Thieves of Mercy

by James L. Nelson

  Soon after, he was reassigned to an ironclad in Mississippi. He fought in the losing effort to stop the Yankees from coming up the Mississippi River from the Gulf, Farragut and that bunch.

  For two weeks after the battle, Wendy had walked around numb, as if she were encased in glass, her mind dulled to the grief and anxiety of not knowing. And then, on the eighth of May, the letter arrived and she knew that Samuel Bowater was safe, as of eight days earlier. He was in Yazoo City.

  She had to go to him.

  She went to her wardrobe, pulled out a plain gray dress, folded it, stuck it in her carpetbag.

  This is insane.

  How could she travel to Yazoo City, a woman by herself? It would be madness at any time, but now, with the entire nation at war, it was beyond the pale.

  But yet… War brought with it a certain insanity, as if the old rules did not apply, as if she could do things she would not otherwise have dreamed of doing. Hadn’t she dressed as an apprentice sailor and snuck aboard a man-of-war, actually taken the wheel in the middle of a sea fight? How, in a sane world, could that have happened?

  She could go to Yazoo City. It was just a matter of courage. Did she have the courage.

  “No,” she said out loud, “I do not have the courage.” But I’ll go anyway.

  She packed the rest quickly: dresses, chemises, stockings, her painting smock and her paints, a tiny canvas she had primed the day before. She looked at the window, more as a matter of habit than in hopes of seeing anything. It was around nine o’clock at night, full dark, and all she could see was her own reflection in the glass.

  Dear God, I look a misery. The days of anxiety had not been kind to her. She was twenty-seven, not a young girl anymore, and the years were starting to show.

  “I guess I had better get Samuel to marry me,” she said out loud, “or I’ll be an old maid soon enough.” She smiled as she thought of the two of them, she and Aunt Molly, living out their dotage together, old maids with white hair. People would whisper about them. Children would start rumors that they were witches.

  She could imagine the two of them growing old together. They had got on well in the two years that Wendy had been with her, staying in the carriage house. Molly was lively and fun, and they understood each other’s need for occasional solitude.

  Indeed, they did not grow tired of one another because they did not see much of one another. Molly was always on the move, and there would sometimes be weeks in which Wendy was certain Molly had not come home, but she was never sure. Molly never announced when she was leaving and did not announce her return. One day she was around the house, one day she was not. But Wendy lived happily in the little carriage house and enjoyed Molly’s company when it was there, and she did not ask questions.

  Wendy finished packing, then pulled a simple traveling dress over her chemise, no crinoline, which she avoided in any event. She took the money that she had hidden in her sock drawer and stuffed it down into the carpetbag. She sat at her familiar desk and wrote a short note to Aunt Molly, explaining things matter-of-factly, and left it on her pillow. She took one look around the carriage house, a place she had come to love, then tied a simple bonnet on her head, turned down the lantern until the flame was extinguished, and stepped out into the night.

  It was dark and warm, springtime in tidewater Virginia, Thursday night, and the city was a frenzy of activity. McClellan was on the Peninsula, pushing for Richmond, and it was generally believed that the Yankees would soon be crossing Hampton Roads and landing on the Confederate side of the water. All that morning and afternoon they had heard the boom of the Yankee guns as the men-of-war in Hampton Roads shelled Sewell’s Point.

  Rumors drifted like clouds over the city: the Yankees would overrun them, the Yankees would be beaten back by Confederate troops even now being sent from Richmond, the mighty ironclad Virginia would destroy any vessel attempting to ferry troops, as she had destroyed Cumberland and Congress just a month before.

  Those stories had pulled Wendy’s emotions one way, then another, until finally she was so sick of the back-and-forth that she dismissed them all, out of hand.

  But from the sounds that came out of the night she could tell that the rumors still found true believers. Portsmouth and Norfolk across the river were being abandoned; the signs and the noise of flight were all around. The clatter of hooves, the rumble of wagons and carriages, the huff and hiss and roar of the trains filled the night. Soldiers and civilians, they were all on the move.

  For a second Wendy just stood, felt the handle of her carpetbag in her sweating palm, wondered what she should do. She had reckoned on getting a train and had not considered the possibility that she would not be able to. Still, she could think of no better plan, so she took a deep breath and headed down the flagstone path to the gate in the picket fence.

  “There’s a war on, haven’t you heard?” The voice came from behind her, soft and feminine, and it startled her as if a hand had grabbed her ankle. She gasped, jumped, whirled.

  Aunt Molly stepped out of the shadows of the rhododendron bush that huddled against the carriage house. “Are you fleeing from the Yankee vandals, dear?” she asked.

  “Oh—” Wendy needed a moment to collect herself. She pressed a hand to her throat, took a deep breath. She could feel her heart thumping in her chest. “Oh, Molly, you scared me half to death! How did you—”

  “You left your curtains open, dear. I’ve been watching you pack like a madwoman for the past hour. I suppose I got curious.”

  “Oh. Well…with all the rumors…and such…of the Yankees coming, I thought perhaps I should go back to Culpepper…be with my family…my mother. You understand.”

  Molly took a step closer and smiled. She was ten years older than Wendy, never married, which put her solidly in the category of spinster aunt.

  Why she had never married, Wendy did not understand. She was a beautiful woman, her hair thick and blond, her skin pale and smooth as that of a woman half her age. In coloring she and Wendy were nearly opposites, but in temperament they were more alike than any other two members of the family. That was the real reason that Wendy’s parents had objected so vociferously to her coming to live with Molly. They did not think their daughter’s behavior needed further reinforcing.

  “You’re worried about your mother?” Molly asked.

  “Yes…and, you understand—”

  “Wendy, darling, that is just such horseshit in so many ways.” Molly’s vulgarity made Wendy blush, not for the first time. The words sounded so odd spoken in Molly’s lilting voice, the soft tidewater accent. In truth, Molly was Wendy to the third power, the woman Wendy wished she was, but did not have the grit to be.

  “How can you say that? How—”

  “Wendy, you spent an hour staring at that letter from your sailor, and then you started packing. You might as well have shouted out your intentions into the night. And you didn’t even have sense enough to close your curtains.”

  Wendy felt her eyebrows come together, her lips press tight. “Fine, very well, I am going to go to Samuel. You won’t stop me.” She was impressed with her own determination, her tone of defiance, even as she spoke.

  “No, I won’t stop you,” Molly agreed. “I just want to be sure you’ll make it there alive.” She took two steps forward, her hand lashed out, grabbed the handle of the carpetbag, yanked it from Wendy’s grasp. She moved so fast Wendy only had time to gasp, and then she was standing there empty-handed.

  “All right,” Molly said. “Now I have stolen your bag. But that’s no great concern, is it, because your money is hidden on your person. Right?”

  “Oh…ah…”

  “Your money is in your bag? All of it?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Very well. So now you are a penniless woman, far from home and friends. And now I am a filthy lecher who is determined to have his way with you. And you do what?”

  “Scream?”

  Molly nodded. “Scream as you pull a gun and
shoot me?”

  “Pull a gun? Dear Lord.”

  Molly shook her head. Her expression showed incredulity, amusement, pity. “My dear, you have a lot more courage than you do sense. That’s how I knew you weren’t going to Culpepper, because going to Culpepper would be the sensible thing to do, but it would not be the courageous thing. As it is, you’ll be lucky to make it out of Virginia alive.”

  Wendy felt the tears coming and she wiped them aside. She was frightened, frustrated, uncertain. She stood there in the chaotic night and she felt like a stupid little girl caught trying to run away from home.

  “Oh, come now.” Molly stepped up and put her arms around Wendy and Wendy buried her face in Molly’s silk dress. “I shouldn’t have said you lack sense, that’s not true. You just want for experience.” She let Wendy cry for a minute more before adding, “We’ll be all right. We’ll find your sailor boy.”

  Wendy let the tears come, let the fear and uncertainty of the past two weeks flow out and soak into Molly’s dress.

  Then, as she felt the tears ebb, another thought vied for her attention. Did she say “we”?

  Molly, it turned out, did say “we,” and she meant “we,” literally. She parried Wendy’s protests like a fencer, turning each argument aside. “No, no, Wendy dear, it is not an imposition, it is an adventure. Besides, I don’t want to be left here in Norfolk with those damned Yankees overrunning the place. It wouldn’t be safe for a single girl.”

  She presented her arguments as she led the protesting Wendy up the flagstone path to her own house and in the back door that opened into the kitchen. A bulging carpetbag sat on the table. Molly was already packed.

  She set Wendy’s bag down beside her own. “All right, Wendy, get your money out of your bag.”

  Sheepishly, Wendy fished around for her little bundle of Confederate bills. She found them near the bottom, pulled them out, handed them to Molly.

  Molly began dividing up the bills like a card dealer. “Unbutton your dress, dear,” she said, and then, sensing Wendy’s hesitation, looked up and said, “Go ahead.”

  Wendy cleared her throat, reached a tentative hand to the buttons on her dress, and began to undo them, feeling the snug-fitting fabric fall away. She had got to just below her breasts when Molly said, “That’s fine. Now here…” She handed Wendy one of the three piles of bills into which she had divided her niece’s net worth. “Stick this in your dress, right on your boobie.”

  “Molly!”

  “Come along. At least anyone who finds it there is someone with whom you are quite intimate. I assume you trust your sailor boy not to steal from you?”

  Wendy felt her cheeks burn but said nothing as she positioned the bills.

  “One stack to port, one to starboard, as your sailor might say.” Molly waited while Wendy secured the bills, buttoned her dress back up.

  “But why not put all the money in there?” Wendy asked.

  “My dear, you don’t want to have to go fishing around in there every time you need some cash! Besides, if you are robbed, it is important to have something to give, or else the robber will become more aggressive in searching. Now, have you ever fired a gun?”

  “A gun? No…”

  “Very well, then, you had better have the little one.” Molly put her foot up on a chair at the kitchen table and pulled up her dress. Silk stocking came up to her thighs, covering well-formed calves. Around her right thigh was a thin leather belt from which hung a small holstered derringer. Molly unbuckled the belt, showed it to Wendy.

  “Molly, where did you ever get such a thing?”

  “A single girl has to look out for herself,” Molly said. “Now come with me.”

  She led Wendy outside again, into the dark yard. “You must always treat a gun as if it was loaded. Don’t ever point it at a person unless there might be a genuine need to shoot them.”

  Wendy nodded. Things were moving too fast for her to put words to them.

  “Here.” Molly handed her the little gun and Wendy took it, held it carefully as if it were made of delicate china. “Hold it with authority, like you mean it,” Molly advised. “You won’t break it. Now, go ahead and shoot the rhododendron.”

  “Shoot…”

  “Go ahead. That little thing won’t do any harm.”

  Wendy nodded, held the gun out the way she had seen her father do it, looked over the barrel at the dark shape of the rhododendron. She squeezed her eyes tight.

  “Wait, wait! Don’t close your eyes.”

  “Oh.”

  Wendy aimed again, this time focused on keeping her eyes open. She pulled the trigger. The derringer fired with a sharp crack, a flash like a photographer’s flash powder, and a satisfying kick that bent her arm at the elbow so the gun was by her head. A week before, a gunshot would have attracted quite a bit of attention in Portsmouth, but now no one took notice. It was not the first gunshot they had heard that night.

  Wendy grinned and looked at Molly. Molly said, “Very good, dear. In any event, if you have to use that, it will no doubt be at close range.”

  They went back in the kitchen. Molly showed Wendy how to load the diminutive gun, then they strapped it to Wendy’s leg. She liked the feel of it, the weight, the secret menace. By outward appearance she still looked like a helpless woman. No one but Molly knew her lethal secret. She liked that.

  Molly fetched a little silk drawstring reticule. She pulled it open, withdrew another gun, an odd-looking thing with a barrel that consisted of six barrels mounted around a separate shaft. “They call this a ‘pepperbox,’” Molly explained as she checked the load in each barrel. “Six shots in revolving barrels.” She explained it as if she were discussing the latest fashion from Paris.

  “But see here, Wendy. The gun is always a last resort. Once a gun is pulled, things change, and it is often hard to extract yourself from the situation. Talk is always best. Talk yourself out of any circumstance, and pull the gun when you have no other choice.”

  Wendy nodded and wondered where Molly had ever picked up such practical advice. She recalled the time Molly had taught her her secret recipe for pickle relish. Her tone of voice, the manner of her speech, were just the same as they were now. Guns, apparently, were as familiar to her as condiments.

  Molly put the pepperbox back in the reticule and hung the bag on her arm. She picked up her carpetbag and Wendy did the same.

  “Shall we go?” Molly asked.

  Wendy nodded. Once again, words abandoned her. She was not sure what to say. It was perhaps the strangest evening of her life. It was perhaps the most exhilarating.

  FOUR

  [U]nless some competent person of education, system, and brains is put over each division of this [River Defense] fleet it will, in my judgment, prove an utter failure. There is little or no discipline or subordination—too much “steamboat” and too little of the “man-of-war” to be very effective.

  MAJOR GENERAL M. LOVELL

  TO GENERAL G. W. RANDOLPH,

  SECRETARY OF WAR,

  CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA

  Samuel Bowater ran forward, reached the bottom of the ladder leading to the hurricane deck, pivoted around the rail, and raced up. He hit the upper deck running, passed the walking beam working up and down like a teeter-totter, made straight for the wheelhouse. A lifetime of his father’s strict instruction concerning the conduct of a gentleman, fifteen years of observing the decorum expected of a naval officer, were all obliterated by blind rage. Mississippi Mike Sullivan had set him up, played him like a flute. No one had ever done that to him before.

  He reached the wheelhouse, threw open the door. He was breathing hard. In the window on the opposite side he caught his reflection, the picture of a feral and frightening thing, like one of Mr. Darwin’s ape-men. But Sullivan was not there.

  “Where—where the hell is Sullivan?” Bowater gasped.

  Baxter, still at the helm, looked over at him. The cheroot was shorter now but still smoldering. His face was almost
expressionless, maybe a bit amused. Men in a rage, looking to kill Sullivan, were probably common enough.

  “Salon,” he said, nodding in that general direction.

  Bowater cursed, slammed the door, stamped back across the hurricane deck. Sullivan must have gone down the starboard side ladder while Bowater charged up the port. He felt the fury ebb as he took the steps of the ladder fast and hit the main deck below. By the time he reached the salon door, his mood had changed from an irrational hysteria to a more controlled fury.

  He kicked the door in, stamped into the big room. Oil lamps on the bulkheads lit the place with a warm, dull light. The riverboat men seemed to be celebrating, holding bottles aloft, shouting, while Bowater’s men stood in a tight and angry cluster to starboard.

  “Captain Bowater!” Mike Sullivan extracted himself from the crowd, crossed the deck with hand extended. “Captain, that was a damn well-done thing, back there!”

  The bonhomie, which would have irritated Bowater at any time, now made the fury boil again. “You bastard!” he shouted, taking a step toward Sullivan, so they were face to face, though Bowater had to look up to meet Sullivan’s eyes. “You son of a bitch, you played me…help you…steal a goddamned…”

  “Ah, hell, Captain, we was just havin some fun! How we do it, here on the river. Come on, now, have a drink and forget it!”

  Sullivan held up a bottle. Bowater drew back his arm and hit Sullivan in the face, as hard as he was able to drive his fist, hit him right in the jaw. The pain in his hand was like an explosion, as if he had shattered every bone clear up to his elbow.

  Sullivan pivoted around and staggered back, but he did not fall, which was bad, because Bowater had reckoned on laying him out flat with that one blow.

  The river pilot turned back to Bowater, blood running from his mouth, and his face was hard to read. Bowater shook out his hand, gasping at the pain, and got ready to take Sullivan on as he came. He had not been in a fistfight since his first year at the Navy School, but he was ready. The blood was up.