Gwyneth Atlee Read online

  “I thought we’d already cleared up this question in our last discussion,” Mason said irritably. It wasn’t his fault the military had underestimated the numbers. He’d simply reminded the officers of his line’s contract and pushed for the best load possible. Now that he finally had the men on board, he’d be damned if he was going to split them. The delay would be a nightmare for both the crew of the Sultana and the prisoners waiting to go home.

  “In some places, there’s not even room enough for the men to lie down,” Captain Speed added.

  “The men will go through comfortably and safely,” Mason assured him. “I’ve taken large loads for the government before.”

  But not this large, Mason knew. It worried him, but still, he couldn’t help thinking of the number Captain Speed had mentioned. At the five dollars per enlisted man and ten per officer that the government would pay, this trip would be profitable enough to offset his earlier light loads. He was also carrying perhaps a hundred civilian passengers and a great deal of cargo.

  He thought again about the loss of the Rowena, of how he’d been forced to sell off a large percentage of his share in the Sultana. He couldn’t afford to allow Speed to stand in the way of a trip like this one, even if he had to pay a bribe.

  But apparently Speed had only wanted reassurance, for he nodded despite his worried frown.

  “Godspeed, then, Captain Mason,” he said in leaving.

  Speed left quickly, without pausing to shake Captain Mason’s hand.

  Looking after him, Mason wondered how long it would be until other impediments to either time or profit would arise.

  When finally, just after nine o’clock that evening, the Sultana backed out into the current and began the journey north, the prisoners’ rousing cheer vibrated through the decks. And J. Cass Mason felt as glad as any man among them.

  Three

  Tuesday, April 25, 1865

  If the Confederacy fails, there should be written on its tombstone, “Died of a theory.”

  —Jefferson Davis

  My dearest Marie,

  Perhaps it is my own guilt that makes me feel as if God turns His back upon my prayers. So instead I beg you to intercede on my behalf, that I might find courage enough to expose the man who took your life.

  I fear he has followed me and even now lurks among the ornate, carved decorations of the main cabin. Each time my eyes close, I imagine I can hear him sniffing at my scent, questing ever closer to the room where I stay hidden, waiting.

  You must believe me, Marie, when I say I only meant to warn you that he was unworthy of your affections. When you refused to hear my suspicions, I sought evidence that you could not refute. But only out of loyalty, my sister. Only out of love. Had I known what grief this proof would wreak, I would have gladly burnt the letter and returned to deviling the demon with my usual mischief.

  Still, I often wonder how could you allow romantic sentiment to blind you to the fact that this man was an enemy? How ever did you come to love a cursed Yankee? I feel aggrieved that you pretended to disbelieve the letter, only to confront him afterward alone. Alone, where he could take your life, leaving everyone who knew you to weep such bitter tears.

  Oh, Marie, how I wanted you to trust in me to see Darien Russell punished for his crimes. But since you could not accept my help and my strength before, I pray that you will now, through the power of your intercession with Him who judges all.

  With eternal tenderness,

  Yvette

  Yvette put down her pen and blew across the drying letters. All throughout the day, as the steamboat labored upstream, she had sat inside this cramped room, thinking of Marie. She wondered idly if this was proof of the onset of madness, this short step from brooding to writing letters to a woman who could never answer. But Yvette remembered from ten years ago, when Joëlle, her toddler sister, succumbed to yellow fever, that death, though terrible, did not separate two people all at once. Rather, it descended layer after filmy layer, in curtainlike veils that gradually obscured the memory of the lost loved one.

  Yvette never found it possible to think of those she’d lost—and the climate of New Orleans ever took its toll—without feeling melancholy. Thankfully, time diminished the great tearing gouges that grief took from her heart.

  Two weeks, however, had done nothing to blunt the agonizing clarity with which she recalled Marie. Perhaps, because of the part Yvette had played in Marie’s death, her sister’s memory would never fade, at least not until her murder was avenged.

  A pang of hunger distracted her from the unsettling thoughts. Only steps away, inside the main cabin, a banquet would have been laid out, then put away by now. Earlier, Yvette had forced herself to ignore the scents that crept beneath her stateroom door and beckoned. She’d had to remain hidden, for if Captain Russell were aboard, he’d certainly watch for her at mealtimes. But now her empty stomach growled its hunger and frustration. Surely, she couldn’t spend the entire journey hiding in this stateroom. Russell might not even be here.

  If she were home, by now the family would have gone to table. She sighed wistfully at the thought of her favorite centerpiece, a cleverly molded nougat church, surrounded by its sumptuous congregation: steaming bowls of crab gumbo, crusty, fragrant bread, plump oysters, stuffed mirliton, suckling pig, café brûlot. Who would have imagined a week ago that today she’d be desperate to fill her stomach with coarse American fare?

  Although she’d learned that even peculiar food could suffice, she still dreaded the idea of dining alone—even alone among so many strangers. How could she savor any meal without Maman and Papa’s spirited discussions of the latest opera, her spinster Aunt Zaza’s whispered gossip, her brothers’ cunningly risqué remarks?

  Her stomach rumbled again, troubled by both emptiness and loss. She felt like Lucifer, cast out of paradise for all eternity, for she had to admit there was only the slimmest chance of going back. Even if Uncle André exonerated her of the criminal charges, no proper Creole family would forget the taint of scandal; her own relations would doubtless remain as aloof as strangers if they chanced to pass her on the street.

  Could she ever again return to her family or New Orleans? If she proved her innocence, proved that Captain Russell had abused the family trust, surely they must accept her once more. Mustn’t they? She still held proof cleverly folded and sewn into the cloth lining of her reticule. Evidence that she would use to destroy Russell in the end.

  She brushed away a tear and thrust her shoulders back defiantly. Whether or not her family forgave her, she was still an Augeron, her lineage traceable to French nobility. She might be ruined, but she was not defeated—yet. Not yet and not ever, especially while Darien Russell walked this earth.

  And she’d be cursed for a fool to starve just steps away from dinner. A day had passed already—broken only by reading, prayers, and her letter to Marie— since she had begged milk for Lafitte and a simple meal for herself.

  As Yvette entered the main cabin, she felt as exposed as if she were completely naked. The sight of a number of crewmen dismantling the long dining tables at its center and setting up rows of double-deck cots did not disturb her. Nor did the deck passengers, who waited patiently along the edges of the well-appointed hall. As usual, it was the Union blue, a number of Yankee officers who were also apparently waiting for their cots, that made her so uneasy. She tried to maintain an air of casual indifference. She wasn’t certain if she was succeeding, especially considering that she was holding her breath. But to her relief, Captain Russell’s dapper figure was not among the other men.

  She began to think she had imagined seeing him before. Frightened and far from home as she was, her mistake was understandable, if vexing.

  She let out a sigh to free her pent-up breath and the rush of anxiety. Then she hurried to the rear section of the main area, which was designated as the ladies’ cabin. She nodded a greeting to a trio of women who sat talking together, their laughter ringing like fork tines upon crystal. Their obv
ious camaraderie and their kinship, evident in the similar wide-set blue eyes, sent a pang of homesickness jolting through Yvette.

  After moving past them, she found the head steward, an older, surprisingly active little man, and asked if it was too late to get a bite to eat. He interrupted his direction of the conversion of the room from dining hall to dormitory. Below his white mustache, his smile looked both sincere and professional. “There are a number of passengers anxious to bed down in here, miss, but I’d be delighted to run to the galley and have a plate prepared for you to enjoy inside your stateroom.”

  “That’s all right,” Yvette said. “I’ll go down there myself.”

  Cramped as she had been inside her quarters, waiting among these Union officers felt too dangerous. She couldn’t shake the idea that at any moment she might be arrested, that here, as well, no one would listen to her explanation of what had really happened.

  Besides, Yankees always spoiled her appetite.

  Just as she turned to leave, Yvette froze. Near the front of the main cabin, Captain Russell stood talking to some gentlemen beside the bar. He did not appear to see her, but there was nothing to prevent him from turning his head at any moment to glance in her direction.

  At the sight of the man, she heard her own blood rushing in her ears, felt it pulsing hot with terror just beneath her skin. She thought she might explode if she stood here another second, simply waiting for him to look at her.

  Her feet seemed so far distant from her brain, so hard for her to manage. With an effort, she subdued her quivering limbs and forced them to carry her outside onto the promenade, where Russell could not see her.

  The evening air felt damp and chilly, refreshing in her lungs, and the breeze of the boat’s movement quickly cooled her. The farther from the doorway— and Russell—she walked, the more she distanced herself from her anxiety.

  Relieved to find that the Sultana’s motion didn’t slow her, she hurried down the stairs leading to the galley on the deck below. After retracing her trip there yesterday, she repeated her request for a small meal to enjoy inside her stateroom. Once more, she felt a twinge of guilt for telling them she was hiding from some humiliating faux pas she’d inadvertently committed in the ladies’ cabin. The cook and his assistant smiled their understanding, and within a few minutes, she emerged, carrying a covered basket.

  She’d gone only a few steps when her path was blocked by a group of men who’d just come to claim the spot. Lanterns bracketed along the cabins’ outside walls increased the meager starlight enough so that within the brighter circles Yvette could discern faces whittled by exhaustion and starvation. Some of the former prisoners appeared to be asleep. Or dead. Mon Dieu.

  Show courage, she told herself. You’ve already proven you know how. She’d been brave enough to flagrantly turn her back on Marie’s Yankee visitor. She’d risked arrest by painting General Butler’s portrait in the bottoms of chamber pots for friends. She’d even dared to sing her insolent tunes so loudly that passing Yankees could hear each one of the rude words. If she could manage all of those feats, then she could certainly face a few sick and hungry men.

  A shaft of lantern light fell across what looked to be a pair of sticks jutting from the hems of trousers. It took Yvette several moments to understand they were not sticks at all, just a man’s legs, so impossibly thin that they appeared inhuman. Above the legs, the man’s face stared at her, so gaunt and vacant-looking, she wasn’t sure he really saw her.

  The basket of food weighed heavily on both her arm and her conscience. Reaching beneath the cloth, she took out one warm roll and tucked it into the pocket of her skirt for later.

  She bent so that her voice would not have far to travel. “Excuse me. Are you hungry?”

  His head tipped back, and she could tell he saw her, but he simply stared. Probably because her question had been so ludicrous, she realized. She doubted he remembered a time when he had not been hungry.

  In the face of such suffering, the color of his ill-fitting uniform lost all meaning to her. As she passed him the basket, the long twigs of his fingers closed around its sides.

  “This is for you, my friend,” she whispered. And why not? Seeing Darien Russell had completely killed her appetite.

  The soldier stripped away the cloth and stared down at the food heaped on the plate. The warm scents of roast chicken and potatoes and some cheese-covered vegetable made Yvette feel nauseated, but she saw comprehension, then slow hope, dawning on the prisoner’s thin face.

  Another man, his face nearly obscured by a tangled thicket of a beard, sat up. “He can’t say it, so I will. God bless you, miss. God bless you.”

  She certainly hoped so. She needed all the blessings she could get if she were to somehow avoid Russell aboard this crowded boat. She nodded and edged past the group, intent on quickly reaching her stateroom’s outside door.

  * * *

  Gabe peered along the cabin deck and hoped like hell the dim light would obscure his features. He tried to picture his former comrades from Ohio, one level below, settling in, their backs turned toward the outer railing as they curled in slumber. He wouldn’t have risked venturing this close except that the hurricane deck had grown so crowded that Zeke could not stretch out his swollen leg. Stiff in his own joints, Gabe had volunteered to see if the steamboat’s second level offered any better spots.

  For a moment, he wondered if that had been only an excuse. Or did some part of him still hope he’d meet someone he’d once known willing to listen to what had really happened on that day in Tennessee? He pushed aside the question, unwilling to examine such a childish notion. He was through hoping his reputation could be salvaged. He now existed only to put the past behind him.

  The steamer’s whistle cut through the darkness. For a moment Gabe stood still, hearing as well as feeling the Sultana’s wheels churning, propelling them along the main channel of the Mississippi River. As they glided northward, relief flowed through his veins, relief that they were leaving the damned South, which had cost so many lives with its futile rebellion. Away from the prison camps, empty of everything except the rows of shallow graves and the old stench that hovered thickly. Away from the burned-out shells of houses and a thousand blood-soaked fields.

  And headed into what? he wondered. Though he felt certain his mother and sisters would be glad to see him after so many months of silence, would his father allow him to embrace them even once? Would he let Gabe hear their voices, so long dreamed he’d recognize them at the world’s end?

  But no matter how they reacted to his unannounced arrival, his family deserved to see him whole, to hear why he had run that time in Tennessee. They might even understand. He couldn’t imagine their condoning what he’d done, but at least they’d comprehend his reasons. Afterward, he could disappear, start over somewhere in the West. Plenty of folks were relocating to the rich farmland of Oregon. He’d bet a man who could work metal into plows and other implements would be welcome despite a checkered past.

  If the South didn’t somehow swallow him, he could move past heartache to start his life anew.

  A soldier swore as Gabe tripped over his leg. He apologized the first few times it happened, but he couldn’t help bumping and jostling prisoners every few steps. His spirits sank. This level appeared at least as crowded as the one above. And the only other place to check was the main deck, where the Ohio troops had settled.

  By the time he was halfway through his circuit of the second level, he thought of asking Seth to go below. But the captain and Jacob had both been asleep when he’d come downstairs. Was he such a coward that he would wake them rather than take this chance?

  “There’s a thin line between good sense and cowardice.”

  Captain Seth had told him that once, when Gabe had felt the need to challenge those prisoners who preyed upon the weak in Andersonville. Those first few weeks, he’d had so much to prove, he’d nearly gotten himself killed. He’d had to relearn that a man wouldn’t stay alive if he d
idn’t look out for himself.

  Was now one of those times?

  Everything inside him rebelled at the idea. Damn it, he would not continue skulking around like a whipped pup, hoping against hope no one he knew would see him. He was a full-grown man of twenty-four. Old enough to have some pride left, though the Rebels had done everything they could to strip it all away.

  He would go to the main deck then, even if that meant facing the demons that he’d hoped to leave behind. He met no one on the stairs as he descended, but below he found men huddled, mostly sleeping, in every available space as well.

  As he passed the boilers, he glanced toward them, remembering Jacob’s earlier misgivings. But this evening, all was quiet, empty, save for one man intently monitoring the gauges. The man, who wore the steamboat line’s uniform, stood from his stool and shook his head as if to ward off sleep.

  Jacob would rest easier, Gabe thought, if he saw how safe and quiet everything appeared now.

  A few steps beyond the boiler area, someone he hadn’t heard approach grasped Gabe from behind.

  “Figured you’d be dead by now, Davis.”

  The man’s fingers squeezed his neck painfully, but the voice dug even deeper. Before Gabe turned around, he knew the face he’d see— the wild, wavy black hair and the almost lipless mouth that slashed above a long chin like an ugly scar. He remembered eyes so black that they looked like a pair of holes drilled into meanness. Bulging and set too close together, their fathomless stare always made Gabe want to look away.

  He didn’t, though. Instead, he jerked free from Deming’s grip and swung around to face him, struggling to keep his own gaze cool and level. He owed this bastard nothing but a mouthful of shattered teeth. He’d be damned if he’d explain or apologize to this prison bait hiding in a Union uniform.

  Like the other human cargo from the Southern prison camps, Silas Deming looked worse for his incarceration. Cahaba Prison, where Gabe had found out that members of his former unit had been kept, had been a hellhole, but its captives were in far better condition than most of the men held in Andersonville. Still, the angles of Deming’s face looked sharper, the black and bulging eyes more prominent. He yet towered over Gabe’s six feet, but hunger or disease made him stoop forward, as if the upper portion of his spine had been bent by his confinement.