Had I not been bedded, I were floored. Appropriately whispered O Dear Lords and the like. I want to laugh; I want to weep; I do a bit of both, a bit more of mere shivering. Impossible! And yet… of course! Ambrose squeezes me and tisks his tongue; begins the necessary labour of conjecture: How in the world, etc.? I find myself shushing him: time for all that in the morning, in all the mornings ahead. A peculiar serenity that had first signalled to me back at Vision-time now takes fair hold of my spirit, a hold it happily has yet to relinquish as I pen these lines. It is all, truly, too much: Jane’s one prior fling, with my late husband; my half-reluctant role as Harrison’s “Lady Elizabeth”; and now “André’s” surfacing (“Monsieur Casteene’s”?) as Jane’s fiancé, together with Henri’s reappearance, like an erratic comet, in our little sky… Who could assimilate it?
We agree not to speak, to Jane or anyone, of my old connexion with her baron: Jane is a powerful and canny woman, nowise foolish, who may well already know all about “us,” and more about “André” than I know; her fiancé’s absence from every gathering where I am present—e.g., the Morgan memorial service — whatever the explanation, is no doubt no coincidence. One thing only is certain: as soon as the Menschhaus can spare us, we must remove elsewhere!
On this note, and feeling now — in my Vast Serenity, mind — almost giggly, I kiss my husband good night and fall quickly, soundly asleep. The obscure horrific happenings of the next day and the whole week since have removed the urgency of these wedding-night resolves, but not our commitment to them.
We were to be woken about 5:00 A.M. to make ready for the Dawn’s Early Light sequence (sunrise would be at 6:44 EDST on that fateful day: New Year’s Day 2281 by the “Grecian” calendar of the Seleucidae, 7478 of the Byzantine era; such “Hornerisms” were now written into A.’s scenario). In fact we were woken rather earlier by an explosion from down-harbour. We made sleepy jokes about what was by now the Big Bang Motif; we pretended to assume that Jerry Bray had signalled his arrival; still subdued by what we’d told each other the night before — not to mention by our separate Visions, as yet unshared — we made drowsy, contented love (adieu, adieu, 7th day of 6th week of sweet Stage Six!) and rose to dress: street clothes until A. can retrieve his F. S. Key outfit.
Even as we gather our gear and tokens — our key to Baltimore, the Easter egg which we shall of course return to Angie — we hear, then see, police cars, ambulances, fire engines screaming past us towards McHenry, and begin to wonder. It is growing light. We crave breakfast. No sign of the filmsters. We ask ourselves merrily whether Prinz is reenacting his “Scajaquada trick” of early August, when we rowed across Delaware Park Lake into his filmic clutches. Darker apprehensions already assail us: apprehensions of we are not sure just what. Sunrise approaches. We drive over to the fort.
Reporters, mobile telly crews! Serious accident! Our passes pass us through police lines. We see Merry Bernstein, shrieking again, but this time not hysterically; accusations, imprecations, directed it seems against whom we had thought her comrades: Rodriguez, Thelma, et alii. These latter are being held and questioned by police. We see other police questioning — can it be that they’re holding? — Mr Todd Andrews and Drew Mack! From a passing hippie we hear that “that pig Cook got it”; Merope shrieks her regret that Reg Prinz didn’t Get His as well. Prinz himself is on hand, calmly directing Bruce and Brice to film the television people filming all the foregoing, over which (he gets the odd shot of this as well) Old Glory serenely flaps, as does my heart.
Oh yes: and the Dawn’s Early Light reveals (it is a quarter to seven; the sun’s upper limb appears on schedule over the smoky piers and railyards to eastward) that while your flag is still there, the yacht Baratarian is not. Details to follow.
In as jigsaw fashion as a Modernist novel, the story emerges: I shall give it to you straight, though by no means all the pieces have yet been found. In the very wee hours, tipped off by Mr Andrews, who had in turn it seems been tipped off by Merry Bernstein, the park police apprehended Sr Rodriguez in the act of planting, near that famous flagpole, not the little smoke bombs “we” were using to simulate bombshell hits, but a considerable charge of serious explosives. They arrested him at once, radioed for a bomb squad from the Baltimore Police Department, and ordered the area cleared (and the filming suspended) for a general search. Just about this time a second alarm comes from Mr Andrews (don’t ask us what he is doing there at that hour): watching from the ramparts with his night-glasses, he has seen — what it must be he had reason to anticipate — the yacht Baratarian raise anchor and move slowly up the Patapsco’s East Branch towards the inner harbour, where the Constellation, and ourselves, are moored. No names are named, but Andrews urgently warns the park police that certain other “radicals” aboard that yacht may be about to attempt the demolition of that historic vessel (and its contents!).
Merope seconds the alarm. A Maryland Marine Police boat is radioed for; it quickly hails, halts, and boards Baratarian, then radios presently back that no one is aboard save the captain (i.e., good Buck, a professional Chesapeake skipper of established reputation, known to the officers personally) and a young guest of his named Henry Burlingame. They are merely shifting the vessel into position for the Dawn’s Early Light sequence; the police search the craft thoroughly and find nothing incriminating. Andrews presses for more information: There is no Drew Mack aboard? No A. B. Cook? Nope: Buck volunteers that those two have disembarked in the yacht’s tender some time earlier, on movie business of their own.
Andrews claps his brow (bear with me; I am reconstructing, as we historians must). Of course: it is the Diversion sequence! Captain Napier’s valiant diversion of McHenry’s gunners, as described — and thwarted — by A. B. Cook IV in the Ampersand Letter! Only played as it were in reverse, Baratarian diverting attention to itself in the East Branch whilst her tender (a Boston Whaler with a hefty outboard engine) runs up the West, the Ferry, Branch, on its unspecified but surely nefarious errand.
The park police grow skeptical, impatient: is this a bunch of movie tomfoolery, and do “we” realize the gravity of such tomfoolery in a national monument? Their misgivings are reinforced by the appearance now from the barracks of Prinz and the Tweedles, all equipment operating. But at Andrews’s urging they move to have a look at the far side of the fort, where the original diversion occurred. En route, Rodriguez gives a shout of warning, not to them; a figure scurries up and away from — shades of old Fort Erie — the powder magazine, supposed by all but the fort’s commandant in 1814 to be bombproof! The police light out after the disappearing figure, drawing their pistols (where else but in America do park police carry guns?) and calling Halt. Andrews himself dashes for the magazine, suspecting it to be mined: a remarkable gesture!
He is stopped at its entrance by the man he was seeking when last we saw him, and just now enquiring after: Drew Mack, evidently put ashore. He pushes past him into the magazine. Shouting oaths, Drew follows after. Sure enough, an explosion follows — the one that woke us across the harbour — but not, Zeus be praised, from the magazine: it is down below the ramparts on the West Branch side. In the magazine itself, however, there is found another mighty charge of explosives, all set to be blown by a wireless detonator. Mr Andrews is already contending to the police that Drew Mack discovered and defused the device, perhaps saving thereby Fort McH. and the lives of all present. Drew says nothing. The police set about taking statements, clearing the area, calling again for the bomb squad.