Widow of Gettysburg (37 page)

A
s soon as Harrison Caldwell stepped off the train at the Carlisle Street station, he was assaulted by locomotive fumes and the lingering odor of human waste and decay. The smell of spoiling flesh was not as strong as it had been when he had left, but the telltale ammonia smell still pinched his nose. The town was now overrun with what appeared to be relief workers, loved ones seeking their wounded, and sightseers with a taste for the macabre. The village of twenty-four hundred residents was simply not equipped to sanitize the sewage of the twenty thousand or more visitors that had descended upon them.

Next to the tracks were several tents, one of which was labeled Sanitary Commission Lodge. From this tent, the smell of strong hot coffee and beef stew wafted on the sticky breeze. When a woman in full black mourning slipped out of one and into another of these tents, Harrison did a double take. Amelia Sanger, from Holloway Farm? He followed
her into a tent lined on one side with barrels labeled shirts, drawers, dressing gowns, socks, slippers, rags, and bandages. On the others side sat grocer boxes of tea, coffee, soft crackers, tamarinds, and cherry brandy. Tables were likewise stocked with rows of jelly-pots and bottles of black currant and blackberry syrup.

“Pardon me,” Harrison ventured, and the widow started.

“Good gracious!” She pressed a hand to her bosom, fingers trapping a hair-work brooch to her high black collar. “Can I help you?”

Of course she wouldn’t remember him. It was dark when they met. She was upset. Emptying her own chamber pot, as he recalled. “Aren’t you—I believe we met once, at the Holloway Farm.”

He waited a moment, until recognition registered on her face. “You’re not the reporter, are you?”

“Guilty as charged. But you don’t seem to be the same woman I met in the moonlight.”

“I’m not.” She smiled. “Thank God. Whatever I said to you that night, I hope you’ve forgotten by now.”

Not quite.
He tugged his collar away from his neck. “Quite. Are you with the Sanitary Commission?”

“Not officially. I was waiting for a train to Baltimore, to then go on to Philadelphia, when I stumbled upon the good work they are doing here. Lucky for me, they let me help a wee bit. That was a week ago.”

“You still haven’t caught your train?”

“It wasn’t time for me to go. Frankly, the work here is all but done, and the Sanitary Commission Lodge is disbanding. I don’t know what I’ll do now.”

Harrison nodded. “Well, if Philadelphia is your destination, you’ll find similar work there that’s guaranteed to last until the end of the war.”

Her face brightened. “Where?”

He told her about the two refreshment saloons for soldiers and prisoners passing through, and she looked like he had given her the moon. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off on a story.” He tipped his hat to her, and took his leave. He did not feel compelled to share with her just yet
that the story involved Liberty and Bella and would quite possibly scandalize her stockings off her feet.

Back on the street, citizens and soldiers pressed around him, nearly choking him with the competing scents they held near their noses in bags, bottles, or on handkerchiefs. Pennyroyal, peppermint oil, cologne, and camphor cloyed thickly in the air. Sidewalks were blockaded with black coffins stacked high outside embalming parlors. When a passing wagon offered him a ride to the battlefield in the vicinity of the Holloway Farm, Harrison jumped onboard.

Folds of skin hung loosely on the wagon driver’s aged face, framing small dark eyes. His German accent flavored his words as he called out the sights through town and countryside. In the fields west of town, Harrison covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief. For there, where soldiers had hastily buried the dead more than two weeks ago, family members now dug up the graves looking for their loved ones. The land was littered with unburied and half-buried dead.

After they crossed Seminary Ridge, they soon came to Willoughby Run, where Harrison jumped out of the wagon, knapsack swung over his shoulder.

“Four dollars,” said the driver.

“Four! You mean for the whole wagon?” Harrison was indignant. When he was an independent reporter, the payment for an entire story had been only five dollars.

“I mean four dollars, from you.” The scathing article Lorenzo Ellis had printed in his New York paper flashed back to Harrison’s mind. Perhaps there was some truth in it after all.

“Sir, that is a ridiculous amount. Do you charge everyone this much?”

“
Ja
, everyone. I don’t play favoritism. Even the soldiers pay this much from here to the station, and are happy for the ride.”

“You charge wounded men four dollars for a ride in an uncovered wagon with no springs? Why, you probably bounce them half to death by the time you get there!”

“Four dollars for the ride, two dollars for a loaf of bread if they’re hungry.”

Madness. A loaf of bread in the country should cost a quarter, no more.

“If you don’t pay the fee, you’ll drive up the cost even more for the others.” His lower lip protruded as he set his wrinkled face in a scowl. Harrison paid the man three dollars, refusing another cent, and vowed to walk all over Gettysburg rather than ever line his pockets again.

At the edge of the lane leading up to Liberty’s stone farmhouse, Harrison tripped on a corner of wood sticking up out of the ground. After fishing it up, he ran a finger through the grooves of the chiseled letters,
LIBERTY INN.
A chuckle escaped him as he scanned the property. Especially for a Union widow, she was quite hospitable indeed.

Liberty’s dark hair shone in the noonday sun as she emerged from the gaping barn with a tray of empty cups.

“Excuse me!” he called as he approached. “Hello there, Harrison Caldwell,
Philadelphia Inquirer.
Not sure if you remember me, but I brought Mrs. Jamison here the evening of July 2.”

“Oh yes!” Liberty nodded. “I remember. You were present during some of our amputations.”

A man joined her side with the help of a crutch, the right leg of his blue wool trousers pinned up.

“Indeed. But I’m afraid I missed meeting this chap. Hello, sir.” Harrison shook the man’s hand.

“Silas Ford. Pleased to meet you.”

A riot of color peeked out from under Silas’s arm when he reached out to shake Harrison’s hand. “I say, what kind of a crutch have you got there?”

Liberty smiled. “He made it himself, from a mahogany sideboard.”

“But she made the pad.” Silas pointed the top of his crutch at Harrison. It appeared to be made from a quilt, with one patch made from a red and cream pinstripe flannel. A line from Fanny Kemble’s journal washed over him.
Nearly all the women beg for flannel, and my bolt of red and cream pinstripe is almost gone.

“Where did you get that fabric, Miss Holloway?”

“From an old quilt.”

“How old?”

“Quite. Twenty years.”

Twenty years. 1843.
Four years after Fanny left the Georgia plantation—but not too long for a slave to keep a gift from her master’s wife. “A gift from your mother, perhaps?”

Her eyes darkened and she tilted her head at him. “Can I help you with something?”

“Forgive me, yes.” Forcing down his excitement, he extended the dirty wooden sign to Silas, since Liberty’s hands were full. “Rescued that from certain death by trampling down the lane. Thought you might want to dust it off and hang it up again someday.”

Silas studied the board as a sad smile overtook Liberty’s face. “I doubt very much that anyone would willingly come to this wasteland. But thank you.”

The way Silas looked at her stopped Harrison cold. He was not just a disinterested patient. Oh no, he was
very
interested in Liberty Holloway. His reporter nose sniffed scandal. Was there a budding romance between a Union widow and a Confederate patient? More shocking than that—between the daughter of a slave and the son of a—could he dare to hope—slave owner? Even as he chided himself for leaping to such an unsupported idea, giddiness bubbled inside him.

Liberty raised her eyebrows and cleared her throat. He had made her uncomfortable. She was waiting for him to go.

Recovering himself, he changed the subject. “I’m looking for your—for Mrs. Jamison.”

“You’ll not find Bella here. She lives at 319 South Washington Street in town. She could be there, or perhaps working for another client at the moment.”

Harrison nodded.
Another client.
He searched Liberty’s face for the resemblance to Bella that Lt. Holmes had claimed to see. Nose and lips? Possibly.

“Good day, Miss Holloway, Mr. Ford.” He tipped his straw hat to them. “You’ve been most … helpful.”

Silas took a deep breath as wind whistled through the apple trees and flirted with wisps of hair around Liberty’s face. “That reporter got to you, didn’t he?”

Liberty gave him a sideways glance and started walking toward the summer kitchen. He joined her, the crutch digging into his armpit with every hop. “You’ve never told me about your parents.”

“Do I need to?”

“I told you about mine.”

“There isn’t much to tell.” She was walking faster now, and he broke a sweat trying to keep up with her.

“Then it won’t take long.” He grabbed her elbow. “Please? No more secrets, right?”

Her shoulders slumped with invisible burden, but she nodded. “Let me take this tray back to Myrtle, and I’ll meet you on the porch.”

When she returned, they sat on the top of the steps, and Silas was grateful to rest his left leg and right arm from his self-imposed rehabilitation exercises. He tired so easily, and his head ached, but Dr. O’Leary told him to expect this as his body adjusted to not having as much opium in his system.

“Now.” He focused his attention on Liberty. “Please tell me. I want to know who you are.”

It was the wrong thing to say. She whipped her head around to face directly ahead, pressed her lips into a line and stared off into the distance. Birdsong mocked the tension between them. At long last, she spoke. “I am not who my parents were. Just as you are not who your father was.”

His mother did not agree. Her words rang in his ears.
You are no better than your father!
But Silas nodded. “Poor choice of words. I’m sorry. But you can’t deny that our parents shape us into who we are, for better or for worse. So. Will you tell me?”

Liberty shared her story in a slow trickle of words, then in a steady stream, until her tale was told. Her eyes were dry, but her unsteady voice betrayed her. This wound was not yet healed, and Silas’s heart ached for her.

“My parents were not honorable people, and I was unwanted by everyone.” Her voice cracked under the pressure of hurt and shame.

“You can’t say that for sure.”

She pierced him with her gaze. “I was not loved, because of how I came to be.”

His mouth felt like it had been packed with lint. “But your husband loved you.”

Liberty broke her gaze with him and looked down at her bare finger. “I was seventeen years old when we married, Silas, and he not much older. He left before we knew what true love meant.” She pushed absently at the cuticles on her fingernails. He folded his own hands to keep from covering Liberty’s with them.

“Levi said he loved me, but as I look back on those memories now, it felt like love from a child who was eager to please, but didn’t know how.” Her cheeks flamed with color, and he struggled to bridle his imagination before it galloped away with him.

She deserves to be loved by a man.
Desire swelled in Silas until it melted his iron will to resist her. Her strength, her beauty, her compassion, all of it was intoxicating. “You are loved now, Liberty.” His throat closed around the words, but they would not be taken back.

Questions swam in the blue pools of her eyes. He cupped her face in his hand, and breath shuddered on her lips. Heart hammering on his ribs, he slid his fingers into her silky hair, and leaned in, bringing her full, soft lips to his. Any second, she would jerk away from him.