Blood Moon (The Mercy Carver Series Book 2)

by Jana Petken

  He hadn’t much cared for soldiering, that he did know. He had witnessed too much death at Williamsburg and had not slept easy since. He’d seen enough blood to last a lifetime. He’d amputated legs and arms under the most unsterile of situations. There had been no time to think, let alone prepare instruments, not when a man’s life was at stake.

  He’d been as surprised as the next man when he’d heard about General McClellan’s decision not to follow the retreating rebels. At the time, he’d not been aware of the actual details of the battle raging, but he sure as hell heard it rumbling outside his tent when he was operating on injured men. He’d grasped a few bits and pieces of information from soldiers, and as far as they had known, the Union was winning. Isaac had been convinced that he would be heading towards Richmond, chasing rebels the entire way. It made sense to destroy the rebel army before it had time to regroup, he’d thought at the time. The general, however, had not seen it that way.

  Isaac found Nelson sitting on a low wall just outside the hospital entrance and couldn’t help but stifle a laugh. He sat down, put his hand on Nelson’s shoulder, and said, “You know you can’t sit here worrying all day. You need to be working, not filling your head with troubling thoughts. You got a job to do, and there’s no use in you tormenting yourself about things that ain’t goin’ to happen.”

  “It might happen, Mr Isaac,” Nelson said moodily.

  “Nelson, it won’t. You’re under the protection of the army you serve in. No sheriff or marshal is going to come looking for you for murders committed over a year ago. No one knows what you look like. I recall seeing the wanted poster of you back when we were looking for Miss Mercy, and it looked nothing like your handsome facial features. C’mon now, I reckon lawmen have better things to turn their minds to – and you have too.” Isaac sighed with growing impatience. His words were not appeasing Nelson.

  “Look, I don’t reckon we’ll be here for long. We’re too valuable to the army, and I know for a fact that they ain’t done with us on the peninsula.”

  “I hears you, Mr Isaac,” Nelson said. “How long we got to stay here?” I’s real scared of gittin’ hung. I don’t want to be back here, south of that James River. There ain’t nothing in this world gives me more concern than coming to the place where white men are just itchin’ to hang me. The white people here still want to kill me. I knows it. I’s bettin’ they ain’t forgotten ole Nelson. Nope, Mr Isaac, I reckon even seeing Miss Mercy again ain’t gonna stop me hankerin’ for the fort. How long?” he asked again.

  “Not long, my friend, but until we get our marching orders, I expect you to do your job. We’ll know soon enough.”

  “I ain’t leaving this hospital. No, sir, I ain’t setting one foot outside them gates there.”

  Isaac shook his head. Nelson was as stubborn as a mule. Mercy had more patience with the fellow than he ever would. “Get my horse, Nelson. I have a lady to call on.”

  “You goin’ to see, Miss Mercy? You see her, you tell her from ole Nelson that she did wrong by you.”

  “I’ll tell her if I see her. Now go on and get my horse; then get back to work. Patients need tending, and they sure as hell don’t want to see your cheerless face.”

  As Isaac waited for Nelson to come back with the horse, he thought again about his decision to call on Dolly. He wanted to pay his respects to her. She was a fine woman. He also wanted to put his mind at ease regarding Mercy. Six months and not a word or explanation for disappearing led him to think she was in even more trouble now than when he last found her. She had cursed him. She’d put a damn spell on him, for he wanted no other woman but her.

  The Norfolk mansions belonging to ships’ captains looked the same as they had on the day Isaac left for Boston. However, as he rode towards Jack’s sprawling house, he noticed a few grand houses with poles flying the Union flag. It hadn’t taken his army long to make itself at home, he thought. A thought struck him. What if Jack’s house had been confiscated? If that was the case, he’d have a devil of a time tracking Dolly down.

  He walked through the carriage arch connected to Jack and Dolly’s house and found a Negro slave tending to a carriage. He recognised the boy and gave him the horse to look after. He smiled. Dolly was still here, thank God.

  Dolly stared at the Union officer for a second or two with suspicion and fear etched clearly on her face. She took a closer look at Isaac and then gasped with surprise. She stared again at his uniform, this time with condemnation, and said brusquely, “Isaac, so you’re a Yankee soldier. I might have known you’d join with your Northern folks. Have you come to steal the house that used to welcome you? It wouldn’t surprise me. Why, you Yankees have been going door to door these past days, throwing poor Norfolk folks out onto the street.”

  “Ma’am,” Isaac said. He tipped his hat and stood with an awkward smile. “I have no such thing in mind. I figured I would call on you to ask if you need any assistance. Is this an inconvenience?”

  “Your entire army is an inconvenience. Why, I don’t know how you can show your face here after what those nasty blue coat war mongrels have done to our glorious city.”

  “This war ain’t of the Union’s choosing, Miss Dolly,” Isaac said lamely. “Folks here in Virginia and all across the South asked for it. I reckon they just didn’t believe we’d fight them inch for inch, mile for mile with wholeheartedness.” He was not going to be invited in, he thought. “I have come to ask after your situation. Do you need anything? Anything at all?”

  “From a damn Yankee – never!”

  “What about Jack and Mercy? Do you have news of them? It would ease my mind to know they’re safe.”

  “I ain’t telling you nothing about my poor husband’s situation – or Mercy’s – and I won’t have you in my house, Isaac,” she stated. “I’m not your friend. No decent Confederate wants a friendship with you occupiers so you best be running along.”

  Isaac had endured the terrible strain of battle, but this here, he thought, was cutting his nerves to pieces. She hadn’t answered the question about Mercy and Jack. He tried again. “It saddens me to hear you say these harsh words, Miss Dolly. Now, I understand why you think it best to send me away, but, ma’am, for the sake of past friendship, will you not grant me a measure of peace before I take my leave? I just need a word about Jack and Mercy – that’s all.”

  Dolly’s expression softened. Tears settled on her lashes. She pulled out a handkerchief from her skirt pocket and sniffed loudly. “Isaac, you know I love you like a son, but I cannot invite you in. What would my neighbours think? How will our poor Confederate soldiers feel when they come back and find I had cavorted with a Yankee in my livin’ room without being forced into it? ,

  “I’ll tell you what you need to know, but only ’cause you look like a lovesick puppy dog. Mercy has not been here for some time, but I do believe she may be in Richmond with Jacob Stone. She loves Jacob, Isaac, so you take the last piece of advice you’ll ever get from me. You best be forgetting her. She wants Jacob, that’s a fact, and there’s no use in you wasting your time thinking she’ll ever have affections for you.”

  “I see,” Isaac said. He felt as though he’d just been punched in the gut.

  “My husband is with Hendry. That’s all you need to know about him. Why, I don’t even know how they’ll find their way home now that your army has gone and taken every inch of the navy yard. May the good Lord forgive you, Isaac Bernstein, because I will not!”

  “Please don’t upset yourself,” Isaac said. Damn it, he had made her cry. He should not have come here. He’d been a goddamn fool to look for Mercy. She had hoodwinked him, and like a damn blind man, he’d believed her.

  “Take your Yankee blue coat off my porch and don’t you dare come back here,” Dolly said, shocking him out of his thoughts.

  Isaac nodded. Dolly’s words hurt him, but she was hurting just as much as he was. He could see regret in her eyes, not to mention her anxiousness about Jack and Hendry. He was deeply sadden
ed beyond words to have such a fine woman like Dolly turn him away.

  He couldn’t get the news of Mercy being with Jacob out of his head. He was angry and sickened by Mercy’s subterfuge. “I am at the hospital, ma’am. If you ever need anything, you just come see me,” he said.

  “I would rather die of yellow fever than have a damn Yankee doctor minister to me,” she told him.

  “My apologies for the intrusion. I will sorely miss our friendship …”

  The door was slammed in his face before he had finished the sentence. He stumbled towards the stable and felt the empty space in his heart grow bigger with every step. “You’re a dull-witted ass, Isaac,” he mumbled. “There is no more Mercy Carver – enough!”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Mercy crossed a stone arched bridge sitting over a brook. When she reached the other side, she dismounted and led Coal to the water’s edge. She would rest here. The horse was weary and so was she. The map was unfolded. She spread it out on damp grass. She’d been travelling for hours today, or so it seemed to her stinging behind.

  In the past week, she had searched for Jacob, without success. It seemed that on this occasion, fate was not on her side. On the journey, she’d come across a few homesteads where she had begged for food. She had seen dilapidated cabins through the trees from a distance but had not approached them, afraid of who might be in them. She had heard stories of deserters hiding out and being discovered in abandoned buildings.

  She’d crossed over a river, and the water had been so deep that it had lapped against her waist. She had seen Confederate infantry marching in the opposite direction, towards Richmond, on her way north, and she’d even ridden into a Confederate encampment in the hopes of seeing Jacob there. Demoralised, she now accepted that looking for Jacob had been like searching for one particular mouse in a wheat field.

  She traced the map with her finger and thought about where she’d searched and where she should be looking next. She had gone as far as Fredericksburg, some fifty-eight miles north of Richmond. The cavalry regiment was still there in part, but Jacob had left a week earlier with his company, and he had not returned. Whilst in Fredericksburg, she had been able to take a good look at the Union Army, moving along the north bank of the Rappahannock River. What she had seen had terrified her. Long columns of wagons escorted by blue coat cavalry had been like a blue ribbon stretching for miles. The wagons had probably been filled with food and supplies, sorely lacking now in the capital and in every Virginia household, she had thought at the time.

  She had sat on the south bank, looking across at the enemy’s cavalry horses quietly grazing upon the grass-covered fields, and she had shuddered as the fear of God rippled through her. Jacob had already faced this invasion of blue coats, and he was probably going to have to strike at them repeatedly and face death every time. What must soldiers feel when they see tens of thousands of men and weapons determined to take rebel held ground. How did Jacob and his men find the courage to face this giant army and their cannons? The answer to that question was beyond her comprehension, for she had found courage sorely lacking in her at the sight of the swaggering, confident Union army.

  She lay now on soft grass, listening to the hurried water splashing against small rocks and a gravel floor, and she relived her journey in her mind. After Fredericksburg, she had gone to Hick’s Hill. There she had found a couple of companies belonging to the Ninth Regiment. She had seen sickness amongst the men – dysentery, she had been told. The conditions in the camp were far worse than anything she had seen up until now. Makeshift graves had been dug for the dead, too weak to fight the sickness. The encampment smelled of putrid waste and brought to mind the Thames River and London’s great stink. Men had lain in their own filth, listless and helpless under the hot sun. God help them, she thought now, for if they were lucky enough to survive, they would have the enemy to look forward to. She thought it fortuitous that Jacob had not been in that encampment.

  She could not give up her search, she thought. She was not more than fifteen miles north of Richmond, and she felt sure that she was closing in on Jacob. She had missed him by two days at Hicks Hill. A nice sergeant there had informed her that Jacob and his men were on the march behind an infantry brigade heading towards Richmond. He had not specified which road they were taking, but Mercy had been studying this map for weeks, and she was convinced that the major road, called Telegraph Road, would be the most sensible road for an army of men, wagons, and horses to take.

  She had to find that road, but it would not be easy. There were dense forests and hilly ground between here and Richmond, and she could easily get lost, as she was apt to do from time to time. She believed she was trailing Jacob, for she had certainly not overtaken him. The ground was thick with mud after three days of heavy rains. The infantry was probably walking at a snail’s pace. This was good news, for she calculated that they couldn’t be more than a couple of hours ahead of her.

  Mercy dismounted within the boundary of a thick treeline. She was on elevated ground. She had been aware of shallow inclines a mile back, but she hadn’t realised that she had taken such high ground after skirting a steep and muddy ditch.

  She sighed at her stupidity. She had lost valuable time, which would probably mean another night alone in the open, listening to wolves howling and foxes growling. She tied the horse’s reins to a trunk and walked towards the farthest trees on the ridge. Hopefully, she would get a good view of what was beyond this vantage point, she thought, and with a bit of luck, she might even spot the road she was looking for.

  She reached a thick tree trunk and stopped. A horse was whinnying in the distance – possibly more than one. She pressed her back against the trunk and held her breath. She exhaled sharply and snuck a peek around the edge of the trunk, first to the left and then to the right of it. There was a flash of blue moving around some distance away. She gasped and looked again. There was no mistaking what she saw. There were at least eight blue coats hunkered down farther up the ridge, intently studying something or someone beyond the hill’s brow. She would like to know what they were so ardently watching, for it could be the very thing she was looking for.

  They were only about seventy-five yards from where she hid. She had seen them. Had they spied her? The first surge of panic hit her. Dear God, this was wartime. This was not like Fort Monroe, full of friendly soldiers and dinner parties. This was a battlefield – Virginia was being invaded. What would the Yankees do with her ? They would bloody shoot her, she decided.

  She slithered on her belly like a snake to the very edge of the hill, glad of the thick foliage for cover, even though it scraped and cut her arms. When she reached the last trees and the edge of the hill, she looked down and saw an infantry column and cavalry. Grey coats. She had found Jacob at last.

  She could hear the column now too. The boots on wet, muddy ground were almost silent, but the horses’ hooves’ thumped like the soft beat of a drum as they hit hard ground underneath the mud. This had to be the column she was looking for. This was Telegraph Road. Why else would poles and wire be lining the route?

  She panicked again. One whinny from Coal and the Yankees along the ridge would certainly notice her presence. How could Yankees get so close to Richmond? she wondered. They must be scouts. They had to be. They didn’t seem to want to attack the strong force of men below, she determined, but they could certainly take away valuable information about Confederate troop movements and weapons. They might even want to destroy the telegraph poles, cutting off the South’s communication with Richmond and the northern towns surrounding it. She had to warn someone. She had to move right now, before the blue coats had a chance to get away or the Confederate column walked on, ignorant of the menace behind them.

  She crawled back to Coal, who was happily grazing. She stroked his neck and kept him hushed with soothing whispers, and she included some invigorating prayers to God. There was no easy or direct route down that hill – no way to ride out to its ridge without being s
een by the enemy. She pictured the Yankees hearing Coal’s hooves and then seeing her swerving in and out of the trees heading towards the brow of the hill. Her intent would be obvious to them, and their instincts would be to kill her before she reached the column. She was no soldier, but she was sure they wouldn’t want her to give away their position.

  No more debating, she thought. Down she must go, regardless of danger and her vision of being shot in the back as she rode. She mounted Coal, clicked her tongue, gripped the reins, kicked the horse’s flanks, and hunched her body across the saddle. “Come on,boy …ride!” she whispered fiercely. The trees danced before her as her head bobbed up and down. Her nose was almost touching Coal’s mane, but every few seconds, she raised it to catch glimpses of the Yankees. She didn’t really want to see a rifle pointed in her direction, but she couldn’t help herself from finding out if she had been seen.

  An errant branch pulled Eddie’s hat from her head, leaving it hanging around her neck by the leather strap. The bloody thing was choking the life out of her! She came to the ridge, moaning with the effort that it took to stay in the saddle. As he stumbled onto the hill’s steep incline, she was sure she was going to slip down Coal’s neck. She shuddered with fear, feeling her throat dry and blocked. She was in the open, exposed and in the Yankees’ sights. They must be able to see her, she thought. They might be aiming at her back right at this very moment. She would feel the bullet strike her, and she would fall to the ground and roll down the hill like a barrel.