She had seduced no, that wasn't the right word. Nothing was right, he decided, nothing tonight.
He closed his eyes and willed sleep to come, but stubbornly it refused.
The following day it rained, and the dampness seeped through the canvas walls and into the bones of the men, chilling them to their very souls. Foster felt the worst he had since coming to the hospital. The flap to the tent had been left open, and he could see the greyness outside, the dripping leaves, the subdued colours, and remembered what autumn was like at home.
He and the other farmers in the area would be done with their harvesting, and the wives and mothers and sisters would have been cooking all day long, and then towards sundown would come the dances in someone's barn. Some man would bring out a fiddle and maybe a mouth harp, then maybe a bucket or two or even some old jugs — they didn't much care what they used as musical instruments as long as it made noise — and William, Foster's oldest slave, a man who'd worked for his father, would bring out his banjo. They'd all dance, too, the slaves and their owners in their own separate circles. The barn would smell of drying apples and old manure, of new hay and dust which rose under the stamping of their feet on the dirt floor. A cow, somewhere down the line in a crib, would low in response, a bird in the eaves might flutter briefly, and in the flickering yellow light of the lanterns they would sing and laugh and drink home-made brew and celebrate the good harvest.
Only the past two years there'd been no good harvest; times had got rougher, and there'd been no dances. There'd been setbacks in the planting, he'd lost a crop or two, and several times army companies had marched through the farmland and taken what food they wanted. They'd also hurt Nell, William's granddaughter, and William had grabbed a pitchfork before Foster could stop him and had run after the retreating soldiers. He'd been shot in the head and he'd simply sunk to his knees, lifeless already, and when Foster had finally reached the old man, his skin was already cooling.
Sarah had cried when Foster and Tom and George, William's sons, buried the old man out on the hill behind the house.
And for a long time after that Foster had sat upon the porch thinking. It had been confederate troops who had come through his farm, who had hurt Nell, killed poor old William.
His own kind, Foster kept saying. His own kind did this. But it was war, one part of him said. That doesn't excuse it, another argued. And he knew then that if the Southern troops would do such awful things, what could he — and Sarah and the others — expect if the Yankees were to come down here, to come through these bountiful farms? What sort of horrors could they expect at these Northerners' hands? What would these Yankees who hated them so much do?
And so the next day he'd kissed his wife goodbye, taken his best hat and best rifle and a pouch full of shot, and had left the farm to volunteer. He would fight, and he would keep the Yankees and the others away from his family. It was the only thing he could do.
But that had been a year ago, and he didn't see that the Yankees were being pushed back. Sometimes the Union forces won a battle, sometimes his people did. And even when they did, there didn't seem to be an advantage. More men got killed and injured, some lay in the fields for days, some were never found. And the officers didn't seem to care for their men, as he thought they would. They weren't the ones at the beginning of the charges. It was the young men like him, some men hardly more than boys, or the old men who should have been at home being waited on by their sons and daughters. It was these men who died, and whose bodies the horses of the mounted officers picked their way over.
Foster rubbed a hand across his face, felt the dampness at the corners of his eyes. A year of fighting, of eating off the land and mostly that meant not eating, of being either too hot or too cold, and mostly too wet, had soured him on the army — Northern or Southern.
He knew now that he should have stayed home, should have laid in as much food as possible, as many supplies as he could find, should have barricaded the house, and kept Sarah and the others together, and maybe they could have fought off anyone who approached.
Maybe it wasn't too late now, though; he had to believe that. As soon as he got out of here he was going home. The doctors might say he was fit to go to the front lines again, but he wasn't. He was going back to Sarah. He would worry about the Yankees when and if they came.
He had no appetite that day. He knew his fever was returning, and nothing tasted good. He laid on the cot, never opening his eyes, hardly moving.
All he could think of was his family, and he wondered if he would ever see them again.
That night Ariadne returned. She was closer now to Foster, and he could see the darkness of her lovely eyes; they looked almost as if they'd been lined with something black; Sarah had called it kohl and said all the fancy ladies wore it. Ariadne's bodice was lower than he'd seen before, and her breasts were full and pale in the dimness.
She murmured to the young man three beds down from Foster, and he responded lethargically. She kissed the man, caressed the back of his hands with her curling eyelashes, and Foster once more felt the stirrings inside him.
He turned his head, though, so he wouldn't watch, but he couldn't escape the sounds of the couple's passion. Illicit passion, he told himself, but those were empty words. What did illicit mean anyway when he'd seen men blown to bits by cannon, horses that screamed in their death agonies?
Once more Foster smelled the scent of Ariadne. Some spice almost like cloves or perhaps cinnamon mixed with musk, and he licked his lips. That strange perfume almost overcame the stench of blood and pus and sweat that pervaded the tent.
When he looked back, she was gone.
The next day when the doctor came, Foster asked when he could leave the hospital. The doctor seemed preoccupied and merely said soon. Still, those few words heartened Foster because before then the doctor had refused to say.
The nurses came in and carried out the body of the young man he had seen the night before.
Foster looked across at Long, who was sitting up once more. 'Another one.'
'Yeah,' Long said. He was chewing a wad and leaned over his bed and spat into the chamberpot.
'She's getting closer,' Foster said, his voice low.
'What's that?'
