Thieves Of Mercy

TWENTY-SIX

The Virginia no longer exists, but 300 brave and skillful officers and seamen are saved to the Confederacy.

FLAG OFFICER JOSIAH TATTNALL TO STEPHEN R. MALLORY

Wendy saw Newcomb running up the trail toward them. It was the first time she had seen him run. She did not know what it meant, but she was not optimistic.

The sight of the ironclad seemed to have done something to him. She braced herself to see what it might be. Any change, she imagined, would be for the worse. He stopped, breathing hard, despite the short distance. “Get up,” he said. There was a new look on his face. Not the cold fury she had seen before. Something different. He looked all on fire. Evangelical.

Awkwardly the women stood. Wendy’s fear had been dulled after hours of waiting, but she felt it come fresh again. Is this here he executes us? Does he think the Confederates are back?

But once again, Newcomb failed to put bullets through their heads. Rather, he pulled his pocket knife out and cut the ropes binding their wrists. It was an extraordinary sensation, the constricting cordage falling away. Numb as they were, Wendy could feel pinpricks in her hands, sharp stabs of pain and a dull burn.

Slowly she brought her hands around to look at them in the dim light. She had thought they would be swollen to twice their size, but to her surprise they looked pretty much as they always had, save for the torn flesh on her wrists and the blood and the awful work of the insects.

Molly was gently rubbing her own mangled wrists.

Newcomb waved his gun down the trail. “Go on, back to the boat.” Molly went first, and Wendy behind. They stumbled and searched for the trampled path, but this time they could keep the dune grass off their faces, and it made the going easier.

Soon they came out to the little strip of sand where they had left the boat. The tide had fallen and most of the boat was grounded, and it was only with a great deal of straining that Newcomb was able to get it floating again. He ordered the women aboard. They waded through soft mud that sucked at their shoes. They climbed in and took their places in the bow. Newcomb put an oar over the transom and in the light breeze sculled the boat out of Tanner’s Creek.

Sitting in the bow, looking aft, Wendy could see the end of Tanner’s Point disappearing astern. They were heading upriver, in the wake of the Virginia. She waited for Newcomb to turn north, to head for Yankee country, but he did not.

South. He stood on south, and when the first ruffle of breeze made the sail flutter, he pulled the oar in, laid it on the thwarts, and hauled the sheet until the sail was drawing. They made perhaps two knots in the light air, slicing silently through the water of the Elizabeth River. Sailing south.

Wendy wanted desperately to turn around, to see what she could see beyond their bow. At first she did not dare, certain that it would inflame Newcomb.

Still, she reasoned, so far he had done nothing but yell and threaten.

It had occurred to her, kneeling in the tall grass, waiting for Newcomb to kill them, that he needed them alive. She did not forget the violence at the house, the horrible thing he had done to Molly. But still, he needed to present them, captured Southern assassins, to his superior officers as justification for his absence. She knew that would not keep Molly and her alive forever-Newcomb was liable to go completely berserk at any moment-but for the time being it was some protection.

She swiveled around, looked ahead. She could make out the hump of Craney Island against the low shoreline beyond. Virginia was visible in the moonlight, the great column of smoke from her stack making a black cloud against the stars and the moonlit sky. She was a mile or so away. She did not seem to be moving much faster than they were.

“Turn around,” Newcomb growled, finally noticing her. She turned back. What on earth is he planning?

Lord, if they could just get aboard that Confederate ship, or attract the attention of her men. But they would have to get closer than a mile away. Much closer.

It took the better part of an hour for them to cross the river at a diagonal. Wendy watched the shoreline, trying to determine where they were going. She watched Newcomb’s face, trying to gauge what he had in mind, following the ironclad.

She saw Newcomb squint into the dark, saw his eyebrows come together as he tried to puzzle something out. She turned and looked forward and Molly did as well. She braced for Newcomb’s shout, but he was apparently too absorbed in what he was looking at to care about his prisoners.

The Virginia was a little south of Craney Island. After a moment or so, Wendy realized that the ship had stopped dead, no doubt run aground on the mud flats that extended a quarter mile out from the island.

Newcomb stood on, closing with the ironclad, until they were no more than half a mile away. He turned the boat up into the wind and let the sail come aback, pressed against the mast, then pushed the tiller over and tied it in place. The boat came to a stop, rocking slightly in the small chop, its only motion a slow drift downriver on the falling tide.

There was a whirl of activity around the Confederate ship. Lights like fireflies on a summer evening moved up and down the casemate and dotted the top of her turtle back. Lights moved across the water from ship to shore and back again.

After a while the tide and current had carried the boat far downriver, and Newcomb got them under way again, coming back to within a quarter mile of the Virginia.

They are abandoning ship, Wendy thought. It was the only explanation for what she was seeing. They were conveying all of the crew to shore, and leaving the ironclad behind.

But they will not leave her for the Yankees, surely?

They watched for another twenty minutes, watched as three boats pulled for the shore, and then just one returned. They could see the lanterns held by men climbing up the side of the ship and then disappearing down inside. Through open gun ports they could catch glimpses of the lights moving around the interior of the casemate.

After a while the lanterns emerged on the top of the casemate and once more moved down the side of the ship and into the boat. One after another they were extinguished, until the boat was swallowed up in the dark, and the only light on the water was the moon’s reflection and a soft glow that seemed to emanate from within the ironclad itself.

Newcomb did not move. He did not speak. He did not tell the women to turn around, and they did not.

There was a light of some sort within the ship’s interior, Wendy was certain of it, and she was almost as certain that it was getting brighter. She wondered if dawn was coming, but a glance at the eastern sky told her it was still the dead of night, with dawn an hour or more away.

She looked back at the ship. The gun ports were clearly visible, oval points of light against the dark iron casement. And then Wendy understood. The ship was on fire. The Confederates had abandoned the Virginia and set her ablaze. They would not leave her for the Yankees. They would destroy her first.

She felt Newcomb shifting behind her. She turned. He was easing the tiller over, getting the boat under way. Once again she waited for him to turn the boat north, to head downriver, but he did not. He pointed the bow straight at the burning ship.

“You think I’m going to give up… you little secesh whores?” he said, speaking to himself, apparently. “Think I can’t save that ship now?”

“What are you talking about?” Wendy asked, disgusted, curious, frightened.

Newcomb pulled his eyes from the ship and looked at her. The zealous look she had seen on Tanner’s Point was there, threefold. His eyes were wide and he was smiling, which made his face look even more horrible. “Those traitors think they’ll keep that ship out of Union hands by burning her. Well I’ll be damned if they will. She’s the Merrimack, pride of the Union Navy, and she will be again.”

Oh, Lord, he is going to try and save the ship!

She turned back and looked at Virginia, now only a hundred yards or so ahead, close enough for Wendy to get a sense of her massive scale. She could see flames through the gun ports, but could not tell the extent to which she was engulfed. Might New-comb do this thing? By the look on his face, it was clear he would die trying, and see that his prisoners did as well.

They closed with the ship, the great casemate rising up overhead like a small, humpbacked mountain. Through the gun ports, around the muzzles of the heavy guns, they could see the flames on the gun deck. The men who had put her to the torch had done their job well, but Newcomb did not hesitate.

They came up with the Virginia’s bow. Newcomb brought the boat alongside, bumping it against the ship’s side. The smell of burning wood and hot iron was sharp in their noses. They could hear the flames crackling and hissing inside the iron shell.

Newcomb stood with one hand resting on the Virginia’s deck. He aimed the.36 at the women. “Get up there,” he said, gesturing with his head toward the ship. The women hesitated. New-comb straightened the arm with the gun, sighted down the barrel. “Get up!”

No choice. Newcomb was even more fixated on the ship than he was on them. It was not hard to imagine what a hero he would be if indeed he could save the ironclad for the Union. And that meant that the lives of his prisoners were of considerably less value than they had been even two hours before.

Wendy stood and grabbed onto a bollard on the edge of the Virginia’s deck. She stepped onto the gunnel of the boat, managed to get a leg on the ship’s deck and pull herself up, a difficult and humiliating move. She looked up, still on hands and knees. A few feet inboard of the ship’s side, a low wooden bulwark made a V-shaped false bow that would keep the area within the V dry even when the deck outside was submerged. Wendy grabbed hold of the top of the bulwark and pulled herself up.

She turned as Molly grabbed onto the bollard and hoisted herself up in the same manner. Wendy took hold of Molly’s arm, helped pull her aboard, and helped her to her feet.

Newcomb stepped to the center of the boat, balancing with one hand on the Virginia’s deck, and grabbed the long painter that lay coiled on a thwart. He handed the coil of line up to Wendy.

“Tie that onto the bollard.”

Wendy took the rope, looked at it, looked at Newcomb standing below her. He was in the boat, and they were on the ship. A mistake. He had made a mistake. She and Molly were not likely to get a better chance.

“Tie the goddamned painter to the bollard, you bitch, I don’t have time for your games!” Newcomb raised the gun and Wendy flung the rope in his face, side arm, as hard as she could, knocking him back into the boat, as much from his off-balance effort to shield his face as from the force of the blow. She turned and shoved Molly, pushed her right over the low bulwark and leaped after her, so they tumbled together onto the foredeck, screened from Newcomb by the wooden wall.

Wendy pushed herself up on her arms, looked around. They had only a few seconds before Newcomb found his feet and came after them, but where would they go?

Inside. Through the gun ports. There was no other place.

There were three gun ports at the forward end of the ship, one over the centerline and one on either of the rounded corners of the casemate. Each of the gun ports had a heavy iron shutter, built in two parts like the blades of scissors. The gun ports, thankfully, were open, the shutters swung out of the way and held off the gun port by a chain that ran through a hole in the casemate to the interior.

“There! Let’s go!” Wendy shouted, nodding toward the far corner. They could hear Newcomb screaming, a high-pitched, horrible sound, “Goddamn you! Goddamn you!” and Wendy was certain now that they would be killed immediately if they were caught. Newcomb had a bigger vision, and the assassins he had captured were only an impediment.

They kept low as they ran across the foredeck, waiting for the crack of Newcomb’s pistol, the ball in their bent backs. There was a gun blocking the way through the center gun port, and in any event it was too high for them to reach. But they could get to the one on the far corner by standing on the bulwark where it met the casemate, and there was no gun there.

They reached the far bulwark, ran hard into it as they tried to stop, turned together to see if they were too late, but they could not see Newcomb. The boat must have drifted off as he flailed to regain his feet, and that bought them a few seconds more.

“Go, Molly, there!” Wendy pointed. Molly stepped up onto the bulwark, caught her foot in her filthy, tattered skirt, freed it, reached up for the opening. The gun port was higher than Wendy had realized. Molly was just able to get her head and shoulders through. Wendy put her hands on Molly’s rear end and pushed, let Molly push her feet against her shoulders, and finally she was in.

Wendy climbed up onto the bulwark, reached up into the gun port. The interior of the casemate was brilliantly lit with the flames that were burning up the wooden sides on which the iron plating was fastened, burning in patches on the deck where flammable material had been spread. Halfway through the gun port she could see the chains holding up the heavy iron shutters where they came through the casemate and were held in place by a lever. She prayed the lever would not let go right then.

Molly grabbed her hands and pulled and Wendy kicked her way up.

She heard Newcomb shout. The pistol cracked, a bullet struck the iron casemate near her flailing legs and whistled away, and then she was in, falling to the gun deck only two feet below the edge of the gun port.

She pulled herself to her feet, with Molly’s help, and looked around. Flames everywhere, climbing up the sides of the casemate, roaring up through the hatches from the engine room below. Thick black smoke rolled in clouds along the overhead, was sucked out through the hatches above. The sound was nearly deafening. She felt as if her skin would blister in the heat. There was no chance that fire would be put out by Roger Newcomb acting on his own-but that truth would make no difference to him.

They were trapped on the burning ship, Newcomb, armed, furious, just behind them. He might die trying to save Merrimack, but he would see they went with him.

“God forgive me, Aunt, I’ve killed us both!” Wendy shouted above the flames.

Molly shook her head. A sharp roar like an explosion filled the casemate, made the deck shudder underfoot, and Wendy was certain the ship was blowing up. A scream built in her throat and she stifled it. Halfway down the gun deck, one of the big guns, engulfed in flame, leaped back as if trying to escape, half-flew across the deck, slammed with a clanging sound into the gun opposite, tilted, and fell with a crash that shook the deck again.

Fire made it go off, Wendy imagined. Breech ropes burned through.

“We have to hide!” Molly shouted.

Wendy nodded. To their right and above their heads was a semi-enclosed platform, a ladder leading up. “There!” Wendy shouted. They raced to the ladder, took the steps fast, tumbled onto the small deck, dark and smoke-filled.

It was the pilothouse. They could see the flames playing off the spokes of the wheel, the smoke being sucked out of the narrow view slits. On hands and knees they crawled to the forward corner and huddled against the ship’s side, lost in the shadows forward of the wheel box.

It was less than a minute later when they saw Newcomb.

From where they hid they could look right down the companionway of the pilothouse to the burning gun deck below. They saw Newcomb move past, slowly, pistol in front of him. A hunter. He was looking everywhere, stepping aft, peering into the few places where the ship was not engulfed in flame. They saw him double over as he coughed, put a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, push on. They pressed themselves against the side of the ship, sat silent. He could not go too far aft. The flames would stop him, and he would know they could not have gone there either. He would be back.

Thirty seconds, an excruciating, breathless thirty seconds, and they saw him again, stumbling forward, retching from the smoke. But still alert, still looking. He stopped, a few paces away. His eyes moved up the ladder, until he was looking at them, looking directly at them, as if he were engaging them in conversation. But there was no recognition on his face, nothing to indicate he had seen them. They were hidden in the shadows, partially obscured by the wheel box, invisible to eyes that had lost their sensitivity to the dark in the glare of the flames.

Newcomb stepped toward the ladder, slow and cautious. The pilothouse was an obvious choice for a hiding spot. There were not many options.

He reached the ladder and took a step up, then another, gun ready, hammer back. His eyes, his wild eyes, were everywhere. He would see them in a second, there was no way he could not, not from so close up. They were trapped. They would soon be dead.

Another step, and his chest was level with the deck of the pilothouse. His head was thrust forward, as if that would help him see. He scanned the space, beginning at the side opposite where the women were hiding, running his eyes slowly around the small stage.

Behind him, another gun discharged, a huge sound echoing around the interior, deafening even over the roar of the flames. The vessel shook as if it had been struck.

Newcomb wheeled around in surprise, twisted on the ladder to see aft.

With a flurry of skirts, a shriek like a banshee, Molly launched herself off the side of the ship and flew across the deck at New-comb, so suddenly Wendy shouted in surprise.

Newcomb swung around, fired the gun, and Molly hit him square in the chest. The two of them flew down the ladder in a wild, chaotic tumble to the deck below.

Wendy leaped to her feet, raced for the ladder, all but jumped down to the gun deck. Newcomb was pulling himself away, trying to disengage himself from Molly, who was slashing at him with clawed hands, cursing and screaming, out of her mind with rage. Five feet from his right hand, the pistol lay on the deck.

“Oh!” Wendy shouted, ran for the gun. Newcomb cocked a leg, kicked Molly hard, knocked her free, lunged for the pistol. The smoke was coming thicker now, a dark cloud filling the forward end of the casement, obscuring objects even close up.

Wendy fell to her knees, grabbed at the gun, but Newcomb got there first. His hand wrapped around the butt, he swung the weapon around at Wendy’s face. Wendy grabbed the barrel and shoved it away as he pulled the trigger.

The pistol fired six inches from her head. The barrel jerked from her fingers, the sound of the shot like a hammer blow, the bullet loud in her ear as it flew past. Newcomb’s crazy eyes were a foot from hers. She screamed, raked his face, slashed at his eyes with her nails, slashed him again. He shrieked, rolled away, the gun still in his hand.

Wendy pushed herself up. Molly was standing, heaving for breath. Her left arm was hanging limp, blood running down her fingers, soaking the torn sleeve of her dress. She kicked Newcomb hard in the head, kicked him again.

Wendy grabbed her good arm, pulled her back, even as she was lashing out with her foot again, shouted, “Go!” She pointed toward the gun port through which they had come. They had to get out. The ship was a death trap. Fire or bullet, they would die by one. “Go! I’m right behind!”

Molly nodded, raced for the gun port. Newcomb was sitting up, blinking sight back into his eyes, looking around, pushing himself to his feet. Wendy raced after her aunt. The smoke roiled around them. Molly put a leg out the gun port, grabbed the sill with her uninjured arm, swung herself out of the casement.

“No, no, you bitch!” Newcomb roared. He was twenty feet aft, barely visible through the smoke, on his feet, stumbling forward. Wendy backed away, ducked under the pilothouse platform. Too late, she could not get out of the gun port without him seeing her. He would shoot her dead as she tried.

Newcomb limped, cursed, staggered forward, the gun in his hand. Wendy pressed back into the shadows. Dear God, did he see me? She was cornered now, she was dead if Newcomb had seen her crawl into that narrow space.

He staggered past, heading for the gun port, following Molly, thinking perhaps that Wendy had gone first. He fired the pistol, put a bullet right through the open gun port, shouted a stream of profanities.

He reached the open port, swung a leg through, straddling the opening, peering out. He reached up and grabbed the sill and began to hoist himself through. Halfway in, halfway out, and that was when Wendy saw the shutter’s lever.

Oh God, oh God… She flew out of her hiding place, her eyes locked on the lever, her teeth clenched, waiting for the bullet. Five feet, four feet, three feet, her hands stretched out in front of her, she saw in the corner of her eye Newcomb turn, Newcomb scream, Newcomb raise the gun and fire. Felt the bullet pluck her skirt, and then her hands were on the lever and pulling.

For a second it would not budge and she heard Newcomb scream “No!” and heard the click of the hammer and saw him try to claw his way back in, and then the lever was free in her hands, no resistance. The chain flew through the hole with a wild rattling sound and the heavy shutters swung down and caught Roger New-comb half in, half out, hundreds of pounds of iron jaws swinging on a single pivot; it caught him there and held him as surely as the hand of God.

The pistol fired, the bullet thumping into the deck. Wendy twisted sideways, waiting for the next shot that would kill her, praying that Newcomb was dead.

He was not. Newcomb’s head, shoulder, and gun hand were inside the casement, his left hand and leg outside, the shutter pinning him vertically by the chest. The gun was on the deck where he had dropped it and he was flailing wildly around, his hand slamming against the shutter and grabbing at the edge and trying to pry it away. But the iron shield was built to resist the impact of solid shot at point-blank range, and there was no chance at all that he would move it.

Wendy backed away, eyes on the struggling man, just as New-comb seemed to notice her. He looked up with bulging eyes, gaping mouth. Wendy wondered if he was being slowly crushed to death, like some barbaric death sentence from another age.

His eyes met hers, and she could see they were wild with pain and fear and fury. He reached out a hand to her, fingers spread, but whether he was looking for help or hoping to get hold of her, to take her to hell with him, she could not tell.

She pressed her hands over her face, overwhelmed by the horror of the scene. She thought of picking up the gun, finishing him off, more for mercy than vengeance, but she knew she could not do that. Without rage or fear to drive her, she could not shoot a human being.

She stepped sideways, past Newcomb, five feet away, but she could not take her eyes from his, she was transfixed by those mad eyes. They were staring at her but they were seeing the face of certain death. He stretched his hand farther toward her. She sobbed, made a choking sound.

When Newcomb’s voice came, it was strangled and cracked. “Help me,” he said. A trickle of blood came out of the corner of his mouth.

“Oh, God!” Wendy cried, turned her back on the man, and fled. She ran across the deck, past the pilothouse ladder. She fell, felt the pain shoot through her arms as her damaged hands hit the deck, pushed herself right to her feet with hardly a break in her momentum. The smoke was thick and black and choking, she could hardly breathe, her eyes were streaming with tears from the acrid smoke and the horror of what she had just witnessed.

She was becoming disoriented. She stopped. Left or right? She had to get out of the casemate before the smoke overwhelmed her. She could feel her head growing light. She was getting dizzy. Her throat ached from coughing and she had no idea, left or right.

She turned right for no reason at all, other than that she had to turn in one direction. She stumbled forward, through the blackness. Her legs were shaking. She wanted to fall down. But she could see something in front of her, something moving, ghostlike in the smoke.

“Wendy! Wendy!” It was Molly, her voice like a dream. “Wendy, here!” She could see her aunt’s arms waving, her face just visible in the smoke-filled place. Wendy stumbled on, felt Molly’s hands on her, pulling her. The smoke seemed even thicker there, and she realized Molly was outside, standing on the bulwark, half in the gun port, and the smoke was getting sucked out around her.

“Come, dear, right out here!” Molly shouted, and Wendy put a leg through the gun port, grabbed the sill overhead, swung the other out. Molly leaped out of the way and Wendy slid down the side of the casement, slid just a few feet until her feet hit the top of the V-shaped bulwark. She felt herself stagger, thought she would fall, tried to recall what was below her. Then Molly’s strong hands were on her arm, pulling her, and she fell inboard, onto the foredeck inside the bulwark.

She landed in a heap and lay there, breathing the air, blessed fresh air, as the smoke rolled away overhead.

She heard Molly’s voice in her ear. “Newcomb?”

Wendy shook her head. It was a few seconds before she could speak. “Done for,” she said.

Molly let her lie still for a minute more, then said, “We have to go. It’s not safe here.” She helped Wendy to her feet, but Wendy was feeling stronger, the fresh air revitalizing her. Together they climbed over the bulwark and down into the boat, which thankfully Newcomb had tied alongside. They cast off. Wendy set the sail.

Toward the after end of the ship, another cannon discharged, blasting a column of flame over the water.

“We should land where the ship’s crew landed, over there.” Wendy pointed toward the dark shoreline.

“Wait,” Molly said. “I have to know about Newcomb.”

“He’s dead. He was caught by the shutters on the gun port.” Wendy did not describe that final, hellish scene. She tried to exorcize it from her mind, but it would not go.

“We thought he was dead before, and he lived,” Molly said with a finality in her voice that Wendy had not heard in some time. “So this time we wait, until we are certain.”

Wendy sailed the boat around the burning ironclad. Port and starboard, guns went off, the shells screaming by overhead.

At last they could see Newcomb’s arm and leg hanging out the gun port. They were not moving, and Wendy hoped that he was dead, hoped he had died quickly. For their sake she hoped he was dead. And for his, because she did not want to think of what he would be suffering if the fire were reaching him now. She did not need that on her soul.

They stood toward the shore, getting some distance from the ship, then Wendy hove the boat to, the way she had seen it done. They stayed more or less in place, watching the ship burn. Three more guns fired, and then no more. Flames were reaching out of the gun ports, licking up the side of the casement, making the outline of the ship quite visible in the dark.

Then Wendy realized that it was not so dark. The sun was coming up in the east, a thin line of gray sky on the far horizon. A new day, and they were still alive.

“Very well,” Molly said, breaking the long silence. “I am satisfied that Newcomb is dead.”

Wendy put the tiller over and the boat began to move. She headed toward shore, and in the gathering gray light could see the landing where the crew of the Virginia had set foot on shore, a weary old wooden dock leading up to the bitter end of sandy road.

Wendy brought the boat alongside and Molly tied the painter to a piling. They climbed up a slick wooden ladder to the dock. Silent, they turned and looked across the water at the burning ironclad. Acting Master Roger Newcomb’s funeral pyre.

“Bastard,” Molly muttered. “I wish I had killed him myself.”

And then the CSS Virginia exploded. The top of the casemate seemed to lift right up, as if a massive creature made of red and orange and yellow flame were standing up inside, tearing it apart as it stood. Black shards of iron and the long guns like exclamation points lifted up, up into the dawn sky. The entire explosion-the light, the noise, the concussion-was so massive that it melded all into one overwhelming sensation, hurling itself at the women standing dumbfounded on the dock.

They looked with wide eyes and open mouths, and then the shock wave rolled over them and knocked them clean off their feet, tossing them to the ground like children’s dolls. They clutched the dirt for protection and felt the earth tremble, and that was the most frightening thing, feeling the only thing in life that is absolutely immovable quivering as if it had no substance at all.

They did not move. The explosion at the shipyard had been a nightmare, but it was a minor affair compared to this Armageddon. Wendy could feel the impact of ironclad parts falling around them. She pictured the huge sections of iron plate, the guns and carriages and shot and massive wooden beams hurling through the air and she wondered if any would drop on them, if Roger New-comb had killed them after all.

When it was quiet they looked up. The sky was lighter overhead. Massive sections of casemate lay smoldering all around them. A falling cannon had shattered a small oak near the side of the road.

They got to their knees and then to their feet. The Virginia was a low dark spot on the water, still burning, like a barge on fire. The casemate was gone, the decks were gone, everything that had made her the invincible ship she was had been blown to the heavens, and now the parts that had once been the USS Merrimack, the hull and machinery that had lived already through one sinking and burning, were dying their final death.

The Virginia no longer existed.

Molly nodded. “Now I am very satisfied that Newcomb is dead.”

The women turned and headed up the road. Behind them, the sun broke the horizon, sent its orange light down the road at their feet, threw long shadows ahead of them. A new day. They headed for Richmond.