“Hang on,” Taylor said. “We’re going to get out of here. I’m going to find McKenzie. We’ll make it out.”
He didn’t know if he was believed or not; the soldier’s eyes closed. But then the man spoke again. “Three of them. The boy the doc went back for ... and the woman. The nurse ... she went after him when the pole snapped and the canvas fell.”
The woman.
Tia.
Who else would have gone after a McKenzie when threatened with certain death, trapped under canvas in the wake of a roaring inferno?
A shudder ripped through him and he turned, looking at the field of charred canvas. He raced for the fallen field hospital roofing, grabbed it firmly with both hands, and started pulling it, managing to move it no more than a few inches. Naturally, fool, he charged himself. It took a dozen men to set it up!
The woods were burning hotter, closer. He raged against the impotency of his own strength, then he gritted his teeth, his anger calming with the realization that he would lose this battle for sure if he didn’t gain control of his fear and fight with logic.
Again, he saw the fallen pole, picked it up, searched until he found another, then slid both under the canvas. He could feel the heat around him continually intensifying as he worked, but he forced himself to take each step, securing the canvas to the poles with rope, then tying the poles to the wagon like a giant travois, and urging the mules farther and farther forward as the great canopy began to move, foot by foot, rather than inch by inch. The mule power gave him the strength he needed to move the fallen tent.
Then he saw her.
She lay on her back, rolled toward him by the shifting canvas, face white beneath the soot, black hair spread out in a giant fan beneath her. He hurried to her, kneeling at her side, brushing a strand of stray hair from her face and seeking a pulse at her throat. She shifted where she lay, groaned. Her eyes opened, and she stared up at him with disbelief.
“Taylor?” she said incredulously.
“Yes, it’s me.”
She shook her head. “Taylor, you can’t be here, you can’t. It’s a Rebel field hospital, the canvas collapsed, it’s all burning ...”
“Tia, I am here, you little fool, and it’s no strange quirk of fate. I’m here because I was looking for you. You’re not supposed to be here; you’re supposed to be in St Augustine.”
“I had to be here. There was no choice.”
“There’s always a choice. But we can’t argue now. Can you move?”
The words came out harshly, spoken with a mixture of fear and relief. Perhaps it was good that he sounded so blunt and angry—his words brought a spark to her dark eyes. “I can move, yes, and I have to—oh, God! Brent ... Brent!” She struggled up, using him to grab on to, then pushing him away to rise. “Brent, where in God’s name is Brent? I saw him, I was trying to help him with the last man when ...”
Taylor rose to his feet behind her. He realized that he was shaking; he was so very grateful that Tia was alive. She was racing toward a pile of rubble—cots, surgery tables that had fallen when the tent collapsed. Brent was facedown in the debris.
Taylor reached Brent right behind Tia. She fell down beside him, trying to move him carefully, calling his name.
“Brent, Brent ...”
Something nearby exploded, perhaps a discarded powder bag, a rifle gripped in a dead hand. Flames seemed to shoot all around them.
Taylor reached down for Brent. “Taylor, we don’t know his injury—”
“It’s death if we don’t move now, Tia!” He collected Brent swiftly in his arms, maneuvering through the rubble to get him to the wagon.
It was heavy laden with the dead.
The soldier who had spoken to him earlier had opened his eyes. He saw Taylor grit his teeth in a fleeting dilemma as he tried to find a place in the wagon for Brent.
“Colonel, roll young Ted Larkin there off the wagon. A funeral pyre here is as good as any. You’ll have to leave some of the dead, if we’re to get through with the living.”
The man was right, and finding the spirit and will to live now that there seemed to be hope, he rose as best he could with his newly amputated leg and shoved the body of the dead man off the wagon, making room for Brent. Not even sure that Brent was still breathing, Taylor turned back for Tia, knowing they were truly running out of time. The air was barely breathable at all; the oxygen was being surely sucked from it.
“Tia!”
She was in the rubble. He ran to her. She was trying to lift the shattered pieces of a camp cot from the body of a soldier. Taylor started to help her, then saw that the man’s eyes were open, staring heavenward. He was dead.
“He’s gone, Tia.”
“No, he just had a wound to his foot.”
“His lungs were crushed, Tia.”
“No—”
“Tia!”
She started struggling wildly against him. Desperate, he slapped her, hard. Stunned, she reeled back. He stepped forward, caught her arms, and threw her over his shoulder. He ran from the canvas and rubble toward the wagon. A large tree, the trunk ablaze, suddenly fell ahead of him. Tia screamed, and he jerked back just in time to avoid it.
“Colonel, move it, move it, move it, move it, sir!” the soldier from the wagon shouted above the renewed roar of the flame. He had dragged himself to the driver’s seat.
Taylor didn’t need any more encouragement. He ignored the instinctive fear of fire, made a running leap over the tree, and catapulted toward the wagon. He nearly threw Tia atop it, then crawled aboard himself, even as the soldier cracked the whip high over the mules’ heads. They leapt forward—spurred by panic and fear. In a matter of seconds, they were tearing down the trail like a pair of racehorses. Someone within the wagon screamed. Taylor, flat on his back at Tia’s side, gasped for air, glad at least that a few of the men were alive. He rose quickly then, but Tia had already staggered to a kneeling position in the wildly jolting wagon. She was seeking a pulse from Brent. She looked Taylor’s way. “He’s breathing!” she said.
“Good. Damned good.”
The woods were still on fire, but the intense heat seemed to be fading with the breeze. They were recklessly racing from the worst of it. Explosions from behind them signified the ignition of the trees as the fire spread, but they were leaving the worst of it.
Then, the wagon wheels hit a pothole. The mules kept shooting forward. The wagon began to break up. The injured screamed as they were flung far and wide from the crushing boards. Taylor halfway rose, throwing his body in a brace over Tia and Brent, burrowing against them as they flew through the smoky air.
They landed hard in the dirt. For a second Taylor couldn’t move. He heard the groans and cries around him. They had escaped certain death at the hospital site, but as he looked up, the tall oaks in front of them burst into flame. He swore, staggering to his feet, then he bent down and secured the unconscious Brent in his arms. “Stay with me!” he commanded Tia as she rose up, and he started to run, carrying his human burden around the blazing oaks. Miraculously, they had come upon a little pond in the midst of a copse. The damp earth by the pond kept the fire at bay. There were riders arriving there, shouting. Someone met Taylor as he staggered forward with Brent. “I’ll take him, Colonel.”
He handed Brent to the man. “There are more in there, just beyond the trees.”
He turned. Tia had started back. “Tia! Damn you!” She was past the flame. He chased after her. She was wasting no time, reaching for the arms of a fallen amputee, ready simply to drag him around the flames. With others behind him, he wanted only to stop Tia. “I’ve got him!” he shouted, lifting the man. “Go!”
She ran. He heard a terrible crackling sound. He looked up. A huge branch was coming down.
He looked at Tia. Her eyes met his.
He heard her shrieking ...
Then the branch fell. With barely an instant to spare, he leapt back. The fire roared and blazed high before his face. He ducked around it quickly. She sta
rted racing toward him. “Tia, no, the other way!”
A weakened tree limb snapped and fell. It struck her on the shoulder. She collapsed to her knees. She rose, fell again ...
Soldiers were coming, finding the injured, sorting them from the dead.
Someone picked Tia up. Another came to Taylor and relieved him of the man he carried. He raced forward with renewed energy, caught up with the man carrying Tia.
“She’s my wife!”
The soldier paused, letting him take Tia. Her eyes opened, caught his. Closed again. He kept moving forward until they came to the water. He went down, ripping her skirt, soaking it, cleaning her face. Her eyes opened again. She stared at him.
“Brent?”
“Safe.”
“You can’t be here!” she whispered.
“But I am here,” he told her.
Behind him, a throat was cleared. “I don’t mean to interrupt this reunion but ... you shouldn’t be here, sir.”
Taylor frowned and turned. Behind him stood an officer. Beyond him, the injured had been taken from the wreckage and the flames. There were many soldiers surrounding them now, efficiently moving men into conveyances to bring them farther back from the flames. The night remained filled with the sounds of the dry trees catching and burning, but the sounds were becoming background noise, and even some of the shouts of the men seemed to be fading into the distance.
He noted what he hadn’t taken time to realize before.
Like the officer who had just spoken to him, the soldiers here were all Rebels.
“I’m Colonel Josh Morgan, sir,” said the Reb addressing him. The man was too young to be a colonel, Taylor thought. He was too young to be out of a military academy. “Your courage, sir, has been extraordinary. I’m sorry to offer you harm or discomfort in any way, but ... well, sir, we’re still at war. And no matter how it grieves me, I must inform you—you are now a prisoner of the Confederate States of America.”
He had a chance, and he knew it. He rose, slowly, carefully, assessing the man. The colonel stood by his mount, a bay mare. It was unlikely that any of the men here were going to shoot him in the back. All he had to do was steal the horse, and ride back into the flames.
He saw the colonel’s eyes—and knew that young Josh Morgan was trying to give him just that chance.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, and he reached past the man, gripping the horse’s reins and meeting the young man’s stare. Then he burst into action, leaping on the horse.
And desperately—perhaps ridiculously—racing back toward the inferno. There had to be another way out.
But Tia didn’t understand. Or she did. He heard her scream his name. “Taylor!” She was racing after him, coughing, choking, stumbling ... but coming after him. He spun around on the horse. “Tia, go back!”
“Taylor, damn you!”
The fire lit the night. Smoke was everywhere, blinding him. She nearly reached him, then doubled over, coughing, gagging. She fell.
He reined in, came to her, dismounted. Her eyes remained closed as he lifted her into his arms. He didn’t know if she was really unconscious, or if it had been a ploy to bring him back.
Whichever, it didn’t matter.
He would not risk her life. He might dare the fires again himself, but he would not risk bringing her through the inferno again.
She lay limply in his arms. Perhaps it was just as well; the trail behind him now blazed with such a fury that it would be pure suicide to risk it. He carried Tia, aware that the good warhorse followed him as closely as a well-trained dog. The Rebels watched him return, the red of the blaze painting the night behind him.
He handed Tia over to one of the Rebel medics who had raced toward him. She was one of theirs; they would see to it that she was taken far behind the lines, and given all possible medical attention. Still, he watched the medic walk away, hearing the grate of his own teeth, feeling tense enough to snap.
He walked wearily to the far-too-young Colonel Morgan.
“Sir, it appears I am your prisoner.”
Chapter 21
WHEN TIA OPENED HER eyes again, it was to daylight. She had no idea where she was, though she quickly remembered the terrors of the day gone by. She bolted up, and was startled to realize that she was in a house, in a pleasant room with cheerful blue and white wallpaper, polished paneling, and handsome furniture. Her charred, torn clothing was gone. She could smell a faint reminder of the fires—the scent was in her hair, she realized. But she was dressed in a blue-flowered cotton nightgown. It still hurt a little to, breathe.
“At last. You’re awake!”
Startled, she turned, and found Mary, Brent’s wife, smiling at her from a rocker. She had not kept vigil in an idle manner, but was busy winding bandages from cotton reels.
“Mary!” Tia said, sitting up.
“Well, you were out long enough.”
“I was? How long? Taylor ... Brent ...”
“Um ... you’ve been out about a day and a half. Brent is fine; he’s already back working.”
“But he was unconscious—”
“Not for long. I reached you all soon after Morgan did. Brent was already coming around then—you were the one we worried about.”
“And what about ... Taylor? Taylor ... he was there, after the canvas fell, and we made it out of the woods, and then he grabbed a horse and ran back into the fire.”
“And you ran after him, you were hurt, and he brought you back.”
Tia closed her eyes; she could see the flames again, feel the awful heat. See his eyes as he sat on the horse. The way he looked at her, across the fire. She shouldn’t have followed him. Why had she done so?
Because he was riding back into the flames. It was as if he had lost his mind, the road was becoming an inferno.
“Then ... if he brought me back ...” She hesitated, and looked at Mary. “What did they do with him?”
“They had little choice. He was taken prisoner. He’s with a group of men who will probably be escorted to Andersonville. He’s at a farmhouse now. Brent will know more later.”
“He’s—all right?”
“He’s fine, Brent was told. The soldiers who took him were very respectful. He dragged Confederate injured out of those woods, you realize.”
Tia nodded. “Yes, of course, I know.”
“I’m sure when Brent returns tonight, he’ll know more. Of course, you’ll want to see Taylor. I’m sure Brent can arrange it.”
“Mary, where are we now?” Tia asked, looking around.
Mary smiled suddenly. “My father’s house. I haven’t been back here in two years. But I have a wonderful, wonderful maid. We grew up together. She’s just two years older than I am, and my father saw to it that we were taught up in the classroom in the attic. She writes to me, always assuring me that she’s kept the house up. When my father died, I didn’t care much. But now ... well, it’s good to be home, except that ...”
“Except that?”
“Well ... we’re not really far behind the confederate lines, and the lines are shifting all the time now. And, well, some of the neighbors have reported that it doesn’t much matter which army robs you blind when the soldiers are hungry.”
“How close are the lines?”
“Sometimes,” Mary said softly, “you can hear the shelling.”
“My God, that close? Then more soldiers are dying—near us! We should probably be with Brent.”
“He’ll come to the house tonight. He said that you were not to leave here under any circumstances.”
“Wonderful! Now Brent is telling me what to do!”
“Tia, Brent wants you to stay alive. You must take time to heal yourself.”
“I must take time? What about Brent? He was out cold for hours, but he’s back to work!”
Mary shook her head, smiling. “You’re forgetting—it’s Brent’s surgery.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Tia said, unconvinced.
“We’ll be back with
him soon enough.” Mary shuddered. “Last night, I died a thousand deaths in my heart, seeing the fires, not being able to reach you, waiting, wondering, praying ... it is the waiting that is the hardest job of all in this war.”
Mary was right.
Waiting was the hardest job of all.
But Tia waited, and wondered, and she was afraid, dying to see Taylor, not wanting to see Taylor, and not understanding herself at all.
Taylor’s imprisonment was not too grim; he was treated decently by the Rebs. He’d even heard that his old teacher and friend, Master Robert E. Lee, knew he’d been captured, and had ordered that he be treated with the utmost respect.
Owing either to Lee’s intervention or to the reports that he had risked his own life to save Rebel soldiers, he had been sent southward toward Richmond to be held at an old farmhouse with other officers until he could be transported to a prison camp. The farmhouse had apparently stood empty for some time—or housed the headquarters of one army or the other on some previous date. It had a strange feeling of emptiness. Torn curtains, once white and beautiful, drifted in a gray dance when the breeze blew. Dust covered the finely carved mantle. Windows had broken and fallen.
It was said that the men being taken now were to go to Andersonville—reputed to be something of a death sentence. The overcrowding was beyond imagination; disease ran rampant. The death ratio was horrendously high.
For the moment, however, his prison was not too grim. Days were spent in the fields—the fields had been mowed down at some earlier battle or skirmish, but there were still a few large oak trees offering shade. The Rebs had little but musty, maggot-ridden hardtack to eat, but what his captors had, they shared. Different men came, and shared the information of the war.
Most of the Confederates had thought that Grant would strike and sidle away—as the Army of Potomac usually did.
Grant sidled, but not away. He moved on to Spotsylvania Court House. The fighting continued, fast and furious. Union losses, they reckoned, were over fifteen thousand. Who could really count? The South ... well, she wasn’t losing so many, but then, she could ill afford any losses.