Chapter 21

To Honour and Obey

It was amazing what a few nights of undisturbed sleep, some hearty meals, and the knowledge of being among friends could do for a man’s health, Adam thought as he put on freshly laundered blue uniform pants and a starched grey shirt. He was still sore in many places, with his right shoulder still aching, his right leg still stiff and uncooperative whenever he attempted to put weight on it, the tender scar tissue still easily aggravated by the friction of the trousers wool on the light bandage. He wasn’t exactly “healed”—the army doctor who’d treated him had been very clear upon that—but he was as good as they were able to make him right now. Everything else would need time.

“That rebel surgeon did an excellent job,” the doctor had said. “Outstanding.”

Unfortunately, that didn’t mean Adam would have full use of his leg anytime soon.

“Think in months rather than weeks.” The doctor had prodded at the scar very carefully, and raised his eyebrow at the tell-tale twitch and Adam’s sharp intake of breath. “Or years, perhaps.”

All in all, the surgeon hadn’t told him much more and nothing much better than Dr. Mabbs: he would have to take it easy for a long time, give his body time to build up strength and his leg time to re-grow bone material and perhaps even a little muscle tissue. He would have to depend on a cane for an unforeseeable time, would experience pain, especially at weather changes and under stress, and would most likely limp for the rest of his life.

It didn’t sound too bad. Seemed quite manageable, actually. Now that the all-consuming fatigue he’d felt for so many days had gone, now that he could eat and drink as much as he wanted and could handle, he felt ready to go back to normal, to do something useful. Now that he didn’t have to be taken care of anymore, he wanted to start taking care of things himself again. He didn’t mind the pain, or the cane, or the limp. Those were things he could deal with. But being inactive was something that ate at him, had actually eaten at him ever since he’d been wounded—but now he finally would be able to change that and to go back into action.

He stuffed the wool shirt into his pants, fastened the buttons on the fly. He smiled wryly. The uniform he’d been given had seemed to be made for a man with a much slighter build. It looked like something his brother Joe could wear. But when he’d pointed that out to the orderly who’d brought it, the man had snorted.

“When was the last time you looked into a mirror?” he’d said and looked pointedly at Adam’s bare chest.

It had been that very morning, that last time Adam had looked into a mirror, as he’d set about shaving. He’d been taken aback by the gaunt look of his face, the prominent dark rings under his eyes, and the hollow cheeks. He’d decided then that shaving—and exposing the full extent of his emaciation—could, and should, wait. So he’d just trimmed the wild growth into something resembling a groomed beard.

Of course, he hadn’t seen more than his face in that mirror, but he didn’t need to see more to know that his long sickness had taken more than a pound or two from him. And as if to prove it, the Joe-sized uniform pants hung loose and low on his hips and had to be bundled up with a belt to sit as they were supposed to.

Perhaps when Fritz had said Adam was only skin and bones he’d not exaggerated after all.

Fritz. For some reasons Adam had not expected to see the boy ever again, but he’d woken from a nap yesterday afternoon to Fritz Boettcher’s excited face.

“You’re a sorry sight,” his comrade had greeted him. “Skins and bones. But seeing you only half-dead sure is an improvement.”

Adam’s mind had still been fuzzy with sleep or he would have drawn the conclusions himself. But as it was, he’d asked, “Improvement over what?”

“To thinking you’re dead, of course.”

“You thought me dead?”

“I knew you were dead.” Fritz nodded for emphasis. “Adam, you died in a field hospital. There were witnesses. I buried you.”

“You…I—what?”

“You—well, a soldier who was thought to be you died. He was brought to the hospital nearly dead. They tried to save his life, amputated his leg, but he died after a few days.”

“But how did they think it was me? You must have recognised—”

“Adam, you know how it was. There wasn’t time to go around and ask people if they knew a wounded man. They concluded who you were from what they found in your pocket: General Ward’s message and the letter to your wife.”

General Ward’s message. God, that had been how…. It was amazing how things meshed together, how every bit of new information now dovetailed into the last holes in his memory: the papers General Ward had given him to deliver to General Schurz, his frantic run through enemy fire, the bullet that had taken him down, his futile attempts at getting up and not failing his mission, the soldier who’d appeared out of the smoke and noise and to whom he’d handed the general’s papers. He remembered it as if it had been only yesterday: how he’d reached into his coat and taken the bundle of papers out. He must have caught the letter, too, accidentally, and so—but…but he hadn’t written a letter to Juliet. Not while he was at Gettysburg.

Unless…Oh, my. The letter that wasn’t a letter. Lupus est homo homini, man is wolf to man. The diary…that wasn’t a diary, either. And certainly not a letter. But of course, it must have looked like a letter to Juliet. He had written her name on it. Not her address—for it was meant never to be sent—but her name. Oh, yeah, he’d had to write her name on it, of course, he had. Had to tidily write her name on a letter he was about to throw into the fire the next day. Why hadn’t he burnt it right away, why? He could only hope…

“They didn’t send it, did they?”

“What?”

“The letter. They didn’t send it to Juliet, did they?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask her about it.”

Now Adam had been truly confused. “Ask whom?”

“Your wife.”

“You talked to my…? How? When?”

And then he’d heard the whole story. Fritz, bereft of the protection of both his older brother Karl, who’d died in his arms the day before, and his sergeant and substitute guardian, Adam, had been as careless and vulnerable as only an always closely supervised younger brother could be, and subsequently been wounded in one of the very few minor skirmishes in which the XI Corps had been involved during the second day of the battle.

He’d been devastated when, upon regaining consciousness after a few days, he’d been told that Adam had died, and Fritz would never have the chance to tell him how much he felt he owed him. He had arranged to have Adam buried next to Karl on one of the large cemeteries that somehow had seemed to materialise everywhere in Gettysburg. Left behind to heal properly when the Union troops had moved southwards following Lee’s army, it had given him time to see to everything, including to commission headstones for both Karl and Adam. During those weeks of recuperating, he had visited the graves daily. As he’d gone on the cemetery the day before he’d been sent after his corps, he’d met Juliet and Hoss there—to his utter surprise but also to his great comfort, for talking to them and telling them all he knew had made him feel he’d done at least something—if not for Adam, then for his family.

The longer Adam thought about it, the less of a surprise it was for him. Of course Juliet would want to see his burial place. Adam had seen death notices to other soldiers’ dependants, and he knew how formulaic those were, how vague and empty. Naturally, Juliet would want to know more, would want…answers. As a reporter—and a person who loathed being ignorant—she knew that answers didn’t come to you on their own. That answers were things you had to pry from people, you had to look for, you had to ask for. Like Adam, she hated to be inactive, to be not in charge.

Oh, no, it wasn’t a surprise she’d gone and searched for answers herself. It was a surprise, however, that the family had let her go.

Well, maybe not.

No one, at least no one of his family, would be able to hold Juliet back if she’d set her mind to something. No one would have been able to keep her back from going on her quest. Joe would rather wrestle a mountain lion than cross Juliet, Pa was too concerned he might not find the right tone and inadvertently hurt her, and Hoss was putty in Juliet’s hands anyway.

At least they’d had the sense to send Hoss with her. Hoss, of whom she thought as a friend, a confidant, a brother. Hoss, who’d catch her if she fell. Hoss, who’d offer his broad chest to lean on, and his heart, unconditionally. Hoss, the only one of them from whom that offer would be unreservedly accepted.

Hoss…who’d be just as shattered as Juliet, but would still find the strength—and the love—to recognise Juliet’s distress behind her wall of impeccable manners and composed indifference, and to tear down that wall and keep her from falling apart behind it.

Lord, what had he done to his family? They had thought him dead. Not missing: dead.

Adam had been glad to learn that General Schurz had seen to it that a telegram had been send to the Ponderosa. But of course, that telegram wasn’t enough. Not by far.

I need to write more letters home, he’d thought. Long letters, happy letters. Let them know I’m all right. Always. But how could he ever make it up to Juliet? All the letters in the world wouldn’t make her forget, wouldn’t take away what he’d put upon her.

He’d have wallowed himself deeper and deeper into self-incrimination had not Fritz pulled him out of it as he’d told him about how they’d found Leopold Hohmeyer’s mangled body in a swale at the outskirts of Gettysburg—and Brigade General Schimmelpfennig alive and kicking in the garden of a private town house, where he’d stayed for days, hidden in a shed to avoid capture by the enemy, until the battle had been over.

“They said he was smart. A hero of some kind,” Fritz had hissed. “A hero, Adam, because he was clever enough to hide from the rebels.”

He’d leaned forward and looked at Adam with an intensity in his eyes that had seemed foreign on his mercurial face, whose youth miraculously had not been touched by the war. “Thank you for not allowing me to become that kind of hero,” he’d whispered and squeezed Adam’s hand. “Thank you.”

And again, he’d reminded him of Joe then—more than ever.

Adam slipped into his boots, put on the Prussian blue coat, buttoning it methodically. He was straightening the coat tails as the orderly came back into the room.

“It’s time, sir,” the man said.

Adam checked the fit of his coat once again. This time, he would face General Schurz a proper, immaculate soldier. He brushed over the shoulder straps—one golden stripe on each end, insignia of his new rank—adjusted his collar. Grabbing his cane, he turned to go.

“Coming.”

***

The report General Schurz received from Lieutenant Cartwright was interesting, enthralling—but didn’t contain very much usable information. Cartwright had spent two and a half months recovering in a hospital, not transferred to prison only by sheer luck and because of the fact that while he’d been suspected to be an enemy, no one had actually been sure he was one. Of course, no one would have spoken openly around him or given him any other opportunity to gain information.

Schurz was sure Cartwright himself withheld certain details of his adventure, too. Nothing crucial, just…the exact course of his flight remained woolly, his escape almost unbelievably lucky. The general suspected that the friendly nurse whom Cartwright had only briefly mentioned had played a much bigger part in the whole scenario, had been more deeply involved than the lieutenant let on. A gentleman never tells, Schurz thought, and he was torn between wry amusement and faint indignation. He had a hard time refraining from inquiring further—and keeping a smile to himself.

Cartwright’s encounter with the fugitive slaves seemed another lucky coincidence—both for him and the escapees. The lieutenant, however, was determined to see the advantage clearly on his side.

“I’d never have made it without Toby and the others,” he said. “They had no cause to burden themselves with a white man, and an injured one to boot, yet they took the risk. I’m forever in their debt.”

He didn’t seem to be aware that the refugees were in his debt, too—an oversight that Schurz registered approvingly and that made Cartwright a man after the general’s heart.

Schurz had fought in what he called two wars: first, in 1848, the March revolution in Germany, now the war between the Northern and Southern States in his new home country, America. Both times he’d stood up to help make his country a better place, a place where people could live in freedom and self-determination. All people, no matter their background—or colour of skin.

He’d always been a political man, one who knew the importance of social justice, of education for everyone and of freedom of will. He had become immersed in the abolitionist movement and in politics shortly after he’d emigrated to the United States; he’d supported his wife Margarethe as she’d opened a Kindergarten in Wisconsin, which practised the idea of offering every child a preparation for primary school, no matter their ancestry, a few years ago; he had left his position as ambassador to Spain to come home and support his country in the war against the Southern Rebels—and against slavery. Cartwright seemed to be cut from the same cloth. A patriot, yet not blind to what went wrong in his land. A man with a deeply inhered humanity, and a determination to make things right, tofight for what was right.

Which didn’t make it any easier to tell him what Schurz had to tell him.

The general was brought out of his musings by a soft hemming.

“I’ve heard Toby and the other men decided to enlist,” Cartwright said, perhaps a nuance louder than strictly necessary—was he repeating himself? “Maybe it could be arranged that Toby will be assigned to one of my squads. I would very much appreciate that, Sir.”

General Schurz sighed inwardly. And here it comes: the difficult part of this conversation.

“Lieutenant, I’m afraid…” How to say it, how to phrase it without making it a repulse? He cleared his throat. “Lieutenant Cartwright, you won’t have any squads.”

“Pardon?”

“I have here,” Schurz picked a paper from his desk and waved it in Cartwright’s general direction, “a report from Surgeon Major Waterman. It states clearly that you are not fit for military service.”

“I understand, sir. For how long will I have to be off duty?”

Schurz leaned back in his chair. He put the paper down, not even pretending he had to check it. This time he sighed audibly. “For ever,” he said.

Cartwright stared. He didn’t flinch, didn’t blink, didn’t frown. He stared.

Then he puckered his lips, closed his eyes, briefly, and looked back at Schurz. “Why?”

“Because you are not fit for military service. And you won’t be for a very long time.”

“But I could—”

“No. You can’t. You are, Lieutenant—and please forgive me my bluntness—you are crippled. You were informed about the extent of your injuries, I believe, and about the time they will take to heal—if ever.”

“But there surely are ways—”

“We need able-bodied soldiers, Lieutenant. We want this war to end as soon as possible, we want to defeat Lee and his Rebels as soon as possible—and we need fit and strong men for that. Not men who can’t stand without the support of a cane.”

There was a short flash of irritation on Cartwright’s face, come and gone so quickly that Schurz could have imagined it—had he not fully understood where it came from.

“Please, don’t think we don’t honour what you’ve done for this army, for this land. Because we do. We were lucky to have a man of your integrity and spirit with us. You served us well, very well. Now it is time we serve you. You’ve done your part, now let us do ours.”

“I’ve served for less than five months.” It sounded flat. A mere statement. But a glint in Cartwright’s eyes said there was more. Frustration? Or…shame? “This is my country, General. I want to fight for my country. Can’t you relate to that?”

“I think you know that I can.” Schurz kept his rebuke short. Cartwright would understand him anyway. He was a smart man.

And as it was, the lieutenant looked down, for the first time. “I’m sorry, sir. That was uncalled for.”

“It’s all right; I understand this isn’t easy for you.” Herrgott, yes, he did understand. Of course, he did. If he just could find a way to make it more…graceful. “Lieutenant, I—”

Distracted, he broke off. There was commotion in front of the tent, angry voices, “No, you can’t—the general is in a meeting, he can’t be disturbed.”

He turned to Lieutenant Di Scompiglio, who, with his slouched shoulders and bowed head, looked as if he’d prefer melting into the ground to having to observe more of the conversation, and gestured towards the disturbance. “Take care of th—”

He choked on the word as he heard another voice from outside. “You will not. Touch me.” A woman.

Then a man, a soldier. “Ma’am, you can’t…”

And another man, warningly. “She done told ya, fella. Ya better listen to her.”

And then the entrance flap was moved aside and revealed a woman, who slapped at a hand that tried to hold her back. With two long strides she reached the middle of the tent, her eyes finding and never leaving Schurz’s.

“General Schurz,” she spat. “I’ve travelled a hundred and twenty miles in the past three days, and I will not be dismissed by your underlings. I demand…”

Her eyes had left Schurz’s face while she’d spoken, as if something had told her the general was not the most important person present, and started to scan the tent. She trailed off as her eyes caught on Lieutenant Cartwright.

She heaved a deep, shuddering breath. Her angry features melted into something Schurz was sure was supposed to be a stiff upper lip. Her face was chalk-white; and for a moment Schurz feared she would faint—but he knew her better.

A man brushed past her, a civilian, a big man with a baby in his arms, and crossed the tent towards Cartwright, who’d risen from his chair and whose eyes darted back and forth, from her to him. The big man pulled him into a bear hug, with the baby somewhere between them, then held him at arms length and looked him up and down. “I’m sure glad to see ya, Adam,” he said, grinning broadly. “Even though there’s not much ta see. Boy, yer even punier than Joe.”

The Countess of Barnstoke still stood rooted in the middle of the tent. She stared at her husband, her eyes bright and watery, her features pale yet composed. “There you are, Adam,” she finally said, much higher pitched than before.

“There I am.” Cartwright’s voice was hoarse and barely audible. “There I am. And there are you.”

She made a soft sound. A choked sob, a suppressed cry, something of that kind.

He cleared his throat, then raised an eyebrow, smiled lopsidedly, and put a hand out to her. “But why are you not here?”

Now she allowed herself a sob, and a cry “Adam,” and she flew into his arms, pressed her face to his neck—and then Schurz took Lieutenant Di Scompiglio by the sleeve and dragged him out of the tent.

***

She was beautiful, so beautiful. More beautiful than in his dreams, more beautiful than he deserved her to be. She was warm and soft, affectionate and familiar, strong and caring: his wife, his friend, his family, his anchor, his home. His everything.

She was too pale and too thin, her curls lustreless and limp, and her cheeks hollow. And yet to him, she was beautiful. The most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

As she’d stood proud and tall in General Schurz’ tent, agitated and demanding and so present, Adam had yet been afraid she was just an apparition, another fever-induced hallucination, another waking dream. But then Hoss had appeared and embraced him—and no one could ever mistake Hoss’s materiality for a figment of his imagination.

Or Henry. Henry, who’d hung groggily in Hoss’s arm but had raised his head after the hug had pressed him into Adam’s chest, and stared wide-eyed at his father’s face, stretching his hand out to investigate the beard. If those two were concrete, Adam had concluded, Juliet couldn’t be an illusion either.

Her choked words had made her even more real. Her choked words, her unreadable face, her rigid stance. She’d been real and there, and he’d been overjoyed and terrified; and it had taken all his courage to look into her eyes, where he knew he would find only truth, no pretence.

Her eyes had been deep with pain and hope and—relief?—and something else that Adam knew had been reflected by his own eyes: love.

Although that love seemed different to what they had had before, seemed tainted with desperation, with doubt, and with unsated longing. It wasn’t a new facet of an old accustomed feeling, it was another dimension of it, unfamiliar, unsolicited—a dark version of something that should be bright and luminous.

There and then he’d sworn it to himself that he would do anything to make the desperation in Juliet’s eyes go away, the hurt, and the doubt; and to replace it with trust and fulfilment, and with certainty.

And yet he was writing this letter. While Juliet was nursing Henry in the adjoining room, and waiting for the chamber-maid to get a bath ready, he was writing this letter. He didn’t want to, and yet he did want to, he had to, he couldn’t help it, couldn’t look at himself if he didn’t write it.

“To the Secretary of War, Sir Edwin Stanton.

“Dear Sir,

“I apply to you to ask for an exemption. After having sustained a severe injury during the battle at Gettysburg, I was mustered out of military service. I do realise my physical limitations. However, I am convinced that I can contribute to the cause of the Union in other ways. As an engineer…”

Juliet would understand. He couldn’t just sit back and wait until others ended this war for him. He’d hardly done anything as of yet. He had accomplished nothing, changed nothing; suffered and brought suffering—but what for? The war still raged on, men still died on the battlefields, freedom still was a word just for white people, North and South still were further apart than moon and earth.

Juliet would understand he couldn’t just go home and be glad it was over for him. He wasn’t a coward, and he wasn’t a quitter.

There were many ways he could still be useful for The Cause. The Union Army was experimenting with new materials, first of all with vulcanite, the new, almost magic substance acquired by heat-treating raw rubber. General Blair had used rubber pontoon bridges instead of the usual wood and canvas constructions, which were heavy and hard to transport, and difficult to repair when damaged; whereas the vulcanite version was lighter, slightly flexible and more durable. Ever since Goodyear had invented the method of vulcanisation, people had come up with the most amazing applications—the rubber pontoon bridge, however, seemed a particular remarkable example of the use of the new material.

Even though Adam had not dealt with vulcanite during his studies—having been invented in 1848 it had been just too new a thing to be part of his curriculum—he was sure there were more ways to make use of it, and he saw himself developing those new uses. Uses that might help the Union Army to gain that little advantage over the Southern troops that could make the difference. It was only one of a thousand ways he could think of as to how he could still be valuable for the army.

He wouldn’t shirk his duty just because things had been rough on him for a time. He wasn’t that kind of man.

Juliet would understand that, wouldn’t she?

Through the door to the next room, he heard her singing to Henry. Adam couldn’t suppress a wry grin as she narrowly missed a high note in Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. She never made it through a whole song without slipping a half-tone up or down on occasions, but Henry didn’t seem to mind. In the past two days, Adam had witnessed him falling asleep without complaint to his mother’s singing more than once.

It was hard to admit, but he nearly hadn’t recognised Henry as he saw him again after almost half a year. He’d known the baby in Hoss’s arms was Henry—but his son had changed so much, he could have been any baby.

If he stayed with the army he would miss even more of Henry’s progress, and more of Juliet being a mother.

Would she understand his motives?

I need you! He remembered. She’d said that, months ago, and he had not fully understood it— he knew that now.“Adam, don’t do that to us, don’t leave us. Don’t leave me. I couldn’t bear…”

And yet she had had to bear it. Had to bear it and more, had paid a heavy price. She’d told him about the miscarriage, in a soft voice, her gaze averted from his face. First he’d thought she didn’t want him to see her vulnerability; only much later he’d realised she was ashamed. Blamed herself. He’d embraced her, said that they would have another child, but he hadn’t taken the burden from her, understanding too late that she had not just told him, but confessed it to him. Now he was helpless, speechless, felt he’d failed her, had ceased to be there for her again.

Would she really understand it if he left her behind again? But other men left their wives behind, too. It couldn’t be helped.

He took up his pen. “I would like to offer my knowledge and skills in the field of—”

The screeching of the door being opened by Hoss interrupted him.

His brother’s gaze swept through the room, then settled on Adam. “Where’s Juliet?”

“With Henry.”

“And you?”

“What do you mean?” Oh, he knew what Hoss meant. For reasons Adam couldn’t quite fathom his brother didn’t tolerate it well if Adam left Juliet’s side for more than a short moment.

Hoss had changed, too. He was protective towards Juliet, more protective than Adam would have thought Juliet would allow anyone to be, and seemed to consider the two of them a unit. Towards Adam, though, Hoss was…edgy. He made it plain he was happy to have found Adam alive and that he was concerned about Adam’s physical shape, but he also seemed to have something weighing on his mind, something that made him moody—Hoss, moody!—and testy: a kind of suppressed anger just below the surface, ready to boil over at any given time.

“Ya know what I mean. Why ain’t ya with her?”

He was willing to let Hoss get away with the tone, but not with the interference. “I’m hardly accountable to you.”

“Yer…what are you writing there?”

“I’m writing to the Department of War. I want to…” He trailed off because Hoss already had picked up the letter.

It took Hoss about ten seconds to read it, and less then one to crumple it into a very small ball.

“Are ya crazy?” he said so softly, it sent chills down Adam’s spine.

“I—”

“Are ya crazy?” A tad louder. “They’re letting you go, and you wanta talk ‘em around?”

“Hoss, I can still make a contribution. I can still fight for—”

“Are ya crazy?” Quite audible this time. “Do ya ever think of Juliet? Pa? Joe? Anyone but you?”

“Hoss, let me explain, I—”

“Are ya crazy?” Now it was a definite roar. “I don’t need yer explainin’. This ain’t about you, Adam, and the dadburned army. This is about everyone hurtin’ because yer not thinking about what yer doing to them.”

“I know this isn’t easy for the family. It’s not easy for a lot of families, and still there are men fighting out there for a good cause. I know—”

And then white hot pain exploded in his chin, blinding him for a moment. He was propelled through the room, hitting the opposite wall before he couldn’t even flail his arms. Unable to stop the momentum or to cushion the impact, he crashed into unyielding solidity; stood there, stunned, for a second or two and then slowly sagged down.

Baffled, he stared at Hoss’s face, which suddenly appeared only inches from his, and which didn’t look quite as shocked as Adam would have hoped.

“You don’t know nothing,” Hoss spat. And he did the thing Adam hated so much: he stabbed with his index finger at Adam’s chest, emphasising his every word. “You don’t know nothing. You ain’t been there as Joe caught a bullet because he’d defended yer honour, you ain’t seen him hurtin’ because of he talk and the looks he got, you ain’t seen Pa aging overnight when he thought yer dead, you ain’t heard Juliet trying not to cry. And you ain’t seen the blood when she lost that baby, ain’t heard her blaming herself fer it ‘cause she thought she’d failed ya, ain’t been sitting next ta her bed and watching her fade. You don’t know nothing.”

Slaps, those words were slaps, each and every one. And they hurt even more than the punch to his face. Fingering his hurting jaw, he tried to give Hoss a small smile and winced as it pulled on his split lip. “I guess I deserved that one,” he said. “Hoss, I had no idea…”

“It’s over, Adam. Yer done yer fighting. Yer busted, and now you ain’t fit fer fighting anymore.” Hoss’s voice had gone soft. Soft and patient and soothing. It sounded as if he was talking to a stubborn child who didn’t realise he was only hurting himself. “You hafta go home and heal. Yer place ain’t here—yer place is home. Come home, Adam.”

“I…” It sounded so easy. Go home, heal. But things weren’t so easy, were they? “The country…” The country what? Needed him? The country had just told him it didn’t need him anymore, hadn’t it?

“Yer family is part of the country, too. Maybe it’s time to fight fer them.”

He nodded. “Yah.” It was so easy.

Hoss offered him a hand, pulled him to his feet. “’m sorry, fer the….” he said, gesturing to Adam’s jaw. Then he put his arm around Adam’s shoulders and squeezed, just once and only softly as if afraid to hurt him again, and whispered, “Welcome back, older brother.”

The door between the two rooms opened and revealed Juliet cloaked in her dressing gown. “Henry is asleep now. Adam, are you don—” She broke off as her eyes fell on him. “Good gracious, what happened here?”

They answered her in a chorus. “Nothing.”

Crossing her arms and looking pointedly at Adam’s chin, she raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yes, I see.”

And then she sighed and drew small circles on her temple with the tips of her fingers.

“Are you all right?” she eventually asked. It was addressed to Hoss, not to Adam, and that was almost like another slap.

“Yes, ma’am, I am. We are, now.” Hoss gave her a smile. “I gotta go now and see iffen I can find out where’s the nearest train station.”

He walked out of the room, and Adam watched Juliet’s eyes follow Hoss leaving and closing the door behind him. The clack of the door latch still echoed through the room when Juliet turned to him.

“What…?”

“Nothing. Nothing…worth talking about, anyway.” He rubbed his chin. “Honest, Juliet. It’s like Hoss said: we’re all right now. I promise.” I promise, again. And he didn’t break promises, did he? No, he did everything to keep them. Always.

She studied him for a moment, then tugged at his sleeve. “Come with me.” She took his hand and pulled him with her. “The tub is big enough for two.”

It was, especially for two people as thin as they were. Adam had been shocked the first time he’d seen Juliet naked, and a look at her face had told him she’d been just as shocked to see him skinny as a rake. They both had to put some meat on their bones.

As it was, they fitted perfectly in the tub. Adam leaned comfortably on the backrest, Juliet lay between his legs, her head resting on his shoulder. They’d shared washcloth and soap, helped each other scrub their backs, and now they were relaxing, enjoying the peaceful quiet of the room, the warmth of the water, and the long-missed closeness.

Juliet laid her hand on his bent knee, then let her fingers trail down the leg towards his hip. They stopped at the scar.

“It looks so painful,” she said.

He shook his head. “It isn’t. Well, not much.”

He couldn’t see it, but he sensed her raised eyebrow as she said, “Sure.”

“It could be worse. It was worse. It’s getting better every day.”

She laid her hand on it, cautiously, barely brushing the tender skin, as if she wanted to shield it—protect it? Heal it? He covered her hand with his.

“It’s not a pretty sight, I’m afraid.”

She leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss on his thigh, just above their clasped hands. “No,” she said. “It isn’t. But who cares?”

He leaned forward, too, and kissed her neck, buried his face in the soft hollow between her shoulder blades. Yes, who cared? He had his scars, and she had hers. The small, nearly invisible silvery line on her side from the bullet that had nearly killed Joe—and if not for his youngest brother perhaps Juliet. The fine web of faded scars on her wrists, a criss-cross of faint, thin lines, and the thicker, still reddish welt on her left palm, all evidence of how she’d destroyed the standing mirror in their hotel room in San Francisco with bare hands, testimony of her desperation—and her temper. It had been another incident about which she’d felt the need to tell him in a fashion more reminiscent of a confession than an explanation.

And then there were other scars. Scars in the shape of worry lines and sadness.

He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her back with him, until he leaned on the backrest again, and she lay on his chest. He kept his hold on her, tightly, and as she turned her head to look at him questioningly, he held her even tighter.

“You’re right, that scar…I don’t care if it’s there or not. I can’t do anything about it anyway. But…” He closed his eyes, just for a moment, praying he would find the right words, then looked back at her. “There are scars I can do something about.”

She frowned. “What…?”

“The scars of…the baby.”

She closed her eyes, shook her head. “No, Adam. There are no scars from that.”

“There are. I can see them, in your face.”

Her eyes flew open, wide, wide open. Brilliantly green, bright with shock and something else. Fear? Unbearable pain. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“Shh. There’s nothing you should be sorry for. I am sorry I wasn’t there when it happened. I am sorry you had to go through that without me.” He cupped her face, traced his thumbs over her cheeks, over her lips, brushed her eyes with his fingertips. “I want to erase those scars,” he whispered. “I will do everything I can to make them vanish.”

He wanted to kiss her, but she turned her face away. “I don’t deserve that. It was my fault the baby—”

“It wasn’t your fault. It just happened.”

“But if I had stayed at home, if I had rested, if I had taken better care of myself…”

“…then it would have happened anyway. Juliet, if rest were needed for that, how could any farmer’s wife ever carry a child to full term?”

There was a long moment of silence, and it took Adam everything not to break it. Finally, he felt Juliet nod.

“That’s true…” She sounded surprised, as if that thought had never occurred to her. “It’s true, but still…Adam, I wanted that baby. I wanted it just as much as I wanted Henry.”

“You’ll get that baby.” He felt her stir, taking in a deep breath, but forestalled her words. “I know, not that baby. But another one. We will have many sons and daughters. It won’t take away the pain of losing that baby, but perhaps…it will make it bearable.”

She pressed her face into his neck, in that old familiar way, and it was answer enough. Then he heard her mumble against his skin.

“Pardon?”

She pulled back a bit. “The beard. Shave it off.”

“What do you have against the beard?”

“I don’t like it.”

“Does it tickle?”

“It obscures too much of your face. I can’t see…I want to see those dimples once you start smiling again.”

“I am smiling.”

“You aren’t. You’re…there’s something on your heart.”

She’d always been that way, had always seen right through him. Had always known how to read him. There was no point in trying to deny it.

He tried it anyway. “There’s nothing—”

It was of no avail. Naturally.

“Oh, taradiddle! What is it?”

It was marvellous to have her back. It was even worth having that imperious tone of voice back, because it meant she was truly back. And stronger than she looked. Strong and smart and able to help him through the fog in his mind.

He took a deep breath. “It’s just…I feel…I haven’t…” It wasn’t easy to put into words. “I’ve achieved nothing.”

“You’ve achieved nothing? What makes you think so?”

“I enlisted to fight for my convictions. To help change this land. Make it a good place for everyone. To reinstate the union. But all I did was get hurt and captured, and then escape again. I did nothing that changed anything. I brought misery to my family, but what for? I didn’t make a difference. And now I’m crippled and not fit to fight anymore. And I’ve achieved nothing. All this was for naught.” There, that was the crux of things, the gist. The unvarnished truth.

Juliet managed to turn around in the narrow tub, to face him properly. She raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“I—”

“Are you blind, Adam? Or don’t you want to see it?”

“See what?”

She sighed. “The boy, for example. Fritz Butcher.”

“Boettcher. What about him?”

“Boettcher. He’d be dead without you, Adam. Executed for desertion.”

“He told you?”

“Yes.”

“But that’s not…enough. I didn’t enlist to—”

“It doesn’t matter why you enlisted, it matters what you did. You saved his life and his honour. Because of you, his family won’t have to mourn two sons.”

He didn’t point out that the war wasn’t over yet, at least not for Fritz Boettcher, who could die the very next day. He knew that that wouldn’t make her argument invalid.

“And the escaped slaves. Where would they be without you?”

“That was a coincidence. I didn’t plan to—”

“Which doesn’t undo it. Adam, you saved their lives. Theirs and Fritz’s. And you might not have performed some military exploits, but you were a part of an army that won some important battles. Wars are not won by outstanding heroes, but by a group of men fighting together for their cause.”

“I never wanted to be a hero, I just wanted to…do my duty. To make a difference.”

“You made a difference. Ask Fritz, he will tell you. You made a difference because you were there.”

“But only for a few weeks. It’s not enough.”

“Not enough? How many weeks more would make it enough? How many slaughtered Southern soldiers would make it enough, Adam? Ten more, a hundred more?”

He shuddered. “No…”

“It is enough, Adam. You did your best, and your best is not killing people but saving them, protecting them.”

She was right; she was so darn right. He pulled her back to his chest. “Why do you always know to say the right things?”

She melted into him. “Because I love you.”

They didn’t say it very often, never felt they needed to say it. Which made the words even more special now.

“What a happy coincidence,” Adam said, holding her even tighter, “that I happen to love you too, Mylady.”

She chuckled. “Indeed, you do. I’ve got evidence.”

“What?”

She wriggled the small of her back against him. “There.”

There she was, his lady. Unashamed, teasing, flirtatious.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t intend…”

“I’d be offended if you weren’t…responsive.” And she leaned into him even more.

But they didn’t make love that night. They got out of the tub as the water cooled down, towelled each other dry, and went to bed, naked as they were, yet they didn’t make love. They just lay and held each other, wept in each other’s arms, laughed in each other’s arms, and talked and recreated their bond. No, they didn’t make love—they loved. And it was the deepest they’d ever gotten into each other.

__________
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended-up where I intended to be. ~ Douglas Adams

***

On a side note: Major General Schurz and Brigade General Schimmelpfennig are real people.

The story of Schimmelpfennig hiding on private property during the Battle of Gettysburg is historically verified. He didn’t receive a very good press for it.

Carl Schurz was a politican before and after the war. He is famous for his response to an often cited quote, which reads: “The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, “My country, right or wrong.” In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”

 ***