One Wore Blue (48 page)

It was late afternoon when Thomas Donahue came riding up to Montemarte at a gallop. It was a fast pace for Thomas—he didn’t like his old bones to rattle, he had told Kiernan often enough. Seeing him come so quickly, a sweep of dread instantly wove through her.

She raced out onto the porch. The Yankees were heading out to the house again, it was about to be burned, something horrible had happened, the war had been lost.

“Kiernan!” Thomas wheezed as he dismounted. She ran to him, offering him support. “You’ve got to go home.”

“Home! What’s happened?”

“It’s your father, Kiernan.”

“Oh, God! Oh, no!” She felt faint. Black waves washed before her eyes. “He’s not … he’s not—”

“He’s sick, Kiernan, very sick. Christa Cameron managed to get a letter through with an employee of the railroad. She thinks you should come right home. But she’s also aware that it’s a long and dangerous journey right now. She wanted you to know that she’d be with him, that she’d take care of him. That she’d do everything in the world for him that she could.”

“But she wouldn’t be me!” Kiernan whispered. “And if Papa is very sick …”

No, she thought suddenly. War was awful, and it already
had taken so very much from her and from everyone. She wouldn’t let it keep her away from her father too.

She stood very straight. “I’m going home, Thomas.”

“But there’s troops aplenty on all these roads!” Thomas warned her. “Troops in blue and troops in gray, and I don’t know which are more dangerous.”

“I’ll be all right. Who would disturb a woman in my—er, delicate condition?”

Thomas hesitated. He didn’t want to tell her that she was still very beautiful, and that war does strange things to good men and worse things to bad men.

“I’ll come with you,” Thomas offered.

“You’ll do no such thing. You hate to travel, and I’ll be moving very quickly. I’ll bring Janey and Tyne with me.” She couldn’t bring T.J.—she’d have to leave him and Jeremiah and David at Montemarte. But the twins would come with her too. She couldn’t leave them. She had promised she wouldn’t.

“I can’t talk you out of this, can I?” Thomas said.

“No.” On her tiptoes, Kiernan gave him a kiss. Then she shooed him on his way home and hurried for the stairs, calling for Janey to help her pack. Patricia ran into her room, and Kiernan told her to hurry and pack for the trip. She was in a whirlwind of motion, getting her things together. Janey helped her, then ran to the kitchen to find Tyne and Jeremiah and see that the wagon was readied.

When she had finished with her clothing, Kiernan hurried back down the stairs to the office and went through the medicines that Jesse had left. Her father was sick—but with what? She stared at the bottles with their neatly printed labels and decided to take them all.

Her fingers were trembling, but she was determined to leave then and there, just as soon as the children were ready.

She was going home.

She touched her stomach and felt a strange excitement sweep through her. The baby could be born at home, in Tidewater Virginia.

Suddenly she was very glad, if breathless. She pulled out
the swivel chair and sat. The baby began to move vigorously inside her, as if caught up in the frenzy of her emotion.

Home, she was going home.

The door to the office suddenly swung open, and Jacob appeared. Kiernan looked up at him and realized that she hadn’t seen him all day.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“We’re going on a trip?” he asked incredulously.

She nodded. “We have to. My father is ill, Jacob. I have to go home. I want you to come with me.”

“But I just—”

“You just what?”

“Nothing. Of course, I’ll come with you. I’d never let you go alone,” Jacob said. He turned around. “I just hope he can find us now,” he murmured.

“Pardon?” Kiernan called after him, trying to rise. It was becoming very hard to do. “Jacob?”

But Jacob was gone, and an hour later, when they were ready to ride out, she didn’t remember that she had been questioning him.

All that was on her mind was that her father was very sick.

She was going home.

It was nearly dawn, and the day was going to bring more fighting, Jesse knew.

He was with George B. McClellan’s troops on the peninsula, moving toward Richmond.

So far, the Peninsula Campaign had been a lesson in confusion.

McClellan had taken his troops to the tip of the peninsula. There, during the first week of April, a Confederate line had stretched from the York across the peninsula to the Warwick River.

The Union had laid siege there for a month, a slow and overly cautious siege, giving Confederate General Joseph Johnston time to join Confederate General Magruder and shore up his troops. On May 4, McClellan began a grand assault, but Johnston had already moved up the peninsula.
On May 5, the Union vanguard overtook the Confederate rear guard, and action followed at Williamsburg. There had been more and more fighting. The Union took Norfolk, and the Confederate ironclad
Virginia
was destroyed. The James River was opened to the Union, but on May 15, at Drewry’s Bluff, seven miles outside Richmond, the Confederates were able to employ river obstructions.

Rains washed over the Chickahominy River, and two Union corps were isolated near the villages of Seven Pines and Fair Oaks Station. On the Confederate side, General Johnston suffered a severe wound.

General Robert E. Lee was put in command.

McClellan remained cautious.

Jesse had it on good word from scouts whom he trusted that they should never have been in their present position. There’d been only seventeen thousand Confederates on that defense line at Yorktown when they’d started their Peninsula Campaign. Now they were facing far greater numbers.

It was ceasing to matter to Jesse. They came in, and he did the best he could to patch them up. He watched them die after he had done his best to make them live. He realized that every day more would come to him. His promotion to full colonel hadn’t changed anything. Now he was responsible for other doctors as well as for his own patients.

Very early one morning, Jesse was bandaging the arm of the scout, a man with dark, soulful eyes, a drooping moustache, and a weary knowledge about him—Sergeant Flicker.

“There will be action aplenty this morning, Colonel,” Flicker said.

“Oh? I heard we were away from the main body of Confederates.”

“Hell, no—there’s cavalry out there! Our best intelligence says there’s no Rebs out there, but our boys’ve been trading all night with fellows dressed in gray who look a whole lot like Rebs to me.”

Jesse arched a brow at him. It was common knowledge that Union “intelligence” tended to be either exaggerated or dead-out wrong.

But cavalry!

His heart thudded. His brother could be out there.

The thought had just crossed his mind when an enlisted man came running into his tent. “Colonel Cameron. Sir!”

“Yes, what is it?” Jesse demanded.

“Reb to see you, sir!”

“What?” Jesse demanded.

The soldier hesitated at his tone of voice. “Sir—”

“For the love of God, spit it out, will you?”

The soldier grimaced. “We were passing some fine Virginia tobacco over for a pound or two of decent coffee, sir.”

Jesse grinned. The man shouldn’t have been admitting this to him, but trading went on all the time. Men in blue and gray often talked all night, then fired at and killed one another at daybreak.

“It’s all right—keep going. There’s a Reb to see me?”

“Claims to be your brother, sir!”

“And there’s cavalry near us? Then, soldier, he most certainly is my brother. Where are the Rebs?”

“Right across the stream. We got the message from a little boat a Reb whittled out of a tree branch. We’ll probably start fighting real soon, but since it’s not quite daylight yet, the major can make sure there’s no firing till you both get back to your right sides. The Reb says that if you’ll see him, he’ll be waiting just downstream.”

“Hell, yes—I’ll see him!” Jesse announced. He donned his overcoat against the coolness of the morning air and followed the man out of his tent. The Union troops were already dug into their positions for the morning, ready for trench warfare. Jesse hurried down the line toward the stream.

“Make way!” The soldier leading him along called out. “The colonel here has got some kinfolk to see!”

Men made way for him. He passed by Colonel Grayson, in charge of the infantry unit on the front of the line. He saluted, and Grayson returned the motion. “Don’t take long out there. I’ve orders to start shells flying by the first real light.”

“Thanks,” Jesse told him. He kept walking, leaping out from the trenches to hurry along the stream. Surrounded by
the mist rising from the water, he could already see the figure of his brother. He wore an overcoat and a plumed hat, both of a gray color that seemed one with the mist of the morning.

“Daniel?” Jesse called. His footsteps moved faster. He was running.

“Jess!”

Suddenly he stood dead still in front of his brother. They looked very much alike, he knew. He was older, but Daniel might have been a mirror image of himself in the mist—except that one wore blue and one wore gray.

Daniel might have been thinking the same thing. For a long moment they stared at one another gravely. It had been a long, long year, and they had both changed in that time.

And yet they hadn’t changed that much at all. Jesse took a step forward, and they embraced, and he saw that they were both trembling.

“Daniel,” he said, stepping back. “Damn, it’s good just to see you well and alive.”

Daniel grinned. “You too, Jess.”

“It’s been a long time.”

“Too long for brothers, Jess.”

“Been home recently?”

Daniel nodded. “Christa’s fine. I’ve been worried, though, what with the Union troops on the peninsula. I’m not real popular with some of the Union troops. My boys and I have done a fair amount of harassing of Union troops. I’m worried about Cameron Hall.”

“Cameron Hall?” Jesse exclaimed. “Why would Union troops want to burn the hall? Legally, it’s mine, not yours.”

“Well, Jess, it’s in Virginia, and it’s in the Confederacy, and I’m part of that Confederacy. I reckon that’s the way they see it, I don’t know. I’ve told Christa to go stay with John Mackay until it’s over. Mackay’s been ill, and he can use her over there. I don’t know if word’s gotten through to Kiernan yet about her father.”

“Mackay is ill?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“What is it?”

“Something in his lungs. But Jesse—”

“I wonder if I can get a leave, get to him. You all are giving us such a pounding here—”

“Jesse, stop. You’ve got to listen to me.”

“There’s more?”

“Kiernan is—”

“Oh, Lord!” Jesse breathed, gripping his brother’s arm. “What’s happened? What’s wrong with her? Where is she?”

“Jesse—”

“Daniel, if there’s anything—”

“Jesse, I’m trying to tell you!” Daniel exploded. “She isn’t ill! She’s going to have your child!”

He might have been hit by bricks, he was so stunned. Of all the things he had expected that morning, the last was the information that he was going to be a father.

“But how—”

“Jesse, you know damned well how!” Daniel said, grinning with a mild rebuke.

“How do you know?” Jesse demanded.

“Jacob Miller came to see me right before we headed out this way. He thought you should know. He also thought you should know that he and his sister think you’re all right—for a Yank. I told him that I felt the same way myself. Jesse, you’ve got to marry her.”

“Daniel, I’ve been
trying
to marry her!”

“Hey!” came a loud shout from Jesse’s lines. “Tell the Reb to get his head down, and you get back here, Colonel Cameron. The fightin’s about to commence!”

“Get back, Daniel,” Jesse said. He embraced his brother fiercely one last time.

“Hey! Hey, sir! The firing is going to start!”

“Keep your head down!” Jesse ordered Daniel.

“Yeah—and I’ll expect to hear about a wedding!” Daniel retorted.

“Is she still at Montemarte?”

“I don’t know, she might be on her way home. Jesse, damn you, now you get back, and keep your head down!” Daniel said. Jesse nodded, and they both turned away, hurrying back to their lines.

The first firing started the minute Jesse stepped back down into the trenches. It went on for hours.

Jesse worked mechanically through the day. There were long spells when it seemed that his mind was completely empty, numb. Shells exploded overhead, and screams and screeches could be heard constantly. At one point his field hospital seemed overrun by the Rebs, but then they were repulsed, and the Union managed to move forward bit by bit.

The wounded poured in.

Five doctors worked under Jesse, and all five worked feverishly. He searched for bullets with his bare fingers and bit down hard on his jaw every time he saw that there was no way to save a man’s life but to remove a mangled limb.

At least he had chloroform and ether. He had heard that the surgeons on the other side had run out. It was difficult to believe in the field tent that they were lucky in any way, but Jesse believed that they were. He had sufficient help to make the operations successful, a man to deliver the anesthetic and make sure that the patients were receiving enough air along with it, a man to secure the patient, a man to hold the limb, and a surgeon to carefully sever flesh, then muscle, then bone.

By the end of the day, he was weary of it, and weary of war. He wanted to go back to treating influenza and stomach disorders. He wanted to deliver a baby.

He wanted to deliver his own. Jesu, Kiernan! There were other things out there in the world. It had been a day just like this when she had stood by his side, the perfect assistant. She had never blanched, she had never failed him.

She had promised that she would never marry him.

You
will
marry me! he thought furiously.

Calling to an orderly, he had the last of his patients taken on a stretcher from the field surgery and proximity to the field to a wagon. Then he was listening intently.