“But if we see omens, doesn’t that mean there’s at least a prayer we can stop a catastrophe?”
“Perhaps,” Pete said, gazing out across the darkness. “Sometimes we see a path, and think that we must take it, and then there’s a fork in the road. We may not go to the same destination.”
She smiled. “You’re confusing me, Pete.”
“Life is confusion. Now, more than ever. Or it is not. We just live. Time will come and go, and this war will end, and there will be new wars. I understand that any man or woman must do what they believe is asked of them by a great power. So, do what you must. And then come home. This is where you belong. Where you are known and where you are loved. There will be bitter days ahead, and harsh punishment, and our tiny island world will be far enough from the heaviest part of the boot when it falls.”
“The war isn’t over yet,” she half protested, though she didn’t know why.
“All but the tail end of the dying. Trust me—I’ve seen war. At the end, there is nothing but blood.”
“There is already blood,” Tara said softly.
Pete didn’t disagree; he had spoken his mind.
She was aware of the sound of the oars striking the water again and listened to them for a while. Then Pete nodded his head toward the horizon.
Squinting, Tara could see Richard’s Peace, sails down, at deep anchor off the stock island. It was barely a silhouette against the dark sky. She was surprised that Pete had seen it, but he had spent much of his life fighting and running through the darkness and the marsh.
Peace was a beautiful ship. Richard had commissioned her for his salvage and merchandising business before secession, and before he had ever dreamed of operating her as a war vessel. She had three masts and a square rig, which meant that at full sail she was quite a sight to behold. She could move swiftly over the open water, but since the decline of the clipper had begun with the advent of steam, Richard had modernized her by equipping her with a steamer, as well. She had a shallow draft, and could easily navigate the coral reefs and shoals, especially with a captain like Richard manning her; he knew the waters around the Florida Keys as well as he knew his own image in a mirror, if not better.
Richard had sailed out on a dark night many a time, evading the enemy ships. He hid the Peace and walked about Key West as an average citizen, avoiding the Yankee troops in the town these past four years.
Pete ceased to row, letting his small boat drift toward the larger ship. A man on guard on the deck quickly called down to them. “State your business, and speak quickly!”
“It’s Tara Fox!” she called quickly.
“Come aboard!”
A rope ladder was thrown down, and Tara leaned over to plant a kiss on Pete’s face. She imagined he might have blushed. “Don’t worry. I will make it home,” she promised him.
Grabbing her satchel and securing it around her shoulders, she reached for the rope and carefully climbed her way up to the deck. Richard was there to help her on board.
“You know, you are insane,” he told her huskily.
“Just following the lead of my captain!” she returned. He turned quickly, introducing her to the man on guard.
“Tara, I think you know Grant Quimbly here. Lawrence Seville is at the helm, and Gary French is working the steam engine. Make yourself at home in the cabin. We’ll be on our way.”
“Thank you, Richard,” she told him.
He nodded. “Lawrence, let’s get her under way!”
Tara looked down to the dark sea; she could barely make out Pete’s small boat.
The darkness seemed overwhelming.
But just as she thought so, the cloud cover shifted, and a pale glow of starlight filled the sky. She could see the barest sliver of a moon. It was the night of the new moon, and yet, it almost looked as if, for a moment, it was waxing crescent.
It almost appeared to be grinning.
She shivered. It seemed as if even the moon was mocking her.
CHAPTER TWO
“THEY’RE GOOD—THE BLOCKADE runners around these waters,” Captain John Tremblay told Finn, looking out at the darkness. “They’re very, very good—the men who sail in the night and the darkness. They know when to make their runs. They know how to make use of moonless nights, when cloud cover erases even the stars.” He turned and looked at Finn. “But, of course, you chose the date.”
The sea and the sky seemed to combine that night, as if they might have been sailing off the earth’s surface into a stygian void of nothingness. Setting out on the captain’s steamer, USS Punisher, they had navigated easily enough; the Key West lighthouse helped ships on both sides avoid calamity on the reefs. But Tremblay and crew were now beyond its glow, heading north, and the moonless, starless night created an eerie realm where even the truth and the horror of the war seemed of another world. The stars, of course, were out there. But cloud cover was blocking even their gentle light. The world was one, water and air merged. Watching the vastness of the ocean at night, Finn could well understand how the medieval population had believed that the world was flat.
He’d been at sea enough to comprehend winds and tides; he’d kept a small sailboat on the river for years. But here, tonight, the sky was deep velvet and blue-black, and the sea seemed to be a glass sheet as vast as the endless dark heavens above them. Though Calloway had been apprised of his mission, Captain Tremblay had not been told any of the particulars, other than a Pinkerton was seeking a certain man, and he believed that he’d find him in these waters.
Finn found himself admiring both the Union navy seamen who plied these waters and the blockade runners themselves. Of course, there was money in running the blockade, but at this stage of the war, many of the men willing to risk the noose of the Union navy did so out of a sense of patriotism; money only meant something if you were alive. Of course, there were those reckless would-be pirates who were willing to take a chance at anything, but at this stage of the game, many were also die-hard heroes, continuing to fight a losing battle in the hope of keeping the Confederacy alive long enough for the North to tire of the war before the South was completely decimated.
“What makes you think your man is a blockade runner?” Captain Tremblay asked him, handing him the spyglass.
“We intercepted communications,” Finn said. He looked through the glass, and still there was nothing to see but blackness.
“About a blockade runner?” Tremblay asked. He seemed puzzled, and then said, “Blockade runners are not often spies, except, of course, they will carry whatever information they acquire. They’re seldom assassins.”
“This one is an unusual circumstance. The man is apparently obsessed with his hatred, though I don’t suppose that’s so unusual at this time…. But he has a vendetta against Lincoln, and he just happens to be a blockade runner, and since he’s able to move around quickly and communicate with others, he’s especially dangerous.”
Finn hesitated a minute, looking at Tremblay, but he was afraid that if they didn’t catch the man tonight, whether his name was known or not wasn’t going to matter much. “He’s a man who goes by the code name of Gator. His brother was killed at Gettysburg, and one of his conspirators was apprehended in the capital—with an incriminating correspondence.”
“Many good men were killed at Gettysburg. Tens of thousands,” Tremblay said, a hoarse note in his voice. “But putting together a conspiracy … What fool puts