Blood and iron

"Let's just put it like this, Mrs. Enos," the lawyer said: "There are a good many people in this town who think Mr. Kimball deserved what you gave him, a good many people who aren't the least bit sorry he's dead. If we can get enough of them on a jury, you might just see Rhode Island again."

"Massachusetts," Sylvia said automatically. She scratched her head. "I don't follow you at all. Isn't-wasn't-Roger Kimball a hero down here for sinking the Ericsson?"

"Oh, he is, ma'am. To some people, he is," Magrath said. By the expression on the matron's face, she might well have been one of those people. The lawyer went on, "But he's not a hero to everybody in the Confederate States, not after what happened last June he's not."

"Oh," Sylvia said softly. At last, a light went on in her head. "Because he was a Freedom Party bigshot, you mean."

"What a clever lady you are, Mrs. Enos." Magrath beamed at her. "That's right. That's just exactly right. There are people in this country-there are people in this town-who would be happy if the same thing that happened to Roger Kimball would happen to the whole Freedom Party."

One of those people, whoever they might be, was without a doubt paying Bishop Polk Magrath's fees. Sylvia certainly wasn't. She'd spent more than she could afford getting a passport and a one-way ticket down to Charleston. She hadn't expected she'd be going back to Boston. Maybe she'd been wrong.

"Time's up for this visit," the tough-looking matron said. Sylvia obediently got to her feet. The lawyer started to reach across the table to shake hands with her. A glance from the matron stopped him. He contented himself with tipping his derby instead. "Come along," the matron told Sylvia, and Sylvia came.

Halfway back to her cell, she asked, "Will supper be more of that cornmeal mush?" It didn't taste like much of anything, but it filled her stomach.

As if she hadn't spoken, the matron said, "You damnyankees killed my husband and my son. and my brother's got a hook where his hand used to be."

"I'm sorry," Sylvia said. "I haven't got a brother, and my son's too young to be a soldier. But the man I shot snuck up on my husband and more than a hundred other sailors after the war was over, and he didn't just kill them-he murdered them like he'd shot them in the back."

The matron said nothing more till they got back to Sylvia's cell. As she locked Sylvia inside once more, she remarked, "Grits for supper again, yes," and went on her way.

"What's your lawyer got to say?" one of the streetwalkers called to Sylvia. "A lawyer-God almighty." She sounded as if she never expected to enjoy a lawyer's professional services, though a lawyer might enjoy hers.

Two days later, the hard-faced matron marched up to Sylvia's cell and a

"Is it-Bish?" Sylvia still had to work to say that. The matron shook her head. Sylvia frowned in confusion. Now that Kimball was dead, her lawyer was the only person she knew or even knew of in Charleston. "Who is it, then?"

Through tight lips, the matron said, "Just come on." Sylvia came. Sitting in an iron cage staled very quickly.

Waiting for her in the visitors' room was a blond woman about her own age whose sleek good looks, coiffure, and clothes all shouted Money! "Mrs. Enos, my name is A

That meant nothing to Sylvia-and then, to her dismay, it did. She'd seen the name in a couple of the newspaper stories that talked about Kimball. "You're one of the people who helped the Freedom Party," she said. Maybe Bishop Polk Magrath had been talking through that derby of his.

A

Sylvia heard, or thought-hoped-she heard, a slight stress on the past tense. "Were you?" she asked, with her own slight stress.

Maybe that was approval in A

Whatever hope Sylvia had went up in smoke. It hadn't been approval after all. It must have been well-bred, well-contained fury. "Have you come here to gloat at me in jail, then?" she asked with gloomy near-certainty.

"What?" A

"Oh," Sylvia whispered. Something more seemed to be called for. She went on, "I'm glad you didn't. It would have meant I'd spent all that money on my passport and train fare for nothing."

"We wouldn't want that, would we?" A

"Oh," Sylvia repeated in a different tone of voice. She'd put her children on the train, too, to distant cousins in Co

"Time's up," the matron a

/ hope this one's right, Sylvia thought. Saying that out loud didn't seem to be the best idea she'd ever had.

A

She came before a judge two weeks after A

"I understand you have a request before we proceed, Mr. Chesterfield?" the judge asked the district attorney.

"Yes, your Honor, I do," the lawyer-Chesterfield-said. When he glanced over to Sylvia, he looked as if he'd bitten down hard on a lemon. "May it please the court, your Honor, the state must recognize the extraordinary circumstances that prompted the defendant to act as she has admitted acting. In light of the fact that the decedent did cause the death of the defendant's husband not during wartime but after he knew combat had ended, the state is willing"-he looked none too willing himself-"to further the cause of international understanding and amity by not pressing charges in this case, provided that the defendant leave the Confederate States on the first available transportation north and solemnly swear never to return to our nation again, on pain of rearrest and the charges' being reinstituted."