Breakthroughs

“But, Nellie-” He also spoke in low tones, and in a voice full of anguish. “Our beloved country relies upon-”

“It does no such thing,” Nellie broke in. “That skunk hasn’t had anything to do with you for months, and our beloved country is doing just fine. The war’s going better than it has since it started. And if that Reach…person makes trouble,” she added, “I will kill him.”

Still feebly protesting, Jacobs let himself be led into the church. Edna, dressed and veiled in white (white she doesn’t deserve, Nellie thought, forgetting she’d worn white on her wedding day after a past far more maculate than her daughter’s), sat in a waiting room. Behind the veil, her expression was the one the Confederate General Staff would have worn had the Army of Northern Virginia captured Philadelphia.

Grudgingly, trying for peace with her daughter, Nellie said, “I do hope it turns out well, Edna.”

“Of course it will, Ma,” Edna said with the unselfconscious confidence of youth. “We’ll live happily ever after, just like in the fairy tales.”

Nellie burst out laughing. She was sorry the moment she did it, but by then it was too late. Edna glared at her in fury burning as vitriol. And then, bless him, Hal Jacobs started laughing, too. He said, “I beg your pardon, Miss Edna, truly I do, but it is not so simple. I wish it were. My own life would have been much easier, believe me.”

“We’ll do it,” Edna said. “You wait and see. We will.”

Jacobs did not argue with her. Neither did Nellie. What was the use? If Edna didn’t know a human being couldn’t go through life without sorrow and anger and fear and boredom and jealousy and bitterness-if she didn’t know that, she would find out.

“It’s gonna be fine, Ma,” Edna said. “Isn’t everybody gorgeous out there? What would Pa think if he could see it?”

He’d think you were marrying a damned Rebel. But Nellie didn’t say that, either. Again, what point? The die was cast here. “He’d think it was quite a show, so he would,” she answered.

“I hope it is a show that goes well,” Hal Jacobs said. Nellie looked at him sharply. He knew something. She didn’t know what, but he knew something. Before she could find a way to ask him what it was, the organist began to play. The lower notes seemed to resound deep within her; she felt them in her bones rather than hearing them.

Edna got to her feet and smiled at Hal Jacobs. “Let’s go,” she said, and then turned to Nellie. “Is my veil on straight?” Without waiting for an answer, she adjusted it minutely.

The procession formed up in the back of the church. Like an army, the wedding had a defined order of march. Nicholas Kincaid’s eyes lit up when at last he was permitted to see his bride-to-be. Animal, Nellie thought, having seen too many men’s eyes light up in dingy rooms. Nothing but a filthy animal.

Up at the altar, the minister waited, looking almost like a Catholic priest in his vestments. An usher-a lieutenant who was one of Kincaid’s friends-spoke in brisk, businesslike tones: “The bride and the gentleman who will be giving her away take the lead.”

With a smirk, Edna gave Hal Jacobs her arm. They started up the aisle together. But they had taken only a few steps when Bill Reach burst into the church, shouting, “People had better get the hell out of here, because-”

Nellie outshouted him: “Get this man-this robber, this thief-out of here this instant!” She shrieked straight at Reach: “Haven’t you done enough to ruin me, you son of a bitch?”

Words, even words no lady should ever have said, were nowhere near enough to satisfy her. The little handbag she carried did not have much room, but she’d made sure she’d included a stout hatpin, just in case any of the Confederate officers tried putting their hands anywhere they didn’t belong on her. She wished she’d brought a knife instead, but the pin would have to do. Snatching it out, she rushed at the man who’d done so much to wreck her life.

Ushers and guests-Confederate officers all-were rushing toward him, too. But they would throw him out, no more. She wanted to hurt him. She wanted to kill him. “He’s mine!” she shouted furiously. “Mine, do you hear?”

They didn’t hear, or didn’t pay any attention. They had just seized him when the first big shell landed across the street in Lafayette Square. At the scream in the sky, at that ground-shaking roar, half the officers in the church- likely the half that had seen action, as opposed to the half made up of occupying authorities-threw themselves flat between the pews.

Another shell landed somewhere off to one side. Nicholas Kincaid ran down the aisle toward Edna, shouting, “Come on! We’ve got to get out of here!” More shells were falling. One crashed through the roof of St. John’s Church and exploded just behind the altar.

Blast picked Nellie up, flung her through the air, and slammed her down, hard. The hatpin bit into her own leg. She squealed. She couldn’t hear herself squeal. She wondered if she would ever hear anything again. She had trouble breathing. When she wiped at her nose, her hand came away bloody. The explosion had tried to tear her lungs out by the roots.

Her dress was rumpled and ripped. The handbag was gone, she had no idea where. She scrambled to her feet. One ankle didn’t want to bear her weight. She looked down. It wasn’t bleeding. She could move her foot, though that hurt, too. That must have meant it wasn’t broken, or so she hoped. She’d walk on it now and worry about it later.

The church looked as if a bomb had gone off inside it, which was true, or near enough. Edna and Hal Jacobs stumbled toward her, both of them bleeding, red smirching the white of the wedding dress. They stepped over a body in the aisle. The body’s head lay in the aisle, too, a few feet closer to Nellie. Lieutenant Nicholas H. Kincaid stared up at the ceiling that was starting to smolder. His eyes would never see anything again.

Edna saw the body, saw the great pool of blood that had welled from it, and then saw and recognized the head. Her mouth opened in a scream that was for Nellie silent. Nellie ran to her, took her by both hands, and pulled her out of the church, Jacobs staggering along beside them.

More shells kept falling, each one a small earthquake. Some people in the streets were up and fleeing-fleeing in all directions, for no one path seemed safe. Others were down, some wounded or dead, others sheltering against fragments and blast. On the far side of Lafayette Square, the White House burned.

Nellie did not see Bill Reach. He must have known this was coming from the U.S. guns, as Hal Jacobs might have. He’d tried to save people. At risk to himself, he’d tried to save people. Nellie wondered if that meant she couldn’t hate him any more. Savagely, she shook her head. She owed him too much for that.

Anne Colleton glared at the men who served the three-inch guns she’d managed to pry loose from an armory where they’d been gathering dust. “You haven’t got rid of Cassius and his fighters,” she said, her voice suggesting that that was a sin incapable of forgiveness. In her mind, it was.

Captain Beauregard Barksdale, the militiaman commanding the little artillery unit, said, “We’re doing the best we can, Miss Colleton. We aren’t so handy with these here guns as we might be.”

She withered him with a glance. “I’ve seen that.” Her voice dripped scorn. She was being unfair, and knew it, and couldn’t help it. Beauregard Barksdale had undoubtedly been named for the famous Confederate general right after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and might well be more familiar with the brass Napoleons the Little Napoleon had fired than he was with the modern artillery pieces Anne had obtained for him.

“Ma’am, we are doing what we can,” Barksdale repeated stolidly. He took a deep breath, then let it wuffle out through his thick gray mustache. “And I’m still not even slightly sure it’s legal for you to be ordering the militia of the sovereign state of South Carolina around in the first place.”

Anne’s voice was sweet as ant syrup, and no less deadly: “Shall I wire the governor up in Columbia and ask him whether he’s sure? Shall I telephone him so he can tell you he’s sure?”

She meant it. The militia captain could see she meant it. Behind his bifocal spectacles, his eyes went wide. She stared at him, unblinking and implacable as a hawk. He wilted. She’d been sure he would wilt. “Well, no, ma’am,” he said. “I don’t reckon you’ve got to go so far as to do that. We’ll take your orders-won’t we, boys?” None of the other old men and youths serving the guns dared say no.

“You’d better,” Anne said. “I haven’t the time to waste going through this nonsense. If I have to go through it