Chapter 26
26
The surgeon told Weybridge nothing he didn’t already know. He was healing. He’d be fine—or as fine as any man could be who had lost a leg and two fingers. No sooner had the doctor completed the examination, however, than a private informed Weybridge that the colonel wanted him to return to his office.
And so he hobbled across the courtyard, past the wounded soldiers lounging on the ground or on camp stools, some even more damaged than he, and back to the garrison. He wondered where Libby and Jubilee had gone. When he reached the squat brick building with Colonel Duffy’s headquarters, he worked his way gingerly up the steps, the inside stairway cool and dark. The door to the office was open, and the colonel asked him to sit in the chair across from his desk.
“I’ve a letter for you. I’m told it arrived a few days ago,” Duffy said.
It was likely from Emily. Word must have traveled fast from the time Libby was here last month requesting the whiskey and medicine that were among the reasons he was still alive. He knew that today, at least, he was the talk of Harper’s Ferry: the Vermont captain brought back from the dead. The Yankee saved by a rebel woman.
He slit open the envelope and saw instantly that it wasn’t from his wife. It was from his friend, Eustis Marsh, the lieutenant who’d created a tourniquet out of a canteen cord. Weybridge tried to read nothing into the fact that the colonel did not leave him alone with the correspondence: it was his office, after all. Could he know what was in the letter? He might for any one of a dozen reasons, though the envelope was sealed, and so Weybridge doubted he did. Still, the idea he’d remained felt like an ill omen.
His eyes began moving across the words from his adjutant.
I do not feel good about how we had to of left you behind. But the doctor hisself said you was a goner. I asked to stay, but they said no, we had ourselves work to do and a couple a boys been ordered to look after you. But I am still mighty sorry. But I am also mighty glad you are still walking this world, even if you are going to complain about things that do not matter like boots with holes.
They tell me some secesh lady has kept you alive and is going to bring you to Harpers Ferry and so I am hoping you get this letter. I am writing between skirmishes with johnnies deep in the valley. And it is bad news, Captain, as bad as it gets. Your beloved Emily was kilt by a damn horse. I do not know the details but I was told she was kicked when she was running after one of your boys. The mare was protecting a foal maybe three months old. It was two weeks ago and it was not the boys fault. Boys is boys.
There was more, but he felt a dizziness behind his eyes and the world was growing fuzzy, and so he bowed his head between his knees, the letter still in his fingers, and tried to absorb this blow. It was as if he had a head wound: not physical pain, but a wallop that had left him stunned. It was as if a shawl had been draped over him—or, perhaps, a shroud—and he was aware that the colonel was speaking to him and he needed to rally and respond, but the words were just noise, as meaningless to him as the concussive blasts of cannons or the roar of riders and hooves as cavalry would race past his infantry.
“Captain?”
He rolled his neck and looked up. “Yes, sir?”
“Bad news?”
“Yes.”
When the colonel said nothing more, Weybridge understood that he was waiting for him to continue. And so he did.
“My wife…she…she died,” he said. “A friend of mine heard. That’s why he wrote.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Thank you,” he murmured softly. “It was a horse. An accident.”
“I’m sure your family has sent letters, too. I’m sure they’ll arrive any day now.”
“Yes, sir,” he agreed, though the fact he heard first from Marsh and not his own family hadn’t troubled him. It was the message, not the messenger. The messenger didn’t matter. In some ways, perhaps it was best to hear it from Marsh, rather than from one of Emily’s or his parents.
“You’ve endured a lot, Captain. To have gotten here and then received this news is tragic. Blessed are they that mourn. Isn’t that the passage in Matthew?”
“I think so.”
“There has been too much suffering since the South seceded.”
“There has been too much suffering forever,” he said, not precisely correcting a superior officer, but acknowledging what he had learned this autumn. He had been lucky for nearly three decades. Now the dice and the cards were exacting their toll.
“True.”
He thought of his boys. Of Emily’s family. What awaited him in Vermont. He’d manage, he supposed, because he had no other choice. He pondered whether someone put down the horse. He hoped not. But you never knew. People were volatile and grief could exacerbate tempers. Ignite them.
“I requisitioned a room at the inn for Mrs.Steadman and her niece,” the colonel was saying. “It’s on the second floor. I got you one on the first floor. Minimize your time climbing stairs.”
“Thank you, sir. But I’m fine…on stairs.”
“I’m sure you are.”
He nodded. His eyes roamed the room. A thought came to him. “And Joseph?” he asked.
“Who’s that?”
“The freedman who came with me. The freedman who helped save my life.”
“Ah. The old Negro. We’ll find him a bed,” the colonel assured him.
“Thank you.”
“What else do you need?”
He thought about this. “Tell me. What will happen to her: Mrs.Steadman? To her and her niece?”
The colonel shrugged. “She may be a rebel. But she saved your life. I told her I’d do what I could to find her husband. And, if we do find him, we’ll send him back to her. Swap him for you.”
“The prisoner swaps ended.”
“I think Secretary Stanton would make an exception, in this case. We find this Peter Steadman, I expect we could send him and his wife and that niece of theirs home.”
“Though, of course, their home is gone,” Weybridge said, reminding Duffy of what he had told him during the initial debriefing.
“Well, they’re not alone,” he replied dismissively. “When this is over, there will be plenty to rebuild across the South. The price of secession. Of treason.”
“Yes, sir,” he agreed, but he knew it was more complicated than that in Libby Steadman’s case. He wasn’t sure if she could ever go home. With every decision she had made that autumn, she had distanced herself further from all that she knew. And, consciously or not, she’d done it for him.
“She’ll be fine, Captain.”
“I hope so.”
“And you?”
“I will, too,” he said, but he wasn’t confident. All he knew now was that his wife was dead and he was in shock, and yet the woman who had saved his life was—and who would have thought this possible?—even worse off than he was.
The inn had a restaurant. Weybridge hadn’t eaten in a restaurant since the spring, when the 11th had been part of the garrison around Washington.
He watched Libby slice the beef before her into small bites, but Jubilee was like a wild animal, ravenous, devouring her meat and cleaning her plate before either her aunt or Weybridge had made much of a dent into their meals. Libby turned to the girl and said, “I’ve seen wolves with better table manners.”
“You haven’t,” the girl corrected her. “I was hungry was all. When’s the last time you had beef like this? Me? It was before my ma died.”
“Going to lick your plate?”
“I just might.”
Weybridge was aware of the money in his pocket. That afternoon, a paymaster had set up a table in the garrison, but the colonel had intervened and made sure Weybridge didn’t have to stand in line for the salary he’d missed while recovering in Berryville. The fellow, an accountant before the war, had Weybridge’s salary ready and hand-delivered it to him.
“I had boys in my company who were very good eaters, too, especially when we had steers to slaughter,” he said. His voice had sounded strange to him since he’d learned that Emily was dead: less resonant. Oddly frail. It brought back those days when he was first wounded and, he had supposed at the time, likely to perish himself.
“See?” said Jubilee. “See?” She finished the sherry in her glass. Her second glass. Libby hadn’t planned on allowing the child her first taste of spirits tonight. But when the girl had pressed her luck and ordered sherry, it seemed to Weybridge that Libby had decided on the spot not to stop her, especially when her niece had reminded her that her birthday was next month and there were girls in the Valley who wed at thirteen and fourteen.
Libby raised a single eyebrow. “That’s precisely what I want from my kin: to eat like soldiers accustomed to mess kits and who’ve been marching for days.”
He’d told Libby that his wife had died, but not Jubilee. He’d asked Libby not to tell the girl. Not yet. He wanted the child today, now that they were in Harper’s Ferry, to have a reprieve from the dark of the world, the way it plucked from them all what they loved. That afternoon he’d written letters to his boys, Emily’s parents, and his own mother and father. He said he hoped he’d be home before the first snow, but he wasn’t sure.
Snow. The word had hit him hard. Snow. Sleet. Ice. He would have to learn to navigate Vermont winters anew.
But he would. He functioned well enough with eight fingers instead of ten.
When he was back home, it would be all about the boys. His sons. What else was there that mattered?
“Jackal, you daydreamin’ now that you’re back with your kind?” Jubilee was asking him.
“I was. Yes.”
She shook her head in disapproval. “My ma never, ever had to ask me where my head was at. I always make sure people know.”
“I’m sorry, Jubilee. I am preoccupied.”
“Sometimes,” Libby said to the girl, “it’s perfectly fine to keep your thoughts to yourself.”
“Oh, I know. I got my secrets. But Jackal? I got to ask you this. Joseph can’t sleep at the inn, and he can’t eat at this restaurant. If you folks want to free the slaves, why don’t you just treat ’em like white people?”
“We should,” he said.
“Sleepin’ in some room off the horse corral with stable boys and grooms? That ain’t right for a man like Joseph,” the girl added.
“No. It’s not.”
“And if so many of you were goin’ to die and kill so many of us, you might have thought that through. What’s the point of all this killin’ if you still won’t let them eat or sleep wherever they want?”
Libby looked at her and then at him. Her expression, unlike that of her niece, was utterly inscrutable. He wished he could read her mind; he wished he had a decent answer for her niece.
He was awakened in the night by the feel of the mattress settling beside him and, reflexively, moving as fast as he ever had in battle, he rolled away and started to reach for the pistol he had placed on the night table. But then, climbing up from the depths of sleep, he understood that it was Libby.
“Shhhhh,” she whispered. “It’s only me.”
“Libby, what…” But his voice trailed off when she climbed beneath the coverlet, laying her head on his chest. “Where’s Jubilee?” he asked. “Is she—”
“A woman crawls into bed beside you, and you ask about her niece. My God, Professor. My God. I’m insulted.”
“But—”
“She’s fine. That sherry has her snoring like cattle.”
He wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
“I figured you needed company,” she said softly. “I know I did. I found myself missing our nights on the porch and the stars and the whiskey.”
“I liked them, too.”
“I know. How are you?”
“No longer stunned. But morose. Fretful for my boys. For Emily’s family.”
“I would comfort you if I knew what to say. But the words of preachers always seem to disappoint me.”
He stroked her head with his right hand, smoothing her hair against his palm.
“I almost cut it all off just now,” she murmured.
“Your hair? What? Why?”
“Not all of it. But most of it. Enough to hide what was left under a forage cap or straw hat. And then I’d disappear. Just go away. Vanish out west. Leave Jubilee with you until her father returned. Or, if he didn’t return, with you and your family in Vermont. That was my plan—or, perhaps, fantasy—until I learned your Emily had died. But I can’t do that now. Run off. Fade away. I can’t leave you with a third child to raise on your own, and I could not do that to the girl. Not after all she’s lost and all she’s been through. Her mother’s last words? Do right by her. By Jubilee.”
“I’ve never been on my own,” he admitted. “My parents are still alive. Emily’s are still alive. That’s a blessing.”
“You know what I meant.”
“I do. So…you’re not leaving?”
She shook her head against him.
“Good.”
“Good that I’m not dropping a very feisty twelve-year-old girl in your lap or good that I’m not leaving?”
He kissed her gently on her forehead, a kiss that was chaste and brief. But then she surprised him, rolling atop him and straddling him. She placed both of her hands on his chest and gazed down at him, her eyes intense. Her nightshirt was white, her hair falling in drapes on both sides of her face, and she looked almost ghostly in the moonlight.
“The Jackal’s mistress,” she murmured.
“What?”
“I have not been with a man since Peter was home briefly in the fall of 1862,” she answered. “And you with a woman? Not that long ago, I suppose. But, still, too long. Too goddamn long. I don’t know what awfulness tomorrow’s going to bring. But tonight? I have you, and you have me, and the thing that has me most tired is being lonely. Tonight, I am the goddamn Jackal’s mistress and putting us both, at least for a little while, out of our goddamn misery.” And then she leaned over and kissed him on the mouth, pressing her lips against his. She opened herself to him, as the night air and the cries of an owl in the distance and a wagon creaking its way down the steep street outside the window wafted into their room, a small refuge from the insensate, unending horrors of the world.
In the morning, when he awoke, he saw he was alone and felt a pang of guilt that he had fallen asleep before Libby had left him to return to Jubilee. But when he sat up and gazed down at the sheets, recalling how only hours ago Libby had been lying beside him, he felt no remorse. He began to make plans, imagining how he would introduce her to his sons and his parents, wondering how he would explain her to Emily’s family. He did not reproach himself for last night, and he did not judge himself for his feelings toward this rebel woman. Emily was gone, and there was no power on earth that could bring her back. If she were alive, he had enough faith in himself and in Libby to believe that last night would never have occurred, and any future he had with the woman would have been but a platonic friendship that, over time, would have dissolved like seasonings in hot soup.
But Emily wasn’t alive.
And he could still mourn her and love Libby: the mind could do two things at once. He could grieve, and he could be grateful. Libby wouldn’t be merely a helpmate, though the logistics of being a widower with two young boys had seemed daunting yesterday, despite the proximity of Emily’s parents and his. He would fan this undeniable spark that he and Libby shared, and count himself blessed to have had the passion of two remarkable women in his life.
He dressed and went to the restaurant for breakfast, and, as he expected, he saw Libby and Jubilee at a table, already devouring eggs and bacon and biscuits and gravy. The girl looked sleepy and he considered whether the sherry last night had been too much for her, but Libby was radiant. Her eyes were joyful and wide as she spoke to her niece. But when she looked up and saw him, her countenance changed. Her smile turned wistful, and for a moment, he saw melancholy there. But quickly she blinked it away, seeming to smother whatever stitch of sadness she had felt upon seeing him. He sat down, and Libby took his wrist and gazed at him, saying, “You won’t believe it, but he’s alive. Your colonel found Peter, and he’s at Fort Delaware. He’s alive!”
She said more, sharing the logistics of how the Union Army was sending her and Jubilee to the prison camp tomorrow, and Peter was going to be released, and her sentences were punctuated over and over with her excitement and disbelief, and her euphoria that Peter Steadman—her beloved—was breathing and well and coming home. And Weybridge nodded and found it in him to feign a happiness he wasn’t feeling, because this was his duty and what was expected of him. He said little but nodded much, almost fascinated by how quickly the kernel that last night had seemed ripe to grow was, by the light of day, a desiccated and lifeless husk.
“Jackal? Your head in the clouds again?” Jubilee was asking.
He looked at the girl. “Yes. Apparently, it was. But…”
“Well, go on.”
But maybe he was better off when his head was in the clouds. The world was too much with him, he thought, recalling Wordsworth. Perhaps now, but perhaps always. Maybe this was how one—anyone—survived the heartaches that came with heartbeats.
No, that wasn’t fair. His mind might wander, but his attention, when necessary, was rapier sharp.
And while the only inevitability in this world was death, that didn’t mean that the uncertainties and surprises of living weren’t lovely before you reached the end. Last night, for instance. He would have that memory forever, and if that moment was now as unsubstantial as, yes, a cloud…fine. So be it. Let it live inside him like a salve. It had happened. It once was real, and he would never forget it.
“But,” he said to Jubilee, “I always come back.”
Libby patted the girl’s hand. “Don’t try and guess what people—jackals or professors or your own kin—are thinking. We’re always outside looking in. We mortals get it wrong much more often than we get it right.”
The girl arched her eyebrows at her aunt. “Well, I know this: you grown-ups sure do.” Then she took the last of her biscuit and sponged the last of her gravy off her plate.