Slaves of Obsession

5

HESTER AND MERRIT left Washington and set out on the journey towards Bull Run. The immediacy of war overtook even personal tragedy, and perhaps Merrit at least found it easier for a few hours to think of the small, practical difference she could make to the scores of men who would be wounded, rather than fill her mind with what had happened in the warehouse yard in London.

They traveled at the best speed they could make out through the streets and then the strange, open patches where one day the city might stretch, across the Long Bridge over the river to the now almost deserted camps in Alexandria. The men here were those wounded in earlier skirmishes to the south and west, and the numerous sick with fevers, typhoid and the dysentery that plagued all such groups of people where there were no sanitary arrangements. Here it was even worse than it might have been in a cooler climate, or among men with military training. These were raw recruits with no knowledge of how to take the smallest precautions against disease, lice, or poisoning from spoiled or contaminated food and water. Each man was responsible for cooking his own provisions, which were given him in bulk. Most of them had no idea how to ration them so they lasted, and very little notion of how to cook.

Hester passed through trying not to stop and recognize everything. There was so much needless suffering, and the stench of it assailed her as they joggled over the rough track in the stifling heat, choked by the dust of those ahead of them. She heard the groans of distress, and fury mounted inside her at the agony she could picture in her mind as vividly as if Scutari and the dying there were only yesterday. She was clenched up inside, all her muscles locked tight, her body aching from the tension of it, her mind trying not to picture it, and failing.

Merrit sat beside her in silence. Whatever her thoughts were, she did not voice them. She was white-faced, her eyes on the road even though it was Hester who drove the cart. She might have been thinking of the battlefield ahead, wondering and fearful of what they would find, whether they had supplies remotely fit for the task, whether her own courage would be good enough, her nerve steady, her knowledge adequate. Or she might have been remembering her furious parting with her father and the things she had said to him which could not now be taken back. It was too late to say she was sorry, that she had not really meant it, or even that for all their differences she loved him, and that her love was far greater; it was lifelong, part of who she was. Or perhaps she was thinking of her mother and the grief that must now be consuming her.

Or maybe she wondered what had happened in the warehouse yard, and what had been Lyman Breeland’s part in it. That was assuming she did not know. And Hester could not believe she did.

The noonday heat was almost unbearable. It was over ninety even in the shade. What it was in the glare of the dust-choked road could not even be guessed.

They drove all day, stopping only as was necessary to rest the horse and allow the animal to cool itself in the shade of roadside trees, and to take a little water. They had to watch carefully that neither it nor they drank too much. They did not speak, except of the other traffic bent on the same errand as themselves, or how much longer the journey would be and where they would finally settle.

Once Merrit looked as if she were going to broach the subject of Breeland’s honor again. She stood on a patch of withered grass, swatting away the tiny, black thunder flies that irritated all the time. But at the last minute she changed her mind, and spoke of the outcome of the battle instead.

“I suppose the Union will win.…” It was not quite a question. “What happens to the wounded of the side that loses?”

There was no point in indulging in euphemisms. The truth would be apparent within hours. To be prepared for it at least reduced the paralysis of shock, if not the horror.

“It depends how fast the battle travels,” Hester replied. “With cavalry it moves on and leaves them. They help each other as they can. With infantry it goes only as fast as a man can run. Everyone does his best to stagger away, to carry others, to find wagons or carts or anything else to move those who can’t walk.”

Merrit swallowed. Other wagons were passing along the road, dust swirling up behind them. “And the dead?” she asked.

Memory washed over Hester with such power for a moment that her vision blurred and a wave of grief and nausea engulfed her. She was back in the Crimea, stumbling across the floor of the valley strewn with bodies of the dead and dying after the massacre of the Light Brigade, the earth trampled and soaked with blood, the smell of blood in the air, clogging her nose and throat, the sounds of agony all around her. She was helpless with the enormity of it. She could feel the tears running down her face again, and the hysteria and despair.

“Mrs. Monk!” Merrit’s voice brought her back to the dust and sweat of the moment, to Virginia, and to the battle yet to happen.

“Yes … I’m sorry.”

“What happens to the dead?” Merrit’s voice shook now, as if she knew the answer in her heart.

“Sometimes they’re buried,” Hester said huskily. “You do if you can. But the living are always more important.”

Merrit turned away and went to fetch the horse. There were no more questions to which she wanted to know the answers, except the simple, practical ones of how to harness a horse, of which she had no idea.

They reached the small town of Centreville at dusk. It was no more than a stone church, a hotel and a few houses lying between five and six miles from Bull Run Creek and Henry Hill beyond it.

Hester was exhausted and certainly aware of how dirty she was, and she knew Merrit must feel the same, only she would be far less accustomed to it. But the girl had a fever of enthusiasm for the Union cause to spur her on, and if she wondered about Lyman Breeland even for a moment, it did not show in the deliberation with which she greeted the other women who had come to share in the work and offer their help also, or the few men from the army who were detailed off for medical duties.

They had already turned the church into a hospital, and other buildings also, and seen their first casualties from earlier, brief engagements. The last of those who could be moved were being put into ambulances to be taken to Fair-Fax Station, seven miles away, and from there to Alexandria.

A tall, slender woman with dark hair seemed to be in charge. There was a moment when she and Hester came face-to-face, having given conflicting orders on the storage of supplies.

“And who are you, may I ask?” the woman said abruptly.

“Hester Monk. I nursed in the Crimea, with Florence Nightingale. I thought I could be of help.…”

The anger in the woman’s face melted away. “Thank you,” she said simply. “General MacDowell’s men have been scouting the battlefield all day. I think they will probably attack about dawn. They cannot all be here yet, but they will be by then, or soon after.”

“That’s if they are to attack at first light,” Hester said quietly. “We had better get our rest so we have our strength to do what is necessary then.”

“Do you think …” The woman stopped. There was a moment’s blank fear in her face as she realized the reality was only hours away. Then her courage reasserted itself and the determination was back. There was only the slightest tremor in her voice when she continued. “We cannot rest until we are certain we have done all we can. Our men will be marching through the night. How can they have confidence in us if they find us asleep?”

“Post a watch,” Hester said simply. “Idealism has its place, and morale, but common sense is what will keep us going. We will need all our strength tomorrow, believe me. We will have to be working long after the battle itself is won or lost. For us that is only the beginning. Even the longest battle is very short, compared with the aftermath.”

The woman hesitated.

Merrit came into the room, her face white, her hair straggling out of its pins; she had tied it back with a torn kerchief. She looked dizzy with exhaustion.

“We need rest,” Hester said. “Tired people make mistakes, and our errors could cost soldiers their lives. What’s your name?”

“Emma.”

“There’s nothing more we can do now. We have lint, adhesive plasters, bandages, brandy, canteens of water, and instruments to hand. Now we need the strength to use them, and a steady hand.”

Emma conceded, and in weary gratitude they ate a little, drank from the water canteens, and settled in for what was left of the short night. Hester lay next to Merrit, and knew that she was not asleep. After a little while she heard her crying quietly. She did not touch her. Merrit needed to weep, and privacy was best. Hester hoped if anyone else were awake and heard her they would take it for fear and leave her to conquer it without the embarrassment of being noticed.

Monk and Trace also heard word that battle was bound to commence on Sunday, the twenty-first of July, and that the last of the volunteers and supplies had gone out to Centreville and the other tiny settlements near Manassas Junction, ready to do all they could to help.

They were in the street just outside the Willard Hotel. People were shouting. A man ran out of the foyer, waving his hat in the air. Two women clung to each other, sobbing.

“Damnation!” Trace said vehemently. “Now there’s no chance of getting Breeland before the fighting. It’ll be the devil’s own job to find him. He could be wounded and taken back to one of the field hospitals, or even evacuated back here.”

“There was never any chance of getting him before the battle,” Monk said realistically. “Chaos is our friend, not our enemy. And if he’s injured we’ll just have to leave him behind. If he’s killed, it hardly matters. Except it will be harder to blacken the name of a man who died fighting for his beliefs, whatever they were.”

Trace stared at him. “You’re a pragmatic devil, aren’t you. Our nation is about to tear itself apart, and you can be as cold as one of your English summers.”

Monk smiled at him, a wry baring of the teeth.

“Better than this suffocation!” he retorted. “I’ll recover from a cold in the head faster than from malaria.”

Trace sighed and smiled back, but his expression was shaky, too close to weeping.

A man careered by on horseback, shouting something unintelligible, sending up a cloud of dust.

Monk stiffened. “Our best chance of getting Breeland is if we can find him in the battlefield and take him by force, as if we were Confederates capturing a Union officer. No one will think anything odd of it, and from the fancy dress party of uniforms you’ve got, no one will know who anybody else is anyway! You could probably be joined by ancient Greeks and Romans without causing a stir, from what I’ve seen. You’ve already got Scots with kilts, French Zouaves in every color of the rainbow, not to mention sashes around the waist and everything on their heads from a turban to a fez!”

“They were supposed to be in gray,” Trace said with a shake of his head. “And the Union in blue. God! What a mess! We’ll be shooting friends and foes alike.”

Monk wished desperately that he could offer any comfort. If it had been England fighting its own he would not know how to bear it. There was nothing good or hopeful to say, nothing to ease the terrible truth. To try would be to show that he did not understand—or worse, that he did not care.

They took horses—there were no more carts or carriages to be hired—and rode through the night towards Manassas, stopping only for a short while to rest. The knowledge of what lay ahead prevented anything but the most fitful sleep.

By early Sunday morning just before dawn they passed columns of troops marching at double speed, others at a full run. Monk was horrified to see their sweating bodies stumbling along, some with haggard faces, gasping for breath in air already hot and clinging in the throat, thick with tiny flies.

Some men even threw away their blankets and haversacks, and the roadside was strewn with dropped equipment. Later, as the sky paled in the east and they got closer to the little river known as Bull Run, there were exhausted men tripped or fallen and simply lying, trying to regather some strength before they should be called upon to load their weapons and charge the enemy. Many of them had taken off their boots and socks, and their feet were rubbed raw and bleeding. Monk had heard at least one officer trying to get the men to slow down, but they were constantly pressed forward by those behind and had no choice but to keep moving. He could see disaster closing in on them as inevitably as the heat of the coming day.

Monk started as he heard the sharp report of a thirty-pounder gun firing three rounds, and he judged it to be on the side of the river he was on and aimed across to the other, close to a beautiful double-arched stone bridge which took the main turnpike over the Bull Run. It was the signal for the battle to begin.

He looked at Trace beside him, sitting half slumped in the saddle, his legs covered with dust, his horse’s flanks sweating. This would be the first pitched battle between the Union and the Confederacy; the die was cast forever, no more skirmishes—this was war irrevocable.

Monk searched Trace’s features and saw no anger, no hatred, no excitement, only an inner exhaustion of the emotions and a sense that somehow he had failed to grasp the vital thing which could have prevented this, and now it was too late.

Again Monk tried to imagine how he would feel if this were England, if these rolling hills and valleys dotted with copses of trees and small settlements were the older, greener hillsides he was familiar with. It was Northumberland he saw in his mind, the sweep of the high, bare moors, heather-covered in late summer, the wind-driven clouds, the farms huddled in the lea, stone walls dividing the fields, stone bridges like the one crossing the creek below them, the long line of the coast and the bright water beyond.

If it were his own land at war with itself it would wound him so the pain would never heal.

Behind them more men were drawing up and being mustered into formation, ready to attack. There were carts and wagons rigged up as ambulances. They had passed pointed-roofed tents that would serve as field hospitals, and seen men and women, white-faced, trying to think of anything more they could do to be ready for the wounded. To Monk it had an air of farce about it. Could these tens of thousands of men really be waiting to slaughter each other, men who were of the same blood and the same language, who had created a country out of the wilderness, founded on the same ideals?

The tension was gathering. Men were on the move, as they had been since reveille had been sounded at two in the morning, but in the dark few had been able to gather themselves, their weapons and equipment, and form into any sort of order.

Hester waited in an agony of suspense as she heard the gunfire in the distance. Merrit kept glancing towards the door of the church where they were waiting for the first wounded. Nine o’clock passed. A few men were brought in, half carried, half supported. The military surgeon took out a ball from one man’s shoulder, another’s leg. Now and then word came of the fighting.

“Can’t take the Stone Bridge!” one wounded man gasped, his hand clutching his other arm, blood streaming through his fingers. “Rebels have got a hell of a force there.” Hester judged him to be about twenty, his face gray with exhaustion, eyes wide and fixed. The surgeon was busy with someone else.

“Come and we’ll bind that up for you,” she said gently, taking him by the other arm and guiding him to a chair where she could reach him easily. “Get me water,” she said over her shoulder to Merrit. “And some for him to drink too.”

“There’s thousands of them!” the man went on, staring at Hester. “Our boys are dying … all over the ground, they are. You can smell blood in the air. I stood on … someone’s …” He could not finish.

Hester knew what he meant. She had walked on battlefields where dismembered bodies lay frozen in a last horror, human beings torn or blown apart. She had wanted never to see it again, never to allow it back into her mind. She turned away from his face, and found her hands shaking as she cut his sleeve off and exposed the flesh of the wound. It was mangled and bleeding heavily, but as far as she could judge the bone was untouched, and it was certainly not arterial bleeding, or he would not still be alive, let alone able to have staggered to the church. The main thing was to keep the wound clean and remove the shot. She had seen gangrene too often. The smell was one she could never forget. It was worse than death, a living necrosis.

“It’ll be all right.” She meant to say it strongly, reassuringly, soothe away his fear, but her voice was wobbly, as if she herself were terrified. Her hands worked automatically. They had done it so many times before, probing delicately with tweezers, trying not to hurt and knowing that it was agony, searching to find the little piece of metal that had caused such damage to living tissue, trying to be certain she had it all. Some of them fragmented, leaving behind poisonous shards. She had to work quickly, for pain, or shock which could kill, and before too much blood was lost. But equally she had to be sure.

And while she was working her mind was caught in a web of nightmare memory until she could hear the rats’ feet as if they were around her again, scuttering on the floor, their fat bodies plopping off the walls, their squeaking to each other. She could smell the human waste, feel its texture under her feet on the boards overrun with it, from men too weak to move, bodies emaciated from starvation and dysentery or cholera. She could see their faces, hollow-eyed, knowing they were dying, hear their voices as they spoke of what they loved, tried to tell each other it was worth it, joked about the tomorrows they knew would never come, denied the rage they had so much cause, so much right, to feel at their betrayal by ignorance and stupidity.

She could remember some of them individually: a fair-haired lieutenant who had lost a leg and died of gangrene, a Welsh boy who had loved his home and his dog, and talked of them until others told him to be quiet and teased him about it. He had died of cholera.

There were others, countless men who had perished one way or another. Most of them had been brave, hiding their horror and their fear. Some had been shamed into silence; to others it came naturally. She had felt for all of them.

She had thought that the present, her love for Monk, all the causes and the issues there were to fight now, the puzzles, the people who filled her life, had healed the past over in forgetting.

But the dust, the blood, the smell of canvas and wine and vinegar, the knowledge of pain, had brought it back again with a vividness that left her shaking, bewildered, more drenched with horror than those new to it, like Merrit, who had barely guessed at what was to come. The sweat was running down Hester’s body inside her clothes and turning cold, even in the suffocating, airless heat.

She was terrified. She could not cope, not again. She had done her share of this, seen too much already!

She found the shot and drew it out; it came followed by a gush of blood. For an instant she froze. She could not bear to watch one more person die! This was not her war. It was all monumentally stupid, a terrible madness risen from the darkness of hell. It must be stopped. She should rush outside, now, and scream at them until they put away the guns and saw the humanity in all their faces, every one, the sameness, not the difference, saw their own reflections in the enemy’s eyes and knew themselves in it all!

But as her mind was racing, her fingers were stitching the wound, reaching for bandages, pads, binding it up, testing that the dressing was not too tight, calling for a little wine to mix with the water. She heard herself comforting the man, telling him what to do now, how to look after the wound, and to get it dressed again when he reached Alexandria, or wherever he would be shipped.

She heard his voice replying, steadier than before, stronger. She watched him climb to his feet and stagger away, supported by an orderly, turning to smile before he left the tent.

More wounded were brought in. She helped fetch, roll bandages, hold instruments and bottles, carry things, lift people, speak to them, ease their fear or their pain.

News came in of the battle. Much of it meant little to Hester or to Merrit, neither of whom knew the area, but whether it was good or ill was easily read on the faces of those who did.

Some time after eleven the surgeon came in, white-faced, his uniform blouse covered with blood. He stopped abruptly when he saw Hester.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, his voice sliding up close to hysteria.

She stood up from the man whose wound she had just finished binding. She turned towards the surgeon and saw the fear in his eyes. He was not more than thirty and she knew that nothing in his life had prepared him for this.

“I’m a nurse,” she said steadily. “I’ve seen war before.”

“Gunshot … wounds?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“More Rebel troops have arrived on Matthews Hill,” he said, watching her. “There are a lot more wounded coming in. We’ve got to get them out of here.”

She nodded.

He did not know what to say. He was foundering in circumstances beyond his skill or imagination. He was grateful for any help at all, even from a woman. He did not question it.

An hour later a man with a badly shattered arm told them with a smile through his agony that Sherman had crossed the Bull Run River and the Rebels were pulling back to Henry Hill. There was a cheer, mostly through gritted teeth, from the other wounded men.

Hester glanced across at Merrit, the front of her dress wrinkled and smeared with blood, and saw her smile. The girl’s eyes brightened for a moment, and then she turned back to pass more bandages to the surgeon, who had barely taken time to look up at the news.

During the next hour the wounded grew fewer. The surgeon relaxed a trifle and sat down for a few moments, taking time for a drink of water and wiping his hand across his brow. He smiled ruefully at Merrit, who had been working most closely with him.

“Looks like we’re doing well,” he said with a lift in his voice. “We’ll drive them back. They’ll know they’ve had a battle. Maybe they’ll think better of it, eh?”

Merrit pushed her hair off her brow and repositioned a few of her pins.

“It’s a hard price to pay though, isn’t it!”

Hester could still hear the gunfire, cannon and rifles in the distance. She felt a sickness creeping through her. She wanted to escape, to find some way of refusing to believe, to feel anymore, to be involved in it at all. She understood very clearly why people go mad. Sometimes it is the only way to survive the unbearable when all other flight has been cut off. When the body cannot remove itself, and emotions cannot be deadened, then the mind simply refuses to accept reality.

She walked away a moment before speaking. If she waited too long she might not do it at all.

“What?” The surgeon turned to her, his voice incredulous.

She heard her answer hollowly, as if it were someone else speaking, disembodied. “They are still fighting. Can’t you hear the gunfire?”

“Yes … it seems farther away … I think,” he replied. “Our boys are doing well … hardly any wounded, and those are slight.”

“It means the wounded haven’t been brought,” she corrected him. “Or there are too many dead. The fighting is too heavy for anyone to leave and care for them.” She saw the denial in his face. “We must go and do what we can.”

It was definitely fear she saw in his eyes, perhaps not of injury or death to himself, more probably of other people’s pain and of his own inability to help. She knew exactly what it was like; it churned in her own stomach and made her feel sick and weak. The only thing that would be worse was the hell of living with failure afterwards. She had seen it in men who believed themselves cowards, truly or falsely.

She turned towards the door. “We need to take water, bandages, instruments, all we can carry.” She did not try to persuade him. It was not a time for many words. She was going. He could follow or not.

Outside she met a soldier who was climbing into a blood-spattered ambulance.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Sudley Church,” he replied. “It’s about eight miles away … nearer where the fighting is now.”

“Wait!” Hester ordered. “We’re coming!” And she ran back inside to get Merrit. The surgeon was still busy trying to evacuate the last of the wounded.

Merrit came with her, carrying as many canteens as she could manage. They scrambled up into the ambulance and set out the eight miles to Sudley.

The heat was like a furnace; the glare of the sun hurt the eyes. Clouds of dust and gunpowder marked easily where the fighting was densest, on a rise beyond the river, whose course was well marked by the trees along the banks.

It took them over an hour, and Hester got off at least a mile before the hospital, carrying half a dozen canteens and setting out to reach the men still lying where they had fallen.

She passed broken carts and wagons, a few wounded horses, but there was very little cavalry. There were shattered weapons lying in the grass. She saw one which had obviously exploded; its owner was dead a couple of yards away, his face blackened, the ground dark with blood. Beside him others lay wounded.

She swore blindly at the ignorance and incompetence which had sent young men into battle with guns that were so old and ill-made they slaughtered the users. The irony brought tears of helplessness to her eyes. Was she really sure it would be better if they fired properly, and killed whoever was in their sights instead? Guns were created to kill, to maim, cripple, disfigure, cause pain and fear. It was their purpose.

The firing ahead was very heavy. The sound of grape and canister being shot from cannon screamed through the air. She could clearly see the lines of men, blue-gray against the parched grass, half obscured by dust and gun smoke. Battle standards were high above them, hanging limply in the hot air. It must be after three o’clock. Sudley Church was a few hundred yards away.

She passed more shattered carts, guns, bodies of the dead. The ground was red with blood. One man was lying half propped against a caisson, his abdomen ripped open and his intestines bulging out over his torn and bloody thighs. Incredibly, his eyes were open; he was alive.

This was what she hated most, worse than the dead, those still in agony and horror, watching their own blood pour away, knowing they were dying and helpless to do anything about it. She wanted to walk on, pretend she had not seen, wipe it out of her memory. But of course she could not. It would have been easier to put a bullet through his head and stop the pain.

She bent down in front of him.

“There ain’t nothin’ you can do for me, ma’am,” he said through dry lips. “There’s plenty o’ fellows further on.…”

“You first,” she answered softly. Then she lowered her eyes to his dreadful wound and the hands clenched over it, as if they could actually do something.

Perhaps she could? It seemed to be the outer flesh which was torn; his actual organs looked undamaged. She could barely see for the dirt and blood.

She put down the canteens of water and took out the first roll of bandages. She poured water onto a pad, and a little wine, and began to unclench his hands and wash the dirt off the pale flesh of his intestine. She tried in her mind to separate it from the live man watching her, to think only of tiny detail, of the little grains of earth, sand, the oozes of blood, to keep it all clean and try to place it where it should be in the cavity of his body.

For a few moments she was even unaware of the heat burning her skin, the sweat dripping on her face, under her arms and down the hollow between her breasts. She moved as quickly as she could; time was short. He needed to be carried from here to Sudley Church, and then Fairfax or Alexandria. She refused to think of failure, that he might die here in the heat and sound of gunfire before she was even finished. She refused to think of the other men within a stone’s throw of her who were in as much pain, perhaps dying as she knelt here, simply because there was no one to help them. She could do only one thing at a time, if she were to do it well enough for it to matter.

She was nearly finished. Another moment.

The gunfire in the distance was growing heavier. She was aware of people passing her, of voices and cries and the bump of a cart over the dry ruts of the ground.

She looked up at the man’s face, sick with dread that he might already be dead and that she had been laboring blindly, refusing to see the truth. The sweat was cold on her skin for an instant, then hot. He was staring back at her. His eyes were sunken in his head with shock and the sweat was dry on his cheeks, but he was definitely alive.

She smiled at him, placing a clean cloth over the awful wound. She had nothing with her with which to stitch it. She picked up the canteen she had been using and moistened a new cloth and held it to his lips. After a moment she gently washed his face. It served no real purpose, except to comfort, and perhaps to give some kind of dignity, a shred of hope, an acknowledgment that he was still there, and his feelings mattered, urgent and individual.

“Now we need someone to move you,” she told him. “You’ll be all right. A surgeon will sew and bandage it. It’ll take a while to heal, but it will. Just keep it clean … all the time.”

“Yes, ma’am …” His voice was faint, his mouth dry. “Thank you …” He trailed off, but his meaning was in his eyes, not that she needed it. The reward was in the doing, and in the hope. There was a little less horror and, if he was lucky, another life not destroyed.

She stood up awkwardly, her muscles locked for a moment, a trifle dizzy in the heat. Then she looked around for someone to help them. There was a soldier with a broken arm, another with blood splattered down his chest but apparently still able to walk. After a moment she saw Merrit on her way back from Sudley Church, dirty, bloodstained, staggering along under a weight of water canteens. She stooped every now and then to help the wounded or to look at someone and see whether he was already dead and beyond her power to aid.

Hester told the man not to move, under any circumstance, and picking up her skirts she ran and stumbled across the rough turf to Merrit, calling out as she went.

Merrit turned, her face twisted with fear and exhaustion, then she recognized Hester and came to her at a run, jumping over the rough tussocks of grass.

Briefly Hester told her about the man with the abdominal injury, and the necessity of finding some kind of transport to take him and any other wounded they could carry to the church.

“Yes,” Merrit said with a gulp. “Yes … I’ll …” She stopped. There was panic barely concealed in her eyes. All the brave words were absurd now, irrelevances from another life. Nothing could have prepared her for the reality. Hester could see that she wanted to say so, to deny the things she had said before. She needed Hester to know what she felt, to acknowledge the difference of everything.

Hester smiled at her, a tiny rueful gesture. There was no time to waste in explanations of how they felt. The wounded came first, and there was going to be no second or third.

“Go and get help,” Hester repeated.

Merrit dropped most of the canteens, squared her shoulders and turned to obey, tripping on the rough ground, straightening up again, then moving a little faster.

Hester picked up the canteens and walked towards the battle, tending others who were wounded, seeing more and more of the dead. Beyond the Bull Run the firing never stopped and the air was thick with dust and gun smoke. The heat was searing, parching the mouth, burning the skin.

Finally she headed back towards the church. It was a small building surrounded by farmhouses about half a mile from Bull Run and had become the principal depot for the Union wounded.

The seats from the body of the church had been removed and placed outside. Many men were propped up awkwardly, lying under trees and makeshift shelters. Others were in the open in the full glare of the sun. Some had no wounds but were suffering from the heat and dehydration.

All around men were groaning and crying out for help. Some less hurt tried to assist the two or three orderlies struggling to make order out of the chaos.

As Hester approached the door, the surgeon, scarlet-fronted, came out and dropped an arm on the pile of amputated and mangled flesh against the wall, and without even seeing her, turned and went back in again.

An ambulance came jolting over the rough ground with more wounded.

Hester pushed open the wooden door. Inside the church floor had been covered over with the blankets that could be spared. Hay from a nearby field had been scattered in loose heaps for men to rest on. There were several buckets of water, some fresh, others red with blood.

In the center of the room was the operating table, instruments laid out on a board between two chairs next to it. There were pools of blood, making the floor slippery, and dried blood darkening. The smell caught in her throat. In the heat it was almost choking.

She swallowed her nausea and began to work.

All the sweltering afternoon the battle went on over Henry Hill. At first it looked to Monk and Breeland as if the Union troops would take it. It would be a crushing blow to the Confederacy. Perhaps it would even be enough to end the open conflict. Then they could return to diplomacy, maybe even agree that such bloodshed was too high a price to force union on a people who were prepared to die rather than accept it.

But by late afternoon the Confederate troops were reinforced and Henry Hill stood against everything MacDowell could throw at it. Henry House itself seemed unreachable. Crouching in a patch of scrub on the side of Matthews Hill and looking across the stream that he had been told was called Young’s Branch, Monk could see Confederate troops holding the crown of the hill. Union men had been charging it again and again, flags held high in the swirls of dust and gun smoke amid the trees, and had been repulsed each time.

There were soldiers as close as twenty yards away. The roar of cannon was deafening. There was a constant crackle of muskets and every now and then the whine of a bullet and the spurt of dust as it hit the ground. One had grazed Monk’s arm, tearing his shirt and drawing scarlet blood. The sting of it shocked him, slight as it was compared with the agony of others.

“I’m going to find that bastard!” Trace shouted over the din. “I don’t give a damn what the outcome of this battle is, he’s not getting away with it.…” He gave a bitter shrug. “Unless he’s dead! Then the devil will have beaten me to him. But if God’s on my side, I’ll get to him first.” He shaded his eyes and stared from where he knelt across Young’s Branch and over to Henry Hill. Union lines stretched as far as Chinn Ridge to the right, and all the way to Henry Hill to the left.

The wind changed a little, sending the smoke across the fighting. A cannonball screamed past them and scythed through the trees, shearing away some branches and leaving them hanging.

Monk wondered briefly why Trace did not join the battle himself. Why was he so determined, above all else, to pursue Breeland? He seemed obsessive about it, out of balance. Monk did not fight. It was not his war. He had no feeling for either side over the other. The issue of slavery did not give him a moment’s thought. He was irrevocably against it, but he could appreciate the Confederacy view that the economic oppression of the North was in actuality no better for the poor. One changed deeply rooted institutions slowly, but violence was not the answer.

Neither did he understand the passion for union above all else. These things were intellectual arguments to him. What he felt was the reality of men maimed, crippled, bleeding to death here on these dusty hillsides. He saw no difference between Union and Confederate; they were all equally flesh and blood, passion, dreams and fears. For the first time he understood something of what Hester must feel as she worked with friend and foe without difference, seeing only the person.

He hardly dared think of Hester. He looked at the wounded and the dying all around him, and had no idea how to help them. Horror made him feel sick. His hands shook; his legs almost failed to support him. He was dizzy with revulsion as his mind drowned in the abomination of it. How did she keep her head, bear all the pain, the dreadful mutilation of bodies? She had a strength beyond his power to imagine.

Philo Trace was scanning the hill ahead, perhaps trying to recognize a uniform, or battle colors, to know where Breeland might be.

“Would you go into that to look for him?” Monk shouted.

“Yes,” Trace answered without turning, his eyes wrinkled up against the sun. “Any Southerner can fight for the Confederacy and our right to decide our own fate. I’m the only one who can take Breeland back to England and show everyone what he is … what a Union gun buyer will do to get arms.”

Monk said nothing. He could understand, and it frightened him. He had seen crime and poverty before, individual hatred and injustice. This was on a scale of enormity, a national madness from which there was no escape, no rational core where one could find healing, or even respite.

Over on Henry Hill men were killing and dying, and neither side appeared to gain.

Trace set off down the slope towards Chinn Ridge. Monk turned back.

There were wounded men on the ground, covered in blood and dust, limbs crooked, lying side by side with the dead. Carts were overturned, wood splintered, gun barrels cracked and pointing to the sky. Wheels were tilted at crazy angles.

Monk did what he could to help, but he had no knowledge, no skills to call on. He did not know how to set a bone, how to stop bleeding, who could be moved and who would be harmed if he were moved. The heat burned the skin and clogged the throat, sweat stinging the eyes, and wet fabric rubbed the skin raw over his bullet-grazed arm. The glare of the sun was merciless. Flies were everywhere.

Time and again he scrambled down the bank to the stream and filled canteens, carrying them back amid a rain of gunfire, to hold them up for the wounded.

He carried men where he knew they should be taken, to the field hospitals, doing what they could to stanch bleeding, pad wounds, splint bones, there on the grass of the hillside.

He saw Merrit at about half-past four, also carrying water, stopping where the wounded were capable of drinking.

Her skirts were torn and she looked exhausted, almost sleepwalking. Her face was ashen, her eyes filled with horror. He was not certain if she even recognized him.

Together they helped into a cart a man with a badly broken leg, and another man with a crushed hand, two more with heavily bleeding chest wounds, and Monk pulled the cart over the rough ground, straining his shoulders, feeling his muscles ache. The bullet graze on his arm seemed to have stopped bleeding.

There were no horses around loose and unhurt themselves. There was something in him that hated seeing an animal hurt even more than a man. They had not chosen to fight. They were creatures with no part in war. But he knew better than to say so. Perhaps half the men in the battle had no will in it either, no decision not driven by fear or someone else’s idealism.

He got the cart to within twenty yards of the field hospital at Sudley Church. He could go no farther. He and Merrit helped the men out, and leaning on each other, they staggered the last little distance.

The shooting sounded closer behind them, as if the Rebels had held Henry Hill and were coming down towards them.

Inside the church he saw Hester. He recognized the set of her shoulders instantly, square, a little thin, the cotton of her dress pulling tight as she moved quickly, deftly. Her hair was scraped back, poking out of its pins, and a tiny strand fell down her back. Her skirts were filthy, and several smears and splatters of blood showed even from the back.

His heart lurched. His eyes stung with tears of pride, and so powerful an admiration welled up in him that for seconds he saw only her; the rest of the room was a dark cloud over the periphery of his vision. There need not have been other people, wounded men, a man standing still, uniform blue or gray, another woman on her knees.

Hester had a saw in her hand and was cutting through the bone of a man’s forearm, moving quickly, with no hesitation, no time for weighing or judging. She must have done all that before she set the blade to the flesh. There was light, wet blood everywhere, on pads and bandages on the floor, in pools and spatters, staining her hands scarlet, and forming a dark stain on the thighs of the man’s uniform. His face was gray, as if he were already dead.

She went on working. The useless arm, what was left of it, fell to the floor and she began stanching the wound, binding a loose flap of skin over it, holding a pad hard, so hard it compressed the vessels. All the time she did not speak. Monk watched her tense face, lips pressed together, sweat running down her brow and standing out on her lip. Once she brushed a hair out of her eyes, using the back of her wrist.

When she was finished and the bleeding had stopped, she took a piece of cloth and dipped it into wine and held it to the man’s mouth, very gently.

His eyelids fluttered.

She gave him a few drops more.

He opened his eyes, turned to focus on her face, and drifted into unconsciousness again.

Monk had no idea whether the man would live or not. He did not know whether Hester knew. He looked at her face and could not read it in her. She was beyond exhaustion not only of body but of spirit. She was hardly even aware that anyone else was there, let alone that it was he, yet he was overwhelmed with the knowledge that he had never seen another woman so beautiful. Physically she was totally familiar. He knew every part of her, had held her, touched her, but the soul of her was something apart, amazing and unexplored, a thing that filled him with awe. And it frightened him, because he knew the dark regions within himself, and felt he would never be worthy of what he saw in her. He also knew that he would never measure or touch the end of his hunger that she would love him equally, that he would be worthy of it, unclouded and whole.

Hester turned and saw him, and the moment broke. Her eyes met his long enough for understanding and a flood of relief. She spoke his name, smiling, then began to work again.

He did what he could to help, increasingly aware with every moment that he had no skill, he did not even know the names of the instruments she needed or the types of bandages, and the blood and pain horrified him. How did anyone deal with this day after day, for weeks … years … and cling to sanity?

He went out again, back to the battlefield, and found to his quickening fear that it had moved closer. It was after five in the afternoon and the Union forces had not taken Henry Hill—far from it; the Rebels were streaming down the slope and hard fighting was now backing towards where he stood. Clouds of dust obscured the details.

He went back into the church.

“The battle’s coming this way!” he said sharply. “We must get these men out.”

The surgeon was there now, ashen-faced, moving as in a dream.

“Don’t panic,” he said crossly. “It just looks closer than it is.”

“Come and see it yourself, man!” Monk retorted, hearing his own voice rise, almost out of control. “The Rebels are coming this way! The Union troops are in retreat!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” the surgeon shouted at him. “If you can’t keep from hysterics, get out of here! That’s an order, mister! Get out of our way!”

Monk went outside again, shaking with anger and shame. Was he panicking in front of Hester, who was so calm in this inferno of horror?

He must steady himself. His legs were shaking. The sweat poured off his body. That was heat! It was like an oven.

No, it was not panic! Not in him. But the Union forces were in complete disarray, running towards him, throwing weapons and cartridge belts aside, hurling away anything that cumbered their flight. Blind terror galvanized their legs.

Monk turned on his heel and charged back into the church.

“They’re in retreat!” he yelled. “They’re all making for the road to Washington. Get the wounded and get out of here! Everyone that can walk, do it!”

Hester turned to stare at him, her eyes steady, questioning. It was only an instant before she believed him.

“Out!” she ordered. “Merrit, you stay with me!” Her eyes were still on Monk’s. She had not forgotten why they had come.

There was a volley of shots close outside.

As if it were the spur he was needing, the surgeon moved at last. He pushed past her and ran to the door, the others following on his heels.

Outside, they stopped abruptly. A small detachment of Rebel cavalry was twenty yards away and approaching fast. A bullet whined past Hester and slammed into the church wall, sending splinters flying. One grazed her hand, and she gasped involuntarily, putting it to her lips to stop the blood.

The Rebels stopped and the surgeon stepped forward to speak to the officer.

“This is a field hospital,” he said, his voice shaking. “Will you give us safe conduct to evacuate our wounded?”

The officer shook his head. “Get them out the best you can, but I can’t give you any promise.” He looked him up and down. “And you’re coming with us … back to Manassas Junction.”

The surgeon pleaded, but the Rebels would brook no argument, and ten minutes later they were gone, and the surgeon with them, leaving Monk, Hester, Merrit and the two orderlies to help the wounded.

They were carrying men into the carts and about to begin the journey back towards Centreville and Washington when a Union cavalry officer rode up, his arm in a sling across his chest, his tunic dark with blood.

“You’ll have to go west!” he shouted. “You can’t go by the turnpike. The bridge over Cub Run River is blocked. There’s a cart turned over on it and there are civilians all over the place, sightseers out from Washington to watch the battle, picnic hampers an’ all. Now they’re overrun and nothing can get through … not even ambulances.” He waved his good arm. “You’ll have to go that way.” He swung his horse around and headed off, picking up speed and disappearing into the dust and smoke.

“Has the Union really lost?” Hester said miserably.

Monk was standing close to her. He could give his reply quietly enough in the momentary lull that even Merrit could barely hear him.

“This battle, by the look of it. I don’t know what’s going to happen along the road.” He could hardly believe what the cavalryman had said. Who on God’s earth would look at this voluntarily?

But the shock he had expected to see in Hester’s face was not there. He stared, puzzled. Why did it not horrify her?

She read his thoughts.

“It happened in the Crimea as well,” she said with a sad, lopsided grimace. “I don’t know what it is … a failure of the imagination. Some people cannot think themselves into anyone else’s pain. If they don’t feel it themselves, then it isn’t real.” Then she started to move again, picking up what few belongings were most important and passing around the canteens of water to anyone who could carry them.

The firing was growing closer all the time, but it was very sporadic now.

Merrit was standing frozen with dismay. In the distance they could hear the strange, high Rebel yell on the wind.

“Where’s Trace?” Hester said urgently.

Monk made the decision in the instant, even as he spoke. “He’s gone into the battle. He’s hell-bent on finding Breeland, whatever happens. We’ll have to go south if we are to get out. Take Merrit with us. It will be hard, but I think trying to find our way through the chaos here, and get Breeland out through his own people, will be next to impossible.”

Her voice caught for a moment. “Go … that way?” She looked towards the gunfire. But even as she protested he could see in her face that she understood the reason behind his words. “Will we be able to find Trace?”

He thought for a moment of lying. Was it his responsibility to comfort her, show strength and hope, regardless of the truth? They had never told each other what was comfortable. In fact, they had spent the first year or two of their acquaintance being as abrupt, as brutally honest, as possible. To do less now would be like a denial of what was precious between them, a terrible condescension, as if by marrying him at last she had forfeited his friendship.

“I have no idea,” he said with a smile which was a little wild, more than a little crooked.

A flash of humor—and of fear—in her eyes answered him.

He turned, knowing absolutely that she would follow, and bring Merrit with her, dragging her if she must, but surely she would come willingly, towards Breeland?

The battle had become a total flight, with men running and scrambling any way they knew how away from the field and towards the turnpike back to Washington.

“Come!” Hester’s voice interrupted him, and he felt her hand on his sleeve and winced.

She glanced at it.

“Nothing,” he said quickly. “A scratch.”

She shut her eyes tightly for a moment. “William … how could they let it come to this? I thought we were the only ones so … so arrogantly stupid!”

“Apparently not … poor devils,” he answered. Now she was no longer pulling at him; it was he who turned to go, taking her hand and half dragging her until she stopped looking and tore her attention away.

Together the three of them went against the tide, towards the still-advancing Confederate troops, always looking for Philo Trace in his pale jacket and trousers against the blues and grays which were now covered in blood and dirt and barely distinguishable in the clouds of dust rising around everyone.

Twice Monk called out the name of Breeland’s regiment to fleeing Union troops. The first time he was ignored; the second someone waved a frantic arm, and they turned and went as well as they could judge in the direction indicated.

The ground was littered with bodies, most of them beyond all human help but the decency of burial. Once they heard someone crying out, and Hester stopped, almost pulling Monk off his feet.

A man lay with both legs shattered, unable to move to help himself.

Hester stared at him. Monk knew she was horrified, and at the same time trying to judge what she could do to help him—or if he was dying anyway.

Monk longed to keep on going, to not even look at the pain, the welling blood and the despair in the man’s face. And at the same time as all of him shrank from it, he knew he would have lost something irrevocably beautiful if Hester had been willing to leave. He would not have loved her less, but the burning admiration would have dimmed.

The tears were streaming down Merrit’s white, exhausted face. She had moved into that realm of nightmare where even movement was hardly real.

Hester bent down to the man and started talking to him, quietly, in a level, cool voice, her fingers trying to move the torn and mangled cloth out of the wounds so she could see what had happened to the bone.

Monk went to find guns fallen when fleeing men had hurled them aside. He got two, broke off the splintered stocks, and returned with the long, metal barrels and gave them to her.

“Well, at last they’re good for something,” she said bitterly, and with cloth torn from her skirt she padded the wounds and tied the barrels on tightly as splints.

Monk held the man in his arms and gently tilted the one water bottle they had brought to his lips, helping him drink.

“Thank you,” the man whispered hoarsely. “Thank you.”

“We can’t move you,” Hester apologized.

“I know, ma’am.…”

It was too late to think of such a thing. The Confederate soldiers were on them. Long muskets were pointed, then lowered when it was realized they were unarmed.

The wounded man was lifted up and they did not see what happened to him. He was a prisoner of war, but he was alive.

“And who are you?” a Confederate officer demanded.

Monk told the exact truth, ignoring Merrit. “We have come to arrest a Union officer and take him back to England to stand trial for murder.”

Merrit burst into denial, but her words were choked with tears, and there was nowhere for her to run. She could not go back through the confusion of the fleeing Union army. She had no idea what to expect in Washington. No one had. Her only loyalty was to Breeland, and he was somewhere ahead of her, and regardless of his reasons, Monk was doing all he could to find him.

The Confederate officer thought for a moment, turned and asked a man a few yards away, then looked back at Monk, his eyes wide.

“You must surely want him badly to come out here now … or didn’t you all know about this?”

“We knew,” Monk said grimly. “He was a gun buyer for the North, negotiating for six thousand first-class rifles with half a million rounds of ammunition. The dealer and his men were murdered and the shipment stolen for the North, instead of the South. I don’t imagine you would be that fond of him either.”

The officer stared at him, horror in his tired face, smeared with gun smoke and blood. “Oh, sweet Jesus!” he said almost under his breath, his eyes distant on the carnage of the field. “I hope you find him, and when you do, hang him high. Try that way.” He pointed with an arm Monk only now noticed was bandaged and heavily seeping blood. The other arm held his rifle.

They thanked him and moved on as directed, through the dust and smoke, Monk ahead, Hester a yard behind him, holding Merrit by one hand, half pulling her along in case in her stupefied horror she should stop and be lost.

They found Trace first. He was easier to recognize because of his white shirt and pale trousers, unlike any of the uniforms. He carried a pistol, and Monk had also picked one up from one of the dead.

It was quieter here, on the bank on the far side of Bull Run. The dead were everywhere on the ground. It was still hot, the air motionless. Monk could hear the flies buzzing and smell the dust, cordite and blood.

Half an hour later they found Breeland dazed, holding one arm crookedly as if his shoulder were dislocated, still unwilling or unable to believe the battle was over and his men had fled. He was seeking to help the wounded, and bewildered to know how. He was surrounded by Confederate troops but he did not seem to realize it. Most of them simply passed him; perhaps they mistook him for a field surgeon. He no longer carried a gun and offered them no threat.

Trace stood squarely, the pistol in his hand pointing at Breeland’s chest.

“Lyman!” Merrit lunged forward. Hester had her by the hand and the impetus of her movement almost overbalanced them both, dragging Merrit to her knees.

“Get up!” Trace said bitterly. “He’ll be all right.” He gestured to the man on the ground, then jerked his hand at Hester. “She’ll stop the bleeding. Then you’re coming with us.”

“Trace?” Breeland seemed startled to see him. He had not yet looked at Merrit.

Trace’s voice was pitched sharp, on the edge of losing control, his face smeared with dust and blood, rivulets of sweat running down his cheeks.

“Did you think I would just let you go?” he demanded. “After all that … did you think any of us would let you walk away? Is that your great cause?” He sounded on the edge of hysteria and the gun in his hand was shaking. For a terrible moment Monk was afraid he was going to shoot Breeland right there.

Breeland was nonplussed. He stared at the gun in Trace’s hand, then up at his face.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

Merrit swung around to Hester, defiance in every angle of her body, and justification.

Monk kept his gun level, pointing at Breeland. “Get up,” he ordered. “Now! Let Hester tend to the soldier. Now!”

Slowly Breeland obeyed, automatically cradling his injured arm. He did not reach for any weapon himself. He still appeared totally confused. Monk was not sure if it was their questions, or more probably that for him the inconceivable had happened: the Union had lost the battle; but worse, far worse, they had panicked and run away. That was not within his belief of the possible. Men of the great cause could not do that.

“We found Daniel Alberton’s body, and those of the guards,” Monk said between his clenched teeth, remembering what he had seen, even though it was dwarfed by the slaughter around him now. Still there was a moral gulf between war and murder, even if there was no physical one. Different kinds of men committed one from those who were caught up in the other, even if the death was much the same.

Breeland frowned at them, and for the first time he looked at Merrit, and a rush of shame added to the confusion.

“Papa was murdered,” she said with difficulty, forcing the words out. She was too drained of emotion to weep. “They think you did it, because they found your watch in the warehouse yard. I told them you didn’t, but they don’t believe me.”

Breeland was incredulous. He looked at each of them in turn as if expecting at least one to deny it. No one spoke; no eye wavered.

“You came for that?” His voice cracked into a squeak. “You came all the way over here …” He flung his good arm out. “To this! Because you think I murdered Alberton?”

“What did you expect us to do?” Trace said bitterly. “Just count it as the fortune of war and forget about it?” He rubbed the back of his hand across his face, wiping the sweat out of his eyes. “Three men are dead, not to mention six thousand guns stolen. Your precious Union might justify that for you … it doesn’t to anyone else.”

Breeland shook his head. “I didn’t kill Alberton! I bought the guns fairly and paid for them.”

Inexplicably, completely unreasonably, it was not the lie that infuriated Monk; it was the fact that Breeland had never once touched Merrit or offered her any compassion. Her father was dead, and he was concerned only that they believed he was guilty of it.

“We’re going back to England,” he stated. “You are coming with us, to stand trial.”

“I can’t! I’m needed here!” Breeland was angry, as if they were being stupid.

“You can come back with us to England to trial, or I can execute you here and now,” Trace said with a level, almost flat voice. “And we’ll take Merrit to stand trial alone. She can tell England what noble men the Union soldiers are … they shoot unarmed Englishmen in the back of the head and leave their daughters to take the blame.”

“That’s a lie!” Breeland moved forward at last, his face filled with anger.

Trace kept the gun aimed at him. “Then come and prove it. I don’t mind if you doubt I’ll shoot you.” He did not need to add the rest; it was wild and glittering in his face, and even Breeland in his indignant dismay could not have misunderstood. He stepped back a little, and turned to face the creek and the way back towards the road to Washington. “You’ll not succeed,” he said with a very slight smile, gone almost before it was seen.

“Nobody’s making it back that way.” Trace’s contempt was like a lash. “Your good Union citizens crowded out for a Sunday afternoon’s entertainment to watch the battle, and they’re blocking the roads. We’re going south, through the Confederate lines to Richmond, and then Charleston. No one will help you there. In fact, if they learn what you’ve done, you’ll be lucky to make it all the way to the sea. If you really think you can show a British court you are innocent, you’d be very wise to come easily and say nothing to anyone else. Northerners aren’t very popular in the Confederacy right now.”

Breeland took one last, aching look after the remnant of his men, the clouds of dust showing their retreating route, and his resistance collapsed. He took a deep breath and followed after Monk. Hester and Merrit walked together, a little apart from him, as if to support each other. Trace came behind, still holding the gun.