Thieves Of Mercy

“Yes… and, you understand-”

“Wendy, darling, that is just such horseshit in so many ways.” Molly’s vulgarity made Wendy blush, not for the first time. The words sounded so odd spoken in Molly’s lilting voice, the soft tidewater accent. In truth, Molly was Wendy to the third power, the woman Wendy wished she was, but did not have the grit to be.

“How can you say that? How-”

“Wendy, you spent an hour staring at that letter from your sailor, and then you started packing. You might as well have shouted out your intentions into the night. And you didn’t even have sense enough to close your curtains.”

Wendy felt her eyebrows come together, her lips press tight. “Fine, very well, I am going to go to Samuel. You won’t stop me.” She was impressed with her own determination, her tone of defiance, even as she spoke.

“No, I won’t stop you,” Molly agreed. “I just want to be sure you’ll make it there alive.” She took two steps forward, her hand lashed out, grabbed the handle of the carpetbag, yanked it from Wendy’s grasp. She moved so fast Wendy only had time to gasp, and then she was standing there empty-handed.

“All right,” Molly said. “Now I have stolen your bag. But that’s no great concern, is it, because your money is hidden on your person. Right?”

“Oh… ah…”

“Your money is in your bag? All of it?”

“Well, yes.”

“Very well. So now you are a penniless woman, far from home and friends. And now I am a filthy lecher who is determined to have his way with you. And you do what?”

“Scream?”

Molly nodded. “Scream as you pull a gun and shoot me?”

“Pull a gun? Dear Lord.”

Molly shook her head. Her expression showed incredulity, amusement, pity. “My dear, you have a lot more courage than you do sense. That’s how I knew you weren’t going to Culpepper, because going to Culpepper would be the sensible thing to do, but it would not be the courageous thing. As it is, you’ll be lucky to make it out of Virginia alive.”

Wendy felt the tears coming and she wiped them aside. She was frightened, frustrated, uncertain. She stood there in the chaotic night and she felt like a stupid little girl caught trying to run away from home.

“Oh, come now.” Molly stepped up and put her arms around Wendy and Wendy buried her face in Molly’s silk dress. “I shouldn’t have said you lack sense, that’s not true. You just want for experience.” She let Wendy cry for a minute more before adding, “We’ll be all right. We’ll find your sailor boy.”

Wendy let the tears come, let the fear and uncertainty of the past two weeks flow out and soak into Molly’s dress.

Then, as she felt the tears ebb, another thought vied for her attention. Did she say “we”?

Molly, it turned out, did say “we,” and she meant “we,” literally. She parried Wendy’s protests like a fencer, turning each argument aside. “No, no, Wendy dear, it is not an imposition, it is an adventure. Besides, I don’t want to be left here in Norfolk with those damned Yankees overrunning the place. It wouldn’t be safe for a single girl.”

She presented her arguments as she led the protesting Wendy up the flagstone path to her own house and in the back door that opened into the kitchen. A bulging carpetbag sat on the table. Molly was already packed.

She set Wendy’s bag down beside her own. “All right, Wendy, get your money out of your bag.”

Sheepishly, Wendy fished around for her little bundle of Confederate bills. She found them near the bottom, pulled them out, handed them to Molly.

Molly began dividing up the bills like a card dealer. “Unbutton your dress, dear,” she said, and then, sensing Wendy’s hesitation, looked up and said, “Go ahead.”

Wendy cleared her throat, reached a tentative hand to the buttons on her dress, and began to undo them, feeling the snug-fitting fabric fall away. She had got to just below her breasts when Molly said, “That’s fine. Now here…” She handed Wendy one of the three piles of bills into which she had divided her niece’s net worth. “Stick this in your dress, right on your boobie.”

“Molly!”

“Come along. At least anyone who finds it there is someone with whom you are quite intimate. I assume you trust your sailor boy not to steal from you?”

Wendy felt her cheeks burn but said nothing as she positioned the bills.

“One stack to port, one to starboard, as your sailor might say.” Molly waited while Wendy secured the bills, buttoned her dress back up.

“But why not put all the money in there?” Wendy asked.

“My dear, you don’t want to have to go fishing around in there every time you need some cash! Besides, if you are robbed, it is important to have something to give, or else the robber will become more aggressive in searching. Now, have you ever fired a gun?”

“A gun? No…”

“Very well, then, you had better have the little one.” Molly put her foot up on a chair at the kitchen table and pulled up her dress. Silk stocking came up to her thighs, covering well-formed calves. Around her right thigh was a thin leather belt from which hung a small holstered derringer. Molly unbuckled the belt, showed it to Wendy.

“Molly, where did you ever get such a thing?”

“A single girl has to look out for herself,” Molly said. “Now come with me.”

She led Wendy outside again, into the dark yard. “You must always treat a gun as if it was loaded. Don’t ever point it at a person unless there might be a genuine need to shoot them.”

Wendy nodded. Things were moving too fast for her to put words to them.

“Here.” Molly handed her the little gun and Wendy took it, held it carefully as if it were made of delicate china. “Hold it with authority, like you mean it,” Molly advised. “You won’t break it. Now, go ahead and shoot the rhododendron.”

“Shoot…”

“Go ahead. That little thing won’t do any harm.”

Wendy nodded, held the gun out the way she had seen her father do it, looked over the barrel at the dark shape of the rhododendron. She squeezed her eyes tight.

“Wait, wait! Don’t close your eyes.”

“Oh.”

Wendy aimed again, this time focused on keeping her eyes open. She pulled the trigger. The derringer fired with a sharp crack, a flash like a photographer’s flash powder, and a satisfying kick that bent her arm at the elbow so the gun was by her head. A week before, a gunshot would have attracted quite a bit of attention in Portsmouth, but now no one took notice. It was not the first gunshot they had heard that night.

Wendy grinned and looked at Molly. Molly said, “Very good, dear. In any event, if you have to use that, it will no doubt be at close range.”

They went back in the kitchen. Molly showed Wendy how to load the diminutive gun, then they strapped it to Wendy’s leg. She liked the feel of it, the weight, the secret menace. By outward appearance she still looked like a helpless woman. No one but Molly knew her lethal secret. She liked that.

Molly fetched a little silk drawstring reticule. She pulled it open, withdrew another gun, an odd-looking thing with a barrel that consisted of six barrels mounted around a separate shaft. “They call this a ‘pepperbox,’ ” Molly explained as she checked the load in each barrel. “Six shots in revolving barrels.” She explained it as if she were discussing the latest fashion from Paris.

“But see here, Wendy. The gun is always a last resort. Once a gun is pulled, things change, and it is often hard to extract yourself from the situation. Talk is always best. Talk yourself out of any circumstance, and pull the gun when you have no other choice.”

Wendy nodded and wondered where Molly had ever picked up such practical advice. She recalled the time Molly had taught her her secret recipe for pickle relish. Her tone of voice, the manner of her speech, were just the same as they were now. Guns, apparently, were as familiar to her as condiments.

Molly put the pepperbox back in the reticule and hung the bag on her arm. She picked up her carpetbag and