Fire by Night

by Lynn Austin

  “Hey, no hard feelings?” he asked, wading over to her.

  “Naw, it feels good.” And it did. Without her wool uniform, Phoebe felt cool for the first time since falling into the flooded river last spring.

  “You are the oddest fellow I ever met,” Ted said. “Imagine, wearing that hot old union suit under your clothes all the time— even in the middle of summer.”

  In reply, Phoebe grabbed Ted’s shoulders and pushed him underwater.

  That afternoon they were guarding the trenches they had dug behind Beaver Dam Creek when Union pickets came on the double-quick from Mechanicsville with bad news. “At least five Confederate brigades have crossed the Chickahominy River,” they reported. “The Rebels are headed this way. We’re in for a fight.”

  A tense hush fell as Phoebe and the others quickly checked their ammunition supplies and made sure their weapons were properly loaded, their bayonets fixed. Then they waited, hearts pounding, watching for the first sign of the enemy. It was the first fight Phoebe had been in since Williamsburg, and she was scared.

  “Told you them Rebels weren’t gonna wait around for us to get our big guns ready,” she whispered to Ted.

  “Guess Little Mac didn’t take your advice, did he?” He flashed a quick, nervous grin. Phoebe saw the tension in his wiry body and in his fidgeting hands and knew he was scared, too. She nudged him playfully with her elbow.

  “I never got a chance to warn him, remember? Some fool ambushed me.”

  A cicada suddenly started to drone nearby, and Ted jumped. “Five brigades,” he breathed. “Holy smokes!”

  The Confederate attack came like a summer storm, with clouds of smoke and a rain of gunfire. Phoebe heard the peculiar singing sound the bullets made as they whizzed above her head like bees. She forced herself to stay calm and to listen for the bugle signals as she loaded, aimed, fired, and reloaded all that long afternoon. Artillery shook the ground, and sometimes the smoke grew so thick she couldn’t even see the charging enemy until they were almost upon her. The stench of sulfur filled the air like the breath of hell.

  She kept an eye on Ted, worried that he would forget the percussion caps again and overload his rifle. His face was blackened with gunpowder and his hands trembled as he fumbled in his cartridge box for more ammunition, but he fought bravely beside her without flinching.

  A few yards away, Phoebe saw a soldier in her company get hit—one of the men who had thrown her into the creek that morning. His rifle fell from his hands as the force of the bullet jerked him backward, and she knew by the way he lay sprawled in a pool of his own blood that he was dead. The Rebels’ rippling cry blended with the screams of the wounded, the dying. Then the deafening roar of artillery drowned out all other sounds. Throughout the long afternoon, Phoebe defended the small patch of earth she’d been assigned, resisting the nearly overpowering instinct to flee as wave after wave of Rebels attacked.

  At dark the battle ended. Moonlight revealed the dazed look in everyone’s eyes. Few people spoke. Phoebe’s muscles ached with strain and tension, as if she had done a full day of hard labor. She’d never known such a powerful thirst. As she and Ted cautiously made their way to the creek to refill their canteens, the bodies of Rebel soldiers lay strewn along the riverbank where she and the others had gone swimming that morning. It seemed a lifetime ago.

  “We won the battle, Ted,” she said to break the awful silence.

  “Hey, guess we showed them.” His trembling voice showed no enthusiasm.

  Their orders came a few minutes later—prepare to withdraw. The exhausted soldiers stared at one another, bewildered. No one believed that it was true. “Why give up the ground we risked our lives all afternoon to hold?” Ted asked.

  “It has to be a mistake,” Phoebe said.

  But it wasn’t. Within the hour, Colonel Drake had ordered their regiment into formation to begin a four-mile retreat, marching to Boatswain’s Swamp.

  The next day seemed like the recurrence of a terrible nightmare. The Rebels caught up to them and attacked them again near Gaines’ Mill. Once more, Phoebe looked death square in the eye and thought for sure that it was coming for her. She crouched in the mud and smoke all day, loading and firing and reloading until she was down to the last two cartridges in her ammunition box. As the sun began to set, the Rebels managed to break through the Yankees’ lines in a few places, and it seemed as though they were all about to die. But then she heard the trumpet sounding retreat, and she nudged Ted to his feet and fled in the dark with the other Union soldiers across the Chickahominy River to safety.

  The battle had been so intense and the losses on both sides so great that Phoebe thought for sure the war would have to end for lack of soldiers. Nearly a third of the men from her own company had been wounded or killed, but she and Ted had come through it unhurt for a second day. A bullet had passed clear through the sleeve of Ted’s uniform, leaving a ragged hole but thankfully missing his arm. To have survived two days of savage fighting in a row seemed like a miracle.

  Then the incomprehensible orders came once more. They were withdrawing again, to Harrison’s Landing, a fortified camp on the James River more than twenty-five miles south of Richmond. Phoebe could scarcely believe it.

  “After all the time and trouble it took us to get here?” she said. “We ain’t even licked! Why are we going backward?”

  Ted shook his head in disbelief. “We were close enough to Richmond to hear their blasted church bells.”

  The retreat continued, with Phoebe’s regiment crossing White Oak Swamp during the night. But the Rebel pursuit continued, as well. They attacked again at Glendale crossroads, the two armies battling each other in another vicious fight that killed several more men that Phoebe had known since training camp. Day after day of relentless combat had left her and Ted badly shaken and resigned to the fact that tomorrow it might be their turn to die. But even though the Union line held at Glendale, the orders came once again to retreat during the night.

  “Why are we letting Bobby Lee chase us off like a bunch of scared rabbits?” Phoebe wondered. Ted shook his head, bewildered.

  Another long march after another hard fight left Phoebe and everyone else exhausted. She’d suffered from a terrible headache all that day, which she figured was from all the noise of battle. But as she plodded up the rise to Malvern Hill, where they planned to camp for the night, the first terrible wave of illness struck her like a blow. She was suddenly so light-headed and sick to her stomach that she dropped to her knees, bending her head to the ground, unable to climb another step. Ted hurried to her side.

  “Hey, don’t stop now. We’re not to the top yet.”

  She lifted her head to look at him and felt so dizzy she nearly vomited. “I can’t …move. … ”

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, crouching beside her.

  “I don’t know …I’ve been feeling poorly all day.”

  “Let’s get you to the top. Then you can rest.” Ted helped her to her feet. The dizziness was so overpowering that she had to close her eyes to make it stop. She stumbled the rest of the way up Malvern Hill like a blind woman, leaning on her friend. If she opened her eyes she knew she would faint.

  “You’re hot as a pig on a spit,” Ted told her.

  “I know…” Sweat drenched Phoebe’s clothes as though she had just taken a dip in the river.

  The shakes started as she sat watching Ted pitch their tent at the top of the plateau. He untied her bedroll and wrapped a blanket around her, but the terrible shivering didn’t stop. As soon as the tent was ready, she crawled inside and passed out. During the night she was out of her mind with fever.

  “I’ll bet you caught the ague in one of those blasted swamps we marched through,” Ted said the next morning. He helped her to the surgeon’s tent during sick call, where a whole swarm of fever patients stood waiting. The doctor dosed them all with quinine and sent them back to their companies. He couldn’t afford to take up space with malaria patients when there wo
uld be gunshot wounds to attend to soon.

  The Rebel attack came later that morning. It started with a barrage of Confederate artillery. There was nothing Phoebe and Ted could do but hunker down and wait for it to stop, praying they wouldn’t be hit. Then came the assault. As the Rebel infantry charged up the exposed hill, Union cannon opened fire. Waves of canister shot toppled the Rebel soldiers like rows of dominoes.

  “You gotta be awful brave to keep charging up the hill like that,” she told Ted above the din. Phoebe wanted the carnage to stop. She didn’t think she could stand to watch another man die. Besides, she needed to lie down. Sweat poured down her face and stung her eyes, but whether it was from the searing heat or her rising fever, she couldn’t tell.

  “You don’t look so good,” Ted said. “You better go back to our tent and take another dose of quinine.”

  Phoebe didn’t want to be sick. She couldn’t be sick. If she wound up in the hospital the doctor would find out she was a girl. “I’m okay,” she insisted, but she said it through chattering teeth.

  Ted took her rifle from her shaking hands. “Come on. Put your arm around my neck. I’ll walk you back.”

  Phoebe slept through the battle of Malvern Hill. The thunder of guns and the moans of the wounded wove in and out of her feverish nightmares until she was no longer sure what was real and what wasn’t. Then everything fell silent. The next thing she knew, Ted was lifting her head so she could swallow more quinine. There was just enough light in the tent for her to see his worried face.

  “Is the fighting over already?” she asked.

  “It’s night, Ike. You slept all day. Feel any better?”

  “What about the battle?” She threw off the blanket and tried to rise, convinced that she had to go back out there and fight or she would get into trouble. Ted held her down.

  “It’s all over. The Confederates finally backed off. But Lord, what a price they paid. You should see all of them lying out there on the hill. Some of them are still alive, and it looks like the ground is moving.” She saw him shudder. “Hey, are you hungry? Want me to fix some coffee?”

  “No thanks. I’ve tasted your coffee.”

  He smiled but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  “What’s the matter, Ted?”

  “You feel good enough to get up? We’ve got orders to break camp.”

  “Are we gonna chase after them and finish them off?”

  He shook his head. “We’re retreating again. Farther south.”

  “Tonight? But if the Rebels are already half licked, why don’t we stay and fight? We got the high ground.”

  “I don’t know why,” he said angrily. “I don’t know what these blasted generals are doing anymore. But I do know that a lot of good men died this week, and when we leave it will all be for nothing.”

  Phoebe slowly sat up and looked around the tent in the fading light. If she moved carefully the dizziness wasn’t too bad. She could help Ted pack everything up and get ready to go. She only hoped she had enough strength to march through the night.

  “You know what makes me angriest of all?” Ted asked. “We told all the Negroes to stay put. We convinced most of them not to follow along after our army, telling them we were going to take Richmond and set them all free. They would be spoils of war after we liberated Virginia.”

  His face looked dark in the twilight, his Negro features more prominent. She remembered how bravely he’d fought for the past week and realized that all this time he had been thinking of the slaves—like the ones they’d left behind at Hilltop. Like his grandmother.

  “They stayed behind, Ike,” he said softly. “All those women and children stayed. And now they’re slaves again.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Washington City

  July 1862

  Julia stumbled up the steps to the boardinghouse, clutching the railing, too tired to lift her feet. As she switched her satchel to her other hand to reach for the doorknob, the door suddenly opened from the inside.

  “Miss Hoffman, welcome home,” her landlady said.

  Julia never would have believed that the shabby boardinghouse or its prim proprietress would look welcoming to her, but after living on the hospital ship for the past week, they seemed inviting indeed. Julia had worn the same clothes day and night for the entire time. She had barely slept or eaten. She couldn’t recall the last time that she’d had a free moment to wash her face or comb her hair.

  “I heard a carriage pull up and saw that it was you,” the woman said. “Poor dear, you look exhausted. Come in, come in.”

  “Thank you. To tell the truth, I am quite spent.”

  “Supper isn’t for another hour …but can I get you anything in the meantime? A cold drink?”

  Her landlady’s uncharacteristic behavior surprised Julia. She was grateful for the change, but she couldn’t help wondering what had brought it about. “Would it be possible to have a hot bath?” Julia asked, scarcely daring to hope.

  “Of course, dear. I’ll have the kitchen girl start one for you right away.”

  At home Julia could have ordered a hot bath any time she wanted one, yet she had taken the luxury completely for granted. Now the prospect of immersing herself in steaming water brought tears of gratitude to her eyes. “Thank you so much, ma’am,” she said.

  “You’re very welcome. I’ve been reading in the newspaper about the wonderful work that all you nurses are doing to help our poor, suffering boys. A warm bath is the very least I can offer you in return. Oh, before I forget, I have something for you.” She rummaged through a drawer in the hall table and produced a letter. “This came for you while you were gone.”

  Julia quickly read the return address and saw that it was from Hiram Stone in Connecticut. Her heart made a little leap of excitement. She smiled without realizing it.

  “From an admirer, dear?” the landlady asked, watching her.

  “Yes, I guess you could call him that.” She thanked the woman again and climbed the stairs to her room.

  The windows had remained closed for the past week, and the tiny room felt hotter than a kitchen at dinnertime. The air was stale and smelled of the previous tenant’s dirty feet. Julia tried to heave open one of the sashes, but it was too heavy to manage in her weary state. She sank down on the bed to read Hiram’s letter, fanning herself with the envelope.

  My dear Miss Hoffman,

  I hope this letter finds you well. As you’ll see from the address, I have returned to my home in Bridgeport once again. I was able to secure the military contract I came to Washington to pursue, so these past weeks have been very busy ones for me.

  I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, however, or the lovely evening we spent at Congressman Rhodes’ home. I can only hope that your memories of our time together are as warm as my own and that you also think of me from time to time.

  As promised, I have inquired into the strange New Haven murder case for you. The name of the man who was shot to death was Eldon Matthews Tyler, age sixty-one, a wealthy banker and financier.The physician involved was Dr. James Joseph McGrath, age thirty, who had a successful medical practice among New Haven’s wealthiest citizens before the tragedy occurred. The doctor was reportedly drunk on the night of the murder and had been heard arguing with Mr.Tyler, yet charges have not been formally filed against him. No one seems to know why not, and he is evidently free on bond for the time being. I couldn’t recall the name of the disagreeable doctor you are working for, but I sincerely hope that it is not this murderous fellow.I trust this information will be useful to you.

  Please let me know if you ever consider returning to Philadelphia.I would so look forward to seeing you again.

  Fondly,

  Hiram Stone

  It chilled Julia to think that she had indeed worked for “this murderous fellow.” The killer had to be the same man she knew— the name was identical, his age was about right, and he was also from New Haven. Not that it mattered anymore. James McGrath was no lon
ger at Fairfield Hospital.

  Before she’d volunteered for the evacuation ship, Julia had worked briefly with the physician who had replaced him. Dr. John Whitney was white-haired, absentminded, and so impossibly oldfashioned that Julia wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he still prescribed leeches. Dr. Whitney preferred to use recovering soldiers from the Invalid Corps for his nursing staff and clearly believed that every woman belonged at home, including all of his women nurses. But at least he wasn’t a drunkard. Or a murderer.

  Julia slid Hiram’s letter back into the envelope, wondering what to make of this information—and what to make of Hiram Stone. In the end, she decided she was much too exhausted to think about anything at all. She would take her hot bath, wash away a week’s worth of sweat, grime, and weariness, then crawl into bed and sleep for as long as it took to feel human again.

  But early the next morning, the landlady awakened Julia with an urgent message from Mrs. Fowle. Fairfield Hospital was overflowing with casualties from the evacuation ships. She begged Julia to come at once and help out. Though groggy and exhausted, this time Julia was wise enough to pray for strength on the carriage ride to the hospital.

  “Are we ever glad to see you,” Mrs. Fowle said when Julia arrived. “I knew the Commission’s ships were back because they’ve brought us hundreds of patients. I was hoping you were back, too— and that you were still willing to work here.”

  “I’ll work for as long as I’m needed—that is, if Dr. Whitney will have me.”

  “Oh, he’s a harmless old fellow. Just ignore him when he starts grumbling about ‘proper women’s work.’ We’ve all learned to. His Invalid Corps is handy for many things, but they definitely lack a woman’s touch when it comes to nursing.”

  The matron sent Julia to one of the second-floor wards to do the same work she had done at White House Landing—feeding patients, offering comfort, bathing their faces to cool their fevers. The men suffered from every sort of wound imaginable, along with bloody dysentery, malaria, and other fevers. As the July temperatures soared above ninety degrees, the stifling hospital reeked of excrement and death.