Full Fathom Five

  Full Fathom Five

  Peter A. Smalley

  Published by Kindling Press

  Copyright 2011 Peter A. Smalley

  Discover other titles by Peter A. Smalley:

  20,001: A Steampunk Odyssey

  The Burning Times

  Grimme

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  Part One: Anaconda

  Walking would have been safest, but word had been late in coming and he had not the time to spare. A coal-burning coach would have been fastest, but they attracted exactly the kind of attention he dared not risk. Not tonight. Delacroix hired a horse-drawn wagon to take him and his heavy steamer trunk to the docks on the Mississippi, and prayed to whatever gods watched over fools and revolutionaries he would make it in time.

  The hot breath of a Southern twilight condensed on his brow and clung to his neck. The evening was hunkering down slow and humid over the city of New Orleans, but distant thunderheads spoke of a storm to come soon, perhaps later that night. At the moment, smoke-trails hung lazily in the sky, drifting over the river from Fort Macomb. Good Rebel boys shelling the Union boats when they came too close, likely. Not that they were like to hit any. Delacroix scowled. The impervious Northern ironclads enforcing the Union naval blockade moved slowly, surely, but not as slowly as Confederate gunners. Or so it had seemed to him in the near-decade since the War Between the States had broken out.

  Delacroix chewed his moustache and watched the ramshackle clapboard houses march by as they rattled down Felicity Street, across the Carrollton Railroad line and past the one of the city’s many street markets. Everyone seemed to spare him a glance, or more than one, and he felt horribly exposed. Acting out a nonchalance he had not felt in months, he picked at his teeth as if he hadn’t a care in the world beyond a late supper at some dockside cafe where the shrimp were fresh and the ale as cool and slow as the waters of the Mississippi. At least the curiosity of his onlookers was not upon the iron-bound leather steamer trunk in the back of the wagon.

  He pulled a nervous finger between his neck and the sweat-stained cravate he wore around it in spite of the heat and humidity. Suitable dress was expected for a Southern gentleman, no matter how hot and sticky the weather. But it was more than just the humidity. Despite chiding himself for letting his anxiety get to him like a novice, he had heard the rumors. Everyone had. The city was full of Union agents, it was said. Anyone could be an informer, a black-hearted turncoat helping the Yanks destroy their beloved Confederacy from within. Or so the rumors went.

  Delacroix was different from most of his fellow Southerners only because he knew it was more than a rumor; indeed, he still had nightmares over his own deadly brush with Union agents. Two dead men in the watery grave of a cypress swamp north of Metairie bore mute testimony to that. He had slit their throats and stuffed their trousers full of rocks to make sure it would be long before they surfaced, and done penance for it privately even if he’d not had the courage to bring it to the confessional as he truly wished to. If those agents had known the full extent of his activities, he would likely be rotting under the brackish marsh-water instead of them. It was cold comfort.

  The horse clip-clopped along at a steady pace toward the river. He wished, not for the first time, for greater speed, but it could not be helped. Not if he wanted to avoid notice. For the moment that was more important to their cause than haste. That, and making sure he was not followed. Dahlgren might care less about that than about a safe delivery, but Alsace Traveaux would cut his throat and throw him in the Mississippi without batting an eye if he ever thought Delacroix might be a threat. He was a cold one, all right, and certainly no gentleman. Sometimes Delacroix wondered if Traveaux was really an ally worth having. He did not question his orders or doubt his fellow agent’s usefulness. Defeating the Anaconda Plan maintaining the Union’s naval stranglehold over the maritime trade of the South would require men who could dissemble, lie, and kill. Men like Traveaux. But that didn’t mean he had to like the lowborn Creole rogue. It certainly did not require that he trust him.

  Delacroix shivered but kept his eyes watchful. Almost there. The wagon took a wide right turn onto Tchapitoulas Street and another onto New Levee. The driver clucked to his off-white mare and it whickered softly in response. Just a few more blocks and it would be done. They passed the busy terminal of Lafayette-Pontchartrain Railroad line and Delacroix inclined his head in silent homage to the twin hundred-and-ten pound rifled artillery pieces mounted on the gunnery coaches at both ends of the twelve-car train. They were some of the most powerful rail-mounted cannon in the South, designed to keep the Bluecoats at a respectful distance. That did not keep Delacroix from scanning every cart, wagon and coal-burning coach in the terminal for potential threats, however. Who knew what could have come into the city on that train? Despite his vigilance, most of those in the vicinity seemed to be focused on examining, haggling over and loading up all the food and dry goods from the last trainload. There was precious little of it.

  Once he would have swore at the thought of having to haggle over food, but as the years of war-without-cease ground on and on, his cultured Southern hauteur had faded to a kind of exhaustion of spirit. The Union blockade turned the flood of trade in and out of New Orleans by water into a trickle for half a decade, starving the populace and ruining the export trade along with many of Delacroix’s fellow plantation owners. The Confederate government had done what it could to route supplies to the important port city, but the Union had proven entirely too willing to bombard ships on the Mississippi and to dynamite key rail lines for it to risk anything but covert aid to willing privateers. They resupplied the city by riverboat, small rail and even by wagon, but despite the heavy gunnery coaches loaned out by the Confederate army it was not enough to push back the constant Union pressure on their supply lines.

  Without a major influx of reinforcements, New Orleans simply could not do more than barely hold back the constant Union naval pressure that kept the city bottled up. As the months had turned to years and the ironclad blockade remained in force, Delacroix had watched in growing dismay as New Orleans had slowly drawn in on itself, turning costlier, harder and more rattlesnake-mean than it had ever been. Everything cost more, sometimes much more. Folk were suspicious of their neighbors, and travel after dark was an invitation to be lynched as a Union spy. There seemed no way to do anything much about it. The Confederacy had their fire-ships and sloops and a few merchant steamers, but no ships-of-the-line to match the Union ironclads patrolling the Mississippi and blockading access to the Gulf.

  But that was about to change.

  The wagon creaked to a halt alongside a moldering warehouse that had last seen a fresh coat of whitewash during the Jackson presidency. Delacroix showed the driver a Confederate half-dollar—a staggering sum, easily ten times what he would have expected to pay just five years before—and leaped lightly over the sideboard. Darkness was coming on with a vengeance now as the storm clouds drew nearer. The streets were already coming alight with fitful, flickering oil lanterns, but here in the side yard of the warehouse it was already hard to see. Delacroix was about to give the man his pay when a door opened in the side of the building and a tall, lean silhouette appeared.

  Delacroix tried not to swallow as Alsace Traveaux walked silently up to the wagon.

  “A
hand with that trunk, s’il vous plait,” he said quietly to the driver in his slow, French-accented Creole drawl. It was not a question but an order, however politely it was worded. Wondering what madness Traveaux was about now, Delacroix stifled his urge to protest and instead climbed back to the bed of the wagon to help the driver lift the surprisingly heavy steamer trunk. They grunted under its weight, sliding it back across the bed of the wagon until they could clamber down, mop their brows, and then heave it once more up and into the warehouse. Traveaux held the door as Delacroix led the way, backing into the lamplit room. He met Traveaux’s eyes as he passed through, but they immediately slid away, searching the alley and the street beyond for anyone paying too much attention. He realized the sweat on his brow and neck came from more than just the weight of the trunk.

  A few moments later they set the ponderous steamer trunk down on the dusty wooden floorboards of the old warehouse. Delacroix tried not to look at it, but the driver had no such compunctions. “What you packing here, hey? You smuggling some cannonballs out to Maison Macomb, oui?” He laughed at his own joke. The poor aim of the gunners at Fort Macomb was a running joke in a town where laughter was growing scarce indeed.

  “Pay the man.” Traveaux spoke from the door, which he had just closed firmly against the night air. Delacroix shrugged and dug in his pocket for another half-dollar. The driver was still chuckling at his own wit and reaching out to accept the payment from Delacroix when Traveaux’s left hand clamped around his mouth from behind while his right hand dragged a short blade across the hapless man’s throat in one smooth, practiced motion.

  “Merde!” Delacroix gave a strangled curse as bright arterial blood sprayed across the trunk, the floor, and him. The driver’s body slid limply to the boards and lay still, eyes bulging. Traveaux’s expression never changed, but his heavy gaze was now squarely on Delacroix. The bloodstained knife was still in his hand.

  “Did you have to do that?” He knew his question was meaningless, but his anger and disgust had momentarily risen to overshadow his fear of the Confederate agent. Traveaux held his gaze for a long moment and then wiped the blood from the knife and tucked it back into the pocket of his frock coat.

  “He helped you handle the trunk, tu sot. You could not have loaded it by yourself any more than you could unload it yourself. He knew too much. Est fait.” Traveaux wasted no more words on him but immediately bent down and frisked the body with practiced speed, methodically removing his wallet, pocket watch, and identifying pieces of jewelry. He then hauled the corpse up by the lapels and unceremoniously heaved it out the window, where it landed in the Mississippi below with a muffled splash.

  “Take the wagon and go pick up Dahlgren. He will be waiting for you at Tivoli Circle.” Traveaux’s tone was level, as calm and as deceptively placid as the surface of the river. It matched his expression but not his eyes: those were cold, hard, and devoid of feeling. That could as easily have been you, they said. Delacroix waited three breaths, then slowly pulled on his cravat until the blood-spattered length lay folded over one hand. Without taking his eyes from Traveaux, he wiped down his frock coat until the darkness would make any remaining bloodstains look like nothing more than mud from the street. Dropping the ruined neckwear next to the becrimsoned trunk, Delacroix turned and walked to the door to do as he had been instructed.

  Turning his back on Traveaux took all his remaining nerve.

  *****

  “I tell you, this is our best opportunity. If we hesitate, it may be our last.”

  Captain Uriah T. Rakestraw leaned back from the table, the guttering kerosene lantern hanging above it casting his thick features into shadow. His expression was dubious, his tone, truculent. “So you say, so you say. But I must think of my ship and crew, sir. We’ve readied the Opelousa to make sail when the tide goes slack late tonight, but the storm blowing up from the south makes that a dangerous proposition. I’ll not lose my ship just because you insist on sailing into the teeth of a gale fresh off the Gulf.”

  Delacroix watched the interplay keenly from where he leaned against the wall of the dim-lit room. They had been at it for several minutes now, the captain and Traveaux. He had rarely seen the implacable Confederate agent stymied, but the bluff captain had proven enough to balk the fanatical Creole for at least a short time. He supposed it was because Traveaux needed Rakestraw to sail the ship, and thus could not afford to slit his throat. Not yet.

  “Think, man! By thunder, why can’t you see? We need this storm if we’re ever to break through that blasted blockade!” Dahlgren raised his voice more than Delacroix thought wise, even with the wind of the approaching storm audibly banging shutters up and down the street. The intemperate and oft-oblivious naval engineer leaned across the table toward the captain and glared at him with the full weight of his Annapolis-educated arrogance. “While we sit here and endure your skepticism, we could be making extra headway down the Mississippi before the storm breaks and we lose our chance to break this blockade once and for all!”

  “I know my business, sirs.” Captain Rakestraw might be bluff and hearty, but he gave every evidence of being wounded at the imprecations against his seamanship. “I have no love for the Union and their cursed blockade. No, sir. It bleeds the city dry and keeps me landlocked. No, I yearn to leave here just as much as any man among you. But the gale that blows our way, no sane man would enter! To sail into this storm is folly—pure, headstrong folly, and I’ll have none of it.”

  “That may be.” Traveaux’s voice was deceptively quiet. Delacroix almost had to lean forward to hear it, and the sound of made his blood run gelid in his veins. “But you will put the Opelousa to sea immediately, captain, storm or no storm. Because if you choose to remain in New Orleans, I just know someone will happen to come across the contents of your ship’s holds, and tell the port authority. I have that feeling.”

  Rakestraw froze, his jaw tight with shock and outrage. Delacroix wondered how Traveaux knew the privateer captain was lining his pockets with Confederate dollars cheated from the men and women of New Orleans in some sort of black market scheme. It was hardly unheard-of, but Delacroix was not about to pardon the man just because others did the same. He himself had gone to bed hungry too often to have much sympathy for a man who would make profit off the misery of his fellow Southerners. After a tense moment, the captain pushed back his chair from the little table. His face was dark with rage.

  “Within the hour, sirs.” He turned and stalked from the room.

  Traveaux and Dahlgren looked at each other, then the former turned his head in profile and addressed Delacroix. “Bring the cart around to the dock. Be ready to unload the trunk when Bastian and Stephan come for it.”

  Delacroix nodded assent. It was settled. They were going to run the Union blockade and brave the wrath of the undefeated Northern ironclads.

  May God have mercy on their souls, for the ships of iron surely would not.

  *****

  The Opelousa pitched and heaved in the heavy surf, lashed by blinding winds and pounded by white-capped breakers despite the steam-powered screw that kept her making steady headway. Her beams creaked and groaned in torment, and every available sail hissed and snapped, their canvas bellies full to bursting with angry storm-wind.

  It was probably all that kept her alive.

  Captain Rakestraw roared orders from the helm, and able-bodied seamen swarmed the lines, fighting to keep as much canvas as they could open to the wind. Half of them seemed ready to rip free, and the other half not far from it; thick ropes hummed and popped as the storm tossed the ship about like a drop of water on a hot iron stove. Heavy black waves swept over the bow and flooded the deck as the ship plowed into a wave-trough, barely beginning to drain from the scuppers before more water came to take its place.

  It was a sight to make brave men weak-kneed and cowards fall to their knees in penitence before the wrath of an angry God. But if the weather were not enough, they were not alone on the storm-tossed waters of the Gulf
. Not remotely.

  Delacroix felt his ears ring in protest as the Union ironclad Impermeable loosed another explosive volley from its massive deck guns. The seven-inch breach-loaders were firing heated shot, the perfect ammunition for setting wooden ships ablaze. Wooden ships like the Opelousa. Red-hot from the forges inside the ironclad ship, the artillery shell arced like a fiery vengeance from Heaven before falling to the waves within five-score yards of the Opelousa. That only seemed far off before the impact. The size of the momentary crater it made in the waves was stunning, and the towering billow of steam from the explosive shell hardly less so. Delacroix shuddered to think what even an indirect hit would do to the Opelousa, a comparatively fragile wooden sloop-of-war.

  “Captain,” he called as loudly as he could to be heard over the storm and the din of the Union’s fusillade. “Captain! Their aim is improving! Can’t we sail any faster?”

  “Regrets, lad?” Rakestraw seemed to be enjoying himself at last. Perhaps it was the greenish pallor to Dahlgren’s expression before he and Traveaux had scuttled belowdecks that had put him in such fine humor. Delacroix suffered no such frailty, but then, men of quality and breeding would never admit to sharing a commoner’s weakness of stomach. “We’re making almost fifteen knots if I’m any judge of it. Those ironclad slugs can barely manage half that against this storm!” He laughed heartily. “We’ve a shallow draft, a steam-driven screw and three full masts of gaff rig sail to push us. Let them try to catch us now, the Union dogs!” He let out a Rebel whoop, and several nearby sailors gave a lusty echo as they swarmed about the stern. “We’ve nothing that will dent their iron hides, alas, but they can’t reload that seven-inch monster of theirs above every three minutes, lad. The Blues have maybe three more chances to cook us and then we’re out of range for good and true.” He grinned fiercely. “Then it will be just the storm to be worrying about.”