Glory (29 page)

They had camped for the night on a stream. Riding with the army was proving a difficult experience. There was a lot of sickness in the camp; even in the north the summer was becoming wickedly hot. They had yet to fight, but everyone knew that the enemy was out there.

That morning she had wakened with a strange premonition. Not a vision, just a premonition. And she leapt up, hurriedly washed and dressed, and made her way to Magee’s tent. She was almost stopped several times by his aides. “Mrs. Tremaine, the general is busy now, you can’t interrupt him—” Lieutenant Garby, his personal assistant, told her, trying to stop her.

“I have to see him.”

Another of his aides stepped in front of the command tent, rifle in hand. “Mrs. Tremaine! This is a war, you can’t just—”

“What are you going to do, shoot me, sir?” she demanded.

“No, ma’am, but I’ll ...”

“You’ll what?”

“All right, now, Mrs. Tremaine, I just can’t let you by—”

“I have to get by!”

She pushed through the middle of the two men, trusting that neither of them would really dare physically accost her. They trailed after instead as she burst into the general’s tent. She found him talking to Colonels Wheaton and Willoughby, both of them scouts.

“Sir! We tried to stop her,” Garby said.

“Yes, yes, it’s all right, men, back to your posts,” Magee said, frowning. “So, Mrs. Tremaine, what is the problem?”

She walked straight to the map spread out on the table. She pointed to the trail Magee had circled. “You mustn’t go that way.”

He arched a brow. “That’s exactly the way we’re going, young woman.”

She shook her head emphatically. “We’re moving with what’s here, sir? A few hundred men. Don’t go that way. There are Reb troops foraging there—”

“Mrs. Tremaine, we are looking for the Rebel troops,” Colonel Wheaton told her politely.

“You don’t want to find this many. If we go blithely riding in that southeastern direction, sir, I swear, you will lose more than half this company. The Confederates have the superior forces this time. Please, General, send one of these men and see if I’m not right.”

“We’d be wasting time,” Willoughby warned.

“Please, I beg of you!” Rhiannon entreated.

“How do you know this?” Wheaton asked.

“Instinct,” she murmured.

“We’re going to change our plans because of a woman’s instincts?” Willoughby asked incredulously.

Magee gazed at Rhiannon. She stared back at him.

“It will cost you a few hours my way,” she told him softly. “General, you have scouting forces; the bulk of the army is too far behind now to come quickly. If I’m right, it could cost a great deal more than a few hours!”

Magee nodded after a moment. “Gentlemen, you’ll both ride ahead. And keep low. If you find as many forces as Mrs. Tremaine believes you will, Willoughby will return to camp, and Wheaton, you will ride as quickly as you can back to the main body of troops with the information.”

Wheaton and Willoughby saluted, accepting the general’s command without argument, but the looks they gave her as they exited the command tent made her wonder just who the enemy might be in the future.

“Thank you. You won’t regret trusting me.”

“How do you know these things? How can you be sure?” he asked, curious.

She shook her head. “Trust me, sir. I don’t want to know these things.”

She left him.

The camp waited. The day was hot, and the soldiers grew restless. Those men who were fevered and sick were plaintive and irritable. She and the other three nurses with the scouting troops moved briskly, bringing water, applying cool rags, rebandaging old injuries.

Finally, hours later, when she had returned to her own small tent to wash her face and smooth back her hair, she was startled to hear her name called by Magee. She hurried from the tent. He was mounted on his big dappled gray mare.

“You were right. The estimated Reb forces would have outnumbered us three to one. We would have faced a slaughter.”

She lowered her head, exhaling softly.

“You think that it’s a curse, my dear,” Magee said. “These visions?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Well, your curse might have just saved hundreds of lives. I, for one, am grateful. Don’t ever hesitate to come to me.”

She came forward, patting the gray’s neck as she looked up at Magee. “No, sir, I won’t.”

Sydney paced her small, solitary room. Another long night stretched before her. If she could only sleep ...

More prisoners had come in today. They were weary and depressed; they had come from the siege at Vicksburg. The situation grew worse daily. Lee was trying to force Union soldiers back to the Eastern front by threatening the Yankee capital, but nothing seemed to be of any avail.

Her only solace was that a soldier came in who had seen her brother Brent. Working at a hospital outside of Richmond for “special” diseases, he hadn’t heard about her predicament. The soldier had heard that Jerome was back at sea, doing well. Julian was moving with the Army of Northern Virginia. Ian was moving with the Army of the Potomac. Any day now, Julian could be sorting through the fallen, looking for the dead, and find his own brother.

A tap on her door startled her. It was late; she was always left alone at this hour.

She walked to the door. She was a prisoner here. Jailers were not required to knock.

“Yes?”

“You decent, Miss Sydney?”

She smiled. “Yes, Sergeant Granger, I’m fully clothed.”

The door opened. “You’ve a visitor, ma’am,” Granger said.

She arched a brow, hopeful and worried. Then, as Jesse Halston, back in full blue cavalry uniform, entered her room, she stepped back, wary and unnerved.

She couldn’t help but be distressed; she felt as if the prison stink and miasma had settled over her. As if she were worn, ragged, and dirty. And there was Jesse, dashing, handsome.

“What on earth do you want?” she demanded harshly.

“I’ll just let you two talk,” Granger said, stepping back.

“No!” Sydney cried. “Don’t you leave me in here with him.”

But even as she raced toward the door, it closed.

She turned back to Jesse. He was leaning against the wall by the window that looked out over the streets of Washington. A small window, but a window nevertheless. Rose Greenhow had used a similar window to continue relaying messages to cohorts on the streets while she had been imprisoned here. It might have been much worse.

“Sydney,” Jesse said impatiently, “just what are you afraid of? What have I ever done to you? I’m not here to molest you in any way.”

She spun back to him, leaning against the door. “You bastard, you’re the reason I’m in here.”

“No, Sydney, you’re the reason you’re in here.”

“When the war is over, the winner will write the history of it, and victory will prove who was right, and who was wrong.”

“Certain things are morally right and wrong, Sydney, and not even history can change that fact.”

“Why are you here? I’m weary of debates about the war. If you’ve come to torture me with conversation, you can just get out.”

“I haven’t come to torture you with conversation.”

“Well, it’s torture simply having you here. If you haven’t come to get me out, then please, for the love of God, go away.”

“Hmm. Well, actually, I did come to get you out.”

“What?” Sydney gasped, her breath catching in her throat.

“I said that I’ve come to get you out.”

Her heart slammed against her chest. She’d been so afraid. When one of the boys wound up in prison, it was one thing. But she was a woman, and the good Southern men in her family would feel honor bound to risk their lives for her honor. She had desperately wanted out, and yes, she’d been willing to do almost anything to get out ...

“Why?” she whispered. “You got me in here!”

“A friend of yours came to see me and pointed out the danger of you being here.”

She frowned. “Rhiannon Tremaine?” The witch—she almost said it out loud. And not with rancor. Private Larson’s foot was miraculously well on the mend.

“Yes.”

She nodded, moistening her lips. “How?”

“I have a way.”

“Oh?”

He shrugged. “You’re not going to like it. But Mrs. Tremaine told me that you said you were willing to do almost anything to get out.”

“Almost anything,” Sydney agreed. Then her eyes narrowed. “All right, Captain Halston, just exactly what is it that you have in mind?”

“I’ll lay it out for you, Sydney, and you’ll have about five minutes to decide.”

“Why five minutes?”

“I’ve been reassigned once again, back to my troops. The need for cavalry scouts has just grown quite great, and I’m reputed to be an excellent officer.”

He said the last dryly. She almost—almost—felt a shred of sympathy.

Fool. Never, she promised herself.

“So what, sir, is your plan?”

He told her.

“No!” she cried, her back against the wall.

He lifted his hands. “It was the only chance I had of getting you out,” he said with a shrug. “Suit yourself.” He started to walk from the room. She found strength and pushed away from the wall. If he left, if he went to the war ...

She would be alone. A prisoner here until she rotted. Or until her father determined to pull a desperate mission and break her free.

“Wait!” she told Jesse.

He paused, his hazel eyes sparkling with golden amusement. “Change of heart?” he inquired.

“You’re a horrible Yankee piece of cow dung!” she told him regally.

“Dear Lord, with such a gentle proclamation ringing in my ears, I will march off to war with warmth in my heart!”

“When do we do this thing?” she demanded impatiently.

“Now,” he said.

“Now?”

“Right now.”

Strangely, what was to prove to be the most terrible battle of the war was not supposed to take place where it did.

Since June, after his spectacular victory at Chancellorsville against far superior forces, Lee had been moving north, determined to take the war to the Yanks. His objective, however, had not been the sleepy little town where the massive armies met.

It was called Gettysburg.

While Lee moved north, Union General Hooker had been riding parallel with his troops, determined to protect Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland, from a possible Confederate attack. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, had been Lee’s actual objective, but events in the Union army changed things. Hooker resigned as commander of the Army of the Potomac, and Lincoln replaced him with General George G. Meade. Lee’s army had almost reached the Susquehanna River when he ordered it to move back toward Cashtown. By chance units of the two armies met at Gettysburg. Naturally, both troops sent back for reinforcements as skirmishes escalated.

The chance meeting took place on June 30. The next day, the Confederates moved into position. They drove the Federals back through Gettysburg and occupied the town. The Union troops, forced back against the hills, formed a line south of the town along places called Culp’s Hill, Cemetery Ridge, and Little Round Top. Lee placed his troops in a north-south arc along Seminary Ridge. The ranks began to swell. Lee wanted to turn the Yankee tide before all of Meade’s forces could arrive.

On July 2, troops were still coming on to the field. Julian had his field hospital established to the south of the arc. Longstreet was to take the flank, but he was late. His cannons didn’t roar until four in the afternoon.

And so the fighting went late. What had been a steady trickle of wounded became a deluge of the maimed and dying. Cannon fire obliterated the sky. The sound of guns went on and on. Julian’s hands grew red with the blood of the injured; soon, he was bathed in blood, as if dropped into a crimson sea.

They kept coming.

A cannon exploded overhead. “Sweet Jesus!” a man shouted.

Ten minutes later, one of his orderlies burst into the tent. “Captain! Just on the next hill ... they were mown down. There’s a company of men out there, caught in the fire ... oh, Lord above us, but they’re not dead, not all of them, they’re alive ... and screaming.”

“Well get them in here!” Julian said.

“There’s no troops, no troops ... they’ve already moved on.”

Julian hesitated just briefly. He looked over at Dan LeBlanc. “Take charge here.”

“McKenzie, what are you doing? We’ve already got enough injured men here—”

“If we can help it, sir, we do not leave our injured abandoned on the field!” Julian argued.

He headed out. His orderly followed.

Outside the tent there were men sprawled around—some waiting their turn with a doctor, some waiting for an ambulance to come and convey them from the front. But some of the men weren’t injured so badly that they couldn’t be of some use. Julian paused in front of the men. They were from mixed units, he knew. Virginians, Georgians, North and South Carolinians, Texans ... even Floridians. All fighting a war far, far from home.

“We’ve injured on the field. I’m going for the men we can bring back. Any volunteers?”

He was met with silence. Then one man with a sling around his shoulder rose. “Bullet’s in my left arm, Doc—sir! Guess I can drag my countrymen out with my right arm!”

“Good, good, anyone else?”

A dozen men had stood by now.

“If I could walk, Doc, I’d be with you,” a man offered. Julian looked down. Two hours ago, he’d taken the man’s left leg. Luckily, the fellow hadn’t lost his knee, which always made the use of an artificial leg better. Julian smiled. “You’ve done your duty, soldier.”

“I’m alive!” the man said softly.

Julian nodded. “You stay that way. Come on,” he told the others. “You!” he said, calling back to the orderly who had come for him. “What’s your name?”

“Evans, sir.”

“Evans, get me an ambulance. Bring it as close to the field as you can without getting it blown up. The rest of you, grab what mounts you can and follow me.”

They followed him to what had been peaceful farm land, where wheat had grown, golden in the sun. The sun was obliterated from the sky by the black powder around them. The wheat was mown down by shrapnel and bullets. Gold was gone, and the color of the day was red, for dead and dying men lay everywhere, Rebs and Yanks.