He turned from the pictures and hurried down the elegant hall, rapping hard on Kiernan’s door. She opened it, startled, her hair wild, her eyes wild, dressed in a white cotton nightgown with the baby on her hip.
“Daniel!”
He grinned. “You want Jesse for Christmas, eh? Well, I know where he is, and I’m going to get you to him. Get dressed, pack up, let’s ride!”
She stared at him for a moment, then her face broke into a smile so beautiful he was convinced sacrificing the remaining days of his leave would be well worth this early trip back.
“Oh, Daniel!”
She kissed his cheek, then slammed the door on him, and he had to laugh. Within half an hour she had herself dressed, and Janey and the baby ready to travel.
It was difficult to say good-bye to Christa, but Christa was delighted for Kiernan.
It was difficult to ride away from home, because he wondered if he would ever come back.
They reached Richmond with little problem, and as they were there for the night, they once again attended an evening at the White House of the Confederacy. Many officer’s wives were there, as were many officers, politicians, and socially prominent citizens. It was a curious war. Kiernan greeted old friends, some of whom snubbed her for being a Yankee’s wife. One woman actually turned her back on her. But Varina took Kiernan’s hand, mentioning that if she had time in the future, they could always use help at the hospital. Kiernan was surely experienced, having worked with such an excellent surgeon and physician.
The next morning they started out again. The roads were clear; the weather held. By late that night, they had returned to Daniel’s encampment. The Yanks were right across the river.
“Welcome back, Colonel!” Billy Boudain called, seeing him approach his command tent. “What you got there, sir—oh, sorry ma’am!”
Daniel laughed. “I’ve got a Christmas present for my brother across the river,” he said. “Billy, send out a messenger for me under a white flag. Ask the Yanks for a private rendezvous with Colonel Jesse Cameron, Medical Corp. I’ll see him at the pontoon bridge.”
“Yessir!”
That night at dusk Daniel rode down to the makeshift bridge the Yanks had used to cross the river. There were pickets—numerous pickets—on either side, and he was careful to call out that there was a meeting going to take place. He didn’t feel like being shot by his own men, or getting Kiernan or the baby shot either. He left her in the shadow of the trees while he moved down by the water. A horseman stood on the other side.
“Jesse?”
“Daniel. I was hoping to see you. Merry Christmas, brother.”
Daniel grinned. “I got a present for you, Jesse.”
“You’re living and breathing, Daniel. That’s present enough.”
Daniel shook his head. “This present is even better.”
He turned back, and beckoned to Kiernan. She rode out from the trees, the baby in her arms. Slowly, she rode down to the river.
“Jesse?” Her voice, soft and feminine, touched the air.
“Kiernan! My God, Kiernan!”
She was off her horse, and running across the bridge. Jesse dismounted from Goliath and went running to greet her. Darkness fell over the moon, and they both disappeared in the shadows. Daniel heard their glad cries mingling in the night.
He smiled, and turned his horse away. He rode back to his tent, and gently refused the company of his men. He retired with a brandy bottle.
Later that night, Billy Boudain and some of the others arrived at his tent. He heard giggling, feminine giggling, and he knew they had arranged some companionship for the evening. In the pale light of muted camp fires he could see a woman’s silhouette in his doorway. “Colonel, this is Betsy. She’s heard a whole lot about you. She wants to wish you Merry Christmas.”
Why not? Betsy was young, it seemed. Maybe even fresh at her profession. Hell, it was Christmas. It had been a long, long time.
In the shadows he could see the girl. She was small, slim, dark. Forget the world, forget the war, forget the night, he told himself.
But he could not. Visions swam before him. Visions of his own bronzed flesh entangled in silken hair that flamed like a fire run rampant. Of silver eyes that met his. Of a voice that whispered and caressed, beckoned and betrayed.
He could touch no other woman until he had found either his vengeance or his peace.
“Thanks, Billy,” he said softly. “Young lady.” He inclined his head to the girl. “I’m, er, well, I’m just in for the night. You all go on. Merry Christmas.”
Billy was disappointed, but he had come to know Daniel, and he knew even his most polite tone of command. He bid Daniel good night and Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Yes. Where are you tonight, Mrs. Callie Michaelson? Is your Christmas warm, is it full of wonder?
He did get through Christmas. And then into the new year.
And into more battles.
But even as the battles began to rage, he had no idea what 1863 would bring.
They were well into the year before he even heard of that little town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg.
———— Sixteen ————
May 1863
“Lord God, he’s down! Stonewall is down, he’s been shot by his own troops!”
The agitated cry of a Reb horseman was the first that Daniel heard of the injury to Stonewall Jackson.
He was down, Daniel thought quickly, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t be up again. Men were frequently injured.
And injury frequently meant death.
He’d been in his tent, dictating his own current situation to Billy Boudain, who was proving to have a marvelous craft with letters. He was surely the finest staff assistant that Daniel had ever had.
The fighting was over for the day. Again, some of the fiercest fighting Daniel had seen. They were at Chancellorsville, and Jackson had just completed one of the most amazing feats of military agility ever accomplished.
The general had cut short a visit to his wife on the twenty-ninth of April when he heard that one hundred thirty-four thousand Federal troops—now under the Union General “Fightin” Joe Hooker—were crossing the Rappahannock on both sides of Fredericksburg. It had been the first time he had ever seen his infant daughter, but he had rushed back to take command. Splitting his forces, he had sent troops against Major General John Sedgwick’s left wing, and then he had taken the majority of his men into the wilderness near Spotsylvania. Daniel’s troops had been with him, and they had driven the Federals back to Chancellorsville.
The next day, Jackson and Lee split the army again. Lee and his men faced Hooker at the front; Jackson completed his wide sweep around Hooker’s flank to attack from the rear, and on the morning of May second, they completely routed the Federals.
Now they were saying that he was down.
“Soldier!” Daniel called out, stepping forward. “It’s true? Jackson is injured?”
“Mightily, sir. He’s been taken to a nearby farm.”
“God help him!” Daniel murmured.
“Indeed, sir!”
And well God should be on his side, Daniel thought, for Stonewall was a deeply religious man. A disciplinarian, strange to many, stoic, and sworn to duty.
And necessary to Master Bobby Lee, Daniel thought.
There was nothing that he could do for Jackson, but all through the night, messengers rode back and forth, reporting on the general’s condition.
By the late hours of the night, his wounded arm was amputated. He could survive still, Daniel thought, and he couldn’t help but think of Jesse. He could survive if it could be kept from infection. If, there were so many ifs.
And there were still the Federals to be fought….
The battle continued through the third and the fourth of May. At the end, Sedgwick and Hooker were forced back, and the Army of the Potomac was withdrawn. Though it was a southern victory, the Confederates also lost, and lost sorely.
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On the tenth of May, General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson died, succumbing to the pneumonia that had set in following his surgery. He died in the company of his beloved wife, and he died at peace with the God he had so worshipped. But he died a soldier still badly needed upon the battlefield.
The entire South mourned, and mourned deeply, no one more so than Robert E. Lee. Daniel had seen death hurt General Lee; he had seen the pain in the man’s gray-blue eyes at the death of any soldier. He had never seen anything like the expression that now haunted that gallant gentleman with the loss of Jackson.
And still, the war went on.
Lee had made the decision to carry the war northward once again. There were very good reasons for doing this, the main one being that while the fighting went on in the South, it was the South that was being stripped of her resources. It would be far better to have the southern armies stripping the North for food and sustenance.
Also, there were many northerners wearying of the war. McClellan—Little Mac—the general Lincoln had removed from command, was now moving politically against Lincoln. He was planning to run for president of the U.S. McClellan wanted to sue for peace. If Lee could just bring the brutality and horror of warfare north, more and more northerners might begin to side with McClellan, and look forward to a negotiated peace. Then the Confederate States of America could move on separately.
On the western front, Union troops were beginning to move against Vicksburg, Mississippi. It was imperative that Vicksburg be held—the Mississippi River was one of the lifelines of the Confederacy.
The Rebels needed the war to end.
Daniel felt a growing heat begin to move in his veins. They would soon be traveling through Maryland once again.
Beauty had promised him time. He didn’t know when it would come; he just prayed that it would come soon.
Don’t let her forget me, he prayed in silence to himself. Don’t let her forget that I am coming…
As always, the emotions knotted tightly within him.
Callie could not forget him.
And certainly not the very beautiful morning of the twenty-fifth of May.
It began as a morning much like any other for her, for she awoke very early, dressed, and hurried down to feed the animals.
She felt the first twinges in her back while she was doling out grain and hay, and the next came while she was throwing out feed to the chickens. She barely noticed the first, and the second only gave her a momentary qualm. It was really too early for the baby. He—or she—wasn’t due until June. When June came she had planned on moving into town, near Doctor Jamison. He might not approve of her, but he was a good and kindly man and he’d not see anything bad happen to her or an innocent infant.
She still had so much to do. The vegetables in the garden were almost ready for jarring to see her through the winter. She was in the midst of making several little winter sacques for the baby, and she had recently gone into a frenzy of spring cleaning.
The cleaning didn’t matter, the jarring didn’t matter. In fact, very little seemed to matter when the third pain came streaking through her spine and around her middle like a bolt of vicious, clutching lightning.
She was in the back, by the paddock, and she staggered with the onslaught of it, reaching out for the fence. For a moment she was so startled that she didn’t even think; then it slowly dawned on her that she must be having the baby.
The pain faded. It remained with her for a moment, then it disappeared so completely that she began to wonder if she hadn’t imagined it.
Perhaps she had. She turned around and walked toward the well, drew up a bucket of water, and sipped a dipper full of it. She felt fine. Perfectly fine.
Still, perhaps she should lie down for a few minutes. She was here alone, with no one to care exactly what time anything got done. She very seldom received visitors from town anymore. Her condition was known, and on occasion, when she had gone in for supplies, old friends had actually turned their backs on her. It didn’t matter, she had told herself, fighting back the first sting of tears. When the war ended, when her brothers returned, she would take the baby and she would leave. She’d heard marvelous stories about New York City and Washington D.C., and she dreamed of a day when she could go there.
After she had seen Daniel.
And what? Apologized for the fact that she’d sent him to a prison camp?
He was coming back for her. He’d warned her that he would.
She felt a quivering take flight inside of her and she tried to swallow her thoughts of the man. She was always trying to do that. To forget the excitement, and the love, and the fear. The color of his eyes and the slow sensual drawl of his voice.
“Stop!” she commanded herself aloud.
But it was impossible to stop thinking of a man in her current condition. When people turned away from her. When she was so heavy that she dragged herself about.
When she could feel the movement of life within her.
Damn them all, she thought. She loved the baby, loved it fiercely. A tiny creature who would need her, who would love her and trust her, who would not condemn her.
She started to walk away from the well. She felt dizzy. She should lie down.
But even as she walked toward the house, she felt a sudden onslaught of water. It was so startling, soaking her skirt and her petticoat and pantalets, seeming to come like a river. She had no experience with human birth whatsoever, but having lived on a farm her entire life, she was very much aware that she had lost her waters, and that the baby must come soon, or die.
“Oh, no!” she cried softly to the morning air. She had never felt more alone. Nor had she ever felt such fear. Women died in childbirth. Frequently. She wasn’t terrified of death itself—too many people she loved dearly had already gone before her—but the idea of having her baby live with no one to find it or tend to it was terrifying.
She stood there a moment, drenched and freezing in the cool morning air. Should she try on her own to reach town? The birth could take hours, she knew that, perhaps she had time.
But even as she finally found movement and began to walk to the house, a pain was upon her again. It was so sharp and horrible that she screamed, heedless of the sound. She doubled over, shocked, stunned by the intensity of it.
This was going to go on for hours?
She grit her teeth against the pain, and then she tried to inhale and exhale with it.
She wasn’t going to be able to go anywhere. She was going to have to move very quickly. She needed to sterilize a knife for the cord, she needed blankets, she …
She needed not to be alone!
She reproached herself furiously for not having taken into consideration the fact that the child might come early. She saw pictures of herself too weak to force out the child. Bleeding to death. Dying with no one to hear her screams, or to care for the tiny life inside of her that she loved so passionately.
Move! she commanded herself, and with the pain still tight around her, she hurried into the house and into the kitchen, seeking a knife to sever the baby’s cord. Now she needed to gather fresh bedding and cloths to clean the baby and herself and tiny garments for the baby to wear.
She gripped the doorway as she left the kitchen. She was shivering like a blown leaf tossed in winter, trying to block her mind. But it was then that she saw a picture of Daniel. Laughing, casual, standing in the doorway, watching her. His smile so beautiful, his eyes so seductive. She could remember everything about him so clearly. The breadth of his shoulders, the bronze of his flesh. The feel of it, oh, the feel of it, so warm, so supple, so powerful, beneath her fingers. She could remember the way she had wanted him. Wanted so much she would willingly be damned for just one touch.
She remembered his anger, remembered his eyes.
She suddenly began to laugh. “Oh, Daniel! If you wanted revenge, here it is! No one could be more terrified than I at this moment!”
She started to laugh hard, but then once agai
n, a pain came around her. Hard, tight, instant, growing.
She’d been to Doctor Jamison. He had looked down his spectacled nose at her, and he had been totally disapproving of her. But he had told her that the pains might come slowly, that they might last all day. That she would be near to time when the pains came very near one another. Most first births took a long time.
Of course, there were exceptions.
“Oh!” Her laughter became a scream, but she didn’t care, there was no one to hear her. She was wet and freezing, and she didn’t care about that either.
She waited for the pain to ebb, and then she pushed away from the door. She started to walk through the parlor, anxious to reach the stairs.
Another pain came, before the first had really faded. Panic seized her, and then an agony unlike anything she had ever imagined. She buckled down on the stairs, fighting the tears that sprang to her eyes, fighting to retain some control over the awful pain. It clutched like rivulets, like fingers, starting at her lower back, sweeping all around the circumference of her abdomen. She could bear it in the front; it was the agony at her spine that was so very vicious. How much could she stand?
Whatever came. She had no choice.
She started to rise from the stairs. It seemed that the pain came immediately. She cried out and fell again, and for a moment, there was blackness, the pain was so fierce. The blackness lifted, and she ceased to care for her own life, or for that of her child.
She just wanted someone to walk in and shoot her and put her out of her agony.
“Dear, dear, dear!”
Dimly, she heard a voice. A gentle, soothing, female voice. Then she heard a clucking sound, and soft, gentle arms were around her. She blinked and looked up.
Helga Weiss was there, and Rudy Weiss was right behind her. It was Helga who held her, Helga who spoke softly, giving her strength, giving her assurance.
“Poor child, poor child!” she clucked again. “All alone here and soaking wet and the babe on its way. Rudy, we must get her to bed. And into something dry.”