Surrender (36 page)

He was respected by his fellow prisoners and given a key place in the decision making among the officers, though as a captain, he ranked lower than several. He was surprised to discover that he was not hated by the Yanks. He received a bucket of aromatic stew from a guard’s wife one night, because, she told him, he had dealt justly with the men from ships he had taken: living, even in warfare, with a code of ethics. He had, in the early days of the war, deposited the wife of the guard’s
younger brother on a Bahamian island to be picked up by a Union ship, and so, the lady was grateful to him. This attitude surprised him somewhat, since he’d never figured that the war had given any of them the right to be murderers. But perhaps, that was what they had all become.

Most of the guards were decent men, trying to get by, intent on surviving the war. Some of them were weary of it, and wished that the North would just recognize the South and let it go.

There were a few sadists among their numbers, however. Men who would casually kick over a soldier’s precious ration of food. Taunt them with rumors regarding their families, and inform them with pleasure about the death of a father, son, brother, or friend.

In his first weeks in the prison, Jerome seldom slept. The sounds of the rats chewing within the walls and scurrying across the floor drove him crazy. Most of the time, a few violent motions on his part at least sent the creatures scampering into their holes. But one especially enterprising gray fellow would not be turned away even when he threw his boots or food bowl at it. It grew so bold as to crawl upon his chest while he slept, and he came to call the fellow Beauregard, and gave him scraps of food at night. Anything to endure the tedium, anything to survive.

Days became weeks. He heard about the troop movements across the country, and he studied the prison walls, the boarded and barred windows, and the yard where he and his fellow inmates were allowed exercise, for some means of escape.

Tandy Larson was one of the more sadistic guards. He wasn’t authorized to beat the prisoners, but he found excuses when men didn’t move quickly enough, or when they were on the wrong side of the yard, to whip them with the butt of his rifle. Jerome incurred his wrath early on by gripping him by the collar and breaking his rifle on a day when he’d started pistol-whipping Lieutenant Anthony Hawkins of Mississippi.

Guards came rushing from all over, but Jerome hadn’t touched Larson other than to drag him off of Hawkins. He wasn’t a fool, and he wasn’t going to get shot—there
was a way out of Old Capitol, and he was going to find it.

But from that day onward, Larson had it out for him. Returned to his cell after exercise one day, he found Beauregard lain out on his bed, a hat pin stuck through his little rat heart. It wasn’t fitting to mourn a rat—not since the war brought on more dead men daily, and inmates were constantly trying to kill the creatures off to lower the population. But he’d liked the damned rat—he hadn’t seen so much courage and gumption in many men. He kept quiet about the incident. He had humiliated Larson in front of his peers, he supposed, and Larson meant to make him pay.

He’d been at Old Capitol nearly a month when Larson approached him in the mess hall, where he sat with other prisoners.

“Heard from Mrs. McKenzie, Captain?” Larson sneered mockingly. “You may be a hero for the South, sir, but your lady fights a better war than you! First, she snared you—then she snared your ship!” Laughing, Larson turned away.

Jerome very nearly killed him then. Moving like the wind, he was on the man, and Larson was on the floor, bereft of his rifle again, with Jerome’s knee in his throat.

“Talk fast, man. If you’re going to talk, say everything you’ve got to say.”

Larson, bug-eyed and choking, made squeaking noises. Jerome eased his hold a little.

Hawkins stood near Jerome, warning him. “Rest of the guards are on their way, guns cocked, McKenzie!”

“Talk!” Jerome ordered Larson.

Larson was beet red. “Your ship was taken—with your wife aboard, along the Florida coast.”

“Where is my wife now?”

“I don’t know—I imagine the Yankee officers honored her right off for helping them capture the ship.”

“Where’s my ship, my crew?”

“Some of the crew members were released, some of them are headed for Elmira Prison; the ship will be re-outfitted for use. Don’t know where they’re taking it!”

“Captain—” Hawkins warned, too late. A half dozen guards had come down, and even those who liked
Jerome had no recourse now. A rifle butt crashed across his head; he saw stars, then nothing.

He awoke later in his own room, where he was kept in solitary for another week. His head pounded for days. And with the pain came a renewed pulse of fury. First he imagined Risa on a medieval rack, then lashed to a mainmast with him wielding a cat-o’-nine-tails. But curiously, the visions just made him ill, and he knew all that he wanted to do was shake her until her teeth rattled—and lock her away in a tall dark tower, where she could do no more harm. He wondered duly how she had managed such a vicious betrayal. It had been one thing to be played a fool himself. But she had managed to get herself aboard his ship—she was his wife, expecting his child, his men would be quite unsuspecting—and get the sailing information to the Yankee authorities. His crew had been good to her. The men had adored her. Now half of them were rotting in Elmira Prison, famous for its death and disease.

Right before Christmas, he received letters from his family. Sydney had been working on getting him exchanged for her Yank cavalry now colonel, who had now mended completely. His Uncle Jarrett had been appealing to old friends in Washington, and his brother Brent had been harassing officials in Richmond. Ian had tried to see him, and been informed that he might be allowed visitors by February.

He didn’t hear a word from his traitorous wife.

During January, while freezing, the men talked—and fought the war within the walls of the prison to keep warm and sane. The big news was about Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation
, something he had drafted before Antietam, but held on to until there had been something he could claim as a Northern victory. By January, word of his proclamation had spread everywhere. The document freed all the slaves in the states “rebellious” to the United States government.

“It’s darned ridiculous!” Norman Jaye, a captain of artillery from Tennessee, said. “He’s freeing Southern slaves—how can he do that? Why ain’t he freeing Northern slaves? And how’s he gonna free the slaves where he’s fightin’ a war already?”

Jerome, who had listened carefully when the document had been read in the prison, smiled. “Gentlemen, I’m sorry to say it, but I think that Mr. Lincoln, with this document, let loose his most powerful weapon.”

A storm of protest followed his words.

He and the other men sat, stood, or lounged against the few tables in a common courtyard, shivering, but it was a place to be together where the guards left them alone.

“Captain, you should explain yourself,” Anthony Hawkins suggested.

“Lincoln is a smart man, and it’s a fact that he doesn’t believe in any form of human bondage. Many of the Northern states have already abolished slavery on their own, but Lincoln can’t risk turning the border states against the United States government, and we all know that places like Maryland have many Confederate sympathizers. He thinks he won a major victory at Antietam, though we argue that. I don’t fault Lincoln for being any kind of a hypocrite; he wants to hold the Union together, and he wants to rid his country of the institution of slavery. No—he can’t really free the slaves in the South, not at this point. But he’s just scored a tremendous moral victory in the North, convinced some folk who might have been tired of the war effort to go on with it—and probably swayed European opinion in his favor.”

“But heck, sir!” Granger Oak, a dirt-poor private from Georgia protested, “I don’t own no slaves—my pa couldn’t afford ’em! I still feel we have the God-given right to make our own decisions—”

“Granger, we’re all aware that only rich men can own slaves, and not all rich men do. My grandfather was against slavery, and no McKenzie has owned slaves since. But we’d be lying to say that since our cotton economy is based on slave labor, many of the rights we’re fighting for didn’t have to do with slavery. Maybe we do have a moral obligation to end slavery; if so, we also have a moral obligation to see to the education and welfare of these hundreds and thousands of people we have enslaved.”

“C’mon, Captain, you’re talkin’ about darkees—”

“Private!” Anthony Hawkins interrupted impatiently, “I can tell you this, I’ve seen red men, white men, and
black men with intelligence and ability, and if you don’t see that, you’re a fool.”

Jerome arched a brow to him, amused, and wondering if that hadn’t been for his benefit. “There’s going to be more bloodshed before any of this is resolved,” he said quietly. “Yet, in my opinion, gentlemen, the South has been dealt a blow. What Lincoln lacked in generals, he’s made up in political cunning.”

A hail of protest went up—arguments raging. Jerome just sat back and listened. And he wondered dismally if the South could ever win the war.

At the end of February, Larson found good cause to taunt Jerome again. This time he did so more carefully, through the small, barred opening on his cell door. “Hey, there, Rebel redman!” Larson called. “Thought you might want to hear the good news. You know of a Jamie M. McKenzie, there, Captain?”

Jerome held his temper, knowing that he had to do so. His time would come. “My father is James.”

“Naw, not your old man. You know a
Jamie
M. McKenzie?”

“No.”

“Funny—that’s the name of your son, Captain. Born right here in the capital of the good ol’ U.S. of A.! A Yank babe, Rebel redman. Your son’s born a Yank!”

His raucous laughter shrilling through the halls, Larson walked away.

Jerome slammed his hand in fury against the wall, again, and again, until his palm was ragged and bleeding.

His son. He had a son. Jamie. For his father? What was Risa trying to do? Was she all right?

He clenched his teeth, remembering how ill his mother had been. He reminded himself that his wife was a very young woman, healthy and strong. He tormented himself again with the thought that childbearing was always dangerous. Risa had to be all right. If there had been any bad news to tell regarding her, Larson would have been only too happy to give it to him.

He looked around the walls again. Be damned. He was getting out of here. Going south. And somehow, he was taking his son with him. As to his wife …

Well, he had a few plans regarding her as well.

Angus Magee had never imagined that he could be sorry to have his daughter in Washington. Especially, not when she had just given him his first grandchild.

Not that he could be with her often. His troops were quartered south of the city, and he had to make an effort to get into his town house, where his daughter was living—having been brought to him under guard by one of the naval commanders who had secured the capture of McKenzie’s ship. She had been absolutely furious, and when he had demanded to know what she was doing on the Southern ship, she had explained about wanting the baby to be born on her husband’s property.

“But, you’re back in the North now, Risa. The child is yours as well. I am equally a grandparent with the McKenzies. And you must stay! It’s Christmas, and your babe is all but born. Trying to travel could … well, frankly, you could harm yourself and kill your babe now.”

Risa had good sense. Mostly. Except, apparently, she had lost it when she had become involved with the Confederate naval captain.

“I plan to stay here now, Father, I’ve no other choice, but—dammit! I can be a good Yank without betraying my husband, and I didn’t do it, Father! I had nothing to do with that ship being taken, and they keep toasting me here in Washington for betraying my husband! This is horrible, and I don’t know who is causing all this, or what is going on.”

Angus hesitated, not wanting to add fuel to fire. “Daughter, this war is plagued with spies! You of all people should know that! You were friendly with that notorious Rose Greenhow, your friend Alaina was a spy … Risa, probably someone has been watching you, and knew what you were about. It doesn’t matter now. What matters is your baby.”

“Yes, I know that.”

So she had been sensible, and Christmas had been happy, and then his grandchild had been born.

Oh, and that grandchild! The boy was pure pleasure, healthy, big, screaming, and caterwauling from the very first, determined on his own way, and letting them all
know he wasn’t happy when he didn’t get it. He was born with a thick thatch of dark auburn hair and large, questing blue eyes. His father’s eyes, Angus decided, deep, crystal blue, and not touched by aquamarine like Risa’s. Babies’ eyes changed, Angus knew, but he had a feeling his grandson’s coloring was set.

Risa’s labor had been remarkably easy. She hadn’t screamed, cried, or carried on, but borne it all in a stoic silence, indicative of her mood of late. Since her arrival, after the capture of
Lady Varina
off Florida waters, she had energetically pitched her efforts into petitioning the White House for clemency for the crew members who had been sent to the infamous New York prison. She had written to Julian McKenzie, to Sydney, to Alaina, and to her in-laws, but she had made no effort to see Jerome, aware that a strict ban on visitors had been set upon him. She was aware, Angus felt, that her husband was as convinced as everyone else that she had brought about his capture—and that of his ship. Maybe she didn’t push the point because she wasn’t eager to see him.

But then, of course, the baby was born.

To Angus, his daughter was more beautiful than ever when blessed with the glow of motherhood. Her cheeks had acquired delicate new hollows, and there was an aura of maturity about her that was compelling. She had always been poised; now she was almost regal. She made her decisions firmly, and carried them out with a speed that would have done any general proud. She learned that Ian was in Washington for new orders, and she sent a messenger to ask him to stand as a godparent to her child—as she had done for his. She next learned that her sister-in-law, Sydney McKenzie, was very near, behind the enemy lines with a prisoner who was about to be exchanged. Sydney couldn’t come to Washington—or she didn’t want to do so. But she couldn’t refuse to be a godmother for her own nephew, and Risa was undaunted. She arranged the passes and paperwork, and made arrangements to have James Magee McKenzie baptized in a little church on the outskirts of Manassas.