Sam did so.
“This is an irregular hour for a prisoner transfer,” the guard said.
“I don’t care that it’s regular or irregular,” said Sam. “I’m here to do a job, and if you have to wake your commanding officer before I can do it, then wake him, please, and do it promptly.”
“I don’t know as that’s necessary… as long as you’ll sign for the prisoner.”
“Of course I’ll sign for her! Where is she?”
The head man did not bestir himself, but called one of his underlings from door duty. “Packard, show these men to the cellar. Take the keys.”
We followed Packard down a set of stairs into a dimly-lit and stinking arrangement of iron-barred cells—a man-made Hell, I might even say, except that it was rather more cold than warm at the moment. I looked around this awful place for any sign of Calyxa, but what I saw was something much worse: the unhappy faces of Job and Utty Blake.
* * *
The two villains jointly occupied a single cell. Our passage had waked them up, and they gazed at us with sleepy suspicion. I did not doubt they were the Blake brothers, though I had only seen one of them before, and then only the top of his head. That one was Job; and if he recognized me by the dim light of the guard’s lantern he showed no sign of it.
Both brothers possessed the family signature, which was a crown of bushy, curly hair; but Job’s incarnation of it had been altered by my prior encounter with him. At the top of his forehead a wide swatch of hair was gone, replaced by a conspicuously scarred and wrinkled divot where my pistol shot had creased his skull. I cannot say I took pride in the sight of the wound I had inflicted on this terrible man… but it didn’t entirely displease me.
I was careful to betray no reaction, however, for it would have been awkward had he known me. We proceeded on to a much larger cell, as big as a room, in which several people had been confined together—the “Parmentierists,” of whom Calyxa was one. She sprang to her feet at the sight of me; but I made a cautioning gesture, and she spoke not a word.
“That’s her there,” the guard said, pointing.
“Let her out, then,” Sam demanded.
Packard fumbled with a ring of keys by the dim glow of the lantern. While he was doing that Calyxa stepped forward and stood where she could whisper to me without being overheard.
“What do you want, Adam?” she asked with unexpected coolness.
“What do I want! Didn’t you get my letter?”
The other inmates—I recognized some of them from her circle of friends at the Thirsty Boot—were frankly curious about this midnight visit; but they kept their distance from us, once Calyxa had given them a fierce glare.
“Yes,” she said. “I got it and read it. You said you want to marry me.”
I did, of course, but I hadn’t thought to discuss it so baldly, or through the bars of a prison cell. “I want to marry you above all other Earthly things,” I said. “If you consent to be my wife, Calyxa, the world won’t hold a happier specimen of a man. Once you’re free of this place—”
“But if I don’t consent?”
“Don’t consent!” That bewildered me. “Well—that’s your decision—all I can do, Calyxa, is ask.”
“I won’t consent to any such arrangement until I know the details of it. There’s a suspicion of you among my friends, who aren’t inclined to trust a soldier of any breed or nationality.”
“What am I suspected of?”
“Bargaining my freedom in exchange for my betrothal.”
“I don’t understand!”
“I can’t make it any plainer. Am I free to go, whether I marry you or not? Or am I to rot in this prison unless I consent?”
I was astonished that she could suspect me of such blackmail, and I put it down to the bad influence of her political companions. At least, I thought, the expression on her face was more hopeful than despairing. I said, “I love you, Calyxa Blake, and I won’t let you linger here an hour longer even if you despise me with all the passion in your body. To see you set free is all I care about right now—we can discuss the rest of it another time.”
I said this loudly enough to be heard by the cynical Parmentierists, who responded by giving me a cheer, perhaps not altogether ironical in intent; and they started up an impudent chorus of Piston, Loom, and Anvil, as Calyxa shot them a vindictive look that said, in essence, I told you so!
Unfortunately I was also overheard by the slack-jawed guard, Packard, who looked alarmed, and pulled back his key from the key-hole. “What’s this about?” he asked, and he persisted in his questioning until Lymon Pugh was forced to silence the poor man. [Lymon had amused himself during his hospital confinement by making himself a Knocker—a very fine one, consisting of a lead egg in a hempcloth sack, just as he had once described to me—and it was this device he employed to relieve the guard of his senses.]
Sam retrieved the keys from Packard’s limp hand and opened the door, and said to all those it contained, “You might as well take the opportunity, you boys—there are only two guards in the outer office, and if you handle them fast they won’t have time to raise an alarm.”
The Parmentierists seemed impressed by this act of generosity on the part of an American soldier, and I hoped it would make their political views more nuanced in the future. They crowded out quickly, eager to overwhelm the remaining guards, and Calyxa came into my arms.
“Well, will you?” I asked, once we had breath enough to speak.
“Will I what?”
“Marry me!”
“I suppose I will,” she said, sounding surprised at her own answer.
* * *
My joy was unconquerable, though it ebbed as we passed the cage where Job and Utty Blake were confined.
Utty sat at the back of the cell, scowling and muttering. But Job, whom I had shot, came up to the bars, and rattled them as savagely as a gorilla, and spat out curses in the French language.
“I don’t guess we’ll set these two free,” Sam said, the keys still jingling in his hand.
“No,” said Calyxa, “please don’t —they’re murderers, bush runners, and spies for the Dutch when the money is good—they’ve already been convicted and sentenced to hang.”
She explained that in the melee between the Blake Brothers and the Parmentierists several shots had been fired, but only Job and Utty had struck targets. Job had killed a young Parmentierist, and Utty had gunned down a luckless bystander. Some Colonel or Major of the local garrison had promptly appointed himself a court and sentenced the pair to public hanging… perhaps not a wholly legal procedure even under the rules of military occupation; but no one, apart from the Blake Brothers, had taken exception to it.
Job had heard all about Calyxa’s dalliance with a soldier, and he had deduced by the events of this evening that I was that person, the one who had come within an inch of blowing out his brains. He directed more curses and not a little saliva at me, before turning his vulture’s gaze on Calyxa.
“Tu nous sers à rien, mais pire… tu nous déshonores! Dommage que tu sois pas mort dans l’utérus de ta mère!”
“What’s he saying?” I asked.
“He says he regrets that I was ever born.”
I looked Job Blake hard in the eye. “We all have regrets in this life,” I said, philosophically. “Tell him I regret I didn’t aim lower.”
9
The wedding was arranged to take place on the Saturday after Easter, by which time Sam, Julian, and I would be civilians again; and after the ceremony we would all board the train for New York City , and begin our lives afresh.