Widow of Gettysburg (47 page)

When the last man had received his meat, Amelia wiped her hands on her apron and found Silas at the end of a long table. He had lost weight in prison, but his face was as handsome as ever.

“How’s Liberty?” His first words, without preamble.

“I don’t know. I don’t even know where she is.”

His green eyes bore into hers. “What do you mean?”

“She hasn’t returned a single letter I’ve written her. I haven’t heard a word from her since I left in July.”

Silas wadded up his napkin and tossed it on the table. “Does she think you’re upset about—well, do you have much time to read the news?”

“I told her I didn’t think any differently of her after learning that Bella is her mother. I’ve done nothing to turn her away that I’m aware of.” She paused, and watched him stew. “The question is, does she know where you are?”

“Of course not.” He sipped his coffee. “There is no point in pursuing … anything. Not now.”

Understanding glimmered in Amelia. As of two years ago, marriage between whites and blacks was illegal in Ohio, too. “I see. Such a shame.” His eyes raised to meet hers. “I’ve seen Liberty with Levi, and I’ve seen her with you. She loved you. I don’t know what she’s feeling now, or even where she is, but I know she loved you once, and she very likely still does. In fact, I have a hunch that the reason she
isn’t answering my letters is due in large part to your absence.”

“Really? Why?”

“Grief isolates. She lost you, you know. She lost everything.”

“Except her mother. And I don’t think Bella wants me around her daughter, regardless of what the law says.”

Amelia leaned back in her chair, said nothing. It was a moot point anyhow.

“I wish I could help her.” Silas sighed.

“Even though you’d receive no promises in return? Whatever you have in mind, she’ll not be able to repay you with anything. Not with money, not with her heart, not with a future.”

“What I’d get in return is of no account to me. I just want to clean up the mess I left, so to speak, and let her live her life.” He propped his head in his hands, elbows on the table in front of him. “Never mind that I have no idea how to go about it fresh from prison. …”

“I don’t believe it.”

Amelia and Silas looked up to see Harrison Caldwell standing at the end of the table. He shook Silas’s hand vigorously and slid onto a chair across from him.

“What are you doing here, Silas?”

He told him. “What about you?”

“Oh, I live in the neighborhood. I come here fairly frequently to talk to the men passing through. Always on the lookout for a story, especially since I was sacked from the
Inquirer.
I’m working on my own now.”

“You were dismissed?”

He rubbed a hand over his freckled face. “Yeah. I was. The upshot of it is that I can write any story I want now. No more battles for me. Downside is finding the stories I can sell.”

“How do you like happy endings, Harrison?” Amelia smiled at the bewildered look on his face.

“Love them. Have you got one for me?”

“Almost. But first, it may be none of my business, but Silas could use
a little help getting back on his feet, after just being released from prison.”

If Amelia Sanger was good at anything, it was meddling in other people’s business.

A violent gust of wind shook hickory and oak leaves from their branches, sent them dancing in the air before fluttering to the ground like golden confetti. The smoky autumn air of Camp Letterman was spiced with the aroma of cooking chickens and hams. More than four thousand of the birds had been brought in for today’s picnic and festivities, a much-needed break from the monotony of hospital life for both patients and workers alike. A band from York trumpeted popular tunes while each patient who could be moved was brought to open-air banqueting tables and had his fill of meat, pies, ice cream, and other delicacies brought by the citizens of Gettysburg and the surrounding area. Patients and attendants competed in foot races, greased pole and gander-pulling contests. For one glorious day, there was more laughter and jesting than moans and sighs.

Laughter bubbled up out of Liberty to see Virginia and Samuel tripping over each other in the three-legged race. A pair of convalescent soldiers deliberately stayed behind them to make sure they didn’t come in last place.

“This has been so good for the children.” Carrie Daws approached Liberty. “I haven’t heard them laugh this much in months.”

Smiling, Liberty nodded, still watching the ridiculous antics of the patients. “It’s been good for everyone. Thank you for your help in getting everything ready.”

Carrie waved the gratitude away. “You know I could not have left right after Jeremiah died anyway. Staying and helping has been a way to
work out my grief. So many of these Confederate patients didn’t have family to come tend to their sides—it was my pleasure to represent Southern sympathy to them.”

Virginia and Samuel crossed the finish line, and both Liberty and Carrie erupted into cheers, along with the rest of the crowd.

“Walk with me?” Carrie led the way to the graveyard and found Jeremiah’s marker. Unable to afford the cost of a coffin and shipment back home, his body would remain here, at least until Carrie could come back for it later.

A cool breeze feathered Libbie’s face with the faint scent of evergreens from the wreaths adorning every tent in the camp. Reverently, she knelt with Carrie between rows of the dead. Carrie kissed the earth that covered Jeremiah’s body, then dabbed the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief she had trimmed with black ribbon on her first day here.

At length, she turned to Liberty, tears brimming in her eyes. “I can’t thank you enough for letting us stay in your tent and help with the patients. You know, some of my friends lost their men in this battle too, but they all refused to come. I don’t judge them for their loyalty to the Confederacy. But I pity them that they will not have a tangible way of closing this chapter of their lives—at least see for themselves the final resting place of their dead. It cost me dearly to make this trip, but I’m glad I did it. And now, it’s time for us to go home.” She tilted her head. “What about you, Widow of Gettysburg? When will you go home?”

“I’ll stay as long as I’m needed.”

Carrie nodded. “You have your own grief to work out, I see. You work harder than any other nurse here, and you are the only one not attached to the government or a commission. One day, Camp Letterman will close. I pray that by then, your heart will let you rest.”

Rest? No, thank you.
Still, she smiled and thanked Carrie as they stood and headed back to the festivities.

When they reached the edge of the crowd, Carrie hugged Liberty and rejoined Betty and her children, while Liberty remained a spectator. The band from York now played a melancholy tune, but one that
had become the most popular song on both sides of the Mason and Dixon line: “When This Cruel War Is Over.” As the notes floated on the breeze, men and women joined in the chorus:

Weeping, sad and lonely, hopes and fears how vain!

When this cruel war is over, praying that we meet again.

Crows squawked against the blue and gold autumn sky, as another woman with red-rimmed eyes wandered in and among the crowd, looking for husband, brother, or son.

This cruel war was not over yet.

Unease roiling his stomach, Silas climbed the steps of Dr. Samuel Simon Schmucker’s house—
mansion was more like it
—and noted the damage the Rebels had caused to his former professor’s home. Window frames had been shattered, sashes broken, the greater part of the glass destroyed. Several shells had knocked through the brick walls.

He rapped his knuckles on the front door and waited, hat in his hands, until the white-haired reverend answered it.

“Can I help you, son?”

Silas’s new suit grew warm on his body. “You may not remember me, but I was a student of yours once. Silas Ford.”

Dr. Schmucker’s eyes widened in his pale face as he reached out and grasped Silas’s hand with a hearty shake. “I don’t believe it. Silas Ford, man of the Lord, here again at last!”

Silas winced as the rest of the rhyme sounded in his mind.
Took slaves to bed and shot Pa dead!
“Actually, sir, I wouldn’t mind if I never hear that mocking phrase again.”

“I’m not mocking you, Silas. Come in, come in.” He stepped back and closed the door after Silas entered his home. “You were one of my most promising students.”

A short laugh escaped Silas as he followed Dr. Schmucker down a hall. “I had to study harder than most to get the same marks.”

“I’m not speaking of academics. I’m speaking of your heart.” He paused in a doorway. “Here, let us visit in my study.” Silas could not help but notice how sparse his bookshelves were as they sat in wooden chairs. “The place was ransacked by the Rebels. So many of my books, papers, sermons—destroyed. An oil painting of my father—slashed with a bayonet. But let us not speak of it. I’m far more interested in you. You had such a shepherd’s spirit. I was so sorry when you discontinued your courses.”

“I understand my mother told you why.”

Dr. Schmucker nodded, peering down his hawklike nose. “She did. In a letter. I’m sorry to say one of my student assistants found it, came up with the rhyme you referred to earlier, and it spread like wildfire. Something in our human nature loves to watch another man fall from grace, you know. That’s not to excuse it. I’m sorry you had to hear it.”

“I’m sorry it was born from the truth.” Silas rubbed his jaw. “Something has been troubling me, though. I understand my mother would have told you I shot my father in a duel, hence the ‘shot Pa dead’ line. But where did the phrase ‘took slaves to bed’ come from? Did she say something about me taking advantage of slaves in her letter too? I can think of only one incident, but I never told her about it.” He focused on the pleats in his trousers, unable to meet his gaze.

“She did mention it. This I found strange, as well—quite unbelievable, actually. Until I received another letter from her. Last month.”

Silas’s head flew up. “You can’t be serious.”

Dr. Schmucker went to his bookcase, pulled from it a small personal Bible, and withdrew a folded sheet of foolscap from within its pages. “It’s for you.”

Silas stood to accept the letter, and opened it immediately.

Silas returned to his chair, hands growing clammy. He loosened the cravat around his neck.