by Lyn Cote
A stranger in a black suit stood before the church door with a Bible open in his hand. “I’ve never performed a ceremony like this. One colored couple. And one groom flat on his back.”
“Well, today is the day you do,” one of Dev’s men said, touching his sidearm.
The pastor swallowed. “Very well. Will the first bride come forward?”
Faith stepped to Dev’s side, knelt down, and gripped his hand. “Please proceed, Pastor. We must be ready to leave as soon as the train arrives.” She plainly didn’t like this at all, but it must be done. A rushed marriage of convenience and then a long trip home with a critically ill husband. No wonder this felt more like a funeral than a wedding, Dev thought.
The pastor hurried through the marriage vows and then produced a marriage certificate, which two of the cavalrymen signed as witnesses, followed by Faith. Finally she held the Bible with the certificate on it, and Dev managed to scribble something that might resemble his name. He did not meet her eyes. She couldn’t look into his eyes either, apparently. They had never spoken of anything but books and herbs, never love or marriage.
The pastor then performed the same ceremony for Honoree and Armstrong, followed by the signing of an identical certificate. Armstrong handed the man a five-dollar bill. “Thank you, sir.”
The man pocketed the money and hurried inside the church, firmly shutting the door behind him.
A whistle alerted them all to the approaching train. Her new husband’s stretcher was carried away and once more laid on the Sanitary Commission wagon tailgate while Faith climbed up onto the wagon bench in front. They arrived at the tiny station moments before the steam engine chugged into view and changed to the northbound track.
Faith watched as Armstrong, along with a handful of cavalrymen, went to the train and arranged matters. Very soon they returned, and a few of the cavalrymen carried first the colonel and then both Faith and Devlin’s baggage onto the train.
The cavalrymen had somehow secured him a berth in the lone Pullman car, a type of car Faith had never seen. The rest of the Pullman was empty. Had they moved everyone out? Or were there merely no other passengers able to afford the cost of a berth in the sleeping car? She didn’t have the energy to think or ask. She was simply grateful and hoped their isolation would last. She couldn’t face strangers and their prying questions. The two cavalrymen who’d acted as their witnesses, along with Honoree and Armstrong, had boarded the car with them.
Devlin was obviously in pain. But he addressed the two cavalrymen. “My thanks. Tell all my men farewell.”
Both leaned forward and saluted him where he lay; then they left together. The train whistle blew, and Faith could feel the engines building steam.
The moment of parting had come. Faith threw her arms around Honoree, who did the same in return. They clung to each other, weeping.
Then Armstrong drew Honoree away. He looked down into Dev’s face. “Be a good patient. Get better. Farewell.”
“Farewell,” Dev muttered, sounding exhausted.
Armstrong urged Honoree out of the car and down the steps. Faith followed to the doorway and watched them step onto the station platform. They turned and, along with the cavalrymen, raised their hands in farewell.
Faith also lifted hers, her heart squeezed tightly at the parting. The train jerked to a noisy start and began rolling forward. Soon she’d left behind everyone who’d come to bid them farewell. The train picked up momentum, heading north. When it rounded a bend, she could no longer see Honoree, so she turned back to the colonel—her husband. She felt like she was walking in a dream.
Then he moaned, bringing her back to reality.
She knelt by Dev’s berth and helped him sip some wine she’d brought with her, following it with laudanum syrup. He looked exhausted and tormented with pain.
She hadn’t wanted to leave Honoree, leave the search for Shiloh. She hadn’t wanted to marry the colonel—well, certainly not like this. But this was war, and nothing in war went as planned. At least that was how she saw it.
Dev’s eyes drifted shut and she sighed with relief. At least she had something to give him for the pain. But what would ease the pain in her heart if she became his widow?
NOVEMBER 13, 1863
Well over a week later, in the early twilight of winter and in a pouring rain, Faith superintended Devlin’s stretcher as he was carried off the steamboat onto the wharf in Cincinnati. Since he was a wounded soldier, they were ushered off the boat first.
They were almost home. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and chill November rain pelted her bonnet, washed her face, and trickled down the back of her neck. Somehow she’d reached this city and her husband still breathed. Would they come all this way only to lose him here?
She lifted a hand, beckoning a carriage. One drove up to her. “Please. I need help.” She tried to keep the tremor from her voice. “My husband is recovering—” she hoped so, anyway—“from his wounds. I need to get him out of the rain.”
“A soldier? Yes, ma’am.” The driver hustled down and helped a boatman lift the stretcher into the carriage, propping each end on one of the seats. Then he helped Faith in and handed her the wooden chest she’d carried. “Don’t worry, ma’am. I’ll see to your luggage.” He loaded in the rest of their cases, thumping them into the rear. “Where to, ma’am?”
She was still getting used to being a ma’am, not a miss. “The Brightman-Ramsay house. Do you know it?”
“Certainly I do.” The driver shut the door, and soon the carriage began to move over the rain-slick streets up the bluff, from the Ohio River into the city proper.
Faith clung to the leather strap dangling from the ceiling as she swayed with the carriage, and though the flashes of fading light through the moving window revealed little, she watched Devlin. She’d begun to call him that at his insistence—sometimes even Dev. They must, if nothing else, at least sound like husband and wife.
Within minutes she leaned out the window and glimpsed her sister’s familiar street. She was so close to her final destination. Her heart quickened. Almost home.
The driver got down and splashed through the rain to the door. Faith heard the pounding of the brass knocker, followed by voices. She leaned against the inside of the carriage—after days and nights spent nursing Devlin, on little sleep, she was too tired to move.
“Hello!” The carriage door opened.
Faith recognized her sister’s voice. “Blessing?”
“Faith?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, my!” Blessing reached for her hand. “Thee came home!”
Arriving at last to safety and family, Faith began to weep. She could let her guard down now.
“Who is this?” Light fell onto Blessing’s upturned face.
Faith found she couldn’t tell the truth. A sob forced its way up her throat. She began to weep harder as the rain fell with greater intensity.
Then, since Blessing’s character matched her name, a flurry of activity—not another round of questions—ensued. Blessing and her husband, Gerard, along with several of their staff, swarmed around, and soon Devlin, shielded by umbrellas, was carried into the house and upstairs.
Faith wearily dragged herself up each stair behind his stretcher. When she saw Devlin safely into a luxurious bedroom, she felt herself sinking and heard Blessing cry, “Catch her!”
Faith woke to the stringent odor of smelling salts. For a moment, as she stared up at the ornately plastered ceiling, she couldn’t think where she was.
Then her sister’s voice called her back to her senses. “Faith?”
“Blessing?”
“There thee is again. Sit up. I have broth for thee, and bread,” Blessing said, setting a small tray on the bedside table.
As she sat up in the bed, Faith heard the sound of water pouring into metal.
“Now eat, and by the time that’s done, we’ll have thy bath ready by the fire,” Blessing said in a soothing tone.
Food, a soft bed,
and a bath—heaven. Faith accepted the tray on her lap, sipped the salty broth, and dipped the crusty, buttered bread into it.
“Who is the man traveling with thee?” Blessing asked, sitting in the chair beside the bed.
“Colonel Devlin Knight of Maryland. My husband,” Faith replied, looking down into the bowl of broth and hearing Blessing’s sharp intake of breath.
“That’s what he told Gerard, but I could hardly believe it.”
“It was sudden.” A necessity. Faith still refused to meet her sister’s gaze.
“Well, that’s one way to put it. Is thee taking him home to recover?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry to see thy injured cheek,” Blessing said gently.
Faith had dreaded the rest of her family seeing her scar. She finally looked to Blessing’s kind face. “I’m too tired to explain.”
“No need. Mother told us everything. Eat up and we’ll get thee clean and warm and into bed. Time enough in the morning to talk.”
“The colonel?”
“Thy husband?” Blessing reminded, her head tilted in question.
“Yes. Who is taking care of him?”
“My good husband, his valet, and our butler are seeing to his supper and bath.”
“He should not be allowed to soak in water for long.”
Blessing rose. “I will go tell Gerard. Should a doctor be summoned?”
“No. All that a doctor can do has been done.” Only God can save him, save us.
Blessing paused to search Faith’s eyes, her expression. “I will be right back.”
Faith finished her supper and let her sister and her maid help her bathe and, afterward, tuck her into bed in a pale-blue flannel nightgown, fresh and soft. Faith let her eyes shut, and sleep came almost immediately. She didn’t have to worry about her husband here. Blessing and Gerard could be trusted.
CINCINNATI, OHIO
Days later, Dev looked at the bit of blue-gray sky visible to him through the carriage window across from where he lay on the softly cushioned seat and wondered why he still lived. First he’d been sure he would die on the train, and then he’d been sure he’d die on the steamboat. He’d never expected to make it this far.
Beside Faith sat her fashionable sister and her sister’s well-dressed husband. The four of them were on their way to the Cathwells’ home. He had been surprised by the quality of the mansion Faith’s sister lived in and by the number of servants employed there. He hadn’t thought Quakers owned luxurious mansions. A mystery there.
This road was becoming bumpy. The skin covering his wounds had closed, but the pain had become a deep, relentless, teeth-clenching ache. He refused opium now, fearful of becoming addicted. Yesterday his wife had painstakingly removed his stitches. She’d told him around two weeks had passed since he was wounded, since he’d seen Jack dead.
He still felt mostly dead himself. He’d looked at his arms and legs during his bath that first night in Ohio. Just skin over bone, almost no flesh. The fever still burned low and constant in him, sapping his strength, and he hated it. The deep infection within would kill him. He’d seen it before. It was just a matter of time until he would fall asleep and not wake. A sad way for a cavalryman to die.
On the other hand, Jack had fallen while fighting.
He turned his attention to Faith—his wife—who gazed back at him, serious, pale, drawn. The trip had taken its toll on her, too. If nothing else, however, marrying him and taking him home had pulled her away from the war. For that, he could be grateful. Her parents should be grateful. Yet the red scar on her cheek still cut him like a whiplash.
The constant fatigue claimed him then, and his eyelids refused to stay up. He didn’t fall asleep, but he did relax and let his body roll with the carriage as it worked its way over the uneven road.
He’d soon see the place he’d die and be buried. Would he be able to describe the location in Tennessee where his cousin had fallen so his uncle would not be left wondering?
I must stay alive long enough to write or dictate a letter to my mother. Then she can write my uncle. Two wars, and now none of them—neither Bellamy nor Jack nor he—would live to start a new generation. Their line would end with his death.
“Write my mother,” Dev had said to Faith before he’d fallen asleep last night.
Instead, this morning Faith had avoided this duty and had left her husband in her mother’s care. She’d wanted to get outside, breathe fresh November air, try to clear her mind. She’d wrapped up in a shawl and walked around the property and the cluster of homes that made up her hometown.
Somehow she needed to face the turn her life had taken. She’d been on a quest to find Shiloh and help the Union cause, but she’d been cut off, diverted from both of these goals, and separated from Honoree. Why hadn’t God let her stay the course? Find Shiloh?
Now she’d married a man who had proposed out of necessity. She knew the story of her parents’ marriage, which had taken place when they’d known each other barely even a week. But that hadn’t been during a war, and Devlin might still die. Nothing made sense.
After exhausting the places she could visit in her small hometown, finally she made her way to her dried-up herb garden. She’d known how it would look. And in a way she felt like her stricken plants. Images from the war crowded her mind no matter how hard she tried to expunge them. How were Honoree and Armstrong? Where were they at this moment? Would they find Shiloh?
She heard someone coming and turned. Her father was walking toward her from the glassworks behind the Cathwells’ large cabin and the other cabins where Honoree’s parents and the other glassworkers and staff lived. Her father came to her and set his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close against him. He didn’t need to say anything. His concern came through his touch.
She tucked herself into his thick wool shirt under his embrace and wept a few tears.
He touched the back of her head and she watched him sign, “Why is thee crying?”
She tried to come up with a single reason, but so much was tangled together. She shook her head in despair.
“Thee went to find Shiloh. Is thee sad that thee wasn’t successful?” he signed.
A harsh sob forced its way up her throat and she wept harder.
Her father stroked her back with his strong yet gentle hand. Then he lifted her chin with his index finger. “I never told thee, but I never expected thee to find her. Some tasks are too big for us.”
She stared at him, her tears drying up. Her father’s simple words clarified so much. She nodded yes.
“We couldn’t save Patience from the fever that took her, and only God can bring Shiloh home.”
She began crying again, remembering that night five years ago when kidnappers had drugged and bound her and stolen Shiloh from them.
Her father held her close and continued rubbing her back as if she were a child again. She allowed the healing in his touch to begin its work. Finally she straightened, pulled herself together. I release Shiloh to thee, Lord. We are in thy loving hands.
Hearing the dinner bell, she signed, “Time for lunch.”
He nodded. “Good. I’m hungry.”
She realized she was too—ravenous, in fact. The two of them walked arm in arm to the house. Her tears had washed away her guilt over failing to find Shiloh. God would have to bring Shiloh home.
Still, Faith could hardly believe she herself had arrived safely at her own home again. How could life here go on as always when, south of here, men were shooting at each other, killing each other? One existence must be a dream or nightmare, not real.
But both, she knew, were all too real.
Inside, Faith helped her mother set the table—just three places, for Faith and her parents. None of Faith’s siblings remained at home, though Ella was living here at present. This morning, however, she had gone to help a neighbor with her canning.
The long time away at war had caused Faith to see her parents with fresh eyes. She noted that
her father’s hair was salt-and-pepper and Honor’s blonde hair was threaded with abundant silver.
Both her parents were letting the younger generation take over Cathwell Glassworks. Though Samuel and Honoree’s father, Judah, still occasionally crafted some special-order glass, neither worked the long hours they once had. Faith’s adopted cousin, Caleb, supervised the glassworks. Caleb and his wife and children lived in a cabin behind the glassworks. Two young men from Judah’s church had served as apprentices and now manufactured the regular glass orders.
The cook, Annie—one of the glassworkers’ wives—knocked at the door. Honor opened the door and the plump woman hurried inside with a tray.
“I hope it’s not gone cold,” Annie said. “How is the soldier?”
“I’m still here,” Devlin muttered from his makeshift bed by the fire.
“Well,” Annie said, “I hope you’re hungry. I made cream of celery soup and biscuits.”
“I’ll do my best. Thank you,” Dev said.
Annie spoke a few more encouraging words before returning to the detached kitchen near her cabin.
Honor said grace and served the lunch. Faith moved to feed Devlin.
“You eat first,” her husband said. “I don’t have much appetite.”
The lunch conversation was stilted. Faith could see from her parents’ concerned expressions that there was much they wanted to ask about her and Devlin and their sudden marriage. But they did not choose to do so—yet.
After lunch, Honor left, carrying the tray of used tableware to the kitchen for washing, and Samuel headed toward the glassworks. Faith went to her husband, propped him up, and set a tray on his lap. Then she sat down beside him. He’d decreed he’d feed himself or go hungry.
She gazed at him. He had survived this far. God had obviously decided the time had come for both of them to retreat. She sighed suddenly. “Nothing has gone as we wanted, has it?”
Dev glanced at her sharply. “That just occurred to you?”