Unholy Fire

by Robert J. Mrazek

  “Good evening, Mrs. Bannister,” he said, as she came up.

  “It’s good to see you again, General,” she responded.

  “I would like to present Captain McKittredge, a friend of General Hooker’s,” he said next.

  From her dazzling smile, it did not appear that she drew any distinction between a general and a mere captain. I took in the fragrance of lilacs.

  “It must be wonderful to be so tall,” she said.

  “Not when you’re in the line of fire,” Sickles came right back.

  “No, I suppose not,” she said.

  She had pale gray eyes and dark russet hair that fell in natural ringlets down to her bare shoulders. Her pretty oval face was marred only by a tiny field of smallpox scars on her cheeks that she had artfully concealed with paint and powder.

  She turned back to face General Sickles.

  “On behalf of my husband, I deeply regret what just happened,” she said, her breasts swelling the low-cut gown with each breath she took. “I was simply dancing with Lieutenant Mitchell, and the next thing I knew.…”

  “Please don’t give it a moment’s concern, Mrs. Bannister,” replied General Sickles. “These things always happen as battles loom close. Right now, the men’s emotions are on a razor’s edge.”

  “Thank you for your understanding,” she said. “I didn’t want anything to spoil General Hooker’s party.”

  “It would be impossible for you to do that, Mrs. Bannister.”

  As they looked at one another, silent messages seemed to be passing between them. Then General Sickles turned to me and declared, “Captain McKittredge, I would like you to escort Mrs. Bannister to her lodgings. After that, you are free to return to the party.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, although at that point I wanted nothing more than to return to my tent.

  “Where are you staying, Mrs. Bannister?” asked the general.

  “I’m at the Fitzgerald estate with some of the other army wives. It is very crowded there, as you can well imagine.”

  “Yes,” said General Sickles, “we all must make sacrifices. Perhaps we will meet again soon.”

  She smiled back at him.

  “I understand,” she replied.

  “My personal carriage will be brought around for you,” he said.

  Demurely taking his hand in her own gloved one, she made a deep curtsy.

  “Thank you for your kindness, General Sickles,” she said. He bowed his head for a moment and then walked toward another group of officers.

  “Are you ready to leave?” I asked.

  “Yes, I am, Captain McKittredge,” she said. “If you will give me a few moments to put on my boots and coat, I will meet you at the entrance to the pavilion.”

  She began walking toward the section of the tent where the guests had left their winter garments. As I slowly made my way through the crowd toward the entrance, I saw Sergeant Osceola heading straight toward me. His golden bronze skin and rough cast face set him apart dramatically from the other guests.

  “I’ve just come from Colonel Burdette,” he said. “He told me to tell you that Major Duval is on the run, and there is nothing more that can be done here tonight. We will meet in General Hathaway’s office tomorrow morning at six.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” I replied. “I’m afraid I must leave now anyway.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  That was when I saw them. They were standing together about fifteen feet away. Physically, the two young women were complete opposites. The first one was dark complected, the other very fair. I assumed that they were probably the daughters of officers attending the party.

  In spite of the whiskey, my mind was suddenly alive.

  Unlike the other women there, they were not dressed in formal evening gowns. The dark one was wearing a simple, cream-colored linen dress trimmed in white lace. The blonde girl wore a dress in cobalt blue.

  The raven haired girl was strikingly lovely, with a slim, tapered face, luminous brown eyes, and a delicate figure. The mass of her black hair was combed up above her head and in the lantern lights gave off the blue-black luster of raw silk. It dramatically highlighted her exquisite cheekbones and finely shaped nose.

  There was a sadness in her eyes, as if she had experienced a recent loss or bereavement. Unlike the blonde girl, whose brittle laugh carried shrilly across the floor, she seemed downcast. It may sound strange or even adolescent, but at that moment I felt as if my heart had suddenly been awakened to the essence of beauty and desire.

  As she looked in our direction, the hint of a wistful smile came to her full lips, and I saw that one of her front upper teeth was charmingly crooked. It made her otherwise flawless face somehow more real and beautiful to me. She turned to address the blonde girl, who was several inches shorter, and had the angelic look of a Botticelli nymph. Her hair was swept up in the same fashionable manner as the other girl’s and was held in place with a lacquered, black barrette.

  “They seem to know you,” said Sergeant Osceola, and I laughed out loud.

  “I think I would remember, Sergeant,” I said, unable to stop staring at the young woman with the sad eyes. “However, I wouldn’t mind introducing myself.”

  The blonde girl was swaying in time to the music, her teeth white in another burst of laughter. I was feeling Dutch courage from the whiskey and was about to suggest that we go over to meet them, when I suddenly remembered Mrs. Bannister. Torn between my obligation to General Sickles and my desire to meet the young woman, I reluctantly opted for duty, consoling myself that she would still be there when I returned.

  “I must go,” I said, already moving toward the entrance.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  From some distance off, I could see the anger on Mrs. Bannister’s face.

  “Please forgive me,” I said, reaching her side, “but I just met someone who had an important message for me.”

  I could tell she was about to convey her displeasure, but then her face softened and she said gently, “Well, I hope she was worth it.”

  “There is no she,” I said, but recalling the sad-eyed girl, I hoped there would be an opportunity to find out.

  We went out into the night to discover it was snowing again. The wind was coming in great gusty blasts, driving the small, hard flakes into our eyes.

  General Sickle’s black carriage was waiting for us. The snow-covered coachman urged his team of four matched horses toward the entrance as we came out, and I helped Mrs. Bannister into the carriage. A moment later I was beside her on the cushioned seat, and we were on our way. It was bitterly cold in the coach, but a down-filled quilt was lying on the front seat, and I spread it over her lap.

  “We will share it,” she said, leaning forward to arrange the quilt over my lap as well. As the coach rolled past the soldiers’ camps heading north, it struck me that just twelve hours earlier I had been sitting in a court chamber on Pennsylvania Avenue listening to Harold Tubshawe drone on about the dangers of kidney tallow.

  I felt bone weary from everything that had happened since. In spite of my best intentions not to fall asleep until I saw her safely home, my head slowly fell back against the headrest, and I dozed off to the rhythmic beat of the horses’ hooves on the hard-packed road.

  It was the scent of lilacs that brought me awake again. Slowly regaining my senses, I realized that the constant beat of the horses’ hooves had not changed. But when I opened my eyes, Mrs. Bannister’s face was no more than a few inches from my own.

  “You know, you are a very beautiful young man,” she murmured.

  I felt her hand moving under the lap blanket. It rose up alongside my left leg and stopped.

  “Mrs. Bannister …” I began.

  “My name is Mavis,” she whispered, “and I’m not going to devour you.”

  Her hand began to move again, coming to rest between my thighs. As we sat close together in that freezing carriage, it suddenly seemed as if every nerve ending in my body was alive w
ith sensation, little pinpricks of pleasure that charged every pore of my skin.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Twenty-one,” I said.

  Her eyes expressed surprise.

  “How is it that someone of your … relative youth … became a friend of General Hooker’s?” she asked, her eyes still just inches from my own.

  “I met him after he was wounded,” I said. “I guess we shared that experience in common.”

  Her lips gently touched mine and then drew away.

  “Will I see you at the party?” she asked then.

  I thought she was confused. We had just come from the party.

  “I understand,” she said. “One must be very discreet.”

  The carriage began to slow as the driver on the box reined in the horses. A few moments later it came to a stop, and her hand slid away from my thighs.

  “I am not entirely wicked,” she said, raising the cowl of her cape over her head. “I just married the wrong man.”

  The carriage tilted to the right as one of the soldiers on the box jumped down to the ground and came around to open the door. In the moment before he did, Mrs. Bannister whispered, “I hope to see you very soon, Captain McKittredge.”

  The door opened and a wind-driven gust of snow swirled into our faces. She gave the young private her gloved hand, and he helped her down from the carriage. I saw that we were under the covered portico of a large country house. She looked back up at me once more and smiled before the soldier opened the front door for her and she disappeared inside.

  Then the carriage was on its way again. As we rode south, my mind kept returning to the sad-eyed girl I had seen at the party and whether she would still be there when I got back. The snow began coming harder, and the carriage slowed to a crawl when we got behind a convoy of freight wagons.

  It was well past midnight when we arrived back at the party tent. My heart sank when I saw that all the other carriages had already departed. Through the open tent flaps at the entrance, I could see two men clearing the banquet tables. Otherwise, the hall was empty. Riding back to camp, I felt a profound sense of loss, as if something infinitely precious had passed out of my life before I even had a chance to sample its measure.

  Aside from a few sentries, no one was stirring at the encampment near Sam’s headquarters. Going straight to my tent, I removed my greatcoat and uniform. When I went to pour some water for a wash, it was frozen solid in the pitcher on the camp table. Instead, I drew on my long flannel underwear, put the greatcoat back on, and burrowed down into the blankets on my cot. The image of the raven-haired girl was still in my mind when I blew out the oil lamp and fell into a black sleep.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I felt someone shaking my arm as if he was trying to tear it out of the socket. For a few moments I thought I was again back at Ball’s Bluff, lying in the blood-soaked pasture on Harrison’s Island.

  “You must wake up, Captain,” said a voice tinged with desperation. I remembered where I was and opened my eyes to discover it was still pitch dark outside the field tent. A hissing lantern was suspended above my face. Beyond its harsh yellow glare, I could see the outline of someone standing next to my cot.

  “What is it?” I groaned at the form above me.

  “You must come, Captain McKittredge,” came back the voice, which I now recognized as belonging to a member of General Hathaway’s staff. It was still bitterly cold, and as I tossed off the covers, the freezing air literally stung my face. That did nothing to stop the vicious pounding inside my head. I had the strange sensation that my body was about to split open. I even knew exactly where it would start, at the top of my head, then rend down through the middle of my back.

  “Colonel Burdette ordered me to find you, sir, and bring you to him.”

  “Where is he?” I asked, still waiting for my head to come apart.

  “A few miles from here,” he said, “right near those nigger shanties.”

  I took off the greatcoat I had worn to bed over my long underwear, put my uniform back on, and finally the greatcoat again. As I was drawing on my boots, I noticed that the direction of the wind had changed in the night. It was coming from the north now and whipping the front flaps of my tent back and forth with loud snaps.

  “What time is it?” I asked him, wrapping the greatcoat close.

  “Just after four,” said the soldier.

  Outside, the wind was still coming in heavy gusts, driving the snow into my eyes and making me turn my back to it. In spite of all the alcohol I had consumed at the party, the frigid air began to restore clarity to my brain.

  The wagon commandeered by the young soldier was completely open to the elements. Both of us rode on the box, and it made for a very unpleasant journey. Another two inches of new snow had fallen since I had gone to bed, although it had now turned to driving sleet. The wind blew it directly into our faces as we headed north on the highway.

  We slowly passed through the thousands of soldiers’ tents and log huts that now covered the ground for miles around Falmouth. A handful of sentries were about, and they stared at us with forlorn expressions as we went by. On the northern edge of the military encampment, we came to the place where the Negro contrabands had made temporary shelters in the previous weeks. There were hundreds of them, most containing runaway slaves who had drifted North seeking the protection of the army. Others were living under scraps of canvas or out in the open.

  A hundred yards farther on, the soldier turned the wagon off the main road, and we began following a narrow, snow-covered gravel road that cut through a small stand of piney woods. Up ahead there was a small clearing in the forest, and I could see lights waving slowly back and forth. In their pale reflection, the snow was a pure ice blue.

  Small clusters of Negroes lined both sides of the lane as we rode toward the lights. Drawing closer I saw that the illumination came from railroad lanterns that were being carried to and from a single cross path. At least fifty soldiers were milling about in a rough circle near the moving lamps.

  At the center of the circle, standing hatless in the freezing rain, was the massive figure of Val Burdette. He was still wearing the decrepit uniform I had seen him in at the party, but it was now covered with a canvas ground sheet. Someone had chopped a hole in the middle of it for his head. His hair was frozen into a monumental crown. A dead cigar was clamped in his mouth.

  “Move everyone out of here!” I heard him shouting. Under the prodding of the guards, the crowd of soldiers slowly began to move back until there was a cleared space around him.

  My headache was still raging as I drew up beside him. “Is it Major Duval? Have you run him down?”

  He shook his head no.

  “Sam’s men were still tracking him when I left to come out here,” he said, morosely. “This is something infinitely more sad … a dead girl. She was discovered about an hour ago. Unfortunately, the whole area around the body has been disturbed.”

  I now saw that a blanket covered a form on the ground in the middle of the rough circle. For thirty feet in every direction, it looked like a herd of cattle had been grazing. Beyond the edge of the little clearing, a belt of tall evergreens swayed and moaned with every gust of wind. Even with a hundred thousand soldiers encamped within a few miles of the spot, it was a lonely and dismal place.

  From a wagon near the tree line, men began unloading canvas and lumber. Val called out to a sergeant who was standing nearby.

  “I will also need eight fully charged lanterns,” he said.

  As we waited, Val led me over to a small group of men who were standing near the wagons. Two of them were Negroes. One looked to be about Val’s age. He was tall and stocky, with carefully trimmed gray hair, and intelligent black eyes. Dressed in a well-worn black suit, he stood with his arms protectively wrapped around the shoulders of the shorter Negro, who I now saw was a teenage boy.

  “This man and his son found her while they were out searching for firewood,” said Val. The Negro l
ooked straight ahead, his face expressionless. One of the soldiers guarding him began to shake his head in disgust. I thought he was about to say something, but instead he just spat in the snow.

  “We’re ready, Colonel,” someone called out. I turned to see that the soldiers near the girl’s body had finished nailing together four crude wooden frames, and were lashing them together in a rough rectangle around her. They then stretched canvas across the frame, completely covering the sides.

  As soon as they had finished, Val pulled one edge of it aside for us to enter. Once inside the enclosure, he carefully placed the eight lanterns around the edge of the blanket. Kneeling down, he uncovered the body.

  The girl was lying on her back in the snow, and she was as naked as the moment she had entered the world. The truth be told, she was the first naked woman I had ever seen. It was a moment that I had often dreamed about, and I imagined that it would be both exciting and profoundly erotic. That was hardly the case. Her face was childlike, almost angelic. If the body had not been that of a mature woman, I would have thought she was no more than fourteen.

  Her bewildered eyes were wide open, and they stared up at the universe far above us. The pitiless sleet had kept them filled to overflowing, giving the impression that she was still silently weeping at what had been done to her. In the glare of the lanterns, her body seemed more like a marble statue than a person who had lived and breathed. The color of her skin was ethereally white.

  “The word of her discovery must have spread quickly through the regimental camp just south of here,” said Val. “They all came to have a look at the dead snow angel.”

  Unless one of the soldiers had shifted her body, it appeared that whoever had left her there had arranged the corpse in a respectful, almost ritualistic way. Both hands were folded over her chest, not quite covering the tips of the woman’s conical breasts. Her long golden hair had been carefully arranged around the head like a regal crown.

  I could now hear a growing tumult in the ranks of the soldiers who remained at the edge of the perimeter near the Negro man and his son. There were several inarticulate shouts, followed by a low keening rumble of angry voices.