Five Belles to Hell

by Tony Masero

  She was there. Leaning over him. It was the angel again but now she was no longer in her heavenly robes. Now she wore a ribbon-tied bonnet and a buttoned high collared dress. She smelled of outdoors, a fresh brightness that seemed to go with her hurried motions. How could this be, he wondered? One minute she was an angelic visitation the next a common woman. It was all trickery imposed on him by the afterlife and he found it irritating.

  Her hand was on his face, gently cupping his cheek and she spoke.

  ‘There, my bold young fellow and how are you today?’

  It was clear and he understood her every word. The shock was enormous.

  ‘I… I… I…’ he mumbled incoherently.

  A broad grin spread on her face and her eyes sparkled delightedly, ‘Oh, praise the Lord, you are with us again.’

  He tried to rise but only suffered a mind-numbing burst of pain.

  ‘No, no,’ she admonished, pushing him down gently on the chest. ‘Not yet, my friend. Not yet.’

  ‘Whurr… urr…’ the words slurred from his mouth and he could make no sense with them, his lips would not obey his mind.

  ‘Steady,’ she said soothingly. ‘Here, a drink of water.’

  It was cool and dribbled from the corners of his disobedient lips and she dabbed him dry with a cloth.

  He tried again.

  ‘Hooo…. Rar… Oo?’

  She smiled benignly. ‘Me? I am Lizbette. And you must rest. It will come, be patient. I know it is hard but you are doing well. It will come,’ she repeats. ‘We feared you were lost to us but now you are here it is only time. I am so happy to see you.’

  Then she was gone again. The light had dimmed and he was left only with a name.

  Lizbette.

  A nice name for a pretty angel, he considered.

  He slept.

  She was washing him. He had soiled himself in the bed and she patiently leaned across with a bowl and cloth and wiped him clean.

  ‘There, there,’ she whispered. ‘Not to worry.’

  Her touch was caring and it was a pleasure to feel the motion across his body. He did not mind that he was naked before her. His body was a thing apart and did not belong to him. It was only a cradle of pain and Lizbette was the one saving grace in the befuddled world he occupied.

  ‘Wharr happen to meee?’

  The words came better as each day passed. And he could recognize days and nights now, the passage of time had become clearer.

  ‘You were wounded,’ she said with a tiny frown. ‘Quite badly, I’m afraid. They brought you into the sanatorium. It was luck really. Doctor Silver was with us then and he is an excellent surgeon. The soldiers who brought you in insisted he stay and treat you. The poor Doctor was all for running off what with the Union troops so near at hand but they were strong in their demands and he put you together again.’

  ‘Hoor long?’

  She bowed her head, her eyes reaching across and meeting his. ‘A long time. Almost six months that you have been away from us. Do you remember anything?’

  He shook his head awkwardly.

  ‘No. Not your name or anything?’ she asked.

  He shook his head ruefully again.

  ‘Never mind,’ she smiled. ‘You are alive and that is all that matters.’

  She dried him and covered him with clean bed sheets.

  ‘Will you take some broth now?’ she asked.

  He was hungry and he agreed with an eager nod.

  She was about to leave and as she rose he caught her small wrist in his hand. It was a reflexive move and he noticed obscurely how fast it was. She looked down at him, not pulling her hand away but curious.

  ‘Urr very kind,’ he muttered. ‘Thenk you.’

  Her smile was gentle and she tilted her head to one side as she looked at him and compressed her lips in gratitude.

  ‘You’re most welcome,’ she said as he released her.

  He was sitting alone on the cliff tops overlooking the broad river one day when it came back to him.

  Kirby Langstrom.

  That was his name and he was a spy.

  The knowledge was not a surprise and it sifted into his consciousness from where it had been lying just below the surface all along.

  There was not much else he recalled; only that he was spy for the Union. A fact that he considered was best kept to himself just now. Until he found out, that is, just what was happening in the greater world. For here in these deserted fisherman’s cottages that he and Lizbette occupied they live a world apart. There was something though about the cottages that jerked at his memory and the gentle water of the broad river and the ships that sailed upon it. He had been here before, he was sure of it. Down there at the jetty. He knew that place. There was a rowboat there once but it is gone now and the jetty was crumbling from lack of use.

  Kirby eased himself upright; using the wooden crutch Lizbette had supplied him with.

  He had taken four bullets he had been told.

  One in the leg, one in the side just under his ribs and another in the left shoulder. The final one that caused his loss of memory and placed him in a coma had barreled off his skull leaving a deep crease that cracked his skull and rattled his brain box. The one in the gut had been the worst by all accounts. The lucky thing had been that they were all clean shots, only the shoulder bullet had lodged whilst the others had passed clean through, the leg wound just missing his bone and saving him from losing the leg and a life on crutches. But he had lost a lot of blood when they had found him adrift in the small boat. The patrolling troops seeing him in his disguising Confederate uniform had carried him right away to the nearby tuberculosis clinic where Lizbette worked as a nurse.

  There, the bunch of husky Confederate skirmishers had insisted in no uncertain terms that the nervous surgeon do his level best to see their wounded companion was given the finest attention. Kirby was in gratitude to those fellows and hoped they never found out his true identity, for without their determination to save a fellow comrade he would not be alive today.

  Just how he found himself adrift and what his mission had been, Kirby could not recall. Bits and pieces came back to him, the name Pinkerton was often in his thoughts and a beautiful woman with electric blue eyes and gold/blond hair whose name he could not remember.

  He pondered over the few facts he had but found but in some way he was enjoying his ignorance. There was something liberating in starting afresh and the isolated life the two of them enjoyed here seemed only to enhance that sense of liberty.

  The tiny figure of Lizbette came into sight from the back door of the cottage and waved at him.

  Kirby was full of grateful adoration of her, without her tender attentions his recovery would have been nightmarish although why she attended him so closely was a mystery to him.

  As he hobbled over to meet her he noted how fair she was and her dainty frame pleased his eye, her fair hair tucked coiled under her bonnet and the pale blue of her cornflower colored eyes gave her a fragility that appealed to the wounded man. Or maybe it was just her kindness that struck into his heart.

  She would not talk of the war to him. Her memories were so bad of the night they had escaped to run before the rampaging Union troops who had smashed their way into the sanatorium and burnt it to the ground. It had been a terrifying experience and one that was imprinted indelibly in Lizbette’s mind like a savage scar.

  Eighteen months passed in their idyll and as another new year approached the two settled into a calm and companionable partnership. He was working his way through a slow recovery and often tempted providence by impatiently attempting to walk without the crutch long before he should. The eagerness Kirby felt in that respect bore no relationship to rediscovering his past, it was merely a physical activity he could grasp easily and was in opposition to the more profound psychological problems that the other posed. Besides, he was content. He had a pretty woman caring for him in a placid and trouble free environment and there seemed little incentive to reach in
to a murky and probably troublesome past.

  Lizbette for her part seemed equally at ease. Their relationship was a platonic one and nothing of an intimate nature had occurred between them. It was true that Kirby’s physical condition forbade any such activity but even so there was no desire on his part to spoil the comfortable environment or to offend his protector and savior.

  She cooked and cared for him, nursing his wounds when necessary and occasionally making her way into the nearby harbor town to shop for a few things, on other days she would resurrect the forgotten vegetable garden left by the previous fleeing residents. Kirby tried to help on such occasions but his wounds made bending difficult and painful and he proved to be of little help.

  The war raged on a safe distance and armies of either side did not trouble them, it appeared they had found an oasis of tranquility and peace in the midst of all the national insanity.

  There were two cottages on the hilltop with a pleasant view across to Yorktown Harbor and the distant hills on the opposite bank. The main cottage that they occupied was a small white painted two-story clapboard building with a brick chimney built on the landward side. The small upper attic rooms, where Lizbette stayed, were under the canted roof and sported two narrow framed windows at the rear and one at the front. Between this and the second smaller cottage, which was unoccupied and in a far worse state of repair, lay the vegetable garden surrounded by a rough wooden fence. There were a few outhouses and a smoke house, all of them under canted plank roofs. Behind the cottages, the land sloped upwards and was covered with brush that finally gave way to a forest. In all they were protected on one side by the woods and the other by the rugged cliffs and water and so they remained hidden from casual observation.

  On calm clear days it was a very pleasant spot to be, when weather came though they could be battered by winds and sheeting rain and it was then that they risked a fire as the smoke was soon dissipated.

  ‘Why is it you stay?’ he asked her one day whilst she crouched and weeded in the garden.

  She looked across at him and thought for a moment. ‘Because it pleases me to do so,’ was her simple answer.

  He suddenly realized he had never asked her personal questions before, taking her attentions without question at first in the midst of his sickness but then later, a fact that he felt some remorse over, she had become a companion that he had taken for granted, ‘You have no family?’

  She bent again to her weeds and shook her head negatively.

  ‘No husband or beau?’

  She looked up suddenly then at the sky above and he could see her clear blue eyes, as pale as the cloudless sky she looked at, and they were covered in a gloss of tears.

  ‘No more,’ she said.

  ‘Which was it, a husband or beau?’

  ‘A very special friend,’ she answered. ‘Once. It seems a long time ago now we shared time together. He was a poet, a man of letters. Not what you would call a handsome fellow, but always gentle and kind. He went to the flag out of some misguided sense of duty or fellowship; I’m not sure which. We wrote often and such letters he would write, full of description. Not of the war but of the countryside he marched through and about the fellow soldiers in his company. They were full of insight and I loved to read them. Then, all of a sudden, they stopped coming.’

  ‘That’s too bad, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It seems a stupid affair this war, at least from what he wrote. Continually marching from hither to thither with no explanation. Marching until the soles on their boots wore out.’

  ‘You have his letters?”

  ‘No longer, they all went up in the sanatorium fire. Which was a sad loss to me.’

  ‘It may be he is prisoner and might return yet.’

  She shook her head firmly and gouged at the earth, ‘No, he is gone. He was not a strong man and if he lived he would not survive long in a prison camp. I have seen how the enlisted prisoners are treated in Richmond, if there is not disease then it is starvation.’

  Kirby limped over to her and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder, ‘It does not explain why you stay here with me, a poor lost creature with a wrecked body and no memory.’

  She placed her hand over his and looked up at him. ‘Perhaps we are both lost souls together.’

  The touch was natural and he took no special meaning in it, she had handled and nursed his body in all its stages and it did not indicate intimacy for him.

  ‘I should like to care for you, Lizbette,’ he said suddenly, where it came from he never understood, the words fell from his mouth as easily as she had placed her hand on his.

  She smiled, ‘There speaks an invalid for his nurse. Don’t worry, it is a common occurrence.’

  That irritated him and a flash of anger he did not recognize ran through him, ‘No, its not that,’ he said forcefully. ‘I mean it. I would care for you.’

  Her look in answer was a little sorrowful but she said nothing and he spun away and stomped off.

  ‘Kirby,’ she called. ‘Do not be angry.’

  He did not answer but walked on towards the cliffs, driving himself and almost glad of the pain it caused him.

  Lizbette ran after and caught up with him as he stood glowering, looking out across the water.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said, placing her hand on his arm.

  ‘That’s alright,’ he answered, looking into the distance and posturing calm. ‘Just forget it.’

  ‘No, it’s not alright. Look at me.’

  He turned, some old and cold hardness had reared itself in his heart and he was confused by the sudden appearance of such bitterness.

  ‘It is a great kindness you do me,’ she said. ‘And I thank you for it. But we do not know each other really. You have forgotten who you were and I only wish to forget who I was. Perhaps you have a wife somewhere, a family. Friends and relatives who miss you like I miss my friend. The taint of this damned war is on us both and I do not think there is enough of us left to care.’

  He kissed her then, sweeping her small body up in the crook of his arm and tasting her lips for the first time. She did not fight and her answering kiss was as ready and willing as one might expect from an old lover. He enfolded her in his arm, the other supporting himself on the crutch and she nestled into his shoulder and sighed.

  ‘It seems there is no escape,’ she whispered.

  ‘No,’ he said brusquely, sounding harsh to his own ears. ‘Some things you just can’t run from.’

  ‘You will care for me?’ she said softly. ‘You promise?’

  ‘I will,’ he vowed. ‘How can I not?’

  ‘You should know,’ her eyes were downcast and she hugged him tightly in preparation for her confession. ‘I am not experienced. I have never known a man before.’

  ‘Well,’ he chuckled. ‘You’ve seen enough of this one to know which part goes where.’

  She chuckled an appreciative laugh. ‘Oh, yes. I have indeed.’

  Kirby was not quite sure of how to take that but he let it slide and they both made their way back to the cottage arm in arm.

  Chapter Five

  Lomas Bell sat his pony and looked at the Rolfe House from down the length of the driveway under the oaks.

  It had been fresh painted and it looked a fine place gleaming in the sunlight at the end of the drive where the building shone imposingly through the mists of moss hanging from the trees. Negroes were employed, nominally as benefactors of the Freedmen’s Bureau, to work in the garden and the place was slowly taking on a pristine look of recovery. Each one of the old field hands working as gardener appeared cowed though and assiduously avoided Lomas’s gaze as if they were still not free and he represented one of the slave masters of old. Lomas shook his head in dismay and rode on.

  There were figures sitting on the steps under the Doric columns, and they appeared out of place under the classical lines of the portico as they lounged there with open whiskey bottles and one of them had a woman in a low cut dress lying sprawled across his lap.
The lazy group appeared like a dark stain on a white sheet to Lomas’s eye. He urged his pony up towards them.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Cable Corinth looking up and noticing as Lomas approached.

  He sat on the steps with Marion Dane and Pat Devlin as they did most days when not called away for more active service. On his lap, Devlin had a skinny redheaded widow woman he had encouraged to share his bed, promising the starving creature food and shelter in return. She had not been keen at the beginning but had now accepted her lot and with it also lost most of her pride. She lay back against Devlin’s chest as if she belonged there and shared with him the long cigar he was smoking.

  Wayland was inside with Sweet Dean plotting over their next acquisitions, and Little Wait was off somewhere chasing down more conquests for his seemingly insatiable lust.

  ‘Help you, mister?’ asked Dane as Lomas pulled up.

  ‘Maybe. Looking for a fellow called Sweet Dean Pye. He around?’

  ‘And what might you want with Agent Pye?’

  Lomas looked over the sergeant calmly as he did over the rest of the group, carefully ascertaining their potential. ‘Guess that would be between me and him, unless you are the fellow,’ he said.

  ‘No, sir. I ain’t Pye. But we can’t rightly let you trouble Sweet Dean without proper reason. He’s an important man about these parts and has much call on his time.’

  ‘And just who might you be?’ asked Lomas, leaning across the pommel of his saddle and fixing Dane with a steady eye.

  Devlin caught the look and snorted a laugh around the cigar between his teeth, ‘We’re what you might call his orderlies. We take care of things.’

  ‘Well, boys,’ said Lomas, tiring of their languid attitude and drawing his Colt and resting it lightly on his hand over the pommel. ‘Much as I’d like to chitchat with you fellows all day, I got business to attend to. Now either you fetch this Pye fellow or I go do it myself, which is it to be?’

  ‘Oh, oh!’ cried Corinth, at sight of the pistol. ‘Looks like we got a hot one here.’

  None of the men had moved from their position but there was a tension evident now and Devlin had shed his cigar and pulled his arm tight around the woman, holding her in front whilst he reached for his own pistol hidden by her body.