Honor's Fury

by Fiona Harrowe

  Had Amélie been attracted to him? She did blush a deep red, Babette recalled, at the supper table when Damon kept staring. It wasn’t like Amélie to get upset simply because a man looked at her. Babette remembered how furious Amélie became upon learning that he had made love to her. Amélie had actually slapped her, something she had never done before. Could she and Damon Fowler . . . ? But no, that was impossible. How could she even think such a thing? Amélie positively hated Yankees. She would die before she’d let one touch her.

  Yet I do love her, Babette thought with a smile. She is kind and good and noble. A real lady. I ought to try to be more like her. But that would mean missing out on so many good times.

  Babette sat down in the tall grass and hugged her knees. She wondered rather idly where Willie was and whether she would ever see him again. It was strange, but she could hardly remember what he looked like. Dear, sweet Willie. If it weren’t for his attachment to his mother she would be married to him by now. She liked him better than any of the men she had met, except for Damon Fowler.

  The real battle at Lookout Mountain did not commence until November 19, when General Hooker moved his Union troops forward.

  Amélie was standing outside the tent with others of the medical staff and several newspaper correspondents who had come out from Chattanooga to report on the fighting. The sounds of battle were closer, the boom of cannon and cough of gunfire ricocheting loudly across the valley. Amélie saw the bluecoats scrambling up rocks and steep inclines, saw Lookout Mountain illuminated with the flash of musketry, saw puffs of smoke and men falling, but all at a distance. Then a thick mist rolled in and the whole scene was obscured.

  A horse-drawn ambulance containing a driver and two stretcher bearers drew up. The driver waved his arms frantically. “I need help! Some mix-up—damn the army!

  We’re short at Missionary Ridge. Can somebody come?”

  “I will!” Amélie cried. Later she was never able to understand why she volunteered. But it was an impulsive reaction to a need and she hadn’t had time to consider the political import of it or that in a more reflective state of mind she might have seen her offer as giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

  “Let me,” a surgeon interceded. “It will be nasty out there for a woman.”

  “No,” Amélie said. “You’ll do more good here.”

  “Hurry!” the driver urged.

  Amélie ducked inside the tent. Slinging a canteen of water over one shoulder and one of brandy over the other she grabbed a haversack of lint and medicine. Rushing back outside she tucked up her riding skirts and clambered aboard the ambulance, which took off with a lurch.

  In his excitement and haste the driver made a wrong turn and, coming up through a small, wooded gully, blundered into the path of an advancing bluecoat army headed for the ridge. The driver tried to turn the horse about but was so quickly hemmed in he could not budge. Rank after rank of marching men flowed around the vehicle and its marooned occupants, cutting them off from retreat or advance. As far as the eye could see, to the left and the right, Yankees were moving forward in orderly file. Their regimental flags flying, their bayoneted guns gleaming in the wintry sunlight, the men, faces set under blue forage caps, came on like a never ending sea. This vast army, seemingly unaware of the ambulance, swept blindly past with a fixed purpose to the fearful roll of drums. Amélie’s heart quailed. She knew, without being told, that the Confederates on the ridge could never match in numbers this determined host.

  Suddenly the sound of artillery fire punctuated the air. Officers on horseback gave sharp commands and the men, still going forward, broke into a run. The ambulance horse, as if on cue, reared in its shafts, then, hooves thudding to the ground, began to race along with the sweeping tide. The frantic driver, sweating and cursing, tried to stop the runaway animal, but it galloped on.

  A few moments later all hell broke loose as the Rebels from their rifle pits started to bombard the field in earnest. The noise was cataclysmic, a horrifying din that was more terrible than Amélie had ever imagined. The earth shook as one earsplitting concussion followed another. The rackety-rack of musket fire never paused but pounded on, drowned at intervals by the thunderous roar of cannon. Canister and shell screamed, smoke belched, fire flared, men shouted, horses neighed, and above all was the awful, damnable booming of field pieces that shattered the mind and shriveled the heart. Yet blue wave after blue wave swept on, here and there broken by a momentary gap as a man fell. Up ahead of the ambulance a soldier sank down in a heap and as they passed Amélie saw that he had been shot squarely through the head, his brains oozing out.

  She was more frightened than she had ever been before. She closed her eyes, but the red flashes against her eyelids and the bursting, blasting sound was worse in darkness. She preferred her eyes open so she could see destruction when it came.

  The winded horse, its flanks lathered and heaving, slowed in the shafts and the stretcher bearers jumped down. One immediately caught a minie ball through the stomach. Amélie heard the bullet chug into his body before he crumpled to the ground. She leapt from her seat on the wagon.

  “He’s gone!” the ambulance driver shouted. “We’ve the living to tend.”

  Amélie did not let herself think of flying balls and bullets but worked fast, going among the fallen men, pausing to give a drink of water here, a sip of brandy there, staunching wounds, quickly winding and twisting a bandage, passing over those who seemed hopeless. She did not pause to ponder about it all. She was too stunned, too awed by the sight of the dead and the dying, the confusion, the destruction, the earth seeped in blood, the torn flesh. “Oh, God help us.” she murmured. “God help us.” And somewhere deep inside a little voice cried. Where are your principles now, Amélie Townsend Warner? But she didn’t want to listen, didn’t have the time.

  “Shoot me! Oh, God in heaven, shoot me!” cried an agonized voice.

  She crouched over a soldier, hardly more than a boy, a large hole torn in his side. “Kill me!” he screamed.

  Amélie was sorry now she had declined the pistol that had been offered to her by one of the surgeons for her protection. At the time she hadn’t thought she would have need of it. She was certainly not going to shoot at her own people up there on the ridge. But now she wished she had it. She couldn’t bear the shrieks and groans of this poor lad. His torment was her torment and though she might have felt differently if she actually had the gun in her hand, she only thought of the need to put an end to his suffering.

  She left him and went on to a kneeling bluecoat, then to one who sobbed incoherently, and on to one who expired as she bent over him. Though numb with horror and growing fatigue she did not pause. She was thirsty, too, with the parched throat and lips that come with fear. Time had lost its meaning. Had it been minutes or hours since she had been caught in this erupting volcano of fire and violence where people were dying in the most horrible way? Was this the war she had urged on Thaddeus, had damned her father for shirking? But she didn’t want to think about it, not now. She ran out of water, brandy, and lint, yet still she stumbled on, moving from one fallen soldier to another, offering words of comfort, of encouragement.

  The ambulance clattered up. “Ma’am!” the driver shouted. “Ma’am! We’ve a full load.”

  With trembling legs she climbed wearily up. Her hat was gone and the front of her riding habit was stained with blood. Shivering as a chill wind struck her sweat-soaked body, she lifted the collar of her jacket. She could still hear the cannon and muskets but the noise was receding now.

  ‘They’ve swamped the rebs’ rifle pits!” the driver cried excitedly, standing to look. “Watch our boys go! By God, they’re storming the ridge!”

  Other ambulances had come on the scene and were busily picking up the wounded. But there were far too few and Amélie knew that many of the disabled and bleeding would lie for hours, perhaps until the next day, before help came.

  The wagon rattled on, the subdued horse urged to a trot. Fro
m the ambulance Amélie heard the groans of the men, who were being unmercifully tossed about as they jolted over the rough ground. A feeble voice said, “Mrs. Warner?” Looking over her shoulder Amélie saw that it was Lieutenant Tyson.

  He tried to smile at her, his white lips trembling. His left sleeve was soaked with blood, his blond hair falling over a face green with pallor.

  “Lieutenant! Hold on, we’ll have you there in a minute.”

  At the hospital tent the surgeon in charge said Tyson’s arm would have to come off. It was too shattered to save. Amélie had never been present at an amputation. At the Fort McHenry hospital the women were forbidden to enter the room in which such operations were performed.

  There was no question of her leaving now. She wanted to stay, to give what assistance she could. The surgeon noticed her presence only long enough to bark terse commands. “Chloroform! The basin! My knife!”

  Tyson was barely under. They had to be sparing of the anesthetic since they did not know how many wounded to expect. Amélie bit her lip as the knife sliced through Tyson’s flesh and he groaned. When she heard the rasping saw grind on fragmented bone it seemed the top of her scalp lifted an inch from her head. She held the basin to catch the blood. The arm fell off in a pail and Amélie, standing beside it, had a black moment, her gorge rising, the basin shaking in her hands. But it was over quickly and she was able to remove Tyson, unconscious now more from pain than chloroform. Directly he was gone another wounded man was hoisted onto the blood soaked table. There just wasn’t time to tidy it up. The stretchers continued coming, a dreadful procession, the men on them either comatose or shrieking with pain. The surgeons with rolled-up sleeves and bloodied aprons wielded their chloroform, knives, and saws, and the pile of limbs grew in ghastly heaps.

  Finally Amélie, sick and close to collapse, was relieved. She went at once to where Tyson was lying and sat beside him. His lack of color was frightening and the blood had seeped through his bandage. In a little while he came to. He didn’t recognize Amélie.

  “Water. Water,’’ he whispered.

  She brought a dipperful and raised his head. He looked at her out of blue eyes as clear and artless as a child’s.

  “Thank you,’’ he said. And died.

  Amélie, her throat constricted and tears burning behind her eyes, rose and covered her face with the blanket. She stumbled outside and, leaning against a tent post, wept, great shuddering sobs that tore her apart. Why? Why? A kind and gentle man, a young man with his whole life ahead of him. Was anything worth the carnage she had just seen? She thought of the Confederate boys lying up there on the ridge in torment, calling for water, for help, for God to give them a merciful death. How many of them were even now taking their last breath?

  Did they remember as they fought and died on this dreadful day what the war was ail about? States’ rights, secession, the Union, abolition—what did it all mean in the face of dismemberment, the chug of minie balls, the tearing of flesh? It seemed to her that the real enemy was no longer either North or South but, the destruction that led to a death as horrible as those she had been witness to.

  And if she had thought the news of Thaddeus’s execution had hardened and changed her, what happened at Missionary Ridge had altered her in a far more fundamental way. Where once she had been fanatically sure of herself and the cause her mind was now opened to questions and doubt.

  The picture of the Yankee woman at the train wreck kneeling beside her dead husband, the little boy clinging to her shoulder, seemed to symbolize for Amélie all the women who mourned their men. Did that Yankee woman and others like herself wonder too?

  And yet Amélie, even in her grief and tumult, knew that if she were asked at that moment to sign the oath of allegiance she could not. That was the paradox.

  Chapter

  ❖ 16 ❖

  Several days later Amélie and Babette rode up, to Nashville with a trainload of the wounded. The Federals had won a decisive victory at Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, forcing the Confederate army to retreat to Dalton, Georgia. Amélie had learned that twenty-five hundred Confederates had been killed and wounded and four thousand taken prisoner. These were only numbers, cold statistics, but she knew that for each one of those brave men there were friends and family waiting and suffering.

  In Nashville Amélie, pleading frail health, tendered her resignation to the commission for both herself and Babette. She procured a room in the home of Joseph and Nancy Emory, a friendly couple in their middle forties. Mr. Emory was bald with a fringe of brown hair that made him look like a tonsured monk; his wife was bright-eyed, with coils of faded blond hair pinned in loops about her head. With the Emorys lived Nancy’s elder brother, Frederick Geyser. A man about sixty, he had a trim figure and a white moustache that he constantly fondled. He was a bachelor and Babette discovered (as only Babette could) that he owned considerable real estate in and about Nashville.

  Amélie had told the Emorys that her husband had been killed at Fort Donelson and that she and her sister were trying to claim the body. She refrained from saying on which side Thaddeus had fought. Later she was glad she had, for she suspected the Emorys were Unionists.

  “So many boys have been buried in unmarked graves,” Nancy Emory told Amélie. Amélie was well aware of this, having heard too many stories of corpses buried anonymously in shallow trenches after a battle because that was the only way to handle the thousands of dead. Still she hoped that since Thaddeus had been executed in a military compound he might have been given some sort of burial with a marker, however crude, to indicate the place.

  It was a hope that faded quickly after she spoke to Captain McFarland at Fort Donelson. Courteous and obliging, the captain sent a sergeant for the fort’s files. After a lengthy, frowning perusal he said, “My books show that in February 1863 several Union soldiers were shot for treason and desertion and”—a stubby finger went down the page—“one Confederate, a Theodore Warder of Montgomery, Alabama, was hanged for spying. Incidentally, Mrs. Warner,” he added, “we don’t shoot out spies, we hang them. “But”—he went on with his search—“I can’t seem to find anyone before or after that date by the name of Thaddeus Warner. However, I might confess in all frankness, we haven’t always kept accurate records.”

  “Could that Confederate ‘spy’ have given a false name?”

  “It’s possible.” He closed the book. “Sorry I can’t be of more help.”

  “Thank you, Captain.” She rose to leave when on sudden impulse she asked, “Do your records tell who ordered that Confederate hanged?”

  He reopened the book. “Well—not exactly. But a Major Fowler was in charge here during that period. He’s since been promoted to colonel and is on General Grant’s staff.”

  Amélie gave no indication that she knew Fowler, but stood very tall, the bereaved yet proud widow. ”I understand General Grant has made his headquarters here in Nashville for the time being,” she said. “And since the colonel is on his staff perhaps he could tell me more about my husband if I consulted with him in person.”

  “I don’t know.” The captain scratched his jaw. “It would be highly irregular. The colonel is a busy man and if everyone—well, you know how it is.”

  Amélie clenched her gloved hands tightly about the string handle of her reticule. Her first impulse was to tell the captain in cold, deliberate tones that she didn’t give a hang if it was irregular. But instead, she fixed him with appealing blue eyes.

  “It would mean so much to me, Captain McFarland.”

  “Well—all right. I guess we can oblige under the circumstances.” He scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to her. “This is a pass. It will get you into headquarters to see Colonel Fowler. I’ve written the address down. But mind, don’t plug him with one of those dainty little pistols you ladies like so much.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it.” Not that she hadn’t already. Rumbling away from the fort in the hack she had hired, her mask of self-possession
dropped and she gave way to her anger. The long journey with its many delays, the danger and hardships she had endured, all served to fire resentment. She felt certain Thaddeus’s name had been altered either by himself or the record keeper or omitted altogether. She was equally sure Damon Fowler knew the truth and she wasn’t going to allow him to turn her away. She would demand an account of exactly what had happened. Her husband was no spy, had never been a spy. He had been a soldier who had honorably served his country and when captured he should have been treated as a prisoner of war.

  When she reached General Grant’s headquarters a light, cold rain was falling. Telling the driver to wait, she picked up her skirts to avoid the puddles and hastened inside. She gave the slip from Captain McFarland to the sentry. When asked, “Who shall I say?” she debated a moment or two, then decided against giving her real name. She didn’t want to allow Damon time to ponder why she had come, perhaps guess her purpose and so prepare a defense.

  “Tell him—Mrs. Boyd,” she answered, choosing the name at random.

  It was a half hour before she was called into the colonel’s inner sanctum, a half hour during which she watched the coming and going of officers, messengers, and couriers. How easy it would be if I were a spy, she thought. They’re so careless.

  He was standing with his back to her looking out the window.

  “Yes?” He turned.

  If anything he had grown handsomer, leaner perhaps, bearded now, and his dark eyes lighting up in recognition exerted the same powerful attraction.