Gwyneth Atlee Read online

  Once more, she tightly shut her eyes against both pain and grief. How could she rest here when her thoughts were still out there, focused like a ray of sunlight through a lens upon the future—and the man—the Mississippi River had snatched away from her?

  Despite Yvette’s pain, despite the whiskey and exhaustion that blurred the ragged edges of her consciousness, that focused beam tightened and intensified until she felt her very heart burst into flame. Instead of using tears to douse that fire, she lay very still, imagining she watched it burn away, leaving behind only a layer of fine white ash that could not conceal the glowing coal of hatred beneath it.

  * * *

  By daylight, the Memphis waterfront boiled with activity. Surgeons, nurses, and medical attendants of every sort had gathered, along with representatives of the U.S. Sanitary Commission. Rescue boats came in and disgorged drenched, half-frozen passengers from the Sultana. The survivors were covered with dry blankets and assessed for transport to several area hospitals. The dead were merely covered and left in long, grim lines.

  Darien Russell, a blanket wrapped around his sodden waistcoat, strode amid the chaos, searching each knot of survivors for a familiar face. If Yvette Augeron had by some miracle survived this, he had better damned well find her before she started talking.

  Darien had always deplored the aftermath of battle, with its bloody puddles and its shattered limbs, the muteness of the corpses, the wails of the survivors. The scene at the riverfront this morning was equally revolting but very different. Instead of gunshot wounds, many of these victims suffered the peeling, reddened flesh of scalds from the boiler’s steam or fractures caused by the explosion. Nearly all of these men, many of whom were emaciated wrecks to start with, shuddered with the bone-deep cold of the river and the night. The keening cries of the living rose hideous around him. Only the stillness of the corpses was the same.

  For all his searching, he could find no woman, only prisoner after prisoner and the occasional guard or male passenger. Had fate solved the problem of Yvette Augeron? Would her body, like her sister’s, surface in the Mississippi after a few days? Or was it here already?

  He decided he must check among the corpses. As he walked among the rows, lifting cloth after cloth, he felt gorge rise to his throat. It wasn’t the ashen pallor of the dead that did it, nor was it their hollowed cheeks or pitiful condition. It was instead the half-lidded stares, both vacant and somehow accusing, that looked up at him as if to ask, “How is it you still live?”

  Did they know, then? About the ugly act that he’d committed to ensure his survival? Fear conjured up the blond woman he’d struck down on the promenade.

  “I’ve been watching you.” A female voice rose just behind him, strong and flat and with the broad tones of New England.

  Darien nearly jumped out of his skin. But when he turned, he had to stifle the impulse to laugh out his relief. No living soul could possibly be less a threat. Round-faced, stout, and with her brown hair streaked with gray, the woman wore the somber colors of a Sister of Charity.

  He shook his head at his own foolishness. Exhaustion had him imagining every sort of fancy.

  She placed a plump, stub-fingered hand upon his still-damp sleeve. “While your efforts to locate your comrades are admirable, you’ll do none of them any good if you take chill and perish. Truly, you should have been stripped of those wet things when you were pulled from the river.”

  Strange to hear a woman of God speaking so matter-of-factly about the need to strip a grown man, but he supposed the sister had undressed her share of wounded soldiers since the war began.

  Darien hesitated only a moment before deciding that, for the time being, a lie would be his best course of action.

  “I must find my fiancée.” He struggled to strike the right note of desperation, and he could see by the change in her expression that he’d succeeded.

  Emboldened, he continued. “We were separated just before the blast. I’m afraid we had some foolish quarrel. She may not even wish to see me.”

  “You poor man,” the woman crooned.

  “I don’t ask her forgiveness,” Darien told the nurse. He would swear he saw tears welling in the foolish woman’s eyes. “I only ask to see that she’s alive.”

  She grasped his hands in hers. “You must have faith, sir. Would you like me to pray with you for her safety?”

  Pray for Yvette’s safety? His overtired mind wondered if lightning would strike for such a ruse. But in an instant he dismissed the thought. The only divinity he believed in was his grandfather’s prophecy. Surely praying with an old nurse could do no harm. On the contrary, it might help bolster sympathy. Who knows to what lengths such a woman might go to help him find his lost “fiancée”?

  He nodded, trying to keep the smile from his lips. He thought perhaps she might take him somewhere more secluded, but this maelstrom of activity offered its own brand of privacy. Amid so many prayers and screams, she merely took his hands and bowed her head.

  Fearing he’d be observed otherwise, Darien closed his eyes. And as the old nun prayed that his fiancée would be found safely, he found himself whispering his own, slightly different version. He prayed that he would find her shrouded with the dead.

  * * *

  Yvette awakened to the protests of a badly scalded soldier as two deckhands carried him off the boat at the Memphis waterfront. Staring after the huge men, she felt mortified by the thought of their hauling her nude body like a burlap sack of coffee. She’d have to walk if she wanted to avoid that indignity.

  Although she’d warmed considerably during the trip, her elbow throbbed so intensely that she wished for the comfort of the surgeon’s flask. She sat up, arranging the blanket to cover her, and tried to imagine how she was going to manage her reticule, her arm, and her dignity at the same time.

  The silver-haired surgeon returned to see to her.

  “Don’t try to get up,” he told her. “I’ll carry you myself.” Gratefully, she nodded. Although she’d prefer to walk on her own

  two feet, the idea that she might drop the blanket had begun to seem an alarming probability.

  “Please be careful of my left arm. It’s terribly painful.”

  “May I have a look?”

  She felt heat rise to her face. “Surely, not here.”

  He smiled sympathetically. “I can see you have a lady’s sensibilities, but unfortunately, this disaster has left many without clothing. I assure you, no one is going to be unduly shocked by your bare arm.”

  Reluctantly, she rearranged the blanket to let him look at the injured limb. The inside of the elbow joint had blossomed with angry black and purple bruising. Swollen to twice its normal size, the arm looked as if it belonged to someone else.

  Yvette had to look away. The sight of the damage made her head whirl and her stomach lurch.

  He asked her to squeeze his hand. She managed, but when he asked if she could bend the elbow, she turned and glared at him.

  “No, and if you attempt to do so, I promise I shall utter the least ladylike language ever to scorch your ears.”

  She could see him struggling to fight back a smile.

  “Very well,” he told her. “Instead, I’ll see what I can find to make a quick sling so we can get you to the hospital without having you pass out.”

  Less than ten minutes later, Union surgeon Henry Millard carried her off the cutter and onto a crowded wharf boat. Crossing it, he hurried ashore. Instead of stopping to place her among the wounded soldiers, he carried her directly toward a hack that had been hastily converted to an ambulance.

  Yvette peered over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of something that nearly tore her breath away. Darien Russell, head bowed and eyes closed, his hands clasped between those of an older woman in dark dress. An instant later, he disappeared from sight behind the backs of a group of similarly dressed women carrying blankets to the new arrivals.

  Had that really been Russell, or was she hallucinating? That possibi
lity seemed more likely than the thought of that Yankee demon in an attitude of prayer.

  * * *

  “I think this one’s dead. Hasn’t twitched a muscle since we pulled him off that bale.” The speaker lifted his wrist, then dropped it.

  Gabriel wanted to respond, wanted to shout that yes, he was alive, but his body refused him. He began to wonder, Was it possible he had died? Did his spirit merely linger, not understanding that his life had dissipated in the dark, cold water?

  He felt a slight weight settle on his face. Whatever it was itched like wool. They’d pulled a wool blanket over him. His whole body twitched in repugnance.

  The blanket was pulled back. “Damned if he ain’t still breathin’. I didn’t feel no pulse. He’s mighty cold, though. Let’s get him one more blanket and send him on the ambulance.”

  Thank God they wouldn’t bury him alive. The thought should have relaxed him, but something that he must do nagged him urgently. What? What could it be?

  Yvette. She was still out there, floating with the mule. How much longer could she last? He had to tell somebody! He had to send them back to find that floating mule before it was too late. Before she slipped down beneath the river’s surface, just as he had. Before she was lost to him forevermore.

  Shouted orders reached his ears, and all around him he saw people moving. Other survivors had been brought here, too, he realized. Could his friends be among them?

  By focusing every shred of energy he possessed, Gabriel managed to croak out, “Must find them!”

  But his effort went unheard amid the confusion and exhausted him so utterly that he plummeted into a deep sleep.

  * * *

  Darien laid his hand on one of the two attendants loading the young private into a waiting ambulance.

  “Where are you taking him?” he asked.

  The brawny, towheaded fellow paused.

  “I’m his commanding officer,” Darien lied by way of explanation. “I’ll need to notify his family.”

  The man nodded. “They’ll find him at the Soldiers’ Home, providing that he lives.”

  “He doesn’t look too badly burned.”

  “Hard to tell. Cold water’ll kill plenty. Excuse me, but we need to move along.”

  Darien nodded and watched the two men load the modified buckboard wagon with several injured men. He didn’t even know the name of the unconscious private. All he knew was that the man had twice helped Yvette escape him. If she were still alive, she would likely check on him. Yvette’s flaws were legion, but she was fiercely loyal, the least likely person he could think of to abandon a friend in need. Even one she’d only met in the past few days.

  Russell shivered, and his stomach growled its need for hot food and black coffee. He walked in the same direction the retreating ambulance had taken. He must restore his strength so he would be prepared to use the injured private to end this deadly game of cat and mouse.

  Thirteen

  April 28, 1865 Memphis, Tennessee

  APPALLING MARINE CASUALTY.

  FEARFUL EXPLOSION OF THE STEAMER SULTANA SEVEN MILES ABOVE THE CITY.

  TWENTY-ONE HUNDRED SOULS ON BOARD—FORTY OF THEM LADIES.

  FRIGHTFUL LOSS OF LIFE—BETWEEN TWELVE AND FIFTEEN HUNDRED PERSONS PERISH.

  ONLY THREE OR FOUR OUT OF FORTY LADIES RESCUED FROM WATERY GRAVES. HORROR—TOUCHING SCENCES OF ANGUISH AND SUFFERING—SHINING EXAMPLES OF HEROISM ON THE PART OF THE ARMY AND NAVY CITIZENS.

  A VISIT TO THE WRECK—FULL PATICULARS OF THE CATASTROPHE.

  FULL LISTS OF THE SOLDIERS AND OTHERS RESCUSED FROM THE BOAT AND WATER.

  THE HOSPITALS FILLED WITH THEM—WHO AND WHERE THEY ARE.

  STATEMENTS OF PARTIES ON BOARD—INCIDENTS, ETC., ETC.

  —April 28,1865, headline,

  Memphis Argus

  Yvette was beginning to regret that she’d refused the morphine she’d been offered at the hospital. Longingly, she thought back to yesterday and the way the drug had dulled both the pain and her senses and hummed a melody of consolation in her ear.

  But the notes that carried hope rang hollow. The only truth she heard in the song of Morpheus throbbed a dismal rhythm that marched on and on, grim as a funereal procession. And she realized that if she allowed it to bear her toward a place of comfort, that place might well prove to be a grave.

  She forced herself to picture Darien Russell laughing, finding her in a drug-induced stupor, choking her to death, the way he had her sister. She would be unable to defend herself, let alone force him to pay for the crimes he had committed.

  Thinking on that possibility, Yvette climbed from the narrow bed. As one of a scant handful of female survivors, she’d been given far more attention than had the myriad wounded soldiers. Several of the nurses at Gayoso Hospital, where she’d been taken, had helped arrange for her to have use of this room in a nearby boardinghouse. They’d collected enough clothing so she could be decently, if not stylishly, clad. And not one of them had seemed to care a whit that she was Southern. They were more concerned with practicalities.

  “With so many men in need, you couldn’t be provided with proper privacy in here,” a plain-looking woman in her early forties explained, gesturing to the rows of soldiers lying in cots along the hall. “And as the doctor told you, you’ll need nothing more than rest and a few weeks in a sling to set that arm right.”

  Yvette had admired the way the women bustled about, competently assisting the doctors with tasks that seemed ill suited for ladies. Maman and Marie had been aghast when they heard that Yankee women often worked in gruesome surgeries and wards. But these women seemed natural and confident in their role, and their steady presence had calmed Yvette’s fears during her examination.

  Dressing was a challenge with her painful arm. But she’d have to ignore the ache and manage on her own. She had too many things to do to allow discomfort to stop her. Her mind skirted around the edge of the hardest of those tasks, then dredged up what the surgeon at the hospital had told her.

  “Your injuries are minor. You’re remarkably fortunate.”

  Amid the severely scalded soldiers, she must have truly seemed so. And yet when Yvette had heard those words, she’d laughed—a joyless sound that made heads turn and the man shuffle his feet uncomfortably.

  Fortunate indeed, she thought, her sore eyes welling with moisture. Gabriel’s handsome face flashed through her mind, his touch upon her cool hand over the back of the dead mule, his soothing words amid the darkness of the river before dawn.

  Fortunate indeed.

  To try to make sense of what had happened, she took out the pencil and paper she had found in the desk drawer. She wanted nothing quite so badly as to speak to her lost sister. And if this was the only method that remained, so be it.

  My dearest Marie,

  My Yankee soldier, my dear Gabriel, is gone now, and all I can do is wonder. Was he taken from me to repay in part the lives that I destroyed? Help me understand, Marie. Help me know where I should turn.

  I can write no more this evening lest my tears follow to wash away each line. Just as the Mississippi washed the ink from that most important letter, the one I needed to set all to rights once more.

  Yours in sorrow,

  Yvette

  Such sad written words seemed even more real than the thoughts trapped in her mind. So the tears spilled over, and Yvette brushed them away.

  What she should do today was try to find another way to reach St. Louis, to get to Uncle André so she could seek a new way to settle with Darien Russell and clear herself of charges. But all of that would have to wait.

  Because alive or dead, she had to first find Gabriel. Even if all that remained was a body as cold and waterlogged as had been Marie’s. * * *

  After his night’s sleep, Darien Russell awoke, his mouth dry and his heart thudding painfully against his ribs. But whatever dream provoked his discomfort quickly slipped away as consciousness reclaimed him and he remembered where he was.

  As wagonlo
ad after wagonload of survivors arrived at the Soldiers’ Home in the wake of the explosion, Darien realized that the best he could expect there was a cot in a common ward overflowing with naked and near-naked soldiers. His efforts to convince the staff that he deserved better had been met with disbelief and then ignored.

  He’d felt a rush of gratitude at the appearance of Colonel Patterson, who had brought men to assist the overburdened staff.

  Though the regular workers could scarcely be troubled to provide Darien with a decent uniform, Patterson, who hailed from Rhode Island, immediately proved himself to be a man sensible to the necessity of seeing to the comfort of a fellow officer.

  The white-haired colonel had gone far beyond mere decency. Indeed, he had invited Darien, along with another stranded captain and a young lieutenant, to stay as his guest in a fine Memphis home “requisitioned” from a pair of unrepentant secessionists.

  Now that he felt rested enough to take note of his surroundings, Darien saw the delicate floral wallpaper pattern and the lace-trimmed yellow quilt. As he swung his legs out of bed and reached for the shoes the colonel had found for him, his hand grazed the worn face of a bedraggled doll. Picking up the item by a fold in its soft blue skirt, he noticed that it had been constructed of some fine material before a child’s fingers had rubbed the luster from it. Apparently, this had been a little girl’s room. And still would be, had not her father smuggled contraband to the Confederacy long after Memphis had been captured. What a fool he’d been to lay down all he had for pride.

  If he became a father, he would damned well see to it his child lived in comfort. An unpleasant twinge made him rub at one temple.

  With more force than necessary, Russell tossed the doll back to its resting place beneath the bed. If he wanted to feel pity for anyone, it ought to be those men he’d seen before he’d left the Soldiers’ Home.

  When he had first arrived there, Darien had closed his eyes against both his exhaustion and the discomfort of looking at the damaged bodies of those men. Beneath bruise-mottled skin, ribs slashed across the half-starved former prisoners’ midsections and other bones took on unnatural prominence. Pelvises jutted, vertebrae bulged, and shoulder blades looked more like stunted wings than parts of anything quite human.