The Blue and the Gray
by Linda Lael Miller
Part One
“...entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go...”
Ruth 1:16
ONE
Jacob
Chancellorsville, Virginia
May 3, 1863
The first mini-ball ripped into Corporal Jacob Hammond’s left hand, the second, his right knee, each strike leaving a ragged gash in its wake; another slashed through his right thigh an instant later, and then he lost count.
A coppery crimson mist rained down upon Jacob as he bent double, then plunged, with a strange, protracted grace, toward the broken ground. On the way down, he noted the bent and broken grass, shimmering with fresh blood, the deep gouges left by boot heels and the lunging hooves of panicked horses.
A peculiar clarity overtook Jacob in those moments between life as he’d always known it and another way of being, already inevitable. The common boundaries of his mind seemed to expand beyond skull and skin, rushing outward at a dizzying speed, flying in all directions, rising past the treetops, past the sky, past the far borders of the cosmos itself.
For an instant, he understood everything, every mystery, every false thing, every truth.
He felt no emotion, no joy or sorrow.
He simply knew.
Then, so suddenly that it sickened his very soul, he was back inside himself, a prisoner surrounded by fractured bars of bone. The flash of extraordinary knowledge was gone, a fact that saddened Jacob more deeply than the likelihood of death, but some small portion of the experience remained, an ability to think without obstruction, to see his past as vividly as his present, to envision all that was around him, as if from a great height.
Blessedly, there was no pain, though he knew that would surely come, provided he remained alive long enough to receive it.
Something resembling bitter amusement overtook Jacob then; he realized that, unaccountably, he hadn’t expected to be struck down on this savage battlefield or any other. Never mind the unspeakable carnage he’d witnessed since his enlistment in Mr. Lincoln’s grand army; with the hubris of youth, he had believed himself invincible.
He had, in fact, assumed that angels fought alongside the men in blue, on the side of righteousness, committed to the task of mending a sundered nation, restoring it to its former whole. For all its faults, the United States of America was the most promising nation ever to arise from the old order of kings and despots; even now, Jacob was convinced that, whatever the cost, it must not be allowed to fail.
He had been willing to pay that price, was willing still.
Why then was he shocked, nay affronted, to find that the bill had come due, in full, and his own blood and breath, his very substance, were the currency required?
Because, he thought, shame washing over him, he had been willing to die only in theory. Out of vanity or ignorance or pure naivety, or some combination of the three, he had somehow, without being aware of it, declared himself exempt.
Well, there it was. Jacob Hammond, husband of Caroline, father of Rachel, son and grandson and great-grandson of decent men and women, present owner of a modest but fertile farm outside the pleasant but otherwise unremarkable township of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was no more vital to the operation of the universe than any other man.
Inwardly, Jacob sighed, for it was some comfort, however fleeting, to know that his mistake was, at least, not original.
Was the cause he was about to die for worthwhile?
Reluctant as he was to make the sacrifice, to leave Caroline and Rachel and the farm behind, Jacob still believed wholeheartedly that it was.
Surely, the hand of God Almighty Himself had guided those bold visionaries of 1776, and led the common people to an impossible victory against the greatest army on the face of the earth. In nearly a century of independence, there had never been a time without peril or strife, for the British had returned in 1812 and, once again, the nation had barely prevailed.
How, then, could he, dying or not, withdraw his faith, his last minuscule contribution, from so noble an endeavor?
So much hung in the balance, so very much; not only the hope and valor of those who had gone before, but the freedom, perhaps the very existence, of those yet to be born.
In solidarity, the United States could be a force for good in a hungry, desperate world. Torn asunder, it would be ineffectual, two bickering factions, bound to divide into still smaller and weaker fragments over time, too busy posturing and rattling sabers to meet the demands of a fragile future, to take a stand against the inevitable rise of new tyrannies.
No, Jacob decided, still clearheaded and detached from his damaged body, this war, with all its undeniable evils, had been fated from the day the first slaves had set foot upon American soil.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...
That one phrase had chafed the consciences of thinking people since it flowed from the nib of Thomas Jefferson’s pen, as well it should have. Willing or unwilling, the entire nation had been living a lie.
It was time to right that particular wrong, Jacob thought, once and for all.
And if by chance there were warrior angels, he prayed they would not abandon the cause of liberty, but fight on until every man, woman and child on the North American continent was truly free.
With that petition made, Jacob raised another, more selfish one. Watch over my beloved wife, our little daughter, and Enoch, our trusted friend. Keep them safe and well.
The request was simple, one of millions like it, no doubt, rising to the ears of the Creator on wings of desperation and sorrow, and there was no Road-to-Damascus moment for Jacob, just the ground-shaking roar of battle all around. But even in the midst of thundering cannon, the sharp reports of carbines and the fiery blast of muskets, the clanking of swords and the shrill shrieks of men and horses, he found a certain consolation.
Perhaps, he had been heard.
He began to drift then, back and forth between darkness and light, fear and oblivion. When he surfaced, the pain was waiting, like a specter hovering over him, ready to descend, settle upon him, crush him beneath its weight.
Consequently, Jacob took refuge in the depths of his being, where it could not yet reach.
Hours passed, perhaps days; he had no way of knowing.
Eventually, because life is persistent even in the face of hopelessness and unrelenting agony, the hiding place within became less assessable. During those intervals, pain played with him, like a cat with a mouse. Smoke burned his eyes, which he could not close, climbed, stinging, into his nostrils, chafed his throat raw. He was thirsty, so thirsty; he felt as dry as last year’s corn husks, imagining his life’s blood seeping, however slowly, into the ravaged earth.
In order to bear his suffering, Jacob thought about home, conjured vivid images of Caroline, quietly pretty, more prone to laughter than to tears, courageous as any man he’d ever known. She loved him, he knew that, and his heart rested safely with her. She had always accepted his attentions in the marriage bed with good-humored acquiescence, though not with a passion equal to his own, and while he told himself this was feminine modesty, not disinterest, he sometimes suspected otherwise.
Caroline shouldered the chores of a farmwife without complaint, washing and ironing, cooking and sewing, tending the vegetable garden behind the kitchen-house and picking apples and pears, apricots and peaches in the orchards when the fruit ripened. She preserved whatever produce they did not sell in town, along with milk and eggs and butter, attended church services without fail, though she had once confided to Jacob that she feared God was profoundly deaf. Caroline was an active member of the local Ladies Aid Society, a group devoted to making quilts and blankets for soldiers and gathering donations of various foodstuffs, including such perishables as cakes and bread, all to be crated and shipped to battlefronts and hospitals all over the North. She did all this, and probably much more, while mothering little Rachel with intelligence and devotion, neither too permissive nor too stern.
In addition, Caroline endured every hardship—crops destroyed by rain or hail, the death of her beloved grandfather and several close friends, the two miscarriages she’d suffered—with her chin up and her shoulders back.
Of course she’d wept, especially for the lost babies, but she’d done so in solitude, probably hoping to spare Jacob the added sorrow of seeing her despair. Now, with death so close it seemed palpable, he wished she hadn’t tried to hide her grief, wished he’d sought her out and taken her into his arms and held her fast, weeping with her.
Alas, there was no going back, and regret would only sap what little strength that remained to him.
Besides, remembrance was sweet sanctuary from the gathering storm of pain. In his mind’s eye, he saw little Rachel running to meet him when he came in from the fields at the end of the day, filthy and sweat-soaked and exhausted himself, while his daughter was as fresh as the wildflowers flourishing alongside the creek in summer. Clad in one of her tiny calico dresses, face and hands scrubbed, she raced toward him, laughing, her arms open wide, her fair pigtails flying, her bright blue eyes shining with delighted welcome.
Dear God, what he wouldn’t give to be back there, sweeping that precious child up into his arms, setting her on his shoulder or swinging her around and around until they were both dizzy. Caroline usually fussed over such antics—she’d just gotten Rachel clean again, she’d fret, and here that little scamp was, dirty as a street urchin—or she’d protest against “all this rough-housing,” declaring that someone was bound to get hurt, or any one of a dozen other undesirable possibilities—but she never quite managed to maintain her dour demeanor. Invariably, Caroline smiled, shaking her head and wondering aloud what in the world she was going to do with the two of them, scoundrels that they were.
It was then that the longing for his wife and daughter grew too great, and Jacob turned his memory to sun-splashed fields, flourishing and green, to sparkling streams thick with fish. In his imagination, he stood beside Enoch once more, both of them gratified by the sight of a heavy crop, by the knowledge that, this year anyway, their hard work would bring a reward.
“God has blessed our efforts,” Jacob would say, quietly and with awe, for he had believed the world to be an essentially good place then. War and all its brutalities merely tales told in books, or passed down the generations by old men.
In his mind’s eye, he could see the hired man’s broad black face, shining with sweat, his white teeth flashing as he grinned and replied, “Well, I don’t see as how the Good Lord ought to get all the credit. He might send the sunshine and the rain, but far as I can reckon, He ain’t much for plowin’, nor for hoein’, neither.”
Jacob invariably laughed, no matter how threadbare the joke, would have laughed now, too, if he’d had the strength.
He barely noticed, as he lost consciousness for what he believed to be the final time, that the terrible din of battle had faded to the feeble moans and low cries of other men, fallen and left behind in the acrid urgency of combat.
He dreamed—or at least, he thought he was dreaming—of the Heaven he’d heard about all his life, for he came from a long line of church-going folk. He saw the towering gates, studded with pearls and precious gems, standing open before him.
He caught a glimpse of the fabled streets of gold, too, and though he saw no angels and no long-departed loved ones waiting to welcome him into whatever celestial realm they now occupied, he heard music, almost too beautiful to be endured. He looked up, saw a dazzling sky, not merely blue, but somehow woven, a shimmering tapestry of innumerable colors, each one brilliant, some familiar and some beyond his powers of description.
He hesitated, not from fear, for surely there could be no danger here, but because he knew that once he passed through this particular gateway, there would be no turning back.
Perhaps it was blasphemy, but Jacob’s heart swelled with a poignant longing for a lesser heaven, another, humbler paradise, where the gates and fences were made of hand-hewn wood or plain stones gathered in fields, and the roads were winding trails of dust and dirt, rutted by wagon wheels, deep, glittering snows and heavy rain.
Had it been in his power, and he knew it wasn’t, he would have traded eternity in this place of ineffable peace and beauty for a single, blessedly ordinary day at home, waking up beside Caroline in their feather bed, teasing her until she blushed, or to watch, stricken by the love of her, as she made breakfast in the kitchen-house on an ordinary morning.
Suddenly, the sweet visions were gone.
Jacob heard sounds, muffled but distinct. Men, horses, a few wagons.
Then nothing.
Perhaps he was imagining things. Suffering hallucinations.
He waited, listening, his eyes unblinking, dry and rigid in their sockets, stinging with sweat and grit and congealed blood.
Fear burned in his veins as those first minutes after he was wounded came back. He recalled the shock of his flesh tearing with visceral intensity, as though it were happening all over again, a waking nightmare of friend and foe alike streaming past, shouting, shooting, bleeding, stepping over him and upon him. He recalled the hooves of horses, churning up patches of the ground within inches of where he lay.
Jacob forced himself to concentrate. Although he couldn’t see the sky, he knew by the light that the day was waning.
Was he alone?
The noises came again, but they were more distant now. Perhaps the party of men and horses had passed him by.
The prospect was a bleak one, filling Jacob with quiet despair. Even a band of rebs would have been preferable to lying helplessly in his own gore, wondering when the rats and crows would come to feast upon him.
An enemy bullet or the swift mercy of a bayonet would be infinitely better.
Hope stirred briefly when a Federal soldier appeared in his line of vision, as though emerging from a void. At first, Jacob wasn’t sure the other man was real.
He tried to speak, or make the slightest move, thus indicating that he was alive and in need of help, but he could do neither.
The soldier approached, crouched beside him, and one glimpse of his filthy, beard-stubbled face, hard with cruelty, put an end to Jacob’s illusions. The man rolled him roughly onto his back, with no effort to search for a pulse or any other sign of life. Instead, he began rifling through Jacob’s pockets, muttering under his breath, helping himself to his watch and what little money he carried, since most of his pay went to Caroline.
Jacob felt outrage, but he was still helpless. All he could do was watch as the other man reached hurriedly for his rucksack, fumbled to lift the canvas flap and reach inside.
Finally, the bummer, as thieves and stragglers and deserters were called, gave in to frustration and dumped Jacob’s belongings onto the ground, pawing through them.
Look at me, Jacob thought. I am alive. I wear the same uniform as you do.
The scavenger did not respond, of course. Did not allow his gaze to rest upon Jacob’s face, where he might have seen awareness.
The voices, the trampling hooves, the springless wagons drew closer.
The man cursed, frantic now. He found Jacob’s battered Bible and flung it aside, in disgusted haste, its thin pages fluttering as it fell, like a bird with a broken wing. The standard-issue tin cup, plate and utensils soon followed, but the thieving bastard stilled when he found the packet of letters, all from Caroline. Perhaps believing he might find something of value in one or more of them, he shoved them into his own rucksack.
Jacob grieved for those letters, but there was nothing he could do.
Except listen.
Yes, he decided. Someone was coming, a small company of riders.
The thief grew more agitated, looked back over one shoulder, and then turned back to his plundering, feverish now, but too greedy to flee.
At last, he settled upon the one object Jacob cherished as much as Caroline’s letters, a small leather case with a tarnished brass hinges and a delicate clasp.
Wicked interest flashed in the man’s eyes, as he fumbled open the case and saw the tin-types inside, one of Caroline and Jacob, taken on their wedding day, looking traditionally somber in their finest garb, the other of Caroline, with an infant Rachel in her arms, the child resplendent in a tiny, lace-trimmed christening gown and matching bonnet.
Caroline had sewed every stitch of the impossibly small dress and beribboned bonnet, made them sturdy, so they could be worn by all the children to follow.
No, Jacob cried inwardly, hating his helplessness.
“Well, now,” the man murmured. “Ain’t this a pretty little family? Maybe I’ll just look them up sometime, offer my condolences.”
Had he been able, Jacob would have killed the bummer in that moment, throttled the life out of him with his bare hands, and never regretted the act. Although he struggled with all his might, trying to gather the last shreds of his strength, the effort proved useless.
It was the worst kind of agony, imagining this man reading the letters, noting the return address on each and every envelope, seeking Caroline and Rachel out, offering a pretense of sympathy.
Taking advantage.
And Jacob could do nothing to stop him, nothing to protect his wife and daughter from this monster or others like him, the renegades, the enemies of decency and innocence in all their forms.
With the smile of a demon, the bummer snapped the case closed and reached for his rucksack, ready, at last, to flee.
It was then that a figure loomed behind him, a gray shadow of a man, planted the sole of one boot squarely in the center of the thief’s back, and sent him sprawling across Jacob’s inert frame.
The pain was instant, throbbing in every bone and muscle of Jacob’s body.
“Stealing from a dead man,” the shadow said, standing tall, his buttery-smooth drawl laced with contempt. “That’s low, even for a Yank.”
The bummer scrambled to his feet, groped for something, probably his rifle, and paled when he came up empty. Most likely, he’d dropped the weapon in his eagerness to rob one of his own men.
“I ought to run you through with this fine steel sword of mine, Billy,” the other man mused idly. He must have ridden ahead of his detachment, dismounted nearby, and moved silently through the scattered bodies. “After all, this is a war, now, isn’t it? And you are my foe, as surely as I am yours.”
Jacob’s vision, unclear to begin with, blurred further, and there was a pounding in his ears, but he could make out the contours of the two men, now standing on either side of him, and he caught the faint murmur of their words, a mere wisp of sound.
“You don’t want to kill me, Johnny,” the thief reasoned, with a note of anxious congeniality in his voice, raising both palms as if in surrender. “It wouldn’t be honorable, with us Union boys at a plain disadvantage.” He drew in a strange, swift whistle of a breath. “Anyhow, I wasn’t hurtin’ nobody. Just makin’ good use of things this poor fella has no need of, bein’ dead and all.”
By now, Jacob was aware of men and horses all around, though there was no cannon fire, no shouting, no sharp report of rifles.
“You want these men to see you murder an unarmed man?” wheedled the man addressed as Billy. “Where I come from, you’d be hanged for that. It’s a war crime, ain’t it?”
“We’re not ‘where you come from,’” answered Johnny coolly. The bayonet affixed to the barrel of his carbine glinted in the lingering smoke and the dust raised by the horses. “This is Virginia,” he went on, with a note of fierce reverence. “And you are an intruder here, sir.”
Billy—the universal name for all Union soldiers, as Johnny was for their Confederate counterparts—spat, foolhardy in his fear. “I reckon the rules are about the same, though, whether North or South,” he ventured. Even Jacob, from his faulty vantage point, saw the terror behind all that bluster. “Fancy man like you—an officer, at that—must know how it is. Even if you don’t hang for killin’ with no cause, you’ll be court-martialed for sure, once your superiors catch wind of what you done. And that’s bound to leave a stain on your high-and-mighty reputation as a Southern gentleman, ain’t it? Just you think, sir, of the shame all those well-mannered folks back home on the old plantation will have to contend with, all on your account.”
A slow, untroubled grin took shape on the Confederate captain’s soot-smudged face. His gray uniform was torn and soiled, the brass of his buttons and insignia dull, and his boots were scuffed, but even Jacob, nearly blind, could see that his dignity was inborn, as much a part of him as the color of his eyes.
“It might be worth hanging,” he replied, almost cordially, like a man debating some minor point of military ethics at an elegant dinner party far removed from the sound and fury of war, “the pleasure of killing a latrine rat such as yourself, that is. As for these men, most of whom are under my command, as it happens, well, they’ve seen their friends and cousins and brothers skewered by Yankee bayonets and blown to fragments by their canon. Just today, in fact, they saw General Jackson relieved of an arm.” At this, the captain paused, swallowed once. “Most likely, they’d raise a cheer as you fell.”
Dimly, Jacob saw Billy Yank’s Adam’s apple bob along the length of his neck. Under any other circumstances, he might have been amused by the fellow’s nervous bravado, but he could feel himself retreating further and further into the darkness of approaching death, and there was no room in him for frivolous emotions.
“Now, that just ain’t Christian,” protested Billy, conveniently overlooking his own moral lapse.
The captain gave a raspy laugh, painful to hear, and shook his head. “A fine sentiment, coming from the likes of you.” In the next moment, his face hardened, aristocratic even beneath its layers of dried sweat and dirt. He turned slightly, keeping one eye on his prisoner, and shouted a summons into the rapidly narrowing nothingness surrounding the three of them.
Several men hurried over, though they were invisible to Jacob, and the sounds they made were faint.
“Get this piece of dog dung out of my sight before I pierce his worthless flesh with my sword for the pure pleasure of watching him bleed,” the officer ordered. “He is a disgrace, even to that uniform.”
There were words of reply, though Jacob could not make them out, and Jacob sensed a scuffle as the thief resisted capture, a modern-day Judas, bleating a traitor’s promises, willing to betray men who’d fought alongside him, confided their hopes and fears to him around campfires or on the march.
Jacob waited, expecting the gentleman soldier to follow his men, go on about his business of overseeing the capture of wounded blue-coats, the recovery of his own troops, alive and dead.
Instead, the man crouched, as the thief had done earlier. He took up the rucksack Billy had been forced to leave behind, rummaged within it, produced the packet of letters and the leather case containing the likenesses of Jacob’s beloved wife and daughter. He opened the latter, examined the images inside, smiled sadly.
Then he tucked the items inside Jacob’s bloody coat, paused as though startled, and looked directly into his motionless eyes.
“My God,” he said, under his breath. “You’re alive.”
Jacob could not acknowledge the remark verbally, but he felt a tear trickle over his left temple, into his hair, and that, apparently, was confirmation enough for the Confederate captain.
Now, Jacob thought, he would be shot, put out of his misery like an injured horse. And he would welcome the release.
Instead, very quietly, the captain said. “Hold on. You’ll be found soon.” He paused, frowning. “And if you happen to encounter a Union quartermaster by the name of Rogan McBride, somewhere along the way, I would be obliged if you’d tell him Bridger Winslow sends his best regards.”
Jacob doubted he’d get the chance to do as Winslow asked, but he marked the names carefully in his mind, just the same.
Another voice spoke then. “This somebody you know, Captain?” a man asked, with concern and a measure of sympathy. It wasn’t uncommon on either side, after all, to find a friend or a relative among enemy casualties, for the battle-lines often cut across towns, churches, and supper tables.
“No,” the captain replied gruffly. “Just another dead Federal.” A pause. “Get on with your business, Simms. We might have the blue-coats under our heel for the moment, but you can be sure they’ll be back to bury what remains they can’t gather up and haul away. Better if we don’t risk a skirmish after a day of hard fighting.”
“Yes, sir,” Simms replied sadly. “The men are low in spirit, now that General Jackson has been struck down.”
“Yes,” the captain answered. Angry sorrow flashed in his eyes. “By his own troops,” he added bitterly, speaking so quietly that Jacob wondered if Simms had heard them at all.
Jacob sensed the other man’s departure.
The captain lingered, taking his canteen from his belt, loosening the cap a little with a deft motion of one hand, leaving the container within Jacob’s reach. The gesture was most likely a futile one, since Jacob could not use his hands, but it was an act of kindness, all the same. An affirmation of the possibility, however remote, that Jacob might somehow survive.
Winslow rose to his full height, regarded Jacob solemnly, and walked away.
Jacob soon lost consciousness again, waking briefly now and then, surprised to find himself not only still among the living, but unmolested by vermin. When alert, he lay looking up the night sky, steeped in the profound silence of the dead, one more body among dozens, if not hundreds, scattered across the blood-soaked grass.
Just so many pawns in some Olympian chess match, he reflected, discarded in the heat of conflict and then forgotten.
Sometime the next morning, or perhaps the morning after that, wagons came again, and grim-faced Union soldiers stacked the bodies like cordwood, one on top of another. They were fretful, these battle-weary men, anxious to complete their dismal mission and get back behind the Union lines, where there was at least a semblance of safety.
Jacob, mute and motionless, was among the last to be taken up, grasped roughly by two men in dusty blue coats.
The pain was so sudden, so excruciating that finally, finally, he managed a low, guttural cry.
The soldier supporting his legs, little more than a boy, with blemished skin and not even the prospect of a beard, gasped. “This fella’s still with us,” he said, and he looked so startled, so horrified, and so pale that Jacob feared he would swoon, letting his burden drop.
“Well,” said the other man, gruffly cheerful, “Johnny left a few breathin’ this time around.”
The boy recovered enough to turn his head and spit, and to Jacob’s relief, he remained upright, his grasp firm. “A few,” he agreed grudgingly. “And every one of them better off dead.”
The darkness returned then, enfolding Jacob like the embrace of a sea siren, pulling him under.
TWO
Caroline
Washington City,
June 15, 1863
Nothing Caroline Hammond had heard or read about the nation’s capital could have prepared her for the reality of the place, the soot and smoke, the jostling crowds of soldiers and civilians, the clatter of wagon wheels, the neighing of horses and the braying of mules, the rough merriment streaming through the open doorways of plentiful saloons and pleasure houses.
She kept her gaze firmly averted as she passed one after another of these establishments, appalled by the seediness of it all, by the crude shouts, the jangle of badly tuned pianos and rollicking songs sung lustily and off-key, and, here and there, fisticuffs accompanied by the breaking of glass and even a few gunshots.
More than once, Caroline was forced to cross the road, a gauntlet of ox carts and ambulance wagons and mounted men who took no evident notice of hapless pedestrians.
A farm wife, Caroline was not a person of delicate constitution. She had dispatched, cleaned and plucked many a chicken for Sunday supper, helped her husband Jacob and Enoch Flynn, the hired man, butcher hogs come autumn, and worked ankle-deep in barn muck on a daily basis.
Here, in this city of poor manners, ceaseless din and sickening stenches, the effects were, of course, magnified, surrounding her on every side, pummeling her senses without mercy.
Runnels of foaming animal urine flowed among the broken cobblestones, and dung steamed in piles, adding to the cloying miasma. On the far edge of her vision, she saw a soldier vomit copiously into a gutter and felt her own gorge rise, scalding, to the back of her throat. The man’s companions seemed amused by the spectacle, slapping their retching friend on the back and chiding him with loud, jocular admonitions of an unsavory nature.
Seeing the disreputable state of these men’s uniforms, intended as symbols of a proud and noble cause, thoroughly besmirched not only by all manner of filth, but by the indecent comportment of the men who wore them, sent furious color surging into her cheeks. Only her native prudence and the urgency of her mission—locating her wounded husband, lying near death in one of Washington’s City’s numerous makeshift hospitals, or, if she had arrived too late, in a pine box—kept her from striding right up to the scoundrels and taking them sternly to task for bringing such shame upon their more honorable fellows.
How dare they behave like reprobates, safe in the shadow of Mr. Lincoln’s White House, while their great-hearted comrades fought bravely on blood-drenched battlefields all over the land?
She was mortified, as well as grieved, but anger sustained her. Kept her moving toward the rows of hospital tents just visible in the distance.
Toward Jacob.
She thought of the long-delayed telegram, tucked away in her reticule. She’d read it over and over again from the day it had been placed in her hands, read it during the long train ride from Gettysburg, the small, quiet town in the green Pennsylvania countryside she had lived in, or near, all her life.
By now, the missive was tattered and creased, an evil talisman, despised and yet somehow necessary, the only link she had to her husband.
The information it contained was maddeningly scant, indicating only that Corporal Jacob Hammond had fallen in battle on May 3, at Chancellorsville, Virginia, and had since been transported to the capitol, where he would receive the best medical attention available.
As the granddaughter of a country doctor and sometimes undertaker, Caroline knew only too well what Jacob and others like him had yet to endure: crowding, filth, poor food and tainted water, too few trained surgeons and attendants, shortages of even the most basic supplies, such as clean bandages, laudanum and ether. Sanitation, the most effective enemy of sepsis, according to her late grandfather, was virtually nonexistent.
The stench of open latrines, private and public privies and towering heaps of manure standing on empty lots finally forced Caroline to set down her carpetbag long enough to pull her best Sunday handkerchief from the pocket of her cloak and press the soft cloth to her nose and mouth. The scent of rosewater, generously applied before she left home, had faded with time and distance, and thus provided little relief, but it was better than nothing.
Caroline picked up her carpetbag and walked purposely onward, not because she knew where she would find her husband, but because she didn’t dare stand still too long, lest her knees give way beneath her.
Thus propelled by false resolution and a rising sense of desperation, she hurried on, through the mayhem of a wartime city under constant threat of siege, doing her best to convey a confidence she did not feel. Beneath the stalwart countenance, fear gnawed at her empty, roiling stomach, throbbed in her head, sought and found the secret regions of her heart, where the bruises were, to do its worst.
She had no choice but to carry on, no matter what might be required of her, and she did not attempt to ignore the relentless dread. That would be impossible.
Instead, she walked, weaving her way through the crowds on the sidewalks, crossing to the opposite side of the street in a mostly useless effort to avoid staggering drunkards and street brawls and men who watched her too boldly. Having long since learned the futility of burying her fears, she made up her mind to face them instead, with calm fortitude—as well as she could, anyway.
As she’d often heard her grandfather remark, turning a blind eye to a problem or a troublesome situation served only to make matters worse in the long run. “Face things head-on, Caroline,” the old man had lectured. “Stand up to whatever comes your way and, if you are in the right, Providence will come to your aid.”
Lately, she had not seen a great deal of evidence to support the latter part of that statement, but, then again, Providence was under no discernible obligation to explain itself or its ways to questioning mortals, particularly in light of the stupidity, greed and cruelty so far displayed by the human race.
One by one, Caroline confronted the haunting possibilities, the pictures standing vivid in her thoughts, nearly tangible. In the most immediate scenario, she could not find Jacob, even after the most arduous search imaginable. There had been a mistake, and he had been taken to some other place entirely, or died in transit, and been buried in an anonymous grave, one she would never be able to locate.
In the next, she did find her husband, but she had not arrived quickly enough to hold his hand, stroke his forehead, bid him a tender farewell. He had already succumbed, and all that was left of him was a gray, waxen corpse lying in a ramshackle coffin. When she touched him, in this vision, his flesh was so cold that it left her fingertips numb and burning, as if frostbitten.
But there was one more tableau to face and in many ways, it was the most terrible of all. Here, Jacob was alive, horribly maimed, helpless, forced to bear the unbearable until death delivered him from his sufferings in days, weeks, months—or years.
The thought tormented Caroline.
If only she knew what to expect, she might be able to prepare somehow.
But then, how could one prepare for the shock of seeing a beloved husband, broken and torn? Suppose Jacob was so disfigured that she did not recognize him or, worse yet, allowed shock or dismay to show in her face, her manner, her bearing?
She swayed, not daring to draw the deep breath her body craved, lest the dreadful smells of disease and suffering and death finally overwhelm her, render her useless to Jacob just when he needed her most.
And that would not do.
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