by Lyn Cote
“At ease, Corporal.” If he’d known this man’s wife was from the South, he could have avoided this breach of etiquette. But he’d assumed she was from the North like Faith.
“Corporal,” Faith continued, “thy sweet wife is helping us with our laundry, as she said. And white women do take in laundry in the North.”
“We’re not from the North,” the corporal said through gritted teeth.
“That is quite true,” Faith allowed, “but while in Rome, one must do as the Romans do.”
“What?”
“Corporal, I know in the South a white woman taking in laundry is not the usual,” Dev cut in, hoping to avoid trouble for the young wife. “But this is wartime. Nothing here is like it is at home. And I know firsthand that in the Mexican War white women worked as laundresses.”
Corporal McCullough chewed on these words and finally nodded grudgingly. “Ella, you can help these ladies. Everybody knows about how much Miss Faith and Honoree do for wounded soldiers. But I won’t have you takin’ in laundry like a …”
“Like a Negress,” Honoree finished for him, lacing the word with sarcasm.
The corporal stiffened, flushing red.
“Corporal,” Dev said as if he’d not heard Honoree’s words, “I just lost my manservant and I’d take it as a personal favor if you would allow your wife to take care of my things this once. I need to go to the contraband camp and find someone to care for my clothing, but I haven’t had time.”
Landon turned to him. “Well, if you put it that way, I can’t very well refuse.” He looked to his wife. “Ella, just this time, understand?”
“Yes, Landon.” Ella smiled tentatively. “I didn’t mean … I—”
“Very well,” Landon said, drawing closer to her and handing her a knapsack. “You forgot these,” he whispered.
With a tremulous smile, Ella accepted the knapsack, and after saluting the colonel, Landon left them.
Dev noticed Faith looking past him, over his shoulder. She smiled and said, “Armstrong, how happy I am to see thee.”
Dev stiffened. He turned.
Armstrong stood before him in an artillery uniform with one private’s stripe. Dry-mouthed, Dev could only stare at the man.
“Good day, Miss Faith,” Armstrong said politely. “Miss Honoree?”
“Armstrong!” Honoree said with obvious pleasure, setting down the buckets she held and coming forward.
Armstrong reached for her hand. “Would you walk with me, Miss Honoree?”
The girl laughed as if he’d told a joke. “Never,” she teased even as she claimed his arm.
Not even glancing toward Dev, Armstrong managed to bow to Faith as Honoree walked away on his arm.
Ignored and miffed, Dev almost asked him to wait. But what could he say? I’m sorry? He was sorry, but not at all sorry.
“It is a difficult situation,” Faith said with audible sympathy.
He didn’t want her sympathy.
“Will thee walk me so I can fetch more water to help Ella?” she asked him, picking up the discarded buckets.
He wanted to deny her, but everything within him strained toward her. Just being near Faith had become his only solace. “As you wish,” he said.
She gripped his arm as Honoree had Armstrong’s. After a few paces, she asked in a low voice, “What is it about doing laundry that is demeaning to whites? It’s honest work.”
Dev didn’t want to answer her because he wasn’t entirely sure how to explain.
She glanced up at him around her bonnet brim. “Colonel?”
“A white woman who’s poor can do her own laundry,” he replied, “but only black women do laundry for hire.”
“Why?”
Dev shrugged, uncomfortable, yet he couldn’t understand why.
Faith walked beside him, obviously in thought. They passed other soldiers doing laundry, writing letters, cleaning their rifles.
“That is the worst part of the slave system,” she murmured.
“What is?” He couldn’t keep his irritation from his tone. Seeing Armstrong and being ignored nettled him, and he hated admitting that even to himself.
“When only black people labor and black people are disrespected, then honest labor loses its respect. Doesn’t thee see that?”
“What does it matter?” Why couldn’t she leave it be for once?
“It matters because first, it’s wrong; and second, slavery is not going to continue. If honest labor isn’t respected, who will do the work in the South then?”
“Did you ever think the South might prevail?” he replied, not believing the disgruntled words but not wanting to go along with her line of reasoning.
“No,” she said flatly. “The Northern blockade is closing the South’s ports along the Atlantic, the Gulf, and now the Mississippi River. Since Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation made slavery the official issue of this war, Europe is not coming to their aid. And the North is enlisting immigrants as quickly as they come to our shore, a seemingly endless supply of men. An army must have men and supplies. The South has limited numbers of both and is being depleted almost daily.”
Everything she said was absolutely accurate, but he didn’t reply. He could still hardly believe some of the subjects that came up in this woman’s conversation.
“After they lose the war,” Faith went on, “the white people of the South will be too poor to hire the freed slaves. Who will rebuild the factories and homes and plant the crops?”
“I don’t have an answer for you.”
She drew in a deep breath, somehow not finished. “The South’s future is not bright. This war is destroying it, and it may not have the will to rebuild since it will lose its free slave labor.”
Her words pierced him. He shut his mind to them. He wanted to turn the discussion away from the South’s bleak prospects, Maryland’s prospects. “I just read a newspaper account of a battle that took place almost concurrently with the surrender here,” he said to distract her. “It was in Pennsylvania.”
“A battle in Pennsylvania? The Confederate Army penetrated into Union territory?” Faith interrupted.
“Yes. Lee’s army.”
“What town? My father is from Pittsburgh.”
“Gettysburg, a small town in the south.”
“Ah, I overheard something about this yesterday, but I haven’t had time to read the newspaper I bought from the vendor earlier today. What has happened?”
“While Vicksburg was surrendering, the Union defeated Lee’s army at Gettysburg, but at great loss.”
Faith tightened her grip on his arm.
“I’m sorry,” he said, already regretful he’d brought this up. She was a woman who cared too much. “I shouldn’t have told you—”
“Don’t be foolish,” she said. “I would have found out. I am not some delicate shoot that must be carefully tended in a greenhouse. I’m a nurse in war. I just …” She pressed her fist against her lips. Finally she managed to speak again. “Thee knows what I think of this war.”
Then the words he’d vowed not to say to her slipped out. “Why did you quote that Scripture to me the other day in Vicksburg?”
She looked into his eyes. “About serving two masters?”
“Yes.” He waited.
“Can’t thee guess?”
“No.” He couldn’t help sounding grumpy.
“Thee does know.”
They came upon a pump on the outskirts of Vicksburg near an abandoned house. He walked over and began working the handle for her. The metal’s creaking made him grit his teeth. For the moment they were alone.
She held the first bucket under the stream of cool water. “Colonel, thee comes from a slave state but fights to preserve the Union. Thee owned a slave yet didn’t want to. Thee planned to free him but didn’t.”
He didn’t respond at first but was unable to keep silent for long. “The passage has nothing to do with that and you know it. It has to do with seeking worldly wealth instead of following
God.”
She moved the full bucket aside and set the empty one under the water stream. “That is true, but it fits. My family has devoted themselves to following God—”
“Slavery is in the Bible,” he retorted. “‘Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters.’”
“At Jubilee, every seven years, slaves were to be freed,” Faith replied calmly, evenly. “Nowhere in the Bible does it say one race should enslave another race just because of skin color. And don’t insult Armstrong or Honoree by telling me they need us to take care of them. Who took care of thee for the past twenty years?”
He wanted to snap at her, and if her tone had been argumentative, he would have. But she’d said those inflammatory words without emotion, stating them as simple facts. His chest tightened with her rebuke.
“Plantation owners didn’t want to pay for the labor because they desired not just to provide for their families but to gain inordinate wealth,” Faith said. “That is greed. Thee said thyself that thy mother didn’t want to hold slaves and left her family’s plantation for that reason. My mother left her family over the same issue. If the South had served God instead of mammon, this war would not have happened.”
“It’s not as easy as that,” Dev muttered, still unwilling to go where she was leading him. “The crops in the South—cotton, tobacco, rice—are different from the crops in the North and need many workers to tend to them. Hence the plantation system.” Dev concentrated on pumping.
“Thee is at cross-purposes with thyself,” she said, ignoring what he’d said. “A house divided against itself cannot stand. And it sounds to me as if thy family is divided against itself. Thy mother versus thy uncle. Jack versus thee. And thee not keeping thy promise to Armstrong.” Not looking at him, she moved the second filled bucket away, then bent and splashed the last of the stream onto her face and neck.
Dev let his pump hand drop. “I don’t want to talk about Armstrong.” His own rudeness abashed him. “I’m sorry, but—”
She interrupted him. “How long can thee push aside these conflicts? Can’t thee see the world is changing around thee? I just posed the problem of the loss of Southern wealth that will come with the war’s end.”
“I know,” he said tersely, again ashamed of himself.
She didn’t reply, merely gazed at him.
He picked up the full buckets and led her back through camp, surrounded by snatches of the conversations of the men they passed. He could not bring himself to speak to her. She made it sound so clear and easy to change his outlook, but she was not in it as deeply as he was. Her family wasn’t torn in two.
She hummed as if she didn’t feel the tension he did. It irritated him.
“I heard from my mother too,” he said finally, trying to regain their usual companionship.
“Some things don’t change,” she said with a soft smile. “Our mothers’ love for us.”
Even as everything else changes. He concentrated on the water in the buckets he carried, careful not to spill.
“Is there any news about Port Hudson?” she asked.
He resented the question because he knew why she asked it. How could he persuade her not to go to New Orleans? The times were too uncertain, too volatile for her to travel among people who wished her dead. And then to start asking them for information about a freeborn woman of color kidnapped and sold as a slave! She’d be exposing the ugliest side of slavery.
He must find a way to persuade her to listen to him and drop this quest till after the war.
“Colonel?” she prompted.
“No, no news from Port Hudson.” He was forced by honesty to add, “But I doubt they can hold out long now.”
“Nothing in this war makes sense to me.”
He couldn’t disagree. He tried to come up with a topic to turn away from these weighty subjects. But as usual, she was quicker.
“Tell me more about thy library. What book is the most important to thee?” she asked in a much lighter tone.
Inhaling deeply, he replied, “Machiavelli’s The Prince.” Grateful for the distraction, he vowed that when Port Hudson fell or surrendered, he’d find some way to forestall her. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t seem to have the sense to fear. But evidently she would not give up on her friend Shiloh … or on him.
ON YET ANOTHER sweltering July morning, Faith and Honoree reported to the hospital tent for their morning duties and there met Ella, willing to help as usual. The young wife looked wan, her clothing wrinkled, no doubt just the way they appeared to her. Outside, the drummer finished sounding morning roll call. Gazing around at the sparsely occupied cots, Faith heard herself sighing.
Though she and the colonel had parted without further rancor, she couldn’t overcome the prickly part of their conversation. Why was it that an intelligent man, an officer and a graduate of West Point, could not see the contradiction in his own actions and thoughts?
Pushing this question aside, Faith smiled at the first patient she approached. Now that the fighting here was at an end, their tasks had become lighter and lighter as patients recovered and went back to their duties or were sent home, discharged from further service. Even in this quiet period Faith didn’t allow herself to think too far ahead. The war had yet to be won. This was merely a lull between campaigns. The Mississippi River had almost been taken by the Union. But that left the rest of the Confederacy to conquer.
And what about Shiloh? Faith sighed again, scolded herself, and began moving from patient to patient, seeing to their needs.
After making the rounds, Faith sat down beside a young soldier whose right sleeve was pinned up over what remained of his arm. He had yet to learn to write with his left hand. She’d brought a small portable writing desk with her for cases like this. “I have time to write letters,” she told him gently.
“Thank you, miss.”
She began writing down what he dictated, knowing that those receiving the news of his injury and his discharge would be both happy and sad. His wife would say, “At least he’s alive,” and then she would cry till there were no more tears. Faith fought the temptation to give in to this moroseness. She had work to do.
Dr. Bryant appeared in the opening of the tent, gesturing to them. “Ladies, please come outside. You too, Mrs. McCullough.”
Faith, Honoree, and Ella glanced at each other but obeyed the summons.
“I’ll be right back,” Faith murmured to the soldier and set her writing desk down on the bedside camp stool.
Outside, Faith saw that one of the photographers who’d recently arrived in camp had now set up his odd-looking equipment here.
“I have decided to have a photograph of our staff taken,” Dr. Bryant said. “How do you want us to pose?” he asked the photographer.
Faith’s restless mind drew her back to the scene of the colonel pumping water for her and denying the truth that he was as divided as this nation was, warring within himself.
Intruding into her thoughts, the thin photographer in a dusty hat stepped forward and arranged them according to height in front of the tent. He set Dr. Bryant in the center. But he left Honoree out of the arrangement.
Faith cleared her throat and glanced at Dr. Bryant.
“Honoree, please take your place next to Nurse Cathwell,” Dr. Bryant said.
“I thought she was a maid,” the photographer said, looking puzzled.
“I hear that a lot,” Honoree said, inserting herself beside Faith. “But I am a trained nurse.”
“Really?” the photographer commented, shaking his head as if he’d heard everything now. He hurried back to his camera and ducked his head under the cloth. “Now hold still. Hold still. Doooon’t move.”
Faith and everyone around her froze into place. She tried to keep her face pleasant, not liking photographs where people looked as if they were being slowly tortured. The point she’d tried to make with the colonel was that he was torturing himself by his refusal to face reality. Just like Ella’s husband, whose ideas of
what was proper for a white woman to do would no longer be true after the war. At least, that’s how Faith saw it.
Even after her conversation with the colonel had taken a turn for the better—when he’d told her about his most prized book—he’d looked vexed as they parted. That should not matter to her, but it did. She would not avoid the truth. But she could not force the colonel to see it. “There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
Finally the flash of powder and the loud click startled Faith back to the present.
“Done! You can move again!” The photographer came out from his cloth head-tent and removed the glass plate from the bulky camera on stilts. “Shall I take one more in case someone moved?”
Dr. Bryant agreed, and they all went through the process a second time. Faith forced herself to stare at the camera and hold the colonel away from her thoughts.
“I will be taking many photographs around camp,” the photographer said. “My tent is to the north side. If you’d like to purchase a photograph, come there before I leave camp. I will be developing film every evening for a while.”
Relieved, Faith and Honoree turned to go back inside the hospital tent, Ella in their wake. “Should I purchase a couple,” Faith asked Honoree, “to send home?”
“Yes. I don’t think it’s a case of vanity if that’s your concern. Our parents would be happy to see us and the people we work with. And I’d like to give one to Armstrong before he leaves.”
Abruptly Faith turned to Honoree. “He’s leaving?”
“The fighting here is nearly done. Most of the army will be moving east now, don’t you think?”
“I believe thee is right,” Faith commented, unhappily picturing the colonel charging into battle again, the thought squeezing her heart.
Ella gasped and swayed, bumping into Faith.
Honoree reached out and steadied the girl. “You look as white as a sheet. We’ll get you some coffee.”
“Oh no,” Ella moaned. “I don’t want coffee.”
Honoree put an arm around her and propelled her toward the empty hospital mess tent, seating her at a table inside. Honoree headed out through the open back flap to get something for her from the cook.