Chapter 16

Burning Bridges

“Nurse Lemont, a word.”

Bernadette looked up from the freshly boiled and dried linen bandages she was rolling. “Yes, Dr. Mabbs?”

The doctor opened his mouth, hesitated and looked around the utility room at the other nurses busy straightening up equipment. He pressed his lips together, breathed audibly out through his nose, then started again, “Outside, if you please.”

He turned and left the room, not even waiting for Bernadette’s word of assent.

Bernadette followed him, of course. Followed him as he strode down the long corridor towards the window where they sometimes seated soldiers who were allowed to get up to give them a change of scenery. Bernadette had helped Adam to the chair at the window the day before—an action that partly had filled her with joy about his new-won ability to stay, if only unsteadily, on his legs and partly had made her dread the consequences of his much-improved condition.

Dr. Mabbs halted his steps at the window, put his hands on the sill and looked out for a moment before he turned around abruptly. His gaze seemed to pierce into Bernadette for a heartbeat or two, then faded into something she couldn’t fathom. Uncertainty? Surely not.

He straightened his posture, crossed his arms over his impressive chest. He stared at Bernadette, watched her with his jaws working, and then his gaze went down to a spot on the floor, just between the two of them, and he nodded to himself, repeatedly, while his jaws still chewed on nothing at all.

It was frightening. His silence unnerved Bernadette even more than his usual sneered malice and barely concealed threats did. While Dr. Mabbs’s hostility was something with which she’d learnt to deal, this unfamiliar hesitation was incalculable.

Clearly, he had something on his mind. And clearly, it would be no good.

“Miss Lemont,” he eventually started, and even though his voice lacked its usual haughtiness, his low, icy tone ran down Bernadette’s spine like a shiver of foreboding. “I think it is time to discuss your future here.”

She swallowed even though her mouth was completely dry. She wasn’t able to utter a single sound; all she could do was stare at him. She began to feel lightheaded.

His smile was poisonously sweet. “And about that Yankee-friend of yours, of course.”

There was darkness creeping onto her from the edges of her vision, tiny black spots that blurred together and started to blot out the light completely. She couldn’t breathe properly, nausea rose up from her stomach, her legs felt like they would give way any second…

And then there was an arm around her waist, and a hand on hers, surprisingly gentle, and she was guided down.

“Do take a seat, my dear,” a voice said softly. “Head down. Breathe. In. Out. Deep breaths. There, that’s it. Breathe.”

“Adam?”

“No, I’m afraid not.” And the bite was back.

***

One hand on the iron headboard, one on the mattress, Adam cautiously pushed himself up from the bed. Keeping all his weight on his good leg, he let go of the bedstead and reached for the cane that was propped at his bedside table. He held onto it with a death grip and carefully shifted from his left foot to his right. Leaning heavily on the cane, he tried to support himself as much as possible on it rather than his still unsteady leg. Half disgusted, half embarrassed, he noted that his arm shook nearly as badly as his leg and that he broke into a sweat almost instantly.

Bernadette had told him to make a show of how weak he still was, of how much his leg still troubled him when he exercised, but, honestly, he didn’t have to make it much of a show: he was weak as a kitten, and his leg…his leg hurt as soon as he put any strain on it.

He made a step forward, just one, took a deep breath, made a second step. A third. He nearly stumbled upon the fourth, caught himself, and, clinging to the cane, stood; just stood, swaying and breathing through the pain, waiting for his blurring vision to clear.

The only thing he was aware of besides the pain was the pleasant, genteel voice of one of the town’s ladies reading from Melville’s Moby-Dick to one of the other soldiers. Most of the women worked as voluntary nurses, like Bernadette. They cleaned wounds, changed dressings, administered medications, washed patients and fed them if necessary. This particular lady was one of the few who only came to read to the ailing men, to talk or to help them write letters home. Hearing her soft murmur in the background had often given Adam a surprising sensation of peace; and now her recitation of Moby-Dick gave him something to hold onto; something on which he could focus, something that pulled him out of the haze.

He contemplated going back to the bed. Go back to the bed. What an exaggeration. He was only four steps away from it. Four steps—and if he ever wanted to put a longer distance between himself and that bed, he would have to stay on those darned, shaking legs now and push on.

Push on. One step, two steps, three steps. Stop and breathe. One step, two steps, three steps. Stop and breathe. One step, two steps—he’d reached the wall. Leaning against it, relishing its solidity, he closed his eyes, breathed evenly in and out, and enjoyed his triumph: it seemed his leg had given up and just accepted that he wouldn’t take no as an answer. The pain, incredible as it seemed, had subsided. It wasn’t gone, but had waned to a tolerable level.

A tiny voice in his head told Adam that he wouldn’t actually make it the few miles short of two hundred from Charlottesville to Gettysburg like this, but he decided to conveniently ignore it. He might not be healed enough to walk as he pleased, but surely he was considered healed enough to become a prisoner. Dr. Mabbs had been subtle about it, but Adam didn’t make the mistake of misunderstanding the doctor’s hints that he soon would be too well to stay in a Confederate hospital. And he had certainly noticed that there was always someone keeping an eye on him when Bernadette helped him outside to the chair next to the window at the end of the corridor.

Dr. Mabbs might not have repeated his original threat, but Adam knew it still was valid and that he could be transferred to prison any day. It was high time for a second attempt at escape—and this time, he’d better not fail.

He pushed himself from the wall, and with the loss of its support the pain returned, as did the blurring of his vision.

“Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon…” reached his ear from the far side of the room, and then there was the image of the girl with the face like a porcelain doll in his head again. She stared at him with those big, bright blue eyes and…

The smell of the sea, a dark garden, a kiss. Longed for, desired, forbidden, yet savoured…and then, “Um, Fiona, you know I’m going to graduate next year?”

God, he was young, so young. A student.

“What’s your dream, Fiona? What do you want from life?”

“I want to find a man I can love and who loves me. I want a family, children, a nice home.”

“Is that all?”

A silvery laugh. “Adam! Is there more someone can wish for? A happy life, no less. What more could I want? That’s the kind of life I want to live, that’s the kind of wife I want to be: the kind of wife a man would want. The kind of wife you would want, Adam?”

And his voice again, amazed but firm. “No, I wouldn’t want that.”

A slap. His cheek was burning. He knew he’d deserved it; he should never have kissed her. Never.

“How dare you, Adam Cartwright!”*

His hand flew up to his cheek, as if the stinging burn were still there; the cane clattered to the floor. He reached back to the steadying wall, missed it—God, where has the wall gone?—

“Are you all right?”

The lady’s eyes were concerned and green, and her face wasn’t that of a porcelain doll, so Adam felt it safe to let himself be ushered back to his bed by her. She helped him sit down, and went back to fetch his cane.

“Shall I call for a doctor?” she asked upon returning.

He shook his head. “I’m fine.” And he was. Shaken, yes, but all in all fine.

She raised an eyebrow, which he found irritatingly familiar, then shook her head, handed him the cane and went back to the other soldier. Soon Adam heard her resume her reading. “And besides, when a man is elevated in that odd fashion, he has no proper foundation for his superior altitude. Hence, I conclude, that in boasting himself to be high lifted above a whaleman, in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to stand on.”

Whaleman, pirate… The smell of the sea. He’d lived at the coast when he’d been young, had studied there—what?—had loved. Adam Cartwright—that was he. And Fiona…that was the woman he had loved but not…not enough? He picked up his notebook and added this new information to the record.

***

“Nurse Lemont, do not think I’m not aware of your…affection for this particular patient.” Dr. Mabbs stood tall, but he glanced down at his hands, which were touching at the fingertips so that they formed a triangle.

“Dr. Mabbs, I’m not—”

“I’m not stupid, Nurse.” The triangle of his fingers opened and closed a few times. “And I know that you are not stupid, either.”

She looked up. His tone was different; she couldn’t put her finger on it, but something had changed.

He actually looked at her, tried to catch her gaze. “Let us speak plainly, shall we?”

She nodded. Cautiously.

“You and I know that our Yankee soldier is ready to leave this hospital any day. He’s clearly out of danger of a relapse; the infection is well under control and his fever non-existent. I’ve done an excellent job on his healing, if I may say so myself.”

That he had. An excellent job, done by an excellent doctor whose work ethic demanded him to devote that excellence to every patient, whether in grey or blue. It wasn’t the attitude of every doctor at the military hospitals in which Bernadette had worked.

But, of course, Adam wasn’t fully healed yet—and even if he were, she wouldn’t admit it. “He’s still weak, doctor. He can’t stay upright for long, and his nights are still troubled. I fear—”

“You fear that I notice just how well he’s recuperated, m’dear.”

“I…no…” She shook her head.

“You fear that I will put an end to his far too prolonged sojourn in this institution.”

Her mouth worked wordlessly.

“You fear that I will arrange his immediate transfer to a prisoner of war camp, where he rightfully belongs.” He let his hands fall and clasped them behind his back. “And I am very much in the mood to do precisely that.”

***

Adam closed the notebook. He had recorded a lot of facts already, all seemingly conflicting—but they still had to make sense, still had to fit together somehow like a jigsaw puzzle. He only had to find out how to put it together.

But that would have to come later—when and if he survived, when and if he managed to escape imprisonment.

He’d talked to Bernadette about it, had insisted it was time to make another effort. She’d been reluctant, had reminded him he wasn’t strong enough yet. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait till his strength fully returned; he knew he would be taken to prison long before then.

In the end, Bernadette had given in. She’d asked him to wait a few more days to give her time to prepare everything, to make sure this time there would be no unforeseen obstacles.

No unforeseen obstacles, as if there could even be such a thing. Life consisted of unforeseen obstacles—even if Adam had forgotten that, too, his current situation would have reminded him of it. Bernadette had scolded him for being sarcastic, he had reminded her that the way to Gettysburg was long enough to provide a million obstacles, and she had stared at him.

“But we won’t go to Gettysburg,” she’d said. “I’ll take you further north. All the way to Canada, where you’ll be safe.”

“If I went to Canada, I’d be a deserter.”

“You’d live.” She’d frowned. “With me.” As if it made a difference.

“I cannot…I cannot be a deserter, Bernadette. I can’t…I enlisted. I’ve signed a contract. I can’t break my word.”

“Adam, if you return to your regiment they will just put you back on duty. They’d send you back into battle. You could get hurt again, you could get killed!”

“Bernadette…”

“And after I’ve fought so hard to keep you alive.” She’d sounded so bitter, but he couldn’t help her.

“I can’t just desert. I’m no coward.”

“Would you rather die?”

“I don’t want to die, but I also don’t want to conduct myself dishonestly.”

“No one would know it. No one knows you’re alive, no one knows you’re here. No one will know.”

“I would know it. I couldn’t live with that. Bernadette, there are men fighting out there. I’m one of them, I can’t forsake them.”

“Most probably they won’t even send you back to fight. Not with that leg of yours.”

“You’re contradicting yourself. But, anyway, it makes no difference.”

No, it didn’t make a difference. Not then, not now. But he hadn’t found a way to make Bernadette understand that his honour was worth more than his life, that he didn’t want to live without honour. He knew she loved him, she’d told him so many times, but how could she love his life more than his honour?

***

Adam had been right. It was time to get away, sooner rather than later.

Tonight. They’d have to flee tonight. What little strength Adam had regained by now had to be enough. And once she had him outside of the hospital she would make sure they’d head further north, to safety. Adam would recuperate there, and then they’d start a new life.

But how to make it outside without being held up again?

Bernadette was aware that she must have been staring, wide-eyed and her face colourless; and somehow she couldn’t escape the feeling that Dr. Mabbs was able to read her every thought right from her face.

“I know that you two attempted to leave that other night.” The doctor’s softly spoken words seemed to confirm her fear. He crouched down, brought his face at the same level as hers. “Miss Lemont, that man isn’t good for you.”

She blinked.

“He will bring great misery upon you. Disgrace.”

“He would never—”

He held a hand up. “Disaster, if you prefer. Whatever it is, you’ll get hurt.”

“I—”

“I will not stand aside and let that happen.” And then he reached for her hand, but pulled back. “Nurse Lemont…Bernadette…you could do better. You are a very pretty woman, and I…” Averting his gaze from her face, he trailed off.

“Dr. Mabbs, you can’t—”

“I can’t let the prisoner escape, and I can’t let him lead you into disaster. I will not allow that.”

She pressed her hands to her mouth, trying to hold back a sob. There was no reason to hide her distress: he knew she was beaten. She hated him more than ever.

“I’m not inhuman, though. I might be able to present an alternative.”

She looked up.

“I…I do care for you, Nur—Bernadette. And there was a time I thought… In any case, I do understand how important that soldier’s safety is for you. Your safety is just as important to me, you see.”

He did try to break through the air of haughtiness that always wafted around him, she had to give him credit for that. He was still crouched before her, with his shoulders slumped forward, his eyes trying but not always succeeding to hold her gaze, and his hands not knowing where to be put. His voice was soft, his words came haltingly—he seemed almost human.

He took a deep breath. “I believe I have an offer you cannot refuse.”

***

Adam sighed. Bernadette might try and coax him as much as she liked; he would not yield. He would do the honourable thing and go back to Gettysburg in the hope of finding his regiment—and people who knew who he was. In one respect Bernadette had been right, though: it was going to be a hazardous venture. He was sure someone—Dr. Mabbs most probably—was going to alert the military or perhaps the Home Guard. He was going to be hunted throughout the whole journey, or at least as long as he was on Confederate territory. He could be caught, and then he wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight. He could get himself killed. Could get them killed.

Could he, in good conscience, expose Bernadette to that risk? How could he? He loved her, didn’t he?

And the image was back: Fiona. The kiss, oh the kiss. So much desire, so much longing—and still so much sense of being not-right. He’d loved Fiona, too, and yet…

His head began to hurt. Fiona and Bernadette…was there a similarity? Was that the reason he kept thinking of Fiona’s blue-eyed face and that improper kiss?

The kiss, the kiss…and then another memory:Adam, I don’t think you are even capable of doing something dishonourable. You never do something you think is wrong. At the cost of your life, at the cost of your reputation—whatever it takes. He heard it as if she was standing right next to him loud and clear in his mind, that voice with the genteel clipped British accent. This time the tone wasn’t that of a governess but of someone much closer, someone much more important: there was warmth in it.

He still didn’t know who she was, but she was right. He might not know who Adam Cartwright was, where he came from, or what he did for a living, but he knew that Adam Cartwright was a man of honour—and the British lady knew that, too.

***

“Tonight you and I’ll be on duty. I might be very busy with some administrative work in my office for at least an hour, right after midnight. Too busy, actually, to leave the office for any reasons. And if a patient decides to leave the hospital on his own account, I certainly wouldn’t become aware of it before…let’s say early morning. Sufficient time to be well away from here, even for someone who has…mobility problems.” Dr. Mabbs came to a dramatic pause and watched Bernadette intently.

She just looked back, stunned.

“All that I…request is that you will still be here come morning. And that you…stay here. At my side. As my…wife.” He paused, just for the moment it took him to clear his throat. “I can offer you everything a woman could want: a house, considerable wealth, a good reputation. A respectable life. It’s up to you. All that’s needed is for you to say ‘Yes, I do.’”

To her utmost surprise, she wasn’t as shocked as she could have been. First of all, it was a chance. A genuine chance, a true chance—the only chance Adam would get. She gazed at her hands. They didn’t tremble, they didn’t sweat. They lay calmly in her lap, palm up, open and relaxed.

It was Adam’s only chance, and had she not said she’d do anything to help him? That she wouldn’t do anything that brought harm to him? That she would save him, even if it were the last thing she’d do? And now his rescue lay in her hands. She clasped them together and raised them to her heart, then looked up at Dr. Mabbs.

“Yes,” she said, amazed at how little time it had taken her to make her choice. “I do.”

He smiled. He actually smiled. It didn’t make him more handsome, but it made her think that perhaps he could be more than her custodian for the coming years.

He took her hand, pulled her towards him. He wants to seal it, shot through her head, but she wasn’t ready to surrender, not yet, not as long as she still felt the ghost of Adam’s lips on hers. However, Dr. Mabbs—does he even have a Christian name?—only raised her hand to his mouth and breathed a feathery kiss upon it.

“I am honoured,” he said, and it sounded more sincere than sarcastic. “And who knows, perhaps, in time you might even come to like me again.”

***

You never do something you think is wrong. It was wrong to go anywhere other than to Gettysburg. You never do something you think is wrong. It was wrong to put Bernadette’s life at risk. You never do something you think is wrong. It was wrong to allow her any longer to think they could have a life together. You never do something you think is wrong. It was wrong to hurt her, but he’d have to do it in order to avoid all the other wrongs—and it would be better to do it now before she gave up her life for him.

He would go alone.

He just hoped Bernadette would forgive him one day.

***

Bernadette hesitated before she opened the door to the hospital room. On her way down the corridor she’d felt absolute calm, a peaceful serenity. Now that she was about to tell Adam she would not go with him, poise deserted her: what had been simple and clear a minute ago, now seemed chaotic and disturbing. She still was sure she’d done the right thing—but she would have to hurt Adam now, and hurting Adam was the last thing she wanted to do.

She closed her eyes. There was no other way. She had to do it. Had to get it over and done with as quickly as possible—and before she could reconsider her decision.

And so she entered the room. She headed straight to Adam’s bed in the far corner, passing one of the town’s fine ladies who was reading to a patient. She vaguely perceived that the book was about ships on the sea, and she wondered why a lady who lived in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains had chosen a book like that.

She forgot that question the moment she arrived at Adam’s bed.

He looked flushed, as if he’d exercised and overdone it again, and somehow agitated. She wanted to check his forehead for fever—but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She needed distance. She couldn’t touch him, or she’d never…

“We have to talk,” she blurted—both to prevent him from speaking, and herself from thinking.

“What…?”

“You have to flee tonight,” she said without preamble. Well, what kind of preamble could there have been anyway? I’m going to marry Dr. Mabbs in order to make him turn a blind eye on your escape? She clenched her teeth. No, those words couldn’t cross her lips. Adam would never allow her…he would never accept that sacrifice. He couldn’t know.

“I know I don’t have much time anymore, but why tonight?”

I’m going to marry Dr. Mabbs in order to make him turn a blind eye on your escape—No, no, no.

“There won’t be a doctor in the ward tonight, from midnight to one. It’s your only chance. We don’t know when that will happen again, and even tomorrow could be too late. You are well enough to be sent to prison.”

“An hour. That should be enough. Even with that leg.” He nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll be glad to get onto the cart, though.”

“The horse. There will be a horse.” She turned her gaze to a point half an inch from his frowning face. “I’ll tell you where.”

She heard him exhale. Then there was a long pause before he inhaled. “I…see,” he said.

She looked back at him. “Adam…”

He still frowned. His mouth worked, wordlessly, and his gaze wandered over her face as if he wanted to read something in her expression—or as if he was searching for words.

She didn’t want to hear it. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to hear it. Not now. Not when she had to talk first.

“You’ll have a good lead on whoever will track you. They won’t notice your absence until morning. I’ll make sure of that.”

Now he just stared. His face was completely unreadable.

Bernadette took a deep breath, careful not to heave up a sob with it. “I will stay here. I can’t go with you.”

“What happened? Has someone…has Dr. Mabbs…? Are you in trouble?”

He was concerned. Of course he was: he was Adam. He wouldn’t go if he felt she was in danger. Why did he make it so hard for her to not hurt him?

“No, I’m…all right. Everything is…Adam, it’s not that. It’s just that I realised…that I came to understand…” I’m going to marry Dr. Mabbs in order to… No! “I don’t love you, Adam. I’m sorry, but I don’t. Not…not that way. Not the way I thought I did. I’m so sorry, but I can’t…I can’t spend my life with you. It wouldn’t be right for either of us.”

His face was blank. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “Don’t…it’s all right.”

But it wasn’t. Releasing a strangled sob, Bernadette gathered her skirt and fled the room.

***

He sat there for a long time after she’d gone, looking at his empty hands, listening to the distant sound of the reading lady’s voice. He wasn’t sure how he felt. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel. He wasn’t sure if he felt anything at all.

He had nerved himself to hurt Bernadette, but while he’d still been looking for the right words—were there right words to use when you hurt a person?—she had gone and hurt him. It shouldn’t hurt, it really shouldn’t considering he didn’t love her that way, either, but it did. Rejection always hurt. He knew that. Something told him he’d had his fair share of rejection in the life he couldn’t remember, more than his fair share. Painfully, Bernadette’s words had reminded him of that.

So he did feel something. Hurt.

And he felt something else: relief. It was just a tiny, low voice, but it was there, undeniable.

Oh, and shame. He certainly felt shame. Shame for being relieved; shame for not having eased Bernadette’s burden by telling her he didn’t love her that way, either—even though she might not have believed him, and, really, what good would it have done to lash out?

And yet he loved her as much as a man could love a woman without being in love, and he would not part from someone he owed so much without telling her that. Taking his notebook from its hiding place, he tore a page out and began to write, “My dear Bernadette…”

***

Through the window at the end of the corridor, Bernadette watched the sun going down over the mountains. Slowly the terrible feeling of having done something horrible made way for the knowledge that she had done the right thing. The honourable thing. She smiled. Adam, with his talk about honour, should be pleased with her—but Adam could never know what she’d done. What she would do.

Perhaps it was better that way, not just for Adam but for her, too. Perhaps Dr. Mabbs was right, and she would, one day, come to like him. Love him, actually. Perhaps never the way she loved Adam, but she loved Adam so much that maybe a little less love would still be more than enough.

And she would, after all, get the life she’d always anticipated: married to a reputable man, well provided for, with her own house, maybe with children.

Running away with Adam had been, perhaps, only a romantic dream. Something she’d dreamt about when she’d been a young girl and believed that one day a knight in shining armour would come and abduct her from the grim dragon’s den.

Now she had to laugh. It seemed that she had to rescue her knight in shining armour from the grim dragon—and spend the rest of her life with the beast. Beauty and the Beast… Would it turn out be a story with a happy ending?

Yes, it was better this way, as much as it hurt. And if she was completely honest with herself, she didn’t really believe that Adam was still free. There had to be a woman out there, waiting for him to return; and it gratified Bernadette to know she hadn’t stolen from that woman, and that Adam would find his way back.

“Be safe, Adam,” she whispered into the red-golden spectacle of sunlight. “Be safe.”

***

One hundred and eighty miles north-northeast, Hoss Cartwright, who’d nodded off in his chair, woke up with a start. In the bed next to him, Juliet was whimpering in her sleep. Her hands twitched, her shoulders jerked, and she made anguished sounds, none of which she’d done while she’d been in the throes of fever.

Murmuring, “Shh,” Hoss cautiously put a hand on her shoulder—and jerked it back as if he’d touched fire when Juliet suddenly bolted upright, emitting what was almost a shriek.

“There,” he said, “don’t you fright none. It’s all right, old Hoss is here for you.”

Juliet’s hands fluttered in front of her, as if she wanted to grab the air before her, then she turned to Hoss and dug her fingers into his shirt.

“He’s coming,” she whispered.

“What?”

“He’s coming, Hoss,” she repeated, this time sounding even more urgent. “Adam. He’s coming.” And then she sank limply into his arms, and he couldn’t wake her up again.

When he asked her about it the next morning, she remembered nothing.

__________
Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

***