Thieves Of Mercy

He fended off the tentative inquiries of Master’s Mate Pembrook. Sir, are you quite certain everything is all right? Sir, are you sure that was the President’s orders? But he was not certain that Pembrook was mollified. There was no telling what that little bastard would do, to whom he would talk, and what he would say.

Cathy! Oh, God! They had met at an officers’ ball at Fortress Monroe soon after the fall of Fort Sumter. She was so beautiful, the center of attention, and she had picked him to escort her! She had lived in Portsmouth, but since the horrible Rebels had taken the place, she was afraid to remain. Or so she told him. Even told him which street she lived on, and he had never forgotten it.

Beautiful, intelligent, vivacious. Insatiably curious about the United States Navy. She had a thousand questions and he, fool that he was, had answered them all, had shown her lists of the fleet dispositions, extolled the virtues of this secret plan, the shortcomings of that.

Oh, he had impressed her, all right, with his encyclopedic knowledge. Knowledge that he had labored so intently to acquire, that he might impress his superiors, only to give it away to a damned secesh spy!

Cathy Luce! They had seen one another for five months, on and off, and Newcomb had been ready with a marriage proposal when suddenly, one day, she was not there anymore. He had been frantic, heartsick, confused, but he had his duty, and that took precedence over everything, even love. He was never able to find out what had become of her.

And now he knew. Now he knew it was all a lie, even her name, and he knew he had to stop her. He had packed his haversack, dressed in civilian clothes, told Pembrook he had secret orders from Admiral Goldsborough himself. Tell no one of my absence, do you understand? He had the boat land him at night north of Portsmouth.

He wondered how many other Union officers there were who had willingly told her every military secret they held, in order to get a kiss on a front porch. Or more. She had allowed him a few liberties. He wondered what she might have done for a captain, or an admiral.

The thought made the pressure rise again, like a boiler pushed well beyond its limits. He knew what she was now. Passion, honor, and duty all demanded the same action. Take her. Bring her in. Expose her. See her hung.

The Union troops were slated to land at Willoughby ’s Point at ten o’clock and now it was 11:15 and they would be there soon. Before, he had looked forward to their arrival, eagerly anticipated handing over the assassin to General Wool and accepting the thanks and accolades of both the army and navy, not to mention that of the President of the United States. There would be no talk of desertion.

But now? He had nothing. He was out of uniform, behind enemy lines, gone from his post without permission.

God, what if they find me like this? He pulled his eyes from the horrible sight in the mirror, looked around the room. On the floor, lying amid a scattering of its own broken parts, lay his pocket watch. He walked over slowly, stooped, and picked up the remains. The hands had stopped at 9:34, which must have been when the bitch had crushed it.

“Goddamn her…” Newcomb spoke aloud for the first time since coming to. The sound of his voice seemed to make everything more real and more urgent. He had to get out of that house.

He had to do something. When the Union troops found him, he had to have some reason for being where he was, doing what he was doing.

He slipped the remains of his watch into his vest pocket. On the fainting couch, where he had left it, he found his haversack. He pulled it open, peered inside. Telescope, loaf of bread, coil of half-inch rope, cartridges and percussion caps, some gold coins, his small Bible, it was all there, all the things he had packed for his mission.

He slung the haversack over his shoulder, picked up his pistol, and headed for the door. The bright sunlight was agony on his head and made his eyes water but he did not slow as he walked down the path to the picket fence and the road. He stepped out into the street. There was nothing going on, nothing moving, as if the town were holding its breath, waiting for the invaders to do what they would.

Newcomb looked around. To the south he could see a great column of smoke rising black above the roofs of the houses and he wondered if Union troops were burning property as they took it. It took him a moment to orient himself, a moment to realize that he was looking in the direction of the Gosport Naval Shipyard.

“Oh, those bastards,” he said. The secesh must have torched the place before abandoning it. “Oh, those vandalous bastards.”

He wondered if there was anything he might do to save the yard. Judging from the smoke, the fire was pretty well established and covered a lot of ground. But perhaps there was something he might do, something of importance he might save. If they found him there, when they came, heroically fighting the flames to save something vital for the Union, then perhaps there would not be so many awkward questions, even if he did not have the secesh spy in his custody.

He started to walk and then he started to run. Soon he could see the low brick wall that surrounded the shipyard, a place he knew well from its time as a United States Navy facility. He was nearly to the gate when it occurred to him that perhaps it was not yet abandoned, that he might be running right into a trap.

He slowed to a walk, approached the gate carefully. He stopped at the edge of the wall, peered around it. The gate was hanging open, no guards. He stepped around the corner of the wall. No one inside the yard that he could see. It looked entirely abandoned, the only movement the waving and leaping of the fires that were still consuming the buildings scattered around the yard.

Newcomb stepped through the gate, moving cautiously, looking around for secesh, and for some opportunity, something he might do.

He was too late, as far as he could see. Half the buildings had collapsed into charred rubble, and those that had not were too far gone to be saved. Not that he alone could have done anything in any event.

He walked on. Through the smoke he could catch glimpses of the river, and that made him think of the dry dock. When the navy had abandoned the shipyard the year before they had mined the dock and tried to blow it to kingdom come. If they had succeeded, then the Rebs would never have been able to bring that Frankenstein’s monster Merrimack back to life. Newcomb wondered if perhaps the Rebs had also mined the dry dock, to deny it to the Union.

He began to run, despite the agony in his head from each jarring footfall. If he could prevent the dry dock from being destroyed he would be a hero for certain. As he raced through the smoke he decided that even if the dock was not mined, he would try to round up barrels of powder and mine it himself, just so he could be discovered in the act of saving it.

He broke through the curtain of black smoke, out into the open place where the cobbled dockyard ran down to the river, with the dry dock just ahead. He hurried on, hoping against hope that the secesh had filled the thing with gunpowder.

He was near the edge of the dry dock when he saw a red bag of some sort lying on the ground. A reticule. He knelt beside it, reached out a hand and lifted it. It was heavy. He looked inside. Half covered by a handkerchief he could see the pepperbox pistol.

Newcomb looked up, looked around. He was the only human being in the dockyard, that he could see. On a bollard nearby he could see dock fasts for a ship’s boat trailing over the edge of the seawall. He squinted upriver. He forgot entirely about the dry dock.

TWENTY-ONE

The enemy’s boats above Fort Pillow are now moored in narrow channels behind sand bars, where we can not attack them again, but we will wait and watch for another opportunity.

BRIGADIER GENERAL M JEFF THOMPSON TO GENERAL G.T.BEAUREGARD

Samuel Bowater walked stiffly uphill to the hospital. He was sore in several places from the beating he

had taken at the Tilton Theater, the most violent theatergoing experience of his life.

In performances past, when the final curtain fell on The Tragedy of Hamlet, it had been the stage that was littered with bodies, while the audience remained largely intact. But that wasn’t how it