The Face of Heaven

by Murray Pura

  So she wore the dress. The officers’ wives were happy, Morganne was happy, and as Nathaniel gazed at her while the chaplain spoke, the sun sliding out from a cloud and lighting the silk and the Potomac, it was clear to Lyndel that her man was amazed and delighted. As she spoke the vows that made him her husband and her his wife she finally relaxed into the gown and let it be one of the many gifts of a day laden with wonder.

  “You’re perfect,” he whispered as the chaplain told them to kiss and their lips came together.

  “My hair is still up,” she teased.

  He kissed her once, smiled, then kissed her a second time. “Not for long.”

  As they had planned, Morganne lifted the black kapp from Lyndel’s head and replaced it with a white one.

  “Somehow you manage to look Amish even with the silk dress and in these military surroundings,” Nathaniel said.

  “No matter what Elizabethtown would think about me today, I’m still Amish to the core.”

  Miss Sharon had come down by steamer for the ceremony and so had the Palmers. The company and platoon were formed up twenty or thirty feet away, uniforms patched and freshly washed, muskets polished to a sparkling brilliance, and even the 19th Indiana’s commander, Sam Williams, stopped by to hear the vows. Congratulating them following the service, and after the company had raised a loud hurrah, he presented Nathaniel with a four day pass co-signed by Long Sol Meredith.

  “Disappear to New York,” he said. “That’s an order.”

  Dear Mama and Papa,

  I am writing a quick note from New York City to tell you that Nathaniel and I have married. Of course this will be a shock to you—if you are even reading this—but we didn’t want to wait until this long war ended or until you were prepared to forgive us for taking part in it. The ceremony was done with the Bible and a chaplain and my kapp is now white instead of black as any married Amish girl would have it. We have been granted a brief honeymoon in this great city and are thoroughly enjoying ourselves. I even got Nathaniel to sleep in until seven one morning. Most of the time we walk by the docks and take in the sea air and watch the sailing vessels and steamers come in and out of the harbor. So I wanted you to hear about the marriage from me and not someone else. I love you both. God bless.

  Your daughter,

  Lyndel

  When they landed back at the Belle Plain wharf on Friday, Lyndel expected to return to the cabin she and Morganne had used for a few days before the wedding. It had been built by two privates who had both succumbed to old wounds from Antietam at the field hospital and whose bodies were now buried in the regimental cemetery. Morganne, she knew, had gone back to Armory Square in Washington and her room at the Palmer home so the cabin would be vacant.

  Cramped but cozy.

  The 19th Indiana had a surprise in store. Levi spotted them as Nathaniel and Lyndel made their way toward the cabin and came rushing up, hugging his sister and pumping Nathaniel’s hand.

  “Welcome back,” he greeted them. “We held quite the barn raising while you were gone.”

  “Barn raising?” Lyndel stared at her brother as if he’d sprouted extra legs and a second head. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Do you see that log building?”

  She looked where Levi was pointing. “The one with the stone chimney and porch?”

  “Yes, that’s it. What do you think of it?”

  “Almost too lovely for an army camp. Does that belong to General Meredith or Colonel Williams?”

  “No, no.” He grinned. “It’s yours, sister.”

  “Mine?”

  “The 19th threw it together while you were on your honeymoon. I’ve never seen anything like it, even back home at Elizabethtown. Men scurrying about like ants, stripped to the waist, felling trees, fitting logs, smearing caulking. I don’t know how many carpenters we had going at the same time. We all helped of course. Ham built the table along with Joshua and Nip. I did the fireplace with Captain Hanson and Lieutenant Nicolson. Groom and Jones made it back from Armory Square the day after you left and put together four chairs. That young Plesko worked on the floor.”

  “Stop, stop!” Lyndel’s face had filled with blood. “This is too much! Nathaniel and I have done nothing to deserve this!”

  Levi stopped smiling. “Of course you have, Ginger. You’re an army nurse. You came close to giving your life at Fredericksburg for the wounded. Let alone what you did for the 19th and the rest of the brigade at Antietam Creek. For a few weeks you and your husband deserve a home. The men have given you that. Please don’t spurn the gifts God gives you through others’ efforts.”

  Lyndel put her hands to her eyes. “I can’t…I don’t know what to say, Levi—”

  “The words will come to you, I have no doubt of it.” Levi looked at Nathaniel, “What do you think, Brother King?”

  Nathaniel shook his head. “It’s altogether surprising. I am blessed because of the woman I married.”

  “No. It’s not just that. The men remember the sermon. They remember you.” He clapped a hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder. “We even got help from the Wisconsin and Michigan boys because of that.”

  “Truly?”

  “Yes, truly.”

  Nathaniel gazed at the log house and at the smoke rising from the chimney. “It seems to me someone has already moved in.”

  “Just a fire to keep you warm at night. Sam Williams is tending it.”

  “You can’t be serious, Levi. Colonel Williams is reduced to fetching kindling for our hearth?”

  Levi put an arm around his sister. “I don’t believe he would put it that way. The colonel wanted to be the first to welcome you both into your new home. He saw you come off the steamboat. And he has a battle flag he wants you to take care of for him.”

  “Why is he giving it to me?”

  “I expect he will ask you to make the presentation. It’s the regiment’s flag from Antietam, brother. President Lincoln is coming.”

  It was only a matter of days before the president galloped onto the parade ground on as beautiful a bay as Lyndel had ever seen. The ground had begun to dry out and dust sprang from the hooves of Lincoln’s mount and General Hooker’s gray. A cluster of officers rode behind them, as well as a group of lancers with pennants streaming.

  Lincoln raced down the line of columns of the First Corps troops, the regimental flags dipping as he went by, head uncovered, hair and beard being tugged backward in the wind he created. He reined in beside Hooker and the assortment of majors and colonels and generals and sat erect as the soldiers began to march past him. His black top hat reappeared and he brought it from his head every time a different regiment went by.

  The 19th Indiana’s turn came and Lyndel watched them stop briefly in front of the president, lower new flags with their bold colors not yet faded by storm or sun or combat, and mark time while Nathaniel detached himself from his company and approached Lincoln. He saluted and lifted two flags, neatly folded, up to the president. Nathaniel and Lincoln exchanged a few words and the president leaned down from his horse, extending his hand, which Nathaniel shook. Then Nathaniel saluted and returned to his company. With a roar from Samuel Williams, the regiment continued marching.

  Lincoln kept the flags on his saddle, one large hand resting on the tattered banners of cloth, as the entire First Corps of the Army of the Potomac moved past his eyes. Lyndel knew one of the flags was the regimental standard and the other the stars and stripes from Nathaniel’s company. Both were shot full of holes. An aide brought his horse over and tried to take the flags and hold them for the president but Lincoln shook his head. One gnarled hand seemed to clamp down even more tightly on the two banners after that. With the other he continued to lift his black hat.

  After the review Lyndel continued to stand with the knot of surgeons and ambulance drivers she had attached herself to. Mrs. Lincoln was in a carriage pulled by four bays and her carriage followed the president as he dismounted and spoke with various soldiers and offi
cers, his ten-year-old, son, Tad, accompanying him, dressed in a blue uniform with a small sword and riding a pony. She saw father and son speak with Lieutenant Stewart of Battery B and examine Stewart’s horse, Tartar, which had lost its tail at Second Manassas. The president wandered off to speak with others but Tad stayed with Stewart—Old Jock—and the horse. With apparent intent, Lincoln drifted toward the doctors and ambulance corps and began shaking the physicians’ and drivers’ hands. Lyndel noticed that the flags were tucked up under his left arm.

  “Miss Keim, isn’t it?” Lincoln was smiling down at her. The carriage had reined in behind him and he nodded his head toward his wife. “May I introduce Mrs. Lincoln?”

  Lyndel inclined her head. “It’s an honor, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Lincoln smiled. “Thank you.”

  “How has the long Virginia winter been for you, Miss Keim?” asked the president. “I expect you have been nursing here at Belle Plain?”

  “Yes, Mr. President. But I’ve just been married and am Mrs. King now.”

  “Mrs. King! Why, congratulations. Who is the lucky fellow?”

  “An officer with the 19th Indiana, sir. Nathaniel King. He is the one who presented you with those standards.”

  “That was your husband? You make a fine pair.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President.” Lyndel had a sudden thought and tried to fight it back. “I…I wish you had been in attendance when he spoke to the regiment about the importance of your Emancipation Proclamation. Both of us heartily applaud it and your support for the African troops. I know you have taken much criticism from various quarters, sir—some who say you have gone too far and others who declare you haven’t gone far enough. But we are behind you. I know my husband made every effort to persuade the troops to side with your point of view.”

  The president listened, his face growing more and more somber, the tired lines reemerging across his face. He took her gently by the elbow and led her away from the group. “Excuse us a moment, gentlemen.” When they couldn’t be overheard he removed his top hat and stood awkwardly before her, as if she were the person of note and he a petitioner who had come to ask for a great favor.

  “I have always been against slavery,” he began. “But I haven’t known how to rid the Republic of it and keep the Republic intact at the same time. I am not a John Brown. It was my belief a gradual emancipation might be best. Or the paying out of sums to the plantation owners to recompense them for setting their slaves at liberty—this is what Wilberforce and his supporters convinced the British to do, something he didn’t live to see. But their slavery was thousands of miles away in the West Indies, not an hour’s drive out of London or Liverpool, while ours is precisely that, yonder a few miles on the far side of the Rappahannock. I’ve come to realize slavery cannot be eradicated, nor the Rebellion suppressed, without a surgery, an amputation, such as your doctors must perform on the battlefield. The Emancipation Proclamation is one of my saws. Our armies are another. I amputate not to kill the nation or even the South but to heal it. I cut away the wounded limb of slavery to heal the enslaved American too.”

  Lyndel watched the changing expressions on his face and the play of light and dark in his eyes. She hesitated a moment when he had finished and spoke up again. “Thank you, Mr. President. Some say you don’t care for the African man or woman or child. Nathaniel and I do not believe that’s so.”

  Lincoln kept his eyes on her. “I confess I don’t always know what to make of the African race, Mrs. King. Yet every month that goes by, my intolerance for their enslavement intensifies and my admiration for their spirit, in chains but unbowed, grows like a tall field of summer corn. I don’t doubt but they will alter my perspective yet further, and soften the disposition of many toward them, once they bear arms against their enslavers and show a passion for freedom and independence as strong as any man’s. It’s true I don’t progress to where God may want me fast enough for the abolitionists or the Radical Republicans or the freemen. But like the tortoise, I expect to make it across the line the Lord has fixed for me, and I expect to win.”

  Lyndel reached out and took his hand. “The Iron Brigade and the 19th Indiana will do all it can for you in that respect, Mr. President.”

  “I know it. And it grieves me to think many of the young men who marched before me today will not live out the summer. Great sacrifices still have to be made to save our nation.” Lincoln took the bullet-shattered flags from under his left arm and examined them, opening the stars and stripes with the company’s letter embroidered in its middle. He looked back at Lyndel. “I won’t leave your husband and his men to make their sacrifice alone. I have my part to play. I have my cross to bear. Believe me when I tell you I intend to bear it for the sake of all our people, South and North, white and black.”

  “I know that, sir.”

  “May God have mercy on you and your husband, Mrs. King. And may you save as many of our boys as the good Lord will allow.”

  He turned to go, folding the standards again before tucking them under his arm, and pausing to place his black hat back on his head.

  “Our prayers remain with you, Mr. President,” Lyndel said.

  He smiled and turned back briefly to face her. “I thank you. It may be that this July or August the door of war will creak back on its hinges enough to give us a glimpse of sky and an early sun rising from the crops. I don’t expect an end. But I should like that crack of light from the old open door and the sight of a round sun rising free and easy from the land.” He began to walk briskly over the flattened grass of the parade ground. “For the present, the nation’s future aside, I see I must rescue Lieutenant Stewart from Tadpole or risk losing a fine artillery officer to my son’s unyielding advance of burnished steel.”

  From that day, the month of April flew like pigeons through Lyndel’s hands. Nathaniel was up before the dawn each morning to drill the men of his company and platoon and didn’t return until supper. Lyndel was always back from the field hospital well before that and had a meal prepared using the pots and pans the women had placed by the fireplace. Most evenings they were able to spend together and this brought into her soul a peace and contentment she hadn’t known since leaving Elizabethtown the year before. She couldn’t forget it was spring planting for the Amish of Pennsylvania but she saw that God was putting seed into the ground of her heart and mind with each moment Nathaniel and she had alone.

  “Do you not miss the people of the church?” he asked as he held her in the spring dark of their home, no lanterns lit, only the flicker of the soldiers’ fires making its way through the bedroom window to move across the walls and their faces. “Do you not miss watching the hay come up in your family’s fields?”

  “It came up too slowly to watch. I’d rather be here with you.”

  “You could be there with me also.”

  “No. I couldn’t. You would still have enlisted and left me, married or not.” She pulled away to look at him in the play of light. “Am I not right?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. “It would have been difficult to leave a young wife so beautiful as you,” he finally said.

  “Still. You would have done it.”

  “To save the country. To free the slave. Yes.”

  She came back to his arms and his chest. “So and I would have become a nurse and followed your regiment just as I have done. Why begin all over again? We’re together. Let’s remain where we are and stay together.”

  Often enough the officers and their wives were invited for evening get-togethers. And often enough the men from the platoon and company came for a bonfire and to enjoy popping corn, which Lyndel purchased by the sackful for them. Private Groom now drank Captain Hanson’s rough coffee as part of his regular diet, allowing that it fashioned a cast-iron stomach that was proof not only against Confederate minie balls but all forms of dysentery, bad food, rank water, and biting insects. Nip and Levi used the fireplace to concoct different stews and soups with forage from their many expeditions t
o the Rebel side of the Potomac—forays that Hanson, Nicolson, and Nathaniel pretended to know nothing about. Ham enlisted the help of Jones and Plesko in working on an elaborate house of cards they added additions to every time they visited the King home.

  For Levi and Joshua it was a garden. They confessed that farming was in their blood—they couldn’t pretend they didn’t enjoy seeding and growing and harvesting, so they planted vegetables in a plot they worked at the side of the house that faced south and west. Using manure and shovels and cultivating as rich a soil as they could manage, they purchased seeds from the sutler and planted radishes and lettuce and peas, hammering poles into the ground for beans as well.

  “I know the radishes and lettuce will come up quickly,” Lyndel laughed, “but who will be here to tend the peas and beans in July?”

  Levi was on his hands and knees in the dirt and putting the beans to bed. “You follow the regiment as our nurse, that’s true. But I’m hoping a few of the officers’ wives will stay on at Belle Plain after the army has moved out. I intend to ask a few of them to take care of the harvest.”

  “Levi, all of the women will go back to their homes once their husbands have left.”

  “A few may linger. Like a late spring rain. It’s not so bad here, Ginger. You never know.”

  The hundreds of cards Ham, Plesko, and Jones used came from decks thrown away by men who had sworn off gambling and found faith in God. Ham declared he was grateful the soldiers and God had met one another and left sin and card-playing behind them. In celebration, with pockets full of kings and queens and aces, he decided they should expand their house of cards into a cathedral and they began to fill Lyndel’s twelve-foot harvest table from one end to the other.

  “Mind you have that done by the fall,” Lyndel would tell them. “I’ll need that table for my pumpkins and squash and corn.”

  “Mrs. King,” Ham would reply, “by harvest we’ll be too busy chasing Stonewall and Lee south to Atlanta to be tending to our card house. You may do with our engineering marvel whatever you wish at that time.”