Clementine

4. MARIA ISABELLA BOYD

The passenger docks in Chicago were out past the slaughter yards, and Maria got a good whiff of them as the coach bore her swiftly toward the semi-permanent pipe piers and the tethered dirigibles that waited there. Out the window she watched not quite nervously, not very happily, as the red-brick city sped by-its streets and walkways gray with the soot of a thousand furnaces, and its roads rough with unfixed holes. A particularly pointed jostle threatened to unseat her hat, so she clutched it into place.

She read and reread the information from the envelope. She fingered the ticket, rubbing her thumb against the word TOPEKA, knowing that she’d have to make new arrangements and wondering how she’d go about it.

Maria had never flown in a dirigible before, but she wasn’t about to admit it-and she was prepared to figure out the details as she went. She was no stranger to improvisation; it wouldn’t have bothered her in the slightest if this weren’t her first case, and if she didn’t have so many questions.

Perhaps it ought to be considered a point of flattery that Pinkerton was prepared to start her off with something so shady and uncertain. Or perhaps she ought to feel insulted, wondering if he would’ve given such an assignment to any of his male operatives; and wondering if they would’ve received the same slim briefing.

Nothing felt right about it.

But she wasn’t in a position to be picky, so when the coach deposited her at a gate, she paid the driver, gathered her skirts into a bunch in her fist, and strode purposefully in the direction of a painted sign that said, “Ticketing.” Lifted skirts and all, filthy slush swept itself onto the fabric and squished nastily against her leather boots. She ignored it, waited behind one other man in line, and approached the thin-faced fellow behind a counter with the declaration, “Hello sir, I beg your assistance, please. I have a ticket to Topeka, but I need to exchange it for passage to Jefferson City.”

“Do you now?” he asked, not brightening, lightening, or showing any real interest. He pulled a monocle off its sitting place at the edge of his eye socket, and wiped it on his red and white striped vest.

Instinctively, she knew this kind of man. He was one of several kinds that were easy enough to handle with the appropriate tactics. The ticket man was thin-limbed and sour, overly enthused with his tiny shred of authority, and bound to give her hassle-she knew it even before she clarified her difficulties.

“I do. And I understand that the Jefferson City-bound ship leaves rather shortly.”

He glanced at a sheet of paper tacked to a board at his left and said, “Six minutes. But you shouldn’t have bought a ticket to Topeka if you wanted to go to Jefferson City. Exchanges aren’t simple.” He spoke slowly, as if he had no intention of accommodating her, and orneriness came naturally because he was essentially weak-and he would not be moved except by threat of force.

She was not yet prepared to resort to a force past feminine wiles, but she could see the necessity looming in the distance.

“I didn’t buy the ticket,” she told him. “It was purchased for me by my employer, whom you are more than welcome to summon if you take any issue with my request which is, I think we can honestly agree, a reasonable one.”

“It would’ve been more reasonable if he’d gotten you the right ticket in the first place.”

She spoke quickly, firmly, and with the kind of emphasis that didn’t have time to cajole. The ticket man did not know it because he was a little bit dense, but this was his final warning. “Then indeed, we can agree on something. But the situation changed, and now my ticket needs to be changed, and I’d be forever in your debt if you’d simply accept this ticket and provide me with a substitute.”

He leaned in order to look around her, in case there was anyone else at all whom he might address. Seeing no one, he straightened himself and deepened his smug frown. “You’re going to have to fill out a form.” Maria glanced at the clock on the table, but before she could say anything in protest the ticket man added, “Four minutes, now. You’d better write quickly.”

Before he could utter the last syllable, Maria’s patience had expired and her hands were on his collar, yanking him forward. She held him firmly, eye to eye, and told him, “Then it sounds like I don’t have time to be nice. I’d prefer to be nice, mind you-I’ve made a career out of it, but if time is of the essence then you’re just going to have to forgive me if I resort to something baser.”

Flustered, he leaned back to attempt a retreat; but Maria dug her feet into the half-frozen dirt. As the ticket man learned, she was stronger than she looked. “Oh no, you don’t. Now put me on the ship to Jefferson City, or I’ll summon my employer and let the Pinkerton boys explain how you ought to treat a lady in need.”

“P-Pinkerton?”

“That’s right. I’m their newest, meanest, and best-dressed operative, and I need to get to Jefferson City, and you, sir, are standing between me and my duty.” She released him with a shove that sent him back into his seat, where his bony back connected unpleasantly with the chair. “Am I down to three minutes yet?” she asked.

With a stutter, he said, “No.”

“And how long will it take me to find the ship that will take me to Jefferson City?”

“M-maybe a minute or two.”

“Then maybe you’d better hurry up and swap my ticket before I get back in my coach, go back to my office, and explain to Mr. Pinkerton why I missed the ship he was so very interested in seeing me catch.” She planted both hands on the edge of the counter and glared, waiting.

Without taking his eyes off the irate Southern woman who was absolutely within eye-gouging range, the ticket man took the Topeka slip and, reaching into a drawer, retrieved a scrap of paper that would guarantee passage aboard a ship called Cherokee Rose.

Maria took the ticket, thanked him curtly, spun on her heel, and ran up to the platform where the ships were braced for passenger loading. The ticket said that Cherokee Rose was docked in slot number three. She found slot number three as the uniformed man stationed at its gate was closing the folding barrier, and she held her hand up to her breastbone, pretending to be winded and on the verge of tears.

He was an older gentleman, old enough to be her father if not her grandfather; and his crisply pressed uniform fit neatly over his military posture, without any lint or incorrectly fastened buttons. Maria did not know if dirigibles were flown like trains were conducted, but she was prepared to guess the estimable old gentleman to be the pilot.

He was essentially a strong man, and most easily handled by appearing weak.

“Oh sir!” she said in her sweetest, highest-class accent, “I hope I’m not too late!” and she handed him the ticket.

He smiled around a pair of snow-white sideburns and retracted the gate in order to let her pass. “Not at all, ma’am. We’re only half full as it is, so I’m more than happy to wait for a lady.”

She lowered her lashes and gave him her best belle smile when she thanked him, and said, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your kindness.”

“It’s no trouble at all,” he assured her, and, taking her tiny gloved hand, he escorted her to the retracting steps that led up inside the Cherokee Rose. “I’ll be your captain on the airway to Jefferson City.”

“The captain?” she said, as if it were the most impressive thing she’d ever heard a man call himself. “Well isn’t that grand! It must be a terrifically difficult job you have, moving a machine of such size and complexity, up through the skies.”

He said, “Oh, it’s sometimes a trick, but I can promise you,” he let her go first, and rose up behind her. “We won’t meet much trouble on the way to Missouri. It’s a quiet skytrail, generally unremarked by pirates and too high for the Indians to bother us. The weather is fine, and the winds are fair. We’ll have you safely set down in about twenty hours, at the outside.”

“Twenty hours?” Maria’s head crested the ship’s interior, where half a dozen rows of seats were bolted down into the floor, off to her right. The seats were plushly padded, but worn around the corners; and only about half of them were occupied. “That’s a marvel of science, sir.”

“A marvel indeed!” he agreed, releasing her hand. “It’s three hundred miles, and if the weather doesn’t fight us, we’ll hold more or less steady at seventeen miles per hour. Welcome aboard my Cherokee Rose, Miss…?”

“Boyd,” she said. “I’m Miss Boyd, Captain…?”

He removed his hat and bowed. “Seymour Oliver, at your service. Can I help you stash your bags?”

“Thank you sir, very much!” She handed over her large tapestry bag and held close to the smaller one with Pinkerton’s instructions.

The captain heaved the luggage into a slot at the stowing bays, secured it with a woven net that fastened on the corners, and he told her, “Take your pick from the seats available, and please, make yourself comfortable. Refreshments are available in the galley room, immediately to your left-through the rounded door with the rivets, you see. A small washroom can be found to the rear of the craft, and the seats recline slightly if you adjust the lever on the arm rest. And if you need anything else, please don’t hesitate to stick your head through the curtain and let me hear about it.”

Captain Seymour Oliver retreated with two or three backward glances, and when he was gone Maria chose a seat in the back, without any other occupants in the row.

The seat was as comfortable as she had any right to expect on a machine that was made to move people from one place to another with efficiency. Though padded, it was lumpy; and though she had plenty of space to stretch out her legs, she could not raise her arms to stretch without knocking her knuckles on a metal panel affixed above her head. This was no flying hotel, but she could survive almost anything for twenty hours.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat’s edge, holding her smaller bag and its informative contents in her lap-and covered with her hands.

Through the speaking tubes, the captain announced that they were prepared to depart, and asked everyone to make use of the bracing straps built into the seats before them. Maria opened one eye, spotted the leather loop, and reached out to twist her fingers in the hand-hold; but it wasn’t as necessary as she’d expected.

The Cherokee Rose gave only the slightest shudder as it disembarked, leaving behind a pipework pier with barely a gasp and a wiggle. The feeling of being lifted made waves in Maria’s stomach. The sensation of being swung, ever so gently, from a gypsy’s pendulum, made her wish for something sturdier to grasp, but she didn’t flinch and she didn’t flail about, seeking a bar or a belt. Instead, she leaned her head back again-eyes closed once more-and prayed that she might nab a little sleep once the sun went down, and the cabin inevitably went dark.

It was a curious thing, the way her belly quivered and her ears rang and popped. She’d risen once before in a hot air balloon, but it’d been nothing like the Cherokee Rose-there’d been no hydrogen, no thrusters, no hissing squeals of pressurized steam forcing its way through pipes. Under her feet she detected the vibrating percussion of pipes beneath the floorboards and it tickled and warmed through her ice-chilled boots. She wormed her toes down and let the busy shaking soothe her, or mesmerize her, or otherwise distract her; and within five more minutes the ship was fully airborne, having crested the trees and even the tallest of the uniform, fireproof brick structures that surrounded the dockyards.

“Quite a performance there, Miss Belle.”

Maria blinked slowly; and through a rounded window to her right, she could see the tips of roofs falling away beneath the craft-and the dark, scattering flutter of birds disturbed from their flights.

To her left, the empty seat beside her was no longer empty. It was now occupied by an average-looking man in an average-looking suit. Indeed, everything about him seemed utterly calculated to achieve the very utmost median of averageness. His hair was a moderate shade of brown and his mustache was of a reasonable length and set; the shape of his body beneath the tailored gray clothes was neither bulky nor slender, but an ordinary shape somewhere in between. Only his shrewd green eyes implied that there might be more to him than blandness, and even these he hid behind a pair of delicate spectacles as if he were aware of the threat they posed.

Maria replied, “I’m afraid you must have mistaken me for someone else.”

“Not at all!” he argued, settling in the seat without her welcome to do so. He shifted his hips so that he could almost face her, and he said, “I’d know you anywhere, even without that outstanding display.”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea-”

“-What I’m talking about, yes. Here, let me begin another way instead. Let’s pretend that these are the first words I’ve said to you, and that my introduction is as follows-my name is Phinton Kulp, and two…perhaps three years ago…I saw you perform in a very fine presentation of Macbeth in Richmond. Your interpretation of the wicked Lady was not to be undervalued; I’ve seen far worse from far more expensive productions.”

For a few seconds she merely stared at him. Then she retreated, shifting so that she nearly leaned against the window in order to face him, in return. She said, “Phinton. That can’t possibly be your real name. I don’t think it’s anyone’s real name. Did you make it up on the spot?”

“You were wearing the most lovely blue gown, as I recall, and the pig’s blood on your hands was as convincing as if it’d gushed freshly from the torso of an inconvenient Lord.”

“I’m not entirely sure what you’re doing here, Mr. Kulp, but I’m fairly certain that you’re a liar, an unrepentant flatterer, and someone who has his own seat several rows away-to which he probably should return. The flight ahead is a long one, and I’d prefer to be left alone to rest.” She folded her arms across her chest, crossed her legs at the ankles, and reclined more fully against the window. The metal and fabric siding was fiercely cold when pressed against her back, but she made no sign that it bothered her.

Phinton Kulp feigned affront. He leaned forward and put his hands on the armrest between them and said, “Are you trying to insist that you’re not, in fact, the renowned actress and former, shall we say, ‘Confederate enthusiast’ Belle Boyd?”

“You’re not very good at this,” she said dryly. “I was a spy, you silly man-and a far better spy than I was ever an actress, but a lady has to eat and the stage kept me in meals between the lean times. Now. I want you to settle some things for me, in quick succession-or else I’ll summon the captain and have you forcibly returned to your appropriate seat.”

“Anything to satisfy your curiosity, ma’am.”

“Excellent. Tell me your real name, what you’re doing aboard this ship, and what you really want from me, and tell me quickly. Though it’s not yet noon, I’ve had a full and tiring day already and I do not speak in jest of my desire for solitude.”

Behind his spectacles the jade-colored eyes narrowed in a way that didn’t quite match the catlike grin he fashioned. “Very well, and very reasonably proposed. My real name is Mortimer, so you must pardon me if I selected something else. Phinton was the name of my sister’s first horse, and he was a good horse, thank you very much, so I’ve appropriated it and I will insist upon it. I am on board this ship with the express intent of reaching Jefferson City-”

“You’ll have to do better than that,” she interrupted.

“And so I shall. In that grand city I have business which must be attended to, and attended to without delay. Following the death of an uncle I scarcely knew, I seem to have inherited a dance hall. On the off chance that this satisfies the demands of your question, I’ll now move on to your final query before you have a chance to scowl at me any further-I wanted only to speak with you, and to express my most heartfelt admiration.”

“For my acting skills?”

“That and more,” he hid a smirk behind a delicate clearing of his throat.

Against her better judgment, Maria asked, “To what do you refer?”

“Only that I’ve long heard tales of the Southern girl with a tongue like a razor and a smile that moves mountains…or dirigibles, as the case may be. That was quite a lashing you gave the poor gent at the ticket counter.”

“I’m well past girlhood, Mr. Kulp; and as for the ticket agent, I did him no harm whatsoever.”

“Yet the threat was rather present, I think you must admit-to yourself, if not to me.”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about,” she lied, but it was a worthwhile lie because she’d decided to keep him talking, if only to lead him into saying something useful. His true intent still eluded her by design, and she didn’t care for it.

He cleared his throat again, using the expectoration as an excuse to cover his mouth with his fist. “Since you’ve not denied being the actress Belle Boyd-which is just as well, since we both know precisely who you are-and since you’ve already so eloquently confessed to your wartime activities, I might assume that once or twice, you’ve been known to hurt a man or two.”

“Once or twice, plus half a dozen or more. And if you don’t vacate these premises, perhaps that tally will rise.”

He pouted. “Come now, Belle. There’s no need for threats. Why can’t you give me the same sort of smile you’ve given our illustrious captain?”

“Because Captain Oliver was a gentleman.”

“And I’ve shown you something other than the utmost chivalry?”

She shook her head. “The circular talk will get you nowhere.”

“Except back to the beginning. Shall I try again?”

“You shall not, Mr. Kulp. You shall return to your seat with all haste if you have nothing of substance to tell me, and if you are likewise incapable of leaving me in peace.”

He shrugged merrily and said, “How on earth am I supposed to comply with such contradictory instructions? You’ve now ordered me to say something pertinent, and yet to keep quiet.”

“No, I suggested either one or the other. Meet one of these goals or be on your way.”

Finally, for a moment, he was silent. He stared pointedly at the folder in her lap, and something in his voice changed when he said more quietly, “So it’s true. The Pinks have snatched you up and put you to work.”

She hesitated in her response. “It’s not a secret,” she said, which was true.

“It’s not a widely known fact,” Phinton Kulp replied, and this was also true.

“Then what’s it to you?” she asked him flatly.

“Nothing at all. It’s as you said before, ‘A lady has to eat.’ But there must be a less dangerous way for a woman of your notoriety to keep herself in skirts and furs.” He retreated several inches, giving her both more breathing room and yet, cause for a little more worry.

“My state of employment is no concern of yours,” she told him.

And he said, “You’re right. But you can’t blame me for being curious, and you might want to treat interested strangers with less defensiveness. Pinkerton has operatives and informants from coast to coast, you know; and it won’t serve your purposes very well to send them trundling off to their seats, as if they’re naughty children caught under the tree before Christmastime. There are networks in place, alliances and allegiances to be balanced. Not everyone loves the Pinkerton name-even among those who sometimes serve it.”

She guessed, “You’re no operative.”

“At this time, you are correct. But I’m still a useful man to know-even Mr. Pinkerton will tell you that, if you ask him.”

“How convenient for you, that he isn’t present to interrogate on the subject.”

“On the contrary, I’d be pleased to see him, if only to see you set at ease with his reassurances. It must be difficult,” he said, keeping his voice low and now adding a bit of warning to it-a dash of sinister seasoning that Maria filed away for future reference. “Being a woman of your reputation, traveling alone, working in a man’s field in which you have absolutely no experience.”

“It isn’t so different from spying,” she insisted.

“From one point of view, I suppose not,” he agreed. “But between North and South you had only one enemy. Adversaries and cohorts might have doubled their roles, or blurred them, but at the end of the day you had only one authority to thwart and dodge. Wearing a Pinkerton shield, you’ll find things are more complicated. Pinkerton wages dozens of tiny wars, all at once, all across the territories. Working for him…it’s a dangerous calling, if you could call it that.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“It’s no such thing,” he promised. “Only an observation buttressed by a friendly suggestion, proposed by a concerned traveler who knows a little too well how hard this road is for a man-much less a magnolia like yourself.”

She snorted, and while making a show of making herself more comfortable, she reached for the derringer she always kept loaded in her smallest bag. “And toting secrets under threat of jail and hanging-that was a day at the park, picking flowers. Now if I may be so bold as to offer you a bit of advice, Mr. Kulp, then here you have it: There are people in this world who steadfastly refuse to understand anything unless it’s couched in terms of violence. In my experience, it is most expedient to simply accommodate them.”

“Expedient?”

“You may as well communicate in the language they best understand.”

Neither his spectacles nor his fist could hide the sly expression he assumed when he replied, “Does that mean you intend to shoot me, the very moment you get your hand wrapped around the gun in your bag?”

“I intend to think about it. And you clearly think you’re quite clever, anticipating me like that, but I think it only makes you moderately well read.”

“Both of the biographical pieces I’ve seen on the subject of the South’s most notorious spy did mention that you never travel unarmed, it’s true. And let me assure you, I don’t plan to press my luck on the point.”

Without bothering to note the gratuitous flattery, much less address it, she asked, “Does that mean you’re ready to leave me alone?”

“It means,” he said, removing the spectacles and wiping them on a handkerchief he pulled from a pocket, “That I’m reasonably satisfied that Pinkerton knows what he’s doing, and I’ll pass the word along.”

“Pass word…to whom?”

He didn’t answer, except to gather himself up and stretch, and begin a sideways shuffle back into the aisle. Then he said, “I hope your flight is a pleasant one, Belle Boyd, and send my regards to Mr. Rice when you see him.” He pinched the front of his hat in a tiny gesture that barely passed for a tip, and he returned to his spot at the front of the seating area without another word.

Maria almost called out after Phinton Kulp with demands for explanations, but doing so would’ve openly declared that he’d rattled her so she restrained herself. She settled back in the seat, drawing her shoulders away from the cold wall and window; and she kept her hand inside the purse-on the single-shot back-up plan that had saved her more than once before.

And between her bouts of uncertainty, her concerns about her fellow passengers, and the idle second thoughts that perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea after all, she slept off and on.

All the way to Jefferson City.