Harvard Yard (49 page)

And he was right. Almost as if it had been planned, the enemy engaged the first brigade just beyond the trees, in the next field, bright and green in the September sun.

Douglass watched them go into it, but there was no room for the second or third brigades to be brought forward. So they bunched up behind the first, listened to the volleys, saw the smoke rise, and watched it all as though it were a baseball match.

Douglass ordered his men to stand at ease. No use coiling yourself for a fight until it was time. His men rested the butts of their muskets on the ground and leaned on them, like satisfied hunters with full bags. One of them started to whistle. Douglass glanced at the rock outcroppings to his left and wondered what Professor Agassiz would say about their composition. Heywood Wedge broke out his pipe and struck a match.

And it was as if he had touched a fuse that caused those rocks to explode.

Douglass swore that he felt a blast of heat, so powerful was the volley.

In an instant, thousands of Confederate muskets were raking the Federal lines. White smoke billowed out of these rocks, and the air pulsated with 50-caliber balls whizzing past and striking home, splintering tree trunks and smashing skulls. Instead of flanking the Confederates, Sedgwick’s Division had themselves been flanked.

Captain Holmes shouted for his men to wheel left and face the rocks. But some of them were already turning to the rear and firing at will.

Douglass shouted at one soldier to wait for orders, but the soldier reloaded and fired again, and so did several others.

Then Holmes came riding over and struck one of them with the flat of his saber. “Dammit, man. Wait for orders. You’re firing into your own men.”

“Bejesus, sir, but the enemy is behind us!”

An instant later, there was another explosion of fire . . . from the rear.

“By God, they
are
behind us.” Holmes raised his sword, opened his mouth, and a bullet struck him in the neck.

It was the most withering fire that Douglass Warren had yet faced. In twenty minutes, half of Sedgwick’s Division was cut down in long rows, like the cornstalks they’d come through a few minutes before.

It was then that Captain Macy called for a retreat. What was left of the 350 men in the Twentieth prepared to retire to their right in columns of four, at ordinary step, with arms at the shoulder. That was what the official battle report would say. But a report could not express the bravery of those men doing their job—forming their ranks, shouldering their arms, wheeling away, piece by piece, doing it like watchmakers, and doing it all under fire.

Douglass was at the rear, standing straight, keeping calm. Heywood was at the head, waving his sword, shouting at the men to dress ranks, because discipline would get them out. Discipline would keep them alive.

And as the regimental colors moved and the line kicked forward, Douglass saw Heywood go down, face first, a bullet just below his knee. The men around him hesitated, perhaps in shock at seeing another officer writhing in pain, perhaps in thought of saving him, but Captain Macy called for them to keep moving.

As Douglass went by, Heywood called out to him.

But Captain Macy shouted, “Lieutenant Warren! Keep your company moving!”

“Yes, sir!” Douglass knew they had to keep the men in good order. But this was his cousin, so Douglass hesitated.

That was when Dan Callahan stepped out and shoved his musket into Douglass’s hands. “Hold this, sir.” Then he picked up Heywood and threw him over his shoulder like a hod of bricks. “We can’t be leavin’ officers on the field.”

And out of those bloody woods they came, out of the dappled, smoke-shrouded shade, into the bloody bright sun. But they did not run. They crossed the Hagerstown Pike at the quick step and went into the cornfield, where they formed a line. A unit that held its ground could turn a whole army, and a unit that covered a retreat could save one.

Seeing the resolve of the Twentieth, the First Minnesota fell in next to them, and then came the remnants of other units. And then, like game flushed from cover, the last of the Federal stragglers came running, followed by the
yip-yip-yip
of the rebel yells.

“Stand ready!” said Douglass, reloading his big Colt as calmly as he could—removing the cylinder, dumping spent cartridges, inserting new bullets one by one.

Dan Callahan had placed Heywood at the rear and was back in line.

“Make ready, lads!” shouted Captain Macy.

Federal muskets dropped into position like gears.

Douglass snapped his pistol shut and took a deep breath.

“Give me one good volley!” shouted Macy, riding back and forth behind the men. “One good volley and fall back by company.”

Yip-yip-yip!
Hundreds of Rebels were pressing the attack, hundreds in homespun clothes dyed butternut gray, as gray as the tree trunks around them.

“Hold your fire, lads,” said Dan Callahan to his company.

“Hold, hold!” cried Douglass.

“Hold . . . Hold!” cried Macy. “And . . .
fire!
”

Hundreds of muskets blasted into the mouth of that charge, turning the rebel yell into a great gasp, a moan, a cry of disbelieving shock.

Then Captain Macy cried, “Retreat!” and the Twentieth bugler sounded the call.

Douglass cast one look back at the field, at the hundreds of young southerners who were down, crying, dying, at all those hopes, all those years yet to live, all the love that had been spent on them, all thrown away in an instant.

And that was when one of them shot him.

He felt the bullet go through him, almost as if it were happening to someone else. It entered his chest on the right side, halfway to his belt, and almost knocked him over. He looked down at the hole and thought, for a moment, that it wasn’t that bad. Then he tasted blood in his mouth. He cursed and dropped to his knees.

Just as he collapsed, Dan Callahan put a shoulder under him, another Harvard hod of bricks pouring blood down an Irishman’s back.

The rest, for Douglass, was a series of bright flashes and fading images. . . .

He was on the hard floor of a farmhouse . . . there were others around him . . . a veritable Harvard club, one of them said . . . Was it Holmes, ’61, bleeding from holes in both sides of his neck? Or Hallowell, ’61, leaning against a wall, left arm limp? Or Artemus Pratt, ’60, who sat with his boot off and blood pouring on the floor. Or Heywood Wedge, ’64, tourniquet on his leg, crying in pain as Dan Callahan laid him down . . .

Somewhere men were yelling . . . guns were firing . . . sweat was dripping onto Douglass’s face . . . from Dan’s forehead, and it was Dan’s voice . . . “Ambulance corps is here, sir. They’ll get you to hospital in no time.”

There were cracks in the ceiling . . . and smoke hung in layers . . . a black powder stain ran up the right side of Dan’s face.

The locket . . . Yes . . . Douglass had felt it when he reached inside his tunic to feel the hole in his chest. . . . Now he pressed it into Dan’s hand. “See that Miss Amelia gets it. . . . See that she knows I love her. . . .”

Dan looked at the locket. It was open to the photograph of Amelia, cut from a carte de visite and fitted into the oval space.

The ambulance drivers pushed Dan aside and glanced at Douglass; then one knelt beside Lieutenant Pratt and examined the wound in his leg.

“I’m all right,” said Pratt. “Take Douglass first.”

“We’ll take Captain Holmes first,” said the other driver.

“Take Lieutenant Warren here,” said Dan. “Captain Holmes can’t live. He’s shot through the neck.”

“But Captain Holmes is alive . . . for now. Lieutenant Warren is dead . . . forever.”

vi

The Twentieth was mustered out in July of 1864, their three years served, their blood spilled, and their hearts, as Holmes would write, “touched with fire.”

Of the twenty Harvard officers who had trained at Camp Meigs, five remained. To preserve the Union, the Twentieth had taken more casualties than any other Massachusetts regiment, and when it was finally over, of the two thousand regiments in the Union Army, the Twentieth would have taken more casualties than all but four.

Sergeant Dan Callahan was a hero in the Irish districts of Boston. Friends and strangers stood him to pints. His mother cooked him lamb stew on his first day home and invited the cousins. On his second day home, Alice O’Hara invited him to the kitchen of the Fay House in Cambridge, cooked him chicken pot pie, and agreed to marry him.

On his way home that night, he went through Harvard Yard. It was a place he had thought about many times during the war, but not even in his dreams had it seemed so serene, so peaceful, so unreal, as it did on that embracing summer night.

He thought to linger, but for Dan and men like him, there was no longer serenity in silence. It was in the deepest silence that they would hear most loudly the roar of muskets, the thunder of cannon, and the cries of men left dying on the field. And Dan had to hurry away from his own sense of guilt, because so many were gone while he was still breathing, with a belly full of chicken and a life full of promise.

He got himself out of the Yard as quickly as he could, out to the Square, out to where there were people and sounds and the distractions of life. He jumped onto the Boston horsecar and sat down next to a well-dressed young man who carried a cane and wore a wooden leg beneath his trousers.

“Good evening, Sergeant,” said the young man.

For a moment, Dan did not recognize the man, who now sported side whiskers in addition to his mustache. “Why, Lieutenant Heywood Wedge. How are you, sir?”

“Glad to be done at the college, and”—Heywood hefted a pile of books on his lap—“preparing now for the law school. And how are you?”

“Happier than I’ve been in some time, sir. You know Alice O’Hara, maid to the Fay family? We’re to be married, sir.”

“Congratulations.” Heywood offered his hand. There had been a time that he would not have touched an Irishman, but the war had changed all that. “I’m to be married, too. To Miss Amelia Fleming, of Beacon Hill.”

And Dan, an honest and reliable man but a simple one in many ways, said, “You know, sir, that’s a fine bit of a coincidence, for I’ve somethin’ I promised to give her. ’Twas a promise I made on the field at Antietam.”

Heywood’s smile faded. “Promise?”

“To give her a locket, sir, give to me by your cousin. A message goes with it.”

“What message?”

“Well, sir . . . considerin’ the circumstances”—Dan looked out at the horses—“’tisn’t one you’d want to hear. A message of undyin’ love, you might say.”

Heywood’s face lost all its false friendliness. “Dan, it will do no good. For her . . . or for me . . . or for Douglass.”

“But, sir, ’twas a battlefield promise, and the locket’s engraved, D. to A., Douglass to Amelia.”

“Miss Fleming has only recently emerged from grief,” said Heywood. “To remind her of Douglass now . . . well, take it from one soldier to another. Leave it to the Lord.”

“One soldier to another,” repeated Dan. To men who had fought and survived together, it was a term that mattered.

Heywood leaned close. “Leave it, and I’ll be even more beholden to you, Dan. I’ll see to it that there’s always work for a loyal member of the Twentieth. No heavy liftin’ and a warm place to shit, eh?”

“A fine prospect, sir, but . . . what about Douglass’s mother? Should I give the locket to her?”

“She remains insensate with grief. Never leaves the house. That locket would only remind her of her loss, and my future wife would wonder why Douglass hadn’t thought of her. Then she would think ill of Douglass. We wouldn’t want that, either.”

“But the locket—”

“Keep it. Let it remind you of Douglass. Or better yet, melt it down and make a ring of it. Then give it to your future wife. I know Douglass would be pleased with that.”

And the horsecar clip-clopped across the West Boston Bridge.

Dan considered his mother a philosophical woman, one who had learned how to make her way through a hard world with few skills but a strong back. So he told her the story of the locket, showed it to her, and asked her what he should do.

She took the locket, opened it, turned it over. “If I was a grievin’ mother, I’m thinkin’ I’d want to hear the story of my son’s last minutes.”

“So . . .”

“But I’m your mother, and I’m thinkin’ that what Mr. Heywood is sayin’ may be right. Life is for the livin’. And the Wedges are folks who can help you on life’s ladder.”

“So . . .”

“So, do as Mr. Heywood says. ’Twill be the better way. Better for the livin’. And better for the Callahans.”

And that was how a certain locket came into the possession of the Callahan family.

Chapter Twenty

“A
LITTLE
breaking and entering,” said Orson Lunt. “This should be fun.”

“If Evangeline is with us, it isn’t breaking and entering,” said Peter.

She was waiting in front of her apartment on Memorial Drive. It was the end of March, cold and windy, sunny and bright.

“This better be good,” she said.

Peter pointed to a book on the seat of the car. “Take a look at that.”

She read the title. “
Twentieth Massachusetts Regimental History, 1861-1865 . . .
”

“Go to the page I bookmarked.” Fallon swung the car around and headed east on Memorial Drive, so that the river sparkled on their right. “Read the list of officers.”

“Oliver Wendell Holmes . . . Heywood Wedge . . . Douglass Wedge Warren . . . Artemus and Francis Pratt, my own collateral ancestors.”

“I was looking up Douglass,” said Peter, “and I remembered the first time I went to your grandmother’s attic to go through the Pratt papers, all those years ago.”

“The day we met,” she said. “How could I ever forget?”

“There were Civil War artifacts in that attic . . . Civil War papers.”

“So?”

“So, maybe Ridley wanted to see you because he wanted to get at them.”

“Peter,” said Orson, “Ridley’s research hadn’t gone beyond seventeenth-century commonplace books. He never saw the restored Copley portrait or had his curiosity piqued by a locket. He was acting on hunches.”