Gwyneth Atlee (15 page)

The skiff owner grunted at Jacob’s thanks. The hour was late, and
the row out to the coaling barge had apparently drained him of whatever civility he might possess.

The Indiana infantryman scrambled aboard the
Sultana
but paused
to offer Jacob a hand.
“I appreciate you talking him into letting me come, too,” Jacob
told him.
The two edged along the crowded deck. Jacob looked for an
opening that would eventually lead him to his friends and hoped
there would be room for him to lie down.
The infantryman turned, clearly intent on another path. “After all
we’ve been through, seems like every mother’s son of us ought to
make it home.”

As his hand stroked her back, Gabriel thought how Yvette’s situation
was yet another tragedy of war. So fine a woman, with her beautifully
made dresses and her fancy stateroom, ought not to have to hide amid
the livestock tethered near the stern. She ought not to have to lean
against a ragged soldier, either, and a damned poor excuse for one
at that.

Strange how little comfort her admission brought him. He felt like
another Yankee looter taking advantage of her dire straits. Because
that’s what he had done, was doing even now. He knew damned well
that even though his family had prospered during this war, he didn’t
have the kind of pedigree her family would demand. He knew it as
soon as he had heard her speak and had noticed the expensive trim of
the violet dress she had been wearing when he met her.

Certainly he loved her, but was taking advantage of her gratitude
and desperation right? Or could their connection, which both had felt
almost from the first, transcend their different backgrounds and the
terrible things both had experienced?

He tightened his hold on her and kissed her temple. Though he’d
imagined she was dozing, she answered softly, with a murmured sigh.
And in that sigh he heard others in their future, ten thousand sighs of
pleasure in the wake of making love.

There might be at least that many reasons why this love between
them could not work, but her one sigh was enough. For on the power
of its promise, he knew he would stand by her and do whatever he
must to keep her safe from harm.

“You there!” Deep with authority, the voice boomed in the
dark stillness.
A nearby horse tossed back its head and snorted with the suddenness of the interruption. Its warm breath formed twin plumes of
steam. Another shifted restlessly, and the lantern light flickered across
its rolling eyes.
He felt Yvette stiffen, more frightened than the animals around
them. For an instant, he wondered if she might bolt and climb over the
railing. But after her initial jolt, she stood stock-still, as if that would
hide her.
“Come out of there and get back with your unit,” the guard
ordered.
“Just trying to keep warm near the horses,” Gabe lied as he turned
toward the man. He glanced behind him and saw Yvette, her head
lowered as if to hide her face.
“This boy’s teeth were chattering so loud I couldn’t sleep,” Gabe
explained. “Thought this might be a good place to take him till he got
to feeling better. It’s almost toasty here.”
The guard took a step nearer and peered over Gabe’s shoulder at
Yvette. The dark beard wagged as he nodded.
“Had a hard time of it, haven’t you, son?” The deep baritone resonated with both sympathy and anger. “Those bastard traitors ought
to be lined up and shot for what they did to all you fellows. Bet you’d
pull the trigger if you could. Wouldn’t you, boy?”
A pause stretched taut as he waited for an answer. Gabe prayed that
Yvette wouldn’t choose this moment to rail against Yankee atrocities.
Finally, as Gabe prepared to spin some yarn about the “poor boy’s”
muteness, she murmured her agreement.
Now the guard sounded apologetic. “I got orders to keep the men
away from these animals. But you might try back by the boilers. It’s
plenty warm there. Some of the real sick fellas already staked out
spots, but there might be room to squeeze in.”
Yvette picked up Lafitte’s basket as Gabe thanked the man. Then
the pair left their sanctuary.
When they were out of the guard’s earshot, Yvette whispered, “This
crowding is terrible. Where can we go?”
He thought about two decks above, where his friends lay sleeping.
He imagined explaining that he was helping her first to Jacob, who
would question his loyalty, and then to Seth, who would question his
sanity. Of the three of them, Zeke was the only man likely to support
the idea. He’d see the notion of smuggling a Southern girl as a grand
lark and nothing more.
But whether or not his friends approved, Gabe couldn’t imagine
any of them reporting this strange “drummer boy.” Their very silence
would put all of them at risk, should Yvette be discovered. Gabe shook
his head at the thought. He was willing to accept the price he might
pay for helping Yvette, but he would not—could not—involve his
friends. Better they should wonder, even worry, about what had happened to him than become embroiled in this mess.
“Maybe we should try the cargo hold,” he suggested. He thought
about the darkness and the dirt. Once more the thought assailed him
that Yvette deserved far better than this ratlike scrabble for survival. “I
warn you, it won’t be too pleasant down there.”
“I don’t care at all.” She tried to mask her anxiety, but beneath the
thin veneer of boldness, her voice quavered. “I will do what I must if
at the end of it I can make Captain Russell pay for what he did.”
He admired her determination. Most women would by now be
in hysterics.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps women were no frailer than circumstances allowed them to be. He thought of his father’s sister, Aunt
Agatha, who had buried first a husband, then her three children,
one after another. And survived. She had not only survived but had
taken over—and expanded—the family business, a prosperous
millinery. Predictably, his father bragged it was the Davis blood that
made her tough, shrewd, and resilient. But Gabe suspected it had
been necessity instead.
Gabe and Yvette edged along dark, blanketed humps of sleeping
men. Occasionally, from somewhere along the deck, they heard the
outcry of a former prisoner erupting with some nightmare. Gabe was
so used to the eerie night cries that he scarcely would have noticed
except that Yvette stiffened and looked around each time she heard
a scream.
There were other sounds as well, snores and sometimes moans.
The moans of men who suffered every ill, from the phantom pains
of amputated limbs to the cramps of diarrhea. The inescapable
noises of exhaustion and of suffering that Gabe had ignored for
months and months.
A new sound broke the darkness. Different, unexpected, yet unmistakable. The metallic click of a revolver. He froze, listening for direction. It had sounded all too close.
A shadow separated itself from the others. Before Gabe could recognize Captain Russell, Yvette’s gasp assured him that their worst fear
had come to pass.
She glanced about herself, as if looking for an escape route. Her
body shifted, and in an instant, Gabe realized she would go over the
rail and leap into the river.
Russell pointed his pistol at her chest. “You’ll be dead before you hit
the water. At this range I won’t miss.”
“That would save you the trouble of dumping me there yourself,”
Yvette told him, “as you dumped Marie.”
“Come along. We’ll discuss this upstairs, in your stateroom.”
“Did she tell you she was carrying your child?” Yvette continued,
fearless in her fury. “Or did you kill her first?”
Russell flinched visibly. “Liar!” he accused. “Come now, before I’m
forced to fire.”
“She’s not going anywhere with you,” Gabe swore.
“You won’t have anything to say about it. You’ll be under guard.
Helping her was treason. I’ll have you up on charges for aiding this
murderess. Perhaps you’ll hang as well . . . unless . . .”
“Unless what?” Yvette asked.
Russell was still staring at Gabe. “Unless he turns around and
walks away from this right now.”
Gabe didn’t realize he was moving toward Russell until he felt
Yvette grasping his arm, restraining him.
“No, Gabe! Don’t! Just do what he says! Go . . . please go back to
your friends, go home,” she pleaded.
He patted her hand and loosed it from his shirt. They both were
offering him freedom, the chance to tuck his tail between his legs and
walk away. But neither Russell nor Yvette could hear the words that
still rang in his head,
“Got no use for a goddamn coward.”
Neither one
imagined what such an act would cost him.
But Gabe Davis knew, and in that instant, he realized what had
happened on the battlefield had been something unexplainable, but it
had not been cowardice. As it would be if he left now.
“There is no price too high for self-respect, sir.”
Yvette had spoken those words to him, and he saw now that she
had been right. There was no price too high, not even death.
With that thought, he launched himself at Darien Russell.
But he never reached his goal.

Clutching his stomach, Jacob staggered toward the railing. It hardly
seemed fair that he was the only one who’d taken ill from the meat
pies after all the trouble he’d gone through to get them. Several yards
behind him, both Captain Seth and Zeke slept peacefully, clearly
untroubled by the nausea that plagued him. Of course, neither one of
them had been cracked on the head this evening, either.

Jacob wondered once more what had become of Gabriel. He’d bet
his bottom dollar (if he had one, he thought ruefully) that it had
something to do with that Southern woman. And knowing Gabe,
he’d have trouble nipping at his heels. Jacob disapproved of Gabe’s
involvement with a Rebel, but he hoped that whatever his friend
was up to, it would inconvenience the hell out of that jackass
Captain Russell.

Jacob leaned against the deck rail and stared out over the dark
water, illuminated only by the meager light of those few stars not
hidden by the clouds. A chill night breeze stole across the hurricane
deck to give his curls a playful tousle. Inhaling deeply, he smelled
the damp, muddy river scent. Despite the coolness, there was a hint
of spring as well, of translucent green, unfurling leaves, of blades
pressing upward through the soggy soil.

The fresh air settled his stomach and made the pounding in his
head more bearable. The hour was late now, so that most men slept,
and the boat felt for the first time quiet, still. Jacob let the rare peace
soak into him . . . one split second before it was shattered by the
loudest sound he’d ever heard.

The gunshot reverberated through Gabe’s body, through his
brain and through his world, all-consuming and as unending as the
heaviest artillery barrage. He’d expected it, of course, expected
Russell would fire. Expected, probably, to die, to give Yvette the
chance to get away.

But he had not anticipated the way the sound would seem to lift
him, to send him spinning into darkness. He had not expected that
dying would feel anything like flight.

Cold enveloped his whole body, pressing in on him. Cold liquid.
The realization sank in that he had fallen into water. A dark river
without landmarks, without up or down or any frame of reference
whatsoever. The shot must have flung him over the steamboat’s railing,
down into the Mississippi, where he would bleed to death or drown.

His body provided him with a direction. Some instinct sent it
struggling toward air, limbs pumping as efficiently as if there’d been
no bullet. As if he were yet again a truant boy swimming in the pond
near home.

He gasped and sputtered at the water’s surface, his mind grappling
with his surprising strength and the utter lack of pain. He remembered hearing that the soul separated from the body at the moment of
death, but he still felt sensations: the chill wetness of the river, the
expansion of his lungs, the disorienting dizziness of his rapid tumble
through empty space, then water.

His eyes began to focus, and he saw shapes around him, floating:
odd fragments of flotsam, a swimming white horse, what looked like
a man’s body, limp and facedown, bobbing amid wavelets. The horse
neighed frantically and struggled closer to Gabe. With an effort, he
made a few strokes, then grasped the animal’s thick mane.

It dragged him along toward a huge hulk in the water, a black shape
lit by . . . flame? And all at once, the pieces spun together in Gabe’s
mind. He had not been shot at all. Something must have happened to
the
Sultana.
Perhaps a Rebel shell had struck it or a boiler had given
out. Whatever the cause, some sort of explosion must have blown him
off the deck.

And not only him. Now that his senses were returning, he could
hear desperate cries all around him in the water, shouts to God for
mercy or to curse his name. Other shrieks, less clear, were coming
from the steamboat, and the fire silhouetted masses of humanity leaping
from the stern, clutching at each other, going down beneath the flame-lit
water in writhing, screaming clumps.

A shaft of fear impaled him so fiercely that he nearly lost his grip
on the white horse. Yvette was in this somewhere. Had she, too,
been blown off the deck, or was she part of the madness on the
burning steamer?

Not ten feet from him, men fought for purchase on a floating
plank, clawing as viciously as mad dogs. Yvette, who might be five
feet tall and a hundred pounds at best, would never survive such
savage chaos, never—unless he found and helped her. Yet how could
he locate one small woman in this hellish nightmare? Was she even
still alive?

He thought, too, of his friends, of Seth and Jacob and Zeke, whose
infected wound had cost him so much strength. Dear God, after all
that they had suffered, would any of them live?