THE REBEL KILLER

by Paul Fraser Collard

  Nothing good could come of this desire. Martha was married to a man she was prepared to cross hundreds of miles to find. It was a decision that he did not fully understand, not with what she had told him of her husband’s quickness to use his fists. But she clearly had enough love for the man to risk her life to go to him, and he knew he should respect her choice and not make the man a cuckold. There were enough black marks on his soul already.

  ‘I’m going to get some air.’ He moved towards the door, making sure not to look at Martha as he moved past her. She knew him well enough by now. He was certain she would be able to read his expression.

  He stepped outside with relief. It was cool to the point of being cold, but he welcomed the chill after the stuffiness of the cabin. He walked to the rail, taking a firm grip with both hands to steady himself against the movement of the steamer, and gazed out over the river. It looked almost enchanting in the last of the day’s light, and he stood there savouring a moment’s peace and giving thanks that it was too cold for any of the biting insects that would have made even a moment outside a misery.

  Around him the steamer was noisy. On the lower deck he could hear the voices of the soldiers left to sleep outside. He listened to their laughter and imagined their faces as they swapped tall tales, or listened to a familiar story told by one of their number. A few men near the front of the boat were singing. He did not recognise the song, but he could hear the enjoyment in their voices. He had an inkling that he could be at home in the company of those soldiers. They might belong to an army he had once fought against, but he suspected that sitting amongst them would feel little different from the evenings he had spent with the men of the 1st Boston.

  The thought brought to mind the aspect of this war that he found most difficult to come to terms with. These were not two foreign powers wrestling for control of some distant, strategic land, the opponents separated by language, heritage or perhaps the colour of their skin. These two sides were made up of brothers, cousins and compatriots. He was pretty sure that such men would be happy to share a campfire with one another and swap stories without rancour. Yet here they were, tearing their country and each other apart.

  He shook his head at his own foolishness. Men would always fight, and generals and politicians would always want them to. It was the way of the world; always had been and always would be. Soldiers never had a say in the matter. They went where they were told to go, then fought whomsoever they were told to fight. They would die to satisfy the whim of a politician, and there was not a damned thing they could do about it. Unless they were like Jack. Unless they tore up the unwritten rulebook and broke free of the shackles of the society into which they had been born. It was not easy. Just a few would do it and even fewer would live long to tell the tale. Yet here he still was, taking a path of his own choosing and fighting to be free of the life he had been allotted.

  It was not often he contemplated what he was doing. He had come a long way since he had first taken an officer’s scarlet coat for his own. He had fought more times than he could count, and finally become the soldier he had always wanted to be. It defined him, his talent for battle the one thing that he had held close through every trial. Yet his desire to be a soldier had led him to what he was now: a mercenary; a man with nothing in his heart but a cold, remorseless desire for revenge.

  For a moment, the notion shamed him. As he looked across the river in the fast-fading light, he wondered quite how it had happened. He had not set out to become this man, this hardened, lonely killer. Somewhere he had lost what he wanted to be. He could blame fate. He could console himself that it had not been his choices that had brought him to this point. It would be easier that way. Yet he had never chosen the easy path, and he knew that he stood here today solely because of decisions he himself had made. It was no one’s fault but his own.

  He tried to conjure an image of Rose in his mind’s eye. He’d told himself that she was the reason he had embarked on this soul-destroying mission. Her loss still burned deep inside him. Yet no matter how hard he tried, he could no longer fully see her face in his mind. Somehow it had faded until it was little more than a lifeless portrait. Somewhere along the way he had lost her too. He was hunting for a man he would try to kill; yet he would do so for the memory of a woman he was already starting to forget.

  The door behind him opened, breaking his chain of thought, bringing him back to the here and now. Life carried on. A man could dwell on his fate and wonder at the decisions that had brought him to where he was. Yet no amount of soul-searching could change the past, and there was damn all a man could do to change his future. That just left the present.

  ‘Come back inside, before you catch your death.’

  He smiled at Martha’s tone. There was a challenge there, as if she was daring him to obey. A part of him had known this moment was coming. He already knew what he would do. He had known since the moment he had glimpsed her in the glass of the cabin window.

  He turned to face her. She had removed most of her clothes so that she stood there dressed in just an oversized shirt. There was no beguiling smile on her face or teasing glint in her eye. Martha was no shy virgin. She knew what she was asking him to do, just as he knew what he wanted.

  It was time to live in the present, to take what comfort he could find and cast his future, and his past, to one side.

  Jack lay in the bed, his arms crossed beneath his head. Martha slept beside him, or at least lay still as if she were sleeping. She had stayed close, but had rolled over so that she faced away from him. Her back rested against his side and he could feel the bones of her spine pressed against his skin. Her warmth seeped into his flesh and he was grateful for it.

  The steamer rocked gently, creaking and groaning as it moved on the swell of the river. He should have felt at peace. There was something comforting in Martha’s presence, in the feel of her flesh against his. Yet he felt nothing but guilt. It was not for making Martha’s husband a cuckold. Martha had been a willing partner, who had not been coerced or persuaded into bed. What had happened had happened between two people who had needed, who had wanted, the other. There was no shame in that, at least not in his mind.

  But there was shame in forgetting Rose.

  As he lay there, he tried again to summon her face in his mind. Once again he failed, the image remaining stubbornly out of his reach. He tried to torment himself, replaying the moment when he had been gunned down like a sick dog. But try as he might, he could not do it. The memories were there, but they were like an old wound. No matter how hard you poked the scar, you could not recreate the pain of its taking. The scar remained, but over time it faded until it became just another part of you, a link to a past that would never disappear, but which no longer had the power to torment.

  Yet there was another face, one that he could recall in perfect clarity. He tried to think of Rose, but the only face he could see was that of Nathan Lyle, the man who had killed her. The glimpse he had caught of the man the other day had done little to refresh the image he carried. For it had already been perfect in every detail.

  He was coming to realise that he was better at hating than he was at loving. He lay in the darkness and held the image of the man he would kill in his mind’s eye. He had got close once, and the next time he would get closer. Then Nathan Lyle would die, and Jack would finally be free.

  Dover, Tennessee, 11 February 1862

  It was late afternoon when the Rowena docked at Dover. The rain had started at dawn, and it was still coming down with no sign of easing off. It shrouded the town, hiding much of it from the view of the soldiers who lined the rails as their journey came to an end.

  Jack stood outside the cabin he had shared with Martha, sheltering from the rain in the covered walkway that led around the deck. The Cumberland river was wide here, its low banks mainly covered in trees. Its cold waters raged around the little paddle steamer as it came into the dock, the fierce flow making the ship buck and lurch so that he was forced to hold
onto the rail.

  It was bitterly cold as the rain lashed down. It was a miserable evening, a time for staying indoors and curling up by a fire. Instead, Jack looked out in the rain and stared at a town he could barely see, wondering if his foe was tucked away in one of its many buildings.

  Jack and Martha disembarked last. They walked away from the Rowena and into the midst of an army. The streets of Dover were crowded with Confederate troops. Most were hauling supplies, the soldiers pressed into service as pack mules as the officers charged with dealing with the supplies coming upriver did their best to organise the chaos. A rare few were at ease, and these fortunate souls scurried through the deluge, hats pulled low and shoulders hunched as they weathered the storm.

  Ahead, a miserable-looking column of infantry marched away from the river. To Jack’s eye they looked a motley crew, even allowing for the rain. They wore little in the way of uniform, with no two dressed alike, and moved with no discernible order. He tried to pick out the officers, but in the rain they all looked as dishevelled and scruffy as each other. It was a unit of scarecrows and vagrants that looked nothing like a body of formed military men.

  He pressed on, leaving Martha to follow with their saddlebags, just as an orderly should. There was little weight to them, their possessions now reduced to a few spare clothes. Jack still wore his knapsack, which contained all his ammunition and a spare revolver. The Navy Colt he had taken from the man who had killed Martha’s father was in a holster on his right hip, and he carried Pinter’s rifle. For her part, Martha carried a single carbine, the shorter weapon still far too big for her tiny frame.

  Jack was not unduly concerned at their lack of supplies. The town of Dover had been converted into one great depot. There would be provision and ordnance stores aplenty. He was dressed in the uniform of a Confederate officer, which meant that unless this army was wholly dissimilar to any other he had served in, he could simply requisition anything he needed, his signature on a scrap of paper likely to be all the authority required.

  Even as he trudged through the mud and the rain, he felt a sense of returning to where he belonged. He was back amidst an army on campaign. It was not his army, and he wasn’t meant to be there, but it was still familiar territory. He was a soldier amongst soldiers. He was home.

  They were soaked to the skin by the time they reached the Dover Hotel. It was a handsome two-storey clapboard house with a veranda across the front and a balcony above. A tall brick chimney ran up one flank, the red of the bricks dark against the white-painted clapboard.

  It came as something of a relief to walk up the steps and onto the veranda. The rain was lashing down. The soldiers encamped in and around Dover would be enduring the last hours of a miserable day that would surely be followed by an even more miserable night. The temperature was already starting to drop, and the soaked soldiers would likely freeze when night fell. It was cold enough for the rain to turn to snow, and Jack offered a silent prayer that by some miracle the hotel would have a room for them.

  The reception area was cramped, the space barely big enough for both him and Martha to step inside. A clerk standing behind a counter greeted them. He was old enough for his bushy beard to be fully grey, and he peered at the two of them through tiny pince-nez spectacles perched on the very tip of his nose. Jack returned the greeting with a genuine smile. The reception room was delightfully warm and he could smell coffee. The idea of going back outside was abhorrent.

  ‘You looking for a room, Captain?’ The clerk had seen the three gold bars on the collar of Jack’s uniform and was clearly familiar enough with military men to know what rank it denoted.

  ‘Yes. Do you have one for us?’ Jack tried not to sound too eager.

  ‘I haven’t had one for the last three weeks or more,’ the clerk replied with a slow shake of his head. ‘Those generals and their staff took over the whole place.’

  ‘Is there anywhere else we can stay?’

  ‘Not here.’

  Jack sighed. It had been a forlorn hope, and he had known this would be the likely answer. Dover was now a vast military camp. That meant there would surely be enough senior officers around the place for all the comfortable accommodation to have been taken.

  ‘You have the general staying here?’ He wanted to linger. He did not care that the two of them were forming a puddle of rainwater on the floor.

  ‘Which one?’ The grey-bearded clerk chuckled at his own answer. ‘We got ourselves so goddam many. But in answer to your question, they’re all here. Floyd, Pillow, Buckner – hell, we got them and their staff. There ain’t room to swing a damn cat about the place.’

  Jack did his best to smile. The clerk seemed happy to talk, and he was content enough to stand in the warm. ‘Least that means they’ll have a chance to plan. We sure need that if we’re going to whip them Yankees.’

  The clerk looked at Jack with an odd expression, as if he could tell that he was uncomfortable with the phrase. ‘Would you be English, Captain?’

  Jack nodded. There was no hiding his accent.

  The clerk seemed pleased to have made the identification. ‘There’s a few of you fellows about these days. Seems some of you are keen to help even if your government don’t want to. Still, we’re grateful and all.’

  Jack could not help smiling as the clerk gave him thanks on behalf of all the Confederate states. He wondered how the man would react if he realised he was faced with a couple of impostors. ‘Just so long as we beat those Northern bastards.’

  ‘Amen to that, Captain. But they’ll sure take some whipping.’ The clerk shook his head as he faced up to an unpleasant truth. ‘They took Fort Henry and now they’re just upriver and sure to be coming here.’

  ‘When did that happen?’

  ‘Five days ago now. I heard they pretty much flattened the place with those ironclad ships of theirs. Some of our boys managed to get away and come here. We’re all that’s left.’

  ‘But we’re making a stand here.’ Jack made it sound like a statement when it was really a question.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure we are, Captain. I never saw so many people in this town. And you’ve all been so busy. Digging rifle pits all around the place and bringing the guns up to Fort Donelson over yonder. Those goddam Yankees won’t know what’s hit ’em if they do come this way. We’ll put a stop to their invasion, and send them running back the way they came.’

  Jack had listened carefully to the clerk, gleaning what information he could. If the Confederate army was making a stand around Dover, it seemed likely that both he and Martha would find what they were looking for, either in the town itself or in Fort Donelson.

  ‘Now, Captain, I’m right sorry to do this, but I need you and your boy there to step on outside.’ The clerk grimaced as he made the demand, as if it truly pained him. ‘But if you stop by here again, well, if I got anything then I’ll let you have it.’

  Jack nodded his thanks, then glanced outside. The wind had picked up and the rain now lashed against the side of the hotel. The light was fading and it would soon be dark. He needed to find them a place to wait out the night.

  ‘You stay safe out there, Captain.’ The clerk gave them a warm farewell as Jack prepared to step outside. ‘Whip those Yankees good.’

  ‘So where are we going to stay?’ Martha followed Jack out and was forced to press her lips up against his ear so that her words were not lost in the storm.

  ‘No idea, love.’ Jack turned up the collar of his greatcoat. ‘But that went well.’

  ‘How do you figure that?’

  ‘That bloke never doubted who you were. And you didn’t say a word.’ He flashed her a thin-lipped smile. ‘You’re learning to shut up.’

  Martha shook her head at the mockery. But still she found something close to a smile. ‘Go on then, Captain.’ She addressed Jack with the same title the receptionist had used, although she laced it with a dollop of sarcasm. ‘Find us someplace to stay.’

  Jack pushed away the blanket and forced his f
rozen body into motion. It hurt to move, the soreness in his back as bad as he had ever known it. As he lurched to his feet, a single white-hot lance of pain cut down into the pit of his spine with enough force to make him stagger.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ He hissed the blasphemy through gritted teeth, his hands kneading his lower back as well as his stiff, frozen fingers could manage.

  ‘Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.’ The rebuke was delivered from underneath the blanket he had shared with Martha.

  ‘Don’t you ever let up?’ Jack snapped the waspish reply, then coughed, his lungs protesting at the chilled air he was hauling into them.

  ‘Don’t you ever learn?’ Martha’s retort was just as snappy.

  He did not blame her. He had found them little in the way of shelter. They had trudged around the streets of Dover until night had fallen, every building and outbuilding already packed full with Confederate soldiers. Tired, fed up and chilled to the bone, he had given up. He had liberated half a dozen blankets from some soldiers’ packs he had found bundled together under a tarpaulin in the back of a wagon, then made them a rudimentary shelter in the lee of a wood store on the fringe of town. It had been an uncomfortable night, and he doubted either of them had slept much as they huddled together under the purloined blankets.

  The morning had dawned grey and cold. It had stopped raining, yet still everything he owned was damp, and he knew his weapons would need careful attention if they were not to rust. Such jobs, though, were for the future. For the moment, all he could think of was getting something hot to drink.

  He coughed, forcing the phlegm from his throat, then looked down at the bundle of blankets. Martha had yet to move. He would let her lie there for a while longer. He ran his hands over his face, feeling the rasp of stubble across his chin and cheeks. He hated shaving, but unless he wanted to accept having a beard, it was something he would have to face soon. His hair was also longer than he liked. He added finding a barber to his ever-growing list of chores.