Angel of the Battlefield (9 page)

September 5

The air smelled different. That was the first thing Maisie thought as she walked across the pasture. She could actually smell grass and dirt and horse poop and smoke, each scent sharper and . . . she inhaled deeply, trying to find the word to describe what she meant. Cleaner, she decided. The air smelled cleaner. In New York, the air always had a hint of car fumes in it. On their block, the smell from the Laundromat hung in the air and food smells from nearby restaurants mixed with it. Since they moved to Newport, her mother had made a big show of taking exaggerated deep breaths and saying “Ah!
The salty sea air.
” But Maisie never really got a whiff of it. Sure, everything stayed kind of damp from being so close to the ocean, and once in a while a strong odor of seaweed infiltrated the air.

But here it was as if every scent was making itself known. Maisie paused. Like right now she could smell something strong and floral. Sure enough, a cluster of flowers appeared around a bend. Maisie kept walking and breathing in all the smells, keeping her eyes peeled for some sign of civilization.

A new smell. Maisie inhaled. Berries, just like the Union Square farmers' market on a hot summer day. Sure enough, she saw a tangle of blackberry bushes. The berries were bigger than any she'd seen before, even bigger than the ones her mother liked to buy at her favorite supermarket, Fairway, where the produce and meat and just about everything was superbig and shiny. Her stomach grumbled at the sight of so many berries, and Maisie realized she hadn't eaten anything since that mac and cheese.

She plucked a blackberry from its branch and popped it in her mouth. The flavor—intense and sweet and more blackberryish than any blackberry she'd ever tasted—exploded on her tongue. And the bushes were crowded with blackberries. Maisie decided to help herself. She chose the fullest bush, placed herself in front of it, and began to eat. Each berry tasted better than the one just before it, all of them plump, juicy, and slightly warm.
What kind of chemicals do these Bartons use that make the blackberries so delicious?
she wondered.

As soon as she wondered that, Maisie said, “Uh-oh.”

She stepped away from the bush and turned slowly in every direction. Everything smelled clean, she realized, because it
was
clean. There was absolutely no pollution here. And she couldn't see any power lines anywhere because there
weren't
any power lines. And these blackberries were so good because they were, well,
real
blackberries, without Miracle-Gro or anything at all.

Maisie had figured out
where
they had landed. But
when
was it?

For the first time in her life, Maisie wished she'd paid a little more attention to her social studies teacher, Mrs. Johnson. All last year, Mrs. Johnson had taught them about American history—pilgrims and pioneers and settlers. Which group did Clara Barton fit into?

Pilgrims. She was fairly sure they wore shoes with big buckles. And they lived in Massachusetts. But didn't they live by the sea? No, Clara was not a pilgrim, Maisie decided with a certain measure of doubt.

All those Laura Ingalls Wilder books her mother had loved as a girl and tried to get Maisie to love took place somewhere out west, not here in New England. So they hadn't landed back when pioneers settled, whenever that was. Maisie rubbed her temples as if that would help her figure this out.

Wait a minute
, Maisie thought.
Who cares what year it is?
She'd find that out eventually. What really mattered was that somehow she and Felix
had
gone back in time. They were not in the twenty-first century. They were not in Newport, Rhode Island. A shiver of excitement spread through her. Just yesterday, her life had seemed dull and claustrophobic. She'd been stuck in a hot apartment with no friends and her father halfway around the world. And today? Well, today everything was different.

Maisie stretched out on her back in the sweet-smelling grass and stared up happily at the bluest, clearest sky she'd ever seen. The taste of blackberries lingered on her lips, and from somewhere nearby, she could smell the musky scent of horses mingling with the rich earth and grass smells. Maybe they hadn't traveled somewhere superexciting, but lying there, Maisie felt happy to be out of Newport.

Clara Barton
, Maisie thought, tucking her hands beneath her head.
Why in the world had they landed in Clara Barton's barn?

“This is disgusting,” Felix told Clara as she put the onion poultice on his arm.

“How would you ever tolerate leeches if you can't endure the strong smell of onions?” Clara said.

“Please stop talking about leeches.” Felix groaned. “Besides, no one does anything like that anymore.”

She looked at him, surprised.

“That's what they did in the olden days,” Felix continued, “before antibiotics and stuff.”

He heard his own words come out of his mouth and something settled in his chest.
The olden days.

“You're not Amish, are you?” Felix said softly.

Clara shook her head. “I have to admit,” she said, “I don't know what Amish is.”

He studied her—the bonnet, the apron, the long dress, and the funny boots.

“Do you know the date today?” he asked, his mouth turning dry.

She smiled. “September fifth,” she said.

Felix swallowed hard. It had been September 5 when he woke up in Newport this morning.

“Um,” he said. “September fifth . . . ?”

“1836,” Clara said.

“1836,” Felix said. He did some subtraction and began shivering.

It was September 5, more than one hundred and seventy-five years earlier than it was supposed to be.

“1836,” Felix repeated as if by saying it again it might change.

“Yes,” Clara said.

Felix tried to concentrate. Had anything terrible happened in 1836? Anything catastrophic? He could feel his heart banging around under his ribs.

“We're not at war or anything, right?” he asked.
When was the Civil War?
he wondered.
Eighteen something.

“I don't think so,” Clara said.

“I mean, the North and the South get along and everything?”

“North and south what?”

“Of America?” Felix said.

Clara placed the back of her cool hand on his forehead and kept it there for a while until she announced, “No fever. When David's fevers came, he often spoke nonsense.”

A great surge of compassion filled Felix. How could he tell this girl that some time, maybe some time soon, a terrible and bloody war would start and that her country would be divided by it? How could he tell her that President Lincoln would be killed and that slaves would be freed? And what about the countless other historical moments that lay ahead?

Again he struggled to remember when the Civil War began. Felix thought of all the times Mrs. Johnson told him that someday he would realize how important it was to know history. He had no idea that day would come so soon.

“Is Abraham Lincoln the president?” Felix asked Clara.

“The president—”

“Of the United States.”

“You don't even know who our president is?” Clara said sadly.

Felix shook his head. Maybe the Civil War was a long way from now.

“For your information,” Clara said, “Mr. Andrew Jackson is the president of the United States.”

Felix tried not to laugh. He had never even heard of Andrew Jackson.
That guy won't do anything very special,
he wanted to tell Clara.
No one will even remember him in a couple hundred years.

“Old Hickory himself,” Clara said proudly.

“Old Hickory,” Felix repeated, searching his brain for some memory of this guy.

“He defeated the Red Stick Creeks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend,” she said, excited. “My father voted for him in both elections. He's completely paid off the national debt—”

“And this president . . . Jackson?”

She nodded.

“He's the . . . twelfth or thirteenth president?”

Clara laughed. “Andrew Jackson is the seventh president of the United States. He used to have John C. Calhoun as his vice president but—”

“That's all right,” Felix interrupted.

Clara blushed. “I can recite the name of every general, captain, colonel, and sergeant, and I know the name of everyone from the president and cabinet to all the leading government officers by heart.”

“Wow,” Felix said, impressed. He certainly couldn't do that.

“But do you know what I used to think?” Clara said with a laugh. “I had no idea that they were all regular men. I thought they must certainly be larger than life, you know? I imagined the president might be as large as the meeting house, and the vice president as large as, oh, I don't know. A schoolhouse maybe.”

Felix laughed. “I know what you mean,” he said. “Last year I saw Johan Santana on the street, and I was shocked that he was so ordinary-looking in person.”

“Johan—”

“Santana! Only the best pitcher in the game of baseball!” Felix said.

Clara frowned. “I don't know that game,” she said.

“You don't know what baseball is?”

Clara shook her head.

“It's only the most amazing game ever,” Felix said. He couldn't believe it. Baseball hadn't been invented yet? He tried to remember when the first baseball game had been played, but he had no idea. That was the exact kind of thing his father would know without even looking it up.

“What's wrong?” Clara asked gently. “You suddenly looked so sad.”

“I was just thinking about my father. He knows just about everything. He probably even knows all about Old Hickory and even that John Calhoun guy.”

“My father, too! He's Captain Stephen Barton, and he fought during the French and Indian Wars, just like President Jackson,” Clara said. “Except he fought in Ohio and Michigan. And before that he fought under General Mad Anthony Wayne in the Revolutionary War. Why, you should hear his war stories!”

Felix nodded politely. “That would be great,” he said. But what he was actually thinking about was how there could have been a war he had never even heard of before.
The French and Indian War?
Did the French fight the Indians? Or did the French and the Indians fight the Americans?

Felix sighed. “Any sign of my sister out there?” he asked.

Clara looked out the barn door. “No. I suppose she went searching for that thing she needs so badly. What did she call it?”

“A phone,” Felix said. No matter how long or hard Maisie looked, she was not going to find a phone here in 1836.

They fell into an uncomfortable silence.

Then Clara said, “Do you know
The Lady of the Lake
?”

“Who's she?” Felix said.

Clara looked disappointed. “The book by Walter Scott?”

“What's it about?”

“Well,” Clara said, “the poem's about the struggle between King James the Fifth and the powerful clan Douglas.”

“Wait. It's a poem?”

“Yes,” Clara said.

“I thought it was a book,” Felix said.

“It's both,” Clara explained.

“I've never heard of a poem long enough to be an entire book.”

Clara laughed. “Even more reason to read it then.”

“Maybe so,” Felix said, intrigued. “You were saying: There's a king and a powerful clan . . .”

“Yes, but at the very beginning of the poem, a mysterious knight called James Fitz-James arrives at the castle. This is important to know because soon enough he falls in love with Ellen, James of Douglas's daughter.”

Felix listened as Clara told him the details of the story. He liked how excited she looked as she talked. That was how he felt about good stories, too.

“Oh, it's all very exciting,” Clara said breathlessly. “But I shouldn't say any more. You must read it yourself to see how it all turns out.”