by Simon Rumney
"Then you can take your chances with the rest of these evil people."
After she finished speaking, Julii ripped up all three tickets and tipped the diamonds from the little scale into the outstretched hand of Robert's father.
Robert's father was in total shock. He seemed genuinely not to understand Julii's point of view. He sounded confused as he turned to Count Anton and said, "I assume this is your company. Why are you allowing this Injun squaw to treat my wife so appallingly? Do you know who we are?"
Count Anton turned to look at Julii with deep concern. He knew her well enough to know such an outburst would be hurting her more than her victims. He could see she was near breaking point; her body shook with anger and grief. He walked to her and held her in his arms. Looking at Robert's father, Count Anton spoke through controlled anger. "I do know who you are, sir. Many times I have heard about the evil things you did to Julii in Atlanta. Oh yes, I know who you are."
Robert's mother spoke in her most pompous voice. "How dare you, sir? My husband is the Mayor of Atlanta."
Count Anton looked at the woman with pure distain and said, "Not anymore, he's not."
When Robert's mother asked why Count Anton was being so unreasonable to fellow white people, he answered, "Because I have hated you since Julii told me of your son's final words. He pleaded with you to take care of Julii in that courtroom, but your hateful bigotry even prevented you from following your son's final wishes! Now get out of my office before I have you thrown out!"
Robert's mother was clearly embarrassed by the number of Atlanta's well-to-do people who were witnessing her humiliation. All of her pain and ignominy came through her voice. "Our son's final wishes? This man must be somehow demented!"
Julii's words came out in a shriek. "You just sat there and let them murder my Robert!"
"Your Robert?"
Robert's mother's eyes were darting around the room at the gawking faces. She was beside herself with embarrassment. Her reply to Julii's statement was directed at her “polite society”. "He is not her Robert! He is my Robert!"
Count Anton's supporting cuddle turned to a hold of restraint. Julii wanted to get to Robert's mother. She wanted to hurt her so badly. The noises coming from deep inside Julii were no longer words but howls.
She heaved her body and twisted her body and swiveled her body in such a violent manner that Count Anton could no longer restrain her. As strong as he was, Julii's rage made her impossible to hang onto. As she rounded the desk to physically attack Robert's mother, she heard four simple words that stopped her like she had been shot with a bullet. The words were spoken by Robert's father, and in an instant they turned Julii's world upside down. "Robert is not dead!"
The reality of time and space seemed to have altered for Julii. Her body no longer worked. Her mind became silent and calm. The silence held her ridged like a statue. She had read about being in the eye of a hurricane, and that is how she felt. Everything she believed was changing. From the calm and silence, she could feel a new drive begin to grow within her. She could feel it rising inside and taking control of all her faculties, even her voice. She heard herself say. "Where is my Robert? I must get to my Robert!"
Still deeply humiliated by all that was happening, Robert's mother turned to the line of Atlanta men and women whose approval she still craved and said, "Our son's sentence was never carried out. General Hardee could not spare such a good man, you see?"
Then in an even louder voice, she added, "Robert Calhoun has spent the last two years fighting heroically for the South! Robert Calhoun is bravely defending Savannah from the Yankees even as I speak!"
Julii needed no more information. She headed for the door, pushing highborn Atlantans violently out of her way in her panicked journey out to the street.
Finding Robert
Julii ran from Count Anton's office and into the street like a woman possessed. Ignoring heartfelt pleas, she fought her way through the line of disappointed cash holders. She even knocked one woman to the ground in her desperation, but she neither stopped nor cared.
Looking for a quick exit from Savannah, all she could see were horses, buggies and carriages of all shapes, colors and sizes filling the space between the sidewalks.
Many of the horses had been in a harness since their self-serving owners had simply dumped them where they stopped. Many had died of dehydration or exhaustion, but no one had time to remove them. Savannah was a city gripped by the uncertainty of war, and all of the rules that normally guide civilized society had now changed for the worst.
Julii ran between the wagons and carriages and suffering horses until she reached the outskirts of Savannah. Count Anton's carriage was still exactly where she had left it but, of course, there were no horses to pull it. Julii cursed her own kindness.
She walked from discarded carriage to discarded buggy looking for horses still strong enough to pull a vehicle, but all of them were exhausted by lack of feed and water. It would have been so much easier to find a single horse to ride, but she held romantic visions of saving her Robert. 'He would be wounded and she would carry him to safety in the carriage she salvaged from among this mess of vehicles.' 'She would nurse him back to health, and he would love her, and they would go on to lead a normal, happy life with their daughter Helen.'
By pure luck, she came upon a place where many horses had been drawn by desperation to a roadside water trough. The horses who had managed to drink were healthier than all of the others. Julii tried to take one of them away from the trough, but all of their respective vehicles were piled up behind them in a tangled mess.
Wheels had interlocked with other wheels. Some of the carriages had fallen onto their side. Others rode into the air as their front axles mounted other axles. It was a mess of wood and metal and, try as she might, Julii could not shift it.
Julii walked around to the rear of the trough where thirsty horses had managed to drag themselves within licking distance of the plentiful water. This side was also a mess of wheels, but by pure chance, one of the single horses, bound to a discarded two-seater buggy, had been able to work its way completely behind the trough to find water and plenty of grass to eat. Not only was the horse in reasonable condition, its buggy was free of all other vehicles.
Fighting the urge to jump immediately into the buggy and get underway, Julii delayed her departure just long enough to relieve the mess of desperate horses by releasing them all from their livery. Once she had freed as many as she was able, Julii set off.
She was pleased to see the strong little horse seemed to enjoy pulling the buggy along the road back to Atlanta. She gave him his head and he trotted at a good pace towards the roadblock ten miles outside Savannah. The boy with no boots and few teeth was no longer on duty. The man who stopped her horse from going any further was a strong-looking sergeant. His boots were worn out but at least he had them. Smiling, he showed a great mouthful of healthy teeth. "I wouldn't go down that there road if I was you, ma'am."
"Can you tell me how to find Robert Calhoun?"
Julii realized this was probably a futile question, so she was not surprised to hear his answer. "Can't say I do ma'am."
Julii wondered how she was going to explain herself. She tried saying, "He is defending Savannah under General Hardee."
But the sergeant replied, "We all are, ma'am."
Stepping down from the buggy, Julii asked, "Can you tell me where General Hardee's army is?"
The sergeant pointed to the left of the road. "Stretches for three miles that way."
The sergeant then pointed to the right of the road. "And two miles thataway, give or take."
Julii looked in both directions. The terrain on both sides of the road was uneven and overgrown. She was about to ask a question when the sergeant read her mind. "Can't get no buggy down neither way, ma'am."
The sergeant watched Julii tie the horse to a bush by the side of the road, lift up the hem of her pretty yellow silk dress, and walk into the undergrowth. The sergean
t's little squad of men even stopped playing cards and walked over to watch the pretty crazy woman disappear into the brush.
It took the rest of that day for Julii to walk the three miles of General Hardee's defensive line south of the road, and with every step she longed for her old moccasins; walking would have been so much easier. Her deer hide dress would also not have ripped on every twig and bush, but as unsuited to this terrain as it was, Julii knew her yellow silk dress was garnering the respect of the troops she met.
As night fell, Julii reached the very end of the line in the south and was invited to join a captain and his men by their campfire. She needed their help to survive so she accepted, but felt terrible guilt for what she knew her plan was about to do to them.
By way of easing her conscience, Julii tried to rekindle the burning hate she had felt for these Confederate men, but it would not come. She wanted to think of them as “murderers” and “Injun haters” and “nigger haters”, but all she could see were husbands and sons and uncles and imperfect human beings like herself and her Robert.
Julii's feelings of guilt were made worse when the men, who had little food for themselves, insisted upon sharing what they had with her. They even protected her as she slept on an old horse blanket that one of the men had given up for her.
When dawn came, Julii rose and silently departed without thanking the men for their kindness. She knew she was being rude, but she also knew they would insist on sharing their breakfast. She could not accept such generosity because she also knew exactly how much these men were going to need their strength in the coming days and weeks.
Returning the three miles to the main road took Julii all of the morning. When she got there, she found the young soldier with no boots and few teeth on guard once again. She smiled a maternal smile at the pathetic boy.
He showed signs of recognizing Julii, but he obviously could not place where he had seen her before. Bewildered, he watched as Julii silently crossed the road, in her torn and stained dress, and disappeared into the undergrowth on the northern side of the road.
Julii asked every soldier she came across if they knew Robert Calhoun. Some knew the surname of the Mayor of Atlanta, but none knew where Robert Calhoun was posted. At one small camp, Julii spoke to a small group of soldiers who were building earthworks. They were busy digging in gruesome, pointed timber spikes that faced in the direction from which General Sherman would eventually attack.
One of the emaciated men seemed different to the others. He stopped working and stared directly at Julii through sunken eyes. His face was completely black with mud. His long hair and dark beard were unkempt. His threadbare uniform, which had been patched multiple times, had a repair on the chest with the tell-tale signs of very poorly-laundered blood-staining surrounding it. This sad man had obliviously been seriously wounded in battle.
He must have said something to one of his comrades because the comrade spat abuse in his direction. "Why don't you just quit your belly-aching bullshit and get back to work!"
Another, much bigger, man clipped the sad man's ear with an open hand and shouted, "We've all had it with your horseshit! One more word and so help me I'll run you through before the Yankees get a chance to do it for me!"
For almost two days now, desperate soldiers had been staring at Julii with curiosity, with plea-filled stares, even with lust, but never with the angry intensity this man showed. Even though the sad soldier was deeply humiliated and his ear was red and throbbing, he never took his eyes off of Julii. His anger seemed personal. Something about this man resonated with her as though he knew she had personally caused all of his suffering, but she knew that was impossible.
'Unless he could read minds?' 'Could he read her mind?' 'Did he know what she had done?' 'Did he somehow know that she had caused all of his problems?'
Something powerful inside Julii told her to 'Get away from him!' 'Just move on and don't look back!'
Too much vengeance
Julii was still troubled by some unknown but significant meaning hidden within the memory of the staring soldier when she noticed a vast group of tents set about a mile back from the northern end of General Hardee's northern line of defense. This was the end of his line of soldiers, so therefore 'Robert must be there’.
Julii's denial simply could not face the logical fact that if Robert was not there, he must be dead. 'Robert cannot be dead!' 'I will find him and save him and life will get back to normal.'
She wanted to run to the canvas structures but she had not eaten since the little food she had been given the night before. She had sipped plenty of muddy rain water from puddles to fight off dehydration, so her tummy felt full and her body was still functioning well, but she was too physically drained to do anything but put one painful foot willfully in front of the other until the distance was slowly and frustratingly covered.
When she did eventually arrive, Julii moved from tent to tent lifting every flap and peering inside. Tent after tent offered nothing but bloody, infected, foul-smelling men and disappointment. Even when she found the one where Robert lay on the ground inside, she nearly missed seeing him because of the bloody bandage covering his right eye and half of his face.
Having left the tent and moved towards the next, something about the bandaged soldier snagged at her memory. 'The jawline?' 'Was it Robert's?' Julii's rush of excitement was immediately tempered by the realization she had not washed her face or combed her hair for almost two days. Licking her hands, Julii wiped at her face and ran her fingers through her hair, but it was just too matted to do anything with.
Looking down at herself, she could see her dainty shoes were destroyed and her feet were bleeding. The pretty lemon yellow dress, so suited to Savannah society, was torn and stained and useless. This is not how she imagined their reunion, but he was here and he was alive. It did not matter how she looked. Even her pain and discomfort meant nothing. She returned to the tent and fell to her knees by his side and kissed the part of his face not covered by bandages.
He was skinny like the hundreds of other men she had seen in the hospital tents. He was also pale and gaunt like all the others. His shirtless body was covered in healed scars. The fresh facial wound could not be seen, but the smell of infection was unmistakable. Her Robert had obviously suffered greatly, but he was alive and that meant Julii was going to nurse him back to health, just as she had after the battle of Shiloh.
She found the strength to stop kissing the healthy side of his face and touched his forehead in a more nurse-like manner, just as she had done in her father's tipi. 'She was going to save her Robert.' 'She was being given a second chance.' 'A chance of redemption; every terrible thing she had done was going to be forgiven.'
Robert's good eye opened in response to Julii's fussing and recognition came slowly. His expression transformed slowly from confusion to vague recognition to disbelief. His voice sounded hoarse and resigned. "Am I dead?"
"No."
Julii smiled that uncontrollable smile that came all the way up from her tummy. Her voice was excited like a child. "You are alive and I am going to make you better again."
"But you are dead."
Robert's voice was filled with sorrow. "They told me you were dead."
"Well, they were wrong. And now I have to get you to Savannah to meet your daughter. Can you stand?"
"I have a daughter?"
"Helen. She is beautiful."
Julii looked around for someone to help her but there was no one. Most of the men in the tent were in worse shape than her Robert.
She had a million questions, but Julii held her tongue. She did not want to say anything that would focus Robert's thoughts back onto his suffering, so she adopted a positive almost jolly tone. "When you are well again, we are all leaving for Rome."
"Rome?"
In his surprise, Robert tried to sit up but the pain was too great. Taking a moment to let his head clear, he asked, "What can you possibly know of Rome?"
"You will be amazed w
hat I know now, my darling."
Julii walked to open the flap of the tent while speaking to Robert over her shoulder. "Your mother and father will be sailing with us."
She liked how saying those words felt. 'If she could forgive Robert's mother, she could forgive anyone or anything.' 'She was going to redeem herself and life was going to have meaning again.'
Julii could see Robert's confusion. She wanted to explain but this was not the time. A doctor was passing a distant tent and she needed to speak to him. Approaching the man who wore a bloody white coat over his gray officer’s uniform, with that once-hated bright yellow collar, Julii introduced herself.
The doctor was left speechless by her arrival. Having lived in battlefields full of nothing but damaged men for so long, he was completely taken aback. So, when Julii told him to follow her back to Robert's tent, he did it without question.
Inside the tent, the doctor examined Robert. Looking up at Julii, he asked, "Are you here to help me with all of these men?"
Julii wanted to tell the doctor her Robert's life was all she cared about, but that was no longer true. She felt responsible for all of these men who lay wounded after fighting for the city she had so heartlessly given up to the Yankees. She even sounded apologetic as she said, "I will take Robert to Savannah and I will return with enough transport to bring all of these men back for treatment."
"How many can you transport right now?"
The doctor looked around the tent. "I have so many men who require urgent treatment."
"Right now I have nothing more than a buggy waiting on the main road. I can take Robert and two others if they can sit up. I can walk beside the horse."