And One Wore Gray

by Heather Graham

Lying in agony, he’d seen it all, over and over again, every word that passed between them, his wanting to walk away, her beckoning him back.

  The fury that raged in him was so strong, he wasn’t sure he cared who actually won the war anymore.

  Just as long as he could go back. For her.

  He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do to her. He just wanted it to last long. And to be unendurably agonizing. He felt his fingers jerk, and he thought that he wanted to wind them around her neck.

  Too smooth. Too easy.

  What then?

  An ancient English torture maybe. Like the rack.

  Not vicious enough …

  Morning had come. His temper hadn’t eased a wit.

  Another day passed with the major being a decent enough fellow. Daniel hadn’t known the man before the war, but apparently his reputation in the West before the start of the war had circulated through the night.

  Maybe some of the Union soldiers hated him more for having resigned when Virginia seceded.

  But for the most part, he thought that the men understood. Little things began to appear for him. A really beautiful red apple. A small flask of Irish whiskey.

  That night, he played cards with the major, and it was then that he learned he’d be moved to Old Capitol in the morning.

  “I’ll see to it that your brother knows where you are, safe and alive and out of action,” the major assured him.

  Daniel winced. Jesse would start moving heaven and earth, and get in bad with his own side, to get Daniel out. Especially if he was worried about the wound. Jesse never stopped being a doctor.

  “Thank you just the same, Major. Jesse’s got his own war to fight, and he’s busy somewhere patching up men. I don’t want him informed.”

  “He’ll find out soon enough.”

  “I reckon. But give it till then. I’m a big boy, and I chose my own side.” He was quiet for a moment. “And I made my own fool mistakes,” he added. He smiled to the major, just to assure him there were no hard feelings.

  “I’d like to let you go, Colonel Cameron. But I can’t. You’re just too damned important. Maybe they’ll exchange you. They’re still trying to swap a private for a private, a sergeant for a sergeant—a colonel for a colonel. Sixty privates for a general. But I hear that our side is starting to say we’ve got to quit exchanging. Every time we put one of you Rebs back in the field, you just start killing Yanks all over again.”

  “It is a war,” Daniel said politely.

  “To our great sorrow, Colonel, yes. To our great sorrow.” He sighed, and rubbed his whiskered chin. “I can’t even make you more comfortable. If your wrists are free, I’ve got to keep the shackles on your ankles. They tell me you fight like a son of a gun. Where did you learn to fight like that?”

  Daniel grinned. “Why, Major, I learned how to fight back home.”

  “Your pa bring in a professional to teach you?”

  “No, sir. Jesse was bigger, and we’d disagree now and then, so I had to get tougher.”

  The major laughed. He shared the Irish whiskey with Daniel.

  But the major wasn’t there when the soldiers came to load Daniel into the wagon. These soldiers weren’t interested in respecting their enemy in any way, shape, or form.

  The driver who had prodded him shouted out an order.

  “Move it, Colonel!”

  Hands grasped hard upon his shoulders, wrenching him up to his feet. He was shoved hard from the open back of the wagon.

  There was no way to gain his balance, not with both arms and legs shackled as they were.

  He sprawled down into the dirt road, striking hard. Gritting his teeth, he stumbled up to his feet.

  There was a handsomely uniformed Union lieutenant colonel hurrying toward him. The uniform didn’t bear a single speck of dust, and the officer didn’t look as if he was many months past his twenty-first birthday.

  “That will be enough, soldier!” he said. The soldier snickered beneath his breath, but saluted. “Yes sir, whatever you say, sir!”

  “Colonel Daniel Cameron, you are now a prisoner of war, here at Old Capitol. Be a model prisoner, sir, and we will strive to see that your stay isn’t too painful.”

  “He means he’ll try to keep you alive, Colonel!” someone shouted from one of the barred windows.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” the soldier who had brought him said. He caught Daniel’s shoulder. “Let’s move him in, sir. He’s a dangerous one.”

  It was obvious that a number of the guards considered him to be a “dangerous one.” There was little chance of his harming any of them, what with the numbers they had on their side. Guards encircled the walled structure, and guards seemed to be in abundance within it. But though his hands were freed, they shoved him roughly into the large room with its heavy doors, trying to keep a distance from him.

  And there he met a ragged band of Confederates.

  They stood, gaunt and disheveled, some with bone-thin faces, some with fraying blankets around their Shoulders. They wore all manner of uniform, a few with the colorful remnants of Louisiana Zouave baggy trousers, some in plain old washed-out breeches; some in proper militia uniform, and some in the butternut and gray of the regular army.

  They watched as he was thrust in among them. Thrust so hard that he stumbled again, and fell to his knees. Squaring his shoulders, he rose painfully. His bare feet were bruised and bleeding. He’d been given a shirt, but it was torn and tattered now too His hair was matted, his face was covered with the dust from the street where he had fallen before.

  He might have been dressed in scarlet robes.

  All around him, cheers rose up. Then a Rebel yell sounded, nearly shattering the prison walls.

  “Colonel Cameron, sir!” his name rang out; he was saluted again and again, one by one.

  The Yankee guard at the door swore softly. “I’m getting the hell out of this one!” he muttered.

  The heavy door clanked shut. Daniel looked around him, greeting his countrymen as they greeted him.

  “Your feet look bad, sir, cut up and swollen,” said one young private with snow-blond hair and cornflower-blue eyes. He came up, setting down a pair of boots. “I’ve got kinfolk in D.C., and I got an extra pair of shoes, sir. I’d be beholden if’n you’d wear these.”

  “Thank you, son,” Daniel said.

  Another soldier stood before him. “My wife just knitted me a pair of socks, and the pair she sent before ain’t hardly got a hole in them, sir.”

  Daniel smiled. Someone else brought him a blanket, and then someone brought him a thin little cigarillo, the likes of which he hadn’t tasted in a long time. He thanked them all. He told them what he knew about the battle of Sharpsburg, and he laughed when they told him tales about his own exploits in the saddle.

  “Well, are they true, sir?”

  “It’s like anything, Billy Boudain,” he told the young man who had given him the boots. “Some is true, and some is the storyteller’s relish for the story.” He winced. Sitting against the cold stone wall had aggravated a crick in his neck.

  “Colonel, there’s a nice thick thatch of hay over yonder for you. Wish we could do more. Some of us have money and kinfolk near, and we can bribe a tiny bit of luxury, but not much.”

  Daniel stood, stretching. He inhaled on the cigarillo, enjoying the fine taste of the tobacco. He grinned at the young soldier again, unaware that the bitter curl of his mouth was extremely chilling.

  “Don’t worry about it, soldier. Don’t worry on it a bit. I don’t intend to stay long. Not long at all.” He crushed out the cigarillo. “I’ve got business elsewhere,” he said softly.

  The ice-blue fury in his eyes belied the very softness of his words.

  “You—you sound determined, sir,” Billy said.

  “Oh, I am. Nothing will stop me from getting out of here.” He realized that his words had brought about a hush in the room, that the men were all staring at him, with maybe just a little bit of fear themselves.


  “I thank you all,” he said more softly, and he offered them a rueful grin. “I thank you very much. I am weary, though. Good night, men.”

  The pile of hay wasn’t much. It didn’t matter. He was surrounded by his own again.

  He fell into it, and curiously enough, slept like a babe.

  Fall was coming to the Maryland countryside. The leaves on the trees were just beginning to show the beauty of wild red and yellow and flaming orange.

  Dusks were cool, with a cleansing breeze.

  Callie sat out on her porch after a long day, anxious to feel that breeze. No matter how fresh or gentle it came to be, no matter how cooling, or how cleansing, it never seemed to blow away the feelings that had settled over her. She tried to tell herself again and again that she had done the only thing possible. It didn’t help her. Daniel’s voice still came to her in the night. His promise, spoken so bitterly, so hatefully.

  “I’ll be back….”

  But he would not be for a long while. They had taken him over to Old Capitol Prison in Washington, and he was a prisoner that the guards would watch well and warily. Eric had assured her so.

  She shivered, remembering the end of the night once Daniel had been knocked out.

  They had shackled his ankles just as they had shackled his hands. One of the officers had stolen his boots.

  Eric’s men had carried him off, and Eric had stayed behind.

  She would never forget that night. The anguish of what had happened to Daniel and what had come after.

  Eric had cornered her against the wall. She remembered him caging her in, his palms flat on the wall on either side of her face. She remembered the bitterness in his voice when he told her that all that he wanted was what she so blithely gave the enemy.

  She remembered the awful choking horror of wondering if he would go through with the violence that he threatened.

  She never knew what gave her strength. She smiled sweetly at him and slipped his revolver from his pocket as he moved in closer. When he would have pressed his lips to hers, she aimed the revolver right at his gut.

  She warned him that she knew how to pull a trigger, and that she would do it without blinking.

  He believed her. He’d stepped back so quickly it was comical. He’d scowled and sworn. Callie had told him to get out of the house or she’d be out riding hard to find his superior officer to let him know just what his cavalry captains were doing in the field.

  Eric had left, swearing his own form of vengeance against her.

  She had then sunk down in her corner against the wall, and cried. Eventually, she’d fallen asleep.

  In the morning she’d realized that she had to go on. Daniel had not been in her life so very long.

  But the time before he had stepped into it no longer seemed to matter.

  The day after Daniel’s capture, a different soldier had come by. Callie had kept Eric’s fine revolver. She had six shots to use if she needed them.

  But the man hadn’t come by to threaten her. She was amazed to discover he had come to replenish some of the livestock that had been taken from her. There were now two pigs in back, two horses, two cows, the goat, and scores of chickens. The animals gave her plenty to do, as did the effort to restore her garden, although with winter coming on there was not much she could do.

  There was definitely going to be a shortage of corn in the area.

  She was glad of work, any work, for it helped to keep her mind off Daniel, and both the anguish and the splendor that had so briefly been hers.

  She tried to tell herself that it was all for the best. Daniel was too daring, too talented, too able. If he fought on, he was sure to get himself killed. He was an expert with his sword, he was probably an amazing sharpshooter, and he could fight bare-handed with a vengeance. But no man alive was immune to bullets, and with his determination to lead his men straight into every fray, it seemed only a matter of time.

  He was safe in prison.

  But as she sat on the porch that dusk, watching the swing wave gently in the breeze, she knew that he would never see it that way. He dreaded prisons. Callie couldn’t believe that Old Capitol Prison could be as bad as they said. It was right in Washington, D.C. There were any number of good citizens in Washington who despised the war, and who would demand fair treatment for the prisoners. After all, weren’t the northerners fighting this war to prove that they were all one Union?

  It didn’t matter. Just remembering the look in Daniel’s eyes made her shiver.

  She closed her eyes, determined to forget. She had to get over everything that had happened, and get on with her life.

  She still had a little unfinished business, she reminded herself sadly, and she stood, and walked back into the house. On one of the big plush parlor chairs lay the bedroll belonging to the young Union soldier who had crawled into her barn to die. She had to get those belongings back to his family.

  She turned the bedroll, trying to compose in her mind a message to send to his family. “Your son died instantly, painlessly. He died a hero’s death….”

  The truth. He died in terror and agony, lingering away in my barn.

  No, she didn’t have to write the truth. No one knew the truth about the soldier’s death except for herself.

  And Daniel.

  Swearing softly, she started to untie the bedroll. If there were tobacco or pipes or playing cards within it, she would get rid of them. She was convinced that if a boy was big enough to go into battle and die, no one should care if he wanted a bit of tobacco or had taken to a fun game of cards on a quiet night. But mothers still looked for honor in their sons, and boys, she knew, still longed to please their mothers. So if this boy’s mother had to receive the sad news of her son’s death, Callie was going to see to it that she was spared all possible extra pain.

  The minute she undid the bedroll the first thing to flutter out was the boy’s letter. It had obviously been signed in quite a rush, and he had never had a chance to find an envelope for it, or a way to post it back home. He’d probably just finished up before he heard the bugle’s blare calling him to battle.

  Callie bit her lip and absently set her free hand against the small of her back. She stretched and wandered back out to the porch, sinking down on the steps to feel the night breeze while she read the letter.

  Dear Mother,

  Just a letter to tell you that I am well, and feeling fine. I wanted to write, because we’re ready to go into battle. Some soldiers found an important order given out by the Confederate General Lee, and there’s all kinds of excitement going on. Seems like well meet up with the Rebel forces real soon, and real big.

  Well, Mother, I’ve just got to say that it won’t be easy. Seems like it was just a week or so ago that we were down in Virginia—so close we could see Richmond—and just across the river from some of those Rebs. Ritchie Tyree—you know Ritchie, Mother, he grew up down the road by the dairy farm—he had some kinfolk over on the other side, cousins he was right close to, and so I promised him that I’d sneak across the river with him. I know that it wasn’t right to go against my orders, but no one really ordered me not to go across the river. If a man doesn’t owe his friends, then we can’t have much of a country to fight for, right? Anyhow, that’s the way I saw it, and I did weigh the decision real careful, just like you and Pa taught me to do. Ritchie and I slipped across the river that night, and we met his cousins Zachary, Tybalt, and Joseph. We sat around in the dark, gnawing on jerky we’d brought over, us having much more in the way of vittles than the Rebs. We talked about old times, and who had died, and who had been married, and it was a right nice night We came back across the river, and we slipped into our tents, and no one was the wiser, so I was glad of the chance to embrace my enemy.

  The only thing is, I started wondering in the morning just why those boys were my enemies. We knew a lot of the same folks, we spoke the same language, and Ritchie and Tybalt even look close enough alike to be near twins. We laughed just alike. And Mother, I tell
you, we pray to the same God every night, we pray mighty hard, both of us praying to live, and both of us praying to win.

  Well, Mother, I don’t mean to burden you with my thoughts. I may question this war, but I swore my oath to my country, and I know my duty, and I will serve.

  How is Sarah? Give my love to her. I write to her often, but I’ve so little time now, and I must write these words to you. God willing, I will come home, and Sarah will be waiting. And we’ll wed, Mother, and though-you’ve already lost Pa and Billy, I’ll be the teacher in the old schoolhouse just like I’ve always wanted with Sarah there at my side and all manner of little ones belonging to me and Sarah to people up your life again.

  It’s going to be a big one, though. A mighty big battle. If God wills that I not return, Mother, remember me to Sarah. Tell her that I loved her, that she was often in my dreams. Know that I was ever your obedient son, and that I’d never bring dishonor upon you. If God so wills that I fade away, hold me with you in your heart.

  There goes the bugle, Mother, calling me to war. God keep you, for you are ever the greatest lady. Your loving son …

  Benjamin

  The letter fluttered to Callie’s lap. She hadn’t realized that she was crying until the first of her tears splattered down on the paper.

  Quickly, almost frantically, she blotted the tear with her skirt.

  The boy’s mother was going to receive this letter.

  She started suddenly, realizing that she had become so involved with the letter that when hoofbeats had sounded, and were now coming closer, she had paid them little heed.

  She leapt up, wondering if she should hurry inside for the revolver.

  But the approaching rider had already arrived at the front of her lawn.

  Her heart began to beat hard as she slipped back into the shadows of the porch. The rider hadn’t seen her, and he certainly hadn’t come furtively. He dismounted from his horse and walked across the lawn to the well. Callie couldn’t see his face. His uniform was a regulation blue. His hat was plumed, cockaded at the brim with a large feather. She watched him for some moments, trying to read his insignias. He looked like cavalry, but some of the insignias on his shoulders were different from any she had seen before.