Ganymede (2 page)

Josephine did not particularly care for the unofficial designation, but there wasn’t much to be done about it now. A name with a rhyme sticks harder than sun-dried tar.

But quietly, bitterly, Josephine saw no logical reason why a woman in her forties should be referred to with the same address as a toddler, purely because she’d never married. Furthermore, she employed no “girlies.” She took great pains to see to it that her ladies were precisely that: ladies, well informed and well educated. Her ladies could read and write French as well as English, and some of them spoke Spanish, too; they took instruction on manners, sewing, and cooking. They were young women, yes, but they were not frivolous children, and she hoped that they would have skills to support themselves upon leaving the Garden Court Boarding House.

All the Garden Court ladies were free women of color.

It was Josephine’s experience that men liked nothing better than variety, and that no two men shared precisely the same tastes. With that in mind, she’d recruited fourteen women in a spectrum of skin tones, ranging from two very dark Caribbean natives to several lighter mixes like Marylin, who could have nearly passed for white. Josephine herself counted an eighth of her own ancestry from Africa, courtesy of a great-grandmother who’d come to New Orleans aboard a ship called the
Adelaide
. At thirteen, her grandmother had been bought to serve as a maid, and at fourteen, she’d birthed her first child, Josephine’s mother.

And so forth, and so on.

Josephine was tall and lean, with skin like tea stirred with milk. Her forehead was high and her lips were full, and although she looked her age, she wore all forty-two years with grace. It was true that in her maturity she’d slipped from “beautiful” to merely “pretty,” but she anticipated another ten years before sliding down to the dreaded “handsome.”

She looked again at the watch, and at the wastebin holding the unfortunate telegram, and she wondered what on earth she was going to do now. Major Alcock was expecting a report on her mission’s progress, and Admiral Partridge had made clear that it wasn’t safe to keep the airship carrier
Valiant
too close to the delta for very long. Texas wouldn’t tolerate it—they’d chase the big ship back out to sea like a flock of crows harrying an eagle.

She had until the end of May. No longer.

That left not quite four weeks to figure out a number of things which had gone years without having been figured out thus far.

“
Ganymede,
” she said under her breath, “I
will
find someone to fly you.”

All she needed was a pilot willing to risk his life in a machine that had killed seventeen men to date; brave the Mississippi River as it went past Forts Jackson and Saint Philip and all the attending Rebels and Texians therein; and kindly guide it out into the Gulf of Mexico past half a dozen Confederate warships—all the while knowing the thing could explode, suffocate everyone inside, or sink to the ocean bottom at any moment.

Was it really so much to ask?

The Union thought she was out of her mind, and though they wanted the scuttled craft, they couldn’t see paying yet another seventeen men to die for it. Therefore, any further salvage efforts must come out of Josephine’s own pocket. But her pockets weren’t as deep as the major seemed to think, and the cost of hiring a high-level mercenary for such a mission was well outside her reach.

Even if she knew another pilot half so good as Croggon Hainey, and without any allegiance to the occupying Republicans or the Confederates, a month might not be enough time to fetch him, prepare him, and test him.

She squeezed her watch and popped it open. The gears inside flipped, swayed, and spun.

But on second thought …

She’d told Marylin she didn’t know any other pilots. The lie had slipped off her tongue as if it’d been greased, or as if she’d only forgotten it wasn’t true, but there
was
someone else.

It wasn’t worth thinking about. After all, it’d been years since last she saw him—since she even thought about him. Had he gone back West? Had he married, and raised a family? Would he come if she summoned him? For all she knew, he wasn’t even alive anymore. Not every man—even a man like Andan Cly—survives a pirate’s career.

“He’s probably dead,” Josephine told herself. “Long gone, I’m sure.”

She wasn’t sure.

She looked back at the wastebin, and she realized that with one more telegram, she could likely find out.

Croggon Hainey frequented the Northwest corners, didn’t he? And Cly had come from a wretched, wet backwater of a port called … what was it again? Oh, yes:
Seattle
—out in the Washington Territory, as far away from New Orleans as a man could get while staying on colonial turf.

“No coincidence, that,” she said to the empty room, realizing she flattered herself to think so. Well, so what? Then she flattered herself. She wasn’t the first.

Downstairs, something fell heavily, or something large was thrown and landed with a muffled thunk.

Josephine’s ears perked, and she briefly forgot about the wastebin, the telegram, and potential news of long-ago lovers from distant hinterlands. She listened hard, hoping to hear nothing more without daring to assume it.

The Garden Court Boarding House was different from many bordellos, but not so different that there were never problems: drunk men, or cruel men who wanted more than they were willing to buy. Josephine did her best to screen out the worst, and she prided herself on both the quality of her ladies and the relative peace of her establishment; even so, it was never far from her mind how quickly things could turn, and how little it would take for the French Quarter to remember that she was only a colored woman, and not necessarily entitled to own things, much less protect them, preserve them, and use them for illicit activities.

It was a line she walked every night, between legitimate businesswoman performing a service for the community of soldiers, sailors, merchants, and planters … and the grandchild of slaves, who could become a slave herself again simply by crossing the wrong state lines.

Louisiana wasn’t safe, not for her or any of her ladies. Maybe not for anybody.

But this was Josephine’s house, and she guarded it with all the ferocity and cunning of a mother fox. So when she heard the noise downstairs, she listened hard,
willing
innocent silence to follow, but suspecting the worst and preparing herself accordingly.

In the top left drawer of her battered, antique, secondhand desk, she kept a .44-caliber Schofield—a Smith & Wesson revolver she’d nicknamed “Little Russia.” It was loaded, as always. She retrieved it and pushed the desk drawer shut again.

It was easy to hide the weapon behind her skirts. People don’t expect a left-handed woman, and no one expects to be assaulted by anyone in a fancy gown—which was one more good reason to wear them all the time.

Out past the paneled office door she swept, and down the red-carpeted runner to the end of the hall, where a set of stairs curved down to all three lower levels, flanked by a banister that was polished weekly and gleamed under the skimming touch of Josephine’s hand. The commotion was on the second floor, or so her ears told her as she drew up nearer.

The location was a good thing, insofar as any commotion was ever good. Far better than if it were taking place down in the lobby. It’s bad for business, and bad for covering up trouble, should a cover-up be required. At street level, people could squint and peek past the gossamer curtains, trying to focus on the slivers of light inside and the women who lived within.

At street level, there could be witnesses.

Josephine was getting ahead of herself, and she knew it. She always got ahead of herself, but that’s how she’d stayed alive and in charge this long, so she couldn’t imagine slowing down anytime soon. Instead she held the Schofield with a cool, loose grip. She felt the gun’s weight as a strange, foreign thing against her silk overskirts, where she buried it out of sight. As she’d learned one evening in her misspent youth at the notorious pirate call of Barataria, she need not brandish a gun to fire it. It’d shoot just fine through a petticoat, and knock a hole in a man all the same. It would ruin the skirts, to be certain, but those were trade-offs a woman could make in the name of survival.

Down on the second-floor landing, she stepped off the stairs so swiftly, she seemed to be moving on wings or wheels. She brought herself up short just in time to keep from running into the Texian Fenn Calais.

A big man in his youth, Mr. Calais was now a soft man, with cheeks blushed pink from years of alcohol and a round, friendly face that had become well known to ladies of the Garden Court. Delphine Hoobler was under one of his arms, and Caroline Younger was hooked beneath the other.

“Evening, ma’am!” he said cheerfully. He was always cheerful. Suspiciously so, if you wanted Josephine’s opinion on the matter, but Fenn was so well liked that no one ever did.

With her usual polite formality, she replied, “Good evening to you, Mr. Calais. I see you’re being properly cared for. Is there anything I can get you, or anything further you require?”

Caroline flashed Josephine a serious look and a sharpened eyebrow. This was combined with a quick toss of her head and a laugh. “We’ll keep an eye on him, Miss Josephine,” she said lightly, but the urgent, somber gleam in her eyes didn’t soften.

Josephine understood. She nodded. “Very well, then.” She smiled and stepped aside, letting the three of them pass. When they were gone, she turned her attention to the far end of the corridor. Caroline and Delphine had been luring Fenn Calais away from something.

From someone.

She could guess, even before she saw the window that hadn’t been fully shut, and the swamp-mud scuff of a large man’s shoe across the carpet runner.

With a glance over her shoulder to make sure the Texian was out of hearing range, she called softly, “Deaderick? That’d damned well
better
be you.”

“It’s me,” he whispered back. He leaned out from the stairwell. “That Fenn fellow was passed out on the settee with a drink in his hand. I thought I could sneak past without waking him up, but he sleeps lighter than he looks.”

She exhaled, relieved. She wedged Little Russia into her skirt pocket. “Delphine and Carrie took care of him.”

“Yeah, I saw.” He looked back and forth down the hall. Seeing no one but his sister, he relaxed enough to leave his hiding place.

Deaderick Early was a tall man, and lean like his sister, though darker in complexion. They had only a mother in common, and Deaderick was several shades away from Josephine’s paler skin. His hair was thick and dense, and black as ink. He let it grow into long locks that dangled below his ears.

“You’re lucky it was only Fenn. He’s easily distracted and probably too drunk to recognize you.”

“Still, I didn’t mean to take the chance.”

She sighed and rubbed at her forehead, then leaned back against the wall and eyed him tiredly. “What are you doing here, Rick? You know I don’t like it when you come to town. I worry about you.”

“You don’t worry about me living camped in a swamp?”

“In the swamp you’re armed, and with your men. Here you’re alone, and you’re visible. Anyone could see you, point you out, and have you taken away.” She blinked back the dampness that filled her eyes. “With every chance you take, the odds stack higher against you.”

“That may be, but we need soap, salt, and coffee. For that matter, a little rum would make me a popular man, and we could stand to have a better doctor’s kit,” he added, looking down at an ugly swath of inflamed skin on his arm—caused, no doubt, by the stinging things that buzzed in the bayou. “But also, I came to bring you
this
.”

From the back pocket of his pants, he produced an envelope that had been sealed and folded in half. “It might help your pilot, if you ever find one.”

“What is it?”

“Schematics from a footlocker at the Pontchartrain base. It’s got Hunley’s writing on it. I think it’s a sketch for the steering mechanism, and part of the propulsion system. Or that’s what Chester and Honeyfolk said, and I’m prepared to take their word for it.”

“Neither one of them needs it?” She slipped the envelope down into her cleavage, past her underwear’s stays.

“They’ve already taken that section apart and put it all back together. It doesn’t hold any secrets for an engineer, but a pilot who wants to know what he’s getting himself into … this might come in handy. Or it might not, if you have to trick someone into taking the job.”

A loud cough of laughter came from upstairs, and the
whump
of heavy footsteps. The siblings looked up to the ceiling, as if it could tell them anything; but Josephine said, “Fenn again, heading to the water closet. Listen, we should go outside. Out back it’s quiet, and even if someone sees you, it’ll be too dark for anyone to recognize you.”

“Fine, if that’s what you want.” He pushed the back stairway door open and held it for her, letting her lead the way.

Down they went, her soft, quiet house slippers making no noise at all, and his dirty leather boots trailing a muffled drumbeat in her wake. At the bottom, she unlocked the back door and pushed it. It moaned on its hinges, scraping trash and mud with its bottom edge.