William Monk 11 - Slaves of Obsession

inside, all her muscles locked tight, her body aching from the tension of it, her mind trying not to picture it, and failing.
    Merrit sat beside her in silence. Whatever her thoughts were, she did not voice them. She was white-faced, her eyes on the road even though it was Hester who drove the cart. She might have been thinking of the battlefield ahead, wondering and fearful of what they would find, whether they had supplies remotely fit for the task, whether her own courage would be good enough, her nerve steady, her knowledge adequate. Or she might have been remembering her furious parting with her father and the things she had said to him which could not now be taken back. It was too late to say she was sorry, that she had not really meant it, or even that for all their differences she loved him, and that her love was far greater; it was lifelong, part of who she was. Or perhaps she was thinking of her mother and the grief that must now be consuming her.
    Or maybe she wondered what had happened in the warehouse yard, and what had been Lyman Breeland’s part in it. That was assuming she did not know. And Hester could not believe she did.
    The noonday heat was almost unbearable. It was over ninety even in the shade. What it was in the glare of the dust-choked road could not even be guessed.
    They drove all day, stopping only as was necessary to rest the horse and allow the animal to cool itself in the shade of roadside trees, and to take a little water. They had to watch carefully that neither it nor they drank too much. They did not speak, except of the other traffic bent on the same errand as themselves, or how much longer the journey would be and where they would finally settle.
    Once Merrit looked as if she were going to broach the subject of Breeland’s honor again. She stood on a patch ofwithered grass, swatting away the tiny, black thunder flies that irritated all the time. But at the last minute she changed her mind, and spoke of the outcome of the battle instead.
    “I suppose the Union will win.…” It was not quite a question. “What happens to the wounded of the side that loses?”
    There was no point in indulging in euphemisms. The truth would be apparent within hours. To be prepared for it at least reduced the paralysis of shock, if not the horror.
    “It depends how fast the battle travels,” Hester replied. “With cavalry it moves on and leaves them. They help each other as they can. With infantry it goes only as fast as a man can run. Everyone does his best to stagger away, to carry others, to find wagons or carts or anything else to move those who can’t walk.”
    Merrit swallowed. Other wagons were passing along the road, dust swirling up behind them. “And the dead?” she asked.
    Memory washed over Hester with such power for a moment that her vision blurred and a wave of grief and nausea engulfed her. She was back in the Crimea, stumbling across the floor of the valley strewn with bodies of the dead and dying after the massacre of the Light Brigade, the earth trampled and soaked with blood, the smell of blood in the air, clogging her nose and throat, the sounds of agony all around her. She was helpless with the enormity of it. She could feel the tears running down her face again, and the hysteria and despair.
    “Mrs. Monk!” Merrit’s voice brought her back to the dust and sweat of the moment, to Virginia, and to the battle yet to happen.
    “Yes … I’m sorry.”
    “What happens to the dead?” Merrit’s voice shook now, as if she knew the answer in her heart.
    “Sometimes they’re buried,” Hester said huskily. “You do if you can. But the living are always more important.”
    Merrit turned away and went to fetch the horse. There were no more questions to which she wanted to know theanswers, except the simple, practical ones of how to harness a horse, of which she had no idea.
    They reached the small town of Centreville at dusk. It was no more than a stone church, a hotel and a few houses lying between five and six miles from Bull Run Creek and Henry Hill beyond it.
    Hester was exhausted and certainly aware of how dirty she was, and she knew Merrit must feel the same, only she would be far less accustomed to it. But the girl had a fever of enthusiasm for the Union cause to spur her on, and if she wondered about Lyman Breeland even for a moment, it did not show in the deliberation with which she greeted the other women who had come to share in the work and offer their help