Deseret (11 page)

“You run a tavern?”

“A hotel and saloon.
 
One of the most famous in the Kingdom.”
 
Her face relaxed for a moment into happiness and pride, then
hardened again.
 
“Now you must
leave.”
 
She pulled a dull,
long-barreled six-shooter from under her skirt and pressed it into his
hands.
 
It was a much bigger gun
than his, less sophisticated, less delicate, more likely, he knew, to kill a
man.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked, refusing the gun.
 
“I already have a gun, thank you very
much.
 
And I can’t go.
 
I am an emissary of Her Majesty.”
 
He sighed.
 
“I suppose I should be grateful it isn’t a brothel.”

“Yes, dear brother,” she said, and forced the heavy pistol
into his hand, wrapping his fingers around its smooth grip.
 
“You should be grateful.
 
And you should take a second
gun—it can’t hurt to be too well armed in this country.
 
And yes, I know you have a
mission.
 
That’s the problem.
 
Port thinks you’re being set up.
 
Port thinks something terrible is going
to happen, and you’re going to be blamed for it.”

*
  
*
  
*

“Brothers and Sisters, thank you very much for your
attendance.
 
I’m afraid it is my
duty to burden you with the weight of a terrible announcement.”

The speaker was a burly fellow, with a round face, a square
little chin-beard and the accent of a man from the English industrial
midlands.
 
He held a speaking tube
pulled up to his mouth that threw his words out through enormous brass cones
hanging high in the ceiling, and his voice was calm but strained.
 
He was dwarfed by the pulpit at which
he stood, but any man would have been, and Poe couldn’t tell whether he was
tall or broad or a midget from his vantage point up in the scalloped terraces
of the Tabernacle.

Thinking of midgets, he wondered again where Jedediah
Coltrane had ended up.
 
He hadn’t
seen the little man since the hypocephalus debate aboard the
Liahona
.
 
That
in itself was troubling.
 
Coltrane
could be dead, somewhere out on the sandy soil of the Wyoming Territory with an
electro-blade in his back.
 
Add to
that the fact that the scarab beetles had disappeared with him, that Poe had
missed his scheduled meeting with the Madman Pratt, and that Poe’s cover had
been blown, and Poe felt that, if disaster had not already struck, it was
looming.
 
Now he badly wanted to
salvage whatever he could of it.
 

Also, he wanted to get away from Roxie.

“The news is distressing enough that in the interest of
time, we will dispense with an opening hymn and prayer.”
 
The burly man almost cracked a smile,
though the expression was fleeting.
 
“And there will not be refreshments.”

Poe looked over his shoulder and saw only the milling
sheepskin jackets, waistcoats, and hats of the crowd.
 
How to find Orson Pratt?
 
He scanned the multitude.
 
It was vast, and he would never pick the needle of his man
out of such a haystack.
 
Was there
any way to make Pratt come to him?
 
He couldn’t think of any, short of seizing the speaking tubes and asking
for the fellow directly.
 
Was there
any way to calculate where in the building he might find his man?

Poe’s eye fell on the stage in the center of the
building.
 
The stocky gentleman
continued to talk, and the plush chairs behind him were slowly filling with
grave-faced men.

“President Young has been shot.”

A hush fell over the entire enormous throng.
 
Poe could hear men and women breathing
around him, and the here-and-there cries of small children, like seabirds
wheeling above the gray vista of a lonely beach.

Poe recognized the men in the chairs from Robert’s
files.
 
There was Wilford Woodruff,
the obsessive diarist, and Lorenzo Snow, the vegetarian, and David Patten,
bloody-handed victor of the Battle of Crooked River.
 
These were the famous Twelve Apostles.
 
They were taking chairs that he now saw
must be reserved for them.

Orson Pratt was one of them.
 
He wasn’t on the stage yet, but if he came here, that’s
where he’d be headed.
 
Poe found
steps leading down to the bottom of the Tabernacle and took advantage of the
stunned stillness of the crowd to push his way along them, great coat flapping
heavy around him with the weight of the four canopic jars in its pockets.

“Good Danite men were on the scene,” the Englishman
continued.
 
George Quayle Cannon,
Poe realized who the man was as he headed for the floor.
 
The so-called
Mormon Richelieu
, whatever that was supposed to mean.
 
“I have been told that Brother Orrin
Porter Rockwell was also injured, defending President Young as he has done for
so long, and as he defended Brother Joseph before that.
 
The Danites removed President Young
from his office to give him into the care of a physician but he could not be
saved.
 
I do not know the fate of
Brother Rockwell.
 
I understand
that our men have, however, apprehended the shooter.”

Poe reached the bottom of the stair and found his way
blocked.
 
Around him, a crowd of
bereft faces stared up at the stage that now loomed over his head.
 
Two steps forward would put Poe on the
lowest floor of the Tabernacle, and another six would put him at the short
staircase that climbed onto the stage itself.
 
He couldn’t take those steps, though, because a tall, heavy
man in a coat and cravat, with a long pistol at his hip, barred the way with a
glower.

Poe could see more of the Apostles now, the thin-lipped
Orson Hyde with unruly hair and the clear-browed Heber Kimball with no hair at
all, whispering solemnly to each other as they mounted the stairs to take their
seats.
 
“Excuse me, brother,” he
said politely to the staring guard, “but I must speak with Apostle Pratt.
 
May I pass?”

“Why don’t you take a seat… brother?” the big man grunted
back.
 
His voice sounded like he
was one half Danish and the other half bear.

“I regret to say,” Cannon continued from the pulpit, “that
the First Presidency is therefore dissolved.
 
The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, I have been informed,
will meet, along with other leaders, to deliberate how to reconstitute the
Presidency.
 
I understand that
those meetings will begin tomorrow morning at seven, at the Lion House… so if
any of the Twelve or the Seventy are in the Tabernacle and haven’t yet been
informed, please join us at that hour.
 
The Deseret Hotel has already agreed to make accommodations for those
coming from out of town to participate.”

Pratt moved into view in the well of the Tabernacle,
drifting from some unseen entrance towards the stage.
 
He was bald and bearded and frayed and rumpled, looking
every inch the
Madman
he was named.
 
He walked with his head bowed and
twitching, lips mumbling some soundless litany.

“Look,” Poe pointed him out to the Dane, “there he is.
 
If you will just let me past—”

The Dane snorted and grabbed Poe by the front of his coat.

Poe didn’t want to hurt the big man.
 
He also didn’t want to attract
attention.
 
But he felt his mission
objectives all slipping out of his grasp, he was frustrated and desperate.
 
So when the guard grabbed him by his
coat, Poe seized the big man by his thumbs and thrust them backwards without
mercy.
 

The Dane gasped and lurched to his knees.
 
Poe looked around quickly to see if
anyone had noticed what he was doing, but the crowd was rapt, unable to take
its attention off the pulpit.
 
The
big man whimpered.
 

Pratt was at the foot of the stairs.
 
Poe was out of time.

He threw the Dane sideways, trying to get him out of the way
without hurting him more than was necessary, and rushed forward.
 

He crossed the open floor in three long steps—

Pratt moved up the staircase—

Poe heard the guard scramble back to his feet, cursing, and
come after him—

Poe grabbed the Madman by the elbow, coughing.
 
He knew he looked like a crazed gypsy
himself, with his hat and his greasy hair and smoked glasses and fingerless
gloves and bulky coat.
 
He had only
one chance.

“I am the Egyptian,” he hissed desperately into the
Apostle’s ear as the man turned and stared at him indignantly.
 
He tried to hold his lungs together by
sheer force of will.
 
“I come
seeking the knowledge of the air.”

“You’re coming with me, you crazy beggar!” Poe felt the
Dane’s big hands grab him and jerk him away.

Pratt stared, confused, uncertain.
 

Poe couldn’t let it end this way.
 
He stepped backwards, close into his attacker, got a leg
under the man’s instep and his body under the man’s weight—

and threw him forward over his shoulder, on the ground.

Thud!

Poe tossed his man away from the stage, planting him close
in against the wall of the wall, so that the angle would hide any more
scuffling from most of the audience.
 
Hopefully the distraction of the speech and the setting would do the
rest.

The big man writhed as he flipped, and as he hit the
plascrete the Dane was already pulling his pistol, thumbing back the
hammer—

“Stop it!” Pratt commanded, and Poe and the guard both
froze.

Orson Pratt scuttled forward, off the stage and back into
the well.
 
“This man is with me,”
he hissed to the big guard.
 
“Thank
you… er, brother, for your caution.
 
As we… as we hear today,” he gestured vaguely to the pulpit and George
Cannon, “your care is… is valuable.
 
Thank you.”

The big man looked dubious.
 
Poe braced himself to be shot.

“Please return to your post,” Pratt continued.
 
“This man is not a danger, but… but the
next one might be.”

“We profoundly regret to tell you one more thing,” Cannon
continued, “but we feel that we must.”
 
His voice echoed loud and brassy from the ceiling cones.
 
“The man who shot President Young has
been identified.
 
His name is
Samuel Clemens.”

As if this news had freed him, the Dane backed away.
 
He glared one last time at Poe,
uncocked his pistol and returned to his station.
 
Further around the base of the stage, other guards, whose
attention had been briefly caught, now looked away.
 
The crowd above appeared not to have noticed.

Poe sighed with relief and adjusted his glasses.

Cannon wasn’t finished.
 
“Mr. Clemens is an agent in the pay of the United States
government.”

He paused.

If a silence could be thunderingly loud, Poe thought, this
was it.

“Come on,” Pratt whispered, and grabbed Poe by the
sleeve.
 
He dragged the younger man
down a plascrete hallway that cut underneath the lower tiers of seating, the
entrance by which the Apostles had all come into the building.
 
“Say it again,” he said.
 
There was an excited light in his eyes,
like he was thrilled.

Poe didn’t feel thrilled.
 
He felt off-balance, discombobulated, entirely outside of
the foreseeable strands of his web of planning.
 
Could Sam Clemens really have shot Brigham Young?
 
What would have been the point of
that?
 
If the American government
assassinated the President of the Kingdom on the eve of the outbreak of
hostilities, what could that do but precipitate Deseret into the war, and on
the side of the seceding southern states?
 
“What?” he asked.
 
It made
no sense.

“Start over,” the Madman insisted.
 
“Who are you?”

Are we playing a game? Poe thought, but he complied.
 
“I am the Egyptian,” he repeated.
 
“I come seeking the knowledge of the
air.”

The old man beamed.
 
“I am the Seer, keeper of the knowledge of the air.
 
By what token shall I know thee,
Boatman?”

“Boatman?” Poe asked.
 
What?

“I mean,
Egyptian
.
 
By what token shall I know thee,
Egyptian?”
 
Pratt blushed.

Who was the Boatman?
 
What kind of double game was going on here?
 
Did Robert know there was a Boatman?
 
“You shall know me by the four sons of
Horus, which I bear,” he answered, according to the script.