Thieves Of Mercy

this! The President of the United States himself ordered I get to the bottom of this!”

“Oh, Roger! You recognized me right off. If you felt nothing for me, why did you not tell the President then? Come now, you can’t deny it. I need you, Roger. Help me.”

Roger stared at her, tight-lipped, standing very straight. “Yes, I had feelings for you. I might even have loved you. I don’t deny it. But after Fortress Monroe, that is over. I have my duty. No more.”

Molly turned to Wendy. “When this is over, we’ll talk,” she said.

“It will be over soon,” Newcomb said, crossing back to the door. The watch came out, was consulted and replaced. “I will take you to the flagship and explain the situation to the admiral and President Lincoln.”

“Wait!” Molly said. Newcomb stopped, hand on the doorknob. He did not move. Finally he turned back.

“Yes?”

“There is nothing I can do to stop you,” Molly said. “I do not even have a gun.”

Newcomb nodded.

“I don’t have a gun,” Molly repeated.

“Oh!” Wendy said as she understood Molly’s meaning. “Oh!” The room swam in front of her. All her daydreams of pulling the pistol strapped to her thigh, and here was the moment to do it. She snatched up the hem of her skirt and petticoat, not caring in her panic if Newcomb saw her legs or drawers. Her hand reached for the butt of the gun, her fingers slick with sweat.

“Oh, son of a bitch!” Newcomb shouted. Wendy looked up. The officer had a panicked look, eyes on the gun. He lunged forward, hand out, to snatch the derringer away. Molly’s leg came up in front of him and Wendy saw him go down, arm outstretched, fingers brushing her skirts as he hit the deck.

Wendy leaped up, pulling the little gun as she did. Newcomb was sprawled out at her feet, still reaching for her. She pointed the gun at his face, looking over the short barrel into his startled eyes. Her thumb pulled the hammer back, her finger was slick on the trigger.

“Don’t shoot him!” Molly cried out. “For God’s sake, don’t shoot him.”

Wendy took a step back. Her hands began to tremble and the gun shook with jerky little spasms. If Molly had not spoken, she would have put a bullet right between Newcomb’s eyes. Without even thinking about it, she knew that in her panic, that was what she would have done. Her breath was coming fast and shallow.

Molly was on her knees beside Newcomb. “Don’t move, Roger, dear, or I will have Wendy shoot you, and the Lord knows I do not want to.” As she spoke she rifled Newcomb’s pockets, extracted the pepperbox and the Navy.36 from his holster. She stepped back, both guns trained on the Yankee.

“Very well, Wendy, you may put up your gun.”

Wendy did not move. She heard the words, but they meant nothing. She was still stunned by how very close she had come-an insignificant twitch of her trigger finger-to killing a human being.

“Wendy, sit down and put your gun away,” Molly said, more sternly this time, and Wendy obeyed. She took another step back, flopped down in the desk chair, stared at the gun in her hand. Everything seemed to have a weird light around it. The shocking events of the last few minutes, coupled with her profound exhaustion, were warping her perspective.

“Now, Roger, let’s discuss this situation,” she heard Molly saying, but she was still looking at the gun. The hammer was cocked, and she knew she could not put it back in its holster that way, but how to get the hammer down again? Molly had never explained that. She tried pushing it with her thumb, but it would not move. She frowned. Perhaps pulling the trigger, just a bit.

She squeezed the trigger, very gently. The hammer snapped and the percussion cap flashed and the gun leaped in her hand with a sound like a cannon blast in that little room.

“Oh!” Wendy jumped, the gun slipped from her hand. New-comb leaped to his feet, going for Molly, but Molly, quick as a snake, whipped up the.36, thumbed the hammer back with a crisp click, and aimed it right at Newcomb’s chest, three feet away. The pistol looked huge in her little hand, as if a child were holding her father’s gun, but the aim was steady and unflinching.

“Sit, Roger,” she said, softly, as if she were offering him tea, and Roger sat. “Are you all right, Wendy, dear?” Molly said next. Wendy nodded, too shocked to speak. There was a bright, roughly circular spot of light on the cabin side, daylight shining in through the hole the bullet had made.

The sound of the gunshot was just fading in Wendy’s ears when she heard the footsteps on the deck, running. They stopped by the cabin door, and were followed with a knocking, and a voice. “Sir? Are you all right? Is everything all right, sir?”

Molly raised the.36 a little higher. She and Newcomb held one another’s eyes. Molly nodded her head.

“We’re fine, Mr. Pembrook. A bit of an accident,” he said. His voice was stiff, but convincing enough.

There was a pause beyond the door. “Very well, sir,” Pembrook replied, though he did not sound altogether certain. “I’ll be in the wheelhouse if I am needed, sir.”

“Very well.”

They listened while Pembrook’s footsteps disappeared, and then they sat in silence for a moment. Then Molly and Newcomb began at once, trampling one another’s words, both stopping at the same instant.

“Roger, dear,” Molly said, “I get to speak first because I have the guns. Now here’s what is going to happen. When we get to the Norvier-”

“Under no circumstances,” Newcomb cut her short, “will I cooperate with you. Never. I’ll die first.” His voice sounded strained and unnatural.

Molly smiled her coquettish smile. “You may yet, but actually you will listen first. Now, it is entirely possible that what Wendy and I have done could be construed as spying. And you know what the punishment is for that. Hanging. By the neck. Until dead. So really, Wendy and I have nothing to lose in shooting you, if need be, to help our escape.

“Here are your choices. Take us to the Norvier and leave us, tell them you were ordered to deliver us to a neutral, steam off before they can ask questions. Tell Lincoln I really was the minister’s wife, and that will be an end to it. All will be fine.

“Or, you can resist, and I will shoot you.” The timbre of Molly’s voice changed as she spoke, the volume lower, more menacing, a voice with no compassion. “I’ll shoot you, and your legacy will be that you were shot in your own cabin, with your own gun, by a woman who had disarmed you first. I’ll see they find you with your trousers around your ankles. Is that how you wish to be remembered? Your death will at least be a source of unending amusement for generations of naval officers.”

That, Wendy could see, had struck home, as deadly a shot as the one she nearly put through his forehead. A man only had one opportunity to die well. A proud fool like Newcomb might go willingly to an honorable death, but to leave a legacy of such dishonor, to be laughed at in death, that was another thing entirely.

“You wouldn’t,” Newcomb said. “I know you too well, Cathy. I know you couldn’t do such a thing.”

“No? Then why don’t you go for the gun?” Molly raised the pistol, pointed it right at Newcomb’s face. “Go ahead, Roger. See if you can grab it before I pull the trigger.” There was not a single note of compassion in her words, and she spoke in the voice of a woman who could, in fact, do such a thing, and would, if forced to.

“What-” Newcomb began, the confidence drained from him. He grabbed at his watch, feeling for it, pulled it out and looked at it. He held it in his palm as he continued. “What happens when Lincoln has the minister to the White House? Meets his real wife, if he has one?”

Molly shook her head. “Roger, do you think the President of the United States really cares a fig about any of this? Do you think a man who is fighting a war will lie awake wondering about some tart he knew for a couple of hours? He has forgotten it already. It’s dead. Let it rest in peace.”

Wendy watched the two of them, felt the palpable tension like some invisible energy move between them. Hieronymus Taylor had once told her that pure steam was absolutely invisible. That was what they were making, the heat of their passions turning the air between them to pure steam.

And then, almost imperceptible in the dim light, a tear rolled down Newcomb’s cheek. He did not move, made no effort to brush it aside. It disappeared into his close-cropped beard.

Something in him had broken, some bulwark of resolve collapsed. Wendy wondered if sitting there he had seen in his mind the image of his own dead body laid out on the deck of the cabin, pants pulled down, revealing white, spindly, hairy legs. The sailors exchanging knowing grins as they lifted his stiff corpse onto a litter. He snapped his watch shut and slowly replaced it in the pocket of his vest.

It was another ten minutes of sitting there before Pembrook once again knocked on the door and announced