Rebels of Babylon Read online

  “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.”

  THREE

  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?”

  His remarkable physiognomy quit my sight.

  I must remind you of Mr. Barnaby’s history. He had been a gentleman’s haberdasher in the very city where we stood that night. Until the Yel
low Fever took his family. Thereafter, he lost his spunk and lost his business. When first we met, in the shocked weeks after Shiloh, the fellow was a gentleman’s gentleman in service to a Confederate of good family.

  An excellent doer at table, Mr. Barnaby was confident at the hip. Shaped like a ripened pear, he was not slovenly fat, but stout and strong. His beef rode high in front. It looked as if a cannonball were about to explode upward through his waistcoat. Bald but for a fringe of chestnut hair and long of face with a plump nose misattached, his person made no proper sense, but seemed randomly collected, if abundant. He was a good-natured fellow who killed without dismay, when events required.

  English-born though he was, we had grown fond in the days we rode together, pursuing killers who claimed to act for God. But that is another tale. When last I saw him, Mr. Barnaby had enjoyed a wound to his posterior, which invalided him from the field for uncertain months.

  As I heard his footsteps returning, I recalled that Captain Bolt had said “the fat man” had been responsible for my rescue.

  Had Mr. Barnaby saved me twice in the course of a single day? That was a heavy debt.

  He had retrieved not only a towel, but also the clean uniform I had left with the bath attendant.

  Averting his eyes as a gentleman should do, Mr. Barnaby tossed me the cloth then looked over my uniform, inspecting the stitching and trim. He did seem in a state of some anxiety.

  “Lovely work!” he declared. “Fit for a very general! Why, when I ’ad my establishment on Canal Street, I ’adn’t no more than two tailors I could call upon to do such sewing as this ’ere.”

  “It is my own wife’s work,” I told him proudly. “My Mary is become the proprietress of a grand dressmaking establishment.”

  Now, you will say: “Since when is your wife’s dressmaking shop so grand? We thought it was a small affair in Pottsville.” But I will tell you: Grand enough it seemed to me, and a fellow must not insult his dear wife’s efforts. And truth be told, who among us does not like to put the best face on matters?

  “Lovely work, just lovely! And, bless me, not a single drop of blood on any inch of it!”

  “Why,” I asked, as I rubbed myself down and the serpent gave a jerk, “should there be blood, Mr. Barnaby?”

  His eyebrows lifted as if to say the matter was self-evident. “Well, the fellow who ’ad the night duty was brushing down your kit when they cut ’is throat. Gashed as wide as a melon carved with a butcher’s knife, ’e is. They must’ve been wicked quick, sir, for I didn’t see nobody as I stepped in myself.” He looked at me, disregarding my condition of immodesty. “I must say, begging your pardon, Major Jones, that you does seem to leave an unreasonable number of corpses behind when you visit us.”

  “Mr. Barnaby … I must ask you a thing. Did you report to the authorities that I had been buried alive?”

  He shook his head. Bewildered. “No such thing, sir! No such thing at all!”

  I was befuddled. “But …”

  “All I told ’em,” Mr. Barnaby said, “was that you ’ad been kidnapped from a ’ouse in the Vieux Carré. Couldn’t ’ardly believe my eyes, when I seen ’em dragging you out of Miss Ruby’s salon, as we likes to call it. Couldn’t ’ardly believe it.” He shook his long head until his belly trembled. “At first, I thought you might ’ave ’ad a few sips too many and made a bit of trouble for the ladies, requiring a certain amount of physical restraint. But then I remembered ’ow you was always going on about John Wesley and Methodism and other such dreadful matters, and I began to suspect that something wasn’t quite right between Brighton and Bristol. After I saw Petit Jean come down the steps, ’im bleeding like an Irishman’s ’eart at the sight of an empty bottle, I knew you ’adn’t found New Orleans welcoming.”

  I wished to inquire as to the identity of “Petit Jean,” who I supposed must be the giant negro. But Mr. Barnaby had grown extraordinarily agitated. He searched my uniform as if two hands were inadequate.

  “Something wrong, is it?” I asked him.

  He raised a worried face. “I can’t find it,” he told me. “What ’as you done with it, sir? Begging your pardon, but tell me where you put it …”

  His demeanour was transformed. A fellow of aplomb in the midst of battle, he had grown as nervous as a lass who cannot find the slippers she meant to wear to her first ball.

  “What are you—”

  Staring at me, the fellow seemed pushed toward madness.

  “For God’s sake,” he cried, “where is it, sir? We ’ave no time to waste!”

  “Whatever are you on about? Surely, we—”

  “The charm, the charm … where is it?” He did seem terribly anxious. “Petit Jean always sneaks one onto ’is victims, for good measure. Did they put anything in your pocket? Around your neck?”

  “You mean that stinking little bag?”

  “That’s it, that’s it! What ’as you done with it, sir?”

  “I threw it away. It was oozing powder and—”

  The poor fellow took such alarm I feared he would swoon.

  “Dear God!” he bellowed. “We ’as to find it. Quick, sir.”

  “It was just a filthy, little sack and—”

  “Where is it, sir? I begs you. If you wants to wake up in the morning!”

  “It’s in the dustbin in the changing room. Just down the hall. As soon as I—”

  He hurled my uniform at me, launching himself back through the curtains so fiercely I thought he would tear them from the railing.

  “Dress!” he shouted behind himself. “For the love of God, get dressed, sir!”

  It all seemed rather a fuss.

  As I was pulling my trousers high and snapping up my braces, my rescuer reappeared between the curtains.

  His face was pale as fresh milk in the bucket. He held out a little satchel, just the size and shape of a human finger. Holding it at his arm’s full length, as if it were a thing he feared to touch.

  His voice was quieter now, cut to a whisper. “We ’as to go. ’Urry up, sir.”

  “Mr. Barnaby,” I began, “you must calm yourself. You said a fellow has been murdered. And someone made an attempt on my life with that snake. There are matters I must attend—”

  Twas the queerest thing. When I tried to draw my right brace onto my shoulder, my arm refused to obey me.

  Mr. Barnaby watched as I struggled to make my limb behave.

  “Dear God,” he whispered. “It’s already begun.”

  MY REBELLIOUS HANDS were fussing with my buttons as he pulled me from the hotel’s lower entrance, straight out between the shut-up shops and beneath the pillars that aped a Roman temple.

  He did not so much select a cab as seize one. Forcing me inside, he followed after, depressing the carriage’s springs by at least six inches. He slapped shut the door, then thrust his head back out through the window leathers.

  “Bayou John!” he cried, “By the shell road, past the race course. I’ll tell you when to turn off.”

  “Twice the fare for them parts,” the driver said. “Night-time, too.” “Go!” Mr. Barnaby ordered. “Drive, man! Go!”

  The coachman whistled. “Hoo, she must be sumpin’, yes, sir!” He gee-upped his horse and the cab rocked into motion.

  Returning his attentions to my person, Mr. Barnaby said, “This ain’t good at all.”

  “Mr. Barnaby,” I began, “while I appreciate your concern for my well-being, I assure you that my arms are simply cramped. I’ve been through more than is sensible today, with falling off roofs and buryings and such like. I will be fine in the morning, when I am rested.”

  “You doesn’t understand!” he cried. “If you ain’t dead when the sun comes up, you’ll be paralyzed and worse!”

  “My dear Mr. Barnaby—”

  It was the queerest thing. My tongue had begun to swell. And my throat tightened. Forming words grew difficult, which is a hard fate for a Welshman.

  A realization struck me like a cannonball.

&nb
sp; “Poison …” I managed to say, with a new and terrible fear sweeping all through me. I had seen it turn men cholera-black in India.

  Mr. Barnaby pitied me by the flicker of the cab lamp. “It’s worse than that, it is. If only it was poison alone, we might put things right with a call on the apothecary.”

  I wished to tell him I would not believe any nonsense about spells or charms or spooks. But my powers of speech were disarmed.

  The cab rattled and banged along streets that declined in quality. Sentinels at a guardpost made us halt, but when they glimpsed my rank, they let us pass. It seemed to me a lax defense for a city.

  The road grew so rough I feared the cab would break its springs or even shatter a wheel. Yet, Mr. Barnaby urged the driver to greater speed. We rocked through the darkness, unhelped by the moon, and only Providence spared us a frightful accident.

  My companion leaned out of the window almost constantly, tilting the carriage.

  “There, there!” he cried of a sudden. “Turn into that yard!”

  The cab jounced to a halt, with the driver cursing.

  “I ain’t going in there,” he told Mr. Barnaby. “And I ain’t going any closer. That’s one of them nigger hant-woman houses. Ain’t it? Anyways, it’s too sumpy.”

  Mr. Barnaby did not waste time on argument, but dragged me from the vehicle. My good leg had begun to behave as meanly as the bothered one. I gasped for breath and my arms were utterly useless.

  Royally frightened I was by then. At the thought of poison seeping through my veins.

  “Oh, dear, dear!” my friend remarked.

  “That’s fifty cents,” the cabbie hollered. “Not including the—”

  “Wait there!” Mr. Barnaby snapped without breaking his stride.

  He moved with such haste that he almost seemed to carry me. I saw the outlines of a shack and the hint of a glow behind some window rags.

  “Don’t let on that you ’as any reservations,” Mr. Barnaby whispered. “Don’t say a word what might be taken ill …”