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Chapter 21

To Honour and Obey

Part I

It was amazing what a few nights of undisturbed sleep, some hearty meals, and the knowledge of being among friends could do for a man's health, Adam thought as he put on freshly laundered blue uniform pants and a starched grey shirt. He was still sore in many places, with his right shoulder still aching, his right leg still stiff and uncooperative whenever he attempted to put weight on it, the tender scar tissue still easily aggravated by the friction of the trousers wool on the light bandage. He wasn't exactly "healed"—the army doctor who'd treated him had been very clear upon that—but he was as good as they were able to make him right now. Everything else would need time.

"That rebel surgeon did an excellent job," the doctor had said. "Outstanding."

Unfortunately, that didn't mean Adam would have full use of his leg anytime soon.

"Think in months rather than weeks." The doctor had prodded at the scar very carefully, and raised his eyebrow at the tell-tale twitch and Adam's sharp intake of breath. "Or years, perhaps."

All in all, the surgeon hadn't told him much more and nothing much better than Dr. Mabbs: he would have to take it easy for a long time, give his body time to build up strength and his leg time to re-grow bone material and perhaps even a little muscle tissue. He would have to depend on a cane for an unforeseeable time, would experience pain, especially at weather changes and under stress, and would most likely limp for the rest of his life.

It didn't sound too bad. Seemed quite manageable, actually. Now that the all-consuming fatigue he'd felt for so many days had gone, now that he could eat and drink as much as he wanted and could handle, he felt ready to go back to normal, to do something useful. Now that he didn't have to be taken care of anymore, he wanted to start taking care of things himself again. He didn't mind the pain, or the cane, or the limp. Those were things he could deal with. But being inactive was something that ate at him, had actually eaten at him ever since he'd been wounded—but now he finally would be able to change that and to go back into action.

He stuffed the wool shirt into his pants, fastened the buttons on the fly. He smiled wryly. The uniform he'd been given had seemed to be made for a man with a much slighter build. It looked like something his brother Joe could wear. But when he'd pointed that out to the orderly who'd brought it, the man had snorted.

"When was the last time you looked into a mirror?" he'd said and looked pointedly at Adam's bare chest.

It had been that very morning, that last time Adam had looked into a mirror, as he'd set about shaving. He'd been taken aback by the gaunt look of his face, the prominent dark rings under his eyes, and the hollow cheeks. He'd decided then that shaving—and exposing the full extent of his emaciation—could, and should, wait. So he'd just trimmed the wild growth into something resembling a groomed beard.

Of course, he hadn't seen more than his face in that mirror, but he didn't need to see more to know that his long sickness had taken more than a pound or two from him. And as if to prove it, the Joe-sized uniform pants hung loose and low on his hips and had to be bundled up with a belt to sit as they were supposed to.

Perhaps when Fritz had said Adam was only skin and bones he'd not exaggerated after all.

Fritz. For some reasons Adam had not expected to see the boy ever again, but he'd woken from a nap yesterday afternoon to Fritz Boettcher's excited face.

"You're a sorry sight," his comrade had greeted him. "Skins and bones. But seeing you only half-dead sure is an improvement."

Adam's mind had still been fuzzy with sleep or he would have drawn the conclusions himself. But as it was, he'd asked, "Improvement over what?"

"To thinking you're dead, of course."

"You thought me dead?"

"I knew you were dead." Fritz nodded for emphasis. "Adam, you died in a field hospital. There were witnesses. I buried you."

"You…I—what?"

"You—well, a soldier who was thought to be you died. He was brought to the hospital nearly dead. They tried to save his life, amputated his leg, but he died after a few days."

"But how did they think it was me? You must have recognised—"

"Adam, you know how it was. There wasn't time to go around and ask people if they knew a wounded man. They concluded who you were from what they found in your pocket: General Ward's message and the letter to your wife."

General Ward's message. God, that had been how…. It was amazing how things meshed together, how every bit of new information now dovetailed into the last holes in his memory: the papers General Ward had given him to deliver to General Schurz, his frantic run through enemy fire, the bullet that had taken him down, his futile attempts at getting up and not failing his mission, the soldier who'd appeared out of the smoke and noise and to whom he'd handed the general's papers. He remembered it as if it had been only yesterday: how he'd reached into his coat and taken the bundle of papers out. He must have caught the letter, too, accidentally, and so—but...but he hadn't written a letter to Juliet. Not while he was at Gettysburg.

Unless…Oh, my. The letter that wasn't a letter. Lupus est homo homini, man is wolf to man. The diary...that wasn't a diary, either. And certainly not a letter. But of course, it must have looked like a letter to Juliet. He had written her name on it. Not her address—for it was meant never to be sent—but her name. Oh, yeah, he'd had to write her name on it, of course, he had. Had to tidily write her name on a letter he was about to throw into the fire the next day. Why hadn't he burnt it right away, why? He could only hope...

"They didn't send it, did they?"

"What?"

"The letter. They didn't send it to Juliet, did they?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask her about it."

Now Adam had been truly confused. "Ask whom?"

"Your wife."

"You talked to my...? How? When?"

And then he'd heard the whole story. Fritz, bereft of the protection of both his older brother Karl, who'd died in his arms the day before, and his sergeant and substitute guardian, Adam, had been as careless and vulnerable as only an always closely supervised younger brother could be, and subsequently been wounded in one of the very few minor skirmishes in which the XI Corps had been involved during the second day of the battle.

He'd been devastated when, upon regaining consciousness after a few days, he'd been told that Adam had died, and Fritz would never have the chance to tell him how much he felt he owed him. He had arranged to have Adam buried next to Karl on one of the large cemeteries that somehow had seemed to materialise everywhere in Gettysburg. Left behind to heal properly when the Union troops had moved southwards following Lee's army, it had given him time to see to everything, including to commission headstones for both Karl and Adam. During those weeks of recuperating, he had visited the graves daily. As he'd gone on the cemetery the day before he'd been sent after his corps, he'd met Juliet and Hoss there—to his utter surprise but also to his great comfort, for talking to them and telling them all he knew had made him feel he'd done at least something—if not for Adam, then for his family.

The longer Adam thought about it, the less of a surprise it was for him. Of course Juliet would want to see his burial place. Adam had seen death notices to other soldiers' dependants, and he knew how formulaic those were, how vague and empty. Naturally, Juliet would want to know more, would want…answers. As a reporter—and a person who loathed being ignorant—she knew that answers didn't come to you on their own. That answers were things you had to pry from people, you had to look for, you had to ask for. Like Adam, she hated to be inactive, to be not in charge.

Oh, no, it wasn't a surprise she'd gone and searched for answers herself. It was a surprise, however, that the family had let her go.

Well, maybe not.

No one, at least no one of his family, would be able to hold Juliet back if she'd set her mind to something. No one would have been able to keep her back from going on her quest. Joe would rather wrestle a mountain lion than cross Juliet, Pa was too concerned he might not find the right tone and inadvertently hurt her, and Hoss was putty in Juliet's hands anyway.

At least they'd had the sense to send Hoss with her. Hoss, of whom she thought as a friend, a confidant, a brother. Hoss, who'd catch her if she fell. Hoss, who'd offer his broad chest to lean on, and his heart, unconditionally. Hoss, the only one of them from whom that offer would be unreservedly accepted.

Hoss…who'd be just as shattered as Juliet, but would still find the strength—and the love—to recognise Juliet's distress behind her wall of impeccable manners and composed indifference, and to tear down that wall and keep her from falling apart behind it.

Lord, what had he done to his family? They had thought him dead. Not missing: dead.

Adam had been glad to learn that General Schurz had seen to it that a telegram had been send to the Ponderosa. But of course, that telegram wasn't enough. Not by far.

I need to write more letters home, he'd thought. Long letters, happy letters. Let them know I'm all right. Always. But how could he ever make it up to Juliet? All the letters in the world wouldn't make her forget, wouldn't take away what he'd put upon her.

He'd have wallowed himself deeper and deeper into self-incrimination had not Fritz pulled him out of it as he'd told him about how they'd found Leopold Hohmeyer's mangled body in a swale at the outskirts of Gettysburg—and Brigade General Schimmelpfennig alive and kicking in the garden of a private town house, where he'd stayed for days, hidden in a shed to avoid capture by the enemy, until the battle had been over.

"They said he was smart. A hero of some kind," Fritz had hissed. "A hero, Adam, because he was clever enough to hide from the rebels."

He'd leaned forward and looked at Adam with an intensity in his eyes that had seemed foreign on his mercurial face, whose youth miraculously had not been touched by the war. "Thank you for not allowing me to become that kind of hero," he'd whispered and squeezed Adam's hand. "Thank you."

And again, he'd reminded him of Joe then—more than ever.

Adam slipped into his boots, put on the Prussian blue coat, buttoning it methodically. He was straightening the coat tails as the orderly came back into the room.

"It's time, sir," the man said.

Adam checked the fit of his coat once again. This time, he would face General Schurz a proper, immaculate soldier. He brushed over the shoulder straps—one golden stripe on each end, insignia of his new rank—adjusted his collar. Grabbing his cane, he turned to go.

"Coming."

ooOoo

tbc