one.

I cannot say who was the more discomfited, the serpent or myself, but when that writhing creature splashed between my legs, I leapt like an Irish girl at the sound of a fiddle.

Perhaps the water’s temperature confused the snake. Whatever the cause, its brief addlement saved me. My leg just cleared the bath as the serpent attacked.

Its fangs struck metal, which must have been disappointing.

Now, I will tell you: I have seen the cobra flare its hood and did not like it, but I never saw such a creature as that snake. When it opened its jaws to strike, its maw puffed up like a dirty gunner’s swab. You might have thought it was puking a ball of cotton.

Its hiss was nasty, too.

I hastened to put some distance between the two of us, but the curtain I opened concealed a solid brick wall. My entrance
had been accomplished on the other side and the snake, which I judged a proper seven-footer, had taken possession of the tub in between.

My state of undress was conducive to neither courage nor ingenuity.

The serpent reared its muscular body. Dripping bathwater, it fixed black eyes on mine.

I did not even have a towel to hurl at it.

Twas one of the rare times in my life when I knew not what to do. And that made twice in a day. The cabin was barren of places to hide and the snake commanded each avenue of escape.

It was about to strike.

Behind the serpent’s head, the curtain parted again. I looked at the new intruder in amazement. So startled I was I near forgot the snake.

The serpent winced at the commotion, delaying its strike by a second. In that blessed interval, a derringer pistol appeared between sausage-like fingers and shot it dead.

Exiting the creature’s skull, the ball nearly caught my leg.

The snake collapsed with a splash. A portion of its body draped over the lip of the tub, slowly withdrawing into the spoiled water.

I hardly glanced at the serpent’s final twitches. My attention was devoted to my rescuer, whose rotundity paused halfway inside the curtain.

“Mr. Barnaby!” I said, astonished.

“Begging your pardon, Major Jones,” the gentle fellow answered, “begging your pardon most terrible. I doesn’t like to intrude on a gentlemen at his ablutions, I don’t. It ain’t quite the thing. But I ’eard you cursing like a jockey in a race what ain’t been fixed and wondered at the commotion.”

“Mr. Barnaby,” I said firmly, “it is grateful I am, see … but I do not think I cursed.”

Surprised I was by his presence in the city. I had not seen him since the previous spring.

Embarrassed by his error, my acquaintance looked away. “All’s one, sir, all’s one. My ’earing ain’t what it was and I admits it.” He gave the snake another glance. “The St. Charles ’as ’ad a comedown since the war began, sir. Standards ain’t what they was.”

As for my Christian self, I had begun to wonder whether the citizens of the “Crescent City” kept snakes as pets, the way decent folk keep dogs. The creatures seemed ever-present. Then I recalled the condition in which I stood before my acquaintance, reminiscent of Adam before the Fall—another business that involved a serpent. There was greater cause for Mr. Barnaby’s embarrassment than his misapprehension of my speech.

The snake was dead, but my rescuer looked agitated.

“Pardon me, Mr. Barnaby,” I said, “but might there be a towel out there?”