Cheryl Reavis (22 page)

“I’m fine.”

“You are clearly
not
fine, Miss Woodard, and I would prefer not to have two collapsed people on my hands, if you don’t mind. I will stay by the boy until you get back.”

Kate stood, trying not to look as “pinched,” as Mrs. Kinnard seemed to think she did.

“His name is Harrison,” Kate said as she walked toward the door.

She couldn’t see Robert in the hallway at first, but she could hear his voice, and she continued in that direction. He was in a small alcove off to the side talking to Castine. She stood and waited until he was finished

“What did the doctor tell you?” she asked immediately.

“He thinks Harrison has a ‘morbid fever.’ He doesn’t know if it’s the result of the...”

“The stationmaster’s wife told me he was robbed and beaten,” Kate said when he didn’t go on. “She hinted that it was his own fault, because he didn’t know to hide the fact that he had money. She said he lay out in the rain all night.”

Robert was watching her so closely. Propriety dictated that she should avoid such an intense gaze, but she didn’t. She was so glad that he was here with her and it was all she could do not to tell him so.

“The doctor didn’t know if the beating has caused the fever or if it’s something else,” he said finally. “He didn’t offer anything in the way of treatment other than purging. I said no to that. I’ve seen too many men die from the weakness that comes with it. They’re always worse afterward. The doctor didn’t know of anything else to try. Perkins sent a field medicine chest—quinine for ague and laudanum for pain are about the only useful things in it. I don’t think Harrison is in pain, despite the bruising.”

“Or is he past feeling it?” Kate asked bluntly.

Robert didn’t try to avoid the question. “That may be the case, but I don’t know for sure. It’s good that Mrs. Kinnard has come. I think she probably has more experience in this kind of thing than the doctor here does.”

“We have to take him home, Robert.”

“It’s a long way to Philadelphia.”

“Not Philadelphia—Salisbury.”

“He’s very weak, Kate.”

“I know. Maria told me to bring him there if I could. I’m going to try to do that. I don’t see him getting better in this place. But I don’t know what it will take to get him space on the train.”

“The authorizations Perkins gave me should take care of that.”

“Yes,” Kate said in relief. “The authorizations. I’d forgotten about those. I thought I’d have to find another carpetbagger.”

“Carpetbagger?”

“There was one on the train. He had a private car, and he knew who I was. He tried to use it to get into Max’s good graces.”

“I don’t think we can count on a private car, a carpetbagger’s or otherwise. Most likely Harrison will have to travel the way wounded soldiers traveled—a stretcher placed across the aisle—”

“Miss Woodard!” Mrs. Kinnard called loudly, and Kate ran down the hallway to Harrison’s room. Incredibly Harrison was sitting up in bed and struggling with Mrs. Kinnard, who was trying to keep him from falling. But then Kate saw the boy’s face, his wild, fever-bright eyes. This was not an improvement in his condition; this was something much worse.

Robert stepped around her to help Mrs. Kinnard. “Find the laudanum in the medicine case, Kate.”

“Where is it? It was here on the table—”

Kate looked frantically around the room. There was no medicine case.

She stepped out into the hallway. “Castine!”

He came at a run.

“The medicine case is missing. We need laudanum.”

He gave her a sharp nod of acknowledgment—as if that was all he needed to know. He whirled around and disappeared down the hall. He wasn’t gone long, and when he returned he had one of the drummers by his collar, and he shoved him into the room. The man looked around wildly, then seemed to be satisfied that he had nothing to worry about—except Castine.

“This man rattled when he walked past me a little while ago,” Castine said. “I’m wondering why.”

Kate didn’t hesitate. She stepped up to him and immediately began going through his pockets—while he leered. She found a number of bottles from the medicine case. The laudanum was in the last pocket she searched.

“Do you know what to do with him, Private Castine?” Robert asked over his shoulder.

“I do, sir.”

“Then carry on.”

“How much laudanum?” Kate asked Mrs. Kinnard.

“Five drops in water,” Mrs. Kinnard said without hesitation. “Put some water in a tin cup—not much—just a swallow or two. Carry it over to the window so you can see the laudanum drops fall into it.”

Kate got a tin cup and poured the water. She kept looking over her shoulder as Harrison tried to get free of the hands that held him fast. He was in torment, struggling to get away from something only he could see.

She dropped five drops of laudanum into the cup and handed it to Robert, who administered it quickly despite Harrison’s resistance, and with as much skill as she had seen the hospital orderly use when he’d poured brandy into Robert the night he’d collapsed in the hallway. She wondered if it was something men in the war had to learn to keep each other alive.

Harrison continued to try to get free, but with less and less forcefulness, until at last he stopped fighting altogether and Mrs. Kinnard and Robert laid him back on the bed.

He was quiet now, but he wasn’t asleep as he had been before. He was still agitated, only he no longer had the physical strength to respond to it. His eyelids fluttered, and he mumbled unintelligible words. His fingertips plucked at the sheet covering him.

Kate took his hand and held it for a moment. He felt much hotter than he had earlier.

Mrs. Kinnard handed Kate a piece of flannel, and together they began wetting him down until his skin was noticeably cooler. They stopped and waited until it grew hot again and then they started all over. They changed the wet sheets. Castine brought more water, and Robert took over for Mrs. Kinnard. Kate lost all track of time. All her attention was focused on Harrison.

She realized at one point that the windows had grown dark and she thought that Mrs. Kinnard was no longer in the room. But Mrs. Kinnard was sleeping heavily on the cot in the corner, and it was all right. Kate was no longer as helpless at the bedside as she had been when Robert had needed water to drink. She had mastered feeding Harrison with a quill. She mixed some of the sugar she’d brought in water and gave it to him repeatedly with the quill—barely a swallow—and then she let him rest. Then another swallow of sugar water, again and again.

Was it helping? Kate didn’t know, but at least she was doing something.

“Kate?”

She looked around, wondering why Robert sounded so insistent.

“Come with me,” he said, taking the quill out of her hand.

She shook her head. “No. I can’t leave him—”

“Mrs. Kinnard is here. You need to come with me.”

She wanted to resist, but he had her firmly by her shoulders, and he walked her out of the room and down the hallway to some kind of storage room she hadn’t been in before. There was a cot in the far corner, and it occurred to her that this must be where he slept—if he slept at all.

“Sit,” he said, making her sit down on one of several tall stools, the kind she’d seen the clerks sitting on when she’d once gone along with her father to his Philadelphia bank, not because he had business he needed to attend to, but more that he wanted to make it known that he had a daughter of marriageable age. The rows of clerks, the reason for her being there—it was all so...Dickensian somehow.

Oh, Harrison!

She sat there on the stool, her head bowed.

“Look up at me,” Robert said, and when she did, he placed a cold and wet piece of flannel over her face. “Let it be for a minute. It will make you feel better.”

“How do you know?” she asked wearily, feeling both impatient and overwhelmed.

“Because I was a boxer. Just bear with me. You’ll see.”

He pressed the flannel gently against her cheeks and forehead, her eyes, then flipped it over, fanned it in the air a few times and reapplied it. The renewed cold against her face felt...wonderful.

“I can do it,” she said, not knowing whether she could or not.

“I know. Just sit still.”

But she took the flannel away and caught his hand. “I have to go back. I can’t leave him, Robert. You don’t understand—”

“I think I do,” he said.

She shook her head. “No—”

“I can see you in him, Kate. And you keep his photograph with you always. If this situation weren’t so dire, you would never have handed it over to me.”

“No, that’s not—” She wanted to deny it, but tears suddenly welled up in her eyes instead. They spilled over, streaming down her face, years and years of unshed tears. She couldn’t stop them no matter how hard she tried. Robert knew the truth, and she was glad.

* * *

“Drink this,” Robert said.

Kate had cried for a long time, and he had stayed with her while she did it, wiping her face from time to time, but not intruding—until now. It was as if he knew she needed to let go at last.

“Drink it,” he said, pressing the tin cup into her hands. “I mean it.”

She very nearly smiled. She had no doubt that he could make her do it if he wanted to.

“What is it?” she asked, looking into the cup.

“I’m not sure—some kind of soup. It’s good, though. Castine made it. I think he’s going to turn into another Perkins.”

She did smile this time. “Thank you,” she said, looking up at him.

He pulled up another stool and sat down in front of her, she thought to make sure she ate the soup. She tasted it, then took a long swallow. Something with onions and potatoes. It was quite good.

She drank a little more, and she felt the effects of finally having some nourishment almost immediately. She had no idea how long it had been since she’d eaten. She concentrated on holding the tin cup, knowing that Robert was waiting for her to look at him. But she kept sipping until she’d finished the last of Castine’s soup, then she sat the tin cup on the nearest stool. She took a deep breath, knowing she was going to tell Robert everything.

“I was very...young,” she said quietly.

“Kate—”

“He was born in Italy,” she said firmly, looking into his eyes. “I was sent to a place there—for rich young women who needed to hide until their babies were born—I’ve always been good at hiding, you see.

“
Bambina povera
. That’s what the midwife kept saying. ‘Poor little girl.’ I thought she meant the baby I’d just borne, but she meant me. ‘Poor little girl...’”

She wiped at her eyes again. “I was his mother for six hours. The midwife gave him to me and told me to hold him as long as I could. So I did—until someone came and took him away. I don’t think she was supposed to let me do that, but I was so...” She stopped.

“You don’t have to talk about this, Kate,” Robert said.

“No, I want to. I told her I wished I had died, and she said no. It was wrong to think that, because I was a mother now and God relied on mothers. Six hours. I always thought it wasn’t long enough to count, but it was. It
is.
He is my child, and this is breaking my heart.”

“How did...?” Robert began, then stopped.

“Go ahead,” she said. “What were you going to say?”

“I don’t understand how people so close to your family raised him.”

“It was all part of the plan. Not
my
plan. I had no say about anything. The Howes and my parents were close friends. Their son—John—is Harrison’s father. He didn’t abandon me,” she said quickly because of the look on Robert’s face. “When he knew about the child, he wanted to marry me, but my father wouldn’t agree to it. He thought I was too young and John was too...wild. And John’s father—he wasn’t about to let a grandchild of his be given over to strangers. So they did the only thing they could do. The Howes took Harrison. Mrs. Howe came to Italy, too—she was young enough to pass my baby off as her own. It wasn’t that difficult. He may look like me in some ways, but he looks more like John. He and John were brought up as brothers.”

“And you’ve always been close by.”

“As close as I dared. I knew I couldn’t get too close to him. If I did that, I wouldn’t be allowed to see him at all. It’s still hard—for me. Not so hard for John, I think. He has a firm place in Harrison’s life,” she said. “It’s true that John was wild when he was young—so was Max. It’s something young men do, apparently.”

“Yes,” Robert said.

“Some of them, anyway. I don’t think Grey was ever like that.”

“Grey?”

“Lieutenant Grey Jamison—I was going to marry Grey.” She sighed. “But perhaps he was wild, too. He was a horse soldier in Kilpatrick’s cavalry. Isn’t that what they say about cavalrymen? That they’re reckless and wild?”

“It’s what the walkers—infantrymen—say about them.”

“He was killed at Bentonville.”

“I’m sorry,” Robert said.

“When I said yes to his marriage proposal, I thought I could live with the lie of Harrison’s birth and never need to tell the man I cared about who Harrison really was.
Now
I know I couldn’t have done that. Those kinds of secrets only... It’s...”

She sighed. “It happened so... John was... I always thought he was very...lonely, despite his fearlessness when it came to breaking the rules and flaunting authority. He was like an orphan in the storm, and I was—I don’t know what I was. He’d come to the house to see Max that night—something had happened—something that upset him terribly. But Max wasn’t there. No one was except me and the servants, and they’d all gone to bed. He wouldn’t say what was wrong and he was in such...despair. I wanted to...comfort him, but I didn’t know how—” She paused to look directly into Robert’s eyes. “And then I...did know. I can’t blame John for what happened. I could have stopped it, but I didn’t. It was all—oh, I’m not making any sense.”

She suddenly straightened and wiped her eyes. “So you see, I’m not someone who ought to be groomed.” She looked at him.

“I love you, Kate,” he said when she did.

It was the wrong thing to say and the wrong time to say it. Kate knew that, and so, she thought, did he. It was so simple and honest, and she believed him.