by Jane Toombs
Jenkins had shaken his head. "Ain't no man in Michigan ever gonna forget that day."
Nick could only hope his encounter with the hex witch along this same river wouldn't prove to be as much of a disaster for him as that long-ago battle had been for the Americans.
A waning not-yet-gibbous moon rose over the trees as he came in sight of Sister Wenda's cottage, the small house all but concealed among dark evergreens. Sensing the blue flicker of energy inside, he knew she was home. Striding boldly up the path, he knocked on the door.
As though expecting him, she opened the door immediately, her sea green eyes flicking over him. She smiled, slowly, languorously, and stepped aside to allow him to enter.
Lindenblatt had told him he heard she was about forty years old. Nick didn't know exactly what he'd thought she'd be like but what he saw sure as hell wasn't it. Red hair curled about her face and fell in waving, flaming clouds over her shoulders. She wore no fashionable hoops, her green gown was low cut and bound with a wide jet-beaded belt under her full breasts, the gown skimming her voluptuous body as it fell in soft silken folds to her ankles.
A man would have to be a eunuch not to respond to such an attractive woman.
"How can I help you, doctor?" she asked in a husky, amused voice as she closed the door.
Nick fought the spell she cast. "If you know who I am, you know why I'm here," he said. "And what I want." "Everything has its price," she murmured. "I'm sure we can reach an agreement. In here." She gestured toward a cosy sitting room off the entry hall where a fire blazed on the hearth.
She touched his arm with the pointed nail of her forefinger, her musky perfume enticing him, filling his mind with images of her naked in his arms. Damn, but he wanted this woman. He could think of nothing but having her. He took a step toward her.
A yowl startled him and he held. A gray cat, fur on end, dashed between him and Wenda, disappearing into the depths of the house.
The witch's cat. Nick came abruptly to himself. His hand closed over what he carried in his pocket and he stepped back, grimly hanging on to the shreds of his control.
"Your cat's afraid of me." His voice challenged her. "Can you guess why?"
Wenda smiled mockingly. "I don't fear you."
"I want what you concocted for Guntar Rilke. You will give it to me."
"For a price, yes."
Should he bargain with a witch? "The price?" he asked cautiously.
"Can't you guess?" Her hands skimmed the air close to her body, tracing her curves.
Nick's eyes widened, he was momentarily speechless. "It's useless to pretend you don't desire me." Her voice was a purr, caressing his ears.
He had to swallow before he could ease words past his dry throat. "I can't pay your price."
Her smile fled. "You will pay it, doctor, willingly or otherwise." Her hand began a gesture in the air between them.
Terror gripped Nick as he felt what remained of his control dissolving. If the witch spelled him into bedding her, what might happen? In his heart he feared such a union would doom Liisi and, eventually, him. Plus the horrible danger of fathering a monster like himself.
Never! He pulled the steel amulet from his pocket and flung it at Wenda.
An almost-forgotten wrenching twisted his guts and, as he tore at his clothes, he heard her laugh.
If she thought he stripped in eagerness to join with her, she was badly mistaken.
"I'm a shapeshifter," he warned, his voice already half a growl. "I have no control over the beast I become--he'll kill you."
He saw the pupils of her green eyes dilate in fear and knew she saw the beast emerging. As she backed away, he leaped at her, grabbing both her wrists in one of his taloned hands. He threw her to the floor and scooped up the steel amulet in his free hand.
"The change is temporarily halted," he told her, hoping it was true. He'd never tried anything like this before. "Give me what I need and the beast stays trapped within me. Refuse and he runs free. And you die."
"In the back room," she whispered.
He hauled her to her feet and, holding her wrists, pushed her ahead of him along the hall, snarling in his struggle against the increasingly demanding urge to shift all the way, to free the beast.
Thirteen wax mannikens nestled in red boxes arrayed on a black table in a room that raised Nick's hackles with its wrongness. After a moment's thought, he eased the leather thong over his wrist and carefully placed all thirteen of the boxes with their hideous contents into a larger, empty wooden box. Carrying the box, he thrust her ahead of him to the front door.
"Open it!" he ordered, realizing with dismay his voice was scarcely intelligible. His control was all but gone. "Leave this town," he told her. "Go back to where you came from. Or face the beast."
As she threw the door open she hissed, "We'll meet
again one day. In Pennsylvania."
He burst from the witch's house, running, flinging the amulet's thong around his neck in mid-flight, searching his mind for the right words to chant before it was too late. When he reached Jenkins', Ombre snorted at his approach, dancing away from his touch, sensing the beast's continuing fight to emerge. It was some minutes before he calmed the stallion enough to mount him. Between his struggle with the horse and with himself, the ride home was a nightmare.
Mima took the box from his shaking hands when he staggered into the house and disappeared into the noita room with the thirteen wax mannikens.
Nick, who'd taken the precaution of having a basement dug under the house, hurried down the steps and into the room without windows he'd had built into the basement. Shut inside, he bowed his head and, one hand closed around the amulet, chanted Liisi's charm against shapeshifting over and over for the rest of the night, fighting the beast's ravening need to burst free.
The next morning, Liisi was conscious for the first time in weeks, though still very weak. Nick sat on the bed spooning broth into her mouth while Mima told them both what she'd done with the mannikens.
"All those little dolls, they got pins stuck in them or strings knotted tight around parts of them. Some, they were partly melted from being burned. I took out the pins and took off the strings and then, one at a time, I held them in my hands and tried to heal their sickness." She smiled at Liisi. "And you woke up."
"Thank you." Liisi's voice was faint, her smile a bare twitch of her lips. She reached one hand to Nick, one to Mima.
Nick didn't tell Liisi what had happened with Sister Wenda until she'd regained some of her strength--and then he didn't tell her everything. Some things were better kept secret from a wife.
When, after several months Liisi recovered completely, Nick found her travail seemed to have turned her against the town.
"Why don't we leave here and travel to your California land?" she asked Nick in April. "They don't like me in Nogadata, you ought to see that by now."
"Guntar Rilke was your enemy, not the townspeople," Nick said soothingly. "He had a grudge against you."
"Mima was twelve when I threatened Guntar," Liisi responded. "He might have been upset eight years ago but not enough to try to get even. He was pushed into what he did. First, by hearing his mother-in-law complain about the two- headed calf and the double-yolked eggs and saying she'd been hexed. She pointed the finger at me, I'm sure. Then, that poor little baby was born to Greta and he decided I was to blame, no doubt encouraged in his belief by his mother-in- law. In my opinion, Mrs. Zweig drove him into visiting the hex witch. She hates me. She'll turn the entire town against me, given time."
Seeing it was useless, Nick didn't argue with her but he thought she was exaggerating. No wonder she was disturbed, after what she'd been through.
"Besides," Liisi said, "I fear war will destroy you.
Do you wish to die without ever knowing where you came from or why you were born?"
Nick stared at her. "I'm more likely to be destroyed if I return to California. I've explained why." He put a soothing hand on her shoulder. "Every
thing will look better by summer. You'll be feeling as good as new by then. We'll take a trip to Detroit--they've opened a new museum there." "You don't understand," she said with a sigh, shrugging off his hand. "Why are men so blind?"
The Detroit trip didn't raise Liisi's spirits. Nor Nick's. Seeing so many men dressed in Union blue, he felt ashamed not to be doing his part. In September of '62, when the Confederates crossed the Potomac River into Maryland and threatened the nation's capital, he decided he had to enlist. There'd be no further threat from the hex witch, she'd long since gone from Monroe--back to Pennsylvania, he supposed. Liisi was completely well now and even the mountain ash in the front yard was thriving. And he had plenty of money in the bank for Liisi and Mima to live on.
They could manage very well without him. After all, how much longer could the war last? Six months? A year at the most. In any case, he was determined to be part of it. What was a man's life without a cause? He'd found a worthy one-- fighting for what he believed was right.
One thing and another, including Phil Jenkins' death, delayed him but, in late November, he headed into Monroe, determined to enlist in the cavalry. But when he tried he encountered an obstacle--since he was a doctor the Army expected him to treat the wounded rather than ride against the Rebels.
"I'll think it over and let you know tomorrow," Nick said.
He stopped by to see Mrs. Jenkins whose daughter and two children had moved into her house after the daughter's husband was killed in September in the fighting at Antietam. The two widows insisted he stay for supper and spend the night at the farm.
Nick took a stroll around town before the meal and was nearing Judge Bacon's house on Monroe Street when he saw a young man in uniform weaving along the sidewalk toward him, obviously drunk. Just as the soldier--a captain, if rather gaudily dressed--reached the Bacon house, he fell onto his hands and knees and vomited into the street.
Nick strode to him, conscious of faces in the windows of the Bacon house staring at the spectacle the young soldier was making of himself.
Helping the man to his feet, Nick asked, "Where do you live? I'll take you home."
"Can't go home," the captain said mournfully. "Lydie'll fuss." His words were so badly slurred Nick could hardly understand him.
"Is Lydie your wife?"
"M' sister. She'll fuss."
God knows the captain probably had cause to drink. Sympathizing with his plight, Nick said, "Come along with me. We'll walk until you feel better."
Nick steadied him as they passed by the Bacon house and turned onto Front Street, walking along the river toward the docks. He thought the captain was oddly dressed for a Union officer. Though he wore regulation blue, his broadbrimmed hat was Confederate gray and a bright red kerchief was tied around his neck. With his reddish-blond hair, worn longer than customary and his shaggy mustache, he verged on the flamboyant.
Evening shadows were gathering by the time they reached the end of a pier and stood, huddled against the cold, staring at the icy water of Brest Bay.
"I might's well jump in," the soldier said morosely. "He's sure to hear about me."
"Who?"
"Judge Bacon."
Nick's eyebrows raised. "I think he saw you. Why are you worried about the Judge?"
The soldier sighed. "Libbie. Miss Elizabeth Bacon. After this her father will never let her speak to me again." He shook his head. "They call me lucky but seems I can't do anything right when it comes to Libbie. When I was ten I fell out of a tree trying to rescue her kitten and now I--" "Autie?" Nick said, surprised. "You're little Autie?" "Captain George Armstrong Custer, at your service,
sir," he said, coming to wavering attention and staring at Nick with his bloodshot blue eyes.
"I fixed your arm when you fell from that tree."
Autie clapped him on the shoulder. "Damned if you aren't the doctor!"
"Nick Deplacer. I'm afraid I didn't recognize you as Monroe's hero, Captain Custer. Everyone's heard of your remarkable exploits in battle; we're all proud of you."
The captain's face flushed and he ducked his head, obviously embarrassed. "I lead brave men," he mumbled.
"I'm trying to enlist in the cavalry myself," Nick went on, "but the army wants me to serve as a doctor. Maybe you can be of service. Do you think you can help me get on a horse instead of stuck permanently in a field hospital?" "Hell, yes, I can. It may take time but I'm General McClellan's aide, I'll speak to him personally."
"Thanks." Nick smiled. "I'll remind you again tomorrow, when your head's clearer. Where are you staying?" "With my sister, Mrs. Reed."
"I believe you've sobered up enough to face her now." Autie rolled his eyes. "You don't know Lydie."
In June of '83, Captain Deplacer was finally transferred from his medical unit to the 1st Michigan Cavalry. He cheered along with the other Wolverines when they learned
the new commander of the Second or Michigan Brigade their regiment belonged to was to be Brigadier General Custer. In July, the brigade, including the 1st Michigan and Nick, rode behind their commander into Pennsylvania.
General or not, Autie Custer still tied a red kerchief around his neck, though he'd exchanged the gray hat for a black one with a gold star pinning up the wide brim on the right side. Gold spurs decorated his high-topped boots.
Nick hadn't yet ridden into battle under him but he'd listened to those who had.
"He's got guts, the general," a veteran sergeant named Ulrich had told him. "No doubt about that. Always rides way the hell out in front. Seems like he figures ain't no bullet got his name writ on it."
Recalling the ten-year-old who'd suffered without a whimper through the pain of having a dislocated shoulder pulled back into place, Nick nodded. Autie was courageous as well as lucky.
God knows there were enough unlucky soldiers. He'd treated bullet and shrapnel wounds after the defeat at Chancellorville in May and had lost his own battle to save many of the injured men. While he was a healer, he wasn't a miracle worker. Nor did he have the heart for surgery, for sawing off maimed arms and legs as though they were so many pieces of wood. He'd welcomed the long awaited transfer to the Michigan 1st.
Riding along the dusty Pennsylvania road with his unit, Nick grimaced as he noted the brilliantly colored paintings on some of the barns. Hex signs. He couldn't help remembering Sister Wenda's threat to meet him in Pennsylvania. Try as he might, he'd never completely forgotten her. He'd never expected to be in her territory-- yet here he was.
Nick shrugged. He was here to fight the Rebs, not rendezvous with a witch. Like other civilians, Wenda would stay as far as she could from any shooting. Ability to hex didn't mean an immunity to bullets.
That night, bivouacked with the others near Heidlersburg, Nick lay on his back in the warm, breathless night staring up at the full moon as it climbed the sky and chanting Liisi's charm under his breath. He hadn't come close to changing since the night with the hex witch but he dared not let down his guard.
He'd come to love Liisi with all his heart and soul and yet it wasn't her image that haunted his dreams in the Pennsylvania night. Wenda, with her red hair and witch-green eyes, beckoned to him, offering her lush curves and he responded, wanting her despite the danger. He'd have her whatever the consequences.
He woke abruptly, heart hammering against his ribs, to the milky half-light of dawn. The moon was setting behind a woods and the other men of his unit surrounded him, most still sleeping. There was no witch lying with him, no crackle of blue energy nearby. But, as he pulled on his boots, Nick sensed she'd somehow deliberately invaded his dreams.
The Second Brigade stood to horse shortly after sunrise. Hours passed with no order to ride. It was getting on for noon before a courier arrived with orders and the brigade, the 1st among them, rode down the Harrisburg road toward Gettysburg, nine miles away.
Around two o'clock they halted at Rock Creek. Nick listened to the nerve-shattering bombardment ahead but the fighting was hidden by a ridge. All he could see was th
e clouds of white smoke billowing above the hill. In the hours that followed, General Custer moved the brigade time and again across the fields but it wasn't until five that they moved out along a dirt road, toward Gettysburg.
They'd gone several miles before Reb cavalry confronted them. General Custer, leading the Michigan 6th, charged, shouting, "Come on, you Wolverines!"
Nick, left behind with the rest of the 1st, listened to the clash of sabers and the crack of pistols up ahead, expecting to be called into action at any moment. When the remnants of the 6th began straggling back he started to wonder if the Rebs were winning. After Custer returned, riding with a private because his own horse had been shot out from under him, Nick understood how bad the defeat was.
Under a full moon, they rode behind the Union line to find a safe night camp. Refugees--wounded men and stragglers--blocked the road, whimpering tales of defeat to all who passed by.
Custer rallied his men. "We lost a skirmish but the battle's yet to be fought. Tomorrow we'll send the Rebs hightailing it back to Charleston, damned if we don't."
But it was near twilight of that day before Nick's unit faced the enemy.
"'Tis Jeb Stuart and his men," Sergeant Ulrich muttered as the 1st fell into formation. "We'll give 'em hell."
Nick tensed. Jeb Stuart's cavalry was formidable indeed--equal to or surpassing any Union cavalry. Custer took his place at the head of his columns. He raised his saber, shouted, "Come on, you Wolverines!" and pounded toward the solid ranks of advancing gray.
Wild yells burst from the throats of the men around Nick as they spurred their horses after their general. He yelled along with them, caught up in the fever of battle induced by Custer's reckless courage.
A red mist clouded his vision as lust for the kill captured his mind.
Death to all Rebs!
Chapter 18