A pain was growing behind Emily’s eyes. “He can’t be more than six months old, Sophia,” she said wearily. “He’s not throwing tantrums. He’s making his needs known.”
Sophia waved a breezy hand. “The noise taxes my patience. And the smells! Children are absolutely vulgar, Emily. Pregnancy is abominable; delivery is torment. And it hardly seems fair that after enduring all that affliction, it is the woman who is expected to tie herself down to child-rearing. I should dearly love a turn at Matthew’s freedom.”
Emily sighed. She had hoped motherhood might turn Sophia’s focus outward. “Sophia, why are you here?”
The young woman lit up. “I told you. The benefit ball. You will come, won’t you? Oh, say you will! Matthew will be in Columbia, and it’s so dreadfully tedious attending alone. I heard Thaddeus Black will be there,” she added.
Emily hadn’t seen Thad since her return and wanted nothing more than to avoid him. “I believe I’m scheduled at the hospital next Saturday.” She’d make sure of it.
Sophia grabbed Emily’s hand. “You could regain his affections. I’m sure you could.” She narrowed her eyes spitefully. “That dreadful Peggy Sue Barton’s been trying to sink her claws in him. Wouldn’t it serve her right if you snatched him back?”
“Sophia, I have no interest in Thaddeus Black.” But she was talking to a wall.
“He’s becoming quite wealthy, you know. All the girls adore him. You were a fool to walk away. Right now, you could be—”
“As miserable as you are?” Aunt Margaret broke in. Her face was frightening in its disapproval. “Sophia Buchanan, I’ve heard enough of your nonsense. You will pack up your child this minute and return to your home where you belong, or I will pen a note to your husband detailing your waywardness. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. That baby needs a mother, and your husband needs a wife. It’s high time you grew up and started playing the part you agreed to when you accepted Mr. Buchanan’s wealth, status, and name.”
Sophia’s eyes widened with indignation. She stood up and flicked her gaze toward Emily.
Emily closed her eyes. For a long while, she and Sophia had been moving in divergent directions. Perhaps it was time to help her friend see that, as well. “Sophia, I’m sorry, but I cannot attend the benefit ball with you.” She sighed. “I’m very tired. I think it might be best if you took your leave.”
Sophia’s mouth dropped open in shock. Snatching up her gloves, she flounced from the courtyard without another word.
When her angry wake subsided back into peaceful stillness, Emily couldn’t muster up even an ounce of regret; the sense of release was too strong. She passed the remainder of the afternoon in restful repose beneath the showy branches of Aunt Margaret’s crepe myrtle trees. It was well she did. It would be the last moment of peace Charleston would enjoy for a very long time.
29
The bombardment began at dawn on the second Friday of July. Unlike the thin exchanges of gunfire that occasionally popped like scattershot across the harbor, this sudden roar of noise started abruptly and did not abate. It was as if God himself had uncorked a giant vat of thick, glutinous sound and dumped it over the harbor in glug after glug after glug. It permeated the air and poured into the ears of listeners until every skull was saturated.
On the morning it began, Emily had been working an overnight shift at the hospital and was in the process of changing a bandage on the leg of a young officer who had taken a bullet in a skirmish on one of the Sea Islands the day before. She jerked in alarm, spilling the basin of bloody water all over herself, the man, and his bed. “I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed, leaping to her feet and sopping at the mess with an extra cloth.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s hotter than Hades in here anyway.” The officer smiled. “Next time pour it over my head.”
Her hands shook as she wrung out the cloth. She glanced out the window but couldn’t see anything except the sprawling silhouette of a live oak against a lightening sky. “It sounds terribly close. How can you be so calm?” If she was this edgy, how was Aunt Margaret faring?
“Not calm,” he corrected. “Confident. We’ve had plenty of time to prepare. We’re ready for anything the Yankees can deliver.”
“Tell me what’s happening.”
“I reckon the Union finally decided to attack Morris Island. They’ve been amassing across the channel for some time. In truth, we expected the assault before now.”
Emily let out a shaky breath. “It’s frightening to hear.”
“General Beauregard has it well in hand. There are only two approaches to Charleston: over James Island or through the harbor mouth. The Yanks have tried James Island before and failed. General Beauregard believes this time they will attempt to set artillery on Morris Island to fire on Fort Sumter and open the harbor.”
Emily’s face blanched. “Is that what they’re doing?”
“They’re trying. But they have to clear our boys off Morris first. And believe me, we have quite a party planned for them. There’s no way they can get past Fort Wagner.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I know I am.”
Emily rushed home as soon as her shift ended and found Aunt Margaret pale and abed but in a remarkably calm frame of mind. Emily reached for the woman’s hand. “How are you?”
“You don’t have enough on your plate that you need to worry about an old woman, too?”
“Of course I worry about you, Auntie. That’s my job.” She tried to keep her tone light to counteract the terrifying thud of explosions.
“Well, stop. I’m perfectly fine.”
“You’re not frightened?”
“Of course I’m frightened. I’m shaking like a glass of water on a galloping horse! But I thought I told you, I’ve decided no Yankee is going to chase me from my home.”
Emily shook her head in wonder. “Aunt Margaret, you never fail to confound me. Sometimes your counsel is sound; other times nothing will make you see reason. Sometimes you demand the strictest propriety; other times you’re absolutely devil-may-care. Sometimes you seem so frail; other times you’re the strongest woman I know.” Emily threw up her hands. “I can’t figure you out.”
Aunt Margaret laughed. “You haven’t noticed I only demand decorum from you? I’m an old woman. No one cares what I say and do. In fact, they rather enjoy being shocked by my behavior. But you, my dear, still have a life to make for yourself. If I’ve been exacting, I’ve meant only to protect you.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Though I’ve found you have rather more of me in you than I expected.”
Emily gave her a wry smile.
“My reason or unsoundness might be a matter of perspective.” Aunt Margaret shrugged. “As for whether I’m strong or weak, that’s a more difficult question to answer. Is it strength when infirmity prevents me from leaving? Is it courage or is it orneriness that puts a brave face on fear? Am I strong when I admit that South Carolina made a grave miscalculation and I now regret the cost? Or am I just a stubborn old woman who’s frightened to lose what she loves most?”
She placed her hand over her niece’s. “Dr. Malone stopped by this morning. He confessed to telling you about my spell last summer. That’s why you came home, isn’t it?”
Emily looked down at the blue-veined fingers covering hers. “Perhaps.”
“I thought as much.” The old woman sighed, long and heavily. “I wish now I’d gone to my daughter’s house despite the difficulties.”
“Auntie, you act like it was some great hardship for me to come home. I want to be here with you.”
“Child,” Aunt Margaret said with utter seriousness. “I admit, the first sound of guns shocked me dreadfully. But my greater fear has always been for you. You and your brother both came to mean as much to me as my own children. I’ve already lost Jack. I don’t want to lose you, too.”
Tears gathered in Emily’s eyes. She shifted to the edge of the bed and wrapped an arm around her aunt’s shoulders. “You won’t. I prom
ise. I’m staying right here, and we’re both going to be fine. I can go back to school when the war ends.”
“Unless life gets in your way, as it has a habit of doing.”
“War does change things,” Emily agreed grimly.
“So does marriage.”
Emily drew back. “Oh, no. Thad is ancient history. There’s no way—”
“I’m not talking about Thaddeus Black. I’m talking about Jovie Cutler, you foolish girl! You should have married him a long time ago!”
Emily’s eyes, her mouth, her entire face opened in astonishment.
“Don’t look at me like I just told you to move to Mars. Anyone can see how much you’ve always adored each other. I don’t know how you’ve been so blind.”
Emily rose slowly, still staring at her aunt. Marry Jovie Cutler? Her hands covered her cheeks. Could it be? Did she love him? It was true that she missed the closeness they once shared. She’d hated the long silence of the past year, and his recent rejection had nearly torn out her heart. But love?
“I—I have to go,” she stuttered and fled the room.
***
The battle wasn’t visible, Morris Island being five miles away and around the bend of the harbor entrance, but for the rest of that day the city reverberated with the percussion of the attack. Emily’s head rang with it. But it wasn’t the constant barrage that stole her rest that night. It was the memory of a green-eyed man in a tattered uniform standing over a pile of muddied envelopes. Confused, exhausted, and heavy of heart, she tossed in the unbearable humidity and finally dropped into slumber a few hours before she was due at the hospital.
The sounds of battle at last grew weary and died with the heat of the following day. Into the sudden silence gushed the heady sound of victory as word reached the city. The Union had failed to take Fort Wagner. Their defenses held.
Those who remained in the city took to the streets in droves. Bands played. Flags waved. After her shift ended, Emily gave in to a palpable sense of relief and joined the spectators swarming the battery promenade. Though Fort Wagner remained out of sight, she had a clear view of the inner harbor’s new fortifications. The officer in the hospital had described them to her. Now she viewed them for the first time. They gave her a surge of hope.
She could plainly see Fort Johnson at the point of James Island and Sumter standing proudly in the shipping channel. Across the harbor she could just pick out Fort Moultrie. Fort Ripley stood on a narrow shoal a mile off the end of the peninsula. There were no less than a dozen other batteries built in between them, another ten in the city, and countless more hidden among the islands and around the curve of the harbor mouth. And the entire waterway was striated with distance markers, booms, ropes, torpedoes, and other obstructions. General Beauregard had had more than a year to design the city’s defenses. For a few sweet hours, Emily gave herself over to trust in his abilities.
That evening, she visited Dr. and Mrs. Malone for dinner. Emily thought the doctor looked far graver than necessary. “Ida,” he said, “I would like to discuss the evacuation orders with you again. I believe it’s time you left the city. And Emily, as much as I hate to lose your help in the hospital, I think you’d be wise to go with her.”
Ida set down her fork. “We’ve already talked about this, Tomas. I will not leave you if there is no immediate danger.”
“The danger may not be immediate, but it is imminent.”
“No,” she said firmly.
Emily looked from one to the other. “I don’t understand, Dr. Malone. Everyone is saying Charleston is invincible. Have you been outside? People are celebrating in the street. It’s like Secession all over again.”
“Yes, they need something to celebrate, don’t they? After losses at both Vicksburg and Gettysburg last week.”
“I’ve not seen a newspaper,” she confessed.
“One in Mississippi—our last stronghold on the river—and one in Pennsylvania. Devastating blows, both of them.”
“I am certain neither battle has any bearing on our situation here in Charleston.”
“No, they do not.”
“Then why should we evacuate? I’ve just been out on the battery. The Union can sooner sail their ships up a mountain range.”
“Perhaps.” He paused to meet her eyes directly. “But given enough time, even a mountain will erode.”
Emily frowned. “You think we’re in danger?”
The doctor wiped his mouth on a napkin and set it beside his plate. “Emily, the North has more men, more guns, more machinery, more ammunition. It might take them weeks or months to bully their way in. It might cost them dearly. But they can afford to be reckless. This time the Union isn’t going away, and Beauregard knows it. He’s dismantling Sumter.”
“What?” Emily exclaimed. “Why?”
“That is the word among the wounded brought in from the battlefield, anyway. We simply do not have enough guns or manpower to dislodge the troops on Morris Island. The Union will besiege Fort Wagner, and it will fall. Then their artillery will smash Fort Sumter into the harbor as it did to Fort Pulaski at the mouth of the Savannah River. Brick masonry cannot stand up to the power of rifled artillery. But the longer Wagner can hold out against the siege, the more time it will give our men to move Sumter’s guns to positions of strength within the inner harbor.”
Emily considered his words with a growing apprehension. “You believe Charleston is doomed.”
“I did not say that.”
“But you believe it.”
“Emily, our men don’t have enough to eat. Some don’t have shoes. Our machinery is outdated. We have no way to cast new artillery. We’re reusing the ammunition shot at us, for God’s sake!” He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his jawline. “But we have no shortage of courage. Charleston will fight long and hard. The Union will have to take her piece by piece, inch by inch.”
“If that is the case, then I will stay,” she stated with finality. “I will be needed in the hospital.” She spooned a mouthful of soup between her teeth. “At any rate, Aunt Margaret will not leave, and I’ll not go without her.”
The incessant pounding of artillery started up again the next morning. For days, Emily worked with it. She bathed with it. She ate with it. She dreamed of it. It throbbed in her head until her skull ached with the echo. Over the sound of rainsqualls, through the oppressive heat, it thrummed relentlessly. Every nerve in Charleston stretched taut.
Sometime after midnight, after a week of constant battering, the guns fell silent. Emily awoke abruptly. The stillness that fell over her room felt ominous and invasive. Unable to sleep in the unaccustomed silence, Emily made herself tea and quietly slipped away to the hospital a few hours early. She was there when the summons arrived calling every doctor in the city to the battlefield.
“I want to go with you,” she told Dr. Malone after the courier departed.
“A field hospital is no place for a young woman.”
“I can help,” she insisted.
“I will have several thousand able-bodied assistants.”
“They will not be skilled in nursing. I—”
“Emily,” he snapped. “I said no!”
She stepped back in astonishment. Dr. Malone had never raised his voice to her before.
He pressed his thumb and index finger into his eyes. He had just finished a night shift, and fatigue showed in every line of his face. “I’m sorry, Emily, but the battlefield is too dangerous for a young woman, even under the flag of truce.” He laid a hand on her shoulder. “You will have plenty to do here.”
His words proved prophetic. The influx of new patients filled the hospital beyond capacity. Many of the prisoners needed care, as well. After a single day to remove the wounded, the bombardment began all over, an irregular rhythm of heartbeats.
It was a harrowing week. In the past, when casualties shipped in from Virginia, the distance ensured that Charleston received only those with a fair chance of survival. But with the battlefield jus
t miles away, horrible, raw injuries passed under Emily’s care. A shortage of medical resources, due to the infernal blockade, meant Emily could not always administer painkiller to those who desperately needed it. Often, all Emily could do was hold some poor soul’s hand while he thrashed out of the world. She did it more times than she could count, and still the siege continued. July merged with August in a blur of death, blood, and the monotonous pounding of artillery.
“Emily, you must take some time off,” Aunt Margaret admonished over a late supper in the courtyard one evening. The bugs had retired for the night, and the heat was far less oppressive under the open sky. “You’re pale. You’ve lost weight. You’re going to make yourself ill.”
“How can I stop when our soldiers get no reprieve?” Calcium lights now lit the harbor mouth. Emily could see the glow over her aunt’s shoulder. Any movement in Fort Wagner at night had become just as dangerous as during broad daylight. She wondered how much longer they could hold out.
“At least get some sleep or you’re going to end up in a grave, same as those soldiers.”
“I believe I’ll take you up on that.” Emily rose. “I have an early shift in the morning.” She kissed her aunt’s cheek and added, “I’ll be all right.”
“Before you retire, there is a letter from your mother on the dining room table.”
The roar of artillery followed Emily inside. Nobody had comprehended what kind of firepower the Union would bring with them, or that the bombardment would continue virtually uninterrupted for weeks. The Confederacy had nothing to match it. And just days ago, the siege lines on Morris Island had drawn within range of Fort Sumter. In addition to the shells falling on Wagner, the grand bastion in the harbor mouth was now quickly being reduced to a pile of rubble.
Emily found the envelope and brought it upstairs to her room. Lighting a candle, she saw that Trudy had brought her a pitcher of wash water. She took the time to remove every trace of the hospital from her body, luxuriating in the cool feel of the water against her skin. Then she donned a cotton nightgown and sprawled on top of her bed to read her mother’s letter.
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