He did not shrink from her vitriol, but leaned in close until she could feel his breath on her face.
“Do you think, Mrs. Hammond, for one damn moment, that I don’t know what war is like? I am military-trained, as is Captain Winslow. I enlisted in the Union army to fight for my principles and I don’t regret it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand why Bridger made a similar choice for different reasons. He’s a decent, honorable man, not some bloodthirsty fiend out for senseless slaughter!”
Caroline spoke carefully, furiously, quietly. “What,” she demanded, “is decent and honorable about enslaving other human beings, Captain McBride? About running a young woman—an expectant mother—down like an animal?”
“A young woman—you mean Jubie? What—?”
“Yes, Jubie.” Caroline was shaken, and not at all sure she could keep her voice down if this discussion continued, so she climbed the steps and entered the house, with Rogan right behind her. “How can you—how can any sensible person—discount the injustice, the cruelty—?”
“I’m not defending slavery,” Rogan said, with conviction. “You must know that. And neither is Bridger.”
She whirled on him, there in the shadowy corridor. “Of course he is,” she insisted, outraged, but very aware that Rachel was in the house and might overhear their heated exchange. “Why else would he fight?”
Rogan was rimmed in sunlight, but his face was in darkness, and she could not read his expression. “He’s fighting,” he replied, “because the South is his home. Wouldn’t you do the same, Caroline? Wouldn’t you fight to defend this ground? Your child, your grandmother, your friends and neighbors? Your town and the folks who live there?”
“It isn’t the same,” Caroline sputtered, a mite less certain of her opinions than before, but still unprepared to back down. All her life, it seemed to her now, she had deferred to the supposed wisdom of men—her husband, her grandfather, teachers and doctors and ministers—keeping her own ideas to herself, even when righteous opposition brewed and roiled within her.
“Isn’t it?” Rogan asked, closing the door behind them.
They stood in the dim, cool corridor, looking at each other. Geneva’s voice trailed down the back stairway, and there were thumps and bumps as Captain Winslow, a member of the very army that had killed her husband and thousands of others, was installed in her daughter’s bedroom.
“No,” Caroline answered, gathering her skirts and making for the stairs, Rogan close behind her. He would be gone soon, she reminded herself, with his army and his good looks and his misguided views on the subject of loyalty. She would not suppress her beliefs. “You know it isn’t the same. Captain Winslow would not have been called upon to ‘defend his home’ if the South hadn’t left the Union in the first place.”
Rogan offered no response to her remark, and she supposed that meant she had won the argument.
The small victory, if it was a victory, seemed strangely hollow.
What seemed most hollow of all was the fact that this very day was the anniversary of the country’s founding. A day meant to be a commemoration, a celebration—but could be nothing of the kind.
* * *
Several hours later that same day, Jubie shyly approached Caroline in the kitchen house. “Miss, I was just helping in the tents, and a soldier asks if I can write a couple letters for him. I said I can’t—” She shook her head sorrowfully. “Will you do it? Sooner is better. He’s in the third tent closest to the barn and his name is Gregory.”
“Of course!” Caroline replied.
“I’ll watch the little miss here and carry on with making dinner.”
Caroline thanked her and retrieved a stack of papers and a pen from the main house. She hurried over to the tent and, with a question or two, identified Gregory Lauder from upstate New York. A farmer’s son, he couldn’t have been more than twenty and had served with a volunteer infantry regiment. In a painfully cracked voice, he told her he’d been shot at Cemetery Ridge; he also said he knew he might not survive. Several of his ribs were broken—but worse, his lungs had been punctured. He frequently coughed up blood, and his shirt, the sheets and blanket were stained with it.
She settled on a camp stool beside Gregory’s cot and prepared to write.
He coughed, weakly wiped his mouth and began by giving her his parents’ names and their address, near the city of Rochester. “Please tell them I love them...and that I believe I made the right decision to fight for the Union.”
As she began the letter, Caroline first introduced herself to his parents, then wrote down, carefully and clearly, everything Gregory said.
“I am presently in a field hospital near a town called Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. Due to my injuries, I will almost certainly not see you again. I am sorry for what grief this will cause. As you know, I had planned, eventually, to take over the farm. I hope young Daniel will understand what a privilege it is.” He paused to cough again.
“I will miss all of you more than I can say.”
“Your loving son and brother, Gregory.”
Caroline wondered if he’d have the physical stamina and emotional strength to dictate another letter. But several minutes later, he seemed ready to begin again. He said she could send his fiancée’s letter in the care of his parents.
“My dearest Eliza,” he dictated. “It pains me to tell you this. I do not believe I shall survive my injuries. Therefore, I do not expect to see you again.”
Once more he explained where he was and that he took pride in being a soldier on the Union side. “I love you,” he went on, “as much as any man can love a woman. Please forgive me for leaving you and understand why I did what I did. I shall hope to see you and my family in a better world. All my love...”
Gregory’s eyes were closed by now and Caroline was in tears. She placed a discreet kiss on his forehead and hurried inside to prepare the letters for posting.
17
Hammond Farm & Town of Gettysburg
July 8, 1863
Caroline
The young men who were physically able tended the wounded and cooked over a single bonfire some distance from the house, fueling the blaze with wood they had purchased from Caroline at a fair price. They were unfailingly polite whenever she encountered them, and stayed well clear of the house.
Except for two of them. Captain Winslow sprawled on Rachel’s narrow bed upstairs, still as death for the most part, but prone to raving, flailing about and shouting curses when overtaken by delirium. And then there was Captain McBride, who took what little rest he could on a nearby army cot in the same small room.
Recovering rapidly, Rogan spent his days helping Enoch and a small detachment of soldiers with the grim task of digging temporary graves for the dead, each plot carefully marked and recorded in a ledger, so the bodies could be recovered later, sent home to loved ones for proper funerals and reinternment or, in some cases, buried at places like Arlington.
Yesterday, the fourth day after the battle, Rogan had ridden to town, accompanied by his men, Pickering and Alderman, and Enoch, who had gone along at Geneva’s request, so that he might visit her house and bring news of its condition.
When the men returned, hours later, they were grim and silent. Rogan, who had bathed, shaved and requisitioned a crisp new uniform as soon as he regained the necessary strength, had been pale as milk, the lower part of his face stubbled with the beginnings of a new beard, his clothing rumpled and dirty, his boots dull with dust.
He had looked, to Caroline, more vanquished than victorious, and the bleak expression in his eyes had stirred an ache of sorrow deep within her. She’d felt an unseemly urge to run to him, as she would once have run to Jacob.
She had not succumbed to the impulse, thank heaven, though her desire to do so had lingered far longer than she deemed proper. No, she had merely watched, stricken by the need to console a
near stranger, as he dismounted, led his horse into the barn, the pair of them vanishing into the shadows.
In the kitchen house, an hour later, hunched over his untouched supper plate, Enoch had related some of what they’d seen to her and Geneva, although Caroline had known his words were but pale sketches of a devastation that fate had drawn in bold lines.
The Prescott house had been used as a field hospital, he reported; the carpets had been rolled back, and the floors were stained with blood. The beds and armchairs and settees were beyond salvaging, the draperies had been torn from the windows, probably to be used as blankets, bandages and tourniquets, along with sheets and dishtowels; and the pantry and cellar were bare.
In spite of all this, there were no signs of the vandalism or wanton destruction both armies had been known to leave behind—and of which he’d seen many signs on the streets. Broken windows, scattered belongings and worse.
Geneva had been visibly relieved, but still concerned. “What of the people?” she had asked, one hand resting at the base of her throat, as if to hide the pulse pounding there. “The other houses—the shops?”
“There was a woman killed...on Baltimore Street,” Enoch had replied haltingly. “Your street... Looking after her sister, who’d just had a baby. The way I heard it, she was in the kitchen, kneading a batch of bread dough, when a stray bullet came right through the door and struck her dead.”
Caroline had sagged into a chair, suddenly as breathless as if she, too, had been struck.
“What was her name?” Geneva had asked quickly.
“As I recall, it was Wade. Miss Virginia Wade.”
Caroline had gasped, covered her mouth with one hand. Geneva shook her head, tears filling her eyes. Jennie, as Virginia was called, Wade had been born and raised in Gettysburg, and they’d both been especially fond of her. She’d had a sweetheart away in the war, Jennie had, and she’d lived for his letters.
Reluctantly, Enoch had gone on to deliver still more dreadful news. The fields were littered with graves and bodies, he’d said, and the remains of dead horses and mules had been dragged behind wagons and teams of borrowed oxen, left in great, rotting heaps to be burned, being too numerous to bury.
No one pressed Enoch for any further information. It would have been cruel, and quite unnecessary, since the land would bear the scars of battle far into the future, stark and plain for all to see.
* * *
The next day in her sun-splashed garden, Caroline remembered her conversation with Enoch and shuddered, running an arm across her brow to wipe away the perspiration.
She reached for her daughter, secured the bonnet, and smiled at the little girl’s upturned face, already smudged with garden dirt.
“Did my nose peel off, Mama?” Rachel asked, wrinkling the feature in question.
Caroline nearly laughed, until she raised her eyes slightly, and was reminded that a fragment of the Union army was encamped squarely between the house and the barn. “It might,” she replied distractedly, “if you don’t keep your bonnet on.”
Taking in the tents and wagons nearby, and those soldiers who were well enough to tend the wounded moving about, she yearned for peaceful days gone by. Long days, full of hard work and, yes, worries, with a war going on and her husband far from home and constantly in harm’s way, but still blessedly alive at that time penning long letters to her whenever he had the chance. Letters of promise—we’ll have more children, Caroline, sturdy boys and girls, you wait and see—we’ll save every spare cent and buy more land—keep beef cattle and raise hogs—and when our sons and daughters have all grown up and married, we’ll travel. We’ll see New York—maybe even sail across the Atlantic, visit places like Paris and Rome and London—
Oh, Jacob, she thought sadly. Jacob.
He’d had such wonderful, high-flying dreams.
Her own aspirations had been so much simpler; she had wanted more children, certainly, but otherwise, she would have been content to live out her entire life on that modest farm, raising babies, growing and preserving vegetables, milking the cow, separating the cream and churning the butter. She hadn’t yearned to go on long journeys, however spectacular the sights; she’d been to them all, at least in her imagination, through the pages of her grandfather’s many books.
Jacob, on the other hand, had never tired of making extravagant plans, though he, too, had loved the farm and being part of a small community. But how his eyes had shone when he spoke of traveling far and wide. The loss of him constantly weighed her down, but she was determined to do anything the grim circumstances that faced her required.
Caroline once again fixed her attention on the doings before her. Soon, according to Alderman, the men assembled on her grass would be moving on, with tents and their wounded, and those who were able would fight again. She decided she’d return to town to be as useful as she could be. She’d see her friends in the Ladies’ Aid Society, Hannah and Patience and the others, and help with whatever she could.
In that contrary way of human nature, she both looked forward to the soldiers’ departure and dreaded it. She and the rest of the state would move ahead, perhaps tentatively at first, pushing up their sleeves, collecting the scattered pieces of the lives they’d lived before the battle and then beginning the long and arduous process of rebuilding. Most people would get through, somehow, sharing what remained to them, helping one another when the need presented itself, discreetly minding their own business the rest of the time.
Caroline would always remember that she had been treated fairly by the Union army, although she knew the courteous forbearance the soldiers had shown her was at least partially due to the presence of Captain McBride’s well-stocked supply wagons, which seemed to contain all that the visitors required, other than the mercy of others. She had indeed been fortunate; other farmers, townspeople and shopkeepers nearby had surely not fared as well, their food and supplies at times pilfered.
Her practical nature soon reasserted itself; she had a garden to tend and a child to look after, and she could not afford to waste precious daylight wallowing in the futile yearning for a gentler world than the one she now lived in.
Just as she was about to call out to Rachel that her bonnet was slipping again, she saw Rogan McBride round the corner of one of the tents and stride toward her.
He was so comely, this man, with his raven-dark hair and dark blue eyes, his straight, uncommonly white teeth, and that innate sense of competence, an ability to forge ahead, even while wounded. His build was lean and agile but muscular, and it seemed to Caroline that, for all his quiet exterior, some unique combination of inner qualities blazed inside him like a furnace, not merely sustaining him, but generating the power to overcome any obstacle placed in his way.
“Good morning, Caroline,” Rogan said, as he stopped at the edge of the garden, a few feet from where she stood.
“I’ve been hoping to speak to you,” Rogan began, lowering his voice. But watching her, he fell suddenly silent, as though something in her expression or her manner had given him pause.
Before he could pick up the dangling thread of his words and make another beginning, Rachel appeared and flung herself at him, giggling, and he bent, scooped the child into his arms and held her, just the way Jacob used to do. He laughed and tugged the wide brim of Rachel’s calico bonnet down over her eyes, then grinned as she stubbornly pushed it up again with a chubby hand.
Clearly, despite her efforts to keep her child apart from the soldiers, these two had, somehow, become friendly. Or was it simply that in his blue uniform, Rogan reminded Rachel of Papa?
If it wasn’t too late, Caroline decided, she would try to make sure that Rachel didn’t form an attachment to Rogan, only to endure another parting when his duties called him away.
“Rachel,” she said, rather more sternly than she might have in other circumstances, “please go back to the main house.”
Rogan set the little girl firmly on her feet, smiling down at her, and inclining his head in the direction of the main house.
Rachel looked up at him and frowned.
“Go,” Rogan told her mildly.
She went, scampering, toward the house.
Caroline cleared her throat, found her voice. “There was something you wanted to say, Captain McBride?”
He turned to look at her, no longer smiling. “There are plenty of things I’d like to say,” he replied seriously. After a pensive moment, he tried again, meeting her gaze. “We received orders when I was in town to transport the wounded to the railroad terminal in Harrisburg and see that they’re boarded on a troop train to Baltimore. Those who are capable of it will rejoin General Meade as quickly as possible.”
This should have come as a relief to Caroline, but it didn’t. Not entirely, anyway.
No more sick and dying soldiers on the farm. They and their tents would be gone, along with the wagons, horses and mules. No more cries of pain. No more temporary graves being dug. No more heartrending letters to be set down on paper and addressed to faraway mothers, wives and sweethearts. She had, at least, learned that Gregory Lauder had so far survived...
She would be able to resume some part of her life, such as it was. At least she’d be able to join her friends in town and help with nursing the casualties. Or cleaning up damaged homes and properties. Or repairing clothes. Or... Whatever was needed now that the fighting in and around Gettysburg was over.
Still she was surprised by her mixed feelings. She would miss McBride, in spite of his determination to safeguard his Confederate friend, who she assumed would be moving on, as well. She now realized how much she’d miss being constantly needed, doing her small part to further the Union cause. Moreover, as disruptive as the experience of having her property conscripted for military use had been, the presence of so many soldiers, not all of whom were incapacitated, had been comforting, too. And the practical reality was that once they moved on, the place would be far more vulnerable to stragglers, deserters and other outlaws. She’d already heard, via Enoch, that another farmer, closer to town, had some of his crops stolen and his home vandalized.
The Yankee Widow Page 21