The trees had disappeared, shrouded in a veil of drifting smoke. They were under attack.
Sixteen
Alden heard the sharp pop of rifle fire and looked up toward the high ridge. He could see nothing from this vantage point, but the men in his boat instinctively clutched their rifles and pointed their bayonets toward the sky.
“Shall we keep rowing, Major?” one of the oarsmen called, his mouth tight and grim.
Alden hesitated, considering his options. If he kept rowing, he could bring these men as reinforcements, but if the commander on the bluff called a retreat, they’d need this pitiful boat to ferry others back to the safety of Harrison’s Island.
“Go back!” He shouted the order. “At once, reverse, take us back to the island!”
Sheahan shot him a contemptuous glance—undoubtedly he thought Alden a coward.
Alden waited until the boat shivered and changed direction, then he fixed the swarthy soldier in his sights. “Mr. Sheahan, you and I will remain aboard to row the boat back. We may be needed to help the others retreat.”
Sheahan did not answer, but gripped his rifle more tightly as the boat moved into the midst of the river. As a new sort of crashing sound broke above his head, Alden looked up—and what he saw froze his blood. A veritable deluge of men spilled from the crest of the ridge; the rocky brow was blue with retreating men. The ground crumbled beneath their feet, sending them over the edge like a panic-stricken herd. Screams tore the air as men tumbled like rag dolls from the precipice, their bodies fairly bouncing over the ragged, jutting crags.
Alden blinked, quite unable to believe his eyes. Men who ought to have known better were leaping from the cliff with their rifles clutched in their hands. Without removing their heavy knapsacks, they threw themselves into the river and sank beneath the silver water without resurfacing. The side of the mountain, which only a moment before had been green with fern and scrub and seedlings, was wiped smooth as men rained down upon it in mindless retreat.
“Major! The current!”
Horror snaked down Alden’s backbone and coiled in his belly as the current caught the boat and pushed it into the hail of men. One poor fellow fell straight on an upward bayonet before Alden could command his men to lower their rifles.
The water churned while a savage and continual thunder rumbled from the ridge. Hands reached out to the boat; desperate men pulled at it from all sides. Alden and his men sprang from the flooded vessel in desperation, joining the scores who struggled, screamed, fought, and gasped in the water. Weak men dragged stronger men under, while the very weakest disappeared without a trace.
Without thinking, Alden slipped out of his knapsack and let it sink to the bottom, then kicked his way toward the Virginia shore. Within moments he stood in knee-deep water, offering help to those who needed it. Most of the men who scrambled toward the bank were from his regiment, but the proud faces he knew were now contorted in the desperate lines of hunted beasts. No trace of the innocent arrogance in which they had marched into Washington remained.
Oh, God Alden prayed, extending his hand to another gasping soldier, spare your wrath and have mercy!
Flanna felt her heart pounding in time to her running footsteps. She had lain on the ground, frozen with fear, for nearly half an hour, then Colonel Baker came from the right and passed in front of the line of Union skirmishers. He had opened his mouth to give a command, but a bullet from the trees caught him in the head and he fell, instantly killed.
The line before Flanna shuddered. As the sergeants vainly called for order, the frightened recruits panicked, many of them rushing toward the cliff and the water below. Though the cliff was frightening and the drop formidable, the certainty of the water and the fall seemed preferable to advancing toward whatever forces lay in those trees.
The lines dissolved in mayhem, and finally the order to retreat sounded over the clearing.
All too willing to obey, Flanna turned and ran toward the footpath that had brought her to this deadly place. The trampled ground was slick with rain and the tread of nearly two thousand men, but stout tree trunks and foliage would shield her from sharpshooters’ bullets. Others had taken to the path as well, a few of the more frightened ones shedding their heavy knapsacks along the way. Flanna kept hers, for the heavy weight on her back felt like a sheltering hand, guarding her back as it insistently pushed her away from the danger.
She heard shouts and yelling from the distant trees to her right. Looking up, she saw gray forms scurrying from tree trunk to tree trunk. Now the woods were snapping around her, bullets nicking the saplings at her left and making soft thuds in the clay at her feet.
“Two shots per minute,” she mumbled, forcing her legs to fly lest she be run over by others on the path. “They can’t fire fast enough to get you; they can only fire two shots per minute!”
The thought was utterly insane, of course, for while one individual might only be able to fire two shots per minute, Flanna was certain the entire Rebel army hid in those trees, aiming and firing at leisure as the Yankees ran for the river.
There! Rejoicing at the sight of silver water and blue uniforms, Flanna paused behind a tree at the river’s edge. There was no way to cross, for all four boats had vanished, but a line of Union men guarded the landing, their rifles trained on the trees. And there, with his golden hair and clothing dark with water, stood Alden, bawling commands as he organized the men in a defensive position.
She wanted to run forward and kiss him, but she raced along in a zigzag crouch instead, explosively releasing her breath when she reached the safe line of defensive fire. For a moment she stood behind that line, gasping for breath and rejoicing in safety, then a sudden thought struck her—she was no longer entitled to take her womanly ease. She was a soldier in this army, and never had her companions needed her more.
Moving to the end of the line, Flanna knelt on one knee. With trembling fingers she pulled a cartridge from her belt, bit off the plug, and poured the powder down the barrel. The action was nearly second nature now, and the mechanical routine helped calm her nerves. She pushed the bullet in with her thumb, drew her ramrod and shoved the bullet down, then pulled the ramrod out and pulled back the hammer. The men around her shouted, and screams rose from the water, but Flanna blocked the sounds from her mind.
Place a percussion cap on the nib beneath the hammer, Sergeant Marvin’s voice echoed in her memory, then draw a bead on your enemy and fire away.
Flanna lifted her loaded rifle to her shoulder. If anything came out of those trees, by heaven, she was going to shoot.
A swollen and blood-red sun hung low over Ball’s Bluff before the random shots from the trees ceased. As darkness deepened, the Federal army began the work of looking after its wounded and picking up the dead.
Flanna felt numb as she climbed into one of the rescue boats. The battered vessel floated silently over the river, where so many dead lay buried. She looked down and recoiled in horror to see a man she recognized on the shadowed bottom, his foot tangled in the strap of his knapsack, his arms floating upward in an attitude of beseeching.
Flanna clapped her hands over her eyes, trying to banish the sight from her mind and memory.
The brigade established a hasty camp several miles north of the river. The army gathered the wounded, then retreated into Maryland. The wounded—and there were far more than Flanna would have believed possible—rode to camp in the rickety wagons or were dragged in by their comrades. Now they lay on the ground in a straight line, their faces turned toward the starry sky, their voices rising in keening sounds of pain and sorrow, regret and loss.
Dr. Gulick, who had not expected a battle, had left most of his medical supplies in the Maryland camp. He worked now under a hastily constructed lean-to, with a wagon bed as his operating table. Flanna stood in the darkness, numbly watching him saw off injured arms and legs without anesthesia or much regard for his tormented patients.
Flanna had thought her body and mind totally exha
usted, but something in her quickened as she watched and listened to the screams of agony. Roger or Alden could be among those bodies on the ground, and she wouldn’t amputate a rat’s leg without first administering something to kill the pain…
Energized by a steadfast determination, she advanced toward the doctor’s tent as a pair of men brought in a soldier who had been wounded in the leg. The man’s coat was streaked with blood and red Virginia clay, and his trousers below the knee were slick with blood. Flanna’s heart congealed into a small lump of terror when the man lifted his head and shone a smile around the circle. Paddy O’Neil!
Flanna inched closer, insinuating herself between two of the doctor’s burly assistants. “Paddy!”
The Irishman turned and grinned at her. “Ah, wee O’Connor, ’tis good to see you. Sure, and didn’t I tell you this would be an easy day? You made it out without a scratch, did you now?”
“Aye, Paddy.” She gazed at him in despair. She wanted to help; she could certainly do more than Dr. Gulick, but she had no supplies, nothing with which to operate.
At a nod from Gulick, one of the assistants cut at O’Neil’s trousers, exposing a shattered leg. The bullet had entered just below the knee.
“I’m sorry, son.” Gulick turned to pick up his saw. “It’s got to come off. I’ve got no chloroform or ether, but there’s whiskey if you want a minute to liquor up before I start cutting.”
Flanna expected loud protestation and tears, but O’Neil only eyed the doctor with a moist glance, then pulled a pistol from inside his coat. Flanna choked back a gasp—she knew Sheahan and a few of the others had pistols, but Paddy had never mentioned his.
With a humorless smile, O’Neil pointed the gun at Gulick and said, “You’ll not be cutting me tonight, doctor. The man that puts a hand on me dies.”
“What the—” Gulick dropped his saw into the dirt, and a murmur ran through the crowd of observers.
“Soldier,”—Gulick’s face went white beneath its sheen of sweat—“you don’t understand. Gangrene will set in if I don’t do something for you now. You’ll not only lose the leg—you’ll lose your life.”
“If I die,” Paddy answered, his voice suddenly husky, “I’ll be taking both me legs to the Promised Land, mind you. How else am I going to walk up to the pearly gates?” Holding the gun steady, he shifted his gaze until he caught Flanna’s eye. “O’Connor! Tell this fool that he won’t be cutting on me with that filthy saw!”
Not knowing what else to do, Flanna stepped forward. “Don’t touch him, Doctor. Give him to me, and I’ll tend him.”
O’Neil grinned good-naturedly at this, but Dr. Gulick’s face clouded in anger. “Let the blamed fool keep his leg and die then,” he snapped, gesturing to his assistants. “I don’t have time to stand here and argue with an idiot. Take him away and bring me the next one!”
Four men stepped forward and lifted O’Neil from the wagon bed, then one of the assistants looked at Flanna. “You really want him?” he asked, one brow lifting. “Where shall they put him?”
Flanna’s thoughts raced. “By the water.” She pointed toward a small creek at the edge of the camp. “And after they put him down, I’ll need blankets, bandages, alcohol—anything you can bring me.”
“I can’t release those things without the doctor’s permission.”
Flanna threw back her shoulders and looked the soldier directly in the eye. “Dr. Gulick is a butcher,” she said, rancor sharpening her voice. “I can help this man and others, too, but I need supplies. So if you care one whit about these fellows, you’ll bring everything you can from that medical wagon.”
The startled soldier looked away, then nodded slowly as the others carried O’Neil toward the creek.
An hour later, Flanna had O’Neil’s pistol in her belt and his leg in her lap. She had found a few men from her company—William Sheahan, Rufus Crydenwise, and Sergeant Marvin—and they held torches high as she worked on O’Neil’s wound. Not one of them questioned her abilities or how she knew what to do, and no one disputed her when she demanded that they heat water in their fry pans so she could clean any instruments applied to the wound. A little flutter of alarm passed through the group when she asked for Sergeant Marvin’s hunting knife, but then the men pressed forward in curious delight.
Her patient cared for nothing. O’Neil had passed out long ago, after sipping liberally from Sergeant Marvin’s liquor flask.
Jonah Barker, whose only battle injury was a long facial scratch he received crashing into a sapling, served as Flanna’s assistant. Without a single hesitation, he used a pair of clean forks to separate the torn flesh of O’Neil’s leg while Flanna probed for the bullet with the sergeant’s blade. Minié balls, she soon discovered, looked harmless enough when inside a cartridge, but the soft lead slugs expanded in the rifle barrel and produced a devastating wound on impact. The bullet had severely lacerated the flesh of O’Neil’s calf before burying itself in the tibia. The bone itself was cracked, but not broken. Paddy was lucky.
“I’m going to have to dig this out.” Flanna lifted her head and motioned for Rufus to hold the torch closer. “Steady there, Rufus, or I’ll have to lay you out next. You’re not a fainter, are you?”
“No—I’m not much of anything.” He gave her an abashed smile and moved the light closer.
Flanna glanced down again, then suddenly remembered. “Charity—Charles! Has anyone seen Charles? He’s very good at this, and if anyone has seen him—”
“I’ll go look.” Sergeant Marvin handed his torch to a curious onlooker, then moved away.
Flanna hunkered back down and applied herself to the task at hand. Paddy O’Neil wouldn’t be marching for a while, but he’d live to dance another Irish jig.
“Major Haynes?” The private who stood alone in the semi-darkness wore a worried expression. Alden pulled himself out of the circle of officers and wondered what else could possibly go wrong. He had been awake for more than thirty-six hours, and the companies of the Twenty-fifth Massachusetts were still scattered like sheep. At present more than seven hundred men who’d gone up to Ball’s Bluff were missing and presumed captured; more than two hundred others were dead or wounded.
“What is it, Private?” He stared at the soldier, his mind thick with fatigue. “Can’t you find your sergeant?”
“I’m in the medical unit, sir, and Dr. Gulick’s right busy. But it’s not him I’ve come about. It’s—well, it’s the other one, sir.”
“What other one?” Alden squinted toward the horizon. Dawn was coming up in streaks and slashes over the treetops, but reveille would not sound this morning. The regiment would need a day to rest, and medical supplies, and transportation for the wounded…He forced his thoughts to focus on the young soldier. “You were saying?”
“A private from Company M. He took a patient away, and doctored him down by the water’s edge. I don’t know much about medicine, sir, but it looked for all the world like he did surgery.” The man’s brow furrowed. “And it’s the strangest thing, sir, but I think he did a sight better than Dr. Gulick. They say he saved one man’s leg, and another fellow’s arm.”
As wide awake as if he’d just drunk a pot of pure, strong coffee, Alden stepped forward and gripped the man’s shirt. “Think carefully, Private. This other doctor—does he have red hair? And is he a small man?”
It was an odd question, but the soldier’s face melted in relief. “Yes sir! You know him then! So it’s all right? I wasn’t sure if I should obey, but he told me to get supplies from the medical wagon, so I did. He seemed to know what he was doing.”
Alden released the man, touched his hand to his forehead, then took a quick breath of utter astonishment. It was utterly unthinkable, but not impossible. Flanna O’Connor had never been one to back down from her ambitions, and her driving ambition the last time they talked had involved going home…as an army doctor.
“Is that all, sir?” The private wavered before him.
“No.” Alden wiped his h
and over his face, then exhaled. “Take me to the place where you left this other doctor. I’d like to have a word with him.”
Seventeen
The private who served as one of Gulick’s assistants pointed toward a small crowd that had gathered by the creek. Alden dismissed the soldier, then walked silently forward, the events of the last twenty-four hours whirling in his mind like bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. What Alden feared couldn’t be true—but how else could he explain the uneasiness that gnawed at his gut?
Around the makeshift surgery a crowd of eager soldiers had volunteered their lanterns, mess equipment, and blankets to comfort the wounded. Inside the circle of soldiers, Sergeant Marvin tended a small fire where water boiled in a split canteen. Right next to the fire, the self-appointed doctor knelt next to a man sitting on a canvas tarp. Two other men lay on blankets on the far side of the fire, and, as the private had reported, one had a bandaged leg, the other a bandaged arm. Unlike Gulick’s workplace, there were no severed limbs here.
Watching in complete and utter surprise, Alden recognized the peculiar elements of this man’s medical practice—the fire, the pans of water, the clean implements. Like Flanna, this doctor worked slowly and steadily, using instruments that had been boiled. Alden narrowed his eyes, staring at the young soldier’s slender form. Were that cap to come off the doctor’s head, Aden was almost certain he’d find a mass of coppery hair marked by a single white streak.
He crossed his arms, facing his undeniable and dreadful suspicions. Somehow, at some point, could Flanna O’Connor have made her way to Washington and Ball’s Bluff? The thought jagged through him like a thunderbolt.
“I’m afraid that’s the best I can do,” he heard the doctor tell the present patient, a man who’d taken a Minié ball in the arm. “I’ve cleaned the wound and removed the bullet, but the bone is shattered. You’ll need to go to a hospital to have it set.”
The Velvet Shadow Page 21