In The Face Of Death (40 page)

At present I have only three soldiers to care for: a young man from Wisconsin with a broken wrist, a drummer boy from Vermont who is serving with a Connecticut regiment and suffering from a putrid sore throat, and a captain from New Jersey with a half-healed wound in his shoulder—a far cry from those in my care a month ago. . . . I know there will be more casualties ahead, and I should make the most of this time, but I have not yet been able to bring myself to work on organizing my notes to prepare for Amsterdam. . . . My monographs are still incomplete and are likely to remain so for some time. . . . Try as I may, I cannot seem to concentrate on them as I would like.

I have sent word to Tecumseh that I would prefer to ride a horse than be stuck in a wagon, but he has not had the time to do more than send a note that he will attend to it. . . . With his current concerns about Kilpatrick’s cavalry, the matter of a single horse is trivial.

There are strict orders given that the army is not to take any refugees with it during the march. Not only are supplies deliberately low, but Tecumseh is determined to keep to his rapid march, which will not be possible if the army is forced to take in all those fleeing war and slavery. . . . In spite of this, a great many former slaves are following the army, hailing Tecumseh as their liberator, and more exalted things than that. . . . This army is now officially cut off from all communication with the North, and will continue this way until Savannah is reached. . . . For the first time in his career, Tecumseh is acting entirely as his own commander; he is the authority and no one higher than he can reach him to countermand his decisions. He told me this morning that he had never realized how much beholden he had felt, and for so long. . . .

At the back of the smoldering ruins, two women were huddled, one of them white, the other black. Both had smuts on their faces and both looked haggard. As Madelaine and her guide, Captain Albert Foster of Minnesota, who was a distant cousin of General Foster and was currently recovering from a dislocated shoulder and a gash in his thigh, rode up to the side of what had been a fine plantation house but was now little more than rubble and five brick chimneys, the two women leaned out of their hiding-place, an old flintlock held between them and pointing up at the new arrivals.

“Get out of here! You hear me? Get out! Now! You already took everything! We got nothing left!” shouted the white woman, her voice shrill, as ragged as her dress and faded shawl. She did her best to steady the gun. “Ain’t you done enough?”

Madelaine drew her hard-mouthed horse to a stop and looked down, peering into the blackened wreckage and motioning to Captain Foster to keep his sidearm in its holster. “We are not here to forage. I’m looking for anyone who is injured, wounded, or ill,” she said calmly. “Are either of you hurt? Is there anything I can do to assist you?”

“Miss, I don’t think—” Captain Foster began.

“You get out of here,” said the black woman, but with less determination that her companion. “We’ll shoot if you get any closer.”

“If you need help, I have brought a medical bag with me—” Madelaine said, unperturbed.

“You a nurse?” asked the white woman; Madelaine thought she was probably nearing forty, and not the former mistress of the house if the condition of her hands and the quality of her faded dress were any indication.

“Yes, I am a medical volunteer with the army,” Madelaine began to explain. “There are quite a number of us—”

The white woman was regarding her skeptically and cut her off without apology. “You don’t sound much like them other Yankees. Where you from?” she demanded.

Madelaine sighed. “I am from France. From the southern part of the country, near the Italian border,” she added in the hope that this might mitigate her foreignness for the women.

The two women looked aghast at this announcement. The white woman muttered something to the black one; Madelaine heard a few scraps of it. “. . . sent for whores . . . keep American women clean. . . .”

Captain Foster glanced at Madelaine, more shocked than she was by what the women said. “It isn’t right, them talking about you this way,” he said quietly to Madelaine, cocking his head in the direction of the women to indicate he would stop them if it was what Madelaine wished. “I can stop it, if you want.”

“Don’t be absurd. Let me deal with them,” said Madelaine, and swung down from her horse. She handed the reins to Captain Foster. “Be calm, Captain; and do not draw your weapon,” she said, loudly enough that she was certain she would be overheard.

“I don’t think Uncle Billy would like you to do this,” said Captain Foster, dreading Sherman’s wrath if anything happened to Madelaine. “He doesn’t want anything to hurt you, in any way. He was real sharp in his orders. He said I was to make sure you were safe—”

“Don’t be missish, Captain,” Madelaine said lightly, her attention on the women.

“Stay where you are!” the white woman commanded. “I’m not going to warn you again.”

Madelaine continued to walk forward, her skirts looped over one arm, her case of ointments, salves, and tinctures in the other hand. “I am an unarmed woman. I have only the captain for escort. You have no reason to fear me and nothing to gain from harming me.”

“You’re a Yankee!” the white woman accused.

“
Mais non
, Madame,” Madelaine said, picking her way through the ruins toward her. “I have told you I am French.” She held up her case. “Are either of you in need of assistance?”

“What kind of mealy-mouthed nonsense are you talking, woman?” the black woman inquired, and pointed an arthritic finger at Madelaine. “What kind of poisons have you got in that case of yours, anyway?”

“No poison,” said Madelaine, continuing her slow approach to the women. “But I do have something for the stiffness in your fingers, and I will gladly let you have it, if you will permit me to make some for you.”

The black woman released her hold on the barrels of the gun and folded her arms. “Why’d you want to do a thing like that?”

“Because it is my work,” said Madelaine. She was less than ten paces from the women now and she heard Captain Foster give a warning shout. “They aren’t going to shoot, Captain,” she called to the Captain. “Because they haven’t any ammunition.” She looked directly at the women. “Do you?”

The black woman clapped her hands to her face, and the white woman threw down the gun and stared haughtily at Madelaine. “The Yankees took it all.”

“Of course they did,” Madelaine concurred with a touch of humor. “And can you blame them? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t shoot one if you could.”

“I’d do worse than that,” said the white woman. There were tears on her face but she would not wipe them away.

“Very likely,” said Madelaine, and indicated the rag tied around the woman’s upper arm. “How old is that cut?”

The woman paid no attention to her. “You should’ve seen it,” she burst out in anger and disgust. “The Negroes all running up to the road, shouting that a red-haired Moses was coming to lead them to freedom.”

Madelaine privately doubted that Sherman would find the allusion flattering, but kept this observation to herself. “The army isn’t supposed to take on refugees,” she said, as he had encouraged her to do.

“Refugees!” The white woman flushed deeply, and looked over at her black companion. “Lillyanne here hasn’t forgotten herself, the way the rest have.”

“They’s gone to the Yankees,” the black woman confirmed, clearly shocked that this had happened.

The white woman glared at Madelaine. “And you come here to gloat!”

Madelaine’s answer was light but her violet eyes shone brilliantly. “I have done no such thing. I am here to tend to any hurts or ills you have suffered. That is the whole of my mission.”

Captain Foster had ridden up close to the women, and now he leaned forward in his saddle. “Miss de Montalia,” he said, “if you aren’t going to do anything here, we should be on our way.”

Madelaine motioned him back. “Be patient, Captain Foster. Can’t you see that this woman is injured?” She indicated the white woman. “Let me have a look at your arm. I will treat it, and if there is nothing else you require, we will go on.”

The woman looked sullen, but she nodded once. “Since you’re here.”

It was not a promising beginning, thought Madelaine as she closed the gap between her and the other woman. “How long ago were you cut?” she asked as she inspected the dirty length of cloth wrapped and tied around her upper arm.

“Three days,” she said reluctantly.

“Three days?” Madelaine repeated as she set her case down and began to work the knot loose. “But the army was still twenty miles away.”

“The Yankees didn’t do it,” the white woman admitted. “There was good Southern boys through here, needing food and blankets. We . . . gave ‘em all we had.” She looked to the black woman for confirmation.

“They took everything,” said Lillyanne with a comprehensive gesture “And what they didn’t take, the Yankees got. And burned the place down.”

Madelaine sighed, recalling the harangue Sherman delivered to his officers not two days ago, warning them that while they were to leave nothing of use for the enemy, they were not to allow unprotected women and children to be without shelter. “It is one thing to make war on the South,” he had said, “but is not honorable to make those who have suffered already bear more than their share of the burden. We are in the heart of enemy territory, and what we do not use, our opponents surely will, but this is not to include making those already preyed upon our victims. The women of the South hate us, yes, but see that they have as little cause to do so as you are able. Take their food and weapons and ammunition, but treat them with respect. I want to hear no complaints about your conduct.” Clearly whoever had come here had not paid much attention to Uncle Billy’s admonition.

“What was the name of the officer leading the men here?” Madelaine asked as she inspected the woman’s wound, doing her best to conceal a frown at what she saw, for the cut was infected and inflamed.

“I don’t know and I don’t care. He was a Yankee devil, that’s all I know,” said the white woman. “Wrap it up again, and I’ll take a shot at any blue coats I see coming this way.”

“He was a Lieutenant Matthew Robertson. They was part of an Ohio regiment, but he spoke like a Southerner,” Lillyanne said promptly. “Shameful thing, to have one of ours treat us so badly.”

“You said that Southern men took your food before the Yankees came,” Madelaine pointed out; there were a fair number of Southerners in the Northern armies—the reverse was also true.

“And so they did,” the white woman agreed at once. “But they deserved it. The Yankees didn’t. It was our food. We didn’t want the Yankees to have it.” She wiped her cheek with the back of her wrist. “It made the Yankees mad that we had nothing left for them to steal.”

“Lieutenant Matthew Robertson will answer for what he has done here, I will see to it,” Madelaine promised, thinking that Sherman would not be pleased; there had been other such instances and his response had been quick and harsh. “Did the men harm you in any other way?”

“If you mean did they rape us, the answer is no; they didn’t have the time,” said the white woman. “I thought they might, though. With men like them, you can be sure they will do whatever they think they can get away with.”

Captain Foster looked dismayed. “The men have strict orders not to—”

“And you think wolves like them give a devil’s hoot for orders?” the white woman demanded, her wrath increasing. “Men like that are rabid animals, and should be treated like rabid animals—shot where they stand.”

Madelaine heard this out with as much sangfroid as she could summon out of her own uncertainties. “I will report this to General Sherman himself.” She looked directly at the white woman. “Your arm will need treatment, and soon. The wound is deeply infected. I can leave you a medication for it that will help contain the infection, but you must have a surgeon look at it as soon as possible. Otherwise the infection will enter your blood.”

“It doesn’t hurt much,” the woman protested. “Just kind of aches.”

“Small wonder,” said Madelaine, and noticed that Lillyanne was nodding in agreement.

“That’s what I been telling her. She don’t want to listen.” Her expression had a tough, satisfied vindictiveness about it.

“What surgeon’s going to make time for me?” the white woman countered.

“I will arrange it, if you like,” Madelaine offered, and called over her shoulder to Captain Foster. “Make a note of this place and see that one of the surgeons is dispatched here to tend this woman.”

Captain Foster drew a notebook and stubby pencil from his tunic and did as Madelaine ordered. His own, half-healed wound ached in sympathy with the woman.

“I don’t want a Yankee doctor touching me, thank you,” the white woman said.

“You’ll take it and be thankful to the Good Lord for his help,” Lillyanne informed her as if the middle-aged woman were her nursery charge. “There ain’t much I can do for you without a real doctor has a look at you.”

“I won’t,” said the white woman, and glared at Madelaine. “I’ll take your medicine, and thank you for it, but if I see that surgeon coming, I swear I’ll blow him to kingdom come.”

“Without shells?” Madelaine asked, trying not to sound sarcastic. “Or have you other weapons your soldiers and Uncle Billy’s missed?”

“I’ll do it any way I have to,” the woman insisted, and let Madelaine smear her arm with a viscous, clear liquid that had been obtained from moldy bread.

Lillyanne watched critically, and nodded approval as Madelaine took a length of clean lint to wrap around the woman’s arm. “You’re good at that.”

“I’ve had practice,” said Madelaine.

With Tecumseh’s army in Georgia, 9 December, 1864

I was told today that the woman I treated some days since has died. The infection was too far advanced for it to be arrested, and even had her arm been amputated, it would have been too little and too late to save her. Her servant, Lillyanne, has stayed with the surgeons to help them, and they have accepted her, for they agree she is sensible and tireless, a valuable combination on this journey. . . .