The Sea Peoples(67)
Pip tucked her hair up under the bell-shaped hat that had come with the rest of her gear and strolled up behind the statue. It was on a granite base with planters holding rosebushes around it, and benches beyond those, with a bronze plaque set into its side: General Philip Henry Sheridan 1831–1888, showing a grim-faced man with a narrow mustache gesturing with a saber. The name teased vaguely at her, something she’d read in a book once, but she couldn’t place it.
This side of the statue was in deep shadow, and a little chilly. She sat at one end of the bench that ran around all four sides of it and let her head fall back as if weary, the brim of her hat shading her eyes and the rosebushes leaving a double screen between her and the other side. That not only made her even less visible, it gave her a better chance of hearing what was going on.
Louis Castaigne and Constance were just murmuring sweet nothings as they leaned together under her light sun-parasol, and rather boring sweet nothings at that; he was telling her what a lovely place San Francisco was, and how he’d enjoyed being stationed there, and he made a painfully obvious joke about it being a splendid town for a honeymoon, at which she positively simpered.
If a man said that to me in that you’re-my-helpless-little-kitten tone, I’d hit him, she thought. Rather hard. I suppose these are the Good People, but Christ, I’m almost tempted to rejoice they’re in a world that’s apparently just been taken over by demons.
Pip’s position put her halfway between the courting couple and Hawberk and Hildred Castaigne, both sitting in the sunshine while the older man smoked a cigar.
Disgusting habit, she thought. One of the few things I didn’t like about Darwin was that so many people there smoke. I suppose because they’ve got more contact with the islands and the North generally.
More than half the men she saw were lighting up something or other, mostly pipes and cigarettes, though far fewer of the women. It was worse than Darwin, much worse than Townsville, and infinitely worse than parts of Oz further south, where the habit had largely died out since the Blackout. In one of the few decent things he’d done while she was shadowing him, Hildred Castaigne declined the offer of a cigar from Hawberk. Deor arrived and stood apparently admiring the river from beyond conversational distance, but Pip knew he read lips very well. Thora sat under a flowering tree of some sort, repelling sailors tempted to try joining her with a quelling glare, like Toa not part of the surveillance operation but ready to explode into lethal violence the minute her friend called.
The sun hung low above the woods on an island in the river, and the bay was dyed with golden hues reflected from the sun-warmed sails of the shipping in the harbor. A silent fleet of white-painted warships lay motionless in midstream, recognizable because of the turreted cannon with which they bristled.
Constance turned away from her companion and laughed, a pleasant enough tinkling sound but one Pip found affected. Apparently that was the way women were supposed to do it here; probably they thought an outright guffaw uncouth.
“What are you staring at?” she inquired.
“Nothing—the fleet,” Louis Castaigne said with a smile; the sound of his voice was low and pleasant, but Pip felt as if nails had screeched on a chalkboard.
Then Louis began explaining what the vessels were, pointing out each by its relative position to a red fort on a small island in the river. Pip recognized his tone; some men thought displays of expertise were a mate-attractant, like a peacock’s tail or starting brawls. She supposed it must work sometimes, or those genes would have been eliminated. Constance hung on his words, and on his arm:
“That little cigar shaped thing is a torpedo boat,” he explained.
Torpedo . . . Pip thought. Then: Ah, those things that ran underwater and exploded against ships. Nasty! Though no more so than a napalm shell from a catapult, I suppose.
“. . . there are four more lying close together. They are the Tarpon, the Falcon, the Sea Fox, and the Octopus. The gunboats just above are the Princeton, the Champlain, the Still Water and the Erie. Next to them lie the cruisers Farragut and Los Angeles, and above them the battleships California, and Dakota, and the Washington which is the flagship. Those two squatty looking chunks of metal which are anchored there off Castle William are the double turreted monitors Terrible and Magnificent; behind them lies the ram, Osceola.”
Constance looked at him with deep approval in her beautiful eyes.
Laying it on a bit thick, dearie? Pip thought. Is he looking for a wife, or a ewe? Does he know the difference? Are you a ewe or is this some sort of bestiality kinky thing?
“What loads of things you know about ships . . . for a soldier,” she said.
Well, that’s a little better.
And they all joined in the laugh which followed.
Presently Louis rose with a nod and offered his arm to Constance, and they strolled away along the river wall. Hawberk watched them for a moment and then turned to Hildred:
“Mr. Wilde was right,” he said. “I have found the missing tassets and left cuissard of the Prince’s Emblazoned, in a vile old junk garret in Pell Street.”
“Nine ninety-eight?” Hildred said; Pip could feel the unpleasant smile in his voice.
“Yes.”
“Mr. Wilde is a very intelligent man,” Hildred said.
“I want to give him the credit of this most important discovery,” continued Hawberk. “And I intend it shall be known that he is entitled to the fame of it.”