“I must speak to Johann,” Caroline said, sidestepping Beata and leaving her standing. She looked back over her shoulder once. Beata was still crying.
She stood on the sidelines and waited until Johann had finished reading the list, then waited again while he spoke to each of the distraught people who approached him.
“Johann, how can we find out what’s happened?” she asked finally.
“I’ve already done all I can for now, Caroline. I’ve wired a message to the German clergy in the area. I’ve sent them the names of all those who are missing and wounded. They will search the hospitals in and around Richmond and let me know. It will take time. We can only wait.”
“Frederich…” She couldn’t complete the thought. Everything—the fear and the love and the longing she felt-suddenly coalesced at the mention of his name. She stood there, trying not to let herself be overwhelmed by the rush of emotion. She was only a breath away from wailing like Beata.
“The battle was very terrible, Caroline,” Johann said. “I can offer you no reassurances.”
“Why didn’t we know he was back in the lines? Why didn’t he tell us—you?”
“I can’t answer that—perhaps a letter will come still.”
“He said once that he would do his best to take care of William.”
“Then you can be certain that he did. Frederich is a man of his word.”
Yes, she thought. How else would she have come to be married to him?
“We can only wait,” Johann said again. “Will you come into the sanctuary with the others?”
She shook her head. She left the church and went to the low stone wall instead, stepping over it when she neared the baby’s grave. The grassy sod William had brought from the meadow to cover it was dying in the summer heat. She sat down on the ground because her legs refused to hold her any longer.
I think you better tell Papa you like him.…
Is there nothing about me that pleases you?
Whatever happens…you are done with us?
Frederich!
She didn’t cry. Not that day or the next. By the third day after the news had come—and regardless of what she had said to Beata—she made up her mind, and she went looking for Johann Rial.
She found him in the church with his sleeves rolled up, diligently sweeping the stone floor that had become heavily tracked in this time of worry and sorrow.
“Will you take me into town?” she asked without prelude.
“Town? Why?”
“I’m going to Richmond—”
“You can’t go to Richmond, Caroline. You can’t travel alone—”
“Beata has so kindly pointed out that a woman of my ill repute needn’t worry about that.”
“You cannot go to Richmond.”
“Johann, I am going. I have Eli’s money and I’m going. I have only asked you to take me into town. I have not asked for your permission.”
“Caroline, you don’t even know if Frederich—if any of them—is in Richmond—”
“I can’t find out anything staying here—”
“I told you there are people checking the hospitals. Caroline, I was there after Sharpsburg. I know how difficult finding a particular soldier can be. It will take time—do you have any idea how big the Chimborazo Hospital is? There must be a hundred and fifty buildings in the hospital compound—and that’s not counting all the men in the tent city on the heights. And there are other hospitals in the city besides. He may not even be in any of them. Sometimes a soldier is taken into a private home—or he may be a prisoner of war and halfway to some Northern prison, Caroline!”
“I know that. I know he may be dead. But what if he’s there? What if he’s so wounded that he can’t say who he is? None of your ‘people’ know what he looks like—or what William looks like. Or Avery—I have to go myself. I may not find him any other way, Johann!” she said when he was about to interrupt. “I have to. If you won’t take me to town, then I’ll find somebody who will. Or I’ll walk. Either way, I’m going.”
“Caroline—”
“I’m going, Johann!”
He looked at her a long moment, then set the broom aside. “I suppose then—since Frederich Graeber is my friend and I have given him my word to keep his wife from harm—I will accompany you.”
“No. I’m sure Eli’s letter will have released you from that obligation—”
“You are mistaken, Caroline. You and Frederich both are always mistaken about each other, and truthfully, I am worn out with it. But—be that as it may. If you will go on this quest, then I will go with you—for Frederich’s sake and for the rest of the people here who are waiting for some word. Day after tomorrow. It will take me that long to make arrangements. We will go to town then and try to catch a train to Richmond, and we will see what we shall see.”
She waited until the next day to go to the Graeber house. After she had packed a change of clothes and what few medical supplies she could put together—a sheet to tear up for bandages and her needs, some dried plantain and catnip and camomile. She had honey—an especially important cure for wounds, according to the old Holt family book of herbs and remedies. But she was afraid the stone jar would get broken in transit, so she saturated strips of muslin with the honey and packed them in an oilcloth pouch. If worst came to worst, she supposed she could eat it. And now all she needed was the book itself. It must still be in the Graeber house in the armoire upstairs. And Beata or no Beata, there was nothing for her to do but to go and get it. She needed to tell the children, too, that she was going to look for their father.
Beata was nowhere to be seen when she arrived. Mary Louise and Lise were quietly playing with their dolls in the shade on the back porch. The day was so dusty and hot, but a breeze stirred the trees at the corner of the house from time to time.
“Beata’s upstairs with another headache,” Lise said when Caroline asked. “We have to be quiet.” She looked up at Caroline and sighed. “I knew Papa would get shot,” she said. “I knew it.”
“Lise—”
The child shrugged and went back to tying a pink ribbon around her doll’s waist. “Nothing you can do about it, I guess—just like Mama. Do you think he’s dead?”
“I don’t know,” Caroline said truthfully. “That’s why Reverend Rial and I are going to the hospital in Richmond to look for him. That’s why I came here now—to tell you that we’re going.”
Lise looked up at her again, her face grave and resigned. “It won’t do any good, Aunt Caroline.”
“Won’t do any good,” Mary Louise echoed without taking her attention from her doll.
“We are still going to try our best,” Caroline said. She sat down cross-legged on the porch beside them, and Mary Louise immediately climbed into her lap.
“Then can we go with you?” Lise asked.
“No, Lise. It’s a hard trip and the war is in Virginia. Your papa would be very upset if he thought you and Mary Louise weren’t safe here with Beata.”
“I know a secret,” Mary Louise said, squirming in her lap until she could whisper something in Caroline’s ear. But Caroline couldn’t understand for the giggling.
“What? Tell me again—no, tell me out loud.”
“Lise’s got a sweetheart!”
“I do not!” Lise cried.
“He’s going to marry her in fifty-hundred years—”
“Ten years!” Lise cried, realizing immediately that she had given the “secret” away.
Caroline smiled and reached out to give Lise a hug, thinking that Ann should be here now. Here was Lise—deep in the throes of puppy love—and how Ann would have smiled.
“He’s a soldier and his name is Toby, and he says he’ll wait for me to grow up,” Lise said shyly. “Do you think he will?”
“Well,” Caroline said, trying not to let her own experience cloud her answer. “I think it’s always best to judge a man by what he does—not what he says. I must go see Beata now,” she said, lifting Mary Louise off
her lap and getting to her feet. “Toby, did you say? Is he one of the foragers?”
Lise gave a crooked smile and nodded.
Toby, Caroline thought. The one who took your father away.
But she said nothing more, and when she was about to go into the house, Beata, somewhat disheveled-looking, appeared in the doorway.
“I need my mother’s herb book—I’m going to Richmond,” Caroline said, deciding immediately that, for once, Beata wasn’t pretending to be indisposed. Her forehead was deeply creased and her eyes puffy and squinted as if they had become sensitive to daylight.
“You’ll bring Avery home?” she asked immediately, her voice husky and very un-Beatalike. Once again Caroline marveled at Beata’s flagrantly displaying her heart on her sleeve.
“I will if I can.”
“If he’s…dead, you will still do it?” she asked so quietly that Caroline barely heard her—neither of the children seemed to. Beata studiously avoided her eyes.
“If I can,” Caroline said again. “He’s my brother, for all our differences.”
“Take the herb book,” Beata said in a normal tone. “You may need it for…” She didn’t say for whom. She stood aside to let Caroline pass instead, and under different circumstances Caroline might have taken exception to Beata’s so graciously giving over what didn’t belong to her in the first place.
But this was not the time. She had far too much to worry about to let Beata insult her.
The book wasn’t in the upstairs armoire where she’d put it months ago. There was nothing in it now. She needed-wanted—the book, because she couldn’t bear the thought of actually finding Frederich or any of the rest of them and not having some way to help them, however ineffective the home remedies the book contained might be. She came out into the hall and called over the banister.
“Beata, it isn’t in the armoire where I left it.”
Beata said something she didn’t quite hear, and after a moment Lise came bounding up the stairs.
“I know where it is, Aunt Caroline—Beata had to use it when Mary Louise had the croup,” Lise said, walking rapidly down the hall and into Beata’s room. Caroline stood in the hallway, unwilling to have Beata come upstairs and find her trespassing. She could see the bed through the open door—Beata had been lying down from the looks of it, and there were letters scattered about on the quilt as if she had been reading them.
From Avery? she wondered. Had they come to some kind of “understanding” through an exchange of letters that would account for Beata’s lack of discretion where her feelings for him were concerned?
No, she decided immediately. Avery had been too concerned about Leah’s engagement to Kader to have pledged himself to Beata. And besides that, he would never pledge himself to anybody. She took a small breath and tried not to think about what condition he and the others might be in now.
In a moment, Lise brought out the herb book. Beata was busy in kitchen when they came down the steps. She eyed them closely—apparently to make certain the book was all that was taken—but she said nothing, and neither did Caroline.
“You’ll come back, won’t you, Aunt Caroline?” Lise said as they walked out on the porch. “Even if Papa and Uncle William and Uncle Avery don’t?”
“I’ll come back,” she said, hugging her tightly for a moment and then Mary Louise. “Be good girls for Beata.”
“We will—except sometimes I go and get Papa’s fiddle,” Lise said. “Beata says leave it alone, but sometimes when Mary Louise and I hold it and we try really hard, we can just about almost hear him play it. Is it all right if we just hold it, Aunt Caroline?”
“I don’t think your papa would mind,” she whispered to them. She stood for a moment, looking into their upturned faces, then she slipped from their grasp and hurried away, the book clutched tightly in her arms.
Chapter Twenty
She kept thinking about what William had written after Sharpsburg.
I don’t have to worry no more about what hell is like, for I have seen it with my own two eyes…
She had thought that, intellectually at least, she was prepared to go into the Richmond hospitals. She had seen death before, but she had never seen it on such a scale as this. She had no point of reference, and the reality of these men’s suffering was far beyond anything her uninitiated mind could ever have conceived. The sight and the smells of such mutilation was nearly unbearable, and the cries of fear and pain went on and on in every crowded barracks she entered.
She could hear them in her sleep at night.
Mama! Mama…!
But she kept looking.
I am ready for the storm. No one is going to give me the white feather, William, she promised as she waited for Johann to accompany her into yet another hospital ward. Three days of searching Chimborazo’s one hundred and fifty buildings from dawn to dark had yielded nothing. She had located men from the North Carolina regiments, some of whom belonged to the Fifth, but none of them had been able to give her any information.
But she kept on looking—when she was already exhausted from the harrowing five-day train trip to get to Richmond. Johann had found her lodging of sorts with a middle-aged German clergyman and his huge family, but the house was terribly crowded and she didn’t understand any of their rapid German enough to communicate. A constant object of curiosity for the children, she slept in her clothes in a curtained alcove in the wide upstairs hallway—or tried to. The street noise that never abated and the strangeness of the house and her profound worry kept her awake every night until just before time to get up again. She couldn’t eat and her head ached all the time.
On the fourth morning, Johann came to the house early and was waiting for her to come downstairs.
“I want you to stay here today,” he said.
“No, Johann—”
“Caroline, you are exhausted. I will continue the search. You must rest—sleep. You look terrible.”
“I’ll sleep later, Johann. When I know. I can’t stop now. I can’t…”
They both looked around as the clergyman came into the room. He nodded to her, but he spoke in German to Johann, giving him a folded piece of paper from his coat pocket. Johann read it quickly.
“It’s from another colleague here in the city, Caroline. He says he has located an F. Graeber on the rolls at Winder.”
“Winder?”
“It’s another of the military hospitals—”
“Then we must go. Now.”
“Caroline, don’t get your hopes up,” Johann warned her.
“Oh, please, Johann. Don’t worry yourself about that. It’s been a long time since I’ve been burdened by hope.“
Camp Winder was not nearly as large as Chimborazo— but it was no less intimidating. They found the ward the note had indicated, but the Invalid Corps attendant, a young man with his left arm missing, stopped them from entering.
“I’m looking for Frederich Graeber,” Caroline said, too upset to let Johann do the talking. “He’s a North Carolina soldier—the Fifth Regiment. He’s German. We got a message this morning saying he’s here—in this ward.”
“No,” he said without looking up. “No Graeber. No Germans.”
“But—”
“I’m telling you. There is no Graeber in this ward.”
“Was he here?”
The man ignored the question.
“I want to look,” she said, her voice trembling in spite of all she could do.
“It ain’t no use looking—”
“Please!”
The man glanced at Johann, then shrugged his permission and stepped aside. But he was right. She and Johann peered into every face. None of the men here was Frederich.
“But he was on the roll for this ward,” Caroline said to the attendant. “Could he have been moved to some other one?”
“There is only one place a man goes from here,” the man answered.
She had already pursed her mouth to ask him where, but then she realized that
he meant the cemetery that was clearly visible through the windows behind her. Several burials were going on even now. She stood there, struggling not to cry.
“Has he got any relatives here in the city or close by?” he asked after a moment. “Sometimes a man’s family will come and take him out.”
She shook her head. “I am his only relative here.”
“Then I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said, finally meeting her eyes. He had the same stunned look that Jacob Goodman always wore, and she wondered if all the men who had endured an amputation did as well. She tried not to think of what might have happened to Frederich and William.
“We will leave you the address of the place where Frau Graeber can be reached should you encounter her husband—Frederich Graeber,” Johann said pointedly, looking at the man hard enough to quell the objection he clearly was about to make. The man reluctantly took the slip of paper Johann gave him.
“I don’t think you ought to get your hopes up, ma’am.”
The opinion of the hour, Caroline thought. “We will have to look in the other wards,” she said.
“I’m trying to tell you as kindly as I can that it’s likely a waste of time—”
“Then why was his name on the roll?”
He didn’t answer her. She looked at him until his eyes slid away, and she let Johann lead her outside and make her sit down on a bench by the barracks entrance. There was no shade, and the sun bore down on her. She felt light-headed, and worse, defeated.
“We have to look in the other wards,” she said again.
“You sit for a moment. I’m going to look over here.”
He meant the cemetery, and for once, Caroline made no effort to participate. Her sleepless nights and her fatigue and the overwhelming July heat had suddenly caught up with her, and she sat and watched him move up and down the rows of rough-cut wooden markers, until finally he stopped. She realized immediately that he had found a name he knew.
She didn’t wait for him to call her. She got up from the bench and walked rapidly to where he stood, clearly startling him with her sudden presence.
“Caroline—”
“Who is it?” she asked, trying to see around him. “Johann, who—?”
Cheryl Reavis Page 27