William Monk 11 - Slaves of Obsession

it. How did she keepher head, bear all the pain, the dreadful mutilation of bodies? She had a strength beyond his power to imagine.
    Philo Trace was scanning the hill ahead, perhaps trying to recognize a uniform, or battle colors, to know where Breeland might be.
    “Would you go into that to look for him?” Monk shouted.
    “Yes,” Trace answered without turning, his eyes wrinkled up against the sun. “Any Southerner can fight for the Confederacy and our right to decide our own fate. I’m the only one who can take Breeland back to England and show everyone what he is … what a Union gun buyer will do to get arms.”
    Monk said nothing. He could understand, and it frightened him. He had seen crime and poverty before, individual hatred and injustice. This was on a scale of enormity, a national madness from which there was no escape, no rational core where one could find healing, or even respite.
    Over on Henry Hill men were killing and dying, and neither side appeared to gain.
    Trace set off down the slope towards Chinn Ridge. Monk turned back.
    There were wounded men on the ground, covered in blood and dust, limbs crooked, lying side by side with the dead. Carts were overturned, wood splintered, gun barrels cracked and pointing to the sky. Wheels were tilted at crazy angles.
    Monk did what he could to help, but he had no knowledge, no skills to call on. He did not know how to set a bone, how to stop bleeding, who could be moved and who would be harmed if he were moved. The heat burned the skin and clogged the throat, sweat stinging the eyes, and wet fabric rubbed the skin raw over his bullet-grazed arm. The glare of the sun was merciless. Flies were everywhere.
    Time and again he scrambled down the bank to the stream and filled canteens, carrying them back amid a rain of gunfire, to hold them up for the wounded.
    He carried men where he knew they should be taken, tothe field hospitals, doing what they could to stanch bleeding, pad wounds, splint bones, there on the grass of the hillside.
    He saw Merrit at about half-past four, also carrying water, stopping where the wounded were capable of drinking.
    Her skirts were torn and she looked exhausted, almost sleepwalking. Her face was ashen, her eyes filled with horror. He was not certain if she even recognized him.
    Together they helped into a cart a man with a badly broken leg, and another man with a crushed hand, two more with heavily bleeding chest wounds, and Monk pulled the cart over the rough ground, straining his shoulders, feeling his muscles ache. The bullet graze on his arm seemed to have stopped bleeding.
    There were no horses around loose and unhurt themselves. There was something in him that hated seeing an animal hurt even more than a man. They had not chosen to fight. They were creatures with no part in war. But he knew better than to say so. Perhaps half the men in the battle had no will in it either, no decision not driven by fear or someone else’s idealism.
    He got the cart to within twenty yards of the field hospital at Sudley Church. He could go no farther. He and Merrit helped the men out, and leaning on each other, they staggered the last little distance.
    The shooting sounded closer behind them, as if the Rebels had held Henry Hill and were coming down towards them.
    Inside the church he saw Hester. He recognized the set of her shoulders instantly, square, a little thin, the cotton of her dress pulling tight as she moved quickly, deftly. Her hair was scraped back, poking out of its pins, and a tiny strand fell down her back. Her skirts were filthy, and several smears and splatters of blood showed even from the back.
    His heart lurched. His eyes stung with tears of pride, and so powerful an admiration welled up in him that for seconds he saw only her; the rest of the room was a dark cloud over the periphery of his vision. There need not have been other people, wounded men, a man standing still, uniform blue or gray, another woman on her knees.
    Hester had a saw in her hand and was cutting through the bone of a man’s forearm, moving quickly, with no hesitation, no time for weighing or judging. She must have done all that before she set the blade to the flesh. There was light, wet blood everywhere, on pads and bandages on the floor, in pools and spatters, staining her hands scarlet, and forming a dark stain on the thighs of the man’s uniform. His face was gray, as if he were already dead.
    She went on working. The useless arm, what was