He was essentially a strong man, and most easily handled by appearing weak.
“Oh sir!” she said in her sweetest, highest-class accent, “I hope I’m not too late!” and she handed him the ticket.
He smiled around a pair of snow-white sideburns and retracted the gate in order to let her pass. “Not at all, ma’am. We’re only half full as it is, so I’m more than happy to wait for a lady.”
She lowered her lashes and gave him her best belle smile when she thanked him, and said, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your kindness.”
“It’s no trouble at all,” he assured her, and, taking her tiny gloved hand, he escorted her to the retracting steps that led up inside the Cherokee Rose. “I’ll be your captain on the airway to Jefferson City.”
“The captain?” she said, as if it were the most impressive thing she’d ever heard a man call himself. “Well isn’t that grand! It must be a terrifically difficult job you have, moving a machine of such size and complexity, up through the skies.”
He said, “Oh, it’s sometimes a trick, but I can promise you,” he let her go first, and rose up behind her. “We won’t meet much trouble on the way to Missouri. It’s a quiet skytrail, generally unremarked by pirates and too high for the Indians to bother us. The weather is fine, and the winds are fair. We’ll have you safely set down in about twenty hours, at the outside.”
“Twenty hours?” Maria’s head crested the ship’s interior, where half a dozen rows of seats were bolted down into the floor, off to her right. The seats were plushly padded, but worn around the corners; and only about half of them were occupied. “That’s a marvel of science, sir.”
“A marvel indeed!” he agreed, releasing her hand. “It’s three hundred miles, and if the weather doesn’t fight us, we’ll hold more or less steady at seventeen miles per hour. Welcome aboard my Cherokee Rose, Miss…?”
“Boyd,” she said. “I’m Miss Boyd, Captain…?”
He removed his hat and bowed. “Seymour Oliver, at your service. Can I help you stash your bags?”
“Thank you sir, very much!” She handed over her large tapestry bag and held close to the smaller one with Pinkerton’s instructions.
The captain heaved the luggage into a slot at the stowing bays, secured it with a woven net that fastened on the corners, and he told her, “Take your pick from the seats available, and please, make yourself comfortable. Refreshments are available in the galley room, immediately to your left—through the rounded door with the rivets, you see. A small washroom can be found to the rear of the craft, and the seats recline slightly if you adjust the lever on the arm rest. And if you need anything else, please don’t hesitate to stick your head through the curtain and let me hear about it.”
Captain Seymour Oliver retreated with two or three backward glances, and when he was gone Maria chose a seat in the back, without any other occupants in the row.
The seat was as comfortable as she had any right to expect on a machine that was made to move people from one place to another with efficiency. Though padded, it was lumpy; and though she had plenty of space to stretch out her legs, she could not raise her arms to stretch without knocking her knuckles on a metal panel affixed above her head. This was no flying hotel, but she could survive almost anything for twenty hours.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat’s edge, holding her smaller bag and its informative contents in her lap—and covered with her hands.
Through the speaking tubes, the captain announced that they were prepared to depart, and asked everyone to make use of the bracing straps built into the seats before them. Maria opened one eye, spotted the leather loop, and reached out to twist her fingers in the hand-hold; but it wasn’t as necessary as she’d expected.
The Cherokee Rose gave only the slightest shudder as it disembarked, leaving behind a pipework pier with barely a gasp and a wiggle. The feeling of being lifted made waves in Maria’s stomach. The sensation of being swung, ever so gently, from a gypsy’s pendulum, made her wish for something sturdier to grasp, but she didn’t flinch and she didn’t flail about, seeking a bar or a belt. Instead, she leaned her head back again—eyes closed once more—and prayed that she might nab a little sleep once the sun went down, and the cabin inevitably went dark.
It was a curious thing, the way her belly quivered and her ears rang and popped. She’d risen once before in a hot air balloon, but it’d been nothing like the Cherokee Rose—there’d been no hydrogen, no thrusters, no hissing squeals of pressurized steam forcing its way through pipes. Under her feet she detected the vibrating percussion of pipes beneath the floorboards and it tickled and warmed through her ice-chilled boots. She wormed her toes down and let the busy shaking soothe her, or mesmerize her, or otherwise distract her; and within five more minutes the ship was fully airborne, having crested the trees and even the tallest of the uniform, fireproof brick structures that surrounded the dockyards.
“Quite a performance there, Miss Belle.”
Maria blinked slowly; and through a rounded window to her right, she could see the tips of roofs falling away beneath the craft—and the dark, scattering flutter of birds disturbed from their flights.
To her left, the empty seat beside her was no longer empty. It was now occupied by an average-looking man in an average-looking suit. Indeed, everything about him seemed utterly calculated to achieve the very utmost median of averageness. His hair was a moderate shade of brown and his mustache was of a reasonable length and set; the shape of his body beneath the tailored gray clothes was neither bulky nor slender, but an ordinary shape somewhere in between. Only his shrewd green eyes implied that there might be more to him than blandness, and even these he hid behind a pair of delicate spectacles as if he were aware of the threat they posed.
Maria replied, “I’m afraid you must have mistaken me for someone else.”
“Not at all!” he argued, settling in the seat without her welcome to do so. He shifted his hips so that he could almost face her, and he said, “I’d know you anywhere, even without that outstanding display.”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea—”
“—What I’m talking about, yes. Here, let me begin another way instead. Let’s pretend that these are the first words I’ve said to you, and that my introduction is as follows—my name is Phinton Kulp, and two…perhaps three years ago…I saw you perform in a very fine presentation of Macbeth in Richmond. Your interpretation of the wicked Lady was not to be undervalued; I’ve seen far worse from far more expensive productions.”
For a few seconds she merely stared at him. Then she retreated, shifting so that she nearly leaned against the window in order to face him, in return. She said, “Phinton. That can’t possibly be your real name. I don’t think it’s anyone’s real name. Did you make it up on the spot?”
“You were wearing the most lovely blue gown, as I recall, and the pig’s blood on your hands was as convincing as if it’d gushed freshly from the torso of an inconvenient Lord.”
“I’m not entirely sure what you’re doing here, Mr. Kulp, but I’m fairly certain that you’re a liar, an unrepentant flatterer, and someone who has his own seat several rows away—to which he probably should return. The flight ahead is a long one, and I’d prefer to be left alone to rest.” She folded her arms across her chest, crossed her legs at the ankles, and reclined more fully against the window. The metal and fabric siding was fiercely cold when pressed against her back, but she made no sign that it bothered her.
Phinton Kulp feigned affront. He leaned forward and put his hands on the armrest between them and said, “Are you trying to insist that you’re not, in fact, the renowned actress and former, shall we say, ‘Confederate enthusiast’ Belle Boyd?”
“You’re not very good at this,” she said dryly. “I was a spy, you silly man—and a far better spy than I was ever an actress, but a lady has to eat and the stage kept me in meals between the lean times. Now. I want you to settle some things for me, in quick succession—or else I’ll summon the captain and have you forcibly returned to your appropriate seat.”
“Anything to satisfy your curiosity, ma’am.”
“Excellent. Tell me your real name, what you’re doing aboard this ship, and what you really want from me, and tell me quickly. Though it’s not yet noon, I’ve had a full and tiring day already and I do not speak in jest of my desire for solitude.”
Behind his spectacles the jade-colored eyes narrowed in a way that didn’t quite match the catlike grin he fashioned. “Very well, and very reasonably proposed. My real name is Mortimer, so you must pardon me if I selected something else. Phinton was the name of my sister’s first horse, and he was a good horse, thank you very much, so I’ve appropriated it and I will insist upon it. I am on board this ship with the express intent of reaching Jefferson City—”
“You’ll have to do better than that,” she interrupted.
“And so I shall. In that grand city I have business which must be attended to, and attended to without delay. Following the death of an uncle I scarcely knew, I seem to have inherited a dance hall. On the off chance that this satisfies the demands of your question, I’ll now move on to your final query before you have a chance to scowl at me any further—I wanted only to speak with you, and to express my most heartfelt admiration.”
“For my acting skills?”
“That and more,” he hid a smirk behind a delicate clearing of his throat.
Against her better judgment, Maria asked, “To what do you refer?”
“Only that I’ve long heard tales of the Southern girl with a tongue like a razor and a smile that moves mountains…or dirigibles, as the case may be. That was quite a lashing you gave the poor gent at the ticket counter.”