A Time of Shadows (Out of Time #8) (15 page)

Instantly, his guilt turned to pride. Maybe he didn’t turn out to be such an ass after all.
 

Despite it being mid-afternoon, the center was still busy with tourists.
 
Simon’s knowledge of the Civil War, and of this battle in particular, was wafer thin. He’d studied some accounts of ghost sightings, but they’d all been fanciful at best. And when it came to knowing anything more than the slightest of details about the area, and those few days in July one hundred and fifty years ago, he was ignorant. Although, he realized, looking at his child as she read one of the plaques, that would obviously change.

They stopped in front of a large map on the wall.

“This is a big place,” Elizabeth said, stating the painfully obvious.
 

The battlefield and environs covered over 11,000 acres of land, thousands of artifacts and dozens of buildings.
 

“A Valentine’s Day gift in July,” Simon recited. “That much at least is clear.”

Charlotte nodded. “I was born in July here, but it was Valentine’s Day back home.”

“Right. But ‘on a ridge that ran red.’ That’s a bit more problematic,” he said as he looked at the map. There were half a dozen ridges and he was fairly certain all of them had run red with blood. “We can’t possibly search them all.”

Elizabeth turned to look around the atrium. “We’re gonna need help. Someone like Chet.”

“Chet?”

Simon turned and saw an older gentleman with a gentle paunch and white mustache. He wore a Gettysburg cap and blue shirt with a patch on his shoulder and a name tag. He smiled at them.

“Chet it is.”

~~~

Chet, their Licensed Battlefield Guide, accept no substitutes, was pleased as punch to show them around. After the fee was taken care of, Chet escorted them back to their car. Gettysburg was far too big to do on foot, he said and Elizabeth had that sinking feeling again.

“Are there any special ridges we should see?” Elizabeth asked, hoping to narrow down the search.

“Oh, yes,” Chet said.
 

Elizabeth’s heart lightened.

“Quite a few.”

And then sunk again.

“There’s Knoxlyn, Lohr’s, Whistler’s, McPherson and Herr, Cemetery and Oak, Seminary…”

And then it sunk a little further. How in Hades were they going to find the right ridge when the place was essentially a collection of ridges?

She got in the back seat with Charlotte as Chet continued on. “…Houck’s and School-House. I think that’s all of them. Let’s see,” he said and started to tick them off on his fingers. “Knoxlyn, Lohr’s—”

“Impressive,” Simon said, casting a quick glance at Elizabeth in the rearview mirror. “Perhaps we should begin?”

Chet slapped his thighs. “Right. Make the first right,” he said, pointing toward a nearby road. “For four long days in the hot July sun of 1863, the Union and Confederate armies fought in the largest and bloodiest battle of the Civil War. It is not too fine a point to put on it all to say that the future of America was forged right here.”

Simon drove slowly along the route Chet designated. They got out at various stops along the way to get a better look at monuments and walk the grounds. Forested areas, farm fields and hillsides were the sites of horrible clashes where boys and old men fought side by side, and died that way. Today, there was no evidence of the fighting. The trees had returned and the battlefields were maintained as open areas of green grass honoring regiments from both north and south. It was peaceful with lush meadows and trees. Split rail fences marked off what had been someone’s home and property.
 
Buildings, barns, churches, anything available, had been turned into military headquarters and field hospitals.
 

The sensation of standing on Hallowed Ground was strong. Elizabeth had read ghost stories about places like Gettysburg, but she’d never given them much credence, until now. This place was filled with more than memories and she shuddered as a cool breeze tickled her skin. At least she hoped it was a cool breeze.

It was at their fourth stop that they’d reached Oak Ridge. It was where the end of the first day’s battle had been. Simon asked Chet to give them a moment alone.

He pulled Elizabeth and Charlotte aside under the shade of a great Oak. “We won’t find anything this way,” he said and then turned to Charlotte. “There must be something else. Some detail you’re forgetting?”

Charlotte frowned in thought. “Mom and Dad didn’t talk about it much. I think it scared them.”

Simon arched an eyebrow. “I can’t imagine why.”

“Think, Charlotte,” Elizabeth urged her. “Just some little thing that can help us narrow it down.”

She concentrated for a moment. “It was in a hospital.”

“That’s good!” Simon said.

“Well, there was a doctor. I remember Dad mentioning him and there was a school or something nearby.”

“He did mention a School-House ridge,” Elizabeth said. “It’s worth a shot.”

With a little convincing they got Chet to go off script and visit sites out of the usual order. Elizabeth had high hopes for School-House ridge, and they piled out of the car and hurried toward the plaque marking the site. She looked for the tell-tale moon, but there was none to be found.

On one side of the road was a thick forest and on the other was a wide open field.

“The school house? Is it close?”

Chet nodded toward the woods. “That’s what’s left of the foundation over there. It was the Second Corps Division Hospital before that was moved over to Rock Creek.”

Elizabeth stepped into the woods a little ways and saw the granite stones that had once been the foundation of the school cum hospital. Surely, Teddy wouldn’t have left his clue in some random foundation stone. That was too much even for him.

“Are there any other schools that were used as hospitals?”

“Well, there were dozens of field hospitals. We’ve got markers at 17 Union and 18 Confederate field hospitals right now. There’s High Street or the Common School, the theological seminary and college and the larger Lutheran Seminary, on Seminary Ridge of course.”

Elizabeth saw Charlotte perk up at that one. She and Elizabeth made eye contact and Charlotte nodded.

“The Lutheran Seminary,” Elizabeth repeated, and Charlotte nodded again even more excited.

Simon appeared at Elizabeth’s side and cast a quick glance her way before saying, “Perhaps, we should go there next?”

“That’s all the way up, or near to it. We should loop down to Little Round Top at the least.”

Simon put his hand on Chet’s shoulder and maneuvered him back toward the car. “We’ll be sure to go there. I promise, but it’s getting later in the day and my wife…she wants to go the Seminary, so…”

Chet laughed, one husband to the other, and elbowed Simon’s side lightly. “Right. Happy wife, happy life.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes but was glad to play the part if it got them the next clue.

As they pulled up in front of the imposing seminary building, Chet started his tour. “General Lee was intent on Harrisburg. Gettysburg wasn’t part of the Confederate plan, nor the Union’s. It was an accidental meeting of great armies. In the early morning of July first, before the battle had even begun, General John Buford, Union, climbed the steps to the cupola and saw the sun glint off Confederate rifles to the west. They were comin’ and the battle was just about to begin.”

He stopped and turned to point. “To the west and the north fighting was intense and the Union wounded flooded into the seminary. By nightfall it had been taken by the Confederates and enemies slept in beds side by side.”

They walked up the steps to the portico of the four-story brick building.

“It was the first field hospital of the battle and hundreds of men died here.” He reached for the front door. “And, although there’s no record of it, there is a rumor that a baby was born here a few days later.”

Elizabeth nearly tripped over the threshold and Simon would have if he hadn’t already stopped to steady her.

“I know what you’re thinkin’,” Chet said misreading their reactions. “Seems like the last place a woman would want to have her child,” he said, ushering them forward.
 

“But then,” he added, stopping for a moment. “There’s somethin’ reaffirming about it, isn’t there? Life in the middle of all that death.”

Elizabeth saw Simon take Charlotte’s hand.
 

“Even if it isn’t true,” Chet said, on the move again. “I’d like to think it was.”

It took them the better part of an hour to find the small metal moon and the little canister that held Teddy’s latest clue in the brick wall next to the Parson’s Warming Cupboard above the fireplace, but they did. Thankfully, without damaging anything. As they left the Seminary, Elizabeth felt a wave of relief. Not just that they’d found the next clue, but that they could leave here now. Despite it being the place where Charlotte had come into the world, there was a palpable memory of the agony so many had endured. Some day she would come back, she knew, and experience it all first-hand.
 

~~~

The concierge at their hotel gave Jack directions to a pier near the Galata Bridge along with a short series of numbers. It took Jack a few moments to understand that it was the number of their sea taxi and all he had to do was give the slip of paper to the captain.

Sea taxis weren’t around the last time he’d been to Istanbul. There were a few ferries, but during the war any sort of transportation was dangerous.

He and Tess decided to walk to the pier. It was under a mile, but it didn’t take long for Tess to lag.

“It’s these damned cobblestone streets,” she said, nearly turning an ankle again.

While he appreciated the effort, and the way her heels made her legs look like they went on forever, it had to be painful. It was definitely awkward.

He held out his arm and she huffed out an indignant breath.
 

“Oh, Hell.”

She used his arm for balance and took off her shoes.

“Do you want me to carry you?” he asked.

She frowned at him. “I’ll be fine once we get off this crazy street.”

He kept his mouth shut and eyes forward, which wasn’t easy. Her dress was as low-cut as her heels were high. How she kept from falling out of the two thin vertical strips of fabric that plunged nearly down to her navel was beyond him. There wasn’t a whole lot to keep in place though, not that he cared. He loved women of all shapes and sizes.
 

Tess cleared her throat.

He looked up, not realizing he’d been looking down. At her…décolletage.

“Sorry.”

She hmm’d, unconvinced.

They walked a few more blocks, finally emerging from the uneven cobblestones.
 

“We’re close now,” Jack said, taking a whiff of sea air with that added thickness that came with piers and docks. “Over there.”

It was just past dusk now, and street lights and torches lit their path along the water’s edge. They walked out onto the pier and, sitting near the end, was a medium-sized covered boat. It almost looked like a very large Italian police car with its blue and white checkered stripe.

Stenciled on the side was the number Jack had been given. A man stood on deck waiting for them. Jack raised his hand and the man stepped forward to help them aboard.
 

They sped along the Bosphorus, crowded with ferries, commercial ships and pleasure cruisers. Lights from clubs and hotels lined the shore. On the left, Europe, and on the right, Asia. And the two of them somewhere in the middle.

The taxi ride took about twenty minutes. Finally, they rode under the lights of the Bosphorus Bridge that spanned two continents, and veered toward the shore on the left.
 

The crew member who’d met them at the dock opened the sliding door and urged them to disembark. As they did, Jack thought they’d either made a mistake or this was some sort of trap. The dock they’d arrived at was industrial, the sort where you’d expect to find an abandoned warehouse and not a premiere club.

But by the time he turned around to ask the driver, they’d already pushed off from the pier and began to pull away.

“Hey!” Jack called after them, but it was no use.
 

He turned back to Tess. “Well, this should be interesting.”

He held out his arm again and together they walked up dark steps. Above them Jack could hear the thumping bass from something someone had mislabeled as music.

Another flight and they were met by two security guards, each the size of a compact car. Maybe mid-size, he thought as one moved and the suit that barely contained his biceps strained under the pressure.

“Two,” Jack said.

The guards looked at him behind sunglasses.
 

“Deux. Uhm,
bir, iki,”
Jack said counting aloud to help remember. He held up two fingers. “
Iki
?”

The guards were not impressed.

“Tell
Alabaş we are here,” Tess said.

One of the guards swiveled his bald head on his shoulders. Jack was sure he didn’t actually have a neck. He nodded once toward the other guard who lifted the velvet rope and opened the door for them.

As soon as he did, the loud thumping music spilled out.

Jack winked at him as he led Tess inside. They’d barely taken two steps when a giant meaty hand gripped his shoulder. Jack managed not to wince as he turned to look up at the security guard.

The big man let go of his shoulder and quickly patted Jack down. He’d hated to do it, but he was glad now that he’d left his gun at the hotel. Once he’d finished, the guard looked at Tess. She just smiled back. There was nowhere to hide anything in that dress.

Then the guard turned back to Jack and held out his hand.
 

“Oh, right.”

Jack handed him eighty lira for the cover and an extra twenty for not breaking his clavicle.

“
Kalıyorsun
,” the big man said in a deep voice and held up his hand in the international signal for “don’t move or else.” Jack nodded.