Blood Moon

by Jana Petken

The sound of gunfire abated, bar a few shots fired by overzealous Confederate soldiers. Jacob’s head rested against the hard soil trench wall. He took a few long breaths and turned to George beside him. “I know what hell looks like now,” he said, “and it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.” He looked about him. From his position, he saw very few grey coats lying face down or bloodied. “We were lucky, George,” he said. He looked at George’s young face, blackened with gunpowder, and slapped him on the back. “We whipped them good. I just hope to God the Yankees don’t learn any lessons from this fight. I’d hate to see any man from Portsmouth looking like those poor dying bastards lying over there …”

  Jacob rode with the Portsmouth Cavalry Brigade towards Yorktown. In front of him and his men sat General Magruder, straight as an arrow on a fresh horse, nodding every now and again at something his aide said. Behind the Portsmouth men were militias from North Carolina and Georgia.

  They were an impressive fighting force, Jacob thought, but there had been many more Federals than Confederates this morning. From what he’d heard, the Confederates had been outnumbered almost two to one. Trenches and good planning had saved him and his men from the brunt of oncoming fire. The Yankees, on the other hand, had been forced to fight in the open, and this had been their biggest mistake.

  He didn’t know how many men had been injured on the Confederate side, but he had been told that one man had been killed, a Private Wyatt of North Carolina. His body was in the back of an ambulance wagon. He was the Confederate’s first casualty, and his name would probably be remembered.

  As they were leaving the field, Jacob had wondered what would happen to the dead and dying enemy still there. Would they be left to rot or was there some kind of gentlemanly code which dictated that all men had the right to a decent burial, regardless of side? He supposed all his questions would be answered as time passed and war became more familiar to him.

  There were a few Yankee prisoners being dragged back with the column. Where would they be taken? Richmond, he decided. They were lucky bastards. They would be locked up. Their marching days were over, as was the threat of dying.

  Jacob was not an experienced tactician, but he fully agreed with General Magruder’s decision to withdraw to Yorktown and the Confederate defensive lines. There, he imagined, they would wait until a full force of men arrived before going into another fight. This morning had been a relatively small skirmish. There would be much bigger and bloodier battles ahead. When and where would the next one be was the question floating around in his mind.

  He turned in his saddle to George and Nathan, riding behind him. “We’re still in one piece,” he said. “We’re dirty, dusty, and tired, but we’re just fine. I told you we would whup the Yankees, did I not?”

  George grinned at him with youthful enthusiasm. “You did, and we did it with half their number. I reckon they don’t have the stomach for a fight, not like us Southerners. We were born to fight them and beat them because of our pure Southern bloodline and our righteousness. Them northerners ain’t nothin’ but a bunch of immigrant mongrels. They ain’t no match for us, I reckon.”

  Jacob smiled, thinking he wouldn’t be the man to knock George off his pedestal. Before leaving the field, he had listened to some of the men shout obscenities at the retreating Federals. They had taunted the Northerners with Southern overinflated pride, but they had only been moderately successful this morning because the Yankees had not gotten past them. They had put up a good defensive fight against a stronger force, Jacob thought, and they had driven the enemy back to where they had come from. But these were early days and too soon to be talking about victory.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mercy panted so hard that she thought her chest would explode. She found it difficult to utter a sound. Her dry throat hurt with each laboured breath. She ran through thick bushes and brambles, which scratched and cut into her bare skin, ripping her coarse shirt and breeches. She tried to shout out to the black man and woman who followed closely behind her. She wanted to tell them not to look back and to run faster, for men and their dogs, barking viciously, were catching up and would be upon them within seconds. However, her breath continued to catch in her throat as she lengthened her stride even more.

  Her legs felt as though they would give way at any moment. She turned briefly and saw her two companions running together and holding hands just a few steps behind her. They were still not running fast enough to escape the dogs or rifles within range of them. They would have to pick up speed, just as she was doing.

  She stumbled over branches knitted together like a spider’s web over the ground’s undergrowth. She straightened herself and moved on until finally she saw what she’d been looking for. The partially hidden path was easy to spot during the day, and she had strolled along it a few times in the past month. Not so at night, she thought now. She’d been convinced at one point that she would never find it.

  She’d walked this route many times in preparation for a mission, although in the last week she had wondered if her services would ever be required. She’d attended countless clandestine meetings with the organisation in the past two months but always went home without a single task being given to her. She had traced the Underground Railroad with hardly an effort. They did not go out of their way to hide what they were doing, and their exploits were well documented in an abolitionist newspaper. This was not very clever of them, she thought now, with her being chased by rabid dogs and men with guns!

  Mercy heard a soft thud and turned her head again for just a second. The black woman behind her had fallen head first onto the uneven ground. The man pulled at her arms, but she stubbornly refused to rise, clearly preferring to lie with her knees at her chest, weeping with defeat in the bushes.

  Mercy ran on, shouting behind her in a barely audible voice that unless the black man left the woman and ran, they would both die. She heard the slave’s footsteps gaining on her again. He caught up, ran beside her for a moment, and then overtook her, but there was no sign of the woman.

  She could see the downward slope of the bank leading to Higgins’ Wharf and Wrights’ Wharf, a little farther along. It was an area where slaves strived to make it to freedom. The pathways were well worn. Many slaves had walked and run down them to the steamships which travelled to New York. As she ran, she cursed the Underground Railroad, again – bloody stupid idea this, with half of Norfolk knowing about this place!

  She and the slave approached the wharf. Two men would be waiting with a small sailboat, she had been told. There were no more steamers going to New York from here, thanks to the war, and this was the best they could do for the slaves. The two men in the boat were brothers, in their early twenties. They were oyster fishermen and knew the rivers like the backs of their hands. They would have no difficulty manoeuvring the boat across the James River to Fort Monroe, the organisation had told her.

  Mercy fell and slid on her backside down the steep embankment towards the wharf.

  The black woman’s screams, now echoing in the still night air, cut like a blade into her heart. Waves of nausea engulfed her. She was dizzy, staggering back onto her feet with exhaustion and fear. The sickening sound of dogs growling ferociously was deafening, even though she had put distance between her and the savage beasts. As she stumbled on, moving pictures of the black woman being ripped apart limb from limb flashed through her mind. She quickened her pace, putting even more distance between herself and the noise. She felt an even greater determination, hearing, imagining, and mourning the woman’s agonising death, until only the shouts of the men in pursuit remained. Dogs could not distinguish the difference between a white skin and a black skin. She would be mauled just like the poor black woman.

  She pushed all thoughts of the woman aside as she zigzagged around nettled bushes and errant branches, like sharp spikes pointing upwards and outwards. She and her black companion took the last few strides in the undergrowth and then welcomed the wharf’s hard and even ground. She finally fou
nd her voice as her pace slowed. She looked down the wooden steps leading to a docking port. The boat and men were there waiting for her. “Get ready. Get in the boat!” she shouted hoarsely.

  The slave took to the stairs, for the moment out of their pursuers’ firing line. The brothers loosened the tethered ropes from an iron ring sitting just above water level on the wharf’s wall. The black man leapt into the boat just as it began to move off, leaving Mercy alone on the wharf’s rickety wooden steps. Shots were fired again. Mercy held on to the wall, easing her way down the steps. She felt a breath of air whistling past her ear just before her head disappeared from the guns’ sights. The shot had almost blown her bloody head off! She couldn’t go back, she suddenly realised. She’d be cut down – she couldn’t go back!

  She looked at the gap between the boat and the step she was standing on. It was a tall order to leap into a moving boat, but the time for daintily stepping aboard it had long gone.

  She crouched down, swung her arms backwards and then forwards, and took a giant leap, aiming for the inside floor of the boat below. The slave stood unsteadily in the boat, ready to catch her or at least grab on to some part of her body. A high-pitched squeal left Mercy’s mouth. She was going to miss the bleedin’ boat entirely!

  The black man flung himself onto his belly towards the boat’s stern, grabbed hold of her left wrist just as she hit the water, and dragged her along behind the boat in an iron grasp.

  She couldn’t swim. Even in the rivers where she had bathed with Nelson, she had gone in no farther than waist deep. The shoreline was being left behind. She held on for dear life, for she would be shot or she would drown if the slave let go of her wrist. “For God’s sake, get me in,” she begged. “Just pull me!” Her legs flailed under the water, trying to find the side of the boat to give her leverage. Mercy felt her wrist crack and cried out in agony. The men, rowing with four oars, screamed in unison at the black man to hurry up and pull Mercy in. They would not slow down or stop for her, one of them shouted. Another shot was fired, and one of the boatmen was hit in the arm. “You goddamn son of a bitch!” he screamed angrily towards the wharf.

  The slave managed to grasp Mercy’s right wrist, letting go of the left one, which was, judging by its twisted and swollen appearance, broken. A determined growl left his throat as he pulled her right arm towards him, using both his hands. Her entire body was immersed in water, making her slight frame heavy to manoeuvre. The black man also had the disadvantage of not being able to stand for fear of being shot. After a few tugs, he managed to lift Mercy high enough out of the water in order to grab the rear of her breeches’ waistband. With one final heave, her body was unceremoniously hauled over the rim of the boat’s stern.

  Mercy screamed from a searing pain coming from her abdominal area. With her head facing downwards, she witnessed her shirt rip on a splintered piece of wood on the boat’s top edge. She saw the blood bursting out from a long tearing gash that began just below her breasts and ended at her breeches’ top button. She landed on the boat’s floor like a caught fish, faint with excruciating pain from her wrist and ripped belly.

  “Stay on the floor and keep your head down,” one of the boatmen ordered. “Here,” he said to the slave, “take over my oars. My damn arm is useless. I ain’t got no power in it – stings like the devil.” He changed places with the slave by sliding his backside onto the floor of the boat. Mercy looked at his shocked and pained face. She lay awkwardly in the rear, curled up in a ball, with her hand pressing down on her wound. He was no more than a foot in front of her.

  The other boatman, thus far silent, cursed as the slave fumbled with the oars. “You got to row steady and fast with me, else we ain’t never gonna git out of this harbour. Do what I do and for the love of God, don’t drop the damn oars,” he added. The boat began to rock with oars fighting against each other until eventually the slave found a rhythm and the boat glided along smoothly in the water.

  “Thank God,” she heard the boatman whisper after a couple of minutes. “I think they’ve given up on us. Shore’s quiet.”

  Mercy sat up cautiously and peered in the direction of the shoreline, almost invisible now in the darkness. Her left wrist was smarting, but the pain didn’t stop there. It was shooting up and down her arm. Her hand and fingers were numb. Her stomach felt as though it were being pummelled with tiny needles. She’d have to have stitches to close the tear, but she’d also have a bruise the size of an apple. She was still panting with fear. Everyone in the boat was quiet. The injured man was wrapping a strip of cotton around his gunshot wound. The slave and the oarsman had their heads down, putting all their efforts into arm movements that were beginning to work in tandem.

  A thought struck Mercy, and she was filled with shame. She had not asked the slave his name, nor had she asked the name of the poor woman who was most probably dead. How rude of her. She had decided to volunteer for this particular undertaking, for she had truly thought herself ready for anything that would be thrown at her. It had all appeared so simple. This particular route had been used many times without mishap or incident, she had been told. Well, not tonight, she thought. This was a bloody disaster.

  She had wanted to behave like a lady, spend her days sewing, taking tea with Norfolk’s wives and young ladies, and waiting patiently for news of Jacob. But she had been bored to distraction and increasingly worried that the longer she sat still, the less her inquisitive mind would function. She was becoming cold-hearted – or maybe she hadn’t wanted to learn the black couple’s names. After what had happened to poor Seth, she thought, who could blame her for not wanting to get attached to the runaways?

  “I don’t know your names – any of you,” she said.

  The injured brother attempted a smile. “Name’s Mathew. This here’s my brother, Billy.”

  “Thank you for waiting for us. You saved our lives,” Mercy said tearfully. “I thought we were going to die. The poor woman with us was caught by the dogs. I heard her scream. I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said to the slave.

  “I ain’t never seen the woman. A saw her for the first time tonight in the place they hid us.”

  “I see,” Mercy said, surprised. “I thought – when you were holding her hand … What’s your name?”

  “Andrew, on account of my massa’s ancestors being Scottish.”

  “Scottish, huh? Where’s that at?” Billy asked Andrew.

  “I don’ rightly know, sir.”

  “It’s at the top of England,” Mercy said. “I’ve never been there, but my grandpa had a map. I think they’re a bit of a violent lot. That’s what my grandpa said when I asked him about the Scots. My name is Mercy – Mercy Carver. Is your injury very bad?” she asked Mathew.

  “Naw, the ball’s gone straight through. I can still move all my fingers. Reckon that’s a good sign. I ain’t never been shot before.”

  “Why are you going to the fort?” Mercy asked.

  “Me and my brother are going to turn ourselves over to the them Union fellas and help them drive these slave lovin’ critters into the Atlantic.”

  Billy was panting but still rowing ferociously. “Mathew’s right. We been planning this for weeks. Family ain’t gonna forgive us in a hurry – but hell, we’re fishermen and we ain’t got no fight with Washington, not like these traitors puttin’ on a grey uniform yellin’ Dixie every five minutes.”

  Mercy wondered what the Federals would do with her when she got to the fort. She didn’t want to go there. If she were a good swimmer, she’d swim back to shore. Oh God, Dolly would wake up and find her missing. She was mortified just thinking about the poor woman worrying about her. “I don’t want to go to the fort. Is there an island or something where you can drop me off?” she asked no one in particular.

  The brothers laughed. Billy said, “There ain’t no island, ma’am, just water. You don’t have no choice but to sit back and rest up. We got around fourteen miles to row, give or take. We got to stay real quiet. Ain’t no ships
or boats on the James at night, but that don’t mean we’re in the clear. I reckon just about anything can happen these days. Now if Mathew here was fit and hadn’t got his arm half blown off we could make it real quick. Water’s smooth as glass. No offence, Andrew.”

  “I ain’t never been on a boat before, sir, but I’m as strong as a bull.”

  “Yep, I reckon you’re doing just fine.” He looked then at Mercy. “I apologise, ma’am, but there ain’t no going back to Norfolk, not tonight. It’s the fort or nothin’.”

  The reality of her actions finally hit Mercy as the fog of shock and fear lifted. “I need to get home,” she said, voicing her thoughts.

  “Well, like I said, ain’t no way we’re turning this boat around – beggin’ your pardon, but didn’t it occur to you that this might happen?”

  “No – I mean, maybe. This is the first time I’ve led a slave to the wharf. I went down there every day to make sure I knew exactly where it was. When they told me this afternoon that I was to take Andrew and that poor woman – oh God, I’ve let people down again. They will all think something terrible has happened to me. Sometimes I could kick myself for getting into bother time and time again.” Her first tears were soft and silent, but the more she thought about Jacob finding out that she had disappeared, the more forlorn she became.

  No one spoke, and she was glad. No one tried to comfort her, and she was grateful for that small kindness too. As always, her mind was debating the righteousness of her actions. She wanted to help slaves, she really did, but she also needed these assignments in order to feel useful and active. These self-centred reasons were utterly selfish and, in some small part, cruel. Hendry, Jack, and Belle would also be worried now. “Will they let me go, do you think?” she asked Billy.

  “I don’t know about that,” Billy said. “Me and my brother here, we glad we made the choice – but I don’t know about you. They might not let you go home on account of you seein’ what they got inside the fort.”