Widow of Gettysburg (24 page)

Liberty nodded. Bella’s words fanned into flame the fire that had been kindling in her spirit. Bella was right. This was her home. Her future. She would fight to get it back.

They walked back over to the men. “This is still my home, Isaac, and I’ll not permit you to stay for free. This farm was an inn before your army overtook it, and I mean to turn it back into one. You’re going to help me. You can start by raking and shoveling all the soiled hay out of the house and combing the countryside for fresh straw, milk, food. And you will assist Dr. Stephens. You don’t need all your teeth for that. We have a lot of patients here and they all need help. So do whatever the doctor tells you to do, or I’ll have no use for you either.”

A scowl slashed across Isaac’s face, but Liberty folded her arms and raised an eyebrow at him. A lashing was ready on the tip of her tongue if he but tested her resolve. The Rebels had torn down her fences. Now it was time to erect new boundaries. Dr. Stephens grunted. “Miss Holloway, I should mention—some of the walking wounded, when they were getting ready to move out today, discovered a body just over there.” He pointed to the bank of Willoughby Run about five hundred yards away.

Liberty’s brows knitted.
A body? Hardly unusual after the last three days. “Yes?”

“Well, he was still alive, and they brought him to the barn, but I haven’t treated him yet.” He looked guilty as sin.

“Why ever not?”

“He’s a Yankee.”

“Dr. Stephens!” She yelled at him, giving full vent to her frustration, stopping just shy of stomping her foot. “I’ve given my house, my orchard, my food, my bedding, my
clothing
and all the strength and courage I could possibly muster to care for
Rebels
for three and a half days, and you won’t treat a single Union soldier? Shame on you! Shame!” Her face burned with anger. She could feel Bella watching her in amazement.

“Now hear me.” His eyes shimmered with his own defense. “I am a Confederate surgeon, and my obligation is to Confederate wounded. There are dozens of patients here whose wounds are not healing properly, upon whom I may need to amputate further. After I’m satisfied that I have cared for all my own patients to the best of my ability, then, and only then, will I look after the enemy.”

“If he’s wounded, if he’s on the brink of death, he can’t fight anymore, so he’s no longer the enemy, is he? He’s a patient. And you’re a doctor.” She looked at Dr. Stephens expectantly but he did not move.

“Fine.” Liberty twisted her loose curls back up under her pins, then wiped her hands on her thread-bare apron. “I’ll look after him myself.”

“Be advised, you’ll have very little to work with. Our supplies are all but gone.”

“The captured Union supplies, you mean. The ones intended for the care and relief of Union wounded. The ones we used on fifteen hundred Rebels. Those supplies?”

“Careful, Miss Holloway.” Dr. Stephens’ eyes were red, his cheeks hollow. “We’ve been over this before.”

Words netted in her chest, fluttered madly, as if to escape. Until, “What is left for my Northern boy?”

Dr. Stephens extended a hand into the downpour just beyond the shelter of the porch, letting it stream through his fingers and slide down his arm, soaking his filthy, rolled-up sleeve. “Water.”

“No brandy?”

“Water.”

“What of opium?”

“It’s not for him.”

“Laudanum? Morphia?”

“No.”

“Bandages and lint!”

“No!”

Liberty snapped her attention to Bella. “You will please go into my bedroom and strip the sheets into bandages, and I don’t care what Amelia says. Then take a razor to my flannel wrapper and scrape all the lint you can. If it isn’t much, which I fear may be the case, please cut small squares of cotton from my dresses, and we’ll use them as pads. Please bring a supply to the barn as quickly as you can.”

“Yes, Miss Liberty.” Bella ducked back into the house.

Still brimming with frustration, Liberty plunged down the steps, mud sucking at her ankles, rain-wrapped wind licking her skin, determined to save the one Union soldier on her farm.

The barn creaked in the wind while rain sprayed through the open doorway like shrapnel. Pale grey light and streams of water trickled through weathered planks. Sodden skirts tangling around her legs, Liberty threaded her way through the greybacks until she found a soldier in blue.

There.

With both compassion and dread swelling in her chest, she hastened to his side, sloshing water over the sides of her pails as she did so. She had brought one for washing, and one for drinking. His face was layered in mud, shadowed by stubble. Kneeling, she slid her calloused palm into his. It radiated with fever. Libbie breathed a silent prayer of thanks that he was still alive.

“Hello, soldier.” She kept her voice low, relieved that her gag reflex had worn out by now. From the smell and looks of his body, he had been injured and left in the field more than a day ago. His Union jacket was encrusted with blood on the midsection, but the fabric of the uniform remained whole.
Someone else’s blood?

She edged a little closer to his face. Turning up her skirt at the hem, Liberty ripped off another strip of her tattered petticoat. She wet it, then wiped his burning forehead with slow, gentle strokes. His eyes fluttered open for a moment, then closed again.

Green eyes. The color of moss.

She inhaled, sharply, as shock rippled through her. “Johnny? Jonathan?”

His eyes became green slits, and his lips twitched in a failed attempt to smile. “I know, I know.” His voice was hoarse. “I don’t look like a Rebel.”

She swallowed the tears gathering thickly in her throat. “It doesn’t matter what you look like.”

“I was hoping I’d see you again.” He paused for breath, taking shallow sips of air. “Just not like this.”

“Please, say no more. Will you drink?” She cradled his head on her lap, then brought a dipper of water to his lips. Some escaped his mouth, trickled into his beard. She hazarded a glance at his leg once more. “We’ll fix you up in no time.”

He gave her a crooked smile, obviously reading the truth on her face. Fixing meant cutting. He was going to lose his leg. Without anesthesia. “I know.”

Liberty tipped more water into his mouth before laying him back down to rest. What she wouldn’t give for fresh straw to cushion his broken body right now.

The doorway darkened, and Liberty looked up to see Bella and Amelia blowing in, with Major between them. When the dog spotted Liberty, he picked his way to her and then wedged himself beside Johnny, putting his wet head on his chest. Johnny didn’t respond.

“Here.” Bella held a tray of freshly rolled bandages, wads of lint, and calico pads. But they both knew what was really needed was not on the tray. They needed Dr. Stephens to amputate.

“Oof! What is that
awful
smell, I
knew
I was right to hide away in my room all this time.” Amelia pinched her nose as if the stench of the
field hospital had not pervaded the entire property.

Liberty glared at the woman. “My room. You’re still a guest, Amelia, and you are free to leave at any time.” In fact, Liberty had half a mind to show her the door right now. “Just what is it that has brought you out in the rain?”

Amelia looked down her nose. “I’ve been waiting all day to give you your birthday present. But as you seem to have no intention whatever of coming in until after I retire, I have come to you.”

“Surely not a cake.” Liberty stood, her mouth nearly watering over the word. She would have been happy with more desiccated vegetables, in fact. Anything for the aching void in her middle, and for something to feed the men.

Amelia pressed something cool and smooth into Liberty’s hand, while Bella watched silently. It was a brooch about half the size of her palm. The small design within the seed pearl-edged border was of a weeping willow over a tombstone.

“It’s Levi’s hair!” Amelia announced.

A few yards distant, a cheeky one-armed soldier named Fitz shouted, “Where? Where’s his hair? Why don’t Levi have his own hair?”

But Liberty was not laughing. “You didn’t.”

“No, I don’t do hair work myself. Far too tedious and intricate for my fingers. I sent two locks of his hair out to be done through a mail order catalog. I had one made for you, and a matching one for me.” Her bosom swelled with pride, and Libbie spotted the hair brooch pinned to her dress.

Liberty dropped the brooch into her apron pocket and forced a smile. “Thank you.”

“Will you not wear it?”

“No.” Liberty cocked her head. “But you’ve brought up quite an excellent point, Amelia.”

“Oh?” She smiled, blinking rainwater out of her eyes.

“Indeed. Levi’s things. There is a box of his clothing under the bed in my room, doing nothing useful at all. Bella, would you please bring down
one of his shirts? This soldier desperately needs a change of clothing.”

Southern voices piped up all over the barn—“I want one! I’m dirty too! Change me!”

Amelia’s jaw dropped. “You would scatter your late husband’s garments amongst the enemy?”

Liberty shook her head. “No, I’m not quite ready for that. But a neglected Union man about to undergo amputation? Yes. I will.” To Bella, she added, “Please bring the quilt off my bed, as well.”

“Absolutely indecent.” The older woman huffed. “Do you dare believe that playing dress-up by putting Levi’s clothes on this man makes him worthy of your attention?”

No. He already is.
“You may as well get used to the fact that I won’t be confined by my losses. It’s time to rise above them, and go forth.” Liberty caught Bella’s smiling eyes and nodded.

“You heard the lady,” Bella said to Amelia. “Go forth.” She motioned toward the open door. Liberty stifled her laughter as Bella shooed Amelia out of the barn like a clucking hen, and into the rain once more.

The swirling sky darkening, Liberty knelt once more by Johnny’s side. With circular motions, she tenderly wiped the grime and sweat from his face and neck, and the furrows in his brow relaxed.

“I must tell you something …” He trailed away, and her pulse throbbed.

“It will keep. Save your breath, just rest for now.” She dipped her rag in the washing pail, then took his hand in her lap and wiped the dirt and blood from between his fingers. She wondered if he had fallen asleep until, when his hand was clean, he closed it over hers, squeezed, and whispered, “Happy birthday.”

She smiled, even as her heart cracked open.

When Bella returned with the quilt and blue denim pullover shirt, Liberty insisted Bella be the one to help Johnny into it, if need be. Liberty had grown accustomed to washing strange men during the past four days. But Johnny was no stranger, and washing his face and hands had
felt intimate enough. She turned her back and let Bella take over.

“There’s something in here.” Bella joined her just inside the doorway to the barn and opened the dirty Union jacket. Pinned to the inside was a foolscap page, folded into thirds. “A letter.” She unpinned it and gave it to Liberty, her face knotted in confusion.

It was addressed to Liberty, who froze as soon as she read her name.

“Miss Liberty, I know this is none of my never mind, but if you would you care to explain to me why your name is on that letter, I would be more than happy to hear it.”

A nod, barely perceptible. Who else could she tell but Bella, anyway?

Bella tossed a glance back at Johnny and the rest of the patients. “Come, your work here is done for now.”

Back through the rain, they returned to the porch. Amelia was holed up in the bedroom, and this was not a story Liberty wanted to share in her presence.

She needed no prompting. Bella’s eyes bore into Liberty’s as the story gushed out of her, beginning with the first letter Jonathan Welch had written her after Levi’s death. They continued writing sporadically, but when he mentioned wanting to meet her, she had ignored the idea. Eventually, she stopped responding to his letters altogether, afraid of trespassing on Levi’s memory and honor. “Then he came.”

“Pardon me?”

“The stranger that came that morning when you and the horses hid—it was Jonathan. But he didn’t tell me it was him.”

She then told Bella the rest of the story—his prophetic words before the battle, his intervention during the raid, his filling the “vacant chair” Amelia had intended for Levi.

“And now he’s filling Levi’s clothes.” Bella raised her eyebrows, and rain splattered the silence between them. “Well, aren’t you going to read the letter?”

“I can’t make it out in this light,” Liberty hedged.

Bella pulled a match and candle from her apron pocket and lit it.
Carefully, Liberty opened the letter and scanned the slanted grey script until she came to his signature: “Please say yes. Jonathan.” The words blinked at her in the flicker of candlelight as if begging for response. She pressed it against the staccato beat of her heart and looked at Bella.

“He said … he—that is, if he lives beyond the battle, he—wants to marry me.”

Bella sucked in her breath, reminding Liberty to take one. Johnny’s face surged before her then, as he had appeared the first time she saw him. Handsome, insistent, and slightly mysterious—but she knew the secret now.
To think, I took him for the enemy at first!