Slaves of Obsession - Anne Perry [59]
Monk started as he heard the sharp report of a thirty-pounder gun firing three rounds, and he judged it to be on the side of the river he was on and aimed across to the other, close to a beautiful double-arched stone bridge which took the main turnpike over the Bull Run. It was the signal for the battle to begin.
He looked at Trace beside him, sitting half slumped in the saddle, his legs covered with dust, his horse’s flanks sweating. This would be the first pitched battle between the Union and the Confederacy; the die was cast forever, no more skirmishes—this was war irrevocable.
Monk searched Trace’s features and saw no anger, no hatred, no excitement, only an inner exhaustion of the emotions and a sense that somehow he had failed to grasp the vital thing which could have prevented this, and now it was too late.
Again Monk tried to imagine how he would feel if this were England, if these rolling hills and valleys dotted with copses of trees and small settlements were the older, greener hillsides he was familiar with. It was Northumberland he saw in his mind, the sweep of the high, bare moors, heather-covered in late summer, the wind-driven clouds, the farms huddled in the lea, stone walls dividing the fields, stone bridges like the one crossing the creek below them, the long line of the coast and the bright water beyond.
If it were his own land at war with itself it would wound him so the pain would never heal.
Behind them more men were drawing up and being mustered into formation, ready to attack. There were carts and wagons rigged up as ambulances. They had passed pointed-roofed tents that would serve as field hospitals, and seen men and women, white-faced, trying to think of anything more they could do to be ready for the wounded. To Monk it had an air of farce about it. Could these tens of thousands of men really be waiting to slaughter each other, men who were of the same blood and the same language, who had created a country out of the wilderness, founded on the same ideals?
The tension was gathering. Men were on the move, as they had been since reveille had been sounded at two in the morning, but in the dark few had been able to gather themselves, their weapons and equipment, and form into any sort of order.
Hester waited in an agony of suspense as she heard the gunfire in the distance. Merrit kept glancing towards the door of the church where they were waiting for the first wounded. Nine o’clock passed. A few men were brought in, half carried, half supported. The military surgeon took out a ball from one man’s shoulder, another’s leg. Now and then word came of the fighting.
“Can’t take the Stone Bridge!” one wounded man gasped, his hand clutching his other arm, blood streaming through his fingers. “Rebels have got a hell of a force there.” Hester judged him to be about twenty, his face gray with exhaustion, eyes wide and fixed. The surgeon was busy with someone else.
“Come and we’ll bind that up for you,” she said gently, taking him by the other arm and guiding him to a chair where she could reach him easily. “Get me water,” she said over her shoulder to Merrit. “And some for him to drink too.”
“There’s thousands of them!” the man went on, staring at Hester. “Our boys are dying … all over the ground, they are. You can smell blood in the air. I stood on … someone’s …” He could not finish.
Hester knew what he meant. She had walked on battlefields where dismembered bodies lay frozen in a last horror, human beings torn or blown apart. She had wanted never to see it again, never to allow it back into her mind. She turned away from his face, and found her hands shaking as she cut his sleeve off and exposed the flesh of the wound. It was mangled and bleeding heavily, but as far