by J. R. Rain
“Where is this doctor you were telling me about?” I ask.
“All the ways across the Portici Plantation, ma’am, and then up that hill yonder, called Henry Hill,” he says, limping around to point back toward the battle. “Doc’s set up a field hospital there with a bunch of white tents. Can’t miss it.”
He obviously thinks I’m crazy. Even though every woman had to be a nurse at home back then, very few female nurses worked at hospitals, except for nuns. Which I’m obviously not.
I thank him and jam my sunbonnet down firmly before picking up my carpet bag.
“Miss Moon! Miss Moon!” calls the ladies’ sundries salesman while hurrying to catch up with me. I’d forgotten his name already. “You mustn’t get separated from the rest of us!”
“I’m a nurse,” I say firmly, like a real nurse would. Hey, I was trying to get into the role; it’s called method acting. “It’s my sworn duty to try to help save lives if I can.”
On that note, I march off down the hill and across the cow pasture as steadily as I can, considering the slippery mud, the sweltering sun, and this cumbersome-as-hell dress. Another train pulls in, disgorging cheering Confederate soldiers who come streaming down the embankment from the railroad yard on either side. Officers blowing whistles muster them into ranks below me on the open parade grounds of the Portici Plantation, and they move off toward the battle in ragged columns, followed by quartermaster wagons and gun caissons. As I pass through the camp’s tent city, I gaze out over improvised fencing where the many drovers’ herds of mules and horses are corralled.
Wow, what a stink.
But it doesn’t hold a candle to the stench from the men’s latrine pits. Halfway across the camp, the acrid ammonia fumes rise up and hit me so hard I almost double over and hurl. Good thing I don’t breathe or I would’ve fainted.
I hurry on past that over to where big white canvas tents overflow with wounded and dying—their howls and prayers carrying all the way up the hill, as does the smell of their emptied bowels―and, of course, their blood.
That is what we are here for, isn’t it, Samantha? whispers the voice of Elizabeth from inside my mind. Blooood...
I set my jaw. No. That’s not at all why I’m walking over to the wounded tent.
From where I stand, the rumbling in the earth and the crack of musket fire is so loud I feel like I’m in the midst of the battle, but I can’t see any of it due to a thick expanse of trees.
Off to my left, nearly at the top of the rise that must have been “Henry Hill,” I catch glimpses of a distant brick house; near me, three white canvas tents sit out in a row, a main tent flanked by two smaller ones adjacent to a small stream. The Red Cross hasn’t been invented yet, I guess, because all the entrances bear draped garlands of green pine or spruce boughs that look like the brocade pulls of a theater curtain, culminating in a big round wreath at the apex. I guess so they won’t get fired on by enemy cannon. Or maybe Christmas had come early.
The place looks like a slaughterhouse.
In front of the tents, moaning soldiers lay on rows of cots just outside; groups of others sit or lay in the shade wherever they can find any. Inside, as far as I can tell, pandemonium reigns. Doctors (or “brigade surgeons” as they called them back then) work busily sawing the limbs off their screaming patients, their white-gloved arms stained a gory red up to their pits. I take off my sunglasses and bonnet and hover in the entrance for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the dimmer lighting.
One of the surgeons, an older bearded man with a round, red face, notices me and glares. “By Christ, I’ll not have a woman in my tent!” he roars above the din of the screaming and the constant cannonading from the battlefield nearby. “Orderly—escort her off the premises at once!”
One of the male nurses approaches me, shamefaced. He’s wearing a slouch cap and loose-fitting dun uniform like a prison convict. Like almost every single one of the orderlies, porters, teamsters, and drovers in the Confederate camp, he’s black. African Americans do all the heavy lifting in the Rebel army—and plenty of the dying when they came under fire. They just aren’t allowed to pick up a gun and fire back. At least, officially.
I fix the doctor with a hard stare that makes the male nurse sidestep. Despite it being normal for the time period, I’m not about to put up with his sexist BS. “Are you actually a doctor or did you just find a white coat lying on a fence somewhere? You’re not doing that right.” I point to the bandage he’s wrapped around one of the wounded soldiers, a beardless boy with a shattered arm. “You need to pull it tighter to stop the bleeding. Here, let me show you. But first, this wound needs cleaning.” Ignoring both men, I move in and tend to the wound. It’s damn hard to concentrate with all this blood filling my senses, but staring at the face of a boy not much older than Anthony keeps me focused.
“What’s your name?” I ask the wounded kid, trying to keep him conscious.
“George,” he mutters. “George Clarke.”
I wipe at a nasty wound in his lower abdomen. Ugh. The sight of it makes my heart sink into my gut. There’s almost no chance this poor kid’s going to survive without modern medical technology, but I still try to do what I can. “Do you have any iodine?” I ask the orderly.
The orderly looks fearfully at the red-faced surgeon but hands me a little bottle.
I let the doctor stew for a few seconds more before forcing my influence over his mind right when it looks like he’s about to physically throw me out of the tent himself. These poor boys don’t deserve to suffer for this idiot’s prejudice against women. For good measure, I make sure the other ‘doctors’ aren’t about to give me any crap for having boobs. The air hangs tense for a few seconds as my commands set in, but the hostility wanes.
Meanwhile, young George Clarke convulses in moans.
“For the love of God, stop that yammering, man!” the doctor bellows at George. “Where’s that brandy? Here, have another swig.” He pours some down the dying boy’s throat, then takes a long pull at the bottle himself.
“I’m afraid we’re out of bandages, ma’am,” the other surgeon says politely from behind. I turn. This doctor is almost as young as the soldier I’d just treated, but had grown a mustache in an attempt to look older. He’s actually pretty cute; tall and skinny with a face like that Irish actor, James Nesbitt. “That’s why we’re having to reuse those we’ve taken from the dead.”
Why are the cute ones always so stupid? I stare at him. “If you’re going to do that, they should be sterilized first or you’ll be spreading disease and infection.”
“‘Sterilized’?” the doctor asks, baffled.
“Boiling them works,” I say. “But vinegar is better.”
He blinks at me, then he and the orderly exchange a look. I impress upon them an urge to use only clean rags to tend to the living, and they both nod. With the desire, I impart a rudimentary knowledge of disease and infection, and they nod again. Why not? Maybe this knowledge alone will help change the course of the war, but I doubt it. Most of these wounds are too serious for these young men to enter back into battle.
And if they are meant to die, they will die, whether now or later. I suspect the Universe has a way of correcting itself, even if I do help extend a life or three.
“We’re short of carbolic and chloride, too,” adds the young doctor. “As well as chloroform. Most of our supplies were used up in the first hour of operations. We weren’t prepared for all this…”
“War?” I ask.
“This carnage, I was going to say. I’m Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire, Brigade Surgeon, Army of the Shenandoah.” He extends his bloodstained hand, then quickly retracts it. “May I ask where you qualified in the practice of medicine, Miss…?”
“Samantha Moon,” I say. “At, umm, St. Jude’s Hospital. In Fullerton, California.”
Well, I was born there, anyway, if that counts as “qualified.”
“Never heard of it. However, you’re obviously quite comfortable in an operating
theater, ma’am, though I must say you’re looking a touch pale at the moment. Do you need to sit down?”
“No, I’m fine, thanks. This is normal for me.” I offer a faint smile. “The sight of blood doesn’t bother me at all.” I nearly say ‘quite the opposite,’ but restrain myself.
Soon after we get George as tended as possible, another teenage boy in a Confederate uniform rushes in and whisks Dr. McGuire away to saw off a foot, leaving me to figure out a way to come up with more bandages. I manage to pry away an orderly named Hiram, and together, we make our way around the camp, stripping the corpses—much to his shock at having to witness a “lady doing such things.” Body by body, we tear their underwear and military blouses into strips to use as bandages and compresses.
Hiram is enthusiastic about the job; not only does it get him away from having to hold patients down during operations, he also goes through the pockets of the dead soldiers and loots them of coins and valuables when he thinks I’m not watching. Not that I care. The dead don’t need them. My problem, aside from the swarms of black flies that follow us around like a cloud, is the smell of blood everywhere. It gets under my skin—and awakens the demon I keep bottled up inside me.
“We’ll need to wash these in vinegar,” I say. “But I need to dilute it. See if you can find me some buckets and fill them with water.”
He shoots me a dubious glance. “The only place for water is the crick, ma’am. And they’s bullets flying thick and fast down there. Shoo, fly!” He flaps his hand at a black fly angling to land on his cheek.
“Hey, this is what Dr. McGuire wants,” I say, staring him straight in the eye. His body gives an electric involuntary shudder, and he backs away from me.
“Yes, ma’am,” he mumbles and practically gallops off.
It’s a myth that all bleeding stops when the corpus, as the surgeons call it, dies. Blood continues to circulate for some minutes after the heart stops beating, and wounds keep oozing because there is little coagulation yet. For a vampire, the enemy is time; you’re in a race to digest before the blood dries or separates into plasma. My hands are already steeped in it from what I’d been doing, and Elizabeth’s bloodlust is pretty strong. I spend a long minute staring at it, like heroin, dripping off my fingertips.
No… I can’t. Human blood will only make her stronger, and I can’t let her win.
I wipe my hands off on a dead man’s uniform and hurry into the camp long enough to grab a tin cup. I dart into a grove of shaded trees where the soldiers have tied up a bunch of cavalry horses. It’s a simple matter to mentally stun one so it disregards me biting its neck, though I only use my fangs to open a wound I can mystically close. As soon as the cup fills, I seal the wound and wander back to where I’d been, casually sipping. A few men glance my way, likely thinking I’ve got water. That makes me hurry on and chug before anyone notices what’s in the cup. For extra discretion, I stop by the large bucket in the middle of the camp and ladle water into it once I’m done with the blood, drinking that down to not waste any nourishment—and also to clean it. People finding a bloody cup would stir up trouble.
Somebody loudly clears his throat behind me.
I realize I’m likely the only woman left in a battle zone of fifty thousand men…
Not that I am in any danger of assault, not being what I am, but I still jump at being snuck up on. I quickly wipe my mouth with my sleeve, which probably only makes things worse, but might at least leave the mixture of blood and grime smeared evenly all over my face. Hopefully, that wouldn’t look too weird considering the condition most of the wounded soldiers are in.
“I have a fresh stack of bandages for you,” I say as I turn around—then freeze at the sight of the man’s face. It takes me a moment to register who stands before me. My vision takes in the white medical smock from his neck down to his boots, the fabric steeped in bright red blood; he looks pretty much like me, covered in gore.
Dr. James Bell from New Orleans. Lalie’s husband. One of the three beloved people I’d left behind in that town, but had hoped against hope never to have to set eyes on ever again…
“Sam?” he asks in a trembling, astounded voice. A voice with a gentle Scottish burr. “What the—what are you doing here?”
He’s about thirty, tall for a man back then, with sandy hair and a pink complexion flushed bright red from the sun. His beard looks unkempt and gingery, but I would have recognized him anywhere.
“I could ask you the same question!” I say. “Why aren’t you in New Orleans with Lalie and your”—I almost say “her,” because the child wasn’t his—“new baby?”
People might think I’d lived in Louisiana a while; I’d pronounced it “Nyawleeuns” like a native.
He hangs his head. “Sickly. The birth was difficult, and she’s… changed a bit. You shouldn’t have deserted us like that, Sam. We needed you there, particularly the colonel.” He takes my hand, and it’s my turn to look away.
I say, “You know why I had to go, James, after what the three of you saw and the way you looked at me afterward. No way of unseeing that after the genie was out of the bottle.”
Of course, I could have commanded him to forget... but such lifelong commands rarely stuck, from what I understood. More than likely, it would have worn off, and he would still be standing here now, looking at me the way he did.
“Aye, I understand it well enough… now. I had to get away, too, Sam. Things were too gloomy at home between Lalie and me. So I signed up as Chief Surgeon with Colonel Wheat’s regiment, the one he raised in New Orleans with private money. Including the colonel’s. The Louisiana Tigers, they’re called.”
We walk together toward the hospital tents. For now, I’ve managed to appease, if not sate, my hunger. I can live with appeased.
“And an eviller collection of ruffians you’ll never see,” he says. “Prison scum and unemployed Irish dockhands, a few former pirates like Wheat himself, the rest of them runaway farm boys and a few Creole gentlemen officers. A lucky thing this battle broke out—General Beauregard already had half the regiment arrested or put on report for thieving and brawling.”
“Where are they now?” I ask.
“In retreat all around us, I’m afraid. I suspect the battle is lost. Our position was to the north, across the Bull Run—Wheat took it into his head to make some lunatic charge from there on the Union lines. We were repulsed under withering fire and Wheat was shot through both lungs. It’s too bad; he’s a remarkably likable fellow for an old filibustier, and the men love him like a father. That’s half his blood covering my coat. I was just now operating on him.”
A “filibustier” is what the New Orleans French call a pirate or a highwayman.
James gives a sad smile. “I told him before I cut him open that no man had ever survived such a wound. He says, ‘Well then, I will put my case on record.’ After I finished, I had to take a minute away to smoke my pipe, forgetting I was out of tobacco. Then I saw you.”
“I was feeding, James. Horse blood this time.”
He had seen me tear out Victor de Boré’s throat. In spite of which, the vampire son-of-a-bitch had almost killed me anyway; James had saved me by stabbing de Boré through the heart from behind with a silver bouquet pin. I could never repay that debt.
“I know, Sam. At least you’re taking it from horses and not these poor boys. But why are you here?”
“I was making for New York City,” I say with a bitter smile. “Guess I was too late—my train was the last one out of Richmond, but we got caught in the troop lines. I’ve got a chance to get home again, and I have to take it.”
He nods. “Aye. Assuming this war doesn’t kill you first.”
For the first time in a long while, I laugh. “I’m not so worried about that… but…”
I glance over my shoulder back toward where the train sits. Delacroix isn’t immortal; meaning, I can’t let the Frenchman die.
Chapter Six
The roar of battle only gets louder as we mak
e our way back to the field hospital, passed by a pair of protesting mules pulling lumbering ambulance wagons. A trickle of retreating soldiers comes through the trees from higher up, a few running headlong in panic and even abandoning their muskets and packs.
“We’re lost!” some cry.
“Save yourselves!” shouts one voice above the others. “The Yankees is broke through our lines!”
A sergeant carrying a pistol strides up behind us and trips one of the men, whipping at another with a cane. “Back into ranks!” he screams, “or you’ll be shot for cowardice! What regiment are you men with?”
Several more run off in the direction of the camp, but the two he’d caught stood still, staring shamefaced at the ground.
“Barney Bee’s Virginians, Sarge,” one of them mutters. “But the General got himself all shot to pieces and is likely to die. That’s him in the ambulance yonder.”
“Then you two little pissants better go with him and help the orderlies. You won’t do much good back in the firing line with no weapons, will you? But if I ever see either of you running away again, I’ll shoot you like the damn dogs you are!”
A volley of cannon fire drowns out the rest of his words, followed by a loud cheer from thousands of voices from over the hill. It takes me a moment to realize that the guns are booming in the other direction.
“I’d better see to General Bee,” says James before breaking into a trot after the wagon.
I consider my options and decide to assist a friend. On the way, I pay another visit to the horses, this time drinking my fill without being noticed. By the time I catch up to him, he’s organizing a new operating theater in the sunlight in front of the tents.
“I think the lighting will be better out here for the next few hours.” He lowers his voice. “Is the sun too bright for you to assist me, Sam?”
I shake my head. Vampires are nocturnal, true, so I’m never at my best during the day, but as long as I have my trinkets, I can still function. I wipe my hands on the only part of my skirt still halfway clean, then put my sunglasses back on. The first clouds of gun smoke drift over the hill from the other side, darkening the day like an eclipse.
