Triumph (39 page)

“But what do I do?” he asked her.

“Can you write?”

“Of course!”

“Don’t go getting huffy there, young man! I know plenty a planter who can barely sign his name and think that the words ‘Francis Bacon’ refer to a man’s favorite pig! But if you can write, you can help me with letters to the families of the men we’ve lost—North and South. You can be honest about their bravery in battle; you can help their families through their grief, and make them proud.”

“I like to write,” he admitted.

“Good. You probably have saved the fellow’s life,” Colonel Bryer told her later that day. “Half the struggle for any soldier is the desire to live. He was convinced that he would die here—murdered probably, and I can’t say that I blame him. But with you here ... well, he believes in me as well.”

The men responsible for the attack on Gilly were gone, and the others were really decent enough fellows. When she wasn’t with Gilly, Tia helped Cecilia with other men. She wrote to Canby Jacob’s wife, as she had promised the first day, and told the young woman how her husband had died a hero to his country, with fortitude, dignity, a deep belief in God, and a tremendous amount of love for her and their child. She hesitated, then wrote as well that her husband’s last words instructed her not to mourn too long, but to live a good, long, and happy life for his sake, and to raise their child to be a compassionate man without thoughts of revenge, but with a desire to structure and repair the country.

She found a certain peace in writing letters, and a certain horror in time with nothing to do. During the day, she worked hard with the men. At night, when most bandages had been changed, meals served, supplies inventoried and doled out, she wrote more letters. For the soldiers who lived. She helped them describe the camp, the state, the battle, the situation. She found out that she could aid them in writing vivid descriptions, letters that were personal and informative, without being morbid. Gilly followed her lead. In time, in the hospital tent, he became known more for his help than for being a Rebel. And she knew, in this very strange little outpost, that many of the soldiers had come to realize the fratricide of what they were doing. In writing home, they were forced to see all that they shared—love for family, fear of what would come if they were not there to provide when the war ended, fear of the future, regret for the past.

Risa had moved into the tent with her. Her cousin-in-law’s company was good; they talked often and long at night.

No one wanted the war over more than Risa. She worried constantly about her father, a Union general, and even more constantly about her husband, a Rebel blockade runner. And now she missed her baby, Jamie, on top of all else. He had been left behind in St. Augustine with Chantelle, nanny, maid, and housekeeper, when Risa had ridden into the interior.

“You had to leave the baby to come baby-sit me!” Tia said one night after they had both crawled into bed exhausted at the end of a long day. The black of night, beyond the tent, was broken by a full moon, and they lay in shadow and pale, ivory light. Taylor had been gone about a week.

“That’s horrible. Taylor had no right—”

“He knew what he was doing,” Risa told her firmly. “The baby is fine, and he needs this time to be without me, to learn to share ... because we’re going to have another.”

“Oh, Risa, that’s ... so wonderful!” Tia said, but she knew that there was a catch in her throat. Naturally, men and women wanted children. North and South, men wanted sons to carry on their names, while mothers often longed for daughters to love, to dress up, teach, and raise to be beautiful young ladies, their very best friends in the years ahead. But in Tia’s experience, childbirth was also dangerous, complications far too often resulted in the death of the mother. She knew of many women who arranged for their babes to be cared for by others long before their babies were born.

“Everything is going to be fine,” Risa said, as if reading her mind.

“Of course.”

“Rhiannon told me so.”

“I wish she’d told me a few things!” Tia muttered.

“She doesn’t have a crystal ball; she can’t plan what she sees and what she knows,” Risa reminded Tia. “Just sometimes ...”

“Is it a boy or a girl?” Tia teased.

“Another boy.”

“Oh, well, we have baby Mary and my little niece to dress up.”

“Well, my dear cousin-in-law, there is nothing wrong with boys!” Risa told her.

Tia laughed. “I wasn’t suggesting there was—men, yes, little boys, no.” Although, she thought, watching those who had fought sometimes, she realized there was often a thin line between the two. “I was merely thinking about keeping the sexes somewhat even here.”

“Then you’ll have to have a girl.”

Tia was startled by the sudden, uneasy pitching of her stomach. “I—I wasn’t planning on children, not in this war.”

“I can’t say that I actually
planned
my own,” Risa said.

“Yes, come to think of it, when did you manage to ...”

Risa laughed, rolling on her camp bed to look at Tia. “I knew not to leave St. Augustine at Christmas! Jerome came down the St. Johns, slipping past all the Yankee gunboats ... he left far too quickly, but we did have Christmas!” she said, and her voice, filled with amusement at first, faded to a husky pain.

“I’m glad you had Christmas,” Tia said.

“And I hope you get your girl.”

“I have barely married.”

“Tia! You are no naive little hothouse flower! You don’t need to be married at all to have a child; indeed, you need no more than one night. Or morning—or afternoon.”

Tia rolled to her side, away from Risa. She loved children. But not in this war.

“Good night,” she whispered.

“Sleep well.”

She didn’t sleep at all.

The next morning, it was determined that the camp had fulfilled its usefulness; all the soldiers who could be found had been found, and it was time to break down and move into the city of St. Augustine.

By horseback, even alone, the trip south would have taken Taylor nearly eight days, and that would have been hard riding, moving Friar along at fifty miles a day.

However, Taylor was able to find passage on a small, three-gunned ship heading from St. Augustine south to Key West. They were able to take him as far south as an abandoned dock fifty miles north of the Miami River. The trouble with taking too many chances close to the coast was that the sandbars shifted frequently, and it was dangerous territory for a gunboat to run aground, even if the Union blockade was strong and the Federal navy was far more in charge of the seas than the struggling Rebels liked to admit. There was dockage to be had south; in fact, even as far south as Taylor eventually intended to go, but Union navy ships didn’t seek safe harbor near James McKenzie’s property. Not that James McKenzie had proclaimed himself a sworn enemy; his sympathies were well known and his ties to the Seminole society were also well known—the Union was fighting hard there for little enough gain without adding an Indian conflict into the mixture. But no matter what the possible dockage, the coast offered dangers because of the shifting sandbars and shallows that had to be navigated. It was because of a shipwreck that Taylor was going there now, and he didn’t want his mission to become the cause of a greater loss. Besides, there were places just to the north where he needed to go. Population in the south of the peninsula was sparse; white population in the south was even sparser. Taking the time to gather a little information might prove to be well worth the effort.

On their first evening out, he was standing on deck before the helm when he noticed the quickly dimmed lights of a ship that lay southeastwardly of their position. Before the lights had gone out, though, he’d a moment to study the ship.

“Colonel!”

He was startled by the whispered call of the helmsman. “Aye?” he replied as softly.

“Did you see her?”

“The ship that lies ahead?”

“Aye, sir, I thought I might be seeing things.”

Taylor was quiet for a moment. “I think we need to steer clear of her!” he said.

A third man, young Captain Henley, who was in charge of the small gunner, joined them on deck then. “Colonel, sir! You may have the rank on me as far as the army goes sir, but this is my ship and we are at sea. Sir, I offer no insult, but I suggest that you’re advising we avoid her because the ship is a notorious blockade runner belonging to your own kin, Captain Jerome McKenzie, of the Lady
Varina
.”

Taylor replied to the captain, leaning against the teak of the helm. “Indeed, Captain, I think the ship ahead is the
Lady Varina
.”

“Then, sir, I’m afraid whether she carries your kin or not, we should attack her.”

“Really? I had not suggested we avoid her because she is captained by my kin.”

“Oh?”

“She outguns us by at least three cannons, sir.”

Captain Henley flushed. “Perhaps she is wounded already, drawing into shore. Perhaps—”

“Perhaps she has seen us, and thought what a magnificent prize we might make!” Taylor suggested.

Henley’s color deepened. “Helmsman, hard to port, avoid her if we can.”

He called orders to his first mate, who called the men aboard and ordered them quickly to their stations.

A cannon shot was fired from the darkened Rebel vessel. The shot fell just short of their ship.

“See? We have outrun her!” the captain declared.

“I don’t think so. I believe it was a warning,” Taylor said quietly. “If Jerome had meant to hit us, he’d have fired more than one gun.”

Apparently, Captain Henson saw the wisdom in his words. “Keep her hard to port!” he ordered, and the command was shouted down the ranks.

They passed by the phantom Rebel ship with no further fire.

The following night, at dusk, Taylor and Friar disembarked at an abandoned dock Taylor knew very well.

He was the one who had ordered the dock abandoned, long ago.

His father had built the dock and that had been even longer ago.

They had dredged out the inlet to give the bay there the depth to accommodate a small gunboat. The land on the coast was his, and since it was mainly undeveloped and bordered what most white men considered to be a mosquito-riddled swamp, he doubted if the state government had made any efforts to confiscate the property. Besides, deeper inland, the terrain was considered dangerous. It was alive with cougars, ’gators, snakes—and Indians.

Despite the growing darkness, there was still enough of a moon in the sky for him to move through the beach and shrub, into thick foliage, and deep, lush pine trails. He rode for an hour, soon becoming aware of the sounds in the forest.

There were eyes in the night.

He was being watched, and he knew it.

He called out loudly in the night, a greeting in the Muskogee language. He drew in on Friar. A moment later, a young man appeared. Tall, muscled, with long black hair and strong, dark features. He wore European-style breeches, a patterned cotton shirt, and a handsome headdress of shell and silver. He grinned, his teeth wide and white in the moonlight. He replied in perfect English.

“What is a White Wolf doing so far to the south, especially when he wears the blue of the slaughters?”

“Charlie Otter, wolves come home,” he said, dismounting from Friar. He clasped his clansman’s arm in a fierce grip. “We always come home,” he repeated.

“Then welcome, cousin,” Charlie said, and turning, he let out a birdcall. Three children, two young braves and a little girl, came running out of the bushes. “This can’t be the baby?” he asked. “She was just a little pea in the pod when I left!”

“This is the baby. She has grown. Time goes slowly in war, doesn’t it?” Charlie asked. “Sometimes,” he said, “I think it is all we know ... except that in this war, the whites kill one another, and do nothing but try to persuade us that we should join them and kill again as well.”

“So you’ve joined neither side?”

“I don’t choose to kill white men by sides,” Charlie said softly. His eyes were hard, and he grinned again. “No, I do not like killing. But as the war goes on ... the refuse of the white armies runs here, and when the deserters come after my wife, our women, cattle, food, children ... yes, then I make war again on the whites. They don’t fight with armies against us now, so when I kill a man and he falls, he is buried in the swamp, and the tale of his evil is buried with him as well. A kindness for a white widow, don’t you think?”

“If a man has deserted his army and run to the swamps to steal from the Seminole and rape and murder his wife or children, then yes, you, like any man, have a right to defend yourself.”

Charlie grinned. “Come to my chickee, quarter-cousin-wolf. Friends remain forever.”

Charlie’s wife, Lilly, was a shy, gentle girl. She prepared food for Charlie and Taylor and some of the other men of the small village. She served it, but then moved away to the women’s chickee, as was the custom. Sitting on the platform that rose about three feet from the ground, Taylor ate deer and a porridge made from the koonti root, and with the men, he shared the black drink, a strong brew, known to give men visions. He was careful to appear to swallow much more than he actually did. He spoke with the men, honestly, telling them what was going on in the white men’s world, how the war went on, how many of their number fought for the Confederates—because of the uniform.

The men around him were grave, listening, judging, nodding.

Then Charlie spoke.

“You didn’t come here to teach us about the war, Taylor Douglas. You wear your blue uniform but come to us as White Wolf, our cousin. You don’t ask our aid to fight white men in the state. So why are you here?”

“I’m looking for a man, a soldier. One who wears this uniform as well. He was on a ship that went down in a storm. The ship was wounded by an enemy gunner, then she was caught by the wind and waves, and wrecked. Some men survived and were picked up by another ship. Some men were drowned, and their bodies were found floating. But one man was carrying papers important to our government, and he carried information in his head that mustn’t fall into Rebel hands. I need to find him, or find out if he drowned and if the papers went to the bottom of the sea. Have you heard of such a man, living here somewhere? The swamp is vast, but still, word travels here. News about a white man from the sea would not be common.”