Wedded to War (14 page)

Jane’s smile lit up her face. “Not to worry, mum. They may be going to Washington, but we’ll have a capital time of our own right here.”

But by the time dinner had ended and everyone retired to the bedrooms, even Charlotte could not quell the rising tide of uneasiness now crowding out her confidence.

Shafts of moonlight slanted into her bedroom as she pulled a crisp white sheet up to her chin, but sleep eluded her. Thoughts tangled in
her mind like the many-tailed bandages she had first attempted to tie.

What if I don’t have what it takes? I have failed at so many things already.

She had done well in all her classes and lessons, but had not put her education to good use. She had followed the doctor’s orders in caring for her father, but he had died anyway. She went to all the right parties, wore the right clothes, said the right things, but was still a spinster. From some dark corner of her spirit, a little voice told her that she had failed at being everything a refined young woman of means should be.

She glanced at the discarded steel hoops in the corner of her dressing room, shining in the moon’s silver light. They had been better than the heavy crinolines, but they had still kept the world just out of arm’s reach, and she had resented them for it. Very soon, she wouldn’t need them anymore. It was time to try on a new identity, one in which the things that had previously distinguished her as a lady would be forbidden. No more hoops. No more fancy clothes. No more meals served on silver platters, or feather beds and down comforters, or shopping trips on Broadway, or strolls in Central Park. It wasn’t that the war had changed her, as much as it had opened her eyes to another way of living.

There was work to be done, and it was time for her to do it. It just had to be a better fit for her than the life she had been squeezed into so far.

But if I fail at this, too, what would be left?

Anxiety needled at her. Throwing off her covers, she tiptoed to her desk, turned the kerosene lamp to a dim amber glow, and opened the letter she had received from Caleb yesterday, written from his camp at Oak Hill, near Falls Church, Virginia. Seeing his handwriting was like hearing his voice, and a balm of comfort to her soul. She scanned the dark grey scrawls on the page until she came to the lines she was looking for.

Beneath his signature, he had jotted the references for Isaiah 45:7 and 1 Corinthians 15:58. Charlotte reached for her father’s Bible then and looked up the verses, intending to mark them. There was no need. They had already been underlined by her father’s own hand.

Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, inhaling the rosewater scent that permeated her room.
Lord, help me work heartily, as unto You. I can’t please my mother, and it’s too late to please my father. I don’t fit into my own society, so help me focus instead on pleasing You by doing the work You have cut out for me. Amen.

Her gaze fell then on the card-size photo Caleb had enclosed of himself with his letter. His serious eyes looked into hers from the tiny card in her hands. Those eyes seemed to see her in a way no one else could, even after all these years had separated them.

Guilt curdled her stomach like Dickens’s milk gone sour in the sunshine.
I’m so sorry, Caleb. But how could I tell you the truth?

When he had left, a year after her father’s passing, Charlotte was devastated. Then she was furious. By the time she got his letter on her eighteenth birthday, she wanted nothing more than to hurt him as he
had hurt her.
I just don’t care about you anymore.

It was a hateful, vicious lie.

Months later, her anger cooled and good sense returned. She wrote him to apologize. But the day she had planned to send the letter, Dr. Shaw came to examine Charlotte. Though she seemed perfectly healthy, the fact that no menses had started caused Caroline concern.

The doctor’s pronouncement: “Barren. For some reason, your womb did not develop.”

“Is there no hope?” her mother had asked.

“There is always hope,” the doctor had replied. “But without menses, there will be no children.”

“Time will tell,” Caroline said, tears thick in her voice. She squeezed her hand.

Charlotte stashed her letter to Caleb back in her desk as soon as the doctor took his leave.
He deserves a true woman—one who can give him children. And I don’t want him to marry me out of pity.
She waited for months to see if her menstrual cycle would begin. Months turned to years until finally, she retrieved her letter and ripped it up. Time had told. Charlotte would never be able to fulfill her female role to its fullest.

No wonder she was ready to try something else.

Tears blurred Charlotte’s eyes. It seemed useless to reveal the truth to Caleb at this point, but surely there was no harm in just writing to each other now …

Dickens threaded his way between her ankles, warming her bare skin. His low purring the only sound in the room, a lullaby to Charlotte’s ears. The promise of sleep beckoned to Charlotte now from her own inviting bed. She would write to Caleb tomorrow, after the clarity of thought that comes with a good night’s rest. But first she pulled out a pair of scissors, snipped a lock of chestnut hair, tied it with a piece of yellow ribbon, and slipped it into the envelope.

R
umpled and stained with axle grease and soot from their eight-hour journey to Washington City, Charlotte Waverly and Alice Carlisle stepped off the train at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Station, Maurice tumbling out behind them. A whoosh of steamy, foul-smelling air rushed up to meet them from the opened doors to the street, like hot, moist breath on their faces. The stench of horse droppings and rotten fruit was so thick in the air they could taste it. The avenue outside the station teemed with people, horses, carriages, and hacks, all of whom seemed either oblivious or resigned to the paste of mud and manure on the unpaved streets below them.

“Shine your boots with Union polish for half a dime!” called out small Negro boys, while white boys hawked newspapers.

“
C’est invraisemblable!
And this is the fine capital of the great Union?” Maurice wrinkled his nose.

Grabbing Alice by the hand, Charlotte wove her way through other passengers who had disembarked just as dazed and damp, until she broke through to the line of cabs. Maurice hailed two hacks to carry them and the trove of supplies they had brought for the boys from Caroline and her friends: towels, old sheets, soap, cologne, oil silk, sponges, a small camp cooking stove, and a spirit lamp. “Treasury Building, please.” Charlotte directed the driver to the headquarters of the Sanitary Commission, and they were soon lurching forward, trying to break free of the surrounding mayhem.

“Oh please,” Alice interrupted, “couldn’t we have a quick tour of the city first?”

Charlotte nodded, much to the driver’s delight, and he cracked the reins on the broad backs of his horses.

The tour of the capital was disappointing, if not downright depressing. The “city of magnificent distances” sprawled out in every direction, with long stretches of shanties, taverns, and vacant lots between a few marble buildings looking wholly out of place in the swampy city: the Capitol, the General Post Office, the Patent Office, the Treasury, the Executive Mansion, and the Smithsonian Institution.

“This does not seem like a national capital to me!” Maurice’s voice was edged with disdain. “These city planners of yours, have they not taken any cues from Paris?”

Charlotte wished she could disagree with the cheeky Frenchman, but the city was undeniably less than grand. The Capitol building was unimpressive, a blunted, unfinished dome against a washed-out sky, scaffolding holding up the skeletal frame with a metal crane perched on top. Even the marble wings on the old sandstone Capitol building were so new they had no steps yet. Littering the grounds were columns, blocks of marble, keystones, carvings, lumber and iron plates, workmen’s sheds, and depots for coal and wood. Rather than a stately symbol of a proud and steady country, it looked instead like an ambitious plan still under construction but with no certainty that any sense of order would ever prevail. Perhaps it was a fitting symbol of the nation, after all.

The unfinished stump of the Washington Monument was surrounded by grazing cattle awaiting slaughter to feed the army. Fish and oyster peddlers cried out from the corners, hawking their wares, while flocks of geese waddled on Pennsylvania Avenue and hogs of every size and color wallowed in the mud from Capitol Hill to Judiciary Square. In some neighborhoods, people still emptied slop and refuse into the gutters, and dead animals into the city canals. Carts of night soil were trundled out and emptied into the commons ten blocks north of the White House.

By the time they arrived at the Treasury Building, one of the very few buildings of any stature in Washington, Charlotte and Alice had seen enough of the city to satisfy their curiosity, but they hadn’t seen a single hospital.

“Please wait here until we know what to do with those boxes,” Charlotte told the hack drivers as she dropped the fare into their leathery palms. “Maurice will keep you company.”

Charlotte and Alice climbed the wide stone staircase of the building, craned their necks to follow the tops of the portico’s granite Ionic columns, and entered the imposing front doors.

Inside, however, they found the Sanitary Commission’s headquarters barely marked, and not nearly as regal as they had expected. It was a single room with a single table nearly overflowing with papers. A pair of crutches leaned against the wall.

“May I help you?” said a small-boned, delicate-looking man who compensated for his receding hairline by letting his black hair flow to his shoulders. “I’m Frederick Law Olmsted, General Secretary of the U.S.S.C.” He rose to greet them, but favored one of his legs.

“Charlotte Waverly and Alice Carlisle.” Charlotte presented a letter. “You must have received a letter from Dr. Blackwell already, but here is another copy. Reporting for duty, sir.”

“Ah! Fellow New Yorkers, welcome, welcome!”

“I knew your name sounded familiar.” Alice’s eyes brightened. “You’re the landscape architect of Central Park, aren’t you?”

“The very same.”

“My favorite part of the city, by far!” Charlotte beamed, feeling as though she had just met a kindred spirit. “It is just what New York needed. And if I may say so, if you weren’t already occupied with the Commission, I would say you would have your work cut out for you beautifying this city, too! It sorely needs a skilled hand.”

“It does that.” Olmsted motioned for them to sit. “Built on a swamp, with Potomac flats, formerly used for a sewage outlet, just behind the president’s house—it’s a ghastly mess. But for now, it’s home.”

“Indeed,” said Alice. “We brought boxes of supplies for the Washington hospitals, only—we didn’t see any. Did we miss them?”

“So you noticed.” He winced. “Not having enough hospitals is an omission on par with not having enough doctors and nurses. For now, the Medical Department is fashioning existing buildings into hospitals—former hotels, buildings at Georgetown College, even government buildings. I’m afraid they aren’t suited for the functionality a hospital requires, but it’s all we’ve got. I trust you will be flexible and can improvise as necessary. That includes, at least for the time being, keeping those supplies with you wherever you stay until I can get some more storage space here. I’m staying at Willard’s Hotel, on the corner there, but it’s quite full. I recommend the Ebbitt House, just across the street.”

“Of course,” said Alice. “Where will Charlotte be nursing?”

“I leave that to Miss Dix,” he said. “Dr. Blackwell had an arrangement with her that we must respect. Dr. Blackwell supplies the nurses to Miss Dix, and Miss Dix supplies the nurses to the army. You’ll need to see her next. Corner of New York Avenue and Fourteenth Street. You might even catch a glimpse of the Seventh New York—the Kid Glove Regiment, they’re called here—while you’re out that way. Lincoln is reviewing the troops today.”

“Thank you, Mr. Olmsted.” Charlotte ran her hands over the wrinkles in her skirt in vain. “The hacks we hired at the station are waiting for us outside, so we’ll be on our way.”

“Please don’t pay those thieves any more than you have to. I’ll send my carriage with you instead.”

By the time the sisters arrived at Miss Dix’s house, their hair clung in damp wisps to their necks, and a film of dust and sweat coated their faces. Their dresses stuck to their skin. Even if they had changed their clothes before coming, the five-mile journey across town would have wilted them back to the same state of perspiration they were in now. They waved their fans in front of them, but succeeded only in stirring up hot sluggish air.