“I can’t…. ”
“You will, soldier!” Quint shouted as he placed a stony face close to the terrified private’s. He couldn’t allow Medfield to see any warmth or uncertainty. “It’s going to hurt like hell, but you will move your goddamn feet!”
Quint reloaded one Colt and shoved the other into his waistband. He slid an arm around a suddenly less tearful private and looked into the young man’s pale blue eyes. Eyes too young and innocent to see what they had seen today. Eyes that looked to his lieutenant to save him, to take care of him.
“Ready, soldier?” Quint felt a tightening in the pit of his belly. The attempt to rescue the private had been helpless, hopeless, but he could no sooner leave the boy there to be slaughtered or captured than he could shoot one of his own men.
They burst from the shelter of the dead horse, Quint’s right side facing the fire that increased as he ran, practically dragging the wounded private as the young man attempted to move his legs. Quint raised his arm and fired aimlessly toward the invisible enemy, the Colt so natural in his hand that it felt like an extension of his arm.
He felt the sharp sting in his arm and dropped the pistol. Twenty more feet to go. He heard Medfield gasp in surprise and knew that somehow, even though the private was almost completely shielded by Quint’s body, he had been hit again. Just a few more steps. Medfield was almost a dead weight, though Quint could hear the young man breathing raggedly.
The ball ripped into Quint’s leg when he thought they were finally safe, tearing into his thigh and forcing him over the barricade in an awkward tumble. Medfield went first, and together they landed almost on top of the waiting soldiers.
“Lieutenant Tyler?” Candell hovered over him, panic in his voice as he gripped Quint’s arm and leaned close to see if a breath stirred. A constant exchange of gunfire kept the Rebs at bay, though for how much longer no one could say.
Quint forced his eyes open, pushing away the comfort of darkness that threatened. The wound in his arm was little more than a scratch, but he recognized that the injury to his right thigh could be deadly. The wound was bleeding freely, and the ball was buried deep. He forced himself into a crouching position, with Candell’s help, putting all of his weight on his left leg. Immediately his eyes fell on Medfield’s body, that lifeless form not three feet away. The second ball had entered the private’s back, and the farm boy was dead.
Quint closed his eyes and breathed a curse. All for nothing. But he had no time for recriminations, no time to wonder if there might have been another way.
“Let’s go, Candell.”
Two men carried Medfield’s body, sharing the weight between them, and Candell placed a supporting arm around Quint.
Quint wanted to drop to the ground and let the darkness overtake him. He wanted to cry and scream for the boy who had died. But he showed no outward sign of giving in to either impulse. It was up to him to see that these boys survived another day.
He ordered the soldiers who continued to fire on the Rebs to retreat, and he and Candell brought up the rear, disappearing through the brush like pale, silent ghosts.
Quint sat up in the hospital bed, a place he had come to hate in the past weeks. He was in a large room full of hospital beds, a place where men died in the night and screamed in pain when there wasn’t enough morphine. And this place was paradise compared to the field hospital.
He flexed his left leg, then his injured right leg. The pain shot through him like another bullet.
He was lucky to have his leg, and he knew that, though the knowledge did nothing to ease his mental anguish. It had been days after the skirmish before he’d heard the story, days he’d spent in a dark limbo. Weak from loss of blood, he’d passed out, and his unit had taken him to the field hospital. There they had gathered around him and shielded him from the surgeon who had decided that it would be simplest and safest to saw off the injured leg. Gangrene could set in. Death would follow. The lieutenant would be grateful to have his life. The surgeon’s arguments had been delivered in a tired and lifeless voice, Candell had later told Quint. Surrounded by soldiers whose limbs had been cut away, Candell and the rest of the unit would not be swayed.
Even when they were threatened with severe discipline, the men had stood by him, and a colonel who had been called in to handle the situation was so impressed by their loyalty, and their story of his failed attempt to save Louis Medfield, that he’d sided with them, and Quint’s leg was saved.
General Burnside’s personal physician had seen to Quint that first week, at the Colonel’s request, removing the ball that was buried deep in his thigh. And then Quint had been sent to this place.
He had his leg, but the physicians assured him that the damage was severe. And permanent. He would regain the use of his leg, but he would always have a limp. Possibly a debilitating one. The wound in his arm wouldn’t have kept him away from his unit for even a day. He could have cleaned it and wrapped it himself and continued on. But the leg… his thigh had been pierced by a minie ball, a soft lead slug one-half inch in diameter and one inch long. It expanded on impact, producing a severe injury. Only time would tell if he would ever be able to return to battle. It would be a long time, at any rate, and even then he might be forced to transfer to the cavalry. A foot soldier with a disability that slowed him down endangered not only his own life, but the lives of the men around him.
Quint had been told by the physician, a man with an incongruous smile on his face and dead gray eyes, that he could count himself lucky. In a few days he would be able to go home to recuperate. Every soldier’s dream.
But Quintin Tyler had no home to go to. He had left everything behind when he’d joined the Union Army. Everything. His family, his fiancée, his home. It was the latter that, surprisingly, he missed the most—the warm moist air, the towering oak trees, the big white house he had been born and raised in.
“Lieutenant Tyler.” He had even come to hate the sound of the ever-cheerful nurses’ voices. Wives and widows of servicemen, most of them, doing what they could. Deep down, he admired them for what they did. The hospital could be a hellish place, yet they held a trembling hand or penned a letter to a patient’s loved one without any visible reaction to the horror they saw every day. But he had seen their own hands tremble even as they smiled, and seen smiles fade as they turned from a dying man’s bed.
In spite of his admiration, it was a fact that he had always lacked patience, and being confined to the bed made his impatience worse. Much worse.
“You have a visitor.” The nurse, a pretty enough middle-aged woman with fair hair and honey-brown eyes, smiled. “Colonel Fairfax, Lieutenant Tyler is our most genial patient.” She continued to smile even as she told the blatant lie, casting a sideways glance at the scowling man on the bed. “He’s a delight to us all. I certainly hope you won’t be taking him from us any time soon. Why, he’s the sunshine of this ward.”
“Sarcasm is never appreciated in the medical profession, Mrs. Nelson,” Quint said in a low voice.
Colonel Fairfax ignored the exchange and stared at Quint intently, studying him, it seemed. Mrs. Nelson placed a chair at the colonel’s side, and pulled a curtain around the bed to give them some privacy from the other patients who watched openly.
“Lieutenant Tyler. Good to see you looking so fit.” The colonel sat languidly in the straight-backed chair.
“Thank you, sir.” Quint’s voice was as dark as ever, suspicious and low.
“Where are you from, son?” The colonel continued to watch as if judging, openly curious.
“Mississippi, sir.” Quint narrowed his eyes. What was this officer doing here? He’d never met Colonel Fairfax, and it certainly wasn’t a social call. Quint knew his military career was all but over. That was painfully clear to everyone.
“Yes.” The colonel nodded slightly. “I did wonder at the accent. To be honest, I have heard a good deal about you. The loyalty you instilled in your men is admirable, especially given that you’re a So
utherner. You were leading some of the greenest troops I’ve ever seen.”
Quint ignored the insult to his men, since the offhand comment was probably true. “There are a number of Southerners serving in the Union Army, sir.”
The colonel leaned forward, his eyes sharp and clear. “Why are you here, young man?”
Quint gave a short, derisive laugh. At thirty-two, he had ceased to think of himself as a young man. “That’s rather personal, sir.” A memory he had tried to bury flooded over him, as it sometimes did when he least expected it. Those unanticipated thoughts of Jonah always managed to surprise him.
“Your father is a planter, is he not?” the colonel pressed. “A slave owner?”
“If you knew that, then why did you bother to ask where I was from… sir?” The pause was just long enough to be a mild insult, but the colonel didn’t seem to mind.
“I just wanted to listen to you for a while. What you said is true. There are plenty of Southern boys in our army, each here for reasons of his own. A hatred for slavery, for the most part. But there are few Southerners of your… breeding… at our disposal.”
Quint gave the colonel a wry smile, and felt suddenly lighter. He’d never been one to resign himself easily to defeat, and the colonel’s words were oddly stimulating.
“Would you care to elaborate, sir?”
“The sooner we can stop supplies from reaching the Southern states, the sooner this damned war will be over.” The colonel’s easy manner was gone, and he was an officer again, giving instructions to an able soldier. “The blockade is successful in some areas, an abysmal failure in others. Those damn pilots can slip into the Cape Fear River almost at will. It’s a lucrative business for the captains of these ships. A business they’re not likely to give up easily.”
“What does that have to do with me, sir? I’m no sailor.” Quint’s earlier anger had faded, and he was listening with interest to what the colonel had to say. He didn’t understand it yet, but he knew there was a chance for him in it. A chance to continue his service in spite of the injury that had him bedridden.
Without the army, he was nothing, had nothing.
“The surgeons tell me you won’t be soldiering for a while. That’s a damn shame, a fine soldier like yourself. But you can still serve your country, Lieutenant Tyler. You can come to work for me and make a bigger difference than you ever dreamed.”
“How is that, sir?” Quint was sitting up straighter and taller than he had been when the colonel had arrived. There was a wicked bent, he knew, to the smile that touched his lips, and the pain in his leg had subsided. He was ready to do whatever Colonel Fairfax asked of him.
The colonel grinned, deepening the wrinkles around his eyes. The smile passed quickly.
“Lieutenant Tyler.” The colonel’s voice was lowered, and he leaned close to the bed. “Have you ever been to Nassau?”
Two
Lily stood at the bow of the ship, the wind in her hair, the spray on her face. She was clad in black trousers, a loose linen shirt, and black boots that came nearly to her knees. It was the garb she always wore aboard the Chameleon.
They were almost home, and as they approached the island of New Providence she felt her heart lift in eagerness. It was such a beautiful place. Nassau had truly become her haven, and now, after an exhausting run, she had a place she could truly call home. A house in that quaint town, bought with the profits from her second run.
The Chameleon was a successful blockade runner, an iron-hulled screw steamer, painted slate gray and riding low in the water. Slipping past the Union blockaders was a dangerous game, one that always made Lily’s heart beat faster, that always made her feel more alive than before. There was no more triumphant feeling than slipping past the Union ships, the crew silent, the throb of the engines muffled by the dank air and the waves crashing against the rocks as the Chameleon eased at a dead slow speed into the mouth of the Cape Fear River.
But it was more than a game. It was revenge. Revenge for her father’s death.
If Elliot hadn’t been so useless, Lily wouldn’t have felt compelled to act. But it had become a matter of family honor. Honor meant nothing to Elliot. He was perfectly content to wait out the war at the London gaming tables, dining with the elite Englishmen who sympathized with the Southerners’ cause.
So it was left to Lily. Elliot had been true to his word and had presented her with her inheritance once they were in London. She had been at a loss, not knowing what to do with the money. She wouldn’t ensconce herself in London with Elliot and pretend that the war was nothing more than a nuisance. But it would be foolish for her to return home alone.
Tommy had shown her what to do. Actually, they had developed the plan together as they sat at Tommy and Cora’s kitchen table, a pot of tea shared between them as Lily told Tommy of her father’s death. He was as outraged as she, and Lily cried for the first time since she’d left her home. She cried as if her heart were broken, finally finding someone who mourned her father as she did.
Tommy Gibbon was her father’s illegitimate half-brother, a fact that had been kept a deep, dark secret for many years. When James Radford discovered that he had a brother, he had approached the man himself, and James and Tommy had been close ever since. They didn’t see one another often, and of course Elliot had always been embarrassed by Tommy’s humble lifestyle. But Lily loved her uncle and his wife, the warm and pretty Cora. She saw in Tommy a bit of her father, though her uncle was rough around the edges, never having had the advantages his older brother had taken for granted.
It was not a good time for Tommy Gibbon when Lily found him in Liverpool. A sailor for most of his life, Tommy had fallen on hard times. He no longer wanted to stay away from his wife for weeks or even months, and the merchant ships he had served on were often at sea for that length of time. That hadn’t been a problem when he was a bachelor, but once he found Cora, he changed.
So Tommy started his own business, a small mercantile in Liverpool. In spite of his good intentions and hard work, the business failed. Tommy had sorely underestimated the fierceness of his competition and the large amount of funding it would take to sustain his young business.
He was about to join the merchant fleet again and to leave Cora behind. They had no children, much to their dismay, and he hated to leave Cora at home alone. And she hated to be left behind.
It was Tommy’s idea at first, though he quickly dismissed it as impractical. But a seed had been planted in Lily’s brain, and she refused to let it die. Together they had hammered out the details, and the very next day they’d found themselves at the shipyards. Lily’s inheritance was well spent.
When Elliot learned of her venture, he protested weakly, calling her plan insane, impossible, and improper. But in the end he had relented, as Lily had known he would. He couldn’t stop her, so he didn’t even make much of an effort.
Tommy had been a fine teacher, instructing her not only on how to operate her ship, but on how the engines worked and how to navigate using only the night sky as her guide. Lily was a quick study, and her love for the sea enhanced her ability to absorb what Tommy taught.
They’d made nearly a dozen runs since then, most of them uneventful, all of them extremely profitable. One summer night, they had been caught in a storm just hours from Nassau, but had managed to ride it out with no losses or injuries, and once they’d had to outrun a Union blockader off the coast of the Carolinas. A shot had been fired across the bow of the Chameleon before she disappeared into the fog, leaving the slower Union ship behind.
The Chameleon was not equipped with guns. Lily had no illusions about the dangers of her venture and had thought often of the possibility of capture. All of her crew were British, and if captured they would eventually be sent home. The British government would see to that. With no show of force from the Chameleon, she would be treated as the merchant ship she was.
As for Lily herself… there was a plan. A well thought-out plan for such a contingency.
/> The profits were made primarily on the luxury items that filled the cargo hold—and on the cotton that was carried out. The rest of the space was reserved for supplies for the Confederacy. Blankets, medicine, shoes, material for uniforms, Enfield rifles, gunpowder, cartridges, percussion caps….
“Cap’n?”
Lily turned and faced the young sailor who approached warily. “Aye?”
“The chief engineer says we’re goin’ to be needin’ coal before much longer.” The youth had a strong cockney accent, one Lily had become familiar with. “’E wants to know if we’re goin’ straight on to Cuba, or if…. ”
“There’s enough coal to get us to Nassau to unload this cotton first, before the Lady Anne sails for England, and to sail to Cuba to take on coal tomorrow.” Lily suppressed the urge to smile. She was always somewhat reserved around her crew, but had come to know them all well. Reggie Smythe was a damn fine engineer, but he always became testy toward the end of a run. And Lily couldn’t blame him. The engine room was an unbearably hot and uncomfortable place to spend the better part of a week.
“Aye, Cap’n.” The young sailor bowed slightly and turned away. It had taken him a while, as it had all of them, to accept Lily as their captain. She knew that very well. But they did accept her, each for his own reason. Every one of the crew helped to perpetuate the myth of the mysterious Captain Robert Sherwood as well. It had even become an enjoyable game for them.
Captain Sherwood had been Lily’s own invention, a fictional captain for the Chameleon. She was certain the idea of a woman captain would be too much for most people to accept, and too tempting to the Union blockaders. It was one thing to be bested by a legendary British captain, but quite another to be beaten by a woman. Lily was certain that the knowledge that she was captain of her own ship would cause the Union to single her out for capture, and she couldn’t do that to her crew.
But she looked forward to the day when she could let her adversaries know that it was she who had slipped past them in the night.
In Enemy Hands Page 2
