In The Face Of Death (33 page)
Read In The Face Of Death Online
Authors: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Wrapped in her deerskin cloak in spite of the heat, Madelaine remained in the shadow of the trees, watching the mill with her night vision, making sure they would be unobserved before she called out his name in a voice hardly louder than the deep breathing of Sherman’s horse.
“There you are.” As he came to her side, he frowned, attempting to see her clearly in the gloom of the trees. “I might as well chase a will-o’-the-wisp,” he complained before his mouth came down on hers. He held her tightly, his body taut with hunger for her, his breath coming harshly as he broke from their kiss. “I should not be here.”
Madelaine read the anguish in his face and did not offer the sharp response that came to her mind; she knew how ambivalent his feelings were. “You are not my prisoner, Tecumseh. You came because you wished to be with me. If you are now reluctant, then leave. If you are willing, then stay.”
Sherman cocked his head and regarded her closely, trying to pierce the darkness with his will alone. “How can I want you now? How
dare
I want you now?” He held her face in his hands and stared down into her eyes. “How dare I?” he whispered before he again opened her lips with his, letting his hands roam down the cloak she wore, sighing as he strained her nearer.
The buttons and buckles of his uniform pressed into her flesh as she opened her cloak to him, revealing the promise of her nakedness beneath the deerskin. “If not now, when?” she murmured, challenging him deliberately.
He made a sound between a sob and a moan, then reached out for her, plundering her with his hands, making no apology for his urgency or the roughness of his caresses. For caresses they were—a curious mix of passion and tenderness that had been his from the start. He knelt before her and explored her body with his mouth, pausing now and again to wrestle free of another item of clothing, which he tossed aside in a heap. He said nothing, and when she tried to speak, he silenced her with a single, abrupt gesture. Only when he drew her down beside him did he utter a few disjointed phrases. “God. Oh, dear God. So sweet, so sweet.” He bent his head to her breast, his beard rough on her skin, his tongue exciting her as he moved above her, and at last, deeply into her.
“Slowly, Tecumseh.” Madelaine rode his ardor with him, matching his growing frenzy with the release of her own long-pent desire. “Savor it.”
His rhythm changed, becoming steadier, and now his kisses were long and wet, with the searching quality she remembered from San Francisco; he was still seeking the whole of her, embracing his quest even as he wrapped his arms more surely around her and she brought her lips to his neck.
The enormity of his fulfillment was overwhelming. After years of stolen dreams, her esurience was gratified beyond anything she had experienced since leaving him. She trembled with the force of his rapture, and was rewarded by a soft, reverent oath from him as he finally lay still atop her, his sweat running over her, his breath no longer harsh in her ear. “My God, Madelaine,” he said softly, his elbows keeping his full weight from her. With one hand he curled a loose tendril of her hair beside her ear. “How can anything so profane be so . . . so. . . .” He managed a rueful smile that softened his features and smoothed his wrinkles. “I’ve never had the right words to say what you are to me.”
She returned his smile. “You do not need words with me, Tecumseh, though it is lovely to have them.”
He kissed the corner of her mouth where a red smudge remained. “You know
that
way, don’t you? The way of your kind.”
“Yes.” She freed her hands and fingered his close-cut beard. “That is a change.”
“Do you like it?” he asked without apprehension, the question rough music now that the tension had left his voice.
“I’m not used to it.” She studied him. “It suits you.”
“It conceals some of the lines, anyway,” he said a bit more brusquely. “I don’t look like somebody’s lawyer.”
“Does that concern you, the wrinkles?” she asked lazily, relishing the companionable closeness between them in the warm darkness.
“Certainly,” he answered, and rolled off her, lying beside her on her cloak, one arm across her body just beneath her breasts. “It would you, too, if you had any.”
“I don’t know,” she said seriously. “There are many times I wish I did not look quite so much like—”
“A girl just out of school?” he suggested, his eyes glinting with amusement. “You do have that air about you, Madame. Still.”
“Exactly,” she agreed, and seeking to extend their intimacy added, “Speaking of girls in school, how is Lizzie? She must be . . . what thirteen or fourteen by now?”
Sherman looked away and some of his awkwardness returned. “She is with her mother. And our other children.”
There was something amiss here, Madelaine knew; perhaps he still did not like talking about his family with her. “And how is Willy?” she persisted, aware that the boy was his favorite.
In a flat voice Sherman said, “Willy died last year. In the autumn.” He looked away from her, into the trees. “He and my wife had come to visit me on campaign.”
Sympathy went through Madelaine in a sharp tide. “Oh, Tecumseh. I am so sorry.”
“He took a fever,” Sherman went on in the same blank way. “At the end of September.”
“And you grieve fordquo; she said, putting her hand on his shoulder.
Overhead, an owl hooted as it flew on silent wings, searching for a night’s prey.
He shook his head. “How can I? In the midst of all this? He was one child, and there are thousands of men dying around me every day.” He turned back toward her with a suddenness that startled them both. “What sort of monster would I be, to put a boy ahead of all these brave men?”
“A loving father,” said Madelaine quietly, recalling the delight Sherman had taken in his oldest son. “As I know you are.”
He nodded once, looking away from her again. “And when this is over, I will mourn my boy. But not while this war goes on. I must not.” He pulled her up against him, his long-fingered hands spread wide on her back. His words were laden with despair. “And I have other children.”
“They are not Willy,” Madelaine said as gently as she could, aware now of some of the inward source of his need for her.
“No, they are not,” he responded, and coughed.
French Mill, near Dallas, Georgia, 9 July, 1864
Tecumseh has returned twice since we lay together, but not at an hour or for long enough to have more than kisses between us, and those hurried. He is concerned about his wounded men, and is as eager to see them and assure himself they are properly cared for as he is eager to visit me. Today he sent a cartload of medical supplies to us, prepared by the Sanitary Commission, with a note of thanks for helping so many Union soldiers.
One of the wounded brought here yesterday is a drummer boy, no more than thirteen, if he is that old. He comes from Illinois, as he told me, “The same as Mister Lincoln.” I fear we will lose him in the next two days, for he has a badly swollen abdomen and he suffers from fever and nausea. If Saint-Germain were here he could tell me what has happened to the boy, and he might have skill enough to save him, but without such skill and proper medication, I do not think he will survive. . . . As I watch this Timothy Rawlins, I think of how Tecumseh must feel at the loss of Willy.
If only he would mourn the boy. It is fixed in him like a Minié ball or a thorn. But he refuses to acknowledge it, and it eats at him with the tenacity of ivy, and it will exact a price from him. . . .
We are still treating men wounded in the Kenesaw Mountain assault. Union casualties were very high, and direct attack has been abandoned for more flanking maneuvers; it may prolong the march, but over-all there will be fewer men wounded and killed, and for that I am heartily grateful. There are now forty-one men at this place, and I have set Silas Wainwright the unenviable task of seeing that the men who die here are properly buried. We have set a small dell near the mill aside to serve as our cemetery. When it has been possible, I have written to the families of the dead men, and turned the letters over to Tecumseh when he has been here, to be carried with other dispatches. . . .
How hard it is to see these young men die with so much promise in them, and so little chance in the world. It would be easier, perhaps, to resign myself to their losses if I were as mortal as they. But to have the luxury of time for myself and to see these men deprived of it—I cannot accept the very thing I must if I am to be able to continue as I am. . . .
“Three this week.” Silas Wainwright leaned on the simple grave-marker, his face dripping. “It’s getting worse,” he said to Madelaine. “If we have so many casualties, think how bad it must be in the camp hospitals.”
“Horrible,” said Madelaine with feeling. She looked at the tattered New Testament in Wainwright’s pocket. “Do you want to read anything for him?”
“I guess I should,” Wainwright said, sounding too tired to do it; the sweltering afternoon had been enervating, and the task itself was disheartening. “It’s only right.”
“Would you rather I did?” Madelaine offered, and took the New Testament Wainwright handed to her. “Is there anything you would prefer I read?”
“I know it should be ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ but somehow that don’t seem right. . . .” He thought about it a short while. “Matthew twenty-four, verses six through fourteen.”
“All right,” Madelaine said, trying to recall what was contained in those verses from the lessons of her childhood at the hands of the Ursuline Sisters. She located the chapter and began to read: “‘And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto nations; and then shall the end come.’” She closed the little book and handed it back to Wainwright.
“Says it all, doesn’t it?” Wainwright asked after a certain silence.
“I suppose so,” Madelaine replied, and started back along the narrow path to the mill. “Do we have an address for Private Ritter?”
“He said his family was in Michigan, a place called Copper Harbor. But he couldn’t read nor write, and probably his folks can’t, either. It wouldn’t do no good to write to ’em.” He looked back over his shoulder to the glen that was filling up with graves.
“There must be a church there. I’ll write to the minister, and hope he can find the family.” There was an abiding sadness in her now, and a fatalism that few things other than the company of Sherman could shake off. “I hope for their sake he was not their only son.”
“Amen,” said Wainwright.
They were almost in the mill-yard when the sound of heavy guns stopped them. “Another skirmish,” said Madelaine as the man-made thunder faded. “We’d better be ready for more casualties.”
Wainwright sighed. “Where can we put ‘em? The barn’s as full as it’ll hold without turning the animals out.”
“Maybe we can put up tents,” Madelaine suggested. “Or sheds for shelter. Or make pens for the animals.”
“Maybe,” said Wainwright, clearly doubting it. He pointed in the direction of the sound of cannon. “With General Johnston gone, there’s bound to be harder fighting. Hood won’t fall back just to suit Uncle Billy Sherman.” The look he shot Madelaine was uneasy.
“That’s unfortunate. No general wants to lose men. A loss of men means a loss of a war.” She remained unperturbed, though she knew Wainwright wanted to discover the reason Sherman had been willing to supply her little improvised hospital, since she treated soldiers of both sides.
“They say that three of Sherman’s right-hand men were classmates of Hood’s at West Point,” Wainwright persisted. “Lieutenant Caufield told me about it.”
“In this war all the generals appear to have been each other’s classmates or teachers and pupils,” said Madelaine, refusing to be drawn into the matter. “Did you give Lieutenant Caufield the poultice I prepared?”
Wainwright gave up for the time being. “I did. But I don’t like the color of his wound.”
“Why?” she asked as they entered the mill. There were cots everywhere, and the men who lay on them were suffering from the heat as much as their injuries.
“It’s got inside flesh sticking out, all purple.” He swallowed hard, and looked around him. “Corporal McMasters needs another drink for pain.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Madelaine promised as she went to the pantry to see which of her medicaments needed replacing. She noticed that the tincture for asthma had been only a little depleted, and all by Sherman. It might have afforded her some amusement at another time, but now, with so many men needing her help, she could do little more than make a mental note of her supply of the tincture as she continued her hasty inventory.
French Mill, near Dallas, Georgia, 20 July, 1864
Generals Hooker and Thomas have repelled a Southern attack, and the casualties are here to prove it. It is approaching midnight, and I have not had any time to write until now. . . .
Tecumseh has not been here much; the fighting is growing more intense and demands his time. He has also told me that there are rumors floating among his men that he has a mistress, so he has become more circumspect in his dealing with me. Speculation is that his mistress is black and that he is hiding her for that reason. He is worried for my reputation, it would appear. . . .
Luke Greentree reached here today, saying that so far the new location is safe. He was going west, to try to return to the Choctaw Nation. He is in complete despair regarding the war, and wants to move as far away from it as he can. . . . In the morning he plans to resume his journey.