Thieves Of Mercy

of the forts on the point.”

Tucker frowned. Molly spoke. “Whatever is the matter, Captain Tucker?” It sounded silly, a woman and a civilian asking after military affairs, and so it seemed odder still when Tucker answered her with no hint of condescension.

“The Federals are going to put men ashore somewhere, and soon, I imagine. We need to keep Virginia safe, she’s the most powerful weapon we have. We can’t afford to let her get trapped between the Yankees ashore and the Yankee fleet in the Roads.”

“So send her away,” Molly said. “Send her up the James to Richmond. Defense of the river will be as important as the defensive lines on shore.”

“We can’t.” Tucker smiled. “We need her here. She’s the most powerful weapon we have. Besides, Virginia might be able to stop the Yankees from taking Norfolk. McClellan nearly canceled his whole campaign for fear of Virginia.”

“The Yankee soldiers are only vulnerable to Virginia when they are landing,” Molly said. “She can do nothing to them once they are ashore. What you need to know is when and where the Yankees will land, so you can stop them, or at least hold your beastly iron ship here until the last moment.”

“Exactly.”

“Well,” Molly said, as if the answer was obvious, “why don’t you ask me to find out for you?”

Tucker leaned back in his chair, regarded Molly for a moment. “I thought you wanted to get out of Norfolk,” he said at length. “Now you’re offering to stay?”

“I’ll stay long enough to tell you when and where the Yankees will arrive. I’ll find that out in exchange for your promise that Wendy and I are on the boat that takes you out of here.”

Tucker looked at Batchelor. Batchelor looked baffled, and Wendy was glad to have company in her confusion.

“I don’t know…” Tucker said. “If you were going to New York, perhaps. But you’re too well known around here, particularly among the navy men. You said yourself you wouldn’t be safe-”

Molly dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “I’ll be safe, don’t you worry. I have Wendy here, and Wendy”- Molly’s voice dropped to a whisper-“has a gun!”

Tucker laughed and then Batchelor laughed and finally Wendy thought she saw the humor in it and she laughed too. And then Tucker said, “Very well, Miss Atkins, if you reckon you can fulfill your part of the bargain, you have a deal. What do you need?”

“Well”-Molly ran an appreciative eye over Lieutenant Batchelor-“why don’t you give me this handsome young officer and let him attend to my needs?”

“Very well,” Tucker said. “Lieutenant, please attend to Miss Atkins. Get her whatever she wants, within reason.”

“Ah… yes, sir,” Batchelor said.

“Good.” Molly stood with the satisfied air of someone who has won an auction. “Let’s get moving. Wendy, come with me, darling.”

Wendy stood more slowly. “Where are we going?”

“I’m not entirely certain, dear,” Molly said, “but I suppose we’ll go and ask those vile Yankees what their intentions are.”

SIX

I trust that the results to be derived from this [River Defense] fleet will compensate for the outlay, but unless some good head is put in charge of it I fear such will not be the case. The expenses for outfit, payment for ships, and month’s wages will consume one and a half millions.

MAJOR GENERAL M. LOVELL TO GENERAL G.W. RANDOLPH

The morning after the brawl, Bowater woke with an unaccustomed stiffness in his arms and legs. He could feel the tender places on his body, like patches of punky wood on an old boat. He sat up with a groan and a difficulty that belonged to a much older man. He braced himself on the edge of his bunk with his right hand, then jerked the hand back as the pain shot right up through his arm. He closed his eyes, let the pain settle. He did not want to look at the hand but knew he had to. Finally, he opened his eyes, examined his outstretched fingers, his palm, and the back of his hand. It was swollen nearly double what it should be, and stained an unnatural yellow and purple. He flexed his fingers. He could move them all, but not much, and it hurt like hell when he tried. At least he could move them, which meant they were not broken.

He thought.

Goddamn it… He stood and shuffled to the small mirror mounted on the bulkhead, found that he could not walk without limping. Sullivan had given him one of the first-class passenger cabins, which was not what Bowater would generally call first class-it hardly compared to his second officer’s cabin aboard the USS Pensacola-but it was better than the bedroll on the deck that the men had for quarters.

Samuel stared in the mirror, saw shades of his father staring back. It was in the eyes, the set of the mouth, the slightly weary, slightly haughty expression. His father wore a neatly trimmed beard and moustache, pure white, while Samuel wore a moustache and goatee, which were still dark brown, shot through with only a few strands of white.

He shook his head, washed his face as best he could with his left hand, dismissed the idea of shaving. He pulled on his pants and his shirt. It took him fifteen minutes to button them, fifteen painful, frustrating minutes, but there was no chance that he was going to ask for help.

At last he pulled on his frock coat and set his cap on his head. His muscles were warmed by the activity, the stiffness worked out of them, and he could walk with no discernible limp.

He did not know what would greet him on deck, but he was not optimistic. There was civil war raging right on the decks of the General Page. The night before, the much-injured combatants had crawled off to their various places to heal: two sullen, angry gangs of men with a big score to settle. The war had not been decided.

Perhaps they were going at it already, taking up where they had left off. But Samuel couldn’t hear the sounds of a fight, and he had to imagine that most of the others, like himself, weren’t feeling much like fighting at the moment.

Maybe Sullivan was going to put the General Page against the bank and boot them all off, leave them stranded in some fetid swamp.

He cursed himself, as he opened the door onto the side deck, for putting himself and his men at the mercy of a man such as Mississippi Mike Sullivan. Then he cursed Mike Sullivan and Hieronymus Taylor and the world at large.

It was quiet on deck, just the creak of the big paddle wheels, the squeak and groan of the walking beam on the deck above, the rush of water along the sides. Bowater looked out over the great brown expanse of river water, the lush green shore far away.

There was no fight that he could hear.

He made his way down the side deck to the first-class passenger’s salon, last night’s battlefield. He reckoned breakfast was out of the question, for him and his men, anyway.

At last he could hear voices and he paused to gauge their timbre. Loud, boisterous, but not angry. Not the sounds of conflict. He wondered if his own men were collected someplace else on the ship. Aft on the fantail, perhaps.

Perhaps. But first he had to look in the salon, as much to demonstrate that he was not afraid to show his face in there as to look for his crew. He took a breath, pushed the door open.

The sight that greeted him was not the one he would have expected. Indeed, it was the one scenario he had not even considered, his men and the riverboat men all eating their breakfast, clustered around the damaged tables and occupying the surviving chairs, or sitting on the deck, backs against the bulkheads. It was not blue-water men to port, riverboat men to starboard, but all of them mixed up, some talking, some eating, some sucking on cheroots.