Shadow of Dawn (38 page)

Around the second week in June Catherine sat
up late, reading. There were no candles for the bedrooms and only
one lamp was ever lit downstairs in order to conserve fuel. The
only books that had not been stolen from Clayton’s study were law
and history books, but she would have read almost anything to
occupy her mind.

The lamp gave a meager light to the large
front parlor, leaving most of it in shadows and darkness. Both Mrs.
Pierce and Ephraim had already retired to their rooms. It was
utterly still; there were no sounds but that of the occasional
turning of a page. Once she glanced up at the window to see her
face palely reflected back, her hair netted smoothly, her bodice
clean but faded.

A sound on the porch made her heart leap into
her throat. Someone knocked softly on the door.

For some reason her first thought was of John
Kelly.

She rose hurriedly and waited a moment for
Ephraim, but apparently

he had not heard. Her voice shaking, she
called, “Who is it?”

“Don’t be alarmed, Mrs. Pierce. I’m a federal
officer.”

She was certainly more alarmed than
reassured, but she opened the door. Two men stood on the darkened
porch. As soon as she saw the uniform of one and the ragged clothes
of the other, her body literally began to quake with dread.

The soldier said, “Forgive me, Mrs. Pierce,
for calling on you at this hour. I am Captain Stephen Marshall with
the United States Army, stationed here in Atlanta. I spoke with
your servant some time ago. He told me you were anxious for news
about your husband.”

She struggled to answer. “Yes. Won’t you come
in?”

She led the way into the parlor and stood
behind a chair, holding on to the back of it with both hands. The
man in the immaculate blue uniform removed his hat, eyeing her
respectfully. He had vigorous red-gold hair and a close-clipped
moustache, high cheekbones and large brown eyes that bore in them a
look of frank concern and kindness.

“This man is Colonel Holcomb, formerly of the
Confederate Army and now a prisoner of war. He’s just been
transferred here from Richmond. When I discovered where he was
from, I asked him if he knew anything of the fate of your husband.
I shall let him tell you in his own words.”

Catherine’s gaze moved apprehensively to the
other man, who must have been four or five inches over six feet
tall. He was thin to the point of emaciation. His dark hair, combed
to the side, revealed a wide forehead and deep-set, solemn eyes. A
bushy beard completely covered his lower face.

The man, whose accent revealed his mountain
origins, inclined his head toward her. With a quiet intelligence
and dignity in spite of his faulty grammar, he said, “Miz Pierce,
my name’s Eli Holcomb. I served with your husband under General
Lee. I ain’t able to say just where he is or even if he’s still
alive, but I can tell you what happened to him just afore the
surrender.”

Catherine’s hands relaxed ever so slightly.
“I would be grateful for any information you can give me, Colonel
Holcomb.”

He nodded gravely. “Last I heard, General
Pierce—”

“General?” she repeated in surprise. “Do you
mean Clayton Pierce?”

“Yes’m…brigadier general. Reckon he didn’t
include that in his letters. He was so good in the field, Miz
Pierce, he had a right smart number of promotions. General Lee
thought of him like one of his sons, tole me so hisself. General
Pierce was coolheaded, ma’am, even under the fiercest attack. I had
the honor of bein’ part of his escort.”

“I see. I’m sorry, sir, please continue.”

He seemed to search in his cheek for tobacco
that wasn’t there. “Well, ma’am, on April the eighth, I think it
was, we was under orders, retreatin’ to Appomattox, when we come
against a whole division of Yankees. We repulsed ’em for a long
time, near on to midnight, but they kept gettin’ reinforcements and
we didn’t have nary a new man to replace one what got kilt. With
all due respect to the captain here, I reckon that’s the onliest
reason we lost the war.”

Captain Marshall bowed his head and said
nothing, though one eyebrow went up in wry acceptance of the
remark.

“The general seen it weren’t no use, and us
and the other officers talked it over and had about decided to
surrender. We was pretty sure our army had time to get away and
we’d done held that road as long as we could. All of a sudden they
charged and swarmed over us like mad hornets and it was flee or
fight. It’s a credit to the general that not a man of his ran off.
Weren’t nobody comin’ to help us, ’cause weren’t nobody left…we was
the last, coverin’ the retreat.

“General Pierce’s horse was shot…the fourth
horse to be shot out from under him since I knowed him, and that
was after Gettysburg. He was engaged with the saber just then and
couldn’t get off the horse in time, and it fell on his right leg. I
think he got knocked unconscious.

“The Yankee he was fightin’ with turned out
to be a general, too…Custer was his name. When he saw our general
had fallen and weren’t nearly any of us left, he stopped the fight
and took us all prisoner. We pulled the horse off General Pierce
but he didn’t wake up. He was alive, though. I heard later that
General Custer put him in his own tent and set a doctor to tendin’
him.”

The colonel paused, as though waiting for her
to speak. When she didn’t, he said, in the same grave voice, “I
just want to say, ma’am, that I held General Pierce in great
respect. He was always calm and quiet…’cept when he was leadin’ a
charge…and I never heard him swear. I know he was a prayin’ man,
though he didn’t make no big show out of it. I seen him kneelin’ in
his tent a lots of times by hisself. He knew how to lead men and he
knew how to outthink the enemy. He weren’t as flamboyant as Jeb
Stuart, but there was a lot about ’em that was alike, when it come
to fightin’.”

“Thank you, sir,” Catherine said warmly,
moved by his words but wishing he had not spoken in the past tense.
“Then you’ve heard nothing of him since his injury?”

“No, ma’am.”

Captain Marshall made a slight movement,
drawing her attention. “If I may speak, madam. I’ve been able to
ascertain by telegraph that General Pierce was formally arrested
after the surrender but was released a few days later on the
request of General Lee. His leg was badly broken; in fact, there
was some talk of his losing it. I’m afraid there’s no written
record of which hospital he was sent to, nor have I been able to
communicate with General Custer or General Lee, either of whom
might know something of his whereabouts. I shall, however, continue
to try.”

“Please, Captain, I would be so very
grateful.” Catherine was unable to hold back her tears. Colonel
Holcomb lowered his eyes, but the Yankee met her gaze
sympathetically. The look he gave her held more than a kindly
interest, lending a double meaning to his next words.

“I shall take pleasure in calling on you
again, Mrs. Pierce. Good evening.”

“Thank you again, Captain. Thank you, Colonel
Holcomb. Is there…is there anything I can do for you, sir?”

The mountain man said, with his mournful
expression, “You needn’t feel obliged to me, ma’am. I’d have
follered the general anywhere and laid down my life for him without
thinkin’ twicet. I wish I could set your mind at rest, but I just
don’t know nothin’ more to tell.”

“You’ve relieved my mind a great deal,
Colonel. Captain Marshall, would you permit me to send Colonel
Holcomb something special to eat on occasion?”

The captain smiled. “That would be a service
to us as well as to him, madam, though he probably will be released
in a few days.”

“I shall bring something for him
tomorrow.”

“Very well. I look forward to seeing
you.”

The prisoner raised his head. “There is one
more thing, ma’am, I reckon I ort to say. The general set quite a
store by you. He didn’t say much, but many’s the night I seen him
in his tent, settin’ at his foldin’ desk with papers all around
him, and after a while he’d stop and bow his head and rub his hand
over his face like he was sad and weary, and then he’d pull a
little miniature out of his pocket and look at it for a long time.
Seemed like it perked him up right smart. I seen it once. He
said…‘That’s my wife.’ He didn’t have to say no more for me to see
how he felt.”

Catherine tried to speak and couldn’t. She
took the man’s hand and squeezed it, causing him to blush violently
above his shaggy beard. The captain said good night again, and he
and his prisoner left the house. She stood beside the door for a
moment and leaned her head on it.

“Clayton,” she whispered. “Oh, Clayton.”

Her legs went suddenly weak and she dropped
down, half sitting, her head still against the door. She said
aloud, “Thank you, God. Oh, please let him be alive, please—” She
stopped.

I’ve been begging and demanding that God
spare Clayton for years now, instead of just trusting Him,
Catherine thought. And Clayton, more a man of prayer than she had
known, had never stopped trusting Him.

Her mind traveled back to Delia’s wedding,
when she had so blithely told her friend, “Bad things happen. We
just have to believe God can bring good out of the bad.” Those
words had been only words then, stemming from some sermon she’d
heard, or perhaps from a conversation with Ephraim.

Now she knew from her very heart and soul
what they meant, and she was every bit as afraid and uncertain as
Delia had been. In fact, she was paralyzed by fear. She had even
stopped nursing at the hospital because she was terrified of
finding Clayton there—mutilated…or dead.

She knew what she had to do. Everything she
had learned in the last few years—from life, from Ephraim, from
Clayton—came back to five little words: trust God, no matter what.
And to do that, an inner voice told her, she had to try to forgive
the Yankees for the loss of practically everything she held
dear—perhaps, even, for the loss of her husband.

She must go on praying for Clayton every day,
but without demands, without that determination that her will be
done. She would— she must—have hope, and yet she must prepare
herself for the worst.

The long dark night, which had begun when
Clayton left for Fredericksburg, was finally over—the first
glimmering of dawn had appeared.

T
he next day Ephraim
went to the jail with a basket containing a jar of chicken and
dumplings and a plate of cornbread for Colonel Holcomb. At first
Catherine was just going to send her portion, but when Mrs. Pierce
heard the news, she insisted on sending all they had. They would
eat cheese and biscuits for a day or two, until they could afford
to buy another chicken, and soon there would be plenty of
vegetables from Ephraim’s garden.

She would send food to the colonel as long as
he was in Atlanta, but she would not go herself. She found Captain
Marshall’s obvious interest in her rather disconcerting. She
believed Clayton was alive, and if not, it would be a long time, if
ever, that she would welcome the attentions of another man—let
alone a Yankee with a Boston accent, no

matter how nice he seemed. Perhaps she could
forgive them, but that didn’t mean she had to marry one of
them.

Jessie came for a short visit with bad
news.

The night Richmond fell had been like
something out of a nightmare, with people surging madly through the
streets, fires spreading out of control, exploding ammunition
rocking the city, women screaming, men shouting. “I thought it was
Judgment Day for sure,” Jessie said, her eyes huge with remembered
horror.

Catherine’s uncle had collapsed and died
early the next morning, just about the same time the Confederate
flag came down and the United States flag went up over Capitol
Square. The Henderson’s’ house had been immediately occupied by a
Yankee colonel and his staff, who had permitted the young widow and
her servants to stay. A few days before Jessie left for Atlanta,
Sallie had married the colonel.

And barely two months since Martin’s death!
Catherine couldn’t believe it.

Maybe Sallie really had been a fellow
conspirator of Bart’s. Well, they’d never know and it didn’t
matter, anyway. That was all part of the world that had ended.

***

Early one morning in late June Catherine sat
in the front parlor with Mrs. Pierce, bent over a piece of sewing.
The soldier to whom it belonged would be calling for it later in
the day and she wasn’t nearly finished with it.

The sunlight had just begun to invade the
room; soon it would be blinding and they would have to draw the
shades halfway down. She pricked her finger for the second time.
She put down the garment and rubbed her eyes.

She had been vaguely aware of the sound of a
buggy stopping somewhere outside. When Catherine looked up, she saw
that Mrs. Pierce had also dropped her work and was staring at the
door. Someone crossed the porch, and the sound of it was strange,
as though the person limped heavily.

A shadow fell across them from the window and
then the front door opened. Someone came into the hall and stood in
the doorway, looking at them.