Widow of Gettysburg (40 page)

But she kissed back.
He sanded the crutch harder, back and forth, until mahogany dust flavored the cool, misty air. Back and forth went his thoughts, from
My mother was right about me
to
I am not my father.
Memories, long stifled, now emerged from the fog.

His father’s slave Psyche had come to him, she said, for help. In a surreal twist of the biblical story, she offered herself to him like Potiphar’s wife. Only seventeen years old, it took all his strength to look away.

“Please,” she had said. “I need to have a baby. Please help me.” If she were with child, she told him, his father would give her more food and shorter hours in the field. And, at least for a few months, his father’s desire for her would die away. She would have some respite from being his special pet.

Silas had refused, ordered her to put her clothes back on. “Why don’t you take a husband?”

“I want a white man’s child,” she said.

He understood then, that she wanted to bleach her line by him. He would not do it. As he sent her away, he vowed to help in a different way. “I can fix this,” he told her.

But he had not locked the door to his chamber. He’d gone to bed earlier than usual that night, and when he awoke, head pounding, in the small hours of the night, Psyche was in his arms.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

The encounter remained fogged in his mind even to this day, but even the suggestion of what had taken place choked him with guilt.

Then, after he had been lashed in her place years later by his own father’s hand, his mother’s words had hurt him even worse. “You’re just like your father. I see the way you looked at her. Did you have your way with her too, you and your father both?”

“No!” Her words ripped open new wounds. “I would have done the same for you if it was your back under the lash. I would protect you, Mother.”

“But you haven’t. Your father has lashed me in so many ways, and
you’ve done nothing. You know nothing of true love, only degraded lust. You fool! Did you not even notice that Psyche is your half-sister?”

Mute with horror, Silas could not respond.

“You are
just
like your father.”

She was right. Fear coated him like molasses—dark, sticky, impossible to remove. Perhaps, Silas thought now as he sanded the crutch, he saw the duel as a chance to destroy the part of himself that resembled his father. The part that yearned for what was not his to take.

Silas turned the crutch and sanded another corner.
It didn’t work.
Though Silas had sworn off women as penance for his sins, he could not deny that he yearned now for Liberty.
But I’m a reprobate. I don’t deserve her.

“Good morning, Silas.” Dr. O’Leary materialized through the fog, freshly shaven and smelling of castile soap and bay rum. “You’re going to sand that crutch down to a toothpick if you’re not careful. Something on your mind?”

Silas glanced up. “Do you believe people can change, doctor?”

“Quite a question for six-thirty in the morning.” He yawned as he leaned against the railing. “But yes, I do. People can change, because God can change us. ‘Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.’ From the book of Isaiah.”

Silas’s hand stilled on the crutch as the words settled into his spirit. He was listening.

Dr. O’Leary bent over the railing and looked at the thornbush that once shone bright with Liberty’s yellow roses. “Do you see this bush? It looks like a briar patch now, without the blooms and leaves. Just thorns. But when I look carefully, I can see new growth. Little buds of green are starting to appear, and that tells me that no matter what happened to this bush on the outside, it is still the same on the inside. In a matter of time, we’ll be smelling the roses once more. That’s what God does for us, too. Where we think there is a wasteland, He will bring new life.
Now sometimes, He prunes us back Himself.”

“If God is in the business of pruning, I’ve been lopped off at the ground.”

Dr. O’Leary chuckled. “Maybe. But He only cuts off what is dead so we can grow with more vibrancy and bear more fruit. Allowing the diseased part of us to remain would only infect our entire being with spiritual poison. He cares too much about our souls to let that happen. Make sense?”

Silas looked at his stump and nodded. Yes, it made perfect sense.

“Remember not the former things. God is doing a new thing in you.”

“I hope you’re right, doctor. I’ve been running from ‘the former things’ for years. But I can’t run anymore.” He rapped his knuckles on the crutch.

Dr. O’Leary smiled. “Have you considered that you are, at this very moment, right where God wants you to be? It’s time to stop running, Silas, and watch as God paves a new path for you. I’m done preaching now, I promise.” He winked.

Silas chuckled. “I always did like a good sermon.”

“I know.”

“Ah, so you did read my letter, didn’t you?”

Dr. O’Leary shrugged. “Not every word, but my gaze did catch on mention of the seminary. It’s none of my business, son, but you don’t have to abandon that dream.”

“After what I’ve done? I beg to differ.”

“Oh come now. God’s instruments are never perfect. If we experienced no pain in our own lives, had no need for healing, we would be tragically irrelevant to the rest of the world. Preaching grace and forgiveness falls flat if we are not desperate for it ourselves.”

Silas received his words like parched earth receives the rain.
God, do a new thing in me
, he prayed.
Make rivers in the desert of my soul.
He studied the doctor before him. “What about you? Didn’t you ever want to be a pastor?”

“I considered it strongly, yes. But the call to medicine was stronger. And lucky for all of us, no matter our occupation, we can still minister to God’s people.” Dr. O’Leary walked over to Silas and squeezed his shoulder. “And now, I best begin my rounds.”

“Yes, of course.” He looked east toward Seminary Ridge. “The sun will be up soon.”

“Oh, the sun has been there for some time.” The doctor smiled. “You just couldn’t see it through the fog.”

A bitter aroma twisted into Liberty’s nose, yanking her out of her sleep.

“Rise and shine.” Her blonde hair almost white in the sunshine, Myrtle offered a steaming cup of coffee, as she had every morning this week since Tuesday.

It never tasted quite right when Myrtle made it, but she was grateful for the gesture, and always forced it down, knowing it pleased Myrtle. She would hate to waste the coffee no matter how it tasted, considering it was donated by the Sanitary Commission. The patients, she knew, were incredibly grateful to have it.

The tin cup nearly burned Liberty’s hands as she sipped the brew and tried not to wince. It really did taste awful. But at least Myrtle was trying.

One more timid sip, and Liberty didn’t think she could choke it down. Her stomach revolted.

“I’ll finish it later, thank you.” She handed it back to Myrtle, expecting to see disappointment written on her face. It wasn’t there.

“Not feeling well this morning?”

She didn’t. “It’s nothing.” Liberty clenched her jaw against the rising swell of bile and waited until it subsided. “You may go.”

Myrtle stayed and watched her.

“Do you mind?” Liberty still needed to use the chamber pot. “A little privacy would be nice.”

With Myrtle now gone, Libbie attended to her meager toilette routine and left the hollowed out shell of her bedroom.

She clutched the banister at the top of the stairs while Major paced a flight beneath her, his claws tapping incessantly on the hardwood floor. With his one good eye, he looked up at her, as if to ask if she was coming.

She wasn’t. Pain radiated from her middle to the ends of her arms and legs until she sat on the stairs and waited for it to pass. She was so tired. But the sun was up, she had work to do. She did not have time to be tired.

A fist slammed in the front door. “Liberty Holloway! Miss Holloway? Are you in there? Open up, please.”

She glanced at the grandfather clock in the hallway and gasped. Nine-thirty in the morning! Had she really slept that long? She forced herself down the steps.

Swinging wide the door, Liberty found herself confronted by Henry Stahle, editor of the
Gettysburg Compiler
, and Geraldine Bennett, from the Ladies Union Relief Society, her arms folded across her chest, and face folded into a scowl.

“Is it true?” asked Mr. Stahle. He waved a paper in her face, and she pressed a hand to her head.

“Is what true?” In the edges of her vision, she saw Dr. O’Leary, Myrtle, Isaac, and Silas approaching.

“What’s all the hubbub?” asked Dr. O’Leary.

“Liberty Holloway, that’s what,” said Geraldine, her voice triumphant. “Or is that even your real name?”

“What? I don’t understand.” Her vision swayed.

“Then maybe you should catch up on the news!”

The
New York Times
waved under her nose then. “I get all the major papers. It’s how I know what to print in ours,” said Stahle. “Imagine my surprise, however, to find a local girl and her mother as a big story on page three! Why didn’t you let us have the story first?”

“You know I don’t have a mother.” Liberty’s knees buckled.
Dr. O’Leary caught her arm and guided her to sit in the armchair at Silas’s workbench.

“What are they talking about?” she whispered, holding her head in her hands. Their voices clanged against her ears, hammered on her skull.

Dr. O’Leary took her pulse, felt her forehead, studied her eyes. “You’re not well.”

Mr. Stahle pressed closer, but Silas blocked his path. “The lady isn’t well, sir.” His voice was low, but firm.

“Aha, let me see, you must be …” Stahle skimmed his finger over the newsprint. “Silas Ford, Rebel wounded, romantic suitor to the Union widow. Tell us, Miss Liberty, which man better tickles your fancy—Yankee or Rebel?” Liberty gasped, unable to believe her ears.

Silas snatched the paper from him and hurled it to the ground, pinning it there with his crutch. “Leave!”

“I need a comment from the Widow of Gettysburg for my story!”

“You don’t.” Silas’s right hand held fast to his crutch, but his left hand clenched into a rock-hard weapon. A semicircle of patients, many of them one-armed, formed around the pair of intruders.

“Y’all bothering Miss Liberty here?” It was Fitz. “Well, this here is our hospital, and that gal there done been takin’ good care of us. We surely would take offense if you was bothering her.”

“We don’t want any trouble,” said Mr. Stahle.

The patients pressed in around the editor and a wide-eyed Geraldine. “Good! Then you won’t mind leaving. Otherwise I just might mistake you for a nurse and ask you to change my bandages.” Fitz began unwrapping his stump below his shoulder. “Mmmm … do you smell that? What do you think, gangrene? Tasty! Hope it’s not contagious!” Cackling mercilessly, he sidled up to Geraldine, sending her shrieking back to the horse and buggy. Mr. Stahle followed, so as not to lose his ride.

Dust billowed up from the lane as they pounded back to the road. “We will be back, Miss Holloway!” Mr. Stahle shouted. “And you can bet your buttons we won’t be the only paper after you, either!”

Liberty’s head pounded. “Can someone please tell me what this is all about?”

The doctor urged everyone away, except for Silas, who leaned on the railing in front of her, his eyes holding hers.

“Dr. O’Leary, would you tell me what the article says?” There was no way she could focus her eyes on the print right now.

He picked up the
Times
, dusted it off and skimmed it, brow furrowing. He cleared his throat, pulled his collar away from his neck. “It says that Bella Jamison is the mulatto daughter of her slave mother and the mother’s white overseer.”

“Why would they print that in the
New York Times
?”

“Apparently, the plantation on which she was born and raised was outside Darien, Georgia. The town the 54th Massachusetts regiment raided in June. Did you know her husband is in the 54th?”

Liberty nodded. “Well, that’s interesting, but I don’t see why it’s in a New York paper.”

“There was a battle at Fort Wagner on Saturday, and her husband was wounded.”

“Is it serious?”

“Doesn’t say. The focus really isn’t on him, Miss Holloway.” He licked his lips and swallowed. Liberty glanced at Silas, whose gaze was fixed on the doctor. “Apparently there was a patient here on which Dr. Stephens operated, a Lt. Pierce Butler Holmes. He recognized Bella as she held the light. Is that correct?”

“He did say something like that, but he was raving mad with chloroform at the time.”

“And is it also true that he said something about you?” He winced.

And she remembered. “He said I was the very likeness of Ross someone.”

“Roswell King Jr.?”

“That’s it.” Goosebumps pimpled her flesh. “But he said that about Bella, too. That we were twins or something. I tell you, he was not in his right mind.”