The Widow's War

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Authors: Mary Mackey

BOOK: The Widow's War
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Table of Contents
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
“Mary Mackey gives her readers yet another woman warrior, this one a fighter in the Civil War. We thrill to the story of Carrie Vinton as she travels from Brazil to Bloody Kansas to Missouri and courageously takes the side of freedom over slavery.”
—Maxine Hong Kingston, author of
The Woman Warrior
Praise for
THE NOTORIOUS MRS. WINSTON
“A deep look at the Civil War from the viewpoint of a feisty, independent female masquerading as a male . . . Strong, engaging historical fiction starring a wonderful protagonist.”
—Midwest Book Review
 
“Using the Civil War as a backdrop for her story of a woman’s struggle for freedom and independence, Mackey creates a strong feminist work of fiction that reads like true history. Her fascinating characters and actual events and battles of the war are drawn so clearly you’ll feel you’re in the midst of the war as well as inside the heroine’s heart. This appealing, intelligent story will find a place on your bookshelf and in your heart.”
—Romantic Times
 
 
 
Acclaim for Mary Mackey’s previous novels
 
“A complex, colorful saga . . . Engrossing and realistic.”
—Publishers Weekly
 
“Inventive and imaginative.”
—The New York Times
 
“Deserves a place on the shelves next to the work of Jean Auel.”
—Booklist
 
“Fascinating.”
—Marion Zimmer Bradley, author of
The Mists of Avalon
Berkley Titles by Mary Mackey
THE NOTORIOUS MRS. WINSTON
THE WIDOW’S WAR
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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(a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
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(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,
South Africa
 
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
 
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
 
Copyright © 2009 by Mary Mackey.
 
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
BERKLEY
®
is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
 
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley trade paperback edition / September 2009
 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mackey, Mary.
The widow’s war / Mary Mackey.—Berkley trade paperback ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-14008-6
1. Abolitionists—Fiction. 2. Women and war—Fiction. 3. African American soldiers—
Fiction. 4. Kansas—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.A3165W53 2009
813’.54—dc22 2009021032
 
 

http://us.penguingroup.com

For John Edward Mackey
1920-2008
Historical Note
In 1854 fierce fighting broke out in Kansas as abolitionists and pro-slavers flocked to the territory to vote in an election to decide whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free or slave state. For the next seven years, until the official start of the Civil War in April of 1861, an undeclared civil war raged on the Great Plains as bands of Southern raiders massacred abolitionists and abolitionists retaliated. The violence in Kansas can be seen as a bloody rehearsal for the Civil War, a conflict that would rip the United States in half from 1861 to 1865 and end with the emancipation of over four million enslaved Americans of African descent.
Chronology
MAY 30, 1854
President Pierce signs the Kansas-Nebraska Act, a law that allows residents of the western territories to vote to decide whether or not those territories will join the Union as free states or slave states. Pro-slavers and free-soilers flock to Kansas.
 
AUGUST 1, 1854
Lawrence, Kansas, founded by New England abolitionists.
 
NOVEMBER 29, 1854
Election for first Kansas Territorial Delegate to Congress. Massive fraud as Missourians stream over the border to vote for pro-slavery candidate John W. Whitfield.
 
OCTOBER 7, 1855
Abolitionist John Brown arrives in Kansas.
 
MAY 21, 1856
Army of pro-slavers attacks Lawrence, sacks the town, and burns the Free State Hotel.
 
MAY 22, 1856
Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner brutally beaten on floor of United States Senate by South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks.
MAY 24, 1856
John Brown kills pro-slavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek.
 
JUNE 2, 1856
Brown’s men defeat pro-slavery militia at Battle of Black Jack (sometimes considered the first battle of the Civil War).
 
AUGUST 30, 1856
Pro-slavers attack Osawatomie and massacre Brown’s supporters.
 
OCTOBER 16, 1859
Brown seizes United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, with intent of arming slaves of the South so they can free one another.
 
DECEMBER 1, 1859
Brown hanged for treason.
 
JANUARY 29, 1861
Kansas enters Union as a free state.
 
APRIL 12, 1861
Confederate batteries fire on Fort Sumter. American Civil War officially begins.
Carrie
The Kansas Territory, September 1856
 
 
 
N
ine days ago, I shot my husband. Tomorrow, I am going to lead a band of escaped slaves into Missouri to free eight women, four men, and three children who were kidnapped by Henry Clark and his band of border ruffians. Actually, the escaped slaves are going to lead me. They were trained in the art of war by John Brown himself, and God help any slaver who gets in our way.
When I throw the divining shells and look into the future, I can see that this is only the first battle in a civil war that will soon engulf the entire nation. That war is racing east right now toward New York and Boston, Richmond and Savannah, cracking and roaring like a prairie fire, and there’s not a thing any of us can do but prepare to stand and fight.
Henry Clark welcomes this war. For the past week he’s been hunting me like game. He’s plastered a poster with my description on it on the side of every jail in western Missouri:
WANTED: WHITE WOMAN, AGE 25. BROWN EYES, BLOND HAIR, 5’5” IN HEIGHT, APPROXIMATELY 120 LBS. SLAVE-STEALER, ABOLITIONIST, STATION MASTER ON THE NOTORIOUS LAWRENCE LINE OF THE SO-CALLED UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. GOES BY NAMES “CAROLYN VINTON,” “CARRIE VINTON,” “CAROLYN SAYLOR,” AND “MRS. DEACON PRESGROVE.”
He got most of the details right, but that poster also contains additional information that reads as if it were composed by a madman, which leads me to believe Clark himself wrote it. “Armed and dangerous,” I take as a compliment, but what am I to make of the charge that I am known to “consort with satanic spirits,” or “kill men from afar by mysterious means”? Clark makes it sound as if I’m wanted for witchcraft. I wonder what he’d have written if he’d known I was coming after him with a cavalry unit of black soldiers?
To tell the truth, I’m surprised the word “adulteress” doesn’t appear anywhere, because I’m not just riding into Missouri to free the men and women Henry Clark plans to sell back into bondage. I’m riding to a plantation called Beau Rivage to rescue my lover before Clark hangs him. His name is William Saylor, and I’ve loved him almost all my life. The first day I met him, I pulled a late-blooming orchid out of the mud and thrust it into his hands. “Have a
Ca lopogon pulchellus
,” I said. “You don’t often see them in bloom this time of year.” That was back in Mitchellville, Kentucky, so many years ago I can hardly count them. William was eleven and I was nine—just children both of us, but from the very first it was as if we had been born to spend our lives together.
William examined the orchid and then stared up at me with dark eyes that reminded me of the black waters of the upper Amazon—a tall, skinny, pale boy with thick, silky hair the color of caramel candy. “You speak Latin?” he said in an awed tone that I found very gratifying. Even in those first few minutes of our acquaintance, I wanted to impress him. Neither of us had the slightest suspicion that we’d just fallen in love or that we’d stay in love forever.
Our lives have been full of so many missed opportunities that when I think about them, they drive me half mad. If I’d stayed in Mitchellville instead of going back to Brazil with my father, we would have married as soon as William got out of medical school, but instead I married the wrong man and spent almost an entire year grieving for William while he grieved for me. Each of us thought the other was dead, and by the time we found each other again, every penny of the great fortune my father had left me was gone, and the war in Kansas had begun. If William and I hadn’t been deceived and lied to, I would never have lost him a second time to Henry Clark or seen my baby boy taken away by Clark’s men, trussed up in a pillowcase like a dead rabbit.

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