Fire by Night

by Lynn Austin

  But as she started toward him again, he lowered his hands and pulled a silver flask from his pocket. All of her compassion fled as he tilted it to his mouth and took a long drink. She hurried over, knowing she’d better speak to him now before he passed out drunk.

  “Excuse me, Doctor, but there’s a wounded soldier lying in my tent. The orderly told me that you ordered him to be put there.”

  “That’s right, Mrs. Hoffman, I did.” He spoke very slowly, as if drained of life.

  “Well, if that’s your idea of a joke, I’m not laughing. I would like the man removed from my tent immediately.”

  “It isn’t a man.”

  “What do you mean it isn’t a man? I saw him myself, as plain as—”

  “Go look again. Carefully. It’s a woman.”

  “There is a man in a uniform in my tent …and he’s wounded.” The doctor was shaking his head. She noticed that his eyes looked heavy with fatigue. Blood speckled his forehead like freckles. “It’s a woman.”

  “Are …are you sure?” she stammered.

  “You ask the most ridiculous questions,” he said, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I’m a doctor, Mrs. Hoffman. I’ve studied anatomy. Would you like a detailed explanation of exactly how I determined that the soldier was a woman?”

  Julia felt herself blushing. “No, thank you. That won’t be necessary. I—I just don’t understand what she is doing …how …why is she wearing a uniform and fighting in the army if—”

  “I didn’t have time to interview her. I’ve been busy.” He gestured to his bloody clothing. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to catch a few minutes’ rest before the carnage starts up again.” He lifted the flask and took another long drink.

  “Do you think it’s wise to get drunk,” she asked coldly, “if you’re expecting more casualties?”

  “Go away.”

  “Our soldiers deserve the very best care we can give them, and that includes a sober doctor.”

  “My sobriety is none of your business.”

  “But these patients are my business.”

  “I’m warning you, Mrs. Hoffman. Go away before I—”

  “Before you what? Before you get drunk and kill somebody else?”

  The moment the words were out of her mouth, Julia was sorry. James McGrath’s head jerked back as if she had struck him with her fist instead of her words. She’d seen pain often enough in a wounded man’s eyes to recognize it in his. She had hurt him deeply.

  “Get out of here,” he said hoarsely.

  “Dr. McGrath, I’m sorry …I didn’t mean it.”

  “Yes, you did. Now get away from me.”

  Julia turned and fled down the road to her tent.

  She heard the soldier moaning as she approached. Julia stood outside for a long moment trying to calm herself, wishing she had held her tongue. Her hands were shaking. She told herself to focus on the soldier. He would need food. And water. She remembered that he—no, she—was filthy. Julia quickly gathered together what she needed and went inside.

  The soldier was tall, so tall her feet hung off Julia’s pallet. Her yellow hair was short like a man’s, and though her face was smooth and beardless, there was nothing feminine about her features. She looked like a man to Julia—a very tall man. Even so, she wasn’t about to check and see. It wouldn’t surprise her one bit if this turned out to be one of the doctor’s cruel jokes, intended to embarrass her.

  Julia knelt and began washing the soldier’s face. Her eyes slowly opened and focused on Julia. She tried to move, then groaned in pain.

  “Lie still,” Julia soothed. “You’ve been wounded. This is a field 236 hospital. I’m a nurse.”

  “Ted…? W-where’s—”

  “You’ve been wounded.”

  “No …no …Ted…”

  “Shh …I’m going to clean some of this mud and blood off you, all right?” The soldier trembled from head to toe, but whether it was from shock or fear Julia couldn’t tell. She offered her a sip of brandy to calm her down. “There …just lie still, okay? My name is Julia. Can you tell me your name?”

  The soldier ran her tongue around her parched lips, then closed her eyes. “Ike Bigelow.”

  “I—I mean your real name. The doctor said that …I mean, he found out that you—”

  Ike’s face crumpled and she started to cry—silent, gasping sobs that shook through her.

  Julia watched helplessly, unsure what to do. “Are you in pain? Can I do anything for you?”

  “Go away and leave me alone,” she said through her tears.

  “I can’t do that. This is my tent. I sleep here. They put you in with me because …well, I suppose the doctor didn’t think you should be out there with all the men.”

  Ike looked up at Julia, her face blotchy with tears. “I been sleeping with them all these months, ain’t I?”

  Julia was taken aback. “That …that’s really none of my business.”

  Ike shook her head. “It ain’t what you think, lady. Did you get a good look at me? Who would ever want a woman who looks like me?”

  “Listen …Ike …What’s your real name?” she asked gently.

  She hesitated a long time before answering. “It’s Phoebe.”

  “Do you think you could eat something, Phoebe? Are you hungry?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what can I do for you, then?”

  “You can leave me alone and let me die.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sharpsburg, Maryland

  September 1862

  Ted watched the wagon approach, chased by a billowing cloud of dust. He kneaded his forage cap in his hands—the cap with a bullet hole through it—as the wagon drew to a halt. “Any word of Ike?” he asked before Sergeant Anderson had a chance to climb down. He got his answer when the officer shook his head.

  “Sorry, son. We’ll have to list him as missing.”

  “He was still alive when the stretcher took him,” Ted said, trying for the hundredth time to reason it all out. “I looked everywhere for him at the field hospital and couldn’t find him. That means he must have been evacuated before I got there.” He followed Anderson around to the back of the wagon, watching as he reached for a mailbag.

  “Ike’s name wasn’t on any wounded list at any hospital,” Anderson said. “But it wasn’t on any dead list, either. We can take hope from that.” Anderson looked truly saddened. Ted knew the sergeant had a lot of respect for Ike. All the men in their company did. When the sergeant spoke again his voice was hushed. “Listen …they’re saying that the casualties aren’t just in the thousands this time …they’re in the tens of thousands. I can’t comprehend that, can you? More than ten thousand men, dead, wounded, or missing. That’s more people than live in my hometown.” He exhaled, then heaved the mailbag out of the wagon and set it on the ground. “Maybe he’ll write someday and let us know he’s okay. Ike knows where to find us.”

  “I need to talk to him,” Ted said. “I’ve been mad at him. I need to tell him I’m sorry.”

  Anderson rested his hand on Ted’s shoulder. “I talked to him the night before the battle. He said you were still his best friend.”

  Ted nodded and cleared his throat. He wouldn’t cry. It had been five days since the battle, five days since he’d exhausted his tears behind the woodpile. “What about all of Ike’s stuff?” he asked hoarsely.

  Ted had already gone through Ike’s knapsack, at first embarrassed by what he feared he would find. What he did find surprised him: extra socks and a shirt, the usual eating utensils and toiletries, a little money—and that was all. Everything else that Ike had been lugging around in his pack for the past year, like the frying pan and the bottles of blood tonic, had belonged to Ted. She had not only saved Ted’s life—she’d been shouldering his load.

  “Do you know where we can find his family?” Sergeant Anderson asked.

  “He didn’t have one. He said his folks were dead and his brothers were all off fight
ing.” Considering Ike’s other secret, Ted couldn’t help wondering if that was the truth.

  “Well, look through his letters. Maybe you can find an address somewhere.”

  “Ike never got any letters. He never wrote any, either.” Ted knew why.

  Should he tell Sergeant Anderson the truth, tell him that the man they called Ike Bigelow had been a woman in disguise? Ted had been close to Ike for more than a year. What if no one believed that he had been fooled all that time? Would he get into trouble for being with her? For not telling when he’d found out the truth?

  But Ike had begged Ted not to tell. She had saved his life. The least he could do for his friend was keep her secret.

  “Well, you were closest to him, son. Do what you think is best with all his things.” The sergeant turned and called gruffly to his men, as if embarrassed to let his emotions show in front of Ted. “All right, let’s get this wagon unloaded. There’s mail.”

  The sergeant reached into the wagon again and pulled out a folded newspaper. He handed it to Ted. “Here. Maybe this will cheer you up a little.”

  Ted unfolded it and read the headline: Lincoln to Emancipate Slaves. He stared at the words, astonished. He was no longer aware of the crush of men surrounding him, jostling him as they crowded around the wagon. Nor did he wait for his own mail. He plowed through the swarm and headed back to his tent, reading as he walked. As he read the president’s proclamation, a quiet joy welled up inside him for the first time since Ike had disappeared.

  On the first day of January, in the year of our Lord 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States,shall be then, thenceforth, and forever free.

  It was the costly Union victory at Sharpsburg that had led to Lincoln’s decision, Ted read. The sacrifice that Ike and all the others had made would now bring freedom to the slaves. Ted thought of his grandmother and of the slaves he’d befriended at Hilltop Plantation. He remembered how Ike had pulled him aside after seeing Slave Row that day, saying, “You know what? That’s why we’re fighting— it’s for the slaves. So they don’t have to live like that no more.”

  Ike’s sacrifice had saved the lives of countless others besides Ted. More than ever before, Ted knew he had a reason to fight. A reason to win.

  Julia ached all over as she walked up the road to the farmhouse. The stiffness came from sleeping on the ground beside her patient for the past five nights, and she wondered how the soldiers managed to sleep on the cold, hard ground for months at a time. The fall morning was crisp and clear, the air scented with ripening apples. She wished she had time to savor the beautiful Maryland countryside, but the suffering and destruction all around her—including the suffering her tentmate was enduring—had overshadowed any loveliness.

  At least two other physicians had been performing surgery in the farmhouse along with Dr. McGrath, and Julia hoped to find one of them. With any luck, James would still be in bed, sleeping off his usual hangover, and she wouldn’t run into him. When she spotted one of the army doctors sitting on the front step, blowing on a cup of coffee, she was relieved. But just as she reached the porch, Dr. McGrath came through the door. He didn’t look ill, for once, but rested and combed and almost personable. Even so, she ignored him, addressing the man with the coffee.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Doctor, but when you have a moment this morning, would you please look at one of my patients?”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “The wound isn’t healing well, and when I was changing the dressing this morning I thought I saw something …shiny.”

  “It could be a piece of shrapnel, but are you certain you weren’t seeing bone?”

  “I don’t know. I’d hoped you would take a look.”

  “This wouldn’t be the patient I put in your tent, would it?” Dr. McGrath asked.

  The other doctor swiveled around to look up at him. “In her tent? What are you talking about, James?”

  “It was a woman, disguised as a man,” he said, moving to stand on the stairs. “I pulled some shrapnel out of her shoulder the other day. Under the circumstances, I thought I shouldn’t put her with the men.”

  “Good heavens!” the doctor exclaimed. “Don’t these army recruiters have eyes? How on earth did a woman slip past them? And what would possess her to enlist in the army in the first place?”

  “Is she the patient, Mrs. Hoffman?” James asked.

  The two doctors looked at Julia. She nodded.

  “I’ll go,” James said. “If it is a piece of shrapnel, I’m the one who missed it. Let me get my bag.” He was already rolling up his sleeves as he went inside the house to retrieve it.

  Julia didn’t wait. She started walking back to her tent without him, dreading the next few minutes. She decided that she wouldn’t try to apologize for her remarks to him the other evening. She wouldn’t mention the incident at all—and she hoped that he wouldn’t, either. She waited for him outside her tent, unwilling to share such close quarters with him. Phoebe had passed out earlier as Julia had swabbed iodine on her wound. She was still unconscious.

  “I’m going to need plenty of light,” Dr. McGrath said when he arrived. “I don’t want to move her, so let’s pull out a couple of tent stakes and fold the roof back.”

  Julia did as she was told, then stood aside, watching from a little distance as he knelt beside the patient. He looked up at Julia after a moment, his usual frown back in place.

  “Aren’t you going to assist me, Mrs. Hoffman? I need your help.”

  She drew a deep breath. “What would you like me to do?”

  “Come here and show me what you saw.”

  Julia hated looking at the huge ragged wound in Phoebe’s shoulder, but she knelt beside the doctor and gently lifted the dressing she had laid loosely in place. “I was trying to clean away some of the debris and dead tissue. I thought I saw something …right around here. … ”

  “Okay. I’m going to have to probe.” He opened his medical bag and handed Julia a bottle of chloroform. “Put her out,” he said. “And be careful you don’t breathe any yourself.”

  Julia poured a small amount on the cloth.

  “I don’t like to dig around any more than I have to,” he said as he waited for Julia to hold it over Phoebe’s face. “If a wound is from a Minie ball or a bullet, I know there will likely be only one pellet to search for—the Rebels don’t waste ammunition. But this was canister shot—hundreds of pieces of metal that spew out of one shell. Devastating stuff.”

  The doctor pulled a slender, curved probe from his bag, and Julia quickly looked away. Several long minutes passed as he worked in silence. “There,” he said at last, “I think I feel something. Hand me the forceps, please.” She pulled a pair from his bag and placed them in his outstretched hand. “Sponge, please.” She gave him one. A few moments later, he was done. “You have good eyes, Mrs. Hoffman. Would you like to keep this little demon for a souvenir?” He held up the bloody forceps, gripping a jagged piece of metal the size of a dime.

  “No, thank you.”

  He tended the wound himself, applying the iodine and a clean dressing. Then he examined Phoebe, checking her pulse and listening to her chest with his stethoscope. When he finished, he sighed. “Well, I don’t like the looks of things. There’s damage to her scapula and who knows what else. But just continue as you are. You’re doing everything that can be done.”

  He was being pleasant and professional. He hadn’t mentioned their last meeting. Julia was so relieved that she summoned the courage to ask him a question. “I can’t get her to eat anything, Doctor. It’s been several days. She keeps saying she wants to die.”

  He closed his bag and stood. “Even if she eats, she might get her wish. But if she doesn’t eat, I can guarantee she will.”

  “How can I get her to eat?”

  “Hmm. I can see where you might have a problem, Mrs. Hoffman. Usually you simply fli
rt with your patients to get them to cooperate, don’t you?”

  She stared at him, afraid to answer. She’d been cruel to him and knew she deserved his cruelty in return. But his next words seemed to come out of nowhere.

  “How did you hear that I killed a man?”

  His voice was so quiet, so intense, that it sent a shiver down Julia’s spine. She could tell that he wasn’t going to leave until she answered him.

  “I met a man from Connecticut,” she managed to say. “He read about it in the newspaper.”

  “I see.” He stared at her for a very long time. “Aren’t you afraid to work with a murderer?” he asked in the same hushed voice.

  This time she couldn’t answer. She was afraid to move, afraid to breathe, as if a predator were watching her, waiting to pounce if she made one wrong move.

  “Well,” he said after a moment. “I think you’ve answered my question.” He smiled sadly and walked away.

  Phoebe opened her eyes and looked around. She was in her tent. It was light outside. Someone was kneeling beside her. “Ted?” she whispered. The name didn’t come out right. Her mouth was dry and bitter tasting.

  “Good morning, Phoebe. How do you feel?” It was a woman’s voice, not Ted’s.

  She remembered then where she was. The pain in her shoulder was an agonizing reminder. It never stopped. She closed her eyes, hoping the blackness would swallow her again, bringing relief.

  “No, don’t go to sleep. I brought you some food.” The woman set something down beside Phoebe that smelled good. “Please, you have to eat.”

  “Why?” Phoebe knew she was dying. Why drag it out? Why not simply close her eyes and get it over with?