52 pages • 1-hour read
The Jackal's Mistress
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Part 1, Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death, and racism.
Part 1: “September 1864”
Part 1, Chapter 11 Summary
Libby shoots and kills the second man when he attempts to take her gun. She and Joseph pull the bodies deep into the forest on the side of the turnpike. They pick up the spent bullet casings, rub the blood from the dirt, and plan to set the horses loose up the road. They will hide the guns and pick them up on the return trip—Joseph’s idea. Libby stashes the bullets and powder as well.
Around 12:30 pm, they near Harper’s Ferry. Two “pickers” (guards) accost them. Libby and Joseph convince the guards to let them through based on the evidence of the letters. Colonel Duffy meets with them, along with Captain McKenna, a Vermonter who knows Weybridge. When asked for proof not mentioned in the letters, Libby gives the ages of Weybridge’s sons and that he teaches Shakespeare. Joseph adds that Weybridge mentioned Eustis Marsh. Convinced, Duffy allows Libby to collect what she needs from their storehouse. They indicate they will ask about Peter, though McKenna scoffs at the notion.
Part 1, Chapter 12 Summary
Weybridge hears Jubilee turning away an officer named Morgan, who is asking about a Yankee soldier. Later, Sally brings him chicken broth and asks if he would like to read, perhaps her Bible. He offends her by thinking she would not be able to read. He apologizes, realizing he is making prejudicial assumptions. She offers to read to him until he can lift the book on his own. Jubilee arrives later, bearing cards. After some banter, she deals the cards for Twenty-One.
Part 1, Chapter 13 Summary
Sally worries about Joseph and Libby, reflecting on an event 10 years before, when Zach, an enslaved man at the Covingtons’ farm, was lynched. She and others, including children, had been forced to go see the body.
Meanwhile, on the way back, Joseph and Libby stop to retrieve the guns. Libby goes into the woods to fetch them while Joseph stays at the wagon. While she is gone, four confederate cavalrymen approach and demand to know his business. They are about to search the wagon, now full of medicine and alcohol, when Libby comes back, claiming she was relieving herself in the woods. She makes up a story about having visited her cousin for repair work on the damsel, a part of the mill. When she comments on her work to make flour for them and the rest of the army, the men leave. Once they are gone, she fetches the guns.
Sally is relieved when Joseph and Libby make it back. Libby sits beside Weybridge later, both drinking whiskey from the Union garrison. Weybridge tries to boost her hope about Peter; Libby mentions the letter Jubilee penned for Weybridge to Emily. She offers to take a new one to the garrison if a return trip becomes necessary—one in which he does not name them. He apologizes for this oversight and thanks her sincerely for what she has done.
Part 1, Chapter 14 Summary
Doc Norton repeatedly tells Weybridge his survival is thanks to Libby’s and the household’s care, and Weybridge agrees. Jubilee jokingly insults Weybridge again in conversation regarding his inability to pull his weight around the property, and Weybridge tries to ask about her interests and dreams. Jubilee sticks with her usual snappy replies. She praises Libby for tending to her since her Ma died and tells Weybridge to “do right by [Libby]” (177). She also mentions that Libby would never be able to kill anyone.
Part 1, Chapter 15 Summary
Libby and Weybridge drink together again; he asks her if she has tried to have children. Libby has not; the time she had with Peter before the war was too short. He asks her if she knows how to shoot; she does not. Libby feels a fleeting attraction to him when she checks his forehead.
Joseph makes Weybridge crutches. Jubilee complains good-naturedly about Weybridge to Joseph and Doc Norton. Joseph worries about Norton being “too drunk by midday to hold his tongue” (185).
Part 1, Chapters 11-15 Analysis
Suspense increases in these middle chapters as a heavy atmosphere of foreboding settles on the farm despite the successful trip to Harper’s Ferry. One literary device that contributes to the weighty, wary mood is dramatic irony. The narrative reveals to the reader several pieces of information that the main characters do not know, and each has the potential for disastrous outcomes if the wrong people come to discover them. For example, Libby has indeed killed not one but three men, so it is ironic for Weybridge to agree so readily with Jubilee’s assessment of her aunt as a woman incapable of taking another’s life. Also, Weybridge does not know, when he hears Jubilee send Morgan away with excuses and lies, that Morgan has already proven problematic for Libby, but the reader does. The result is that all the secrets and burdens of the separate characters are held by the reader, adding to the already suspenseful and looming consequences of Libby’s Civilian Resilience Under Military Authority.
For her part, Libby must contend with more Moral Decisions Amid Societal Collapse, but her choices are not delayed or debated, indicating her continued inner strength throughout the section. She never wavers under Doc Norton’s reminders that she is aiding and abetting, and she shows both her bravery and her determination in killing the two men on the turnpike. While the impact on her conscience is discernible from her symptoms of shock, she does not regret or question her actions, though she later wonders what effects the murders will have on her relationships, her fate, and her soul, if they are ever discovered. Far from being reduced to tears, though, Libby characteristically presses on with the task at hand, accomplishes her mission at the garrison, lies to save Joseph on the way home, and is relieved to add more weapons to her private arsenal. Her deeds are done in the name of morality—as she repeatedly explains to others, tending to Weybridge is only what she would want some Northern woman to do for Peter—though her motives also point to her awareness of the need for continued protection of her family.
The romantic feelings that begin to develop between Libby and Weybridge are subtle but significant markers of rising action that tie a romantic plot into the wartime drama. His concern for Libby’s safety, evidenced in his questions about her past, whether she tried to become a mother, and if she knows how to shoot, foreshadows Weybridge’s developing attraction to Libby as his weeks of recovery continue. Her fleeting stirs of emotion when she touches his head to check for fever or brushes his arm are sudden breaks into an emotional space that she usually stays away from. The trip to Harper’s Ferry represents a new direction in their quiet attraction for one another, as they are now supplied with whiskey and, on two occasions, have a glass together in the late evenings. Their conversations during these times develop the theme of Humanizing the Enemy Through Shared Vulnerability; over drinks, they both begin to let down their guard over private details while feeding their growing mutual respect, complicating their situation with a perilous attraction.
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