LITTLE HORSE

29

PANIC OVER THE UNEXPLAINED NOISES and visions of a nightmare come to life propelled Hetty along the streets, so much so that she felt like she was flying on her bicycle. Benjy trailed behind her. She stopped for nothing and no one, veering around any hapless person foolish enough to be out in the streets and in the shadows.

She almost threw her bicycle down to run up the steps to the door. She knocked first, forgetting the doorbell, forgetting her manners, aware only of Oliver’s note clutched in her hand.

She kept knocking even when the door opened and Jay himself stood there, lit up by his own magic that he had summoned around him.

“Henrietta, Benjamin,” the pastor asked. “What’s wrong?”

Hetty held up Oliver’s note. “You said your friends were dying. You neglected to say there was a connection or voice concerns about yourself!”

Jay studied the note calmly before he handed it back. “I only just realized things myself as I started to think over recent events and saw the link was in the past. Come inside. Cora is asleep, but we shouldn’t be heard in the kitchen.”

The light was already on in there, as he had been in the middle of enjoying a late-night cup of tea. He pushed aside his mug as Hetty and Benjy sat down.

“I have not always been a station master,” Jay began. “In my youth I worked the Road back before anything was organized. Just a few brave souls eager to do all they could. I came to Philadelphia as a young man in the late thirties, but after the ’forty-three riots I spent years doing what I could, mostly as far west as Ohio and south as Maryland. I traveled further as needed, and when the Fugitive Slave Act went into effect our little vigilance group came into being. We did targeted retrievals of persons known to us. You did a few of those yourself, so I think you understand how those went. It was fairly simple, but there were also some interesting cases. And none more than the one that began in 1840 when a young man I knew as Alvin Jacobs went to get a drink one night, in a little town not far from Boston. His company for drinking were strangers, and they were the wrong sort of company. They drugged him and tossed him into a wagon, and he ended up on a trader’s block in Virginia. Jacobs was a freeborn man, but without his papers, without people willing to give value to his words, he was enslaved.

“His wife of course tried to fix this. She petitioned the courts to overturn things, but it never went anywhere. By then Jacobs’s attempted flight to freedom caused enough damage and loss that the judge ruled against him. The family went around looking for anyone who could help, and the news reached Bernice in 1853. Bernice made arrangements for a group of us—myself, Raimond, Valentine, John Roberts, and a few others—to head down and bring Jacobs back home. The plan fell apart right away. I blamed Bernice at the time, but that was wrong of me. She didn’t know all the details.”

“What details?” Benjy asked.

Jay looked them both in the eye. “That in 1848 Alvin Jacobs dug the hole in which Vernon Clarke found his sapphires.”

“Stars above,” Hetty whispered. “Are you saying that—”

“This is about the Clarke Cipher!” Benjy exclaimed.

“Sadly, yes,” Jay said. “Rich folk are paranoid people. They find treasure and instead of sharing it, they hide it away. In this case, Clarke traveled to hide his treasure, hoping to keep it hidden longer. He created the ciphers to hide the location and other information, even if it fell into the wrong hands. I know all this because when we rescued Alvin Jacobs, he told us. Even as he escaped he had snatched those papers from Clarke’s study, fully intending to claim the treasure for himself since he’d dug it. It wasn’t greed, though. During the time of his bondage, he had adopted a young girl named Sarah. The girl had reminded him of the daughter he had been torn away from. The treasure would go to Sarah. We had even rescued her along with him that night. I wish this story could end happily. Or that I could say we took extra care as we headed back north. But I didn’t realize that Clarke, in addition to being paranoid, was like a dog with a bone. No—much worse. When he couldn’t get everything he wanted, he decided instead to destroy everything.”

“He caught up with you,” Hetty guessed.

Jay nodded. “Sent bounty hunters after us. Surrounded us, forced us on the run. Raimond got hurt, a few others were wounded in the fighting, and we all got separated. Then the bounty hunters grabbed Sarah. The ciphers or the girl’s life, they said. It was no choice for Alvin Jacobs. He gave himself up. They shot him even before the papers were in Clarke’s greasy hands. Sarah was taken away screaming. I tried to see if there was anything I could do, but there was never a chance. We could do no more.”

Jay tapped his fingers on the table, lost in his memories of the night and the regrets he’d carried since.

“If Jacobs gave the papers back, why is there a pamphlet?” Benjy asked.

“Jacobs was a clever man. He had the foresight to create a fake set of ciphers. Those were what he gave up while he passed the real ciphers to someone else.”

“To Valentine,” Hetty guessed. “The bookshop he owned has a printing press. It would have been an easy thing for him to make a pamphlet.”

“No one knew he had the ciphers until the pamphlet started making rounds. Raimond was so angry about it, but Valentine didn’t seem worried, or that’s the impression I got. I’m not sure why Valentine printed them in the end. Maybe he wanted to see if someone else could solve it. Maybe he wanted the money that came from selling a fantastical story like that. Maybe he thought enough time had passed that everyone who knew anything about it was dead or wouldn’t be bothered. Either way, he should have known better.”

“What about ’sixty-one? How do our travels with Sarah Jacobs fit into all of this?” Benjy asked.

“Clarke died in the previous winter rather suddenly, and his brother-in-law inherited his estate. He learned about the treasure, and from what I gathered, Sarah knew about a key that would aid in solving the ciphers. She was kept close and never let out of sight.”

“She was so closely watched the whole time, why go through all the effort?” It had been a great deal of effort, even before Hetty had made things tricker with a plot to rescue Sarah’s children. But even then Bernice did not balk at the change of plans.

“Bernice saw this as atonement. For what we should have done before.” Jay sighed. “She wasn’t alone in that. Getting Sarah to freedom was an attempt to fulfill what we failed to do with her father. That’s why you had so much help on your journey to Toronto. Although, we didn’t realize you would need it so badly. Or that the ciphers would still be that important.”

“They still are,” Hetty said. “Has anyone else contacted Sarah Jacobs? Has Bernice?”

“Bernice hasn’t told me so. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she had.”

“Or she’s waiting for the right moment,” Benjy remarked.

Hetty and Jay shared a look. “The ball!”

“Yes, the ball.” Benjy folded his hands under his chin, deep in thought. “It’s important to make sure we can talk. But not important enough to tell us right away.”

“That woman,” Jay grumbled. “She takes on too much, keeps too many secrets. What if it’s too late?”

Benjy only shook his head. “We would have heard, we would have known.”

“I beg to differ,” Jay said. “Six of my friends are dead, some very recently!”

“Which is why,” Benjy said, “Bernice didn’t say anything right away. The connection wasn’t clear. And now that it is, she’s going to try to protect you. Since it’s clear the murderer is after everyone connected to the Clarke Cipher.”

“How do you know that’s why she’s doing it?” Jay demanded.

Benjy’s gaze drifted over in Hetty’s direction. “I recognize that behavior.”

The insult was a gentle one, but it still stung even if she knew it was true.

“I promise, you’ll get a note saying not to go to the ball. Ignore it,” Benjy said.

“I would have anyway.” Jay struggled to smile. “If you two plan to go, it promises to be very interesting.”

“I think we can all agree on that.”

Cora entered the kitchen. She had been asleep, just like Jay had said. A scarf was still tight around her hair, and as she belted her dressing gown she floated like a queen into the room, stirred from her rest.

“Jay, why didn’t you wake me?” Cora asked as she stopped by the chair to Hetty’s left. She smiled at Hetty, as if they had never exchanged bitter words. “I know they didn’t come here at this hour to talk about a ball.”

“It’s about Valentine Duval,” Jay said when no one else spoke up. “It turns out what happened to him relates to what happened with Alvin Jacobs all those years ago.”

“That was when you, Raimond, John, and . . .” She blinked, catching on rather quickly, as she looked at him, horrified. “Sweet stars above! Don’t tell me this is all because of that silly little cipher?”

“Who told you it was a silly little cipher, again?” Jay asked tersely.

“Bernice.” Cora shook a finger at him, before he could interrupt her. “That’s because the idea of treasure is as fantastical as one as Henrietta’s stories.”

“My stories always have a bit of truth in them,” Hetty reminded her. “And there’s more. Valentine asked us about Sarah Jacobs before he died, and Emily, Sarah’s daughter, had written to Raimond very recently.”

“If you look into the past two months, nearly everyone that was there that night has died,” Benjy said. “Mostly in a manner that didn’t attract attention.”

“Nearly everyone,” Cora echoed. “Old man,” she said, looking intently at her husband, “you’re in trouble.”

Jay turned to each of them. “I’m perfectly fine. I have all of you looking out for me. I’ve noticed nothing odd.”

Cora tapped the chair’s back, unswayed by his words. “There was that fire on Carver Street.”

“Where your tunnel used to lead out,” Hetty said with a nod to the fireplace in the living room.

“Which Benjamin swung a hammer around and collapsed for us so no one can come through!” Jay gestured to Benjy.

Benjy only raised an eyebrow. “You had reason to doubt my work before.”

“I have never doubted you,” Jay retorted. He coughed, seeing the disbelief on Hetty’s face. “I mean, I was only pressing because you are a stubborn man, Benjamin Rhodes. It takes a strong wind to get you to pay attention!”

“A strong windbag, you mean,” Cora muttered under her breath, just loud enough for Hetty to hear. Louder, she continued, “Old man, you could have saved us some heartbreak if you’d said something earlier!”

Jay sucked in a breath. “I didn’t realize it. All that business with Jacobs was so long ago, and Raimond never said much about it.”

“Because he blamed himself for what happened,” Cora said.

“And because Valentine printed the pamphlet. He felt responsible for all the trouble that came from it,” Hetty said.

Benjy spread his hands across the table. “We have a handful of possible suspects, but we’re certain about two things. One, the murderer hired a man to kill people with ties to the Clarke Cipher. Two, Bernice Tanner will relate many things to us at the ball, and not a moment sooner.”

“Not sooner?” Jay asked.

“She wouldn’t have invited us to the ball if the timing wasn’t right,” Benjy said. “There’s something she’s waiting for.”

Cora grunted. “Well, it’s a good thing we’ll be there to help. If the worst comes, Jay can be a distraction.”

“Absolutely not!” Hetty exploded, her nerves getting the best of her. “You will do no such a thing!”

The older couple only laughed. “We can handle ourselves, thank you very much, missy,” Jay said, with a bit of a twinkle in his eye. “We know quite a few spells. The world didn’t sit around and wait for you to invent magic!”

Jay projected it the way he spoke from the pulpit, with that particular cadence all preachers used, and Benjy started to laugh.

When they all looked at him, he continued in earnest.

“That’s exactly what she thinks!” Benjy cried between breaths.

Jay chortled. “You should have seen her when she first came here. Doing spells all over the place and seemed to think we didn’t even notice!”

Hetty was ready to defend herself when Cora tapped her on the shoulder.

“Let them talk,” she mouthed. She urged Hetty to follow her and led the way out of the kitchen and into the small study down the hall.

Cora turned on the lights and went around to the large desk that filled the room. The desk was mostly clear except for a stack of letters, a Bible, and a basket with balls of yarn.

“We both married rather stubborn men who need to be certain they are right in what they say or do,” Cora said as she sat down at the desk. “Let them talk about silly things. I’d rather that than play messenger between them. But I also wanted to talk to you. To apologize, mostly. I made the error in listening to Jay first instead of you. Mostly because I saw fear in you and thought it came from the wrong place.”

“I should be the one to apologize. You were right to say what you did. Every lesson you taught, I carry with me always.”

“Which is why I apologize for what I said in turn.” Cora opened a drawer and pulled out an envelope. “Just because I have gray hair and wrinkles, it doesn’t mean I know everything. Nor do I always make the best choices. I should have told you about the Magnolia Muses earlier and should have given you the choice to take part or not.”

“I probably would have said no,” Hetty admitted.

“What about now? Consider this an official invitation to the group.” Cora held out the envelope.

Hetty took it, expecting a key at the very least, or some sort of magical token. But instead it was tickets to a baseball game between the Independents and the Pythons.

“Baseball?” Hetty asked.

“A group of Magnolias are meeting tomorrow. It’s more of a general meeting to talk about things. Someone who worked with Valentine will be there. Oh, and Henrietta, there are enough tickets for you and your friends—don’t go alone. Sometimes these meetings get interrupted by the police.”

“You’re not going?”

Cora smiled. “That’s the benefit of working with young people. I don’t have to do everything.”

Hetty nodded, putting the tickets away. “One question: Is Bernice Tanner involved with the Magnolia Muses?”

“Bernice knows about my work, but she’s not involved.” Cora leaned back in the chair, her hands folded across her chest and her expression devoid of anything that gave away her innermost thoughts. “Why do you think she would be?”

This reaction, even more than Cora’s question, took Hetty by surprise. “I thought you were good friends.”

“We are. I daresay I may be her only good friend,” Cora said. “But that doesn’t mean we have the same goals. For example, if I knew my friend’s husband was in grave peril and had information I could give someone to stop it, I wouldn’t wait until a ball to tell it.”

Cora did not raise her voice, nor do anything more than sit there as if she were pondering what book to pull from the bookshelf behind her. But Hetty knew she had asked the wrong question and it was better she leave now before she made things worse.

“Have a good night under happy stars,” Hetty said.

“And to you, my dear, and to you.”

Hetty collected Benjy from Jay, the latter in the middle of a story about the time Hetty accidentally had shot a hole into the dining room wall. She used that story as an excuse to walk around outside so she and Benjy could add protective spells to the house. It wouldn’t do much, just add another layer, but it was the peace of mind Hetty wanted.

The ride home was sedate in comparison to the frantic flight there, as they pedaled along quiet and mostly empty streets. Hetty remained lost in her thoughts, going over all she learned from both Cora and Jay. She had known in some fashion that the ball was important, but that it might provide answers to her last lingering questions was something she never would have guessed.

It was only when she heard Benjy swear under his breath that Hetty drew back out to the world around her.

There were flames flickering in the distance.

Blythe Holloway had not been rambling about their neighborhood being protected from flames. When the fires started occurring with alarming frequency, Hetty and Benjy had set a wide perimeter of protections on the streets closest to their home. The spells covered all the residential homes, homes of people who might never know they were being protected. But the spells only went so far, stopping where the street turned to shops.

The place on fire was a tiny little trinket store that Hetty had never gone inside of. It wasn’t a big fire, and it already seemed to be under control. The owner and nearby neighbors were working away at the water pump, tossing over buckets of water, and in some cases guiding water with magic to douse the flames.

But still Hetty and Benjy stopped. Not to see what could be done, but because on a distant street corner a man stood illuminated by a flickering streetlamp.

His white skin, more than his bowler hat, gave him away.

Alderman Anderson, watching them from the corner, puffs of cigar smoke drifting lazily into the air around him.

When he saw them noticing him, he smirked, tipped his hat, then turned to disappear into the night.