A Snow Country Christmas (The Carsons of Mustang Creek #4)(52)
The darkness returned then, enfolding Jacob like the embrace of a sea siren, pulling him under.
TWO
Caroline
Washington City,
June 15, 1863
Nothing Caroline Hammond had heard or read about the nation’s capital could have prepared her for the reality of the place, the soot and smoke, the jostling crowds of soldiers and civilians, the clatter of wagon wheels, the neighing of horses and the braying of mules, the rough merriment streaming through the open doorways of plentiful saloons and pleasure houses.
She kept her gaze firmly averted as she passed one after another of these establishments, appalled by the seediness of it all, by the crude shouts, the jangle of badly tuned pianos and rollicking songs sung lustily and off-key, and, here and there, fisticuffs accompanied by the breaking of glass and even a few gunshots.
More than once, Caroline was forced to cross the road, a gauntlet of ox carts and ambulance wagons and mounted men who took no evident notice of hapless pedestrians.
A farm wife, Caroline was not a person of delicate constitution. She had dispatched, cleaned and plucked many a chicken for Sunday supper, helped her husband Jacob and Enoch Flynn, the hired man, butcher hogs come autumn, and worked ankle-deep in barn muck on a daily basis.
Here, in this city of poor manners, ceaseless din and sickening stenches, the effects were, of course, magnified, surrounding her on every side, pummeling her senses without mercy.
Runnels of foaming animal urine flowed among the broken cobblestones, and dung steamed in piles, adding to the cloying miasma. On the far edge of her vision, she saw a soldier vomit copiously into a gutter and felt her own gorge rise, scalding, to the back of her throat. The man’s companions seemed amused by the spectacle, slapping their retching friend on the back and chiding him with loud, jocular admonitions of an unsavory nature.
Seeing the disreputable state of these men’s uniforms, intended as symbols of a proud and noble cause, thoroughly besmirched not only by all manner of filth, but by the indecent comportment of the men who wore them, sent furious color surging into her cheeks. Only her native prudence and the urgency of her mission—locating her wounded husband, lying near death in one of Washington’s City’s numerous makeshift hospitals, or, if she had arrived too late, in a pine box—kept her from striding right up to the scoundrels and taking them sternly to task for bringing such shame upon their more honorable fellows.
How dare they behave like reprobates, safe in the shadow of Mr. Lincoln’s White House, while their great-hearted comrades fought bravely on blood-drenched battlefields all over the land?
She was mortified, as well as grieved, but anger sustained her. Kept her moving toward the rows of hospital tents just visible in the distance.
Toward Jacob.
She thought of the long-delayed telegram, tucked away in her reticule. She’d read it over and over again from the day it had been placed in her hands, read it during the long train ride from Gettysburg, the small, quiet town in the green Pennsylvania countryside she had lived in, or near, all her life.
By now, the missive was tattered and creased, an evil talisman, despised and yet somehow necessary, the only link she had to her husband.
The information it contained was maddeningly scant, indicating only that Corporal Jacob Hammond had fallen in battle on May 3, at Chancellorsville, Virginia, and had since been transported to the capitol, where he would receive the best medical attention available.
As the granddaughter of a country doctor and sometimes undertaker, Caroline knew only too well what Jacob and others like him had yet to endure: crowding, filth, poor food and tainted water, too few trained surgeons and attendants, shortages of even the most basic supplies, such as clean bandages, laudanum and ether. Sanitation, the most effective enemy of sepsis, according to her late grandfather, was virtually nonexistent.
The stench of open latrines, private and public privies and towering heaps of manure standing on empty lots finally forced Caroline to set down her carpetbag long enough to pull her best Sunday handkerchief from the pocket of her cloak and press the soft cloth to her nose and mouth. The scent of rosewater, generously applied before she left home, had faded with time and distance, and thus provided little relief, but it was better than nothing.
Caroline picked up her carpetbag and walked purposely onward, not because she knew where she would find her husband, but because she didn’t dare stand still too long, lest her knees give way beneath her.
Thus propelled by false resolution and a rising sense of desperation, she hurried on, through the mayhem of a wartime city under constant threat of siege, doing her best to convey a confidence she did not feel. Beneath the stalwart countenance, fear gnawed at her empty, roiling stomach, throbbed in her head, sought and found the secret regions of her heart, where the bruises were, to do its worst.
She had no choice but to carry on, no matter what might be required of her, and she did not attempt to ignore the relentless dread. That would be impossible.
Instead, she walked, weaving her way through the crowds on the sidewalks, crossing to the opposite side of the street in a mostly useless effort to avoid staggering drunkards and street brawls and men who watched her too boldly. Having long since learned the futility of burying her fears, she made up her mind to face them instead, with calm fortitude—as well as she could, anyway.
As she’d often heard her grandfather remark, turning a blind eye to a problem or a troublesome situation served only to make matters worse in the long run. “Face things head-on, Caroline,” the old man had lectured. “Stand up to whatever comes your way and, if you are in the right, Providence will come to your aid.”