Andersonville (20 page)

There had been a moment there, very close, when it seemed that the enraged prisoners and their Regulator champions would actually devour their hated enemies in the middle of their berserk state.

Charlie had nearly killed Sullivan. Or Rickson, rather. Perhaps he should have let her. He wasn't sure why he had stopped her. The whole thing had suddenly felt very bad. Oppressive even.

He looked over and saw her locket lying nearby.

He went to it and fished it from the sand, wiping it on his trousers.

Then from out of the collapsed tangle of timber and canvas, Sailor Jack Muir emerged. His face was still scab-covered. The fat bruises Big Pete had dealt him had dwindled to yellowish stains around his eyes. Barclay realized it was the first time he'd seen him since the fight.

They saw each other at the same time.

Muir lunged at him, his knife in his hand, but it was a halfhearted attack, and Barclay fancied he could almost see an apology in the man's bloodshot eyes.

Barclay danced easily aside and kicked the knife from Muir's hand.

Muir fell to his knees. Either that fight had taken more out of him than Barclay had guessed or he had realized it was pointless.

“I didn't kill nobody,” Muir declared tiredly. “I wouldn't kill nobody. Surely not that poor drummer boy.”

Barclay stared at him silently. He hadn't realized just how young the little sailor was before. He looked to be about Callixtus's age. Had he really killed Red Cap, maybe to get even for the beating he'd suffered? If he had, Barclay had sorely misjudged him.

He was turning out his pockets, flinging coins and wads of greenbacks, a whittling knife, a lucky rabbit's foot, even the lint, at Barclay's feet.

“Take it. Take all of it. Just say you didn't see me—”

Then a big hand slapped down on his shoulder.

Big Pete loomed over him, grinning.

“Hey, Limber! I got that little son of a bitch! I got him!”

He pulled Muir to his feet. “No!” Muir managed before he was carried off kicking like a child under one of Pete's arms, his turned-out pockets flapping.

Barclay stooped down and gathered up the money and the rest of Muir's possessions, pocketed them, and went off after Big Pete and the rest of the Regulator army, which seemed to be marching en masse back to the South Gate, driving the beaten prisoners before them.

The entire gate swung open as he arrived, and Wirz and a few other mounted officers along with the infantry guards appeared in the gateway.

Limber and his lieutenants pushed their way to the front and drove Mosby, Delaney, Sarsfield, Sullivan, and Muir to their knees in front of the Flying Dutchman and his coterie. Muir was still pleading for his life. Big Pete kicked him facedown into the dirt.

Pressed on every side by the eager, victorious combatants, who were cheering and hurrahing as each new vanquished enemy was produced and thrown to the ground before Wirz, Barclay jumped when he glanced to his right and saw the Hatter, Boston Corbett, standing stoically beside him.

“Hello, brother,” Corbett said.

“Boston.” Barclay nodded. “Were you in the fight?”

“I did not participate, but I saw it,” said Corbett. “I saw the Rebels watching and the demons, too. They were all very interested in it.”

A notion took hold of Barclay then.

“Boston,” he said, “look at Captain Wirz and those men right now and tell me what you see.”

Boston's eyes slid to the Rebels as Limber Jim and his lieutenants walked up to confer, but he quickly looked away, blinking rapidly.

“What is it?”

“I see men with demons inside of them,” he whispered. “But not Captain Wirz. Inside him there is an angel. An angel bright and terrible to look upon.”

“An angel?” Barclay repeated.

He watched as Wirz shook hands with Limber Jim, apparently complimenting him and his lieutenants. Something strange about that. He was shaking with his right hand, which appeared to have regained some vigor. Maybe he had good and bad days. It was like that with some wounds. Barclay couldn't hear over the excited jeers of the prisoners, but it looked as if he was inviting them to take charge of the Raiders and march them under guard out of the stockade, probably to some pen where they'd be held to protect their lives until…until what? Charlie had mentioned that Limber was pushing a court-martial. Could they have such a thing without officers to preside over it?

As Romeo, Big Pete, and a few others marched out of the gate with Mosby and his beaten Raiders, Limber said something to Wirz.

Wirz nodded and rode over to where the vindicated prisoners waited. Limber jogged behind until he stood beside the mounted captain. Wirz held up his left hand for quiet.

The ruckus died down a bit, and he spoke.

Beside Barclay, Boston put his hands over his eyes and laid his head on Barclay's shoulder like a scared child.

“You men have done
Gud's
work tonight. These villains will not escape your punishment. In time they will be returned to you, and I promise, General Winder and I will do all in our power to ensure the worst of them are tried according to your law and sentenced if necessary.”

He turned his horse around and galloped for the gate, and perhaps for the first time, the prisoners cheered his words and offered up huzzahs.

A small voice called out after Wirz: “Sentenced how?”

It was Whelan, the priest. There was blood on his hands, and his face was drawn.

Limber ignored the man and cupped his hands to his mouth.

“Any of you who are carpenters. Come on!”

Four men raised their hands and stepped out of the crowd.

“For what?” Father Whelan pressed. “To build a scaffold? Are you so certain there'll be executions, then?”

Around Barclay, men yelled in answer:

“You bet your ass!”

“There must be!”

“To set things right, I'd say so!”

Limber reached into his pocket then and held something up for all to see.

Barclay knew right away what it was.

“I found this in that sailor's pocket when we took him!” he called. “It's the boy Red Cap's watch! The one given him by his father! The one he was murdered for! Ask again if there's a need for executions, Father.”

Limber jammed the tarnished silver watch in his pocket and stormed off after Wirz and the rest.

Father Whelan put his bloody hands in his pockets and walked quietly behind, head bowed, deep in thought.

As Wirz and Limber and Whelan walked through the gate, the men broke up, talking among themselves, unanimous in their lust for recompense, in their assuredness of Muir's guilt in the death of the drummer boy.

Except Barclay had seen Muir turn his pockets inside out.

And there hadn't been a watch.

He had forgotten about the Hatter, who was clinging to him, his face buried in Barclay's tunic, mumbling prayers.

He pulled Boston from him, held his grimy face between his two hands, and looked him in the eye.

“Listen to me carefully, Boston,” Barclay said, speaking as calmly as he could. “You said Captain Wirz has an angel in him. All right. But what about the men with demons in them you saw? Which of the Rebels had demons?”

Corbett shook his head.

“None of them.”

“Which, then? The Raiders?”

“No.”

He pointed to the gates as they began to swing closed.

“Which of them, then?” he nearly shouted.

Corbett pointed one trembling finger.

“The tall one with the long hair. Him. And his friends, too. The very big one who was in the fight and the one that quotes Shakespeare. They are all of them possessed.”

The tall one and his friends. Big Pete. Romeo.

Limber Jim and the other leaders of the Regulators.

Even the oppressive heat of the day did not keep every club-bearing man who could stand from forming two parallel lines at the North Gate, nor did it deter onlookers. As the fiery sun ascended to its noonday point, driving even the vermin to burrow beneath the ground or into the shadowy crooks of their wretched human hosts like prey fleeing the bright eye of a wheeling eagle, the obstinate wraiths milled and chattered in anticipation, but none sat or moved unless they swooned from the heat and were carried away. Several did. But at least two hundred waited as though to receive some august personage.

The priest waited, too, fanning himself with his black hat, stripped to his white shirtsleeves. He stood at the end of the two lines, reading from his Bible in a hoarse voice:

“Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Neither give place to the devil.”

Barclay also waited, sipping the fermented sarsaparilla beer one of the purveyors on Market Street brewed. Clemis stood with him beneath the pine bough awning of the booth. The extreme heat of the day had excused them from their regular labor duties, mainly because the Rebel overseers did not fancy standing in the sun. The Negroes employed in the hospital had not been so lucky. He thought of young Callixtus sweating in the heat of the sick tent with a nose full of rotting, scurrilous flesh and resolved to buy a mug of this foul-tasting but potent stuff to leave in his tent.

One good thing had followed in the wake of the breaking of the Raiders: the prison economy was booming. The Regulators had torn apart Mosby's great tent and made off with months' worth of stolen valuables, redistributing them to the general populace. They had found several corpses buried among the caches under the Raider's tents as well, some of them skeletonized.

The clanking of the wicket door roused the sweating, sun-blistered men.

“Here we go, boys,” someone said.

Captain Wirz rode in on his white mare, two armed men on either side.

He glanced over the gathering, then unfurled a piece of paper and read the order he had read to the men earlier in the week.

Wirz folded the paper.

“With the aid of your elected Regulators and eyewitness testimony, we have identified six ringleaders of this villainous element in your midst: Charles Curtis, John Sarsfield, Patrick Delaney, Terry Sullivan, William Collins, and Jack Muir. They will be retained in our custody until their trial. In the meantime, I return their subordinates to you. Do with them as you will.”

Wirz turned his horse around and exited. The guards remained.

Barclay started. Muir was no ringleader. He had joined the Raiders only a few days before the coup. But of course, he had been the scapegoat to swing the usually timid prisoners to the Regulator cause. The murder of Red Cap Popwell had been the proverbial camel-crippling straw. Muir would be included in the trial to push the prison further for their execution.

Except that Barclay was convinced it was Limber himself who had killed the drummer boy. Where else could he have gotten the boy's pocket watch, which he personally had claimed to have found on Muir? Barclay knew that to be a lie. Muir had emptied his pockets in front of him that night.

So why did Wirz want these men executed?

Limber, Big Pete, and Romeo Larkin were the next to enter, and a weary but heartfelt cheer went up among the two lines of men.

Barclay straightened at their entrance, keenly interested. These men, Corbett the Hatter had told him, were possessed by kastirin demons, the same as Turner. So Wirz had placed these men, his agents, into the camp. Limber, Big Pete, and Romeo. With Turner, that made four, and if his guess that the amount of hellhounds in the pack corresponded to the number of kastirin-possessed men, that left one more somewhere. Sergeant Key, maybe? Or Carrigan?

Meanwhile, Day was a day late returning from his leave.

Sergeant Turner had not returned to duty, either.

Clemis and the others had agreed that the latter was a blessing, but Barclay knew that Turner had gone out to tail Day. The two must have clashed somewhere on the road. Perhaps Day had discovered him, or perhaps Turner had surprised Day in the middle of some unapproved endeavor.

Whatever the details, both men were missing.

This left Barclay effectively alone and in the dark about what he should do next.

Limber raised his hands.

“All right, boys. We're turnin' 'em loose!”

The men cheered more heartily than before and steeled themselves, raising their fists, clubs, planks, and timbers, whatever each had brought with him.

The first of the Raiders to stumble blinking through the wicket was Chester, Sarsfield's underling. His clothes were torn and bloodied, and his skin was mottled with yellow splotches, the bruises from the last beating the Regulators had given him only now beginning to fade.

Limber struck him in the lower back with his short club.

Chester yelped and ran down the middle of the gauntlet. The men on either side reached in and harried his progress with a rain of hard blows and snaking straight razors pilfered from the Raiders' own camp. He bounced down the lines, shoved and kicked. Someone tripped him, and he fell sprawling, rising with his arms held up to shield his face from the onslaught.

By the time he finally reached the end, he was drenched in his own freely flowing blood.

Father Whelan rushed up with his arms outspread and caught him.

“My God! My God!” he stammered. “Give place unto wrath, for it is written, Vengeance is mine;
I
will repay, saith the Lord!”

“Revenge!”
Romeo yelled, pointing his club at the quivering, broken man in the priest's arms.
“The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction!”

The gauntlet yelled their agreement, though probably less than half understood the words.

They turned away from the priest, who was mopping at Chester's bleeding brow with his handkerchief as the next Raider was herded down the line.

“How they so game for such exertions in heat like this?” Clemis muttered, shaking his head. “Just proves my point.”

“What point?” Barclay asked, watching as a man broke through the gauntlet, waving a knife he had concealed, only to have a young prisoner with one of the long cane sparrow poles viciously clothesline him to the ground as he fled.

“Give any white man the opportunity to beat on another man with no recompense,” Clemis said, draining his cup, “the cracker inside come out.” He shuddered. “
Kiss
my ass!”

“Maybe you're right,” Barclay said.

“You best believe I'm right. Like that business the other night. Why you lend yourself to that mess?”

“What, the raid?” Barclay shrugged. “I thought I owed somebody.”

“Tell a white man you owe him something, you goin' keep on owing him.”

“What taught you that, Clemis?” Barclay asked, curious.

“Sheeyit. A lifetime of beatin's, watchin' my kinfolk get sold off, lynched. Don't feel so bad, though; even I forgot it once. After me and Earl run off. He got it in his head we owed somethin' to the ones we'd left behind. It was his idea to join up, be soldiers, fight to free them that was still in bondage. Hell, he talked me into it, too. When he got his wound and them white doctors wouldn't tend him, we got separated on the train. By my lonesome in that car, 'mongst all them white soldiers, I realized what I'd gone and done.”

“What's that?”

“I signed on to be a slave all over again. I wasn't fightin' for the ones I'd left, for my folk. I was fightin' for the white man. Goin' where he told me to go, killin' who he told me to kill. And ain't no man should have the right to tell me that. Whether I owe 'em or not.”

“Let's get out of here,” said Barclay. “I don't want to watch this anymore.”

He bought the beer for Callixtus and walked off with Clemis, holding his hand over the cup.

The men were going mad. The heat, the helplessness, the fight, it was all boiling over now.

He and Clemis napped away the hot afternoon in their tent, enjoying their rare day's rest.

At dusk, Callixtus came calling.

As soon as Barclay let the young man into the tent, he knew something was the matter.

The boy looked furtive and spoke in hushed tones.

“I got somethin' for you, Barclay.”

Barclay sat up.

“What is it?”

He reached into his faded tunic and produced a small square of paper folded over many times and smudged with dirt and blood.

“This mornin',” he said, “some Rebs bring one of they officers into the prisoner hospital. Some lieutenant. They ain't never been here before, don't know where he supposed to go. They say the lieutenant tell them to bring him here. They tell Dr. White he was found lyin' in the road outside Americus, shot. He spent a couple days in the hospital there before he woke up and they figure out where he belong. While the Rebs talkin', the lieutenant sit up on his cot and call me over. He give me this, tell me give it to you.”

Callixtus handed the paper over.

Barclay busily began unfolding it.

“Did this lieutenant have one eye?”

Callixtus nodded and held his hand over his bad eye.

“That's the man. He had him a patch right here. I think I seen him at the cemetery once or twice.”

“What did they do with him?” Barclay asked.

“They take him out, probably move him to the Confederate hospital over the tracks in Andersonville.”

Barclay nodded. He opened the paper. It was written in Creole, using the Caesar cipher.

“What it say, Barclay?” Clemis asked.

“It's going to take me a little bit to figure out.” He looked up and patted Callixtus's shoulder. “Thank you, Callixtus. I bought some sarsaparilla beer for you. It's in your tent with a shingle on it.”

Callixtus nodded.

“Obliged. Well, I guess I leave you to it.”

“Callixtus,” Barclay said, “if you can find out anything else about the lieutenant, his condition, I'd appreciate it.”

Callixtus shrugged.

“I'll see.”

When he had left, Barclay spread the letter out and took Bruegel's pencil and began to decode it.

“What is you about, Barclay?” Clemis asked, watching him in wonderment.

“You wouldn't believe me,” Barclay said.

A half hour later he had penciled in the correct letters above the code and read it. After he had absorbed its contents, he joined Clemis outside at the cooking fire and carefully burned it.

As Clemis cooked their rations, Barclay sat staring into the fire at the point where Day's bloodstained letter had blackened and finally disappeared.

Corbett the Hatter had been right about the angel inside Wirz. It was a fallen angel called Mastemah that had opposed Moses in the time of Exodus. And now Mastemah and Wirz were trying to raise this ha-Mashchit thing, a creature that thrived on misery and suffering, the same thing that had taken the firstborn of Egypt. It was probably the same thing Bill Mixinisaw had seen the old mound builders sacrificing to, the thing the sun worshipers had defeated. The letter had been otherwise maddeningly brief in detail. Day had been composing the message in snatches, it seemed, probably in secret as he lay in pain in the hospital in Americus. He very well might have omitted things.

But Barclay knew that Wirz would perform some kind of sacrifice, recite one of the hidden names of God, and the thing would be set loose upon the North, ensuring a Confederate victory, just as Nettie Maynard had foretold.

But again, Day's letter had been vague on a few important points. When was this supposed to happen? What was the procedure, the nature of the sacrifice? He hadn't mentioned anything about the brands he'd found out were being applied to the dead.

Then it struck him.

The Raiders.

Mosby and the other Raider chiefs were going to be tried, and it looked like there was a good chance they'd be executed.

Limber, who was a host to a kastiri demon, as were his Regulator cronies, was pushing the prisoners toward that end under the hidden guidance of Wirz.

And Jack Muir was innocent.

He knew well that in dark rituals, the murder of an innocent increased the potency of the spell enacted. Was Muir to be the final sacrifice?

In that case, Barclay couldn't wait for Day any longer. The trial of the Raiders was set to begin soon, and there was no doubt in his mind their execution would follow soon afterward.

Muir, Mosby, Sarsfield, and the rest were being held in a pen outside the walls, ostensibly to protect them from unsanctioned reprisal at the hand of some maddened inmate bent on revenge.

What could he do from here?

Nothing.

He had to get out of the prison.

Free of these walls, he had options. He could try to effect the rescue of the condemned Raiders or at least Jack Muir. He could assassinate Wirz.

And Day? What of Day, whom he had come to kill, in the back of his mind?

Maybe Day would die on his own. He had no idea what the extent of his wounds was.

It wasn't entirely satisfying, but he had to put it aside. There were bigger things at stake.

He had to escape, and he knew only one way.

When he stood up from the fire, Clemis nearly jumped back. He realized he'd been sitting there a few minutes without saying anything.

“Where is you going?” Clemis asked.

“I need to see someone. Now.”