Thieves of Mercy

by James L. Nelson

  The lower block had a hook on it. All right…the hook must go somewhere….

  She looked around. On the outboard edge of the thwart aft of the one through which the mast stepped were eyebolts, port and starboard, that looked very much as if they would accept the hooks, so Wendy tried one.

  “Oh!” The lines were some kind of rigging to support the mast. She pulled on the end of the rope and hauled the line taut. And there, as further proof of the correctness of her hypothesis, was a cleat on which to make the line fast. She set up the other supporting rope on the starboard side. She looked up. All the lines were now accounted for.

  “I think that is it, Aunt!” Wendy smiled. “Let’s hoist the sail now.”

  The line that Molly held ran from her hand, up through a hole in the mast and down again. It was attached to a light gaff to which the head of the sail was laced. Wendy stepped around until she and Molly were side by side. She reached up and took hold of the rope and together they pulled. The gaff and sail lifted off the thwart. They pulled again and again. The sail unfolded, fluttered in the breeze as they pulled it up.

  The manila line was agony on blistered and bleeding hands, but they hauled together, and soon the gaff was as high as it would go. The boat began to heel to starboard and the foot of the sail flogged gently in the breeze.

  “We have to pull up the anchor,” Molly said, as much a question as a statement. They went forward and tugged on the anchor line, but they could not move it. They could not pull against the pressure of the wind and the tide on the boat. The anchor line was like a solid thing.

  “Just untie it and let it go,” Wendy said. “Wait for my word.” She went aft, sat on the stern sheets, and took the tiller. She held it amidships. It was the third time in her life she had held a boat’s tiller, having been allowed brief and closely supervised turns at steering on two of her previous outings.

  “All right, untie it!” she called. Molly unwrapped the line from the cleat. It leaped from her hands, spun overboard, and suddenly the boat was free, swinging away to starboard, lively with motion. Wendy pushed the tiller to starboard to bring the boat back on course. It turned, farther and farther, and the sail began to flap, so she turned it the other way.

  Steer small, steer small… That was what she had been told, over and over, but she had been too proud to ask what the hell that meant. At last, in context, it had made sense, and that was when she really began to get a feel for the boat. And that was when she had been made to relinquish the tiller.

  So now she concentrated on steering small and on how the sail was setting. It looked right, except that the bottom corner nearest her was too far out. “Molly, could you pull on this rope.” Wendy pointed with her left hand. “I think the sail is too loose.”

  Molly worked her way aft. The rope ran through a block on the lower corner of the sail and then back into the boat. Molly pulled and the corner of the sail came more inboard and Wendy made the line fast on a cleat. The boat heeled farther over and a gurgling sound came from its waterline as it raced along. The wind blew fresh on Wendy’s face and she could see the shoreline moving swiftly past. And for all the horror of the past twenty-four hours, she was thrilled.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The abandonment of the peninsula will, of course, involve the loss of all our batteries on the north shore of James River. The effect of this upon our holding Norfolk and our ships you will readily perceive.

  Captain Tucker’s command covers our right flank.

  I am much pleased with his intelligence and zeal.

  GENERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON

  TO FLAG OFFICER JOSIAH TATTNALL

  Flag Officer Josiah Tattnall stared through field glasses at the absence of a flag.

  He stood just aft of the low conical pilothouse at the forward end of CSS Virginia’s ironclad casemate. The gentle westerly wind ruffled his thick white hair, made the tails of his gray frock coat tap against his legs. The heavy ship hardly moved at all, even as it tugged on its moorings off Sewell’s Point. It felt more like standing on a rock than any vessel Tattnall had ever been aboard.

  But at that moment, Tattnall’s focus was on shore. He was examining the Confederate batteries on Sewell’s Point. There was no flag.

  Tattnall lowered the glasses, rubbed his tired eyes. He raised the field glasses again, this time swept them along the earthen redoubts. No guards paced with glinting bayonets, no men lounged on the thick walls, no Negroes filled sandbags. No one. Deserted. By the looks of it, the battery was abandoned.

  “Sir, you called for me?” The voice of Flag Lieutenant John Pembroke Jones.

  “Yes, Lieutenant, yes. Here, have a look. Is it my tired old eyes, or is there no flag flying at Sewell’s Point battery?”

  Jones took the field glasses and studied the fortifications, which just the day before had been pounded by Union ships, including the Monitor. “I do not believe there is a flag flying, sir,” he said at last. “I can’t see a soul stirring there.”

  Tattnall frowned. Damn Huger was supposed to notify me if he was abandoning his position…. The Virginia had been kept at Sewell’s Point to protect Norfolk from the Union Navy, and she had been damned effective in that job. Every time she showed up, the Yankees skedaddled. She had fired only one shot since the great battle with Monitor, and that had been a parting shot in disgust at the Union fleet that would not close and fight. She was the undisputed queen of Hampton Roads.

  But if the Yankees took Norfolk and Portsmouth, and once again had possession of the naval yard, then Virginia’s position there was untenable. She ate coal at a prodigious rate, and her engines were too unreliable for her to be without a dockyard nearby.

  But where would he go? There was no ship afloat with guns heavy enough to penetrate Virginia’s ironclad hide, but Tattnall was not so certain about the big guns at Fortress Monroe. He was not enthusiastic about steaming past that place during the daylight hours, through tricky shallows and the crossfire of Monroe and the Rip Raps, and the pilots would not take her through at night.

  Richmond was where the Virginia belonged, up the James River to the capital, fight the Yankees as they tried to use their gunboats to cover McClellan’s flanks. But the James River was tricky, and shallow, and Virginia was clumsy and deep.

  Tattnall took the field glasses back from Jones, trained them to the south, toward Craney Island. The island was four miles away, but he thought he could make out the Stars and Bars still flying in the breeze. Jones’s considerably younger eyes confirmed it.

  “Lieutenant, take a boat down to Craney Island and see what’s happening there. We have to know if the Yankees have landed, and what Huger is doing with his damned army.”

  “Aye, aye, sir!” Jones saluted.

  “And send up Parrish and Wright.”

  “Parrish and Wright, aye, sir.” The lieutenant disappeared down the hatch, and Tattnall was able to enjoy the agreeable quiet once again. From inside the casemate he could hear a dull pounding, someone fixing something, it never stopped. At the far end of the hurricane deck a gang of sailors were overhauling boat falls. But where he stood, it was quiet. Hard to believe they were surrounded on all sides by warring parties, great armies struggling over the fate of two nations.

  Tattnall frowned and paced.

  “Sir?” It was the pilot, Mr. Parrish, and his chief assistant, Wright. Tattnall did not care for them, did not think them bold enough in assuming risk. Virginia was a man-of-war, she could not be safe all the time. But that was the nature of the breed, with pilots.

  “Mr. Wright. It appears the battery at Sewell’s Point has been abandoned. If the Yankees take Norfolk we will have to sail up the James River to Richmond. I wish to confirm with you that we can do so.” They had been over this before. But Tattnall had to know that it could be done.

  “Well, sir,” Parrish said patiently, “we can get her to within forty miles of Richmond. If the ship can be lightened to a draft of eighteen feet.”

  Tattnall nodded. Virgini
a drew twenty-two feet. To raise her by four feet would require throwing nearly everything overboard, save guns and powder. It would raise the iron shield out of the water and expose her vulnerable wooden hull. It would render her indefensible. But it would be worth it, to get her upriver. If he could not do that, then he would blast his way into the Union fleet, rip them apart until he was run down by Yankee rams, until the ironclad sank under him with guns blazing and flags flying. That was how a ship like Virginia, and an old sailor like Josiah Tattnall, should die.

  “Very well,” Tattnall said. His eyes were following Jones’s boat, which was just leaving Virginia’s side, heading southwest toward Craney Island. Four men were pulling oars, two were stepping the mast amidships. Jones sat in the stern sheets, a hand on the tiller.

  Suddenly, Tattnall felt very unwell. His stomach churned. A headache was building like storm clouds. “Thank you, pilot,” he said and Parrish and Wright disappeared. Tattnall leaned heavily on the rail that ran around the hurricane deck. I am old, he thought, old, old, old.

  Roger Newcomb tried to see upriver through the drifting smoke of the navy yard. He stood near the end of the great granite dry dock, coughing, wiping his eyes, trying to focus his telescope on the northern reaches of the Elizabeth River.

  There was no telling how far ahead those two bitches were. They might have left two hours before him, or twenty minutes. They might be alone in a skiff, or they might be in a longboat with twenty secesh sailors. He just did not know.

  He snapped the telescope shut—useless thing—and cursed out loud. There was only one thing he knew with certainty, and that was that he had to follow them, and run them to ground before they could reach the protective arms of the Confederacy. He needed a boat.

  That realization spurred him. He put the telescope back in the haversack and began to work his way north across the navy yard, but he was met with fire that made the way impassable, or with the charred remains of buildings, a few blackened brick walls standing here and there, empty window casements like eye sockets in skulls. It was pointless. Anything worth having there had been taken by the secesh or burned in their wake. He would not find a boat.

  Cursing, he ran back across the navy yard, through the smoke and the heat, out the iron gate in the low brick wall. The streets were deserted, the people either hiding or fled. He raced for the north end of the shipyard and the docks he knew lined the waterfront.

  His head was a riot of pain, made worse with each footfall, and that only fueled his fury. He had been shot with his own gun, he knew it, but he would not let the words form in his head because the humiliation was too great. Instead he focused on the treachery, the lies, the unfathomable viciousness of that bitch. Both of them. Because the dark-haired one was a part of this too, as guilty as the Luce whore.

  He came to the north end of the wall, the northern boundary of the shipyard. Beyond that, the town of Portsmouth consisted of wood frame houses and various businesses tucked into red brick buildings. Trolley tracks cut parallel lines down the hard-packed dirt streets.

  He crossed the road at an angle, heading for the water. With the breeze blowing the smoke from the burning yard off toward Norfolk, he could smell the fish and coal dust and brackish mud flats of the waterfront.

  A Negro in a big slouch hat stepped from an alley to Newcomb’s left. Newcomb rested a wary hand on the butt of his gun, but the man stopped short twenty feet away. Their eyes met, and the black man took a step back, his face registering fear and revulsion. He turned and fled back the way he had come.

  Stupid nigger, what got into him? Newcomb thought as he hurried on. Then he recalled his own reflection in the mirror, the crusted blood, the hair wild and matted. He was a frightening thing to look at.

  The waterfront consisted of wharf after wooden wharf, stretching north along the Elizabeth River and piled with barrels and bales of sundry goods, cotton and hay and straw. Rising above them was a tangle of masts and smokestacks like a forest in winter—seagoing ships and brigs and schooners, fishing smacks, tugs, packet boats. They were all tied up and seemingly abandoned in the panicked town.

  Newcomb paused, let his breath settle, looked around. There was nothing moving on the river. He waited for a minute, then another, to be certain he was not being watched. He took a step toward the docks, then stopped.

  The river was not entirely deserted. He could see a boat now, about two hundred yards away, and coming up from somewhere downriver. The boat was driven by a dipping lug sail, a crew of seamen leaning on the weather rail to steady it. It had to be a man-of-war’s boat, it could be nothing else.

  Newcomb sucked in his breath. He felt the sweat stand out on his forehead, though he was not certain why. Is it them? If so, why would they be coming upriver? They should be heading to Richmond, or to hell, or wherever secesh trash went.

  He pulled his telescope and focused it on the boat. Six men that he could see. They seemed to be wearing the bibbed frocks of navy men, but there was no uniformity, and that, to Newcomb, meant Rebel. He swept the glass aft to the officer in the stern sheets. His coat might have been faded blue, but Newcomb did not think so. More likely the gray of the Confederate Navy.

  Newcomb felt a tremor in his stomach, felt an impulse to run inland and hide. He lowered the glass, took a step back.

  Wait, wait, wait, he thought. I’m a civilian, aren’t I? Nothing about him indicated that he was a Union naval officer. That fact might get him hung as a spy if the secesh caught him, but it also meant that the men in the boat, even if they did pay any attention to him, would not see him for what he was.

  He lifted the glass again, pretended that he was entirely calm, and watched the boat approach. All right, if they land anywhere near here I’ll hide, he decided at last, but the boat made no move to approach, and soon Newcomb realized they must be heading for the navy yard.

  All right, all right, what does this tell me? The Federal forces have not yet taken Norfolk, or those bastards would not dare come sailing upriver like it was a holiday. Whoever those Rebs are, they do not know the yard is abandoned. Damned secesh, just what you’d expect…left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing….

  He continued to watch as the boat swept by, making good time with the sail set and the tide flooding. None of the boat crew even looked in his direction. Finally it was lost from sight behind a warehouse upriver of where Newcomb stood.

  I need a boat….

  He needed to find a boat that he could handle by himself. A fast boat, one that could outsail the Rebel boat that had just passed him, in case it came to that.

  Through the maze of rigging and spars he saw a single thin mast, no more than twenty feet high. It looked like a possibility. He walked out along the wooden wharf to which it was tied.

  The boat floated four feet below the level of the wharf, a long, lean thing, ketch rigged. It was what the people of the Chesapeake called a log canoe, with a hull that looked for all the world as if it were planked up, but was in fact burned and carved from a few big logs fastened together. They were generally used in the oyster fishery, as apparently this one was, judging from the dried mud, broken shells, and dark pool of fetid bilgewater in the bottom.

  But that did not matter. The boat was simple to sail and fast and that made it ideal. Newcomb looked around to see if the owners were near, but the only people he could see were a hundred yards away and paying no attention to him. He climbed down into the boat, lowered the centerboard, cast off the dock fasts, and pushed away from the wharf.

  He raised the jib and then the mainsail, which was an odd-looking thing. It had no gaff, but rather a triangular head and a loose foot, rather like the jib. The clew was cut off and a short spar was laced there and the sheet attached to that.

  The sails flogged as they went up and the boat began to drift downwind. Newcomb took his place at the tiller, leading the sheets aft. He hauled both sheets taut, the sails hardened up, and the boat began to gather way, heeling over and moving so nimbly that Newcomb s
ucked in his breath in surprise. He rounded up a bit to slow her down, then fell off the wind, letting the lean boat gather way. In less than a minute he was cleaving the small chop at four knots, the tiller firm and responsive in his hand.

  Soon the town of Portsmouth dropped away and the river opened up before him. He turned the bow more northerly. The quick and weatherly log canoe pointed so high he thought he might well fetch Hampton Roads on that one tack. Newcomb was well versed in small boat handling, had sailed nearly every kind of rig imaginable, but he could not recall any boat so nimble and fast.

  He kept to the center of the river, well away from the tricky mud banks, equidistant from Portsmouth to the west and Norfolk to the east, since he did not know who was in control of either town. He scanned them with his telescope as best he could, but the glass revealed nothing beyond the fact that they both seemed deserted, that virtually no one and no vessels were moving along the waterfront.

  The town of Norfolk yielded to the brown fields and clumps of trees to the north, and Newcomb had to tack once to stand more into the center of the river, then again to return to his northerly course. The low western shoreline dropped away where the southern and western branches of the river met, and four miles downriver the great expanse of Hampton Roads and the mouth of the James River opened up before him.

  He picked up his telescope, twisted around, and looked astern. Nothing. Just empty river and a shoreline crowded with idle shipping. He looked forward, his pulse quickening. He made himself be calm, be methodical. Swept the glass west to east.

  There was a boat. It was under sail, about a mile or so ahead. It was on a starboard tack, sailing roughly southwest, but as Newcomb watched, it turned up into the wind, tacking around. It seemed to stall, sail flogging, caught in irons for a moment. It was too far to see what was happening, but whoever was sailing the boat was apparently no expert.

  Newcomb’s hands were trembling. He was grinding his teeth together and he made himself stop.