Fire by Night (2 page)

But that excitement now turned to apprehension as she watched the Rebels slowly force the Union army to retreat the entire distance they had advanced. The ground shook with the rumble of booming cannon.

“This is not going well,” her uncle murmured.

“Hold your line!” the congressman shouted to the distant troops. “Don’t let them push you back!” But the blue-coated line gradually splintered and broke apart before the onslaught of gray. Union soldiers scattered as the field dissolved into chaos.

“Dear God, our men are retreating,” Uncle Joseph moaned.

“That’s not an orderly retreat,” Nathaniel said. “It’s a rout.”

Julia clutched her uncle’s sleeve. “They’re coming this way!”

“Stop, confound you! Stop!” the congressman yelled. “Stand and fight!”

Then, above the din of clattering gunfire, an eerie whistling sound sliced the air. A roar like a burst of thunder crashed nearby, followed by another, then another.

“They’re shelling us!” Congressman Rhodes cried out.

Nathaniel gripped Julia’s arm. “Everyone into the carriage. Quickly!” He propelled her up onto the seat, then helped her uncle.

The congressman’s face was pale behind a sheen of sweat. “Driver, let’s go! Make haste!” he said. For a long moment the coachman didn’t move, his eyes wide and very white against his dark face. “Hurry! Move!” the congressman shouted. “What are you waiting for?”

The coachman finally turned around and snapped the reins. The horses, more than eager to run, lurched forward, throwing Julia backward against the seat. The carriage started down the rutted turnpike toward safety. But dozens of other carriages, coupes, and landaus bearing fleeing spectators already mobbed the road, slowing their progress. Julia turned around to watch the battle as the sounds of warfare grew unmistakably louder: exploding cannon, volleys of gunfire, and the eerie, inhuman scream of the Rebel yell.

Congressman Rhodes suddenly stood, swaying in the jolting carriage, waving an empty champagne bottle at the retreating soldiers. “Stop! Go back! Stand and fight, you cowards!” His orders were lost in the tumult as troops sprinted across the fields toward the river, their panic made worse by the mad flight of everyone around them.

“Please, sir. You’d better sit down,” Nathaniel urged as the cannonading grew louder. “Those shells are falling much too close.”

“The Rebels are probably trying to destroy the bridge across Bull Run,” Uncle Joseph said. “Can’t you go any faster, driver?”

“I sure would like to do that, sir, but they all backed up ahead. Everybody try and get across that bridge, same as us.”

Julia saw a long line of army wagons with white canvas covers clogging the road ahead. Her carriage made very little progress, then, a few minutes later, stopped altogether. The excitement she’d felt earlier vanished, replaced by horror as fleeing soldiers staggered past, dazed and bleeding, their lips blackened from tearing open their powder cartridges. Sweat and dirt and fear covered their faces. Their abandoned knapsacks and bedrolls littered the road.

“Let us through!” someone shouted. “Please! This man needs help!” Two soldiers hurried past the stalled carriage, supporting a third man, whose bloodied foot dangled from his leg. Julia quickly looked away.

A hundred feet ahead, a tangle of vehicles and pushing, shoving men jammed the bridge. Dozens more men plunged headlong into the river in their haste to retreat. Then Julia heard the eerie whistling sound again, tearing the sky apart, roaring toward her like thunder. Her heart seemed to stand still. She was going to die.

The shell slammed into the ground nearby, the powerful blast pulsing through her body and hurling her to the floor of the carriage. Julia felt the explosion at the same moment that she heard it. Her nerve endings prickled from the concussion as dirt and grass and tattered cloth rained down on her. Everything vanished from sight in a blinding cloud of smoke and dust.

Above the ringing in her ears, she heard the terrible screams and moans of the wounded and the driver’s frantic shouts as he fought to restrain the rearing horses. She was still alive.

“Are you all right?” Uncle Joseph asked as he lifted her onto the seat. He sounded far away even though he sat right beside her. Julia nodded and realized she was weeping. Dirt filled her mouth and coated her tongue. Grit stung her eyes. The front of her new blue dress had turned gray with dust.

“Hurry, driver!” the congressman pleaded. “Get us across that bridge before they reload their artillery!”

Julia felt the carriage jolt forward again. Through a blur of tears and dense smoke she saw that the Confederate shell had missed the bridge by only a few hundred feet. A jumble of blue-coated bodies littered the roadside where the missile had struck.

“Help me! Please!” a soldier begged. He lay beside the road, both of his legs missing below his knees. A man lay dead beside him, still gripping his gun, the top of his head blown off.

“Driver, stop,” Nathaniel said. “We have to take some of these wounded men on board.”

“No, don’t!” Julia cried, hugging herself in terror. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop! We have to get out of here!”

Nathaniel stared at her, shocked. “Julia! These men need our help.”

“I don’t care! I don’t want them near me! Keep going. Please, keep going!”

Then, unable to stop herself, she leaned over the side of the carriage and vomited her lunch. Her entire body shook. Bile burned her throat, humiliation seared her cheeks. She reached for the handkerchief Uncle Joseph offered, her movements clumsy with fear. She couldn’t control her arms and legs. They seemed to belong to someone else.

“Please, we must help these wounded men,” Nathaniel begged.

“No!
No!
” Julia was terrified that another bomb would explode, that a shell would destroy the bridge and they’d be trapped, that the carriage would become an enemy target if they took soldiers on board. And she could no longer bear to see the blood and muscle and glistening bone of the soldiers’ wounds.

“Don’t force her, Reverend,” Uncle Joseph said. “She’s very upset. I’m responsible for her, and I don’t want her hysterical.”

“Help me …please!” One voice carried above the moans and cries of a dozen others. Nathaniel stood and leaped off the moving landau as it finally reached the bridge.

“What are you doing, Reverend? Come back!” the congressman yelled.

“We can’t wait for you,” Uncle Joseph pleaded. “Come on. Get in, get in!”

“No, go on without me. I’m staying to help.”

“We can’t leave you here.”

“Go on,” Nathaniel called. “I’ll find another way back.”

“Please, get me out of here!” Julia begged. “I don’t want to die!” She covered her face with her hands as the horses clattered across the stone bridge and plowed through the crush of stampeding soldiers on the other side. The horses gradually picked up speed as they finally pulled ahead of the troops, leaving the cries of the wounded far behind. Only then did Julia dare to open her eyes.

“What should we do about Reverend Greene?” the congressman asked. Dirt and sweat turned his handkerchief black as he mopped his face. “We can’t leave him here. He’s in danger.”

“It was his choice to stay,” Uncle Joseph mumbled. He looked pale and badly shaken. The layer of dust on his hair and mustache aged him ten years. “Look, I have my niece to consider. Let’s get her back to town, then we can decide what to do about Greene.”

The ride back to Washington seemed very long. Though the sounds of battle gradually faded in the distance, the thunder of artillery and the screams of the wounded continued to echo in Julia’s mind. At dusk, Washington’s church steeples finally appeared on the horizon beneath lowering clouds. The carriage reached the safety of Congressman Rhodes’ home moments before the rain was unleashed.

“I’m so sorry, my dear, for putting you through that,” Uncle Joseph said before a servant helped Julia upstairs to bed. “I should have known better than to let you come with us.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she murmured. Her hands still shook as she accepted the laudanum pill and glass of water her aunt offered her.

Julia held back her tears as the maid helped her undress and turned down the bedcovers so she could crawl in. Then, alone in the darkened room, with rain hammering on the roof above her, she finally allowed herself to cry. She wanted to die of shame. It was bad enough that she had proven a coward, fleeing in fear and leaving Nathaniel stranded. But refusing to help the injured men had been unforgivable. Worse, she had disgraced herself in Nathaniel’s eyes. If she was ashamed of herself, what must he think of her? Julia wept until the laudanum took effect, then fell into a nightmare-filled sleep.

“Has there been any word of Reverend Greene?” Julia asked one of the maids when she awoke the next morning.

“He arrived a few minutes ago, miss.”

Julia sat up in bed. The sun, streaming through the cracks around her curtains, looked high in the sky. “What time is it?” she asked.

“Nearly half past eleven. You had yourself a good sleep, then, didn’t you?” The servant’s cheerfulness seemed wrong to Julia, as if the entire world should still be mourning over what had happened yesterday.

“How did it get to be so late?” Julia murmured. “Open the curtains, please.”

“No, Mrs. Rhodes said to keep the room dark and let you rest, seeing as you had such a terrible time of it yesterday. I never did see anyone shake the way you was shaking last night. Had yourself a terrible scare, didn’t you?”

Julia felt a wash of shame all over again at her cowardice. To let Nathaniel think she was bedridden from the experience would only add to it.

“I want the windows open, Bridgett. Hurry.” Hot, humid air poured into the room along with the sunshine as the servant reluctantly tugged open the draperies and opened the windows. Julia untangled the sheets from around her legs and climbed out of bed. “Help me get dressed.”

“But Mrs. Rhodes says you ought to stay in bed for the day, Miss Julia.”

“I’m not staying in bed. Come here and help me.” Julia reached behind her back, trying in vain to pull her loosened corset laces tight by herself while the young servant gnawed her fingers as if unsure whom to obey. “Bridgett! Are you going to help me with these corset laces or must I ring for another servant? Where’s my dress?”

“The blue one? We’re still trying to clean it, Miss Julia. It was nearly ruined, you know, especially all that lovely lace. Just covered with dirt, like you been rolling around on the ground, wrestling or something.”

Julia’s skin tingled as she remembered the force of the blast, the blinding cloud of debris. “Then I’ll just have to wear my evening dress. Come on, then. Help me with it. Hurry.” She drew a deep breath as Bridgett yanked the corset laces. “Pull tighter!” Julia wanted her figure to appear as dainty and frail as possible. “Where is Reverend Greene at the moment?” she asked, carefully exhaling when the ordeal was over.

“In the study with Mr. Rhodes. That reverend’s looking all tuckered out, like something the cat dragged in. I heard Mrs. Rhodes telling them to fix his bath.”

“Is my uncle with him?”

The maid stood on a stool, lifting Julia’s hoops and layers of petticoats over her head one by one. “No, miss. He left for the railway office to buy tickets to take you all back to Philadelphia.”

“Did he say when we were leaving?”

“Tomorrow, I think.”

“Do you know if Reverend Greene is going home with us?”

“I don’t think so, miss. I heard him talking about staying to help the wounded soldiers.”

Julia wanted to weep. She had hoped to finally win Nathaniel’s affection on this trip as they spent time traveling together. Instead, she was further from her goal than ever before, having disgraced herself in his eyes yesterday.

“Hurry,” she begged. “I must speak to him before he retires to his bath.” With her dress finally in order, Julia sat down in front of the mirror and dabbed a little color onto her cheeks and lips while the maid tried to tame her wild hair with a brush. Julia didn’t want to look like a painted woman, but she had to do something to disguise the pallor of her face, still ghostly from yesterday’s ordeal. When the maid finished brushing her hair, parting it in the middle, and pinning it back, Julia thought it looked much too severe. She pulled a few curls loose to soften her face. Then, satisfied with the way she looked, she splashed on some perfume, shoved her feet into her shoes, and hurried downstairs.

The door to the congressman’s dark-paneled study stood open. Julia stayed outside in the hallway for a moment, waiting to catch his eye and be invited inside. Nathaniel’s impassioned voice drifted out along with the congressman’s cigar smoke.

“But the Rebels should be the least of your concerns, sir,” he said. “The government simply must find accommodations for all of the wounded men. There aren’t enough hospital beds for them all, and they’re being forced to wander the city, looking for medical care.”

“What good are hospitals if our city is virtually undefended?” Rhodes said. “There’s nothing to stop the Rebels from crossing the Potomac and attacking Washington!”

“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that. The heavy rains have turned all the roads to mud. Believe me—the enemy will have as hard a time getting here as I did.”