Illustration:  Carrier pigeon with legband. Coded messages on tissue-like paper were folded into the legband. 

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

When a Yankee soldier out hunting accidentally shoots a messenger pigeon, Colonel Good assumes the message was sent by the Yankee spy, Aaron Matthews. When confronted by the colonel, Aaron immediately realizes he is not the only spy on the island.

Enjoy Ch. 4 of MUDSILLS & MOONCUSSERS. :)

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"What the hell are you talking about?" Colonel Good asked.

"Someone else is sending messages to Havana," said Aaron. "This was not my bird. We've got ourselves a Confederate spy on our charming little island."

Colonel Good looked stricken. He and Aaron exchanged a look acknowledging the unspoken truth: We've got trouble.

Colonel Good paced the length of the room, deep in thought, while Aaron studied the coded message. At last, the colonel stopped in front of Aaron. "What do you think it says?"

Aaron sighed. "I'd guess he's telling the Rebel Navy what I'd tell them if I were in his boots. How much contraband you have. How many men to protect it—and how many of them are sick with yellow fever—"

Colonel Good drew a breath as if he would deny this, but Aaron went on before the colonel could speak, "—Oh, yes, the state of your infirmary is passed from porch to porch with all the other Key West gossip."

Colonel Good began pacing again.

Aaron studied the message, thinking what else it might contain. "Or maybe I'd tell them how little fresh water you have. Or how much powder and shot."

"He couldn't know all that!" said the colonel.

"He'd find out," said Aaron. "I would."

The colonel digested this. "Well, however much he knows, he could not say much in that single message."

Aaron folded the message and stuffed it behind his initialed belt buckle. "Exactly," he said. "He may have sent other messages before now. And he'll most certainly send more in the future."

Colonel Good stopped before a wall map of the lower keys, Florida Straits, Forts Jefferson and Taylor, and Cuba. He traced a course from Havana harbor to Key West with his finger. The two islands appeared close to one another. Dangerously close. He gritted his teeth and growled, "Find him, Aaron!"

"I shall make good use of our advantage, sir," Aaron said as he nodded and started for the door.

The colonel stopped him, outrage boiling over, snapping, "Advantage! I see no advantage! Too much to protect and too few to protect it. Low water supplies and the wet season still months away. Yellow fever stealing men from my ranks. And now—," he jabbed the map's Havana harbor with stiff fingers, "now a Rebel wolf pack growling at my door and a traitor among us waiting for the chance to let them in! What advantage?"

Aaron put his hand to the doorknob and smiled. "I know about him. But he doesn't know about me."

Aaron slipped out the door and left the fort as he had come, unheard and unseen.

Colonel Good turned again to look at the map. His fingers traced the outline of Havana harbor. "And who was waiting for your news, little bird?" the colonel muttered. "What will he do when you don't arrive? I wonder."

...

At dawn the next morning, on the island of Cuba, a young Rebel soldier climbed a twisting pig trail to the top of the bluffs overlooking the Florida Straits. He stopped to look out at the Caribbean-green waters, shielded his eyes from the blinding sunrise, and scanned the horizon for something that simply wasn't there.

After a few minutes of watching for something that refused to appear, the soldier gave up. Dropping his hand wearily, he turned to trudge across the top of the bluff. His destination was a thatch-roofed shack seemingly built of driftwood, leaning next to an extensive pigeon coop. The residents of the coop cooed, fluttered, and scratched about in its depths, responding to the attentions of a small, dark, eccentric-looking Cuban peasant called Javi.

Hearing the soldier's boots scrape gravel, Javi looked up. "What you want here so early?"

"Thought maybe it came," said the soldier with a shrug.

"These are pigeons, amigo, not owls. They don't fly all night, not even for you," Javi said with a chuckle.

Tired and obviously disappointed, the soldier turned and retraced his steps back down the jagged trail toward to foot of the bluffs.

...

It was also dawn on the other side of the Florida Straits, on the dirt streets of Key West. Morning mist hung among the mangrove roots and low-drooping banyan trees. The man on lookout lolled in the Tift's Wharf bell tower after a long night of watching for ships in distress.

A squarely built Cuban milkman led a cow from house to house, its neck-bell clanking as they sauntered. A 9-year-old slave girl came to the curb with an empty pitcher. The milkman stopped, to milk the cow directly into her container, and collected his coin.

A lanky black fisherman hawked freshly caught mullet from a basket balanced on his head. Lucy Drake waved to him from the Thibodeaux house, and he came to kneel and clean part of his catch for her on her kitchen steps.

Here a window was shoved open, there a curtain was drawn. Somewhere a goat bleated, a door slammed. The city was waking.

In Aaron's bedroom, yellow sunlight crept across the room from the wooden-louvered windows, slunk over the head and shoulders of Aaron Matthews sleeping humped over Richard Thibodeaux's desk. A spent candle, dribbled wax mounded at its base, told of a long night—as did the pages of notes scribbled and crumpled under Aaron's elbows on the desktop.

A knock at the door jerked Aaron awake. Realizing where he was, he made a frantic sweep of the desk to hide his work from the visitor. "Come in."

Joe Thibodeaux made a careful entrance, taking in Aaron's rumpled clothing, still-made bed, and unshaven face. "You haven't slept?" she said.

Aaron gestured to the chair. "No, I ... I slept..."

"You all right?" said Joe. "Something wrong?"

"No. Not at all. Just paperwork. No end of paperwork."

Joe nodded. Maybe it meant she understood, maybe it didn't. "Mm-hmm," she said. "Auction coming up and all."

"Yes," Aaron pounced on that excellent explanation. "Exactly."

Joe backed out of the room without taking her eyes off him. "Breakfast'll be ready time you get shaved," she said.

He nodded his thanks, and she left. Aaron turned to the rumpled papers and took up one—the culmination of his night's labors. He folded it carefully and stuffed it behind his belt buckle, crushing the remaining pages into his pockets.

Minutes later Aaron emerged onto the back porch, clean-shaven, dressed, and ready to face the day. He looked around, saw no one, and headed toward the kitchen structure in the back yard.

Entering the kitchen, and seeing no one about, he went to the brick hearth (the only fireplace on the property) and quickly emptied his pockets of the decoding papers he had worked on all night. He watched the fire gobble them up then was startled to hear: "I've 'ad your trousers soaking." Lucy spoke from the doorway. "You can 'ave 'em back tomorrow."

Aaron covered his surprise like the professional he was. "That's quite all right," he said, smiling. "I merely came to thank you for another marvelous meal."

"You're welcome," she said. She didn't believe a man freshly dressed for business would go out of his way to stand in a sooty kitchen waiting to tell a slave woman thanks for the breakfast. She said nothing more.

Sensing no rapport developing, Aaron glanced back at the fire to be certain no traces of his work remained, then he moved past the stoic Lucy toward the kitchen door. "Yes, well. Always a pleasure, Miss Lucy," he said. "Good day."

In silence, Lucy watched him go.

...

Meanwhile, 90 miles to the south, in the captain's cabin of a Rebel ship, the commanding officer and his executive officer huddled over a desk strewn with maps and charts. They shuffled papers, compared one chart with another, measured distances, made notes on still more papers, and appeared to be concocting a plan.

Into this tense atmosphere came the Rebel soldier who had fruitlessly climbed the bluffs at dawn.

The commanding officer looked at him. "Well?"

The soldier shook his head. Nothing.

The C.O. deflated.

"Are we certain of the schedule?" asked the Exec. "Maybe it's not due until today ... or tomorrow."

"The bird was due yesterday," said the C.O. "Something must have happened to it."

"Or to our agent," inserted the soldier.

The C.O. reflected on this but rejected the idea. "Not likely," he said. "We'll just have to go with the information we have up to now, and hope that the next message gets through."

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AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Who is sending bird-borne messages from Key West to the Rebel Navy lurking in Cuba?

What did Aaron learn when he decoded the accidentally-intercepted message?

In the next chapter of MUDSILLS & MOONCUSSERS, Aaron takes the first steps in learning the identity of the enemy spy.

Thanks so much for reading, voting, and commenting, my Wattpad friends. Is everybody planning their vacation to Key West now? (It's really warm down there in the winter.)

Happy reading,

Iris