Cheryl Reavis (16 page)

A
biah walked to church in spite of the rain and the cold, leaving Miss Gwen at home in front of the warm fire, applying hot flannel to her rheumatism. Church was the only place Abiah could go where she could find some solace. There had been no word from Maryland about whether Thomas’s death had been confirmed or not and no more visits from Dr. Nethen, and she had retreated into a place where nothing existed for her but her coming baby. She felt well enough. The baby moved often and vigorously enough to reassure her.

The church wasn’t far from the house, but it was on the other side of the street, and the steady downpour had made crossing a matter of wading into a smelly quagmire of mud and horse and pig manure. If one was on foot, the only way to safely cross was a line of stepping-stones some distance from the church. Unfortunately, it was a favorite loitering place for off-duty soldiers because the granite pillars were at least a foot above the street itself and widely spaced to allow
for the passage of wagons and buggies. The soldiers obviously hoped to catch a glimpse of a well-turned ankle—or more—as the ladies struggled with their voluminous skirts to reach the other side.

Abiah had hoped that the inclement weather would have thinned the crowd this morning. It hadn’t. She waited her turn among the group of other women churchgoers and the one elderly man who was their token escort. She kept her eyes averted from the enthusiastic military audience, her demeanor as indifferent as she could make it. Finally, there was nothing left for her to do but go. She was the last one of the group to cross, and she was on the third step well out into the muddy street when the loud comments began.

The wind was blowing, driving rain into her face. She couldn’t see. Her bonnet blew off and hung down her back by the ribbon ties. She stood there, in spite of vigorous coaxing from the men on the sidelines to hike up her skirts and carry on. When she was about to step to the next granite pillar, they began to whistle loudly.

“Come on, darlin’,” one of them yelled. “Come to Billy! Come—”

There was a loud thud, and Abiah looked around. An officer had ridden his mount into the group and was now scattering soldiers left and right with the well-aimed toe of his boot.

“Sons of bitches!” he berated them. “Is this all you have to do?”

Abiah took the opportunity to continue to the next stepping-stone. When she looked up, the officer was
riding in her direction. She glanced away from him, and then immediately back again. And the breath went out of her.

“Thomas…” she whispered. Her knees grew weak. It was all she could do to stay on the stepping-stone. He was so…changed. He was thin to the point of gauntness, and there was a livid scar on his right cheek.

Thomas!

He said nothing. He simply rode toward her, his eyes on her all the while. The effrontery of his staring caused a murmur of protest from the women waiting on the other side of the street. He paid them no mind. Abiah kept expecting him to say something, but he didn’t, not until he was riding slowly past.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve ruined your reputation once. I won’t do it again.”

She stood there, not knowing what to do, trying not to cry. She had believed with all her heart that he was alive, but the reality of seeing him again—
here
—was nearly more than she could bear. And if he’d made even the slightest gesture toward her, if he’d given any indication at all that he wanted her to come with him the way he had that rainy afternoon in the Winthrop driveway, she would have gone. Anywhere. It wouldn’t have mattered.

She felt so light-headed suddenly. The baby fluttered in her womb. She turned carefully and began to make her way back the way she had come.

“Abiah?” one of the women called. “Are you all right?”

“I—yes,” she said. “But I need to go home.”

“…Uncalled for!” she heard the woman say to the others in the group. “Abiah, are you sure you can—”

But Abiah didn’t wait to hear the question. She kept going, her bonnet still tied around her neck and bouncing along behind her, until she reached the house. Two of the boarders were in the front hall, and she pushed past them, bursting into Miss Gwen’s small parlor so suddenly that the dogs leaped to their feet and began to bark.

“What?” Miss Gwen cried, apparently startled from a sound sleep in her chair.

But now that Abiah was here, she didn’t know what to do with herself. She stood, then began to pace. Miss Gwen grabbed her by the arm.

“Abiah, look at you! What’s happened? You’re soaked—sit down, for heaven’s sake!”

Miss Gwen all but forced her into a rocking chair. The dogs were still unsettled.

“What is it? Is it the baby?”

Abiah shook her head. “Thomas,” she said. “He’s here.”

“Thomas,” Miss Gwen repeated. “
The
Thomas, husband of one Abiah Calder, active participant in that army we generally despise?”

Abiah nodded.

“And he’s
here
—alive—in New Bern?”

“Yes.”

“Well!” Miss Gwen said. “I’m beginning to like that boy better and better all the time!”

* * *

Thomas waited in the cold damp foyer. He kept drawing covert looks from the general’s staff—because his face was scarred, for one thing, and the scar in itself was a blatant symbol to these soldiers of exactly what their “plum” posting in New Bern really meant. He noted that their facial expressions almost always fell into the same two categories: shame at not having done their duty at Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville or Gettysburg, or profound relief at having escaped the trial by fire.

Commanding officers ordinarily didn’t come down to brigade headquarters on a Sunday at all. They passed the day quietly at home with their wives and children and a big chicken dinner instead. But the general himself was here now, and they—and Thomas—knew he was not happy.

“Major Harrigan, the general is ready to see you,” a young lieutenant finally came out of the inner sanctum to say, his eyes focused somewhere above Thomas’s head.

Thomas got up with some difficulty; he had long since discovered that cold, rainy weather made his right thigh sing. He could feel the young lieutenant watching him as he limped past.

“Damn you, Harrigan,” the general said before he had even closed the door. “What have you got to say for yourself?”

The remark was so like his many audiences with the judge that Thomas very nearly laughed. And he could only give his same standard answer.

“I’m…sorry, sir. I don’t know what you mean—”

“The devil you don’t! I have had hysterical churchwomen in my parlor all afternoon!”

The general was glaring at him, expecting…damned if Thomas knew what.

“You haven’t even been here three days! What the devil were you thinking? The young woman you insulted on the street this morning has connections. She belongs to one of New Bern’s oldest families. Are you out of your mind?”

“Sir, I intended no insult—”

“Whores are one thing, respectable women on their way to church are something else again! You can’t blatantly show your carnal inclinations like that! It will
not
be tolerated, do you understand?”

Thomas did, finally, but he had the good sense not to interrupt.

“I’m not going to have the townspeople up in arms over this incident,” the general continued. “We are getting along fine with these people, and I’ll be damned if you’re going to upset the applecart with your uncouth behavior. If you can’t control yourself, I suggest you go visit one of the women down on the docks—or better yet, send for your wife to join you here!”

“Sir, the lady in question
is
my wife,” Thomas said.

The revelation didn’t impress the general in the least.

“Well, if she is, it is obvious from the reports delivered in my parlor today that she wants nothing whatsoever to do with you. I understand her distress
is such that she has even taken to her bed.
Her
bed, not yours.”

“Sir, is she all right?”

“It’s a bit late to worry about that now, Major. What I said before stands. You
will
stay away from her. I’m not having those. Rebel Amazons stirring up the whole town over this thing. You stay away from her, or you’ll find yourself back in a fighting unit—wounded or not, hero or not, influential relatives or not. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” Thomas said. “Perfectly.”

He stood outside the general’s door after he had been dismissed, looking out the front windows. The rain still fell steadily, but his leg didn’t ache nearly so much now. Or perhaps that pain had been usurped by the pain in his heart.

Now what?

There was no question in his mind that he would make another attempt to speak to her—without the onlookers and without the general’s permission—if he could just find her. He gave a quiet sigh. New Bern wasn’t all that big. He’d just have to do what he’d been doing and keep watch for her. Sooner or later he was bound to run into her again—hopefully without the churchwomen. She must be staying someplace near those stepping-stones.

He realized that the lieutenant had said something to him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said that I didn’t make the connection, sir—the name, Mrs. Harrigan.”

“You…know Mrs. Harrigan?”

“Not exactly, sir. I board at Miss Pembroke’s house. Neither of the ladies invite familiarity from the officers staying there.”

“I see,” Thomas said after a moment. He had a thousand questions pertaining to that remark, but he didn’t ask any of them. He didn’t want the general to come out of his hole and find him interrogating the lieutenant as to Abiah’s whereabouts.

“We all knew Mrs. Harrigan’s husband was in a Massachusetts regiment, but I didn’t realize you were he.”

Thomas couldn’t keep from asking one question.

“Mrs. Harrigan is…well?”

If Thomas’s ignorance surprised the lieutenant, it didn’t show.

“I have not seen her today, sir, but I believe she is. I have seen Miss Pembroke, and she gave no indication that there was anything amiss. I believe she would have been after us not to make so much noise coming and going if Mrs. Harrigan were not well. I always thought—”

“Thought what?” Thomas, asked when he didn’t go on.

“It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to make the observation, sir,” the lieutenant said, flushing slightly.

“Make it,” Thomas said.

The lieutenant looked at him, clearly trying to decide if he wanted to take that liberty or disobey what was obviously an order.

“Well, sir,” he said after a moment, “she seemed
sad to me. Not weepy or anything like that. Just…sad.”

“I see,” Thomas said, but he didn’t see at all.

“Sir, could I ask you a question?”

“As you please,” Thomas said, expecting some inquiry about his personal life he would have to reject.

“I have heard that you were at Gettysburg, sir.” The lieutenant looked at him, this time scar and all. “I was wondering…what it was like.”

Thomas stared at him. It wasn’t a question he had anticipated, and he couldn’t find the words to either answer it or dismiss it. What words were there to describe hell on earth?

“Sorry, sir,” the lieutenant said as the silence lengthened into a painful awkwardness. “I shouldn’t have asked. It’s just that well, there’s no one else here who—”

“Lieutenant Howell!” the general yelled through his closed door, and the young officer was off and running, Thomas supposed, in order not to find out “what it’s like” firsthand.

There was no point in hanging around here any longer. Thomas wasn’t quite sure yet what his duties were, but he did know this was not the time to ask.

He stepped outside into the rain. There had been a heavy downpour at Gettysburg after the battle—or so he’d been told. He didn’t remember it all, but he felt as if he did. A day like this left him no defenses against the heavy melancholy that constantly threatened to overwhelm him. He didn’t remember the rain, but he was beginning to remember everything else.
Sometimes his hands shook so badly he couldn’t hold on to things. He jumped at sudden noises. He couldn’t sleep; he hardly remembered to eat. He had had two setbacks with the wound in his thigh, and here it was December. The army surgeon at the hospital in Washington had been reluctant to declare him fit for duty, but Thomas had insisted. He simply couldn’t bear the waiting any longer.

Abby.

Seeing her stranded in the middle of the street being insulted by his own men, he had wanted only to rescue her one more time. Would she have come with him? He didn’t know. She hadn’t looked away in horror at the sight of him, at least, and that was something. If he could just talk to her. If he could just put his head in her lap and tell her what had happened to him and to La Broie and Bender.

But even as the thought came to him, he knew that he couldn’t speak of those things to her. He was in the wrong army, the same army that had killed her brother. How could he say anything to her of the hatred he’d felt for those people—her people—that hot July day?

He mounted his horse and set out toward his quarters. The house where he’d been assigned to stay had been completely taken over by the military. There was no token “boarding,” and no New Bern resident he could ask about Miss Pembroke.

“Major Harrigan!” one of the orderlies called when he was about to ride around to the back of the house
to stable his horse. “There’s a matter that needs your attention, sir!”

Thomas dismounted painfully and made his way slowly up the front steps, expecting some petty military matter that needed some kind of disposition.

“She’s waiting in the parlor, sir,” the orderly said.

She?

Thomas opened the door. A little old lady sat on a straight chair near the stove, both feet propped up on the rail. The bottom of her skirt and her shoes were wet and muddy. She seemed not in the least surprised to see him.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” she said.

He looked at her. “I beg your pardon?”

“Get in here,” she said pointedly.

“Ah, yes, ma’am,” he replied after a moment. If this was another dressing-down for his behavior at the stepping-stones today, he supposed that he might as well get it over with.