In The Face Of Death (37 page)

“Because he has four times tried to kill Corporal Hayward.” She answered steadily and waited for him to castigate her for the risk she was taking.

Instead he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her close to him. “Oh, my sweet, good, brave, true, dearest Madelaine,” he whispered, his tone amazingly gentle, as he laid his cheek against her hair. “What have I brought you to?”

For the better part of a minute she let herself take solace from him, leaning on his taut strength, and then she moved back a pace, relinquishing his comfort with resolution mixed with anguish. “I brought myself here, Tecumseh,” she said. “You have offered to send me north, you have promised me protection here, you have recommended I remove myself from immediate danger, and all with the most honorable and affectionate intent, for which I thank you with all my heart. Yet I have remained. It has been my decision.”

“So it has,” he said, trying to match the sensible tone of her voice and failing. “Your . . . devotion to me has nothing to do with it.”

She was so exasperated she wanted to yell at him, but contained herself. “We must not alarm Private Rich,” she cautioned him, moving toward the second door. “Be careful, Tecumseh. Keep back and keep silent. This man is unpredictable.” With that warning, she unlocked the door and turned the latch.

Private Rich squatted in the far corner facing the wall, for all the world like a little boy who had been severely chastised. His hands were knotted into fists and at his sides. He turned his head to see who had come in, then let out a single, harsh cry. “Out!”

“Private Rich,” said Madelaine in her most authoritarian voice, “I want you to turn around. Come to attention, Private.”

Private Rich glared at her for an instant, then pushed away from the wall. He glowered down at his shoes as he straightened himself in form. He brought his right hand half-way to his brow and let it drop.

“You will be getting food in two hours. Enoch will bring it to you. You will be expected to eat it without complaint or any incident whatsoever,” Madelaine said sternly. “If you do not comply, we will be forced to send for men to assist the nurses in feeding you.”

“The food’s bad,” said the private in a strangled voice.

“The food is good; there are supervisors to be certain it is.” Madelaine looked at the cot where Private Rich slept. “You will need new sheets.” For he had torn those he had to scraps and tatters.

“Don’t,” said Private Rich, his expression darkening as he continued to stare at the floor.

“And you must change your shirt,” she went on in the same firm tone. “I will not allow you to fall ill because of uncleanliness.”

“Don’t touch me,” Private Rich whimpered. He drew his arms up to shield his face as if he expected to be struck. “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.”

“Tecumseh,” Madelaine said very quietly, without turning away from the cowering Private Rich, “be ready to get out of here quickly.”

“Madelaine, surely you’re not going to—” Sherman began, then was cut off as Private Rich gave a sudden bellow of rage and launched himself at the door and those who stood between him and it.

His rush struck Madelaine in the shoulder, and she staggered, turning to see Private Rich, his features distorted with wrath and madness, attempting to fix his hands around Sherman’s neck; a steady, vehement stream of obscenities accompanied his actions.

Madelaine sprang to the struggling men, and although it was day, she had some of her preternatural vampire strength to aid her in battling the maniac. She took a grip on Rich’s collar, tugging, only to have it rip.

Sherman regretted at once that he had left his sidearm with his aide and now inwardly cursed himself for the oversight. He managed to keep on his feet though Private Rich was nearly as tall as he, of heavier bone, and driven by the full fury of his insanity. “Get back,” he hissed between clenched teeth, as much to Madelaine as to Private Rich. His breathing tightened and became strident as he fought.

Private Rich began to kick, trying to batter Sherman’s legs and feet as well as striving to choke him. He used his head as a bludgeon, smashing it into Sherman’s face twice, howling each time.

Then Madelaine slammed Private Rich in the back of his knees as hard as she could, and followed it up immediately with a double-handed blow to the small of his back, delivered with all the power she could summon; she slipped out of the way just in time.

Private Rich screamed as he fell backward, landing with the sound of timber falling. He lay for several seconds, then pulled onto his side as his knees drew up to his chest and he began to wail.

The flush was fading from Sherman’s face, rapidly replaced by pallor. He tugged at his collar to right it, his eyes never leaving the man on the floor. “Christ Almighty!” he whispered, without a trace of profanity. He pulled Madelaine toward him. “And you actually have to come here to . . . treat this man?”

“At least three times each day, or he would be far worse off than he is now.” She regarded Sherman with a somber gaze. “Don’t forbid me to do it, Tecumseh. I cannot let these poor men be left here alone, to suffer more than they suffer already.”

He considered what she said, the apprehension not gone from him. “I don’t like it,” he admitted after a time. “He’s a madman. He might do . . . anything.”

“Think, please think,” she insisted as Private Rich’s wail became a steady, pathetic keening. “Who else can have so little risk as I? Who else can deal with these men and take so little harm from them? None of the nurses are as safe as I am. And when the sun is down, I have more strength than either of them.”

Sherman snorted. “In fact, the most sensible thing I could do is send all my hard cases here.” He shook his head and struggled to bring his breathing back under control once again. “No, no, Madelaine, that won’t wash, not with me. Men such as these two are dangerous, unpredictable. I know you can be hurt. I’ve seen it. And I will not permit you to make yourself a martyr to a cause that isn’t yours.” He laid one hand on her shoulder, his long fingers gentle and possessive at once. “No argument, young lady. I will not hear it.” He managed to open the door and drag both of them through it. In the little anteroom he stopped to allow her to lock Private Rich’s room, loosening his hold on her shoulder, but not releasing her. When she was done, he faced her. “I know better than to try to persuade you to keep away from these two soldiers. I will not try. I know when I am out-gunned, and you out-gun me, dear love. But I will insist on one thing: you are not to increase your numbers of these patients. If there is any question, say that General Sherman will not allow it.”

“But the need is very great,” she said, prepared to make a case for her work. “And so few are willing to do it.”

“No.” Only the expression in his eyes had any softness about it.

Madelaine knew that tone of voice; it was folly to object again, but it was an effort not to.

“Madelaine,” he said in a far kinder tone, “you were the one who told me I must mourn my friends, and my son.” He took her head in his hands. “How do you think the loss of you would affect me? You have seen what Willy’s death, and McPherson’s, have done to me; imagine then how much despair I would know if you were lost.” Before she could answer his mouth touched hers, lightly at first, and then with more turbulent emotion.

She responded to his kiss at once, reveling in his accessibility and his sudden vulnerability. For once, he was as clear to her as still, deep water, where she could look and see only him, since she had no reflection to cloud or distort her vision. As she put her arms around his neck, she felt the surge of longing that went through him; her need matched his own.

Then he raised his head, and though he continued to look at her as if determined to fix every nuance of her features in his memory, he gave a quick, wry smile. “Much as I hate to refuse an opportunity, this is neither the place nor the time, Madelaine.”

“No, it isn’t,” she said, and lowered herself from her toes. “Oh, Tecumseh, why are you so tall?”

He managed a chuckle. “Inconvenient, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said. “At times, very inconvenient.” She fingered her hair and discovered it was in disarray. She fumbled to put it into a semblance of order.

Sherman saw what she was doing and impatiently took over the task. “You’re making a mull of it.” As he struggled with pins and stray tendrils he said, “You being short, I should introduce you to Phil Sheridan. He’s a shade taller than you are, maybe an inch,” he said, in a tone that made it clear he would do no such thing. He straightened his tunic and went to the door. “Come.” Then his eyes softened again. “Tomorrow night I should be able to spend time with you.”

She smiled. “Good. I have been hoping you would have a few hours that were not taken up with waiting for word from Corse or pouring over maps.” She saw his scowl begin again, and went on quickly. “I know this is your work, and it is what you are here to do. I do not intend to interfere with that—”

Abruptly Sherman smiled. “Oh, yes you do. And God bless you for it.”

Atlanta, Georgia, 8 October, 1864

Most of the worst cases at Saint Eustace’s have been sent north by rail. More will be going in the next month. The plan is to have them all moved in a month, though a few are too stricken to be moved safely and will have to remain here until they can be moved or buried. . . . Corporal Hayward is in a very bad way; for the last six days he has refused to eat, and I fear that if he continues he will starve himself to death. . . . Private Rich attacked Enoch two nights ago, broke his leg and his shoulder before I could pull him off the poor man. I dislike the notion of restraints, but I begin to believe they must be used in Private Rich’s case. . . .

Tecumseh was in a dreadful mood yesterday, as scowling and irascible as I have ever seen him. He snapped at everyone without apology and he hardly ate anything. He has also not been sleeping, insisting that there is too much work to do to sleep. He claims that his brusque mood was because he had to sit to have his picture made, which he intensely dislikes, but I suspect his state of mind has more to do with the pressures being put on him by his superiors. . . . He does not want to sit here waiting for the enemy to come to him; he wishes to strike out for one of the Gulf ports, but from what he tells me, he is encountering opposition from the men advising President Lincoln. . . . Tecumseh is aggravated by what he calls their lack of foresight. He has said he may dispatch the Fourth Corps to Tennessee for General Thomas to use there at Nashville. . . .

Two huge copper washtubs boiled on the stove, and the steam that rose from them smelled of cotton, linen, stale sweat, urine, and blood. The make-shift laundry was dank, the walls darkening with mildew, and the three lanterns hanging around the close room made little headway against the gloom.

“How much longer will those be?” asked Miss Sachs of the Sanitary Commission, a spinster from Chicago who, three years ago, had been the organist for a Methodist church. She was looking worn to the bone, her hatchet features now honed to a sharpness that provided her plain, angular face an arresting quality it had never had before. Even the dark circles that rimmed her eyes seemed instead to make their blue the more startling. She no longer felt like an Angel of Mercy as she had when she first undertook her mission with the army.

“Almost done with these,” said Madelaine, using a wooden paddle to swirl the washing in the boiling water. “Jeanette has the rinsing tubs waiting outside, and I’ll help her hang them once I have the next load going. We should have everything hanging on the line by midnight.”

“She’s been a . . . real help,” said Miss Sachs with difficulty.

Madelaine turned and regarded Miss Sachs calmly. “Why should she not be? She had laundry, and worse, to do in that brothel; this is hardly any challenge to her, after what she has been through. A pity that her master should feel impelled to sell her because she was his daughter as well.”

Miss Sachs shuddered. “And to sell her to such a place. . . .” She put one slim hand to her throat, and coughed delicately. “I am afraid that in another week most of our casualties will be gone.”

“There will be others to take their places, as long as the skirmishing continues, and as long as the army spreads illness among its men, which, with winter coming, is bound to happen. There will be another influenza epidemic; there always is, and if not influenza, then something as bad, if not worse,” said Madelaine, world-weariness coming over her with such intensity that she nearly lost her footing.

“Others cases, yes,” said Miss Sachs. “But I am going with the last train. I have been instructed to return with the men, and see them established in hospitals. There are also a number of hospital ships bringing casualties to the North, and I have been assigned the task of finding quarters for the nurses.”

“An advancement,” said Madelaine. “I congratulate you.”

“It is, I suppose,” said Miss Sachs, at last getting around to the reason for her seeking out Madelaine. “One of the men I am to take with me is Private Rich. He will have to be restrained for the journey, of course, and I was hoping you would be willing to give me some of that composing draught you have made for him, to keep him calm during the long train ride. If he flew into one of his rages, I don’t know how we could deal with him.” She spoke very quickly, as if she was afraid she would lose her nerve before she had finished.

“If you think it will be necessary, certainly you may have a vial of it to take with you,” said Madelaine without undue emotion.

“You don’t think it’s wise to move him, do you?” asked Miss Sachs keenly. “You are afraid it cannot be done safely.”

Madelaine answered promptly and with candor, “No, I don’t think it can. Not in a crowded railway car with dozens of wounded men around him, in any case, and that is all that is possible now. If he must be moved, he would do better in a compartment of his own.”

“I doubt that could be possible,” said Miss Sachs stiffly.

“So do I,” said Madelaine, and began to lever shirts, sheets, and trousers out of the laundry tubs into waiting baskets. The paddle steamed in her hands from the heat of the water; the loads were heavy and bent the oar under their weight, but Madelaine continued with her task, undaunted. “Is there anything else, Miss Sachs?”