Thieves of Mercy

by James L. Nelson

  He picked up his pen and he wrote:

  June 5. Colonel Fitch discovered several days ago a weak and assailable point by which he proposed to attack the enemy’s works by land while I encountered the batteries in front. It was agreed between us that this should come off yesterday morning, but a foolish movement of Colonel Ellet prevented it in a way that could not have been foreseen. The movement was then to have been made this morning, as soon after daylight as possible. But the Rebels retreated yesterday and last night, after, as usual, destroying everything.

  These works are very extensive and very strong.

  I am now lying under the batteries of Fort Pillow, waiting for Colonel Fitch to return from some examinations he is making. As soon as he comes back we will make our preparations for going down the river. I do not believe that there is any force at Randolph. If not, there is probably no interruption between here and Memphis, except, perhaps, the enemy’s gunboats, and they would detain us but a short time.

  He heard footsteps in the alleyway, the inevitable knock on the door. “Yes?”

  A midshipman’s voice. “Sir? Colonel Ellet wishes to speak with you.”

  Davis sighed. Ellet had been giving him a pain in the neck for the past ten days. He represented the worst of all possibilities: a civilian just recently turned army officer who was now playing at naval commander, with some bizarre notion he had dreamed up—flimsy little rams with which he hoped to run the enemy down.

  Ellet had been badgering him since he arrived with various half-baked ideas for this foray or that attack. They had danced around the question of who had authority over whom, until they decided that neither had authority over the other, and then Ellet had started doing as he pleased.

  Terrific bloody situation—two complete, separate waterborne commands on the same stretch of river…

  Davis blew on the diary to be sure the ink was dry, and to make Ellet wait for a moment more, then closed it up. “Come!” he shouted. The midshipman opened the door and Ellet stepped in.

  “Colonel.” Davis nodded a greeting.

  “Captain.” Ellet nodded back. “Might I be so bold as to ask if you are ready to move on Memphis?”

  “Have a seat.” Ellet’s eagerness irritated the flag officer. The old man seemed to imply, with every word and action, that he, Davis, was not moving fast enough. Because Ellet the Upstart did not understand the need for planning and care. He did not appreciate the strategic importance of the gunboats, or how the advantage enjoyed by the Union would be wiped out if the ships were lost or, God forbid, captured, which they could be, if their commander did something rash and stupid.

  When Ellet was seated, which Davis knew made him uncomfortable, which is why he had insisted, the captain began to speak. “We will begin our move on Memphis this afternoon. We will not, however, rush headlong at the enemy. There is still a fortification at Randolph and we must make certain—”

  “I have already been down to Randolph,” Ellet interrupted. “I went down this morning with some of my rams to demand surrender. I sent a man ashore and he found the works deserted.”

  Davis shifted in his seat. This was annoying in the extreme. “On your own authority, you decided to demand the surrender of the Confederate works at Randolph?”

  “Yes, on my own authority. Which comes from Secretary of War Stanton.”

  “I see…” Davis stared at his desk for a moment, let the irritation pass. There would be time to deal with this later, but with Memphis hanging there like a ripe plum he did not have time now to waste on Ellet. “Well, if that is the case, we shall get under way immediately. As I have related to you before, I see the rams in a role such as that of light skirmishers, whereas the gunboats would be more in the line of heavy artillery. For purposes of order of battle, I would like to see your rams on the wings of my squadron, and in the rear. Ready to dash forward, take the enemy in the flank if the opportunity presents itself, pick off stragglers, and the like. It would be folly to expose your…light craft to the brunt of the enemy’s fire.”

  “I see, Captain. Though I more imagine my rams in the role of cavalry, charging forward, lightly armed but fast. However, in this I will yield to your authority.”

  “Very good, Colonel.” Davis stood to make it clear he was done talking about this, and Ellet stood as well. “The fleet will get under way in a few hours or so.”

  “Very good, Captain. In the meanwhile the ram fleet will proceed downriver and meet up with you when you get down by Randolph.” Ellet held out his hand. The men shook, and Ellet was gone.

  Davis sat again with a sigh. In the meanwhile…Bloody man.

  He looked down at his diary. He had hopes of publishing it one day, when the war was over and he had achieved enough noteworthy accomplishments. He noticed a stack of paper on the edge of his desk. He squinted at it, trying to recall what it was. And then he remembered—the manuscript the Rebel spy had delivered to him.

  He reached for it, smiled as he recalled that singular meeting. Send the book to a New York publisher, honest to God!

  But in truth, he still did not know if the big secesh yahoo was serious or not. The Reb had given up a fair amount of intelligence regarding the situation in Memphis, revealed things that might or might not be helpful.

  Not that Davis was starving for information about the enemy. Since the Rebels had instituted a conscription a few months back, deserters had been streaming north, and they all had a story. What the big Reb had said agreed with some accounts Davis had heard, contradicted others. It was hard to know.

  He decided to let them go mostly out of appreciation for the outrageous nature of their story. It had given him hours of amusement, thinking on it and telling the other officers. Nor could the Rebels have gleaned any important information from their visit, even if they were spies. They didn’t learn anything that a person sneaking through the woods on shore with a telescope couldn’t have learned.

  Taking them prisoner would have involved a big brouhaha over their flag of truce and their status at the time of their capture. Davis could envision the tedious correspondence that would result. In the end, it was less bother to just send them away.

  He reached over and picked up the bundle of paper, smudged and dog-eared. He had tossed it on his desk and forgotten it, had not even looked at the title page.

  Mississippi Mike, Melancholy Prince of the River. Davis frowned at the title. Was this a joke? Or were these idiots serious? He set the top page aside and began to read.

  Chapter One—A Ghostly Tale. On the whole of the Mississippi, there is no man who would dare cross Mississippi Mike, best of the riverboat men. And of all of them, you’d reckon it was his kin would know best that the hardest drinkin, hardest fightin man on Western Waters was not a fellow to be done dirty.

  By the end of the first page, Captain Davis was smiling. He read on. Ten minutes later he was laughing out loud.

  During her wild run through Hampton Roads and the Elizabeth River, Wendy Atkins had all but forgotten why she was doing what she was doing. Before, she would not have thought that possible. Risking everything to race across the country into the arms of one’s lover—it was so romantic, she would never have dreamed anything could make her lose sight of that goal. But that was before she had been threatened with hanging or shooting or rape or burning to death.

  Wendy Atkins discovered, during that short and brutal time, that, girlhood fantasies aside, even true love could not take precedence over everything.

  Wendy nearly forgot her primary objective, but she did not forget it entirely. As she and Molly staggered up the dirt road, leaving the smoldering hulk of the Virginia behind, heading vaguely north toward Richmond, she remembered. Samuel Bowater.

  When Molly finally collapsed at the side of the road, unable to go on after all the blood she had lost from the gunshot wound in her arm, Wendy remembered.

  She dressed Molly’s wounds, made her comfortable, sat with her in the shade by the side of the road. And as Molly slept, W
endy thought of Samuel Bowater, of the look he would have on his face when he saw her, after recovering from the shock of her being there. They would run to one another, wrap their arms around each other, kiss in a brazen and heedless way, careless of what the world thought, because they were in love.

  Of course, Samuel was not generally the brazen and heedless kind, and Wendy was just starting to worry that perhaps he would be too reticent to kiss her in public that way, when she heard the sound of a cart coming up the road. She left Molly where she was, walked back down the road, skirting the side, in case whoever it was coming up was not someone she wished to meet. Despite what she had seen with her own eyes, the specter of Roger Newcomb still floated in her peripheral vision.

  It was not Roger Newcomb, or anyone who might be a threat, but an old cart loaded with a profusion of household goods, a farmer, his wife, their three children, a pig, and sundry chickens in wooden cages. Wendy waved them down.

  “Gettin the hell out of here, afore the Yankees show and take every damned thing we got,” the farmer explained, when Wendy asked where they were bound.

  “We have been trying to do the same. My aunt and me. Oh, we have had a terrible time. My aunt is hurt. Could we beg a ride of you?”

  The farmer followed Wendy to where Molly lay. He had a notion that Molly’s wound looked very much like a gunshot wound, but Wendy explained that it was from a broken sapling on which Molly had torn her flesh when she tripped and fell.

  The farmer looked hard at Wendy. Finally he spat a stream of tobacco on the ground. “All right, whatever you say,” he said. “Let’s git her on the wagon.”

  It was not a comfortable ride, but it was better than walking, and the farmer took them to a place where they could catch a train to Richmond.

  Molly slept a good deal of the time, but when she was awake she was lucid, and she told Wendy of a place in Richmond, the home of a friend, where they would be safe. It took them forty torturous hours of travel, rattling along on trains, waiting on benches at depots while the soldiers took precedence, jamming onto trolleys, before they finally arrived at Molly’s friend’s home, where they were welcomed in like family. Wendy felt as if she had been forty years in the desert, but now it was over.

  She stayed for a week, sleeping when she could, between dreams that made her bolt upright, kicking at the bedclothes, cold with sweat. She tended to her aunt, whose recuperation was slow but steady. She helped in the kitchen when she had the strength. For a week she rested, recuperated, and then she knew it was time to go.

  “Molly,” Wendy said, hesitant; she did not know how to broach it.

  “You want to go to your sailor boy?”

  “Yes.”

  Molly smiled at her, brushed the hair from her face. “You are a very different woman than you were the first time you set out on that mission.”

  Wendy nodded. Molly sighed. “I’m too battered to go on,” she said. “A week or two, perhaps, but not now. Part of surviving is knowing when you must stop. But you are much younger than I am, and stronger. And now I know you’ll be safe.”

  Wendy was surprised, but she hid it. She had expected an argument from Molly, along the lines of “Now you know what can happen…” but in fact her aunt’s response was very much the opposite.

  She left the next day. Some money in her carpetbag, the bulk of it down the front of her dress, her pistol strapped to her thigh, she set out with none of the trepidation or uncertainty that she had felt in the carriage house in Portsmouth, packing her things. She bid farewell to Molly. Their host took her in his carriage to the railroad depot.

  She waited five hours there for a train, reading back issues of the Richmond Whig and the Despatch, reading the reporters’ versions of the historic events she had just witnessed.

  It was a long and exhausting eleven days of travel, west toward the Mississippi River. Terrible food, sleepless nights, excruciating delays. At several points she had to walk or beg a ride from one railhead to another because the lines did not connect. At other times she had to take a room in a hotel because the train was delayed for some reason—tracks washed out or torn up, engine broken down, cars diverted—and no one had any idea when it might arrive.

  She wondered if the Yankee rail system was in such a shambles, and she had the sinking feeling that no, it was nothing like this. The shopkeepers in the North would keep their trains running on time.

  Worst of all were the ribald suggestions of men who assumed a woman traveling unescorted as she was had to be earning her way across country in some manner, and they were willing to give her a job of work. There were times when she wanted to pull the pistol out of its secret holster and jam the barrel into some leering face, just for the satisfaction of seeing the lust dissolve into fear. But she resisted, and managed to satisfy herself with a few cutting words.

  It was monotonous, irritating, unpleasant, uncomfortable, but it was a Sunday church picnic compared to the few days it had taken her to get free of Norfolk, and she never once even thought to complain.

  Eleven long days, and then she was there.

  It was midafternoon when the train arrived at the station and Wendy stood on protesting muscles, stretched as delicately as she was able, and retrieved her carpetbag. She stepped out into a beautiful day, bright and warm. She could smell the nearby river, the pungent smell of late spring flowers. She was there, after all she had endured she was there, and the elation was unlike any she had ever felt.

  The fresh air was welcome after the train car, which reeked of tobacco smoke and too many people in too tight and warm a space. Wendy crossed the platform and pushed her way into the station. She did not imagine that anyone there would know Samuel Bowater by name, but she hoped perhaps someone might know where the navy men were employed. It seemed a wanton question, but Wendy had already left the bonds of propriety way behind, so she steeled herself and asked the ticket man.

  “Oh, sure, ain’t a soul here doesn’t know that. They’re pretty near heroes, ’round here. You just follow the River Road south an…well, hell…Tom! Come over here. This here lady needs a ride down to the shipyard.”

  Tom, an old black man in an old black sack coat, nodded, smiled, took up Wendy’s carpetbag. He led her out of the station to an old buckboard just outside the door, a tired horse standing in the traces. He set a crate on the ground for her to step on, then joined her on the seat, shook the reins, and the horse stepped off.

  They rolled through the streets and then along the wide river, and Tom kept up a running narrative of everything they had done in town to prepare for defense, how the Yankee navy was closing in, but how they would be ready.

  Wendy listened with half an ear while she took in the sight of the strange town. She had only been out of Virginia twice in her life, and once was just to Maryland and the other to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, to see Samuel Bowater. This was so different, so exciting—the travel, the new places, the reckless way she had run off to be with her love—it was absolutely intoxicating.

  At last the shipyard came into view, a bustle of activity, men swarming around like ants on a hill of spilled sugar. Wendy felt her pulse race, felt a tingling in her hands and feet. After all this time and suffering, would she be reunited with Samuel Bowater, here, in the next five minutes? Would she have the courage to kiss him the way she had dreamed? She was not so certain now.

  Tom pulled the buckboard to a stop, made to get out to help her down, but she leaped to the ground before he could even rise out of his seat.

  “Thank you, Tom!” She handed him a coin.

  “Thank you, ma’am! You enjoy you time wid you husband, now!” He tipped his hat and drove on.

  Wendy took a few steps toward the yard and stopped. She looked over the men working there, but none of them was Samuel. Not that she would have expected him to be swinging a hammer or hauling on a saw.

  A young officer standing in the yard glanced her way, glanced again, then approached. Wendy waited for him. “Ma’am, may I help
you?” He was wearing the uniform of a navy lieutenant.

  “Perhaps. I am looking for Lieutenant Samuel Bowater, of the Confederate States Navy.”

  “Lieutenant Samuel Bowater…” The lieutenant looked away, screwed up his face. “Name doesn’t ring a bell, ma’am.”

  “I was under the impression he was here,” Wendy insisted.

  “Could be. It’s not as if I know everyone. Let me take you to the captain.”

  The lieutenant, whose name was George Gift, graciously took Wendy’s bag and led her across the yard to a small wooden building, more of an overlarge shed, which served as the yard’s office. He led her inside, introduced her to a man seated behind one of two desks there, flowing with papers.

  “Sir, perhaps you can help this lady,” he said.

  The man stood, gave a shallow bow. “Lieutenant Isaac Brown, ma’am. How may I be of assistance?”

  “Lieutenant, I am Wendy Atkins. I am looking for a navy lieutenant named Samuel Bowater.”

  Brown said, “Hmmm,” and he squinted. “Bowater…?” he said, unsure.

  The man at the other desk in the room, who had not looked up from the journal in which he was writing, looked up now. “Bowater? Sure, I know him,” he said. “He was the one got command of the Tennessee.”

  “Tennessee?” Wendy asked. She had heard nothing of that.

  “Ah!” Brown said, as if all were explained. “That’s why you can’t find him. The Tennessee is still up in Memphis. It was only this ship, the Arkansas, that was towed down here to Yazoo City.”

  The Yankees were coming downriver. They were wasting no time.

  The River Defense Fleet dropped down ahead of them. By the light of the full moon and the huge bonfire that was once the gunboat Tennessee, the makeshift men-of-war tied up to the levee that lined the Memphis waterfront.

  Confusion swept like a nasty rumor through the fleet; uncertainty was the only thing they knew for certain. The troops from Forts Pillow and Randolph had been sent away, there were no soldiers to defend the city. Was the fleet to make a stand? Try to hold the Yankees at bay? For how long? Were there reinforcements of any kind on the way? Or should the fleet preserve itself, make a stand farther downriver?