Unfortunately, the other funny thing about time is that it doesn’t stop when your whole world falls apart. Men came along and began to line up the bodies, and Bastian and I watched helplessly as Jack was pulled by the legs and dropped beside another man we barely knew. With nothing else to be done, we slowly made our way back to the woods in a daze. Someone had found a local stream nearby, and the men violently washed the blood from their skin as though it were diseased…and it probably was.
Wild screams came from the back of our makeshift camp, where our one medic (who finally decided to show up, apparently) was dealing with the wounded…and it didn’t sound like they would be healed.
“We have to take the leg, sir,” I heard him say frantically. “You, hold him down. Sir, if we don’t take the leg then you will surely die of infection!”
The man screamed as the saw cleaved his bone from his body, and then fell silent, unconscious, when the pain became too much to bear. I leaned back against a tree and stared into space, waiting for the images of battle to stop beating at my mind, replaying themselves as though to torture me—nothing was more painful than my memory of the grimace on my brother’s face as a bullet stole his life. It was moments later, or perhaps hours, that Bastian knelt before me, tilting my head as he had done once before as he searched for any wounds.
“I’ve built the tent for the night,” he said quietly. I could tell he was trying to be the strong one, as I had no desire to continue on as a functioning human being. I was mildly surprised to realize that darkness had already fallen. I wondered why he had bothered to build a tent at all, as we hadn’t really been using them outside of rainy days. Perhaps he just needed to be busy.
“Do you think you can get up?” he asked gently. I struggled to focus on his face, and when I did, all I saw was Jack. Bastian was all I had left of him now, and he was suffering, too. Swallowing a new batch of tears, I nodded, and allowed him to help me rise. Like a pair of zombies, we walked in a stupor. When I knelt to enter our tent, the empty space between us where Jack should be was like a cavern I was prepared to fall into at any moment. Still, I crept in, subconsciously avoiding his bedroll, which Bastian had still laid out. Perhaps it was a way for us to keep him in the tent, even in spirit.
Mechanically, I lay on my back, looking up at the short makeshift rooftop covering our heads. I didn’t even bother removing my shoes. I thought about all the times Jack had looked out for me and held the family together when our father fell apart. Hot, steamy tears mixed with the dried blood on my unwashed face. I sniffed.
“J?” Bastian asked from across the tent, a distant voice in the dark void that had so suddenly become my world. My throat constricted enough for me to be unable to provide an answer beyond some form of gurgle. He appeared by my side, the shadow of his face hovering over me. Instead of saying anything, he lay by my side, on Jack’s blanket. I almost yelled at him not to, but then he took my hand in his, and squeezed it tight. I couldn’t help myself—I rolled over and into his arms, silently coughing my sobs into his dirty uniform. He held me like that until I cried myself out, saying nothing.
We fell asleep that way. God help us had we been caught. The company came together the next morning and held a small service for the dead, many a strong man wiping at his eyes. It was only one battle, and already we had lost our friends, our family. So much, so soon. The officers’ kindness did not stretch beyond that moment of grief, and soon we were walking once again. It took a little over a week before Bastian and I could speak about anything other than Jack, mostly because I was afraid that if we did then he would be gone forever in every possible way.
He wasn’t though. I found peace in the quiet solitude of nature, the sturdy, ever-present trees. I imagined his spirit flying around in the wind, spraying us with a light mist when we crossed a stream. Bastian and I began to talk quietly about many things, from politics to nature and everything we missed back home. In that place, I finally felt free to tell him of the torment Miss Jean had put me through, the beatings and the verbal abuse. One night, by a small campfire we had made for just the two of us, I told him about how she slapped me over and over again in an attempt to realign my nose.
“She did not!” he exclaimed, scandalized. His blue eyes gently caressed my face, and his hand twitched as though to run along my cheek, to fix whatever damage she had caused during all those years of emotional torment. I gazed back at him, unknowingly letting him see that I would like nothing better than for him to do just that. My smirk was tinged with bitterness.
“What do you expect for an Irish girl in America?” I asked, turning on my brogue and deepening it for impact. He laughed.
“This is America, my dear…friend,” he almost said girl. “Anything is possible in the land of the free.”
I shook my head.
“Anything is possible for you in the land of the free. As a white male landowner, you can do and have whatever you want—the possibilities are endless. If you’re Irish, they specifically put up signs to keep you from working. If you’re black, you are property…not a person at all,” I finished, watching his eyes widen at my brazen and uncommon opinion. His eyes flickered as he registered my point. How would he know, anyway? Raised in a world where there are no limitations, it was impossible for him to believe that anyone else could live such a struggle. Our walls had been placed around us at birth, and the barriers keeping us from climbing out would not budge.
“You wouldn’t have even let me come with you on this mission because I’m a woman. What would you have done, when Jack…if I wasn’t there?” I couldn’t say it yet, knowing that to say out loud that my brother was dead would finalize it for good. I expected him to protest, to tell me that women are delicate creatures and that my choice had been foolish by anyone’s standards. Instead, he stared at me as though seeing a completely different person. He had listened.
“I don’t think I could have survived it,” he said. “You have proven yourself a competent soldier, and no one here even knows that you are…what you are. I’m amazed by you more and more every day,” he said, his expression full of wonderment. As the tide of honesty rushed from me, I couldn’t help but get in one last jibe.
“And you allowed for Giselle to be beaten, in spite of being master of the house. Yet I was spared…why? Because of my color alone? Giselle is no less of a human than I am.”
Sebastian shushed me, and I straightened up, offended.
“You can’t talk like that here,” he chided in a whisper. “I don’t like it any more than you do, J, but do you think the son of a plantation owner can protest such things and still be respected? I have a station that I have to live up to, even if it goes against what I think. I had no choice that day,” he finished, exasperated. I stared.
“You always have a choice when it comes to doing the right thing.”
“It’s not that simple,” he huffed.
“Isn’t it?” I asked, not really knowing the answer. After all, I had never been a rich man’s child…how would I know what pressure they were under? The mood was getting heavy, and in our situation it was something we couldn’t afford.
“Look at us,” I laughed. “The master and his servant, talking as equals—nay, friends. That’s one good thing this war has brought about, to be sure,” I said, my best attempt to change the subject. This made him frown.
“I never looked at you that way, J. Not once,” he said, his expression becoming fierce with…something, in the waning flames of the flickering fire.
“Well,” I said, not finishing the statement. I had no idea what I would have said anyway. In my own girlish way, I had determined that I had fallen in love with Sebastian Liddell, much to my own detriment. I meant to hint that in our world, we would never be equal, and I would never get the chance to be his wife. To keep myself busy on the long, endless walks, I would imagine living in a fine house as the new Missus Liddell, holding our nicely clad little babies in my arms and laughing. Always laughing. It was a foolish dream, and I wa
s certain I was only feeling that way because I had no one else and was desperately alone without my brother.
Still, sometimes my breath would catch when he looked at me in a certain way. It was a combination of fierce protection, and something I dared not name out loud, for fear of what it could mean after the war. More importantly, for fear of what it could mean while I was disguised as a man in a world where homosexuality wasn’t even a word spoken out loud. We could easily be killed and left on the side of the road for the buzzards. I lived in an empty world of could haves and should have beens, and there was nothing I could do to change it.
“We should tuck in,” he said finally, rising and offering his hand as always. I grasped it in my usual masculine way, relishing his brief touch, holding on a moment too long after I found my footing. We felt our way back to our small tent, our hands gently brushing against the rough skin of the trees. I was amazed at how gallant Sebastian was, that he was willing to carry the extra weight of the tent in our endless parade of marching without uttering a single word of complaint. When we made our way back and settled down on our blankets, I shivered. The further north we got, the colder we all became, and I felt Bastian’s slow and hesitant progression across our barrier of space.
When I felt his body close enough to press against, the heat of him reaching out to me like tendrils of sunlight in an arctic freeze, I very slowly rolled onto my side, pressing my back into his chest. His arm slowly slid around my hip, cradling me close, and we settled together as two puzzle pieces—a perfect fit. I sighed, comfortable for the first time in our dreary world of no food, disease, and the endless parade of marching. My stomach was always in a state of hunger, and I barely recognized it when it growled softly under Bastian’s hand. His fingers tensed, flexing across my belly and spreading fire across my body.
“I wish that things could have been different,” he whispered in my ear, and I shivered again, as though he had spoken over my grave. Thinking I was cold, he held me even closer. I recovered.
“Me, too,” I said, feeling brave speaking out into the darkness. “I would have liked to someday be worthy of consideration to be your wife,” I said, my breath leaving my body entirely at having the courage to say the words. I expected him to pull away, to remind me sternly of the rules of society. Instead, he began to rub his thumb back and forth along my stomach thoughtfully, driving me to distraction.
“I think you would make an excellent wife,” he declared, shocking me into turning over to face him. Even in the pitch of night, I could feel the smile in his voice.
“You’re teasing is most cruel,” I said, giving him a playful slap on the shoulder. Before I could pull my hand away, he grasped it, and very, very softly kissed the center of my palm. My heart began to race.
“I am not teasing you. You are a woman who was willing to risk her life, to give up the comforts that being a woman provides, to live as a dirty man in an angry war. Who wouldn’t want someone like that by their side?”
I stared at his shadow in disbelief. Bastian would be willing to love me for a lifetime, even considering how ugly I was with my chopped up hair and my terrible face and my odd body shape. I had been told over and over by Miss Jean that I was unworthy, and at some point I had grown to believe it, and had come to accept it as truth. Yet still, this man would have me for who I was beyond my outer appearance…for what I offered on the inside. I held perfectly still as his hand gently cupped my face, guiding his lips to mine, trapping them in a delicious, delicate, and completely forbidden kiss.
It was all we dared to do. He pressed his forehead against mine, our breathing ragged as we worked to repress a raging torrent of emotions. Finally, we lay back down, as we were before, and he gently brushed his lips against my temple. I held onto his arm tight, wishing that this night—the night we could be in love—would never come to an end.
Chapter Fourteen
Our Last Battle
The next day began much like any other. Bastian and I woke and pulled apart, stretching in the light of a new sun. He left to go boil water for coffee—the only thing we had plenty of—and I reached for my satchel and began to dig around for a biscuit I had been slowly savoring. I had always kept my shard of mirror as a personal keepsake (or potential weapon), and when I grasped it to move aside, the tip tore at the inside of my bag, ripping a loose row of stitching I had mistaken for a manufacturing mistake.
“Damn,” I cursed, fingering the loose cream-colored fabric on the inside, my fingers brushing against an unusual texture. Frowning, I pulled out a small folded piece of paper…a note.
To J it read in the delicate script I had come to know better than my own. A letter of support? I wondered as I gently unfolded the parchment and began to read.
To my dearest J,
I don’t know if you’ll ever find this letter. In fact, the thrill of not knowing whether or not you will is exciting enough to allow me to speak frank and true. You will likely not be surprised to know how truly and deeply I hate you. From the moment I laid eyes on you, with your foppish manner and your stupid, perfect skin, I knew I had to beat you down, and I think I did a good job of it.
I purposely sent you to war in the hopes that you will suffer, and perhaps even die—Lord, isn’t that refreshing to finally be able to say! I cannot express deeply enough the extent to which I have loathed you these past few years, and the joy it gives me to think of you suffering in the mud like the disgusting pig you are.
I sincerely hope that you and your brother die in the pursuit of keeping you and your friends slaves—isn’t the irony just delicious? I will make it my personal mission to have your little slave friend beaten in your absence until she will be of no use to anyone, as it will be my only form of entertainment now that you are gone. Please do make sure that Bastian makes it home, though. He is above you in every possible way, and is the only one of you who truly deserves to live.
Ever cordial,
Miss Jean
My hands shook as I re-read her nasty letter over and over again. There were no words for the raging storm of anger that exploded inside of me. I knew then that I would do anything to prove her wrong, that I would come back home and marry Bastian, and then kick her out of our house and into the dirt myself. I crushed the paper in one hand, dropping it carelessly onto the ground before packing up my bag. We had to be ready at a moment’s notice to run into battle, despite the fact that we had walked around aimlessly for months just trying to find one.
“J!” Bastian rushed over, his hands empty.
“I thought you were getting coffee,” I said tersely. The letter was making me want to lash out at something, anything, and Bastian just happened to be the first person to arrive. This in no way deterred him, as he reached into the tent and grabbed his gun. That removed all else from my mind in a heartbeat.
“What’s happened?” I asked, following suit and grabbing my own gun, the weight of it now a familiar friend. I slung it back on my shoulder. Bastian continued moving, getting all his battle gear in order.
“A battalion’s been spotted not far from here…they’re prepping the line,” he said, finally casting a glance at me. I saw the fear in his eyes, sure that it mirrored my own. We had only seen one battle, and for me it had been more than enough. As we had spent the past few weeks just walking, I had secretly hoped that that was all we would do until someone else won the war for us. Alas, it was not to be.
We fell in line with our fellow soldiers—dirty, half diseased men who hadn’t had a decent meal in far too long. I stared at their mud caked faces, the whites of their eyes shining out from smudged, unwashed skin. Filthy beards and tattered shoes were a trademark of every man…making my beardless face stand out even more. Bastian had made it a point to continue shaving, keeping up the pretense that it was a matter of principle among us, though at that point I doubted anyone cared what or who I was anymore. We were soldiers. We weren’t trained to think.
We shuffled through the trees, waiting in dread for the clear
ing…and more carnage. The woods became eerily quiet, the birds seemingly holding their breath in anticipation of a plentiful meal. I had no doubt that their wish would be fulfilled. My knees began to buckle, and I shook my legs to the side with each step, loosening the tension. I tripped on a rock and stumbled, catching a nearby branch to keep from falling. It seemed far too soon when we made it to the clearing—to face another, longer, line of Union soldiers.
My teeth began to chatter. I forced my tongue between them, and bit it hard enough to bleed. Prepping my musket, I fell in towards the middle of the line, next to Sebastian. We stood in silence once again, reliving our previous battle almost exactly—the one major exception being that the other side now grossly outnumbered us. We cast nervous glances around at each other, subtly accepting that it was extremely likely that we were facing our deaths, that these last precious seconds without pain would be our last.
“J…” Sebastian whispered. I kept my eyes forward, waiting for the charge, but tilted my head to the side slightly, indicating that I could hear.
“I love you.”
I turned my head fully, searching for the joke in his expression, maybe the quirk of a lip. There was none. I sighed.
“I can’t afford to love you, but I still do. Let’s talk about it once this is over with,” I said, desperately trying to instill the hope that we would, in fact, be able to speak again hours after the fighting—perhaps even days or years. He wrapped his thick pinky finger around mine, the smallest gesture—all we were allowed—and squeezed tightly for just an instant.
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