Emma Barry (16 page)

He nodded as if this explanation had convinced him too.

“He promised me he would return. I tried to stop him from doing so, but he insisted. Even now I expect him to open the gate” — she gestured at it — “and to ask what the fuss is about with a boyish grin.”

“If ever a man would change his fate, it would be Theo to return to you,” Josiah said. “Whatever Sarah may say about it, you realized his life by marrying him. Don’t forget it.”

“No, he realized mine.”

They returned to the house and spent another evening in one another’s company, exchanging only the barest of pleasantries and hurrying off to bed to be alone with their honest, isolated lamentations.

• • •

So this was Richmond.

Theo wished he could rise and strain onto his toes in order to look out the squat window. His fellow prisoners told him that through the bars one could see over the river, to the factories, steeples, and hills of the Confederate capitol. Hear, even, the bells from the churches. It would be fitting to enjoy a view of the city he had thought about, cursed, and spoken of more than any other in the past two years. But at present, it was nothing more than the place where he might very well die.

In his experience, it was less a city than a cold, stinking, gray stone room. His Richmond housed, at present, several dozen Union officers in various states of injury and infirmity. Several piles of filthy straw stood in for beds. Chairs and tables also. Prisoners were ingenious.

Theo had the exclusive use of the largest, an honor in accordance with the perceived severity of his hurt. Maybe that was why the French word for wound was
blesser.
Il a été blessé à la jambe
. He had been wounded in the leg. He muttered the words over to himself several times as a talisman. Old Professor Bright would be pleased to know that, fever or no, he could still conjugate the pluperfect. If he ever got out of here, he’d write the man a letter and tell him so.

He ran a hand down his thigh, skimming over the matted hair, thick with dried blood and dirt, toward the wound itself. Where his fingers paused he felt heat. He was hot — much too hot, he knew. He could feel weeping too, a thick sludge of mucous and discharge. He lacked the fortitude to check the color of it. He’d rather not know.

So far, he’d kept the leg. Not out of any sort of choice, mind, but because he hadn’t seen a doctor. Or at least he didn’t remember having seen one. He’d been told there was a shortage of them at present in the city. There seemed to be a shortage of everything, really.

They should have left him there on the damned field of battle. Eventually the Union Army would have picked him up. What precisely would these bastards trade him for? Why had he been bumped over every hole and lump the bad roads possessed sixty miles south into the heart of Virginia? To where there was no food, no doctors, and no medicine. Even clean water was at a premium and appeared only twice a day.

His mouth pricked at the thought. A mistake on his part, thinking of water. He’d been here … well, several days at least. By now he should know not to think of it. Or of his family.

Dear Margaret. He hoped she didn’t know where he was.

How long had it been since the battle? He wasn’t sure. He’d lost track at the beginning, in the searing white heat of the fever and the delirium that had followed. That had passed now, mostly, except for the festering in his leg. Regardless, he wasn’t able yet to track time accurately. It seemed to have paused in his Richmond. There was only when the food came and when it did not. All the times were without what he wanted most in the world: Margaret.

His restless hands moved again over the place where he’d torn away one pant leg of his uniform, over the hot, oozing wound. He pressed down slightly, trying to put his wife from his mind. She’d be mad with grief and fear if she knew. Had she been told he was dead? Would she give up hope? If he died, would she ever know the full story? Would she understand what had passed in the final, painful chapter in this accursed stone room?

No, he couldn’t think of that. There was nothing to do but bash one’s head against the stones and frankly, at this juncture, he lacked the strength to do it properly. Maybe after the food came again and he’d rested a while. Best to keep that option until all the others had been forestalled.

“Won’t be long now,” one of his cellmates said, brushing Theo’s shoulder. The bent of his thoughts must have been clear on his face.

Theo was pretty sure this was the man had been here the longest. It was difficult to tell, what with them all sporting long, dark beards and a goodly layer of dirt. Whoever it was had explained that as officers, they warranted better accommodations, but Theo wasn’t convinced. Better than what?

Remembering the man’s statement, Theo asked, “Until the fever returns?” He gestured at his leg and propping himself up on his elbows to look at his fellow prisoners.

The kind man shook his head and responded, “No, until they come back.”

Another man crouching in the corner of the cell grunted, “And then what?”

“Who knows? No one ever stays around long enough for us to get a sense of the routine.”

Theo let himself fall back against the straw, one hand flopping over onto the stone floor. At least it was cool.

He waited and prayed and tried not to think of Margaret and of water. Who knew how long it would be before he might have either. Or indeed if reunion would come at all.

Margaret walked home from the post office, having mailed letters to Rebecca, Matilda, and Phoebe apprising them of the current situation. It had been a few days longer than a month since they had learned of Theo’s disappearance. Still there was no news.

The situation in the Ward home grew tenser with each day. Surely they had to face the truth, as soon as they could decide what it was. Margaret’s feet slapped the sidewalk in a regular rhythm. Her corset rubbed at her hips. Her boots pinched ever so slightly. Those small discomforts were a relief as they were real. They cut through the nest of abjuration she had built around her heart.

She stopped across from the park, hesitating. She crossed the street and walked to the willow. She didn’t come to this place often, afraid perhaps that if she visited too frequently it would lose its power and magic. But now she needed those qualities to keep her hope alive. Sinking to the ground, she folded her hands and prayed.

She said, “Almighty and merciful Father, please see fit to return him to me. I know we have erred, as individuals and as couple. We violated your commandments. It was selfish and wanton and wrong. I know I have sinned and fallen short in so many ways. But, Lord, have mercy on me and most of all on Theo. Return him to me. Let us live a long and faithful and humble and righteous life … together. Or if you cannot, let us learn soon of his fate. Have mercy on a grieving mother. End Sarah’s uncertainty and glorify your holy name. Amen.”

It was a prayer she had been perfecting. She knew it now as confidently as she knew the Lord’s Prayer. Its words were her own, though its sentiment was endorsed by the prayers offered by Reverend Patterson every day in Sarah’s parlor.

Once she had finished this official request, she allowed another less formal, less pious prayer to flow from her heart. In ’59 and again more recently, she and Theo had kissed and clung beneath the branches of this tree, allowing the glory of nature to consecrate their union. Would they truly never do so again?

At this, tears built in her eyes and threatened to spill over. She pressed a handkerchief to her face and suppressed a sob. She focused on the movement of air in and out of her lungs. The crisis passed. She was calm and poised after several minutes.

Her hands drifted to her lap. She watched the flowing of the river and smelled the verdant soil and searched her heart for evidence Theo still walked the earth. No answer came back to her. Unsettled and unsatisfied, she started for the temple of worry she called home.

Before leaving the shelter of the willow, she offered one final prayer, breathed as much as spoken, “Please, Theo, you promised to return to me. Don’t break with me thus.”

Perhaps it was the morbid bent of her mind or the lack of sleep, but Margaret felt disconcerted. Pins pricked the back of her neck, and she whipped her head around only to find no one there. The beating of her heart was erratic, sometimes heavy and thick and then shallow. Her hands were dumb, struggling with the ribbons of her bonnet and with the handle of her basket. Somehow, her feet found the path back to Main Street.

Across from McDonough House, she stopped. The city was haunted by ghosts of her former self … and of Theo, whose name she couldn’t use in the same sentence as anything non-corporeal. She crossed the threshold into the foyer of the hotel and settled herself into a chair, allowing the memories of their honeymoon to wash over her.

How foolish she had been to deny her feelings for so long. Had she thought love and happiness and perfect union occurred regularly? Had she been so caught up in an ancient hurt that she couldn’t face the truth?

Losing her husband was punishment for her dawdling and wasting her life. How many sunny afternoons had she whittled away? How many years had she spent alone? Every day was a gift she would not again misuse. She closed her eyes and shook her head. She needed to become a dutiful daughter-in-law again and return home. Sarah needed her.

As she crossed the lobby, resigned to her fate, a familiar visage moved through the crowd.

Theo.

Her heart was in her throat and her stomach roiled. Every muscle in her body trembled. The instant she knew the face, it was gone, swept away in a stream of people. The face was thinner. The beard darker and fuller. The gait halting. But it was him. Margaret’s voice trembled, but she managed to shout his name from the doorway.

The man did not heed her. Had she been wrong? Was her mind seeing what it wished to see? Had she finally lost her tenuous grip on reality? She turned into the flow of traffic, making excuses and dodging people.

“Theo,” she cried. “Theo!”

Whoever he was, he moved quickly and with great purpose. He wore a dark blue military uniform, though she could not determine the rank as she was still half a block behind him. He moved with a limp and carried a bag that she did not recognize. No, it could not be. It was not him.

One final, sad time she tried. “Theo!”

At this, the man stopped. The word, or perhaps it was her tone, arrested him. Margaret’s feet had ceased to obey her. She froze, not daring even to hope, as she waited for him to either turn or to continue apace.

Around them, people strolled and walked and sauntered. How could they not know something significant was occurring? Why did they not look? In the street, carts and carriages and riders traversed. Was this not worth their attention? All was movement and business. It must not be. They would know. They would bear witness.

She released a breath that had been clenched in the deepest part of stomach. She had not known that she was holding it. As the air rushed past her lips, she released her hold on hope.

At last, very slowly, the man turned.

It was Theo. She would recognize those eyes across the marble halls of Heaven, across the widest rivers, across chasms of pain and loss. They were more familiar to her than her own. It was her beloved.

At once, he was upon her. His lips and his hands were everywhere. It was scandalous. It was necessary. It was a rushing, bracing oneness. Margaret experienced a reunion of pieces of herself that she had thought gone forever. Fears, grief, and worry disappeared, replaced with relief so powerful it was frightening.

He was alive. He was hers. He loved her.

In the years since their first hurried embrace in the Smiths’ hallway, Theo had kissed her countless times. Those previous kisses had been tender, perfunctory, gentle, rushed, passionate, lusty, angry, consuming, brief, and enthralling. She thought had seen the full catalogue of his kisses. She was wrong.

First this kiss was relief and confirmation. As if their bodies could communicate beyond words. Then came the waves of joy enhanced by sorrow and worry. And finally the promise that, having been restored to one another, they would be deserving and appreciative as no one had been before or would be again. Though perhaps no longer on the street …

Margaret broke from his mouth and laid her face against his chest, saying, “I thought I would not see you again. That you were — ”

“I told you I would return,” Theo murmured. He gently released her from his arms, took her elbow, and picked up his bag. They set off down the street, nodding to passersby, who eyed them curiously.

“But wherever have you been?” she asked, wiping moisture from her face. “Sarah is going to chide you so!”

“It could not be helped, I’m afraid.”

Theo spoke then. He told her briefly of his incarceration in Libbey Prison in Richmond. Of the prisoner exchange that had brought him out of the South. And of the wound in his thigh that had inadequately healed. With his injury, no return to the front was forthcoming.

More than once, they paused for her to recover herself, so chilled was she by the tale. Or perhaps she merely wanted to touch him, to comfort herself with the knowledge that he was real and had returned to her.

All too soon, they arrived at the Ward home, where Margaret would have to relinquish him to the cries and comforts of others, albeit briefly. Theo’s hand rested on the doorknob, poised to turn it and give Sarah the happiest shock of her life, when he paused and asked with a smile, “Did you not trust me?”

“I didn’t trust myself. But now my store of hope is endless,” Margaret replied.

“You will never need it again.”

They didn’t.

June 12, 1863

Matilda Winters folded the letter and leaned forward to look out the window, a smile hovering on her lips. Just beyond the casement, a wood thrush was sitting in its nest, singing a joyful song. It was a day to be happy. Mr. Ward had returned home, injured to be sure, but alive. He and Margaret would have a long life together, Lord willing.