She teased and stroked the brooch, tracing the design with her fingertip. For someone accustomed to saving lives by paying attention to intricate details, the hairline seam around the circumference of the stone was easy to spot. She knew it opened. But how? There had to be a clasp. She retrieved her MacGyver knife from her haversack and picked at the brooch until she found the problem. A tiny piece of the clasp had broken off. She used tweezers to pinch the silver tracery, and a cleverly constructed spring popped the top half of the sapphire open. She ran the tip of her finger over an inscription etched into the center of the stone. Hmm. Gaelic?
“Chan ann le tìm no àite a bhios sinn a’ tomhais an gaol ach’s ann le neart anama.”
As she stammered through the last word, a groundswell of heavy fog smelling oddly of peat gathered around her. She climbed to her feet and tried to jump out of the fog, but it followed her. A vortex formed and swirled up her legs, creating a funnel of dense air. She edged forward, then back, dodged left, then right, but she couldn’t shake off the fog. The funnel reached her chest and pressure squeezed from all sides.
The fog completely engulfed her until she couldn’t breathe. Nothing existed beyond the gray, cottony cloud surrounding her. The jackhammer beat of her heart was deafening, louder than the cannons, which had roared throughout the day. She had entered a maelstrom of chaos and its bitter taste of terror.
4
Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia, October 1864
Muffled cannon fire, high-pitched screams, and clanging swords penetrated the fog. As the peat-scented mist thinned, the sounds of battle resurged in a clap of thunder.
Her head swam, and her heart raced in panic. A battle waged around her. “What the f—”
“Run,” a soldier yelled, pushing her. “Move or die.”
A line of men, sweat beading their faces, hurled themselves forward aiming bayonets and muskets. The roar of a passing train couldn’t have been any louder than the rumbling artillery caissons. She inhaled fetid air seething with minié balls and screeching shells. Barefoot and blood-soaked soldiers fell thick and fast amid the reek of loose bowels and searing flesh.
This wasn’t a reenactment. This was a damnable real battle. How had this happened? Paralyzing fear rose from her gut, burned her throat, and a vile taste exploded in her mouth. Her feet became leaden as if ancient roots had erupted from the ground and entangled her feet. She couldn’t move, but she had to get to safety. How she came to be here wasn’t as important as surviving it.
She tucked the brooch into her pocket and snagged the arm of a soldier dressed in gray with blood dripping down the side of his face. “Where’s the field hospital?”
He shook off her hand. “’Bout half mile ahead.”
If the Confederate Army was running toward the field hospital, it meant they were retreating. Hundreds of soldiers ran past her, through the smoky blur of gunfire, bleeding from open wounds on their heads, arms, and legs, and leaving a trail of blood in their wake.
She edged her way over to the tree line, tasting the gunpowder-laden smoke. Soldiers trying to dodge the main rush of men crashed through the bushes. Battle conditions altered how things looked, but how could this possibly be worse? Dead and dying were lying in the shifting shadows of the maple trees. She was a doctor, and the wounded needed attention. There was no one else around to do it. If she ran for safety, these men would die. They needed her. Now.
The first soldier she reached was dead. The next had been shot in the arm, which hung limply at his side. A look of desperation clouded his eyes. She ripped off the bottom part of his shirtsleeve and fashioned a pressure dressing to stanch the bleeding.
“Can you walk?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Make your way to the field hospital.”
“Can they save my arm?”
“Maybe,” she said before triaging the next wounded man, doing what she could do without medical supplies. She moved quickly from one to the other.
A field dressing team finally arrived. “You’re needed at the field hospital, sir.”
“Where is it?” she asked.
A private pointed. “Through those trees.”
A bullet whizzed over her head. She ducked, her legs nearly buckling. She wrapped her arm around the trunk of a small tree and dug her fingernails into the bark. The wind set the branches to chattering exactly as fear had done to her teeth.
She had to get out of there. But where was she, besides stuck in the middle of a battle? She glanced around, looking for a recognizable landmark, something identifiable. Then she gasped, hardly able to catch her breath, not believing her eyes. “On my God.”
Belle Grove Plantation sat several hundred yards behind her. Not only had she suddenly appeared in a Civil War battle, but she had landed in the middle of the Battle of Cedar Creek.
She pulled the brooch from her inside jacket pocket. Minutes ago, when she had clenched it in her hand, she had inadvertently closed it. Now she tried to open it but couldn’t. Not without tweezers. She patted down her body, hoping they had survived the fog. They hadn’t, and without them, she couldn’t pinch the clasp. Her heart sank with a hollow thud, and fear rose, hot and heavy.
She sat back on her heels and pinned the brooch inside her waistband. Until she found a tool to help her open it, she was stuck. She had to find a place to hide. But what good would hiding do? None. She would be much better off if she located the field hospital where she could borrow tweezers. But if the army was retreating, the field hospitals might already be relocating. If she knew what time it was, she’d know the locations of the armies.
She looked up to study the position of the sun. Using the plantation as a marker, she could gauge the time. She knew the house faced southwest. If she turned her back to the house, due west would be over her right shoulder. Assuming the sun would be straight up at noon, and would set at six o’clock, her best guess was it was now around five o’clock. She couldn’t schedule surgeries telling time this way, but for what she needed at the moment, it would do.
According to the battle timeline, General Early had already overrun the nerve center of the Union Army. If the Confederates were now running in the opposite direction, it meant General Sherman had rallied his troops and launched the Union counterattack. About now Custer and Ramseur would be meeting at the final Confederate battle line on Miller’s Lane. General Ramseur was probably already wounded. If she could get to him, she could help him, maybe.
If she was going to try, she had to head toward Strasburg. The retreating forces and his staff would take him south of the plantation at the North Fork of the Shenandoah River, about four miles away. All she had to do was follow the Valley Pike south.
She double-checked her bearings as she ran, while bullets whizzed overhead. She had no helmet, flak jacket, or steel-toed boots, none of the protective gear she’d worn in Afghanistan during a six-week medical mission. She might as well be running unprotected through a minefield. She hunched over and ran faster.
An explosion fifty yards to her right filled the air with debris, and the ground vibration knocked her off her feet. She rolled to her knees, shaking, and crawled until her jelly legs worked again. As more explosions lit up the sky and shook the earth she increased her stride and pumped her arms.
The sun was setting by the time she reached Strasburg, where ragged and exhausted retreating Confederate soldiers, along with wagons and cannon, jammed the streets. Their all-night march and six hour hand-to-hand battle had done the men in.
Charlotte stopped each horse-drawn ambulance and asked the drivers if they’d seen General Ramseur.
Blank, anguished stares met her inquiry. “Dear God, he can’t be wounded. Are you sure?” they had asked.
The smell of bodily fluids and fear saturated the air. Dirt, grime, and blood covered the soldiers, crusting their hands, their faces, their shaggy beards, and unwashed hair. Ripped trousers and mismatched uniforms made it hard to tell which army they belonged to. Only their tigh
t, pinched, demoralized faces revealed their loyalties. They were from the south and, on this day, the gains made earlier in battle had now been lost in utter defeat. This was no black and white moment captured by a still photographer, but a bold, red fragment of time indelibly etched in their weary hearts.
Custer’s cavalry would arrive any moment and capture more than a thousand men. If she were with the mortally wounded general, she might be allowed to stay with him. But where was he?
“Help,” a soldier yelled. She turned to see a man leaning out of the back of yet another ambulance, waving. “Here. We need help.”
She wove her way through the retreating forces toward the wagon. “I’m searching for General Ramseur. Have you seen him?”
“He’s here,” the soldier said. “He’s been shot.”
Charlotte climbed into the back of the ambulance and knelt beside him. “General, can you hear me?” She ripped open his jacket and blood-soaked shirt. “I need bandages.”
One of the soldiers pulled a white cloth from his haversack. “Will this do? It’s the general’s clean shirt.” It would have to. She used it to stanch the bleeding from the wound under his right ribs, hoping to reduce the hemorrhaging. She couldn’t do much about the blood collecting inside his chest, though. She found the second wound near the left side of the general’s neck. Blood and air leaking from his bullet punctures were slowly collapsing the remaining functional lung tissues.
“I need a syringe and needle. Find one, now.”
“Where?” the soldier who had given her the shirt asked.
“Check the medical supply wagon.” Her tone of voice was so urgent the soldier immediately jumped from the rear of the ambulance and disappeared. He returned shortly with a metal syringe and bandages.
Using an unsanitized needle went against every standard of care she knew, but it wouldn’t matter. The general had a mortal wound and her intervention would not save him, but her care could lessen his discomfort during his final hours.
After verifying proper placement, she gently inserted the needle into Ramseur’s chest until she heard a small whoosh of air. She attached the syringe and pulled back on the plunger, relieving some of the pressure as she sucked off a mixture of fluid and air. His breathing eased a bit.
A Union officer came to the rear of the wagon, gun pointed. “Everyone out.”
Charlotte swallowed hard. She knew the cavalry would capture them all, but she’d been so engrossed with tending to the general she hadn’t paid attention to what was happening outside the ambulance’s canvas walls.
“I have a seriously injured patient. I can’t leave him,” she said.
He motioned with his revolver. “Get out.”
Charlotte asserted herself as the surgeon in charge. “Where is General Custer?” She held the syringe firmly in her still hand. “Tell him his friend Dod is mortally wounded, and I refuse to leave his side.”
Another cavalry officer joined the first. “What’s the problem here, soldier?”
“The doctor said the wounded man is a friend of General Custer.”
Charlotte spoke again in a controlled voice which still retained an urgent appeal. She had to be the general’s advocate. “General Custer will want to know. They went to West Point together, and they’re old friends. General Ramseur needs a bed, and I need supplies to treat him. He’ll die in the next few minutes if you don’t help us.”
“Get everyone else out. Guard the wagon. I’ll find the general.”
Moments later, the driver was turning the ambulance around. “Clear the way.”
The ambulance moved slowly, bumping and jostling the general as it threaded a course through the once-crowded street now lined with surrendered Confederate troops. She didn’t have to ask where the wagon was going. She knew their destination and what awaited her patient.
A Union surgeon met the ambulance at Belle Grove Plantation and directed stretcher-bearers to carry the general inside the house. “General Custer wants to know his condition.”
“He was shot in the chest. The bullet tore through his chest cavity, likely injuring the lungs. Short of clamping off the injured blood vessels and removing damaged lung parenchyma, there isn’t much I can do here except continue to relieve the pressure when his breathing becomes labored again and make him as comfortable as possible.”
“What do you need?” the surgeon asked.
“Clean bandages, soap, and water,” Charlotte said.
The stretcher-bearers carried the general down the hall and entered a room on the right, where they placed him on the bed. With modern surgical techniques and chest tubes, she might have been able to save him, but not in 1864.
She was sitting at the bedside, holding the general’s hand, when a cavalry officer wearing tight olive-colored corduroy trousers appeared in the doorway. A wide-brimmed slouch hat covered his yellow hair. His long tawny mustache needed a trim. She recognized the tall, broad-shouldered, imposing man immediately.
“Thank you for bringing him here, General,” she said.
Custer crossed the room, sat in a chair on the opposite side of the bed, and scrubbed his face with his hands, smearing smudges of dirt. A mixture of blood and mud covered his jacket. “Is there nothing you can do?”
“Not here. Not now,” she said with a solemn mix of sadness and regret.
How many times had she read the account of Ramseur’s death? Dozens. And it was happening exactly as it had been reported. She’d been doing living history demonstrations for years and now she was living history. God, how was it possible? Her fingers grazed the bump of the brooch pinned to the inside of her trousers. How could a stone do this to me? She shook her head. She’d deal with how it happened later. For now, General Ramseur was more important.
A steady stream of officers moved in and out of the room during Ramseur’s final hours. Some offered prayers. Some sat silently. All came to honor a friend. General Custer kept a vigil throughout the night.
As dawn broke over the valley and the death rattle continued, Ramseur’s attempts to keep moving air into his chest weakened. Charlotte rose to stretch her legs, setting aside the cold compress she had used to wipe Ramseur’s forehead. Custer picked it up and dabbed at his friend’s face.
The general opened his eyes and spoke in a weak voice. “I have a new baby and I don’t even know whether I have a son or a daughter.”
A moment of truth arrived for Charlotte. She had failed to save him, but she would not fail to give him the one piece of information she alone had the power to give.
She leaned in close and said in a low voice, “You have a daughter. Her name is Mary.”
The general’s mouth lifted slightly on the right side in an effort to smile. “Send a lock of my hair to my wife, Ellen, and bear this message: ‘I die a Christian and hope to meet her in Heaven.’”
And with those words, the general closed his eyes and quietly slipped away.
Charlotte met Custer’s steel blue eyes, now battle-weary and red-rimmed from a night of sleepless grief. “Thank you, Doctor Mallory. I will mention the excellent care the general received in my letter to Ellen.”
Charlotte’s chest hitched as panic swept through it. Her ancestor’s name could not appear in the historical record because of something she did. “Please don’t single me out, sir.” She struggled to think clearly. “The general received excellent care from your surgeon as well.”
He stood with his hat in his hands, nodded, and quit the room.
Charlotte went over to the window for a gulp of fresh air, but was almost suffocated by the smell of decaying flesh. The dead and dying of the two armies were commingled. Many of the wounded had crawled to the stream for a drink of cool water. Horses dragged damaged wagons behind them. Abandoned ambulances were still full of wounded soldiers. Cries of agony could be heard from every direction. Over eight thousand men had been killed, wounded, or captured, and many of the dead were in the plantation’s front yard, stacked in gruesome piles awaiting burial. They
would all be buried in shallow graves until they could be moved to their final resting places.
She turned away from the window. All these years she had been so naïve. She’d studied history and reenacted battles and believed she understood the war. But she hadn’t, not really. War was gut-wrenching, heartrending, and, above all, deadly. And she had come close to being a casualty. Was this the point of this trip back in time? To see the war as it really was? If so, she’d seen enough, and she was ready to go home. Her fingers grazed the bump of the brooch again. As soon as she had privacy, she would use the tweezers she had pilfered from the medical supplies and find out if the brooch would take her back to her century.
Boots clomped on the floor behind her. She turned to see one of the junior officers who had been in and out of the room during the night.
“General Sheridan wants to see you. If you’ll come with me.”
She patted her beard and wig, hoping she continued to look the part of Major Carlton Mallory. As tired as she was, appearances still meant everything. Even more important, in this case her appearance might mean the difference between survival and death.
She was escorted to the front room Sheridan was using as his office. “Come in, Major. Take a seat.”
She sat across the desk from a dark-eyed man with closely cropped hair. A man she knew to be a ruthless and highly decorated warrior. He picked up a quill pen and dipped it into an inkwell. “Name and regiment?”
His steely tone triggered the bad kind of shivers along her spine. She twitched and straightened her back. She would not let him intimidate her. Who was she kidding? She was stuck in the Civil War, for Pete’s sake, and not at all sure how, or if, she could return home. Was she intimidated? Yes, by God, she was.
The Sapphire Brooch Page 3