Iron Ships, Iron Men

by Christopher Nicole

  Who sighed. ‘She must be mad. Mad with hate. The fact is, something must have happened last night. Her clothes were all mussed up, and she’s saying the strangest things. Me, I think she’s having some kind of breakdown. But then ...’

  ‘Who?’ Marguerite almost screamed. ‘Who are we talking about?’

  ‘Why, Claudine,’ Wilbur said in surprise.

  ‘Claudine?’ Marguerite shrieked, and sat down herself.

  ‘She made the accusation against you,’ Morris explained.

  ‘Accusation? Against me?’ She could not believe her ears.

  ‘She has accused you of treason, of writing letters to the Federals, perhaps to your husband, acquainting them with our dispositions.’

  Marguerite gazed at him, open-mouthed, then at her father. ‘But you know that can’t be true. Dispositions? What dispositions? How can I possibly know anything about our dispositions?’

  ‘Sure we know it can’t be true.’ Wilbur Grahame joined them on the bed, sandwiching her between the two men, and put his arm round her shoulder. The bed creaked ominously. ‘I guess everybody knows it can’t be true. Like I said, something happened to Claudine last night. Maybe she got a bump on the head. She won’t talk about it. Only about you.’

  ‘About me?’

  ‘The trouble is,’ Morris said, ‘that while a lot of what she says is obvious raving, there are moments when she seems perfectly lucid ... and then she still makes the same accusations. Of course I shall tear her to pieces when it comes to court, but ...’

  ‘Comes to court?’ Marguerite asked, her voice sunk to a whisper. ‘When will that be?’

  ‘Ah,’ Morris said. ‘Well ...’ he looked at Wilbur.

  Who tightened his grip on his daughter’s shoulder. ‘These things take time, honey child.’ Another long-forgotten childhood endearment. ‘But you do not have to worry about a thing.’

  ‘Time?’ she asked. ‘Time?’ she shouted, throwing off his arm and getting up, to back against the wall and stare at them. ‘How much time?’

  ‘Well ... it could be a month ...’

  ‘A month?’ she screamed. ‘Here?’

  ‘Well ...’ Wilbur looked from left to right. ‘We’ll bring you in some clean clothes, and ...’

  ‘Here?’ she shouted again. ‘With men staring at me through those bars? With every criminal in Mobile next door to me? With ... that?’ She pointed at the latrine bucket in the corner. ‘Here? Pa, you have got to get me out. Now.’

  ‘And we’re looking after Joey,’ Wilbur said, helplessly. ‘He doesn’t know you’re in gaol,’ he added, brightly. ‘We’re not going to tell him that. He thinks you’ve been called away.’

  ‘Out,’ she screamed. ‘You have got to get meout!’ She turned to the lawyer. ‘Isn’t there such a thing as bail in this state?’

  ‘Sure there is, Mrs McGann. But not in a treason case. The fact is, well ... there’s a Federal fleet sitting right off there, and there’s no doubt they’re getting ready to attack. These good people are frightened, and the thought that the Federals might somehow have got hold of some information which might help them to come in has sure got everybody worked up. Things will have settled down by the time you come to trial, and even if they haven’t, as I said, there really is no case against you. I can prove that your sister is suffering from delusions. But meanwhile ... there’s no judge in this country would dare grant you bail.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ she said. ‘Oh, my God!’ She sank to her knees against the wall. A month ... in this hell?

  Wilbur Grahame got up and rested his hand on her head. ‘I’ll be in tomorrow,’ he said. ‘With some clean clothes. You be good, now.’

  Marguerite didn’t move, or acknowledge Morris’s farewells. The gaoler unlocked the door and they went into the corridor. Dimly her father’s voice drifted back to her. ‘Wouldn’t you agree I have got to be the Goddamnedest unluckiest man in the world? A drunken sot of a wife, one daughter who’s going mad, and another who’s locked up for treason. Jesus Christ!’

  Marguerite remained kneeling against the wall until the pain in her legs forced her to move. She was afraid to get up, afraid something would snap, and she would start screaming insanities herself. That would really put the cap on it for poor Daddy, she thought bitterly; a drunken sot of a wife andtwo crazy daughters.

  She staggered across the cell and lay on the bunk, and actually slept; she had had very little sleep the previous night, and she was exhausted. Sleep was a blessing because thought was impossible. The idea that Claudine would do something like accusing her of treason ... of course she had behaved very badly towards her sister. She had known that even while she had been holding Rod in her arms, had told herself that what she was doing was justified because Claudine loathed Rod anyway, was only interested in keeping him because he washer husband. She had never understood the depths of Claudine’s anger and hatred — she had never tried to understand it. Now ...

  The gaoler woke her for a meal that afternoon, and she ate it gratefully, for all that it was food she wouldn’t have fed to the dogs on Martine’s. The dogs, she thought. Like everyone, and everything, else, they had been abandoned. Father was a great abandoner. So, was he getting set to abandon her? In this stinking cesspit, without even the solace of Little Joey? ‘We’re taking care of him,’ Father had said. Who? Mother, so permanently drunk she couldn’t even tell her daughters apart? Father, who hated small children? Or Claudine? God, she thought. Claudine is out there, free, and I am locked up in here. She wanted to scream and scream.

  She heard voices outside, went to the window. There was a stool in the cell, and by standing on this she could look out into the alley beside the gaol, and where, she discovered to her surprise, there were several people, both men and women, gathered, muttering amongst themselves. She watched them for several moments before one of them noticed her. Immediately they pointed, shouting epithets, ‘Traitorous whore!’

  ‘Bluebelly lady!’ and others far worse. Then someone threw a clod of mud. She released the bars and slid down the wall, horrified by the hatred being expressed. Hatred of her!

  The gaoler appeared at the barred door, having heard the noise. ‘Now you keep away from that window, Mis’ McGann. You don’t want to go riling up those folks. They’s riled up enough already. You remember that. We sure don’t want them busting in here, eh?’

  ‘Busting in?’ she asked, her voice faint with terror.

  ‘I’ve seen it happen,’ the gaoler said. ‘When people get riled up. It ain’t pretty. Makes a terrible mess. And it’s one hell of a way to go. You just keep away from that window.’

  She felt sick with fear, lay on the cot, panting. Now she was grateful for the gaoler’s habit of coming to peer at her every half an hour or so; his presence meant no one was ‘busting in’ to get at her, yet. Even the noise from down the corridor — thank God she couldn’t see any of her fellow prisoners, only hear them — was reassuring as meaning that the prison was normal. On the other hand, as the afternoon wore on, she could hear the noise outside her window growing, and once even heard a man shouting, ‘Hell, boys, we know she’s guilty, accused by her own sister and all. We don’t want no smart ass lawyer talking the jury out of convicting her. Let’s get the bitch out of there and string her up.’

  She sat up, hands clasped to her throat. This just could not be happening. She had betrayed the North, to come back to her people, driven by a sense of not belonging, of being hated ... but did anyone in the North hate as much as this mob, who wanted to hang her because of a hate-filled accusation brought by a crazy sister? It couldnot be happening. She gazed at the gaoler, when he brought her some soup and bread for an evening meal; it was just getting dark. ‘Do you have any soldiers?’ she asked.

  ‘Soldiers? This here town is crawling with soldiers.’

  ‘I meant here, in the prison.’

  He grinned. ‘There ain’t no soldier would want to be in this gaol, Mis’ McGann. That’d mean he was in real trouble.’
<
br />   ‘I mean to protect it,’ she shouted. ‘Protect me, from those hooligans out there.’

  ‘Shucks, Mis’ McGann, there ain’t no soldier going to want to fire on his own people to protectyou. Right now, they hate you more than the civilians.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I’m in your charge,’ she told him, fighting back the urge to have hysterics. ‘It’s your duty to protect me.’

  ‘It’s my duty to keep you locked up,’ he said. ‘I aim to do that. Anyway, the street door upstairs is locked, and I sure mean to keep it locked, too.’

  ‘One door? Are you armed?’

  ‘Sure I’m armed, lady. To stop anyone trying to bust out. It ain’t my business to get into no shooting match with my own people. Else they might just lynch me too.’

  She couldn’t believe her ears. ‘You mean, if a mob breaks down the street door and comes in here looking for me, you won’t try to stop them?’

  ‘There’s no way I could stop a mob, Mis’ McGann, and there’s no way I am going to try. I’m a married man. I got kids.’

  So have I, Marguerite wanted to scream. Oh, God, so have I.

  ‘What we have to do,’ the gaoler went on, ‘is hope it doesn’t happen. It needn’t. I’ve seen a lot of mobs do a lot of shouting and yelling and threatening, and then go home to bed. Tonight’s the risky bit. They’re all out drinking. By tomorrow morning things will have settled down, and if you keep away from that window, they’ll have forgotten all about you being in here. You’ll see.’ He closed and locked the grill door. ‘You get some sleep. Tomorrow morning things will be better. Just so long as you don’t go looking out of that window.’

  He took the lantern which usually hung in the corridor, and plunged the cell block into darkness. But not silence, as the other prisoners continued to talk and shout at each other, and at her, having overheard the conversation.

  ‘Hey, darling,’ one of the prostitutes shouted. ‘You worrying about being hanged? You could enjoy it. I’ve heard it’s a real sexy feeling.’

  ‘Naw,’ objected one of the men. ‘I saw a woman hanged once. It was horrible.’

  ‘Say,’ said another woman. ‘You reckon, if they comes in after her, they’d let us out?’

  ‘Could be,’ said the first woman. Marguerite threw herself on the cot and pulled the blanket over her head and ears, endeavouring to shut out the noise, both inside the prison and on the street. She just had to lie there, until tomorrow. Tomorrow, she wanted to scream. My God, I may not be alive, tomorrow. She shivered, despite the heat of the July night.

  She wanted to pray, but she had lost the art, had scarcely attended a mass since leaving Jerry; she had been too aware of her overwhelming guilt. Then she tried to think coherently, of what might happen to her. Save her, even. It might rain. A good heavy thunderstorm would send people home to their beds. Oh, if it would only rain. It often did, in July, when the bayous got overheated. And almost as if shehad prayed, she thought she heard a peal of thunder. It was still a long way off. But the next was a little closer, and she even thought she could see the distant flash of lightning, illuminating the square hole of the window.

  The people outside must have seen it too, for the noise died as they wandered off. Only a few minutes later the rain began, a heavy, monotonous downpour, crashing on to the roof and the street, striking the sill of her barred window with such force some of the drops splashed right across the room to reach her in the cot on the far side of the cell. She lay on her back and allowed the water to patter on her face. It was raining, and she was saved. She wanted to weep with joy, and fell asleep, to wake what seemed only a moment later, as a light shone through the bars.

  She sat up, blanket pulled to her throat, heart pounding and seeming to rise into her chest in terror. But there was no mob in the corridor. Only two men. One was the gaoler, unlocking her door. The other, she saw from the light of the lantern, was a man wearing a naval uniform.

  Rod Bascom!

  Chapter Thirteen: Mobile — 1864

  ‘ROD?’ Marguerite whispered, unwilling to believe her eyes. ‘Rod?’

  The door was open, and he was inside, scooping her from the cot and holding her in his arms.

  ‘You can have ten minutes,’ the gaoler said. ‘You want I should leave the lamp?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rod said. ‘Leave the lamp. I want to look at her.’ He held her away from him. ‘Oh, my dearest darling,’ he said. ‘What have they done to you?’

  She wanted to look at him too. He wore a new uniform, and was clearly as fit and healthy as she remembered him. Rod was indestructible. ‘Nothing,’ she told him. ‘Nothing that matters. Not now you’re back.’

  They sat together on the cot, and she realised that his clothes were dry. The rain had stopped. But she didn’t need the rain, now — she had Rod. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘How ...’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘Tell me.’ She squeezed his hands. ‘Tell me about theAlabama. Is she back in the States?’

  ‘TheAlabama is at the bottom of the English Channel.’

  ‘Oh, my God. But ...’

  He told her of the fight with theKearsage, and how they had been rescued by the Englishman, Mr John Lancaster, in his yacht. ‘But for that,’ he explained, ‘I’d have been returned to a prison camp in the North, I suppose, like so many other of our brave fellows. But as it is, Captain Semmes, John Kell, most of our officers, and some thirty men have got away. They are saying that John Winslow, the Federal commander, is furious, and accusing the British of having robbed him of his prisoners. But the fact is, no one knows for sure if theKearsage’s boats would have been able to get back in time to rescue us before the ship went down. We were quite within our rights to get off while we could.’

  ‘Oh, Rod!’ She clung to him.

  ‘Marguerite ... Jerry is serving on board theKearsage.’

  ‘Jerry? You mean you saw him?’

  ‘I spoke with him, the day before the fight.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  Rod sighed. ‘He is not a forgiving man. I cannot find the heart to blame him for hating my guts.’ He grinned. ‘But I am glad I didn’t fall into his hands.’

  ‘And then you came back here?’

  ‘By the first available ship. To Nassau, and thence through the blockade to Wilmington. Semmes gave us all compassionate leave, although he wants us back on duty in a fortnight’s time. I’ve been riding day and night to get here, to see you ... and discovered this.’

  ‘Claudine,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘I went to your house first. Met Wilbur. He’s quite distraught.’

  ‘Is he?’ Marguerite asked, grimly.

  ‘Well, pretending to be, at least. Claudine was in bed. I didn’t see her. Wilbur thinks she’s having some kind of a breakdown.’

  ‘So she’s had me locked up,’ Marguerite said bitterly. ‘In here! She hates me, Rod. She hates us. She hates everything about us.’

  ‘As with Jerry, that isn’t altogether surprising, I suppose.’

  ‘Rod ...’ she squeezed his hands. ‘You’re only here for a fortnight. Can you get me out of here? I feel as if I’m going mad.’ She didn’t want to tell him about the mob.

  ‘You bet I am going to get you out of here, if I have to break down this Goddamned gaol to do it. But give me a chance to try some legal methods first.’

  Her shoulders slumped. ‘We’ve tried legal methods. They won’t give bail to anyone charged with treason.’

  ‘You mean the local judges. But we have a high authority. I happen to know that my old friend and skipper Franklin Buchanan has been appointed admiral of all the Confederate naval forces, and is right here in Mobile, taking charge of the defence. He’s Commander-in-Chief of all armed forces in southern Alabama. I am going to apply to him first thing tomorrow morning. Can you stand another night in this place?’

  She smiled, and kissed him. ‘I can sta
nd anything, now I know you’re here, and safe ... and looking after me.’

  ‘Then ... he raised his head as the gaoler appeared in the corridor, jingling his keys. ‘That was a damned short ten minutes.’

  ‘Time’s up, Lieutenant Bascom. And if I were you, I’d get the hell out of here. While you can.’

  ‘Eh?’ Rod stood up.

  ‘You hear that noise? That’s people talking, and coming closer. I thought maybe the rain’d drive them all home. But all it did was drive them into the saloons.’

  ‘I thought there was a curfew in this town?’ Rod demanded.

  ‘Well, there is. But there ain’t anybody around to enforce it.’

  ‘You mean your sheriff and his deputies are too busy arresting innocent people,’ Rod told him. ‘What are those people after?’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Marguerite whispered, listening to the shouts; she almost thought she could recognise some of the voices. She thought they had gone home too. Now they were definitely drunk, and they were coming closer every minute.

  Rod glanced from the gaoler to her, noting their expressions. ‘You don’t mean they’re coming here?’

  ‘They think I’m a spy,’ Marguerite said. ‘Oh, God, they think I’m a spy.’

  ‘So you had better get out of here quick,’ the gaoler repeated.

  ‘And leave Mrs McGann to a mob? Where are your guns?’

  ‘Now lookee here,’ the gaoler said. ‘I sure don’t aim to take on no mob. Not in defence of a Federal spy.’

  ‘I amnot a spy,’ Marguerite shouted. ‘For God’s sake, can’t you get that through your stupid head?’

  ‘You ain’t been tried yet, Mis’ McGann,’ the gaoler pointed out.

  ‘So how can I be a spy,’ Marguerite begged. ‘I haven’t been proved guilty, yet.’

  ‘But you ain’t been proved innocent yet, either,’ the gaoler said, triumphantly.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Rod snapped. The noise was very close. ‘Okay, I’m going to take your advice, and get the hell out of here. But I’m taking Mrs McGann with me.’