Read the book: «The Soldier's Wife»

Chapter One

Jack Murphy hadn’t intended to go looking for the wounded man. He couldn’t hear him now, and it was likely that he had finally died, but for which heartfelt cause, Jack couldn’t say. The soldier they all heard calling from the battlefield could be one of their own or one of the Rebels—or it could be a ruse engineered by either side to draw some gullible soldier into the open.

He stopped crawling and listened intently. It wasn’t gullibility that had brought him out here, and it had nothing to do with the Golden Rule Father Bartholomew and the Sisters at the orphan asylum had done their best to teach him. His hands were still shaking badly, and he simply hadn’t wanted the others to see him like this. He was Jeremiah “Jack” Murphy, and Jack Murphy’s hands never shook.

The sweet, dank smell of scarred earth rose up from the ground beneath him, land that should have been plowed for spring planting by now, not fought over and bled on. He could hear his comrades in the distance, the quiet murmur of their voices. Every now and then, one of them laughed despite their recent ordeal. Little Ike was finally reading his letter from home, sharing it with the others. Jack envied him that letter. It had been a long time since he himself had gotten one from the only person who ever wrote to him, Elrissa Suzanne Barden, the girl who had promised to marry him when the war was over. The irony was that he hadn’t wanted to go to war at all. He’d enlisted because so many of the boys he’d grown up with in the orphanage had already joined. He’d always looked out for them; most of them had been culled from the dirty backstreets of Lexington as he had. They looked up to him. He couldn’t let them deliberately go into harm’s way without his overseeing the effort. He gave a quiet sigh. So many of them dead now, despite his determination to keep them all safe and together, their faces coming to him whenever he was on the verge of sleep, faces of the boys who had too quickly become men and then were gone. A line of clouds moved across the moon. He lifted his head, trying to see in the darkness. He couldn’t detect any movement, couldn’t hear any sound. Most certainly the wounded man had died.

His hands were steadier now, the tremors fading as they always eventually did. There was no reason for him to stay out here. He’d made what must at least seem like a humane gesture, and now he could go back. He could eat some hardtack and wish he had coffee to soften it. He could make Little Ike reread his letter. He could think about Miss Elrissa Barden standing in lantern light on a dark and windy railroad platform and try to remember her pretty face.

“Wait,” a voice said distinctly when he began to move to what he hoped was a less conspicuous place. The voice was close by, and he turned sharply in that direction.

“Will you...wait?” the man asked.

Jack made no reply. He was still trying to get his bearings. Where—and how close—was he? And how close was his musket?

“Please,” the voice said, feebler now. “I don’t...”

The moon appeared from behind the clouds, and Jack could just make him out in the semidarkness. Surprisingly, he was sitting upright, leaning against the wheel of a broken caisson. And he was farther out into the open field than Jack was willing to go.

“Wait!” the man said sharply when Jack was about to move away again. “I’m shot. Don’t leave me...out here. Please...”

Jack hesitated, his head bowed. This man was nothing to him. Nothing. For all he knew, he was the one who had shot him.

The soldier was weeping now, his sobs carrying eerily into the night. Jack waited, knowing if he waited long enough, he wouldn’t have to make the choice.

“Have...mercy...” the man said, the words suddenly lost in a near animal-like moan.

Jack clenched his fists. How many times had he been in this kind of situation no matter where he found himself? The orphanage. Mr. Barden’s dry goods store. The army. Always when he least expected it, a sudden choice between right and wrong would be staring him right in the face. It was as if his life were some kind of classroom, one where he was supposed to learn the principles of moral rectitude—and he was always getting called on.

Here’s another one, Jack, old boy. Let’s see what you do with this one.

And this one could get him killed.

The man grew quiet, but he was still alive. Jack had no doubt about that, just as he knew what Father Bartholomew would say:

It’s not that we don’t know what is right, Jeremiah. We always know. It’s that we don’t want to do it.

Jack exhaled sharply. All right, then.

He began to crawl again, making a wide circle to get to the wounded soldier without being seen from the far side of the open field. Whatever happened, however it turned out, Father Bartholomew and the Sisters, at least, would be happy. The Golden Rule and the parable of the Good Samaritan all rolled into one.

But he wasn’t about to take any chances. He made his way slowly. The closer he got, the more he could tell about the uniform—or what was left of it.

“Here, Reb,” Jack said when he had moved to where he thought—hoped—he’d be out of sight and could sit up. He pulled the cork from his canteen despite the color of the uniform, and he tried to get the man to drink from it. Most of the water ran down his neck. The smell of death rose from his body.

“Much...obliged,” Jack thought the man said. He couldn’t be sure because the soldier had suddenly hunched forward in agony.

“What...are you doing...out here, Yank?” he said when he could, his voice barely audible.

“Came to see what all the fuss was about,” Jack said, and the man actually laughed, a pain-racked laugh that immediately died away.

“Just to...keep me company, I...guess.”

“Or rob your pockets.”

“You’re out of...luck...there, Yank. I’m...going to ask you...to do...something for me.”

“I doubt I’ll do it.”

“I’m going to ask...anyway. You...got a...wife?”

“No.”

“Sweetheart?”

“Yes,” Jack said, despite the dearth of letters from Elrissa.

“You should have...married her before you...left...lest you end up...like me. My wife...she’s not going to know...what happened to me...if you don’t...tell her.”

“I can’t do that, Reb.”

“Take my...blanket roll,” the soldier said in spite of Jack’s refusal. “My letters...I couldn’t mail them. Take them—take everything. Her name is...Sayer Garth. She’s in...Ashe County...North Carolina side of...the Tennessee border. Anybody can tell you...where the Garth place is. Get them to her...tell her...Thomas Henry gave them...to you. Say I know how...hard she’s...prayed for me. I know...she wanted me...to be...ready if I fell. Say her prayers were answered...and I wasn’t afraid to die. Tell her...I don’t want her...to grieve. My little sisters...they’ll cry when they know...I’m not coming home, but...you tell them...I don’t want that. I don’t want any...sad faces. You say I went...easy. Don’t...don’t tell them about...the pain.”

The soldier was quiet for a time. Jack could see the rise and fall of his chest, but he couldn’t tell if he was conscious.

“I can’t save...her,” the man said abruptly. “Marrying her won’t be enough...if I’m dead.” He gave a heavy sigh. “I’m afraid...for her. I don’t know...what...to do. I swear...I don’t. I don’t know if it...was the right thing. I don’t know what to do!” He threw back his head suddenly and began to moan, overwhelmed by the agony of his wounds. “End...this...” he whispered.

“No,” Jack said. He knew exactly what the man meant.

“You were...ready enough...to take my life...this morning...”

“I’ll leave you my canteen—”

“It’s your revolver...I need.”

The man gave a long shuddering sigh. His head dropped forward for a moment, but then he lifted it and looked in Jack’s direction.

“First time...I saw her I was...eight years old,” the man said. “She was six...living...with her daddy’s kin. Rich people, they were. They came...to the mountains every summer. Came all the...way from...I can’t...no. No...I remember. Town on the Yadkin River. It was...bad there in the...in summer. They...always stayed in the...high country till...first...frost. Her people didn’t want her. Why didn’t they...want her? I never did...know. She tried so hard not to...vex them. Big scared eyes...she had. All the time. I told my...mama...when I got...grown...I was going to marry that...sweet girl...take her away from those people...that didn’t want her. I...wanted her. But I had to leave her...with those big...scared...eyes of hers come back again. She’s so pretty...so...pretty. Sayer...Sayer...if I could just see you...one last time...” His voice trailed away. Then, “I think I’ll have...some more of that...water now...if I might,” he said politely, as if they were in some situation where politeness mattered.

Jack lifted him upward and held the canteen to his lips. It was the only thing he could do for the man. If he still prayed, he might offer the Reb a prayer, but he was too weary and his emotions too raw. Even such a simple gesture as that was beyond him.

This time the Reb managed a swallow or two before he fell back against the caisson wheel. There was a breeze suddenly, carrying with it the sounds of the soft spring night. A whip-poor-will in a tall pine at the edge of the field, crickets in the grass, frogs in a ditch somewhere nearby. Not the sounds of war and dying at all.

“Graham?” the man said suddenly. “You listening to me, Graham!” He was looking directly at Jack, but Jack had no sense that he was actually seeing him. He grabbed on to the front of Jack’s uniform, his grip surprisingly strong. “Promise me! Promise you’ll help Sayer!” He made a great effort and lunged forward, his other hand clasping Jack’s shoulder. “Promise me!”

“All right,” Jack said, trying to keep him from falling on his face. “All right. Let go—”

“Give me...your word,” the man insisted. “Say it... Promise...me...”

“I promise,” Jack said to placate him, pulling the man’s fingers free from his jacket. The Reb began a quiet, but urgent mumbling.

“...teacheth my hands to war and my...fingers to...fight. Is Graham dead?” he suddenly asked as his mind shifted to another time and place. “I don’t... I can’t— Hey!” he cried, his attention taken by something only he could see. “All right, now! Get ready! Get ready! Sun’s in their...eyes.” He abruptly raised his hand as if he were about to give a signal, and Jack struggled to keep him from falling.

“Let’s go! Let’s go! Come on! We got ’em, boys. We got ’em!” the Reb said, his voice stronger now. He suddenly threw back his head and cried out. The terrible sound he made rose upward in a blood-chilling yell Jack had heard a thousand times in battle. He knew it had nothing to do with the pain. The Rebel soldier was shouting his defiance one last time, and it echoed over the battlefield and into the soft spring night.

But then the cry ended, suddenly cut short, and the still-raised hand fell onto the dirt.

* * *

Sayer Garth started as a pair of mourning doves suddenly took flight from a nearby rhododendron thicket. She couldn’t see any reason for it, no one coming along the narrow pathway leading down the mountainside to the old buffalo trace that passed for a wagon road. A cold wind blew off the mountain, and her hair swirled about her face. She pulled her shawl tighter around her and listened intently, but she couldn’t hear or see anything that might have caused the birds’ alarm. Even so, her heart pounded with fear.

“Please,” she whispered, and it occurred to her that all her prayers since Thomas Henry went off to war had come down to that one word. She felt it with every bit of strength she had whenever she thought of him, or the girls, or herself.

Please.

She took a quiet breath and waited. She was so tired of jumping at every little sound and shadow, of being hungry, of being on a mountain ridge alone.

“Thy will,” she whispered. “Thy will, not mine.”

For nearly four years she’d lived in the Garth family cabin with Thomas Henry’s two younger sisters. His mother, a kindly but frail woman, had died less than a year after he’d left. He had been gone so long! Sayer wondered if she would even recognize him when she saw him again. And how strange it was. Of late, in her mind’s eye, he always looked the way he’d looked when he was a boy. She could barely remember the dashing young soldier she had so hurriedly wed. The truth was she’d been too ill at the time to remember much of anything. She knew that he had suddenly appeared at her bedside early one bright Sunday morning and had informed her uncle, John Preston, and his wife, Cecelia, that he would be bringing a preacher that very afternoon, and ill or not, he intended to marry one Sayer Preston before he marched off to war. He wouldn’t be put off and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Sayer gave a quiet sigh because the truth was she didn’t really know if she remembered the incident or if she only knew about it because people who claimed to have been there had told her. She could recall the illness easily enough, the fever, the way her body had ached and sunlight had hurt her eyes and made her head pound so. She knew that she had said yes to Thomas Henry’s proposal and that she had worn a freshly starched and ironed—and far too big—nightdress borrowed from her aunt. It was much more elaborate than anything she’d ever owned. There were tucks all over the bodice and around the sleeves at the wrists. And so much lace—lace on the nightdress and the intricately tatted lace of the Spanish shawl she’d been covered in for decency. She remembered the beautiful butterfly-and-iris pattern of the shawl and the cedar-and-lavender smell of it—but not much else. She must have said the right words when the preacher asked, because their names—and the preacher’s—were written in the Garth family Bible, along with the names of two church-member witnesses. She thought that Thomas Henry’s mother had attended the ceremony, and the cook and the two hired girls had been allowed to come—which was only fitting since Sayer had spent so much of her time in their company.

But what she remembered so clearly had nothing to do with the wedding at all. What she remembered was a long-ago wagon ride from the railhead to the mountain house, and the way a boy named Thomas Henry Garth had stared at her the first day they met, stared and stared until she’d wanted to cry. She was used to living in her uncle’s house all but unnoticed—unless someone—her aunt Cecelia—decided she had done something wrong—and she hadn’t known how to withstand the scrutiny of this fair-haired boy with the gentle brown eyes. She remembered, too, the first thing he ever said to her.

I won’t bite you.

After a moment of forcing herself to return his steady gaze, she had been certain somehow that he was telling her the truth. He would never hurt her, and that belief was reinforced every summer because of the way his face always lit up when the train bringing her uncle and her aunt—and her—finally arrived at the railhead.

Thomas Henry was the one person in this world she knew she made glad, not because of anything she did or didn’t do, but simply because she existed. All through her childhood he had never missed waiting for the train, and he’d always brought a secret gift for her—some dried apples and cherries or pieces of honeycomb wrapped in brown paper, and once, when they were both nearly grown, a pencil—just in case she might like to write him a letter once in a while.

The pencil had alarmed her at first, but he had immediately understood.

“You just write to me if you feel like it,” he said. “Tell me what it’s like living in a town. I’ve never even been to a big town with a railroad through it. I won’t write back,” he hastened to reassure her. “It might cause...” He hadn’t finished the sentence, but she had known what he meant. Her aunt would never allow it. She knew that, but she had already begun arranging in her mind all the things he might like to know about the place where she lived—the ferry that crossed the river and the trains. He’d especially want to know about the trains, what kind and how many. She could count the whistles she heard in the daytime and at night and give a good estimation of that.

Remembering her forbidden enthusiasm for the plan suddenly made her smile. She had been pleased with all his gifts, but she had truly cherished that cedar pencil. What little was left of it she now used to write to him while he was away fighting in the war, because it made her feel some kind of connection to him, and she sorely needed that.

She sighed. Why couldn’t she remember his face? Not long after he’d left, he’d written that he had had a daguerreotype made and had sent it to her. The daguerreotype had never arrived, and it seemed to her now that she very much needed it.

She stood watching the path a little longer, until she was certain that no human had disturbed the mourning doves. A sudden snippet of memory came to her after all. Thomas Henry, leaving her almost immediately after the wedding ceremony, taking her hands and pressing a kiss on the back of each one, despite the onlookers. And then he’d winked, the way he often did when no one was looking, and pulled the blue ribbon from her hair, the closest thing she’d had to a bridal veil. He’d stuffed the ribbon into an inside pocket in his uniform. “Now, don’t go and forget me,” he whispered in that teasing way he had. It had made her want to laugh and cry all at the same time. And then she’d given him the only cherished possession she had—a small Bible that had belonged to her mother.

“I can’t take this,” he said, clearly moved that she wanted him to have it.

“It’s so you’ll know,” she whispered.

“Know what?”

“Know I won’t go and forget you.”

No, she thought now. She would never forget him. It was only his face she had trouble remembering. She knew in her heart that she might not have survived her illness if not for God’s grace in the form of the gift Thomas Henry Garth had offered her. Marriage to him had given her a sincere hope for a better life. It was true that so far that life had been hard, but she thanked God every day for it. Thomas Henry had left for a seemingly unending war, and she had remained in the mountains, never regretting for a moment that she hadn’t returned to Salisbury with Uncle John and Aunt Cecelia on the train. She looked toward the cabin. Both of Thomas Henry’s sisters were dancing around trying to stay warm while they poured limewater into the pans of shelled corn to make hominy. Hopefully, some of it would actually hit the corn.

Amity was eight, and Beatrice was ten, and they both had the Garth brown eyes and curling honey-blond hair. Since Thomas Henry’s mother had died, they had been both a great responsibility and a great help. Sayer went out of her way to make sure they were aware only of the latter. She didn’t want them to ever feel the way she had felt in her uncle’s house. Her real worry was that she was neither brave enough nor strong enough to keep them safe. She believed she might have long since given up trying to hang on to Thomas Henry’s land if not for them. They were the true Garth family legacy until Thomas Henry came home again, and she hoped desperately that she wouldn’t fail them.

The winters had been particularly hard, and she had no doubt that they would have starved if it hadn’t been for old Rorie Conley, who lived atop the ridge on the other side of Deep Hollow. It was a short distance to Rorie’s cabin as the crow flies, but a hard trek down into the hollow and back up again to the other side on foot. The big sack of shelled corn she’d brought them on the back of a mule would last them for a while, and Sayer had taken great pains to make sure both girls understood that they were not to tell anyone—anyone—where the corn had come from, lest Rorie begin to suffer the same mishaps and accidents Sayer had: crops decimated by deer and other wild animals because of mysteriously downed fences; chickens and pigs stolen, supposedly by deserters from both armies hiding in the mountains; her one milk cow inexplicably shot.

The only clue Sayer had as to the cause of these troubles was Halbert Garth’s overconfident smile. Thomas Henry’s uncle constantly urged her—in the face of all her “bad luck” and her ignorance of farming—to write to Thomas Henry about the supposedly generous offer he had made to buy the Garth land. Surely, he kept telling her, Thomas Henry would want her and the girls to go live “somewhere safe,” though the Lord only knew where that might be. He had already written to Thomas Henry himself, of course, but he thought that it would be better for him to hear the truth from her. Halbert Garth didn’t realize how much of the “truth” Sayer was actually privy to. She knew that he had expected to inherit all the Garth land when his father died and that he considered the acreage Sayer and the girls were living on his birthright, to claim and to dispose of as he pleased, despite the fact that old Mr. Garth had made it plain in his unbreakable will that he intended the land to be a family legacy for all the Garths who followed after him and not the ante in some high-stakes Louisville poker game.

* * *

“Sayer! Sayer!” the girls suddenly called to her, and she began walking in their direction.

“Will you read to us after supper?” Beatrice wanted to know, twirling again around and around the pan of corn. Sayer suddenly imagined her all grown-up and dressed in a white gown with gardenias in her hair, dancing the evening away at the Harvest Moon Ball in Salisbury, the event Sayer had heard so much about when she still lived in her uncle’s house, the one she had known even then that she’d never be allowed to attend.

Poor Cinderella, Sayer thought a little sadly, thinking of them both. No white dresses and gardenias for us.

“What shall I read to you?” she abruptly asked, putting her fanciful notions about the social events in Salisbury aside. She smiled, because she already knew their answer. She had diligently tried to make sure that neither of them forgot their brother, despite the lost daguerreotype and the years that had passed, especially Amity, who had been only four when he left.

“Read us a letter from Thomas Henry!” they both cried.