He couldn't blame Hale for once. It would be the easiest thing, it usually was, but even Jed could see the man had meant only to give a gift to Mary. Ostensibly, his performance was for the entertainment of the men as part of the very circumspect festivities Mary had arranged for the evening, but it had been clear from the first lyric that the song was intended for the Baroness von Olhausen first and foremost.
Hale's surgical finesse left much to be desired; he valued speed over any other attribute, which had occasionally made Jed pity Anne Hastings her obviously clumsy lover though he knew he could not share that observation with any denizen of the hospital. Hale's ability as a singer, however, allowed no deficit—if only music had been his vocation and not the Army's Surgical Corps! Jed was tempted to lose himself in the man's soaring tenor, strong and clear and true, that must call to every spirit and rouse it, to every heart to soothe it, to make exquisitely pronounced the divine within the obscuring flesh. He'd a musician's skill in picking the tempo and so, even though German didn't come as readily to Jed as French, he had no trouble making out the meaning of "O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum, /Wie treu sind deine Blätter! / Du grünst nicht nur zur Sommerzeit," and found himself responding to the exhortation as he searched the room for Mary's face.
She was turned away from him so he might only see her profile, the fine, elegant line of her throat rising from her lace collar, the quiet posture she had assumed and held, as Hale sang and sang, filling the room with beauty both ethereal and familiar. The last notes hung in the air as if he'd set them like stars in the void and a theater would have rung with applause but the sick men only murmured and hurrahed weakly till Jed relented and called "Bravo!" and the chant was taken up by men on crutches, in slings, bandages taking the place of coronets, shadows so common the light in their eyes was a miracle. Hopkins clapped him on the shoulder wearing a broad smile, a friend and a brother before anything else and Jed saw Hale beaming himself with the adulation he was always greedy for and had finally merited.
What Jed couldn't see was Mary, who must have slipped from the room in the general hubbub, as Dr. Summers was persuaded to take out his fiddle and play some English carols, the kind even a half-broken boy could take up, the crowd providing the liveliness that Hale had managed alone though none of his ardent intensity, the ephemeral melancholy that lurked around the calls to be true and the wish for constancy in a deep, cold winter. Jed tried to listen to the violin's melody and the merry cheer the men and boys made, but he could not settle to it, not while he looked for her to be standing beside this boy of that, returning with some essential item; he fidgeted enough that Henry put a hand on his arm and said, "I saw her go out, towards the back parlor perhaps," and then nodded at Jed, some combination of permission and instruction and comprehension that allowed him to turn his back on his fellows and walk down the suddenly quiet hall in search of her.
Henry'd had the right of it. He found her in the back parlor lit only by the moonlight. He would have wondered at it, that she hadn't brought a lamp or lit even one candle, but he was more taken aback by the sound he perceived even before he'd recognized her entirely, the sound of a women crying bitterly. She'd wept when the deserter died, almost silently, and there had been a few other times, that private from Vermont they'd labored over so, when she'd despaired but he'd never heard her like this—heart-broken, hopeless sobs that had nothing about them of the wounded child except the rare, sharp cry that took the place of any word.
He couldn't say he'd thought before he walked to her swiftly and took her in his arms, saying, "Mary, what's wrong?" She shuddered against him and he pulled her closer, a hand at her waist and one held to her wet cheek.
"Please tell me, Mary," he murmured. His mind was caught between frantically enumerating causes for her distress and the perception of her body against his, the urge in his hands to try and console her with his touch. She took a hitching breath and he felt her clasp the sodden handkerchief in her hand more tightly where it lay against his vest.
"I miss him. So much. I miss him," she said, her voice low, roughened from her tears. He stoof very still and tried to consider the best response, the best question to ask.
"Mary…"
"My husband, I want my husband, that song…" she said, explaining more than she knew. She wept more quietly but she didn't stop. She didn't pull away from him either. He'd felt brief, cold dread when she'd first spoken and the companion phosphorescent flare of jealousy, but they'd both receded and he had to be grateful for that. What he felt most was an all-encompassing tenderness for her, such a yearning to soothe her and find something to say or do that would not make her stop crying but make her not need to.
"He, for once, I think Dr. Hale meant it kindly," he said, careful not to suggest she was at fault with his tone or any change in his posture.
"Oh, I know he did. D'yo know, I think that was worse, that he wanted to give me something to make me happy and still, from the first note, it was as if it were that first morning again, without him, when I wanted him so," she replied. He waited and didn't say anything as she sounded a bit calmer.
"I shouldn't say any of this to you, how selfish I am! You will feel I don't—but I do, I just, I cannot help myself tonight, I thought I was done with grief but I was wrong," she exclaimed, her usual tone trying to reassert itself and failing. He moved his hand and tipped up her chin so he could see her face, eyes red-rimmed and swollen, tearstains over her flushed cheeks; she looked ill and devastated and so beautiful and he knew he could not kiss her and shouldn't want to.
"You must say whatever is true, whatever you need to. I am, I hope more than anything, I am your friend, Mary, that your friend can hear whatever is in your heart and only love you the better for it," he said, more slowly than was his wont, so she would listen and know what he meant, how deeply he meant it.
"And why shouldn't you feel this way? I've never known the human soul to run by the clock's hand, nor even the season's turn, only to whatever pace it sets itself. I'm sorry to see you so…hurt, but that's all. Only that- and that I wish I could help," he added and she tried to smile at him but couldn't manage it and tears spilled again over her cheeks. He started to brush them away but to feel them made him change; he stroked her face gently and let them both appreciate her tears on his fingers, how he didn't try to dash them away as much as tell her with his gesture how dear she was, inclusive of her grief and not despite it, that he accepted it and only sought to help her bear it.
"You do, Jedediah," she said. She didn't smile but he didn't miss it, not with the way she looked at him. He could feel the difference in the way she leaned against him, aware again that she was Mary and he Jedediah, alone together even if neither would take advantage of the moonlight, the relative silence.
"I think you should sit a while and let me lay the fire," he said, guiding her to the upholstered sofa that must once have been Mrs. Green's pride and joy; an errant spur had lacerated the seat and it had been poorly mended but it would do for Mary to rest and for the chill room to be filled with the warmth and succor of firelight.
"Shouldn't we go back?" she said, sounding so tired he thought he might better send her early to bed and forbid her even her bedtime prayers.
"Do you want to? I suppose we might but I can't guarantee Dr. Hale hasn't an encore planned," he said lightly, kneeling beside the hearth. There was enough wood for a fire, but it wouldn't burn long.
"No, I'd rather not, if you think we won't be missed. I would hear it again, even if he doesn't sing anymore. So beautiful. Gustav would have-" she said, breaking off.
"Does it bother you to speak of him to me? Should I fetch someone else, Chaplain Hopkins perhaps?" Jed said. The prospect of leaving her to bring her Henry in his stead hurt but if she wished it…
"No, don't. Don't go," she said quickly. "It isn't you, anymore than it would be anyone here, anyone who had never met him. I've learned it's a different kind of loneliness, to be among people who never knew him, and to hear that song, in German, he would have loved it so, I can see how he would have smiled and taken my hand. I could hear within my mind how he would have praised Dr. Hale… there was such a crowd and I was all alone, I had to leave," she said. He wiped his hands on his trousers to rid them of the ash from the hearth, then went to sit near her.
"What do you want, Mary? Do you want to tell me about him? Or do you wish not to talk at all? We could be quiet together if you'd rather," he asked. The more he knew Mary, the more he had become curious about the man she'd married and mourned, a Baron and a chemist, a foreigner who had adopted the New World when the Old would not do, but he had hesitated to ask, for so many reasons.
"I think…You were going to recite, weren't you? Before you left. I should like to hear it, the poem you chose, without all the men about. If you are willing," she said, not shy but with some of her old reserve and yet what had she asked him? For him to sit alone with her, in the firelight, and to recite her poetry, while the tears she shed for her much loved husband dried on her face, the grief shared with him but mixed with something else, that was theirs alone. She made no pretense at a lady's expected reticence, not with him, though she was proper and private with the others and that moved him in a way he could not have imagined.
"Of course. I needn't stand, though?" he said and she laughed softly, which he hadn't thought to hear since he found her crying.
"Well, then. 'A Christmas Carol,' George Wither, 'So now is come our joyful feast,/ Let every man be jolly;/ Each room with ivy leaves is dressed,/ And every post with holly,'" he began, pausing to let the words surround them.
And then he paused because he felt Mary lay her head against his shoulder, her arm and waist and hip lightly touching his. He suddenly wished to be reciting this poem to her in their marriage-bed, her hand held against his heart, to get through the first two stanzas and then to be interrupted as he said "…evermore be merry," by her lips on his throat, kissing his name into his skin. He was a greedy man and should be grateful for what was—the firelight and Mary's confidence, the easing of sorrow and her true, true heart, constant and more than he could ever deserve. He returned to the poem, speaking the words with more tenderness than he would have among the men, and then they sat quietly and listened to the sound of the fire, the muted voices of the men, the music of their matched breathing, a rival to Hale's performance. It was not a gift they shared but a promise and even a greedy man could be content with that.