The Face of Heaven

by Murray Pura

  Lyndel laughed at that. “Oh, Hiram—always so confident about his predictions. Well, he has a lot riding on this one. The end of the war, a Union victory, and his marriage to Morganne David. Do you think the world will turn on the axis that Hiram plans?”

  Morganne shrugged. “I’ve waited this long, Lyndy. Even if the war doesn’t end until Thanksgiving, I plan on getting that man to the altar. You will be my matron of honor, won’t you?”

  “Matron. That makes me sound so old. But I’ll stand with you. I’ll be so happy to stand with you. So why isn’t Hiram hanging around the camp with you here?”

  “Oh, I expect him to pop in and out. But he’s a big muckety-muck at the paper now—a lot of correspondents answer to him. He’s in Boston and New York as much as he’s here at the front.”

  Three days later, on March 25th, Confederate troops tried to break out of the Union encirclement and capture Fort Stedman behind Union lines. The skies broke open as artillery shells streaked back and forth and Federal forces counterattacked. Once again the two nurses were dealing with Rebel officers and men as well as Union troops. The battle only lasted one day but other fights and skirmishes soon followed as Grant began to press in on Lee and Petersburg.

  Lyndel saw the general himself ride up to the field hospital on the last day of March with his retinue. It was raining heavily and the horses splashed and slipped through puddles of mud. She and Morganne were working on five Confederate prisoners as the rain pelted their backs and the soldiers’ faces. Grant called a captain to his side and pointed at the two nurses. The captain saluted, shouted for a number of his men nearby, and they went off at a brisk run, returning five minutes later with a tent, which they promptly began to erect right over the nurses and their patients, finally getting them out of the storm. When Lyndel realized what was happening she looked at Grant and lifted her hand in a small sign of thanks. He tugged on the brim of his hat and nodded and urged his horse forward. Lyndel wondered how he could keep his cigar lit in such weather but the trail of smoke he left behind him was obvious.

  The next day a fierce fight at Five Forks between Philip Sheridan’s bluecoats and George Pickett’s men of butternut and gray kept the ambulances racing. From bits and pieces of information officers related to her and Morganne and the other nurses, Lyndel gathered that the South had suffered a severe blow when Sheridan led a charge that breached Pickett’s left flank and won the battle. The Union victory had cut Lee off from his supply lines in Richmond.

  As she worked through half the night it became clear from what she was told that Grant would launch an assault along the entire Rebel line in the morning. Anticipating a great run of casualties, Lyndel forced herself back to her tent, where she slept for five hours. When Morganne woke her the battle she’d expected had begun and the surgeon’s probes and saws were already slick with flesh and blood. She lost track of all time, but she paused from bandaging a man’s eye that evening to watch a cluster of Union soldiers outside the tent toss their caps in the air and shout.

  “What is it?” asked the corporal she was nursing.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “Some sort of good news, I expect.”

  He forced himself up on his elbows. “What sort of good news? We been almost a whole year in this stinking mud. Find out what good news, ma’am. Please God, let it be that this siege is over.”

  Lyndel finished his bandage. “All right, Corporal. Sit here a moment.”

  She stepped to the opening of the tent. “What’s is it, men?” she called out.

  A young private grinned at her. “Why, Mrs. King, Lee is on the run west. The Army of Northern Virginia is whipped. Word is that tomorrow we will occupy Richmond and Petersburg.”

  Lyndel turned back to the corporal. Tears were flowing from his good eye. “I thank the Lord. It’s over. It’s pretty much over. I thank God I’ve made it through. I can go home soon, ma’am. Home to Illinois.”

  Lyndel wasn’t sure what to say. “The South hasn’t surrendered yet, soldier.”

  He laughed with his happiness and gripped her arm. “You’ll see. Grant ain’t no Hooker or Burnside or Meade. He’ll go after Lee like a greyhound. It’s all gonna happen fast now.”

  The next morning, April 3rd, with Lee’s army gone, Richmond and Petersburg surrendered. The camp was a mass of running bodies and plunging horses and rattling artillery pieces as Grant prepared to go in pursuit. The Army of Northern Virginia was marching toward Confederate forces in North Carolina as fast as it could.

  General Grant came galloping by the hospital tent with his cluster of officers. He meant to go past but suddenly reined up. He peered into the tent for a long minute. Then he spoke to an officer next to him. A major general dismounted. Lyndel and Morganne were working on a man who’d been shot through both lungs and was dying painfully. Lyndel could feel the major general’s eyes on her and looked up. Grant and his attendants were only a few feet away, framed in the tent opening.

  “Sir?” she asked, holding a bloody towel to her patient’s mouth.

  The officer’s face and eyes were soft as he watched her nurse the soldier. His voice was quiet. “General Grant’s compliments, ma’am. When you are finished with your patient, and the man is comfortable, he asks you both to attach yourself to one of the surgeons’ units traveling with his army. I have asked one of my men to see to the arrangements. We are following Lee and General Grant very much wants you two working with our casualties.”

  “Of course, sir. I’m surprised the general could even think of the pair of us when so much is on his mind.”

  Grant spoke up as he sat on his horse outside the tent, a cigar stub burning out between his fingers. “It was always niggling away at the back of other matters and concerns after I saw you treating the Confederate prisoners in that rainstorm. I wanted to satisfy my memory and locate you.”

  “Thank you, General.”

  “May I have the honor of your names?”

  “Why, sir, I am Mrs. King, Mrs. Lyndel King, and my friend and colleague here is Miss Morganne David.”

  Grant lifted his hat briefly. “Very good.”

  Once the major general had returned to his mount, Grant quickly rode off followed by his men. The soldier the two nurses were treating died five minutes later. The two washed their faces and hands and went back to their tent to fetch their clothing and bags. A half hour later a lieutenant tapped on the canvas flap. He told them his name was Carson and he was their escort. Tall and slender with a boyish face and a gentle voice, they trusted him from the start.

  “Where’s home, Lieutenant?” Morganne asked when he had them safely placed in a surgeon’s wagon.

  He rode a bay gelding beside the wagon. “New Hampshire, ma’am.”

  “I expect you are anxious for this war to end so that you can return to your family.”

  “I am. I hope it will be over before the month is out. I hope this pursuit of Lee will determine that.”

  “It seems to me your state is also the birthplace of the famous words of your Revolutionary War soldier,” Lyndel spoke up. “My husband was with the Iron Brigade and he often quoted it to me.”

  “I hope he is well, Mrs.—?”

  “King. Thank you, he is fine. He lost an arm at Gettysburg but he has readjusted to farm life regardless.”

  “I am heartily glad to hear it. Do you recall the quote, Mrs. King?”

  “I do, but I do not remember the name of the man who said it. Live free or die. Death is not the worst of evils.”

  Lieutenant Carson smiled. “I am honored that you and your husband know these words. It is from a toast by one of our soldiers of the Revolution, just as you surmised. General John Stark.”

  “Are they your sentiments, Lieutenant?”

  “They are. And they would be even more so if I were one of our African soldiers. My Lord, just to take one lungful of air as a free man and not a slave I would willingly die a thousand deaths.”

  The women slept in their wagon of bandages a
nd medicines as they rolled west with the army. Short, sharp battles occurred at places with names like Namozine Church, Amelia Springs, High Bridge, and Rice’s Station. No matter how many casualties there were, Morganne and Lyndel always moved on the next day with several of the surgeons and ambulances. Lee’s supply trains were captured and burned. His escape routes were cut off. At Sayler’s Creek, he lost a quarter of his army as eight thousand men were trapped by Union troops and forced to surrender.

  Lyndel held an image in her head—maybe she had dreamed it—of the white-bearded and distinguished Lee running desperately one way, only to turn and scramble in the opposite direction, seeking a route free of the many traps waiting for him. Sweat covered his elderly face. His horse, Traveler, was gone. His men were gone. Only the general was left and the forests, rocks, and rivers of Virginia were pressing in. Soon he was backed up against a gray mountain of stone and shale. His eyes were wild, frightened, in agony.

  The image upset her. It returned to her mind again and again as she worked on Union and Confederate wounded and dying. Soldiers with gray or white beards took on Lee’s features regardless of the color of their uniforms. In her mind she watched Lee die a dozen times. If he appeared at night he drew his sword from its long scabbard and lay it down on the dirt and grass, exhaustion and misery in the lines below and above his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she would whisper in her sleep.

  The daily clashes went on for a week. After nursing for hours without a break, she would get out of sight with a cup of coffee for a few minutes and write letters to Nathaniel and Lincoln and Corinth. Once or twice letters from home caught up with her and she kept them in her pocket to read over and over again. Days and nights became one long streak of light and dark, of mangled bodies, of men’s faces contorted by suffering. Then one morning they did not move forward. There had been a storm of musket fire at dawn but then nothing but the pop-pop of snipers and skirmishers. And silence. Too much silence, Lyndel thought. It made her twist her hands in her lap as she prayed her morning prayers. No thunder of cavalry. No artillery roar. No banks of white and gray smoke. But ambulances came in with wounded from the fight at sunrise and Lyndel rushed to the side of a Rebel officer who had been shot in the leg as they placed him carefully on the grass by the hospital tent.

  “The day seems strange,” she murmured, cutting off his pant leg below the knee and stanching the flow of blood. “What is going on, I wonder?”

  “It’s Palm Sunday, ma’am,” the captain told her.

  She bandaged his wound and then tugged a blanket over him. “Is it? I’ve lost all track of time and dates. Is that why there’s no fighting?”

  The captain did not respond to her question. “Thank you for the blanket. I’m not sure why I feel so cold on such a warm morning.”

  “You’ve lost a good deal of blood. But you will recover. The ball passed clean through and didn’t hit any bones or arteries. You’re a blessed man. Can I get you a hot coffee with sugar and cream?”

  “Black is fine. I’m much obliged to you.”

  As Lyndel strode by the rows of wounded to get the coffee and move on to another patient she spotted Hiram and Morganne off behind a thick cluster of trees. She gave the captain his coffee then walked toward them, smiling at their love and passion as they kissed and hugged each other. Morganne opened her eyes and saw her friend and her face flushed with blood.

  “Hiram. Stop. It’s Lyndel.”

  Hiram broke off from kissing her neck and dropped his hands to his side. “Ah. Mrs. King.”

  Lyndel burst out laughing. “For heaven’s sake, I haven’t caught you two behind the schoolhouse, have I? You’re courting, after all. And your marriage is only months away.”

  “Sooner than that,” said Hiram. “Haven’t you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “There was a brisk fight at Appomattox Court House at sunup.”

  “I know. We have the casualties now.”

  “Lee could not break through the Union lines. He’s trapped for good. There’s a cease-fire. He has asked for terms.”

  “For terms?” Lyndel looked at Hiram in surprise, her blue eyes lightening. “What do you mean? Is he—?”

  “Lee is going to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia.”

  Lyndel gasped. The image of General Lee laying down his sword flashed into her mind and she felt tears start to flow down her cheeks and could hardly speak through the emotion. So long it has been! So many lives…and is it now over?

  “But what…what about the other armies?” she whispered.

  “That is up to their commanding officers. The general consensus is that once Lee’s men lay down their arms, the rest of the Rebel armies will follow their lead.”

  A young man in a derby hat and dark suit came riding up.

  “What have you found out, Sam?” Hiram asked.

  “Lee is going to meet Grant at the village of Appomattox Court House. Grant let the Confederates choose the location.”

  “Well, which house is it? Or is it in the court house?”

  “Not in the court house, sir. It’s a home owned by a Wilmer McLean. They say he lived at Manassas Junction when the first battle took place there in ’61. He headed down here to get away from the war.”

  “So he’s in at the beginning and the end, eh? Write that up. Well done, Sam. Let’s ride out that way and see how close we can get. What does the house look like?”

  “Brick. Not that old. It was put up in ’48.”

  Hiram’s horse was cropping grass nearby. He kissed Morganne a final time and swung up into the saddle.

  “I’ll bring the news back with me when I return. Ladies.” He touched his hat and he and Sam rode off across the field and into a line of trees thick with spring green.

  Wounded from the dawn fight kept trickling in. The Confederate casualties were more subdued than the prisoners Morganne and Lyndel worked on usually were. Many would scarcely talk. At five-thirty that evening, while the two nurses took a break and sipped coffee with the ambulance drivers, Hiram came riding up with his assistant but did not dismount.

  “The surrender is done. Grant’s terms came from both himself and the president. They were gracious. Rebel officers keep their sidearms. All troops keep their horses and mules for spring planting. I will tell you more later. We must get to a telegraph station.”

  Lyndel stood up. “Hiram.”

  “What is it?”

  “What about his sword?”

  “Whose sword?”

  “What did Lee do with his sword?”

  “Why, he kept it. Grant let Lee keep his sword.”

  As Hiram and Sam rode off, Morganne stood up beside Lyndel and folded her arms over her chest.

  “Now what?” she asked. “I feel we ought to do something. I ought to have brought my Martin on this campaign.”

  “There will still be wounded,” Lyndel replied.

  “Yes, the ones we have here. But no others. No others, I thank God.” Morganne glanced around her. “How green the grass is. How blue the sky. Have you noticed?”

  “I notice now.”

  That night they sat by a fire with one of the surgeons and watched the stars emerge from the darkness.

  “How different it feels,” Morganne continued to marvel. “Everything in nature feels different.”

  “The killing has stopped,” Lyndel responded.

  The next day at noon Lieutenant Carson, who had made sure they joined the surgeons at the beginning of the pursuit of Lee, appeared to escort them back to Richmond and Washington by rail. The two women had done enough, Carson said, and had rendered honorable service to the United States Army and the Republic. It was Easter week and they needed to return to their families. Regular army personnel would take care of what casualties remained.

  “You have served our nation with distinction and you are here to witness that it has been made whole again. I am instructed to convey the heartfelt thanks of the Army of the Potomac and of General
Grant in particular. Please fetch your belongings and I will see you safely to the capital of our united country.”

  “Our united country? But the other Confederate armies have not surrendered yet, Lieutenant,” protested Lyndel.

  “They will, ma’am. The rebellion is finished.”

  Lyndel assumed travel would be slow and the rail lines clogged with troop trains and freight. But the lieutenant took them on board an express that carried officers who had important dispatches for the secretary of war and the president. The locomotive and its two cars were waved through while other trains had to wait. When they entered Richmond, the city was somber and subdued, fresh ruins jagged and black in the pale April light.

  “When the citizens found out Lee’s army had abandoned them, they rioted and set those buildings on fire,” Carson explained.

  A few United States flags hung from charred beams and undamaged brick shops. Union troops were everywhere and Lyndel breathed in the heavy spirit of the defeated Confederacy. It wasn’t until Washington that Lyndel caught a different spirit—of a war ended and a war won. The Stars and Stripes filled the air and flew from hundreds of buildings and homes, bands played “Dixie” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” couples danced in the parks and the streets. Once night fell hundreds of soldiers paraded with lit candles in the barrels of their muskets, the flames drifting up and down the broad avenues of the capital like feathers on fire.

  Morganne still boarded at the Palmer house, and Lyndel and Lieutenant Carson stayed there overnight as guests. The jubilation in Washington and the North had infected the Palmer household too—red, white, and blue bunting decorated all the windows and doorframes, while several large flags draped the walls outside and in.

  “The victory is a great relief,” said Mr. Palmer as they dined that evening. “It is as if a crushing weight has been lifted off Washington’s shoulders.”

  The lieutenant looked up from his plate. “And placed on Richmond and the South.”