Cherie Priest - Clementine

She was seated still, hands folded in her lap over the gun she’d drawn from her handbag. Quietly she said, “Every word the gospel truth. I have no reason to lie to you. The captain is right and I am a patriot for my country, and although I generally desire my country’s approval, that goal will be best served by preserving Danville from utter destruction. You’re fugitives, yes, but what good would it do me to hand you over…if there is no nation left to prosecute you?”

Hainey swung a hand out and pointed it at her, as if to say, “See?” but he did not say it aloud. Instead he said, “On your word then, lady. On your word as a Southerner, and a Confederate, and, and,” he searched for something else to bind her. “And a widow. On your husband’s grave, and on your-”

“That’s enough,” she snapped. “On that-all of it. On that and more, I give you my word that if you send me into the city to gather information, I’ll return to you with everything I know.”

One hour later, she was deposited without ceremony beside the road that led to the bridge that would take her into the city.

When Maria returned-and she did return-she brought them the location of a brand new facility south of the city. And she climbed aboard, and neither she nor the captain nor any of the crew said another word until they landed their craft behind the Waverly Hills Sanatorium forty miles outside of town.

Behind the Waverly Hills Sanatorium the forest was high and a creek rolled through the grounds, making light, pretty noises as it trailed between the trees. The sky was perfectly clear, without a cloud to hide behind; and in the end, the Valkyrie settled down in what passed for a small clearing at the edge of a fruit grove, half-concealed by the edge of a green knoll.

The folding stairs extended, and all four of the ship’s occupants disembarked. Three black men and a white woman together looked strange enough indeed, but there was no one to see them while they plotted amongst themselves.

Maria attempted to straighten her deflated skirts. She gave up and asked, “I didn’t see any other ships moored anywhere close, did you?”

The captain shook his head. He said, “I didn’t, but that’s not to say the Free Crow isn’t docked and stashed someplace nearby.”

“It must be smaller than the Valkyrie ,” she guessed.

“It is,” he said. “Maybe half the size overall. Oh, she’s not so tiny that she’d be a snap to hide-don’t misunderstand me. But if the boys in blue are hiding a weapons facility, pretending it’s a hospital for the deranged, then I wouldn’t put a damn thing past them. For all we know, they have a…a secret set of docks. Maybe there’s something hiding in the trees, or maybe one of these hills isn’t what it looks like.”

Lamar looked warily from hill to hill before saying, “It’s possible, sir. But there’s no reason to make yourself crazy over it.”

Ever since stepping down the folding stairs, the first mate had been rolling himself a cigarette. He stuck one end in his mouth, lit the other end, and stared at the sky. He said, “I think we beat them.”

“We must have,” Maria insisted. “We dumped all that cargo, and full speed, you said. Your true and proper ship is loaded down and moving slowly, or so you mentioned. Head start or none, I think it’s likely we’ve made it here first.”

She set her large tapestry bag down on the ground and laid the small handbag beside it.

“What are you doing?” Hainey asked.

“Reloading.”

Inside the large bag, beneath a layer of ladies’ underthings, stockings, and a second pair of boots, she revealed a long burlap bag stitched into pouches, like a workman’s tool belt. Inside each pouch was a stash of ammunition, divvied up into such an orderly fashion that Hainey was forced to marvel.

“No wonder you enjoyed shooting the Gatling. Get a hundred shots out without having to sift through your little bag for more bullets.”

“I don’t reload often,” she said without taking offense. “Because I don’t often shoot, and when I do, I don’t often miss. But I want to take a different set of guns into the facility-something with more kick and, in case of trouble, more capacity.” She hoisted a pair of Colts into the daylight and flipped the wheels open. While she thumbed bullets into the chambers she explained, “I don’t know what I’ll be walking into, in this facility. Twelve bullets are better than six, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” Hainey said, and he hesitated. “You said…I suppose. Well.”

“There’s nothing to suppose, Captain Hainey. I’m going into Waverly alone, because you have no business there. You came to Louisville for your ship, which may appear at any time. I came to Louisville to prevent a weapon from completion. Now, there’s nothing for either one of us to do but chase our own paths. You’ll wait here and watch the sky; and I’ll go inside to look for this Ossian Steen.”

“And what will you do when you find him?” the captain asked.

“When I get to that bridge, I’ll burn it,” she drawled.

She finished loading the Colts and holstered them on a belt. The belt had received an extra set of holes in order to accommodate her slender waist in a fashionable way; she strung it over her hips, fastened it, and tested the weight of both weapons against her hands before replacing them in the holsters. She slipped her arm through the handbag’s thin strap, and took the other one’s handle into her fist.

“Gentlemen,” she said. “I believe this is where our missions diverge. It’s been…it’s been a most peculiar…pleasure. Or at the very least, it’s been an adventure. I thank you for the use of your ship, and for your trust, if ever I earned any.”

Simeon said through a skeptical narrowing of his eyes, “Thanks for not shooting any of us.”

She nodded, accepting that it was all the friendly acknowledgment she was likely to receive from the first mate; she nodded also at Lamar, who hadn’t said a thing, even to wish her farewell; and she took a deep breath. She adjusted her hat, and then let it fall to rest between her shoulder blades, suspended around her neck by a red velvet ribbon.

And she said to the captain, “Well, Captain. Best of luck to you.”

He said in return, “And to you, Belle Boyd.”

As she walked away, down towards the building that reared up darkly through the woods, she heard him say behind her, “And that’s something I never imagined-not in all my life-that I’d ever say.”

She was nearly warmed by the sentiment, or by the thought that she’d deserved it; and she honestly wished them well, for all the strangeness of it.

Down at the bottom of the hill and across a walking bridge that crossed the stream in a tidy wooden arc, Maria made her way towards the dark spot-the hole made of a building, and stacked four stories up through the Kentucky bluegrass. The structure sucked everything towards it. The creek flowed to it, the trees leaned its way, and the earth itself seemed dimpled by the immense weight of the place and all its horrible contents.

She was drawn to it like everything else.

She strode through the forest away from the Valkyrie and up to the main road. She would conceal the gunbelt under a tied shawl, hold her baggage firmly and with purpose, and announce that she was there to apply for a position as a nurse. Maria scaled the low edge of the road and walked along it as if she had nothing to hide and no purpose at all which was not direct, friendly, and absolutely ignorant of military behavior or espionage of any stripe.

Out on the front lawn there were patients, here and there-or people masquerading as patients. And behind them, Waverly loomed.