Tuesday June 12 1864

(Near St. Louis on the Illinois side of the Mississippi)

Megan stood on the brake as the Conestoga pushed the hefty Percherons down the steep grade toward the riverbank. The team dug in their heels. The wagon skipped from rut to rut. Megan clenched her teeth and tried to remember how to pray.

Behind her, Kathin bounced on the feather bed while Loren gurgled with delight in a padded box nailed to the back of the driver’s seat. Megan’s foot slipped off the brake, and her team broke into a frightened run.

“Wheeeee,” Kathin teased as the heavy wagon bounced across the flat and zigzagged between sparse trees. Megan hauled the big drays to a sit-down stop inches from the bluff.

Thousands of wagons cluttered the fields beside the river. One would have thought the addition of three more canvas-hooded homes on wheels would tumble the entire assemblage into the broad avenue of murky brown water.

Megan glanced at Loren, and Mignonette’s chubby arms reached upward like a happy puppet. The journey had defeated all efforts to protect the babies from the sun, which had toasted Mignonetté’s face two shades darker than her mother’s while giving Loren a serious burn.

Megan climbed past Loren into the wagon, where she reached into a pocket on the underside of the canvas and withdrew a squat jar of rose-scented glycerin. Loren’s bright aquamarine eyes followed her every movement as she applied a drop to Kathin’s parched lips. When she did the same for the babies, Loren’s tiny pink tongue touched the salve on her lips, and she eyed her with disgust. Megan snatched both of them up before Loren’s bellow had time to build. Mignonette locked her arms behind Megan’s neck. Megan winced as Loren’s tiny fingers grabbed a hank of hair.

“Give them to me,” Angelique offered from beside the high front wheel.
Megan peeled Mignonette from her neck then bent close to let Angelique untangle Loren’s fingers from her hair, surprised by the strength of her grip. Mignonette kneaded Angelique’s bosom, contentedly suckling until Loren pushed her aside. Angelique smiled and shifted her daughter to her other breast while Megan wondered what insanity had prompted her to undertake an arduous journey with a miniature monster and an invalid on her hands. A monster and a semi-invalid that I love beyond reason she admitted with a rueful smile.

An hour later, she stood cooking over an open fire as a storm loomed overhead. Hilda, who probably should have been relieved of work at her age, had set up their camp, then gone to help other émigrés with their animals. Megan suspected that working helped relieve the blacksmith’s grief. In contrast to Hilda’s forced pleasantry, Sam acted as happy as a colt in a field of wild hemp. No wonder, Megan thought, as Angelique joined him beside their wagon.

The sky clouded over. Misty rain settled the dust of gathered wagons and dampened the spirits of weary travelers anxious to move on. Megan remembered other rainy days as she grabbed an umbrella to protect their dinner. The raindrops stopped their assault on her back and she looked up surprised to see a second umbrella. When she turned to see who held it, her umbrella tilted a stream of water onto the fire, and steam billowed. Through it, Megan heard a familiar laugh.

“Luke,” Megan gasped.

“Best give it up and come over to our lean-to, Miss Megan. Sally’s cookin’ extra. I told her to put more taters in the pot soon as I spotted you.”

Luke’s gentle smile beamed through the dissipating steam. “Luke Conners. What are you doing here?”

“A person who didn’t know you might ask you the same thing, Miss Megan. You look like a shipwrecked rat.”

“And you look a whole lot better without a bonnet.”

***

Her dinner ruined, Megan’s party had no choice but to take the Conners up on their gracious invitation. After consuming a goodly portion of Sally Conners’s stew, Sam, Angelique, Hilda, and Kathin returned to their respective wagons. Megan stayed beside the Conners’s fire. The Conners’s baby, Lucy, snored delicately in her mother’s arms.
Luke glanced around and said, “Looks like you don’t need to travel any further, Miss Megan. Looks to me like you’ve got enough younguns to start yourself a school right here.”

“Aren’t they somethin’?” Sally nodded toward where Loren and Mignonette lay in a puppy huddle with Luke Junior and Luke’s surprise homecoming gift, Sally Jean. “Little Yanks and Rebs all snuggled tight together.”

Megan shook her head to rid it of a vision of other piles of Yanks and Rebels.

“I thought both of them belonged to Miss Kathin,” Luke confessed. “That Mignonette looks more like Lainy Mercer than she does like Angelique or Sam.”

“Probably because she’s Lainy’s cousin,” Megan said. She did not offer further explanation. Instead, she said, “Sally, did Luke tell you how much he helped me with the wounded?”

“Seems you helped him more,” said Sally, her voice thick with pride and gratitude. The look she gave her husband lit her face and turned plainness into beauty in a way that Megan envied.

“It weren’t all that much,” Luke said. “Anybody woulda done it.” He gave the fire a left-handed poke. When it flared, Megan noted his blush and she smiled.

“It was you did it,” Sally bragged, “and with your hand hurtin’ so.”

“Don’t know if it hurt or not,” Luke said. “It and me had parted company by then.”

Sally grimaced. Megan held her face expressionless. Sally glanced from one to the other, then needlessly adjusted the blanket around the babe in her arms. “Was you wrote that letter for him,” she said when she again looked up. “Was you got him home.”

“’Twas the Underground Railroad,” Luke whispered. “That’s why I couldn’t tell ya before, Sal. Too many folks want to kill abolitionists. War didn’t change the south in that respect. Miss Megan and her friends and family would have been in major trouble if folks knew they helped darkies slip through to freedom. Them and folks they was connected with got me south of the Union lines slick as a weasel through a henyard fence.”

***

Megan tossed on feathers gone lumpy after two months of constant use. In her dream, she saw hay gone sour with the blood of hundreds. Next morning she sat on the tailboard of the Conestoga and watched a lone buzzard swoop across the river then fly northwest in a clumsy flurry of dark wings.

From the interior of the wagon, she heard Kathin whisper “Chris, oh Chris, where are you now? Do you really love me? Will you be able to love my daughter when I bring her to you?”

Of course, he does, and he will. He has to, Megan thought as she gathered her soggy skirts into a bunch and climbed to the ground for a necessary stroll to the surrounding woods. She heard the crunch of footsteps, and her pace quickened.

“Wet sure looks good on you, girly girl.”

Megan frowned, turned, shielded her eyes, and stared into the rain. A skinny-ugly muleskinner grinned back at her. “Jo! Jo Fletcher! What are you doing here?”

“Waitin’ for you.”

Afterword

When the tide of battle receded from Gettysburg, 21,000 wounded and dying men were left behind; 7000 dead lay where they fell or in shallow, hastily covered graves; 3512 Union soldiers were eventually reburied in Gettysburg National Cemetery. Over 7000 Confederates were interred in temporary graves; the remains of 3320 were later removed to Richmond, Virginia, and other southern states.

Mary A. Brady, a forty-year-old mother of five, was typical of the women at Gettysburg. When, having worn herself out tending and feeding the wounded, she died a few months later, she was given a military funeral with full honors and escorted to her grave by the widows of men who had fallen in the battle.

Dr. Emeline Horton Cleveland, a member of the Sanitary Corps medical staff at Gettysburg, later became the first female resident physician of the Women’s Hospital in Philadelphia.

For those readers who wish to know more about the courage of their forebears, the author recommends: South After Gettysburg; The Letters of Cornelia Hancock, ed. Ophelia Stratton Jaquette (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell 1956) and Lincoln’s Daughters of Mercy, Marjorie Barstow Greenbie (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons 1944) Both are out of print but available through interlibrary loan.

Megan had shown her a newspaper article that said Fort Leavenworth, Kansas was a major embarkation point for troops assigned to police the Indian territories and that there were repatriated Rebels among them. Galvanized Yankees the reporter called them.

Thinking of Chris and an impossible imaginary future, Kathin rolled onto her stomach, intending to bury her face in her pillow and hide from the storm within her mind. The corn shuck mattress refused to accommodate her abdomen. The pressure reminded her of her condition. Megan’s knock protected her from considering the unthinkable.

***

“She’ll be fine,” Sam told Megan as they drove away from Loren Farm later in the day. “Doc says the worst is over. She’ll be up and fussing at us all to mind our grammar sooner than you think.”

Megan surveyed the fields on either side of the road and pretended to believe him. Lush growth had covered all traces of the horror of July.

“The fields don’t look bad for a year when nothing but corpses and body parts got planted,” Sam said.

Megan nodded but did not speak. There was too much and nothing to say. For a long time, the only sounds she heard were the cawing of crows, the clop of hooves, and the grinding of the wheels. At least the air is fresh.

“Supposed to be free,” Sam grumbled after an extended silence. “What you think, mule? Mister Lincoln’s s’posed to have freed all the slaves. Ha! I’ve been free most of my life until now. Bury the dead soldiers, the white man says. Hurry, hurry, hurry; get them underground before they stink. Black man does the digging and white man does the snoopervisin’. Too goody-goody to get their fish-belly hands dirty, but they can watch over me so I won’t steal anything.

“Then soon’s we get the stench under control, another white man comes along ’n’ says bury ’em someplace else. Now, I ask you, mule, who you think is gonna do all this digging up ’n’ putting down? You seen that white man with his notebook, taking tally of who’s put where? Ever see a pad ‘n’ pencil dirty a man’s hands?”

The mule tossed its head, then slowed to climb Herr Ridge.

A half-mile farther on, Megan saw Bobby dropping handfuls of minié balls onto a pile of spent shells.

Bobby waved and yelled, “I need more money for Miss Kathin’s birthday present. Scrap man’s payin’ thirteen cents a pound.”

“You be careful,” Sam called. Megan watched Bobby over her shoulder as Sam drove on.

Bobby picked up a grapeshot cartridge and carried it toward where another boy whacked spent shells against a rock.

“Sam! Stop! Look!”

“No-o-o!” Sam hollered, “Don’t!” He dropped the reins jumped to the ground and vaulted the fence screaming, “Stop! Bobby! Don’t do that!”

Bobby looked up and grinned. “Plenty of good lead in that one,” Bobby hollered as he stopped beside a rock and raised the grapeshot casing high above his head.

“No-o-o-o-o.” Megan screamed. Sam sprinted across the field. Bobby’s hands came down. Sam dove. Bobby smashed the shell against the rock. Sam hit the ground ten feet short.

Megan stumbled onto the field half blind with tears. Sam picked himself up and walked the additional ten feet. When Megan reached his side, she retched violently. Vomit spewed over Bobby’s exposed entrails and mingled with his blood.

“Oh Jesus! Oh sweet, sweet Jesus.” Sam pulled her into a one-armed hug. “Damn you, Jesus. I wish you hadn’t died on that cross. I wish you were here, Jesus. Wish you were here right now so I could kill you for letting stuff like this happen.” Megan shuddered.

They did not return to the farmhouse until after evening chores. When they did, they found Kathin slumped over the dining room table, the look on her face telling them more than they wanted to know.

“I was going to tell her,” Sam whispered to Megan.

No you weren’t. Why bury him if you were going to tell her?

Her thoughts must have shone on her face because Sam looked guilty as he turned away from her and leaned over Kathin. “You come on now.” He placed his hands on her upper arms and urged her to her feet. “You have to rest.”

The devastation in Kathin’s eyes brought Megan past Sam to slip an arm around her waist. Except for that slight thickening, she was so thin Megan ached. “Think about your baby, honey. Let me help you upstairs.”

Kathin jerked away. “To hell with Edwin’s baby.”

“I think I could find some ergot in the barn,” Megan offered.

Kathin rounded on her. “I couldn’t kill my baby!”

“Remember that,” Megan said, smiling softly, pleased that her jibe had conjured the desired result. Taking Kathin’s hand she said, “Come, dear, you need to rest.”

“I don’t want to go upstairs,” Kathin insisted softly. “I can’t stand the sound of Hilda’s tears. She’s always seemed so strong.”

“There’s lots of kinds of strong,” Sam said, warming Megan with his smile.

The tent flaps whipped in the wind, and Lance Flynn ducked inside. The stream from his hat brim created a new puddle on the packed dirt floor.

“Thought you’d gone ’n’ set yourself afire.” His eyes twinkling, he snatched Ophelia’s butcher knife from the table. The slash he made in the rear tent wall allowed the wind to clear the tent of smoke.

Megan rubbed bloodshot eyes as Ophelia smiled. It was obvious she would miss the cocky Irishman who had greeted her most ungallantly the day Megan drove her to the tent hospital for the first time.

“Sure ’n’ it took you long enough,” Lance had said. “Doesn’t the country know the boys be needing lady-nurses?”

Since then, many wounded men had gone home, or died, or both. Those who remained had at least two attendants. Ophelia’s usefulness in Gettysburg would soon be over.

The situation in the west was different. The soggy casualty lists on the table were abysmally long. General Grant had called for nurses, and Ophelia had told Megan earlier that she intended to go.

“It’s time for me to move on,” she had said. When she repeated it now, Lance gathered her into an exuberant hug, swung her off her pins, and twirled.

Megan stepped out of the way as Ophelia’s foot tapped the tent pole, and Lance collapsed onto a bench out of breath with Ophelia on his lap. “’Tis ye I was afraid to tell I’ve been ordered out,” he said as she slid from his lap to the bench beside him. Megan watched and smiled as he took Ophelia’s hand. “Sign on with the Second and we’ll go together,” he said. “Sure ’n’ we’ll make a fine team, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Megan said without thinking.

Ophelia signed the enlistment papers, and within the hour, she had said her farewells to her remaining handful of patients and collected her carpetbag. Thoughts of western adventures filled Megan’s mind as she flicked the reins and headed her wagon across town with Ophelia and Lance chattering together in the back.

“Wait here,” Ophelia told him when they reached the townhouse. “My sister’s going to throw a fit ’twould make the devil proud.”

Megan let herself in. Lainy and Jason were with James Evans in the parlor. Jason had taken over Anne’s chaise. Lainy sat in the wing chair by the window with the Evans’s infant in her arms. Sunlight glimmered on her amber hair.

No one was sure how Lainy had become the primary daytime caregiver for Jacob Evans, Junior. Mrs. Evans could not look at him without bursting into tears. This in turn sent the infant into squally fits that in turn sent Sybil into one of her ordinary everyday conniptions.

For the first few weeks of his life, Hilda had carried Jacob Junior’s cradle downstairs each morning and placed it beside Anne’s chaise, where she could rock him without strain. Megan came by most days, but Kathin’s pregnancy kept her at home. Sybil returned him to his mother whenever she had some additional reason to climb the stairs.

Money was no longer a problem. Sam had taken a job with the National Cemetery Committee. Business at the Lichtner Smithy boomed until Hilda could no longer tear herself away from Anne. Two weeks ago, she took her to Loren Farm and had remained there with her ever since. Megan hoped that having them there would help pull Kathin from her doldrums.

Their absence from the townhouse made no difference in the way Sybil dealt with the baby. She continued to bring Jacob Jr. downstairs each morning and deposit him in the parlor with a stack of nappies. “Deaf Lainy won’t be bothered by his noise, but the house is full of people. Somebody will change him if he gets too loud.” That somebody usually turned out to be Lainy or the infant’s elder brother, James.

When Ophelia came in, she went directly to Jason and explained her plans.

Jason smiled and said, “Well, Little Soldier, when are you leaving?”

“Right away,” said Ophelia, then she glanced to where James Evans leaned protectively over Lainy and she added, “Perhaps I’m being selfish. I could stay and help look after her.”

“We don’t have to worry about Lainy,” Megan said.

Jason nodded agreement. “Must you leave right away? Won’t you at least stay for supper?”

Ophelia shook her head. “Yes. I mean no. I won’t be staying for supper.”

“It’s a good thing too,” said Sybil from the doorway. “There are too many nonpaying guests here as it is. I haven’t a moment to spare what with all the invalids. However, I won’t have people saying Sybil Mercer does not do right by her relations, so if you wish to stay to supper I will, of course, oblige.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Ophelia responded with obvious disdain. Megan settled back to enjoy the show. “There isn’t time,” Ophelia said. “The train leaves in less than an hour.”

“Well, goodbye, then,” Sybil huffed. “It’s high time you stopped cavorting around all those men and went home.”

“I’m not going home,” Ophelia said. “I’ve enlisted in the nursing corps.”

“The nursing corps,” Sybil squealed. “I could make more money from one boarder in a week than you’ll make in an entire month in the nursing corps if those nasty women would let me. Father will—”

“Father left yesterday,” Ophelia said. “At the Cemetery Committee’s suggestion.”

“You’ll ruin whatever chance you have of ever catching a husband,” Sybil said as if Ophelia’s maiden state were a personal affront. “No man in his right mind will want a wife that goes out of her way to perform intimate services for God knows how many strange men.”

“Really?” Ophelia eyed her sister with amusement. “I didn’t know you thought I had any chances.”

“You don’t,” Sybil reversed herself. “You’re too uppity.”

“Uppity smuppity. I’m simply honest, not sneaky bossy like someone we both know.”

“I am not bossy,” Sybil shrieked.

“Stop,” Jason said. “You’ll upset Lainy.”

Sybil rounded on him. “Do you know what this fool woman has done? Do you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jason said. “Lainy does not need your screeching.”

Megan flashed him a thank-you smile.

Ophelia kissed his cheek. “God’s speed,” she said. Then she crossed the room, shook James Evans’s hand, and hugged Lainy. When Megan stood, she hugged her as well and then made her exit. Megan and Sybil followed her to the door.

“What’s he doing here?” Sybil screeched when she saw Lance on the stoop. “Don’t tell me you dragged another penniless Yankee soldier here for me to feed.”

“Shut up!” Lainy shouted from the parlor. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

“Now see what you’ve done,” Sybil whined. “Can you imagine? My own daughter telling me to shut up like I was her nigger.”

“So, shut up,” Megan said. “No one listens to you anyway.”

“Somebody better listen. Those awful women abandoned me here with three-quarters of a man and a daughter who’s forgotten herself and gone back to nappies and sugar teats.”

Megan shoved Sybil backward and rushed to close the parlor doors, but Jason had already heard.

“They went to Loren Farm seeking peace and quiet,” he said.

Sybil huffed. “Peace and quiet? They’ve had nothing but peace and quiet, holed up all the time together in that upstairs room of theirs.”

“Sybil!” Jason pushed himself to a standing position.

“Now what?” Sybil sniffed.

“Pack your things,” he said in a soft, tense tone. “We’re going home so that Miss Lichtner and Miss Mason will feel free to return to theirs.”

Sybil sniffed. “Theirs? This is Edwin’s hou—”

Megan stomped her foot.

“Well, it is,” Sybil insisted with waning confidence.

“Pack,” Jason repeated. His tone invited no argument. “We’re going home.”

“We can’t go home,” Sybil whined. “The servants are gone. Who’s going to take care of you?”

“You are my dear. For better or worse. Remember?”

“Lainy …”

“Leave Lainy be,” Megan said.

Jason said, “She’s staying here where she’ll be looked after.”

“But—”

“Pack, Sybil. We’ll do fine without servants. I might even teach you to read.”

“Read! Read?”

Jason smiled, and winked at Megan. “Perhaps we’ll settle for listen. Now go pack, my dear.”

“It’s a pity Sam returned that fine, bright carriage to its owner,” Megan said.

Sybil perked up until Jason added, “It would be better suited to her disposition than Miss Lichtner’s extra buggy.” She watched in silence as Jason said goodbye to Lainy. Megan tasted bitterness when Lainy showed no sign of recognition.

Jason’s shoulders shook as he straightened and addressed himself to James. “You be sure to read to her, young man. She likes that.”

Megan hugged him.

“Take care of her,” he whispered. “My love to Kathin,” he added, and then he and his wife joined Lance and Ophelia at the curb.

***

Two weeks later, Megan stood next to the chiffonier in the farmhouse guestroom not wanting to interrupt the tableau before her. Hilda sat on the edge of the four-poster bed holding Anne’s fragile hand. Anne’s gaunt frame barely dented the feather tick. A month ago, Megan had compared her to a corpse that forgot to die. There had been scant improvement since.

Pale light filtered through bare windows. No one had the strength or ambition to replace the curtains that had become bandages for dying men. Anne’s lips trembled, and Hilda touched them with her finger. Megan fought back tears and prayed to an absent god.

“All right everything’s going to be,” Hilda whispered. “Strong enough I am for both of us.”

Megan knew that to be a lie. Hilda was not strong. Not the way Anne was strong. Hilda might be able to throw a grown man ten feet, but when it came to facing what she was facing now, Megan could tell her guts writhed with fear. The harder Hilda fought to hide her terror, the more Anne’s eyes revealed how unsuccessful her efforts were.

“The sickness has run its course.” Megan said, echoing the doctor’s prognosis.

Anne suppressed a fit of coughing, then quickly crumpled her handkerchief into her pocket. “I’m fine,” she whispered when the spasm passed.

Megan disbelieved her. She had seen the scarlet speckles on the handkerchief. “I could bring a cool cloth for your forehead,” she offered.

“I’ll do that,” Hilda said.

“No,” Megan insisted. “Let me. Please. I’ll bring some warm milk too.”

“Warm milk would be nice,” Hilda said, although they both knew Anne would probably not be able to keep it down.

Anne struggled to speak, and Hilda leaned close. Tears trickled from both women’s eyes when Anne again began to cough. Hilda brushed Anne’s tears away but not her own. Anne rasped for breath, then renewed her attempt to speak. Hilda tried to shush her, but Anne’s eyes warned her away. She motioned for Megan. Megan’s damp cheek brushed Anne’s as she strained to hear. “Promise me . . .”

“Hush,” Hilda said. “Save your strength.”

Anne clutched the front of Megan’s robe. “Promise me—” She coughed. “Promise me—”

“Anything,” Megan said. “Anything. Just rest. Please. We need you.”

“Promise me . . . Megan . . . look after . . . Hilda . . . promise.”

Hilda choked back a sob. Anne’s hacking cough resumed. Megan ran to fetch Kathin.

Jason Mercer recuperated in an upstairs bedroom with Kathin to look after him. Ophelia had gone to help with the transfer of Union wounded from the field hospitals to the General Hospital east of town, to which Lance Flynn had been assigned and from which Miss Hilda hauled corpses to a functioning depot down the line. Miss Anne spent most of her time at Trinity. Sam and Bobby were scouting adjacent counties for supplies, and all Lainy did was cry constantly, which left Megan to make sure everyone remembered to eat once in a while.

The next time Sam and Bobby came to replenish townhouse supplies, she was out of the house and in the driver’s seat of their wagon before they reached the stoop.
“Watch things,” she called as she slapped the reins.

The mules Sam had borrowed from a local professor headed straight for the barn at Pennsylvania College, which suited Megan fine. At the entrance to the campus, the lead mule took the bit in its teeth and headed for the stables. Megan fought him and his sidekick to a stop beneath the ancient oaks in front of Old Dorm, where Union guards lounged about the green like satiated guests at a garden party.

The guards let her know that while they would be more than willing to relieve her of her load of flour and vegetables, no amount of coaxing could entice them to enter the noxious building.

Megan refused to let them appropriate supplies Sam had worked hard to collect. She imagined it took a lot of charm to convince county folk to donate anything for Rebels—even wounded and defeated ones. She was anxious to check casualties among the prisoners, but she dared not say why—so she sat in the swelter, waiting for someone with enough stomach to take the food inside.

“I will help. Yah?”

Megan turned and blinked. The Union soldier’s face looked familiar, but she could not place him among the thousands she had seen.

“Bjorg Johansson, ma’am.

“Good to see you,” Megan said, pretending to remember.

The Iron Brigadier pulled a pair of loom shuttles from his hip pocket and extended them toward her. “These are yours yah?”

“Yah.” Megan blushed. I should have remembered. “How’s the arm?” She was glad to see that someone had bound his fracture more efficiently than she.

“Hey!” The shout came from their left. “Get your nigger-loving ass back inside before I blow it off!”

Megan’s eyes followed the Union soldier’s angry gaze.

A Confederate prisoner stood in the wide dormitory doorway waving his arms over his head, one of which ended three inches past the elbow.

“Luke! Luke Conners,” Megan cried. “Come and help me.”

“You stay right where you are, Reb!”

Luke smiled, waved, and turned away.

“A relative?” Bjorg Johansson asked.

“A friend,” said Megan. She sat ramrod straight and smiling while a nearby New Englander smirked.

Moments later, Luke reappeared in the doorway accompanied by a nursing nun and a dozen semi-able Rebels.

“You go back,” the guard said, his challenge focused on Luke’s missing hand. “You’re not fit for work.”

“You are,” Megan said. “Perhaps you would like to take his place.”

The guard grunted and scurried away. Megan was glad to see Luke again, but the speed with which the nun managed the unloading allowed them no time to visit.

When she was ready to leave, Bjorg stopped her. “There is someone inside you will want to see.”

Puzzled Megan searched the big Swede’s eyes. There was no way he could know Edwin, but there was one person they both knew.

“He’s been calling for Mrs. Brown,” Bjorg said, and Megan envisioned Kathin’s joy at seeing her Rebel friend again. She’ll be so pleased. “Where is he?”

“I will take you, yah?”

The building reeked of excrement and infection worse than any Megan had approached before. The guard stopped her at the foot of the steps that led up to the entrance.

“Don’t waste your time on the scum in there,” he said. “There are better men in need of your attention.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Megan ran up the steps. Inside she paused, blinded by the sudden change from sunlight to dim hallway. Putrid air stung her eyes. She gasped, “Where?”

“Third floor, northwest corner,” Bjorg said.

Megan hiked her hem. Perspiration dripped from her brows as she dashed up the stairs to where Luke waited. Jo stopped her as she approached the room.

“Jo! How’d they get you?” Megan’s her eyes searched Jo’s lean form for injuries. Her relief when she found none was inexplicably profound. Her knees buckled.

“Whoa, girly girl.” Jo put a hand beneath Megan’s elbow for support. “I’m fit as a bear.” She gestured over her shoulder with her head. “You don’t want to go in there.”

“I must,” Megan said. “For Kathin.”

Jo shook her head. “It’s not who you think.”

Megan pushed past her and saw Edwin, bloated, black, and festered. She shivered, and whispered, “I thought he’d be dead by now.”

“He’s dying,” Jo said, “and it won’t be easy.”

Edwin loosed a demented groan, and Megan trembled.

“Is he a friend?” Luke asked her softly.

Megan gagged and shook her head. Jo took her arm and showed her to the door. The expression in her eyes spoke volumes only Megan could read.

“Don’t worry, Miss Megan,” Jo said as they parted. “They’re planning to transfer a bunch of us soon, but I’ll tend to him before I go.”

Megan left the dormitory in a haze of conflicted emotion. Her face flamed with guilt when she saw the little nun waiting beside the wagon.

“Kindly wait here,” Sister said. “There is a thing I must do.”

“But . . .”

“Wait. Please.”

Megan’s head spun with the suspicion that God had somehow told the nun about the perverse joy that sang within her soul.

“A penny for your thoughts.”
Megan jumped. Luke wore a secretive smile.

To divert him from what she thought he knew, Megan said, “I wish I could get you and Jo away from here.”

“Mayhap you can,” he said. “Look.” Megan followed the direction of his gaze. The little nun stood near the command tent surrounded by a cluster of Union officers. Luke chuckled. “Look at her smile. Have you ever seen the like?”

Megan sighed. “Not lately.”

Sister skipped toward them waving a scrap of paper.

“Ain’t she somethin’?”

“Yah,” Bjorg agreed.

Sister joined them, huffing and laughing and waving her scrap of paper beneath Luke’s nose. “You can go with your friend,” she announced breathlessly.

“What about Jo?” Megan asked; her joy at Luke’s release diluted.

Sister smiled sadly. “I’m sorry. I tried, but the officers wouldn’t hear of it. Private Fletcher is still fit to fight, they said.” Her voice took on a conciliatory quality as she added, “Your friend did promise to take care of the Colonel for you.”

Not exactly, Megan thought. To the nun, she said, “I’m sorry, Sister, I did not mean to appear ungrateful. Hurry, Luke, let’s get you away from here before they change their minds.”

The rain had stopped. Neighborhood children played in the streets as Megan drove through town. Lainy slumped on the townhouse stoop. Megan got Luke settled, then prepared to return to Old Dorm to try to do something more for Jo.

She did not get the chance. Miss Anne saw her two baskets of supplies and assumed she intended them for the Lutheran Seminary. Megan did not argue. No one argued with Miss Anne, especially now when she grew weaker by the day in spite of all effort to protect her.

Outside, the children’s laughter rang in sharp counterpoint to Lainy’s dismal silence.

“Enough moping,” Megan said. She took Lainy’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “Come help.” She led her to the carriage, where she sat head bowed throughout the short drive to the Lutheran Seminary.

Union convalescents unloaded the carriage. Lainy wandered up the steps and through the open doors. Megan followed.

Lady nurses from Harrisburg had turned the lobby into an orderly infirmary. Women in immaculate aprons served aromatic soup to boisterous, well-tended Union patients. Megan paid no heed to the shrieks and screams from adjacent rooms in which the civilian surgeons had set up shop. Days of exposure had inured her to the sound.

She looked for Lainy and found her beneath the stairway to the second floor beside a huddle of wounded Confederates. Little light penetrated the chimney of a lantern on the floor.

A one-legged boy no older than Bobby shooed flies from the face of the blinded man beside him. “The boys meant to take care of us, but all the beds were full,” the young Rebel said.

“There are plenty of beds now,” Megan said.

“For Yankees,” the boy said with a shrug. “Them they seen leastways. They ain’t found them in the cellar yet. Cellar’s full o’…”

“The cellar?” Lainy sprinted to the cellar door, yanking it open. Megan heard splashing.

“Yankees.” The boy finished his sentence. “Been down there since we took the building.”

“But that was last Wednesday. My God!” Megan ran to Lainy. Lainy screamed stared and pointed. Megan saw a dozen faces floating within a few feet of the open doorway. She jumped into the water and hauled the nearest man up and out through the cellar doorway. A Harrisburg woman grabbed him and passed him to another. Lainy fell back against a wall and slumped to the floor, still screaming.

“Stop that,” Megan yelled. “It doesn’t help!”

A couple of Union convalescents pushed past her to get at the men in the cellar. Megan stood firm and refused to be muscled aside. Together, they dragged men from the flooded basement; the majority near death, many—too many—already gone. No one would ever know how many had died from wounds, and how many died because they lacked the strength or the will to swim.

“Since the first day,” Megan raged until her throat was raw. “Since the first day!”

“Alone,” one woman shouted among the crowd. “They left them there alone.”

“Nobody came, nobody heard,” a survivor said.

“Oh God! Oh God!”

“Why did no one hear us after the shooting stopped?” another survivor’s cry mingled with the women’s prayers.

“Those up here screamed louder,” the young Rebel said as Megan helped the man to a cot. “The doctors were so busy they forgot.”

“Why didn’t somebody guess where we were?”

“We tried to tell the Yankees when they came,” the blind Rebel claimed, “but they refused to listen.”

“Our own guns—they put us down there to protect us from our own guns.”

“We couldn’t get out.”

“The rain! Dear Lord, the rain!”

“The water kept rising. So many drowned. Dear God, dear God.”

“What good are you, God?” Megan added her voice to the cries of outrage around her. “Wasn’t it enough that they were blown to pieces? Did you have to send down so much water?”

“Oh Jesus! Oh God! When will enough be enough?”

“I don’t know what we brought this one up for,” Lance complained from his end. “He would probably have thanked us to let him lay.”

Sam said nothing. He had learned from long hours of running back and forth through drenching rain from the Valley of Death to the make-do hospitals that griping was Lance’s way of coping. He paused as a wagonload of amputated limbs passed between them and the hospital. The long line of empty wagons lurched forward a notch. The unconscious remnant on the stretcher moaned as if he knew what lay ahead.

“Sure ’n’ we need to get more selective,” Lance complained as they deposited their latest burden on a bed of matted straw. “I don’t know about you, but I’m too bone weary to be after hauling hopeless cases up this godforsaken hill. Those with a prayer of surviving will keep us hopping into next week as it is.”

“I can handle my end,” Sam said, goosing Lance with a stretcher pole as they sloshed downhill. “You decide which ones we carry.” He wanted no part of that decision.

“There’s something moving over that way,” Lance called as he dropped his end of the stretcher and high-stepped toward a bloated horse. Sam splashed behind him, carrying the stretcher rolled beneath his arm.
L
ance knelt in the mud beside a Confederate officer. Sam could tell that from the boots. “What a foin mess this is,” Lance said. “How’re we going to get that horse off him?”

“Can’t lift it, that’s for sure,” Sam shouted above the storm.

“Hold his head,” Lance yelled.

Sam went around the dead mare, looked down, and froze.

“Get me out from under here, you stupid nigger!”

Sam pulled the saber from its sheath of mare’s guts and debated whether to butcher the dead animal or the live one.

On the other side of the carcass, Lance chuckled dryly and said, “Nasty bugger. Least he’s still alive. That’s something. Don’t you worry, Boyo, we’ll get you out of this.”

“I vote we leave him and haul somebody else,” Sam said. Edwin sputtered. Sam clamped a palm over his mouth, carefully avoiding gnashing teeth.

Lance leaned down and lifted a muddy boot. “Sure ’n’ you could be right. His leg’s lost all color. No telling what we’d find if we got him out.”

“What do you mean if, you Irish bastard? Get me out from under here.”

“Sound’s healthy enough. What do you think,” Lance asked. “It’d be a pity to waste time getting him out, if his mouth’s the only part still working proper.”

“If you’re going to leave me, kill me,” Edwin said in a harsh whisper. “You always hated me for fucking Kathin. Wanted to fuck her yourself didn’t you, nigger?”

Sam slashed the dead mare’s intestine.

Edwin flailed about, gulping shitty water in a vain attempt to swim. “I fucked ‘em both for you,” he spat, when Sam yanked his head up by the hair. The saber hacked an equine vertebra, missing Edwin’s neck by inches.

“A quick kill’s too good for you,” Sam hissed. “I’d rather see you rot.” He silenced Edwin with his fist, then told the Irishman, “Heave to. It’ll be sundown soon, and I’m hungry enough to eat this poor damned slaughtered horse.”

Lance came around to Sam’s side of the mare, where he grabbed Edwin by his gray jacket. Sam got his shoulder under what was left of the mare, then heaved.

“Poor Johnny,” Lance said when he yanked Edwin free. “He’ll lose half of himself when regimental surgeons see him.”

Sam felt Edwin over and said, “he’s swollen bad, but his bone’s are sound.”

“They won’t notice,” Lance said. “‘Tis balmy with fatigue they all are. They’ll take one look at that gray uniform, then saw his legs off at the hip. I’ve seen it happen.”

“We’ll take him to the church instead,” Sam said pretending compassion. “If he dies there, they’ll plant him where his kind belong—in the colored graveyard.”

“There’s a God damned Rebel in my bed! Is he who you got all gussied up for, bitch?”

“He was sorely wounded,” Kathin said. “They left him here to die.”

“Not on my bed he doesn’t! I have better uses for it,” Edwin growled. He gave her chignon a wrench that tumbled her onto the bloody feather tick beside the corpse.

Her hoops upended over her face. The touch of rough hands on her skin reminded her that beneath them she was naked.

“You’re as dead as he is,” Edwin grumbled. He shoved the dead Rebel aside. “I’d get better service from a lazy whore.”

Then go to a whore, or go to hell, Kathin thought but dared not say. She clenched her fists, held her arms tight against her sides, and thought of Chris Alexander as Edwin adjusted her position. The feel of his trousers against her outer thighs made her yearn for the courage to apply her knee to the obscenity she knew he aimed in her direction, but she was unable to overcome years of denigration. She cringed when Edwin grabbed her breasts through layers of organza. Blood trickled from her bitten lip as he scrunched and mauled them while grinding his groin against her. Inch by inch he dragged hoops and organza off her face. She smelled fetid breath hot against her cheek. His tongue touched her lips, and she turned away. He pinched her right nipple, and her eyes flew open. The young Confederate’s dead eyes stared inches from her own, and Kathin envied him the oblivion she could not share.

“Look at me. God dammit! Look at me!” Edwin’s paw in her hair jerked her to face him.

Kathin squeezed her eyelids, jammed her fist against her teeth, and silently cursed her insipid weakness.

“I should have known better than to risk my hide for this,” Edwin grumbled.

He plunged. Kathin’s scream escaped around the edges of her fist.

Edwin’s full weight collapsed onto Kathin’s rigid form. Kathin brushed a trickle of moisture from her cheek, then looked up to see Megan toss a bloody poker toward the fireplace.

“When did you–?”

“Never mind that,” Megan said. “Get up and get out of here.” With Jo’s help, she yanked Edwin off the bed and slung him against the northern wall.

“What the –?” Edwin stumbled up. A trickle of blood seeped from his hairline. His appropriated Rebel trousers tangled around his knees. “You vicious slut!” He lunged at Megan and fell flat on his face.

Jo hauled him up and smashed him with a hard right to the jaw. She followed with a left uppercut that helped him pull up his britches.

“Whoosh!” Jo doubled over from a surprise punch to the gut.

Edwin withdrew his fist and tried another swing.

Kathin tried to get between them. “Stop!”

“Leave them be,” Megan shouted.

“Stop! Oh, please stop.” Kathin begged. “You’ll kill him.”

Megan sneered. “Do you care?”

Jo scooted back from a kick aimed at her groin. An instant later, her foot connected with Edwin’s head. Megan’s hands closed on his throat.

“Don’t,” Kathin whispered, pulling at Megan’s wrist.

“Why not?”

“Just don’t,” Kathin sputtered. “You’re not a murderer,” she whispered.

Megan released her hold on Edwin, and Kathin immediately regretted it when he slapped her aside then rocked Jo with a rabbit punch.

“Stop,” she shouted when his thumbs reached for Jo’s eyes.

Jo held him off with a series of right and left jabs.

“Yeah,” Megan yelled. “Hit him again!”

Kathin grabbed Jo’s arm. Edwin seized the opening and caught Jo in the gut with his knee; then his knuckles cracked against her cheekbone. Jo’s left hook jarred his chin up. She caught him with a right cross, and he reeled.

Megan grabbed his saber, raised it above her head with both hands, and shouted, “Over here!”

Edwin went for her. She brought the blade down at an angle and slashed his appropriated Rebel uniform from heart to hip.

Edwin glanced down saw his own blood, and his knees buckled.

Jo knelt over him. “He’s hardly scratched,” she said with obvious disappointment.

Edwin groaned. Megan picked up a chamber pot and bopped him on the noggin, thoroughly drenching him with its noxious contents.

Jo went to the window and raised her fist toward the glass. A brief flash of lightning revealed a cadre of Confederates struggling to free a heavily loaded wagon from axle-deep mud below the garden.

Kathin grabbed Jo’s wrist. “Wait! He’s my husband,” she added in response to the icy question in Megan’s eyes.

“He’s a snake,” Megan hissed and turned to leave.

“Wait,” Kathin called, but Megan did not stop.

Kathin felt helpless, foolish and ashamed. Looking down at Edwin, she wondered. What have you done to make her hate you so? Part of her rejoiced to see him senseless on the floor in a pool of night soil. The rest feared what would happen when he awoke. Jo touched her arm. Kathin flinched reflexively. A flash of clarity more painful than any ever felt shot through her thoughts, its brilliance more piercing than the lightning that fractured the thunderous sky. Megan always flinched from mention of Edwin’s name.

“Edwin was at the townhouse,” she whispered gagging on the words.

Jo nodded affirmation, and Kathin’s hatred for her husband plummeted to depths she could not have imagined an instant sooner. “Dear God.” Her voice was hard and cold. The storm around her was as nothing compared to the torment of guilt and rage that fermented in her brain. Jo took a half step toward her. “I have to find her,” Kathin said.

“Leave him to me,” Jason said from the doorway.

Kathin rushed to him and helped him to the bed, glad to have a man around to decide things for her. As Edwin’s wife, she had forgotten how to make decisions.

“How did you get up here?” she asked, breathless with relief.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jason said. “A lovely irony, don’t you think? Captain Edwin Amadeus Brown—captured in his own bedroom.” He turned to Jo and said, “Hand me the old rifle from the armoire, then take her downstairs. I want him to think he escaped me on his own. I can’t kill him,” he added when Jo scowled. “Sybil would make my life pure hell.”

“So instead you want to make the son of a bitch think he’s a hero,” Jo grumbled.

“He thinks that already,” Jason said and then he crinkled his nose and chuckled.

“Not many heroes report in reeking of piss and shit. Who spilled the chamber pot?”

“Megan,” Jo said with a throaty chuckle.

Jason said, “Good for her.”

Kathin sobbed, “Megan,” and raced for the stairs. She heard Jo behind her but did not look back. Megan was nowhere in the house.

Kathin hurried through the kitchen and out onto the east porch and into the rain from there. If Megan was still on Loren Farm, she was sure she knew where to find her. The door to the abandoned cellar lay open. Kathin ran toward it and stopped, heart pounding. A golden hide lay on the ground beside the door. A much smaller one lay crumpled on the steps. The crates were broken the baskets gone, and Megan was not there. A Confederate major’s hat lay on the floor. Damn him!

She returned to the house dejected and alone. Jason and Jo met her on the kitchen porch.

“I can’t find Megan,” Kathin voiced her foremost thought. “Have you seen her?”

Jason shook his head. “Edwin’s gone,” he told her as if she cared.

Jo sniggered. “Last we saw of him he was galloping off as if he had a tribe of banshees on his tail.”

“But, I can’t find Megan,” Kathin fretted.

“Don’t worry about that girl,” Jo said with confidence. “That girl’s resourceful.”

***

Hilda drove away from Jed Carlson’s still with a swaybacked bag-of-bones mule tied to the tailgate and Megan huddled in a sodden lump on the wagon seat beside her. Anne rode in the back and tried to keep their jugs from rattling. They could not be sure the Confederates had cleared the area. One Rebel suspicion of their cargo and it would be gone.

Hilda had used their need for medicinal whiskey as an excuse to force Anne to rest. They had been relieved to find that the Rebels had not raided the Carlson place, but finding Megan steeped in green corn liquor had surprised them more. Jed had been too busy guarding his aged vats to know she was anywhere near his still.

Hilda secreted the rig in the woods south of the Rebels’ Marsh Creek camp. Then she untied the mule from the tailgate and draped Megan across its back.

Anne dismounted with a jug of whiskey in each hand. “They may need this.”

“If they don’t, Megan will come morning,” Hilda said. She wished Anne had taken a sip or three.

Anne led the way through muddy fields. Hilda followed with the mule and Megan. She disliked the sound of Anne’s cough. Before my eyes, she is wasting away.

Kathin and a pair of Rebels ran to meet them as they neared the farmhouse. When she saw Megan, she shrieked like a wounded eagle. “What happened to her?” She ran anxious fingers through wet honey-blond hair. “Megan,” Kathin prodded peering at her sister’s face. “Why doesn’t she answer me?”

“She’s drunk,” Anne said disapprovingly.

“Never saw a lady drunk afore,” the baby Rebel said.

“Stuff it, Bobby.”

Hilda eyed the skinny Rebel as she pulled Megan onto her shoulder. “Too much she has seen.”

Anne said, “Take her to the cellar and sit her in the spring.”

“In the spring?” Kathin stared. “Isn’t she wet enough?”

“Wet looks good on ‘er.”

“Hush, Jo, she needs to be dry,” Kathin said. “She needs a warm bed.”

“I’ll say,” Jo agreed with a grin.

Hilda shot her a frown.

The baby Rebel skipped toward the outside cellar steps. “Give her some dry mustard. That’ll fix her.”

Anne said, “It would serve her right.” Hilda carried Megan into the cellar.

The baby Rebel danced around the icy spring. “You put ‘er in there, she’ll holler like a stuck pig.”

“Good,” said Anne. “Come, Kathin, we’ll find something warm and dry to wrap her in. Dear Lord, girl, what happened to your face?”

“Edwin came by,” Kathin muttered.

Hilda tensed. Anne set the jugs on a barrel and drew Kathin into her arms.

Megan stiffened but did not cry out when Hilda put her into the spring.

Anne nodded toward the jugs and then toward Megan. “Give her a slug when she comes around. No need to withhold it now.”

Lincoln’s Daughters of Mercy
Marjorie Barstow Greenbie
(G.P.Putnam’s Sons NY; 1944)

*** Part III ***

“No fireworks on the fourth”

Saturday July 4 1863

The Eagle Hotel

The Fourth of July dawned hot, stinking, and hazy. With the dawn came vultures and crows—raucous, obnoxious, unwelcome guests, squawking and squabbling over tidbits at an obscene banquet.

Edwin awoke disgruntled over whores gone arrogant on Rebel gold. He had arrived at the Eagle Hotel, in the dead of night, by the back door, to find that none of his regular ladies would service him. He had settled for Sam’s coffee-colored bitch, who tried to tell him she was Mignon Desirée Angelique Le Clair, the daughter of an expatriated Marquis d’France and a sixty-fourth Mandingo debutante. Edwin was not interested. He had always called her Coffee.

“Hot Coffee,” he said, smiling at the sound of his own voice. He grabbed the neckline of her dress with both hands and ripped it from throat to hem. It tore easily, and she wore nothing underneath. Edwin smiled at how well the madam understood his needs.

Angelique tried to break free. Edwin laughed and stabbed a finger into her dry hole. Using the finger as a hook, he pulled her onto the bed, where he ploughed her like a stubborn furrow, but not for long. “Damn!” He shoved her off onto the floor.

***

Angelique smiled and silently blessed the aging courtesan who had taught her how to clamp internal muscles and strip a man of his pleasure long before he had his fill. Now, while he protected his hangover with his hands, she rose with grace and aplomb and filled a mug from the pot of fresh coffee on the dresser. When she handed it to him, she barely resisted the urge to spill the scalding brew on the flaccid instrument of torture in his lap. She had heard more about him than she wanted to know from Sam, little dreaming she would ever have first-hand experience. Until now, the madam had reserved her for class clientele.

“It’s not safe here any more.”

Edwin raised his head from his hands and looked at her as if he thought she had spoken to him. Angelique inclined her head toward the Confederate major’s uniform lying on her vanity. “You better put that on. The Rebels were leaving when you got here, but they’re not gone yet. They check the rooms for Yankees every hour or so.”

“Let them come.” Edwin sounded defiant, but when someone pounded on the door he grabbed the major’s trousers and slunk into a corner. Angelique stuffed his Union captain’s uniform beneath her bed an instant before a squad of Rebels burst into the room.

“Hold it right there.” The Rebel sergeant hoisted Angelique to her feet, uniform and all.

“I’ll be a bastard’s bootblack,” the corporal behind him blurted when he saw its color.

Edwin scrambled into the Confederate major’s jacket, then gestured toward Angelique. “Want her? Turn around, Coffee. Let the boys look at you. You boys can share her if you’d like. She’s used to it.” She was not, but Edwin did not know that. Nor would he care if he did.

“I don’t fuck niggers,” the corporal said.

“Neither do I,” said Angelique.

The Rebel sergeant drew his cock and advanced.

***

Edwin grabbed the major’s hat and ran. He buttoned the stiff gray jacket as he hurried down the hall.

“Cold-assed, arrogant bitch,” he muttered to himself as he descended the carpeted stairs. “I hope they fuck her cross-eyed.”

He left the hotel and marched down West York Street with rainwater dripping from the brim of the Confederate major’s hat. By the time he clacked the townhouse knocker, his inappropriate uniform was soaked.

Lainy squealed when she saw him. “Uncle Edwin, you’ve come over to Papa’s side!”

Edwin shrugged and pushed past her into the house. “Gray seemed to be the color of the day.” He slapped the soggy hat against his thigh, then pulled his niece into a dispassionate hug. When he realized how unexpectedly good she felt against him, he drew her closer.

Lainy wriggled free. “Are you hurt?”

“As you can see I’m fine, though slightly the worse for wear.”

“Oh no,” Lainy said blushing. “You’re as handsome as ever. Gray becomes you. It matches your eyes I think. Come.” She took his hand. “Josh made fresh coffee. I’m sure Megan will be down any minute.”

“Perhaps I’ll go up and look for some dry clothes,” Edwin said.

***
Megan was in the middle of changing out of her nightdress when she heard the door to her old room open behind her.

“I’ll be finished in a minute Lainy.”

“That’s time enough,” said Edwin.

Megan turned quickly clutching her dress to her bosom.

“You look lovely, my dear. Come, let me give you a brotherly kiss.”

Bile rose in Megan’s throat. His words raised clanging echoes in her mind. The memory of Kathin’s going-away picnic churned her stomach. “You’re so much warmer than your sister,” he had said with one hand up her skirt. Now, he yanked her dress from her grasp and tossed it to the floor.

Megan stood naked before him, glaring, waiting her chance; refusing to tremble as his gaze crawled from her breasts to the joining of her thighs.

“I’m glad you’re not a prude,” Edwin slurred. “My wife’s a prude,” he added drooling as his hand slid over her left hip. “I like fire in my bed,” he said.

His breath reeked of brandy as before, but this time she was not inclined to allow him that excuse. How dare he malign Kathin that way? Megan shoved him and grabbed for her dress. “Stop!” She had yelled at him in the hayloft, but he had not listened. Now, her “stop” was little more than a whisper. There were others in the townhouse, and Megan felt ashamed.

“Stop what?” Edwin mumbled, possessively nuzzling her neck.

Megan knew that if she did not stop him now, she might never get another chance. If I give in to him again, he’ll think he owns me. “I’m not your wife,” she snarled through clenched teeth.

“I know,” Edwin muttered as he caught her in a clumsy clinch. “You’re warmer.” He stifled her protests with a soggy kiss. Megan latched onto his hair and bit his tongue. He slapped her. She fell against the door. He grabbed her and threw her backward onto the bed.

“Megan?” Josh’s tentative call filtered through the bedroom door.

Edwin lost concentration and Megan dove for his sword. That other time, she felt guilty. This time, she planned to gut him.

“Miss Hilda,” Josh Evans called into the hollow of the stairwell. “I think Miss Megan fell.”

Edwin grabbed the door and yanked it open. Josh Evans fell back against the banister as Edwin burst onto the landing. Edwin raced down the stairs and through the door Miss Hilda had just entered.

“Sneaky swine,” Miss Hilda growled as she slammed it shut behind him.

“What are you looking at?” Megan snarled at Josh. Then she gave him a clear view of her bare behind as she stalked back into the bedroom, locked the door, and quickly dressed. As she slipped from the room, she made herself a solemn promise. This time I tell her, whether she adores the beast or not.

A short time later, she left the townhouse to stumble homeward amid the maelstrom of the Confederate withdrawal. Agony was everywhere. A carriage passed her, then a surrey, followed by a conglomerate of rolling stock filled with raving remnants from the three-day battle.

“Oh God, oh God,” they cried.

“My God will no one give me a gun?”

Unable to listen, Megan left the pike and sloshed westward over once familiar fields in search of the yesterday she left behind.

“No,” Lainy screamed. “No more! It’s over!”

Another Yankee on horseback raced north across the intersection. He was nearly out of sight when a bullet lifted his crown like the lid off a worm can. When another Federal trooper rode into view, Lainy raced down the hall, yanked the front door open and yelled, “Stay back! Sharpshooter!” The rider threw her a hurried salute, hugged his horse’s neck and galloped on.

Josh tugged at Lainy’s hand. “Get in here before you get hurt,” he growled. “They’re Yankees!”

Lainy grabbed the doorframe as Josh grabbed her around the middle. “I don’t care if they’re demons from hell. I’ve had enough of death and dying.” She jerked free and returned to the doorway.

The sound of hoofbeats, another yell of “Sharpshooter!” and the Confederate rifleman got wise. His next shot chipped a notch in the doorjamb. “Sharpshooter,” Lainy yelled at the next passing rider. A bullet creased her right shoulder. “Oh damn. Sharpshooter!”

Josh grabbed her wrist and yanked her half a foot into the hallway. “Too damned sharp,” he growled. “Go tend your shoulder.”

“No.”

“Go.”

“Not now.”

“Yes now.” Josh insisted. “You’re bleeding all over the carpet.”

Lainy glanced toward the floor, then at her nicked shoulder, and then she grimaced as the flies homed in on the wound. She tossed her wilted curls to shoo them, then she returned her attention to the street. “Sharpshooter!” Lainy hollered as another bluebelly galloped through the intersection.

“All right, all right, dammit that’s enough!” Josh insisted. “I’ll yell at ’em if you’re so all-fired set on it. Go tend to that shoulder!” He pushed her toward the back of the house. “I’m gonna pay for this,” he grumbled under his breath. All Lainy heard was “Sharpshooter!” and she was satisfied.

The deluge soon made it impossible for either Josh or the sharpshooter to see. Its splatter muffled the sound of hoofbeats as, one by one, the Yankee riders raced across the unguarded intersection. Josh stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

“Come on,” he said to Lainy, who had not budged from the front hall despite his instructions. With a no-nonsense grip on her elbow, he steered her toward the kitchen.

Warm rain blew in through the open back door. Its fresh, sweet smell was too much for Lainy to resist. Friday was almost over, and she had not been out of her clothes since Tuesday night. She shook off Josh’s restraint, scrunched her all but bare hoops, and squeezed out onto the back porch. From there, she sailed down the steps and out into the middle of the sloppy yard, where she danced in happy circles, catching raindrops with her tongue and wishing she were naked.

“Come on out, Josh! It’s wonderful! It’s cool! It’s clean!”

Drenched the instant he stepped off the porch, Josh tried to grab her. Lainy scooted out of reach. “Your shoulder,” he reminded her.

“Oh, bother my shoulder. It stopped bleeding and it’s clean. See?”

She stood still long enough for him to examine her wound and frown.

“It was just a nick,” she giggled. “I’m a hero.”

“Come inside before you catch your death,” he urged. “Even heroes need to rest.”

“You rest.” Lainy giggled. “I need a bath.”

***

Megan tried to concentrate on yesterday—yesterday, which had seemed unbearable until she saw today. “Lord help us,” she prayed as soldiers and civilians carried more and still more wounded into the sanctuary. She could not remember when the church was merely crowded. Gravely wounded men now lay under the pews as well as on and above them. Corruption-soaked planks and blood-drenched straw held two and sometimes three together, toe to head and head to toe, their eyes on a level with her own. Needy eyes that dug into her soul as she searched each new face and prayed none would be familiar. Everywhere she looked, eyes clouded with death dreams begged for the right to close, while outside the constant clink-a-chink of shovels rang in the eerie stillness left by silenced guns.

Past modesty, Megan did not bother to turn away as she reached beneath her skirt to remove the petticoat she had found in the charity box at the townhouse. The strip she tore from it bound half of what was once a bearded chin.

“I’m sorry,” Megan whispered when blood seeped through the folds.

“This will help,” someone said at her elbow.

Megan looked up into Luke Conner’s patient eyes. They had become fast friends since she wrote a letter for him in another lifetime yesterday. Now, he stood at her side, a bucket of fresh water in his left hand, a second bucket hanging from the crook of his right elbow.

Megan removed the bucket from Luke’s bandaged stump and dipped a cloth into it. As she wrung out her cloth, Luke set the other bucket at her feet and followed suit. Together they pressed moisture to parched lips until they had emptied both buckets several times.

Megan staggered through the sanctuary doorway and down into the churchyard, scarcely aware of Luke until he folded her into his arms. She let her head fall forward onto his shoulder, sure she would have fainted had he not caught her. Every muscle she owned had long since passed from ache to numb. She lacked the energy to move, but she did—away from the comfort of his warmth and back into what she no longer thought of as a church.

Miss Anne stood near the basement stairway, using a thin blade to scrape corruption from a gaping shoulder and reveal healthy pink flesh beneath.

Megan gasped, “How can you?”

Miss Anne did not look up. “How can I what?”

“Never mind,” Megan said. She dipped a fistful of lint into Miss Anne’s bowl of bloody whiskey and dabbed the soldier’s raw but disinfected muscle with it. A thick hand replaced the bowl of dirty whiskey with a clean one. Megan looked up into the kindness of Miss Hilda’s eyes.

“Home you should be.”

Miss Anne blinked, then smiled at Miss Hilda’s stern expression. The blacksmith’s apron was stiff with blood, her boots forever ruined by accumulated gore. Megan had lost count of how many wounded men Miss Hilda had carried into the sanctuary and how many dead ones Sam had carried out. She tried but was unable to remember when Sam had arrived to take charge of burials at the church.

“About to keel over you look,” Miss Hilda said.

“I’m fine,” Miss Anne said in a thin and raspy voice. “I cannot rest. I have too much to do.”

“Others there are to do it,” said Miss Hilda. “Look around.”

Megan looked and saw that it was true. The room had filled with able men without her notice. Each of the surviving wounded had at least one Rebel soldier in attendance, sometimes two. A short way up the aisle, a tall, light-complexioned Confederate officer conferred with the Rebel surgeon.

“It is finished,” she heard him say. “The emplacement on Cemetery Hill is too well dug. Pickett came too late and too openly. We are withdrawing. You are to come with us. The Federals will send doctors to take your place as soon as they realize we’ve gone. You there! Pack the doctor’s instruments. He’s leaving.”

Miss Anne looked at him over her glasses. “Do you intend to simply abandon these men?”

“What in the name of all that’s holy are you doing in this hell hole?”

Megan glared. The question deserved no answer.

“Working,” Miss Anne said.

The officer stared aghast. “Working?”

“Leave them be,” the surgeon said. “This lady is as good a nurse as I’ve ever worked with. As good a doctor too,” he added with a smile.

Miss Anne accepted his compliment as her due. The officer eyed him as if he were a fugitive from Bedlam.

“This is goodbye,” the surgeon said in a deeply apologetic tone. “You’ll need this.” He handed Miss Anne his satchel. “I can get another,” he said when she would have refused. “It could be hours before the Yankees understand we’ve gone.” He laid his hand on her arm. “You’ll do fine,” he said. “You have the makings of a fine surgeon.”

“Thank you,” Miss Anne whispered as if she had a lump in her throat. “I cannot possibly leave here now,” she told Miss Hilda after the men had walked away. “Megan you go. Get food.”

“I’m not going without you,” Megan said.

“Leaving she is also,” Miss Hilda said. “More in need of food than doctors these men are, and dead on your feet you are.” She cast stern eyes on Miss Anne’s sputtered protest. “If kill yourself you must, come do it in your kitchen.”

“I’m staying,” Miss Anne insisted. “Don’t look so miserable. I promise to eat some of whatever you bring back. Hurry please. Get Megan out of here before she collapses and gives me more work to do.”

Hilda’s expression said their argument was not over. Megan stepped outside to wait. Luke joined her on the sidewalk and batted a fly away from her face.

One of the civilian ambulance drivers harrumphed. “Won’t do no good to swat,” he said. “I suspect bugs and carrion will be lords of the county for quite a while.”

“Ow!” The beardless, filthy Rebel sucked his injured finger.

Kathin used the opportunity to squiggle from her bed and dash for the door. He grabbed her wrist, and she stumbled backward. “No!”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, lady, shut up before you have all of them up here. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Kathin opened her mouth, and a slap closed it for her. “Damn, lady. I’m sorry,” the soldier claimed in a soft, gruff alto. “You forced me to do that. If you’d shut up and listen for a minute, you’d save us both a lot of trouble.”

Mollified by his apparent sincerity, Kathin rubbed her cheek and took his measure. He was no bigger than she, emaciated and unarmed. His smoke-blackened uniform was at least two sizes too big, and he could have gotten a better haircut with a butcher knife. He had a narrow, elongated face, with a pointed chin and a nose sharp enough to chop wood: Ugly to be sure, but with the tenderness of angels in divine blue eyes. “What do you want?”

“A safe place to sleep,” he said.

“There are plenty of beds in the house. Why pick mine?”

“It’s the only one without a man in it.”

Kathin grimaced. “I intend to keep it that way.”

“Fine by me.” He lay back down.

“I said I don’t want any man in my bed.”

“I heard you,” he yawned.

“So get out,” Kathin demanded.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and began unbuttoning his uniform.

“Stop! What are you doing?”

“Trying to sleep,” he said. He opened the front of his shirt.

Kathin gaped. The soldier had breasts. They looked like two fried eggs on hooks, but they were definitely breasts. No doubt about it. Kathin was thoroughly discombobulated. “God, you’re skinny.”

“It helps the uniform fit.” The skinny-ugly soldier grinned as she re-buttoned her shirt. “You ready to let me get some shuteye now?”

“Aren’t you hungry,” Kathin asked in one last effort to restore her privacy.

“No more than most,” the soldier shrugged. “I thought to have some fresh bread, but it was all ate up before it got to me. I was as sleepy as hungry, so I looked up a hole to crawl into and here I am, but I’m sure not Goldilocks.”

“And I’m no bear,” Kathin said with a nervous chuckle.

“I can see that,” the soldier said. “But now that you’ve got me good ’n’ awake, I’m near as hungry as one.”

“Stay here. I’ll bring you something.”

“I’m not wounded and I ain’t crippled,” the soldier declared. “I’ll go down and get my own.”

“You can’t go downstairs dressed like that. They’ll send you to the front.”

The soldier snickered and gazed at Kathin with blue-eyed wonder. “Where do think I got so skinny, Ninny? I’ve been at the front of every battle from Gainesville to Gettysburg.”

“But—you’re a woman!”

“You just figure that out?”

“Women aren’t soldiers.”

“Now you tell me. Good thing nobody told me that before I started shootin’ the balls off o’ Yankees. I might’ve missed a couple.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Like what? Gracious me, Ninny, you didn’t know Yankees have balls?”

“Stop calling me that! I’m not a ninny.”

“What am I supposed to call you?”

“My name is Mrs. Edwin Brown.”

“Well, do tell. Does Mr. Edwin Brown allow you to have any name of your own?”

“What?”

“What do I call you? Folks call me Jo. They think it stands for Joseph.”

“Hello Josephine. I’m Kathin.”

“Fine,” said Jo. “But I’m nobody’s Josephine. I’m Jo! Now that we’ve got all that straight, can we eat?”

Jo’s smile was as bright and friendly as her eyes. Kathin warmed to it in spite of reservations. “Are you sure you don’t want a change of clothes?”

“Don’t know,” said Jo, considering. “It’d be pleasurable to be a mite cleaner, I suppose.”

“Come with me.” Kathin led the way to the loom and the apple-green dress.

“Hey! Wait a damned minute,” Jo exclaimed when she saw it. “I said clean, not prissy. Can you imagine what a perfect stick I’d look in that? Besides which, I have no intention of retiring from Lee’s army ’til the last shot’s fired.”

“And, I had no intention of letting you wear it,” Kathin said. “It’s not even mine. It’s my sister’s, although she doesn’t know it. I don’t suppose birthday surprises matter a whole lot now.”

“Your sister must be pretty as you to rate a get-up like that,” Jo said.

Kathin smiled. “Prettier and younger. Let’s see if we can find anything for you in here.” She dug into the donation box and selected a pair of ratty jeans. They kept clothes in many sizes handy for night-visitors. These she had not yet mended. “At least they’re clean,” she said as she handed Jo the britches.

Jo put them on, then stood by while Kathin replaced a missing button on a faded denim shirt.

“This should feel better,” Kathin said after biting the thread.

“Not likely without a bath,” Jo said “but that can come later. Can we eat now?”

“Certainly. You can help me gather eggs,” Kathin said, but when they got to the chicken house, all they found were scattered feathers. There were hungry Rebels everywhere. Kathin prayed that Goldy and her calf would stay hidden. Not daring to go near the old cellar, she returned to the house empty-handed. In the kitchen she prepared what was available, then found she could not eat.

Jo sopped unleavened biscuits in gravy and wolfed them down as if nothing short of death could curb her appetite. When she ran out, they went to the parlor to tend the wounded there.

“Please retire to your rooms above,” one of the doctors told Kathin as she entered. “We will try not to inconvenience you.”

By midmorning all question of convenience vanished. Every room in the house overflowed with the shattered remains of men’s colossal king-of-the-hill game. A thickening red puddle spread beneath the Chippendale dining table. When Kathin passed through the room at lunchtime she saw four men bent over the table where another man writhed and screamed; a sixth man leaned toward him wielding a bloody saw.

Something tugged her hem. Kathin looked down and saw bandaged eyes on a face so handsome she wanted to cry. Instead, she swallowed hard, returned his sightless smile, and hurried to the side yard well, where she stuck her head beneath the spout and pumped with all her might.

***

Megan gnawed a chunk of melted candle wax to keep from gnashing her teeth. She had stared at the Trinity Church window for what seemed like hours before she realized it was dark outside. The eerie light of a dozen torches projected the scene behind her onto the glass. Union doctors had ordered every third box pew dismantled to give themselves room to work. Confederates had placed the removed boards atop the remaining pews and covered them with straw. Refugees from slaughter lay head-to-foot from entry to altar. God’s meat tossed on a butcher’s block waiting for the cleaver.

Spilled blood obscured the color of their uniforms. The differences no longer mattered. Each time a soldier shrieked for admittance into heaven or hell and got his wish, the ambulance drivers put another in his place, but there was nothing left with which to bind their wounds. Megan tried to remember what the sanctuary had looked like on Sunday. Four days ago? The memory escaped her.

“Have you nothing to do,” Miss Anne asked sharply.

The inanity of the question clawed Megan’s attention from the grizzly reflection. She twirled away from the window ready to issue a sharp retort, but one glance at Miss Anne’s face proved that unnecessary. It was obvious the comment had been a ploy.

“Brooding accomplishes nothing,” Miss Anne said. “Here.” She folded Megan’s hands over a pad and pencil. “The men are all anxious to correspond with their families, though Lord knows when we’ll be able to post the letters. Not that way,” she added when Megan turned numbly toward the entrance. A soldier with a drill knelt in the blood beneath the surgeon’s table.

“By the pulpit,” Miss Anne said as she turned Megan away.

Megan marched toward the dais. The bloody carpet squished beneath her feet, but she did not look down. Instead, she kept her eyes focused on the cross above the altar. A piece of ancient anger fell away with every forward step. Plaints from the men who lay atop the pews on either side soon became impossible to ignore.

“Water,” one called and then another.

“Please.”

“Water.”

“Please, Ma’am. Please.”

“Have you seen my Marilee?”

“Ma’am?”

A Rebel scarcely older than herself tugged at her skirt with his left hand. When she knelt beside him on the filthy floor, Megan saw that his other arm ended an inch or two below his elbow.

“Would you write a letter for me, Ma’am?” He sounded apologetic, as if ashamed to be an inconvenience. “I’d have a bit of trouble doing it myself,” he said with a rueful grin.

Megan suspected that any sympathetic comment would be unwelcome. Instead, she touched the point of the pencil to her tongue, then asked, “What would you have me write?”

“Say I’m fine,” the young man began. “No,” he corrected. “First say Dear Sally. Sally. That’s my wife.” Megan glanced up at him. “We start early in Tennessee,” he said. “Had a formal wedding, we did. Her pa painted his shotgun white.” He glanced at her expectantly. She managed a wan smile.

“Let me see,” he mused aloud. “Where was I? Oh yes. Dearest Sally, I’m fine. We’re whupping the Yankees real good. ’Scuse me Ma’am but we are.” He looked more tickled than sorry.

“Put this down.” He tapped the tablet with his bandaged stump. “We fought all day for two days so far ’n’ we’re still at it ’cause they didn’t run this time.” He winked to let Megan know that the last clause was in deference to her presumed patriotism.

“Don’t you worry none, Sally,” he continued. “I won’t be a fightin’ ’em no more. We don’t have ‘em licked yet but my trigger finger ain’t what it used to be, so I’ll be heading on home right soon.”

Megan tried to get it all down while he caught his breath. He smiled and patted her arm. Then he went on dictating lies as if he did not see the tears that slowed her hand. “Maybe I’ll get there in time for the hayin’, Sally. Only you’ll have to do a little more this time on account of I won’t be able to tie the shocks up so good no more.

“Give Luke Junior a big smooch for me and keep one for yourself,” he dictated. “I’ll be home to help ya get that other baby girl you want ’fore ya think. Sign that, Love Luke. And please, Ma’am, if you know a way, could you send it to Mrs. Sally Anne Conners, Westfork, Tennessee?”

“That I can do,” Megan whispered, grateful to him for offering a task she could accomplish, strengthened by a renewed sense of purpose.

Lainy appeared in the kitchen doorway and hollered, “Why didn’t y’all leave with Miss Hilda?”

Miss Hilda had explained that both armies were using public buildings for hospitals, and no one could talk Miss Anne out of going to Trinity Church to help. They had left right after breakfast, with Lance Flynn and a mixed load of wounded.

“We’re hightailing it now,” Buckeye said, just as a cloud of ashes filled the hall.

“The chimney’s been hit!” Sharkey yelled on his way out the door.

Megan hiked her skirts and took the first flight of stairs two at a time, climbing past men helping other men down from the upper floors. Some she recognized from the morning. Some she did not. She gave herself no time to think what that might imply. She wanted to see the battle.

On her way to Miss Anne’s sewing room, she heard a groan from the bedroom next to it. Megan ran inside, tripped over a crutch, and found an amputee. What fool carried him way up here? She tipped him from his chair and shoved him beneath the bed.

Shards of glass spattered the window seat. Megan was under the four-poster with the amputee before the ricochet strewed plaster on the dresser. Seconds later, she shimmied out, less afraid of bullets than of the man beneath the bed. His hands were fresher than his amputation, and what she had taken for a groan had more likely been a snore.

The Union guns joined the cannonade when she was halfway down the stairs. She raced Lainy down the hall and down the cellar steps. At first, she thought the cellar was empty; then she spotted one Rebel boy snoozing in the corner. Lainy wilted to the cold dirt floor beside him and stuck her fingers in her ears.

Megan pulled Lainy’s hands away from her ears and shouted, “Sing! Sing as loud as you can.” Together, with loud and trembling voices, they sang every song they knew in the hope that the music would drown the roar of the deadly duet outside. Or, at least make it easier to bear.

The young Rebel added a lilting tenor to the second chorus of Lorena. “Josh Evans,” he said his name was when Lainy quizzed him between fusillades.

Megan catnapped, hearing everything, reacting to nothing, while Josh and Lainy talked. Not of war…nor death…nor dying. They talked of life…and home…and food. Mostly food. Their talk of food lured Megan to the kitchen.

Josh was asleep with his head on Lainy’s lap when she returned with the remains of yesterday’s beans and ham. Belatedly noticing the rags that bound his feet, the girls decided to try making him more comfortable. Megan unwound the outer layers with ease, but the inner layers reeked and stuck. Lainy dipped water from the spring and used it to soak the putrid rags loose. Josh groaned but did not flinch from the icy chill, nor did he awaken. Megan wondered. How can anyone get that tired?

When Lainy peeled off the last bit of rag, Megan took one quick look at Josh’s festered feet, then dashed up four flights of stairs to snatch a pair of clean white stockings from Miss Hilda’s bureau drawer. On her way back, she detoured through the kitchen for a tub of lard, which Lainy took from her the instant she reached the basement.

“Mama,” Josh muttered in his sleep as Lainy greased his tortured feet. When she finished, he loosed a contented sigh and curled into a little-boy coil on the floor. Megan cuddled his feet in clean white wool while Lainy wrapped herself around him, humming lullabies.

***

The slaughter in the basin continued unabated. Vast numbers of walking wounded staggered to the rear. Behind Cemetery Ridge, ambulance after ambulance careened toward town. Lance Flynn crawled from under a wagon to help Hilda quiet her fractious team. Hundreds of wounded men hoisted themselves onto blood-drenched tailgates. Hundreds of others sat where they collapsed.

Hilda made countless overloaded trips to beleaguered churches. She came to hate the lulls between bombardments. Whenever the guns got quiet, she could hear the screams and curses of the thousands still trapped on the bloody field.

By late afternoon, musketry encircled the cemetery side of Culp’s Hill. By dusk, its crest seemed ablaze with what looked like a million metallic fireflies doing a ritual mating dance.

Hilda drove away from Trinity Church in twilight, so tired she had to lean on her whip to remain upright. She tasted acid as the Rebel vise around the old picnic ground tightened and closed. As she made her last round trip of the day, the lights atop Culp’s Hill went out as if snuffed by the hand of God.

Flashes of brightness blinked out all over the sinkhole of man’s stupidity. Gradually, battery after battery shut down in deference to gathering darkness. The ping and crackle of war toys dwindled. The sulfur stink remained. Hilda drove back to town beneath a bright full moon, with a full and raving load.

* * *

Megan opened her eyes and blinked. It took her several moments to realize that she had been awakened by the quiet. Lainy and Josh slept spooned together like twins in a cradle. She did not disturb them. Instead, she went to the kitchen and packed two baskets full of bread and apple butter. She left the townhouse with the handle of a food-heavy basket tucked in the crook of each elbow.

She felt like Little Red Riding Hood in a forest of wolves as she picked her way toward the junction along the uneven brick sidewalk. The woods, represented by the dark areas between houses, threatened ominously. The Confederates were everywhere. She swerved to avoid a clutter of Union corpses, and she wished she had a free hand with which to hold her nose. Their combined stench made it obvious that they had lain unattended since the first battle. Was it yesterday morning?

“Let me help you with those baskets, Pretty.”

Megan jerked away from the leering Rebel who latched on to one of her baskets. Eyeing him caustically, she let the handle of the other basket slide to her left hand. She did not blink as she tightened her grip. “Let go!” Megan swung the basket at his head, not caring if it spilled.

“Hold on there!” A neatly uniformed Confederate officer hurried toward them. “Trouble, Miss?”

His disreputable compatriot did not hang around for a confrontation. By the time the young officer reached Megan’s side, her harasser had vanished. “May I help you, Miss?” the newcomer offered.

“You have,” Megan said. “You scared the other one off.”

“My pleasure, Miss. You shouldn’t be wandering about alone. I’ll escort you to your home.”

“I’m not on my way home thank you. I’m taking food to the men at the Seminary.”

“I’d be proud to take it there for you.”

“No!” Megan hugged both basket handles to her breast.

“I wouldn’t take them for myself,” he assured her. “Let me escort you home, then I’ll take the baskets to the seminary, I promise you.”

“Thank you, no,” she said. The past thirty six hours had taught her that no man in uniform could be trusted anywhere near a biscuit. “Please. Let me pass.”

The officer was slow to step aside. “I really should accompany you.”

“I assure you I will be perfectly safe.”

She was several feet closer to the junction when the man called after her.“Don’t go past the entry, Miss! A field hospital’s no place for a lady.”

“Don’t go past the entry!” Megan stamped across the junction mumbling to herself. “A field hospital’s no place for a lady. Ha! Where does he think I’ve been for the last twelve hours, trembling in an empty cellar?”

She bypassed the Confederate tents and headed straight for the Seminary’s main building. A Rebel sentry stopped her at the foot of the steps. “I’ve brought comforts for the wounded,” she informed him.

He nodded tiredly and reached for the baskets.

“No! I’ll distribute them myself.”

“Sorry, Miss. I can’t let you do that. What’s in here’s not fit for a lady’s gentle nature.”
“Lady lady lady,” Megan chanted disgustedly. “Lady, I’m hungry. Lady, I’m hurt. Lady, would you write a letter for me? Lady, where can I bury my friend? I’ve heard enough “lady, lady” for a lifetime. I’m not Jason Mercer’s useless daughter. I’ve contended with filth and corruption and empty bellies ’til I’m sick, and most will die anyway. My hands are a contagion of blisters, but I can still roll biscuit dough. I come here tired as I am with good clean food, and you dare tell me I can’t go inside? You won’t allow me to distribute it to the wounded because I’m too delicate? Too refined? You want the food for yourself, that’s all. I wouldn’t trust you with a crumb, much less two full baskets.”

“You can trust me.”

Megan whirled so fast she rapped Chris with one of her baskets. “Trust you? First I heard of you, you were a thief. Or were the boots you’ve got on offered freely?”

Chris reached for the baskets. “Let me take those inside for you.”

“I can take them myself,” Megan insisted. though she was weakening. “I’m not helpless.”

“Of course you’re not,” he said, “but you are tired. You just said so. Rest a bit. I won’t be long.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Wait here. That was not a request, Miss Loren.”

More tired than she cared to admit, Megan relinquished her baskets. While Chris was gone, she leaned against the stone banister, painfully aware of stares from every side. They made her feel like a harlot on display. She was relieved when Chris returned, although she would not admit it even to herself.

“Miss Loren,” he said in a most formal tone. “Allow me to see you to your quarters. With your permission, Sir.”

The Confederate officer to whom he spoke appraised Megan from the seminary doorway. She covered her breasts. Chris took her arm and ushered her away. The instant they rounded the northeast corner of the building, she pulled away.

“Not just yet,” Chris said, drawing her into the shadows. “Why did you come? You should have known they wouldn’t let you in.”

“I didn’t come looking for you if that’s what you think.”

Chris looked like a caught little boy. Honestly! The conceit men have!

“I’d better get you back to the townhouse,” he said when she moved away.

“That will not be necessary. I can get back just fine without your help.”

Chris chuckled, and Megan stiffened. “I’m sure you can,” he said, “but I need to talk to your sister.”

“So go talk to her,” Megan snapped. Chris double-stepped when she picked up her pace.

“Kathin isn’t at the townhouse?”

“No, Kathin isn’t at the townhouse,” Megan mocked. “What’s your interest in Kathin anyway?”

“I need to talk to her.”

“You know she’s married?”

“Of course I know she’s married, and I can tell how well her husband treats her from the way she acts.” He sounded irritated. “Is Mrs. Mercer at the townhouse?”

“Mrs. Colonel Mercer is at her father’s home in Philadelphia. Of what possible business could that be of yours?”
“None whatsoever,” Chris said. “As long as I’m this close I may as well pay my respects to Miss Anne.”

“She’s not here either,” Megan said as they approached the stoop. “She’s at Trinity Church, and Miss Hilda’s probably with her.”

She cranked the doorbell. The door swung open. Lainy stood framed in the doorway. Josh Evans stepped into sight beside her. Chris tipped his hat.

“Miss Mercer. Good to see you’re not alone here.”

Josh drew Lainy close against his side. Chris turned to Megan.

“Which one’s Trinity Church.”

“I’ll take you there,” Megan said, and this time he did not argue.

They found Miss Anne kneeling on the altar, applying a compress to the forehead of a gray-faced Virginian. Chris pulled her to her feet.

“Let go of me! I’m not finished.”

“But he is.” Chris enfolded the tiny woman in his arms and pressed her head against his shoulder. Behind her, convalescents carried out the body. “Easy,” Chris whispered. “You need to go.”

Miss Anne pushed him away. “I’ve heard that lecture.”

“Colonel Mercer’s wounded,” Chris said.

Megan gawked. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“I’ll go to him at once,” Miss Anne said. “Lainy should not have to cope with that alone.”

“He’s not with Lainy,” Chris said. “He’s at the Seminary. He’s lost a foot. I offered to take him to the townhouse, but he refused.”

Megan scanned the sanctuary and realized Miss Anne had protected her from the worst of it. “You can’t possibly mean to bring him here.”

“No,” Chris said. “He wants to go to Loren Farm, but Kathin’s there alone. Mrs. Brown,” he corrected himself in response to the arch of Megan’s brow.

“Kathin’s not alone,” she said.

Chris patronized her with a glance, then turned to Miss Anne. “Kathin’s not alone, and that’s the problem. She needs you.”

Miss Anne gestured around her. “So do they. They need you too, Megan. Take Colonel Mercer to Loren Farm,” she told Chris. “Kathin’s stronger than she thinks.”