The Sapphire Brooch (The Celtic Brooch Trilogy Book 2) (42 page)

Dawn was coming now, casting a bluish-yellow glow above a landscape dotted with wildflowers. When the sun came up, so would a profusion of brilliant colors, the work of a true master painter.

Gaylord made a round up motion with his finger. “Let’s go.”

She stopped ruminating and hefted the bag again, hoping the physical weight would distract her from the increasing weight of her worry. Pressing her right boot into the damp soil, next her left, then her right and left again, she eased into a comfortable stride which would keep her from lagging too far behind the men.

Allowing herself a small smile, she couldn’t help thinking if Braham knew she and Jack were risking their lives to rescue him, the force of his explosive reaction would register on the Richter scale. But Braham’s opinion in this case was irrelevant.

Jack had promised he would devise a plan by the time they reached Richmond. As far as she knew, he had yet to make it to the first rung on his plotting ladder. She was in favor of carrying Braham off to the future again, but it would only solve the immediate problem. He would merely turn around and come back to the nineteenth century, and there was no way she was going to live in a
Groundhog Day
time loop.

“Jack.” She hurried up next to him, ducking under a low-hanging willow branch. “Do you have a plan yet?”

He slowed, pushing aside the hanging veil of branches to make room for her on the path, letting Gaylord gain a few yards on them. When they were safely out of earshot, Jack said, “The prisoners will be evacuated Sunday night for a forced march south.”

She repositioned her haversack to ease the load on her shoulders, thinking about what dangers the evacuation would mean for Braham. “Hmm. Then we have to get him out before then.”

“I don’t think so. We can use the evacuation to our advantage.”

“What are you going to do? Pull him out of line while they’re marching out of town? What if he’s disoriented and resists?”

Jack put his finger to his lips, glancing ahead. “Shhh. The softest cry carries out here.”

Charlotte covered her mouth, realizing her voice could have carried across the field in the morning stillness. She whispered between her fingers. “We don’t know what condition he’s in. He could cause a disturbance by not realizing we are there to help him. He has to know what to expect.”

Gaylord stopped and signaled for them to catch up and follow the tree line to the right. In a low voice, he said, “Heard part of what you said. I agree. We need to get a message to the major.”

She moved to stand beside Gaylord, keeping her voice low, too. “A Confederate doctor could get inside easily.”

Jack came to a halt, pointing a finger at her. “You can get your crazy idea out of your head right now. You’re not going in there.”

She swatted at his finger. “Put your dictatorial brother finger away. I’m no longer your baby sister. I’m almost forty years old and can make my own decisions. If it’s a possibility, we can’t rule it out. I got into a Confederate hospital. I can find a way to get into a prison, too.”

Gaylord came up between the siblings, giving a small, amused sort of snort. “Miss Van Lew will have suggestions. We’ll sort out how to make it happen together.”

For the next hour Gaylord skirted around rebel forces, taking roads and paths through the countryside and bypassing the home guards manning checkpoints. As they neared the city, Gaylord followed the James River to the southeast. Slowly, in the chill of the morning, they made their way through to the woods lining the rushing river, swollen from early spring rain.

Charlotte ducked into a dense stand of trees and changed out of men’s clothing and into a traveling dress. Her preference was not to change, but they didn’t have work papers for another man, and women didn’t need them.

The trio arrived in Richmond, passing by the Tredegar Iron Works. At Cary Street, Gaylord left them with instructions to make their way to Miss Van Lew’s Grace Street residence.

“She might have news of the major,” he said in parting.

“If you hear anything, please send word.” Her fear for Braham was almost strangling. Since he had already been tried, convicted, and sentenced, he could have been hanged by now.

No, impossible. She would know. There would be barbed wire tightening around her heart, a sharp tug in her gut, the intensity would create a cosmic disturbance. Maybe she’d be the only one to feel it, but it wouldn’t diminish the intensity of the disturbance.

He was alive, and she knew it.

He was above all an honorable man, exuberant about living. A man so naturally sexual he intensified her own sexuality. A man both tender and intensely male who made her feel intensely female.

Yes, she would know.

She allowed none of these turbulent thoughts to cause even a ripple in her expression, though. Jack needed to believe she had her usual calm confidence, especially if Doctor Carlton Mallory intended to visit Castle Thunder.

Jack had a keen look on his face as he scanned the cobblestone streets. “We’ve spent most of our lives in this city. It’s as familiar as Mallory Plantation, but this,” he encompassed the scene with a wave of his arm, “is an alien place.”

Charlotte hugged her cape tight around her shoulders and breathed out hard, followed by a long breath in, hoping the chill would calm her.

“There’s an ominous stillness. Do you feel it?”

“Yes.” Jack lifted his chin and sniffed. The expression in his intelligent eyes changed ever so slightly. “I smell it, too.” He sniffed again. “It’s the lingering smell of sulfur from cannon and artillery fire.”

She twitched her nose. “You’re more sensitive to smells than I am, but even I can smell it, hear it, feel the vibrations.”

“Do you want to go by the prison on the way to the Van Lew’s house?”

She nodded.

He pointed with a slight lift of his chin. “Let’s head up Cary Street then, but don’t make it look like we’re casing the joint. If we get locked up, we won’t be any help to your boyfriend.”

She gave Jack a smile as thin as a razor. “He’s
not
my boyfriend.”

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

She’d never been able to put anything over on her brother. He knew her too well. But Braham wasn’t her boyfriend. Wannabe lover maybe, but not a boyfriend. No matter how much she might wish for a future with him, they were both in the wrong place and the wrong time.

The tune to a Stevie Wonder’s song surfaced in her mind, and she hummed a few bars while she and Jack walked down Cary Street to 18
^th
.
Undercover passion on the run…For me and you my part-time lover.

“There it is—Castle Thunder,” Jack said, pointing to three old red brick tobacco warehouses. The buildings faced the James River, each one with dozens of barred windows open to the elements. A wooden fence encircled a small prison yard, and guards lined the tops of the walls.

A cool breeze had sprung up and was blowing the folds of her skirts around her legs. Dread of what they might find raised the hackles on the back of her neck. “I wish I knew which building he was in.”

“Probably the one with deserters and political prisoners.”

“Not much help unless there’s a sign over the door. Whichever one it is, we’ve got to get him out.”

He nodded cautiously. “Come on. Let’s keep going.”

They moved quickly though the shadowy street, peering in all directions and listening to groans coming from the prison’s open windows. The rancid smell, a sickening combination of disease, sweat, and other bodily fluids coated her nostrils and clung there, magnified by her own fear. She chewed her lower lip as she tried to think of ways to get him out quickly and safely. They didn’t have many. In fact, they only had one.

“Major Carlton Mallory is going to visit the prison tomorrow.”

Jack’s face assumed the Mallory look; a characteristic calm masking the rapid and furious thinking going on behind it. After a moment, his eyes bored into hers, dark and penetrating. “The prisoners incarcerated there are some of the most desperate men in the Confederacy. There’s not a chance in hell I’m going to let you go inside that suffering, stinking pit.”

Jack placed his hand on her back, heavy even through her riding cape. He guided her forward with a bit of pressure to keep moving. “The guards at the door are watching. Keep going.” He guided her up 23rd Street toward Main.

“There won’t be any wagons or ambulances available to evacuate the non-ambulatory prisoners. It would make sense for a doctor to go in there to evaluate the prisoners and get an accurate count of how many would need to be left behind. That wouldn’t be dangerous.”

He glanced sideways, tongue probing a back tooth as he thought. “I might have a plan, but it requires someone to get inside—someone other than you.”

“I wouldn’t want you in there either, Jack, but disguised as a Confederate doctor—”

He shook his head. “We’ll work something else out. The place is a vast sinkhole of inhumanity.”

“I wonder if any of those men will ever find their way back from the abyss of brutality.”

Jack shot a glance over his shoulder toward the prison. “Abyss of brutality? Hmm. Nice word choices.”

She thought about it, rubbing absently at her cheek. “It’s not original. I read it somewhere. Epitome of inhumanity is a good line, too.” They continued to the corner in silence and headed down another block toward Franklin Street. “I’ve been reenacting Civil War battles for the last twenty years, but walking past those warehouses, smelling the blistering stench, and hearing those anguished moans makes me realize what I’ve been doing is—”

Jack finished her sentence saying, “Honoring those who fought.”

She glanced up at him with a lifted brow. “Those words aren’t exactly the ones I would use.”

“Don’t belittle what you’ve been doing.” He lowered his voice to a familiar pitch, trying to appear unruffled, but he marked every word with subtle inflection, a vocal cue to those who knew him well. “Every survivor will suffer for the rest of his life. Thank God it’s almost over.”

They reached Grace Street and climbed the short distance up Church Hill to the Van Lew mansion. The horizon to the east appeared gold-plated as a brilliant sun inched its way up through the orange hues of dawn. The sumptuous fragrance of showy pink Magnolia blossoms floated on the breeze. Grand homes lined both sides of this street. Charlotte stopped and stared, appreciating their beauty all the more after the degradation they’d witnessed. In the twenty-first century, half-million dollar row homes were crammed together in their places. Though still a beautiful street, it didn’t have the charm and elegance the street possessed in the nineteenth century.

“One of my reference books mentioned that during the evacuation—” Jack said, but Charlotte interrupted him.

“What? I’m sorry,” she said. “I was distracted. What were you saying?”

He frowned back with a look of puzzlement. “Pay attention. Stop woolgathering. I thought you wanted to hear my plan.”

She might have laughed if she’d been in the mood for irony. After waiting with bated breath for two days to hear his plan, her mind took a break for a very few seconds to appreciate the scenery, so naturally he chose this particular time for his big reveal. She lifted one eyebrow at him. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

He glanced at her with a wry half-smile. “Are you sure?”

She replied with a small grunt of amusement.

“Okay, here’s the gist of it. During the evacuation there was a confrontation with the crowd, and three of Miss Van Lew’s cohorts slipped away undetected.”

“Then Braham needs to be with them. Wait a second” She snapped her fingers repeatedly as she attempted to draw something from memory. “There are no horses, wagons, or trains in Richmond, at the present, right? So there’s no way to carry wounded prisoners. If a prisoner can’t walk, he won’t be evacuated. Doctor Mallory has to get inside the prison to get a message to Braham to get in line with the Van Lew people and slip away with them.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

She snorted.

Jack dug a knuckle hard between his brows, as if he was trying to press a headache into submission. “We’ll find another way.”

She was fired up, suddenly feeling quite herself, although there was a faint echo of constant, underlying fear. “I want to do this.”

“What we want,” he began in a voice inflexible as a stone, “isn’t always good for us.”

“Good God, Jack, stop acting like a parent and be my partner in this.”

“When you were in high school and college, I was your only parent. It’s hard to break old habits, especially when it concerns your well-being.” He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “Let’s wait and see if Miss Van Lew has any better suggestions.”

Their walk up the street took them alongside the Van Lew’s three-story white residence. The house took up an entire city block and sat at the top of the elegant Church Hill neighborhood. From the side street they could see the rear of the house, an imposing two-story Doric piazza overlooking elaborate gardens. Magnolia trees, hedges of privet, and box bushes wreathed the house and fell gently in a series of terraces down the hill toward the river.

“It’s gorgeous,” Charlotte said. “Old black and white pictures don’t do it justice. Why in the world did they have to tear it down?”

A wistful, reflective smile crossed his face. “The city condemned the building in 1911. Folks thought it was haunted.”

“Now I’ve seen all this,” she said with a sweep of her arm, “I realize how much of historical Richmond will be lost to the future.”

Jack pointed to St. John’s Episcopal Church on the corner across the street from the mansion. “The church hasn’t changed much.”

“It’s such a waste the Van Lew mansion didn’t survive as well. Maybe we can find a way to save it.”

He gave her a narrowed-eyed disapproving glance. “Are
you
suggesting we change history?”

She gave him the faintest of shrugs. “What harm would it do?”

“What harm?
Seriously?
If you make a small change for Van Lew—”