The Face of Heaven (11 page)

Lyndel smiled as she read and then quickly got up from the bed and went to her desk. She laid out a fresh sheet of paper, lit the lamp at her elbow, and dipped the tip of a goose quill in her bottle of ink. Then she began to smoothly spread her flowing script across the page, dipping the quill after every third or fourth word.

7

L
yndel and her brother didn’t leave in June as they had planned but early on a July morning. Levi spent the extra weeks working with his father in the fields, Lyndel with her mother and sisters around the house and the barn.

When the day finally arrived, their mother stood like stone on the porch as the buggy pulled out of the drive and onto the road in the darkness of the pre-dawn morning. Waves of guilt surged over Lyndel as Dancer trotted toward the depot. Levi gripped her hand as their father drove.

“I do so worry,” Lyndel whispered to her brother. “I hope they can manage without us.”

“Remember, I’ll be back for harvest,” he said softly. “They won’t be alone for long. I’ll escort you to Washington and see that you are properly settled. And if I can be of any help to the effort, short of taking up arms, I will do what I can. By September I will have returned.”

“I feel I am doing the right thing,” she groaned quietly. “But now that we are actually leaving I wonder…”

“We can ask Papa to turn around.”

Lyndel considered this for a moment and then said, “The papers are full of the fighting around Mechanicsville and Frayser’s Farm and Malvern Hill. The casualties are pouring into the hospitals. This isn’t simply about finding Nathaniel’s regiment and asking to serve with their surgeons. It’s about keeping as many of the boys and men alive as possible. Even you can help with that.”

Levi nodded. “I intend to…if I can.”

“Here we are.” Their father brought the buggy to a halt. “Let me help you with your bag.”

“It’s light enough, Papa,” said Lyndel as she stepped down. “Don’t trouble yourself.”

“It’s no trouble.” Taking his daughter’s bag, he walked ahead of them to the station platform, where they stood quietly waiting for the call to board the train.

Finally, their father spoke. “As your father, I must say what I must say and then I must trust you to our God. Above all things, I want you to remember who you are and what you believe. Perhaps nothing will come of it since Levi is only escorting you, Lyndel, and you are simply going to be nursing the wounded. But some will say that makes both of you contributors to the war effort. Who knows what will come to pass? I’m sure I can give you three months before others insist on the
Meidung.
”

“I’ll be back before that,” Levi said.

“Still. They may ask you to repent upon your return.”

“I won’t have so much as lifted a rifle,” Levi protested.

“Nevertheless. In your way you have supported the war by helping your sister.”

“Helping her to heal the sick just as our Lord did.”

“Nevertheless.”

“Perhaps I will be home very soon as well, Papa,” Lyndel spoke up.

He looked at her. “Do you truly think so?”

“They’re always talking about fighting one big decisive battle, aren’t they? Perhaps that will happen this summer. Then the South will surrender.”

“There have already been many battles, daughter, and the South has won most of them. Why would they surrender? No, the fighting has decided nothing. It has only succeeded in placing more young men in the ground.”

“I hope to keep some of them away from the grave, Father, if I can.”

His dark eyes remained on her a long time. Finally he said, “I know. Let me pray for both of you before it’s time to leave.”

He removed his wide-brimmed straw hat, put it by his feet, and placed a hand on each of their shoulders, praying in High German. Levi took off his hat as well. Lyndel felt herself calm as her father spoke with God. Then he put his hat back on his head and stepped back, his hands behind his back. The locomotive had taken on water and coal and was building up a head of steam.

A short man with a cigar walked by and spoke in a dull voice, “All aboard!”

“Well, then,” their father murmured. “You must board…and I must get back to your mother.”

Lyndel put her arms around his neck. “I’ll miss you, Papa. God bless you.”

He patted her gently on the back. “And Christ be with you, daughter.”

Levi shook his father’s hand. “I will not be long.”

“I pray not. May his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

He went and stood by Dancer and the carriage and was still there when the train pulled out of the station. Lyndel and her brother faced each other at window seats and both lifted their hands to him. Their father nodded. Then he and Elizabethtown were gone and the sun rose, coloring the land by laying down layer after layer of light as the train moved through.

Lyndel closed her eyes and pressed the fingers of one hand against her forehead. “This is so difficult.”

“
Ja
,” Levi responded, almost in a whisper.

“Even though I believe it’s God’s will it’s still difficult.”

“
Ja.
”

Even so early in the day tall white clouds had begun to pile up in the east and form thunderheads over the green land. Farms came and went. It seemed to Lyndel to be only moments before they were approaching Harrisburg. She hadn’t visited the city in years. The sudden sight of hundreds of soldiers in blue uniforms lined up beside the tracks startled her—she had only seen two or three in Elizabethtown over the past year. Several large black cannons chained to flatcars made her dig her fingers into the fabric of her seat. The train slowed as it approached
the station, passing more soldiers and horses and artillery. Suddenly it stopped before the platform was even in sight.

“Why are we stopping here?” she asked.

Levi shrugged. “Who knows? Harrisburg is a busy place now. There’s an army camp and many trains running through from east and west.”

“Can’t you look out and see?”

“Of course.”

Levi stood up and tried to open the window. It was jammed. He worked at it and banged it with the heel of his hand before he was able to get it to respond and he could thrust his head out. All he could see was rolling stock and soldiers. A sergeant with a pipe in his mouth glanced up at him.

“They’re filling up the cars with troops just ahead of you, lad,” the sergeant said with a distinctive accent. “It will be a few more minutes.”

“Couldn’t we just climb down and walk to the depot?” asked Levi. “We need to change trains.”

“Ah, no, they’ll not let you do that. Too dangerous to be wandering about on these tracks. Trains are coming and going by the minute and the engineers aren’t always extra careful. Where are you headed?”

“Washington.”

“What’s there?”

“My sister is going to nurse.”

The sergeant spotted Lyndel and raised his hat. “Wonderful. Grand.” Then he looked back at Levi. “And you—are you going there to enlist?”

The train suddenly shook itself and lurched forward.

“Thank you!” Levi called to the sergeant and sat back down as the locomotive inched its way ahead. He shook his head at his sister. “I’m glad I didn’t have to answer that question.”

“You can always say you are going to nurse as well.”

“I don’t think that’s the answer a soldier is looking for.”

“I’m causing everyone a lot of trouble. Mama, Papa, my sisters, you. I’m sorry for that.”

“I’ll be all right.” Levi stared out at a column of soldiers marching along a street. “What has Nathaniel told you about Lewinsville?”

“What do you mean?”

“You never told me how he became a corporal. Did he shoot someone?”

Lyndel stared at him. “My goodness, no. Is that what you think?”

“He had to do something.”

“He saved some of his men from Jeb Stuart’s cavalry. They would have been captured. He kept them hidden until Stuart’s troopers rode off.”

“Is that all?”

“I suppose he kept everyone calm and helped keep his company organized. So his captain thinks he’s a natural leader.”

“Has he ever fired a shot?”

“No. A few of his boys fired their muskets at Lewinsville. But none of them have ever been in a battle and Lewinsville was no battle. For which I thank God. I would like all of this to be over before Nathaniel has to aim his weapon at anyone. Or have them aim their weapons at him. Didn’t he talk to you about this in his letters?”

A small smile came over Levi’s face. “Not much. Most of all he was asking about you.”

“But he and I were writing each other.”

“He was afraid one of the other men from church would ask to court you.”

Lyndel half-laughed. “As if I would say yes. Does Nathaniel think I’m as fickle as an English girl?”

“It’s been over a year that he’s been gone. And he tells me you’ve never told him you loved him.”

Lyndel struggled to reply. “It’s not…that I don’t care for him…I just need to see him again before I…speak those words.”

“Why?”

Lyndel felt the blood in her face and throat. “I need to find out… what I feel when I see him.”

Levi frowned, the lines wrinkling his young, handsome face. “You mean you don’t know what you feel?”

Her blue eyes had become gray. “As he says, it’s been more than a year. I can’t…use those words until I see him face-to-face. That’s all. Please don’t ask me about this again, Levi.”

“All right.”

“You find that strange?”