Sisters of Shiloh (7 page)

Libby seemed effortless in her role. Josephine had a bit more trouble.

“Drink from this canteen,” Libby said. “No, not that way. Tilt your head. Throw your head back and gulp. Let some water spill out the sides. Men have no manners.”

Josephine tried again. “Yes, that’s more like it,” Libby said approvingly, “Now, catch.” A cartridge came sailing toward her face. Josephine threw her hands up to block it.

“No,” Libby said, “men catch things fearlessly. Try again.”

The amputations had left the stone floor as gory as a battlefield. More blood speckled the walls. A bladder bag filled with tobacco sat atop the pulpit, and a mound of unused cartridges made a pile in the far corner. The women slept on pillows made of discarded haversacks and played with a deck of cards that was missing all of its queens.

When Libby was satisfied with Josephine’s training, she made her cast off her dress in favor of Stephen’s clothes. Libby had found them laid out to be washed the night the girls left home, and so it was these filthy clothes that Josephine had to wear. Josephine felt repulsed as she put on her brother’s clothes and his mud-covered brogans, which had not been allowed inside the house but now seemed to fit perfectly inside this fetid church.

Libby inspected her.

“They fit about right,” she said at last.

“They smell bad,” Josephine said.

“We may as well get used to it. We won’t be able to bathe and groom ourselves, not for a long time.”

Josephine was grateful for the nod of approval, even though she felt wretched and ugly and stripped of nearly everything that made her feminine. She had never felt pretty. And now all the things she’d done to try and be more attractive were being stripped from her—the lace, the dress, the grosgrain ribbon. The cream she rubbed into her skin to make it soft and smooth. Every attempt to be a young woman had been stamped out now. She had never felt so ugly, so undesirable to the men whose attentions she had desperately hoped for. All she had left was her light, long hair, the same hair she had spent hours washing, preening, brushing and fixing. She felt tears start in the corners of her eyes when Libby picked up the knife.

“Are you sure you are willing to do this?” Libby asked.

Josephine stood miserable in her brother’s clothes, the shoes heavy on her feet, her body sweating, her chest bound in muslin so as to flatten any hint of breasts. Her breasts were larger than Libby’s, and the deception took more muslin and tighter binding.

“Is there nothing I can say to persuade you to stop this madness and go home?” Josephine asked.

“You know the answer.”

“Then cut my hair,” she ordered, as the first tears ran down her face. She stood perfectly still as Libby took a hank and began sawing. The freed strands dropped on the bloodstained floor. Light and a partial breeze came through the broken window.

Josephine wiped her eyes. “Keep going.”

When they left that ruined church, Josephine left a pile of her long hair, her dress, and her name. She was now Joseph, and Libby was Thomas. She was glad she had no mirror to reflect back what she had become.

October 1862

Bunker Hill, Virginia

He was a shabby, bearded figure, wearing an old slouch hat and taking bad posture in the saddle. The buttons of his jacket had been torn off by female admirers for souvenirs; strands of his pony’s tail had been yanked out for the same reason. He had a wide forehead and the shape of his lower face seemed to grow narrower over time. There was something comical about his visage: the nose, eyes, and mouth a Calvinist trio, but the ears a joke passed down a marching line. At the Virginia Military Institute, where he had been a professor, students drew caricatures of his enormous feet on the blackboards. Now those same students rushed into battle shouting his name.

Some thought him mad. He wouldn’t eat pepper because he believed it made his right leg weak, sometimes held one arm straight up to balance himself, and liked to suck on lemons during battle. His wrinkled uniform made him half-general, half-wretch. He didn’t send letters on certain days of the week, for fear they might be in transit on a Sunday.

He was Stonewall Jackson, and those who thought he simply obeyed the will of General Lee were wrong. He had buried his first wife and two babies, sinking the spade under God’s direction. He took his orders from a wet Bible that lay in a leaky tent. The caress of the New Testament, the puncture wound of the Old. He had moved his brigade to Bunker Hill, restoring his troops to health and making plans he neglected to share. The Valley Pike loomed, macadamized and packed on each side with crushed limestone.

Bunker Hill was tantalizingly close to Winchester, a town dear to Jackson’s heart. He had set up headquarters there the winter before, in a T-shaped house near the top of Braddock Street. The bachelor who owned the house had been incapacitated at Manassas, a minor discomfort when compared to the incredible fortune of having Jackson under his roof.

Jackson’s wife, Anna, had come to Winchester to meet him, and they had stayed together at the manse of a Presbyterian minister. The Jacksons slept in the upstairs bedroom at the northeast corner of the house. At night, when they were alone, Anna touched his hands and ran her fingertips over his face. One night they closed the door after a dinner of roast beef, corn bread, and buttermilk. He lit the fire and undressed her. His finesse with the buttons spoke of much practice. Outside, frost hung in the trees. The persimmons on the ground were hard as stones. Cattle stood in the fallen snow. The windows rattled.

Naked and glowing by firelight, Jackson’s pleasant-faced wife transformed into something so beautiful it took his breath away. Their time together would torture him later. Worse than exhaustion, hunger, or the smell of death would be the memory of her body beneath him, warming every part of him. Chest to chest, belly to belly. He moved his lips from her cheek to her mouth, then down her neck. In the backyard, a branch broke off a dogwood tree, fell onto the roof, and then slid down the house, scraping against it like the bristle of a beard. The fire crackled and sent sparks up the chimney.

“Thomas,” she said, “I’m afraid.”

“You have no reason to be.”

“I don’t want you to die. I couldn’t bear it.”

“Other wives do.”

“I don’t care what other wives do.”

“If I die, it is God’s will.”

The bed creaked. The headboard tapped the wall. In a room nearby, Jackson’s staff were sleeping. They heard the sounds and opened their eyes. Impossible. Sex was the joy of mortal men.

When she left Winchester, Anna was pregnant with his child.

Bunker Hill was busy. Four drills a day, ninety minutes each. In between the drills, the soldiers wrote letters, boiled rye coffee, and played checkers. They were a sad-looking lot, badly dressed and hungry and weary of war. Some of them coughed persistently, and some had rose-colored spots on their skin that turned white at the press of a finger. Lice tormented them, making popping sounds when the clothing they infested was held over a campfire. So many soldiers had died or deserted. Thousands of wounded lingered in Winchester, nursed by the local women and crammed into hospitals converted from schools, churches, and even the courthouse.

The South needed reinforcements. Boys too young, men too old.

The camp had been set up in an orderly grid, the parade grounds on the opposite side of the officers’ quarters, supply wagons parked in the middle. The sisters stood outside the surgeon’s tent, two sweating frauds who felt weak in the knees at the thought of being examined. Another man came out of the surgeon’s tent. The sisters moved forward in line. The day was hot for early October, the late afternoon sunlight still so fierce it seemed to penetrate their clothes and reveal their true figures to the world. Sweat dripped down Josephine’s face. She wiped it away with her fingertips. Libby noticed the feminine gesture and looked at her in disapproval.

“Wipe with the back of your hand,” she admonished in a whisper. “And then fling the sweat away, even if there isn’t any, and make a face like you’re annoyed.”

“I can’t remember all this.”

“Men aren’t ladylike. That’s all you need to know.”

“We will never get past the doctor.”

“He won’t suspect us. The soldiers who go into that tent leave quickly. The doctor can’t be looking very closely.”

Josephine took a deep breath and felt the binding stretch across her breasts.

Finally they were ushered in by a harried-looking recruiting officer.

“What are your names?” the doctor asked.

“I’m Thomas Holden,” Libby said. She pointed to Josephine. “And this is my cousin, Joseph Holden.”

“You boys from Winchester?”

“No. Shiloh.”

“Shiloh? Shiloh’s not a town. It’s a battle.”

Josephine thought she might faint from the anxiety. Libby had decided on the name “Shiloh” to honor Arden’s hometown.

“Shiloh is near Fredericksburg,” Libby shot back. “I think I should know where I’m from.”

“What are you two boys doing all the way out here, then?”

“Joseph’s folks died when we were kids, and he came to live with us. My pa didn’t want us in the war, so he moved us west after First Manassas. Pa died last month, so we came to join up,” Libby said.

Josephine was impressed not only with the arrogant, calm way her sister spoke, but with the register of her voice. Had she not known Libby was female, she could have sworn an insolent young man stood in her place.

The doctor looked Libby up and down. “You and your cousin are pretty small. You’re the size of boys, not men.”

“We may not be very tall, but we can fight just fine.”

The doctor sighed and motioned to Josephine. “Come here, Joseph. I don’t bite.”

He took her hand. It seemed to cause him some suspicion. Perhaps the palms were too soft or the knuckles too delicate. He looked her square in the face with a you-don’t-fool-me expression that put a knot in her stomach.

“How old are you?”

The knot dissolved and then grew again as a different concern. Her gender wasn’t in question after all. Only her age. Someone with her delicate features must have looked like a child.

Libby answered for her. “We’re both eighteen.”

The doctor exchanged looks with his assistant and sighed. “Well, I’ve been ordered to believe you. You got two arms and two legs, and that makes you soldier material. I guess you boys never think of your mothers and how they’d feel if you were killed. Either one of you ever had malaria or pneumonia?”

Libby spoke up again. “We’re both healthy as horses.”

“Measles? Typhoid?”

“No.”

The doctor glared at Libby. “Your cousin speak at all?”

“Not much.”

The doctor pressed the disk of his stethoscope against Josephine’s chest. “Breathe. Now, again. Now hold out your palms.”

Josephine held out her hands, and the doctor took them in his own, pressing on her fingers.

“Good color,” he said. “You’re not dead. Welcome to the Army of Northern Virginia.”

The soldier who led them to their company wore spectacles and didn’t have a hair on his head. He seemed bored, or tired. He was a thin man; his jacket hung off his frame, and his pants were too big for him. Libby and Josephine stumbled behind him, weighed down with their guns and gear and uniforms.

He carried a half-whittled stick and used it to gesture at the supply wagon. “You need anything, ask them. They don’t got nothing.”

“I thought we were going to get Enfields,” Libby said.

“Sorry. Converted flintlocks are all we got, for the moment. And we don’t got any shoes. You two are lucky you have shoes of your own. A lot of the men are barefoot.”

No one stirred in the camp, but in the distance could be heard music and sharp commands.

“What’s happening over there?” Josephine asked.

“Dress parade. That’s what we do every day at six o’clock. We’ve got to look good. Of course, our general looks like hell. That’s a god’s prerogative.” He pointed his stick again without breaking his stride. “Over there is what they call the sinks. That’s where you answer the call of nature. Only, no one wants to go over there. Take a deep breath through your nose and you’ll notice why. I think the boys dug the trench too shallow. Most everyone goes to the woods. More privacy, and the cardinal flowers are lovely this time of year. You know, there’s an unwritten rule between Confederates and Yankees never to kill an enemy soldier while he’s relieving himself. But don’t count on that. Rules are made to be broken.”

“Where do we bathe?” asked Josephine.

“There’s a river yonder, on the other side of those trees and down a slope, if you can get to it through the blackberry vines and the scrub trees. Funny, most of the fellows don’t make much of an effort. Then when winter comes, some of them stop bathing till spring. They hate the cold water. They turn into cats in December.”

He stopped in front of a small tent. “This is all you got right now for shelter. This and your oilcloths. You should be grateful. Most everyone else don’t got nothing but the cold hard ground. Two boys from your company stole this tent from a dead Yankee a week before they died themselves at Second Manassas. Then two other boys got it. They went down at Sharpsburg. No one else wants to use it. Too superstitious, I guess. But you don’t believe in that foolishness, do you?”

“Of course not,” Libby said.

Josephine eyed the tent.

“We get a lot of our supplies from dead Yankees, in fact,” the man continued. “Blankets, haversacks, brandy, good socks. Sometimes we find dried beef.” He swept his arm around. “This is your company. D as in dog. You’ll be fighting alongside boys from Harrisonburg, Charlestown, and Winchester.”

Libby and Josephine exchanged glances.

“No, never mind,” he corrected himself. “We don’t got any Winchester boys anymore. Six of ’em got killed, two got wounded, and the other two deserted. You boys ain’t gonna desert, are you?”

“Deserters are cowards,” Libby said. “They should all be hanged.”