by P. G. Nagle
“I do not mean merely the duties of my post. I mean my duty to my fellow man. To my comrades. Have I allowed myself to be too much distracted?”
Emma shrugged helplessly. “I cannot say. You must decide that for yourself.”
“You are never distracted in this way.”
“I do not have such an agreeable correspondent.”
Emma turned away, hiding her unhappiness. She wanted to change the subject, but Jerome persisted.
“Her letters are very agreeable,” he said. “I find myself reading them over and over again.”
“Everyone does that, with their letters from home.”
“But not everyone ... I find myself wishing to write to her.” He began to pace beneath the trees. “Every day. I already send her more letters than she sends to me. Should I not restrain myself?”
“If it eases your heart, then write to her,” Emma said miserably. “What harm can it do?”
“I would not wish to appear over-eager. I fear it might give her a distaste for me.”
“Jerome, I cannot advise you in this.”
“Your mind is clearer than mine, just now. Is it wrong for a man to think so much about a woman?”
Emma gave a hopeless laugh. “I am not a man.”
Jerome paused in his restless pacing. “You are young, but no younger than I. You have seen battle. You are more a man than many of the soldiers come to Washington, who are yet to taste of war.”
“Jerome—”
“You are a man of sense, and I value your opinion. You always see the right of things. Will you not help me now?”
Emma felt the burden of her deception weighing down upon her. “I cannot help you,” she said. “Go to the Scriptures.”
“But the Scriptures do not address my particular situation. They are not of this time, of our customs. You might well be in my position, someday.”
“I will never be in your position.”
“How can you know that? You have a lady friend—”
“A friend. She will never be more.”
He smiled, disbelieving. “She might be. Perhaps you will conceive a tender feeling for her.”
“No.”
“It could happen, Frank.”
“No. It could not.”
Again the laughing smile. “You know that no sooner one says a thing can never be, than it will come to pass.”
“Not in this case.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Because, Jerome,” Emma said, dropping her voice low, though there was no one near enough to hear, “I am not a man. I am a woman.”
Washington, D.C., 1883
So you told him,” Jamie said, his eyes narrowing.
“Yes.”
“He never gave me any indication that he knew. Even when I told him what I knew of you.”
“He was a friend,” Emma said coldly. “He kept my confidence, though I did not demand his silence.”
Jamie’s face grew stern; his nostrils flared. “You told him, knowing it would place him in danger,” he accused her. “Knowing he could be court-martialed for it!”
“The chance of that was slim.”
“But you took it. You took the chance with his freedom!”
Emma tilted her head, regarding him. “Why so bitter, Jamie? I never knew you cared so much for Jerome.”
“I didn’t,” he said in a clipped voice, and strode a few paces away.
He paused before a portrait of President Arthur. The muscles in his back were bunched beneath the fabric of his coat. Still strong, Emma noted.
The door behind Mr. Glass’s desk opened, and Emma glanced up. The secretary rose from his desk, went to the door where he conferred quietly for a moment with another gentleman Emma had not seen before, then stepped inside, shutting the door behind him.
Left alone with Jamie, Emma waited. Why was he here, she wondered? What was he doing in Washington, all these years later? Last she knew, he had been bound for Scotland.
“Poor Robbins,” Jamie said at last. “The victim of your self-indulgence. He hid it well.”
Emma swallowed, angered by his words, but knowing they were true. “Yes,” was all she said.
“Weren’t you afraid he would betray you?”
“No. I was never afraid of Jerome.”
She watched for his reaction, but he gave no sign. Still with his back to her, he stood like a statue. She shifted in her seat, trying to ease the ache in her left foot.
“You feared me,” he said at last.
“Yes. With good reason, as it happened.”
That stung him, she could tell. He moved, a wince, as if something had struck him between the shoulder blades. Emma allowed herself to smile.
“But Jerome was true to the last. He never betrayed me. I should not have told him, I know.” Her smile became wistful. “I knew it the moment the words left my lips.”
The War: Alexandria, Virginia, 1861
Jerome stared at her, silent. Even in the gathering darkness, she could see his confusion.
“I am a female,” she said, to make certain he understood. “I ran away from home when I was fifteen. I worked as a milliner for a while, then I assumed the name of Frank Thompson and began selling books.”
“What are you saying?” Jerome asked, incredulity in his voice.
“I am living a deception, Jerome, but I can no longer deceive you. I honor your friendship too much.”
She stood trembling, awaiting his answer. The silence stretched between them, and dread rose in Emma’s heart. Never had she shared her secret, entrusted it to another. She had placed herself in Jerome’s hands, and doubt now assailed her as to the wisdom of it.
“Why?” he said at last, in an anguished voice.
“I never wished to hurt you, Jerome. I never thought to find such a—such an affinity with a fellow soldier. Your friendship has been the greatest blessing to me, truly, and I tell you this now because I cannot bear to deceive you any longer.”
“But why did you run away?” Jerome demanded. She could see his frown, even though shadows darkened his face. “Why did you leave the bosom of your family?”
“I was fifteen, and my father insisted I marry a man I despised. A man more than thrice my own age.”
“But—surely your father could not have forced you to marry!”
Emma laughed bitterly. “You do not know my father.”
She went on then, and told him everything. How her mother—whose marriage was miserable in every way save for the blessing of her children—had helped Emma escape from her family and go to a milliner friend of her mother’s in Salisbury. How Emma feared that her father would find her even there, and moved on to Moncton, where she opened a hat shop with another young lady. How the dread that her father would somehow hunt her down and drag her back to be wed to his elderly friend had prompted her to create a new identity for herself, and find a place in which he would never seek her. A man’s place.
Jerome listened in silence as the darkness deepened around them. Emma told him of her success as Frank Thompson, Bible salesman, of her delight in her new-found freedom, and of how she had eventually come to Flint, and there decided to join the Grays.
“The rest you know,” she concluded.
A moment passed. She watched him, his face half-turned away from her, frowning in thought. At last he turned to look at her.
“And why do you tell me this now?”
“Because I—”
She stopped, struggling to master herself. Taking a steadying breath, she began again.
“I have told you the main reason. I do not wish any longer to deceive such a valued friend. The cause of my telling you now, at this time, is your confidences to me regarding Miss Corey. You would not have made them, perhaps, had you known I was female.”
“I would most certainly not have done!” he replied, and Emma winced.
He began to pace now, stalking back and forth between the rows of peach trees. “How you dared to listen
to them is beyond me! You allowed me, under false pretenses, to unburden my heart—”
“Jerome—”
“You took advantage of my trust!”
“I never meant to. I did not ask your confidences.”
“Yet you accepted them!”
He was lashing himself into a fury. Emma watched, helpless to prevent it, knowing she deserved every word of his angry accusal.
“If I listened, it was out of friendship,” she said.
“Friendship requires honesty!”
“And that is why I have been honest with you now.”
“I don’t believe you know the meaning of the word! How could you, and act as you did? Every Christian value you claimed was a lie!”
“That is not true—”
“A lie, Frank! Or whoever you are—”
“Emma. My name is Emma.”
He stopped and stood staring at her, seething, his chest rising and falling with angry breaths. Emma feared she had lost his goodwill entirely. Danger prickled at the back of her neck, and along her arms.
“Our discussions of faith,” she said softly, “of the Scripture, of philosophy—those were all true. I have never deceived you save in this one thing.”
“One little thing,” he said bitterly.
“I ask your forgiveness, Jerome. I need it. I need it most desperately.”
“You want me to countenance this lie. Be a party to it.”
Emma swallowed. “You must do as you see fit.”
He stared at her again. The moon was rising over his shoulder now, leaving his face shadowed in darkness. Emma gazed at its sullen, gold orb, knowing it illumined her own face for Jerome to see.
“How many others know of this?” Jerome demanded. “Your company? Your captain?”
“No one. No one else knows.”
“The man you share a tent with? Do you ask me to believe that is innocent?”
“I’ve lain beside you often enough, and that was innocent!” Emma retorted, her patience strained to breaking. She regretted her tone at once, and added more moderately, “Believe what you wish, I cannot stop you, but Damon knows nothing of this. You will find out if you ask him, though it ruins me.”
“They call you their woman,” Jerome said doubtfully.
Emma gave a wry smile. “Yes. Ironic, isn’t it? A company jest. It began at Fort Wayne, where they teased me because of my small feet.”
He turned his back to her then, and stood gazing at the moon. It cast twisted shadows of peach branches across the ground.
“Jerome,” she said softly, “I cannot bear to think I have lost your friendship. Please tell me I have not.”
“How can I be your friend? I do not know you!”
“You know everything that matters about me. Everything we have discussed is true. That I am female is merely an accident of my birth, it has nothing to do with me.”
“This is unnatural,” Jerome said, his voice wrought with despair.
“I have never been womanly,” Emma said. “No more than a cloistered nun. Less, in fact. Think of me that way, if you will. Unsexed.”
Jerome was silent. Emma dared to step up beside him, and turned her head to look at him in the moonlight. His handsome face was frowning, lost in thought.
“You have opened your heart to me,” she said. “I will do the same. There is no one in the world for whom I care more than I do you, Jerome. The esteem I feel for you—words cannot express it.”
He glanced at her sidelong, then, his dark eyes glinting in the moonlight. Trouble still haunted them, and now a hint of wariness joined it.
He took a backward step, then another, then turned and strode from the orchard, making for the road. Emma watched him go, knowing that to follow, to plead with him further, would be worse than useless. She had placed herself in his hands. Time would reveal her fate.
Her heart ached, and she fought back the tears that started to her eyes. She feared she had said too much, but she had only spoken the truth. She had shriven herself of deception, at least with Jerome.
Would he forgive her? She hoped and prayed that he would.
She gazed about her at the peach trees, their fruitful limbs barren at this season. Barren.
This time tomorrow, if she remained free, she would return to this place and give thanks for it. If she was not free ... she would have a new challenge to face.
Closing her eyes, she whispered a prayer for forgiveness, and invoked God’s blessing upon Jerome. Whatever the morrow would bring, she loved him still.
Returning to the camp, Emma passed a restless night in her tent. Damon was gone again late into the evening, playing cards and carousing. She feigned sleep when he came in, not wishing to talk.
She lay awake, though, subject to haunting fears, starting at every sound and expecting any moment to hear the heavy tread of the provost guard coming to arrest her. Morning came instead, and no sign of any change.
She reported to the hospital. Jerome was there, but he avoided Emma’s gaze, and she in turn avoided meeting him as she went about her duties. When necessity brought them together, they spoke as strangers. Emma was grateful that he had apparently decided not to unmask her, but every cold word or glance they exchanged made her miserable.
She volunteered for night duty that evening, preferring to stay at the hospital where she might at least be of use than to spend another night in camp, agonizing over her fate. Jerome departed at the end of his shift, and Emma was left to the quiet of the night-time hospital. She read in her Bible during every spare moment, seeking consolation.
Remembering her pledge to return to the peach orchard, she did so in the small hours of the night after she was relieved of duty. The sky was cold and filled with glimmering stars. She gazed up at them through the bare branches and thanked God with all her heart for her freedom.
The next two days passed in much the same way as the first. Jerome’s manner was distant, and Emma responded in kind. She turned her attention to the patients instead, and took pleasure in giving them comfort. Once, while she was reading a newspaper to one of them, she sensed Jerome watching her and glanced up at him, meeting his gaze. He wore a troubled look, and turned away.
Late on Thursday afternoon, as Emma had just completed a round of the beds preparatory to serving the evening meal, Jerome came up to her. He made a small, formal bow.
“There is a prayer meeting tonight,” he said stiffly. “I wondered if you would like to attend.”
Emma gazed back at him, gratitude swelling her heat. “I would like it very much. Thank you.”
Jerome nodded, then stepped away. Until the end of their shift he said nothing more to her, but when they stepped out of the tent together, Emma carrying her Bible beneath her arm, she felt almost as if nothing had changed between them. Jerome spoke cordially of the latest news, gave his opinions, and invited Emma to share hers. She did so with slight hesitation, wishing to avoid his displeasure. As they talked, however, she felt more and more at ease.
The prayer meeting lifted her spirits even more. Six other soldiers crowded into Mrs. Brown’s tidy parlor, seated upon chairs borrowed from the dining table. The smell of the Browns’ supper lingered in the house, making Emma think of her mother and her long-forsaken home. Jerome sat beside her, leaning forward as he listened intently to the Reverend Mr. Brown, the Second’s chaplain, reading aloud by lamplight.
“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”
Emma found comfort in these words, and when the assembled joined together in prayer her heart felt as if a great weight had been lifted from it. She and Jerome walked away together, discussing the meeting as they strolled
through the camp toward Emma’s tent, which was nearest.
Jerome’s manner was much more open, fired with enthusiasm for the subject of their discourse. They found themselves in agreement, as they often did, that it was faith that would be the salvation of all soldiers.
When they reached Emma and Damon’s tent they stopped. Emma turned to face her friend.
“Thank you, Jerome. I have very much enjoyed this evening.”
He smiled, the first genuine smile she had seen from him since their talk in the peach orchard. “So have I.”
“Thank you also,” she said, her voice dropping to a near whisper, “for your discretion.”
His smile faded somewhat, and a shadow of trouble returned to his eyes, but he did not turn away. “I have thought long on our conversation,” he said quietly. “I have been plagued by many doubts, but always I returned to remembering our discussions of faith. The star of Christian hope must ever bind the links of friendship more firmly between us, I think.”
Emma let out a breath she had not realized she was holding. “Yes,” she said, smiling. “Yes.”
If, in her moments of folly, she had hoped for more, she knew now that this was enough. Indeed, it was a great gift, and she must be duly grateful.
“I shall be true to your confidence in me,” Jerome said.
“And I to yours,” Emma eagerly agreed.
“And both to our God’s.” Jerome smiled again, offering his hand. “Good night, Frank.”
Emma shook it. “Good night.”
She watched him walk away until, recalling herself, she turned and went into her tent. Damon was not there. She sank onto her bed, relief washing cold through her limbs, and gave a quiet sob of gratitude.
From then on, her friendship with Jerome seemed secure, if not quite as intimate as it had once been. Aware that she had bound her heart to him perhaps more closely than was wise, she now took care to spend some time in company with others. If she did not care for the card games Damon liked, she could still enjoy sitting around a campfire with him and others of the company—Ben Shelley and Will McCreery, especially—trading news and stories.