Dark Chaos (# 4 in the Bregdan Chronicles Historical Fiction Romance Series) (84 page)

Chapter 1

Would it be today?

Carrie Borden turned away from the Chimborazo Hospital building and tents crowding the plateau when she crested the steep hill and moved to the edge of the cliff overlooking Richmond and the James River glittering below.  She pushed stray black, wavy strands back into her bun and tried to block out every noise in the overcrowded, bustling capital of the Confederacy.  She was listening for just one thing…

The sound of battle.

Three years into the Civil War, there was no doubt that there would be another attempt to take Richmond. 
On to Richmond
had been the Union battle cry from the beginning.  Every spring there was vicious fighting that tore at the heart and soul of what had once been a united country.  Every spring the buildings behind her filled with horribly wounded men who would never live the life they had known before
if
they survived their wounds.

But it was just one man who held Carrie’s heart.  Just one man who had kissed her goodbye a few days before and headed out with General Lee’s Confederate troops to meet the massive 100,000 man Union army waiting on the other side of the
Rapidan River to attack. 

Carrie’s husband of just one year, Captain Robert Borden, was once again on the battlefield.  Carrie took deep breaths, trying to calm her nerves and focus her mind.  Everyone knew the battle would start soon. 
Today.  Tomorrow.
  

And then it would begin all over again, the constant worrying and wondering of whether Robert had made it through another battle.

The sound of battle would also trigger wagonloads of wounded men pouring into the hospital and into medical wards and homes all over the city that were set up to handle the tens of thousands of men that would need them.

Carrie stared into the distance, her green eyes glistening with tears, took one final deep breath and turned to stride briskly into the nearest tent. 

Battle would come.  She had work to do.

“Good morning, Carrie,” Dr. Wild called cheerfully, his laughing green eyes glancing up at her from under his cap of curly, rust-colored hair. 

Just the sound of his cheer, no matter how forced, made Carrie feel better.  And it made her realize how thankful she was to be able to make a difference.  She was the only woman working as a true medical assistant to a doctor at Chimborazo Hospital.  Dr. Wild had been the first to give her a chance to use her skills; now they worked as a team.

The years of battle had sickened her; they had also left her even more certain she was going to become a doctor when the war ended.  The ridicule she had suffered from so many when she had first arrived at the hospital had done nothing but steel her determination.

“Good morning, Dr. Wild!” she called out, glancing down the rows of what was mostly an empty hospital ward.  Most of the soldiers wounded in earlier battles had already been sent home or back to the battlefront. 

“Will you check all the drug supplies?” Dr. Wild asked.  “I’ve had the women stock everything they have made so far.  I’m afraid we’ve got little but what has been created.”

Carrie nodded grimly.  The blockades of the Southern coastline by the Union navy had been grimly successful, blocking out the drugs and medicines so desperately needed to treat patients.  Once again, Carrie sent deep waves of gratitude to Old Sarah, now dead, who had taught her the magic of the herbs filling the Virginia woods.  She had directed groups of women all spring in collecting plants and then turning them into the herbal medicines and treatments that would be the only relief many of the men would have. 

“I checked everything before I left last night.  We’ve got a good supply of the most important medicines.  The women will continue making them.  They’ve become quite good at it.”

“They’re angels,” Dr. Wild agreed.  “All the beds are ready.”  He walked to the open door and stared north.  “Now we wait.”

Carrie moved forward to stand beside him.  The air was still; the whole city held its breath as it waited for the inevitable.  Though the sun shone hot and bright, she could feel the heavy, dark clouds that had settled over the entire country.  Storm after storm had wrought tremendous damage, but they weren’t done yet. 

The worst was still yet to come.

Carrie shook her head to dispel her gloomy thoughts and then smiled when she saw Janie striding up the hill.  She had finished breakfast with her best friend just an hour earlier, but she was already in need of her steadiness.

Janie looked over and then veered off her course to another tent to come join them.  She took her position at the door and gazed north, just as Dr. Wild and Carrie were. “Will it start today?”

“I don’t know,” Dr. Wild said.  “We’ve been told to be ready, but there is no definite word on whether General Meade has begun to move his troops.  I suppose that, like always, we’ll know when the wagons start rolling in.”

He looked at Carrie with deep sympathy. “Any word from Robert yet?”

“No, but I didn’t expect there to be.  Both he and my father believe this will be the hardest fought battle for Richmond yet.”

“Because of Grant.”  Dr. Wild wasn’t asking a question.

“Because of Grant,” Carrie agreed.  “He doesn’t have the cautious nature of the generals who have come before him.  Robert believes we’ve been lucky.  There have been so many times the city could have been taken, but the generals didn’t push forward.  They gave up and left.”  She shook her head sadly.  “But not before they injured or killed thousands of our men.”

“But they weren’t fighting against General Lee,” Janie protested. 

“That’s true,” Carrie agreed, “but Robert told me General Lee just doesn’t have enough men to stop them.  His troops are much smaller, and they’re in much worse condition.”

“Yeah, we may not look so good, but we’re tougher than them Yankee boys any day!”  One of the few soldiers left in the ward had heard them talking – his voice ringing out.  “I’ll be out of this bed soon, and then I’ll be back fighting.  Them Yankees ain’t coming down to take our country!”

Carrie and Dr. Wild exchanged a somber look.  Both of them knew the soldier from Georgia wouldn’t ever go back into battle.  They had barely saved his life - and had not been able to save his leg.

He seemed to read their thoughts.  “Don’t be worrying ‘bout this missing leg of mine.  I reckon I can just strap on a wooden one and still aim a gun!  I ain’t going down without a fight!”

And that, Carrie thought with a sigh as she smiled encouragingly at the soldier, is exactly why this war was still destroying lives.  Neither side was willing to give in; there was no chance of peace.  The war would simply have to burn itself out.

Janie changed the subject.  “I tried to get information about Eddie again.”

Carrie turned to her eagerly.  She had been trying for almost two years to find out what happened to the man now languishing in Castle Thunder Prison.  Opal, one of her father’s slaves, had moved to Richmond from Cromwell Plantation to be with her cousin, Fannie, and work at the state armory munitions building.  She had been so happy, that is, up until the day Fannie was killed in an explosion at another munitions plant, and her husband, Eddie, caught as a spy, had been thrown into prison for treason. 

Opal had returned to the plantation with Fannie and Eddie’s four children, now her sole responsibility, and was determined to stay there until their father was released from prison. 

“Any luck this time?”

“I’m afraid not,” Janie said heavily.  “Captain Alexander doesn’t feel compelled to share anything about the inmates.”

Carrie tightened her lips.  “He is a hard man.  His time in a Union prison before he escaped has given him no sympathy for anyone at Castle Thunder.  I’ve heard conditions there are cruel and deplorable.”

“Unfortunately, that is very true,” Dr. Wild agreed.  “Which is just going to make things that much harder for one of the newest Castle Thunder guests.”

Carrie and Janie turned to him with questioning looks.

“Both of you probably missed the news a couple weeks back about Dr. Mary Walker.”

“
Dr.
Walker?”  Carrie asked in disbelief.

“A
woman
?” Janie gasped.

“There is a small ward for women,” Dr. Wild explained, “but Dr. Walker is a rather unconventional woman.”  He smiled at Carrie.  “I think you would like her.”

Carrie smiled and waited for him to continue.

“Dr. Walker is one of the country’s first women doctors.  She graduated from Syracuse Medical College almost ten years ago.   Then she married a fellow student, but I understand the ceremony didn’t include a promise to obey; she didn’t take his name, and she wore trousers and a dress coat to her wedding.”

Carrie and Janie both laughed in disbelief.

“Neither the marriage nor their joint medical practice lasted long,” Dr. Wild said wryly.  “She is quite the champion of women’s rights and dress reform.”

Carrie grinned.  “You’re right; I believe I would like her very much!” 

“They captured her as a spy,” Dr. Wild continued, “though if my source is correct, she crossed our lines to treat civilians, not to spy.”

“But to be in Castle Thunder,” Janie said with a shudder.  “It’s such a horrible place.”

“I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy,” Carrie responded, unable to get the memories of her friend Matthew, sick and gaunt after many months in Libby Prison, from her mind.  She could only hope he had been able to make it all the way to Fort Monroe and gain the protection of the Union Army. 

“I hope she’ll be released in a prisoner exchange quickly,” Dr. Wild agreed somberly.

Thoughts of Matthew had Carrie turn and stare east toward the coast, toward Fort Monroe.  Had Matthew made it?  Had he found Rose?  Was she still teaching at the contraband camp?  Even that tiny morsel of information about her former slave Rose, who was closer than any sister could be, had fed her
starving heart when she helped Matthew escape several weeks before. 

Janie, feeling her frustration, reached out to take her hand.  Carrie absorbed the courage it offered. 

Captain Robert Borden was weary to the bone.  Not from fighting, the battle had not yet started.  He was weary of the war and had lost all confidence in ultimate victory.  Before the first shot was fired, he knew the outcome would be the slaughter of thousands of men, with the distinct possibility he would be one of them. Whether they won or lost this particular battle didn’t seem to really matter.

He settled back against the cunningly built earthworks that created a natural fortress the Union could not succeed against.  The sparkling waters of the Rapidan River, flowing placidly below the high hills of the southern bank, had become used to being the unofficial boundary of the Union and the Confederacy.  The setting sun cast a golden glow that could almost make one believe there wasn’t really a war going on.

Robert closed his eyes and let Carrie enter his thoughts, though somehow it seemed wrong to bring her fresh beauty and vibrant energy onto the battlefield.  It was the only thing that kept him going.  He was no longer fighting to win a war.  He was fighting to protect his beautiful wife in the city the Union was determined to destroy. 

“Hey, Captain!” 

Robert opened his eyes and looked at the boy who had crawled over to him. His heart ached when he looked at the boy, barely sixteen, with his gaunt cheeks and exhausted, yet still defiant, eyes.  “Yes, Jimmy?”               

“You reckon the battle will start tomorrow?  The fellas are getting plenty tense.”

Robert shook his head.  “I just don’t know, Jimmy.  I believe it will be soon, but we haven’t gotten any orders yet.” 

“You really think we got a chance against Meade’s army?  I hear we’re outnumbered pretty bad.”  Jimmy’s sober face was much too old for someone his age.

Regardless of what he really believed, Robert knew it was his job to send his men into battle with confidence.  “Of course, we’re going to beat them!  It’s not the first time we’ve sent a much bigger army running.  They don’t know what’s hit them when they run into us.”  He made his voice strong and reassuring and was rewarded when the fear on Jimmy’s face was replaced with confidence.