The Velvet Shadow

by Angela Elwell Hunt

  No, Roger would not appreciate Flanna’s lifesaving skill, but one day Private Fraser might be very grateful that Roger dearly loved drill practice.

  Calmer now that his gorge had stopped heaving, Alden stood and peered inside the tent again. Flanna stood at the side of the table, her right hand rising and falling in a regular, graceful pattern, like the women he’d seen at country quilting bees. She was sewing, he realized, holding a needle in another pair of surgical tweezers, moving over the patient’s gut in a regular and even rhythm.

  He held his breath as Flanna gave another order to her maid. The girl came forward, held a pitcher of water over the patient, and doused Private Fraser’s gut with a blasting stream of water. Once that was done, Flanna pulled a sheet up to the private’s chin, then stepped back and gave Charity a wavering smile.

  “All right, open the tent and we’ll let the fresh air revive him,” she said, her voice carrying outside to Alden. He stepped forward, lifting the tent flap as he came.

  “Major?” Flanna’s brow arched in surprise as she moved toward another basin to wash the blood from her hands. “Did you feel it necessary to spy on me?”

  “Not at all.” He took a step forward, then halted at the odors in the tent—the pungent scent of chloroform, the stale scent of sweat, the tang of blood. “I was merely…curious.” He glanced at the covered body on the table, then thrust his arms behind his back and returned his gaze to Flanna. “Did the operation go well?”

  “I believe it did,” she said, her eyes flitting toward the unconscious soldier, “but time will tell. There is always the chance of infection, though I did everything I could to keep the area clean.”

  “Is cleanliness so important?”

  A thoughtful smile curved her mouth. “Cleanliness is next to godliness, isn’t it? I believe it also aids in the practice of medicine.”

  “Well then.” Alden paused, casting about for something to say. For some unknown reason he suddenly felt as tongue-tied as a boy alone with a girl for the first time. “I was very impressed, Dr. O’Connor. You seemed most capable.”

  Flanna looked up, her fascinating smile crinkling the corners of her eyes. “We were both fortunate this time, Major. Your soldier—well, he put me at ease.” She lifted a towel from a table and began to dry her hands. “I wouldn’t want to do this type of surgery every day. But perhaps you should reconsider my offer to accompany your regiment.”

  “Now, Flanna—” Alden lifted his hand, amazed at her persistence.

  “Think about it, Major.” Humor struggled with annoyance on her fine-boned face as she looked up at him. “I’ve heard about Dr. Gulick’s so-called work for your regiment. And while I may not share his gender, I can guarantee that I do not share his fondness for taverns and gambling.” A tremor touched her smooth, rose-colored lips as she dropped the towel and took a step toward him. “Let me go south with you. You don’t have to pay me. I’ll go and I’ll help your men…because I must go home.”

  Alden shook his head, unwilling to voice the feelings that had risen in his throat. Again she had asked the impossible, but his reasons for refusing this time were far different than the last time she’d asked. Before he had cited rules, regulations, and the practical impossibility of allowing a woman from South Carolina to act as a Union physician. But now he would not take her for the simple reason that men did not carry beloved valuables to war.

  For some reason, she seemed to find his refusal amusing. “Still not willing to consider the idea?” She took a deep breath and adjusted her smile. “Apparently I shall have to wait out this war in Boston. But there may come a time, Major Haynes, when you will wish you had another pair of experienced medical hands—even if they are a woman’s.”

  “Dr. O’Connor,” he said, a wry smile curling his own lips, “I fear you may be completely correct.”

  Nine

  Tuesday, July 30

  Yesterday I operated on a patient—Pvt. Henry Fraser, of the 25th Massachusetts. The patient seems to be making a good recovery, though I am certain my prayers have more to do with this soldier’s health than my pitiful work. But God way good. He Steadied my hand and helped me remember all that I needed to know.

  I was so eager to share the news with someone—but can’t be entirely honest here, of course, for there is no lock on my door! I wrote a longs letter home to Papa and Wesley, giving them every detail, and was bold enough to actually mail it. Mrs. Davis drizzled gray disapproval upon the letter and handled it by one corner, as if it would somehow poison her.

  Mrs. Davis’s niece, a rather prissy-looking girl called Nell Scott, has come into the city from Roxbury. I don’t know what she intends to do here besides entrap a husband, for her attentions are almost entirely centered upon the soldiery—and the more braids upon the many shoulder, the better. She sings “Weeping Sad and Lonely” with an overtly sentimental gleam in her eye that I find extremely annoying—particularly when she casts goose-eyes at Alden Haynes from across they church social hall. She cannot be the type of woman he likes, though he is far too polite to say anything to offend her feelings.

  Oh, why do I even care about Nell Scott? Father God, please show me the way out of Boston!

  As July passed into August, Flanna continued to divide her time between work for the Sanitary Commission and the Boston Women’s Hospital, but she also visited the regimental camp every day to check on Henrietta Fraser. That courageous young woman had made a remarkable recovery from surgery and was scheduled to return to light duty at the end of August. A postoperative fever had been halted with generous doses of water and the regular application of clean bandages, and Flanna was confident that no doctor in Boston could have done better. Best of all, no one in the Twenty-fifth Massachusetts suspected that Private Fraser was anything other than the farm boy she claimed to be.

  “How do you escape their notice?” Flanna asked one sweltering Saturday afternoon as she visited the recovering soldier in camp.

  Fully dressed in a regulation blue uniform, Henrietta was sitting by the fire eating a mash of potatoes and stewed vegetables. The private hesitated until her last messmate finished and left the campfire, then she gave Flanna a shy smile. “Think about it, Doctor.” She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, a decidedly unfeminine gesture she may have picked up either at home or in camp. “All the women ’round here are shaped like thimbles and decorated in bonnets and ribbons. These men ain’t never seen a woman in trousers, and most of’em can’t believe that a woman would ever want to stick her limbs in a pair of pants.” She looked down, long lashes hiding her eyes. “I reckon another woman would see me for what I am far quicker than most of the men.”

  Flanna smiled, silently agreeing. Now that she knew Henrietta’s secret, it was difficult to see anything but a young woman with large eyes and a delicate frame.

  “But don’t they—” Flanna hesitated, unsure how to ask about private matters. For all her coarseness, Henrietta Fraser was still a modest young woman. “How do you handle the times…when a woman needs to be alone?”

  The tip of Henrietta’s nose went pink, and she smiled, looking somewhat abashed. “Oh, that.” She shrugged. “They just think I’m shy. There’s a couple of other shy boys who don’t like bathing in the open or relieving themselves in the company sinks.”

  “But surely Dr. Gulick noticed something when he administered your physical. He can’t have been that drunk!”

  Henrietta’s grin shone through her freckles. “Dr. O’Connor, don’t you know nothing? Those army doctors got orders not to be too picky. When I steps to the head of the line for my physical, the doctor asks me to hold up my arm, says my trigger finger looks like it works fine, then shakes my hand and tells me, congratulations, I’ll make a fine soldier no matter how skinny I am!”

  Flanna frowned and laced her fingers together. “I have no trouble believing that few men think a woman capable of fighting a war. But you would think at least one or two of the brighter fellows here would open their eyes to
the truth staring them in the face.”

  Henrietta stood and raised her arms, looking for all the world like a scarecrow in a too-big jacket. “I don’t look like much, but I look like a soldier,” she said, her blue eyes dark and serious, “and I must thank you again, Dr. O’Connor. You not only saved my life, but you saved my family too. We needed that bounty money to make it through the winter ’cause my pa can’t farm much since he broke his leg last summer.”

  Heat began to steal into Flanna’s face. “Never mind that. How’s your incision?”

  “That scar’s just a little red and puffy now, nothing like it was. I promise to keep it clean, just like you said.”

  “You’re doing very well.” Flanna gathered her skirts. “I’ll be back to check on you in two weeks.”

  “No ma’am, you won’t find me in a couple weeks. The regiment is moving out. We’ll be on our way to Washington by next Saturday. Major Haynes says we’ve got 930 men now, and as soon as the new ones have a bit of drill training, we’ll be heading south.”

  Speechless with surprise, Flanna stared at the girl. Neither Roger nor Alden had said anything to her about leaving soon.

  Next Saturday! The thought of the Haynes brothers’ departure made the skin on her arms prickle into gooseflesh. Soon her best friends would be gone, and she would be alone in a city of hostile foreigners. Though no one would be so crass as to openly say so, Flanna knew that only her friendship with the Haynes family had held the secessionist critics at bay. But when Roger and Alden were gone, Mrs. Haynes’s polite invitations to church and Sunday dinner would evaporate, and so would the restrained silence that greeted Flanna and Charity wherever they went. The hate and spite that filled the editorial pages would spill out on her, the secesh doctor from South Carolina, birthplace of traitors.

  Flanna bade a thoughtful farewell to Private Fraser, then pulled Charity from a group of servants and began the long walk back to the boardinghouse. Apparently sensing her mistress’s mood, Charity walked beside Flanna with her head down and her dark eyes fixed on the stone walkway.

  Thoughts Flanna had not dared formulate came welling up as they walked, an ugly swarm of doubts, suspicions, and fears. The newspapers overflowed with tales of Southern sympathizers arrested as suspected Confederate spies. Boston readers had been particularly enraged by the story of Mrs. Rose Greenhow, a forty-four-year-old Washington widow who had apparently sent information across the Virginia border and enabled the Confederates to smash the Union at Bull Run. In retaliation, Federal officials were holding Mrs. Greenhow under guard in her home. Forbidden to read newspapers or receive uncensored mail, the dignified widow could only visit with “approved” relatives. According to newspaper reports, Union officials forced Mrs. Greenhow to live in “the full sight” of Union soldiers, “with her rooms open as sleepless sentinels watched and looked at her by way of amusement, all the mysteries of her toilette laid bare to the public eye.”

  Though Boston had not yet discovered a spy among its own ranks, Flanna feared that once the brothers Haynes left the city, she might be the first target of speculation. Why, she may have already committed worse sins than Mrs. Greenhow without knowing it! In the vain hope that a letter might reach her home, she had written her father about Private Fraser, innocently describing the condition and strength of the army regiment. What if that letter ended up in the wrong hands?

  Even if she was not openly accused of a crime, the polite disdain she had thus far experienced would certainly turn to open distrust and suspicion once Alden and Roger moved south. It could take days or weeks, but Flanna knew she would eventually be discharged from her employment. What hospital would allow a potential spy to care for its patients?

  And at the end of this month, her father’s prepayment of her room at the boardinghouse would run out. With no income, Flanna would have no means to pay her rent. Mrs. Davis would certainly evict her.

  Those dire thoughts brought an indisputable realization in their wake, and a chill that struck Flanna deep in the pit of her stomach. She had no place in Boston, she would have to leave.

  Before Boston cast her out.

  Ball’s Bluff

  There are bonds of all sorts in this world of ours,

  Fetters of friendship and ties of flowers,

  And true lover’s knots, I ween,

  The girl and the boy are bound by a kiss.

  But there’s never a bond, old friend, like this—

  We have drunk from the same canteen.

  FROM A CIVIL WAR POEM, AUTHOR UNKNOWN

  Ten

  Sunday, August 25th

  I went to church this mornings with Mrs. Haynes. Roger and Alden received liberty to come, too, and I could scarcely look them in the eye, knowing that it would be the last day they worship with us. Mrs. Haynes knows they are leaving; she wept into her handkerchief during the entire service. I could not weep; my thoughts were too heavy for tears. I sat between Roger and Alden and wondered how I managed to give my affection to one and my utmost admiration to the other.

  This afternoon, when Charity and I retired upstairs for our afternoon nap, I pretended to sleep while Charity practiced her readings out of the Bible. She read the Scripture we had heard in church that morning: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident. Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies: for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty. Wait on the Lord be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: watt, I say, on the Lord.”

  I know now what I must do. And though my spirit quails at the thought of it, at least I know that the Lord will walk with me. I shall not be alone.

  “Miss Flanna?” Charity’s voice floated through the darkness like the whimper of a disembodied spirit. “Miss Flanna, what are you doing there?”

  Flanna sat in the rectangle of moonlight that poured from the tall window in her room. The sultry nighttime breeze blew in across her face, lifting the lace curtains and ruffling her hair—what remained of it.

  “Miss Flanna, you’d better answer me!”

  “We’re leaving, Charity.” With mathematical precision, Flanna ran her fingernail over her scalp, sectioning off another hank of hair. The scissors bit through the locks with a clean snip, and Flanna let the hair fall to the floor.

  “Leaving?” The bedclothes rustled as Charity’s voice drew nearer. “What do you mean, we’re leaving? The train won’t take us home, and the army said they didn’t want any lady doctors.”

  “I’ve got it all planned.” Flanna snipped another lock. “And I’ll need your help, so now that you’re awake, you might as well come here. I’m having a little trouble with the back of my head. Could you cut it for me in a straight line?”

  “You’re cutting all your hair off?” Charity stumbled into the moonlight and gazed at Flanna with wide, luminous eyes. “Miss Flanna, are you feeling all right? If you’re sick, I could go downstairs and fetch you some tea.”

  “Charity.” Flanna lowered the scissors to the floor and looked up at her maid. “We have to leave Boston, and we’ll have to slip away so no one knows where we’re going.”

  “Ain’t we going home?”

  “Yes. We’re going home the hard way, but it’s the only way I know. Remember Private Fraser? We’re going to do what Henrietta did. We’re going to get ourselves some trousers and shirts and pretend to be soldiers.” She took a deep breath and smiled up at Charity. “The Twenty-fifth Massachusetts is moving out next week, and when they go south, you and I will be among them.”

  Charity sank to the floor with a loud thump, crossed her legs, and wordlessly stared at Flanna.

  “Mrs. Davis will think we’ve gone to New York,” Flanna went on. “You’ll pack our trunks, and I’ll leave a letter indicating that they’re to be sent to Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. Mrs. Davi
s and Mrs. Haynes and anyone else who cares will think we’ve taken a position in Dr. Blackwell’s clinic.”

  “You think Mr. Roger will believe that?”

  “Mr. Roger will be thrilled.” Flanna shrugged. “He’ll figure I’m expanding his future constituency.”

  Charity pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, Miss Flanna. What about the folks at the hospital?”

  “I’ll send a letter of resignation.”

  “But shouldn’t you go and talk to them? My ma says it’s rude for a lady to—”

  “There’s no time, Charity. And where I’m going, I can’t act like a lady.”

  The two women stared at each other across a sudden ringing silence, then Flanna leaned forward and took Charity’s hands in her own. “I know it’s scary—I’m nearly frightened out of my wits. But I can’t think of any other way.”

  “We could try the trains again. Maybe we could get through.”

  Flanna shook her head. “No. Last week I read about two women who were hauled off the train in Washington. The soldiers there ripped off their dresses, looking for guns under their hoop skirts.” She lifted a brow. “You don’t want that to happen to us, do you? The paper didn’t say, but I can’t imagine that the women’s ill treatment stopped there.”

  “But how can we fool anybody?”

  “The Federals are desperate for men; they won’t be choosy.” Flanna picked up the scissors and offered them to Charity. “Trust me. If Henrietta Fraser can pull it off, we can…as long as you really want to go home.” She gave Charity a small, shy smile. “Or you can stay here. You’ve been a faithful servant and a good friend. I know I’m asking a hard thing. You don’t have to go with me…though I don’t know what I’d do without you.”