In The Face Of Death (34 page)

“He is in a terrible state,” the young lieutenant told Madelaine for the fifth time since he had summoned her from the old mill to Sherman’s camp. It was now after two in the morning, and most of the Union army was lost in exhausted sleep as he guided Madelaine toward the ruined house where General Sherman had temporary headquarters and was spending the night. It was warm and close, the air hardly moving. Both horses were flecked with foamy sweat. “He has been up and sleepless, since they brought McPherson’s body back. The Army of the Tennessee has needed support, and he has exhausted himself with the task. He hasn’t been breathing right since mid-afternoon. He put General Thomas and General Schofield on the attack.”

“McPherson was killed this morning?” Madelaine asked, hoping to get some sense of the order of events.

“Yesterday morning, yes, Ma’am,” the young lieutenant corrected her.

Madelaine said nothing; she could feel the agony of spirit which held Sherman in its relentless grip, and had since early the previous afternoon. Her draught horse mount whickered as they approached the house, recognizing Sam among the other officers’ horses. “Is he alone?”

“He was when he sent for you. He would let no one near him, said the surgeons had enough to do without wasting their time on him,” the lieutenant told her, pointing to the entrance of the half-burned house. “In there.”

She dropped out of her sidesaddle and reached for the case strapped to the cantel. “Tell me where to find him.”

“I’ll take you there,” said the lieutenant. There were deep circles under his eyes and when he dismounted he moved as if every joint was sore. “I am grateful to you for coming. Someone has to help him.”

“He’s right. Your surgeons do not have time or the supplies to treat his asthma. Fortunately, I do,” she said briskly, hoping to convince the young man that her summons had nothing more to it than medical necessity.

The lieutenant hesitated at the foot of the short flight of stairs. “He . . . was not himself. When General McPherson was killed. . . . They brought his body back here, laid it on a door for a table.” He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “I never saw Uncle Billy cry for anything before. But he sure did for General McPherson. He paced the room, shouting orders, and all the while the tears ran down his face. I don’t think he knew he was doing it. The crying, that is.”

“They were friends,” said Madelaine with what patience she could muster, her anxiety increasing. “Where is he? The sooner I can treat him, the sooner he will be himself again.” She saw a worn-out corporal come to take the horses, and she told him, “Give him water and a handful of oats. It is a long ride back to the mill.” And one she suspected she would have to make in sunlight; at least she had lined the soles of her boots with her native earth the morning before.

“Come with me,” said the lieutenant, at last going up the stairs and motioning Madelaine to follow him.

They climbed to the second floor, past two posted sentries, along a hall with one wall charred and stinking. At last they reached the last door, and the lieutenant knocked. “General? The Frenchwoman is here.”

The voice that answered was so distorted with wheezing it was difficult to hear what he said.
“Go away!”

The lieutenant was about to knock again, but Madelaine moved him aside and touched the door twice, very lightly. “You sent for me, General Sherman.”

This time there was the sound of hasty steps and the door was flung open. Sherman had removed his tunic and his shirt was open to the middle of his chest. His wild eyes were hollow, lividly shadowed and bloodshot, and his red hair was in disarray; his breathing was strident and labored. He stared at Madelaine for a few seconds, then grabbed her by the shoulder and abruptly tugged her into the room, slamming the door behind her at once to shut out the lieutenant. He shoved the bolt home to guarantee their privacy, then glared at her, unacknowledged tears on his face. “You came.”

“How could I not?” she asked, trying to hide her distress. Nothing she had anticipated prepared her for the sight of him, his face mottled, his chest straining visibly as he gasped for breath. She put down her case and opened it, doing her best to remain calm; she removed three glass vials. “I knew you would need this.” The room smelled of charring nitre paper; a single lamp burned on the gate-legged table standing near the center of the chamber. “Why did you wait so long to send for me?”

“I had other things to do.” He regarded the vials suspiciously, wariness in his stance and inflection. “Ah, that same concoction you gave me in San Francisco. When you told me you were studying Indians?” He could barely get the last words out.

“Yes,” she said, opening one of the vials and holding it out to him.

“It will work?” he demanded, glowering at her.

“It did before. It has for others.” She was not intimidated by his stare; she put the vial into his hand. “Here, Tecumseh. Drink it.”

He took it without comment and tossed it back as if it had been whiskey. Then he coughed—deep, wracking coughs like sobs that made him whoop for gulps of air as he began to exhale at last.

Madelaine set the other two vials down on the table and went to his side. “How long have you been suffering like this?” She had rarely felt as helpless as she did now, and it made her testy. “Tecumseh? Answer me.”

He bent over at the waist, retching, one hand moving to show he would say something directly. He dropped to one knee, still hunched over, the veins in his neck standing out with effort. Slowly the struggling subsided and finally he drew a long, steady breath, let it out fully without wheezing, the mottling faded from his face and then he straightened up, refusing her offer of a supporting arm as he fussed with the open front of his shirt. He directed his gaze at the far wall, and spoke distantly. “My thanks, Madame.”

She would not be put off by his formality. “How long, Tecumseh?”

“A while,” he answered indirectly, then gave her a long, appraising stare.

“You should not have waited. Asthma can be dangerous,” she reminded him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, reaching for her, determined, cool lasciviousness showing in his demeanor.

“The attacks have been getting worse, haven’t they?” she asked with certainty.

“From time to time,” he answered. “I am better now.” He reached out and took her arm, pulling her closer to him.

“Until your next tragedy, if you will not mourn Willy and McPherson now,” she said, confronting him. “Then it will be worse than this time.”

“I will manage.” He ran his hand down the front of her body, hard anticipation shining in his steel-colored eyes. There was no kindness in him now, no suggestion of the tenderness he had offered her before.

“Tell me how long you have been suffering with this,” she insisted, not quite resisting him, but not acquiescing, either. She made no attempt to stop his calculated assault on her, yet she made no indication of capitulation to his desires.

He was unbuttoning her bodice, working steadily as his breathing continued to deepen. “Not important. How long.” His kiss was an act of possession, ferocious and arrogant, driven by despair. He gripped her clothes and tore at them, opening her bodice and exposing her camisole, then tried to haul himself out of his shirt, leaving it hanging beyond his suspenders. “A night of debauch—what do you think? A better cure than nostrums. I’ve seen to my men already, and they are prepared for tomorrow. But tonight? A bout of excess to lend forgetfulness. A balm against dying. But you don’t die, do you? No corsets. That’s providential.” As he pressed his mouth to hers again, she could feel his teeth on her lips.

Knowing he was expecting denials and a fight, she put her arms around him and held him, accepting his kiss, taking in the rage that hid his anguish. When he tried to break away from her she clung to him, unwilling to allow him to retreat into his self-imposed isolation and loathing. She opened herself to his grief and his engulfing shame, the sorrow he would not recognize, and she gave him her constancy and love to take its place.

Sherman pushed back from her, his face aghast. “Madelaine.” He looked down into her face as if seeing her for the first time. “What have you done to me?”

She embraced him, leaning against him. “Nothing that is not in you to have done,” she answered, and drew his head down to her, their lips barely touching for many long seconds, then meeting fervently. When they drew apart she said, “You are part of me, Tecumseh. Nothing can change that, not war, not distance, not age, not death itself.”

“But . . . how?” His eyes glittered with tears. He tried to wipe them away but she stopped him. “Don’t. It isn’t fitting.”

She answered him without hesitation. “What has that to do with it? Know your sorrow, Tecumseh, or you will sink into black desolation again. It is like a festering wound and you must lance it or it will spread its poison through you. Grieve, for your son and your friend, I beg you, and I will comfort you; my word on it.” There was only the table, two chairs and a cot in the room; she took him by the hand and drew him toward the cot.

Now he hung back, refusing to look at her. “No. No. I cannot. Not here, not yet. I haven’t the right to mourn yet, not for McPherson, and certainly not for Willy. Don’t you understand?”

“But you must; I understand better than you do. Mourning is not a privilege to be earned, it is the cost love exacts from us for loving.” She took both his hands and lifted them to her lips, kissing the prominent knuckles and long fingers. “Accept the pain of your losses. For my sake, if not for yours.”

“Why for your sake?” he asked, startled at her plea.

“Because of my bond with you. Your life touches mine, including your torment. If you contain your pain, it must be mine, as well. Be free of it, and you will release me from its grip.” She sank onto the cot, still holding his hands, so that he had to bend over her or break their touching. “The blood is a bond that cannot be severed.” She could see the doubt in his face. “I told you this at the first, and nothing has changed.”

“Nothing has changed?” he echoed, incredulity making his voice rise. “How can you say that? You see for yourself daily how the world has changed.”

She met his eyes steadfastly. “Nothing between us has changed, Tecumseh, nor can it.”

He shook his head in adamant rejection of her perseverance. “There is a
war
that brings us back together. We meet over the corpses of the fallen, over oceans of blood. Surely that is a change? Or do those shattered men at your mill mean nothing to you, but fodder?”

Madelaine recoiled as if struck. “What do you think me?” she asked, shocked but determined not to be goaded to anger, for she realized that he was trying to thrust her away from him, to put himself beyond her concern and his own wretchedness.

“Why,” he said archly, “you told me yourself, Madame. You are a vampire. And what better place for one than in the midst of this unspeakable carnage? And that we have in abundance.”

“You know that I seek no one who does not want me.” She said it quietly, without countering his challenge. “And I would not prey on the helpless.” Deliberately she added, “The dead have nothing I can use.”

“You do not prey on the helpless, you say?” Sherman inquired sardonically, and put one knee on the cot so that he could loom nearer to her, tempting himself with her accessibility. “And what would you call me?”

“Hardly helpless,” she answered with asperity, stung to a hasty reply. She sat rather straighter, feeling unjustly attacked.

“Ah, there you are wrong.” He leaned closer as if compelled by something beyond his power. “I am vulnerable to you, Madame, as I am vulnerable to no other woman. And I am twice-damned for it; for adultery and for—” His fingers closed on the twist of hair at the nape of her neck. Using this, he pulled her head around so that he could kiss her again, this time roughly, as if to prove he could do it and feel nothing.

“Tecumseh, Tecumseh,” she whispered as he broke away from her and paced the length of the room, pausing as far from him as the confines of the chamber would permit. “It isn’t me you wish to escape.”

“How astute of you,” he snapped, then stood very still, his back to her. As she watched, his shoulders, held so rigidly, drooped and trembled as the first terrible sobs shook him.

Madelaine went to him, standing behind him, pressed against his back, her eyes sore with tears she could not shed. For that instant she envied him his weeping as much as she knew he despised it. She could feel him shudder with the intensity of his misery. For several minutes they remained that way while he cried himself out.

When at last he turned to her, he caught and held her as if to staunch a bleeding wound. His face was wet. “I cannot bear it,” he murmured, as if seeking her pardon for his lapse.

Her soul went out to him. “You don’t have to, Tecumseh, not alone,” she said softly.

“You will take my burden? You?” He managed a single bark of devastated laughter. “For all this cruelty?”

Her arms remained firmly around him. “Must it be cruel?”

“Of
course
it must be,” he said with a trace of his usual force of character. “It is
war.”

“But to what purpose must it be cruel?” she asked reasonably, feeling a little of his strength returning.

“Why, to
end it!”
His finger dug into her sides. “This cannot drag on another year, or deteriorate into constant regional skirmishes, and if it isn’t settled soon, that is what will happen. Neither North nor South could survive that. There is no kindness in such protracted fighting. It must be
stopped.
Now. For good and all.” He looked down suddenly to where he clasped her body. “I’ve hurt you,” he whispered.

“Not that way, not with your hands,” she responded, and pressed close to him once more. “You hurt me by denying our bond, and by refusing what succor I offer.”

His chuckle was brief. “Succor. Apt choice of words.” He released his grip on her, and reached around for her hand instead. “Since you are here, well, why not?” The question was light, almost flippant, but Madelaine was not deceived; this was a cry from his heart.