The Brightest Day, The Darkest Night

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‘Not in that way,’ he answered.

‘What then?’ she asked, anxious of any final comfort she could bring him.

He didn’t answer her immediately. Then, in a moment, raised his head to her. ‘If my mother were here with your son …’ he said, forming the words so slowly, so deliberately, that she would not mistake them, ‘… she would surely kiss him.’

And he kept his eyes open, fixed on her face, as she leaned down and gave him the tenderest mother-kiss.

Ellen just sat with him then, rocking him to herself, thinking of her own son and a mother in East Tennessee.

Beyond her, Ellen saw Louisa still sheltering the golden head of Jared Prudhomme.

‘He is dead – the beautiful youth!’ she heard Louisa say, in a far off voice. ‘Dead!’

She watched, as Mary went to Louisa, knelt beside her sister, and made the Sign of the Cross on the boy’s forehead.

‘He is home, Louisa, death exalts his face,’ Ellen heard Mary say.

Mary then came to Ellen. ‘The Lord is good, He will receive them all,’ she comforted and gave thanks that the young fiddle player had died ‘in a mother’s arms’.

Where Mary saw hope Ellen saw only hopelessness.

‘No young man believes he shall ever die,’ she said to Mary.

America was losing its young to this war … and in losing its young was losing its old.

‘The young are beautiful,’ Mary answered. ‘He takes them first to himself.’

‘Yes …’ Ellen said, looking at her daughter. ‘The young are truly beautiful.’

She herself felt old, unbeautiful. War killed all that was beautiful. Plucked out singing youth from life. Silenced it. Diseased men’s hearts and minds, eating up what measure of goodness there once was there. Poxing the soul as well as the body. The land would wait till it was ready – nurturing below its terrible fruit until the sons of sons had forgotten. Then there would be rivers of blood, seasons of storms, Lucifer rising.

Then would the land wreak its revenge.

With the men, Ellen and the two nuns helped lever the dead bodies onto the rude planks that would be their coffins. Until they were upended again from them – returned to the land.

Louisa’s petticoat now lay where she had placed it, on the boy’s breast – a mocking testament to safe passage. Ellen put her arm around Louisa’s shoulder, trying to salve the frantic heart within.

‘God decrees,’ Ellen thought, but didn’t say it.

Inside, Dr Sawyer summoned them, addressing Louisa.

‘It was against my disposition, Sister, that I agreed to Confederate soldiers being sheltered here. Events have proven me correct. We cannot be responsible for any but our own. Let the Rebels gather up their dead and wounded – and we ours!’

Displaying no hint of her private emotions, Louisa answered him. ‘It is not the Christian way. All men are brothers. In war, in life … and in death. The Lord is neither North nor South. Who are we to dispute with the Lord, to say mercy to this one because he is in blue uniform … no mercy to this one because he is in grey?’