He tried to divine motives. Were they hiding her from the Yankees? Springing some trap? If so, he had to find out.
The significance dawned on him slowly. This was important, damned important, perhaps the most important bit of information in the whole theater of operations. The Union forces, army, navy, everyone in Washington, all of them were more worried about Merrimack than they were about all the other Confederate military forces in southern Virginia combined. McClellan had almost canceled his Peninsular campaign for fear of that one ship.
And here he was, Roger Newcomb, the only man in all the Union who knew for certain where the Merrimack was. If they were going to make him a captain for bringing in the two bitch assassins, what would they do when he also brought them word of the trap Merrimack was waiting to spring?
She was south of him now, and soon she would be lost from sight on the dark river, and he could not let that happen. He had to tail her, dog her, know where she went. The Union Navy would be there soon, and he would report from his secret mission with two dangerous assassins as prisoners, and the most crucial military information imaginable, all in his possession.
He put the telescope back in the haversack and raced up the beaten path. He felt as if he had been born again.
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 W
endy 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.
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