Dreams of Savannah

by Roseanna M. White

  Then Luther knelt beside him, held his hands above the wound, and closed his eyes. “Father God Almighty, I cannot know your will or your purpose in washing this young man up on my beach. But knowing you love him even where I cannot, I pray that you touch this wound, that you set a barrier against infection, that you help this boy keep his life and his leg. I pray the healing wrought by your precious Son upon him and claim his life for you, Lord. Please lead me as I care for him, and give Dr. Santiago your wisdom and grace. In the name of Christ Jesus, amen.”

  He withdrew his hands but stayed on his knees for a long moment, studying this unwanted guest. A Confederate soldier, of all things. A young man fighting to keep Luther’s entire race bound by slavery.

  Yet he couldn’t ignore that murmur that moved through him, the one that forced his eyes open to see more than the uniform. This young man in his twenties must be at least ten years Luther’s junior, perhaps more like fifteen. And knowing the life pampered young men tended to lead—to which class he obviously belonged, given that offer of bribery on the beach—he had likely never known hardship or toil. Luther sighed. Phin was little more than a child, even at his age. Untested, never put upon, seldom taxed.

  Until now. The war between the Union and the Confederacy may have only just begun on American soil, but this young fellow had received an early taste of its realities.

  Luther stood, his neck bent at its habitual angle in this low-ceilinged house. “Well, young man, I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can, rest assured I shall return as soon as possible, with a well-trusted doctor. There is food and drink here for you. Try not to fear.”

  Phin made no response, so Luther turned and exited the house, stretching the discomfort from his neck as soon as the sky towered overhead. Oh, for soaring cathedral ceilings, for scrolling plasterwork several feet above him. For windows with glass panes and brocade curtains.

  He must get his head out of the realm of wishes and into the present though. With another silent prayer to underscore the urgency that crept into his consciousness, Luther hurried to the little lean-to he had constructed to house his horse. Gulliver wasn’t exactly the fine horse he had waiting for him in England, but the large gelding was the best he could manage here. And he would traverse the two miles to the doctor’s home easily enough.

  How often had they made this same journey together over the last months? Too many. Far, far too many. But at least the frequent interactions with the physician had resulted in an unexpected friendship. And an improvement in Luther’s Spanish.

  It took him only a couple minutes to saddle the bay, hoist himself up, and urge him into a trot down the overgrown lane. The road wound past Hacienda Rosario, on which Luther refused to gaze. He didn’t have to. He knew well how the Big House sprawled gleaming white in the glaring sun. How the rows of tobacco plants marched along, acre after acre. But whether he looked or not, he could hear the chants of the slaves. If any dared glance up from their tasks and see him, he would be able to feel their burning gazes too.

  At the crossroad, he turned right and headed for the home of the physician-planter. Dr. Santiago had a house far more modest than his neighbor, with far fewer slaves. And a far fairer mind. Still, it had taken months for Luther to earn the doctor’s respect.

  He rode through a copse of trees, dense but brief, and then looked out over Hacienda Santiago. “Lord, let him be at home.”

  Here, the slaves greeted him with cool glances—absent any welcome, but also absent the hatred he found at the Rosario operations. To them, he was nothing but an outsider, rather than an outsider they thought should be among them. He nodded an acknowledgment to the nearest field hand, who summarily ignored him.

  Gulliver clip-clopped up the drive and went without prodding toward the stable. The stable boy was one of the few on this cursed island who smiled when he saw him. “Señor Luther! ¿Cómo está?”

  “Bien, Juan.” Even with so short a reply, his Spanish felt as smooth as a rusty hinge. He switched to English, knowing the boy understood it as well as Luther did Spanish, anyway. “Do you know if the doctor is at home?”

  “Ah, sí.” He motioned toward the Big House.

  “Thank you. That is, gracias.” He’d nearly said merci. Why couldn’t Eva have hailed from a French quarter? He would have been far better at communicating with them.

  He handed over Gulliver’s reins and strode toward the back door. It stood open to receive the breeze, but he nevertheless knocked on the frame even as he filled it.

  One of the house slaves looked up and offered a polite smile. “Buenos días, señor.”

  “Good morning. I need the doctor—it is an emergency. Emergencia.” He nearly rolled his eyes at himself. He only knew the word because it was a cognate—and since it was, the servant would have been able to understand his emergency quite well enough.

  The man looked doubtful—probably wondering whom Luther had to seek medical aid for—but nevertheless motioned him down a hallway that let out near the doctor’s study.

  Luther waited while the servant knocked, stepped inside, and introduced him. When he was given leave to enter the study, he found Dr. Santiago standing with a sober smile. “Good morning, Luther. What is the matter?”

  Luther waited for the servant to exit. “I found a man on the beach this morning, Doctor. He is in a bad way—a bullet in his leg, no exit wound. He seems to have been in the ocean and is unconscious more than not, in terrible pain. It goes beyond what I am able to tend without instruction.”

  Already reaching for his familiar black bag, the doctor shook his head. “Curious. Is he from Cuba?”

  “No. Georgia. He is a Confederate soldier of some kind, though I got no more out of him before he fainted again.”

  “Curious indeed.” Santiago took a moment to run his fingers down his beard, then charged toward the door. “Well, let us not tarry. How old a man, do you think? Generally strong of physique?”

  Luther knew only too well how age could affect affliction. “Young. I guess midtwenties, and he looks otherwise healthy.”

  The doctor led the way out the back, calling out in rapid Spanish over his shoulder to the servants he passed, no doubt telling them where he could be found. A few minutes later, Juan had saddled a horse for Santiago and led Gulliver out for Luther.

  Once they were underway, Santiago looked over at him. “Have you any idea how long ago he was wounded?”

  Luther shook his head. “I can only guess that it hasn’t been long. I walked the beach last night and saw no evidence of him then.”

  “He is in much pain?”

  “He seems to be, yes.”

  The doctor nodded, lips in a grim line between his beard and mustache. “How is his color? If he is pale, it may mean he has lost much blood.”

  To that, Luther had to shrug. “It was difficult to judge, as he seemed to be rather tan.”

  “He gave no indication of where he had been?”

  “No, Doctor.” Luther shifted in the saddle and cast his gaze in the direction of his makeshift home, as if he could see it from here. “Said he was Confederate, from Savannah. Offered to repay me—or rather, my master—if I helped him. That was all he said before he went under.”

  Santiago sent him a look of knowing amusement. “Knowing you as I do, Señor Bromley, I am certain you took that assumption with the utmost, how do you say . . . deplume?”

  “I believe you mean aplomb, Doctor.” Luther’s lips twitched, but he held down the smile. “Assuming that you assume I handled it with grace and not with lack thereof.”

  Santiago chuckled. “It depends on my level of sarcasm, which I meant, I think. No?”

  “Oui. I mean, sí.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I admit to feeling a bit of insult when he referred to my master. I ought to have simply agreed and let him hand over a tidy sum to the church, since the Lord is the one I serve.”

  A low hum came from the doctor’s throat, then another thoughtful glance. “Savannah, did you sa
y?”

  “Sí.”

  “Is that not . . . ?”

  “It is.” Luther’s fingers gripped the reins until his knuckles ached.

  “A strange coincidence.”

  He only nodded and held his tongue as they finished the trip.

  Soon enough, they were back inside his bungalow, and Santiago, able to stand upright under the low roof, had pulled over what he needed—the lone chair, the rickety table, the lamp. “Agua, por favor.”

  Luther jerked a nod and fetched the bucket of water he had filled from the well first thing that morning. Santiago dipped some up and poured it over the wound. He made a ticking sound with his tongue and muttered in Spanish.

  Not knowing what else to do with himself, Luther crouched down beside the cot. “Is it bad?”

  “The usual problem with a gunshot wound—the bullet pulled fabric into the leg and is itself lodged inside. If I miss a piece, it will fester. More water, if you please. We will get it nice and wet, then cut the pants away.”

  At home in England, it was always Eva who played the part of nurse when a parishioner was ill. Luther far preferred reading to them, talking with them, praying for them. But he had grown accustomed to giving such medical care here in Cuba. He poured a generous ladle of water over the wound, his breath snagging when the prone man groaned in his sleep. When Santiago brandished his scissors, Luther helped pull the cloth gently away from the flesh wherever he could, until the soldier’s leg was bared to mid thigh.

  “Now the work begins.” Santiago affixed a pair of spectacles to his nose and bent over the leg. “If he begins to awaken, you must hold him still.”

  Luther nodded—and prayed the Lord would be merciful and let Phin remain unconscious.

  For an hour, the doctor painstakingly removed sliver after sliver of blood-soaked fiber, then set to work digging out the bullet. At this, fresh blood gushed out in earnest, demanding Luther move from his defensive posture of a lazy arm restraining Phin to pressing rags all around the leg to catch the river of red. When at last he heard the metal ping of bullet hitting pan, he took his first breath of relief.

  It fled, seeing the shake of Santiago’s head. “The damage is great. His bone . . .”

  Dread cinched tight in Luther’s chest. “Fractured?”

  “Destrozado. Shattered. If he lives, he will have a long recovery ahead of him. You must pray the gangrena does not set in. I do not look forward to coming back here to amputate, but it is muy probable.”

  Luther stared down at Phin’s face, tense even in sleep, his distress obvious. He had symmetrical features, a straight, narrow nose, a cleft to his upper lip that Eva always teased was exceedingly handsome on a man. All the young belles back in Georgia no doubt swooned when he entered a room. He was so young, undoubtedly full of vitality before this.

  Yet now he was cut down. His life hanging by a precarious thread, his leg likely lost. Abandoned by his compatriots on an unfamiliar island with no friend to pray him back to health.

  What matter was the uniform he wore? Under it was a man who, if he lived, would be hurting from far deeper within than that bullet had pierced.

  Santiago stood. “I will make a splint. He must not move the leg. It must be braced.”

  So must he be. Luther closed his eyes and gripped Phin’s shoulder. “Father God, again I commend this young man to you. Sustain him, Lord. Save him.”

  The patient’s breath hitched, then eased out in an agonizing moan. His eyes fluttered open, though they remained unfocused before his eyelids came down again. “Delia. Didn’t tell Delia . . . tell her I love her.”

  Luther gripped his shoulder a little tighter. Who was this Delia? Wife? Sweetheart? Either way . . . either way. “You’ll have the chance to tell her,” he swore, so low the man likely didn’t hear through the haze of his pain. “Rest now, my friend, gather your strength. I’ll get you back to your Delia.”

  And maybe—if the Lord smiled on him—he would find his Eva too.

  Chapter Seven

  Cordelia fastened the pearls into place around Lacy’s ivory throat and viewed her little sister in the looking glass before them. “There.” She couldn’t resist a grin. The pale green dress set off Lacy’s coloring perfectly, and with those blooms of excitement giving her cheeks a becoming rose, she would be irresistible to all the young men.

  One Julius James included.

  Lacy tried to mute a squeal, but the punctuating bounce wouldn’t be contained. “Oh, Delia, it’s been too long since we’ve had a good ball. Are you sure this cousin of ours will like me? And he’s handsome? As handsome as Phin?”

  She felt a bit like Jane Austen’s Emma. Or some other selfless, beatific, matchmaking heroine. To that effect, Cordelia pasted on a patient smile and smoothed Lacy’s skirt a little better over her hoop. “Well now, I can’t say as any man is as handsome as Phin—but I daresay you’ll find him to be so, yes, and he’ll just adore you.”

  Lacy spun around and threw her arms around Cordelia. “Oh, Delia, thank you for letting me borrow your dress. Now I’ll leave you to get ready before Salina pushes me out the door.”

  Salina grinned. “Now, I’d never do that, Miss Lacy. Leastways not unless you got in my way while I’m trying to curl Miss Delia’s hair.”

  Lacy laughed and flounced out. The room felt quiet in her wake, a bittersweet semi-peace. Cordelia drew in a deep breath and sank down onto the stool of her dressing table.

  Salina got to work with the curling tongs, hot from the small fire that had been built to purpose. “And what you gonna wear, Miss Delia, now that you done gave your best new gown to your sister?”

  “Oh, any old thing. It hardly matters, since Phin won’t be there.” She kept her head straight but let her gaze wander to the flowers on the wallpaper. Wouldn’t it be something, though, if he just showed up without warning? Perhaps his ship was fighting the Yankees off the coast and they were given leave in Savannah. Or his captain could have a dispatch so crucially important that it must be hand delivered, and naturally he would choose his most trusted man to dispatch it.

  Yes, Phin could be on his way to the city even now. Braving the Yankee offensive, slipping through enemy lines.

  Captured. Shot. Taken prisoner and carted off to one of those dreadful prisoner-of-war camps she had heard horror stories about. Where he would starve, get eaten by lice, be tormented by dreadfully large rats, left to waste away in a . . . a dungeon somewhere, with no one to visit him, no one to dab his sweat-soaked brow, no one to even talk to.

  She squeezed her eyes shut against the dark images. “Do you think he’s all right, Sal?”

  Salina drew in a long breath and wrapped a length of hair around the tongs, tugging softly. “I don’t rightly know, Miss Delia. But I been prayin for him.”

  “So have I. But I can’t escape those dreams. The feeling he’s in danger.”

  “In danger don’t mean without hope though.” Her fingers rested a moment on Cordelia’s shoulder, warm and familiar. “You keep clingin to that, and keep on prayin. To my figurin, the Lord wouldn’t bother givin us dreams about it if there weren’t something we could do, if all hope was lost.”

  She would have nodded, but Cordelia had learned long ago not to do such a fool thing with hot tongs at her head. “An excellent point. I shall keep praying, keep hoping.” But she would also resign herself to not seeing him tonight, or any other time in the near future.

  “And keep thinkin on what you wanna wear tonight, ’cause if you don’t look your best, your mama will send you straight back up here.”

  Cordelia met her friend’s reflected gaze in the mirror and smiled into the knowing glint. “She likely will at any rate. I always seem to neglect something she insists upon. But I think I’ll wear the ivory-and-pink striped one.”

  “Pink?” Mirror Salina arched a brow. “You really don’t care to impress this Mr. Julius, do you?”

  A laugh bubbled forth. Any other servant would assure her she’d made a fine choice, say
what a beautiful gown the silk and taffeta had turned out to be. But Cordelia much preferred Salina’s honesty. “I really don’t. Though Mama assures me that a gown so lovely can’t help but flatter me, no matter how ill-suited it is for my complexion.”

  Salina let loose a dubious hum that worked its way into a song as she continued her task. Cordelia relaxed into the familiarity. Many long minutes later, the mirror began to reflect the carefully crafted image Savannah would see tonight. Golden curls, set just so, laced through with ribbons. Green eyes that Cordelia would work hard to keep free of worry. Cheeks that Mama would no doubt pinch some color into before they exited their carriage at the Dunns’.

  What would Phin say if he saw her tonight? Would he think her pretty, even in pink? Would he draw her away from the crowd for another stolen kiss if he were here? Would a light of jealousy enter his eye if he beheld Julius claiming a dance?

  He hadn’t looked particularly jealous after seeing the scoundrel Thomas Bacon try to kiss her. But then, he had been too amused at her taking a stand as she had. It may be different now that she had promised to wait for him though. He must think of her now as his and wouldn’t take kindly to another fawning over her.

  Not that Cousin Julius had been fawning yesterday, but why get particular over word choice? If she were dreaming Phin were here, she could very well dream he was delightfully jealous—just enough to whisk her away from all the other doting men, off to some quiet corner where he would gaze down into her eyes, a storm of passion in his own, and lean down, so slowly and delectably—

  “Miss Delia, are you going to step into this gown, or do you want me to go to the ball in your stead?”

  Cordelia started and looked over to see that Salina had put away the curling tongs and gotten out her hoop and gown, which she had spread out on the floor, awaiting her. All while she sat here dreaming of another kiss from a man who was undoubtedly hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away. She chuckled at herself and stood, shrugging out of her dressing gown.

  Salina held out a hand to lend her balance while Cordelia stepped over the splayed skirt and into the opening. Once within, her maid raised up hoop and dress and fastened them, cinching tight the sash around her waist.