Deseret (14 page)

Burton considered this.
 
“So why tell me who you are now?
 
What are you doing here, and what is it you want from me?”

“You are Her Britannic Majesty’s special envoy to the
Kingdom of Deseret, are you not?
 
Surely your task here relates to the looming secession crisis?
 
If the southern states secede, Brigham
Young—the Kingdom—will have a decision to make, and Her Majesty
must care about the outcome.”
 
Poe
didn’t need the confirmation, but he waited for Burton’s slow nod anyway, as an
indication that the man was following and anticipating his train of thought,
and willing to engage in an open discussion.

“Yes,” Burton drawled.

“The secession is a fact,” Poe continued, satisfied.
 
“The south will secede, not willy-nilly
but en masse, as a new and separate unity.
 
Maybe it already
has
seceded.
 
War may or may not be in
the offing.
 
It is very likely, I
think, that it is.
 
English cotton
mills, the mills that grind out prosperity for her entire Kingdom, take in
cotton from the southern states.
 
Victoria cannot want war, and if there is war, she must enter on the
side of the states with which her mill owners are economically aligned.
 
The question, then, becomes, what will
Deseret do?”

“That isn’t
my
question,”
Burton growled.

Poe hesitated.
 
“What’s your question?” he asked.

“I don’t need a lecture about the economy of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
 
I want to know what game you’re playing.
 
My question is: whose side are
you
on, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe?”

“Quite.”
 
Poe
sighed.
 
“I never would have
approached you, Captain Burton, except that my cover is blown.
 
The Mormons know who I am.
 
Specifically, their agent, your lady
friend, Roxie, has recognized me.”

“Roxie!”
 
Burton
looked surprised, but even more, he looked disappointed.

“I guess you may have already had your suspicions about the
woman.”

“Quite.”
 
Burton’s face settled into a glare sandwiched between beetling brows and
a jutting granite jaw.
 
With his
scars, he looked like a real goblin.

“You
should
suspect
her.
 
It was she who poisoned me,
nearly killed me and ended my writing career, a decade ago in Baltimore.”
 
He omitted to mention that his putative
murder had also scuttled his then-impending marriage, turning his fiancée, a
perfectly decent and happy woman, instantly into a grieving widow.
 
Poe felt a slight twinge of regret,
like he was betraying a confidence to Roxie in telling Burton these things.

But that was insane.
 
He owed her no confidence.
 
If anything, he owed her a bullet in the forehead.

Only he kept thinking of their meeting in his cabin in the
Liahona
that morning, when Roxie had had him at her mercy
and hadn’t killed him.
 
Remember
this
, she’d said.

Surely, she was playing him.
 
Again.

“Are you Sam Clemens’s man?” Burton asked, shaking him from
his reverie.

“No,” Poe said.
 
“Clemens and I are both in Army Intelligence, but he and I never worked
together and I don’t believe he even knows I am alive.
 
He remains, as far as I know, a loyal
Union man.”

“And you are a secessionist.”

“I’m a Virginian.
 
Like other Virginians, I will serve my state when its leaders feel they
must withdraw from a union that is noxious to its interests, that will tariff
it and vote it into submission and poverty.
 
Like all Virginians.”
 
Like Robert.

“Your mission was secret.
 
Your cover is blown.
 
Now you join with me… why?”
 
Burton looked genuinely puzzled as he wrestled with the situation.
 
“To jointly persuade the new leadership
of the Kingdom of Deseret to enter the war on the side of the south?
 
But they seem amply persuaded of that
course of action already.
 
Clemens
with his single bullet appears to have accomplished more than you and I together
ever could, whatever blandishments we might have had to offer.”

Poe shook his head, wondering what blandishments the
Englishman had been sent to offer to Brigham Young.
 
“I’m not persuaded.
 
There are… plots… here.
 
Men
are machinating, and I fear they are machinating for war.
 
There is a rush to blame the United
States.
 
I am a Virginian, Captain,
but like you… like all reasonable men, I hope… I would have peace rather than
war.
 
I reveal myself to you
because I need an ally, and because I hope that you may possess information I
do not.
 
Secret things are being
done here, terrible secret things, and I don’t know what they are.”

Burton shook his head.
 
“I have no information,” he said somberly.
 
“But Sam Clemens doesn’t strike me as a murderer.”

“Brigham Young isn’t dead.”

It was Roxie’s voice, it came from behind him and it caught
Poe off guard.
 
Again.

He whirled, prepared to defend himself, but Roxie stood
relaxed, casual, non-threatening.
 
With her was her younger companion, the girlish young woman with the
curly brown hair and the freckles.

“Do you mean he unexpectedly survived the shooting?” Burton
asked.
 

“Someone was shot all right, but I don’t think it was
Brigham,” the younger woman said.
 
“I had to kiss two of Brigham’s sons and beat hell out of one of his
house Danites to get the information, but they all said the same thing.
 
He was in his office with the Mexican
Ambassador and the Yankee.
 
There
was a shot, and then some of the Danites, including some pretty senior fellows,
came in, and disappeared with Brigham.
 
There was blood on the carpet, but no body left behind.”

“So Cannon’s version of events might be true…” Poe pondered.

“Danites are… like they are painted in the penny
dreadfuls?”
 
Burton was hesitant,
for once.
 
“Tarring and feathering
newspapermen?
 
Stuffing ballot
boxes at the Gallatin County elections?
 
Gunning down Governor Boggs in a dry goods store in broad daylight?
 
Massacring Indian tribes to remove them
from fertile farmland?
 
Robbing
wagon trains of emigrants bound for Novy Moskva or California?
 
Hanging federal agents?
 
Slitting the throats of the wounded
Missouri men at Crooked River?”

“The degree of exaggeration,” Roxie answered him, “is not as
great as you might think.”

“They’re President Young’s bodyguards?” Burton continued.

“Roughly,” Roxie said, with a hint of a smile at the
ambiguity in her own answer.

“So this information is completely inconclusive,” Burton
concluded.
 
“It could be that
Clemens made an attempt and his bodyguard whisked the President away.
 
Perhaps it was Clemens who was shot.”

Poe shook his head.
 
“Then we wouldn’t have had this emergency meeting and the announcement
of Young’s death.
 
If Young is
alive, then this is a coup d’état, Captain Burton, and you are in the
uncomfortable position of the ally on the scene at the time.”

“You and I both.”
 
There was a gleam in Burton’s eye that seemed to say that he wasn’t
entirely unhappy to be in the situation.

Poe laughed.
 
“True.”
 
He turned to Roxie,
loath to trust her but unwilling to discount her information.
 
“Do you know which… Danite… took
President Young?”

“
You
know him, as it
happens,” she informed them.
 
“It
was Bill Hickman, with some of his boys.”
 
She nodded to Burton.
 
“You
may remember him as the low-life, backstabbing snake who almost shot your
friend.”

Poe shuddered.
 
He remembered Hickman, and it made a dark sense.
 
Hickman and Lee plotted to take
power.
 
They anticipated the
arrival of the Yankee Clemens, they arranged to kill or kidnap Young and blame
it on the United States.
 
Then in
the moment of the Kingdom’s bereavement, Lee stepped forward to reassure the
Mormons that everything would be alright, he and the Third Virginia Cavalry
would protect Deseret and its Saints from the nasty evil Yankees.

The next President of the Kingdom of Deseret wouldn’t be
Orson Pratt.

It would be John Lee.

And his first act would be to take the Kingdom to war.

“Fearnley-Standish isn’t my friend,” Burton muttered, a
little grimly.
 
“Arguably, he may
be my colleague.”

“What do you want, Eliza?”
 
Poe hardened himself, chased out the strange,
almost-forgotten feelings of vulnerability and need.
 

“I think you’re right, Edgar.”
 
Her voice was soft, warm, encouraging, gentle.
 
He willed himself to keep his eyes open
and his focus tight on her, his mind tough.
 
“Annie and I are inconvenient to the new overlords, and we
will soon be rendered harmless.
 
We
need your help, to find and rescue Brother Brigham, to overturn this coup, to
avert the war.”

“I’m appalled the Kingdom could get itself into this state
of affairs,” Poe said.
 
It was an
unfair comment, but he saw that the knife was in and part of him wanted to give
it a hard twist.
 
“Aren’t you its
top spy, Eliza?
 
Have you been
asleep while this revolution has been building under your very nose?”

“That isn’t fair!” Roxie’s protégée snapped.

“Hush, Annie,” the older woman told her.

“I will
not
hush!”
the girl objected.
 
“The only
reason I haven’t already kicked his teeth from here to his precious Baltimore
is because you’re sweet on the pucker-faced little cogitator!”
 
Poe flinched and prepared himself for a
kung fu kick.
 

“Enough!” Roxie ordered, but her companion charged on.

“Listen, you!”
 
She jabbed a finger in Poe’s direction, her crinoline crackling slightly
with the energy of her motion.
 
“Just because Brigham Young gets good advice doesn’t mean he’s going to
take it!
 
He’s President of the
Kingdom, not the all-seeing and almighty God himself!
 
Roxie warned him Lee and Hickman were up to no good, Porter
Rockwell warned him too, but he just liked and trusted John D. Lee way too much
to believe us!”

Poe felt duly abashed, though he wasn’t sure that he should.
 
“Is that true?” he asked Roxie.

“It’s true.”
 
She cracked a crooked smile.
 
“Brigham Young is not the all-seeing and almighty God.”

Poe felt mollified, but Burton showed the proper masculine
hardness that Poe wanted to evince.
 
“And why should I help you, Roxie?
 
Why should
we
help you?”
 
Poe met his gaze and they nodded to
each other, each reinforcing the other’s resolve.
 
“This is a mess, and it may be a crime, perhaps a coup
d’état, but I don’t see that it’s my problem.”

Roxie nodded humbly, though the brown-haired Valkyrie behind
her looked stubborn and almost angry, like she might at any moment explode into
action and make good on her threat to kick Poe to Baltimore.
 
“I had hoped that you would do it for
your Queen, Captain Burton,” she said, and then she turned to look at Poe.
 
They locked eyes, and her lip
trembled.
 
“And as for you,
Edgar…”
 
Tears pooled above her
lower lashes, and one slipped free, cascading mournfully over her high, austere
cheek.
 
“You have no reason to do
it.
 
No reason at all.
 
And yet, I hope you will.”

What a consummate actress she is, he thought.
 
A very devil in a corset.

And what a consummate fool am I.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ll help.
 
My mission is to treat with President Young.”
 
He smiled ironically.
 
“And I have no taste for plotters.”

Burton looked suspicious.
 
Perhaps he had private reservations, but he kept them to
himself.
 
“Fine,” he
harrumphed.
 
“Where do we
start?
 
Hickman?
 
The Danites?”

Orson Pratt? Poe wondered, but he said nothing.

As if prompted by Burton’s question, Burton’s diplomat
colleague materialized.
 
Another
observer might have laughed at Absalom Fearnley-Standish in his long coat,
waistcoat, cravat and top hat, especially given that a crescent-shaped piece of
the top hat’s brim had been sliced neatly out of it, giving him a nibbled-upon
appearance.
 
Poe, though, saw his
erect posture and his fussily-maintained outfit and admired the young man’s
ongoing struggle to maintain civilization and manners, despite his coarse
environment.
 
He hoped Fearnley-Standish
persisted.
 
In his right hand,
pointed at the floor but obviously loaded and capped, he carried a long, worn
revolver.