Kary, Elizabeth (65 page)

"It
would have to be someone with a good deal of authority," he speculated,
"someone with suspicions or a grudge against one or both of you."

Leigh
was silent for a moment before she spoke a single name. "Aaron
Crawford."

He
glanced across at her, his narrow features contracting. "How did you
know?"

"It
was only a guess, really. Aaron came to the house several months ago, and when
I refused his advances, he made threats and said he'd pay me back as he had for
refusing him before. But how did he do it? Isn't disrupting the mail
illegal?"

"Not
as provost marshal, in seeking out a spy."

"So
Aaron never gave up the idea that Hayes was working for the Confederacy."

"Whether
he gave it up or not isn't the point. He used his power as provost marshal to
sever the flow of letters between you. I spent this afternoon at the Sanitary
Commission offices and found that before you returned to St. Louis, Crawford
made a point of looking over all your mail."

Leigh
nodded slowly. "And because I was not sure where to send Hayes's letters,
everything I wrote came to the military headquarters here!"

"You
couldn't have known what Crawford was up to," Nathan offered consolingly.
"There was nothing you could do."

"Oh,
but Nathan, when I think of the time we wasted, time we could have used to
resolve the problems keeping Hayes and me apart. Hayes died not knowing that I
loved him, not knowing that I had carried his baby, not knowing of our
loss." There was despair clearly written on her face, the overwhelming
knowledge that because of one man's cruelty she and Hayes had missed so much.

Nathan
had no way to change what he had discovered, no way to make right the terrible
wrong that had been done. But he believed that there was power in truth, and
that, for all it hurt Leigh now, the truth would help her build her life anew.

Yet
fate did seem to work in strange and mysterious ways, and the major had paid a
price for his deception. "Crawford was killed last week at
Petersburg," Nathan said softly. "He will never be able to hurt or
threaten you again."

Though
Leigh felt vaguely guilty for her response, she accepted the news of Crawford's
death with a marked sense of relief, glad that the man who had caused so much
pain would never return to haunt her.

The
Travises stayed in St. Louis for a few days more before heading up the river to
their new home. How Nathan would accomplish the transition from wanderer and spy
to father and farmer, Leigh could only guess. But if anyone could beat Nathan's
sword into a plowshare, it was Delia with her sweetness and joy, her tenderness
and love.

Now
there was only Leigh's own future to resolve, and when Mother Bickerdyke's
telegram arrived summoning her to Philadelphia, Leigh was packed and more than
ready to go.

March 30, 1865—Wilmington, North
Carolina

The
town was at the end of the long finger of water that probed deep into the North
Carolina coast, and as Leigh stared out across the expanse of blue,
Wilmington's church spires began to appear, rising above the treed banks of the
Cape Fear River. Then slowly, commercial and civil buildings came into view,
followed by a knot of homes and warehouses. The ship General Sherman had
provided for their use was putting into Wilmington only long enough to take on
fuel and water before heading to Savannah, but Leigh welcomed the break in the
routine. After traveling most of her life on riverboats where there was much to
see along the banks, she had found her week on the ocean-going steamer dull,
and welcomed a diversion.

When
she had arrived in Philadelphia in mid-March, she had found Mary Ann Bickerdyke
in the midst of fund-raising. It was not an activity the older woman particularly
enjoyed, but it was one of the things she did for the sake of "her
boys." Though Mother Bickerdyke was not an eloquent speaker, she was an
effective one. Her sincerity and compassion were evident when she told of the
hardships and tragedies of battle, and she wrung her listeners' hearts and
pocketbooks as more articulate speakers could not. Leigh had been asked to talk
about her experiences too and had done so gladly. But both she and Mother
Bickerdyke were at their best helping the men in the ranks, not soliciting
donations.

As
Leigh watched the sailors tie up at the dock, she heard a gruff voice from
behind her. "You going to stand there all morning, or are you coming with
me to get a look at the town?"

Mother
Bickerdyke was obviously as tired of the ship as Leigh, and less than five
minutes later they set off to explore Wilmington. They passed the customs
house, where at the height of the war the blockade runners had unloaded their
cargoes of contraband, then strolled by sprawling warehouses and up a street
lined with tiny shops. Just six weeks before, the town had been evacuated by
General Bragg, and though a Federal occupation force was in evidence, life
seemed to have been comfortably reestablished since the surrender.

As
they continued up the main street, they came upon the Union headquarters set up
in a fine old mansion. But instead of the usual few sentries around the place,
there were hundreds of men in the yard. For all the tattered threads of Union
uniforms they wore, it was clear that they were not regular soldiers. These men
were bearded, unkempt, and dressed in rags. They looked half-starved, and many
were sick and covered with running sores.

Mother
Bickerdyke approached the sentry at the gate. "What's going on here?"
she demanded. "Who are these poor beggars, and what's being done to help
them?"

"I
can't see how that's any of your business, ma'am—" the corporal began.

But
before he could finish the sentence, Mother Bickerdyke had taken out the pass
General Grant had given her in the early days of the war and waved it beneath
his nose. "I'm General Grant's representative here in Wilmington, and I
want to see someone in charge!"

Once
the man recovered himself, Leigh and Mary Ann Bickerdyke were ushered up the
stairs and into the Union commander's office. "Please, ladies, sit
down," the gray-haired colonel murmured solicitously, as impressed by
General Grant's pass as the young corporal had been. "What may I do to
help you?"

Mary
Ann Bickerdyke eyed him. "I want to know who those men are in the yard!"

"They're
a sorry lot, ma'am," the commander began, shaking his head. "They're
some of the men released from Andersonville Prison. They were brought into town
shortly after the place was liberated."

"And
what's being done to help them? They look to me as if their needs are being
ignored!"

Mother
Bickerdyke was an intimidating woman at the best of times, and she seemed
especially formidable now.

"Two
of our doctors have begun to take over some of the churches and private homes
and set up hospitals," the officer explained, "but we're a small
force, and we haven't the supplies or manpower to do more."

"Well,
I can!" Mother Bickerdyke informed him. "Mrs. Banister and I were on
our way to Savannah with a shipload of sanitary stores for General Sherman's
men, but it looks to me like these boys here have been given short shrift too
long."

She
ignored the colonel's exclamation of surprise and went on characteristically.
"Now I'll need a couple of wagons and a detachment of men to bring our
things from the ship. And if you can tell us where we can set up, Mrs. Banister
and I will get down to business."

The
house the officer assigned Leigh and Mother Bickerdyke was several doors from
the headquarters building, a tall Greek Revival temple built in the epitome of
the Southern style. A few of the worst cases from the yard were taken there
directly and were laid out in the downstairs rooms on pallets of straw. As soon
as supplies began to arrive, beds were made up in earnest: real cots with soft
mattresses and cool, inviting sheets. But before any more men were assigned
sleeping quarters, Mother Bickerdyke insisted that they be bathed and dressed
in the clean clothes she provided.

In
the small orchard next to the mansion, a bathhouse was set up where, within the
relative privacy of rope-strung blankets, the men could bathe. They could scrub
with a brush and strong soap until they were clean and the vermin were washed
away. Then they were given soothing balms to apply to the sores that marred so
many skins. These sores, caused by dirt, starvation, and rat bites, could
fester and putrefy and, left untreated, had claimed large numbers of lives in
the prison camps.

While
the men were being bathed and the beds made, Leigh and Mother Bickerdyke set to
work providing the thing that would raise morale most quickly: good, nourishing
food. In the summer kitchen behind the house, they made soup by the kettleful,
lemonade by the gallon, tapioca pudding thick with dried peaches and apricots.
To the table outside the kitchen door where Leigh doled out the food came a
line of heartbreaking wretches: thin, haggard, and ill with fevers or wounds
that had not healed. Their delight at a bowl of thick soup and a piece of
hardtack, their overwhelming thanks for a dollop of tapioca and a cup of strong
coffee, touched Leigh and made her wish there was more she could do.

When
the meal was over, the men came back, seeking Mother Bickerdyke's kindness and
good sense or Leigh's compassion and beauty. They were men anxious to talk to a
woman after years of loneliness, men quiet and shy after all they had endured.
They needed medicines, bandages, and care, but most of all they needed to be
drawn out by someone who had the patience to listen to their tales. Some men
had borne the ravages of war better than others and had retained a semblance of
strength and vitality when others had not. Leigh knew, as she tended her
patients, that some of them would die before reaching home or would never be
truly well again. But large numbers would survive, thanks to the care they were
receiving.

It
was the mental wrecks who were the most difficult for Leigh to bear. These were
the men who had been driven into their own private world by the prisons and the
war, the men who had ceased to deal with the dismal realities of their lives.
They sat alone at the back of the compound or moved like sleepwalkers under
their comrades' care, their faces blank, their eyes hollow and haunted. Their
suffering tortured Leigh, and she ached for all those men had lost.

Toward
the end of the first day Leigh paused at her post by the kitchen door to take
note of everything she, Mother Bickerdyke, and their helpers had accomplished.
Through the house's lighted windows, she could see freshly made beds lined up
neatly and orderlies carrying the evening meal to the men too weak to serve
themselves. Before her the dinner line wove halfway around the yard, and the
men awaiting their evening meal looked far better than they had this morning.
Though painfully thin, they were clean and dressed in new clothes, with their
wounds tended and their dinner awaiting them. Thanks to the Christian
Commission's generosity, the men would sleep tonight warm, well fed, and
beginning to regain their strength. It filled a woman with satisfaction to know
that she had been a part of something so worthwhile.

With
a contented sigh, Leigh went on ladling stew for the soldiers' dinners, but as
she worked, she caught sight of a single man emerging from the bathing area.
Dressed as all the other men were in dark trousers and a muslin shirt, she
could not say why this particular man drew her attention. Perhaps she had
noticed him because he was taller than the others around him or because, for
all his thinness, he still looked powerful and strong. Then the man began to
move, and there was something in his carriage that reminded Leigh of her
husband.

"Hayes,"
she whispered as she stood staring. Her stunned gaze crept slowly over the man
on the far side of the yard, seeking some clue to his identity. His height and
build were much the same as Hayes's had been, but in the fading light she could
not seem to make out the cast of his features or the color of his eyes. By some
miracle, might this be Hayes? she found herself wondering. Could this be the
man she had given up for dead?

Moving
with rigid precision, she placed the ladle in the kettle of stew and slowly
stepped around the end of the table. Her eyes were riveted on the tall stranger
as she started across the yard, her feet moving faster, eating up the distance
between them. As she came closer, she saw that the soldier's hair and beard
were the color Hayes's had been, and there was something achingly familiar
about the way he held his head.

"Hayes?"
she ventured in a whisper, the word like cotton on her tongue.

"Hayes?"
She spoke his name aloud and prayed for some response. There was hope rising in
her chest, but it was tempered by the desperate fear that this man might not be
the one she sought.

There
was a start of recognition at his name, a shudder of response at the sound of
her voice, and slowly he turned to face her, looking startled and unsure.

Leigh
went tingly with the shock as she recognized those harsh, familiar features:
the high forehead and narrow nose, the heavy brows and the sensual curve of his
mouth, half-obscured by the chest-length whiskers.