Beaudry's Ghost Read online

  “Do I need to remind you how to load your own weapon, boy?”

  “No, sir,” she quavered.

  “Then…?”

  She rolled back to her left side and poured a small amount of powder into the firing pan. Her hands ran on autopilot, for her rational brain had shut down. Her worst nightmare had come true. Undoubtedly by now the Union re-enactors knew that real lead whistled past their ears, and those who weren’t on the run were now reloading their own weapons with live rounds in sheer self-defense, and to protect innocent bystanders. Even if they were “only” re-enactors, many of them were veterans and wouldn’t back down from a fight.

  In a few moments, she could be shooting to defend her own life.

  Troy…help me…

  She flinched as another volley of Rebel fire reduced the Union threat by several more. Taylor rolled to her stomach and rammed the butt of the Enfield to her shoulder, ever conscious of Harris’s presence behind her. She tried to sight down the barrel, but she couldn’t see for the sweat and tears that kept blurring her vision. The cloth Gulley had wound around her head slipped and fell into her eyes. Her hand shaking, she jerked it off taking her slouch hat with it, and tossed both away.

  Finally she found a clear spot and aimed just over the bobbing heads of the Federal re-enactors.

  Harris would have none of it. From his crouched position behind her, he saw exactly what she was doing.

  “Private, you are aiming high.”

  “No, I’m—”

  “You’re aiming high, Private. Aim for the heart.” Despite the chaos of battle noise, he sounded for all the world like a patient teacher instructing a slow student. He sounded chillingly like her friend Stephen.

  She gasped for air. “I c—can’t.”

  “Fire your weapon, Private.”

  “I can’t!”

  “You are ordered to fire, Private!” Harris’s impatience edged closer to anger.

  She sobbed once as, directly behind her head, she heard him cock the pistol.

  “FIRE!”

  Taylor shut her eyes and squeezed the trigger.

  She didn’t think she’d hit anyone, but before she knew it she was halfway through reloading the Enfield. She blinked and tried to slow her actions, but it was if someone else moved her hands for her. As if someone else did the shooting while she stood back and watched. Even her eyes had dried. Shock, she supposed.

  “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it, Private?” He sounded faintly disappointed. “Believe me,” he slid the Colt back into its holster, “it gets easier.” And he was gone, moving on down the line to encourage and direct.

  “See what I mean, boy?” yelled Lije above the noise as he squeezed off another shot, “A hard man. But by god, he’ll make a man outta you.”

  Make a man out of me? Taylor wished she could laugh, but she was too busy watching, with faint amazement, her hands at work. The haze of fright in her brain cleared just enough to remember Beaudry, and she looked toward the wagons.

  He was gone. A limp pile of rope left in his place. He had seen and taken advantage of the chance she’d given him. No doubt he was on his way to Cape Hatteras and whatever awaited him there.

  Relief surged through her even as she realized his disappearance had done nothing to dispel the time bubble. Then, to her surprise, a little crack formed in her heart.

  Jared Beaudry was gone. And he had left her behind.

  Taylor clutched Troy’s Enfield tighter and prepared to shoot again.

  Before she had finished reloading, Harris’s voice boomed from several yards to her right.

  “Fix bayonets!”

  Excitement among the Rebel soldiers pitched a notch higher as metal clanked against metal. She peered through the eye-stinging smoke and found the Union commander, smeared with blood and trying to rally his men. Terror soured the back of her throat.

  Then the Union commander apparently caught sight of the Rebels’ bayonets flashing in the sun. He shouted words she couldn’t make out, but the meaning was clear if his waving arms were any indication. Retreat.

  “Hot damn!” cried Lije, setting his feet under him and preparing to launch himself forward.

  She did the same, her mouth open wide and gasping for breath. She forcibly detached her mind from what she was about to do. Firing at someone from a distance was one thing. Killing while looking her victim in the eye was quite another. Refusing to do it would mean her own certain death.

  God, no.

  “Chaaaaarge!”

  And she was up and out, running down the beach along with the others, propelled by a force she couldn’t deny. Her world was reduced to the sound of running feet and her own labored breath, her own pounding heart. The cheering spectators perched on the dunes, totally unaware of how real was the blood on the sand, faded from her peripheral vision as she ran. The odd thought occurred to her that the time bubble was beginning to have an effect on her, after all. In fact, she suddenly wondered if she wasn’t who she thought she was. The Taylor Brannon she knew wouldn’t rush headlong toward unarmed men, this hair-raising scream for blood wouldn’t erupt from her throat.

  Was it like this for the rest of the 35th Tennessee? Was everyone else looking down at themselves, powerless to stop their bodies from doing harm?

  The Union re-enactors gathered up their wounded as best they could, and ran for the dunes.

  Taylor, falling behind the others, felt an angry sting slice across the top of her shoulder. She stumbled and fell, throwing her arms out in front to catch herself. Her hands landed and sank up to the wrists in a sickeningly warm, wet pool of bloody sand.

  Her mind went blank.

  Scrambling to her feet, she grabbed her gun and kept running, this time for the safe cover of the dunes. Behind her, she thought she heard Harris cry out and wondered if a Minié ball had found him, but didn’t turn to look. Only one thought occupied her mind as the surrealism faded into reality; to get herself conveniently lost and to slip away. This time the idea of desertion didn’t go down so hard. There was nothing to keep her here now. Troy’s spirit hadn’t appeared to her, hard as she’d tried to make her power work. And Beaudry was gone, as she’d wanted.

  Sucking great gasps of air, she plunged into the maze of dunes, pulling at handfuls of tall grass to keep herself moving, leaving smears of red on the strands of pale spring green. The sounds of battle and retreat faded as the men scattered. She kept to the dunes and headed south, away from Lt. Harris, away from the scene of blood and writhing, wounded bodies. Her feet slipped on a soft slope and she went down. She struggled to rise, but the strength in her legs flagged. Sinking back down into a heap, she raised a hand to wipe new tears from her face.

  Blood.

  God, what have I done?

  She barely had time to lurch to one side before her stomach heaved and emptied itself. Granted, there wasn’t much in her stomach to begin with, but what little came up took the last of her strength with it. She lay unmoving, uncaring, one hand under her throbbing head. The other still gripped Troy’s musket.

  There she is. Thank God.

  Jared limped toward Taylor’s still form, his frown deepening when he saw her grey uniform stained with several splotches of blood. Hers, or someone else’s? He clenched his jaw and picked up his pace. She couldn’t be dead. He would have felt some break in the connection between them. Something!

  There was no time to make sure. He knew she didn’t like to be touched, but there wasn’t time to worry about that, either. He fell to his knees beside her, turned her gently to her back and shoved his arms underneath her shoulders and knees. And prayed for the strength that was rapidly failing him in spite of his iron will to keep going.

  The moment he touched her, her eyes flew open.

  “Jared.” A blood-streaked hand rose to touch his face as her eyes focused on him. His heart squeezed at the telling tremble of her fingers and he laid a quick kiss on them, blood and all. Her hand dropped away and her eyes cleared.

  �
��What in the hell are you doing here?”

  she demanded, her voice gaining strength with each word.

  “Rescuing you. What does it look like?” Doing the one noble thing left to me. He adjusted her weight in his arms and staggered toward his two stolen horses.

  “Oh my God. That’s Stephen’s horse!”

  “That it is,” he agreed.

  “Is that my knapsack? And…Missy! My horse! How did you know to take her, too?”

  Though grateful she was coming to life, he wished she’d stop twisting around. She wasn’t heavy, but her rangy, lean body was unwieldy, especially in his deteriorating condition. “I didn’t. I just needed her for you to ride, and that one was the next one in line,” he puffed. “The grey is a fine animal, but he can’t carry us both.” He did well not to drop her when he reached the spotted mare. He braced his hands to boost her aboard the saddleless horse. She placed a gritty foot on his palms, but didn’t push. He looked up into her face, streaked with blood and dirt, furrowed with tear tracks, looking down at him in wonder.

  “Both? You mean you… Jared, why are you here? Why didn’t you keep going once you’d escaped?”

  He pulled on her foot and forced her to mount. When she was up, he gripped her knee for support as the rising pain clamped down, vise-like, on his calf. Touching her seemed to help him fight it off, but time was running out.

  He leaned on the horse and looked up into her eyes.

  “Did you honestly think I was going to leave you?”

  For once, Private Taylor appeared speechless. He pushed away from her, limped around the front of the mare and, by sheer force of will, dragged himself up onto the gelding.

  From the west, a deep-throated roar boomed across Croatan Sound. Then another. And another. The scattered musket fire clattered to a stop, undoubtedly because everyone had stopped to listen.

  “The battle’s started. Those must be the Parrott guns at Fort Bartow. They managed to find three of them for this event.” She sounded dazed. But that was understandable. After his first battle, he’d thrown up everything he’d eaten for three solid days.

  He grit his teeth as spots danced in front of his eyes and he fought to stay upright on the horse. His vision blurred as she turned her face toward him and frowned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He braced his weight on his arms, crossed on the horse’s neck. “Nothing a decent bottle of whiskey won’t cure.” Or even an indecent one. He’d drink just about anything right now if he knew it would stop the runaway train of agony that was about to run him down.

  Taylor kneed the mare closer to him. “It’s happening again, isn’t it? The pain?”

  He managed one short nod. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he gasped. “Those guns are a signal for Harris to round up the few men who can ride and start his little raiding party down to Hatteras.” He straightened his spine and took the reins back. “We’ve got to stay ahead of him. By the time he figures out what has happened, we have to be long gone.”

  Without another word, they guided their horses to flat ground just inside the dune line, out of Harris’s line of sight, and took off to the south at a full gallop.

  *

  Jared didn’t know when his horse’s mane had replaced the reins in his hands.

  Taylor’s voice floated around him, muted to insensibility by the haze of pain shooting up his leg, spreading up his spine and diffusing through his body. And still he managed to hold off the worst of it. Over and over in his mind, as if jerked back and forth through time, a sword flashed in an arc down toward his leg. Each time, he fended it off before it struck home, but he didn’t think he could do it much longer.

  He couldn’t tell what she was saying, but she sounded angry. Which meant she was scared out of her wits again, too. But that was all right. So was he.

  He opened one eye and tried to judge the angle of the sun. Two hours, maybe three, they’d been riding. He barely remembered the last hour. He’d been losing ground in his fight to hold off the final thrust of pain he knew would take his consciousness, and cancel their flight for safety. He wondered dimly how he’d stayed on his horse. Instinct, maybe. He’d been riding horses since before he could walk.

  The horses stopped, and Jared squinted at what looked like a road. A long, grey one with something silvery on each side, and a yellow stripe down the middle. On either side of it sparkled water. Oregon Inlet? Had they made it that far?

  “I’m pretty sure horses aren’t allowed on this bridge, so if we get pulled over, let me do that talking.” Her voice floated back to him.

  Pulled over? Bridge? He opened the other eye. And here he’d been worried about how they were going to get across the inlet’s strong ocean currents with two horses, and without a boat. But here was a bridge. Problem solved. Yes, it had to be Oregon, he realized. A few of the small ships of Burnside’s fleet—or rather, a re-enactment of the fleet—lay at anchor just outside the inlet. Small boats loaded with Union soldiers and light artillery floated under the bridge and into the Sound.

  “You know,” she went on, a little desperately, “General Burnside miscalculated how shallow the draft of his fleet needed to be to get his troops through the inlet. He thought it was eight feet, but when the boats tried to pass through on the high tide? It was two feet too shallow.”

  The Bodie Island Lighthouse rose tall and solid, the horizontal black-and-white stripes on its tower giving him something to focus on as the horses clopped over the hard surface of the road and out onto the bridge. Jared fixed his gaze on it and reminded himself to keep breathing.

  The sun felt good on the top of his bare head, but it wasn’t warm enough to still the rippling shivers that raced up and down his body. Taylor rode ahead of him, and he saw a large red stain extending from her right shoulder down her back. She rode as if she wasn’t hurting anywhere, though, so he assumed it wasn’t her own blood. Jared shuddered. God, what she must have gone through, to have so much of it on her.

  She had taken his reins again, a simple act he found irritating. He should be the one taking the lead. He should be the one keeping her safe. Not the other way around. Time and again she’d come to his aid, and it was damned humiliating. He wanted to say something, but his mouth wouldn’t work.

  “Do you know how they finally got across?” she went on, her laugh a little too edgy. “Some pre-MIT types figured that by running the boats up on the sandbar, the incoming tide would wash the sand out from under the keels and dig out a channel. It took three days of high tides to do it, but they did. After that, it took only about a day and a half to take Roanoke Island.”

  He waited for her to launch into excruciating detail about the battle and how it was won, or lost, if you looked at it from her point of view. But she paused and coughed as if to clear out the fear that clogged her throat.

  His vision dimmed, and his mind wandered backward.

  Sarah…did you marry that Rowe boy you said you couldn’t stand? Did you have children? Have I seen any of your grandchildren on this beach in the last hundred years?

  Ethan. What happened to you? I never meant you harm. I just thought that one of us going off to war was enough in one family. They said your horse threw you off the Little Hocking bridge. But hell, brother, you were a better rider than I. That horse shouldn’t have been able to unseat you.

  “Uh, oh.”

  “What?” He started as several large, brightly colored…things…like train cars without the engines, whizzed by at speeds that made him dizzy. Yes. Yes. He’d seen these before. Nothing to be alarmed about. He’d seen many of them swerve to avoid him over the years. What a ghastly sight he must have been, sitting on his horse in the middle of the road, when the vehicles’ bright, probing eyes picked him out of the dark. He thought about it now and grinned to himself. Ethan would have envied him for thinking up the ultimate Halloween prank. Every year it was the same, the two of them trying to outdo each other, with Sarah usually the semi-willing victim.

  “Not
hing. Just don’t look down,” Taylor warned.

  What else could he do? He looked down over the bridge railing. And wished he hadn’t. The water, rushing under the bridge with the tide, reminded him of the strength that he was losing just as fast. He focused on Taylor’s back and tightened his grip on the grey’s mane.

  The bridge seemed interminably long. The cars rushed past them, too close sometimes, emitting short, sharp blasts of noise. Occasionally a human head would pop out of a passing window with a shout about the South rising again, or some such nonsense. She only laughed and waved in response.

  His spine stiffened. He knew he should have some appropriate retort filed away in his brain, but he just couldn’t seem to find it right then. He let his back slump. Later.

  He heard himself groan.

  “How are you holding up, there, Yank?” she called with forced cheer. “We’re almost across, and no cops yet.” A short pause. “That’s pretty surprising, actually. You’d think every cop and news bureau in the state would know by now and be headed this way. After what happened, I mean. Gee, do you think we’ll get lucky and they’ll arrest Harris?” She pulled up on the reins and dropped back beside him, reaching for the knapsack he had hastily strapped to the back of the grey’s saddle.

  “Hang on, we’re almost there,” she assured gently.

  “Almost where?” Jared wished he hadn’t wasted his strength on those two words.

  Her right hand disappeared out of his peripheral vision as she rooted around in an outside pocket of the knapsack. “The house. My cousin Lane is over on Roanoke Island taking pictures, and she rented a beach house for the week not far from the lighthouse. She told me if I wanted to spend a few days, to drop by.” When she straightened up again, she had a piece of paper in her hand. “Aha! I did remember to bring the directions. The lighthouse is out on a marshy area, and you can’t get to it by road. But the house is supposed to be just up the beach. We should be safe there for a little while. Should be a nice view…”