Glory by Heather Graham
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.
Cannons continued to explode and bullets whistled by, since the fighting had moved just slightly south. But Julian and his volunteers moved quickly and efficiently. Injured men saw them and cried out for help. They went to those who called for them first, then tried to find the unconscious living, testing pulses. Julian was bent over a Rebel soldier when fingers curled around his leg. He looked down. A Yank soldier. His heart catapulted. This hadn’t even been a cavalry engagement, but every time he saw a blue uniform, he was afraid. So afraid that he’d find his brother.
The man wasn’t Ian. But he was injured, badly.
“Help me,” the fellow whispered.
“Help me with this man!” he shouted.
The volunteer by him spat. “There may be more Rebels out here. I ain’t pausing here for no Billy Yank.”
“Yes, you are, and that’s a god-damned order!” Julian shouted.
Together, they dragged the man to the ambulance.
Evans stopped Julian then. “Sir, no disrespect intended, but you’re needed badly now back in the surgery. We won’t leave the men.”
The soldier with the sling around his arm stood next to Evans. “I’m Captain Bentley, artillery, sir. I’ll see to it that we find all the living we can—Rebs and Yanks, sir.” Bentley’s eyes met his steadily. “My pa’s fighting over with the Yanks,” he said quietly.
Julian nodded. “Fine, thank you, Captain. I will go back then.”
He returned to the surgery. More and more men appeared before him. And then the Yank he had saved. The fellow looked up at him and smiled. “Lord, A-mighty! Why, you must be Colonel McKenzie’s brother.”
“Yeah, I’m Ian’s brother.”
The man kept smiling, despite the fact that he was shot in three places. “You’re his spittin’ image, Doc, sir, you ever hear that?”
“All the time. Have you seen my brother? Is he—”
“Yes, sir, he was right as rain when I saw him, just a few days ago. Guess I’m glad to be here, with you, even if it makes me a prisoner. Your brother sure does brag on you, sir. Says you’re the best there is.”
“I do my best, Yank.”
The Yank’s, Walter Smith, left knee was shattered. It was bad. He was going to lose it.
“Wish I could tell you something better, but I’ve got to take the leg. No choice.”
The man stared at him, nodding, accepting his fate. “I know you’d save it if you could. I heard that you saved limbs better than anybody.”
“My brother told you?”
“Naw ... the angel.”
“An angel?”
“No, sir, I said the angel. Mrs. Tremaine. She’s from Florida, sir. Just like you are. You know her, sir?”
“Oh, yes. I know her.”
Sound seemed to dim behind Julian. He felt cold in the midst of an awful heat. He felt afraid, very afraid. The field hospitals were far too close to deadly action, to fighting, to cannon fire, to bullets ... Cannonballs didn’t know good men from bad men. They didn’t recognize hospital tents and avoid them. They didn’t know not to kill women ...
He wondered how many nights, when he should have been exhausted and sound asleep, that he had lain awake, worrying about her. Damn her, why couldn’t she have been happy working in St. Augustine?
“She’s here at Gettysburg?” he asked quietly.
“Yes, sir.”
“With what troops?”
“With Magee’s forces, sir.”
Magee. He mentally damned himself. Well, he had introduced her to Risa, and it was surely through Risa that she had come to be with Magee.
“Ah, we’re grateful to have her. She made Surgeon Grimley leave a young boy’s leg be the other day when Grimley wanted to hack it off. Said you’d saved dozens of limbs, she’d seen you in action, and she’d look after the boy herself. She’s strange, so beautiful, so ladylike, and so determined! So I know, sir, that if you could, you’d save my leg. Frankly, I’ll be mightly grateful just for my life.”
“I’ll do my best, soldier,” Julian promised him.
The man closed his eyes as Julian nodded to an orderly to administer ether with the bag and nose cone they’d been using.
“If the angel were just here too ...”
Well, she wasn’t here, but damn her, she was with Magee’s troops. Why the hell did Magee have her so close to the action?
Angel ...
She’d kept men alive. Kept them whole.
Witch.
Had Magee come to trust her strange instincts?
He couldn’t think about her now, didn’t dare think about her. There were too many wounded still coming. But tonight, when finally the guns fell silent ...
Chapter 17
JULY 2 HAD BEEN a brutal day. Rhiannon had never seen fields of such death and devastation. Perhaps it was natural that she later dreamed.
The day had begun early, with troops arriving throughout as both sides began to realize the enormity of the battle that would ensue. General George Meade, replacing “Fighting Joe” Hooker, fought a defensive battle and held his own. From the start to finish, the day was filled with wounded. Wo
The fighting ended late. A charge by the Confederates against the Yanks up Cemetery Hill did not even begin until dusk, and then lasted through the evening until ten, and even after that, the occasional crack of a bullet could be heard. Campfires burned across a landscape rich in the blood of the fallen. Confederates and Unionists finished the day with no clear victor in sight.
Stories of courage and cowardice, success and failure, cheer and despair, all came into the surgery. And so it was that Rhiannon heard firsthand accounts of a Reb surgeon who had defied guns and cannon fire to come for his wounded. McKenzie. By all accounts, he had come for men in blue and men in gray, and men so covered in blood and mud that the colors of their uniforms were barely discernible.
Perhaps, it was natural that she dreamed. And so, when she slept at last ...
It came.
The dream.
At first she relived the dream in which she had seen Richard die. She knew she was seeing it again, but she couldn’t stop it from coming. She could hear the cries of the men, the shouts of command, just as she had seen it all today, except that this was a different battle, a different time. There had been cornfields. Great waves of green and gold, bending and bowing to a summer’s day. Now those stalks were shorn, stripped down by thousands of bullets ...
She struggled; she tried to cry out. She wanted to turn away, and yet she could not. She wanted to call to the men, to stop them from dying, and yet she could not.
Then she saw Richard ...
Leading the men.
Oh, God, she had dreamed this dream before.
Bullets began to fly in a terrible hail and men began to fall. She tried to cry out; she tried to stop Richard.
The bullet struck him, a mortal hit.
For a moment he was frozen in time, life caught within his eyes. Regret, pain, the things that he would never see, never touch again. He mouthed her name ... But as life faded from his eyes, so light faded from the sky, only to come again.
A different hill. And in her dream she was here, in the little Pennsylvania town called Gettysburg.
They came in great sweeping waves, more and more of them. The field was alive with smoke, with powder, with the thunder of cannon, the screeching of the cannonballs, the screams of dying horses—and men. And still they came, marching across fields, up hillsides ...
Yet among the other sounds there was a strange, challenging ripple on the air, and despite the terror she realized that she was hearing a Rebel yell. It was the South dying here, attacking the North—bold, brave, desperate, and dying.
Her dreams were suddenly patterned in a wild array of pictures. The old dream mingled with the new. Richard was dying, staring ... then Richard rolled and turned over, and it wasn’t Richard anymore.
Julian.
He lay upon the ground, unhorsed by cannon fire, thrown far from his mount. The animal was down, whinnying in pain. But the soldier didn’t stay down. He rose, calling out to those who had followed him, ordering help for the dead and dying men. He raced through the barrage of fire all around him. He tied a tourniquet on one man, ordered another dragged back—announced another dead.
He was too close, far too close to the battle lines. The clash of steel could be heard as foot soldiers charging enemy lines met in hand-to-hand combat with their foes. Julian was in the midst of it.
She saw the bullet strike, saw the look in his eyes. Mortality registered instantly, for he was a physician, and he knew ...
And he started to fall ...
The field was suddenly alight with a burst of color against the black powder of cannon and rifle fire. Streaks of sunlight, gold and hazy, mauve, crimson, colors like that of a setting sun, a dying day ... life perhaps was like a day, sunset bursting like a last glory, fading to black ...
She awoke with a start. The sun was no longer setting upon rolling hills and fields bathed in blood; it was just rising in the eastern sky, yet its gentle morning streaks touched the white sheets of her camp bed, nightdress, and canvas tent with a haunting shade of the palest red ...
Like an echo of blood.
She sat up, breathing deeply, looking around. She was not at the scene of battle, yet she knew ...
The first battle had taken place.
It had occurred some time ago, just as she’d first dreamed. And she’d awakened then, crying out, keening with agony. She had given way to desolation, sobbing in great, violent spasms.
For she’d seen the captain’s face, seen his eyes. She had seen the light of courage, honor, and compassion within them.
She had seen that light diminish as he had fallen forward, his blood then a part of the crimson drenching the field. She had known, and a part of her had perished that night as well.
But now a new dream had come. And she’d seen him. And she knew what would come ...
Her stomach churned, and she bit into her lower lip, placing a hand upon her abdomen.
If she didn’t stop it.
How? How could she stop this great, deadly tide of war? She couldn’t, she didn’t have the power. But perhaps ...
Perhaps she could stop him. Warn him. Stop him? With his fierce pride, loyalty, determination—sheer pigheadedness?
She had to stop him. She would not bear this agony again.
She rose quickly, washed, dressed, and emerged from her tent in the medical sector of the Yankee camp. Corporal Watkins, the orderly standing guard duty, was just pouring coffee. “Why, Miz Rhiannon, you’re up way too early. It will still be several hours before the firing commences again, I’ll wager.” He handed her the coffee he had poured, shaking his head. “This must be mighty hard for you, and other folk, I imagine. I mean, to some Northern boys, the only good Reb is a dead Reb, but then you folks from the South who were against secession, why you know there’re some good folks in Rebel butternut and gray. And cannonballs, ma’am, they just don’t know the difference between a good man and a bad, now, do they?”
She took the coffee he had offered her. Her fingers were shaking, she knew that she was pale. “I have to see General Magee, Corporal Watkins.”
“Why, he’ll be busy, ma’am, planning strategy—”
“Now, Corporal. Tell him I have to see him. And he’ll see me. I know that he will.” Yes, he would see her. She’d already been able to tell him several times when he needed to take certain evasive measures.
Yes, he would see her. What then? Once she’d baited, tricked, and betrayed Julian McKenzie, what then ...
He’d loathe her. But he’d still be alive.
And one day perhaps, far in the future, a child would have a father.
Julian had been lying awake a long time. He hadn’t gone to bed until he’d been ready to drop. So many injured.
But then he’d awakened as the very first rays of dawn were beginning to touch the heavens. Awake, he came to sit out in the open, aware that he had to rest, if not sleep, before entering into surgery again. He was glad of the night’s touch of coolness against the summer’s heat, even here, far from home. The air was clean tonight, good, so delicious to him. Sometimes, he didn’t think that he’d ever be able to breathe without feeling that the air around him was not redolent with the smell of blood, the smell of death.
He had feared he would dream about her. Witch, they called her, and indeed, it seemed she had cast a spell upon him, for damn her, but he could not forget her. From the moment when he had first seen her, standing upon the stairway, she had somehow slipped beneath his skin and into his soul. At each turn she had been there, even when he had turned away
Sweet Jesus! In the midst of death and mayhem, he was thinking about her. She was a witch. Haughty, stubborn, far too proud, ridiculously argumentative, annoying, totally pigheaded, foolish, dangerous.
And yet ...
God, how he wished that she were with him.
No one had such a touch. When she walked into a room, she was magic. There was no one with whom he’d worked who could save more lives. She healed others. She haunted him. And he was afraid, because she was with the Yanks now, as she wanted to be. Not in safety but on this battlefield. At dawn the guns would roar again, raining death even on those who were trying to save lives ...
“Captain! Captain McKenzie!”
Startled by the urgent call, he rose quickly to his feet. Dabney Crane, one of the civilian scouts, rode toward him. He dismounted in haste, looking around anxiously, and Julian knew then that Dabney had a message for him. Fear seared his heart—too many of his kin were embroiled in this conflict.
“What is it, Dabney?”
“A message from the Yankee lines, sir. I was approached by one of their riders.”
This war was a sad, strange jumble, of loyalties. By day, the battle raged in a deadly hail of cannon fire, bullets, and bloodied swords. But when the fighting fell silent, messages often passed between battle lines, and those who should have stopped them coming looked aside, aware that the day might come when their own kin tried to reach them.
“My brother—” Julian began, a terrible lump in his throat. Was Ian across those lines? He never knew where his brother was fighting.
“No, sir, there’s no bad news about your Yankee soldier kin. This has to do with a lady.”
“My sister, my cousin—”
“No, sir, a different lady. A Mrs. Tremaine. She’s serving with their medical corps, sir. The rider, a man I’ve met with now and then regarding other personal exchanges between troops, gave me an envelope, and I was to give it to you and no one else, and that I keep this all in strictest confidence. But I’m to summon you now, quick, before the day’s fighting can commence. She has to see you, sir, at the old Episcopal church down the pike.”