Brimstone and Lily (Legacy Stone Adventures) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  A note from y’all’s intrepid narrator

  1/ Verity the Valiant

  2/ Romulus

  3/ A Weird Chamber

  4/ Jasper

  5/ Venoma’s Threat

  6/ Marshals of the Equity

  7/ Hordes of Bullies

  8/ Sorry, Eddie

  9/ The Dread Pirate Roberta

  10/ Honourable Merchantry

  11/ Mr. Pitts Barks at Verity

  12/ “Safe” in Virginia

  13/ A Brief Rest

  14/ Tyrell’s Pistol

  15/ Fresh Dreams

  16/ Hellfiend Legion

  17/ Pickles

  18/ New Rules

  19/ A Cure for Sore Feet

  20/ Fredericksburg

  21/ Trouble in Richmond

  22/ Lost in the Rain

  23/ How to Glamour a General

  24/ Robert E. Lee

  25/ Pluto’s Bane

  26/ Bolt Hole

  27/ Boatswain’s Swamp

  28/ Angels

  29/ To the Coast

  30/ Redeemers

  31/ Sha’ira

  32/ Pitcairn’s Flying Squadron

  33/ Wats!

  34/ In Langhorne’s Clutches

  35/ Attack of the Shades

  36/ Penelope’s Kiss

  37/ The Pirate’s Honeybunch

  38/ Lady Freya’s Eyepatch

  39/ Slave to the Croatan

  40/ Lunch with Ma

  41/ Battling Demons

  42/ Voyage of Surprises

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The experts speak about Brimstone and Lily:

  “Call me disgusted.”

  ---Herman Melville

  “The manuscript that corrupted Hadleyburg!”

  ---Mark Twain

  “Please, sir, I want no more.”

  --- Oliver Twist

  “From hell’s heart I stab at thee! For hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee!”

  ---Captain Ahab

  “All right, then, I’ll go to hell…as long as I don’t have toread that book again.”

  ---Huckleberry Finn

  Attention all students, teachers, and other crazed literature geeks!

  There are several dozen references to famous books in Brimstone and Lily, particularly to great books of the 19th century. Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Melville’s Moby-Dick are most represented, along with some Charles Dickens, but so are To Kill A Mockingbird and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, among others. See how many you can spot! Sponsor B & L Lit Parties! Amaze your friends! Kick butt on Jeopardy! Be smarter than a 5th grader!

  We’ll post a list on the book’s website. So compare your list with mine. Who knows, maybe you’ll spot names, places, or plot devices that didn’t even strike me as allusions. Since I write in a complete trance most days, that’s absolutely possible.

  Happy hunting!

  www.legacystone.net

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites and their content.

  Copyright 2009 © by Terry Kroenung

  Cover photo by Janet Smith

  Cover design by Alaena Prince

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information and storage retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  For information address Rare Moon Press,

  1172 E. 5th Street, Loveland, Colorado 80537

  First Rare Moon Press edition, 2009

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.

  Visit www.raremoonpress.com

  Digital Conversion by www.KindleExpert.com

  BRIMSTONE

  AND

  LILY

  A fantasy of the Civil War

  By

  Terry Kroenung

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  The Legacy Stone

  Book One

  BRIMSTONE

  AND

  LILY

  Terry Kroenung

  A note from y’all’s intrepid narrator

  Ma says I oughta make sure y’all understand about this here book. I hafta admit it sure looked like the south end o’ a north-bound horse when I first scribbled it (sorta like this here introduction). I tend to get pretty good grades in English Literature but Miz Finch threw up her pudgy hands and declared that the Pennsylvania State Normal School sure never prepared her for my grammar. Thought she’d expire o’ the vapors when she first eyed the rough copy. But betwixt her, Ma, and Sha’ira we wrassled the words into a rough sort o’ shape that swanky, educated folks like yourselves kin read without too much eyestrain. We cleaned up the narration parts some but tried to leave most o’ the dialogue stuff alone, so y’all get the flavor o’ the thing.

  I just don’t want to misrepresent that I’m some sort o’ literary stylist, ‘cause I sure enough ain’t. Took a month o’ Sundays t’ put lipstick on this here pig, let me tell ya. Miz Finch might be contemplatin’ a career change. If I’d known what a trouble it was to write a book I never would o’ tackled it.

  As far as the talkin’ bits go, I guess I oughta apologize in advance for Jasper. You’ll see what I mean.

  Thanks,

  Verity

  1/ Verity the Valiant

  ...the most magick-hunted person on Earth.

  Right past my eye! Too close. The wasp-sting of the Fell Knight’s sword point buzzed so close to my nose that for an instant I saw two of them. A drop of sweat leapt from my face as I jerked back and the bead split itself on my foe’s steel. Move, move, move! Giving his rapier blade a quick tap upward with my parrying dagger, I cart-wheeled left. As I’d expected, my enemy’s own poinard gouged jagged woodchips where my foot had just been. I shrugged my dripping hair out of my eyes and squared off to meet his new attack. Not much more than a warm-up so far.

  “You’re too predictable,” I told him with a smirk. The saucy heroine must always smirk at the villain. I think it’s a rule.

  “Predict this!” he sneered, giving me a feint thrust to the left shoulder. I moved to block it with my rapier but he deceived it. His tip dipped below my guard and licked at my wrist. Ready for him, though, I knocked it aside with a snap of my dagger. Is that your best move? In that same second he stepped in hard with his own short steel to dispatch me witha jab to my right flank, his intended target all along. Clever boy.

  But he hadn’t reckoned with the rattlesnake responses of Verity the Valiant. I paralleled both of my blades and spanked the knife out of his cruel fingers. With a yelp he tried to take my head off with his sword. Good thing I can do a fast split! His long edge tickled my cowlick as my feet slid apart and I dropped to the floor. I looked up, catching him out of position from his follow-through. Scissoring my legs back together, I rose to his exposed throat with my blades crossed. I placed the iron X at his sweaty neck, feeling his frightened pulse pounding through my edges.

  I snarled, “Do you yield, monster?”

  The Fell Knight gave me a proud laugh. “To the likes of you? Never! Do your worst, wench!”

  “I take you at your word, then!�
�� My weapons clattered to the stage floor as I began tickling him in his bony ribs.

  “Hey!” Eddie shrieked, his defense against my wiggling fingers as vain as his swordplay had been. “You’ll make me wet my pants!” High and ringing, his voice echoed in the empty theatre.

  That only increased my gleeful assault. I pinned him against the stage left proscenium arch. “Give?” My arm wrapped around his neck and I Dutch-rubbed his scruffy brown noodle. “Give? Say uncle!”

  My stage brother squirmed like a trapped rat but that got him nowhere. I’d always been stronger. “Oww!” He threw up his dirty hands. “Okay! Okay! Uncle, then! Don’t scalp me like a red Injun!”

  I released him with a grin and staggered out the stage door into the alley for some air, making the cats and rats scatter. Eddie followed, gasping. Lordy, it’s hot. Side-by-side, arms around one another’s shoulders, we gazed east toward the half-completed Capitol dome. They still ain’t finished the darned thing, or the Washington Monument, neither.Prob’ly have to wait for the war to end now. I’d heard, though, that President Lincoln vowed to keep working on the dome, no matter what Jeff Davis tried to do.

  We flopped onto a pile of just-delivered scenery canvas. Later we’d make flats out of it, transforming it all into mountains and skylines and forests. Already I could smell the glue. Ick! That smell of that stuff always made my head hurt. Near as bad as the smell of the Canal. Seemed the farther into summer we got the worse the raw sewage stunk. Made you wonder why the Confederate army would want the place. Richmond sounded ever so much nicer than Washington. Our capital still needed paved streets and decent plumbing. I’d seen the mud so bad that a fire engine drove onto the sidewalk so it wouldn’t sink. Some days I wished Ma had never moved us here from the Maryland farm where I’d been born.

  Touching his own aching noggin, Eddie made a face and offered me

  the jug of water he’d been guzzling. We panted and sweated in the June humidity. “I get to win next time. You can be the villain.”

  “Only if you invent the fight moves. Them’s the rules. Besides, I like givin’ bad guys their comeuppance.”

  He nodded toward the hole he’d made in the apron floorboards. You could see it even from that distance. “We have to fix that quick. If Mr. Ford sees it we’ll be the ones getting the comeuppance.”

  “If you hadn’t stabbed so hard you wouldn’t’ve put a dent in his new floor. It’s just pretend, you know.”

  “I know, but it has to look proper.” Eddie sure loved proper. Proper speech, proper clothes, proper manners. Everything had to be correct. That’s how you could tell we weren’t real kin.

  “You’re gonna get a proper whuppin’ if you don’t fill that back in and paint it before their dress rehearsal tonight.” I nudged a pot of glue at him with my toe. “Here. Put the big chunks back, sand everything off even, and then slap some black paint down.”

  Eddie sagged. “I don’t know how to do all that. I’ll make a hash of it. Can’t you?”

  I sighed, something I did a lot around Eddie. “You’re a piece o’ work, Edward Stubb. How is it that you can paint the prettiest pictures but you’re useless for paintin’ a floor?”

  To be honest, Eddie couldn’t really have been as useless as I let on. Mr. Ford paid him a nickel apiece to make color sketches of scenery and costumes. No adult could do them as well. Mr. Sherburn, the company carpenter, and Ellen Sauveur (my mother), the wardrobe mistress, used them as references.

  Eddie shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just different. Not like designing makeup or styling wigs.”

  I snorted. Different’s the word, all right. He’d fooled us all once, Ma and me included, by waltzing into the lobby of Ford’s Athenaeum dressed as a snooty rich lady. For ten minutes he’d complained about the ticket prices, how uncomfortable the seats felt, and the ruffian next to him spitting tobacco juice on the floor. Then he stuck his snoot in the air and stormed out. We might never have discovered him if he hadn’t come to supper with a tiny bit of rouge on one cheek. Mr. Ford announced that soon he’d put Eddie onstage. Even at twelve years old, he acted that well. Most of what I know of disguises and accents I learned from him.

  Eddie was a lot prettier than me. I hate that word. Was. It still takes some getting used to, that he’s gone. Taken by the Bullies. You know what that means. Dead, or wishin’ you was. Magicked into something horrible, not even able to make a human scream.

  Anyhow, Eddie had a prettier face than me, though that ain’t saying much. Prettier than his three girlfriends, too. Everybody called me a tomboy. A “ragamuffin”, Mr. Ford would say when he got cross at me. Short red hair, pug nose, and freckles. Dresses made me itch and corsets made me cry. All that girlie stuff left me cold. Seemed to me that all that girls and women got to do boiled down to three things: embroider, stay clean, and giggle. I preferred hammers and wrestling and swordfights. And maybe that’s why you only have one friend in the whole world.Who wants their kid to be seen with the freak? Ma always said I’d grow out of it, a terrible thing to contemplate. “You’re only twelve,” she’d told me that very day. “When you’re a bit older you’ll see.”

  I stood up and stretched, looking around. Mad Molly crouched over down the alley a piece, hunting for who-knew-what in a trash heap. She’d lost her husband in the last war, the one where Washington had been burned by the Britannic army. Everybody said she’d lost her mind from grief back then, too. Walked about town living on handouts, babbling. Eddie and me gave her a dime now and then, but mostly avoided her. There were lots of poor old widows in town, left with no one to care for them. Now the new war minted fresh ones faster than anybody could count.

  We finished up the water jug and shuffled back inside, muscles creaking from over an hour of stage combat. When I planned the fights Verity the Valiant triumphed, a spunky unbeatable righter-of-wrongs with a heart of gold and an arm of iron. The Fell Knight had no chance against her. But whenever Eddie designed the routines poor Verity fell, a rube from the countryside who scarcely knew which end of the sword to grab. A helpless pawn caught in the ruthless designs of her social superior. Today I’d won the coin toss.

  “Battle of Agincourt?” blurted Eddie in a snooty Britannic voice. Aha. Time for Round Two.

  “1415,” I answered, returning his serve with a Gaullic tone. “Fall of Constantinople?”

  “Which one?” he asked with a grin, batting his huge chocolate-brown eyes. I noticed that his lashes were short, even for a boy.

  “Both, smarty-pants.”

  “1204, sacked by Christian knights during the 4th Crusade. Then the Turks took it for good in 1453. Shakespeare’s birthday?”

  I made a ppfft sound with my lips. Too easy. “April 23, 1564. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”

  He hesitated for just a second. “Straight pin or safety pin?”

  We had a good laugh at that. I punched him on the arm a couple of times. He made-believe that it hurt. Like I said, Eddie could act. Sometimes he’d sham weakness. It helped him keep the rowdies away every now and then, since they couldn’t look very tough picking on a “sissy”. Fooled them, too. They’d saunter off to find bigger game and the next thing they knew, a rock would ping them between their shoulders, fired from around a corner or up on a balcony. Eddie worked on proper marksmanship, along with everything else he did.

  While he rubbed his arm he peered at me like he wanted to draw my face. I twisted up my nose and mouth, and then stuck out my tongue. “Whatcha doin’?” I asked.

  “Your eyes look bad. Are you sleeping okay?”

  I looked away. “Sure.”

  “None of those dreams?”

  I rubbed the dark circles under my eyes. “Uh-uh.”

  He pulled me back around and gave me his ‘you can’t lie to me’ face. “Verity.”

  Sighing, I gave in. “Oh, all right! Just a couple o’ times this week is all.”

  “Maybe you need to see a doctor.”

  “What for? He’ll just say I n
eed to quit eatin’ raspberries before bed or some other fool thing. Doctors don’t know beans.”

  “Maybe not, but you need to do something. You tell your ma?”

  “Not after the first time. She gave me a look like I’d just confessed to murder. Don’t want to see that again.”

  Eddie frowned. “Same exact dream? Every time?”

  I nodded, pulling glue and paint out of the tool cupboard. “Never changes.”

  “The man with the gold skin? The big black dog?”

  “Yep, all of it.” Fallin’ down a dark hole. Weird letters that move around like ants. The grandma with sharpened teeth. And blonde kids with long scary hands, reaching out for you. I got spooked just thinking about it and wanted to talk about something else. “I’ll be okay. They come in bunches for a couple o’ weeks, then they go away. Should about be done.” I held up the glue jar. “And we should be about done fixin’ the floor, if you’d quit yer jawin’.”

  I made a deal with Eddie to trade chores for the day. He’d wash costumes for me and I’d beat the lobby rugs for him, plus fix the floor. His funeral, I figured. Washin’ is ever so much more work, to my mind. So while he went out with our hired freedman Romulus to fetch water for the tub, I patched the nick in Mr. Ford’s apron floor. When I’d finished you’d never have known it’d been there. That’s what I’ve always been good at, hiding mischief.

  Just as I put the paint away in the stage right cupboard Mr. Ford strolled in through the upstage entrance, dapper and handsome as always. One of the lead actors came with him. They didn’t see me because I snuck behind the cupboard door. They talked about the dress rehearsal that night, picking their way through papier-mâché Scottish rocks. Macbeth always pleased the crowds and no mistake.Mr. Ford seemed to think that his witches weren’t scary enough.