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She shut her eyes tightly for a moment. “William … how could they let it come to this? I thought we were the only ones so … so arrogantly stupid!”
“Apparently not … poor devils,” he answered. Now she was no longer pulling at him; it was he who turned to go, taking her hand and half dragging her until she stopped looking and tore her attention away.
Together the three of them went against the tide, towards the still-advancing Confederate troops, always looking for Philo Trace in his pale jacket and trousers against the blues and grays which were now covered in blood and dirt and barely distinguishable in the clouds of dust rising around everyone.
Twice Monk called out the name of Breeland’s regiment to fleeing Union troops. The first time he was ignored; the second someone waved a frantic arm, and they turned and went as well as they could judge in the direction indicated.
The ground was littered with bodies, most of them beyond all human help but the decency of burial. Once they heard someone crying out, and Hester stopped, almost pulling Monk off his feet.
A man lay with both legs shattered, unable to move to help himself.
Hester stared at him. Monk knew she was horrified, and at the same time trying to judge what she could do to help him-or if he was dying anyway.
Monk longed to keep on going, to not even look at the pain, the welling blood and the despair in the man’s face. And at the same time as all of him shrank from it, he knew he would have lost something irrevocably beautiful if Hester had been willing to leave. He would not have loved her less, but the burning admiration would have dimmed.
The tears were streaming down Merrit’s white, exhausted face. She had moved into that realm of nightmare where even movement was hardly real.
Hester bent down to the man and started talking to him, quietly, in a level, cool voice, her fingers trying to move the torn and mangled cloth out of the wounds so she could see what had happened to the bone.
Monk went to find guns fallen when fleeing men had hurled them aside. He got two, broke off the splintered stocks, and returned with the long, metal barrels and gave them to her.
“Well, at last they’re good for something,” she said bitterly, and with cloth torn from her skirt she padded the wounds and tied the barrels on tightly as splints.
Monk held the man in his arms and gently tilted the one water bottle they had brought to his lips, helping him drink.
“Thank you,” the man whispered hoarsely. “Thank you.”
“We can’t move you,” Hester apologized.
“I know, ma’am.…”
It was too late to think of such a thing. The Confederate soldiers were on them. Long muskets were pointed, then lowered when it was realized they were unarmed.
The wounded man was lifted up and they did not see what happened to him. He was a prisoner of war, but he was alive.
“And who are you?” a Confederate officer demanded.
Monk told the exact truth, ignoring Merrit. “We have come to arrest a Union officer and take him back to England to stand trial for murder.”
Merrit burst into denial, but her words were choked with tears, and there was nowhere for her to run. She could not go back through the confusion of the fleeing Union army. She had no idea what to expect in Washington. No one had. Her only loyalty was to Breeland, and he was somewhere ahead of her, and regardless of his reasons, Monk was doing all he could to find him.
The Confederate officer thought for a moment, turned and asked a man a few yards away, then looked back at Monk, his eyes wide.
“You must surely want him badly to come out here now … or didn’t you all know about this?”
“We knew,” Monk said grimly. “He was a gun buyer for the North, negotiating for six thousand first-class rifles with half a million rounds of ammunition. The dealer and his men were murdered and the shipment stolen for the North, instead of the South. I don’t imagine you would be that fond of him either.”
The officer stared at him, horror in his tired face, smeared with gun smoke and blood. “Oh, sweet Jesus!” he said almost under his breath, his eyes distant on the carnage of the field. “I hope you find him, and when you do, hang him high. Try that way.” He pointed with an arm Monk only now noticed was bandaged and heavily seeping blood. The other arm held his rifle.
They thanked him and moved on as directed, through the dust and smoke, Monk ahead, Hester a yard behind him, holding Merrit by one hand, half pulling her along in case in her stupefied horror she should stop and be lost.
They found Trace first. He was easier to recognize because of his white shirt and pale trousers, unlike any of the uniforms. He carried a pistol, and Monk had also picked one up from one of the dead.
It was quieter here, on the bank on the far side of Bull Run. The dead were everywhere on the ground. It was still hot, the air motionless. Monk could hear the flies buzzing and smell the dust, cordite and blood.
Half an hour later they found Breeland dazed, holding one arm crookedly as if his shoulder were dislocated, still unwilling or unable to believe the battle was over and his men had fled. He was seeking to help the wounded, and bewildered to know how. He was surrounded by Confederate troops but he did not seem to realize it. Most of them simply passed him; perhaps they mistook him for a field surgeon. He no longer carried a gun and offered them no threat.
Trace stood squarely, the pistol in his hand pointing at Breeland’s chest.
