Blood Moon (7 page)

Margaret sighed. “I’ll miss you too, dear, but I’m tired of Portsmouth and the nasty people who are saying terrible things about you. I did hope that you would decide to come with me. I suppose I’ll just have to go to all the balls and parties on my own. Portsmouth will be deserted, apart from women and a scattering of old men, but Richmond is a different kettle of fish.”

“If I did come with you, where would we live, Margaret? If I get Pa’s permission, he’ll insist I live in the best house or the best hotel in the city. I would want everyone to know I’m rich. After all, it’s not like I can’t afford to treat myself.”

“I agree with you there. You should take your money and enjoy it – you should buy a whole new wardrobe of clothes and then you’ll have men hanging on to your skirts for dear life. So you’ll think about it?”

“I believe I will, Margaret. As you so rightly said, I won’t have many attractive opportunities in Portsmouth, and I’m sure Ma and Pa won’t mind as long as I’m with you. Why, before I know it, I’ll be old and then no man will want to marry me.”

Chapter Eight

The graveyard, which sat on a hill at the edge of the town’s perimeter, was bathed in a soft spring morning glow. The dew twinkled like diamonds on damp grass and wet the mourners’ bare ankles and dress hems as they came to stand around the newly dug hole.

Mercy stood at the graveside with head bowed beside Charlie, standing rigidly to attention and steadfast in his resolve not to shed tears.

She watched him place a small bunch of Virginia bluebells on top of Lina’s coffin. He kissed the wooden lid and stepped back to watch it being lowered into the ground. He had barely spoken to her since her return yesterday morning with Lina’s body, but she surmised that his stoic silence was but a mask to hide his pain. Mercy sensed his desolation, but he would not speak of it. She had seen his eyes lose all light on her return and had done her best to give an honest account of all that had happened, but Charlie could not comprehend Lina’s murder. The blame for Lina’s death was hers, she’d told him, describing the moments before Lina died. She had drawn her Colt and had aimed it. She had wanted to save Lina and Seth, but she had hesitated to pull the trigger, and by the time she did, Lina was dead.

She pleaded with Charlie to say the words that would either vindicate or condemn her actions, for blaming her, she’d told him, would be better than his wall of morbid silence. She spoke of Lina’s bravery, of her desire to help Seth right to the bitter end, but Charlie remained voiceless, unable or unwilling to give her the peace of mind Mercy craved.

She thought back to the night she, Lina, and Seth left Charlie standing in the street, watching the wagon drive away. She had seen his fear and torment, not wanting Lina to go yet not able to stop her. It was as though a voice somewhere in the depths of his soul had already told him that he would never see his beloved Lina again. She recalled his last words to his wife: “I love you.” Mercy had witnessed the truth in those words many times, for they were clear to see in everything Charlie did or said when he’d been with Lina. That night, however, was the first time she’d actually heard him say those three short words aloud.   

Only a small group of mourners had accompanied Lina to her final resting place. The town was almost deserted. All the townsfolk suspected that the Yankees, as everyone called them, were going to occupy Newport News. The woods and waters would soon echo with the tramping of boots along the great Warwick Road, they had all agreed.

Charlie was leaving the moment Lina was laid in the earth. He was going to the cabin – alone. He said he did not want company. He would not return until Northern boots left Southern ground, Mercy had overheard him say to the captain who had helped Nelson escape. She would not argue with Charlie on this occasion. She was leaving too, to Norfolk and Jacob. He was her home, her compass, and she should have gone with him when he’d asked her to.

Mercy had quickly read the letter brought to her by courier this morning. In it, Jacob had given her many reasons to leave this place, and she had finally agreed with him.

Lina had gone forever, and her arguments for remaining here were no longer valid, which she had already decided before receiving his missive. She did not want to be divided from Jacob by an occupying army for an indefinite period. She had come to realise that life was a vulnerable state in which all things should be enjoyed and savoured before death robbed a body of consciousness. She would go with the courier to Jack’s wife, Dolly, as Jacob requested, and she would remain there for the foreseeable future. She would not disappoint Jacob again with misfortunes brought about by her own hand, not after witnessing Charlie’s sorrow.

Mercy stood by the wagon as Charlie loaded the back of it with the rest of his belongings. He had a glum expression, and his eyes were dulled with pain. She checked the horses’ harnesses and then placed her hand on Charlie’s arm. She looked deep into his eyes and recoiled at the accusations she saw there. He was not going to forgive her. Her truthfulness had come from a genuine attempt to give him understanding, yet it had also condemned her as a coward. She waited patiently for him to speak, to say something that would give her heart some tranquillity.

Charlie stepped up and into the driver’s seat. He looked down at her tear-stained face and shook his head with a miserable sigh. “Mercy, I just don’t know what to say to you, girl. My Lina was as stubborn as a mule and could kick like one too. I loved her, but I’m so damn angry with her. You were with her when she drew her last breath, and it should have been me. You saw her eyes looking at you just before she closed them forever, when they should have been seeing me – I’ve no doubt you gave her comfort in those last moments, but I can find no ease in any of this. You’re the best damn shot I know, man or woman, yet when it came for the moment to deliver, you let my Lina down …”

“I’m so sorry, Charlie …”

“No, you will not speak. I’m going to give you some advice because you were as close to my Lina as it gets. You need to hear what I have to say and recall that I said it. If you ever have call to draw that gun on someone again, you make damn sure you fire it without hesitating. I lost my Corslina, and I ain’t gonna lose you too! I love you, girl, I do, but damn it, Mercy, I can’t give you the comfort you need. You’ll have to get it from Jacob.”

As Charlie’s arm reached down to stroke her face, he noticed that her eyes were swollen. He doubted she’d slept in days. His heart went out to her as she stood with trembling lips. He couldn’t leave her like this when he figured he might never see her again. He had not meant to be cruel; she was not to blame for Lina’s death. But he believed she had needed his opinion, for she was not the kind of woman who would sit still in someone’s house ignoring a war. He had come to know her – she was impetuous and fearless, and she would throw herself into another dangerous cause because that’s who she was. She would draw her gun again, and he had wanted to drill into her that she might have to fire the damn weapon to save her life.

His days would be over soon. His life’s blood would ebb away with sorrow and emptiness, and he’d be glad to see his end. He looked once more into Mercy’s face and smiled for the first time. “Get on your way to that man of yours. He loves you as much – every bit as much – as I loved my Lina, and that’s saying something.”

            “Will I see you again?” Mercy asked.

              “No, my sweet Mercy, you will not. This is a parting of the ways for us, but don’t you worry none about me. I’ve got my bears and my rabbits, and I’ll be just fine. You’ll always be in my thoughts, and I don’t mind tellin’ you I’ll miss you. Now let me go. You make a good life for yourself, Mercy Carver. You hold on to Jacob and don’t let anything or anyone come between you two.”

Chapter Nine

June 1861

Isaac Bernstein stood on the highest part of Fort Monroe’s stone wall, which had been designed and built with the purpose of repelling heavy attacks from a foreign foe. For 250 years, a fort had stood at the edge of the causeway. The first stronghold, Fort Algernourne, was erected in 1609 by British colonists and had served them for three years, before it burnt to the ground. This had always been a highly strategic position, no matter who had held it in the past, the commanding officer had told Isaac during his history lesson. Forts had come and gone on this very spot. They had been given various names. Some had been besieged, and the site had welcomed the Bantus, the first black people to set foot on American soil from Angola, Africa.

Isaac thought it a cruel irony that the foe on this particular occasion were his own countrymen, blatantly turning their backs on the United States and all they stood for, but he was not surprised that verbal conflict had turned to war or that he was once again in Virginia.

On his return to Boston in February, he resumed his surgical career under his father’s tutelage, with the aim of becoming a bone specialist. However, the threat of war had grown louder in March, and by the time Fort Sumter surrendered to the rebels, he had already enlisted in the army.

Being an army surgeon meant that he would not be asked to attend strategic meetings, nor would he fight unless, God forbid, he was called upon to do so in extenuating circumstances. But after being ordered to Virginia, his first objective had been to find out all he could about the long-term goals of the federal government.

It had not been easy to come by classified information, but thanks to his father, a noted surgeon who had treated the North’s elite for years, he had managed to ascertain the nature of certain military proposals made by General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, one of his father’s old acquaintances.

Scott’s plan had been put forward to President Lincoln and entailed bringing the states back into the Union by cutting the Confederacy off from the rest of the world. This, Scott stated, would be a more cohesive strategy than attacking its army in Virginia. His plans had already been executed and involved a blockade of the Confederacy’s coastline, using navy and troops from Fort Monroe to control the Mississippi River with gunboats. This blockade had now been joined by two more: the southern seaboard from the South Carolina line to the Rio Grande, Virginia, and North Carolina coasts.

Isaac looked out towards the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and the James River, bordered by Portsmouth and Norfolk to the south. His emotions were entangled in a bittersweet conflict, for he supposed he should be remembering five years’ worth of good memories here instead of focusing on a petty squabble on Portsmouth’s railway station platform with Jacob.

That day still lay heavy on his heart. Jacob had been one of the closest friends he’d ever had, yet their parting had been filled with veiled accusations, envy, and bitterness, which had resulted in a staid and indifferent farewell between them. Were he able to, he would turn the clock back and apologise for his crass behaviour and jealous rhetoric, which had involved a woman who had not been his to begin with. However, saying these words to Jacob would not change the way he felt about her.

He thought about Mercy often. His feelings for her were not those of an infatuated boy blinded by a comely form. No, he loved her with the heart of a man, suspecting that his affections had been and always would be unrequited, but at the same time allowing his eternal optimism to deem that after months apart, Mercy would have come to recognise the futility of her love for a married man.

He wished for an opportunity to apologise to Jacob for so many things. He would give anything to cross the river and correct his bullish conduct, which had turned a friend into an enemy and trust into suspicion. He wondered, as he stared at the James River, what Jacob and Hendry were doing right now. Were they looking across the water at this fort?  It was the incumbent North’s final bastion, standing alone at the enemy’s gates. Were they already on the march, slowly edging their way towards these walls in an attempt to drive the Union northwards? 

He turned and looked downwards at the open parade ground sitting in the centre of a maze of buildings and filling up with reinforcements and supplies. He’d arrived only yesterday, following behind two trained Massachusetts volunteer militia infantry regiments, yet work was already under way to fortify the fort’s defences.

He shifted his gaze to the land. General Benjamin F. Butler, the fort’s commander, had ordered the men to dig trenches – long lines of them stretching from one side of the narrow causeway to the other. Two cannons sat at each end of the narrow strip of land facing eastwards towards Newport News, some eight miles away, and the town of Hampton, which was on their doorstep. He was not privy to all the officers’ meetings but he had been informed that the towns would be occupied within days and that this, for the moment, would be their land grip on the Virginia Peninsula.

He walked down the stone stairs to the level below and then climbed down the ladder to ground level. His man was there waiting for him. He smiled. Everywhere he turned, Nelson was standing to attention, ready to serve and please him. “Nelson, I want you to make sure that my uniform is ready for dinner tonight,” Isaac said. “I’d like to make a good impression on the other officers. I’m going to be here for quite a while and can’t have them thinking I’m green about the ears.”

“Yes, sir, Mr Isaac. I make sure you look like a fittin’ soldier.”

Nelson heard the snap of a gun being fired and spun his head to the left and then to the right of him. He was uneasy in his new surroundings. For starters, there were too many white folks with guns, he thought. He had struggled long and hard to get to Boston in search of a new life, a peaceful life, where his skin colour would not determine who he was or what he was capable of doing. He thought about his journey to Boston a lot, and every time he recalled it, he shuddered with fear.

Bandits had stopped him. They had taken some of his money but not all, thanks to Miss Mercy, who had advised him to keep most of his money in his socks. The bandits had punched him in the face. After kicking him in the ribs, they had left him on the ground hugging his belly; that had been his first taste of freedom. Later he’d been questioned by white folks who had insisted on seeing his freedom papers. Had he not been in a public place, he felt sure that they would have hauled him away to a slave auction back in the South. He was thrown off a carriage, even though the driver agreed to take him and his money. He was refused bed and board on three occasions and had slept in fields and empty barns, feeling like a slave on the run once again.

He had concluded that freedom was a wonderful notion but at times a theory, absent of reality. He also thought that being alone and having to fend for himself was not the great adventure he had hoped for but was instead a daily struggle to stay alive and safe.

“It don’t seem right, me being back here, Mr Isaac, on account of me bein’ a free man. But you can count on ole Nelson,” he said, mulling his thoughts aloud.

“I didn’t think I would be back here so soon either, Nelson,” Isaac said, smiling at him. “I guess we can thank the Virginians for this situation of ours. Tell me honestly – are you afraid? Do you wish you had stayed in Boston with my father?”

“No, sir, Mr Isaac. I’s right where I’s meant to be. Miss Mercy done tol’ me you were a good man – she done tol’ me an’ tol’ me. Said I be in good hands, and I sure am. You done let me see the white folks’ world. I got to eat in a restaurant. You done give me a job, and I done got dollars. I done walked down a street beside you, and some white folks even called me Mr Stuart. I done got to make a decision for the very first time, and I’s real proud to be with you here, Mr Isaac. Yes, sir, I reckon I ain’t never been no prouder.”

The two men walked towards the infirmary, which sat in a block behind the row of buildings overlooking the parade ground. Isaac looked at its shabby facade, engrained with dirt and eroded by sea salt. It was lined with small windows and framed with cracked wood holding panes of dirty glass. He was going to be here for the foreseeable future, he thought, and the first thing he’d see to was the infirmary’s cleanliness.

“We have a lot of work to do, Nelson,” Isaac said. “If I’m to be the fort’s surgeon, I’m going to make damn sure this place is cleaned properly. It was a good day indeed when you arrived at my doorstep, but
you
might not think so now. You’re going to be working harder than you ever did in the cotton fields, and I’m sorry about that.” Nelson’s arrival in Boston at the end of April had been a joyful day for him. He had read Mercy’s letter more times than he could count since then. It sat inside the cover of his Bible, one of his most treasured possessions, and he brought it out at least once a day, a reminder that Mercy was alive and well.

Isaac looked at Nelson’s black face, grinning with the elation of freedom still new to him. He envied Nelson. He’d been fortunate to come to know Mercy better than he had or Jacob had. Nelson had spent months with her, surviving, laughing, crying, and sleeping beside her. On that journey, they had shared experiences that he would never have. As he walked to his office, he realised that he begrudged Nelson and Mercy’s relationship. He had learned that Mercy was alive and well, and that should have been enough to satisfy him, yet proof of life was not enough to satisfy his incessant craving for her nor dampen his resolve to possess her, body and soul.

“Nelson, where do you think Miss Mercy is right now?” he asked. “Do you believe she might still be in Newport News?”

“I don’ reckon I know, Mr Isaac. She talked all day long ’bout getting back to the man she left behind. I done told her that she should forget him, on account of him being married, but she just say they meant to be together. Now, Mr Charlie done tell Miss Mercy to stay away from that Mr Jacob Stone, but Miss Mercy say she love him and he should know better.”

Isaac smiled to mask his disappointment. “Know better about what?”

“I dunno – about love, I reckon. Love sure must be a powerful thing, the way Miss Mercy be goin’ on about it.”

“It is, Nelson, and when you have it, it’s not easy to give up. I believe it may be a cursed pursuit for some folks.”

Nelson didn’t know any more about Mercy’s whereabouts than he, Isaac, did. There was still a sliver of hope that she had decided against going back to Jacob, he thought. He would cling to that hope.

“Nelson, I have paperwork to be getting on with. You best get on with cleaning those rooms, like we talked about, and, Nelson, if a soldier stops you and asks what you are doing and where you’re going, you tell them that you are a free man and that you are Major Bernstein’s orderly. You understand?”