Faith (17 page)

He stiffened. Since Armstrong had left, he’d felt hollowed out inside, but he would not discuss it. “Today isn’t about me.”

“No, but I can’t see thee hurting and not wish I could help.” Her gentle tone removed the sting from the words.

Yet he resisted the sympathy she offered. “I can’t think about that now.”

“I know. We can’t let ourselves feel things as we would if we weren’t here in this dreadful war.”

Dev nearly gave in and folded her into his arms, just to comfort her or take comfort himself. His arms ached with wanting to feel her soft form next to him.

She straightened up from the tree. “I must be strong too. I still have to tell Honoree of Shiloh being taken to the New Orleans slave auction, one of the most notorious. And that we can’t continue following this lead yet. We will not stop looking, but this news is a hope and a setback at the same time.”

Then Dev couldn’t stop himself. Faith’s mention of Honoree had broken the dike preventing him from speaking of Armstrong. “Couldn’t Honoree have reasoned with Armstrong? Doesn’t his enlisting worry her too?”

She raised her gloved hand as if to stop him from saying more. “We cannot protect the ones we love from harm
 
—none of us can. Does thee think my family wanted me to become a nurse in the midst of a war?”

“No,” he said, now also unable to hold back the words he’d thought many times. “I wouldn’t think so. Why didn’t they forbid you?”

“Because in our family an adult is allowed to make his or her own decisions. I know my parents and family and the
Friends at our meeting are all praying for me. And in spite of their faith in the all-sufficiency of God, they do worry about me. But this is the work I felt the Inner Light, the Holy Spirit, leading me to do.”

“So they just let a defenseless girl go straight into a war?” He was vexed beyond courtesy.

“Did thy decision to join the military make thy mother spring up and rejoice?” She lifted an eyebrow at him.

“That is completely different.”

“Because thee is a man and I am a . . . defenseless girl?”

“Yes.” His reply was curt because he didn’t want to say more, to be as rude as he felt like being. He still thought her father ought to be horsewhipped for not refusing to let her come here.

“We cannot trap our dearest ones within our love, safe from all harm,” she continued. “Not in this world. What if my parents had insisted I stay safe at home but a tornado came? While they watched, I could have died there under their own roof.”

He tried to interrupt, but she kept talking. “When my twin sister was sick with that fatal fever, I held her hand, but I could not keep her . . . from leaving me.” She bowed her head as if hiding her face.

Then he did fold her into his arms. She was only a few inches shorter than he, so his lips came nearest her forehead. He kissed it and tightened his hold on her.

She accepted his embrace for but a moment before drawing away and moving to their safe, neutral topic of choice. “When thee goes home to Baltimore, does thee know which books thee will be looking for in that favorite bookshop of yours?”

He recognized her intent. Both of them needed to step back from the here and now, the overwhelming and unhappy
and unsettling here and now. He tugged his reluctant mouth into a smile. “I thought I might depart from the classics and choose some poetry for a change.”

The men were bringing the horses up out of the creek, so he led her from the shady oak to meet them.

“What poet?”

“I was considering Wordsworth.”

“‘I wandered lonely as a cloud,’” she quoted, “‘that floats on high o’er vales and hills.’” She looked to him.

He continued the poem. “‘When all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils.’”

“Now that would be lovely, but wait just a moment.” She moved away from him and bent and picked some plants growing near the creek. “No daffodils here today. I will have to consult my herbal dictionary, but this looks like a different strain of bee balm.”

Her knowledge impressed him once again. She tucked the herbs into her pocket.

His men paused with their horses, and he swung her up onto her saddle and mounted his own horse. They rode toward the Union camp.

As they finally reached the outskirts, Dev halted and rose up in his stirrups. Ahead men were everywhere, talking animatedly in small groups. “Something’s happened.” He motioned for his company to follow him into camp. As they made their way toward the horse corral, the change in mood became more and more palpable.

“A white flag ahead!” one of their fellow cavalrymen shouted to them. “The generals are conferring over terms! Vicksburg is surrendering!”

D
EV NOTICED
that the daily artillery barrage was indeed absent. Surrender had come at last. He felt suddenly as if a great weight were sliding off his shoulders. He sucked in a deep breath and gripped the reins more tightly.

The men around him sent up a cheer, but he remained silent. He looked over and Faith was gazing at him. She did not appear jubilant but rather perplexed. He leaned closer to her. “What’s the matter?”

“We’ve waited for this so long, but . . .” Falling silent, she shook her head and pressed her lips together. “Please help me down. I must find Honoree and tell her the news, the bad news.” She closed her eyes for a moment as if controlling herself.

He had a hard time understanding her reaction. “Does this hard-won surrender mean nothing to you?”

She tilted her head to one side. “I am happy that it means there will be no more killing here. But with Port Hudson between Vicksburg and New Orleans, how can I go to that city to discover whether Shiloh has been sold there at auction? And if she was sold, to whom?”

He understood a little now. One more battle won, but how many more lay ahead of them? And even if they could go to New Orleans, where the girl might have been sold, this lead was so slim as to be barely usable. For all they knew, the catchers could have sold her to someone else before they reached New Orleans and the famous slave auction there. But he held his peace, unwilling to discourage Faith now, when she looked so downhearted.

Then a Scripture passage his mother used to quote came to mind, and he spoke it. “‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ From the book of Matthew.”

She smiled, and her shoulders relaxed. “I stand rebuked. I will take joy in this victory. It cost us much.” She looked toward Vicksburg. “And cost our enemy even more.”

Dev ordered his men to tend to their own horses before they joined in the celebration. He dismounted and led Faith’s horse to the corral. There he helped her down from the saddle. Resisting the urge to prolong his hold around her waist, he released her. “I will have someone see to your horse.”

She hesitated and then agreed. She murmured good-bye to Horace, her mount for the day, stroked his head, and hurried away.

Dev couldn’t help himself
 
—he watched her walk away till he could no longer see her, swallowed up in the reveling crowd.

The lieutenant beside him, currying his horse, said, “She’s quite an unusual lady.”

Dev merely nodded his agreement. He listened to the happy voices around him and let the ease of a battle won work its way into his heart. He wouldn’t look beyond today.
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
Then he wondered what the terms of the surrender would be. But that responsibility lay with Grant, not him.

Heading directly to the hospital tents, where she expected to find Honoree, Faith threaded and pushed her way through the milling men, all shouting or singing. One hatless young soldier grabbed her around the waist and danced her in a circle as if they were at a jollification. She pulled away, smiling but shaking her head at his invitation to celebrate.

Finally, ahead, she glimpsed Honoree outside the hospital mess tent. Faith lifted a hand.

Honoree saw her and hurried forward. “Did you . . . ?” Honoree’s voice trailed off.

Faith grasped both Honoree’s hands. The artillery barrage might have ended, but the rejoicing all around them created nearly as much noise. Leaning close to Honoree’s ear, she said, “We spoke to a slave away from the main house, and Shiloh had been there. But on her way to the auction in New Orleans.”

Honoree pressed her hand over her mouth and turned away.

Faith claimed her friend’s shoulders and rested her cheek against the bright-blue kerchief tied over Honoree’s braids. “Not the best news, but the most we’ve found to date,” she said. “We won’t give up.”

Reaching back, Honoree put her hand over one of Faith’s and nodded. “Port Hudson’s still holding out.”

“Yes, but how long can they do so now that Vicksburg has fallen?” Faith said, forcing a smile while holding in tears.

Amid the tumult of celebration around them, they stood as an island of sadness.

“Is thee certain thee wants to come with us to offer aid to the fallen city?” Faith asked Dev as they walked through camp in the morning. The victory celebration had ebbed into routine. Grant had given his permission, so they were entering the defeated city to aid the civilians there.

The normal day sounds still felt abnormal to Dev’s ears. Forty-seven days of almost-constant artillery noise had left him disoriented. Hearing birdsong again was strange.

“I have no pressing duties today,” he said, “and I think you will need protection.”

“We are bringing food and medical supplies. Why would anyone attack us?”

Dev considered it a foolish question.

“Ella wouldn’t come with us today,” Honoree murmured to Faith. “She was afraid of entering Vicksburg, said no good would come of it.”

Dev didn’t know who Ella was, but he agreed with her.

Faith shook her head as if denying Honoree’s words.
“If that is what thee thinks, perhaps thee should not come either.”

This exchange reminded him of their argument over whether or not to nurse Jack. Personally he thought Honoree should remain in camp. She could be a target of nastiness.

“I’m coming, but I’m not thinking I’ll meet any thanks,” Honoree said grimly.

Honoree was evidently the realist and Faith the idealist. But he didn’t comment, merely walked with Faith, Honoree, and Dr. Bryant beside a wagon packed with food and medical supplies. The colonel had brought a few of his men along for added protection.

The Southern civilians he’d met in similar situations hated the Union with a virulent, sometimes-violent passion. Walking into this defeated city to offer aid would be like trying to help a wounded wild animal. Would they get bitten or savaged for their efforts?

The terms of surrender had been settled. The Confederate soldiers
 
—thirty thousand men
 
—had promised not to fight again and to go home. The day before, Dev had watched them march out of the city, some of them nearly naked in ragged, worn clothing and all looking pitifully starved and defeated.

He’d been proud to see many of his fellow Union soldiers open their haversacks, sharing their hardtack and offering cups of coffee to the defeated Rebels. Some even had given clothing to those who needed it.

But now Dev felt as if he were once more on reconnaissance, exposed to danger and watching for the enemy. He stepped closer to Faith, his every sense alert.

As they entered the city, their party beheld a scene beyond
the imagination of most. He’d heard the artillery every day, but now he saw the destruction it had inflicted. Rubble covered the streets, mixed with remnants of exploded shells; destroyed houses leaned against each other. A few gaunt people, sitting on straight-backed chairs in front of a damaged house, turned hollow-eyed stares at them.

Dev couldn’t stop himself. He imagined Baltimore, his hometown, devastated like this, and a pressure gripped his heart. Thank God Maryland had not seceded.

“Good day!” Dr. Bryant called to the family in front of the house. “We’ve brought food and medicine. I’m a doctor, and these women are my nurses. Do you have any sick who need help?”

The people continued to stare in silence.

Dr. Bryant repeated the question louder.

An emaciated woman, her hair unbound, burst out of a nearby home. “You have food? Medicine?”

“For the sick. I’m a doctor. Do you have
 
—?”

She ran to him and grasped his hand. “My daughter. Come. Please.”

Faith and Honoree accompanied the doctor inside. Dev gestured for his men to remain guarding the wagon while he went inside too. On a sofa in the parlor lay a girl of about thirteen, almost a skeleton in a thin nightgown too large for her.

Dr. Bryant touched her forehead and spoke softly to Faith. “High fever.” He turned to the woman. “How long has she been ill?”

“Four days. Can you help her, please?” The mother twisted the hem of her threadbare apron in her hands.

“We’ll do our best.” He knelt by the child and quickly examined her. “It’s measles.”

That word filled Dev with revulsion. Measles had swept away thousands of soldiers who’d signed up to fight but instead had died in camp.

“We need to bring down her fever and feed her up,” Faith said.

“Exactly,” Dr. Bryant confirmed. “I will leave her in your capable hands, Nurse Cathwell, while I go on ahead. I’m sure I will be needed elsewhere.” He turned to the mother. “Nurse Cathwell has much experience with measles. She will do everything possible for your daughter. Listen to what she tells you.”

He turned to go, nodding to Dev as if to say,
Please stay and protect them.

Dev bowed his head in agreement and tried not to glance at the ill child. Though used to battlefield devastation, he was not prepared for this. A house stripped of all possessions; civilians sick, starving, defeated. He had trouble drawing a full breath.

“I’ll do all I can,” Faith said, kneeling beside the patient. She looked to the girl’s mother. “I am going to add some alcohol to the water thee has been bathing her face with. That will make it more effective. And Honoree will mix some hardtack with sugar and wine for thee to feed thy daughter.”

The woman looked surprised at Faith’s Quaker plain speech.

Honoree carried a small sack of ingredients to the fireplace mantel and mixed the slurry. She offered the small bowl to the woman. “Here, ma’am. We’ve found that this is nourishing and helps with fever.”

The mother glared at Honoree but accepted the bowl, muttering to herself.

This woman’s reaction reminded him of Jack, who’d cursed Faith even as she nursed him. But Honoree had refused to nurse his cousin. Why had she come here today?

When the mother knelt beside her daughter and began to feed her, Faith rose. “We will bring more food before we go back to our camp. Thy daughter most needs nourishment and liquid to help her fight off this fever.”

The woman stared at her. “I don’t understand.”

“Pardon?” Faith halted, gazing at her.

“Why are you helping us?”

Dev could understand why the woman asked the question and why Faith looked confused.

“‘Love your enemies. . . . Do good to them that hate you,’” Faith quoted, and then she and Honoree turned to leave.

The woman glared at them, looking extremely irritated. “Don’t preach to me. I’m as Christian as you are.”

Faith glanced over her shoulder. “Of course.”

The woman continued to scowl at Faith’s and Honoree’s backs till she looked down at her daughter, and her face softened.

Outside, Dev accompanied the two women as they caught up with Dr. Bryant. He kept close to them. He sensed that Faith, her plain Quaker speech marking her, might act as a lightning rod here. Just as slaves warmed to her when they heard her speak, that same speech today would no doubt attract
unpleasant
reactions.