The Face of Heaven (36 page)

Oh, Lord, will our fortunes ever turn, will they ever turn—or is it your will that America remain a household split in two?

Back at Fitzhugh House Lyndel worked with the casualties day and night and saw no sign of her husband. But the Monday morning after they returned she was trying to pour herself a coffee, her hands shaking from fatigue, when he took the pot from her, filled her cup, and pressed it into her hands, holding it there.

“I love you,” he said.

She clutched the cup and leaned her head into his chest, closing her eyes. “I love you too. Where have you been? I’ve missed you.”

“I was sent out to do reconnaissance the day after we arrived here. They’ve given me a horse.”

“A horse. How wonderful. Where is he?”

“She. A mare. Can you walk with me a few minutes?”

“I can.”

Holding her hand, he led her to a tall pine behind the Fitzhugh mansion. A shining black horse was tethered there and it nickered at their approach. Lyndel’s eyes took on light and color as she put a hand to the mare’s neck and stroked her. The mare swung her head and tried to chew playfully at Lyndel’s black apron and Lyndel laughed like a young girl.

“Oh, we’re already good friends. What’s her name?”

“Libby.”

“Why such a name?”

“For Elizabeth. Elizabethtown.”

“She’s a beauty.”

“Perhaps I should have named her Lyndel then.”

“No, you would need a sorrel for that. Something with red in its coat.”

He tilted her chin and kissed her long and with strength. Finally pulling away she glanced around them and, seeing that no one else was nearby, brought her lips back to his. After several minutes she rested her head on his chest again.

“Where have you and Libby been?” she asked.

He evaded the question with a question of his own. “Did you hear that Stonewall Jackson is dead?”

She immediately lifted her head and drew back to see his face better. “No. We’ve only heard that he was wounded by his own pickets last week after the attack on Hooker’s flank.”

“Pneumonia set in after they amputated his arm. He died yesterday. May 10th. The Southern papers say he always wanted to die on a Sunday, the Lord’s Day.”

Lyndel folded her hands in front of her as she stood. “What do your men say?”

Nathaniel looked away and rubbed Libby between her ears. “I know there’s no love lost between certain parties on either side. Some in the South see us as tyrants and some in the North see them as traitors. No doubt many in the Union are thanking God that Stonewall is dead. A few might even wish him in hell. But my boys don’t think that way. We’ve been up against Stonewall several times. At Brawner’s Farm he said we fought against him with
obstinate determination
, which is a mouthful of praise from Jackson. There is no hatred in my company for him. We wish he hadn’t died. He was an American.”

Lyndel nodded. “I feel the same way. All the deaths in all the battles sadden me and his death saddens me too.”

“Let’s walk down to the river for a minute.”

They stood on the bank holding hands and gazing at the sun leaping back and forth across the current. It was impossible not to look at the opposite side where the Iron Brigade had stormed the Rebel defenses two weeks before. Nathaniel kissed the top of her head by her white
kapp
.

“I love the smell of your hair. All around you is blood and mud and dying and you always manage to smell like a bouquet of lilacs.”

“I discipline myself to wash my hair every morning. Though sometimes I confess I wonder if it’s worth the effort.”

“It’s worth the effort to me. Even if I’m not there every morning to enjoy it. I miss brushing your hair out for you.”

“Well, if we stay here long enough perhaps we can get back to our old married-couple routines like that.” She smiled. “I miss hearing you say you love running your hands through the flames.”

But he didn’t smile, though his eyes came from the river to rest firmly on hers. “There will be some time. I don’t know how much. Weeks, I think—you see the men have shoveled out walkways and ditches and put up tents with awnings made from woolen blankets and pine boughs. I believe it will be the same as last year—Lee licked us at Manassas Junction, the brigade covered the army’s retreat, and Lee came after us into Maryland and we had a fight. Now he’s licked us at Chancellorsville, the brigade’s covered the army’s retreat a second time, and it’s only a matter of time before Lee comes north. He has Harrisburg on his mind again, I’m sure of it. And Washington. If there’s one flaw in Lee’s makeup it’s pride. He means to complete what he wasn’t able to complete in ’62—the invasion of Pennsylvania, the capture of Harrisburg, the entrapment of Washington, and the destruction of the Army of the Potomac.”

“Is this what you’ve found out by your reconnoitering on horseback?”

“Partly from that. Also from prisoners. From other sources. Stonewall’s death will set Lee back a few weeks. But then he’ll gather the Army of Northern Virginia together and strike as hard as he can. He’s not afraid of us.”

“Should he be?”

“Of generals like Hooker and Burnside and McClellan? No. But when the Iron Brigade gets a chance to fight he should reckon on the backbone Stonewall saw in us. The men are in a sour mood because we’re frustrated, Lyndy. At Fredericksburg only the 24th Michigan got to put up a fight. At Chancellorsville the 6th Wisconsin and 24th
Michigan led the brawl on the other side of the river there and that was it. We didn’t do anything else. The great battles are being decided without us.

“The Lord knows I hate the killing, but the Lord also knows I want the fighting if the fighting can end this war more quickly. At Brawner’s Farm we fought Stonewall and Lee to a standstill. We did it again at South Mountain. We did it a third time at Antietam Creek. Let Lee come after us, Lyndy, and may God give us a chance to stand squarely in his path this time like David.”

Lyndel watched the green fire tear through her husband’s eyes. He seemed to burn the air that moved around him as he spoke. She felt a pricking of fear in her stomach.

“You talk as if the 19th Indiana and the Iron Brigade are ready to change the course of the war and take on Lee’s army single-handed,” she said.

A softer color came into his eyes and he touched her cheek, playing with a loose strand of her hair and twisting it around his fingers. “We have some time. God has given us a second honeymoon. Let’s make the most of it.”

Now he smiled again and strong warmth filled her as she saw his love for her.

“
A virtuous woman who can find?
” he recited. “
For her price is far above rubies.
”

He removed her
kapp
and began to pull the pins from her hair until it fell in a scarlet shower upon her shoulders and down her back. She didn’t stop him. Nor did she look about her to see if anyone was watching as he ran his hands through her hair and placed his lips against hers.

“
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth
,” she murmured, “
for thy love is better than wine.
Oh, Nathaniel, I wish we had our log cabin back.”

“Perhaps,” he said as he moved his lips over her long shining hair, “the army will consider letting out the Fitzhugh mansion to us for thirty days. I think I can just swing it on a second lieutenant’s pay.”

23

T
he army didn’t let the Fitzhugh House out to Lyndel and Nathaniel but it didn’t bother them when they met there for privacy. Nathaniel repaired a table and chairs that had been abandoned and set them up in a back parlor. Sometimes the two of them ate there, sometimes they just sat together and talked. It could never be like the log house, for Nathaniel refused to room with his wife while his men slept in the field.

At night Nathaniel lay on the ground next to Lyndel’s brother Levi while his wife slept in a wagon next to Morganne. Yet to Lyndel the evenings in the Fitzhugh House by the Rappahannock had a charm and wonder all their own, and no experience surpassed sitting in the parlor with the door shut and one candle between her and her husband—his rugged face and green eyes glowed like gold.

By day she nursed the sick and wounded of the 19th Indiana, the Iron Brigade, and the First Corps while Nathaniel drilled his men. For five days in late May, the 19th Indiana and three other regiments were sent out to rescue the 8th Illinois Cavalry but they only marched in a circle for one hundred miles and came back, finding nothing they’d been told they would find.

Sometimes Nathaniel left for days on reconnaissance missions as the Union did its best to keep an eye on the movements of Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. She was aware that the cavalry were
normally used for this sort of work and wasn’t sure what Nathaniel’s role was, except it didn’t take people long to see that he was an exceptional rider. He wouldn’t talk about where he went but now and then there was the whiff of burnt powder on his uniform when she hugged him, and twice she watched him reloading his revolver at the parlor table with lead balls.

At the end of May the commander of the Iron Brigade, Long Sol Meredith, designated the Fitzhugh House as a sleeping residence for the only two women traveling with the army, Lyndel and Morganne. Nathaniel and Levi and the others in the platoon cleaned up two of the bedrooms on the second floor after repairing the staircase, and a pair of beds was put together with the help of some of the carpenters in the company. The women washed and hung curtains they found in an old trunk, and extra blankets donated by various soldiers were laundered and used as bedding.

“We live like queens,” Morganne said one night as she stretched herself out upon her bed. “It’s soon going to feel like the Palmers’ home in Washington if we pick up a few more pieces of furniture.”

“Hiram would have a story in this,” Lyndel replied, finishing the stitches on a pillowcase. “When do you hope to see him again?”

“I have no idea. His last letter was two weeks ago. He’s more enamored of General Grant than he is of me.”

“Oh, I doubt that, Davey.”

“I don’t know if I’m that interested in Mr. Hiram Wright anymore anyway.”

But the next day, June 4th, Hiram did show up in an unexpected way, when newspapers came into camp with the story of an assault by Union troops on Port Hudson on the Mississippi. He had written the account for the Philadelphia paper that employed him. What made this battle different from all others before it was that the soldiers who charged the Rebel fort were African-Americans. Lyndel read several accounts in the Boston and New York newspapers but liked Hiram’s writing the best and clipped it for the diary she had begun to keep. Her spirit was a swirl of joy and pain as she pasted the columns of type in her small book.

When they met after the news had swept through the Iron Brigade and the First Corps, Nathaniel and Lyndel did not speak. They gripped each other’s hands, the rings on their fingers strong and golden in the sunlight. Several times Nathaniel tried to say something to her but failed at each attempt. Finally he blurted out, “Charlie and Moses.” Then he brought her into the embrace of his arms.