Fire by Night

by Lynn Austin

  “The first time I ever worked as a nurse,” she told Ma, “was the night I helped Dr. McGrath take care of some former slaves living in a shantytown.” She wondered who was taking care of them now.

  In early March, President Lincoln was sworn in for a second term. Phoebe read the words of his inauguration speech aloud to Ma: ‘“Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword …so still must be said, “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.””’

  Later that afternoon Phoebe stood at Ted’s grave, her arm linked through his mother’s. The long, cold winter was nearly over; spring was struggling to break through. And Phoebe knew that her own dark winter was drawing to an end. The time had come for new life to begin—in the countryside all around her and in her own life, as well.

  “I have to go, Ma,” she said quietly. “The war is gonna start up again soon, and I need to go back and help take care of the soldiers.”

  “No, stay here, Phoebe,” she begged. “Let me take care of you.”

  Part of Phoebe longed to stay. The pull of her comfortable surroundings was strong, secured by the ties of love that had been knit between the two women. But in another part of Phoebe’s heart, she knew she had to go. Before the war started she would have jumped at the chance to stay in a home like this, where she was loved. But things were different now. Phoebe wasn’t the same person she was before the war.

  “I ain’t leaving forever,” she said. “I’ll come back and see you again when the war ends.”

  “Why do you have to go?”

  “Because …because love ain’t meant to be kept to ourselves, Ma. It’s meant to be shared.”

  “But it’s dangerous near those battlefields. I’m afraid for you. What if something happens to you, too?”

  Phoebe looked down at Ted’s tombstone for a long moment, studying his name deeply etched into the stone marker. “Ted wasn’t afraid to die. He knew what he was living for. Seems like if you know why you’re living, you can face death a whole lot better. One of the last things Ted told me was that I should serve the Lord. He said it was the only thing that mattered. That’s what I aim to do.”

  Mrs. Wilson wrapped her arms around Phoebe and hugged her. The tiny woman’s head didn’t even reach Phoebe’s chin. “I love you, honey. Promise me you’ll come back and see me again?”

  Phoebe remembered the tearful farewells on the train platform three years ago and how she’d wished for a mother like Ted’s. Now she had one, and it broke her heart to leave her. “I’ll be back,” she said through her tears. “I promise.”

  Philadelphia

  April 1865

  “Honestly, Julia! Is it really necessary to read three newspapers every morning?” Julia looked up from her reading to find her mother standing beside the breakfast table, her hands on her hips. “You’re getting worse than your father.”

  Julia glanced at the mess she’d made, strewing papers all over the table and even onto the floor. “I’m sorry,” she said, bending to gather them. “But Nathaniel is in Petersburg, and I need to find out what’s going on there. Things are happening so fast it’s hard to keep up.”

  “Well, what’s the latest news?” Mrs. Hoffman asked as she sat down to drink her coffee.

  “The Rebels are all but defeated. I think the war is going to end soon.”

  “Thank God,” her mother sighed. “Maybe we can all get back to normal around here.”

  Julia buried her nose in the paper again. She couldn’t seem to get enough information as the war swiftly drew to a close. But each time she read about the latest battles that were taking place, she couldn’t help but wish she were there, working beside James again, caring for all the wounded soldiers. She hated observing events from far away through a newspaper, and she felt as though her own life was passing by as she watched other people live theirs. Something huge and important seemed to be missing.

  “The city of Richmond fell,” Julia read to her mother a few days later. “It says that the Rebels burned everything as they fled. Much of the downtown area is in ruins.”

  Mrs. Hoffman had to sit down as she absorbed the news. “I pray that your cousin Caroline made it out safely. Maybe our letters will finally get through to her again, and we can find out how she’s doing.”

  “She’s probably all right. It says here that most of the residential areas of the city were spared,” Julia continued. “President Lincoln paid a visit to Richmond the day after it fell and was met by mobs of cheering slaves.”

  “I wonder what will become of them all now that they’re free,” her mother said.

  Julia thought of Loretta and Belle and the desperate condition they and their children had been in before she’d hired them to work in the laundry. “I wonder, too,” she said. She didn’t share with her mother the fact that Union troops had found Richmond’s citizens close to starvation. Here in Philadelphia, their family had never gone hungry for a single day during the past four years. Nathaniel had remained safe as a noncombatant, and Rosalie’s husband had paid a substitute to serve in his place. Julia couldn’t help wondering what life had been like for Caroline in Richmond all these years and if her fiance had survived the war as a Confederate soldier.

  Then one morning Julia read of General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, and she rested her forehead on the table and wept. It was over—the war was truly over. No more young men would have to die, and she wouldn’t have to wrestle with her longings to be a nurse anymore. She could, as her mother said, get back to normal life. But what was “normal”?

  She read how the Confederate soldiers had been spread so thinly across miles and miles of battlefront that they hadn’t stood a chance against hundreds of thousands of Yankees. Many of the men who died in the Rebel trenches had been as old as Julia’s father; many others had been mere teenagers. They’d spent the winter without uniforms or shoes or food, starving, while Union soldiers had eaten fresh bread every day, still warm from the bakery in City Point. Now the army hospitals were filling with Union soldiers who had been held captive on Belle Isle and Libby Prison and in other Rebel prison camps. They would need medical attention and nursing care in order to get well. As she read about their desperate condition, Julia longed to care for them herself.

  “I guess this means your Nathaniel will be mustered out of service soon,” her mother said when victory was announced. “We should start preparing for your wedding.”

  Julia tried to feel enthused as they visited a dressmaker to look at patterns and fabric samples for her gown. Her future stretched ahead of her, filled with exciting new changes. Why did she still feel so uneasy about starting a new life as Nathaniel’s wife?

  “It’s perfectly normal to feel jittery when you’re about to become a bride,” her mother told her. “We’ll go visit your sister tomorrow. She can tell you that she once felt the same way. She adjusted to her husband.”

  Julia had learned to do all sorts of things she had never imagined she could do—washing laundry, dressing wounds, working near a battlefield with shells exploding around her, assisting with surgery. She would learn this new role, too. She would adjust to becoming Nathaniel’s wife, allowing him to order her life.

  As she was preparing to visit Rosalie the next day, Julia heard the worst news of all—President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated. It was one final blow after four years of death and sorrow, and it shook her to her core. The world had gone insane. Who could ever imagine that someone would kill the president?

  “Such a tragedy,” Judge Hoffman said, “for that man to have led us through a long, terrible war, only to be killed barely a week after it ends.”

  The nation came to a standstill to mourn. When the funeral train passed through Philadelphia
and Lincoln’s coffin lay in Independence Hall, Julia joined the three-mile-long line of mourners to pay her last respects.

  The war was over, the guns silenced at last. But she knew that the hatred that had divided a nation for four years, enslaving millions of people and leading to the murder of a president, was far from healed. Nathaniel could preach against that hatred from his pulpit— Julia would serve tea to his parishioners. She remembered how God’s presence had surrounded her the night her first patient died: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these…” The “least” hardly described Julia’s wealthy church. Sister Irene had told her that any task would have meaning if she did it for the Lord, even baking bread—or serving tea.

  But as Julia helped her mother draw up a long list of guests for her wedding reception, she couldn’t help wondering if this was really the life she was meant to live.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Washington City

  May 1865

  Julia gazed at the throngs of people jamming the sidewalks on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue. The flag-waving crowd stretched for miles in both directions. “I’ve never seen this many people in my life!” she told her father. One hundred and fifty thousand soldiers with military bands and cavalry units paraded up the avenue for the Grand Review. Julia had traveled to Washington with her parents to attend the victory parade of the Grand Armies of the Republic as guests of Congressman Rhodes. They had seats close to the reviewing stand where General Grant and President Andrew Johnson surveyed the troops, along with the secretary of war and Generals Sherman and Meade.

  Bands played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Hail Columbia” as they marched past. The flag of the newly restored Union flew at full mast again for the first time since President Lincoln had died. Regiments proudly displayed their own flags, bearing the names of the battles in which they’d fought. Tears came to Julia’s eyes as she read the familiar names, recalling the places where she, too, had served. There was Antietam, where James had brought Phoebe to her tent. Fredericksburg, where she and James had kissed. Gettysburg, where she had nursed James back onto his feet. And Petersburg, where her career as a nurse had ended and she’d seen James for the last time. All of those battlefields seemed to evoke memories of him and the work they’d done together—but none was as overpowering as her memory of the night the sky had blazed in Fredericksburg.

  Julia shook herself to clear her thoughts. She was here to see Nathaniel. She gazed up the street toward the Capitol, where the parade had begun and saw that the new dome, which had been under construction when she’d lived in Washington, was finally finished. A bronze Statue of Freedom was now perched on top, the ugly scaffolding removed. The procession of troops would take two full days to pass, but Julia was only interested in watching on the first day. That was when the Grand Army of the Potomac—Nathaniel’s army—would parade past. She searched for him as row after row of men marched by, but the soldiers all looked alike beneath their blue forage caps. She saw his regimental flag but couldn’t find him among the many hundreds of men.

  Late in the afternoon, she returned to the congressman’s house to wait for Nathaniel. Julia hadn’t seen him since leaving City Point with Phoebe ten months ago, and she paced the hallway, watching for his carriage. As soon as he stepped through the front door, she rushed toward him, eager to hold him in her arms. But Nathaniel reached to take her hands instead. “Julia! How wonderful to see you!” he said. He kissed her cheek.

  She felt cheated, even though she knew how reluctant Nathaniel had always been to show his affection in front of other people. “I’ve missed you so much,” she said.

  “Yes,” he murmured, then he turned his attention to their host and Julia’s father, who were also waiting to greet him. She had to be content to sit near Nathaniel and gaze silently at him for most of the evening as he shared his experiences as an army chaplain with the rest of the guests. At least his handsome face and shining golden hair were pleasant to gaze at.

  During dinner her mind spun back to the first time she had ever seen Nathaniel. He’d been fresh out of seminary, arriving in Philadelphia when she was only fifteen to preach in her home church. He’d turned the congregation upside down with his blunt, passionate preaching, and Julia had fallen in love with the handsome, dynamic man at first sight. She hadn’t thought of another man since—except James, a nagging voice reminded her.

  Julia remembered how she used to hug her pillow in bed at night, pretending it was Nathaniel. And she smiled to herself when she recalled all the abolition meetings she’d attended with him in her efforts to win his affection. But all of his passion during those years had been directed toward the cause of abolition, not her.

  “What will you do now, Nathaniel?”

  Julia didn’t realize that she had spoken the question out loud until the dinner conversation suddenly stopped. Everyone stared at her.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I was just thinking about all the energy you used to pour into trying to abolish slavery—and now the slaves are free. You’ve won. I wondered which cause would replace that one in your life.”

  “Whichever cause the Lord gives me,” he said. “My mission in life hasn’t changed. It has always been, as the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, to show myself ‘approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed.”’

  “Is that why you’ve worked so hard? To win God’s approval?”

  “Yes, of course. Each one of us will be asked to give an account of our lives on Judgment Day, and I would certainly hate to be found lacking.”

  “But what about those of us who don’t work?” Julia asked. “And what about the thousands of helpless, crippled soldiers who may never live productive lives again? I thought God’s love was unconditional. I thought we were accepted as His children because of what Christ has done, not because of what we do.”

  For the briefest of moments, Nathaniel’s eyes sparked with anger. She couldn’t imagine why. Then he hid his displeasure behind an indulgent smile and patronizing tone. “Julia, this is hardly the place or the occasion for a theological discussion of grace and good works.” He was covering his anger well, but she saw it there just the same, simmering beneath the smooth surface of his words. “Besides, you’re changing the subject, dear. Congressman Rhodes and Judge Hoffman were discussing the trials of the assassination conspirators.”

  Julia leaned back in her seat again. The conversation returned to Lincoln’s assassination. As she puzzled over the reason for Nathaniel’s anger, she realized how little she really knew about him. The love she’d felt for him all these years had been based on his handsome appearance and dynamic preaching, and she barely knew the private man beneath the public surface. She had wanted to be loved for who she really was, not because she was pretty—yet she had done the same thing, pursuing Nathaniel for what she’d seen on the outside. She didn’t know him at all.

  A wave of panic rocked through her. It felt much too overwhelming to be the usual “bride’s jitters.” She suddenly pushed her chair back and stood.

  “Julia? What’s wrong?” her father asked.

  “It’s very warm in here,” she said. “I’m going outside for some air.”

  She made her way through the rooms to the front door and rushed outside to stand on the steps. The night was warm and clear, with millions of stars shining in the sky. But her feelings of panic had followed her outside. So had Nathaniel.

  “I’m sorry if I said something to hurt your feelings,” he said. “I didn’t mean to sound abrupt.”

  “Why did you fall in love with me?” she asked. “How …when did you know that you wanted to marry me?”

  “I knew the moment I saw you working on that hospital ship. The conditions were horrifying, yet you were so compassionate and giving, so willing to sacrifice for the sake of others. A minister’s wife must have all of those qualities. And I knew you were the wife I’d been searching for.”

  Julia wouldn’t look
at him. She wanted to hear what he had to say without being swayed by his good looks and charm. “Should I be the woman you want me to be or the woman God wants me to be?”

  “They are the same thing, Julia. God gave you to me to be my helpmate, to support me and my ministry.”

  “What about my own work? Will I have something else to do besides helping you?”

  “Of course. There are numerous charitable causes and mission projects for you to become involved with. The Christian Commis-sion’s most successful fund-raisers were the ones you organized. Your upbringing trained you to be exactly what I need in a wife. You’re comfortable moving in all the right social circles, you understand church politics—”

  “I meant my nursing work. I’ve been trained for that, too.”

  He exhaled. She could tell that he was making an effort to be patient with her. “I think it was very clear after what happened at City Point that you’re finished with nursing. Besides, now that the war is over, nurses are no longer needed.”

  “I miss it,” she said softly. “It was hard work, and I never would have believed I could do all those things, but part of me still misses it. I felt as though I was useful to God. I could show His love and compassion to people, like those men on that hospital ship.”

  “I understand. There are things I will always miss about my work as a chaplain, too. But life brings change, Julia. It’s time for us to move on to new challenges.”

  They were both silent for a time. Julia was still reluctant to look up at him.

  “What are your plans for tomorrow?” he finally asked. “Are you going back to watch more of the parade?”

  “No. I want to go to Fairfield Hospital and see my friend Phoebe. She wrote and told me that she’s working there again. But she said the hospital is scheduled to close as soon as the last soldiers are well enough to go home.”