Clockwork Souls (8 page)

“How did it happen?”

“Preacher had brought us a boat, so that we could leave on
the morning of freedom. Your people were already gone when we gathered in the
dawn to go ourselves. Calvert came rushing down to the dock, with his two sons
and foreman, demanding to know what was going on.

“Preacher spoke. It was the first time Calvert had heard one
of us speak, and it startled him, for he stepped back. ‘We are leaving,’
Preacher said. ‘We have souls and you have no right to us.’ And he showed him
the mark.

“Calvert said, ‘Like Hell you are.’ He told his men, ‘Grab
them,’ and reached out himself to pick up one of the smaller ones among us.
Preacher said, ‘Let go,’ but Calvert drew out a pistol. He must have thought
the threat would stop Preacher, because he didn’t even aim it. Preacher grabbed
him then, and throttled him.”

Maker paused. “I think it had wanted to do that for a long
time. It wanted to kill all those who denied us our freedom. The three other
men fired their rifles at Preacher, hitting it in the head where all the wires
come together, but Calvert was long dead before Preacher, too, let go of life.
The others of my kind advanced on the men before they could reload their
rifles. I might have been able to stop them. I did not try. I do not like
killing, but I loved Preacher”

Calvert was her father and two of those men were her
half-brothers, and they had died horrifically. Jasmine tried to grieve for
them, but found she cared more about the loss of Preacher. Her friendship with
it had fulfilled her in a way that mocked the mere biological tie to men who
had never acknowledged her as a human being, much less as a relative.

“In any case, I have come to tell you that you need fear
nothing from those people. The men are dead, and the women have gone to the
wife’s family, or so I have heard. Only ghosts are left.”

Jasmine sat there, relieved, sad, unsure of what might
happen next. “I promised Preacher that I would fix the others when the time
came, would give them fingers and eyes and voices. Shall I come with you to
Somervelt’s Island, or will you bring them here in ones and twos?”

“You are not needed,” Maker said. “You gave me those things
and I can now do them for others. I only came to tell you what happened. Now I
must go back to take care of my people.”

“There are others of your kind, still enslaved. Will you go
out and ensoul them so that they can be free?”

“I cannot. Only Preacher had that ability, and even it did
not know where it came from. It died with it.” It paused. “We did what we
could, you and I and Preacher. Take heart from that.”

Some saved, but not all, not nearly all. Jasmine had family
to care for in an uncertain future world, responsibilities to her own she could
not forsake. But she was tied to the metalmen, just as she was tied to family.
It wasn’t enough, that she had helped some.

For now she would bide her time and raise her daughter. But
she would do more, when she could. “I won’t forget,” she told Maker.

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Brenda W. Clough

Towards the middle of February in 1865 Lieutenant Sam McAvers
clattered into Alexandria, Virginia, as the dawn was coming up lurid and gray
in the east. He threw the reins of his horse to a sleepy cadet in a blue
uniform and ran into the garrison headquarters. “Where is she?”

Sergeant Fanning was leaning back in his chair, and when he
started awake the front legs came down to earth with a thump. “Damn. Are you
from Col. Jeremiah Inglis? Thank the Lord! Come an’ identify her.”

McAvers followed him into what, when this house had been a
rich man’s dwelling, used to be the grand front hall. Alexandria being a sullen
and occupied town, the Union guards were awake at this hour and even sober, if
you didn’t sniff too closely at their breath. Sergeant Fanning said, “She asked
for tea. Then a wash basin and water. Hot water, not cold, no sir. And a
washcloth, but neither the first nor the second nor the third we found were
clean enough for her. Had to go out and buy a new one at the drygoods store,
and that’s three cents I’ll never see again. She wouldn’t eat hard tack. Nor
corn pone made with bacon fat, fitten for a king. She turned up her nose at the
very salt pork we was having for our own dinner, can you believe it? And Jesus!
The things she says Col. Inglis’ll do to us—ladies ain’t supposed to know about
castrating shoats, they just ain’t. She says he’s got an ivory-handled
cut-throat razor imported from Paris. In France, you know? Well-stropped, it’s
sharp enough to bleed the wind. You don’t even feel the cut. You’re singin’
soprano and you didn’t even feel the nuptials waving goodbye to your trousers
as—”

“Will you hush up and make haste?” the lieutenant cried. “Mrs.
Inglis is in distress, and I have been charged with her rescue!”

“You ain’t rescuing her,” the sergeant grumbled. “You’re a-rescuin’
us.”

McAvers was grateful to see that they were not descending to
the cellars. So close beside the Potomac River, any room below ground was
dangerously damp, no place for a gentle lady. Instead the sergeant conducted
him up a cramped wooden stair, its wainscoting scarred by five years of careless
spurs and rifle butts, and up yet again to the attic level. On the topmost
landing Private Buck sat on a stool with his revolver on his knee. “’S quiet in
there,” he reported, holding out the large iron key. “Maybe she’s asleep?”

“And the ice skating’s mighty prime today in hell.” The
sergeant turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open. “Aah! God damn
it! Run like clappers, Buck, and get ’em out into the alley in back! She’s got
a rope!”

“The colonel will gut me,” McAvers cried. The slant-ceilinged
attic room was very small and entirely empty. At the end of the room the window
sash was up. A frail rope twisted from torn petticoats was tied to the single
wooden chair, which had been set crossways in the meanly-proportioned window
opening. The way it hung in mid-air, tightly pressed against the frame, showed
that a weight was hanging outside. When he united his strength to the sergeant’s
they were able to haul the chair carefully down from the opening, slowly, and
without any abrupt jerk that might dislodge the escaping prisoner dangling
below. “You’re heavier ’n me,” McAvers panted. “Sit yourself in that chair and
hold it down! I’ll try and haul her up.”

He shucked his forage cap, which was too new to lose, and ducked
his head out the narrow portal. How had a lady in her wide skirts wormed
herself through a window barely a foot wide? Above the narrow alleyway the sky
was bright with the cold new day. The house was sided with boards whitewashed
when Franklin Pierce was president. To his astonishment he found he was staring
not two yards down into a pallid face some years older than his own, dominated
by large brown eyes and surmounted by a brown-plush bonnet. “Is that you, Sam?”
Mrs. Inglis quavered. “I am so glad to see you! I used to be able to shin down
ropes all the time when I was a girl, but I find I am sadly out of practice.”

A number of words burst from the lieutenant’s lips that
should not be voiced in the presence of the wife of one’s commanding officer. From
the manure-clogged alleyway three stories below the men set up a shout. Mrs. Inglis
glared down over her shoulder at them. “Go away, you lewd creatures! You may
not look up my skirts, I simply forbid it!”

“Mrs. Inglis, can you climb up again? Even a little? Yes,
that’s the way! Now, your hand. Yes, yes . . . Christ on a
crutch, ma’am! Have you run utterly mad? What will the Colonel say?”

“Jerry will applaud me,” Mrs. Inglis said, with overweening
confidence. Lieutenant McAvers had had a mule like her once, back in New York
State—long, rangy, brown, and strong. And as set on her own way as the devil!
She shook her brown-plaid woolen skirts down into propriety, pulled her gloves
up, and straightened the thick crocheted Shetland-wool shawl around her shoulders.
“Lieutenant, you must and shall believe me, as these bumpkins do not. The
President is in imminent danger.”

“President Lincoln?” The lieutenant gaped in horror. “Good
God! The nation is at war, ma’am—the Union stands or falls with him!”

“Everyone of understanding knows that,” she replied tartly. “There
is a plot afoot, of international ramifications, to assassinate Mr. Lincoln.
Come, quickly! We must be off immediately, to scotch the wicked plan!”

Sergeant Fanning set himself in the narrow doorway like
Horatius at the bridge. “Lieutenant, don’t you let her get her tongue round
you. She must be suffering from some female dementia, raving nonsense by the
yard like that.”

“You fat fool,” Mrs. Inglis snapped. “Get out of my road!”

McAvers snatched up his blue forage cap. “Sergeant, I take
full responsibility for the lady. Now if you will excuse us, we have an errand
of some urgency.”

They clattered down the battered stair and out into the cold
narrow street. The Potomac had escaped its banks in January and the cobbles
were still silted and muddy. A raw wind raised mist from the overflowing
gutters, and between the warehouses and shanties the river could be glimpsed
running like polished silver beyond the ice cruddling the shallower marshy
verge. Mrs. Inglis turned east, striding towards the docks with furious swift
steps that made her long skirts billow and her thick shawl flutter like a flag.
McAvers trotted in her wake. “What plot is this, Mrs. Inglis? And how did you
hear of it? The colonel believed you to be safe at home in Philadelphia! He was
horrified to get your wire, that you were immured in Alexandria. If I had not
been in Washington this week on the battalion’s business, who could he have
called upon to rescue you?”

“Well, I do not suppose you know of my cousin Anna
Leonowens. I don’t think even Jerry does, men not being much interested in
crochet.”

“Crochet?”

“She is a governess to foreign royalty—in Siam, just fancy.
But no one there does any knitting or crochet! Nor is tailoring a Siamese art,
if you can lend credence to such a thing. There, they simply tie the breadths
of Oriental silk around their bodies for clothing—not a corset, not a
petticoat, nor a pair of drawers. It sounds hardly decent, and I do not know
how Cousin Anna tolerates it. And so for the past few years I have been sending
her crochet cotton by post. And patterns.”

“Oh Jesus.” Crochet patterns? Was it female flummery after
all? “Let us cross over to Washington, ma’am. I’ll put you onto a train back to
Philadelphia.”

“No you shall not, lieutenant! We are going to the wharf,
where the
Tripolitania
docked
yesterday! You have heard that King Mongkut of Siam has a great regard for our
President? And has sent him a gift?”

“I had read something of it in the papers, yes—a golden
elephant.”

“Not merely a golden elephant, lieutenant. Airavata is a
mechanismic one, a machine able to imitate all the motions of the living beast.
Mrs. Leonowens was in the train of the king, when he visited the workshop to
inspect the workings.”

“And what is an American president to do with such a wind-up
toy?”

“I believe King Mongkut’s intent was that Mr. Lincoln should
ride it. Airavata is life-sized, lieutenant.”

“Great God.”

“The Oriental mind inclines towards mechanical animals—have
you read of the great bamboo steam dragon the Chinese brought to London some
years ago? And their wicked scientists have even experimented with transferring
the soul of the beast into a mechanismic housing.”

“A lot of work,” McAvers commented. If only she would get to
the point! “Why not just create elephants the old-fashioned way? Doing what
comes naturally.”

“A steam-powered mechanical elephant is so much more
convenient for transport around the globe, you must agree—no food or water
necessary, and you just turn off the boiler during shipment. Airavata was
dispatched from Bangkok in November. It took five months for the
Tripolitania
to round the Horn, and she
made port yesterday. All the customs inspections and papers having been
processed, the President is to come down to the wharf and accept his gift this
very morning. And Mrs. Leonowens sent me a wire, only last week, but it is so
complex to transmit a telegraph message from Bangkok to Philadelphia that it
has taken all this while to get to me. King Mongkut hired some of the greatest
mechanismic artificers in Asia to build the elephant, and one of them is a
minion of . . . the Poet King.”

McAvers would have danced with impatience, except that he
was walking too fast. “My dear Mrs. Inglis! Lord Byron is dead a generation
ago—gone to his richly deserved damnation. He’s nothing now but a bogey to
frighten children with.”

“He is not dead,” Mrs. Inglis said. “And his scientific
crony, Sir Willoughby, is in Bangkok. Mr. Lincoln has been their primary target
ever since he signed the Emancipation Proclamation that liberated all Negroes
and mechano-Americans. King Mongkut does not know that a bomb has been secreted
in the belly of his gift. And when I hurried down to warn Mr. Lincoln the local
garrison accused me of loitering suspiciously down at the docks!”

“Now you’re talking turkey,” McAvers exclaimed, with a sigh
of relief. “You had me worried it was all a fudge. You may safely leave it all
to me, ma’am.” All this female yap—it took a man, to get the thing done! He
loosened his revolver in its holster, and took to his heels, sprinting past her
and out into the open.

“Sam! You wait for me!” she cried, but he ignored her. Just
before him was the wharf. At the far end the Pioneer Mill building towered up
in its many brick stories, and the great vessels were moored at the quays, both
steamers and sailing ships. Bales of cotton were stacked against the warehouse
walls, and barrels of goods waited in ranks for shipment. He could see
immediately where the presentation must be taking place—where a crowd of swells
in top hats waited at the largest pier. The stiff wind coming up from
downstream cut through his blue coat as he ran full tilt. There was not an
instant to waste!