The Velvet Shadow

by Angela Elwell Hunt

  Flanna lifted her chin, not willing to let herself be put down by this brute. “I am a loyal American, sir!”

  “I think we caught ourselves a genuine spy,” he said, eyeing her with a calculating expression. “An honest-to-goodness piece of Yankee trash that talks like a Southern belle.”

  Without giving her a chance to respond, the man stepped through the doorway and closed the door. Flanna ran to it, but heard a clear click as the key turned in the lock.

  She turned around and leaned against the door, her feelings as bleak as the room in which they’d been confined. The only light came from a high window above the door, and she knew that would fade as soon as night fell and everyone went home. The furniture—a single chair and a bench against the wall—was scuffed and scarred. The floor was dusty tile; the walls weepy plaster that smelled of dust and mildew.

  “Well, that’s it then.” Roger sank into the wooden chair. “The war’s over for us. They’ll send us to prison, of course, but we’ll be released as soon as McClellan comes up and takes Richmond.”

  Flanna stared at Roger in astonishment. Had he not learned anything during these past months? “McClellan will never take Richmond! He’s retreating right now! The man can’t stand bloodshed—he won’t fight.”

  “What would you know about it?” A shadow of annoyance crossed Roger’s face. “You don’t know politics, and you don’t know men.”

  “I know about Little Mac,” Flanna said, crossing the room. The soldiers had dropped Alden on the floor. He now slumped against the wall, and Flanna feared he would fall over at any minute. “Here, Alden, lie flat.” She knelt beside him. “Is the floor cold? Let me find something—”

  She looked up at Roger, who still wore his blue dress coat. “Give me your coat,” she said, her mind racing. “Did you wear it into town? What were you thinking, Roger?”

  “I was angry.” He leaned forward and shrugged out of his coat, then tossed it to her. “I thought you both had deserted the army. I came through the Confederate lines with my hands up. I knew I’d be arrested immediately, but I didn’t care. I wanted to find you.”

  “Whatever for?” Flanna had been spreading the coat on the floor for Alden to lie on, but she stopped and stared at Roger. “What were you going to do when you found us?”

  Roger released a choked, desperate laugh. “I don’t know. I hadn’t considered that.” His gaze returned to her. “I just didn’t want to lose you.”

  She felt her heart shrivel at his hurt expression. “Roger,” she softened her voice, “you never had me. I’m sorry, but I didn’t join the army to follow you. I just wanted to go home.”

  Turning away from Roger, Flanna put her hand on Alden’s shoulders and eased him to the floor. He mumbled something she couldn’t understand, so she shushed him and urged him to rest.

  She sat silently for some time, studying him. He had not shaved in over a week; a golden brown beard covered his cheeks, softening that determined chin, that strong jaw. Even in sleep, his face seemed marked by anxiety and grief. The cut above his forehead was healing nicely, but loss shadowed his eyes and his face seemed narrower than it had been on that Christmas Day when they first met.

  That thought had barely crossed her mind before another followed: Alden was not hers. After the war, he would return to Boston and marry Nell Scott, the faithful young lady who had remained at home and fulfilled a woman’s proper role. While Flanna slogged through mud and shivered in the freezing rain, Miss Scott had been kneeling by her cozy fireplace and praying for Alden, her delicate fingers clasped together, her long hair spilling over her shoulders like a waterfall…

  Flanna slammed the door on her imaginings. Bad enough that she should save him for another woman; she didn’t have to torture herself in the process.

  When at last Alden’s breathing slowed and deepened, she crossed her legs under her skirt and turned to Roger.

  “I suggest you get some sleep too.” She looked at his sorrowful face and did her best to smile. Perhaps she had been too harsh with him.

  “Flanna, I didn’t know.” Roger’s voice echoed with entreaty. “I didn’t know he was wounded. I’m afraid I’ve made an awful mess of things, but I was so crazy with jealousy. I read the letter, you see, and I know you so well I knew what you were saying.”

  Feeling utterly miserable, Flanna closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Roger.”

  “Its okay. I can understand. Alden’s always been the brave one, the responsible one.” A thread of desperation edged his voice. “I should have known you’d fall in love with him.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that.” Flanna crossed her arms and rested them upon her knees, watching the shadows lengthen in the room. Was Nell Scott sitting by the fire now, thinking of Alden as she penned another letter? “I could never give Alden my heart.” Because he would never accept it.

  Roger cleared his throat. “But now that I’ve ruined things for all of us—”

  “Maybe things aren’t so bad.” Flanna spoke with a conviction she didn’t feel. “But we won’t know anything until the morning. So get some sleep, Roger, and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

  He nodded slowly, then pointed to the chair. “Would you like to sit?”

  “No. I never could sleep in a chair, not even in medical school.” Flanna stretched out on the cold floor and rested her head on one arm. Streams of dust rose to tickle her nose, and sand gritted against her skin, but she was content. Alden was safe, and he slept only a few feet away.

  “Flanna?” Roger’s disembodied voice floated toward her in the darkness.

  “What, Roger?”

  “We are friends, aren’t we?”

  She smiled, amazed at his persistence. He was the perfect politician because he never gave up, never acknowledged defeat.

  “Yes, Roger,” she called, her voice husky with exhaustion. “We’re friends.”

  “Some marriages”—he paused a moment—“some very good marriages are established on friendship, Flanna.”

  Flanna closed her eyes and sighed in exasperation. Like a child who has been denied a privilege he thought he had earned, he needed to know he would have something to call his own.

  But he would never have her. Alden had given her heart wings, and she could never settle down in a loveless marriage. She would die alone and a spinster before she would marry a man she did not love.

  “Go to sleep, Roger.” Her voice echoed in the room’s emptiness. “I expect that we will need our strength for tomorrow.”

  He did not answer, but the chair creaked as he settled into it. Flanna rested her cheek on her clasped hands and willed herself to sleep.

  Through a haze of exhaustion and pain, Alden heard two voices buzzing around him. Something in his brain urged him to wakefulness, and his eyes opened to complete darkness as Roger assured Flanna that friendship would prove a good foundation for marriage.

  Of course it would. Flanna was too accomplished, and Roger far too persuasive for them to be anything but happy together.

  Alden let his heavy eyelids fall. The dreams he allowed himself were an exercise in futility, and he would do himself a favor if he put them aside altogether. He had no business even thinking about his brother’s sweetheart.

  Flanna woke the next morning to the sound of argument. Both brothers were awake and sitting up; both blazed with fury as they faced each other.

  “You still haven’t explained why you were absent without leave,” Alden was saying, his face bright with anger. “If I were your commanding officer—”

  “But you’re not,” Roger snapped. “And I’ve been trying to tell you, but you won’t listen. You were gone, Flanna was gone, and I figured you were gone together. But none of that is important now—we’ve got to decide how to help Flanna now.”

  “She should tell the truth,” Alden said. “No one would blame her for trying to come home.”

  “But she aided the enemy, and they’ll consider her a spy,” Roger countered. “Do you want her executed
or thrown into prison?”

  “She’s not a spy.” Though stained with fatigue, Alden’s face glowed as though lighted from within. “You must give away information to be a spy. She’s given no information to anybody.”

  “She impersonated a Confederate army surgeon!” Roger’s eyes were flat and dark in the dim light, unreadable, but there was no mistaking the passion in his voice. “They will not appreciate that! And they will be incensed to learn that she brought you, a Yankee officer, to a Confederate hospital for treatment.”

  “Stop, stop!” Flanna held up her hand, then wearily ran her fingers through her sleep-tousled hair. “Both of you must be quiet. There is nothing to debate. This Confederate colonel will decide whatever he wants to decide, and that is all there is to it.”

  “You could lie.” Roger tilted his brow and looked at her uncertainly. “Tell him you were held captive by the Union army. Tell him you were caught behind the lines when the army came ashore on the peninsula, and when you saw Alden wounded you thought he was a Confederate. Tell them you were confused, that you’re only a woman, that you had no idea what was going on—”

  “I’ll say no such thing.” She crossed her arms and glared at him. “I won’t lie.”

  “It’s not a lie; it’s an elaboration. Politicians do it all the time—”

  “Heaven spare me from politicians then.” She closed her eyes, wondering if he would ever understand. “Roger, I am a woman, but I can think, I can reason, and I know very well what is going on. And what I did will be wrong in their eyes, but it was right in God’s. I just used the gifts he has given me.”

  “So you’re bringing God into the discussion?” Alden looked at her with a smile glowing in his eyes.

  “Yes.” Flanna’s voice was firm and final. “For God Almighty is neither Confederate nor Federal. He is truth, and he is right, and he knows that my heart is innocent.”

  “Well then.” Alden leaned peacefully against the wall, a beatific smile creasing his tanned face. “Let us hope the officer who hears our case has consulted the Almighty on our behalf.”

  Colonel James L. Kemper, of the First Virginia regiment, sat in a chair at the front of the courtroom, flanked by several other officers in brushed gray coats with gleaming brass buttons. General Robert E. Lee had just been appointed commander of the army at Richmond, an aide explained as he ushered Flanna, Roger, and Alden into the oak-paneled chamber, and Major General James Longstreet commanded the right wing. But neither man could be spared for a military trial, so Colonel Kemper had been tapped to hear this case.

  The accused did not have to wait long for the proceedings to get under way. Once Flanna and the brothers had been seated in a row of wooden chairs before the tribunal, one of the colonel’s aides stood and read the indictment. “Charge—that this woman, Flanna O’Connor, with premeditation, did willfully impersonate a doctor of the Confederate army with the avowed purpose of giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”

  Flanna risked a glance at the colonel. He sat absolutely still, his eyes as hard as dried peas and his mouth drawn up into a disapproving knot.

  “These two men, sir,” the aide lowered the list of formal charges as he pointed to Roger and Alden, “are officers in the Union army. We will file no charges against them. The wounded officer was brought here by the machinations of this woman, and the other freely surrendered himself to our pickets.”

  “A deserter?” the colonel asked.

  “Yes,” the aide answered, and Flanna saw Roger flush at the word.

  “Your honor, I object to these military proceedings.” Roger stood and inclined his head in a gesture of respect. “This woman obviously has no place in either army. Since she is a civilian, she is beyond this court’s jurisdiction. You have no authority over her.”

  The colonel pressed his hands together and leaned forward, his dark eyes sinking into nets of wrinkles as he smiled. “Thank you for attempting to educate me. I have eyes—I can see that this is a woman. But she has been tampering with the army, sir, and under very serious circumstances. So I find I must deal with her.”

  Those dark and wary eyes now turned to Flanna and studied her above a strained smile. “Miss O’Connor, did you bring this Yankee officer into one of our hospitals for treatment?”

  “Yes sir.” She tried to maintain her curt tone. “He was very badly wounded, and I knew there were no Union hospitals behind the lines. He would have died if I had not brought him to Richmond.”

  “Surely the Union army has regimental surgeons.”

  “Yes, but the surgeon for Major Haynes’s regiment is inept.”

  The colonel’s feathery brows shot up to his hairline. “And how would you know anything about this Yankee surgeon?”

  “I know because…” She glanced at Alden, and the warmth in his eyes gave her courage. “I know because I am a degreed physician, sir. And I have been traveling with the Twenty-fifth Massachusetts since last summer.”

  A light twittering sound broke out among the observers at the back of the room, and Flanna blushed when she realized what they had inferred.

  “I am not a camp follower,” she proclaimed, imposing an iron control on herself. “I would not have you thinking that my virtue was compromised in any way.” She lifted her chin and straightened into a militant posture. “I wore a soldier’s clothes, sir, and enlisted as Franklin O’Connor.”

  Astonishment blossomed on the colonel’s face, then he snorted in derision. “You expect me to believe that?”

  “Believe what you like.” Pride kept her from arguing. “But while I traveled with the army, I observed several regimental surgeons at work—many of them are butchers, including the surgeon attached to the Twenty-fifth Massachusetts. Major Haynes would have died in the Union camp if he had been fortunate enough to receive any care at all.”

  The colonel lifted an eyebrow in amused contempt. “Then why, Dr. O’Connor,” he said, faintly underlining the title with scorn, “did you choose to bring this particular Yankee officer to Richmond when there were scores of other men who needed treatment?”

  Caught off guard by the question, Flanna blanched. Why bring Alden? She wanted to shout, “Because he means everything to me,” but she couldn’t give that answer. The judge wouldn’t understand, Alden would be mortified by her confession of a love he couldn’t return, and poor Roger would be further humiliated.

  “Why did I bring Major Haynes?” Her stomach knotted under the colonel’s withering glare.

  “That was my question, young woman.”

  Flanna gripped her hands and decided to revert to Southern tactics. She was a lady, schooled in all the strategies of feminine charm. Perhaps this gentleman colonel could be convinced to grant her a moment’s grace.

  She deepened her voice and her accent. “I must confess that I hesitate to tell you, sir, since it involves a personal matter.” She looked up, hoping to disarm him with a pair of fluttering lashes and her prettiest smile—

  He wasn’t buying it. Her flirtation rippled over him like water over a rock; his granite expression remained unchanged. “Speak up, young lady!”

  So much for Southern charm. Flanna wiped the smile from her face, quietly relieved that Aunt Marsali’s lessons meant nothing here.

  “Well—” She glanced at Roger. “I know you may not approve, but I acted to save Alden Haynes because for some time I have thought of him as my future brother-in-law. Roger and I had an understanding before the war began.”

  The colonel’s eyes widened into glittering ovals of repudiation. “You, Miss O’Connor, have already gone to the devil. You may as well go to the Yankees too!” He flushed in fury and slammed his hand on the armrest of his chair. “We shall waste no more time with this.” He motioned toward his aide. “The proper judgment is clear. Flanna O’Connor, you are remanded into the care of Mrs. Ellen Corey and placed under house arrest. If you’re a doctor, you ought to make a good nurse. You will work in Mrs. Corey’s house as a nurse until the business of war is finished.�
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  The colonel’s mouth pulled into a sour grin as he looked at Roger and Alden. “The two Yankee officers are sentenced to Libby Prison until the war is over.”

  Flanna pressed her hand over her face as her throat ached with regret. She did not mind her sentence, for she liked the widow Corey and Charleston no longer tugged at her heart. But neither Roger nor Alden deserved a prison term.

  “Come, my dear.”

  Flanna looked up. The widow stood by her side and her arm slipped around Flanna’s waist. “Let me take you home.”

  “Wait, please.” Flanna stepped out of the widow’s embrace and turned to Alden and Roger, who stood between uniformed guards. “Roger, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, reaching out to take his hand. He tried to smile at her, but his features only flinched uncomfortably.

  “And Alden—” She took his hand, too, and held it tightly. “I never meant for this to happen. If I had known I would bring you such pain, I would never have acted as I did.”

  “If you hadn’t, I’d be dead.” The warmth of Alden’s smile echoed in his voice. “Take care, Flanna. God go with you.”

  Flanna released their hands, and the soldiers led both men out of the courtroom. She stared at the space they had occupied a moment before, and it seemed to her that it now contained a dark and palpable emptiness. She stood in the void and heard her heart break—a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a twig underfoot.

  …and he shall direct thy paths. Where was God taking her?

  A light touch patted her shoulder. “Let’s go home.” The widow Corey spoke with staid calmness. “You’ll feel better after a cup of tea.”

  Flanna took an abrupt step toward the door, then allowed Mrs. Corey to take her hand and lead her out of the courtroom.

  A pair of volunteer nurses had managed to move the wounded out of Mrs. Corey’s kitchen by the time Flanna and the widow returned. Mrs. Corey told Flanna to sit at the table while she prepared a bit of lunch.

  “I’m so sorry,” Flanna murmured again, drowning in waves of guilt. “There’s a guard outside your door now, and all because of me. You are too kind to suffer this way.”