Memories

Peter is taken prisoner by the Confederates. His friends in Kilmarnock begin to assemble a rescue

Chapter Four

   Memories

 

Peter kept his word.  Every week he penned a letter home to Maggie and to the McKays.   The minutiae of camp life filled his letters.  Drill, sanitary inspections, the condition of patients and weather he described with care. Omitted were jokes, camp gossip and any reference to himself.  He would give them the facts of camp life but nothing more. Like the Union generals, he hoped to wear the enemy down by slow attrition.  His strategy as had that of the union had so far proved unsuccessful. Gripping his pen as a private soldier would a musket he assaulted each sheaf of paper hoping that this letter would be the last. The letters continued into the spring when the army once more marched into Virginia. 

Of his relationship with Doctor Traynor he made scant mention. Why worry them with unpleasant matters. Doctor Traynor had never forgiven him for his slighting of his wife, a not unreasonable attitude Peter admitted.  Traynor's attempt to punish him however had floundered against two rocks. Peter had not broken a specific regulation and could therefore not be court-martialed. Restriction to base Peter greeted not as a punishment but as a form of release from any further social obligations.  Throughout the camp he had developed a reputation of being peculiar and standoffish, with a stubborn insistence upon following regimental procedure. Once viewing army regulations as idiotic he had now found in their adherence a sense of order lacking in the streets of Washington. 

Winter ebbed into spring. Peter would sit in his tent playing solitary games of chess or reading. Sometimes he would sit with a hot cup of tea and listen to the pacing of the sentry. His thoughts would drift away from the encampment north towards Kilmarnock. He would think of the McKays and of Maggie and of how much better they were without him inflicting himself upon them. Sometimes deep in the night he would stir in his sleep. His hands would grope in the dark finding under his pillow the pendant given to him by Maggie.  If at times during those nights he relented in his determination to free them of him, he would lash himself with the memories of Montreal and of Malvern Hill.

Malvern Hill.  A tired surgeon stumbled out of a tent to see three wounded soldiers waiting for him. From an Illinois regiment, they had lost their company.  They asked him for medical help. He told them as he had told other regimental strays that this was a regimental hospital. Their hospital was another quarter mile down the road.  He had then turned and went back inside the tent. Peter still remembered the sound of one of the men's feet squelching inside his boot. Only later did he realize why. Blood had been seeping into the boot.

Janet.  Following the retreat from the peninsula the army of the Potomac once more withdrew behind its fortifications. In the lull that ensued Peter found himself on temporary assignment to an army hospital in Washington. As he examined a patient suffering from dysentery, a flock of volunteer nurses lead by the head nurse Mrs. Dix entered the ward. He looked up to see Janet in the back row, third from left. He darted his head back down busying himself with his patient until the nurses left.

After completing his rounds, he marched to Doctor Traynor's office. He found the man recording the names of the seventeen patients who had died that day.  He tapped on the door and then coughed.

 “Umm?” Traynor looked up. 

The man had aged, thought Peter. "May I speak with you sir?"

“Of course.” Traynor removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. “Would you like some coffee?”

“No sir.”

Traynor sighed. He wondered why he even bothered asking anymore. “Sit down, MacTavish.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Peter sat in the cane-backed chair in front of the doctor's desk.  “It's a matter of some importance, sir.”

“Ah.”

“I . . . would like to pose a question sir. Suppose you were to come into possession of information concerning the background of one of our staff members . . . that this person once took part in criminal activities. What would you do?”" 

Traynor looked at his assistant's unsmiling face for a moment. Then he closed his book. “Hard to say. A physician's first duty is to his patients. Does this ... person pose a threat to them?”

“Morally, yes sir.”

“Morally? We don't treat morals, doctor, just disease and wounds.”

“Yes sir, but isn't it our duty to protect our patients moral well-being?”

“This person ...  is he still carrying out his criminal activities?”

“Perhaps.”

“But you're not certain.”

“I am certain about the person's past.”

“There is no past here, doctor; just this god awful overwhelming present and maybe a future. Besides, people can change.”

“Not always sir.”

“No,” Traynor nodded.  “No. Not always.” Traynor looked down. He drummed his fingers in thought. “"Do you believe that this person represents a patient to the wellbeing of our staff and patients?”

“Yes sir. To their moral well-being.”

“But physically, does this person represent a threat?”

Peter frowned. He considered the question. “No sir . . . I don't think so.”

“High-minded people, of the most respectable character, on both sides, pushed us into this war.  High-minded people have called upon tens of thousands of men to die to defend the principles those high-minded people hold up for us.  If this person that you are referring to, even if somewhat lacking in high-mindedness, can save a life or two, I'll risk any moral contamination. Is that all, doctor?”

“Yes sir.”

Peter knew as he left Traynor's officer that it had been a mistake. They man was too much a part of this system. Not a bad man, just too worn out by work and red tape to see the matter clearly. Peter knew that he would have to see to the matter himself.

***

She stood at the closed door waiting for permission to enter. He had not responded to her knock.  Better, he thought, to make her wait. The thought had flitted through his mind that she might not know him.  He had changed during the years. Would she still remember her? No. A woman such as her lived devoid of conscience, of a sense of morality. How many men had she used and forgotten?

A fly settled on his desk. He flicked it off with his hand.

Peter had not forgotten her anymore than he had forgotten Katrina. Every day since she had left he had thought of Janet, not because of any lingering feelings of affection for her.  As long as he remembered her, he would never fall victim to her kind again.  He had been imagining how he would destroy her, threatening to unmask her immorality to the entire hospital. Perhaps the woman, to avoid disgrace would flee. That would rob him of the satisfaction of exposing her but perhaps . . . it would be better that way. Try as he would, he could not forget the memory of her body lying next to him in the dark of a summer night

A soft tapping in his door caused him to sit up.

Janet knew that she should not be here. In her first days at the hospital, she had not associated the young, busy, bearded physician with the boy she had known so many years before.   Then his voice, the mark on his wrist the knowledge that he was a Canadian, made his identity undeniable. She should have left then but there had been so much work to do, always more work.  How could she explain leaving to John? An orderly had brought her a note just after supper requesting her to meet with Doctor MacTavish at seven o'clock. Nothing had been said about the purpose of the meeting. Nothing had to be said.

 “Come in.”

The door opened but she did not step inside.

Best to do this as quickly as possible. Keep it impersonal and polite. He concentrated on the book in his hands. "You know who I am, Miss Ryan. I know who you are. “Tomorrow if you are still here I shall inform Doctor Traynor and Mrs. Dix of your past.  The conclusion is obvious to us both. You will resign for health reasons.  You will place your resignation on this desk tomorrow morning before you leave. Goodnight.”

He turned a page.

“You don't wish to hear anything I have to say?”

“Why? I have no wish to be lied to twice.”

“Couldn't you at least look at me, Peter.”

Peter's eyes remained fixed to the book. “Why? I've seen you before, Miss Ryan.”

“Mrs. Reynolds.”

“Once released, such information will spread through Washington.  It would be beneficial neither to you nor to your husband.”

“You would ruin my husband to punish me?  Do you hate me that much?”

Peter lowered his book and looked up at her.  “Yes. I think I do.”  He saw a summer evening, her standing in the doorway of his bedroom.  He could still feel the desire surging within him. He closed his eyes. “What you did was unforgivable.”

“Perhaps, but what did my husband ever do to you? He knows of my past, if that's of any interest to you.   John's a schoolteacher, a simple, honest man who loves me. He didn't care what I was, just what I could be, but you wouldn't understand that, would you? Anymore than you would know what it's like to live in rags, dirt and hunger?”

“You weren't hungry when you stole from me, when you used me.”

“Not for food, no. But a person needs something more than just food to live for.  John gave me that. So to save him I'll sign your damn paper and I'll leave.”  At the door she stopped and looked back at him.  “Do you know that for years I felt ashamed of what I did to you. In you, I thought I saw something of what I found in John. Maybe I was wrong.  Maybe it had been there and it got lost somewhere. If I helped to lose it then I am sorry for that.”

Peter turned another page. “And maybe you’re just lying just as you did before. I don’t know and I don’t really care.”

He could see the words in his book ,  but he could also see something else, a scarred, blackened bearded face. Milos Krivanek, the pig keeper of Jablunka, stood quaking before him. He looked down at to see round soft hands, short, pudgy fingers not his own.

 Janet was closing the door when he spoke again.  He had placed the book down on the desk and was looking up at her.

 “Mrs. Reynolds.” He whispered.

“Sir?”

“Are you good at your job?”

“Job?”

“As a nurse. That is why you're here, isn't it?”

Puzzled she frowned.  “Yes. Yes I am.”

“Suppose, just suppose, there is a feeble chance that you may be telling the truth. As long as you perform your duty, this stays between the two of us. Is that understood?”

“Yes sir.”

“Goodnight.”

***

Unable to sleep Peter rose and threw on his dressing gown. He stood beside the flap of his tent breathing in the night air.  He remembered the wounded soldiers at Malvern Hill that he had turned away. He thought of how he had been willing to threaten a man he did not know to hurt a girl who did not exist anymore.   He could see himself aging over the years becoming ever more bitter and suspicious. Maggie should not burden herself with loving such a vile creature as he and if he had courage, any courage at all, he would tell her so. Not possessing that he would try to keep her at arm's length until she came to her senses and found someone better.

***

On a warm May afternoon, Peter set up an advance hospital outside a small crossroads called Chancellorsville. This day he had been informed would witness the final destruction of the Army of Northern Virginia. As the casualties flowed through the hospital he and his orderlies had no time to concern themselves with the course of the battle. From the wounded who could speak and from the stretcher bearers they had learned that it was not going well.  The Confederates had slammed into the Federal lines catching Fighting Joe Hooker off guard.  As the sounds of battle swirled around the hospital tent Peter had concentrated upon amputating limb after limb. Evening crawled in. The firing subsided. Silence crept into the hospital tent.  Peter was removing the leg of an eighteen-year-old Pennsylvania boy when the light from the tent door dimmed.   He looked up to see a bearded officer in a gray uniform staring at him.

The lieutenant looked at the surgeon, his hands and leather apron caked with drying blood. The Confederate hesitated unwilling to intrude.

“You're blocking my light,” said Peter. 

The Confederate officer bowed, murmured an apology and disappeared.  Peter returned to his work.

                           ***

Peter stirred as the wagon rattled over a bridge. He blinked and looked at the other prisoners huddled on the straw-littered floor. Beside him a young corporal moaned. He stank of dysentery.  Peter wrung out a cloth and placed it on his brow. He could have gone with the other officers but these were his patients he had told his captors. He could not just leave them. They had been moving south for three hours. A guard had mentioned Richmond. Beyond that they knew little of their destination.  Whatever it was, it did not matter. The Confederacy had saved him.  Maggie, the McKays, everyone in his past would believe him to be dead.  Yes, there would be some feelings of sadness he conceded but with it as sense of relief in finally being rid of him.  He closed his eyes and slept.

      ***

 Maureen pondered the date on the letter. “Four weeks ago.  This Doctor Traynor thinks he was captured. That's not very definite is it?”

“No,” George agreed. “Which is all too the good. At least it means he's probably alive.”

“They've no right to hold him. He's a British subject.”

“He was wearing an American uniform. The Confederates are within their rights.”

“Go to the government.”

“There's nothing the crown can do. We don't have any diplomatic relations with the Confederacy.  The only thing we can do is wait for the war to end. Apparently, Lee is moving into Pennsylvania. If he wins there, the war will be over in a few weeks anyway.”

“You've been saying that for two years. Suppose Lee doesn't win. Supposes it goes on and on?”

“Then we wait and hope that he gets a letter out. Hopefully he'll be paroled. They do exchange prisoners. We musn't lose hope.”

Upon being told of Peter's disappearance and probable capture by the Confederate army, Maggie prayed that he would be paroled.  On October 13 the McKays received a letter from Washington from a Mrs. Janet Reynolds.  Mrs. Reynolds wrote of a Corporal Chambers who had been paroled from the Confederate Prison Camp in Belle Island near Richmond. The Corporal referred to a Doctor MacTavish who was serving as an assistant surgeon at Belle Island. The McKays sent the letter on to Maggie.

Zedekiah had greeted Doctor McTavish’s capture with poorly disguised relief. “Maybe it’ll sober up the young fool.” At least it might give other suitors a possible chance at Maggie. David Strachan, the judge’s eldest grandson, was a likely choice.  Handsome, a barrister and holder of three hundred acres, he would be a prime catch for any young girl. In March David had approached him about the possibility of calling upon her.   When Zedekiah raised the proposal, Maggie had primly replied that “Doctor MacTavish and I have an understanding.”

The news of MacTavish’s disappearance gave Zedekiah hope but he sensed that raising the idea would smack of callousness. As he watched his daughter mope listlessly about the house during the months that followed, he even flirted with accepting MacTavish as a son-in-law. Anything was better then looking at his daughter’s cow-eyed stares.  The arrival of the letter in October proving that Peter was alive seemed to bring her back to life. When she asked her father if she could travel to Perth to shop for a new dress Zedekiah hastened to agree.

Maggie had decided to do more than just buy a dress. She would speak with the most powerful man that she knew, Judge Alistair Strachan.

Alistair shifted in his seat. Seventy-five now, and a widower for the past eight months he asked for little more from life than to be left alone.  He wished that Miss Ferguson would understand that but she was young. “We will try to do everything reasonable to find him” he said hoping that being a sensible young woman she would go home and await the war’s end.

“And what is reasonable,” Maggie asked.

“I have written to the governor-general seeking British intervention.”

“Will he intervene?”

“We have no diplomatic relations with the Confederacy.  He may on an unofficial level.”

“Would that do any good?”

“I don't honestly know.  At best it would take months.”

“It has already been months.”

“These things take time Miss Ferguson.”

Maggie, her gloved hands clutching a teacup, had listened as Strachan had explained why there was very little to be done.   She had heard the same from her parents and from the McKays. “Why not the unreasonable?” she asked. 

“"I beg your pardon?”

  “If we were to be unreasonable, sir, perhaps we might be able to do something besides waiting for the war to end.”

“What would you suggest, Miss Ferguson?”

“I don’t know but anything is better then waiting and doing nothing.”

Alistair smiled and wished that he were not seventy-five. “I understand that he told you about his past.”

She nodded. “Yes. He could not bear hiding the truth from me.  Have you ever wondered what it must be like being loved by someone who can't quite understand that he is capable of being loved?”

“You must love him very much.”

“I have tried to.”

“I understand that you want to do something of course but . . .”

“He thinks we're better off without him. If he's a prisoner who does not believe he has anything to return to, what are his chances of survival?”

“Not the best,” Alex admitted.

“If we can prove to him that he's wrong  . . . ”

“We tried that. Year after year we tried...”

“So now we give up?”

“Miss Ferguson?”

“And we prove him right?”

The wallpaper shimmered giving way to the smoke-stained plaster of the Royal Arms. “Lack of hope, Alistair,” whispered Alex, “killed more men then disease or bullets.”  One of the few times Alex ever talked about Sainte Etienne, Alistair thought.  He smiled at Maggie. “I’ll do what I can.”

Maggie rose. “My apologies for bothering you, sir.  I won't take up any more of your time.”

Alistair also rose. “Miss Ferguson. At my time of life, one welcomes having one’s time taken up by an attractive young lady. I’ll have my coachman take you home.  Perhaps I could travel with you? I could use an outing.”

                                           ***

Ian Campbell rode up to Kilmarnock Hill expecting little more than a cup of tea and a chat with the McKays. He knew that Judge Strachan had arrived from Perth. The judge often stayed overnight at Kilmarnock Hill when passing through Kilmarnock.  He fancied that the judge's arrival had something to do with young MacTavish's disappearance at Chancellorsville. Perhaps he had received some news.

Over tea Maureen asked Strachan about the possibility of Peter's being paroled.

“If I were President Lincoln,” Strachan mused “fighting a foe I outnumbered at least two to one, why would I wish to exchange prisoners?”

“To save your own men,” said Campbell.

“The sooner the Confederacy runs out of manpower the sooner the war ends. That would be a very effective means of saving lives.”

“Then there is no hope for an exchange,” Maureen asked.

“Very little” Strachan admitted.  Then he continued. “I am a widower with grown children. I have no dependents and very few responsibilities. If I wish to travel there is no reason why I can't. If I were to go to ... Richmond perhaps, to make a personal appeal to the Confederates perhaps something might come of it but I’m too old to be doing this by myself. What I need is a companion. Doctor McKay is needed here. There is only one other possible choice, isn't there, constable?”

Strachan and the McKays looked at Ian.

“I have a family, same as the doctor.”

“I know, but I need your help, Ian. There is no one else. If something should happen to me, I need someone I can trust, someone sworn to protect Alex’s son. Peter. You're the only one.” 

“What are you planning to do?” Ian asked.

“I told you. Get to Richmond. Find out where Peter is being held. Persuade the Confederates to grant him a parole.”

“What makes you think that will work?”

“There are...unofficial representatives of the Confederate government in Montreal.”

"Spies?" asked Maureen.

“Not at all. Gentlemen most of them, former residents of the Federal Camp at Johnston Island. They know certain other gentleman in Richmond who in return for a contribution to their cause may be willing to arrange for a release. After all we won't be sending him back to fight the Confederacy.”

“But how would you get there?”

“Ian has some contacts with the American military.”

Ian shrugged. “They buy my horses. Doesn’t mean they’ll let me through their lines.”

“Then there’s only one other thing that we can do. We run the blockade. From Bermuda we can sail to North Carolina.  Ships get through."

“Ships also get caught,” said Ian.

“We are British subjects, passengers only. The Federal authorities will probably content themselves with shipping us to the border.”

“But you don't know that for certain?”

 “No. I don't.”

“The two of you could go to prison,” said Maureen.

“That is possible, yes.  So, Ian?”

Campbell thought. He thought of Anna and of his son, Tom. He thought of not seeing them, possibly for years.  “My family will be looked after?”

Strachan nodded. “I’ll see to that.”

“I don’t know what may come of it. We may fail. Chances are we will. But I gave my word, all those years ago.  Aye, I’ll go.”

                      ***

Zedekiah Ferguson beamed. To boast of Judge Strachan as a guest, who would have thought it? Perhaps Strachan had come to lend his weight to his grandson’s suit.  As he poured the judge a second glass of whiskey Strachan raised the purpose of the visit. “Maggie.”

“My Maggie? And … um...what would you like to see her about?”

“I’ll be travelling through the states for a few months. I would like to hire her as a secretary, to take notes and to read to me.”

“I see. And would anyone else be travelling with you?”  David perhaps?

“Ian Campbell.”

“Ah? Well, Campbell’s a good man.”

Perhaps Strachan wanted to judge the girl herself.

“All quite respectable Mister Ferguson. I can assure you of that.”

“Of course; of course. I’ve no doubt of that, sir.  But … why my Maggie?”

“She is intelligent, has a good hand and a pleasant temperament.”

“Quite true, but why not one of your granddaughters?”

“Maggie is older. She possesses a maturity that they lack.”  

“I see.  Where in the states did you plan on travelling to?”

“New York. Washington."

Ferguson frowned. “There is a war on there, sir.”

“I promise you sir. I would never expose your daughter to harm.”

***

“How long will you be gone?” Anna asked.

“Three to four months, said Ian.

“Why you?”

“There's no one else,” said Ian.

“Strachan has servants.  Why take you?”

“He has servants enough,” Ian agreed, “but it's not a servant that he needs. It’s a friend. As a friend I can't say no.”

“You can say no to your wife and son.”

“Anna, would you want me to be less than the man you married?  I gave him my word.”

“That's what I'm supposed to tell myself, is it, as the hours drag by every night that you're away.  You kept your word.”

“I'll be saying the same.”

“"That's supposed to comfort me? And what if you’re caught. They might even ... ”

Anna turned away, her arms pressed against her chest

 Ian held her. “This is something I have to do.”

Anna refused to look at him. “Don't expect me to understand because I don't.”

“I'm not asking you to understand just to accept it.”

For the rest of the day Anna descended into silence broken by a monosyllabic word or two to Tom. Feeding her anger was the knowledge that between her husband the McKays and Strachan lay a secret closed to her, a secret that she knew extended to the McKays and even to her own Mother.  She did not seek to pry. What she could not forgive was that Ian placed it above her.  Ian knowing her to be in one of her “moods” settled into the guestroom.

Lying alone in her bed, Anna wondered what she had done wrong. She knew that Ian had loved her. He had defied his own mother and brother in asking her to marry him.  He had accepted without questioning Father Byrne's insistence that the Catholic church would permit the marriage only if his children were to be raised as Catholics, something that she and her mother had also insisted upon.  Some in the township had accused him of betraying his own faith. Through the twelve years of their marriage, Ian had never complained about her or his children. Now, for a reason that he refused to tell her, he had taken it into his head to leave them and go roaming across America. What was wrong with him? Why would he not tell her why he had to leave? She closed her eyes. The problem lay not with Ian but with her.  She had seen herself fading with the years. Ian, having tired of her now hungered for a fresh adventure in his life, perhaps even with another woman. 

Faint fingers of mist still clung to the cool morning air as Strachan's coach stopped in front of Ian's home. Anna shoved cloth-wrapped roast beef sandwiches into a tin box.  “Don't be buying station food. I've heard tell it's not fit for pigs.”  

Ian nodded as he finished slurping his tea. He could still feel her ill-humour. The passing of the night had done little to ease it. He had risen in the early morning and crept upstairs to their bedroom. He had found the door locked. He could not blame Anna for being angry. Leaving Tom and Anna smacked of desertion. A man's first duty should be to his family. He could still refuse to go.  Even as he pulled on his coat he still considered telling Strachan that he could not go.

The front doorbell chimed. “Judge Strachan, like as not,” he said. 

Anna settled into a kitchen chair. She folded her arms to stare at the wall. In a voice as stiff as her body she muttered, “you don't want to keep him waiting.”

“No.”

He looked across at Thomas, freckle-faced, red-haired, busy spooning his oatmeal. Tom knew of his father's leaving. Ian had been away before buying and selling horses. He imagined this trip to be no different from the others. Best for him to keep thinking that thought Ian. “You'll help your mother while I'm gone.”

“Yes, father,” said Thomas, his answer muffled by a mouthful of oatmeal.  

Smart lad Tom, he thought. Not a dunce like his father. Tom always seemed to have his face in a book. He must get it from his mother. Tom would amount to something more then what his father had done. Ian admitted that he had not done too badly in life. A blacksmith, town constable, horse dealer and owner of a livery stable, member of the village council, he had made a good living for himself and his family. Even so, he could not keep from wishing that he had applied himself more in his youth. 

“I'm going now, Anna.” 

Anna did not look at him.

He bent over and kissed her on the top of the head. “I don't want to go,” he said.

“Then don't.”

“I have to.”

Anna stood and without looking back at him left the room.

Judge Strachan noticed that Ian seemed somewhat flustered as he stepped into the coach.  “Something wrong?”

“No. Nothing's wrong.”

Strachan glanced at the porch of the Campbell home. Young Thomas stood on the step waving to his father.  Anna could not be seen.

“Mrs. Campbell is not well?”

Ian shrugged. “Woman's thing.”

“Ah.”  A quarrel between the Campbells perhaps? Further questioning would be both impolite and futile.

Ian settled into his own thoughts, as the coach pulled away from his home. He waved at his son and at the empty space beside him.  Anna, he knew, would never forgive him.

“We'll stop at the Fergusons and then at the McKays,” said  Strachan.

Ian nodded but made no reply. 

Alistair touched his shoulder. “Thank you for coming Ian. You are doing the right thing.”

“Am I?”

He settled back and closed his eyes.

Peter  Amazon Press