The Jackal’s Mistress

Chapter 15

15

Here I am again, Libby thought, sitting in a chair late at night, sipping whiskey with a Yankee captain. Her back was sore, as it was most evenings, but she was beginning to understand the attraction of hard spirits. She could almost forget the ache from kidney to kidney and in her right shoulder. And while the world seemed no less mad to her, it did seem more tolerable when viewed through the amber mist of this alcohol. She noticed how, by the light of the day, Weybridge’s eyes were green; by the lantern, however, they were black as crows. He was, once more, in her husband’s sleep shirt. It smelled of soap, not Peter. It hadn’t held her husband’s musk in years.

“Libby?”

Her name pulled her from her reverie. She was staring at him, but she had lost the thread of their conversation. She smiled.

“I’m curious: Where will the doctor say he got the quinine and all that medicine?” he was asking her.

“Jeremiah Norton is a very capable liar. I’ve heard him tell people who won’t live through the night that they’ll be fine, helping them pass in their sleep. That’s a gift. And when a doctor can’t cure you, it’s helpful when he can ease you from this world with poppycock and tripe.”

“So, he’ll come up with something?”

“He will. Or did. He and Joseph have already delivered much of it to the army. Said it was likely some bighearted smuggler dropped it off at his place. I am quite sure the army didn’t ask questions.”

“Or he could have said it was Mosby’s men. Given them the credit.”

She shook her head. “No, he couldn’t. If the rangers had commandeered a wagon with that much medicine, they would have brought it directly to Jubal Early’s command. And taken the credit.”

“Of course.”

“And kept some for themselves.”

She saw the toothbrush beside the glass of water on the night table. He’d been giddy as a child when she’d found it in the plenty she’d received at Harper’s Ferry and brought it upstairs to him. Joseph had brushed his teeth for him the morning after he’d arrived, but the idea he had his own toothbrush had made him happy almost beyond reason. They hadn’t given her tooth powder, but tooth powder was one of the few commodities they had in excess here at the gristmill and house. Eggs and flour and tooth powder, it seemed. And catfish.

“You’re fortunate you’re right-handed,” she said. “I see you brushed your teeth all by yourself like a big boy.”

“My independence is staggering,” he said. Then he continued, “I was never going to be four F.”

“Four F? What Yankee nonsense is that?”

He smiled. “You can’t serve in the army if you’re four F. It means you’re missing the four front teeth you need to tear open the cardboard cartridges for your rifle. That’s how it started, anyway. Now it means anyone who’s unfit to serve.”

“Somehow, I doubt teeth have been a factor in Southern recruitment. We need every warm body we can get.”

“Both sides do. My company was often at half strength.”

“I will never forgive your General Grant,” she said, shaking her head at the thought of the man. He was vile. She loathed him more than Abe Lincoln.

“I can think of any number of reasons why the man might have earned your wrath. Is there one in particular?”

“You really don’t know?”

“I don’t.”

She sighed heavily and put the tumbler down on the night table. “He was the one who stopped the prisoner exchanges back in March. Up until then, I always had hope that Peter might come home in a prisoner exchange with you Yankees. Now, if he comes home, it won’t be until the fighting is over—which, if your current president wins in November, will likely be never.”

“No war lasts forever, Libby.”

“Well, the Hundred Years’ War lasted a hundred years.”

“One hundred and sixteen.”

“Thank you, Professor. There’s no trait in a man more attractive than the willingness to correct a lady. I couldn’t tell you the dates of that war, and I don’t care. The fact it lasted one hundred and sixteen years is about all I need to know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. Not sure it was necessary, but I’ll take it. Of course, from now on when I call you Professor, please know there will be the smallest dollop of rebuke in my voice.”

“My penance?”

“And I’m going easy on you,” she said. She supposed she should push herself to her feet and go to bed. But she was comfortable in this chair. She would be content to scandalize the world—well, Sally and Joseph and Jubilee—and close her eyes and sleep right here. In this chair. It wouldn’t take long to fall asleep. She even closed her eyes and tried it out, breathing in slowly through her nose, counting the breaths, savoring the quiet with this man who may have been a bit of a know-it-all, but was otherwise a most companionable presence.

“Tell me something,” she said, her eyes closed, her voice huskier than usual. It was the whiskey, she guessed.

“Of course.”

“What have you heard of the Union prisons?”

“I’ve heard they’re fine.”

“Fine.”

“Yes.”

“You’re lying.”

“I am. But only because I’ve never seen one. My sense is that your husband is as well as can be expected. He’s being fed and kept warm, and will come home to you when this is over.”

Against the back of her eyes, she saw Peter. But only dimly. How quickly one could forget a face. It was both pathetic and tragic.

“May I ask you something?” he said.

She didn’t open her eyes. She was enjoying the dark there. She nodded.

“I know you and Peter don’t have any children. Did you have a baby that died?”

“No. I’ve never been pregnant.”

“Is that a disappointment?”

Now she did open her eyes and meet his. “No. We’d been married barely a year when the war came and he left. If I’d had an infant to care for on top of everything else? I’d be licked by now. Utterly whipped.”

“I doubt that. You have a stronger spine than a lot of the men I’ve commanded.”

“You may be right. I’m not shy about my capabilities. But a baby the last three years? No.”

“Can you shoot?” he asked, and there was something devilish in the question. She couldn’t tell for sure, but from the tone, it seemed, he didn’t believe that she could—which was both true and not. She really couldn’t shoot, but she had fired a Colt and amassed a small armory. She had killed more men than any woman she was likely to meet.

Or not. Who could say what secrets other women had after three and a half years of war?

Especially here, where the armies—both sides—always seemed to be coming and going.

“No,” she answered finally. “But I have other strengths. Make no mistake: you don’t want to cross me.”

He put up his right hand in surrender. “Never. If I have learned one thing in the army, it’s this: never go into a fight you can’t win.”

“You’re a wise man, Professor.”

“Jonathan. Please.”

“I’ll work on it.”

“Very kind of you. And Professor is better than Jackal. ”

“Depends on what I mean when I say it,” she told him. “So, tell me. How are you feeling?”

“A little better, actually. I mean that.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No.”

She took her glass off the night table and rose. With her free hand she touched his forehead, relieved to find it as cool as hers. She allowed her fingers to linger there an extra second. Then she came back to herself. He was definitely mending. She motioned at the lantern, and he nodded that she could take it with her to the room she was sharing with Jubilee. Then she turned and left him alone in the dark. She felt unsteady on her feet, and knew it was not merely the whiskey.

The afternoon sky was waxen and stark, an endless flatness the color of eggshells. In the pasture, the two horses and the lone cow were grazing. The day was windless, and the birds, at the moment, were silent.

Jubilee was too short for the crutches, but Joseph watched her take one and hop about on it while he finished sanding the handpiece of the other one. He was seated on a stool in a patch of flat dirt beside the corncrib, empty since they had stopped growing corn.

“That man is a lot of work,” she said to him. Joseph knew whom she was referring to.

“He has made the days a little longer,” he admitted. “But not everyone in this war has to die, now do they?”

“And even with them crutches, I don’t see how he can help around here. You been up since dawn—”

“Before dawn.”

“Me too. And you were at the mill, and then hammerin’ back them boards in place in Cinnamon’s stall, and now you’re makin’ the man these crutches. Sally was not happy you didn’t stop for dinner. She says you’re too old to be missin’ meals.”

“I’m a little sick of okra.”

“Me too. But that ham you got from the bluebellies in Harper’s Ferry? That was tasty.”

He looked at the handpiece and ran his fingers over it, savoring how smooth he had made it. No chance of a splinter there. “Bring me that other crutch,” he said to the girl, and she pretended to use it, hobbling over to him. When he had both, he stood and tried them out, bending his right leg at the knee and lifting it off the ground.

“You need more padding on that part there that goes under his arm,” Jubilee told him.

The girl was right, and so he took some of the worn fabric Libby had found him from the basket, sat back down, and cut another piece. The pattern was paisley, and likely the remnants that were not needed for a dress.

“I hear Sally usually cans tomatoes and makes mighty good pickles. I reckon not this year,” she went on.

“Nope. No more tomatoes and cucumbers to pickle. That’s what happens in a war. Too many people to feed. Too many people just takin’ what they want.”

“You see Doc Norton when he was here today? He’s seen that jackal three times now.”

“I did not.”

“He thinks he’s a better doctor than Robert E. Lee’s a general. Says he’s workin’ wonders on the bluebelly.”

He cut the fabric into a long strip and wound it around the top of the crutch. “The man is much better.”

“It’s sleepin’ in my aunt and uncle’s bed. It’s all the food he’s eatin’.”

“And the medicine. And the doctor.”

“Doc Norton practically fell off his horse when he was leavin’. Smelled like a saloon.”

Joseph sat up straight and folded his arms across his chest. “Child, you have no idea what a saloon smells like. Are you sayin’ in your fashion that the man was tipplin’ before he came here?”

“Tipplin’? Jeremiah Norton pours bark juice down his gullet like he’s tryin’ to power the wheels in the mill!”

Joseph knew it was no secret that the physician drank too much: whiskey was always part of his plan to bring the physician into their camp. But people shied away from calling him a drunk. And the idea that the doctor was already five sheets to the wind when he was here this morning was worrisome. Yes, they were plying him with whiskey to buy his silence, but that alcohol could also prove to be their undoing if he was too drunk by midday to hold his tongue.

He pulled at his shirt collar, which was soaked through with sweat and chafing his neck. He was unsure what they could do, but helping a Federal was treason. He’d only been free a half decade, and the last thing he wanted was to lose that freedom to a noose.