Unholy Fire (39 page)

In the hours that followed, my mind wandered constantly. A minute would not pass without it always returning to the incredible fact that Sam Hathaway was on his way to kill President Lincoln and that I might be the only person who could save him.

Over and over I prayed that Amelie was safe, and that Val had been able to stop the bleeding in her thigh. My thoughts strayed to the memory of her body, naked and alive in my arms, pulling me down to her with an urgency and hunger that matched my own. I tried to imagine a future for us after the war, a life we might enjoy together in a place where no one would know of her past.

It was almost two in the morning and the temperature had to be near freezing when I felt the first droplets of what soon became a hard, driving rain. As it began to soak my uniform, I remembered the revolver I had taken from Lieutenant Hanks. Knowing how important it was to keep the loads dry, I stopped under a stand of tall evergreens and removed the gun from inside my belt.

Unscrewing the top of my match safe, I lit a sulphur match and quickly examined the revolver. Lieutenant Hanks had fired four rounds, leaving only two in the cylinder. The remaining loads appeared to be dry, and the percussion caps both looked fine. Using my pocket knife, I cut a large piece of rubberized canvas from the liner of the saddle blanket, and carefully wrapped the gun inside it before placing the bulky pouch under my uniform blouse next to my abdomen.

Then it was on into the rain-filled night. Even as the roadbed turned muddy, the big stallion proved to be as indomitable a beast as I have ever ridden. Mile after mile, he slogged and splashed through the darkness, oblivious of the storm.

It was my own strength that began to flag first. By then my boots were filled with water, and my eyes stung badly from the relentless wind-driven rain. At some point it occurred to me that aside from the apple in the fruit cellar, I had eaten nothing since the previous night with Amelie on the packet boat, fully twenty-four hours earlier. As the minutes passed, my energy seemed to ebb ever lower until I slowly drowsed off in the saddle.

I came awake to the sound of the stallion pawing the ground. The timber stanchions of a bridge loomed up at me out of the darkness, but it was only when I looked closer that I saw the bridge itself had been burned. A felled tree lay across the roadway. Turning the gray around, we retraced our steps to a point where a well-worn path led down toward the bank of the stream.

The water was fast moving and as black as tar, but it didn't look deep. We were out in the middle before I realized that it was over the horse's head, and we would have to swim for it. By the time we got across, I was shivering uncontrollably.

Regaining the roadbed on the opposite side of the stream, I saw a faint light through the trees off to my right. Desperate for food and temporary warmth, I headed toward it. A logger's path led in that direction, and I turned off the trunk road to follow the track. Fifty yards in, I saw that the light was coming from the window of a small, two-story farm dwelling.

I reined up in front of the porch. As if trained to announce his arrival, the gray began trumpeting loudly toward the house. When I slid off his back, my stringy legs nearly collapsed underneath me. A painful tingling sensation presaged the circulation slowly coming back into them.

The door to the house opened, and someone came out on the porch. I looked up to see a slim woman of about forty standing in the open doorway. She was wearing a black woolen shawl over her full-length nightdress, and she came toward me carrying a small oil lamp. Her face seemed alive with emotion.

“Stephen?” she called out.

“I saw your light in the window,” I said.

The excitement drained out of her eyes when she heard my voice.

“The light is for my son. Stephen is with Eppa Hunton's Brigade,” she said. “He was reported missing after the second battle at Manassas.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Perhaps he will be coming home soon.”

“You should know that I am a Union officer,” I said then.

She held the lantern up and gazed into my face.

“Come in out of the rain,” she said, finally. “At least that is what I hope someone would say if it was my boy on such a night.”

The woman told me there was forage in the little stable behind the house, and I put the stallion there out of the wet, leaving him quietly munching hay. Her darkened kitchen was still warm from a fire in the grate. She threw a small log on it and the coals burst into flame, illuminating the room. Aside from a trestle table and two chairs, it was full of potted houseplants. Long-handled pans hung from an iron rack above the kitchen table.

She poured me a mug of mulled cider from a jug that was lying on the warm hearthstones. Drinking deeply, I felt the coldness inside me begin to diminish.

“All I have are some eggs,” she said, slicing me a thick slab of bread from a loaf on the table. “I hope they will do.”

“Thank you,” I said, “that would be very good.”

The smell of the eggs frying in butter was almost enough to make me swoon. They went warm into my stomach along with another slice of bread slathered with raspberry preserves. All the while, I could hear the rain drumming on the roof. As good as it felt to be there, I began to worry that I would soon fall asleep.

“I need to be on my way,” I said, the back of my clothes steaming from the heat of the fire. I tried to give her money then, but she firmly refused it.

“I hope your boy comes home safe,” I said.

“Stephen is dead,” she said then, her eyes filling with tears. “He is never coming home.”

“I'm so sorry,” were the only words I could muster, but they seemed to give her momentary comfort.

I brought out the horse and mounted him. Checking my watch, I saw that it was a little after four o'clock.

“Can you tell me how far it is to Washington from here?” I asked.

“You are ten miles from Alexandria,” she said. “The federal capital is just across the river from there.”

The big gray had carried me about fifty miles already, but he still looked strong. Restored by the mugs of hard cider and hot food, I was starting to feel confident that we could reach the president's mansion with time to spare. Soon we were heading north again through the dark, wet countryside.

Once more I became inured to the mindless repetition of sound and sensation—the thudding of the gray's hooves on the roadbed in their regular rhythmic cadence, the jolting pain of skin rubbed raw from my groin down to the upper thighs, and the pounding ache as my rear end met the saddle. We rode on, me chilled to the bone, my fingers numb on the reins.

I don't know when I first realized that someone was following me. In the wan glow of false dawn, I found myself constantly looking over my shoulder as if expecting to see a rider emerge from the veil of rain behind me. Ascribe it to a sixth sense, but with the passing of each minute, I became increasingly convinced that someone was back there in the darkness coming after me.

Of course, there was no way of knowing for sure, but soon the speculation hardened into a certainty. Somehow I knew that it was Billy Osceola following in my path, as dedicated to stopping me as I was to stopping General Hathaway.

That thought alone kept me driving forward at a pace I would otherwise have found impossible to maintain. It also made me think again about the revolver—whether it was sufficiently protected from the soaking rain, and whether the charges in the remaining cylinders had stayed dry. I had no other loads for it and could only hope that the gun would fire if I needed it.

Suddenly I heard the first salvo of a massive cannonade far ahead of me. At least, that is what it sounded like to my exhausted brain. I recognized it as approaching thunder when a jagged bolt of lightning lit up the sky.

I waited for the next flash to turn in the saddle and look back again. A tremor of fear went through me as I saw the mounted figure, just as I had pictured him, shrouded in a rain slicker and a broad-brimmed hat. He was coming hard, only fifty yards behind me.

I knew that the big gray was almost played out. He had already done far more than I ever could have expected of him. It was hard to believe he had anything left. But when I kicked him in the flanks, he took off like a fresh colt.

We went over the brow of a hill and down into a hollow where the foggy mist masked everything up to a height of four feet. On and on we raced between the rain-slick trees that lined the roadbed as flashes of lightning lit up the still dark sky. In the distance I could now see a faint halo of light that had to be Washington.

The stallion was running at breakneck speed when we came over another rise and I saw a covered bridge ahead of us, shrouded in the mist and fog. My fingers were frozen clawlike to the reins as I felt the great stallion leap to avoid a hidden obstruction in the roadway. Then we were inside the enclosed bridge, the clatter of his hooves echoing against the roof timbers above us.

Suddenly, the clattering stopped and I realized too late that the bridge plating was no longer below us. We were plummeting together through space, down through the beclouded air into a great void.

Having grown up by the sea, I instinctively drew in a deep breath and held it. The big gray began to trumpet in fear as we continued to fall. His scream was abruptly cut off when we hit the water.

It was like the buffeting blow of a crashing sea wave. The blackness was so complete that for several seconds, I wasn't sure if I was up or down, on my back, or on my stomach. I knew that I was still half in the saddle because I could feel the big stallion churning and twisting in his death throes, as desperate for air as I.

In that impenetrable murk, it seemed as if we had become entombed inside the skeleton of some vast primordial beast. The slimy, bonelike ribs were all around us, in every direction that I flailed my arms as I tried vainly to break free and reach the surface.

At some point I realized that the sunken object was a gigantic tree, torn by its roots from the ground, and lying at the bottom of the river. Still trapped next to my noble friend, I began to fear that he would kill me in his attempts to find passage out of the honeycomb of branches and vines. His powerful legs continued to slash wildly until they finally weakened and then became still.

Perhaps he saved me even in meeting his own death. I must have been driven beneath him because suddenly my face brushed the muddy bottom of the river. Somehow his thrashing legs had cleared a narrow path through the obstructions, and I was able to drift on through.

In spite of having tried to keep my mouth tightly closed, I had already swallowed a great deal of water. There was a pounding roar inside my brain. With my last conscious thought, I planted my feet against the bottom and drove upward.

I came out of the river into the same wind and rain we had left behind during our descent. Gagging uncontrollably, I held onto an exposed branch from the submerged tree long enough to regain a measure of my strength. The far bank was only thirty feet away, but it seemed like the breadth of an ocean. When my boots finally touched bottom at the muddy shoreline, I dragged myself out of the maelstrom, gasping from the cold.

Kneeling on the bank, I felt to make sure that I still had Lieutenant Hanks's revolver. Miraculously, it was still nestled behind my belt. The wind-driven rain was still coming at me with a violence that made it hard to see. I looked back toward the opposite bank, but it was hidden in the impenetrable fog. Even if Billy hadn't followed me across the bridge into the water, I knew that he must already be stalking me, and that I needed to find a place to defend myself. Farther down the bank of the river, I could see the dim outline of what appeared to be a broken mill wheel, along with the dark blur of another structure just beyond it.

I stumbled through the saplings and brush that lined the riverbank. An old mill, long abandoned and canted over to one side, emerged out of the gloom. The front door was gone, and the windows were missing on either side of it. That was all I saw before plunging inside.

It felt even colder inside the mill than it had been along the river. The first room was empty, and there were big sections missing from the floor. I went through the next doorway, coming out into a large, high-ceilinged open area that had probably been a storeroom for grain. I shut the door behind me. Although there was no key to lock it, the door closed into a solid frame.

Across the floor of the storeroom, I saw the outline of one more doorway etched in the darkness and headed straight for it. This last room had no windows and was empty of furniture. The open hearth of a small fireplace stood in the corner, partially collapsed in on itself.

With my back to the far wall, I dropped to the floor and pulled out the canvas-wrapped pouch from inside my uniform pants. When I removed the gun, it was wet to the touch, and droplets of water stippled the barrel. I had no way of knowing whether the loads were spoiled in the last two cylinders, but there was no other weapon to fight him with anyway. Pulling back the hammer, I set the gun on my left knee and aimed it toward the storeroom beyond.

All my senses seemed sharpened … the sound of the rain dripping through the holes in the roof, the odor of wet bird droppings, and my own smell, sour with stale sweat. My eyes were focused on the narrow view through the doorway when I heard what sounded like the creak of a floorboard, followed by the touch of an icy breeze on my face.

Several minutes went by. The sound was not repeated. I kept the revolver pointed toward the open doorway. Every thirty seconds or so, another lightning flash would brilliantly light up the next room. As I sat there shivering from the cold, it struck me that I still had a mission to carry out, and that the president's life might rest in my hands. I began to silently berate myself for the panicked actions that had brought me to this place.

What if I had simply imagined that it was Billy back there on the road? I had only seen his image for an instant. And even if there had been another rider on the road, what if he had just been a farmer looking for lost livestock? The more I thought about it, the more I knew it was sheer cowardice that had driven me to race off the bridge at the cost of my horse and then to this unnecessary refuge.