The Velvet Shadow

by Angela Elwell Hunt

  “Major Haynes is my brother.” Roger took the envelope from the boys hand. “How did you come by this?”

  “We found it on a dead man, sir. Private O’Neil, from Company M.”

  Roger tapped the envelope against his fingertips, thinking. O’Neil’s name meant nothing to him, but Company M certainly did.

  “Thank you.” Roger nodded, dismissing the boy, then walked back to the campfire. The men around him sat silent for the most part, each man consumed by his own thoughts, regrets, and private relief.

  Ignoring the warning voice that whispered in his head, Roger broke the seal and pulled out the letter, still damp from the rain and the sweat of battle. A deep, surprising pain smote his breast as he read; the feeling intensified as he read the note a second time.

  When he had finished, he crumpled the letter in his hand and stared at the fire. An unexpected weed of jealousy sprang up in his heart, stinging like nettles. He tossed the wadded paper into the fire, then shoved his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders forward, trying to hide from the pain.

  How could he have been so blind? His sweetheart loved his brother; that much was clear enough. From the first word, Flanna had expressed more honest admiration and caring for Alden than she ever had for Roger.

  And what did she mean by saying that she would never see Alden again? She certainly would, for as Roger’s wife she would see Alden at every family gathering…unless the letter was a calculated lie. A test. An attempt to force Alden’s hand, to goad him into doing something he would never have done without an open threat.

  You have given me the courage to step out on my own…

  Roger looked out into the darkness, unable to stop himself from pondering the impossible. Had Alden and Flanna run away together? It seemed inconceivable that Alden would desert his post and his men, but before this night Roger would never have believed Flanna capable of deception.

  He laughed aloud, realizing the illogic of his thoughts. Why, Flanna was a natural deceiver! She’d deceived him from the first, hiding in this camp as a man, without telling him, her fiancé, anything at all. But Alden had known. Alden had spent a great deal of time with her, helping her establish that silly dispensary, encouraging her in foolish and inappropriate ideas. And Alden had brought her to Virginia, against all common sense, against Roger’s wishes, and why? Because he loved her!

  The admission flowered from a place beyond all logic and experience, but Roger could not deny it. And the letter, Flanna’s loving farewell, was intended to provoke Alden to action.

  The thoughts that had been chasing each other through Roger’s brain suddenly fell into a neat and obedient order. That was exactly why she had done it! She had written this letter before the battle, but Alden hadn’t received it because this man O’Neil had died. And so Flanna had waited and confronted Alden after the first day of battle, knowing he could easily desert his post in the confusion. They both knew he’d be listed as one of the missing while they ran away together.

  “So this is why you brought her to Virginia,” he muttered.

  The man next to Roger turned with a quizzical glance. “You okay, Captain?”

  “Fine,” Roger answered, crossing his arms. “Just fine.”

  They were out there together. Somewhere in the woods or in Richmond itself, they had their arms wrapped around each other. Perhaps even now they were laughing at the brother they’d left behind.

  The surge of rage caught him unaware, like white-hot lightning through his chest and belly. Roger gasped, half-choked with it, then clamped the anger down tight, hoarding it like coals in a hearth.

  He would find them. Tomorrow he’d search through the camp for Flanna and Alden, just to give them the benefit of the doubt, and when he didn’t find them, he’d set out on his own. During this lull, while men still walked around in an after-battle daze, Roger would slip away too. Some things were bigger than war, more pervasive, more fundamental.

  At that moment, Roger felt far less animosity toward the secessionists than he did toward Flanna and Alden. A cheating woman and a disloyal brother were far greater sinners than mere secessionists.

  Twenty-Seven

  Six days after the battle at Fair Oaks, Flanna paused beside the bedside of a wounded Confederate soldier. The man had been hit in the thigh, and the leg amputated. Even with her skill, Flanna could see no other way to save the man’s life. He seemed to bear her no ill will, though, and now he lay on a cot in the house and stared at the ceiling with his hands folded across his chest.

  “You okay, Private?” Flanna asked.

  His eyes did not move from the ceiling, but he nodded slightly. “Yes sir, I’m just glad it’s over. Glad I’m out. Glad I’m alive.”

  His eyes flickered toward her for an instant. “You been in battle, Doc?”

  Flanna pulled over a nearby stool and lowered herself to it. “I was at Ball’s Bluff.”

  He lifted a shoulder in a slight shrug. “I weren’t there. But I heard about it.” A slow, shy smile blossomed out of his beard. “I heard we set the Yanks running right off the edge of a cliff.”

  Flanna lowered her eyes, alarmed that she had nearly forgotten where she was. She was in Richmond, in the guise of a Confederate doctor, tending Rebel soldiers. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be talking about how she’d been quaking in her boots as she ran down the mountain…with the Yankees.

  “It was something,” she offered noncommittally. She reached out and pressed her hand to the man’s forehead. No signs of fever. Good.

  “Were you nervous, Doc?” His bright blue eyes squinted up at her, then one hand came up to wipe a string of wetness from his eyes.

  “Yes,” Flanna answered, looking away. “I was nervous.”

  The Rebel nodded and folded his hands again. “I was scared as a jackrabbit, and ready to run,” he said, his eyes lighting with some indefinable emotion. “The bullets scared me most—that constant hissing sound. The captain said to move out, and I tried, but I felt sick at my stomach and started sweating all over. I didn’t think my legs could hold me up, much less carry me to meet those bullets. But I ran, and I kept running, even when my comrades fell over in the grass.”

  He paused a moment, and Flanna let the silence stretch, knowing that he needed to talk. Most of these men had been in this house for nearly a week, and they’d had no chance for conversation, no opportunity to share their feelings and their pain.

  “The thing that scared me even more,” his voice quavered, “was that after a minute, I couldn’t feel anything.”

  When he did not speak again, Flanna squeezed his shoulder. “You’re alive now, Private, and you’re feeling lots of things. Trust in God with all your heart, and he will guide your path.”

  He didn’t answer for a moment, but tears fell from his eyes and made dark patches in his brown hair. “Were you ever that afraid, Doc? So afraid you couldn’t feel nothin’?”

  Flanna looked away, remembering the hour when she brought Alden to the Confederate doctors. She, too, had felt a cold perspiration and a weakness in the knees—indeed, she’d later thought that only the stiffness of her blood-stained skirt had held her upright. And she hadn’t cared about living or dying. Alden’s safety was all that mattered.

  “Yes, soldier, I have been that afraid.”

  Though he could not find the strength to open his eyes, Alden heard a myriad of sounds: voices, murmurs, whispers. The voices faded to a brief inaudible exchange, then a door closed with a definite and final click. And yet the sounds continued; the place seemed alive with them.

  Someone screamed, someone cried, and every once in a great while the sheets over him rustled as they lifted and fell.

  He drifted in and out of a thin, cruel sleep. He dreamed of men falling around him, shells exploding in a shrieking frenzy, soldiers splintering apart before his eyes. He choked on air thick with black smoke and struggled to move forward, joining men who shoved and stumbled over each other as they pushed through the mire. And then
something hit him, and he fell. The others kept going, unaware that he had fallen. His hands clawed at the mud; his body sang with pain as a panicked horse galloped over his legs.

  The darkness gradually deepened, and he slept for what felt like a very long time. Then he felt someone lift a weight from his chest, and something cold splashed on a burning area in his shoulder.

  Groaning, he locked a scream behind his teeth and writhed in pain.

  His eyes flew open. Flanna stood beside him, a pitcher in her hand. “Thank goodness.” She smiled at him as if she’d just kissed him awake instead of shattering every nerve in his body. “I was beginning to wonder if I’d killed you.”

  “Good grief!” Alden gave her a black look. “What are you trying to do?”

  “Hush.” She leaned over, examined his shoulder, then nodded with satisfaction and taped a clean bandage into place. “I have done nothing but try to save your life. But you must hold your tongue, or you may get us both killed.”

  Her voice brimmed with depth and authority, and Alden knew she wasn’t joking. He lifted his heavy head and glanced around him. He lay on a cot in what appeared to be a private home. Two other soldiers lay near him, their faces drawn and pinched in suffering even while they slept. A small table stood near the door, with a washbasin and pitcher arranged on a pretty, embroidered doily.

  “Where am I?” He lowered his head to meet Flanna’s gaze.

  “You are a guest in the home of Mrs. Ellen Corey,” Flanna answered, her voice now as smooth as silk. “In Richmond.”

  Richmond?

  “Did we beat the Rebs back? Is the war over?”

  “Stop talking foolishness, soldier,” she snapped, glancing abruptly toward the hallway. “Do you think we’d let the Yankees into Richmond? Not by a long shot.”

  Alden let his head fall to the pillow as the significance of her words took hold. The Confederate army wouldn’t treat Union prisoners in Richmond; there were far too many wounded Confederates for that sort of largess. Which could only mean that—

  Flanna placed her hand upon his chest, stilling the question on his lips. For the first time he noticed that beneath her starched apron she wore an oversized shirt and dark men’s trousers. Her hair was slicked back away from her forehead, barely touching her collar.

  “I can see that you don’t remember much.” Her eyes warned him, Be still and listen. “Right after you led your men to face the Federals’ charge, you were hit in the shoulder. I found you and brought you back here.” A little smile quivered in the corner of her mouth. “I removed the bullet, cleaned your wound, and put your arm in a sling. You’ll be fine as long as you don’t try to rejoin your regiment, sir. The Fifth South Carolina and Colonel Giles will just have to get along without you for a while.”

  Alden opened his mouth to protest, but she was quicker.

  “Of course,” she went on, her voice pitched low so that only he could hear, “they weren’t about to let a woman operate on you. What Yankees lack in manners they make up for in common sense, Alden, I’ll give you that. It might be twenty years before a Southern man allows a woman to come near him with a scalpel.”

  “Excuse me,” he interrupted in a tense, clipped voice that forbade any foolishness. “But who are you today?”

  If she hadn’t been wearing pants, an observer might have thought she cast him a flirtatious smile. “I’m Dr. Franklin O’Connor, of the Fifth South Carolina—everyone knows that. I’ve been here several days, tending all you nice Confederate boys.”

  Alden closed his eyes, then exhaled loudly. He knew he ought to be grateful that his life had been spared, yet this wasn’t right.

  Flanna was claiming him as a Confederate, but this particular disguise was an affront to his honor and the vows of loyalty he’d taken as an officer.

  “Alden.” Her tone deepened as she leaned closer. “I know you think this is wrong. And as soon as you’re better, I’ll do whatever you want me to do with you. But I had to save your life. The Union has no hospitals, and scores of men are dying right now by the railroad tracks. There is no one to help them.”

  He met her determined gaze. “I ought to be with them.”

  “You wouldn’t have survived the journey!”

  He flinched at something he heard in her voice, something jagged and sharp, like words torn by a bayonet. She bit her lip and remained silent for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice rang with cool authority. “You don’t know what it’s like out there. The Confederacy has never seen a tide of casualties like this. The folks of Richmond and even Petersburg have been taking omnibuses and private carriages to the battlefields to collect the wounded. The injured are being piled into stores, tobacco warehouses, factories, private homes, and tents, and still there isn’t room for everyone. Men with perfectly trivial injuries are dying because they can’t walk and there is no one to bring them food and water. Even the ones who made it into town are having a rough time of it. The Richmond papers have been begging people to bring ice and food to the hospitals, and ladies are tearing up their old cotton dresses for bandages.”

  Unspoken pain glowed in her eyes, and he swallowed hard, realizing that she had risked a great deal to save his life. He reached up and squeezed her hand. “Thank you,” he said simply, knowing he could not undo what had been done. For some reason God had used her to save him when he ought to be dead in the field with his comrades. Who was he to question the Almighty? Better to trust this woman’s compassion and rest in God’s plan. If it meant he spent the rest of the war in a Confederate prison camp, well, there were less honorable ways to end a military career.

  Aware of passing footsteps in the hallway, he released her hand. “I didn’t think anyone would come.” His voice fell as the memory brushed him. For some reason he felt compelled to talk about what had happened. “I felt the bullet hit, and I tumbled to the ground like a drunken man, but I did not feel any pain. Instead I thought that someone had hit me terribly hard.” He gave her a crooked smile. “I could not even tell where I had been hit, and thought perhaps I shouldn’t look. Perhaps it was best not to know.”

  He lifted his eyes to the ceiling, letting his gaze rove over the water stains from the floor above. “I had little hope of seeing the next sunrise. I thought of more things in that next hour than I could write in a year. I thought of my dead father’s brave example and prayed for my worried mother, wondering if she would ever learn what had happened to me. And I thought of you.”

  A cynical inner voice railed at him—what a thing to admit to your brother’s sweetheart!—but Alden clenched his fist. He had suffered much for his brother and his country, and he deserved a moment of honesty! In the hours that he had lain on his back and stared at the weeping gray sky, he had thought about the people he would miss if he died. Flanna’s oval face was the one that filled his imagination and fired his will to live.

  But he no longer stood at death’s door. And Flanna was still his brother’s fiancée.

  Reining in his defiant emotions, he avoided her eyes and kept his gaze fastened to the ceiling. “I longed for someone to come. I was shaken by the thought that I might die alone. I thought none of my regiment would ever find me, and that I might be buried in a common grave like the one we dug at Ball’s Bluff. I prayed for daylight and the sunrise…and that someone would come, someone who would sit with me while I died. I knew God was with me, but I wanted to…touch someone.”

  “I would have come, Alden, if I had known how to find you. I sat with Paddy O’Neil.” Flanna’s voice went soft with the memory. “He died talking to me.”

  Alden blinked back a sudden rush of tears. “I shook so badly I thought I would jar all my bones out of place. I wanted water. I wanted to die…but not alone.”

  “You’re not alone now.” Her small hand floated up from the bedside and touched his cheek with tenderness. “You’re not going to die, Alden, and I’m not going to leave you. When you’re well, I’ll help you do whatever you want to do.” Her voice dropped to
a hushed bedside whisper. “I’ll even go downstairs and put on a dress, if that would please you. I’m done with surgery—I’m your nurse now.”

  “Why should you stay here?” He swiveled his head to better look at her. “You wanted to go home. Surely you can now.”

  Her lovely face twisted in a small grimace of pain, as if someone had suddenly struck her. “I have placed my trust in Mrs. Ellen Corey, mistress of this house. I had to, you see, for I needed men’s clothing in order to operate on you and the others. The Confederate doctors would never have listened to me otherwise.”

  She looked toward the window, and Alden shifted as far as his wounded body would allow in order to study her. “You helped others?” he asked, gently urging her to continue.

  “Yes. Mrs. Corey was very understanding.” Flanna pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at her eyes. “These clothes were her son’s. He died at Manassas.” She lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug. “In any case, when I found you, I took off your blue coat. Without it, you looked like any other wounded man on the battlefield. I brought you in on a wagon with Confederate wounded, but I couldn’t leave you in the hospital.” Her face twisted in horror. “I saw how they were operating, and I couldn’t leave you there! So I sought out Mrs. Corey, for in her face I saw kindness and compassion. I pulled her aside, explained as much of my story as I dared, and she brought me here and gave me her son’s clothes. I had you brought here with the others, and I operated on you downstairs in her kitchen.”

  She smiled, but her smile held only a ghost of its former warmth. “Amazing, what a pair of trousers will accomplish. I barked orders like Gulick on his best day, and they brought everything I needed—bandages, chloroform, sutures.”

  “It wasn’t the trousers.” He eased into a smile. “It was you.” He shook his head slightly, marveling at her determination. Her story thus far was one of success, so why did a shadow linger in her eyes?