CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
T he bombardment jerked Leona from a restless sleep on the parlor divan.
When she opened her eyes, muzzle fire glowed in the windows.
Smoke hung heavy in the air around her and, despite the flashing lights, she couldn’t see anything outside.
Volleys of cannonballs landed nearby, throwing dirt and soldiers into the air.
The booming of ordnance didn’t drown out the screams of horses and the shouts of men.
Breathing hard, she slammed the shutters closed and shut the curtains, the panic inside her like a wild thing.
The fury of the battleground did not cease.
“Please stop!” she screamed at another fusillade bursting overhead. “For the love of God, stop!”
“Leona?”
Who called her name? A contraband woman, caught in the line of fire? But her name was—
“Ruth, run! They’re coming!” Leona dashed behind a chair and held her hand out. Ruth, her friend, had somehow wandered onto the battlefield. The hot whizz of Minie balls, like angry, stinging wasps, filled the air. “Come on! You can make it!”
“Oh, my sweet Lord.” Ruth held a candle aloft and blinked sleepy-eyed behind her spectacles. “Leona, no one is coming. No one is here but us and the furniture.”
“Will you get down?” Leona shouted over the noise. “You’re making a target of yourself!”
“What’s happened?” Grandfather hurried into the room in a striped robe, his feet bare.
Leona knew she was standing in her parlor on Cranberry Street with her grandfather and friend. A larger part of her stood on the perpetual battlefield, overwhelmed by an episode playing out repeatedly in her soul. Where is Luke?
“She’s dreaming, but she’s awake,” Ruth said. “I don’t understand why this is happening.”
“A soldier’s dream. She’s had a terrible shock. The shooting and the break in have frightened her, more than she can say. Come, Leona. Gil is safe at home now, as you are, my child.”
The cannon boomed louder, directly overhead. Leona shrieked, on her knees, covering her head with her arms. A bell began to ring. How she could hear it over the thunder in her heart, she didn’t know.
“My dear Lord, help this woman.” Ruth kneeled beside Leona. “You are home in Brooklyn, Leona Earl Gladney. You are safe. No bullets. No cannons.”
“You don’t hear it?” Leona asked, still shaking but wanting to believe her. She’d never behaved like this on the battlefield. It was as if her insides were exploding with the terror she’d long locked inside a blue wool uniform and under her kepi.
Ruth shook her head. “I don’t hear it. Only you.”
“But—” Leona lowered her voice to a whisper. “I can’t find Luke.”
“Who is Luke?” her friend asked.
“The drummer boy,” Grandfather replied with a groan.
Leona stood, Ruth with her. “He was right there.” She pointed to the open doorway where Ruth had been standing a moment before.
“He stood right there, looking at me. Frightened to death, he couldn’t move.
I told him to run to me. I heard it coming, and I screamed at him and he—. And he—the sky rained down blood.”
She put her hand to her head, feeling she might fall to the floor with the strain of living two lifetimes side by side. An unpleasantly warm stickiness bloomed between her legs.
Ruth put her arms around her. “Leona, my dear friend, there’s nothing you can do for him. He’s with the angels and has no fear or pain now. Ah—your gown is wet. Mr. Earl, I think Leona needs a woman’s care right now. I’ll take her to my room.”
If Leona could find the mad clock, she would smash it.
“Who is ringing that bell?” The bell rang loud and clear again, the battle receding into the background like a thunderstorm passing overhead. The terror left her body, left her mind, and the landscape held furniture again and not felled trees and boulders to hide behind.
“It’s Gil. I’ll see to him.” Grandfather lit a lamp to take with him and left the room. He returned with a lingering, worried glance back.
“She’ll be fine,” Ruth said.
Her warm hand on her arm reassured her. Leona’s brain popped and fizzed as the parlor became more solid. Ruth didn’t let go of her, which convinced Leona the battlefield had gone. Or she’d returned from that liminal place inside her mind.
“Am I going mad?” Leona whispered.
“You’re awake now,” Ruth reassured her. “I think you walk in your sleep, only inside out.”
She felt turned inside out, nerve endings on fire. A sharp cramp sliced across her lower abdomen. “Oh, damn it.” Disappointment sank into her bones, gnawing.
“There’s water in a pitcher in my room. I’ll get what you need from upstairs.”
“In the linen cupboard in the hall. Thank you, Ruth. I’m sorry.”
“You’re welcome. I came to take care of you because we’re friends, and I worry about you. Don’t be sorry. I’ll be right back.”
Leona wished she could feel relief there would be no child, but only bitterness remained.
***
L EONA WENT TO SLEEP in the spare room across the hall from their bedroom, not wanting to disturb Gil after her night-time adventure.
When she awoke late in the morning, Gil lay beside her, eyes closed, breathing evenly, his face pinched with pain.
She watched him sleep until tears blurred the sight of him.
“Please don’t leave me,” she whispered.
“Why would I leave?” he murmured back.
“Everyone leaves.”
He opened his eyes, hazel with a gold ring around the iris. “I’m not going to die.”
“I know you’re not.” She didn’t, though. A fever or infection could attack at any moment. “But I think you don’t want to be married to me anymore.”
His eyebrows rose. “What makes you say this? I married you to be beside you always, nightmares and all, to have this house together and fill it with our family.”
The tears spilled over, and she sat up to wipe at them with the sheets, pushing the pillows behind her back. “I don’t want to lose you to Helen.”
He squinted at her. “Helen, who? You mean Helen Caldwell-Jones? What are you talking about, Leona? Help me sit up.”
Leona got up and came around the bed. His left arm in a sling, he grimaced when he pushed with his right hand against the mattress, and she helped to lever him up against the pillows.
She got into bed again and turned so she could observe his expression.
When he settled and the pain lines receded, she went on.
“I found Helen’s glove in your pocket.” A little white lie, but the truth lay at the center of it. “And you are so often not at home in the evenings. What am I to think?”
He frowned. “There’s nothing like what you’re imagining between us, my love. You are not losing me to Helen. Is this what you came to the office to ask me on Christmas Day?”
“I did. Then why did Henry shoot you?”
“Henry? Shoot me?” Confusion gave way to agitation. “Did you see who shot me, Leona?”
“I didn’t see very much of him,” she replied, thinking back. Perhaps a man too tall to be Henry? “Didn’t you see? You were facing him.”
Gil sighed and rubbed at his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Thank God for your grandfather. If I lost you.... No, I—yes, I did see him, but I didn’t think it was Henry.”
He didn’t sound sure, but pain creased his face. The doctor had prescribed morphine, which she usually administered, and it was overdue.
“Do you want the morphine pills?”
Gil shook his head. “No, not yet. They’ll just send me back to sleep.”
He’d insisted he leave the hospital as soon as he could stand. He’d slept for two days after that. She stroked his good arm. “Sleep is good healing.”
“I want to assure you there is nothing between Helen and me, that I am your true husband. Though this notion Henry shot me is not without merit. He must know I set the police on his trail. He was ever a vengeful bastard. What do the police think?”
Jealousy had been a powerful motive in her mind, but Gil had denied an affair. She hadn’t quite decided to believe him yet, but she wanted to.
“When you feel better, the police will want to talk to you, of course. Perhaps it’s related to the break in, though shooting someone on Christmas Day sounds so very personal, doesn’t it?”
Frustration tightened his mouth, darkening his eyes. “What if I wasn’t the target? Did you think of that?”
She pushed herself up off the pillow and stared at him. “What? But who would want to shoot me and why? For a too-critical book review?”
“This business with the Van Wyns and the spiritualists. Someone slaughtered those people. The newspapers have been shouting about Millicent Frost, haven’t they? Who knows what sordid types of people she’s involved with?”
He sounded angry and confused now. None of what he said about the Frosts made sense. Well, not about Millie, anyway. When he grimaced and bared his teeth, Leona realized the pain was biting hard.
“I’m getting your morphine.”
She hurried off to pour a glass of water and take the pills from his night table. He swallowed everything with gratitude and became quiet for a few minutes, waiting for the drug to work.
“Thank God,” he whispered and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, he said, “The Fenians, Leona. The ones who threatened your grandfather. Maybe they were shooting at him? Yes,” he said, more to himself than to her.
“This makes sense. I just got in the way.” He pushed himself flat again on the bed with a sigh.
Deeply relieved at his denial of involvement with Helen, Leona sighed.
If Gil wasn’t having an affair with Helen, it couldn’t have been Henry who shot him.
Certainly, Millie hadn’t shot at them, though admittedly there were some foggy areas about what she was capable of.
And, goodness, the Fenians? Of course, it frightened Gil to think he might be the target of assassination or execution, but. ...