Rebels of Babylon Read online

  I had been buried alive. Shut in with bones and rot and rags, piled up so high they pressed me against the roof of the narrow crypt. My arms had but a few inches of freedom.

  My final breaths would be fumes off rotting corpses. The thought put my lingering toothache in its place.

  Were I a dishonest fellow—which I trust that I am not—I would tell you that I thought of my wife and son, of the child due to us soon and of Fanny, my ward. And, perhaps, of one last person, lost irreparably.

  The truth is that I thought of Abel Jones. Of myself and of none other.

  I was afraid. I am not certain I had ever known such fear as that terror of suffocation among the dead. My pride and manliness quit me and I wailed. Kicking as best I could with good leg and bad, I hurt myself but did the tomb no damage.

  As I struggled, desperate and incapable, ancient bones gone brittle snapped beneath me. Splinters poked through my clothes like impatient fingers.

  Cornered by death, I was a maddened animal. Our greed for life is stronger than we know.

  I began to gasp.

  The tomb was air-tight as a cholera coffin. My tantrum, which had accomplished nothing else, robbed me of dear minutes of breathable air.

  Forcing my body to calm, I lay as still as a living man could do. Even amid decay and bones, each instant of life remained precious. I hoped, although there was no hope. And I raged against my weakness and the world.

  The truth is that I even failed to pray. I did not think of it.

  It shames me now to think how unready I would have been to go before my God. After such a graceless end. I did not ponder that sweet Beyond, but only thought of here and now, of living.

  I am unworthy to call myself a Methodist.

  The air thinned further still. My lungs began to rule my body, trying to lift my torso, contorting me in their famished quest for sustenance. I banged my head again and bruised my limbs. Using up still more of that reeking necessity.

  I wanted to live.

  The only prayers I said were spoken with fists and feet against the masonry walls.

  Twas my comeuppance for the sin of pride, for thinking myself a steady, courageous fellow, firmer than others. The hunter of tigers fears the lowly worm, as a fakir once told me.

  Choking, dying, with lungs in disbelief, I imagined that I heard voices. Dreaming that I felt blows at the wall of the crypt.

  Twas then that I began to pray at last. I had failed to call upon Our Lord to save my soul when I was doomed to perish. But now I called upon Him to save my life.

  I tried to cry out, but could hardly muster a voice.

  I felt as if I were collapsing inward and exploding at the same moment. My lungs burned. Gulping nothing. Rot. Stench. Gagging down the filth of my companions.

  I began to twitch madly, yearning for air, that cheapest of commodities.

  Then I began to die.

  I DID NOT understand what had happened at first. I felt the rush of cold air before I realized I was breathing. Gulping life.

  A voice said, “God amighty, drag him out of there.”

  Hands began to tug me by the ankles. A great mess of bones chased after me as they drew me free of the tomb.

  “Peeeee-yooo!” a soldier complained as he embraced my falling body. I had been sealed into a vault set high and we tumbled earthward together.

  A muddle come over the lot of us. We found ourselves sprawling, adorned with death’s forget-me-nots. In a landscape of granite and marble, of whitewash and brick.

  Twas the queerest place this side of a heathen temple. Lit by the lanterns of the rescue party, a jumble of tombs crowded round. Their architecture ranged from the humble and low to masoleums so elaborate they must have annoyed our Savior’s sense of propriety. My intended deathbed had not been among that warren of crypts, however, but in a space built into a wall as thick as a Punjab battlement. A taller man would not have fit without first being dismembered.

  Now, when he has been buried alive, a fellow requires a moment or two to collect himself. I was at sixes and sevens, and beg no pardon for it. Much of the world remained disordered, as if devils were playing a parlor game with time, mixing up the counters to confuse me. I trust that I mumbled my gratitude to those who had saved my life and I saw full well that their uniforms were of the same hue as mine own. I even recognized the necropolis for what it was, although twas of a different order than the one in Glasgow where we had a fuss.

  But I am not certain I knew what I was about. The queerest thing it was. I grasped that I sat upon the earth of New Orleans, yet I hardly understood how I had gotten there and seemed to have but the weakest grip on the moment. Memories that had eluded me in the tomb swept over me now. I did not know if I was a child in Wales, or a fusilier putting paid to Johnny Seekh, or a broken-hearted fellow in Lahore.

  And then I did something I am not wont to do. I turned over and retched. As some fellows do in battle’s lulls, although I was never that sort.

  Perhaps my organs were purging themselves of bits of death breathed in, of particles of the sort described by that Greek fellow, Mr. Aristotle, whose estimable works I had read on my voyage down from Baltimore.

  The soldiers rose and cleansed themselves of the debris as best they could. One succumbed to panic, slapping at himself and leaping about, anxious to separate his person from death’s adhesions.

  The officer in charge of the party, a captain with an unfamiliar face, bent toward me.

  “You all right, Major? God amighty, I swear. You were yelling like Hettie with her skirt on fire. God amighty.”

  “Captain … you have me at a disadvantage.”

  My attempt at good manners baffled him, for he was from Iowa, as I come to learn. And Iowa is a wild place, fit only for the undemanding Swede and dull Norwegian. As for myself, I had been studying the formal ways of a gentleman since my recent increase in fortune.

  “Who are you?” I asked directly.

  I remained a bit short of wind, seated still in the slop and wreckage of death.

  “Simon Peter Cincinnatus Bolt,” the fellow told me. His air of recitation conjured schoolrooms. He had a sturdy, presentable face that bore no special burden of intelligence. “Captain Sim Bolt, mostways to folks. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  He half-saluted, tipped his hat and extended a hand to draw me to my feet.

  Having lost my latest purchase while tumbling from that roof, I was again without a stick to help me. The loss angered me, that I will tell you, and not only because I found a sword-cane useful. I had spent a painful amount—so much I am ashamed of it—to replace my first such implement, which had been given to me by a curious fellow in Scotland. I had left that blade in an old madwoman’s bowels.

  But that is another tale.

  In furnishing myself with another stick, I had indulged my vanity in Philadelphia’s second-best shop for gentlemen, a luxury I never should have allowed myself.

  Funds should never be squandered on pride, as any Welshman in his senses will tell you.

  “God amighty, you’re one lucky man, Major. One lucky man. Swear to God, I really do. You just don’t know how close you came there.” Of a sudden, his face pruned with doubt. “You are Major Abel Jones, aren’t you?”

  He underwent a moment of discomfiture. As if he might have rescued the wrong major entirely. As if the cemetery were positively thick with majors buried alive and he might have wasted his efforts by saving the wrong one.

  I began to suspect that his candle did not burn quite so brightly as an officer’s should. Yet, he seemed a good-enough fellow. And in John Company’s regiments in India, a drop of noble blood in the youngest son of a bankrupt country squire was thought a more useful quality than intelligence. Twas especially so in the lancers, where every sort of thinking was discouraged.

  “I am Major Abel Jones,” I assured him. “Now if—”

  “Well, thank God for that much, just thank God down on your bended knees, Major, that’s all I can say. I n
ever heard of such a thing in my life. Swear to God. Never once in my life. Had to make the men here do all the breaking in and busting up after those darkies ran off. Just threw down their shovels. Darnedest thing I ever saw or heard. Don’t know what goes on in their heads half the time.”

  He grimaced at mankind’s deficiencies. “Pulled up in the wagon and half of them took one sniff and started talking loony about some Marie Venison or somebody. Two blinks, and they’re gone, quick as a nickel at the county fair. Just plain gone, the half of them, without a wave goodbye. I got the rest inside here, complaining every step. After that, I was all busy trying to figure out how this place is organized, working my way down to where they had you sealed up. And God amighty, if the rest of them didn’t start hollering and run off, like they just saw Kingdom coming their way and didn’t much like the look of it.”

  He shook his head. “Grabbed one by the arm. Swear to God, I never seen a man so afraid. Not even at Gaines’ Mill. No, sir. When I asked him what the dickens, he started jabbering about some brown gal floating in the air and clawing at the tomb they got you shut up in. He was scared half white.” The captain grimaced. “They’re all crazy down here, black and white. And every shade in-between. All of them. Swear to God. Every useless one.”

  I owed him gratitude as my benefactor. But I found his language wanton. The name of Our Lord is not mere punctuation.

  “How on earth did you even know to look for me? Or where?” I asked.

  The events of the day swirled about me and my legs opposed my desire to remain upright. My toothache, having fled at the prospect of death, returned to haunt the living. Although I was glad to be alive, I was not at my best.

  “Who sent you to rescue me?” I demanded. I had grown a bit cranky, now that I was safe. “Who told you where I was?”

  The captain nodded to himself, recalling his own excitements.

  “The fat man,” he said.

  THE BULLET MISSED me and spared Captain Bolt. But a soldier just behind us tossed up his hands at the sound of the shot. He called for his mother as he fell, then sprawled on the ground as only the dead can manage.

  It was the lad who had been so anxious to dust off the scraps of death.

  “Stay here!” I commanded. A hint of battle brings me to myself, see. I snatched a rifle and cartridge belt from the stacked arms of the detail, collapsing the rest. “Put out those lanterns,” I called over my shoulder. For I was already off at a run, bad leg or no, scuttling down the lanes between the tombs.

  First, I had to get me deep in the darkness, into a realm where the marksman and I would be even. I have a good sense of direction and sought to work my way toward the killer. Perhaps he had already fled, if other gates there were in the boneyard walls. Wise snipers do not linger. But if he had been fool enough to stay, I meant to bag him.

  The moon had not come out to flirt, so the lonesome dark embraced me. Treacherous the going was, for some of the tombs were cordoned by low rails with cast-iron spikes. A fellow saw the paleness of the crypt, but not its shadowy guardians. Such reverence for the dead was hard on my shins and I took a nasty spill that near impaled me.

  Still, I know how to make my way in the night far better than most. I learned my skills from Johnny Seekh, then polished my talents in the Afghan hills. A man whose feet cannot find their way in silence does not live long in the East.

  A wilderness of stone it was, dense and disordered. But I was certain that I had my bearings. I lowered myself as close to the earth as I could without crawling on my hands and knees. Dragging my disloyal leg behind me.

  And I listened.

  The rustle of a city late in the evening reported life beyond the boneyard walls. I heard the crack of a whip, then whinnies and creaking wheels. Struggling to fix my ears on closer matters, I found that I was panting like a beast.

  And then I heard a boot scrape over gravel.

  I stood to fire over a low vault. The world exploded with light.

  My quarry had lit a torch. Hurling it from behind a tomb, he meant to spoil my vision in the darkness. To allow himself the next shot.

  I dropped back to the earth with one eye shut. A bullet nicked the crypt where I had stood.

  The shot had not come from my enemy. One of the soldiers behind me had fired the round.

  Twas my own fault and I should have known better. They were not proper veterans. Nor could I trust the quality of their leadership. I had told them to remain behind. But I failed to tell them to let me do the shooting.

  The torch crackled on the earth. Just beyond the vault where I was kneeling. If I stood up, I would show myself to both the sniper and my fellow soldiers. And likely earn a crossfire for the risk.

  Whispering stronger language than is my habit, I crawled away from the sputtering torchlight, embracing the ground like a native scout in the Khyber.

  I heard footsteps. Fleeing.

  The gunman would have his back to me. I took a chance and rose, rifle locked back tight against my shoulder.

  I saw his shadow in the dying light. But before I could aim, another bullet bit the marble wall behind my head.

  Again, it issued from my fellow soldiers, not from mine enemy.

  I could not call out to tell them to hold their fire. That would only give me away to my quarry. Instead, I scuttled along like a seashore crab, dropping the hammer on the rifle so I might use it as a stick to help me.

  I was unwilling to give up the chase, although my own comrades, having rescued me earlier, now seemed anxious to send me to my reward. Lucky it was they were not better marksmen. I do not think that Jimmy Molloy or I would have missed our target at that range.

  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.<
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  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.