Glory

by Heather Graham

  She broke off, hearing movement behind her. As she spun around, she saw two men in plain black jackets aligned on either side of her. Sissy was standing just to the rear of one of them. She turned back to Watts.

  “I’m sorry, Sydney,” he said softly.

  Then she recognized the voice and realized what a fool she had been.

  Jesse Halston. Her dashing young cavalry officer. The man she had nursed back to health. The wretch who had kept her from joining Jerome when he had escaped Old Capitol and gone south ...

  “You bastard!” she cried. She flew at him, fists flying. He captured her wrists, struggling to hold her steady.

  The plainclothes men behind her stepped forward immediately.

  “No!” Jesse said, breathing heavily as he secured her wrists at last. “Sydney—”

  She freed a hand and struck him hard across the face. One of the men came forward again, but Jesse stopped him once more. “No!” He caught her wrist again. “Dammit, Sydney, am I going to have to tie you up?”

  She pretended to go limp in his grasp, and he released her.

  She hit him again.

  He swore, and this time when he spun her around, he slipped iron shackles around her wrists. Tears stung her eyes. She blinked them back furiously. She faced him with her chin high, her eyes blazing.

  “Get into the carriage,” Jesse said, wincing as he ripped off his fake beard, mustache, hair, and eyebrows. He reached into his overalls, slid out the huge pillow that had given him the appearance of a gut. And there was the Jesse she had known, should have known, with his lean, agile physique and rich dark hair.

  She should have recognized his eyes. Hazel, direct. Sensual at times. The eyes with which she had once been fool enough to fall in love.

  “Where am I going?” Sydney asked him.

  “Old Capitol,” he said softly. “Where else?”

  She spun around, looking at Sissy, her eyes narrowing. “You were in on this.”

  Sissy didn’t deny it. “I was,” she said quietly.

  “You worked for me; I trusted you.”

  “I was just another darkee to you, Miss McKenzie.”

  Sydney shook her head. “We never owned slaves, Sissy.”

  “No?” Sissy smiled, lifting her chin. “But you’re fighting for people who do.”

  “I’m fighting for the rights—”

  “The right the Southern states want is the right to own slaves. And it’s wrong.”

  “You’re wrong! Men like General Lee have outlined plans to free their slaves in a way they aren’t left penniless and destitute and wandering the streets—”

  “Miss McKenzie, it’s wrong to own another human being. I know. I was born free, but seized by bounty hunters as a slave and brought back to a man in North Carolina who beat me with a whip—”

  “Not all men are so cruel!”

  “But many are,” Sissy said. “And I have the scars on my back to prove it. So if I’ve disappointed you, I’m sorry. I don’t want the Southern states to have the right to own men and women.”

  “Shall we go, Sydney?” Jesse suggested.

  Sydney started out of the mercantile. She hesitated, spinning back to Jesse. “Where’s the real Jeff Watts?”

  “He escaped,” Jesse told her. “Come on, Sydney.”

  Sydney walked on past. A wagon waited for her just outside. She felt Jesse behind her, felt his hand on her elbow. She shook off his touch.

  “Dammit, Sydney, I—”

  She spun on him furiously. “No! Damn you!” she told him, and she made it into the carriage on her own.

  Chapter 14

  AFTER BRANDY STATION, JULIAN found himself on the move. The Army of Northern Virginia was heading north. That was no great surprise. Everyone knew that Lee wanted to fight on Northern soil. If he could bring the war to them, maybe he could sap their will to keep on fighting.

  In the western theater of the war, the Mississippi River was being choked off. Vicksburg was under siege. Word came to the troops in the east that the residents were eating rats, that there wasn’t a pigeon to be found anywhere near the city. They hid in caves in the cliffs in the nearby hills while the bombs exploded around them. The South was hurting. They needed a victory in the north against the North.

  He was with his troops in the Shenandoah Valley near Harpers Ferry, waiting for some of the supplies he had requisitioned, when one of his new assistants approached him with Corporal Lyle, who had accompanied him north along with Liam Murphy. His new assistant, Surgeon Dan LeBlanc, fresh out of medical school, was a bright young man. Julian was pleased with him because he had an open mind and a belief that they had a lot more to learn about medicine than what anyone knew.

  He had been in his tent—a canvas tent with a folding desk, chairs, and camp bed, much like he’d had in Florida—when the men came in.

  “What is it?” he asked, seeing the unhappy look on Dan’s young face.

  Dan produced Julian’s requisition list.

  “They can supply us with about half of what you’ve asked for.”

  Julian sat back, swearing.

  “Well, you have asked for a lot—” Dan began.

  “Yes, I have. I am a doctor, not a butcher.”

  “Captain, there’s no help for it—” Dan began.

  “But this time there might be,” Henry Lyle interrupted.

  “You’re going to get us all court-marshaled” Dan put in quickly.

  “Whoa, whoa, what’s going on?” Julian demanded.

  “Well, a fellow got some information off a captured Yank. There’s supposed to be a Union supply train headed this way to meet up with Yank troops. It’s coming along just south of the old Harpers Ferry pike—”

  “Then surely,” Julian interrupted, “someone in this army is going for it?”

  “No,” Dan said.

  “What?”

  “Because we don’t have any reliable information. The whole thing could be pure rumor, really,” Dan explained. “Maybe a trap. And the troops have been commanded to move north toward the west of this rumored supply train—”

  Julian rose, pulling out a map of the area. “Show me!” he told Dan.

  “Sir—”

  “Show me!”

  Dan pointed to where the pike lay just beneath the Harpers Ferry road. Julian stared at the point. He might be medical staff, new to the job here. There were surgeons who outranked him, but he had been brought in by request, and, at the end of the day, he was answerable directly to Longstreet, and then Lee. If he asked for permission to explore the situation himself, he’d be turned down. But by tomorrow night, the way they were riding, he’d be in a position to intercept the supposed supply train. He looked at Henry Lyle.

  “Guards, troops?”

  “No more than a small company of men is what I heard.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “I’m with you, sir.”

  Dan groaned. “What are you talking about? Is this some kind of a Florida code? No, no, Dr. McKenzie, sir, you don’t understand the workings of the regular army. I don’t mean to be offensive, but you’ve been militia, taking things into your own hands way too often. There is structure here—”

  “You’re not going to be a part of any wrongdoing, Surgeon LeBlanc, so don’t you worry. And if anything comes up, I’ll deny to my dying breath that you knew a thing about this.”

  “But, sir, you need troops to take a supply train—”

  “Not always, Dan. Not always.”

  Julian looked at Henry Lyle. They needed Liam, just Liam. And three good horses.

  “You’re being reckless. You’re a doctor, sir. You’re taking a horrible risk—”

  “Yes, I am,” Julian admitted. “But you see, the prize is worth the risk.”

  Sydney had her own room, and the Yanks guarding her were quick to let her know that it had once been occupied by the spy Rose Greenhow. It was little comfort. She was miserable, embarrassed she’d been caught, and worried sick about
what would happen when her family discovered what she had done. And Jesse! He had accompanied her to the prison, signed for her arrest, and left her. He’d been as unyielding as rock, cold as ice. She wanted to rip his eyes out. She wondered if she was destined to rot here throughout the rest of the war. Then she worried again that her father and her brothers would never let it happen; they would somehow kill themselves to get her out. Unless, of course, Ian could intervene, but Ian, she knew, was out on the front now.

  Her only comfort was the soldiers in the Old Capitol, though she had to admit that it was the captivity that was galling, and not her circumstances. Sergeant Granger saw that she was given clean bedding and decent food.

  She was in solitary through the night, but in the afternoons she was allowed to fraternize with the captured soldiers. Anderson apologized to her a thousand times over. He suggested that she turn him in as the man who had given her the information—perhaps she could bargain to be sent south for such information. But she knew that she would never turn him in, and she knew as well that as much as she had to worry about with her family, not even her father would suggest that she trade such information for her own freedom. She finally managed to make Anderson quit talking about it.

  On her second afternoon in the prison, she was sitting at a table in the outside exercise yard, when she remembered Lawton’s foot.

  “Young man, you’re limping. And I’ve nowhere to go today,” she said, smiling ruefully. “Show me that foot.”

  “Oh, no, ma’am—”

  “Not this again!” Sydney protested.

  “But—”

  “Your foot, Private Lawton, please!”

  “You heard her, young man,” Lieutenant Anderson ordered.

  Unhappily, Private Lawton limped over to the table. He set his injured foot up on a chair, wincing. One of his friends reached over and undid the bandaging.

  Sydney almost retched. One look at the foot, and she doubted if even her brother or her cousin, Julian, could save it. The bullet had cleared the foot, but debris in some form had entered the wound, and the injury was now rank and putrid.

  “Doesn’t hurt near as bad as it used to. It’s going to be all right,” Lawton said.

  Sydney shook her head. “Private Lawton, do you have a wife?”

  “Why, yes, Miss Sydney, I do, sweetest little girl you’d ever want to meet.”

  “Do you want to see her ever again?”

  He reddened. “I love her, Miss Sydney. Of course I want to see her.”

  “That foot’s probably got to go.”

  He shook his head. “No, ma’am—”

  “Why? I’ll go to the right people; I’ll be with you when they amputate.”

  Lawton shook his head strenuously again. “Why, Miss Sydney, I’m not a rich man. Got me a little spit of land, and a little farmhouse—it’s right down from my ma and pa. I work my land myself, and I need my foot.”

  “Your wife needs you home. You keep that foot much longer the way that it is, and you’re going to die.”

  He hesitated a long time, then looked at her. “What if my wife don’t want me no more with just one foot?”

  “Private Lawton, I’ve got two brothers and two cousins in this war, and I just want them back. I love them for being the men that they are, and so help me, I’d take my loved one without an arm rather than a corpse. You understand?”

  He glanced down, ashamed. His voice was a whisper. “I’m just scared, Miss Sydney. No man likes to admit that. I’m just scared.”

  She came to him, reached for his face, took it between her hands. “But, Private Lawton, what a fine man you are. Why, I know that your wife wants you back in the very worst way! We’ll see to it that you’re taken care of by the best man possible.” She wasn’t sure who that might be, but she trusted Sergeant Granger.

  She rose suddenly, calling to one of the guards. “Please, I need to see Sergeant Granger.”

  “Now, Miss McKenzie, you’re not a guest here anymore—”

  “I need to see Granger,” she repeated, eyes narrowing. “And he’ll be very angry if he hears that I needed him and you didn’t tell him!”

  “All right, all right!”

  The surly guard unlocked the door to the office, indicating with his chin that she should get up and go in. She glanced at Lawton encouragingly, then hurried into the main office.

  Granger smiled ruefully when he saw her coming to him. “Can’t tell you how it hurts me to have you here this way, a prisoner behind bars, Miss Sydney.”

  Yes, it changed things, she realized. She used to come here frequently. She had never felt as if the walls were closing on her before. But that was because she had been free to come and go as she chose.

  She lowered her head, thinking of Sissy. Freedom. Good God yes, but freedom was a precious right to have ...

  “Sergeant, do you remember—”

  “Medical help, of course,” he said softly.

  “You won’t betray me, will you?” she asked.

  He frowned. She had, in a way, betrayed him. She sighed.

  “Private Lawton is a good man, surely you’ve seen that. He’s terrified about losing his foot—”

  Granger lowered his voice. “I can bring you the widow, but it will have to be soon. She’s leaving for the army with General Magee in less than two days.”

  Sydney sat back, hesitating. The Yankee witch widow. Not a surgeon. Yet then again, her mother was a healer, known as a woman with a special touch. If there was a way to cure Lawton’s foot ...

  “Well, Miss Sydney?”

  She paused, thinking it over. Risa would never have sent this woman north to work with her own father if she wasn’t a decent, capable human being.

  “When can you get her here?” she asked Granger.

  “Right away.”

  Rhiannon was startled by the arrival of the soldier who said he had come to escort her to Old Capitol, but glad of it as well. She had packed, she was ready. She had seen something of Washington, and she didn’t like it.

  War was ugly, she knew. But, being here in Washington, she knew that politics could be uglier. She was ready to go to the front, to be useful and busy—and she’d had to wait. She had nothing to do but sit or pace until it was time to go.

  Or dwell on her own thoughts.

  And she was afraid, uneasy. She knew what had happened. And yet, what she thought she knew was so incredible that she wouldn’t allow herself to believe ...

  And so she’d counted. Days. Not that many, really, not that many.

  Yes ...

  And at certain times during those days she felt just as sick as a dog ...

  So when the soldier came for her, telling her she was needed at Old Capitol, she was intrigued and ready to go.

  A carriage brought her to the prison. She was escorted into the outer office, where she was greeted by a grizzled older man. “Sergeant Granger, how are you?” she said politely.

  “Grateful that you’ve agreed to come,” he told her.

  “Why am I here? Has the Union run out of surgeons?” she asked lightly.

  Granger grinned and shook his head. “I’ve a special prisoner who has asked a special favor.”

  “Who?”

  “Come with me, will you?”

  They walked through a room where she saw many ragged Confederate prisoners sitting around a table. They all watched her as she passed, every man nodding politely. Granger pushed open another door that led to a stuffy little room. A man was lying on a cot, and by his side, a woman. The woman turned to her, and she was startled at the resemblance she saw to the McKenzies.

  The man on the cot groaned. Rhiannon turned quickly from the young woman to the man. His shoe was off, his pants had been ripped so that his foot was bared from the upper ankle down.

  It was horrible. Swollen to twice its size, pussy, infected. Rhiannon came to the man. He was a Rebel. He might have killed her husband. But he was young. His eyes were green, earnest, pained. He was so anxious. She real
ized that holding on to her resentment was a lost cause. She had been among Rebels already. She had learned that they were men who fought and died and worshipped their God and loved their wives and children just the same as Yanks. She had always known it, of course. Most of her neighbors had been Rebels. The people with whom she had grown up, her father’s friends, business associates ...

  She’d just had to remember.

  She sat by the Rebel private, offered him a smile, and gently took the foot into her hands, setting it on her lap to study the wound.

  “Oh, ma’am, you mustn’t touch it—” the soldier on the cot protested.

  “Sir, I must touch it if I’m to heal it.”

  “They say it’s got to be chopped off. That I’ll die.” He was afraid, and he tried so valiantly to hide it.

  “Maybe,” she admitted. She studied his foot, looking up his ankle. Though the foot was horrible, it didn’t seem that the infection was spreading. Perhaps ...

  She looked up at Granger. “Sergeant, I need some clean, very salty water.”

  “Salt! Ma’am, are you trying to torture me?” the wounded Rebel said.

  “No, I’m not, young man, honestly,” she told him, a rueful grin on her face. She felt the woman in the room watching her, and she turned, assessing her in turn. “You’re Julian McKenzie’s cousin?” she asked.

  The young woman was surprised by the question. “Yes, I’m Sydney McKenzie.” She looked at the boy on the cot. “No, she’s really not trying to torture you. I should have thought of this myself—salt water is one of nature’s finest cleansers.”

  Men came with a big bucket of salt water, just as Rhiannon had asked. “Can you ease up, soldier?” she asked the injured Reb.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Sydney supported him. Rhiannon had him set his foot in the water. It must have stung like crazy, but he bit his lower lip, holding back any cry of pain.

  Rhiannon rose. “Soldier, you have to stay there with your foot in that water. I’ve got to go out and make an ointment for you. You have to soak the foot for a full hour, at least three times every day, then bandage it with the poultice thickly spread on it.” She looked at Sydney, knowing that she would be the one caring for the man.

  Sydney nodded, understanding that they were going to try to clean out the infection.