Beyond All Price

by Carolyn Poling Schriber

“Mrs. Leath, be realistic. There are hundreds of slaves out there, and they don’t belong to us. They haven’t been freed because a northern army arrived on their shores. They’re not our responsibility.” The chaplain looked as if he were growing more and more exasperated with her.

  “But. . . .”

  Nellie’s next protest was interrupted by a shout and cry for help from outside the tent. “Someone come quick! It’s a bomb!”

  Every officer in the mess tent leaped to respond to the call, Nellie and Reverend Browne along with them. Just outside, a frantic young private, white with fear, pointed to another soldier standing a few feet away. Sergeant Benjamin Scott Stuart was holding a large unexploded artillery shell, turning it over in his hands and examining its workings.

  “Ben, stop!” shouted Captain Armstrong, the commander of Company A. “It’ll blow!”

  “No, Sir,” Scott said. “If I can get this fuse out, it won’t be able to explode.”

  “You can’t get that fuse out.”

  “Stop!”

  “Somebody run and find help from the ordnance crew.”

  Shouts came from all around, but the observers seemed rooted to their spots. All realized they were watching a disaster unfold, but no one knew what to do. As if in slow motion, Sergeant Scott began to twist the fuse. Not a soul took a breath. The fuse seemed to come loose, and then, as Scott looked up with a grin of triumph on his freckled face, the shell exploded.

  The concussion echoed across the dirt field, driving the onlookers backward. The sound was first unbelievably loud and then abnormally silent as eardrums reacted to unbearable noise. Most stood frozen. Then, out of the crowd burst Reverend Browne, Nellie close on his heels. The two of them knelt by the supine form of the sergeant who had tried to prevent the accident he had caused.

  “He’s still alive,” Nellie said, unable to tear her eyes from the horror of what lay before her. The shell had blown a hole in the sergeant’s abdomen, his intestines a bloody mess, his liver and heart visible within his chest cavity. But above the hideous wound, his chest still moved. Both his legs had been broken by the blast and lay twisted at improbable angles. His arms flailed helplessly, and Nellie saw in disbelief he had lost both hands.

  Reverend Browne sat on the ground, cradling the man’s head on his lap as the soldier tried to speak through the blood clogging his mouth. “Mrs. Leath, for God’s sake. Get him some water.”

  “But he can’t drink, Sir. He has no. . . .”

  “Nellie!” the chaplain’s voice boomed at her. “He needs to clear his throat. Get him water!”

  Someone was already passing a tin cup to her. Carefully she held the cup to his lips, and to her amazement, he gulped the water down. She could not look to see where it went.

  “Reverend,” the young man gasped. “Will you pray with me?”

  “Certainly, my Son. I’ll speak the words and you follow along. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom . . . .”

  Nellie found herself murmuring the familiar words along with them. The soldier was trying to fold his missing hands in a gesture of prayer. She reached over and took hold of the stumps of his arms, enclosing them in her own folded hands. It seemed to her the soldier’s voice became a bit stronger as the three of them reached the end, “. . . Thine be the power and the glory, forever and ever, Amen.”

  Nellie felt a vast emptiness expanding inside her, but the dying young soldier was not through twisting her heart. “Reverend, will you tell my mother I was not afraid to die? And send my love to my dear wife Lizzie. She thought I’d be coming home soon to raise our family. Tell her . . . tell her I wanted to.”

  “Rest easy, Son. I’ll personally see to it all your loved ones receive your final thoughts. And I’m sure they are sending you their blessings. They do not want you to worry about them. All will be well, I promise, and you’ll see them again one day soon.”

  Sergeant Scott breathed a huge sigh, and Nellie waited for his next breath. It never came. Reverend Browne drew his hand gently over his eyes, closing them for the last time.

  “Is there a blanket to cover him?” he asked.

  Other hands took over now, and when Nellie looked around, Reverend Browne was already gone. Colonel Leasure was still there, however, and he helped Nellie to her feet, handling her as if she, too, had received a mortal blow. He accompanied her to her tent and sat with her silently for a while, seeming to understand no words were capable of easing the horror of the last few minutes.

  At last she looked up at him. “All those things the chaplain said about seeing his loved ones — do you think he really believes that?”

  “Of course he does, Nellie. That’s what makes it possible for him to offer consolation to those in extremis. And you must take consolation yourself in the fact Sergeant Stuart had a good death.”

  “A ‘good death’? That’s another contradiction. How can any death be good?”

  “It’s what every soldier hopes for. A ‘good death’ demonstrates the soldier’s courage, his concern for others, and his own acceptance of his fate. Sergeant Stuart was beyond feeling the pain of his wounds. He died trying to keep his comrades from being injured by that shell. He had time to make his peace with God and to leave encouraging words for his loved ones. He would not have asked for more.”

  Nellie kept shaking her head. “But it was all so senseless.”

  “When we mourn, Nellie, we mourn not for the dying but for the living.” Reverend Browne spoke as he stood in the doorway to her tent. “Is she going to be all right, Colonel?”

  “Yes,” they spoke in unison. Then Nellie added, “Thank you, Reverend Browne. You were wonderful out there. You were much more useful than I was. I’m beginning to understand that.” A faint smile touched her trembling lips. The chaplain repaid her with a scowl as he turned to leave. Colonel Leasure’s eyes moved from one to the other. “Just maybe,” he thought. “Just maybe these two can find some common ground between them.”

  ggg

  13

  On To Beaufort

  There were no solutions to the problems of Hilton Head, of course, but a promise of relief arrived on Dec. 5th. Colonel Leasure and some of the other regimental commanders had been absent for several days. They returned late that evening, and Leasure immediately summoned his company commanders to a briefing in the mess tent.

  “We’re moving out,” he announced.

  A clamor of voices broke out: “Who?” “When?” “How soon?” “Where are we going?” “Are we headed into battle?” “Are we abandoning Hilton Head?”

  Leasure held up his hands for silence. “It’s General Stephens’ brigade—that’s us, along with the Eighth Michigan, the Highlanders of the Seventy-Ninth New York, and the Dirty Dutch of the Fiftieth Pennsylvania. We’re headed up river to occupy Port Royal Island, which the Confederacy has already abandoned. We’ve drawn the lucky straw, because we’re assigned to hold Beaufort against all comers.”

  “What’s Beaufort?”

  “It’s one of the prettiest cities you’ll ever see. It sits on the bank of the Beaufort River, which flows into Port Royal Harbor. It’s where the plantation owners from all over the low country maintained their summer residences. The climate is said to be especially healthy. The houses are mansions with huge back lots for the staffs of slaves who run the residences. It has several stores, churches, meeting halls, a post office, government offices, a courthouse, even a library. And for you, John Nicklin,” he said, pointing at the director of the regimental band, “a real bandstand in a park right across the street from our house.”

  “Our house! Are you saying we’re moving out of these musty tents?”

  “Right you are. We’ve been exploring the city the past few days, picking out the places that will be most comfortable.”

  “I’m dreaming!”

  “No, it’s real enough, but make no mistake. We’ll have a lot of work to do, and most of our men will still be in camp tents on the outskirts of town. General
Wright will have his command post on the town square, in the former John Mark Verdier House. He’s coming with us so he can establish a more central command over the entire coastal area. We represent the first wave of Union occupation of South Carolina. The other troops will eventually move north and south to take Charleston and Savannah. Our job is to hold Beaufort, so the rebels can’t use the Charleston and Savannah Railroad, which runs above Port Royal Island.”

  “But we’ll be in town?” asked James Cornelius, captain of Company C.

  “Our headquarters will be right in the center of the city,” Leasure said. “Each company will have its own plantation house, along the outskirts of town, to guard all access. You, Jim, will take your men to the Barnwell plantation north of town. The house there is well-furnished. It even has a piano, and an old Negro mammy who has offered to stay on as your cook. There will be room for your officers to stay in the house, and there’s a shady clearing where the men can pitch their tents nearby. The rest of you will have similar accommodations.”

  “And regimental headquarters?”

  “The Roundheads headquarters will be in the Leverett House. It belonged to an Episcopalian minister who raised a family of eleven children in it, so it’s good-sized. It sits on a slight hill overlooking the river. Across the street on one side will be General Stevens’ brigade headquarters, and on the other side will be a huge hospital for the Roundheads.”

  He looked around to spot Doctor Ludington and Mrs. Leath. “Your hospital will be the Fuller House, which used to belong to a medical doctor. The doctor’s office and equipment are still in place. It’s an odd structure, build out of oyster shell concrete, but they say it keeps wonderfully cool in summer and warm in winter. It has a total of four wings of two stories each, so you will have a surgery and seven wards.”

  “How soon do we leave?” asked Alva Leslie, the quartermaster.

  “Immediately. I’m afraid you’ll have to work through most of the night, Alva. We must begin to load the ship at daybreak. We’ll be traveling in the Winfield Scott, and most of you are already familiar with her layout. You company commanders should have your men prepare rations for twenty-four hours, pack their things, and break camp first thing in the morning. We will assemble at the wharf and load as quickly as possible. We have to sail with the incoming tide to get that ship though the shallows of the river, and there will be no time to lose.”

  As it happened, of course, things did not go as quickly as hoped, and the ship’s crew missed both the morning and the evening tides. The soldiers spent all of Friday and Friday night tied up at the dock; the ship finally sailed at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday. The trip was only a matter of some twenty miles, but sailing was slow on the river, and they did not arrive at Beaufort until late afternoon. As had happened before, Colonel Leasure asked Nellie to stay aboard with her hospital patients until all unloading was finished. She managed to cajole the ship’s mess crew into cooking up some soup to feed her patients Saturday evening.

  It was midnight before the ambulance wagons pulled up at the dock and the sick and injured disembarked. Colonel Leasure was there to supervise, and he touched Nellie’s arm gently. “Come with me. You’ll ride back to headquarters in our carriage.”

  “But the men will need me,” she protested.

  “Nonsense. The hospital is all set up and ready for them. The rest of the medical staff can manage fine. You’ve been on constant duty for eighteen hours. You need a good night’s rest, and I’ve arranged quarters for you at the Leverett House.”

  A few gaslights illuminated the central main street, but once the road bent to the right to follow the line of the shore, Nellie could see little until the carriage came to a stop in a brick-paved yard surrounded by tall buildings. Despite the lateness of the hour, the yard swarmed with figures unloading wagons and unhitching horses. Among them were dark faces, including those of several small children who deftly avoided being stepped upon as they tried to see what was going on.

  Private Stevenson was there to help her down from the carriage. “Come inside, Miss Nellie,” he said. “The slaves have your room all ready for you.” He led her up a broad flight of stairs and through a doorway into a dark hall. He stopped at the first doorway on the right, stepping back to let her precede him into the room. She took in little of what she was seeing. A banked fire glowed in the fireplace, and a candle shaded by a glass lamp threw shadows across vague outlines of furniture.

  “There’s a chaise here,” he pointed out, and she sank onto it gratefully. “Your trunks and supplies are in the corner. I’m sure there will be someone to help you unpack and get settled in the morning.”

  “Thank you, John. You always seem to find perfect lodgings for me. You needn’t bother further. I’ll be fine here. I’ll rest a few moments longer and then retire for the night.”

  She awoke hours later, stiff and cramped from the awkward half-reclining position in which she had slept. Sunlight was creeping through the curtains, and a slight noise told her she was not alone. Sitting up, she saw a young slave girl, who had just placed a steaming pitcher and basin on the marble-topped dresser near the door. “Mornin’, M’am. This be you water and towel.”

  “Thank you, uh . . . I’m sorry. What is your name?”

  “I’s Maudy, M’am,” the girl said as she backed out the door, shutting it firmly between them.

  Well, that didn’t last long, Nellie observed to herself. She had been ready to ask several questions, but perhaps one didn’t hold conversations with slaves. How would I know? she asked herself. I’ve never talked to a slave at all, let alone had one waiting on me and bringing me things. How odd it feels!

  She began to look around the room, needing to answer her questions for herself. With a sigh of relief, she spotted a screen in the left back corner. It sheltered an empty iron tub and a chamber stool of carved dark wood. The seat lifted to reveal a chamber pot painted with lively roses and daisies. Nellie smiled in delight. “This surely was a girl’s room. It goes way beyond anything Private Stevenson could have come up with.”

  Her immediate needs dealt with, she was ready to survey her new quarters. The floor was covered with a woven woolen rug and the windows draped with heavy brocade curtains. The bed, small and narrow though it was, looked deep and comfortable. Its coverlet was a hand-worked quilt of flowered gingham patches in a daisy petal design. The chaise on which she had slept was upholstered in dark green velvet, with tucks and buttons all along its back. Two smaller armchairs flanked the fireplace. A low table held a couple of books and a vase of fresh flowers. And there were her boxes of belongings, stacked neatly next to a tall wardrobe with a mirror set into one of its doors.

  All of this for me! she thought in disbelief. If the Colonel really means for me to be housed here, I’ll be living in luxury. Her curiosity now fully aroused, she splashed a bit of water on her face, smoothed the unruly tendrils of hair curling around her forehead, shook out her skirts, and declared herself ready to explore the rest of the house. Her courage lasted long enough for her to open the door and step into the hall. Straight across the way stood a closed door, and a staircase that led to the third floor. To her left the door she had come through last night now stood open to a small porch and the yard beyond. To her right, the hall led past two facing rooms with doors ajar, toward a massive front entrance with sidelights and fanlight now filled with the rosy tints of the rising sun.

  Nellie hesitated, curiosity competing with trepidation as she tried to take in the layout of the house. Tentatively she ventured down the hall toward the two rooms that seemed to be standing open. Neither showed any sign of human occupancy, but the furnishings suggested both might have originally been used as parlors. Settees and armchairs arranged in pairs flanked ornate fireplaces. Small carved and gilded tables were scattered about the rooms, while mirrors and chandeliers reflected the available light. The walls were covered in what looked like silk, setting off what must have been family portraits. In contrast to its original design, the pa
rlor on her right was crammed with trunks, cots, and boxes she recognized from the medical tent. Across the hall, several official looking trunks stenciled with Colonel Leasure’s name cluttered the other front room.