Blood Moon (34 page)

Chapter Sixty-Three

Mercy’s fitful sleep had left her with an aching neck and limbs, which alternated between being painful and being numb. She sat in a chair, but her head rested on the edge of the bed, cradled in her arms. Her leg muscles were cramped, being jammed between the chair and the bed, and her feet were bootless. She winced when she lifted her head, massaging the knots in the back of her neck. For two weeks, she had slept, either on the chair or on a blanket on the floor. Tonight the floor would be her preference, for at least she would be able to stretch her legs.

She rubbed her eyes and glanced at Isaac through half-closed eyelids. He looked peaceful this morning, she thought. She rose to stretch her legs, leaving the room for a moment to refill a bowl of water and to wash the sleep from her eyes. Nelson would be here shortly with coffee, she thought gratefully. After she had drunk it, she would tend to Isaac and then go to Dolly’s house for a couple of hours to bathe and eat.

She walked unsteadily down the hallway, still half asleep. Her mind was filled with dreary thoughts. Over the past weeks, she and Nelson had taken shifts, concentrating on keeping the room and Isaac as clean as possible. There were not enough nurses to do these jobs, for more than twenty patients in the hospital had come down with typhoid and all but four were still alive. She could not keep doing this, she thought. Every day she was more exhausted, and every night sleep was more evasive.

If only she could see an improvement in Isaac’s condition. If he could wake up just for a few moments to speak to her, to smile, and tell her he felt a little better, her spirits would be lifted. The epidemic, which had begun on a couple of farms, had spread rapidly and without mercy. Rich and poor alike had been infected. She put her hand to her own forehead, as she did every morning, checking for signs of a fever. She had not been feeling well, but she put her aches and pains down to uncomfortable sleeping habits, not the onset of the disease. She was fine. Her forehead was cool.

Returning to the room, she opened the curtains. It felt to her tired body like the middle of the night, yet sun streamed into the room, blinding her momentarily and making her feel giddy. She went to the basin and soaked a cloth in the cold water before turning her attention to Isaac.

She looked at his face and was puzzled for a second or two. Its grey pallor was tinged with blue. He was not perspiring; his skin was completely dry. She looked at his mouth. Lips were slightly parted. She heard a husky sob leave her mouth. Her hand flew up to stifle it. She tucked her hair behind her ear and then put it to Isaac’s mouth, praying for breathing sounds.

“Please … No no, no, no, he’s not dead!” she said hurriedly in a high-pitched, accelerated voice. She slumped into the chair, covering her face with shaking hands. He was … He was dead. He had taken his last breath whilst she slept. She had not heard his last words, nor had she been awake to comfort him in his last moments. He had died! No, it couldn’t be, she told herself. Isaac couldn’t die, not after fighting so hard to live.

She stumbled from the room blinded by tears and headed down the hallway and into an office where two attendants slept. “Wake up!” she shouted harshly. “Major Bernstein is dead. He’s dead, you hear?”

The attendants staggered down the hallway and into Isaac’s room. Mercy stood in the doorway, holding her hand to her throat, choking on tears, and for the first time in a long time, she had no idea what to do, say, or even think. “He is dead, isn’t he?” she asked stupidly. He’s gone – I don’t know when it happened …”

One of the attendants covered Isaac’s face with a sheet. “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am,” he said. “We best be taking the major now.”

“No, you can’t,” Mercy cried. “Leave him be! I have to find Nelson. He has to come here. He has to say goodbye …”

“Nelson, the nigger?”

“Yes, Nelson the free man. He was the major’s friend, and you’re not taking his body away until Nelson sees him one last time. Please get him.”

“I ain’t goin’ to fetch no nigger,” the attendant said angrily, “and we ain’t leaving the major here. The nigger can come to the morgue if he has a mind to see the body.”

The body –
the
body – as if Isaac was already forgotten as the person he once was. She slumped again in the chair, rocking her body in a soothing motion. She watched as the men covered Isaac with a sheet and lifted his body like an old sack. She jumped to her feet and followed the men into the hallway. Oh God almighty, if she had a gun, she would shoot the ignorant, disrespectful gits right now, she thought.

Her tears continued to fall, and now she had the added worry of not knowing where Nelson was or when he would get here. She couldn’t let him walk into the room without being warned about Isaac’s death. Isaac, gone forever, never knowing how much she had loved him or how much she regretted hurting him.

Mercy went back to Isaac’s room and wept in private. After a time, she looked up to see Nelson’s tear-stained face staring at the bed as if not believing Isaac was no longer in it. He tried to speak, but not a sound left his lips. He stared at Mercy’s swollen eyes and closed the door. Mercy fell into his arms, and he held her tightly. “Hush now, Miss Mercy. Ole Nelson’s here,” he said as a father would to a child.

“Oh, Nelson, I wasn’t awake when he passed. I fell asleep …”

“Hush now. He’s gone to the good Lord. There ain’t nothin’ to be done. You just take comfort knowin’ he died happy seein’ you here – that’s all he wanted.”

“What are we going to do? What’s going to happen now?” she asked him.

“You got to leave now and git to your Plantation. Ain’t no more you can do here.”

“Nelson, I can’t leave you. You are here because of Isaac. I know these people, and you know them even better than I do. They won’t let you stay here and tend to white people, not now that Isaac’s gone. He protected you. You were his orderly, and you served him, but now you’ll just be a soldier. Oh God, they will send you back to the front line to fight. I know they will.”

“I’s in the army. I’s got to do what they say. But I’s afraid to fight. Lord have mercy, I’s gonna join Mr Isaac real soon – I knows it.”

Nelson cried like a baby. Mercy comforted him as best she could, but in the back of her mind, a plan was forming. She had lost Isaac she was not going to lose Nelson too. She couldn’t, and she wouldn’t. “Nelson, do you want to stay in the army?”

“No!”

“Would you like to come with me to Stone Plantation – do you want to run away?”

“We gonna run away again? Like the last time? The Union ain’t never gonna let a nigger soldier leave the hospital all by himself. I reckon they’ll hang me for sure if I try to run. You knows its gospel true.”

“Well, running has to be better than your being on a battlefield running for your life! I’m not going to let you take a rebel bullet. There’s been enough dying – enough, Nelson! Maybe I’m not thinking straight right now, but I think we could get you out of here, if that’s what you want.”

“I sure would like to go wit’ you.”

“Then you will. We’ll face the future together. Isaac would have wanted this. He would not have wanted to see you going back to the front. Let me sit here awhile and think. We need to get you ready to leave …”

Chapter Sixty-Four

Mercy hailed a carriage that sat in the street adjacent to the hospital. She ordered it inside the hospital gates and told the driver to wait for a few minutes. She ran across the lawn and found Nelson where she had left him, just outside the entrance to the hospital basement, dressed in Isaac’s civilian trousers and shirt. He wore Eddie’s hat and had pulled it down over his eyes. “Thank goodness you made it outside – but you look too far too clean,” Mercy told him. “Spread some dirt on the clothes. We can’t have you looking like a gentleman.”

She asked the driver to take them to the harbour. Nelson sat on the bench seat at the rear of the carriage, clutching Mercy’s carpet bag, head down, afraid to look up, lest a hospital employee recognise him. Once they had left the hospital’s grounds, Mercy sat back and relaxed her tired muscles. Nelson looked just like any other Negro slave, she thought.

Her head was pounding like hammers. She couldn’t get Isaac’s face out of her mind. His death was unbearable, and nothing could have prepared her for the terrible grief that enveloped her. Her mind conjured up images of Jacob, dead and buried, and of Nelson being ordered to fight, when he had not a bad bone in his body and would be incapable of shooting anyone, even to save himself. How could she bear the weight of so many horrible thoughts? All she saw and felt was darkness shrouding her. She could not find one vision of light or happiness.

The harbour was busy. A ferry came alongside after only a few moments, and for the first time today, a glimmer of hope found her. Across the water was Portsmouth and, five miles east of that city, Stone Plantation. Belle was there, and they would comfort each other. Nelson would be safe, although she had no idea how he was going to fit into a community of slaves when he looked like them but was not one of them.

Mercy noticed that Union soldiers on the ferry did not seem interested in her or Nelson, who was trailing behind her. For the first time since her arrival in the bay area, she was able to form an opinion, and it surprised her. Slaves were still openly owned by Southerners and were not being confiscated. Civilian tradesmen and labourers were going about their business, as usual. They were not being imprisoned or shot. Taverns were open, doing a roaring trade from what she had seen, and the harbour boats still crossed at regular intervals, carrying civilians and Union soldiers together, albeit in cold, uncomfortable silence.

              Mercy bought a horse and cart from the blacksmith, two streets adjacent from the Portsmouth harbour. Nelson sat on the wooden floor in the back, and every now and then, he asked Mercy if she knew the direction she should be taking. Mercy couldn’t honestly say she was sure about which way she should be going. When she’d driven to Stone Plantation with Belle, a lifetime ago, she had been far too busy looking at trees and thinking about slave stories to remember what route they had taken.

She looked at her hands. They were trembling at the thought of setting foot once more in the house she had left all those months ago, a sick broken-hearted girl, fearful of a life without Jacob and filled with thoughts of revenge against Madame du Pont. In June, she had imagined going back to Jacob’s home, riding Coal beside him and Thor, happy and optimistic. She had pictured a glorious homecoming, not this grief-stricken road.

“Nelson, we have to give you a new name!” she exclaimed. The thought had burst into her mind after thinking about the past and Madame du Pont. “Nelson Stuart is still a wanted fugitive. It will only take one person to find out that you’re at Stone Plantation to bring a bunch of bloodthirsty Southerners down on your head. We have to give you a new name. That’s all there is to it.”

“But I like my name.”

“I like your name too, but Sheriff Manning might come for you if he knows you’re here. I’m going to tell everyone that you are my slave. We both know you’re not a slave, but we’ll have to pretend you are, at least for a little while. I’ll say I brought you from Richmond. You have to agree to this, Nelson. It’s the only way. Pick a name – any name you like.”

“No.”

Mercy stopped the cart and stood up, holding the reins tightly inside her clenched fist. She looked at him with flashing eyes and a stubborn pout to her lips. “I’m fit for nothing, Nelson! I can barely think about anything other than poor Isaac. I’m ready to shoot someone for saying the wrong word to me! God’s truth! For once in your life, can you not agree with me on something?” Sobbing, she sat back down, hands covering face and body swaying.

“Thomas – Thomas, like your father,” Nelson said. “I’s sorry, Miss Mercy. You ain’t got to weep no more.”

“Thank you,” Mercy croaked hoarsely. “Thomas will be fine. Thomas Freeman, just so you remember you’re not a slave.”

“Thomas Freeman,” Nelson repeated. “That sure sounds nice.”

Chapter Sixty-Five

Mercy drove the horse and cart onto the road leading to Stone Plantation, passing barren fields devoid of cotton, tobacco, and slaves. When the house came into view, she noticed lawns covered in sparse clumps of grass, yellowed with the sun and dry weather. Jacob had often spoken to her about his gardens and their spectacular summer rose beds, which graced the land and house with fragrant air, but she neither saw nor smelled flowers on this sad desert-like plain.

The horse and cart threw up the dust which lay on the surface of the hard-crusted dirt road leading to the front entrance of the house. She choked on the dry taste of earth in her mouth, covering it with her hand and sighing with relief when the cart halted at the foot of the porch steps. “We made it, Nelson. Welcome to your new home,” she said, cheered somewhat.

Slaves, appearing from behind tall hedges at the bottom of the garden, walked in a long ragged procession up the driveway towards Mercy and Nelson. Mercy looked at the black faces and smiled at their eagerness to welcome her, but on closer inspection, she noted that they were not a happy bunch. Their faces held lost and forlorn expressions, and her smile froze. Mercy left Nelson with the cart and the hordes of Negros now surrounding it, telling Nelson she would be back momentarily, after she had greeted Belle.

The door to the big house was open. She walked inside and called loudly for Belle. The hallway was covered in a fine film of dust. It was filthy and had an air of abandonment. This was a strange sight, Mercy thought, especially with the mistress of the house being in residence. She looked up the curved staircase and called out again. “Hello, Belle? Are you home? Is anyone here?”

She walked into the drawing room – no one. The dining room, salon, and library were also empty. The house was deserted. There was no evidence at all of Belle and her parents living here. The big house was in a sorry state. Some couches remained, but the Yankees had ransacked most of the furniture. Mercy remembered the fine oak dressers and walnut tables which had graced the rooms. They were gone, leaving only their marked outlines on the bare walls where they had once sat. The walls had also been stripped of paintings and fine carvings, and only a cracked mirror remained, hanging lopsidedly.

Missing too were crystal vases and glasses, rugs from Morocco, and unusual ornaments from France and Spain. The house was a mere shell of its former self, as though the pearl had been snatched from the oyster.

She stood in the hallway with a worried frown. Where had Belle gone? she wondered. Why had she not sent word?

Mercy felt a presence behind her and turned to see a slave standing cap in hand and with an anxious expression on his gaunt face. She smiled at him. He had no idea who she was, she thought, other than a woman who did not appear threatening. “Hello, what’s your name?” she asked him.

“Reginald, ma’am, but the massa call me Reggie.”

“Hello, Reggie. My name is Mercy Carver.”

“You come to call on Mistress Belle?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Mercy, distracted by noise, turned to the entrance. A growing number of slaves had now appeared at the front door. They did not cross the threshold. Instead, they crowded its frame, staring at her with open curiosity. Mercy had never seen such a ragtag bunch of people. They were pitifully skinny, scared, and looked like lost children seeking guidance. “Where is your mistress?” she asked. She wore a worried frown, still staring at the Negros.

“Mistress Belle, she done take Miss Grace to New Orleans, to Massa Hendry,” Reggie told her. “He on his ship, and she say she needs to see him – I don’ rightly know if she’s comin’ back. She done take Handel too, cause she was mighty scared to go alone. She say she need Handel to look after Mr Hendry when she gets to Louisiana. We ain’t got no one tellin’ us what to do. Handel, he done look after us. What we do now? We ain’t got nothin’ to put in our empty bellies.”

Mercy heard her sharp intake of breath. Belle gone, Hendry back in America, and where in God’s name was Louisiana? “Where are Mistress Belle’s mother and father?” she asked him.

“They gone too. They livin’ in Portsmouth.”

Holy mother of God – what was she to do now? She looked at the black faces pleading for help, eyes filled with sadness and confusion. She had to think quickly. She had come to an empty house without the right to be inside it, in the eyes of the law. As soon as Portsmouth folk found out, they’d throw her out on her ear. “Please ask my man, Thomas Freeman, to come inside. Wait outside, Reggie. Get all the slaves to gather round. I’ll be with you shortly – everything is going to be all right,” she added quickly.

Mercy sat Nelson down on the couch in the drawing room. She sat next to him and held his hand. “Nelson, we are alone, and I don’t know how long we’ll be able to stay. But whilst we are here, you must help me to help the slaves. These Negros are not like you. They haven’t seen or done anything bar live and work on this land. Handel was in charge of all these slaves. The poor souls don’t seem to know what to do without him. You know the land. You have worked on a plantation for most of your life, and you know the white man’s world. I can’t do this without you.”

“What you want me to do?”

“You will do what you do best: give orders. You’ve always liked ordering me around, haven’t you? And you can see to the slaves. The poor souls have no one to protect them or to give them guidance. This is what you can do as a free man.

“We have to get his house in order before Mr Jacob comes back. We will plant some vegetables. I don’t know how we’re going to feed all these mouths, but we had better try. I can hunt, but I doubt if I’ll get much more than a few rabbits – and, Nelson, my money is running out. God’s truth, the last thing Mr Jacob will want to see is this chaos – and us starving!”

Nelson’s eyes shone bright with contentment. He had dreaded stepping foot on a white man’s land. On the drive here, he’d recalled his days with Massa Stuart, a period in his life he had tried so hard to forget. Plantations and massas were a thing of the past, he’d thought, and he had sworn never to work the land or serve a white massa or mistress again. But this was different – he was free. Miss Mercy would not treat him like a slave. He would be a bossman. And he knew Miss Mercy. She would work harder than them niggers livin’ here.

“I ain’t afraid of hard work, Miss Mercy. You knows me, and you knows I can help you real good. I reckon we can get these niggers workin’ those fields in no time, and I’ll toil right along beside ’em. I ain’t no slave, but these my kin here, and I aim to give them some hope back – they ain’t gonna have no cause to sit around here all day on their nigger behinds when we needs food to eat. No, sir, they got to work fir their supper.”

Mercy hugged him and smiled brightly. We’re going to make a good team, you and me. You’ll make a wonderful gaffer.”

“What dat word?” Nelson asked.

Mercy laughed. “It means you will be in a position to order everyone around, bar me, of course. I know you’ll enjoy that very much.”

After Mercy had spoken with the slaves and had formally introduced Nelson as Thomas Freeman, Abby, the slave she had been given when she first arrived in America, handed her a letter. It was from Belle.

My dearest Mercy,

Please forgive me for not being here to greet you. It is quite unforgivable of me, I know, but circumstances compelled me to leave hurriedly and I barely had time to write this letter. I do hope you understand.

              By now, you will have found out that Hendry is in New Orleans and I have gone to meet him. Louisiana is far from Virginia, and I do not know if or when I will return. But I am so very happy to be reunited with him, Mercy, and I know had you been in my position, you would have run to Jacob.

              I’m so sorry, darling. I should not be talking about my happiness when you are grieving for Jacob. I also miss him. He was my brother, and I loved him dearly. What a terrible day it was when we went to city hall. A list of casualties had been put up. There were so many dead and missing, all from Portsmouth. The list was about three inches long. It broke our hearts to look at the names of our neighbours and people we did business with for years. Jacob’s name was on the list, and next to his name was his status: “Missing – presumed dead.” You must accept his death, Mercy. If you don’t, you will go mad with hopeless expectations.

              I have informed Sheriff Manning that you might return to Stone Plantation. He will call on you from time to time – he was one of Jacob’s oldest friends, and I just know he’ll do all he can to give you assistance, should you need it.

Mercy crumpled the letter and scowled. People were talking about Jacob as though he were already buried, but she still had hope. How could so many men disappear into thin air if they were supposed to be lying dead? She understood that bodies could be missed, or were unidentifiable, but when she was in Richmond, she saw lists covering all states, and there were hundreds of men missing. Surely it made more sense to believe that no one could find them because they were taken prisoner? She was angry. Belle had lost faith, and she of all people should be ashamed of herself. Belle never gave up on Hendry when he set to sea. She smoothed the pages and read on.

Jacob’s home is not your responsibility but please remain there for as long as you wish. I wanted to comfort you in your devastation, and I have let you down terribly. Poor Jacob, he loved you so.

I must rush away now, Mercy, but I leave you with a last piece of news about, Elizabeth and her family. Mrs Coulter has belly sickness. Personally, I believe she talked herself into a malady, for she threatened she would be ill with something or other. We must pity her deeply, though. She has just lost her youngest son, George. She has borne so much pain.

The Coulters are still in North Carolina. I hear tell that Jacob was sending them money to pay for their lodgings and for Elizabeth’s appeal. From what I hear, the appeal has every chance of succeeding, thanks to your testimony about that awful Mrs Mallory. The judge in Richmond was spittin’ mad at Elizabeth’s lies, but those judges in North Carolina seem to be more sympathetic, what with her being a wronged woman and all.

Finally, I am praying to the Lord, hoping he will see fit to save Isaac. Please send him my love and tell him to be strong. I will get news to you, and an address, and hope that you will write me soon.

God bless you, my dear Mercy. Stay safe.

Belle

Isaac, oh, Isaac,” Mercy mumbled. She walked from the house into the fading afternoon sun. She would ponder Belle’s letter later, she thought. She didn’t want to think about Elizabeth right now, for she, Mercy Carver, was now a Southern planter, and there was much work to do.