“Colonel, my name is Tremaine. It would be quite impossible for me to bear a McKenzie child.”
He left the log, apparently unaffected by her words. He strode to her, a slight mocking smile remaining upon his face.
He stopped by her side. “You said you hadn’t really seen Richard for almost a year. No dead man comes back in dreams to create living flesh, Mrs. Tremaine. They teach you that in medical school. Excuse me, if you don’t care to join us, my ragged, skinny, pathetic body and I are quite famished, and since a wonderful meal is promised, I’ll leave you to your brooding sorrow.”
With a very correct bow he walked on by her.
Chapter 11
RHIANNON RETURNED TO HER field tent and stayed there.
To her surprise, she found that she couldn’t rest. She tried to get ready for bed, telling herself over and over again that she was tired. And though she felt moments of deep unease and discomfort, the anguish of withdrawing from the drugs she had abused did not keep her from resting either.
It was curiosity. She longed to join the McKenzies and find out what was going on.
Rachel had done so. Her ward didn’t come to bed until late at night, and then she said that she was exhausted, that she had spent the time watching Captain Jerome McKenzie as he slept. Then she had dined in Colonel McKenzie’s tent. The McKenzies were all charming, so warm, and they had all been kind and polite to her and grateful for all her help.
“Well, of course, they are Rebs,” Rachel said with a sad sigh, “but so many people in this state were your father’s old friends, so we know that they were decent, good, people.”
“Yes, we know that. But we are at war. Rachel, I never, ever said that all Rebs were bad people. But we don’t have to become the best of friends with the enemy.”
“I was having dinner,” Rachel said indignantly. She turned her back on Rhiannon then, bidding her good night.
Rhiannon lay there then in misery, wondering how the world could be so torn.
No one came near her during the night.
Jerome was not a model patient. Despite the fact that he knew full well—without both David and Julian reminding him—that he still ran the risk of infection and death, he wanted to be up and about not two days after his surgery.
Rhiannon had kept her distance from Jerome’s sick bed and the family McKenzie. Young Liam had brought her meals. She’d kept Paddy’s bandages changed and looked in on the few other fellows in sick bay. But she hadn’t joined the McKenzies for any family tête-à-têtes; she had, indeed, stayed as invisible as possible.
Admittedly, she had assumed that somewhere along the line Julian would have come to her, insisting she be more social, join them whether she was a Yankee or not. But he didn’t come near her.
On the afternoon of the second day, she sat in her tent, repairing a pile of clothing. It was well washed in the brook, but like everything else here, all but threadbare. She didn’t want to aid and abet the enemy, but seeing the fellows so shockingly attired—their privates could surely pop out of some of these worn trousers. And so she was sewing.
Rachel found her there. “My Lord, but that man is a demon! He’s trying to get out of bed, saying that he can heal just fine on his ship, and poor Risa is declaring that he hasn’t got a right to go kill himself when he has a baby boy, not to mention her. Julian is threatening to waste what drugs they have in their Confederate stores to knock him silly so that he’ll quit being such a—” She broke off, giggling. “Well, he said it, he did.”
“Said what?”
“Pain in the ass!”
“Rachel!”
Rachel sobered. “I guess he does have to settle down, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, he does. And you’re learning atrocious language from these Rebs.”
“Umm. Yanks don’t know atrocious language?”
“Don’t be cheeky,” Rhiannon said sternly, setting her sewing aside and rising.
“Where are you going?” Rachel called.
“To see the patient.”
She walked across the camp. Soldiers, busy at various tasks, stopped in their whittling or gun cleaning to glance up at her. All nodded in polite acknowledgment, and she bowed her head in turn as she moved quickly among them. Coming to the tent where Jerome McKenzie lay, she paused briefly. Julian was angrily telling him that he had to stay down at least another few days; Risa was furious and then in tears. David was trying to be a voice of reason, explaining the risk they ran of infection if they moved him and he started hemorrhaging.
She stepped into the tent. Jerome, who looked a little feverish, which she thought he must be to be so cantankerous to people who loved him so much, had been in the middle of a tirade. Seeing her, he fell silent.
The others, who had been facing him where he lay on his cot, turned to her. “Ah, well, here we have the black widow,” Julian said irritably.
She ignored him as she walked past him to Jerome. She shook her head, looking him right in the eye. “Don’t you even think about leaving.”
Somewhat to her surprise, he hesitated. “Why?”
“You’ve heard that I can see ... things. I’m just telling you—don’t go now.”
“If I do?”
“If you do ...” She broke off with a shrug. “All right, you want the entire picture? There’s a storm due. You’ll get caught in it—”
“I’m an excellent sailor,” he challenged.
“So you are. But this time a wave is going to hit your ship.”
“What is my ship’s name? Can you see that?”
“The Lady Varina.”
Julian let out a sniff. “All of Florida knows the name of your ship, James.”
“Hush up, Julian, please, she’s telling him not to go!” Risa pointed out.
“Indeed. Pray, do go on, Mrs. Tremaine.”
Rhiannon gritted her teeth. “A wave will hit your ship. You’ll be unbalanced; you’ll fall. The fall will tear your stitches, you’ll bleed profusely, and lose consciousness.”
“And I’ll die?”
“Without you at the helm, your ship will go down, and your entire crew will die.”
“I’m very young, Jerome,” David Stewart said. “I don’t want to die. Especially not for a bloody storm!”
Jerome smiled slightly, glanced at David, then back at Rhiannon. “And if I don’t sail?”
Rhiannon found herself glancing up at Jerome’s beautiful wife. The woman watched her so eagerly, and with such hope. A fellow Yank. Married to this fellow here. The scourge of the seas. She should let him die. But she felt the warmth of Risa’s gaze, the gratitude in it, and she felt that she wasn’t being a traitor to anyone to help this woman—she was, after all, the daughter of a Union general.
“You’ll have another child next year.”
“Oh!” Risa said, flushing as she found everyone staring at her. Her husband grinned broadly. “Boy or girl?” he asked, amused.
“Another boy.”
He looked at Rhiannon again. “I’ll survive to see it?”
“You’ll live,” she said softly.
He watched her, his lip curling slightly. “Through the whole war?”
“I believe so.”
Still watching her, he lay back in his bed. His large hand covered his wife’s where it lay upon his shoulder.
He shrugged. “Well, then, I guess I’m bedridden a few more days.”
“Great. We tell you all about the risks of blood and death, and a Yankee comes in and beats us all,” Julian murmured. “Risa, he needs—”
“I know, Julian. Cold cloths; I can feel that he’s a bit warm.”
“Damn, Julian, don’t go getting offended. I mean, I could lie here and die worthlessly, or move and die doing some good, that’s the way I was seeing it until ...” he broke off, watching Rhiannon again. He pulled Rhiannon closer to him. “I’ve heard an awful lot about you, Mrs. Tremaine. From before the war.” He glanced at his cousin. “Remember Rede Corley?”
“Yeah.
He was in a group of boys commissioned into the artillery right when the first fighting started,” Julian said.
“She kept him from heading out in a worm-eaten old dinghy one day when he had a hankering to go fishing. Worked for her father back then.”
She looked at Julian. “I saved him before the war, of course. He wasn’t the enemy at the time.”
“But I’m the enemy right now,” Jerome said. “Maybe you’re plotting to keep me from a strategic Rebel sweep.”
She hesitated. “Maybe I’m trying to keep you alive because your wife might one day talk some sense into you, sir. Excuse me, please, will you.”
She spun around and exited the tent. She was shaking as she did so.
She headed back for her own tent, afraid she was going to fall. To her dismay, Risa McKenzie came running behind her.
“Once again, thank you so much!” She paused, hands on her hips, shaking her head. “You’re amazing,” she whispered. “And you really see so clearly.”
Rhiannon hesitated, then opted to tell the truth. “Mrs. McKenzie, honestly, I didn’t see a blessed thing. But I thought that if other people believed what I said ...”
Risa McKenzie started to laugh. She reached out, ignoring Rhiannon’s stiffness, and hugged her fiercely. “Thank you, thank you, so much! If there is ever anything I can do for you ...”
Unnerved, Rhiannon eased herself from Risa’s hold. “Just don’t let on that I’m a liar, please?”
“Never, never!” Risa promised. “Again, if there’s anything—”
“Perhaps there will be. When you go back to St. Augustine, I believe I’ll be coming with you.”
“Yes, that’s what I’ve heard.”
“I’d like to work with the wounded in the north. On the battlefield. Perhaps you can arrange it for me. With your father.”
Risa smiled. “My father will be very glad to have you assisting with his injured. He’ll think that God has granted him an angel.”
“Or a witch.”
“Women sometimes have to be a little bit of both, don’t they?” Risa asked softly.
“Perhaps. And oh!”
“What?”
“Please, don’t mention to Dr. McKenzie what I plan to do.”
“Why ever not?” Risa asked, surprised.
“Men being men, I believe he’ll think I’m risking the dangers of the damned if I head off for a battlefield.”
“Ah ... yes, I know, they go off and fight, and we wait in anguish, and we are to take no risks! I promise, I’ll keep your secret,” she swore. Then she left Rhiannon, spinning around to head back to her husband.
There was always general excitement with any arrival at the Florida base camp along the St. Johns.
Miles before reaching the camp, riders and those on the river could be observed by pickets. It was the only way to keep the camp safe. It was in an accessible area; the Yanks at St. Augustine knew that it existed. But until some general came in determined to throw away an unacceptable number of Union lives, there would be no attempt to clean out the camp. There was a strange acknowledgment of one another along the river. Prisoners were exchanged; messages came and went. Tobacco, coffee, salt, and more were often swapped.
Soon after Julian’s argument with Jerome, riders were seen on the trail approaching the camp. The Yankees were not in Jacksonville at the moment, and as Julian watched them approach—Paddy, on crutches, by his side—he commented that they might have headed south from Jacksonville. There were three riders, and they were moving cautiously. They were regular army boys, information quickly sent back by the first lookout, and they appeared to be from a Georgia unit, though it was getting harder and harder to tell. Julian ordered two men out to meet them and escort them the rest of the way.
He stood in the trail beneath the pines, waiting, as the men rode their sorry-looking nags into the camp. He saluted the officer, a slender old man with thick gray hair and a thick beard to match. The fellow saluted in return, dismounting from his horse, and removed worn mustard gloves to shake Julian’s hand. “Captain Christopher Rogers, Georgia regulars, Doctor. Private Justin Ewell and Corporal Evan Haines, accompanying me. Official business from the front line of the Confederacy, I’m afraid.”
Julian shook the man’s hand, amazed that his Yankee brother could be so accurately aware of what was going on in the enemy’s camp. “We’re to be ordered out?” Julian asked politely.
Captain Rogers arched his brow, surprised. “I’d meant to bring this up a mite more delicately, since the powers that be are aware of the problems here in your home state.”
“Naturally,” Julian murmured. “And we are fighting for states’ rights, aren’t we?”
Rogers arched his brow a bit higher at the bitterness in Julian’s tone. Julian shook his head. “Sorry, Captain, excuse my manners. Will you join me in my tent? I do happen to have some brandy not immediately required for medicinal purposes.”
“Thank you, Dr. McKenzie.”
Julian stretched out an arm, indicating his canvas quarters. “Paddy, you’ll see to the men?”
“Aye, sir.”
Once seated behind his camp desk, Julian poured brandy. Rogers sipped it, and the expression on his face as he savored the brew was such that Julian felt a moment’s guilt; Rogers obviously hadn’t had brandy in a long time. He was an old-timer and still willingly accepted the hardships of war, taking whatever assignments were given him.
He’d been damned lucky himself. Yes, the state was stripped, and he got no help from the central Confederate government. But he’d had Jerome to see to it that his Florida boys did have what medicines could be procured. Often, though his father remained loyal to the Union, his mother managed to send him smoked hams and dried beef from their plantation in Tampa, just as he’d received supplies from his Uncle James down the peninsula.
That, he realized, was about to change.
Captain Rogers sighed with pure pleasure. “Thank you, Dr. McKenzie.”
“I’m delighted to see you enjoy it so. I think we can spare a bit more.”
Rogers smiled, accepting another portion of brandy. “I’ve heard your cousin was shot up, and that his ship is in. The Yanks know it, you can be sure. You’ll have to take care.”
“Yes, the Yanks know it,” Julian agreed, waiting for Rogers to go on.
“Well, down to it, then, I’m here to tell you to report just outside of Jacksonville in five days’ time. You’re to be commissioned to the regular army and sent north to help with the surgical needs of the Army of Northern Virginia.”
“My entire company?”
“Oh, no, sir, they’ll be sending another young surgeon here. And you may choose your assistants, of course.”
“Why me?”
Rogers shrugged. “You’ve managed to keep people alive. You’ve written letters on the subject of sanitary conditions—”
“I wrote personal letters to my cousin,” he said, eyes narrowing.
“Yes, and your cousin, Captain McKenzie, used paragraphs from those letters when writing entreaties for supplies that could improve conditions when operating on the battlefield. The major medical officers of the Confederacy have asked for assistance, Doctor.”
Julian drummed his fingers on his desk. “Will I be working with my cousin?” Naturally, he would be glad to be with Brent, though at the moment he’d like to strangle him. How could Brent have shown others their private correspondence? But he knew that they were both aware that filthy conditions and unsanitary water caused more deaths than bullets and sabers combined. Brent had done what he felt he had to do. He couldn’t have know the consequences.
“I’m afraid Brent McKenzie is being sent on to a grave task indeed.”
“Oh?”
To his amazement, old Rogers blushed. He leaned forward, as if there were others in the tent who might overhear their conversation. “Prostitutes!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why, sir, it is an epidemic. Where men will fight, women wi
ll go. We have so many men downed by diseases of the ... well, you know, sir, diseases of the flesh—”
“A problem with crabs?” Julian couldn’t help but ask bluntly.
Rogers became pathetically pink. Julian decided a little kindness would be in order. “Sorry, sir.”
“Much more than that. There are women ... so many women. Well, Dr. Brent McKenzie is being put on special assignment to try to contain some of these awful diseases and get our men back in the field.”
Julian lowered his head, a small smile curling his lips. Well, it was war. Here he had been, sick at heart at leaving his state. He sure as hell couldn’t be angry with Brent anymore. Brent had been passionately dedicated to the men on the field. And now he was being sent off to deal with prostitutes! He was surely fit to be tied.
“I’m sure my cousin will rise nobly to the task ahead,” Julian said.
Rogers nodded somberly. “You’ve been noted by the important men in medicine, sir, and they are pleased with your records of success.”
“I’ve not had to work under the same conditions as many of the men in the midst of the major battles.”
“You’ve treated men in the field.”
“We’ve had skirmishes here. I’ve worked with the same illnesses and the same injuries, but never under some of the truly horrifying circumstances about which I’ve read. From the major battles, sir, the numbers of wounded, missing, and killed are staggering.”
“Staggering,” Rogers agreed. “That’s why you’re in such high demand. Don’t be too dismayed, Doctor. Your Governor Milton spends hours writing to the Confederate government, decrying the way his state has been stripped and left to fend for itself with so little defense. The Confederacy has deep sympathy for your plight here. When the summer campaigns are over, there’s a good chance you’ll be relieved of national duty and allowed to come back home. That’s not a promise or a guarantee, sir. You know that I can’t give that. We all go where we’re ordered to go.”