Only the Gallant (13 page)

They were pulling out. And so was he. Caitlin Brennan, Peter Abbot, and Sherman and Grant and the whole blessed Union Army could wait one night. He had nothing to base his suspicions on but instinct. No matter. Death waited for him in that alley. He was certain of it.

To all appearances Jesse was only another Johnny Reb, pausing to fasten the buttons of his coat and tug his hat lower on his head for protection against the cold. A rider who tarried a moment but had business elsewhere.

The ground trembled as the shore batteries several streets below fired a final volley after the retreating steamers. The roan was too tired to be skittish. The animal usually kept its head around the rattle of pistol and musket, but artillery was another matter entirely. The stallion was never comfortable around the field pieces and quite often fought its owner’s steady hand, shying and pawing the street whenever the cannons opened up.

Tonight the stallion plodded along, seemingly impervious to the roar of the guns or the smell of powder smoke that drifted like a pallor over the darkened city. Jesse took the shortest route possible, skirting the block where the Presbyterian church had become a funeral pyre of collapsed timbers. A gentle, cold rain began to fall. Droplets collected on the brim of his gray felt hat and poured off every time he lowered his head. He found Monroe Street and pointed the stallion up the steep hill toward the two-story Greek Revival manor crowning the summit. Judge Miller had proved himself a hospitable Southern gentleman. After meeting the Union agent at his party, the judge had insisted McQueen stay in one of the guest rooms.

Jesse didn’t plan to try to sneak into the house at this late hour. The stables offered a bed of hay in a dry stall out of the rain. McQueen had slept in worse places. On such a damp wintry night a stable would do just fine.

Jesse unlatched the gate without dismounting. He walked the stallion to the drive and, keeping to the right near the garden wall, skirted the house and headed straight for the stable set off from the house and far enough back so as not to be obtrusive.

Jesse dismounted and led the stallion to the stable doors. Lamplight spilled through one of the windows. Someone was up and about. The Union agent thought up a reason for his untimely arrival, then opened the door and brought the stallion inside.

The air was thick with the smell of leather and decaying hay, horseflesh, and brewed coffee. Bon Tyrone stood before a cast-iron woodstove, adding tinder to the firebox. A blue enamel coffeepot rested on one of the burners, steam curling from the spout. Tyrone had stripped down to his flannel undershirt, gray pants, and mud-spattered boots. His gunbelt hung from a wall peg along with his campaign hat, gray shirt, coat, and rain-soaked greatcoat. From the look of his uniform, Tyrone hadn’t been there long himself.

The Confederate officer looked around as Jesse entered and unsaddled the stallion in the nearest vacant stall. Tyrone lifted his coffee cup in salute.

“‘Oh, Young Lochinvar is come out of the West,’” he said.

Jesse glanced over at the captain. “‘So faithful in love, so dauntless in war, there never was knight like the young Lochinvar.’” He finished with the stallion, dumped a mound of hay in the stall. There was already water in the trough.

“So you’ve read Sir Walter Scott?” Tyrone said, folding his arms across his chest. “Even in the Indian Territory.”

“My father and grandfather were educated. They taught my brother and me the classics.” He glanced up at the rafters, where shadows flickered like dark wings. “And my grandmother taught us of mysteries.”

Tyrone stroked his goatee while he considered the man’s reply.
This McQueen is a most intriguing fellow
, he thought.
I have never known his like
. Tyrone handed him a heavy tin cup and gingerly lifted the coffeepot, using a piece of burlap to keep from burning his hand.

“Real coffee?” McQueen noted aloud, inhaling the aroma.

“Took it off a bluecoat last week,” Tyrone replied. “He wasn’t going to be needing it anymore.” The implication was clear.

Jesse studied the man filling his cup. Bon Tyrone was as good as they came—brave and honorable to a fault. But he was a killer, as war made all good men killers. And he would continue to be until the Confederacy was defeated. Jesse couldn’t help but wonder what might happen if he and the Gray Fox had to confront each other. He did not relish the prospect.

“A bad night for riding,” Tyrone said. He was curious about Jesse’s whereabouts but too much of a gentleman to ask outright.

“A miserable night,” Jesse pointedly corrected. “But Pemberton figured the boys in the redoubts deserved to hear the message President Davis had prepared for them. He asked me to deliver it rather than risk Davis’s life unduly.” He sipped the coffee and sighed as the steaming bitter liquid returned life to his veins. “You brewed this strong enough to float a horseshoe,” he added, sloshing the contents of his cup.

“It will get me through till morning,” Tyrone said, growing serious. “Which is what I need after this night’s black business.”

“What business is that?” Jesse asked.

“I was given the unpleasant task of arresting Rosalie DuToit. She was accused of being a spy by Colonel Henri Baptiste. He claims to have met her in New Orleans. Only she had a different name then.”

Jesse shrugged and tossed the dregs of his coffee cup into the stove; the liquid sizzled on contact with the flames. He struggled to keep his voice free of emotion. The news of Caitlin’s arrest had shaken him. Damn Baptiste. And what else had the damn Creole told the authorities?

“So she changed her name. That hardly makes her a spy for Lincoln.”

“Spider found a tintype at the bottom of her trunk. It showed her in a chair, and behind her, a Union officer with his hand on her shoulder.” Tyrone sat on a three-legged stool by the stove. “Perhaps it’s a lover, or her husband, of maybe just her brother. Either way, Miss DuToit, or whoever she is, will be taken to Jackson on Davis’s train and held under guard until General Johnston learns the truth.” The Confederate captain shook his head. “I dislike making war on women.”

Jesse nodded, sharing the captain’s sentiments. He ambled over to an empty stall and used the pitchfork to pull together enough dry grass for bedding. He unfurled a woolen blanket and spread it over the hay, then unbuckled his gunbelt, draped it across the wooden siding, and stretched out upon his makeshift bed. A second stove, set against the wall in the center of the stable, gave off enough warmth for the horses, but Jesse was grateful for the extra warmth the straw provided.

Up at the front of the barn, Bon Tyrone blew out the lamp, plunging the stable into what seemed at first total darkness. Once McQueen’s eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he noticed the stoves also cast a feeble glow that the rafters swallowed up. He heard Tyrone stretch out in another stall.

“It would be a shame to have to drop a hangman’s noose around such a pretty throat,” Tyrone muttered.

“Yes, what a waste,” Jesse agreed. Caitlin had saved his life once. Now he would have to return the favor—somehow, someway—or die trying. “More’s the pity.”

C
AITLIN SPENT THE MORNING
of her arrest toying with her breakfast, cornmeal mush flavored with molasses, honey cakes, and a pot of English tea. She had been apprehended, her room at the Magnolia searched, and then brought to an unassuming little cave set in a hillside overlooking Clay Street. There were many such caves, all furnished as comfortably as possible with furniture salvaged from homes that had been seriously damaged by shells from Union gunboats.

Caitlin’s prison sported a four-poster bed, a woodstove, a rolltop desk and chair, a washstand, and a whatnot—a triangular stack of shelves carved of black walnut and displaying an assortment of porcelain cups and tiny bells shaped like tulips. The owner of the cave, Letitia Denard, had spent time between her poor battered house and the cave until she was injured when the porch of the former collapsed. She was convalescing at her sister’s home only a couple of blocks away, leaving her servant, a buxom black woman named Arabelle, to look after the house, cave, and all of Letitia’s belongings.

Arabelle had brought Caitlin her breakfast an hour after sunrise. With the guards outside listening through the open doorway, the black woman made no attempt at conversation.

On her return, Arabelle closed the door behind her. She lifted the hem of her brown woolen dress and waddled across the room.

“Honey chile, you ain’t touched a lick a’ breakfast. And you gots visitors comin’ up the street. I seen ’em from the porch.”

“I’m not hungry,” Caitlin said.

“Can I get you somethin’ else? There ain’t much. …”

“A way out of here would be nice,” Caitlin dryly suggested. The black woman grinned broadly.

“Sure ’nuff and I would give it to you, but the only way out of here, dear one, is right through the door and past them guards outside.” Her work-roughened hands pulled a kerchief from her apron and wiped the perspiration from her shiny black forehead. She was a pretty woman for all her great bulk. Her oval features were devoid of artifice.

“Folks says you a spy. That you works for Mistuh Lincoln. I say, God bless you and Mistuh Lincoln. Yes, ma’am. He gonna put an end to the buyin’ and sellin’ of chillen and poor black folk, and I don’t care who hears me.” Her brave words, though well meant, were not quite true. Despite the Emancipation Proclamation, Arabelle was still a slave, and in fact, she cared most certainly who heard her. A look of horror crossed her face as the door behind her opened and Colonel Henri Baptiste swaggered into the room. He had brought a couple of soldiers to relieve the guards posted by the door. Arabelle clamped her mouth shut, picked up the breakfast tray she had left on the table, and hurried from the room. The Creole frightened her. A man like Baptiste could cause her a lot of grief.

Baptiste waited for the servant to leave and then closed the door after her. He walked across the cave and took a seat at the table. He removed his hat and placed it in front of him. Lamplight played upon his silver hair. His eyebrows arched as he stared at his prisoner. He scratched at his bushy white sideburns and smiled. He pulled a silver hair from his goatee, examined it a moment, then blew it away.

“Comfortable, Mrs. Windthorst? That was the name you used in New Orleans wasn’t it? Amanda Windthorst. The patient and faithful wife. Yes, I remember now.” He reached in the pocket of his greatcoat and removed a silver flask, his ration of bourbon for the day.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Caitlin said in the brassy voice she had adopted for Rosalie DuToit.

Amanda Windthorst had been quiet, almost shy, and very ladylike and proper.

“You are most clever. But you overlooked one important part of the pretense. You are a very attractive woman. I wasn’t the only man in New Orleans who noticed, either. With your husband supposedly gone, and the thought of you sleeping alone every night … yes, indeed, I was quite enamored of you. I never dreamed it was all a performance for our benefit. So that we wouldn’t suspect you were a spy sent to betray us.”

“I’ve never been in New Orleans,” Caitlin retorted. “However, I have performed in theaters in Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and up and down the coast. You have mistaken me—” She never finished. Colonel Baptiste slammed his fist down on the table, half rose from the chair, then settled back.

“Lies! Just hear them, pouring out of your mouth.” He wiped a hand across his mouth. “Do not take me for a fool.”

“It is hard not to,” Caitlin said. She combed her fingers through her pale hair and sighed. “But I assume you’ll come to your senses and allow me to return to the theater.” She straightened a landscape painting that Letitia had hung from the sod walls to give the cave a more homelike feeling.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Baptiste said, frowning. He folded his arms, a smug expression on his face. “Johnston has ordered me to find out the truth from you.” He smiled without a trace of humor, his eyes narrow and wicked looking. “I won’t fail.”

“You already have, Colonel. You believe I’m someone I’m not. Why, I wouldn’t have the courage to be a spy.” As she spoke Caitlin noticed the Creole remove the tintype that had been discovered in her trunk. She had been a sentimental fool to bring it with her. John Brennan had fallen on the blood-soaked fields of Bull Run. Everyone had expected the battle to be like a picnic. No one was supposed to get killed. But Rebel troops had chased the Union soldiers back to Washington.

Baptiste held the image of her husband in his hand with such causal disregard, it was all the woman could do to restrain herself. She wanted to rip the tintype from his grasp and attack her arrogant captor. Caitlin figured she could at least blind him before the guards burst into the room to drag her off to the gallows.

Henri Baptiste thought he glimpsed a slight quiver in her expression, and his smile broadened.

“I lost everything in New Orleans. My estate, slaves, my family wealth.” His hate-filled eyes narrowed. “Someone is going to pay. It might as well be you.”

He tucked the tintype back in his pocket and stood, walked around the table, and moved in close to the woman. She was physically bigger than he, but he was definitely in control. He liked that.

“Of course, I might be persuaded to change my mind. I might even forget I saw you in New Orleans. You could help me forget.” He reached up to stroke her hair. His voice was deep and resonant, like the purr of a big cat. He had an orator’s voice and a politician’s shallow charm, as shifting as the sands. “I think you know how.”

Caitlin caught him by the wrist and batted his hand away.

“I’d sooner drink spit,” she remarked.

A shadow seemed to fall across the face of the colonel, stripping away the mask of false civility. He retreated a step as if she had physically assaulted him.

“I warrant you’ll sing a different tune when you sleep in the shadow of the gallows.”

He retrieved his hat from the table and without another word left the cave. Caitlin sighed and sat down on the bed, the mattress creaking beneath her. No one really had any proof she was a spy, only the tintype and Colonel Baptiste’s word. But in the hysteria of war, with Grant poised to strike at the heart of the Confederacy, reason might not prevail. As for the quality of mercy, it had been strained to the breaking point at Shiloh and Chancellorsville and Antietam.