18. Chapter 18
Chapter 18
Hartford
November 1864
A fter nearly two months of practice, Robbins proclaimed Fabienne fit to travel without his supervision; she could now train at home, and they’d meet again in a few weeks. He suggested she not travel to the future, as it was harder and riskier to remain there.
Fabienne was fine with that. She was afraid of what she might see, and besides, she had much to uncover in the past.
She began every travel in the same position, sitting on her bed, propped up with pillows. If a servant came in while she was ‘unconscious’, they’d think her sleeping. After a few travels to days and weeks ago, her curiosity grew. She didn’t dare to go back to the morning in New York—didn’t think she’d be able to bear it—but she still wondered what happened afterward.
It was time to find out.
She prepared her watch and the notes with calculations of times and dates. Before the travel took hold, she closed her eyes—it helped against dizziness.
But it didn’t help against a horrible, splitting pain that engulfed her body. Had she done something wrong? Hurts —like someone had poured liquid metal on her leg. Was she going to end up with one of the injuries Robbins had described?
She directed all her energy into breathing, trying to shut out the pain. Her blurry vision slowly cleared. Grey walls, moving shapes, murmuring voices, moans, a narrow bed beneath her—a hospital. She made it. The pain wasn’t from the travel; it was her wounds. A cold shiver ran over her, followed by a wave of heat, and she gasped, her mouth dry. Oh, ?a fait mal! How did she even make it out alive?
Steps approached from the left, a shape of a man, dressed in white, becoming clearer. Fabienne leaned her head back, exhausted from the pain, and pretended to be asleep. It’d be better to return to her time; she couldn’t make any discoveries here, not in this condition.
But before she could will herself back, a hand gently lifted her head. A bottle clanked.
“If you can hear me, I’ll need you to swallow this,” a young male voice said. “It will make you feel better.”
Something cold touched her lips, and for the sake of her past self, she dutifully swallowed a spoonful of liquid. It didn’t taste as bad as she expected, a bit on the sweet side, like syrup, but it still burned as it went down her throat.
“Perfect. Don’t worry, it’s going to be fine.” He held her hand—or maybe brushed it accidentally—then retreated.
“Excuse me, you there,” an authoritative male voice said. “Can you—uh, are you new? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”
“Yes, sir. I’ve just been assigned here.”
Fabienne cracked open one eye. The two men stood at the foot of her bed. The younger one, with dark hair, was facing away from her.
“Hmmph. You don’t look old enough to be out of medical school.” The authoritative voice belonged to a man with gray hair and a generous beard.
“I hear that often, sir. I have one of those faces.”
“Well, make yourself useful and go down this list.” The older man passed a piece of paper. “Mark the beds accordingly. We have an incoming of typhoid patients, and some reorganizing to do.”
The assistant checked the list. “You’re sending her to St. Mary’s? But they won’t be able to give her the proper treatment there—”
“Look, boy, this may be hard on you barely out of the schoolroom, but sometimes, you can’t help everyone. No one’s come to claim her, we have no clue who she is or where she belongs, and she’s taking room from patients who can still be helped. The nurses at St. Mary’s will make her as comfortable as possible. Now get on with it.” He tapped the list and briskly walked away.
They were turning her out? But she was too weak to even sit up. Pressure built—a sign she was being pulled back—and she didn’t resist. Her last view was of the young man, scribbling something on the list.
Fabienne breathed a heavy sigh of relief upon seeing her familiar bedroom ceiling, not just happy to be free of the pain, but also to still be here, healthy and, by some miracle, alive. She wouldn’t travel back there again.
But how had she ended up in Hartford?
A knock sounded on the door, and Fabienne quickly put her watch away.
“Excuse me, ma’am.” The housekeeper, Mrs. Beasley, peeked into the room. “May I request your help with reorganizing downstairs? I’m clearing out the cabinet in the parlor, and I’d hate to throw away something you might still need.”
How was she supposed to know what she still needed? Or worse, what Brayden might need? Fabienne’s chest stung at the thought of him, but she nodded at the housekeeper and followed her downstairs. If the servants knew something was wrong—and they must have, the way that day in October went—they were keeping quiet.
She sifted through the drawers. Stacks of papers, cards, a wooden plate with hand-painted squares for checkers… That seemed sentimental. She wouldn’t dare discard it.
A packet of papers fell from the uppermost drawer and landed on the floor, a few sheets slipping free of the binding. Letters, addressed to her at Caddie’s house. She selected a random one. The neat cursive writing that filled the entire page was Brayden’s, and the letter was dated nearly two years ago.
She arranged them by date. All were rather hefty, until she got to the last few in the batch. These were addressed to this house, to Fabienne Marshall.
The very first letter was dated July 17th, 1862, two months after the morning in New York.
Miss Beaumont,
I hope you will not think it too presumptuous of me for writing you a personal letter. During our conversations, I got the impression you would not consider a correspondence such as this to be too daring, or in any way demeaning to your character. If I am wrong and you do, you are encouraged to throw this away, and should we meet again, I will not mention it.
While my good neighbor Mrs. Ellison begs me for letters as often as possible, you probably know she has very strict demands about what those letters should contain, and she is not fond of too many details of our life here. The problem is, when all mentions of war are taken away, I can only write about the most trivial of matters. My fellow soldiers put their worries and thoughts on paper and lessen their burden, and here I am, thinking about how I could mention a fine meal we had without worrying Caddie about all the not-so-fine ones. Sometimes, as strange as it sounds, it makes one feel lonely.
I regret your situation as much as the others, and I send you wishes and hopes that you can make the best of it. I’ve known Caddie my entire life, and you are in the best of hands. Please do not take this as a sign of pity; I merely hope you can find some solace in my letters, knowing there are people who think of you. I do not ask for lengthy replies or a baring of your soul, and if you feel uncomfortable with doing it personally, you can send a sentence of greeting with Caddie’s letters. You can do the same if you do not wish for me to contact you further. But I do hope you will take this as a sign of friendship, even if it comes from a Yankee.
With best wishes,
Brayden Marshall
Enclosed was a shorter letter, detailing a funny story about an inside joke the regiment had coined in the early days. He was so… kind. He acknowledged her reservations, prejudices, even, and pushed them aside in favor of friendship.
Other letters followed, dated a few weeks, or sometimes only days apart. He always addressed her properly as Miss Beaumont, and yet, something about his tone made Fabienne feel strangely warm in her chest. Warm—and even guiltier.
She devoured one letter after another. In September of the same year, he wrote:
The brigade received new recruits and fresh supplies (no, those two are not the same). I ended up sharing a tent with Welby, who worked on a farm in Illinois before the war.
(I noticed how, somewhere along the way, we all started to use a past tense for our occupations. During the first couple of months, it was always ‘I work this and that’ as if we expected to get back to it in a few weeks. Now, the war seems all that’s left.)
You can tell he’s worked a farm his entire life, and did most of the literal heavy lifting. He is well aware of that, and given that we were to share our camp supplies, has volunteered to carry the pots, pans, and much of that uncomfortable burden, saying that I “definitely don’t look strong enough to do it. Can’t expect you to be, what with you shuffling papers all day long”. I swallowed my pride and let him do it. I won’t mind giving up that part of the job for a while. There are still plenty of other things to transport.
Besides, arguing is a useless endeavor with Welby. He is a man of good humor, which is most appreciated during off time, but he will rarely admit defeat. He’d make either a superb or an absolutely horrible general. One of his favorite topics of conversation is ‘Mid-westerners versus New Englanders’, or as he calls it, good old farm boys versus city boys. I felt obliged to point out there’s plenty of farmland in New England, and after some back and forth, he somewhat conceded the point. There’s no complete surrender with Welby. He still calls me ‘city boy’, but I won’t call him out on that one, considering I am from a city.
Fabienne pressed her hand to her lips to hide her smile. Brayden’s letters during the winter months told her about building log shanties, gambling for furniture that was brought in from a nearby town, playing baseball with a makeshift ball made of wrapped string, and an incident with a farmer and his chickens, with some men receiving not-so-honorable war injuries. In the spring of the next year, Fabienne found the last mention of Welby; he and Brayden seemed to have formed a close friendship.
During it, a shell went off near Welby, and some shrapnel caught his leg. Luckily, they did not get embedded too deep and severed no major arteries. He’ll keep the leg, but will be useless as a soldier for a while—something that a particularly tactless surgeon told him in those exact words, and then ducked quickly enough to avoid an empty bottle Welby hurled at him. Nobody likes to hear the words ‘useless soldier’, and particularly not him. He’ll soon be transported to an off-field hospital, most likely to Washington, to recuperate. It is unlikely we shall ever meet again. He did leave me with these wise words: “I guess you’ll have to carry all the pans now, city boy.”
Poor Welby. Brayden must’ve missed him. Fabienne paused before reaching for another letter, her mind temporarily occupied with a shocking new realization.
She was sad. For Welby. A soldier.
But when she’d been reading those letters, she hadn’t seen him—any of them—as soldiers. Only people. And with Brayden’s voice leading her, it had been so easy to see behind the simple designation. The soldiers that had molested them in New Orleans—they weren’t bad because they were Yankees. They carried their burdens, whatever those were. Fabienne carried her own.
But she’d let them out on Brayden. She’d punished him—for nothing.
She forced herself to return to the letters. Separated from his friend, Brayden’s thoughts became more introspective. In one letter, Fabienne was surprised to find not a recounting of the week past, but a memory.
I woke up today shivering, not from the cold, but from a dream. I have never written Caddie the details of the battle of Cedar Mountain—if you’ll remember, I only told you at the time you should not worry about me being on the ‘wounded’ list, as I was already recovering.
You see, no matter how prepared you think you are, battles like that leave a lingering memory, a collection of sensations so vivid that certain things may remind me of them for the rest of my life. In the moment just before, time slows down, and you’re aware of the wind passing through the branches above you, of the musty, earthy smell of the fallen tree you’re hiding behind—your eyes fix on a crack in that trunk, and you gather all the sounds and pack them in a memory of that crack, that tree, that forest. I’m afraid this might be a memory that will not grow hazy for a very long time, and it’s not one to be envious of. Simple details, such as how little of the Fifth made it out, don’t tell the entire story, but I don’t wish to burden you with more. In fact, I may just toss this letter out. Nothing like philosophizing about dreams and memories to make a man feel like a fool.
But he had mailed it. And two letters later, she found this.
… cannot express how much your letter has helped. I suppose I’m not such a fool after all. Will you allow me to respond in kind? I have this peculiar habit: when something good happens, when we’re having a great time, or perhaps the weather is nice and the food delicious, I try to commit the feelings to memory. I keep telling myself remembering good times will get me through bad ones, that I can close my eyes and think of those days, and everything will be better.
If you’ve been successful in your methods of remembering, I’d be grateful for some tips. I’ve never quite managed to get the feeling back. When you have to sleep on the cold, damp ground, surrounded by snow, it doesn’t help to think of a nice warm bed you once secured on a farm, and the memories of days when food was plentiful, and we could even afford to have a proper picnic, do not make the taste of stale bread any better. You may wonder why anyone would endure it, how strong their convictions must be, or simply, how stubborn they are. Like I remember the happiness, even if at times I can’t feel it, I remember the beginning, too. The excitement of going to fight, of doing something. However, I remember having that feeling, more than I remember the feeling itself, and I wonder now how it was even possible. Do you know what I’m talking about?
Fabienne put the letter down and stared at the opposite wall. She thought she did, yes. Sometimes she’d close her eyes and imagine the warmth of the Provence sun on her face, the laughter of Antoine and Marion somewhere in the distance, the smell of herbs and roasted meat coming from the house. Now that she had the power to go back, she wavered. She was afraid the memories wouldn’t measure up.
A conclusion to the letter was cramped at the bottom of the page—she’d almost missed it.
Yesterday, I thought of our walks as one of the happy memories. Is it too brazen to admit it? But you helped me.
Brayden’s face, the hurt in his eyes as she pulled back in the kitchen, flashed in her mind, and led to a sour taste in her throat. Helped him? She pushed him back into the fight.
He may have said differently in the brief note he’d left her, but surely, he couldn’t have wanted to go. Not with what she’d read here, not with seeing how month upon month, year upon year of fighting whiplashed his soul.
And finally, she found the moment where she’d whiplashed him, as well.
Madam,
As reports may have reached you, we are still in Tennessee, and might continue to be here for some time. I hope all is well. If you’re reading this in company, try to produce a smile for the benefit of our dear neighbors.
- B.
That letter was from the summer of ‘63, and all that followed were phrased in a similar manner, now addressed to Fabienne Marshall. She doubted the soldiers’ adventures had suddenly stopped. She simply wasn’t privy to them anymore.
“Ma’am?” Mrs. Beasley stood at the doorway. “Have you sorted everything out?”
“Uh… I’m almost done.” Fabienne tried to remember where she’d left off. How long had she been reading? “This stack of paper can be reused for whichever means necessary.” She pointed to the pile of discarded papers. “What I want to keep is in the drawers.”
“Very well.” Mrs. Beasley bent to collect the papers, sweeping a few letters along with them.
“No!” Fabienne lashed out, gripping the housekeeper by the wrist. “Not those.”
Mrs. Beasley maintained a stoic facade. “My apologies. Which ones may I take?”
“Those.” Fabienne pointed to the rest, hoarding the letters in her own pile and covering them with her hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
Mrs. Beasley nodded and took the papers away. Fabienne shook her head at the stupid behavior. Why did she have to snap like that? Because of a bunch of letters? She’d already read them. They’d be better used elsewhere.
Still, she wrapped them with a ribbon and put them in the corner of the uppermost drawer. Where they would be safe.