Andersonville (29 page)

Then it was gone.

Barclay raised his head, blinking.

Wirz was staring up at him in confusion.

At his side, his arm was withered once more.

“Get off of me, boy,” Wirz mumbled. “What the hell are you playing at?”

Barclay's answer was to drive his fist into Wirz's face so hard that the back of his head rebounded off the muddy ground, and the commandant said no more.

He rolled off Wirz and found the ritual branding iron lying there discarded, the iron black and cool now, staunched in the rain. He thought of putting the handle across Wirz's neck and breaking it, but he was too tired.

The rain was no comfort to his burned flesh. He felt raw and exposed. Even the cold mud beneath him was agony.

He turned his head and stared at the broken stockade wall. He was lying just inside the deadline. He was totally spent.

Then, from one of the holes Wirz had made with the broken pine timber, water began to gurgle up. He had struck a hidden spring, or maybe the lightning had. Or both.

The water that bubbled out coursed toward him, ran over his face and hands.

He sputtered and sat slowly up to avoid drowning. He should have been unable to move, but suddenly he felt renewed.

He blinked his eyes and looked down at his ruined hands.

They were perfectly fine. Restored.

Barclay stared for a moment at the source of the spring washing over him, said a quiet prayer of thanks, and got to his feet. He retrieved the branding iron and left Wirz lying there.

He made his way back down to the flooding creek.

That was when he spied the body on the execution scaffold and crossed over to investigate.

He found Charlie lying there, still breathing but bleeding from the leg. He tore his sleeve and tied the cloth tightly around it, but she had bled out a great deal already.

He carried her down and only then saw the headless body of Limber lying beneath the platform.

He took her to the Hatter's tent, where he found Day seated within a candlelit pentacle, the Bible still open in his lap, as Corbett crouched in the corner of the tent and Cora Wirz still lay unconscious.

“Jesus, Barclay,” Day exclaimed at his entrance. “Did it work?”

“It worked,” Barclay said, laying Charlie down beside Cora. “Mastemah's gone.”

“Praise God,” said Corbett.

“It's not finished. Not yet,” Day said gravely.

“What do you mean?”

“Mastemah's departed Wirz, but he's still free, and he still has the knowledge to summon the ha-Mashchit.”

“Back at the house,” Barclay said, “he intimated that he had chosen Winder as his next host.”

“I suspected he might,” Day said.

He reached in his tunic and produced the silver knife, holding it up to the meager light and regarding it thoughtfully. Barclay saw the thick blood coating the blade.

“I've got an idea,” he said, “but I've got to ride for Oxford as soon as I can.”

“What can I do?” Barclay said.

“Nothing. I've got to do this alone. Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think I care to share the particulars of this damned rite with anyone. It's bad enough I know it.”

“All right, then,” said Barclay, and held up the branding iron. “Here. You'll need this. There's a hole in the north wall. They've probably manned it with guards by now, but I think it's our best bet at getting out.”

“What about you?” Day asked, taking the ritual iron.

“Turner's still out there. Wirz sent him to kill Father Whelan on the road. I'm going to try and stop him.”

“All right, let's go,” Day said, standing up. “I'm still an officer. Maybe I can get you out if I tell 'em you're my servant.”

Barclay nodded and hefted Charlie up once more.

“Hang on,” said Day. “What're you going to do with her?”

“She's hurt. She's coming with us.”

“If she's hurt, that's all the more reason not to bring her,” Day said.

Barclay gritted his teeth.

“Was that your reason for not taking my sister with you, too?”

“She was pregnant. I was going to war. Those were my reasons.”

“The lieutenant is right,” Corbett said suddenly.

Barclay stared. He'd forgotten that the strange man was there.

“Leave her here. You won't get out with her. Go and save the priest if you can.”

Barclay looked down at Charlie's scarred pale face lolling against his chest. It was agony, but they were right.

He set her back down.

“You take her to the Indian, Doctor John, Boston. You hear me?”

“I will.”

He reached in his pocket and took out her locket. He fastened it around her neck.

“Times a-wastin', Barclay,” Day said.

Barclay stood and gripped Day's arm.

“Quit. If she dies…”

“You'll add it to my ledger,” Day said. “I know. And one day you'll find me again. I know that, too. But if we don't get out of here, that day will never come. Now come on.”

They rushed back out into the rain and marched in silence to the north end of the stockade.

There was a line of soldiers standing at the breach in their rain gear, muskets at the ready, bayonets fixed.

Day hailed them, calling out his identity.

Thankfully, whatever orders the sergeant who had accosted them earlier in the evening had gotten in regard to him, these men hadn't heard it and let him pass with his black servant.

With most of the attention of the garrison being on the stockade, they stole a pair of horses from the encampment on the bluff.

The rain died by the time they reached the crossroads. Barclay turned his horse's nose for Augusta, and Day aimed his south.

“I won't shake your hand, Barclay,” Day said as they parted. “I know you won't take it.”

Barclay swallowed.

“I'll meet you at the grave of your wife and son. St. Louis Number Two.”

“I won't be there, Barclay,” said Day, and kicked his horse and galloped off down the road.

“You goddamned coward!” Barclay hissed. “I'll see you there if I have to drag you.”

The rain was driving hard, and the horse withered between Barclay's knees, sliding in the mud of the road, threatening to fall. He was cruel to the beast and forced it onward as fast as it would go. He leaned low over the saddle and rode blind into the pelting drops through the dark until at last the horse outlasted the violence of the storm, albeit barely. As the drops lessened to a fine misting, the wheezing horse's forelegs finally slid out from under it and it crashed headfirst into the road, depositing him on his face.

It was a hard landing, but when he pushed himself up, he saw a glow through the trees of the bend up ahead and, sputtering, rose and made for it.

Father Whelan sat on the ground beneath the makeshift awning of the wagon where he had stopped when the rain had become too much to travel in.

He was reading aloud from his Bible as he was wont to do, as he fancied the sound of his voice comforted the poor mule standing in the traces, its head bowed against the rain, gaining only a little shelter from the tree branches he had positioned them under. His eyes were heavy, and now that the storm was dying, the peaceful intermittent plops of the last vestiges of the rain were lulling him to sleep.

He was reading from Jude, having opened to the book at random, but he kept jerking awake:

“I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”

The mule brayed anxiously at that moment, and four men stepped into the edge of his lantern light from the trees across the road.

The rainy wind whipped their gray greatcoats, and the brims of their hats flapped in the gust.

“Hello there!” called the leader, a sergeant by his piping.

Father Whelan closed his Bible and waved them over, the drowsiness falling from him at the welcome prospect of company on that lonesome road.

“Come, come, my friends!” he called. “I've not much room under here, but do come out of the rain!”

The men didn't move.

“You Father Peter Whelan?” the sergeant asked.

“Do I know you, Sergeant?”

The man put his hand to the crown of his dripping hat and raised his head enough that the shadow of the brim retreated and showed a burned, disfigured face that made Whelan start uncontrollably.

The burned man's raw face split into a yellow-toothed grin.

“Apologies, Father. I know I do look a sight.”

“I'm sorry, my son. But I don't think I know you,” Father Whelan said, sure he never would have forgotten such an unfortunate face. “How do you know me?”

“You remember me, Father, I think,” said another man at his side, stepping closer into the light.

Father Whelan squinted at the second man, also a sergeant but with a familiar face. A dark-haired fellow with a narrow chin. Yes, someone from Andersonville. One of Captain Wirz's staff.

“Sergeant Duncan, isn't it?” he said, standing up. “From Camp Sumter. What are you men doing way out here?”

“Been sent to fetch you, Father,” the burned man said.

“Fetch me? Am I needed?”

“You might say you are required, sir,” said the burned man, chuckling.

Father Whelan looked at the other two, a pair of scraggly privates with hungry looks in their eyes that put him off.

“Boys?” said the burned man.

The two privates flipped back their coats. They opened the flaps on their revolvers and eased them from their scabbards, smiling vacantly the whole time.

The two shots came so quickly one after the other that Whelan barely had time to register that they had not come from the men in the road. Those two were already sinking to their knees when a fifth man burst from the trees and came running, a smoking pistol in his fist.

He ran right between the two sergeants and sprang at Father Whelan in a flying tackle that took him over the lip of the wagon and into the bed.

All the wind blew out of him, and he gasped to see Barclay Lourdes, a man he had been thinking a great deal about, lying next to him in the wagon, pushing him down flat as the night erupted in gunfire and smoke and splinters blew in great chunks from the wagon.

The shooting stopped, and the voice of the burned man spoke. By the sound of him, he hadn't moved from his spot in the middle of the road.

“Duncan, did you see that streak of black lightning come betwixt us just then, or did I imagine it?”

“I saw it,” Duncan said.

“Well, that's just got to be old Barclay Lourdes or I'm a horse's ass.”

“You're right on both counts, Turner,” Barclay called.

He looked at Whelan and showed him the revolver with which he had killed the two privates. He pressed it into Whelan's hands.

“Well, if that don't cap the climax. You are one persistent nigger, I will give you that,” said Turner. “Looks like the cap'n and me were both right. Day wasn't your catamite; he was your goddamn partner. Him and that mick priest, and you, was it?”

Father Whelan shook his head emphatically. He couldn't take up a gun. He wouldn't. Not to save either of them.

Barclay took his head in his hand and drew him close so that his lips were close to the priest's ear.

“Bless the bullets, Father. Do it quick!” he whispered. It was their only chance. But would it work? Had Whelan's faith strengthened sufficiently to make his prayers worth a damn?

Then he shouted over the lip of the wagon.

“You've got it wrong again, Turner. Let the priest go. He's got nothing to do with it.”

“That's how come you rode all the way out here to get him, huh?”

“What's your name, Turner? Your real name?”

“You think me ignorant, do you?” Turner replied jovially. “I do appreciate your cunning. You are surely a considerable critter amongst mortals, but you must know you have put yourself in a spot now. I will tell you my name, Lourdes. I will whisper it in your ear when your body drops away from your black head.”

Whelan had learned not to question this man despite the circumstances.

As the boots of the two sergeants clumped closer in the muddy road, he made the sign of the cross over the pistol and whispered rapidly: “Blessed are you, Lord God, king of the universe: you have made all things for your glory. Bless these bullets and grant that we may use them in your service and for the good of all your people. Father, we praise you through Christ our Lord.”

“Little late for prayers,” Turner said.

Barclay snatched the pistol from Whelan's hands.

“Amen,” he said, and cocked the hammer as the faces of Duncan and Turner loomed over them.

The first bullet pierced Duncan dead center in the bridge of his nose and flung him backward.

Turner moved blindingly fast but yelped as the second bullet blew into his eye and plowed a furrow through his right temple, exiting a bit beneath the crown of his head.

When Barclay stood in the wagon bed, he saw Turner running into the trees hatless, clutching the side of his face.

Sergeant Duncan lay spread-eagled, the raindrops plinking in his open eyes.

Barclay aimed at Turner's retreating back and pulled the trigger, but the rain had wet the powder in the last two charges, and no amount of blessing was going to spark them now.

Barclay jumped down and picked up Turner's hat, sticking his finger through the blackened hole in the crown.

He was gone. Hurt badly but not dead. He gave only a passing thought to trying to track him in the woods in the dark. No, that would be a foolish endeavor.

The rest depended on Quit.

He thought of all they had gone through, about what they'd said to each other in the last, or what he'd said, anyway.

Did he really think Quitman Day was a coward?

He was many things, but no, probably not that.

There was only one reason he wouldn't agree to meet at Euchariste's grave, and it wasn't cowardice.

Whelan leaped down and came to him.

“Are they dead?”

“That one's cold as a wagon tire,” he confirmed, nodding to Duncan.

Whelan tentatively reached out and put his hand on Barclay's shoulder.

“Come on, son. Let's get you out of the rain. In the morning I'll take you wherever you'd care to go.”

“Father, I'll tell you plain,” Barclay said. “It may be that there will be no morning. But if it comes, I wonder if I could impose upon you for one last favor.”

“Name it.”

“If you're bound for Savannah, it's far out of your way.”

“My son, you've saved my soul and now my life. Name it just the same.”

“I need to get to Oxford posthaste, and a black man traveling alone…”

“A priest with a manservant, however, might go unquestioned,” Whelan said. “Listen, Lourdes. Despite the look of me, I'm no great dummy. I know you're more than just some colored soldier. I'll take you if you can promise to me that your actions will incur no loss of life.”

“Just the opposite, Father,” Barclay told him. “I hope to save a life.”