by Tamara Gill
It occurred to Jacqui that rushing into the middle of a battle was not the smartest thing to do. Part of her felt inviolate, armored by weeks of hard, slogging, thorough research. The Fenian invasion of Canada West and the Battle of Ridgeway were big news back in 1866. Fear of a second invasion ran high throughout that summer and the volunteer units had remained on alert, stationed in the Niagara until September. Interest in the invasion continued through the fall and winter while the volunteer officers squabbled amongst themselves seeking to lay blame and Sir John A. MacDonald and the Canadian government tried to figure out how an invasion had actually come about. If a young woman masquerading as a boy had been injured or killed on the battlefield it would have been reported. So that hadn’t happened. She was safe enough, as long as she didn’t change the timeline.
The pop-pop of gunfire continued unabated as she ran toward the oncoming Fenians. She had just sighted a shadow of dark green in the near distance and was hoping it was Queen’s Own Company number four when nearby a volunteer screamed as a Fenian ball lodged in his arm. Jaclyn hit the ground, suddenly terrified by the close call. Blood spurted from the soldier’s arm and dripped down on her. A drop landed on her cheek, trailing across her skin like a tear. The bravado that had impelled her into the middle of the rout deserted her with the speed of adrenaline euphoria.
What was she thinking? She had to be crazy.
The soldier stumbled, but didn’t fall. Jaclyn looked up, past his feet to his face. He was staring at the darkening red stain on his tunic with open-mouthed astonishment.
If he stood here letting his blood drip all over her he was going to pass out. She got to her feet, took his good hand and made him clamp it over the wound. Then she tugged off the black neckcloth he wore beneath his uniform tunic. At some point the cloth must have been starched and stiff, but it had wilted from the young man’s sweat and the already hot morning. She scrunched it in her hands, softening it further.
“There’s a doctor with the Thirteenth,” she said as she tied the cloth above the wound in a crude tourniquet. “Keep going and he’ll see to you. If you can’t manage, there’s also a doc at Ridgeway. He’ll look after you.”
“I don’t understand. How do you know this?”
She gave him a little shove. “Get out of here, okay? Don’t be one of the five who dies.”
A massed volley of gunfire banged out. They both jumped, but it was impossible to tell whether it had been the Fenians who fired, or one of the few remaining Canadian units that was retreating in an orderly manner. The soldier shuffled forward, holding his arm against his chest, his face a mask of painful determination. Jaclyn set her own teeth and headed back on her quixotic quest to find Hugh MacLeod.
The constant crash of gunfire, the stink of powder, the panic around her, and the brush with injury, were all getting to Jaclyn. She pushed her way through the retreating soldiers until she was clear of the flowing mob. Close to the far side of the battlefield, she stopped and took a break. She could see the Fenians now, their massed formation a smudge in the haze. They were pushing forward, still whooping occasionally, cleaning up the last of the resistance from the Canadian troops.
They were closing in on her surprisingly quickly. She could hear the clunk of ramrods shoving the ball and gunpowder cartridge securely into the barrel of the muzzle-loading weapons used by both sides, the thump of feet and clink of metal as men trotted. The enemy would be upon her soon and in a panic she dove for the shelter of nearby trees.
Her heart pounded, her breath was short. She hated the fear that made everything, including her need to find a dying man, secondary. How could anyone—how could Sean—live like this, day after day, year after year? Why would he join a crackpot organization like the Fenian Brotherhood after he’d escaped from this dreadful life?
She cowered behind a tree, folded into as tiny a shape as she could manage, trying to be invisible. The Fenians passed by her, focused on the enemy before them, and she was safe. She breathed deeply, steadying herself, then stood up. Like a cat that has just knocked its owner’s prize china figurine to the floor, she cleaned herself, brushing the dirt from her trousers, pretending that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. At the same time she muttered, “You’re a bloody coward, Jaclyn Sinclair. What were you doing, hiding in the trees? Stupid, stupid, stupid! Go find Hugh.”
He was alone when she finally reached him. As she’d guessed, he’d been shot while his company was still in square formation. The battle had passed him by, leaving him sprawled face down in the mud and seedlings, his rifle to one side, his arms above his head as if he’d tried to break his fall. The black shako had tumbled off and rolled away, leaving his thick brown hair gleaming in the sun. The back of his coat was dark with congealed blood. Jacqui couldn’t tell where the bullet had hit him, but from the way he was lying, it didn’t look good.
She knelt beside him. His eyes were closed, the long lashes dark against his fair skin. Her heart lurched, stealing away her breath momentarily. The photographs hadn’t lied. Except for the hair color he resembled her brother Matt so closely that they could have been twins. As she stared at him she forgot she was one hundred plus years away from her own time. Instead she saw her brother lying there, hardly breathing, his skin waxen from loss of blood.
“Matt!” The name was torn out of her, almost a sob of denial. The Volunteer’s eyelids twitched and then slowly eased open.
“Wrong man.”
She had to lean close to catch the words, which were little more than a whisper of breath. “What’s your name?” she asked, knowing the answer, but giving him the right to reply.
“Hugh.” His eyes were cloudy, but there was a spark of life left in them. “What’s yours, boy?”
“Jacl...” She started to say her real name, but at the last minute decided it would be easier to continue with her deception. “Jack.”
“Get out of here, Jack. Escape while you still can.”
“It’s okay—”
“Be like the rest of us and run like the cowards we are.” He laughed shortly. “I can’t feel my legs, or move them. If I could I’d be there beside you, running with the rest.”
The bullet must have cut his spinal cord. She caught his hand and squeezed it, unsure whether he’d be able to feel her touch or not. “No! You’re not a coward, Hugh.”
His eyes fluttered shut. Jaclyn thought he had passed out until he said suddenly, “We were beat by a rabble. A wild mob of madmen. We couldn’t stand against them. We lost everything.” He ended on a sigh of pure defeat.
This was not Matt. The man lying here, inching into death, might look like her brother, but as close as they might be in appearance, they were not the same person. Still, the urge to comfort was impossible to resist. “Hugh, you did beat the Fenians. Because of the way you and the men of the Queen’s Own stood under fire, the Fenians think twice about pursuing the Canadian army from the field. Yes, you lost this battle, but you didn’t lose everything. By tomorrow the Fenians will be gone.”
His eyes opened. He watched her steadily. “You think the Regulars will chase them off?”
Jacqui smiled, wanting to comfort this man who could have been her sibling, but was not. “Peacocke never gets near the Fenians. It’s the Canadian Volunteers who scare them off. They think you are the regular troops, Hugh. You don’t know that, but I do. They can’t believe that a volunteer militia would advance steadily under fire the way you did. They assumed they were fighting professional British soldiers and when they find out the Queen’s Own are militia troops it takes the heart out of them. They made the Queen’s Own and the Thirteenth run from the field, Hugh, but they didn’t beat you. In the end you and your friends destroy their illusions. They thought they had come to liberate an angry, bitter people who only needed a little push to make them rise up against Britain. But the rising never happens and the troops who fought them so bravely were not the British regulars, but Canadian Volunteers. They will not stay. They have no reason to stay.”
&nbs
p; “We beat them?”
“You beat them.” Hugh had closed his eyes again. Jaclyn risked a gentle little feminine movement, stroking his hair off his forehead. It was soft to her touch, his skin warm. His breathing sounded shallower than it had a few minutes ago. Just a whisper, hardly loud enough to hear. She touched his neck, seeking a pulse. “Hugh?”
She couldn’t find one. That might be because she was lousy at first aid. Or it might be because he was gone.
“Hugh? Oh, Hugh!” She reached out, pulling him toward her, half crouching over him, half holding his limp, shattered body as she wept.
***
Sean walked the field. He could have ridden. Although the skittish young mare, Sunny Girl, was not an easy mount, he didn’t really need to walk slowly past each prone soldier to form a sense of the injuries. He was doing that to remind himself how cheap life was in a battle and how, when the exhilaration ended, the cost so quickly became apparent.
The sharp odor of gunpowder and the sight of broken bodies made nausea well in his throat. It was always this way. He had vomited out of sight of his fellows after he survived his first battle, Bull Run. There, the Union—his side—had broken more quickly than the Canadian militia they were fighting today and had run with the same headlong panic. The Confederacy had won the field that day while the Union retreated to Washington to lick its wounds and prepare for a final, bitter defense of the capital.
Washington had stood and there had been other battles, of course. After four violent, vicious years, the Union succeeded in defeating the rebellious South and forced Confederate general, Robert E. Lee, to sign a surrender at the Appomattox Court House.
There had been so many battles, Sean had forgotten the names of them all. But he remembered the fighting and he remembered the carnage that had to be dealt with in the aftermath.
He’d been wounded once, an injury to his thigh that wasn’t enough to send him away from the front lines, but was deemed bad enough to keep him from riding into battle. His side had been the victors in that conflict, remaining in control of the battlefield, so to them had fallen the task of dealing with the wounded and burying the dead.
In 1862 the North established an ambulance service dedicated to transporting the wounded to medical care, but early in the war this task was performed in a much less formal manner. Those soldiers who had not taken part in the battle, men who were lightly wounded, or doing other duties, were expected to clear the battlefield. As a reasonably fit soldier who hadn’t taken part in the battle, Sean was one of those assigned to the cleanup.
He had participated reluctantly, a newly made sergeant in command of a company of equally reluctant soldiers. None of his men wanted the duty any more than he did and they’d fought his authority at first. That had been a relief, for he’d had to focus on the control of his twenty troops, rather than the cries of wounded men begging for help, or simply voicing their agony. Or worse, the twisted lifeless bodies empty and somehow abandoned in death.
Eventually, though, the twenty individuals coalesced into a single unit intent on doing its job. That was when the full horror of the task came to the fore. Some of the injured were lightly wounded, as Sean himself had been. Those who could walk he sent back to their unit with one of his men to support them. Others were loaded onto stretchers to be taken to the field hospital. And some, too badly wounded to be moved, were left to wait for one of the battalion surgeons to attend them.
He had worked steadily, gradually falling into a state of detached efficiency. Bodies were laid on stretchers, raw wounds were crudely bandaged with strips of torn cloth, men were helped from the field, no doubt relieved they would not have a leg or arm amputated this time. Sean issued orders, praised where he could, kept morale high, and yet, in his head he heard words repeated over and over. Why am I a soldier? Why am I fighting this war? What is the point?
His task was to sort the living from the dead and Sean performed that duty with a kind of single-minded proficiency until his unit came across a body lying sprawled on the field. The soldier’s eyes were wide and staring, his expression surprised. The fellow had been shot in the chest and had probably died instantly.
His face was familiar and with a sickening blaze of recognition, Sean realized he knew him.
His name was Michael and they had come to America on the same boat. They’d gone to the Fenian headquarters together on that first night they were in New York and they’d joined the Union Army together. Michael had been assigned to an infantry regiment while Sean, with his expert horsemanship, was sent to the cavalry.
Michael’s death had been sudden, quick and probably painless. For that Sean was grateful. He had squatted down beside his friend, said a brief prayer and gently closed the staring eyes. Then he’d moved on. His duty was to the living, not the dead. There were others who would see that Michael was buried.
From that day on Sean had lost his illusions about war. He fought because he had no other way to live and because he’d given his word, but he hated the bragging of his fellow soldiers, the arrogance of the officers, even after he became one, and the wanton destruction of army on the move. Most of all he hated the blood lust that pounded through him when battle was imminent and during the fighting itself. It came unbidden, capturing his reason and his decency, allowing the fierce, angry part of himself to kill without remorse. There had been moments during the war when the blood lust had filled him so completely that he could hardly remember his actions. He didn’t want to remember them. He wouldn’t let himself remember.
When the war ended he had been relieved. He’d found work, but the Northerners who had come south to pick over the bones of the Confederacy reminded him forcefully of his overlord’s brutal, bullying son back in Ireland and the dark, fierce side of his nature flared into life. When he saw an injustice done, and there were many, he fought against it, as he had fought the young lord. He didn’t kill any of the carpetbaggers, as they came to be called, but he quickly gained a reputation as a dangerous man. Employment became almost impossible to find, so when the Fenian Brotherhood came up with their mad scheme to invade British North America he’d joined up. As in the long years of the Civil War, he felt he had no other alternative.
He’d told himself he believed in the importance of the Fenian cause. Now as he walked this battlefield and looked at the young faces contorted in pain or empty in death, he knew he had been wrong. He’d begun to consider the possibility yesterday, when he’d realized there would be no free land for the Fenians to settle once the battles were over, but yesterday had been a normal day, filled with the ordinary tasks of setting up a camp. The Fenian army may have annoyed half the population of this region, but no one had been hurt. Today was a different matter.
There were dead on both sides, with the numbers pretty much equal. He’d found more of his own men by the Bertie crossroads, while their green-coated opponents had fallen in the fields.
Sweet Jesus, why had they formed square as if they were expecting to repel cavalry? They’d been advancing steadily, undeterred by the Fenian fire. To form square, then stay in it with no cavalry attacking made men vulnerable to enemy gunfire. Sean wasn’t surprised the green-coated soldiers had eventually broken and run. It was a tribute to their courage that they’d stayed in formation at all when the redcoats in the front line had turned tail.
Both his own army and the British forces were far ahead of him now. He could be alone on the field, except for the dead and injured. The haze of gunpowder had cleared and the sun beat down from a cloudless blue sky. He took his hat off and rubbed the sweat from his forehead. A movement on the edge of his vision caught his attention, a flutter of white where there should only have been dark green. He turned his head to look more closely.
Damn, damn, damn!
He shoved his hat back on and mounted the nervous Sunny Girl. From the mare’s back he could see the damned dark-haired woman who was crouched beside one of the fallen Canadians. She shouldn’t be here, not in this place of death and d
estruction. He wanted to get to her quickly, to take her away from a scene no woman should ever have to see. Sunny Girl leapt forward under his urging, cantering to within yards of the girl’s bowed form. Dismounting, Sean dropped the reins, hoping the mare wouldn’t stray, and walked slowly toward Jaclyn, half-afraid that she’d bolt if he came upon her too quickly.
She was stroking a wounded man’s hair and talking to him in a soft, gentle voice that wrenched at sorrows buried somewhere deep inside Sean. The Canadian’s back was a mess. He could see at a glance the man would not survive. It seemed that Jaclyn had come to the same conclusion for she was crooning to the fellow, telling him nonsense stories about his army’s success and a Fenian defeat.
“We beat them?” The words were a whisper, little more than a last exhalation of air.
“You beat them,” Jacqui murmured. She was crouched over the Canadian, smiling, though tears were trickling down her cheeks. She stroked the wounded man’s hair, providing gentle comfort. The Canadian’s eyes drooped shut. Sean knew death when he saw it, knew the instant when life left the Canadian’s body. Jaclyn didn’t. She continued to touch him gently until...
“Hugh!” She lifted the body, holding it as she began to cry, calling the man’s name again and again.
Sean knelt beside her and put his arms around her, drawing her close while she sobbed out an angry denial of death.
Gradually her weeping eased. She was warm in his arms and when he lowered his head, her hair smelled of the sun and wildflowers. He breathed deep, snatching at decency and life in the midst of wanton destruction and death. She leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder. Her breath tickled his throat and he imagined her lips inches from his neck. He had a sudden vision of those sweet soft lips kissing his skin, of his lips capturing hers, of her body stretched beneath his, arching against him.
He wrenched his head up. Turned his eyes away. Stared at the bloody destruction of a young man’s life. “Who was he?”
