Thieves Of Mercy

made the going easier.

Soon they came out to the little strip of sand where they had left the boat. The tide had fallen and most of the boat was grounded, and it was only with a great deal of straining that Newcomb was able to get it floating again. He ordered the women aboard. They waded through soft mud that sucked at their shoes. They climbed in and took their places in the bow. Newcomb put an oar over the transom and in the light breeze sculled the boat out of Tanner’s Creek.

Sitting in the bow, looking aft, Wendy could see the end of Tanner’s Point disappearing astern. They were heading upriver, in the wake of the Virginia. She waited for Newcomb to turn north, to head for Yankee country, but he did not.

South. He stood on south, and when the first ruffle of breeze made the sail flutter, he pulled the oar in, laid it on the thwarts, and hauled the sheet until the sail was drawing. They made perhaps two knots in the light air, slicing silently through the water of the Elizabeth River. Sailing south.

Wendy wanted desperately to turn around, to see what she could see beyond their bow. At first she did not dare, certain that it would inflame Newcomb.

Still, she reasoned, so far he had done nothing but yell and threaten.

It had occurred to her, kneeling in the tall grass, waiting for Newcomb to kill them, that he needed them alive. She did not forget the violence at the house, the horrible thing he had done to Molly. But still, he needed to present them, captured Southern assassins, to his superior officers as justification for his absence. She knew that would not keep Molly and her alive forever-Newcomb was liable to go completely berserk at any moment-but for the time being it was some protection.

She swiveled around, looked ahead. She could make out the hump of Craney Island against the low shoreline beyond. Virginia was visible in the moonlight, the great column of smoke from her stack making a black cloud against the stars and the moonlit sky. She was a mile or so away. She did not seem to be moving much faster than they were.

“Turn around,” Newcomb growled, finally noticing her. She turned back. What on earth is he planning?

Lord, if they could just get aboard that Confederate ship, or attract the attention of her men. But they would have to get closer than a mile away. Much closer.

It took the better part of an hour for them to cross the river at a diagonal. Wendy watched the shoreline, trying to determine where they were going. She watched Newcomb’s face, trying to gauge what he had in mind, following the ironclad.

She saw Newcomb squint into the dark, saw his eyebrows come together as he tried to puzzle something out. She turned and looked forward and Molly did as well. She braced for Newcomb’s shout, but he was apparently too absorbed in what he was looking at to care about his prisoners.

The Virginia was a little south of Craney Island. After a moment or so, Wendy realized that the ship had stopped dead, no doubt run aground on the mud flats that extended a quarter mile out from the island.

Newcomb stood on, closing with the ironclad, until they were no more than half a mile away. He turned the boat up into the wind and let the sail come aback, pressed against the mast, then pushed the tiller over and tied it in place. The boat came to a stop, rocking slightly in the small chop, its only motion a slow drift downriver on the falling tide.

There was a whirl of activity around the Confederate ship. Lights like fireflies on a summer evening moved up and down the casemate and dotted the top of her turtle back. Lights moved across the water from ship to shore and back again.

After a while the tide and current had carried the boat far downriver, and Newcomb got them under way again, coming back to within a quarter mile of the Virginia.

They are abandoning ship, Wendy thought. It was the only explanation for what she was seeing. They were conveying all of the crew to shore, and leaving the ironclad behind.

But they will not leave her for the Yankees, surely?

They watched for another twenty minutes, watched as three boats pulled for the shore, and then just one returned. They could see the lanterns held by men climbing up the side of the ship and then disappearing down inside. Through open gun ports they could catch glimpses of the lights moving around the interior of the casemate.

After a while the lanterns emerged on the top of the casemate and once more moved down the side of the ship and into the boat. One after another they were extinguished, until the boat was swallowed up in the dark, and the only light on the water was the moon’s reflection and a soft glow that seemed to emanate from within the ironclad itself.

Newcomb did not move. He did not speak. He did not tell the women to turn around, and they did not.

There was a light of some sort within the ship’s interior, Wendy was certain of it, and she was almost as certain that it was getting brighter. She wondered if dawn was coming, but a glance at the eastern sky told her it was still the dead of night, with dawn an hour or more away.

She looked back at the ship. The gun ports were clearly visible, oval points of light against the dark iron casement. And then Wendy understood. The ship was on fire. The Confederates had abandoned the Virginia and set her ablaze. They would not leave her for the Yankees. They would destroy her first.

She felt Newcomb shifting behind her. She turned. He was easing the tiller over, getting the boat under way. Once again she waited for him to turn the boat north, to head downriver, but he did not. He pointed the bow straight at the burning ship.

“You think I’m going to give up… you little secesh whores?” he said, speaking to himself, apparently. “Think I can’t save that ship now?”

“What are you talking about?” Wendy asked, disgusted, curious, frightened.

Newcomb pulled his eyes from the ship and looked at her. The zealous look she had seen on Tanner’s Point was there, threefold. His eyes were wide and he was smiling, which made his face look even more horrible. “Those traitors think they’ll keep that ship out of Union hands by burning her. Well I’ll be damned if they will. She’s the Merrimack, pride of the Union Navy, and she will be again.”

Oh, Lord, he is going to try and save the ship!

She turned back and looked at Virginia, now only a hundred yards or so ahead, close enough for Wendy to get a sense of her massive scale. She could see flames through the gun ports, but could not tell the extent to which she was engulfed. Might New-comb do this thing? By the look on his face, it was clear he would die trying, and see that his prisoners did as well.

They closed with the ship, the great casemate rising up overhead like a small, humpbacked mountain. Through the gun ports, around the muzzles of the heavy guns, they could see the flames on the gun deck. The men who had put her to the torch had done their job well, but Newcomb did not hesitate.

They came up with the Virginia’s bow. Newcomb brought the boat alongside, bumping it against the ship’s side. The smell of burning wood and hot iron was sharp in their noses. They could hear the flames crackling and hissing inside the iron shell.

Newcomb stood with one hand resting on the Virginia’s deck. He aimed the.36 at the women. “Get up there,” he said, gesturing with his head toward the ship. The women hesitated. New-comb straightened the arm with the gun, sighted down the barrel. “Get up!”

No choice. Newcomb was even more fixated on the ship than he was on them. It was not hard to imagine what a hero he would be if indeed he could save the ironclad for the Union. And that meant that the lives of his prisoners were of considerably less value than they had been even two hours before.

Wendy stood and grabbed onto a bollard on the edge of the Virginia’s deck. She stepped onto the gunnel of the boat, managed to get a leg on the ship’s deck and pull herself up, a difficult and humiliating move. She looked up, still on hands and knees. A few feet inboard of the ship’s side, a low wooden bulwark made a V-shaped false bow that would keep the area within the V dry even when the deck outside was submerged. Wendy grabbed hold of the top of the bulwark and pulled herself up.

She turned as Molly grabbed onto the bollard and hoisted herself up in the same manner. Wendy took hold of Molly’s arm, helped pull her aboard, and helped her to her feet.