And One Wore Gray (34 page)

Another pain came, before the first had really faded. Panic seized her, and then an agony unlike anything she had ever imagined. She buckled down on the stairs, fighting the tears that sprang to her eyes, fighting to retain some control over the awful pain. It clutched like rivulets, like fingers, starting at her lower back, sweeping all around the circumference of her abdomen. She could bear it in the front; it was the agony at her spine that was so very vicious. How much could she stand?

Whatever came. She had no choice.

She started to rise from the stairs. It seemed that the pain came immediately. She cried out and fell again, and for a moment, there was blackness, the pain was so fierce. The blackness lifted, and she ceased to care for her own life, or for that of her child.

She just wanted someone to walk in and shoot her and put her out of her agony.

“Dear, dear, dear!”

Dimly, she heard a voice. A gentle, soothing, female voice. Then she heard a clucking sound, and soft, gentle arms were around her. She blinked and looked up.

Helga Weiss was there, and Rudy Weiss was right behind her. It was Helga who held her, Helga who spoke softly, giving her strength, giving her assurance.

“Poor child, poor child!” she clucked again. “All alone here and soaking wet and the babe on its way. Rudy, we must get her to bed. And into something dry.”

Callie shook her head, tears suddenly streaming down her cheeks as she stared at the woman. “I’m going to die,” she said.

Helga laughed kindly. “No, no. You are not going to die. Helga is here.”

Helga tisked away as she and Rudy carried Callie up the stairs. Then Rudy was sent away, and Helga worked on her own. In minutes, Callie was in a warm gown. The pains still continued to assail her, but Helga talked her through them, and the panic that had seized her was gone. The pains remained very close together.

The closer they came, the more she wished that Helga would just shoot her instead of trying to talk to her.

No! Daniel ought to be shot. Prison wasn’t good enough for him. He ought to be shot, and then she ought to be shot.

“Hold tight, it will be soon!” Helga told her.

Callie told Helga where she thought she should go.

But the kindly German woman never lost her gentleness, no matter how Callie tossed or screamed, or fought her assurances. Then, along with the pains, came a new sensation, the desperate desire to push.

“What do I do?” she begged Helga.

Helga competently looked into the situation and smiled at her, smoothing back her hair. “You push, Frau Michaelson. You push. Your little one is here.”

It wasn’t quite that easy. The pains remained savage, and she had to push and push and push. She thought that she passed out again, she strained so hard, but Helga was telling her that the head had been born and that they needed another shoulder, and another shoulder.

She heard the cry. Her baby’s cry. Drenched in sweat and tears she cast her head back and began to laugh, and then to cry again, and the sensations seemed to overwhelm her. That cry! That pathetic little cry. It reached inside her and touched her heart, and filled her body with wonder. The tears, the laughter, both remained as she reached out to Helga. Helga, smiling
like a saint, handed her the bundle of her baby, so tiny! And so, so beautiful! He was a little pinched, and very much a mess, but so beautiful. He screamed like a banshee!

It was a he!

“Helga! A little boy!”

“A son, yes. A beautiful, beautiful son.”

Callie forgot all about the pain. She barely noticed as Helga cut and tied the cord, and she was heedless of all sensation as Helga reminded her that they were not done, that she must deliver the afterbirth.

Callie didn’t care. She had already forgotten that she had wanted Helga to shoot her.

Her hands were on her tiny son. She was counting fingers and toes, and she was marveling at the exquisite beauty of her baby. Hers.

“Come, come now,” Helga told her. “Into a new gown with you. And now, I must have the baby. You won’t recognize him when I give him back. He will be so beautiful; you will see!”

Callie held him for a minute, then released him to Helga. She closed her eyes, overcome with wonder. Then, amazingly, she slept.

When she awoke, she was completely disoriented. She remembered her baby, and she bolted up, panicking.

But Helga was there, sitting in a rocker by a fire she had built against the coolness of the night. She was singing softly in German.

“May I see him?” Callie whispered.

Helga gave her one of her beautiful smiles. “He wants his mother. He has waited patiently, but now he is hungry.”

Callie reached out for the baby and Helga brought him to her. He took one look at her and began to howl. Helga laughed, and Callie fumbled a little with her
gown, then awkwardly tried to lead him to nurse. His mouth was so wide against such a tiny face!

But her son instinctively knew what he wanted. The wide but tiny mouth closed over her breast. The first tug that touched her as he suckled sent a new wave of emotion sweeping through her, emotion so strong that tears instantly rose to her eyes again and her heart seemed to warm there within her chest, beneath the little body. With trembling fingers she touched his head. It was covered with ink-black hair. She touched his hand, resting against her breast, and she was in awe of the perfection of the little fingers. Nothing that had come before could matter now. Nothing. People could turn their backs to her; they could damn her. None of it mattered. He mattered. This precious child. Her child.

“Jared?” She looked at Helga.

Helga shrugged. “It’s a fine name. But perhaps he should be named for his father.”

Callie lowered her lashes. “Jared was my father. It is a fine name.”

The baby fell asleep, right against her flesh. Helga came to move him. Callie didn’t want to release him. “You need something to eat,” Helga told her. “You will need strength. For him.”

Callie released the baby. Helga had made him a bed in one of the dresser drawers. She set him down to sleep. “I’ve made soup. I will bring it,” Helga told her.

It struck Callie just how wonderful this woman had been to her. She reached out for Helga’s hand. “Thank you. Thank you so much, Helga. You have been so good to me. And surely, in your eyes, what I have … done,” she said lamely, “must be so very bad.”

Helga smiled. “All around us there is death. Today, there is life. God has given us this beautiful life. What can be bad? You are good, Callie. You are good, and life is good. And God has let me be here.” She squeezed Callie’s hand. Callie smiled.

“Thank you so much!” she whispered again.

Helga hesitated. “You must find the baby’s father.”

“When the war is over,” Callie said.

“He has a right to know about this child.”

What rights did Daniel have? Callie didn’t know. She felt the usual shivering seize her. All she really knew was that Daniel hated her, that he had promised to come back. She had never, never forgotten the look in his eyes.

“He’s in prison,” she told Helga. “When the war is over, I will find him. I promise.”

She was still shivering. She had time. The war was nowhere near being over. Maybe Daniel would not care. Maybe he would not want to acknowledge the child.

Maybe he would want to strangle her, and take the child.

She moistened her lips. For the first and only time, she was grateful that the war was going on.

And that as long as the battles waged, Daniel would be safely locked away.

In the days that followed, Callie quickly regained her strength.

Helga and Rudy stayed with her nearly a week, but then she felt very well and she was anxious to get on with life in the way that she must learn to live it. It was not so difficult. Jared was demanding, but he slept frequently, and she was able to manage very well. She felt wonderful. She was so very in love with her child that she felt more exuberant than ever. She walked with a new spring to her step, and lived for the moments when she could just lie with the baby and inspect him over and over again.

By the time that he was three weeks old, his resemblance to his father was startling. It was more than the ink-black hair or the startling blue eyes. His mouth was
Daniel’s, his nose was Daniel’s, the set of his brow was Daniel’s. Callie often lay on the bed with the baby sleeping beside her, seeing Jared, feeling the softness of his breath, remembering Daniel.

She had loved him so fiercely.

But he hated her. Hated her with as much passion as he had ever loved her. She had betrayed him. He would never let her explain. He would never believe that she had fought only for his life.

Every time she thought of Daniel, she began to shiver again. It was best not to think of him.

She couldn’t look at Jared and not think of him.

And then came the rumors that the southern army was going to come north again.

Lee wanted to attack.

In Virginia, the armies were beginning to move.

On the eighth of June, Lee attended a review of Jeb Stuart’s troops at Culpepper Courthouse.

Word reached them that on the westward front, the Yanks had reached Briarfield, Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s home. They had burned it to the ground.

Two days later, Beauty Stuart’s cavalry were able to pursue their anger at any and all insults, for Union cavalry met them at Brandy Station, Virginia.

The most furious clash of cavalry in all the war took place that day.

For Daniel, commanding his troops, it was a nightmare like none other. Horses trampled men and other horses, guns were emptied of their shot and used as clubs. Sabres slashed and rained down death, creating bright red streams of death.

And through it all, the cries of the animals and the men met and melded, and as the day progressed, Daniel could no longer ascertain whether it was a man or beast who screamed in ragged agony at his side.

Time and again, he just missed the blade of a Yankee sword; time and again he felt a bullet whiz by his cheek so close that he could hear the rush and whisper of the displaced air.

Time and again he wondered how he could live, how he could survive the awful mechanics of the day.

But he did survive; and the battle did end. The Yankees had come on reconnaissance, and perhaps they had learned something of the southern troop movements. But it was the southerners who had held their ground.

Brandy Station was theirs. For what it was worth. Brandy Station, littered with the dead and the dying.

In the dusk he looked over the death-littered terrain and shuddered. He set his fingers before him in the coming darkness. He hadn’t sustained a single scratch.

He didn’t want to think of the death he had wrought himself.

A shivering seized him. This battle was over. They were no closer to a certain victory than they had been before it.

But now they were really moving north. He’d been given partial orders already about moving his troops. The North had been testing their movements—now it was his turn to test the movements of the Yanks.

Through Maryland, on up to Pennsylvania.

Again, he felt the most curious trembling sweep through him. He closed his eyes tightly. It had been a long time. A long, long time since he had stepped foot on that Maryland soil.

A few days later, Jeb gave him their orders. They were to move ahead. Lee’s ultimate goal would be Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The cavalry was to move on.

As always, the horsemen were ordered to be the eyes and ears of the South.

“I want my time in Maryland,” Daniel told Jeb. The words were almost cold.

“Not on the campaign north. You’ll get your time on the return south. You’ve got my word.”

Beauty’s word was as good as gold. Daniel knew that he would see her soon, and the excitement and the bitterness and the fury and the passion all churned tightly within him.

There would be fierce battles in the North.

They didn’t matter. He knew that he was going to live because he had to see her again.

He didn’t know at that moment that his emotions would run even more deeply when he saw her again at last.

And he had no way of knowing that there was a city called “Gettysburg” to stand in his way.

At the moment, it was nothing more than a little speck on the map.

As it happened, Daniel and Stuart and his cavalry arrived late for the battle.

By the time they made it, a day and a half of bloody fighting had already occurred, fields were already strewn with the dead, and a great debate over what was going wrong was already in process.

Some said it was the first major battle Lee was having to fight without his right-hand man, Stonewall. Some said that Stuart, in his attempt to make another great sweep around the Union army, had ridden too far and deprived Lee of his eyes and ears.

In their journey north, the cavalry had become involved in battle again and again. Even after the inconclusive battle at Brandy Station, there had been skirmishes at Aldie, Middleburg, and Upperville. On the twenty-second of June, Lee gave Stuart discretionary orders, permitting the cavalry to harrass the Union infantry. Stuart and his men were also to guard the army’s right flank, remain in communication, and gather supplies.

They came close—very close—to the Maryland farmland where Callie lived. So damn close that he could almost reach out and touch it. So damn close that the thought of desertion touched both his heart and
mind. At that, he had to convince himself she had become an obsession.

She might not even be there. Who knew? Perhaps she had turned from him to her Yank cavalry comrade, the damned Captain Dabney who had delivered the coup de grace once Callie had disarmed him.

Maybe she had married him.

It didn’t matter. She could have married a hundred men, he was still going back for her. But not now. He could not give in to his desire and pursue her, even though they passed so near. His honor was at stake, he reminded himself dryly. Ah, yes, honor and ethics! Without them, what were they?

They rode very hard, and they rode very fast. On the twenty-seventh, late in the day, they crossed the Potomac. On the twenty-eighth they captured one hundred and twenty-five Federal wagons, but the capture was surely a mixed blessing, for the wagons slowed them down.