As they ordered breakfast, they chatted about the fighting off to the west, in northern Virginia. Edna had taken everything Kincaid said as gospel (which was a devil of a thing for a woman bent on marriage to do), but Nellie added together what she had heard from many different people. Her picture of the way the war was going didn’t match his optimistic words.
After the morning rush of soldiers and collaborators and their sleek, expensive women ebbed, Nellie said, “I’m going across the street to say hello to Mr. Jacobs.”
“Have fun, Ma,” Edna answered.
In another tone of voice, the remark would have been harmless. Nellie felt her face heat. “He’s a gentleman, Edna. I know it’s a word you may not understand, but it’s so. We don’t do what you and that overgrown side of beef most assuredly
“That makes you the fools, not Nick and me,” Edna shot back.
Nellie went outside without answering. It was still chilly, but not savagely cold. As it had at dawn, as it did around the clock, artillery rumbled to the north. Every so often now, Nellie could hear individual shells screaming in on Confederate fortifications defending the Rebels’ grip on the capital of the United States.
The bell above Hal Jacobs’ door jingled instead of jangling. The cobbler looked up from the Confederate officer’s riding boot he was resoling. “Widow Semphroch-Nellie,” he said, and smiled a smile that made him look young in spite of gray mustache and thinning gray hair. “How good to see you.”
“And you, Hal,” she answered, closing the door behind her to keep the heat inside. She looked around. Almost all the shoes in Jacobs’ shop these days belonged to Confederate soldiers. Some awaited his attention, some their owners’ return. Nellie sighed and said, “The Rebs have been here a long time.”
“That they have,” Jacobs agreed. “That they have.” He sighed, too.
Casually, she went on, “They’re going to try to hold on here, too. They’re bringing in reinforcements-whites and niggers both, matter of fact.”
“Is that so?” the shoemaker said. “How interesting.” Nellie always passed him the gossip she picked up in the coffeehouse in that easygoing, conversational way. He always responded in kind, and then sent the information on so the United States could get some use from it.
“I thought so,” she answered now. After a moment, she went on, “My daughter and that Rebel lieutenant are planning to get married here, a few days after the start of spring.”
For one of the rare times since she’d begun letting Hal Jacobs know what she heard, she was looking for information from him. He understood that, and did not look very happy about it. At last, grudgingly, he said, “I do hope their plans won’t have to be changed, as could happen.”
He wasn’t going to say anything more. She could see it in his eyes. He’d told her something, anyhow. She nodded brusque thanks. Then, even more brusquely, she asked, “What do you hear from Bill Reach?”
Jacobs knew Bill Reach. Along with being a humiliating piece of Nellie’s past, along with drinking like a fish, he had also been the cobbler’s superior among the U.S. spies in Washington. Jacobs said, “Since that unfortunate evening, Widow Semphroch, I have not heard from him at all. Perhaps the Confederates have again jailed him as a thief.”
“Perhaps he’s frozen to death in a gutter.” Nellie’s voice was full of fierce hope.
“I never knew what he did to offend you so greatly,” Jacobs said.
“Never mind, but he did.” Nellie thought Jacobs was lying about his ignorance. If he wasn’t, she didn’t intend to enlighten him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry because, since you have been angry at him, you have not brought so many pieces of useful information to me-and you must hear a great deal, because your coffeehouse is so popular with the Confederates and those who deal with them.”
Jacobs and his friends-about whose identities Nellie had carefully not inquired-had helped keep her coffeehouse in coffee and food, when both were in short supply in occupied Washington. She probably would have gone out of business without their help. “I am sorry, too,” she said. “I do pay my debts, or try to. But that man…I want to pay him back-oh, yes, very much.”
The cobbler held up a hand. “I had not finished. I am also sorry because, with you angry at Bill Reach, I don’t get to see you as often as I would like. I’ve missed you, you know.”
Nellie’s mouth fell open. She wasn’t used to having men say such things to her. Edna’s father had been decent enough to marry her when she found herself in a family way. It was one of the few decent things he’d ever done. After he died, she’d been content-more than content-to live as a widow. Now-
“How you do go on, Hal,” she said, trying to make light of it.
He didn’t want to make light of it. “I meant what I said,” he told her, and she could hear the truth in his voice. “You are a fine woman-a finer woman, I think, than even you know. Maybe you have been a widow too long to remember these things, but you must believe me here, for I know what I am talking about.”
“Well, good day, Mr. Jacobs,” Nellie said. “I really have to get back to the coffeehouse now.” She fled from the shoemaker’s shop as if a hundred Confederate spycatchers were on her trail. Her heart thudded. A man who said he missed her, a man who thought her a fine woman, was to her a more frightening apparition than all the Confederate spycatchers in the world.
Commander Roger Kimball let out a long, lugubrious sigh as the CSS
“Damn,” he said with all due respect. “That sure as hell is one fine town for a shore leave, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Senior Lieutenant Tom Brearley, his executive officer. Both men were recently promoted, after their successful raid on New York harbor. The fresh gold stripes on the sleeves of their dark gray uniform coats were easy to tell apart from the duller ones they’d worn for a while. Brearley went on, “I thought I was a whiskey- drinking man, but I expect I could get used to rum.” He grinned. “I expect I
“Hot and cold running whores, too,” Kimball said with a reminiscent leer. “Black ones, brown ones, white ones-whatever you happen to feel like. Cheap, too. Cuba’s a damn sight cheaper than Charleston, and you can have a better time, too-although I had me some pretty fair times in Charleston, now that I think about it.”
Anne Colleton naked on a bed had been worth a dozen Habana whores. His blood heated at the memory. She’d been a tigress between the sheets-and she’d wanted him for himself, not for the money he laid down. And she was a rich lady, an influential lady. To a man who’d gone from a backwoods Arkansas farm to the Confederate Naval Academy at Mobile, a connection like that was worth its weight in rubies. Kimball didn’t intend to go back to that miserable farm when his Navy days were over. The only direction he intended to head was up.
“Weather’s a lot better here than up in the North Atlantic,” Brearley said. “Sea’s a lot calmer, too. I’m just as glad they sent us down here.”
“Far as the
Brearley shrugged. “If England doesn’t get the bread and meat she needs from Argentina, she’s out of the war. If she’s out of the war, the Kaiser runs roughshod in Europe and the damnyankees do the same thing in America. If the United States are starting to try and take a bite out of the route from Pernambuco to Dakar, we’ve got to stop ’em.”
Kimball clicked his tongue between his teeth. His exec was a good kid, but you needed to give him the C and the A if he was going to spell CAT. “Yeah, Tom, we’ve got to stop ’em. But if things were going better farther north, they wouldn’t be able to turn ships loose to go after this shipping route.”
“Oh, I see what you’re saying, sir,” Brearley answered. No doubt he did, too; he wasn’t stupid, only a little slow. “We’ve got them beat hollow when it comes to logistics.”
“Good thing, too,” Kimball said. “Otherwise, this war would be within shouting distance of over. But they’ll need coal and fuel oil if they’re going to operate for long in those waters from out of Boston or New York or Philadelphia. We want the supply ships as much as we want the warships.”
He took his binoculars out of their leather case and scanned the horizon for plumes of smoke. He knew that was foolish. If he spotted enemy ships less than an hour out of Habana, the war wouldn’t just be within shouting distance of the end. It would be history.
“Anything, sir?” Brearley asked. He had to be jumpy, too, if he thought there might be something so close to
