Flashback (9 page)

For a moment, while guilt and confusion rattled around in his very small brain, I thought I could get past him easily. Unfortunately, as with many men accustomed to few emotions and comfortable with none but anger, he got mad. Had I not been his captain's wife I expect he might have overstepped the bounds of common decency.

"You got no business-"

I could see his slow mental processes, so recently scrambled, lining themselves back up. Right quick before he could bluster himself back into some semblance of a sergeant at arms, I stepped up close and sniffed.

"You've been drinking," I said with all the disapproval I could muster. Whether he'd been drinking or not, I couldn't tell. Amid the swamp of odium that drifted from him, sorting out a single scent was past even my bloodhound abilities. The laundresses at Fort Jefferson often take home three times as much pay as their soldier husbands each month. They are grossly underpaid. Woolen uniforms in the sodden heat of July wring much in the way of bodily effluvia from men far less unpalatable than Sergeant Sinapp.

"Have not!" he countered, sounding so much like your Leonard did when he was three and into breaking things and pestering the dogs that I nearly laughed.

Tilly had taken this moment out of my control and the sergeant's thrall to scoot her unpantalooned self behind my back and into the sally port where her pet rebel was.

The sight of young Joel Lane robbed me of any rebuke I might, for Molly's sake, have given Tilly. Lips and eyelids were swelled, the skin stretched so tight I feared it might burst and spill the blue-black blood pooled beneath. The once-clean line of his jaw was blurred, misshapen, and his neat close ears puffed, red, angry and probably never to resume their pretty shape.

It is common practice to punish prisoners and union soldiers alike by tying their hands behind their backs and hoisting them up till their toes barely touch the ground. As vicious as this practice is, it evidently wasn't sufficiently cruel for Sinapp. Private Lane had been strung up by his thumbs; this I have never seen but only read of in books of medieval tortures.

The poor boy's thumbs were the size and color of plums. Tilly slid to her knees and began to cry. This time I saw nothing of theatrics in her. I often forget how young she is-or I choose to forget how inured to brutish behavior I have become.

"Cut this man down," I commanded the sergeant, hoping he was still cowed by my previous accusation of imbibing.

He'd had time to reinsert his spine and gather his few thoughts.

"I can't do that, ma'am. This ain't no place for you to be. This here's army business.

"That man was talking traitor talk. Going on about Mr. Lincoln like his foul murder was a right and good thing. That's why he got himself strung up. I'm making no apologies that he got what was coming. When he gets cut down he'll be put to carrying shot-a hundred and twenty-eight pounder or my name ain't Cobb Sinapp."

During the rehearsals I have gotten to know Joel somewhat, and he didn't strike me as a political man, certainly not one to speak out if it would get him beat half to death which surely even the dullest reb here must know could happen with tensions so high. Joel was more likely a reckless young man who had joined the war against the union because that's what the young dandies in his circle were doing. Still, I cannot completely discount Cobb (what a ridiculous name, undoubtedly he was called after the kind of pipe his mother smoked in the birthing room) Sinapp's words. Who knows what strange twists might exist in the mind of a southern boy, and an actor to boot?

"Cut him down at once," I insisted. "Or I'll-"

"I'll scream," Tilly said, and I've never seen that exquisite face of hers look so hard. "I'll scream and I'll go on screaming until the whole fort comes down around us."

I must say I was relieved at her interruptions. I had no idea what my threat was to have been. I certainly couldn't threaten to tell my husband. Sergeant Sinapp knows in what high regard Joseph holds me, though he'd never dare speak of it or show any overt disrespect.

Tilly's threat sounded childish to my ears, but it put the fear of God into the wretched Sinapp.

"Now no need for that kinda talk, missy. What with them murderin' cowards, this place is already a..."

I suppose he was searching for a metaphor: powder keg, hornets' nest or some such, but the limitation of his intellect stopped him. However, much as I dislike admitting it even to you, the most forgiving of souls, Sergeant Sinapp had a point. The "murderin' cowards" to whom the sergeant referred are the Lincoln conspirators. Not the man who shot him, of course, or that woman who was put to death, but Samuel Arnold, Edward Spangler and Dr. Mudd, who is said to have set John Booth's leg after he broke it leaping to the stage. As if we weren't enough on edge, knowing that those who were at least in part responsible for the death of the president are to be with us soon has brought the hatred to the surface.

"Cut him down, cut him down," Tilly began. A smallish boy-faced fellow emerged from the guardroom behind Sinapp and proffered his knife. Sinapp cut Private Lane down, letting the boy fall all in a heap on the stone. Had Tilly not gotten in the way, I expect Joel Lane's skull would have been cracked open when he hit.

The boy-faced soldier had the good sense to vanish after that, but the sergeant stood around being of no use to us but needing to vent his frustration. He threatened to tell Joseph, which I'm sure he will, and I will have to answer for Tilly's soft heart. Joseph won't do much but to yell. He learned a long time ago, the first time he struck me, that he had but three options: to kill me outright, never to strike me again, or to sleep with one eye open for the rest of his natural life.

Without help there was sadly little Tilly and I could do. Private Lane was too heavy for us to move. We asked the sergeant to help us but he would not so much as fetch water to wet the boy's lips or bathe his poor ruined face. Between us, Tilly and I made him as comfortable as we could there on the stones of the sally port and got him to drink a little water I fetched myself. Then we had to leave him.

Tilly begged Sinapp prettily to be compassionate, and I made a number of threats I have no authority to carry out, that if Joel Lane was further damaged when we returned, much in the way of ill luck would befall whomsoever mistreated him.

We'd stayed too long as it was-the theatrical would have started and only by rushing would Tilly and I be back in time for our entrance. The drama of the situation outweighed the artificial drama of our little play, and I had to all but drag our little sister from the rebel's side. Many evils are bound to come from this act of kindness, not the least of which is Tilly, playing at Miss Nightingale, will probably feel obliged to fall in love with her patient, or fancy she has.

On the way back, as we ran in a most undignified fashion across the parade ground toward our bows and pinafores, Tilly suddenly said: "Our duet!" (They had adapted "Somebody's Darling" for two parts.) "We can't do it, his being gone. And I looked so pretty in that blue silk robe." I took heart from that. If the baggage is still thinking of her own self and vain pursuits, we can hope tonight's debacle hasn't damaged her spirit too badly.

For a time the excitement of being in a theatrical production gave us respite from the sad state of the rebel soldier we'd left quite possibly dying, but I dared not even think of that. I suppose it's unchristian, but I think the bright lights and tumultuous applause took our minds completely. The stage-built by the prisoners-is small but utterly delightful. I continue to be amazed by the varied talents one can garner simply by imprisoning a section of the American armies. Which side they fought for doesn't seem to be a factor. The fort boasts several excellent carpenters; the lights (every candle and lamp on the key was pressed into service) had been cunningly shaped and aimed by a union deserter from New York. Before the war he worked for a clothier in the city of New York, and one of his tasks was to provide attractive lighting for the window displays and the live mannequins. We even had an exquisitely painted back-drop provided by a burglar-cum-muralist from Philadelphia. War and theater seem to be good bedfellows.

Despite this "innocent maid" being rather long in the tooth and not a maiden by any stretch of the imagination, Tilly's and my " 'Tis True I Have Flirted" was very well received. I do believe we would have gotten a standing ovation had I not insisted Tilly put her underskirts and knickers back on in spite of the heat. What the girl was thinking, I cannot say. Under the bright lights burning all round our makeshift stage she would have looked like a burlesque queen.

Both of us had a wonderful time. Tilly can be excused by her youth, I suppose. As for me, I must simply be a vain and shallow creature for all the thought I gave that battered boy during my brief moment of glory. I did happen to notice that the fort's surgeon had not abandoned his seat in the center of the third row despite the fact we had sent a boy with a message about Joel. Evidently he didn't feel the health of one rebel soldier-and one reputed to have celebrated our dear Mr. Lincoln's death-was worth missing an entertainment.

I think the evening would have been an unqualified success had not a minor riot broken out. Two numbers after Tilly's and my triumph, as a magician was pulling two rats from an old hat (rabbits being hard to come by in the middle of the ocean and rats, he assured us, being really rather clever creatures), there was a great hullabaloo from the parade ground.