A Perfect She-Devil

Thanks to blackrandi for the invitation to the Wine and Old Lace event. Historical pieces can be pretty challenging and I've tried to do this one justice. Thanks to MsCherylTerra, stev2244 and norafares for the beta reads and editing. This would be unreadable without all of them. There are others who prefer not to be named; you know who you are, and you know you are appreciated. As always thanks to The Missus for characters, ideas for plots, and tolerating my insanity.

A Perfect She-Devil

12th of December 1865

Galena, Illinois

Sunlight shone through the windows of the well-appointed parlor, bringing a welcome warmth to a slightly chilly Illinois day. Elizabeth studied the dark-haired, dark-eyed, woman seated across from her. Young, very young, not too far out of her teens, perhaps. Willowy. Her dress was clean, but plain and just a bit careworn, in sharp contrast to Elizabeth's fine morning dress.

Elizabeth set her tea down and picked up the letter of introduction from the table next to her. "So, Mary, Genevieve's letter says I may be able to help you, but it doesn't explain what you are seeking. " Her deep Mississippi accent had been refined by years of very expensive finishing schools, but she'd never lost it entirely.

The younger woman looked down at her hands for a second before looking back up at Mary and responding in a quiet voice heavily tainted with a deep Virginia hill country twang; no refinement here, although she was obviously struggling to speak properly. "She... she said you might understand my problem. She said you had one like to it." "Might" came out "Maht" and "Like" came out "Lahk".

She sighed deeply, almost shuddering. "I find my situation... dreadful."

Elizabeth waited patiently. The girl had to muster her own strength, and in any case, Elizabeth had no other engagements until the evening.

Finally, with an obvious struggle, Mary continued. "I need to find a former Yankee soldier. I don't know for certain that he is alive. His name is Captain Jeremiah Lodge of the 3rd Illinois Cavalry. They were stationed in Virginia, near Wheeling."

The new state of West Virginia then, Elizabeth reflected. "What is your purpose in doing so?"

Mary looked stricken. She obviously really didn't want to answer the question, but it simply wasn't seemly to ignore a direct question from a woman of Elizabeth's station. "I don't rightly know, Ma'am. I ain't sorted that out yet." But her nerves made her accent deepen so it came out a little different. "Aah don't rahtly know Ma'am... Aah... haint sorted thet out yet."

The tears welled in her eyes and for a moment, she looked as if she was about to completely break down. Mary struggled with herself, set her jaw firmly and continued in a more measured and precise manner. "I can't stop thinking about him. I've tried."

Elizabeth wondered if there was a baby involved. Scandalous, of course, but hardly unheard of. Especially for a young hill country girl during the war.

"If I may ask. Are there any... obligations?"

Mary looked frankly puzzled, then blinked as she took Elizabeth's meaning.

"Heavens no! But if he is alive and I find him, he may not be willing to see me."

Elizabeth eyed her critically. She was certainly pretty enough in a dark, sloe-eyed way. "I'd rather think any man would be more than willing to entertain a visit from you."

"Well, maybe not him. You see, I shot him. Twice't."

Even Elizabeth's carefully crafted and maintained demeanor cracked. "You shot him two times?"

"Three times. I forgot about the last time. It hardly counts. It was a boot gun, just a Baby Paterson. And I really didn't mean to kill him that time."

"Three times?"

"He was a Yankee abolitionist soldier, Ma'am." She said it with finality as if that explained everything.

"And you still want to find him?"

"I think I must. Like I said, I can't stop thinking about him. And we may be married. So there is that."

Elizabeth refreshed Mary's tea, then her own and settled back into her chair, a smile starting to show. No wonder, after all, that Genevieve had sent her on. This would be a delicious distraction. It promised to be most amusing.

"I believe you'll have to tell me the whole story."

*****

3rd of AUGUST 1861

Cripple Creek Road near Sutton, Virginia

Mary smoothed her blue Sunday dress -- it was the finest she owned, and, while she hated the color, she felt the finery and the color made her a less tempting target for abuse by the hated Yankee cavalry that patrolled the roads. She'd heard horrible stories of girls kidnapped and abused by the blue-coated devils. Nobody she knew, fortunately.

Her little pony cart had already been searched twice by Union soldiers, but they'd stopped their searches after idly glancing in the bags of clothing she was taking with her to stay at her cousins'. It'd taken every bit of restraint she could muster to stay silent during the intrusions. She'd made this trip three times over the last two weeks already. Two more miles and she'd be home free.

Damn the blue jackets and their intrusion into her State. She was glad the war came, it was finally time to teach the Yankees a lesson. She'd have thought the victory by the brave Southern men at Manassas would have had the cowards tucking their tails and running for the hills by now. Perhaps they were too stupid to understand their position. It wouldn't matter in the end. A real Southern man was worth ten Yankee dogs any day.

And she would help any way she could.

*****

Lieutenant Jeremiah Lodge saw the simple two-wheel farm cart on the road ahead. A slender dark-haired girl in a blue dress guided the pony down the dirt road with an easy familiarity. It wasn't as unusual as it should have been -- many of the local boys had gone South to join the nascent rebel armies at Richmond, leaving women and children to run the errands that they would have normally done.

Jeremiah planned to simply lead his ten-trooper patrol on by; as he came even with her, he touched his hat brim. She nodded stiffly in return -- about as much as he could ever expect from one of the local girls in this part of the state.

He'd have passed on, but for a sound caused by the morning breeze. It was a simple sound. The sound of paper moving. It certainly wasn't the sound of cotton nor crinoline, but the sound of paper.

"Halt"

He turned in his saddle and caught the reins from the girl's hands.

She glared at him intensely for a fraction of a second, then struggled to bury her hatred under icy disdain. But the icy coolness only lasted until she spoke.

"What do you want, Lincoln pup?"

Jeremiah smiled, as disarmingly as possible.

"Lieutenant Jeremiah Lodge, attached to the Provosts Office station in Sutton, at your service, Ma'am. I'm afraid I am going to have to ask you to come with us to Headquarters."

Her eyes narrowed and she glared at him. "I'll be damned if I go anywhere with any foul, abolitionist blue jacket!"

She dropped the reins and leaped from the cart.

Jeremiah was caught flat-footed by her sudden bolt for the woods lining the road, but he still managed to catch her left arm -- and was promptly dragged from his saddle for his trouble. She shifted her efforts from escape to attack and he found himself trying -- and mostly failing -- to control a spitting, hissing, clawing demoness.

Just as he was convinced she was going to claw his eyes out, she was lifted bodily into the air and held between Sergeant MacKay and Trooper Henry, both of whom were laughing so hard they could barely breathe.

Jeremiah picked up his hat and dusted it off as he tried to salvage what dignity he could from the situation. Another trooper handed him one of several sheaves of paper that had fallen from the girl's dress during her furious assault. It turned out to be a railroad schedule for supplies.

"I suppose this was accidentally pinned inside your dress?"

Jeremiah was expecting denial, maybe some tearful contrition.

The young lady simply exploded with hate. "It's no accident you damn foul Yankee! I'll take no condensendin' from a low-born, gutter-crawling Black Republican thug mercenary!"

Jeremiah stepped back.

"So you admit to being a spy?"

"I admit to being true to my State!" She lunged at him, but the troopers' firm grip saved him from being bitten.

At that point, she exploded into an obscene diatribe against Yankees, the North, the Union Army and Jeremiah himself. With details on general Yankee anatomical shortcomings and Jeremiah's ancestry in particular. Her accent was so thick he could barely understand half of what she was saying, and for that, he was truly thankful. What he could understand was enough to make even a hardened sailor cringe. Even Sergeant MacKay looked suitably impressed, and he was a true artist in vulgarity at times.

Despite being outnumbered and very much in custody, the young woman, who refused to even cooperate so far as to give her name, had to be bound hand and foot, then placed on her own cart, with one of the troopers at the reins.

A half an hour into the trip to Headquarters, the trooper begged Lieutenant Lodge to be relieved of his duty, or his life, if necessary, to avoid her boundless vulgarity.

Rather than shoot his own trooper, Lieutenant Lodge ordered the young lady forcibly gagged.

*****

Upon arrival at Sutton, the young woman, refusing to walk on her own, was carried into the makeshift headquarters and jail, a former hotel that the Provost had appropriated for the time being.

After Jeremiah's explanation, and a brief -- blissfully, an exceedingly brief - attempt to talk with the prisoner, Captain Darr sat at his desk watching the proceedings with ill-hidden humor. The Sergeant and three brawny troopers placed the woman, with her gag firmly in place again, in a former storage closet, which now had a sturdy oak door with a small barred window facing into the interior office.

"Lieutenant, I'm still hearing paper. Has she been properly searched?"

Lieutenant Lodge turned bright red, starting at the tips of his ears.

"Sir, I can't... I don't..." his voice trailed off.

"Well, Lieutenant, at least we can say with some certainty that she does not have a weapon or she certainly would have shot or stabbed somebody, by now. Probably you. I can't understand most of what she says, even when she isn't gagged, but she doesn't seem overly fond of you."

"I believe you may be correct, Sir. Although, in my defense, she doesn't seem particularly fond of anybody."

"Well, she will have to be searched."

Sergeant MacKay stepped up "Sir, if I may, I think I have a solution."

Fifteen minutes later he was back with his wife, a large, powerful Clydesdale of a woman, Irish to the core. And with them was one of the Trooper's wives, a tall rawboned German woman.

Captain Darr herded the Troopers out but stopped Jeremiah when he tried to follow.

"Oh no. An officer has to be present when she's searched, otherwise, a military court would consider evidence inadmissible."

Before Jeremiah could object, he continued with no attempt to hide his grin. "And I'm afraid I have been called to confer with the Colonel in Wheeling, so I must be on my way."

*****

Mary listened to the discussions outside her cell but was totally unprepared for the size of the two women who walked in.

She felt her visions of fighting her way free and dashing for freedom melting away.

The enormous red-haired woman took the lead, taking off Mary's gag. "What's your name, Dearie?"

When Mary didn't say anything she tilted her head to the side a bit.

"Look, Dearie, we can do this any way you want, but it's going 'ta end the same. There's no harm in telling us your name, we'll find out soon enough no matter what. So come on, come out with it?"

"Mary."

The Irish woman gently untied Mary's feet and began untying her hands, speaking calmly and reasonably.

"Well isn't that something? Me name's Mary too. Irish Mary, they call me." She chuckled for a moment. "Makes na sense to me. If'n you call for 'Mary,' in the street, near on every Irish girl will answer." She shook her head in amusement. "My friend here is Bruna. Let's just make this easy. Strip down to your underpinnings, and we'll let the young gentleman out there examine your dress for more of your dispatches."

The young Lieutenant who had arrested her was facing away from the makeshift cell, but his ears turned an even more brilliant red as Mary watched.

As the big woman began to pull her dress up over her head, Mary panicked, knowing exactly what they would find.

She bolted, tearing from their grip, and unfortunately, from her dress.

Out the cell door and toward...

"Stop her, she's running!" The Irishwoman's voice rang through the building.

The young cavalry officer leaped to block the single door out and found himself tangled up with a demon from hell. A demon wearing nothing but high button boots.

Jeremiah was simply mortified. He desperately sought a way to hold her still without touching anything... inappropriate.

Unfortunately, there was simply nothing appropriate about the lithe young woman to start with, and while she did seem to have a surplus of handholds, they were, like the girl herself, far from polite.

She was practically nose to nose with him when he met her dark eyes; they both froze for a second before her eyes narrowed and she clawed at his face. Before she could do any lasting damage, however, she flew up and away from him.

For the second time in a few hours, she was lifted from him amidst gales of laughter, held between the Irish woman and her German cohort, both of whom guffawed uncontrollably. She shrunk down on herself a little and quit fighting.

Jeremiah stood and averted his eyes, pulling his jacket off and extending it to the German woman, though his words were obviously intended for his attacker. "Please be careful of the Bible in the left front pocket. It's a family heirloom."

Sergeant MacKay's wife spoke, still chuckling as she wrapped the cowed girl, "I shoulda figured on that. Most hill county girls don't have underpinnings to wear. What were you going to do, Dearie? There's near on five hundred men out that door." She looked down at her captive in an almost affectionate manner. "Next time, tell me, Dearie, we can spare ourselves the trouble."

Mary was herded to the back of the cell and watched carefully while the cavalry officer pulled more letters and papers from her dress.

After her dress was returned to her, the young woman simply refused to acknowledge him in any way, which gave him a complete sense of relief.

He ensured the door to the cell was locked properly and fled as quickly as he could.

*****

Two weeks later, Mary was brought in front of Captain Darr for the third time as he studied a pile of papers carefully.

He shook his head slowly.

"War is no business for women, young lady. In some places, they would hang you for spying. There's certainly enough evidence, and despite Lieutenant Lodge's testimony to your utter lack of capacity to think things through, it is spying."

She squared her shoulders and glared at him. "Hang me then. Let the world see what kind of so-called men you damned blue jackets really are!"

"Very dramatic. I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation, young lady. I'm inclined to release you, so long as you promise not to engage in this type of activity any longer."

He waited expectantly.

"I'll promise nothing of the sort. So long as one of you foul beasts desecrates the sacred soil of my state, I will do everything in my power to stop you."

Captain Darr rubbed the bridge of his nose in obvious irritation.

"Desecrate?" He sighed. "I don't recall giving any orders to desecrate anything. It would seem that I don't really have any choice but to forward you to Wheeling, maybe someone there can decide where to send you. Maybe we can 'get thee unto a nunnery.' Or perhaps they have women of similar ilk who they can house you with."

Mary expressed exactly what the Captain, the unfortunate Lieutenant, and all disgusting Yankee pigs could do with themselves in very fine detail.

Captain Darr looked over at his secretary, who had been taking notes but was now simply staring at Mary, frozen in shock.

"Please don't record her response, Eliot. The paper might just burst into flame. She will be escorted to the Wheeling Provost Marshall's office and placed in confinement there until such time as the Commander of the Mountain Department may determine her disposition."

*****

Two days later, Mary was taken out and placed on a dispatch wagon. She felt her heart sink as the escort rode up to join them.

Sixteen cavalry troopers and one Lieutenant Lodge.

She couldn't even meet his eyes and realized he didn't want to meet hers either. He pulled up alongside and looked through her to the dispatch driver, then nodded sharply before issuing the order to move out.

As they set off, Mary decided it was going to be a very long three days to the railroad terminal at Weston.

Over the next few days, they found that they could co-exist simply by not speaking any more than necessary. Despite his distaste for her behavior, beliefs and general befoulment of language, Jeremiah Lodge found a grudging respect for her dedication to her beliefs, even if she didn't seem to have a solid grasp on exactly what the whole conflict was about. She was perfectly willing to die for her cause, even if she wasn't sure what it was. And while Mary found them quite without redemption, what with their being foul mercenaries of the Black Republican cause, whatever that was, they did treat her with rather more courtesy than she'd expected. Even if it was the rather strained courtesy of a man trapped with a viper.

Local people glared relentlessly at the patrol as it escorted her to the station, but it wasn't until they'd very nearly reached Weston that anyone confronted them.

A dignified woman, dressed quite well in contrast to the commonly worn homespun, marched right up to him and stood in front of Jeremiah's horse.

"Sixteen soldiers seem like rather a great many to guard one helpless woman."

"She is hardly helpless, but the escort is for the dispatches. We've had a few too many dispatch riders and wagons go missing lately, Ma'am."

The woman made an odd huffing sound that clearly indicated a complete lack of belief. "I would have a word with your prisoner. I must ensure that she is not suffering indignities at your hands."

Jeremiah considered informing her that she could take her concerns to Washington DC, but the woman's demeanor suggested she might just do that if pressed. She might even prefer to do that, given her obvious self-importance.

He touched his hat brim. "You certainly have my permission to speak with her, but you should be aware that she very rarely manages civil discourse with anyone."

She brushed past him with the barest acknowledgment of his permission.

"I am Clarissa Albright of the Women and Children's Relief Committee here in Weston. I've been... selected to inquire as to your treatment."

Mary had little doubt that the woman had selected herself to make the inquiry. "Thank you, Ma'am."

It quickly became evident that Mrs. Albright was hoping for a horrific tale of lurid mistreatment that she could rescue Mary from. She tried to hide her disappointment at Mary's honest assessment that she was being treated with respect and courtesy. Jeremiah watched out of the corner of his eyes as Mary related a somewhat more forthright account of her martyrdom than he'd have expected. She did leave out the fiasco of searching her dress though.

After Mrs. Albright had retreated to her covey of supporters, to give a no-doubt suitably embroidered account of the conversation, they had finally reached the train station. As he passed her off to the Federal troops stationed there, Jeremiah tipped his hat to Mary. "I hope the accommodations in Wheeling will suit you, Miss Green."