Billy lifted the tin cup, tilted it to drain the last of the cold coffee. In his brother's eyes George detected a sad skepticism. Billy didn't believe what he had just said.
Well, he didn't, either. He had seen too much of Washington and Petersburg. He had heard the fire bells in April, long ago.
117
The scratch of her pen and the pound of the sea — those were the only sounds in the cramped and wretched stateroom.
Ashton bent over the account book on the tiny table she had pushed against the wall beneath the single flickering lamp. Wearing a loose silk shirt and stained trousers, Huntoon lay in the lower berth, watching her with resentment. During the entire first day after leaving Hamilton, Bermuda, he had puked into a bucket at least every half hour. The second day, he was able to reach the rail, but the earlier stench still tainted the cabin. One more grievance she bore against him.
Ashton weighed nine pounds less than she had on the disastrous night Orry aborted the assassination plot and sent them flying out of Richmond in a closed carriage. She yearned for an opportunity to repay her brother for his ruinous meddling. But at the moment she had more important goals. Surviving. Reaching Montreal, then the Southwest. Restoring her beauty; the way she looked now was loathsome.
Most compelling of all was the need to be with Powell again.
Huntoon sharpened the need because of his constant snuffling and tossing in the berth.
Cresting waves struck and shook the steamer. She was Canadian, the Royal Albert, and was presently running as close to the American coastline as she dared, being a neutral. It was the evening of election day in the North. More pertinently, as Ashton's occasionally queasy stomach reminded her, it was November. November meant the onset of this kind of rough sea in the North Atlantic.
From the bunk, Huntoon bleated, "What time is it?"
Writing numbers, Ashton said, "Look at your watch."
He made a pathetic sound to tell her of the suffering induced by the effort. "Almost eleven. Won't you put out the lamp?"
"Not until I'm finished."
"What are you doing?"
"Reckoning our compound interest." The Nassau bank in which, at her insistence, all the Water Witch profits had been deposited, wouldn't know where to send quarterly reports until Powell established the new government. In Hamilton, Ashton had been able to cash a draft on the bank, just enough money for minimum, traveling expenses. The rest remained safe in their account, in sterling. Sometimes she shuddered, remembering how close she had come to putting it all in a Charleston bank.
Quickly, she toted up the figures and swung around, flourishing a little book at him. "Nearly a quarter of a million dollars, as closely as I can compute it. That's something to compensate us for this misery."
Huntoon's round spectacles misted; he was sweating. "Lamar may ask for some of that money."
"Oh, no." She shut the book and tucked it in her bulging reticule. "He doesn't get the loan of a penny until the new government is in place, and perhaps not even then. In this venture, he hazards the gold from his mine — we hazard ourselves."
"I'd sooner surrender that bank account than our lives," he countered in what she considered a sniveling way. "But if you look at matters honestly, Powell has placed more than his gold at risk. I mean, he faces the same physical dangers we do —"
"He should. It's his scheme."
Ashton loved Powell, but she saw no contradiction of that in her reply to her husband. One plot had foundered; a second might also. Curiously, failure hadn't embittered her lover, even though he had been forced to hide in that filthy attic for weeks, then flee down to Wilmington by himself after he returned to Richmond and found the farm in the hands of the provost's men.
At Ashton's insistence, Huntoon left a sealed letter at one of Powell's drinking haunts. Thus he learned more of what had happened and where the Huntoons were bound. From Wilmington, he had continued on to Nassau before rejoining them in Hamilton. Discovery, hasty flight, fear of pursuit — those had perversely strengthened his determination. It helped convince Ashton that although the possibility of failure was always present, Powell would succeed this time. He would bring the new nation into being.
The need for it was more desperate than ever; that had become clear in the weeks since their flight from Richmond. Lee was stalemated, Sherman was driving to the sea, the old Confederacy was going down. In Nassau, Powell said, some Southerners had begged him to join rebel agents already in Toronto, headquarters for new schemes to throw the North into turmoil, foil Lincoln's election and pave the way for peace negotiations. One plan Powell heard about involved Illinois Copperheads who were supposed to overwhelm Camp Douglas and free great numbers of Confederate prisoners. Another, even more witless in his estimation, called for burning every major hotel in New York City.
"King Jeff is trying eleventh-hour ploys to save the regime he's already destroyed. I'll not help such a mad and desperate man. That's what I told the people in Nassau, and when they didn't like it, I told them to go to hell."
Those were Powell's remarks at luncheon yesterday. Huntoon was in his bunk at the time. To sit opposite her lover and be unable to do so much as clasp his hand frustrated Ashton. They hadn't enjoyed a moment of privacy since leaving Hamilton. Always, there were crewmen close by or passengers. The steamer was carrying several Canadian business travelers and three couples returning from an autumn holiday in the tropics. In the dining saloon, Powell haughtily refused to speak to any of them.
Ashton rose, smoothing her skirt and catching a flash of her image in a small, cracked glass on the wall. The sight was sickening. Her hair was dull, her arms bony, her bosom shrinking. She clung to an imagined future in which she would be attractive again, sharing Towell's bed in the presidential mansion.
From time to time she pressed him for specifics about the new state. Where would he create it? On how much land? How many settlers did he expect, and how many armed men to defend them? He claimed to have all the answers but preferred to keep them to himself — an additional reason Ashton would give him her body but not her money. Not just yet.
"Ohhh." Huntoon clutched his middle. "I think I'm going to die."
I wish you would. She stamped her foot. "I know I'll go insane if you don't stop your childish complaining."
"But I feel so terrible —"
"Believe me, you've made that clear. Whine, whine, whine! You hated the hotel in Wilmington, even after we were lucky enough to get there without being caught and arrested. You complained about the seediness of the man who sold us forged passports for three times what they're worth. You didn't want to sail to Bermuda on a fishing boat, even though there was no other vessel to take us. You hate this steamer, Canadians, the sea — What would make you happy?"
He dragged his legs over the side of the berth and pulled off his glasses. His eyes looked wet and weak. Like a boy's. She could have sunk through the deck when he answered: "To go back to South Carolina — to be done with this business. I've thought it over, endlessly. I can't stand the strain. The possibility of danger, death. It's tearing my nerves to pieces."
"Do you think our poor Southern boys on the battlefield feel any differently? You enlisted when there was glory in the air, but now you want to desert. Well, you can't." He cringed away from the denunciation. "There will be a new Confederacy, and we are going to be important in it. Very important."