Gwyneth Atlee (3 page)

After a brief trip to the main deck to fetch a bit of food and some
milk for her kitten, Yvette hurried toward her stateroom. She paused
for one last moment to watch the late afternoon light dance on the living
water. An image came to her: Marie, hair waving in its currents, limbs
as loose as her long tresses, flesh as pallid as the moon. Yvette’s stomach
plummeted in response.

Turning away from both the river and the unexpected jolt of
grief, she stepped inside and secured the door of her cramped but
well-appointed stateroom.

Reclining on the lower berth, she whispered,
“Dieu merci!”
With
Marie’s fate fresh on her mind, death had become both real and
threatening. But behind this door, at least for the moment, she felt
the beast at bay.

She never should have gone ashore in the first place. If she’d kept
to the sanctuary of her stateroom, no one would have seen her.
She’d taken a terrible risk, drawing attention to herself among all
those Yankee soldiers. The whole accursed lot would remember the
rare sight of an unescorted young woman, even if she were as
unfashionable as a ’gator’s snout without her bell-shaped crinoline.
Arguing with that petty tyrant of a sergeant had only made her
more conspicuous, but unfortunately, it could not have been avoided.
She had to hurry northward, and her ticket said
Sultana.
She had no
intention of explaining to that Yankee that she had little money left
to change her plans.

Another impatient mew reminded her to unlatch Lafitte’s wicker
prison. The black-and-white kitten nearly exploded from the handbasket, then vaulted from the lower berth to a single chair and onto
the empty washbasin. When he careened into the water pitcher, Yvette
leapt up and grabbed it just in time to prevent it from falling.

It had been a mistake to take him out of the stateroom, she belatedly
realized. She’d had the foolish notion to find a sunny patch of grass to
let him play for a few minutes, but nothing about Vicksburg had
encouraged her to linger.

As the kitten tumbled toward the floor to begin another circuit,
Yvette scooped him up into her arms. Moving to the chair, she settled
him on her lap.

“You’ll have to make do, the same as I must, little scoundrel.”
As she scolded him, she scratched his white chin with a finger,
and he erupted into such loud purring that she forgot her fears
and laughed.

She could sympathize with his relief at being freed. For the last
few days, this stateroom had felt exactly like a handbasket to her.
She’d had to switch from her beautiful hoop skirt to a more practical
silhouette just to maneuver her way past the narrow set of bunks.

That was one reason she’d risked leaving the
Sultana,
but not the
only one. The delay in their departure had allowed her time to send a
telegram to alert Uncle André in St. Louis that she was on her way,
seeking assistance. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on her
father’s brother, a prosperous attorney she hadn’t seen since she was
nine or ten. She pictured a dark-haired, balding man, but the features
of his face refused to focus. When she concentrated, she had an
impression of deep and generous laughter. She prayed that she
remembered right.

Heaven help her if she was wrong about her uncle or if her message
had told him too little to be of help. Or worse yet, if it said too much,
in the horrifying event that it was intercepted. She’d worked on it for
hours, packing what she hoped was hidden meaning into every syllable. But if anyone could decipher desperation, it would be her brilliant
uncle. His letters alone proved him a master of nuance. And having
left New Orleans so many years before over some quarrel with
Grandmère Régine, who ruled over her descendants like a tyrant
queen, Uncle André would not care how the rest of the family had
shunned her—or so Yvette most desperately hoped.

She risked everything on the chance that he would once more
ignore
Grandmère,
who had cursed her bitterly. That he would help her
clear her name and lay the charge of murder where it belonged
instead, at Capt. Darien Russell’s feet.

Yvette put the kitten on the floor beside the saucer of milk she’d
begged off the cook. With the haughty daintiness of a debutante,
Lafitte dipped in one white paw, then tasted before deciding it was
fresh enough to suit his palate.

Yvette picked at the plate of food she’d brought with her. But the
bread turned to tasteless sawdust in her mouth, so difficult to swallow
that she soon gave up the task. Instead, she worried that she had truly
spotted Captain Russell near the end of the line of prisoners. She
wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered at the thought of
facing him now, before Uncle André could protect her. At the thought
of looking at his hands, which had choked the life out of Marie.

“No,” she whispered to herself. She couldn’t face him. She
struggled to convince herself that the bearded man had been only
another soldier, like that presumptuous sergeant. Just another
Yankee who imagined he had the God-given right to order her
about. One was little better than the next, and all of them so infernally
smug in their victory. Every last one of them so . . .

Perhaps not. There
had
been that shy young soldier from among the
prisoners. His dark blond hair had been neatly barbered and his
whiskers freshly shaved, as if a civilian volunteer had wished to blunt
his family’s shock at seeing him return so thin. She recalled the pale
blue of his eyes, which still looked as innocent as any farm boy’s
despite the horrors that they must have witnessed these past few
years. She smiled at the memory of how he groped for words.
Maman
would have condemned her with the suggestion that she chattered
more than enough to suit them both.

What was she imagining? He’d been a kind man, handsome
even, but he was still a Yankee. For all she knew, he was the one
who’d shot off Pierre’s right arm. Remembering her eldest brother,
she felt traitorous for thinking well of anyone who’d ever worn the
Union blue.

As she’d learned from harsh experience, she must never for a
moment let her guard down. Desperation had driven her to hide
among her enemies, who would catch her if she couldn’t curb her
wayward tongue and kill her if they only knew the charges Captain
Russell had contrived.

No matter what happened, she mustn’t ever suppose any Yankee
soldier was her friend. No matter how he’d stood up for her. No
matter how compelling his thin face.

Pushing aside the unsettling thoughts, Yvette took out her rosary
and began to chip away at the almost hopeless task of absolution for
her sins.

Capt. Darien Russell could barely look at the photograph of Marie
without remembering his hands on her delicate white throat, without
picturing the livid bruises they’d left there. He liked his ugliest memory
of the most beautiful of women tamped down deep, a dead seed
pressed into barren soil. So he kept his eyes averted as he showed the
small portrait to the soldiers and wished again that he had one of
Yvette instead.

He recalled the sisters’ differences too well. Most importantly,
Marie revered him. She never would have considered making
him an object of ridicule. They also differed physically. Whereas
Marie had been refined and elegant, her youngest sibling had
the fiery eyes of a tigress set in an angel’s face. Smaller and infinitely more vocal, Yvette resembled the graceful Marie only in
coloring and in the long, thick lashes that provoked so many
admiring glances.

That resemblance was enough, however, for the third man he asked
recalled a pretty, black-haired young woman boarding the steamboat
minutes before. If he’d had any doubts at all as to the passenger’s
identity, the man dispelled them when he laughed about the way she
had dressed down the sergeant trying to keep order among the men
crowding on board.

The little hellcat already had men laughing at another Union soldier
whose only crime was helping to keep order. The sergeant should be
grateful she hadn’t brought with her a piano, her weapon of choice.

Yvette had never known the meaning of the word comportment.
Darien well remembered how Marie had fretted over the girl’s future
in society. Their father’s family background and his standing as a wellto-do coffee broker assured all of the Augerons invitations wherever
better families gathered in the Crescent City. But it would take more
than money to blunt the cutting edges of Yvette’s razor wit. Marie had
been tight-lipped about the cause of the girl’s disgrace, but Darien had
finally coaxed from her some nonsense about a stingingly acerbic little
ditty she’d sung at a society soiree.

“Surely, such youthful mischief is not sufficient cause for social
death,” he’d told Marie. He’d been foolish enough at that time to
imagine the girl harmless.

“Oh, I’m certain that the song might have been eventually forgiven
if not for the unfortunate verse concerning Madame LaFarge’s
predilection for the
services
of handsome young gardeners.” Marie’s
dark gaze flicked away, as if she found the subject too distasteful for
discussion.

She continued, anger coloring her words. “It’s bad enough Yvette is
so extreme in her opinions, but Papa wouldn’t force her to apologize.
He’s always spoiled her no matter how
Maman
feared for her character. Papa may have smoothed things over this time, but she’s learned
so little from it. If she does not begin conducting herself as a lady, no
one in polite society will have a thing to do with her.”

Darien wondered how they’d react if they learned that the
proper Marie was keeping company with him, a Union officer—
worse yet, an aide to both General Banks and, before him, the
hated Butler, who had made such bitter enemies when he occupied
New Orleans. At Marie’s insistence, they’d been extremely careful.
She’d been fond of saying that Lucifer might have regained heaven
if he’d been more discreet.

Apparently, despite the fact that her meddling had cost Marie her
life, Yvette hadn’t yet learned the lesson of discretion. No matter.
Darien meant to bridle the girl’s tongue once and for all. Even if he
had to steal aboard this crowded steamer, the vicious little hellion was
going to share her sister’s fate.

“I think you’re gaining back some weight,” Gabriel lied. If anything,
Zeke felt even lighter. Or perhaps, with his returning strength, the
younger Fuller brother was less a burden to Gabe’s arms.

“In two months’ time, I aim to get so fat I’ll bust my buttons.” Zeke
tried to grin, but pain contorted his expression. His cut and swollen
ankle, when they’d checked this morning, had darkened ominously.
But Zeke refused to let either his brother or his friends call for a doctor
out of fear he’d be left behind in the hated South. Like the rest of them,
he told himself that time spent home would erase all traces of their
incarceration.

Sadness washed over Gabe on a dark tide of misgivings. Zeke’s
bones felt so close to the surface that his shoulder blades ground into
Gabe’s supporting arm.

Gabe forced himself to agree with his friend’s boast and tried to
make himself believe in the future Zeke imagined. Zeke grown fat and
healthy, married to some apple-cheeked farm girl. Zeke, in later years,
father to a slew of children with the same green eyes, the same mop of
unruly, straight brown hair. Maybe he’d be a prosperous businessman,
organizing horse races at some Indiana fairgrounds with the same
good humor with which he’d set up louse races for the entertainment
of his fellow prisoners. It could be . . . because it
must
. Surely, a just
God would see that Zeke deserved that much. Surely he’d fought hard
and suffered plenty for one life. All of them had except, perhaps, for
him, Gabe thought.

Zeke was already the thinnest and weakest among their group the
day they had departed Andersonville. Even so, he’d been in high spirits
when they’d left the Georgia prison camp. They all had, certain that
the worst was now behind them. None had been prepared for the
harrowing journey from Georgia to the Mississippi River. The tracks,
torn up during the fighting, had been in such poor repair that the train
derailed three times along one short stretch in Alabama. On the last
occasion, their crowded railcar had overturned. Several men broke
limbs made fragile by starvation, but at first it seemed that none of
their group had been hurt. Only later, when he could not walk the
final stretch to Union-held Vicksburg, would Zeke at last admit
his injury.

Gabe didn’t blame him. After all they’d been through together, he’d
rather haul Zeke’s half-starved body clear to Indiana than leave him
behind to recover in Alabama or Mississippi. The war might be over,
but Seth was right. Confederate resentment hadn’t died. No telling
what sort of “tender care” an injured Yankee might receive.

“Let’s grab a spot right here before the best ones are all taken,” Seth
suggested, raising his voice to carry over the sounds of clanging metal.
Gabriel guessed that he was thinking of the difficulty of getting
Zeke up the main stairs, where many of the other Indiana cavalrymen were heading. Also, this central section near the boilers would
be warm at night, something that would especially benefit the
injured man.
But Zeke shook his head.
“That banging might sound like a symphony to a farrier,” he began,
referring to Jacob’s career shoeing horses, “but that racket will drive
the rest of us insane.”
Jacob rounded a corner and shouted a question Gabe couldn’t hear.
In a few moments, he returned.
“They’re working on a boiler,” he told the others. “Might be pounding
on it a couple hours more. I say we should go up with the others.”
Zeke nodded. “Let’s go on up, Jake. If we have to be stuck in one
spot for three or four days, I want to sit where I can watch the South
get farther distant and God’s country come into view.”
When he put it that way, all of them agreed. Jacob moved to his
brother’s left and helped Gabe carry him upstairs. Halfway there, they
had to rest.
Gabe noticed the strained expression on Jacob’s face. “What’s
wrong?”
“Must have been those extra rations I swiped when you boys
weren’t lookin’. I’m getting too brawny for my big brother to carry
anymore,” Zeke joked, making a bare swell of a muscle with his thin
right arm.
Jacob shook his head and grinned. “Hell, Zeke, I’ve been carryin’
you your whole sorry life. I’m not about to start complaining now. It’s
only that—”
“What?” Gabe urged. Despite his jest, Jacob’s face looked grim.
“Come have a look yourself.”
“What’s the trouble?” Seth asked.
Jacob shook his head. “I’m not sure I like the looks of this. Probably
nothing, though. How about if Gabe and I go check? Zeke needs to get
off his feet, though.”
“All right,” Captain Seth said, but he didn’t look too happy.
Knowing Seth, he probably wasn’t certain they’d stay out of trouble
without his preaching good sense in their ears. “But come and get me
if you need me. Zeke and I will find a spot for us up top.”
Seth took over the task of supporting Zeke, and Gabe followed
Jacob. As they passed several soldiers wearing the insignia of an Ohio
infantry unit, Gabe scanned the area, hoping to God he wouldn’t be
spotted by anyone who knew him. The Ohio contingent of prisoners
must be settling on this deck. Whatever Jacob wanted, Gabe prayed it
would be quick.
The pair returned to where two men were hammering a patch onto
a boiler. One man paused in his pounding to look up at Jacob.
“Something troubling you, soldier?”
“Just interested,” Jacob told him, but Gabriel read concern in his
friend’s expression.
Gabriel glanced at the boiler, then looked back over his shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” the mechanic told Jacob. “We’ll have this patched
and get you home in good time. Didn’t you see the elk’s antlers on the
staging? The
Sultana
broke the record last year—New Orleans to Cairo
in four days and seven hours. She’s a fast one, and no mistake.”
The boiler mechanic returned to his banging.
As they left, Jacob said, “I’m more worried about getting home in
one piece than making any records. They’re slapping a patch over a
bulge in one of the boilers. If I didn’t know they were civilians, I’d
think it was a typical shoddy army job. I don’t like it at all. Makes a
weak spot in the metal.”
Gabriel nodded. He’d worked around metal enough to see the
sense of what Jacob was saying, but every moment they spent on
this deck begged a confrontation. Though he’d enjoy a chance to
explain his reasons for running six months earlier, he knew his
former comrades would no more listen now than they had the
day he’d been drummed out. Only this time, instead of sending
him into an enemy ambush, they’d likely beat him senseless,
maybe even cut his throat.
And maybe they’d be right. After all, he hadn’t learned his lesson in
spite of nearly paying with his life. If he faced that boy again today,
he’d do exactly what he’d done before. He knew it to his bones.
“Come on, Jake,” Gabe urged, unwilling to tell his friend the real
reason for his hurry. “These fellas work on boilers all the time. Surely
they have inspectors lined up to check the work before we go.”
Jacob hesitated, running a hand through his newly cropped brown
curls. His natural impatience won out, and he nodded. Then the two
worked their way upstairs, to the hurricane deck.
Gabriel could have sworn he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a
hand lifted in his direction.
“Hey, Davis!” The words were faint but unmistakable.
Gabe quickened his steps and hoped that Jacob hadn’t heard. They
bypassed the cabin level and hurried up top, to the hurricane deck.
“It’s getting mighty thick,” Jacob said, gesturing to the soldiers who
were crowding into every available spot. “Looks like they mean to
pack us in like hogs.”
It was a wonder Gabe could hear the way his heart was hammering.
He hoped his voice would not betray his nervousness. “You’d think
they’d split us up and put some on that other steamboat.”
He nodded toward the
Pauline Carroll,
which was tied nearby. The
big steamer appeared nearly empty.
“You aren’t still trying to figure out the way the army big bugs
think? There’s only two reasons they do anything: bribery or lunacy.
Tryin’ to figure out which one’ll only give you headaches,” Jacob told
him. “Look, there’s Seth and Zeke, back toward the stern. Let’s see if
we can get to ’em without stepping on too many of these fellows.”
But Gabriel already felt as if someone had trodden on his thumping
heart. He’d been noticed, recognized. He scanned the crowd on the
hurricane deck, hoping like hell that there was no one else.
When he saw someone he knew, nausea rushed at him until he realized
it was only Mac Mahoney, from Andersonville. Shame heated Gabe’s
face. Had his guilt made him so jumpy that he flinched upon hearing
another former inmate’s voice two decks below?
At last they reached their two friends, who’d staked out a narrow
stretch of deck in front of a wheel housing.
“So, brother, did you make ’em quit their banging, or did you just
show ’em how it’s done?” Zeke asked Jacob.
Jacob grinned. “I thought I might fix those boilers myself, but the
fools suggested I stick to pounding little brothers.”
Gabe couldn’t help but smile at their banter, but he felt a measure
of pain, too. He’d been with Zeke and Jacob for months, but in the past
few days, seeing the two brothers together resurrected Matthew’s
ghost. Why now and not before? Was it prompted by his fear of being
caught by members of his old unit? Or maybe with their journey
home, Ohio was once more growing real inside his mind instead of a
vague, unattainable idea, like freedom.
Well, he was free now, thank God, and soon he would be home.
He’d have to face the fact that a grave was all that he would see of
his younger brother, that the only Davis male to greet him would
be Father.
His father. A memory rushed up at him, like a hungry fish rising to
the bait. His mother weeping as his father jabbed the air with his pipe
to emphasize his words.
“No son of mine is going to shirk his duty.”
“But you said I’m more useful working on artillery design,”
Gabe argued. A part of him did want to go with his friends, to
join in the grand adventure of the war. But Mama’s tears, her
whispered pleas, had stayed him. That and the satisfaction of
working in his father’s factory to build the weapons that would
help the Union win the day.
Flint Maxwell Davis made a ring of his pipe smoke and sent it floating
toward the ceiling. In a moment it dissolved into a sweet, ashen
fragrance, like the ones that came before it.
“I can do without you, Gabe.”
That
was God’s truth if he’d ever heard it. It always had been,
ever since his father realized that Matthew shared so many of his
interests, which Gabe found somewhat alarming. But Father had
gleefully taught his younger son the workings of a dozen games of
chance and encouraged him to breed bloodthirsty roosters for illegal
cockfights. More and more, Flint Davis ignored his eldest, whose
interest in sketching trees and animals he proclaimed unmanly.
When Matthew drowned, Gabe could all but hear resentment
buzzing in his father’s skull.
Even so, hearing him admit what Gabe had long sensed stunned
him. He remembered a wave of nausea rising, like one of Father’s
damned smoke rings.
“This draft notice cannot,
will
not, be ignored,” Father insisted.
“Don’t ignore it, then. Pay a substitute,” Mama told his father.
Though she didn’t give it voice, her terror hung in the air, fear that she
would outlive yet another son. “It isn’t as if we can’t spare three hundred
dollars. You’ve said yourself how well the business is doing.”
“Like hell I’ll pay a substitute!” his father roared. “And have everyone
saying that Flint Davis, the man who built a fortune in artillery, was
too cowardly to send his own son off to war? Or thought his money
made him too grand? I’ve told you before, I’m not one of those
damned blue bloods who thinks that a few dollars set me above
the rest!”
“Plenty of families we know have kept their boys at home!
There are men who need that money just as much as we need
Gabe,” she pleaded.
“No.
We
don’t need him;
you
do. You need Gabe tucked under your
wing so he won’t die like
him.”
The tears filling Mama’s eyes spilled over. In the three years since
his brother’s death, as if by consensus, his parents never spoke his
name. When forced to refer to Matthew, they said only
him
. As if by
pretending Matthew had never existed they could assuage the pain of
losing Father’s favorite.
His mother straightened her spine and glared into his father’s eyes.
“Mr. Davis, you know very well you’re only using this draft notice as
an excuse! You mean to
punish
Gabriel!”
She didn’t have to say for what. Though no one asked the
questions, they hung heavily among the surviving family members.
His sisters stared them at him. His mother wept them into lacy handkerchiefs. And his father, especially, hinted at them in dozens of
furtive looks and conversations that danced around the point.
Why
couldn’t you save Matthew? How could you have let him drown?
That Gabe had nearly died, too, jumping in after his younger brother,
was not an answer. Flint Davis was consumed by the mystery of why
one son climbed out of the icy river while the other hadn’t.
God knew Gabe had tried to make it up to his father. He’d turned
his talent from sketching landscapes and horses to drawing precise
artillery designs. He’d followed the old man into the factory out of a
sense of duty and the hope that he could prove useful enough to earn
his father’s forgiveness, if not his love. Flint Davis never thawed, but
after a time, the work became its own reward. Gabe had discovered art
in three dimensions among the gleaming rows of cannon with his family
name stamped on the barrels.
Until his father made him join the army and Gabriel saw with his
own eyes the carnage he’d unthinkingly unleashed upon the world.