With this Pledge Page 7

  “You gave him your word,” he repeated, leveling a stare. “You don’t even know this man, Miss Clouston. I do. For the past three years I’ve patched up his wounds. I’ve shared his campfire at night as we’ve written to our wives, all while praying this war would come to a swift and victorious end. I’ve seen him advance on the enemy with courage and determination that inspired his entire regiment. So please understand that I am not making this decision lightly. He will die if I don’t take off this leg, and he may yet die even if I do. But his chances for recovery are far greater if I amputate. Now hand me the scalpel.”

  The words crackled with warning, and only then did Lizzie realize the room had gone silent.

  “Dr. Phillips,” she began, surprised that the trembling in her hands hadn’t yet reached her voice. “You are a most gifted surgeon, that is undeniably clear. And that you care for these men is clear too. But it seems only fitting that a soldier—especially one as dedicated as you know Captain Jones to be—should be able to choose the manner in which he dies. And though I am no doctor,” she added, “judging from the severity of his wounds, he should have met his Maker on the battlefield tonight. But he didn’t. And he believes the Almighty’s hand was in that. So please”—her throat tightened with fatigue—“I ask that you honor this soldier’s request . . . sir.”

  Dr. Phillips held her gaze, his own stony and unrelenting. Then he looked briefly at the room full of soldiers. And though she didn’t turn to see them, she sensed they all agreed with her.

  Finally the doctor nodded. A short, unconvincing gesture. “Needle and suture thread, Miss Clouston.”

  Lizzie gave him a weak smile.

  “Don’t see this as a victory, ma’am. That pledge you made has likely sentenced one of the finest soldiers I’ve ever known to an agonizing death.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Two stretcher bearers carried Captain Jones to Winder’s bed and carefully laid him down. The captain didn’t so much as stir, his coloring still far too pale. Watching him from across the room, Lizzie prayed that the doctor’s prognosis would not come to pass and that the autumn moon Captain Jones had seen—the same moon whose silvery light spilled in through the open window—would indeed prove to have been a prophetic sign of some kind. However unlikely that possibility seemed at present.

  Lizzie squeezed her eyes tight and rubbed her temples, a dull headache starting at the back of her head. Then, remembering, she called to one of the stretcher bearers.

  The young man looked back. “Ma’am?”

  “We need more bandages and suture thread, please. We’re almost out of both.”

  “Sorry, ma’am, but there aren’t any more bandages. We’ve checked with the other docs for suture thread too. But they’re out, same as y’all.”

  Dr. Phillips joined them. “You’ve spoken with the surgeons outside?”

  “Yes, sir, Doc. They’ve already taken to cuttin’ up the patients’ shirts or coats, if they have ’em. And they’re usin’ that to staunch the blood and wrap the wound.”

  “But it’s so cold outside.” Lizzie frowned. “They need their coats.”

  “Better bein’ cold, ma’am, than bleedin’ to death.” The attendant gestured toward the hallway. “The Negro woman from downstairs set off to ask the owners of the house if they have anything else we could use. She hasn’t come back yet.”

  Lizzie stepped forward. “I can tell you where to fetch more materials for bandages. If you’ll take the stairs down to the entrance hall, then go through either the dining room or farm office on your left, you’ll see a short staircase leading down to the kitchen, located in the east wing. Cross the kitchen to the narrow staircase and—” Seeing the confused look on the young man’s face, she turned. “Doctor, if you’ll permit me, I’ll fetch the materials myself.”

  “Go.” Dr. Phillips nodded. “Sam here can fill in for you while you’re gone. But please, ma’am, don’t delay.”

  With a last look at the captain, who had yet to stir, Lizzie maneuvered her way through the men lying on the bedroom floor, then through those in the hallway. She’d almost reached the landing when she spotted Tempy bustling up the stairs.

  “Tempy! I’m glad to see you. I’m headed to my room to get the extra blanket to cut up and use for bandages. Do you know of anything else we can—”

  “We already doin’ the same thing down below, Miss Clouston.” The older woman’s breath came hard. “Scavengin’ from everywhere. We done used all the old linens, the napkins, most of the towels. Missus McGavock sent me up here to fetch all the sheets. She tol’ me to get the colonel’s shirts too, along with her day dresses.” Tempy leaned in, her brown eyes going wide. “She even said to fetch her underclothes!”

  Working in tandem, Lizzie and Tempy hurriedly gathered the sheets from the family bedrooms, which were all filled with wounded men. Thirty soldiers in each room, at least. Then they collected several of Mrs. McGavock’s dresses and her undergarments, and carried the bundles of clothing and linens downstairs to the kitchen, where they hurriedly cut them into strips. Slicing through the finely woven fabrics didn’t feel quite real—until she saw Mrs. McGavock’s best Sunday dress in ribbons on the kitchen floor.

  Then Lizzie remembered the blanket in her own room and climbed the narrow staircase to get it. Her bedroom was dark and the air chilled, but she didn’t bother lighting a lamp. She opened the door to the wardrobe and retrieved the blanket from the top shelf, then grabbed her three remaining day dresses from the hooks. Thinking of how much Mrs. McGavock had already sacrificed, she reached for the two scarves hanging there as well, then closed the door to the wardrobe. Her gaze fell to the trunk at the end of her bed, and she paused. But no. She couldn’t use that. No one would expect her to do such a thing. Better bein’ cold, ma’am, than bleedin’ to death. If it were Towny who was wounded and needed surgery . . .

  Her unyielding response to that silenced all internal quibbling. Lizzie opened the trunk and gently lifted the paper-swathed bundle on top and carried it back down to the kitchen with the rest.

  But when Tempy saw her unwrapping it . . . “Oh no, ma’am! Not that, Miss Clouston. You been workin’ on this for months now. Your Lieutenant Townsend, he wouldn’t be wantin’ you to—”

  “What if Lieutenant Townsend is somewhere injured tonight, Tempy? Wounded and needing surgery? What if there was nothing to be used for him?” Her eyes flooded, but she drew in a fortifying breath and held up the simple white cotton dress, the pale pink flowers she’d sewn along the waistline nearly disappearing in the dim lamplight.

  She laid the dress out on the kitchen worktable and held the scissors poised to cut, wanting to remember it. “I can make another one,” she said, more to herself than aloud. “Lieutenant Townsend and I aren’t planning on being married until after the war is over anyway.”

  “Which might be soon, from what I been hearin’ the soldiers say.”

  Lizzie looked up.

  “I heard ’em talkin’, Miss Clouston. They say the Army of Tennessee is takin’ a real lickin’ tonight. We got near three hundred men here in the house. And that ain’t countin’ all them others out in the yard, in the barn and outbuildin’s. And they tell me there’s hundreds more lyin’ dead on the field, ma’am. And even more dyin’ out there as we speak. Both ours and theirs.”

  Lizzie briefly closed her eyes, and a single tear slipped past her resolve. “And knowing that, Tempy, makes what I’m about to do feel so much less significant by comparison.”

  She sliced across the carefully stitched hem of the garment all the way up through the bodice—a clean, even line—imagining how the delicate pink roses at the waist would soon be turned to crimson.

  It took surprisingly little time for the two of them to reduce the stack of fine shirts and dresses, including the blanket, linens, and undergarments, into strips for bandages. They divided them into two baskets.

  Rubbing her temple, Lizzie indicated for Tempy to precede her up the short flight of kitchen sta
irs. “I’m going to get a drink of water, then I’ll be right up.”

  Tempy nodded. “You can take yours on upstairs, Miss Clouston. I’ll make sure the rest gets handed out on the main floor and then outside. I got a mind where we can get some suture thread too, but I got to check with the colonel first.” Tempy climbed the stairs, her soft tread a familiar sound.

  Lizzie set aside her basket, fetched a glass, and filled it with water from the pitcher on the counter. She drank, willing the ache in her head to subside. She glanced about the kitchen, at the orderliness of the pots and pans hanging on the wall, the various cooking utensils nestled between them. Then her focus moved to the fire burning low and white hot in the hearth. How quiet, how peaceful it was down here in comparison to upstairs.

  Although she could still hear the faint hum of chaos that resided only steps away in the main rooms of the house, this wing of the home that housed the kitchen—part of the original house Colonel McGavock’s father had built near the turn of the century—felt like another world away. It was still. And quiet. Death did not reign here. Nor did pools of blood puddle on the stone floor.

  The knot wedged tight at the base of her throat threatened to break loose, same as it had all evening. But she wrestled to hold it in check, knowing that if she gave in to it now, the tears would be impossible to stem. The time for that would come soon enough.

  MOMENTS LATER, LIZZIE passed through the farm office, then the entrance hall, the basket of bandages on her hip. She noticed that several of the wounded men she’d seen earlier in the evening were no longer there. And still the stretcher bearers came and went through the front door, bringing in the wounded as quickly as they carried out the dead.

  She looked down the hallway. Though she couldn’t hear his voice, she saw the soldier who’d been repeating the Twenty-Third Psalm, head bowed, his lips still moving.

  “Oh God . . . ,” came a twisted cry from another room. “Give me forty grains of morphine and let me die!”

  Drawn by the desperation in the voice, Lizzie peered into the dining room and saw an officer lying on the floor. She wondered why he was calling for forty grains of morphine when two grains was a regular dose. But as she drew closer and saw the extent of his injuries, she knew why, and had trouble containing the tide of emotion rising inside her.

  “That’s Colonel Nelson of the Twelfth Louisiana,” a voice said beside her.

  Chin trembling, she turned to see another of the surgeons.

  “Both of the colonel’s legs were crushed by a cannonball, and his gut is riddled with grapeshot.”

  “Nothing can be done?” she whispered.

  He shook his head.

  “And no morphine?”

  He winced. “We’re running very low. We need to save what we have for the men going under the blade. Who stand a chance of living.”

  She nodded, loathing that such a choice had to be made.

  “I’ve tried speaking to him,” the doctor continued, “but he’s out of his mind with pain.”

  “Give me forty grains of morphine,” Colonel Nelson called out again, his eyes sinking deep into his head, exhaustion and pain contorting his features. “Oh, can’t I die? My poor wife and child. What will become of my poor wife and child!”

  “They brought him in here to die,” the doctor said, respect deepening his tone, “due to his rank and fine military record. It seemed wrong to his men to leave him out there in the cold. And while I know it’s most difficult, ma’am, it’s truly best if we both continue where we can to nurture life instead of courting death.”

  Her throat aching to the point she could scarcely breathe, Lizzie nodded and hurried up the stairs with the basket, Colonel Nelson’s pleas fading in volume but not in her memory. But when she reached Winder’s bedroom, she stopped stone-still, certain her legs were about to buckle beneath her.

  Captain Jones still lay in the bed where she’d left him—but with a cloth draped over his face.

  CHAPTER 6

  What had she done?

  Lizzie felt the basket of bandages slipping from her grip and set it at her feet. She stared at the still form on the bed. She’d been so certain, so convinced by the captain’s own confidence that it had apparently blinded her to what an experienced surgeon had known was best. She heard her own voice again as she’d taken a stand against Dr. Phillips’s advised course of action.

  Men had died all around her that night, were dying still. But in none of those other deaths had she been complicit. A wave of nausea swept through her, and she grabbed hold of the doorjamb.

  “Miss Clouston! You’re back.”

  She turned and saw a blurred image of Dr. Phillips standing by the operating table, the young attendant beside him still filling in for her. Scalpel in hand, the doctor gestured to the basket at her feet. “You’re just in time. I’m nearly done here.”

  Lizzie lifted the basket that felt twice as heavy as before. And though her thoughts swirled and collided, the only words she could hear in her mind were, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  The attendant eagerly surrendered the chloroform and cloth, and Lizzie stood staring down into the boyish face of a young soldier whose left leg now lay separated from him in a basket on the floor. “Too much,” she heard herself whisper, feeling a shaking starting deep inside her. “They’ve given too much.” She swallowed. Brother fighting brother. Countryman fighting countryman. All the bloodshed and killing. For what? When would it end? She thought she was going to be sick.

  “Miss Clouston, the chloroform.”

  Lizzie blinked to refocus and tented the cloth over the boy’s nose. With each drip, drip, drip of the anesthetic, she saw blood. The blood these men—and boys—had spilled. Suddenly it didn’t matter that she didn’t agree with their reasons for fighting. Anger festered up inside her. How had the country come to this fatal brink? For all her training as a teacher, for all her learning, she had no answer. She had no idea—no power to wield—that would bring this war to an end. She tried to pray, but no words came that adequately conveyed the turmoil inside her, all around her.

  She looked down at the young soldier before her and thought of his mother, whose heart would ache the first time she saw her son again, his body broken. Yet that mother would rejoice that her precious son was still alive. A joy that Captain Jones’s wife would never experience.

  “This is the last of the thread.” Dr. Phillips finished suturing the wound and bandaged what was left of the boy’s leg.

  Lizzie felt the doctor’s gaze on her and knew what he was waiting for. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, making herself look into his eyes when it was the last thing she wanted to do.

  He frowned. “You’re sorry for what, Miss Clouston?”

  She shook her head. “I should have allowed you to do what you knew was best, and now . . . Please forgive me, Dr. Phillips. I demonstrated poor judgment in taking up Captain Jones’s cause. He was under the influence of morphine, and I”—she glanced back at the bed—“I should have taken that into account. I’m deeply sorry for my part in what happened.”

  “Captain Jones?” he repeated. He followed her gaze to the shrouded figure on the bed, then just as swiftly trailed back again. “Oh . . .” He sighed. “That’s not the captain. Captain Jones is on the floor in front of the fire.”

  Lizzie searched his expression. Then, needing to see for herself, she stepped through the maze of men lying on the floor to the other side of Winder’s bed and—a hiccupped breath escaped her lips—there was Captain Jones lying before the fire, his eyes closed. But the rhythmic lift and fall of his chest chased away her misgivings until guilt fled without a backward glance. Watching him, knowing the extent of his injuries and the pain he’d already endured, and would yet endure, she could all but feel his determined nature. The same determined nature that had convinced her to say yes when he’d asked for her pledge. She felt someone behind her and turned to see the doctor.

  “He said the bed felt foreign to him after all t
hese years of sleeping on the ground, so the stretcher bearers moved him down here.”

  Lizzie felt a rush of hope. “So he’s going to be all right, you think?”

  “No, Miss Clouston.” His voice went somber. “I still do not think the best decision was made in Captain Jones’s regard.”

  She swallowed.

  “It goes against everything I’ve spent the last near twenty years studying and practicing, to not do everything I can to save a life. But,” he added, briefly looking away, “my dedication to saving lives can sometimes blind me to doing what is right. Which is what you were doing, Miss Clouston. You are right—a soldier should be able to choose whether or not to keep his leg, even if that decision may cost him his life. If the captain does die, ma’am, you will not be responsible for his death. Nor, in truth, will I. Though I will carry the burden of my decision in that moment to my grave.” He looked past her to Captain Jones. “You championed the wishes of a soldier in a moment when I needed to be reminded of what he wanted, not of what I thought was best. And if I may say so, Miss Clouston, you championed him exceedingly well.”

  Lizzie offered a dim smile. “Thank you, Dr. Phillips. But if he does die, know that I, too, will carry a portion of that burden for the rest of my days.” She looked back at the captain. His eyes were still closed. Only then did she notice he clutched a piece of paper to his chest.

  “Miss Clouston!”

  Lizzie spotted Tempy standing in the doorway holding a cup and went to meet her. Lizzie looked inside. “Is that—”

  “Suture thread, ma’am. Horsehair suture thread.” Tempy beamed. “I had to get permission from the colonel first, to relieve his fine horses of their tails. But he said, ‘Do it now, Tempy!’ So I did. I boiled ’em up and they’re ready for sewin’, ma’am.” Tempy pushed the cup into her hands and turned to leave.

  “Dr. Phillips,” Lizzie called, gently taking hold of Tempy’s arm.

  “What do we have here, Miss Clouston?” The doctor examined the contents of the cup.