A Call to Arms

by P. G. Nagle

  Emma was at brigade headquarters one afternoon to collect the mail, and stopped in to say hello to the Colonel. Headquarters was housed in several buildings near the ferry at Edwards Landing, Colonel Poe’s office being in a small house with a pleasant front garden, somewhat neglected. Waved into the office by an aide, Emma did not realize at first that the Colonel had company as she dug in her pockets.

  “I brought you some apples, sir. They’re a little green yet, but—oh, I beg your pardon!”

  She stopped, apples in both hands, and stood gaping at the man sitting with Colonel Poe, who wore an infantry uniform with sergeant’s stripes on the sleeves. He was tall and slender of frame, with blond hair just tinged with a hint of red. He raised blue eyes to Emma’s and quirked an eyebrow that was darker and redder than his hair.

  “It’s all right, Thompson,” said Colonel Poe. “Frank Thompson, mail carrier,” he added to his guest. “Frank, this is Lieutenant James Reid, Acting AAG of the brigade.”

  Edwards Ferry, Virginia, 1862

  Oh!” Emma felt a rush of heat in her cheeks, and stuffed the apples back into her pockets. She looked at Lieutenant Reid again, thinking his face familiar.

  “I believe we may have met—weren’t you a sergeant in the 79th New York?”

  “Very observant, Thompson,” said Colonel Poe, lounging back in his chair. “He was indeed, until about fifteen minutes ago. I just signed his promotion.”

  Reid flashed a grin at the colonel, who smiled back. Poe must have liked him, to promote him to the brigade’s staff as Assistant Adjutant General, a position of considerable responsibility.

  “Congratulations,” Emma said.

  Reid glanced at her, still smiling. “Thank you.”

  “What was that about apples?” said the Colonel.

  “Oh.” Emma stepped to his desk and emptied her pockets onto it. “I passed an orchard on the way in, where there were still a few clinging to the trees. I thought you might like some.”

  “Ah! Thank you. Most observant indeed, and most resourceful.”

  Emma felt Reid’s gaze upon her and glanced at him, apple in hand. “Would you like one?”

  He smiled ironically as he leaned forward to accept the apple. His fingers—long, elegant fingers—brushed Emma’s as he took the fruit.

  “Thank you.”

  She felt unnerved by him, by his casual touch and his apparent wry amusement. She was suddenly aware of all her inadequacies: her small size, her disability, and the awkwardness of having blundered in upon Reid and the Colonel’s conversation. Instinct told her to flee.

  “Well, pardon my interrupting,” she said, taking a shuffling step backward, then another.

  Colonel Poe smiled and polished an apple on his sleeve. “Not at all, Thompson. Thank you for the apples.”

  “You’re welcome.” Emma felt the doorjamb against her back, and stopped, still gazing at Lieutenant Reid. “Congratulations again.”

  Reid nodded, the red eyebrow rising. Emma turned and hastened from the room.

  She collected the mail and with the heavy bags slung over her shoulder, limped out to where she had left her mule. Riding back to the Second’s camp, she tried to find a new direction for her thoughts, but kept returning to the meeting in the colonel’s office. She had recognized Reid, but did not really know him. Perhaps that was about to change.

  Soon thereafter, Colonel Poe sent her to Washington to deliver mail to the Second’s wounded who were in hospitals there. She had leisure to make some visits of her own, to points of interest in the capital, as well as to replenish her supply of handkerchiefs. She also had time to rest and recuperate further from her injury, and by the time she returned to Edwards Ferry she was feeling quite nearly herself again.

  From that time on Colonel Poe kept Emma busy carrying his official dispatches as well as the mail. She was often in the saddle, like as not riding to Washington and back once a week or more.

  Returning to Poe’s headquarters on one such occasion, Emma found Lieutenant Reid sitting behind the colonel’s desk, writing a letter. He glanced up at Emma, who stood holding her leather dispatch pouch.

  “Frank Thompson,” Reid said, breaking into a grin.

  “Y-yes. I’m surprised you remember.”

  “How could I forget the first person to congratulate me on my promotion?” Emma had not heard him speak much before, and now noticed the slight lilt to his voice. “The colonel’s out,” he added. “Shall I take that for you?”

  He set his pen in the standish and held out his hand. Emma hesitated. Ordinarily she insisted on placing dispatches directly into the colonel’s hands, but there was nothing urgent in the pouch today, and certainly the adjutant held a position of high trust and responsibility. He was, in many ways, the commander’s right hand.

  She handed him the pouch, and watched him open it and glance through the messages inside. He took them out, laid them aside on the desk, and gave back the empty pouch.

  “Thank you, Thompson.”

  Reid’s smile remained and his gaze lingered, making Emma uncomfortable. She shifted, leaning most of her weight on her good foot.

  “Please tell the colonel I’m sorry I missed him.”

  “I will.”

  Emma turned away, heading for the door. Reid’s voice called her back.

  “Thompson.”

  She turned, remaining by the door. “Yes?”

  Reid leaned his elbows on the desk, watching her with slightly narrowed eyes. “How do you like being a regimental mail carrier?”

  Emma blinked. “I like it very well.”

  “Long hours in the saddle.”

  “I enjoy riding.”

  “Mm. Colonel Poe says you’re good at it.”

  Emma shifted her left foot to ease a cramp. “Usually.”

  “Usually?”

  Was that too arrogant? Yet it was true. She was a good rider, and saw no reason to deny it.

  Reid tilted his head to one side. “How did you hurt your leg?”

  “An unfortunate accident.”

  “Ah.” He smiled and his eyes narrowed a little more. “That is why you say ‘usually’?”

  Emma made no answer. After a moment Reid’s smile widened. He picked up his pen and carefully scraped the excess ink from the nib.

  “Thank you, Thompson.”

  She watched him begin to write, pen scratching on paper. Thus dismissed, she turned to go. As she went out to her horse, she wondered about Reid’s curiosity. Perhaps he was merely familiarizing himself with all the Colonel’s staff, even down to the mail carrier for a regiment not his own.

  The next time Emma reported to Colonel Poe he gave her a fat pouch of dispatches and an unexpected surprise. Lieutenant Reid was again in his office, and the colonel gestured to him.

  “Lieutenant Reid will accompany you to Washington.”

  Astonished, Emma glanced at Reid, then back at the colonel. “Sir?”

  “He has some business to conduct on behalf of the brigade,” said Colonel Poe. “You may as well ride together, and keep each other company.”

  Emma looked at Reid, who returned a friendly smile. “I am leaving directly,” she said.

  Reid stood up and took his overcoat from a peg by the door. “My horse is ready.”

  He gestured for Emma to precede him. Having little choice, she stepped out of the office and passed through to the yard, where her horse stood by the fence where she had left it.

  Several others were there as well; usually there were a number of horses tied outside headquarters. Emma watched Reid go to the head of a magnificent bay gelding.

  Her own mount, a former cart-horse named Ben, recently acquired in place of the mule, could better be described as a sturdy animal. His coat was an unremarkable brown for which the word “sorrel” was almost too rich. She liked Ben for his sure-footedness and stamina, but he was not much to look at. She hauled herself into the saddle, settled her left foot in the stirrup as comfortably as she could, and turned to t
he road.

  Reid fell in beside her, and for the first mile or so kept silent. Emma set a brisk pace once they were away from the village, but in fairness to Ben she could not maintain it indefinitely. She dropped to a walk to let him rest, and Reid, whose horse seemed not to have noticed any exertion, kept pace.

  “The colonel tells me you are also a foreigner,” he said.

  Emma nodded. “I am from Canada originally, but I have been living in America for some time.”

  “Selling books, I hear.”

  Emma felt a prickling at the back of her neck. She turned her head to look at him.

  “You take quite an interest in a lowly mail carrier.”

  Reid smiled. “Ah, well, there is a reason.”

  He said no more, and Emma did not press him. She felt any show of curiosity about his purpose could only make her appear unconfident, and that she could not risk. She looked forward rather grimly to the end of this journey.

  To her surprise, Reid shifted the subject. “What do you think of Burnside?”

  “I have not seen him,” Emma said.

  “That never stops one from having an opinion.”

  Emma shrugged. “My opinion cannot matter much. I had rather have McClellan, but the government seems set against him.”

  “We had all rather have McClellan.”

  Reid gave her a description of Burnside, whom he had seen twice when he had gone to army headquarters on Colonel Poe’s business. “He is about to make a move, you know.”

  Emma glanced up in surprise. “Now? I had thought we were about to go into winter quarters.”

  “Lincoln wants action.”

  Emma shook her head. “That is all very well for him. It is not the President who will be stuck in mud up to the knees.”

  Reid smiled. “I am curious to see some of those old battlegrounds. I missed some of the earliest battles.”

  “We will pass a number of the other battlefields, if you care to stop and look.”

  “I would like that. Will you be my guide?”

  Emma glanced at him and saw him smiling. She gave a shrug. “If you like. I doubt there is much to see.”

  There was, in fact, quite a lot to see, especially at Bull Run, where the second fight had taken place not many months since. The battlefield was still covered with carnage, men and horses thrown in heaps and a little clay thrown over them, others lying where they had fallen, their limbs bleaching in the sun.

  “Look at that,” Reid said, pointing off to one side as they crossed the field. He dismounted, leaving his horse to stand as he gazed at a cavalryman and his horse lying together.

  Nothing was left of them but bones, scraps of hide, and the cavalryman’s clothing. One of his arms stood straight up in the air.

  “He’s lost his hand,” Emma said, dismounting.

  “Here it is.”

  Reid knelt beside the cavalryman and pointed to where his hand lay on the ground where it had dropped off, white bones in perfect order, nothing missing or displaced.

  “Shall we take it?” he asked, looking up at Emma.

  She glanced dubiously at the man’s uniform, hanging on his bones. “We have no way of knowing who he was.”

  Reid gazed at her for a moment, then a corner of his mouth twitched upward. He stood, leaving the hand where it was, and went back to his horse.

  They rode on to Centreville, where they paused again. It was here that Emma had served in the stone church. It was in ruins now, abandoned. Emma stood within its crumbling walls, gazing at the sky and remembering the horrors she had first witnessed here.

  Reid joined her, but kept a polite distance and remained silent, as if sensing that her mood was not for conversation. Emma walked along the center of the church to the back, where the surgeons’ tables had stood.

  “This was a hospital,” she said. “I had my first taste of battlefield nursing here.”

  “I had heard you were formerly a nurse,” Reid said, coming to join her.

  “In Washington, in the regimental hospital. It was different here.”

  She stepped to the back door, which hung by one hinge, rotting. Looking out across fields that had since been swept by fire, she remembered her flight from the Rebels and wondered what had become of the wounded she had been forced to abandon.

  Jerome had been captured rather than leave the men who were in his care. Emma was suddenly smitten by guilt, wishing she had done the same, but that was folly. She could not have risked capture, which would certainly have led to her discovery.

  Sensing Reid’s gaze upon her, she looked at him. The wry smile he often wore was gone, leaving his face unusually sober. She felt a strange attraction to him, as if he needed some comfort that she could offer.

  She turned away, shaking her head. It was the memories of this place, no doubt—of the desperate need of the wounded, and her anxiety to ease them. Always she responded to that need, to a call for water, or the simple desire for a sympathetic ear.

  She missed the work, she realized. Missed the satisfaction of helping others. It had borne her spirits down, once, being every day among the sick and dying, but now she thought she could return to it if only she had the strength. At present, her leg was too weak to enable her to lift and carry patients.

  “What is it?” Reid asked, his voice gentle.

  Emma glanced at him, saying nothing. He gave a rueful smile.

  “You look a little haunted.”

  Emma gazed at the ruined walls again. They were falling in upon the floor. This place, which had once sheltered the wounded, was itself now dying.

  “We are all haunted, are we not?”

  She stepped across a tumbled wall as if to break free of the church’s shadow, and walked back to where the horses waited. Reid followed, and in silence they resumed their journey.

  They rode on, visiting the battlefield at Chantilly, then riding on until dusk. They found lodging at a farmhouse for the price of four dollars and listening to the farmer’s endless stream of complaints against the army. Emma was inclined to be offended, but Lieutenant Reid seemed to be more amused than anything, and she held her peace.

  In the morning they continued to Washington, where they were greeted with the news that Burnside was moving the army, shifting his base from Warrenton to Falmouth, a move that had begun shortly after their departure. Emma, surprised by the swiftness of the change, had to acknowledge that Reid had been right.

  “Well, I had seen clues of it,” Reid said. “No matter, we shall manage.”

  They parted to pursue their separate duties, and after bidding Reid farewell, Emma watched him trot his bay up the avenue toward the Capitol. When he was out of sight, she made haste to attend to her deliveries.

  Washington was as full of life and color as ever. Emma had long since become inured to the sight of generals in plumed hats and gold-fringed epaulets, a costume which would never be seen on the field. Washington had its own values, some of which had little to do with the army’s actual efforts on behalf of the country.

  As evening approached, she began to think of her dinner. She often dined at Willard’s when she was in the capital, if she had funds enough, for it was the most elegant place in the city and she had always been fond of elegance. As her stomach was now grumbling at her, she started thither.

  Willard’s Hotel was the center of military color in the city. It was here that visiting generals stayed, and made sure to be seen hobnobbing with the political elite.

  She entered the lobby a few minutes before five and looked about at a panoply of ornate plumage, interspersed occasionally by sober civilian attire. A shock of pale hair caught her notice.

  Lieutenant Reid was standing in an alcove, talking with an older man in sober civilian attire, whose black beard was peppered with gray. Reid’s expression was earnest. After a moment the man took out a purse and gave him a handful of coins, which Reid tucked into his pocket.

  Emma stepped back, then turned and walked toward the hotel’s front desk, ce
rtain that Reid would not have wished her to see that transaction. She wondered briefly what it was about, but in Washington there was no way of knowing.

  The man could be a lobbyist, or a person who had some reason to bribe Reid though she could not imagine what that would accomplish. Reid might be selling information, but in Willard’s Hotel he would not likely be selling it to an agent of the Confederacy. Perhaps it was something else altogether. Perhaps the man was sending money to a relative in the army, through Reid’s agency.

  Concluding that it was useless to speculate, Emma strolled toward the desk intending to look in the register to see if any of her acquaintances were staying at Willard’s. She was prevented by a hand upon her arm.

  “Thompson! Are you here to dine?”

  “Yes,” Emma said, turning to face him.

  Reid grinned. “I’ve bespoken a table. Have you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then share mine. You won’t get another before ten o’clock.”

  As she allowed herself to be led across the lobby and into the dining room, she wondered fleetingly whether the gentleman with the peppered beard would also join them. She saw no sign of him. Several other gentlemen who were waiting outside the restaurant cast dark looks at her and Reid as they were ushered at once to a table.

  Reid summoned the sommelier and after some discussion selected a bottle of French wine. Emma mentally counted the money she had brought with her. She had enough for dinner, even an elegant dinner at Willard’s, but not enough for extravagance.

  “Well,” said Reid, looking pleased with the world, “at last we may relax! I trust your errands went well?”

  Emma murmured agreement, not thinking it worthwhile to complain of being detained for two hours at one general’s office while she awaited his reply to Colonel Poe’s message. She had not finished quite all of her errands, though she had managed to deliver all the colonel’s dispatches.