Thieves Of Mercy

TWENTY-FOUR

On returning to the ship, he [Lieutenant Jones] found that Craney Island and all the other batteries on the river had been abandoned… [T]his unexpected information rendered prompt measures necessary for the safety of the Virginia . The pilots had assured me that they could take the ship, with a draft of 18 feet, to within 40 miles of Richmond.

FLAG OFFICER JOSIAH TATTNALL TO STEPHEN R. MALLORY

Wendy could feel her confidence and her boat-handling ability growing with every foot of their course made good. She concentrated first on steering small, on preventing the boat from taking wild swings to port and starboard, on not turning so far to weather that the sails flogged, then jamming the tiller over so they swung far off to leeward. A little experimentation showed her how little she had to nudge the tiller to get a response, even with that heavy, beamy boat.

Steer small, steer small, she kept the words running in her mind until soon the tiller was amidships, the boat tracking nicely. She lined up a point of land with the boat’s stem and kept it there, correcting her course with minor adjustments of the helm as the boat tried to wander to one side of the river or the other.

“You’re getting the feel of it,” Molly said. Even she could see the difference.

They cleared Portsmouth, leaving that town in their wake, with Norfolk under their bow. Sitting on the weather side of the boat, they kept their eyes forward as they stood on toward the waterfront.

“Um, Wendy,” Molly said at last, tentative in her ignorance of boats, “we seem to be heading toward Norfolk. Shouldn’t we turn to the left?”

Port, Wendy thought, but she did not correct her aunt. After a lifetime of trial and error she was finally learning not to embarrass herself with such pretension.

“Yes,” she said, “perhaps…” It was exactly the problem she had been considering. She understood the theory of tacking, of how a sailing vessel worked to windward. She tried to feel the wind on her face, but she could get only a rough sense of its direction. Now that the boat was moving along so well, she hated to change anything.

“Perhaps we won’t have to tack,” Wendy said next. She was thinking out loud. She pushed the tiller to leeward, an inch, then another, watched carefully as the boat began to turn up into the wind. The town of Norfolk disappeared behind the sail. If she could turn just a bit more, then they could sail clear into Hampton Roads on that heading.

She gave the tiller another inch to leeward and the elegant curve of the sail’s forward edge collapsed, the canvas rippling and snapping and bulging out. Wendy jerked the tiller back and the boat swung quickly downwind, the sail filling, the Norfolk waterfront sweeping by.

Steer small, steer small! She eased the tiller the other way, brought the boat carefully back to its original heading.

“We’ll have to tack,” Wendy announced.

“All right… what shall I do?”

Wendy was not sure. She tried to picture what would happen when they brought the bow of the boat through the wind. The line from the corner of the sail, which she believed was called the “sheet,” ran through a block just in front of her and was fastened to a cleat. She did not think it would need adjustment.

“When we tack,” Wendy said, “then the other side of the boat will become the higher side, and we’ll have to shift over there.”

Molly nodded.

“All right, here we go,” Wendy said, trying to sound confident. She pushed the tiller over to the leeward side. The boat turned up into the wind, higher and higher. The sail began to flog, a distracting and unnerving sound, but Wendy kept the tiller over. The shoreline beyond swept by, the sail rippling as it passed through the wind.

Then they were on the other tack, the boat pointing almost downriver, the wind coming over the starboard bow. The sail was pressed flat against the mast by the wind, and Wendy thought, That can’t be right…

Somehow the gaff and sail should have been moved to the other side of the mast in order for it to set right on the opposite tack. But, unseamanlike as it looked, it was doing the job, driving the boat along, and Wendy played with the tiller until the bow was as high on the wind as it would go.

Molly did not look confident. She was looking at the sail, looking at the shore.

“We have to sail on this tack for a bit,” Wendy explained, “so that when we tack again we can sail past Norfolk.”

Molly nodded. “Because it does appear we are going back the way we came,” she said.

“I know. But not for long.”

For five minutes they held that course, crossing the Elizabeth River from east to west, and then they tacked again. It went smoother that time, and with the wind back over the port bow, the sail set correctly, which was a relief to Wendy. Seeing the sail pressed awkwardly against the mast made her very uncomfortable.

They cleared Norfolk, made Finner Point where the river opened its wide mouth to Hampton Roads. Craney Island was three miles ahead on the port bow, and beyond that, only the shimmering open water of the Roads, with the low blue-gray coast of Newport News a thin line on the northern horizon.

“I see a boat,” Molly said.

“Where?”

“There.” Wendy could hear the forced calm in Molly’s voice, and in her own. She looked where Molly was pointing. A small boat, not unlike their own, coming upriver under sail.

No reason to be afraid, Wendy assured herself, but she was. “What do you think we should do?”

Molly shook her head. “Sail on. Hope they ignore us.”

Wendy nodded, ran an eye over the approaching boat. They had the wind a little astern and they were coming up fast.

“I wish we had a telescope,” Wendy said.

“I prefer guns,” Molly said. “Where is the pepperbox?”

“We left it behind.”

Molly nodded. “Do you have your gun?”

“Yes. I put it in my carpetbag.” Wendy wondered how much of that morning her aunt recalled.

Molly dug through the bag, pulled out the little gun, examined the chamber and the percussion cap. “We have one shot. We had better make it a good one.”

Four minutes passed before the boat was up with them. From fifty feet away, the women could make out six men sitting on the weather side, and a man who appeared to be wearing an officer’s frock coat at the tiller.

“I hope to God these aren’t Yankees,” Molly said. She adjusted her skirts so they covered the gun in her right hand.

The strange boat turned up into the wind. Its sail came back and it stopped dead, like a carriage with the brake set. The officer called out, “Heave to! Heave to in our lee!”

What does that mean? Wendy wondered. No doubt it involved stopping so the men could determine who they were. Wendy turned the boat slowly up into the wind. The sail began to flog and beat, and the boat lost way, until at last it drifted to a stop ten feet from the other.

“Ladies, I am Lieutenant John Jones, flag lieutenant, Confederate States Navy. May I ask your business?” the officer said. He spoke in the accent of the South. His coat was gray. Dark gray, but nonetheless gray. Wendy felt relief spread like the warm glow from a shot of whiskey.

“We are leaving Norfolk, before the damned Yankees get there,” Molly said. “I am a particular friend of Captain John Tucker, and we are attempting to reach him.”

The officer in the boat nodded. “Tucker is with his squadron in the James. But there are Yankees everywhere. You’d be better to land and go on foot.”

The women nodded.

“What news do you have of Norfolk?” Jones asked.

“The Yankees were not yet there when we left, about an hour or more past. The navy yard is in flames.”

That news seemed to take the officer by surprise. “Are you certain?”

“Yes,” Wendy said. “We were there ourselves. It is quite overcome.”

The officer nodded. “Very well. I wish I could offer you more assistance, but I fear I have urgent business.”

“Sir, you are kindness itself, but we will be fine, I assure you,” Wendy said. She was feeling optimistic, for the first time in a long time. She was eager to be under way.

“Very good, ladies. Good day.” Jones tipped his hat as if they had met on the street, and not bobbing along in boats in the middle of a theater of war. The navy boat fell off and soon was under way, running upriver. Wendy and Molly fussed with the sail and the tiller until they were also under way again, downriver for Hampton Roads.

They did not see another sail for nearly an hour.

Craney Island was broad on the port bow and a mile off when Molly happened to notice it, astern of them, and coming down-river fast.

“Is it Lieutenant Jones again, do you think?” Molly asked.

Wendy glanced over her shoulder, then back at the sail overhead and the boat’s heading, then back over her shoulder. “I don’t know…” She did not think so-the shape of the sail did not look right-but this new boat was nearly a mile away, and she could not be certain. “I don’t know,” she said again.

They tacked once more to gain sea room from the mud flats on the eastern shore of the river, then tacked back. It was an awkward maneuver as Wendy tried to shift the sail around to the other side of the mast, which she managed to do, but only after getting the boat in irons for a few confused moments. By the time they were back on the port tack, the boat coming up astern was much closer.

It was not the Confederate officer Jones.

They could see that now. This boat had a jib and a mainsail, whereas Jones’s boat had only a single sail much like their own.

“Oysterman,” Molly pronounced, “or someone fleeing the Yankees like we are.”

Wendy nodded. She felt as uncertain as Molly sounded.

But why would anyone care about us? she thought. Even if they are Yankees, surely they have better things to do than come after us? Whoever they were, she assured herself, they would not care about a couple of harmless women in a boat. There was only one person she could think of who might want to hunt them down, but she had already put a bullet through his head.

She saw that whole nightmare scene again, played out in her mind as if she were seeing it for the first time. She tasted the revulsion and fear and wild fury all over, felt the kick of the big gun in her hand. She tried to summon up remorse for what she had done, but it was not there.

I feel not that deity on my bosom, she thought and wondered if that should concern her. She wanted to talk about what had happened, what she had done and felt, had a desperate need to verbalize it. She wanted to spill it all to Molly, but she could not broach the subject with her aunt. Not with Molly. She could not bring it up again.

She wished that Samuel were there. Samuel would understand. He would help her understand. These were things that he had faced as well. Men were supposed to perform such acts as killing with never a thought, but Samuel was more introspective than that. She knew he lacked nothing in courage, but not feeling fear was not the same as not feeling at all.

She missed Samuel desperately. It was ironic, but since the moment she had decided to make her way west, there had hardly been two consecutive minutes to think of him. At that moment, however, hand on the tiller, boat tracking north through the small chop at the river’s mouth, quiet save for the water on the hull, she thought, and she recalled how much she loved him and how painfully she wanted to be near him.

“That boat seems to be making for us,” Molly said, soft and calm.

Wendy, pulled from her thoughts, looked over her shoulder. The boat was in their wake, directly astern, about half a mile away. The river was two miles wide at that point, and yet the boat was right there, right behind them.

“I doubt it. More likely my keen sense of seamanship has led me to choose exactly the best course downriver, which this fellow also knows.” Wendy could hear how hollow her efforts at being flip and unconcerned sounded.

She looked back again. It did seem that the boat was making an effort to close with them.

I’ll tack… tack away and see what he does, she thought, then realized how pointless that was. The boat astern was clearly sailing much faster than they were. It might be chasing them, or it might not, but either way it would overtake them soon, and then they would know. And tacking would make no difference one way or another. They stood on.

And the boat astern of them did as well, coming up fast, coming right at them, unwavering in its attempt to overtake them. Twenty minutes later, they knew. The boat was chasing them.

“I can see only one person there,” Molly said. She was looking astern. The boat was a hundred yards behind them now, sailing at least two knots faster than the women’s boat. “Who could it be?”

The women looked at one another, and all the questions and fears passed between them, unspoken.

“No,” Wendy said. “No. I blew his goddamned brains out.”

It was all so agonizingly slow, so painfully inevitable, like a lingering death. One hundred yards, seventy-five yards, fifty yards.

“It’s him,” Molly said, her voice dead.

“It can’t be.” But Wendy was no longer so certain. Why had she not felt for a pulse, tied him up, slit his throat, something?

“It is him. I can see him clear enough now.”

“You have one bullet.”

No one spoke. Newcomb was twenty yards astern. They could see his horrible blood-caked face, his clothes filthy and torn, the hair wild on his hatless head. He looked like a statue, a gargoyle, motionless in the stern sheets, eyes locked on them. Wendy wished he would curse at them, scream at them, order them to heave to, anything but that silent, relentless approach.

“Goddamn him!” Wendy said out loud, all but shouting. Her nerves were played out, she had to act. Just standing on was tantamount to submitting to the lunatic bastard.

“Hold on, Molly! Don’t shoot until we are on top of him!” Wendy bit down, pressed her lips together. Took one last look over her shoulder, then thrust the tiller hard to starboard.

The heavy boat spun up into the wind and kept on going. In the few seconds it took to turn one hundred and eighty degrees, Newcomb’s boat covered the distance between them. Wendy watched the shoreline spin past as the boat came around again on the port tack, spinning a neat circle, and then Newcomb’s boat was right under their bow.

They hit with a shock that sent Wendy tumbling forward. The boat rolled, dipped her rail under the water, and Wendy had an image of falling masts and crushing wood, Newcomb flying from his seat and water pouring in before she landed across the after-most thwart. She heard a shout like a bull’s bellow, knew it was the outraged cry of Roger Newcomb.

She struggled up. Their boat had stove in the bow of Newcomb’s boat entirely, and the impact had sent Newcomb’s mainmast by the board, though their own still stood. Molly was clawing her way up from the bottom, the gun still in her hand. Newcomb’s boat was filling fast, going down.

“Where’s Newcomb?” Molly shouted, gun held out. It was suddenly quiet. Wendy could hear her and Molly’s breath, coming hard.

Then Newcomb was there, leaping up from behind the mass of shattered wood and torn canvas that had been his boat’s rig. Bounding over the wreckage, his eyes wild, fresh blood running down his face. He had a pistol in one hand, a wooden bucket in the other

“Son of a bitch!” Molly shouted, held the gun out. Newcomb flung the bucket at her. She flinched and pulled the trigger.

The gunshot made a weak cracking sound, like a thin twig breaking underfoot. Wendy saw Newcomb jerk around, stumble, and fall. He came down hard, falling across the gunnel of the women’s boat. But he was not dead.

He pushed himself up on one arm, his.36 Navy Colt held in front of him, a horrible leer on his face. Slowly, agonizingly, he pulled himself on board, the gun steady, the muzzle aimed always at Wendy or Molly, moving between them, as if trying to decide whom to kill first.

Newcomb got both legs aboard and sat down heavy on the thwart, leaning against the gunnel, mouth open, sucking air. The wreckage of his boat drifted off, half sunk, held up only by the buoyancy of the wood.

Newcomb’s head flopped forward, as if he did not have the strength to hold it up. Wendy searched him for a bullet wound, hoping desperately that Molly had managed to hit him, that he would bleed to death before their eyes. But there was nothing. He had fallen while twisting out of the way of the bullet. She had missed.

“Ladies,” Newcomb said at last, guttural and ironic. “How nice to see you again…”

Wendy could see Molly’s jaws working, see her arms tense. She was afraid that Molly was going to launch herself at Newcomb, try to claw him to death. “Molly…” she warned. The.36 was pointed at her aunt’s chest. She would never make it across the boat before he shot her.

They sat in their silent world of hatred as Newcomb waited for his strength to return, for the pain to subside. Ten minutes they sat, then Newcomb stirred. His gun swung over to point at Wendy. His thumb pulled the hammer back. The click was loud in the quiet air.

“You bitch… you shot me.” His voice sounded stronger now, as if in the moments of quiet he had recovered some of his strength. “I should just kill you now.”

Wendy looked at the gun and then at Newcomb’s crazy eyes, and her hatred was so profound that it blotted out the fear she knew she should feel. “Go ahead, you cowardly little puke,” she hissed.

Newcomb gave a half grin, eased the hammer back. “No, no. I can wait for the pleasure of seeing you kicking and jerking at the end of a rope. Pissing yourself as you die. Be worth it.”

Wendy looked away in disgust, her eyes moving upriver, toward the column of smoke rising up from Portsmouth. Were the Yankees there yet? Would their navy come upriver soon, to rescue the wayward Acting Master Roger Newcomb?

There was a boat coming down from Norfolk, just coming into view as it rounded Finner Point at the confluence of the southern and western branches of the Elizabeth River. It was nearly two miles away, little more than a white square bobbing on the blue water. Yankees? If they were, it was quite possible that she and Molly would hang. But at least they would be saved from whatever more horrid plan Roger Newcomb had.

Then another thought came to her. Is it Lieutenant Jones? The Confederate Navy? She pulled her eyes away quickly, so that New-comb would not follow her gaze. She tried not to think about the boat. It would play out the way it would. There seemed to be little that she could do now to influence her fate.

“So we wait…” Newcomb was saying. “We wait, wait, for the Union to wipe out all the stinking secesh like the vermin they are, and then we go and take you two to the proper authorities, and I am made captain while you are hung.”

The women did not respond. They sat silent and glared at Newcomb, and that seemed to unnerve him a bit. “Or maybe I’ll have to kill you as you try to escape, I don’t know, I shall see. We’ll see.”

Wendy looked beyond Newcomb, out toward the eastern shore of the river. The tide had turned, the boat was slowly drifting downstream toward Hampton Roads. She wondered how long Newcomb would just sit there.

Finally, with a grunt of effort, he stood, gun held loose at his side. He jerked his pocket watch from his vest, glanced down at it, put it away, seemed not to notice that the face was crushed, the case and the hands broken off. “Perhaps we should be on our way,” he said.

Wendy glanced astern, involuntarily. She caught a glimpse of the boat, much closer now. She cursed herself and turned her head away. Heard Newcomb gasp. She looked up. He was glaring at her, the gun pointed at her face. “You traitorous bitch!” he shouted. “How long have you known they were there?”

Wendy looked astern, no point in pretending now. The boat had halved the distance between them. She still could make out no details, but by every appearance it seemed to be Jones’s boat. She had stared long and hard at it when they met before; she recognized the shape of the sail.

She looked back at Newcomb, met his eye, held his gaze unwaveringly. “How long have I known who was there?”

“Who? Who? I’ll give you… get up in the bow. Both of you, get the hell up in the bow!” Newcomb gestured with the gun. Wendy stood, made her way forward, a hand on the gunnel, Molly in front of her. They came to the forwardmost thwart and sat, facing aft. Neither woman cared to have her back to the lunatic with the gun.

Newcomb sat with a grunt in the stern. He pushed the tiller over with the hand still holding the gun, sheeted in the sail with the other, and made it fast. The boat fell off the wind and gathered way and Newcomb brought the tiller amidships. He was a very good boat handler, Wendy could see that, and it made her even more angry. She wondered if Jones’s boat was the faster of the two. Or whether it would matter.

Newcomb’s eyes were everywhere, looking at the set of the sail, looking aft at the approaching boat, looking past the bow and out to weather. The boat was moving fast, heeling in the westerly breeze. They were not sailing hard on the wind, as they had been before, the point of sail that Wendy had chosen to get them out of the river and into the Roads.

She turned and looked forward. Newcomb was making for an open place on the eastern shore, a wide marshy place called Tanner’s Creek.

“Turn around,” Newcomb shouted and Wendy turned back. She settled her hands on her lap. She waited.

They moved fast on the beam reach, and the boat astern did not seem to be gaining anymore. Soon Wendy was aware of the shoreline close at hand. She looked to starboard. They were not more than a hundred yards off the reedy, wild riverbank. She looked to port, expecting Newcomb to shout at her, but he did not. She could see Tanner’s Point fine on the port bow. Newcomb was going to duck out of sight behind the point.

Ten minutes later the land was all around them, the mosquitoes beginning their torment as the boat moved slowly through the shallow, muddy water. Newcomb brought the bow around to close with the shore, and Wendy thought for certain the boat would take the ground, but it did not, gliding along silently and nearly upright in the wind shadow of the land.

Finally the bow nudged into the sandy shore on the east side of Tanner’s Point. Newcomb ordered the women to sit on the center thwart, then he climbed over the bow and pulled the boat as far up as he could. He tied the painter to a sapling at the edge of the tall grass.

“Get out.” Newcomb gestured with the gun, and Wendy, then Molly climbed awkwardly out of the boat. He made them turn their backs to him, and for a horrible moment Wendy thought he was going to put a bullet through their heads.

Instead he bound their hands behind their backs, tied them tight with thin, rough cordage. “Wouldn’t have to do this…” he muttered, a lunatic’s monologue, “if I thought I could trust you… give your word… would if you were civilized women and not damned Southern trash… secesh garbage…” He tied their wrists swiftly and securely, with the marlinspike seamanship skills he had learned in the United States Navy. He pulled a pocket knife and cut a long strip from Wendy’s skirt and gagged them.

“This way.” He shoved Wendy toward the shore and Molly after, prodded them along as they stumbled and made their way through the tall dune grass. The stiff vegetation whipped their faces and scratched their skin and with their bound hands they were not able to fend it off.

Tanner’s Point was only one hundred yards wide, and soon they came to where it met up with the water of Hampton Roads. To the southwest, two miles away across the mouth of the Elizabeth River, was Craney Island. The horizon to the north and south was bordered by low shoreline, and straight across from them, open water marked the mouth of the James River.

“Wait here.” Newcomb pointed to the ground where they stood, ten feet from where the grass gave way to the riverbank. He went ahead by himself, peering through the grass, looking south.

They remained like that for some time. How long, Wendy did not know. The minutes crawled along. Finally, through the screen of grass, they could see the boat. It was Jones’s boat, heading toward Hampton Roads. Wendy could see the gray-clad Jones in the stern sheets. He was making no effort to look for them, none that she could see. He was just sailing on.

The despair took Wendy by surprise, caught her unawares. She had invested all her hope in Lieutenant Jones and the Confederate Navy and she had not even realized it. But the sailors had passed by, had not even glanced in her and Molly’s direction. Through the tall grass, she watched her last hope disappear from sight, heading north toward Sewell’s Point.

Now they were alone, bound and gagged. There was nothing more they could do but await the pleasure of Roger Newcomb.