men. They ate, another fine meal, and tumbled off to sleep, too exhausted to talk.
Samuel took a private room, as was fitting his status as captain, and saw of course that Wendy had a room to herself. In the dark he lay in his bed, staring up at the ceiling, a dull blue in the moonlight. Outside the windows the crickets and frogs were singing their opera, an ensemble cast of thousands.
The door creaked on its hinges and he did not startle, did not even ask who it was. He could see her in the muted light, her hair loose and hanging down her shoulders, a robe held tight around her. She paused and they looked at one another and neither spoke. Then Wendy slipped off the robe, slipped off her nightdress, and for a moment the light played over her naked body, her white skin. She stepped up to the bed, pulled back the cover, and slipped in next to Samuel.
Samuel put his arm out, wrapped it around her, pressed her tight. She lay her cheek on his chest and they seemed to melt together. They remained like that for some time, silent, serenaded by the crickets and frogs.
“God, I have missed you,” Wendy said at last.
“I have missed you too.” And he had, though he had not known until that moment just how much.
She propped herself up on her elbow, shuffled closer to him, kissed him on the lips. He ran his hands over her back, through that long thick hair he loved, cradled her face in his hands. They made love, as if they had been waiting their whole life for this and were not going to rush through it now.
Finally they lay side by side, their heads on the cool pillows, their bodies bright with sweat because it was June and it was hot and humid, even at two o’clock in the morning.
“What will we do?” Wendy asked finally.
“I don’t know,” Samuel answered, the only true answer, but he knew Wendy needed more than that and it was not kind to leave her without it. “We’ll have to get to some city, someplace where we can contact the Navy Department. I reckon-I imagine we can find a steamer, something to get us down to Vicksburg. That’s the last holdout on the river, and when that falls, the Confederacy is split in two.”
Wendy rolled over, flung an arm across his chest. “Will that end the war?” she asked. There was a note of resignation, a touch of hope. Win or lose, she was ready for it to be over.
“No. Not immediately. There’ll be plenty more war. The navy will have more work for me, of that I have no doubt.”
Wendy pressed tighter against him. “I don’t want you to go.”
And he did not want to go. For once in his life, it seemed, there was something better on shore than anything he could hope to find over the horizon. After years in the moribund United States Navy, where his coming or going was a matter of complete indifference to anyone, when he might have walked away at any point, he had at last found a reason to walk away, at the very moment he could no longer do so. Sometimes he thought God specialized in irony.
“The war will end someday,” he said, but the words did not sound as hopeful as he wanted them to. They had this day, and the next, and the next, and he would savor them and not think about the future. He knew how to cherish any given moment. It was one thing, at least, he had learned.
EPILOGUE
FORTINBRAS:
SHAKESPEARE,
By June 30, 1863, the Battle of Memphis was a year gone. Time, that great if arbitrary healer, had come to the aid of Hieronymus Taylor. A broken leg had been the death of plenty of men, but not Taylor. It took him four months to recover from the third break to his leg, brought about by the falling shaft, and he was left with a permanent limp, but nothing worse.
Time was not so kind to Colonel Charles Ellet, Jr. The wound to the knee was not nearly so bad as the injuries suffered by others who survived, but he nonetheless suffered infection and died two weeks after his great victory.
And by June 30, 1863, all of it-Fort Pillow, Memphis, the River Defense Fleet-it was all history. Samuel Bowater’s short tenure with the army was over, and he was a navy man once again, once again a part of the Confederate States Navy that would fight on until the war was truly and finally over. Likewise Hieronymus Taylor. Ruffin Tanner. By the summer of 1863, those events at Plum Point Bend and Memphis were largely forgotten by everyone who had not been immediately touched by them.
In Pennsylvania they were worried about more than history. In particular, attention was focused on the gathering of armies in a place called Gettysburg for what had the makings of a major fight. The coming battle would throw the Southern invaders out of the North, or allow them to push on toward Washington, D.C.
And Lieutenant Tom Chamberlain of the 20th Maine, bone weary from the day’s march, was hoping for a moment’s reprieve. He longed for a moment during which he did not have to think about army things.
They had been marching hard, had covered eighteen miles the day before and twenty-three that day. They were marching north, pursuing Lee through Pennsylvania. The locals had been glad to see the Union Army, and had even obliged them by setting up roadside stands to sell food and drink at usurious prices. But Tom had noticed that the closer the civilians were to the Rebel army, the more obliging they became to the Army of the United States, and the more reasonable their prices.
He sat on his camp stool and leaned back against a small oak. He pulled his boots off and allowed himself the luxury of a groan. Around him, hundreds more men were doing the same, sitting around their little fires. It was hot, and no promise of rain, so the men eschewed their tents and slept on the ground. They would not be there long. Ten hours if they were lucky.
Tom Chamberlain had driven a nail into the trunk of the oak and hung a lantern from it, which gave him light enough to read. He pulled the dog-eared book out of his haversack. It, like the 20th Maine, had seen hard use, being passed from man to man with a smile and a “Hell, you got to read this.”
Chamberlain opened the book to where he had stuck a maple leaf as a bookmark the night before.
He smiled in anticipation and began to read. Soon he was chuckling, he could not help it, and then laughing outright. It was perfect, magnificently crafted.
He read for the next hour, until he was done, then put the book down with a satisfied smile on his face.
Tom’s brother, Joshua, colonel of the 20th Maine, would genuinely appreciate the genius of this subtle parody. Joshua was an educated man, a professor at Bowdoin College before joining the army. He knew his Shakespeare and would appreciate this skewed take on the bard.
He held the book up and read the title in the light of the lantern.
Tom wondered who the officer was. There was good reason for him to avoid putting his name on it. The people back in Washington would not look kindly on an officer with so much time on his hands that he could write such a bit of doggerel.
And there was no doubt that Washington was aware of the book-it was immensely popular throughout the North, and particularly among army officers. Whoever that officer was, he had been in the South long enough to have a genuine feel for the colloquialisms of that illiterate, ignorant race of people.
He had to be a Yankee. Who but a New England man could be so thoroughly versed in Shakespeare, and able to
