And One Wore Gray (54 page)

“What will you do?” Callie asked her.

“I will go, of course.”

“I’m coming with you,” Callie determined suddenly.

“To save Rebel lives?” Kiernan asked her.

“To save human lives.”

Kiernan grinned. “Good! I was hoping you would come!”

Yankees were very near the capital.

At the end of February Daniel was summoned to a meeting. A courier had arrived with dispatches warning of the discovery of a planned raid on Richmond. Federal General Judson Kilpatrick and Federal Colonel Ulric Dahlgren were leading forces that would separate, meet, seize the capital, distribute amnesty
proclamations, and free the Federal prisoners in Richmond.

Daniel, who knew the countryside like the back of his hand, was ordered to leave his troops to ride communications for the troops who would defend against these raiders.

By nightfall of the first of March, Dahlgren and his men were within two and a half miles of the capital. Daniel was there with the Confederate forces who fought him.

Riding around Dahlgren’s forces, Daniel discovered that he had ordered a retreat.

The next day, the Confederates pursued him. Late that night they set up an ambush. In the fighting that followed, Dahlgren was killed.

The raid might have been considered a minor incident in a war in which thousands sometimes died in a battle, except for the fact that startling documents were found on Dahlgren’s body.

There were orders to his men—signed by Dahlgren—that they must burn Richmond, “the hated city,” to the ground.

A second paper, unsigned, said that they must find Jeff Davis and his cabinet, and kill them.

Daniel returned to his command with the couriers carrying the photographic copies of the letters to Lee. Word was out about the letters, and emotions were running high against the Union. Southerners, on the field of battle and off, were outraged.

Lee sent copies of the letters to Meade. In turn, Meade replied to Lee assuring him that the United States government had never sanctioned such orders, had indeed, sanctioned nothing but what action might be necessary by war.

Whether it was a cover-up or the truth, no one knew.

Beauty Stuart had summoned Daniel when the reply
came in. He showed him a copy. “Well, what do you think?”

“I think it’s a good thing that Dahlgren did not succeed with his raid,” Daniel said.

“And what of our one-time friends in the North?”

“I cannot believe that they would condone murder.”

Stuart shrugged. “Perhaps not.” He gazed at Daniel sharply. “Well, did you see your wife in Richmond?”

“What?” Daniel demanded sharply.

“I’m sorry, you didn’t know? Flora mentioned in a letter to me that she had heard both your sister-in-law and your wife were working at the hospital. You know that I’m not a man to take leave often, and that I don’t appreciate time taken by my officers. But as you were so close …”

Daniel gritted his teeth. He hadn’t known that Callie was in Richmond.

Callie didn’t write.

But he hadn’t heard from Kiernan, either.

“As we are still so close,” Daniel said, “when you feel that I might be spared again, I would highly appreciate just a day or two to see to her welfare, and that of my sister-in-law and son.”

Beauty acquiesced.

Once again, Daniel bided his time.

Winter was fading; spring had come. With warmer weather, the fighting would intensify.

He wanted to see Callie. Soon.

Callie’s first days in the hospital seemed to bring her from one horror to the next.

She had seen men die before. She had seen them die all over her yard. She had nursed Daniel when he was wounded, and she had feared for her life.

None of it had prepared her for the hospital.

There were not enough drugs, and now there was
barely enough whiskey to be prescribed for the patients.

Amputations were the order of the day. By the end of her first week, Callie couldn’t count the number of operations in which she had assisted. At first, she had nearly passed out. Kiernan had warned her to pinch herself, and thus save herself such an embarrassment.

There was much more to helping in the hospital than the horror of seeing whole men lose their limbs. Some soldiers tried to bring their whole families in to sleep, and she had to part clinging wives from their soldier husbands and insist that the hospital was for the sick. She read until she was hoarse, and she wrote endless letters.

She wrote letters for men who died before they finished dictating them.

She and Kiernan and Janey had rented a small row house right by the hospital for themselves and the boys, and while Kiernan and Callie put in their endless hours with the wounded, Janey minded the boys and did what she could to put food on their own table.

Callie couldn’t have said that she was happy. To live in the midst of such pain and misery could not make one happy.

But she felt useful.

She was also, upon occasion, able to visit Varina Davis. One evening she and Kiernan both stripped off their worn work gowns and attended one of Varina’s receptions. Kiernan tried to tell Callie that she was really not very welcome because of her marriage to Jesse, and Callie commented that it was very strange that she—the one who was the Yank—seemed to fare better than a full-blooded Confederate like Kiernan.

“I’m afraid it’s a man’s world,” Kiernan said. “And we are judged by our men.” She grinned. “You, at least, are thereby a national hero.”

“I don’t think that Daniel would agree.”

“But you must take advantage of his situation, right?”

It was impossible not to come to love Kiernan dearly, and Callie was very grateful for her. No matter what other women might be saying about Kiernan, Varina was, as always, the ultimate hostess.

Varina was expecting another baby that spring, and despite the lines drawn into her beautiful face by the tensions of her position, she seemed to hold a special beauty.

“You manage to be happy, despite it all,” Callie told her.

“And you seem to serve us well, even if your heart lies elsewhere!” Varina told her. She smiled a beautiful smile, even if her slender face seemed drawn. In her way, Varina was happy. She loved her husband, and she loved her children. She was willing to ride out any storm with him, to rise to the heights, to endure any hardship.

Callie was suddenly very envious. She could suddenly see clearly what she wanted more than anything in the world.

A love so simple, and a love so complex.

It might well be something she could never have. She and Daniel might never come to an understanding. He didn’t trust her; there was the possibility that he never would.

It was a division every bit as deep as the Mason-Dixon line.

Kiernan had told her that Daniel did love her. Maybe in time.

She smiled ruefully and told Varina, “I’m glad to be at the hospital. Well, I think I am. It’s terrible to watch the men suffer. Sometimes, it’s pure agony to write their letters, and help them say good-bye, telling their mothers or wives or children that they love them so. But when they’re in the hospital, it doesn’t seem that
they are Yankees or Rebels anymore, it just seems they are men, God-fearing and all alike.”

“And once we were,” Varina murmured. She flashed Callie a smile. “I have a wayward child slipping down the stairway once again. Excuse me!”

Callie laughed. Through the open foyer doors she could see a dark-haired little boy with a brilliant smile to defy any mention of warfare, inching down the elegant stairway.

Again, she felt a little tug of envy for Varina Davis.

The world, it seemed, was crumbling down around her. But she had her “dear old Banny,” and her beautiful children.

Callie and Kiernan enjoyed the evening, but retired early.

Richmond was crawling with refugees. Even in the late evening, the streets were filled with people. Many of them were living on the streets, Callie had heard. They had been burned out of their homes, or were in the way of a northern army determinedly destroying any source of supply it could.

The Yankees were very close. And still, the southern spirit was a determined one.

The Yankees might come close, but they wouldn’t take Richmond.

Working in the hospital again, Callie discovered that more and more of the injured men were coming in from skirmishes extremely close to the capital. She was startled to discover that she was hanging on every word that the soldiers told her.

She began to hear about her husband. He was close with his flamboyant commander, that dashing cavalier Stuart, and they were keeping close tabs on Union General Custer’s troops now.

Callie felt her heart beating quickly as she cooled fevered foreheads and tried to make men more comfortable. She realized that she was longing to see Daniel
again. But as Kiernan had said, she could not surrender. But she could sue for a negotiated peace.

But war gave no quarter to the wants and desires of the contestants locked within it.

Daniel remained on the battlefield, and Callie remained in Richmond, praying that he would come for a day, an hour.

Deeper tragedy struck.

On April 30, the precocious little boy with the beautiful smile, Varina’s Joey, fell from the porch of the Confederate White House.

A servant brought news of the awful event to Callie at the hospital. An old, gaunt black man, tears running down his face, told Callie the tale.

“Miz Varina, she had just left the children playing in her room, and she done bring some tea or some-such into the president. Next thing we all know, that boy—her very pride and joy—why he done crawl up on a bannister and then … then he was on the ground and there was all manner of screaming. Miz Varina, why, she done reach her child mighty quick, and he died in his mother’s arms. She was overcome. Just overcome. But the army, ma’am, it had dispatches coming in for the president all the time, even as he was kneeling there, bowed over his son in grief. He done told them at last that he had to have one day with his child. And there she is, Miz Varina, expecting another babe, weeping over this one, and trying to hold up her husband all the while. She’s strong, Miz Cameron, but Lawd almighty, how strong can a woman be? She sets a store by you, ma’am, and I thought that maybe …”

“I’ll come right away,” Callie promised him.

And she did.

It seemed that there was so little that she could do. The Davises were closeted with their grief.

Callie tried to help with the weeping babes who were so lost and confused at their brother’s death, and she
tried to greet the mourners who came to the door. She sat numbly as she saw the small boy dressed out for his burial, and she could think of no words to say when Varina was before her.

There
were
no words to atone for the loss of a child. Callie thought of how recently she had seen little Joey with his beautiful smile.

And after all the death she had witnessed time and time again, she turned away and wept.

The thunder of cannon fire could be heard as the little boy was laid to rest.

Within days, the Union and Confederate forces were engaged in fierce fighting in the Wilderness. Callie had never seen anything more terrible, for the forests caught on fire, and men brought into the hospital were sometimes little more than charred corpses. And no one knew if their uniforms had been blue or gray.

Then came the battle of Yellow Tavern.

A little less than two weeks after the death of little Joe Davis, the thunder of cannon fire could be heard again as Callie stood in Hollywood Cemetery, eyes glazed as she watched another burial.

James Ewell Brown Stuart, the flamboyant, defiant, passionate, dashing cavalier, was dead.

He had been mortally wounded in battle with General Custer’s forces. An ambulance had been found to bring him back to Richmond.

Jeff Davis had come to his side; some old friends and comrades had come to do the same.

They had sung “Rock of Ages,” his favorite hymn. He had asked the doctor if he might survive the night, just long enough for his wife to arrive.

But Flora Stuart had arrived to a house of silence, and no one had needed to tell her that her husband was dead.

The Yankees were so close that there was no local
militia to form an honor guard—the city’s forces were all out fighting for the city’s defense.

Callie attended the church service, her heart heavy. She’d never met Stuart—she had known that he had meant a great deal to Daniel. Stuart had known he was dying; he had ordered his officers not to follow him to his deathbed, but to see to their duty.

So Daniel must be seeing to his duty, collecting bullets. Like Stuart. Like Stonewall Jackson. Like so many others.

Callie didn’t hear the service at the cemetery. She heard the burst of shells, a not too distant sound. She saw the slopes and curves and sections of the cemetery, and she gazed at the place where Jeb’s little daughter—Flora, for her mother—had been reinterred just a year ago. He had accepted his death, they said, because he whispered that he would be with his Flora again.

Callie looked at the sky, and she thought that soon it would rain. She couldn’t pray for the man being buried.

She could only fervently pray for Daniel. He would never falter if asked to lead a charge. All these years, he had been in the thick of things. The fighting was growing more and more fierce daily.

Dear God, don’t let him die.

She could hear Flora Stuart, sobbing softly.

He wouldn’t die, she told herself. Not now, not today. Little Joe had died, and Jeb was dead, and no matter what his general had ordered, Daniel had thought the world of Jeb Stuart. He would leave the front lines; he would come home to be here now. She would close her eyes, and open them, and Daniel would be there, across the crowd.

She closed her eyes, her lips moving in prayer.

She opened her eyes.

But Daniel was not there. He was not coming. He
was still in the battlefield, where he had been ordered to stay.

The minister finished the service.

The sky suddenly seemed to burst open, and it began to rain.