Fire by Night (50 page)
He slowly rose to stand beside her, shaking his head. “Perhaps it isn’t fair, but it is justice,” he said softly. “I am a murderer, Phoebe. I didn’t kill Eldon Tyler …but I did kill someone else.”
Julia sat at the breakfast table with her father, watching his face as he read the morning newspaper. He usually read articles aloud to her and her mother, sometimes denouncing the secretary of war or various army generals for the decisions they’d made. But this morning he was unusually quiet. Julia feared she knew why—Nathaniel’s regiment must have gone into battle.
“What’s in the news this morning?” she finally asked.
“More of the same.” He folded the paper closed. “The fighting has shifted to a place called Spotsylvania Court House.”
“More casualties?” Julia asked, almost in a whisper. She pictured James bent over a makeshift operating table and wished she was working alongside him.
“General Grant is getting the job done,” the judge replied. “He isn’t going to retreat like all the other generals before him. Of course, there will be a high price to pay.”
“How many, Daddy?”
“I won’t discuss it,” he said, rising. “It’s a morbid way to begin the day. You and I both have work to do.” He left the table, his food barely touched, his coffee cup still full. The judge usually left his newspaper lying on the table when he was finished, but this morning he took it with him.
“Is that what you’re wearing to the church guild meeting?” Julia’s mother asked as she swept into the room a few minutes later. “Where’s your father? He hasn’t left already, has he? What time is it? Why didn’t he tell me he was leaving early?”
Julia didn’t know which question to answer first. “Daddy is finished eating. I think there was something in the paper that upset him, but he wouldn’t say what. And yes, this is what I’m wearing to the meeting. Why?”
“You’re deliberately undermining your natural beauty, Julia. I do hope you’re not going to end up like Nathaniel Greene’s mother, so drab and plain. A minister’s wife needn’t be an ugly old crow, you know.”
“And what do you suppose the ladies’ guild would say if I flounced into the meeting in silk and jewels?”
“There is such a thing as a happy medium. And you are still our daughter, not Nathaniel’s wife. There are expectations within our social circle, as well.”
“I know,” Julia said. “I can scarcely keep track of them all.” And she wondered, on top of everything else, if God was pleased with her.
Later, as Julia stood in the front hallway, waiting for the coachman to bring the carriage around, she spotted her father’s newspaper, lying on the desk in his study. She went into his room. When she unfolded the paper she saw right away why her father had hidden it from her. A headline on the front page read,
More Work Than There Are Hands to Do
.
Wounded soldiers had been evacuated to Fredericksburg, the article explained, but the army had made no hospital preparations there ahead of time.
There were stretchers and ambulances at the front, trains and boats at the rear, but no personnel or equipment in the middle,
she read,
and the delay caused untold suffering
. Men lay unattended for days, without proper food or shelter. A handful of surgeons and nurses were unable to cope with the nearly eight thousand casualties that poured in. The need for medical supplies and for volunteer nurses and doctors was enormous. The article ended with a frantic appeal for help; more battles were expected in the coming days as the armies of Grant and Lee clashed. There was “more work than there were hands to do.”
“Why are you here, Julia?” her mother asked from the doorway.
Julia remembered the night on board the hospital ship when Sister Irene’s voice had come out of the darkness, asking her the same question.
“I don’t know. … ” Julia murmured. “I should be in Fredericksburg.”
“Where? What is the matter with you this morning? You’re supposed to be at a meeting at the church in a few minutes. If you don’t hurry, you’ll be late—and that will make a worse impression on Nathaniel’s congregation than the clothes you wear.”
“All right, Mother,” she sighed. “I’m going.”
Julia was the last to arrive at the meeting. She was well aware of a few disapproving frowns. She sat quietly, demurely, listening as the president of the ladies’ guild droned through the items on their agenda. There was a long discussion over whether or not they should participate in an interfaith memorial service at a local cemetery, since there were denominational differences between the various churches. The ladies decided they would not attend. Another item concerned the seating at an upcoming tea; two parishioners, locked in a long-standing feud, would both be attending and must be tactfully kept apart. Then there was the question of whether donors’ names should be listed alphabetically or according to the amount of money they contributed to the memorial fund. But the longest and most heated debate concerned which color to paint the vestry—white, ivory, or pale yellow.
Above the sound of cultured voices and tinkling teacups, Julia thought she could hear the anguished cries and moans of suffering men, the unending wail she sometimes heard in her dreams. Why was she here?
“What do you think, Julia?”
She came out of her reverie to find all the ladies watching her.
“After all,” the guild president said, “your future husband will be using the vestry regularly. Which color do you think your reverend Greene would prefer?”
Julia stared at her. “What a perfectly ridiculous question,” she replied. She thought of Dr. McGrath, remembering how often he had said the same words to her. Unlike Nathaniel, James had never cared what people thought of him. She set her teacup on the table beside her chair and stood, trembling with emotion.
“An entire race of people lives in poverty and slavery in this country. Our nation is being swallowed alive in hatred and war and death. And we’re arguing over what color to paint the vestry?”
She saw shock and surprise on every woman’s face, but Julia couldn’t stop herself. “Satan is the enemy—not the South, not other churches, not each other. We pray the Lord’s Prayer every week, saying ‘Thy kingdom come,’ then we sit around waiting for it to magically float down from heaven on a silver platter. Didn’t you hear what Nathaniel preached in his last sermon? The kingdom is within
us
. The only way it’s going to come is if we fight for it. And how can we fight Satan if we’re busy with trivial things—or worse still, busy fighting each other?”
Julia was aware that she was burning her bridges behind her, just as the Rebels had done in Fredericksburg, leaving only the stone piers behind. She knew the enormous effort it had required to rebuild those bridges, the terrible cost. But she also knew that withdrawing from conflict only prolonged it, allowing the enemy to fight another day. The words of the hymn they’d sung on Nathaniel’s last Sunday echoed through her mind:
Let goods and kindred go …His kingdom is forever
.
“You know, women are part of His kingdom, too,” she told the astonished ladies. “Every single one of us should get down on our knees and ask God what He wants us to do for Him. Then maybe we’ll stop building our own comfortable little realms and get about our Father’s business.”
Julia walked out, knowing she had made her choice and that it was the right one. She told her coachman to take her to the Christian Commission offices, and when she learned that several members of the group were leaving that afternoon to take food and medical supplies to Fredericksburg, she went straight home to pack. Thankfully, her mother wasn’t at home. She wrote a note to her father, explaining that she was leaving to be a nurse again, and left it in his study beside the newspaper article. She ended the note with these words:
I’m sorry that I had to disobey your wishes. But “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.”
The hardest part was letting Nathaniel go. But Julia knew she’d broken her engagement to him the moment she had stood and admonished the women at the guild meeting. She would have to write and tell him about the choice she’d made, but she sat on the train with a blank piece of writing paper in front of her, not knowing what to say.
She loved him. That hadn’t changed. She wanted to be his wife more than anything …no, not more than anything. She wanted to obey God more, and she felt Him calling her to be a nurse. What good was the congregation’s approval or Nathaniel’s approval if she turned her back on God? Jesus had said that the two greatest commandments were to love God and love her neighbor. He’d told a parable about helping the wounded man lying on the side of the road. He’d said, “Go, and do thou likewise.” But how could she explain that to Nathaniel? She’d tried once before and he’d said the choice was hers to make. He wouldn’t stand in her way if she chose to be a nurse. But in doing so, she would be choosing not to be his wife.
It was the most difficult decision she had ever made in her life. But the fact that Julia was riding south on a train told her that she’d already made it. Now if only her heart could accept it.
Julia’s notepaper was still blank when she reached Washington City. She and the other Christian Commission volunteers spent several hectic hours booking passage on a steamship that would carry them and their supplies down the Potomac. She tried once more to write a letter to Nathaniel after she was on board the ship. She pleaded with him to understand her decision and forgive her. She begged him to say that he still loved her, that he still wanted to marry her. But before the ship landed in Virginia, she tore the letter into tiny pieces and threw them overboard.
It was pouring rain when Julia’s ship docked. The Confederates had destroyed the rail line to Fredericksburg, so the group would have to travel by wagon the rest of the way. But when she climbed up from the wharf and looked down the road, she saw hundreds and hundreds of ambulances lined up as far as she could see. They were sunk to their hubs in mud. Several Commission workers from New York State had arrived the day before and were waiting in their tents for the roads to dry; Julia asked them about the ambulances.
“They’re filled with wounded men from the battle that took place in Spotsylvania a few days ago,” a clergyman told her.
“A few days ago! Have they had medical treatment?”
“No, ma’am. They were brought to Fredericksburg first, but there was no room for them there. The city is overflowing with casualties as it is. So they brought them all here to wait for the evacuation ships. When it started to rain, the wagons got stuck in the mud.”
“Has anyone here been tending the soldiers? Do they at least have food and water?”
One of the female volunteers shrugged helplessly. “There’s no way to get down the road to them through all this mud.”
Julia stared at her. “Couldn’t we walk down?”
“The mud is knee-deep!” one of the ladies said.
Julia drew a deep breath. “If you would be so kind as to help me fill some baskets with food, I’m willing to wade through the mud.”
Four days later, Julia finally arrived in Fredericksburg. Reminders of James were everywhere, and she couldn’t help thinking of him—even though she knew her feelings for him were very wrong. As night fell, she stood on the hill overlooking the river, remembering how the northern lights had blazed in the sky on that December night more than a year ago. James had said the lights were heavensent, to keep the world from despair. The despair and suffering she found in this city were greater than any she had ever seen.
Julia still hadn’t written to Nathaniel, but she knew that she couldn’t put it off any longer. In the end, as painful as it was, she decided that what she had to say was really very simple:
Dear Nathaniel,
I am in Fredericksburg, Virginia, working as a nurse. I’m sorry.
Julia
The soldier groaned in pain as Phoebe tore open the sleeve of his uniform to examine his wound. One look at the raw flesh and shattered elbow told her that he would need surgery. She poured powdered morphine into the wound, then carefully removed some of his gear and sponged his face to make him more comfortable while he waited his turn. The temporary field hospital had been set up outside a small whitewashed church near a crossroads called Cold Harbor—mere miles from Richmond. As the battle raged nearby, the church had quickly filled with hundreds of casualties until the yard was overflowing with them, too. Dr. McGrath and the other surgeons couldn’t keep up.