Songs of the Shenandoah

by Michael K. Reynolds

  “I spent a lot of time trying to dig riches from places that were probably better left alone.” Davin looked up at the ceiling. “It’s odd to think how much that all meant to me at one time.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Miller said. “This war has a way of shifting perspectives.”

  Davin glanced around the interior of the house, which was simple but tidy. “Did you stay here?”

  “What? During the battle?” He took another sip, and part of it dripped on his beard. “No. I’m not that big of a fool. I own a carriage shop in town. I stayed there until the artillery stopped railing. Why I hadn’t been back here long at all before your friend . . . what’s his name? Barry? Yes before Barry came by. Really startled me some.”

  Davin pointed to his face.

  “What? Oh . . . thank you.” Mr. Miller lifted a napkin and dabbed it on his beard.

  There was a melancholy about the man that Davin could relate to. “You have a wife?”

  “Me. No. Well, I used to.” He winced. “She died a few years back.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, don’t be. We had many good years.” He stared into the fire. “Many good years.” Mr. Miller waved his spoon at Davin. “You like that girl. That nurse. Don’t you?”

  It made no sense to lie to this man. “Yes. I like her quite well.”

  “She fancies you as well.” He started to scrape the spoon along the inside of the bowl.

  “I know she does.”

  “What about your brother?” He nodded toward Seamus, who continued to sleep. “Is he going to . . . make it through?”

  “No.” Davin had a hard time uttering these words. “Muriel says that she’s done all she can, but he’ll die in a few days.” He looked at his brother, who was wearing his chaplain’s uniform again, which they had cleaned and dried by the fire. “Might have been better if he had died right away . . . as opposed to lingering on.”

  “No sense speaking for God. He makes up His own mind when people come and go.”

  “You believe all of that?” Davin scraped the last of his soup into a full spoonful.

  “About God? Yes.” Mr. Miller reached out for Davin’s bowl. “More?”

  “If it’s not an inconvenience.”

  “Not at all.” He got up, left the room, and came back carrying a full bowl while watching it carefully in his hands. “Got a bit ambitious.”

  “Not a drop will be wasted.” Davin cheerfully accepted it.

  “Now, my wife.” Mr. Miller sat back in the chair, this time with a groan.

  “She was a good cook?”

  “No. I mean, yes she was a good cook. But you were asking me about my belief in God. Now, my wife.” He stepped around Seamus and reached up to the mantelpiece and pulled down a frame. Then he wiped the dust off with his sleeve and handed it to Davin.

  It was an old daguerreotype and it appeared to about fifteen years old. “She’s a lovely woman.” He handed it back.

  Mr. Miller looked at the face smiling back at him. “Mildred was a very faithful woman.” He looked up. “You’d have to be to put up with a man like myself. When she died, I am afraid she took some of my faith with her.”

  The picture reminded Davin of something. He set his bowl down on the table beside him and reached down into Seamus’s front shirt pocket, and sure enough, there was the faded photo of Ashlyn. Or what was left of it.

  “What’s that?” Mr. Miller went to the fire and added a couple of logs.

  “This,” Davin glanced at the fading image, “is the photo that drove my brother to travel more than a thousand miles in search of a woman.”

  Mr. Miller stepped up and clapped his hands together. “Ashlyn?”

  “Yes . . . how did you know?”

  “That’s the name I keep hearing him mutter.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Was he always a man of faith? Your brother?”

  “No. That came later. I suppose right around the time he found Ashlyn.”

  “Women have a way of doing that for us, don’t they?”

  This struck Davin. Was his pursuit of Muriel causing him to rekindle his faith? The old man was right. He realized why it was referred to as falling in love. It was like falling off a cliff and hoping there was water below. This type of risk took more than a man could do on his own.

  “Hey,” Davin said. “Would you want to see some?”

  “See what?”

  Davin reached down into his pack and poked around a bit and then pulled out a small glass with a cork sealing the top. He held it to his eye, pleased to see the two large gold nuggets were still in there. He handed it to Mr. Miller.

  “Is it real?” They were now in the hands of a wide-eyed child.

  “They better be. It’s all I have left of my possessions.”

  There was a knock on the door, and then it cracked open. “May I come in?” Muriel didn’t wait for an answer. She was carrying her medical case, and she went over to Seamus and examined him. “How has he been doing?”

  “He’s woken a few times,” Davin said. “What are you doing here?” He couldn’t imagine how exhausted she must be having worked in the medical tents for a day and a half without rest.

  “What?” She turned to Davin and seemed agitated. “Well I’ve been worried about him.”

  “Keeps asking for his Ashlyn,” Mr. Miller said. “Poor soul.” He stood. “What manners. May I get you a bowl of soup?”

  “That would be delightful,” Muriel said without turning from her patient.

  Davin was thinking of something Mr. Miller had just said. “Muriel?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you sure there is . . . no hope for him?”

  She broke from her work, turned toward Davin, and her face softened. “There is always hope. But,” her eyebrows lowered, “the cut is deep. I have sewed it up as best I can. And I have given him morphine to help with the pain. You need to prepare yourself. There is nothing we can amputate here. I’ve seen these wounds so many times before. He has two, three, maybe four days left.”

  Davin touched her arm. “I don’t want to just stand around and watch him die.”

  Muriel shook her head as if she didn’t understand. “Are you just going to leave him?”

  “No. I want to take him home.”

  “Home?”

  “Where is home, young man?” Mr. Miller returned with another bowl of soup. He directed Muriel to the chair, and she sat and began to eat the soup.

  “A town called Taylorsville. It’s in the Shenandoah Valley.”

  “Well, that’s a fair distance.” Mr. Miller walked over to the other side of the room and fumbled with papers on his desk.

  “I know it is madness,” Davin said, as Muriel sipped her soup. “But if he has a chance to see his wife again, and if I have any way of granting him that last wish, then it would at least be something I can do for him. And myself.”

  “The travel would hasten his death,” Muriel said, in between quick ladles of her soup. “He needs constant care.”

  “I know it’s not safe for him, Muriel. But if he is going to die anyway, then there isn’t much to risk.”

  “No. You don’t understand. Your brother needs continued care, and he’ll get that.”

  Davin shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  She put the empty bowl on the table and stood, wiping her chin with the back of her hand. “He will get constant care because I am accompanying you.”

  Her words lifted his spirits. She would come with him? It provided a sudden confirmation to his plan. But then his enthusiasm melted as quickly as it had arrived. “No. You can’t leave here. The commission needs you. This is what you’ve always done. This . . . this is your cause.”

  Muriel took both of his hands. “Causes change.”

 
; Davin tried to comprehend the depth of her sacrifice. He was grateful to have her expertise, her fellowship. But something was disturbing him about all of this. Was there something more to her explanation? There had to be. It was so unlike her to leave her station.

  “Here. I found it. Come here.” Mr. Miller flung open the map by the hearth so they could see it in the light. “This may be a little old, but most of the roads should hold true. You may want some civilian clothes so as not to stick out so much. We’re not exactly the same size young man, but I can see what I have.”

  Davin glanced over at his brother and realized there was a major flaw with this plan. They had no way of moving his brother. “Will he be able to ride a horse?”

  “That won’t be a problem. You are going to take my wagon.”

  This was all surreal to Davin. How could this all be coming together? There was something wrong. Or odd. Or supernatural. Davin leaned back against the hearth. “This is all rubbish. I couldn’t ask you to let us use your wagon. And even if we did, there’s no hope of us getting past roadblocks without getting stopped. None of this will work.”

  Mr. Miller took over the proponent’s role. “You can’t give up on your brother. It would be a great gesture. A wonderful story. Some joy in this miserable war. Besides, I would not be giving you the wagon. I would be selling it to you.”

  Davin raised his hands. “I used to have money.”

  “You’ve got something better.” Mr. Miller pulled out the vial of the two gold nuggets. He uncorked it and pulled out one. He resealed it and handed it back to Davin. He held the nugget up to the light of the fire. Then he held out his hand to Davin. “Fair price?”

  In his head, Davin tried to calculate the value of the nugget and it didn’t take long to figure it wasn’t near worth the value of a horse, let alone the wagon. But the fact he had something to exchange gave him some peace about the transaction. He shook hands with Mr. Miller, whose smile glowed through his beard.

  Still, there were too many impossibilities left for them to solve. “Now, how are we going to make it past the sentries without getting stopped?”

  Muriel was already packing her medical bag. “I’ve got a plan for that. But it begins with us leaving now. In the cover of dark.”

  Chapter 40

  Back Home

  Clare had lingered in Gettysburg for two days after the battle had ended, and she had yet to get any answers.

  With more than twenty thousand casualties, it was understandable that the soldiers would be busy and the doctors would have no time for a reporter’s questions, but she found it excruciatingly frustrating that she couldn’t find out anything about Davin. Not from his superior officers. Not from the men in his battalion. They could only say that he was missing, and although they couldn’t confirm he was a casualty, they hadn’t seen him for several days.

  Was he out there lying in some field? One among the many bodies being stacked and waiting for the embalming surgeon? The mere thought made her stomach churn, but until his death was confirmed, she clung to the fading hope that he was still alive.

  Equally frustrating was her inability to locate Muriel. In the last day, Clare had gone from hospital tent to hospital tent, past the carts stacked with body parts, and peered in to see some of the worst horrors mankind had ever witnessed. But still no Muriel.

  Clare was determined to get the answers she was seeking. Finally she hunted down a lead. Clare was told that Nurse Hilda Meldrickson was the type of woman who put her nose into all things, and if anyone knew where Muriel was, it would be this Sanitary Commission officer.

  But to pursue this lead meant Clare would have to endure the screams and the moans as the surgeons performed their awful craft.

  In little more than a day, the doctors and nurses and their teams had set up what appeared to be a city of tents, each overfilled with the diseased and dying. It took Clare most of the day to track Nurse Meldrickson down, and when she did, she found the lady to be in the foulest of moods. Which under the circumstances, certainly was understandable.

  Clare skipped exchanging pleasantries with the woman glaring down at her and got to the point. “I am seeking a woman by the name of Muriel McMahon. My understanding is that she reports to you.”

  The mention of Muriel’s name seemed to crack the brittleness of the woman’s expression. But only momentarily. “There are many people who report to me. May I ask who you are and what business you have in the matter?”

  “I am Clare Royce, a correspondent for the New York Daily, and I have some questions for her.”

  Nurse Meldrickson leaned back on her heels and crossed her arms. “In that case, Miss Royce, I have no comment on the matter.” She turned to go into a tent.

  Clare grabbed her by the arm, perhaps a bit too brusquely, and this was met with a glare of daggers.

  “I am very sorry, Nurse Meldrickson. Please forgive me as I am quite exhausted.”

  “As we all are.” She freed her arm from Clare’s grasp.

  “Wait. I am not here in the capacity of a reporter. I am here as Muriel’s friend. She was our nanny and I’m quite concerned about her.”

  The nurse flared her nostrils and looked at Clare from shoes to forehead, her lips curled. But then she seemed to soften. “I have not seen Muriel for several days now.”

  “Several days? Hasn’t she been helping out with the wounded?”

  “She hasn’t been here to help a single soul. Before the first shot was fired, I was approached by some officers and they were quite insistent that they needed to speak with Muriel. I shared this news with her, and she seemed . . . affected by it, frankly. I had not seen her since.”

  Clare lowered her head.

  “I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “I wish I had more to share with you. I do. Muriel was a fine nurse for us, with the skill of a doctor. She will be missed. Now, I must . . .” She pointed to the door of the tent.

  “Yes, of course. Thank you.”

  What was that all about? What could the officers had wanted to discuss with Muriel?

  “Clare!”

  She looked up to see Ben Jones jogging toward her. He stopped and put his hands on his knees to catch his breath. “Here, this telegram came in for you from the Daily.”

  Clare took it from him and noticed that it wasn’t in an envelope.

  “The army opens everything coming in,” he said for explanation.

  “I suppose then, you can tell me what it says.”

  He shrugged. “I can’t help my curiosity. I am a journalist.”

  She read the words slowly:

  THE MILITIA HAS BEEN CALLED TO SERVICE. THE DAILY HAS BEEN THREATENED. PLEASE COME HOME. ANDREW.

  “What does this mean?” Clare looked up to Ben’s concerned eyes.

  “The news is just coming in on this, but it appears it’s about Lincoln’s draft. They are giving a three-hundred-dollar exemption, which means the wealthy can buy safety for their sons. The poor, and the Irish in particular, have had it. And they are blaming the blacks for the war in the first place. It looks quite serious. Many of us in the press corps are making plans to head back as soon as we can, but finding transportation will be difficult.”

  How could this be? Here she was desperately trying to find out if her brother was alive, and now she had to worry about her family back home. What should she do?

  “It’s worse,” Ben said. “The word we’re hearing is that the newspapers are going to suffer retaliation. Well, at least those who have been supportive of what they are calling ‘The Negro Cause.’”

  “The Daily,” she whispered.

  But was she too late?

  Chapter 41

  Crossroads

  “You know, if you sat next me to up here, I wouldn’t have to shout.” Davin turned back and saw Muriel peering out of the shadow of the covered wagon, seeming to enjoy
the sprawling farm countryside.

  “And how would that look? A Union soldier with a civilian beside him? That would only stir curiosity.”

  Muriel was right. So far he had only drawn friendly waves from those who passed by or observed him from the fields. To their eyes, he simply appeared to be a supply driver. “But if you were beside me, it would mean my neck wouldn’t hurt so much from turning to admire your pretty face.”

  She strained to speak above the rattling of the wooden wheels on the gravely roads. “If I felt you meant that, I would certainly be flattered.”

  That was it. Davin pulled on the reins and then pulled up hard on the brake. “Why must you do that?”

  “What?”

  “Not believe me. When I tell you how lovely you are?”

  Her light red eyebrows bent in and she stared at him for a moment before speaking. “We are out of camp now. No longer am I the only woman under fifty years of age. So you can enjoy these beautiful farm girls. And without any discomfort in your neck.”

  “Who did this to you?”

  “Did what?”

  “Made you so unlovable.”

  “Unlovable?” Hurt shone in her blue eyes.

  “Not that you are unlovable, but that you won’t allow yourself to be loved.”

  “Davin, you must keep this wagon moving. It will appear suspicious for us to be stopped for no reason.”

  “I am not starting this wagon again until you answer my question.”

  Muriel crossed her arms. “Then your brother will never make it home.”

  He should have known better than to square up against Muriel. She would always have the advantage. Davin released the brake, tugged on the reins, and then they were grinding away on the dirt road once again.

  What was indisputably beautiful was the farm country they were traveling through. Muriel had been navigating them through remote country roads, and in this part of Maryland, it was hard to know a war was raging.

  This was their second full day of travel and it had been surprisingly uneventful. Whether the Union army was busy recovering from its wounds or chasing retreating Confederates, they were nowhere to be seen so far. Yet Davin was well aware that all it would take was one scout team, soldiers coming from the other direction, or even a curious farmer and they could risk being arrested and even hung for deserting their posts.