Bride of the Night

Yes, she had gone north, and, yes, she had been accosted. By an idiot citizen who seemed to think that she was about to offer harm to President Lincoln. Idiot, yes, but …

Canny and observant, he had watched her—stalked her practically!—and stopped her from getting near Lincoln. If she hadn’t been wary …

No, she could take care of herself. If forced into a fighting position, she could take care of herself. And, while highly unlikely, she could be killed, especially if someone really knew or understood just who she was.

What she was.

That was then, long ago now. The man could be dead now, such was the war.

Somehow, she doubted it. She could too easily remember him. Though far shorter than the president, he was well over six feet tall, built of brick, so it appeared, with sharp dark eyes that seemed to rip right through flesh and blood. She remembered his touch all too well. He was a dangerous enemy.

“I’ve been north before,” she repeated to Richard. “I’m not a soldier and I’m not a spy. I’m a traveler. I’m just trying to find a place to live, to find work … I’ve been there, I’ve done it before.”

“Yes, I know, and I didn’t think that it was a good idea then, and I think it’s a worse idea now.”

She touched his hand gently. She couldn’t be afraid, and she couldn’t let others be afraid for her. If she could only make her friends understand that it was almost as if she was being called to help. “Richard, it’s as if he knows me, as if he’s communicating with me through his mind. I don’t know how to explain, but I dream that we’re walking through the White House—and he’s talking to me.”

Richard stood, paced the soft ground and paused again to look at her. “If you want to go, you know that I’ll help you. I just want you to realize what a grave mistake you’re making—absolutely no pun intended.” He hesitated. “This is home. This is Key West. This is where your mother came, and where you are accepted, and where you have friends. It’s where I’m based.”

Tara lifted her chin. “It’s where you’re based. Half of the time, you’re off—trying to slip through the blockade. Speak of dangerous.”

“It’s what I’m supposed to do,” he said quietly.

“You never wanted the war,” she reminded him. “You said from the beginning that there had to be a way to compromise, that we just needed to realize that slavery was archaic and the great plantation owners could begin a system of payments and schooling and—”

“I was an idiot,” he said flatly. “In one thing, the world will never change. Men will be blind when a system—even an evil one—creates their way of life, their riches and their survival. John Brown might have been a murdering fanatic, but in this, he could have been right.” He gazed off into the distance, a bemused look on his face. “The state of Vermont abolished slavery long before your Mr. Lincoln thought of his emancipation proclamation. But do you think that rich farmers anywhere were thinking that they’d have to pick their own cotton if such a law existed? Yes, it can happen, it will happen, but …”

“You’re saying the war is over, that we’ve lost—but you keep going out, running the blockade.”

He lifted his hands. “It’s what I have to do…. But! You don’t have to. You are in a dangerous situation when you leave this place.”

“Richard! I don’t walk around with a sign on my back with large printed letters that spell out b-a-s-t-a-r-d!” she said indignantly.

“Nor do you have a sign that says Be Wary! Half Vampire!” Richard warned.

Tara was silence a minute. “And you’re my friend,” she murmured dryly.

He knelt back down by her in the bracken by the pines near the tiny spit of beach that stretched out along the causeway to the fort. “I am your friend. That’s why I’m telling you this. You know I’ll take you aboard the Peace when you wish … you know that. What I’m trying to tell you is that every journey we make grows more dangerous. The South started the war with no navy, had to scrounge around and build like crazy—beg, borrow and steal other ships—and then count on blockade runners to carry supplies. My ship is good, but the noose is tightening on us, Tara.”

He was quiet for a minute, looking downward, and then he looked up at her again. “Tara, I’m saying this to you now, here alone. If I were heard, it might well be construed as that I was speaking as a traitor, and God help me, I’d fight for my state, no matter what. Yet, every word we’ve spoken here is the truth of it. The war is ending. And we are on our knees, dying. The Confederacy can’t hold out much longer, and who knows, maybe God Himself is speaking. General Sherman ripped Atlanta apart, and thankfully Savannah surrendered before being burned to the ground, as well. Since Gettysburg, our victories have been small and sadly sparse.”

Tara drew her knees to her chest and hugged them. “Yes,” she said softly. “I can read very well,” she assured him.

“The death toll is ungodly.” He might well have been sadly informing himself.

“I know …” She waved a hand in the air. “I know the tragedy of the whole situation, and all the logic. Grant is grabbing immigrants right off the ships and throwing them into the Union forces. The North has the manufacturing—and what they didn’t have, they seized. They’re in control of the railroads, and when the South rips them up, they have the money and supplies to repair them, and we don’t. Lee’s army is threadbare, shoeless, down on ammunition and, half the time, scrounging desperately for food. I know all that, Richard. Like you, I’d hoped that there wouldn’t be a war, and that most people with any sense would realize that it wouldn’t simply be a massive cost in life for all of us.”

She looked at Richard, pain and passion in her eyes. “I think about you, and my friends fighting for the South. And I think about Hank Manner, the kind young Yankee at the fort who helped old Mrs. Bartley when her carriage fell over. Richard, the concept of any of you shot and torn and bleeding is horrible. North and South, we’re all human beings.” She winced. “Well, you know what I mean. Hank is a good man, a really good man.”

She was quiet for a moment, and then added softly, “I think I’m just grateful. It really is all over. I just don’t know why we keep fighting.”

“Human beings. Yes, as you said—it’s the human beast,” Richard said, shaking his head as he looked out to the sea. “Men can’t accept defeat. It hits us at some primal level, and we just about have to destroy everything, including ourselves …”

“So, it may go on. Please, Richard …?”

“The war will go on,” he said harshly. “And it will be chaos while it’s still being settled, and, God knows, far worse after!”

“You can’t understand this urgency I feel,” she told him.

He gripped her hands. “Tara, it makes no sense! Why in hell are you worried about Abraham Lincoln? He’s been elected, again. He’ll be inaugurated soon, again. He’ll be the conquering hero of the United States. What, are you crazy? There are professional military guards who worry about his safety, friends who watch over him. And Pinkerton guards …”

“He surely can’t imagine the amount of enemies he must have.”

“But, Tara—” Richard began, and then he just shook his head and went silent with frustration.

She smiled, touching his face tenderly. They’d known each other so long. She almost smiled, thinking about how most of the people they knew couldn’t understand why they hadn’t married. But, of course, they could never marry. They were closer than a sister and a brother. They had grown up as outcasts who’d had to prove themselves, even to survive in the bawdy, salvaging, raw world of Key West, where nationalities mingled with the nationless pirates, and, yes, where the War of Northern Aggression went on, though most often as idle threats and fists raised to the sky. At Fort Zachary Taylor, the Union troops died far more frequently from disease than from battle, though Union ships ever tightened their grip on the blockade. Beer, wine, rum, Scottish whiskey and all manner of alcohol ran rich at the taverns. Fishermen mingled with the architects of the fine new houses, and only at night, behind the wooden walls of their houses—poor or splendid—did the system of class mean much in Key West.

Tara thought that she and Richard were far closer than they might have been had they been born blood sister and brother. Tara’s mother had returned from an excursion to the mainland with a new name and child, but no husband. Richard’s mother had deserted his pirating father, who had eventually been seized and hanged for his criminal ways. Lorna Douglas Fox had taken Richard in when he’d been just eight years old, ignoring all speculations that the boy would surely grow to be as bad as his father. Lorna had already weathered rumor and whispers; she didn’t care what people said, no matter how tiny the island community. She had been born in Key West, and her father had been there before Florida had even become a U.S. territory, much less a state. And, of course, at the beginning, statehood had meant little in Key West. Its population had remained Spanish, Bahamian, English and American … and that really only at shifting intervals, since so many came just to fish, drink and rest, and move on back to nearby island homes.

Tara stood. Richard eyed her warily but stood, too.

“Where is your ship?” she asked flatly.

“I haven’t dissuaded you at all, have I?”

She wagged a finger at him. “You have given me a lecture. Now, I shall give you one! I think—however he might have been hated in the South—that Abraham Lincoln is an incredibly good man. I believe that of many of our leaders and generals, as well. And, I think that we need him. I think that we’ll need many men of his ilk if we’re ever to repair the great rift that’s been created. As you said, John Brown might have been an out-and-out murderer, and certainly, by the law, his sentence was just, but he did have the right idea. Here’s where we are, though, about to surrender to a furious power that will have to have any remnant inklings of vengeance held in check, or else the South will be truly doomed. I have to try to get close to the man. I believe that he needs me—and that’s not turning traitor, because my state will need a strong, enlightened man in control when the giant foot of victory stomps down on us as if we were a pile of ants. Maybe God did decree that we lose the war, but I don’t believe that even God wants more horror than what we’ve already seen to follow it.”

Richard looked downward for a moment, and then met her eyes again. “I’m so afraid anytime you leave, Tara. Here … here, you’re safe. You have me—and even if I’m not here, you have the threat of me! You have people who know you and love you, and if the general population somewhere knew everything about you—or if they suspected the truth about you—we have stock! We have plenty of beef, we have … blood.”

THE UNION SHIP USS Montgomery found anchor in the deep harbor at Key West.

Soon the ship’s tender drew to the dockside entry of Fort Zachary Taylor on a crystal-clear winter’s morning, and Finn took a moment to enjoy the sun streaming down on him through a cloudless blue sky. Palms and pines lined deep-water accesses on the island and joined with the bracken that collided on small spits of sandy beach.

The fort itself was a handsome structure, joined to the island by a causeway that was equipped with a drawbridge. When the Union had first maintained the fort, there had been fears that the citizens of Key West would rise up and try to take it, hence the drawbridge, and the ten cannons set toward the shore. The walls were thick, and dominating the northwest tip of the island, the fortress was an imposing structure to those at sea.

However, despite these fears, it had yet to see real action in the war, and at this point, it was not likely to. Still, the fort had been a major player by enforcing the Union’s dominance of the shipping lanes. The Union blockade was strangling the South, and many of the men stationed at the barracks at Fort Zachary Taylor had been the sailors who prevented Bahamian goods and British guns from reinforcing the rebels.

Finn mused that, from the outset, the North had been at a disadvantage when it had come to true military genius, since many of the mainstays of the Union army—men who had fought and prevailed valiantly in the Mexican conflict—had chosen to lead the troops in their own states. An agrarian society, the South had naturally bred many fine horsemen, and their cavalry had been exceptional. But the North had the manufacturing, a greater supply of men upon which to draw and what Finn considered the key in finally winning the war: tenacity. That tenacity, of course, came in the form of the one man who stayed his course no matter how bitter and brutal and disillusioned many had become: Lincoln.

“Agent Dunne!” a smartly saluting soldier proclaimed, offering assistance with his travel bags. Finn greeted him in return, leaping upon the dock.

“I’m Lieutenant Bowers. We’ve been expecting you, sir! And, please, whatever you’ve heard about the island and the fort, don’t condemn us before you’ve had your stay. Winter is the time to be here. Though it can grow cold, the days are dawning beautifully! It’s not wet and humid like the summer, and mosquitoes are at a minimum. There’s hardly a man in the hospital ward, and we’re praying we’ll not see another summer of war, sir, so we are.”

“We can all pray,” Finn assured him.

“Come along, sir.”

The fort was impressive, Finn thought as they entered. The causeway and drawbridge gave it a bastion against the island, and its high thick walls and multiple guns aimed at the sea provided for a threat against invaders from the water. On the grounds, the barracks seemed clean and even bright in the winter’s sun, while within the walls, Finn was certain, there was ample space for supplies, ammunition and further arms. As they walked, Lieutenant Bowers pointed out the dorm-style rooms where many of the fort’s occupants slept, the guard stations and the desalination plant, supplying the fort with its own mechanism for providing clean, potable water.