The Jackal’s Mistress

Chapter 22

22

He felt the churning inside him he had experienced before every battle, the agitation, the soul leaning into the violence. A small part of him was surprised that after the fight at Gilbert’s Ford where, finally, the odds caught up to him and he joined the boys who were forever crippled, he wasn’t more gun shy. Maybe it was his protectiveness of these people who had saved his life and risked all that they had for him.

Or maybe it was just the fact that man was a monster. Perhaps God, whatever or whomever he was, had not created us in his image, but instead saw us more like the minotaur, part man and part bull, or the animated corpse birthed by Mary Shelley. We hunted and killed with greater ferocity and precision than any other animal in Vermont or Virginia. And, it seemed, no classroom or book could bleed that from a person.

Weybridge was confident that he could pick off a single rider with the carbine if he still had two legs. Perhaps he could take out even two or three. And he could have done this at night, if there had been any moon at all and the skies weren’t about to unleash torrents.

But there might be more than a couple of riders, according to Clark. And it was about to pour.

And he didn’t have two legs.

So, he was not going to ambush them on the road between here and Leveritt Covington’s. Besides, there wasn’t time to scope out the land and find the right ground.

Their best bet was a battle at close quarters, and to use the element of surprise to their advantage.

He surveyed the property, the contours of the buildings and their proximity to the gristmill, as he felt the first drops—cool and gentle—on his fingers and nose. He was only a captain, but he had been on enough battlefields that almost reflexively he fought by trying to imagine how his opponent was going to use his position, his assets, his ground. It was nighttime: these men with eyes even deader than his were not going to search aggressively. Not now. They were going to approach this differently.

“Well?” It was Libby. He looked at her, still in a sleep shift beneath her cloak. And at her niece, barefoot. At Joseph and Sally.

“Sally,” he said, the thoughts forming in his mind as if he were writing them down, “please take Jubilee and go to the mill. Climb to the very top. Above the hoppers.” There they would be above the fray and behind stone walls. They would be in some of the deepest black on this property.

“No, Jackal,” Jubilee began, “you need me to—”

“I need you to listen to the man!” Libby snapped at the child, her voice uncompromising and fierce.

“We’ll give you one of the Colts,” he told Sally. “I know you’ve never used one.”

“I’ve never even held one.”

“But you’ll only fire it if one of Morgan’s men actually does search for me up there, and I don’t expect one will. You’ll be in the dark, and you won’t make a sound. If someone does go there, when he reaches the top step? Shoot him. Put the gun in his chest and shoot him. Joseph or Libby will bring you the Colt in a few minutes, when we have it loaded.”

“I ain’t even got shoes on,” Jubilee complained, but her aunt glared at her, and then Sally led the child away to the mill.

“I’m going to guess they’ll go to your home first, Joseph. They’re going to use you and Sally to force Libby to give me up.”

“And then kill me anyway.”

“Very likely.”

The world seemed to go still when he said that. There were dozens of other ways this could go down. They might shoot Joseph the second he opened the door, planning to use only Sally as leverage. They might dismount on the road and go first to Libby’s home instead, believing it was they who had caught the small Steadman contingent unawares, and burst through the front door, killing the Yankee and capturing his abettors. He needed to plan for this, too. He had to have a contingency.

There was another low rumble of thunder, and the rain was falling harder now.

“Let’s go inside,” he said. “Joseph, please get the carbine from the mill and then join us in the kitchen. Libby and I will start loading the Colts.”

“What did you call these?” Libby asked as they loaded the pistols. “The lover bullet?”

He’d forgotten he’d shared the term with her. It had been on one of those evenings when they had sat together on the porch. He’d been recalling for her his delirium on the floor at Maude Bingham’s before they’d rescued him. “The mistress bullet,” he answered.

“Salacious,” she mumbled. “Improper, salacious, and just the sort of stupid thing a man would think. And more cowardly than heroic.”

“I know.”

“You never would have done that.”

“No,” he said. At least that’s what he liked to believe. But certainly the idea had crossed his mind when he’d been dying on the floor of that first house.

They made quick work of preparing the guns, but still, when Joseph returned with the rifle, it was raining so hard that he was sopping wet and his clothing dripped onto the kitchen floor. Libby had opened the window wide so they might hear the approaching horses, and the storm was raking the sill and that corner of the room like waves crashing upon the sides of a dinghy, and Weybridge supposed that while Libby’s thinking was logical, the storm would nevertheless shield the sound of the animals’ hooves.

Libby handed two of the pistols to Joseph, one for him and one to bring to Sally, and he stared at them as if they were equipment for the mill he’d never worked with before. Then he raised one up and extended his arm, aiming it toward the window. “Was this the one we took off the man who attacked you over there?” he asked Libby.

“Right here,” she answered. “He would have killed you with it. He might have killed me with it.”

“If they come to your house first, open the door and shoot whoever’s there,” Weybridge told him. “Just point and fire—and keep firing. You have six shots and the element of surprise. You’ll get at least one of them, I’m certain of that, and I’ll be at that window right there with the carbine. I’ll get the others. I’ll use the sill to help with my aim, and I’ll also have one of the Colts handy. Libby here will have the other two. She may not have perfect aim at this distance, but she’ll have two guns and twelve bullets in the chambers.”

“And if they come to this house first?” Joseph asked.

“Stay where you are. If they come here, if they open that front door right over there, Libby shoots one and I shoot the rest.”

“You’re assuming there are only three or four coming,” said Libby. “What if there’s more?”

“We can handle four. Maybe even five.”

“And if there are six?”

He exhaled loudly, wishing he had better answers. “I don’t know how many men they’ll send for one crippled Yankee. It’s a lot of bother.”

“Bother? It just might be good-natured fun for them,” she said morbidly. “String up a Yankee and a freedman? They’ll hoot. Exact a little revenge for what you Yankees have done so far in the Valley? They’ll holler. Take a little pleasure at the expense of that Peter Steadman’s turncoat wife? They’ll cheer.”

“If the posse’s that large, I’ll throw down the carbine and walk out to them,” he said. “I’ll turn myself in and slip my head through the noose.”

“That’s a noble sacrifice. Downright chivalrous. But I doubt it would spare Sally or Joseph or me.”

She might have been correct. But he had laid out what felt like the best of their bad options. The kitchen had a moment of daylight, more lightning, and then there was another boom overhead.

“I like our odds,” he said, trying—and failing—to convince himself as well as them. “Two last things. I saw lots of boys shoot too soon. It’s natural. But don’t do it. And Libby? Remember what I taught you: aim low.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, Professor? I am happy to shoot low. I am happy to shoot very, very low.”