Monk listened to complaints about the overwhelming presence of the army everywhere, the upheaval to the city, and especially the offensive odor of the drains, which could not cope with the sudden influx of people. And overriding everything there were the political arguments about how the issue of slavery had changed into the issue of preserving the Union itself.
Hester saw the men and women in the street, especially the women, who had sent their sons and husbands and brothers to the battlefront imagining glory, and with only the faintest notion of what their injuries could be, what horror they would be part of which would change who they were forever. The amputated limbs, the scarred faces and bodies would be only the outward wounds. The inner ones they would not have the words to share, and would be too confused and ashamed to try. She had seen it before in the Crimea. It was one of the universals of war that it bound friend and foe together, and set them apart from all those who had not experienced it, however deep the loyalties that tied them.
Twice she spoke to women in the hotel and tried to tell them how much linen they would need for bandages, which simple things for keeping injured men clean, like lye and vinegar and rough wine. But they did not understand the scale of it, the sheer number of men who would be wounded, or how quickly someone can bleed to death from a shattered limb.
Once she tried to say something about disease, the way typhoid, cholera and dysentery can spread through the closely packed men in an army camp like fire through a dry forest. But she met only incomprehension, and in one case deep offense. They were good people, honest, compassionate and utterly blind. It had been the same in England. The agonizing frustration was not new to her, or the rage of helplessness. She did not know why it should hurt more the second time, thousands of miles from home among a people who were in many ways so different from her own and whose pain she would not stay to see. Perhaps it was because the first time she had been ignorant herself, not seeing ahead, not even imagining what was to come. This time she knew; the reality had already bruised her once, and she was still tender from it, still raw in places she could not reach to heal.
By evening Trace had already managed to find Breeland’s parents and contrived that he and Hester and Monk should dine in the same place. It was forced, but by ten o’clock they were in a small group talking and by five minutes past they were introduced.
“How do you do,” Hester replied, first to Hedley Breeland, an imposing man with stiff white hair and a gaze so direct it was almost discomfiting, then to his wife, a woman of warmer demeanor, but who stood close to him and regarded him with obvious pride.
“Happy to meet you, ma’am,” Hedley Breeland said courteously. “You’ve come at an unfortunate time. They say the weather is always oppressive in Washington in midsummer, and right now we have problems which I daresay you’ve heard of even over in England.”
She was not sure if some of that was intended as a criticism of their choice of time; there was nothing in his face to mitigate the brusqueness of it.
Mrs. Breeland stepped in. “We just wish we could make you more welcome, but all our attentions are taken up with the fighting. Lord knows, we’ve done everything we could to avoid it, but there’s no accommodating slavery. It’s just plain wrong.” She smiled at Hester apologetically.
“It’s not just about slavery,” her husband corrected. “It’s about the Union. You can’t expect foreigners to understand that, but we must be truthful.”
A flicker of annoyance crossed Mrs. Breeland’s face and vanished immediately. Hester could not help wondering what her true feelings were, what emotions filled her life, of which perhaps her husband had no idea.
“Our son has just become engaged to marry an English girl,” Mrs. Breeland went on. “And very charming she is. All the courage in the world to just pack up and come out here with him, all alone, because her father was against it.”
Hester felt a surge of relief that Merrit was here and apparently had come willingly. The girl could not possibly know the truth.
Hester felt Monk stiffen beside her, and tightened her hand on his arm warningly.
“She knew a fine man when she saw him,” Hedley Breeland said with a lift of his chin. “She couldn’t do better for herself in any country on God’s green earth, and she had the sense to know it! Fine girl.”
“Is your son here?” Hester asked disingenuously “I should be delighted to meet this girl. I do admire courage so much. We can lose all we value in life without it.”
Breeland stared at her as if he had become aware of her existence for the first time but was now uncertain whether it pleased him or not.
She realized she had said something he considered vaguely unseemly. Perhaps Breeland did not think women should express opinions on such a subject. She had to force herself to think of Judith Alberton and bite her tongue not to tell him what she felt about the quiet courage of women the world over who bore pain, oppression and unhappiness without complaint. She could not contain herself entirely.
“Not all courage is obvious, Mr. Breeland,” she said in a small, tight voice. “Very often it consists of hiding a wound rather than showing it.”
“I can’t say I understand you, ma’am,” he said dismissively. “I’m afraid my son is at the battlefront, where all good soldiers belong at a time like this.”
“How brave,” Monk said in an unreadable voice, but Hester knew it was his coldest irony, and that he was thinking of the grotesque bodies shot to death in the Tooley Street warehouse yard.
There was music, laughter and the clink of glasses around them. Women with bare shoulders drifted by, magnolia blossoms caught up in their gowns and wafting a sweet perfume. It seemed to be the fashion to wear real flowers.
“Surely his fiancee is here with you?” Hester said quickly, she hoped before Breeland would wonder about Monk’s remark.
“Of course,” Breeland replied, turning to her. “But she is very keen to do her duty also. You should be proud of her, ma’am. She has a clear vision of right and wrong and a hunger to fight for freedom for all men. I admire that greatly. All men are brothers and should treat each other so.” He made it a statement, and looked to Monk as if he expected to be challenged on it.
A wave of panic passed through Hester, burning her cheeks as she thought of all the answers Monk might make to that—most of them with razor-cruel sarcasm.
