The Face of Heaven (24 page)

Nathaniel picked him up and carried him to the stables where the 19th Indiana’s surgeons were at work. Lanterns hung from the rafters, and the stable doors had been unhinged and were being used as operating tables. Soldiers lay groaning on the straw while Morganne mopped their brows or gave them sips of brandy to prepare them for the amputations. She glanced up at Lyndel in the black and gold light. Her eyes seemed to have no color.

“Just lay him here.” Morganne patted her hand on a patch of straw stained with blood. “It will be another hour. Is it a leg or an arm?”

“His right arm,” Lyndel told her as Nathaniel lowered the boy gently down beside Morganne.

“So young,” said Morganne quietly.

A shriek made Lyndel jump but Morganne scarcely noticed. Hiram leaned into a bearded Union corporal whose leg was being sawed off above the knee. Then he replaced a thick strip of harness leather in the man’s mouth.

“Bite, Jack,” he said. “Bite for all you’re worth. The doctor’s almost done.”

Hiram’s arms past his elbows were red.

“Miss Keim.” A surgeon looked up from a second stable door. “Would you give this man more chloroform while I probe for the bullet in his shoulder?”

Lyndel poured the sweet-smelling liquid from a bottle into a clean
cloth she found on a shelf next to a rack of farrier tools. She held it over a young soldier’s mouth and nose. He writhed and twisted as the surgeon poked deep into a muscle. Both the surgeons were covered with blood and grime and sweat. Once the soldier lay still, Lyndel took another cloth, dipped it in a bucket of water, and quickly and firmly wiped first one doctor’s face and then the other’s.

“Thank you, Miss Keim,” said one of them. “Before you head out into the night again I wanted to tell you how much we appreciate the supplies you brought us—sharp saws, the chloroform and brandy, quinine and morphine and opium pills. Our own army has not brought up the supplies we need for fear the battle may resume tomorrow and the enemy capture the medical wagons.”

“I took a page from Clara Barton’s book, doctor. She is always bringing supplies to the field stations.”

“I’m glad you learned so well. Now some of our assistants are over in the tool shed just behind us. I have no idea how they’re fixed for horse-hair for suturing or whether it’s even been boiled to render it pliable. Do they have enough morphine to rub into the worst of wounds to deaden the pain? Or oiled linen and sticking plaster for bullet holes?”

“I promise I will look in on them before I head back to the battleground.”

“Miss David!” called the other doctor loudly. “I need you here. Bring a sponge and basin and take care of this blood from the amputation. Then administer some turpentine or tannic acid to stanch the flow.”

Morganne set the bottle of brandy to one side. “I’m coming.”

“Fetch some laudanum as well, will you? And I will need you to apply a tourniquet.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hiram,” the doctor went on, “you may lift the corporal down now and lay him on some fresh straw at the back. Then I’ll thank you to bring up that lad with the neck wound there.”

“Nathaniel!” Hiram looked at his friend and half-smiled. “I’ve not had a chance to say it’s good to see you. Can you help me lift this man down and the other up?”

“Of course.” Nathaniel scrambled to Hiram’s side and together they took the corporal from the stable door that was propped up on saw-horses. Morganne was still applying turpentine to the amputation as they set him in the straw. Then they picked up a soldier with blood running through the bandage on his neck.

“Thought you’d be looking for the nearest telegraph station to file a story,” Nathaniel said to Hiram as they placed the soldier carefully on the door.

“In the morning.” Hiram grunted. “First light I’ll ride out so the pickets can see who I am. Unless the fighting resumes.”

Nathaniel stared at him. “Do you think it will start up again?”

“Depends what McClellan does. He’s fought Lee to a standstill. I don’t think Lee will push for any more. It depends whether or not Little Mac wants to try to put an end to the Army of Northern Virginia. We still have more than twenty-thousand in reserve while Lee has none.”

“But Little Mac is no risk-taker, Hiram.”

“No, he’s not.”

The other doctor spoke up around a scalpel clamped in his teeth. “We’ve never had casualties like this, not at Manassas, not at Gainesville or South Mountain. I honestly don’t know who McClellan can summon up to fight.”

“The reserve would be enough, doctor. But I don’t know if Mac’ll do it. If he doesn’t, Mr. Lincoln will want to know why. So will the Congress.”

“There’s been enough slaughter for one battle. More than enough.”

Hiram put his hands on his hips and watched the doctor work morphine into a large gash in a soldier’s side. “That may be, sir. But if Lee’s army lives to fight another day you’ll see this again and again and again. The war could go on for years.”

Lyndel went outside the stables and headed for the tool shed. Suddenly she felt faint and sagged against a tree. She tried to remember what she was setting out to do. Then an arm went around her shoulder and back and held her up.

“Are you all right?” asked Nathaniel.

“I thought I was.” She leaned into him. “I’ve worked at Armory
Square for months. I tended the wounded with Clara Barton at Second Manassas. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Some of the wounds are pretty bad.”

“It’s…it’s more than that. Do you ever think back to our families in Pennsylvania? How much they disapprove of our being here? Sometimes the weight of their censure is just too much along with all the blood and killing.” She looked up at his powder and blood dark face. “Nathaniel. I feel alone and far away from myself.”

“No,” he responded, kissing the top of her
kapp
. “You’re not alone.”

14

“Lyndel!”

“I’m in our tent writing a letter, Davey!” called Lyndel.

“The boys are forming up in the field. President Lincoln really is here this time. Hurry!”

The men stood in straight rows, regiment by regiment, backs straight but uniforms faded and tattered. Lyndel realized there were nowhere near the numbers there should have been. The president looked rugged in his untrimmed beard and black suit, his face sunburned, but his step steady and sure on the green grass. The reek of dead horses left where they had been killed during the battle two weeks before saturated the warm air. The president didn’t appear to notice. With General McClellan beside him he gazed long and hard at the ragged but proud appearance of the Iron Brigade and Lyndel saw the pain pass over his face.

The flags of the four regiments, many of them full of bullet holes, some shot to pieces, dipped in salute to the president of the United States. Lincoln, tall black hat in his hands, bowed low in response. Lyndel saw Nathaniel formed up with his platoon, Captain Hanson and Lieutenant Nicolson on one side of him, Ham a corporal now, on the other. It seemed to her that Lincoln searched out the platoon in the formation and rested his eyes on Nathaniel, Levi, and Joshua, as if someone had pointed out these were three Amish boys who had taken up arms to preserve the Union.

Perhaps I have imagined it,
she thought.

Lyndel was gathered off to the side with the 19th Indiana’s quartermaster and surgeons and chaplains. The president slowly made his way toward them. Briefly he shook a few hands. Then he spotted Lyndel and Morganne and inclined his head.

“The nurses of the Indiana regiment.”

“Mr. President,” they both replied at the same time, bowing their heads and each making an attempt at a curtsy.

“This was a terrible ordeal for you,” he said.

“It was an honor to help these soldiers, sir,” Lyndel said. “They bore the brunt of the battle. To have saved some from the bullets and shell-fire is a privilege.”

Lincoln nodded. “I see that by the look in your faces. You do not find the field conditions too rough? You have been encamped here more than two weeks.”

“They are not rough, Mr. President,” Morganne spoke up. “The troops afford us every amenity they possibly can. They treat us as if we were their own sisters with all grace and respect.”

A smile came to Lincoln’s face. “Do they? I’m sure you’ve done your best by them to deserve it.” He nodded as he walked away. “Perhaps I may not have to meet you under such circumstances again if the fortunes of war favor us.”

“We shall pray to that end, sir,” Lyndel said as the president moved slowly on.

That evening Nathaniel came as he usually did to the primitive hospital that had been set up not far from Miller’s farm where Lyndel and Morganne also had their tent. Since he was bivouacked with his men near the Potomac he didn’t have far to walk. Lyndel and Nathaniel made their way along the Hagerstown Turnpike but didn’t hold hands.

“Sometimes I feel guilty,” Nathaniel said. “I can have my evenings with my sweetheart while other men cannot.”