Widow of Gettysburg (21 page)

“Easy, easy,” Silas murmured to the horses he drove, more from habit than from the belief that it would help matters one whit.

The ambulance allowed Silas to move six wounded men from the battlefield, including Holmes—but judging from the sounds coming
from the rickety wagon behind him, the journey felt more like torture than salvation for those he intended to help. With no straw to cushion their bodies, every bounce of the wheels intensified their pain. By now, all but Holmes had passed out from it, if they had not been unconscious already.

As they approached Willoughby Run, Silas expelled a sigh in relief. “Almost there, Holmes,” he called over his shoulder. “Only five hundred yards past this creek and you’ll get—”

CRACK!
The ambulance pitched left, the horses skittered sideways, and Holmes cried out in agony. The wobbly front left wheel had finally bounced clear off the axel, leaving one corner of the ambulance sloping to the earth. Silas wiped the back of his hand across his forehead and squinted toward Holloway Farm. Surely, they were close enough.

Climbing down from his seat behind the horses, he walked to the bank of Willoughby Run and waved his arms. “Hello!” he shouted. “Over here! Help!”

No one looked his way.

“Help!” He tried again, but his voice was still hoarse from the gunpowder he’d swallowed.

Silas leaned against the wagon. “Well Holmes, our wagon has just mustered out of service, but I can see the hospital from here.”

“They see you?” Holmes whispered.

“Not yet. But don’t worry—”

“Take my gun.”

“What?”

“As a signal. Fire into the air.”

No.
Silas shouted and waved his arms again, but still no one turned his direction while six men lay dying in the wagon.

“Please. Take it.” Hand shaking, Holmes held up a pistol by the barrel.

It’s just a flare
, Silas told himself.
Not a weapon.

As he grasped the handle in his sweaty palm, his father’s contorting face flashed before him once more. He shut it out, pointed the pistol to
the heavens, and squeezed the trigger. The shot tore through the sky, silencing the chatter outside the farm.

Finally, people saw. He handed the pistol back through the window to Holmes.

“Look! Over there! A Yankee!”

“He’s shooting at us!”

“Shooting at a hospital!”

“Take him down!”

With sickening clarity, Silas remembered the Union uniform he now wore. “No!” he shouted. His sweat turned cold on his body, chilling him to his core. “I’m Confederate, and I have wounded Confederate soldiers here!”

They were ramming their rods down on their powder.

“I tell you I’m not the enemy!” His mouth turned dry, he could barely make his tongue obey. He walked closer to the creek, to be heard. “I escaped with this jacket—” But his voice would not carry.

Get down!
His brain told him, but his body had become wooden.

A bullet sliced through the air.

Hit its target.

Dropped him to the ground.

Instinctively, he sat up, reached for the pain, and gasped when his hand came back to him bleeding from its palm, stabbed by the bone jutting out of his trousers.

Another bullet whistled by his ear and he dropped back to the ground, smacking his head on a rock.

Silas closed his eyes to stop the dizziness. Vaguely, he could hear the footsteps of two men running toward him. Their voices were muffled. He heard them grunt as they carried the wounded out of the ambulance. And then they were gone.

They will come back for the rest.

But they did not come back for him. Darkness fell between Silas and Holloway Farm. He was still alone in the field, bleeding into the grass. Rejected and forgotten by North and South alike.

Like a lamb walking into a pack of wolves, Bella returned to the Holloway Farm hospital and prayed God would help her. Relief washed over her when she saw Liberty smile at her in welcome.

“I’m so glad you’ve come back,” Liberty said.

Before Bella could reply, two men in grey carried a new patient over to a barn door on barrels.

“Miss Holloway.” A man with a stethoscope around his neck bellowed as he stormed by. “I need light, and I need it now.”

Liberty scampered after him, pulled matches and a tallow candle from her apron pocket. She lit the candle, and held it over the mangled form. “We have no more kerosene.”

“So we have a single flame?” The doctor growled. “That’s not enough light to cut a steak, let alone a man.”

Bella swallowed the acid in her mouth and stepped forward. “Is there another candle? I can hold it for you.”
Lord, help me.
“If you’ll allow it.”

The doctor looked her up and down and grunted. He did not turn her away.

Harrison Caldwell approached and offered to hold one, as well.

“Still here?” Bella asked Harrison, her tone low.

He nodded. “Fighting’s over for the day anyway. I’ve been interviewing these men about the battles in which they fought. Helps me get the overall view of things.” His voice was steady, but his color paled in the candlelight.

Bella turned her attention back to the table, where the doctor was tipping some brandy into the patient’s mouth.

“Soldier, can you tell me your name?”

He swallowed and licked his cracked lips. “Pierce Butler Holmes.”

No.

No no no no no.

Pierce Butler Holmes?

Here?

The name seemed to slither around her throat like a snake, tightening, slowly.

“Oglethorpe’s Light Infantry. Eighth Georgia.”

Her throat squeezed. She knew him. Lord have mercy, he was the son of the plantation’s physician, and the godson of Master Pierce Butler himself! He lives in Darien—or at least, he lived there before the Union troops burned the town.
My husband’s troops.

“Pierce Butler Holmes, you say?” Harrison leaned in closer to the patient. “Are you a relation of my fellow Philadelphian, Pierce Butler, the former slave owner? Ex-husband of Fanny Kemble?”

Holmes blinked. “He’s my … godfather. Good as … family. My father … was the doctor … for his slaves.”

Harrison raised his eyebrows, but mercifully prodded no further.

This can’t be happening.
Bella stepped back.

“Light, woman! Bring it close!” the doctor snarled, then looked back at the patient. “Can you tell me when you were wounded, man? Was it today?”

When Holmes nodded, the doctor dripped some clear liquid into a small metal device and held it in Holmes’s nose. Harrison leaned over and whispered to Bella the reason for the doctor’s question. “If it’s been more than twenty-fours since the wound, they can’t use anesthesia. Might not come out of the sleep, you see.”

Bella quelled the instinct to run. So he was going to sleep in a moment.
Fine. All right.
She could hold on a moment longer, and soon it would not matter who he was. He would just be one more patient, lying on the table, helpless under the knife and saw. He would not be able to harm her.

Suddenly, his eyes snapped open and flashed with fire. Bella’s breath caught in her throat as he clamped a hand around Liberty’s wrist and pulled her close to his face. Her candle dripped hot wax on his face, but he did not flinch. Or even blink. “Why, you’re the very likeness of Roswell King Junior!”

Bella’s candle shook, her knees buckled.

“It’s the chloroform,” Harrison said. “It makes them crazy before they drop to sleep.”

He wasn’t crazy.

“That’s a good man, now let the young lady go.” The doctor pried his white-knuckled fingers off Liberty’s wrist, but Holmes twisted and writhed until he was up on elbows, staring at Bella.

She could not breathe. She could not move.

He pointed at her and laughed maniacally. “So are you! You’re twins! That is, except for your skin color …”

“He is mad with the drug,” said the doctor.

Holmes spoke again, his voice eerily high-pitched. “I would know a King anywhere, even away from Darien. But how did you escape? You all have the same—eyes, I think. No, lips. Nose and lips, that’s it.”

Liberty looked at Bella, unspoken questions written in the lines on her brow. Bella shook her head, as if to say, “He is only mad. Pay him no mind.” But no words formed.

He knew her secret.

And Liberty’s.

Only when he fell back, unconscious, upon the table, did Bella realize she was covering her face with one hand, and leaning against Harrison. The nosy reporter who had seen it all.

After the tenth amputation since Harrison had been at the table, Dr. Stephens dropped in a dead faint from exhaustion.

Finally, the morbid candlelight vigil came to a close.
At least for now.

He let out a breath and noticed his stomach cramping. His supply of licorice Necco wafers depleted, Harrison reached into his knapsack and pulled out some hardtack and vegetables.
Desecrated vegetables
, as the soldiers called them. Army fare wasn’t particularly appetizing, but it was portable, and it took the edge off his hunger. If it was good enough for the Union army, it was good enough for him. In small doses.

“Excuse me, Mr. Caldwell.” Liberty’s eyes looked hollow in the
sputtering glow of her candle. It would surely be out soon. “Is that—food?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. Tasteless hardtack, and a cake of dried vegetables.” He held up the squares.

She stared at them, and her stomach growled.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to try one?”

She grabbed the vegetables from his outstretched hand and ate it a little faster than was generally considered polite. Wiping her mouth, she turned toward a mass of men begging for water. “I need to go. Bella, there is enough for both of us to do—there is enough for a dozen of us.” She sighed. “But I will not require it of you. Do as you please.” She walked away, her steps heavier than they had been when he first met her hours ago.

Indecision etched on Bella’s face, and Harrison seized upon her hesitation.

“Mrs. Jamison, I couldn’t help but notice you seemed quite upset by Lieutenant Holmes’s outburst. While the chloroform was taking hold.”

She looked down at her fingers, twisting in the folds of her apron.

“Why were you so shaken?”

“I wasn’t—I was—it was just—I’ve never stood so near an amputation before.”

Harrison frowned. “No, no, this was before Dr. Stephens brought a knife to the skin. It was something Holmes said that bothered you.”

Her chest rose and fell in quick, shallow breaths.

“Mrs. Jamison, where is your husband now?”

Her eyes narrowed, she flattened her lips.

“He’s a soldier.”

“In training?” Just last week, colored troops had begun training at Camp William Penn, eight miles north of Philadelphia.

“Active.”

The only active duty colored troops were the 54th Massachusetts and the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers. Being from Pennsylvania, he would be in the free black troops of Massachusetts. The South Carolina
regiment was made up of contrabands—former slaves. But they had recently joined together for a controversial action in—

“Darien, Georgia. Yes? The home of Pierce Butler Holmes?” Harrison casually broke off a piece of hardtack and popped it in his mouth, gauging her reaction.

The sparks in her eyes flared brighter.

“Yes. My husband is in the 54th, which recently burned down the lieutenant’s hometown. If he knew, I don’t know what he would do. Wouldn’t he want to retaliate? Wouldn’t I be the perfect target?”

Harrison swallowed. “Good news, Mrs. Jamison. You must have read only the earliest report of the Darien raid.”

“Our telegraph has been out.”

“Allow me to put your mind at ease. Further reports have shown that it was Captain Montgomery of the 2nd South Carolina who gave the orders to torch the town. Not Colonel Shaw. In fact, more than one of Shaw’s letters to his superiors have since been published in the papers, expressing his disagreement with Montgomery’s methods. It’s widely known now, that if the 54th had any involvement in that raid at all, it was minor, and only because Montgomery forced it upon them. Your husband, Mrs. Jamison, has done nothing wrong, I am quite sure of it. You need not fear revenge on his behalf.”

The night was deepening, and Harrison could barely see her face anymore, but a flash of white teeth told him she had understood.

“Thank you, Mr. Harrison. I am much relieved to hear it.”

“My pleasure. It’s not every day I get to bring glad tidings.”

She nodded. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will go help Liberty bring the men water.”

“You have nothing to fear.”

But as she walked away, her shoulders still sagged.

Harrison bit into a cake of dried vegetables and mulled over her curious behavior.

Aha! Roswell King Junior.
Those were the words that sent Bella backward until she leaned on Harrison for support. He had grabbed
Liberty, and said—she looked like him. That couldn’t be right. He had also said Liberty and Bella were twins, and that obviously was wrong, too. Still, there was something there.