The Brightest Day, The Darkest Night. Brendan Graham

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СКАЧАТЬ naming a thing for their women, as if to protect – or to own – it. Louisiana … Georgia … the Southern States seemed to have the best of the gender divide. Louisiana – Louisa’s Land. Ellen thought of her adopted daughter.

      Louise, in many respects, was more like herself than Mary was. If not in looks, then certainly in temperament. Ellen smiled. Louise had some inherent waywardness. Needed always to be holding herself in check; dampening down her natural high spirits. Her passion for this life sometimes out-balancing her preparation for the next.

      Ellen looked back through the door, to catch a glimpse of Louisa. There she was, gaily dancing with that young Southern boy Jared Prudhomme. Ellen had noticed them talking together. She would speak to Louisa about it.

      The one thing, Ellen knew, which held the Sisters high in the respect and affections of the men, was that they, unlike the lay nurses, divided their care equally among all the men. To move from this understanding would undermine the position of the Sisterhood – and re-instate all the barriers and prejudices they had worked so hard to remove. Louisa’s vocation, Ellen knew, was more difficult than Mary’s. Louisa would always be torn between the things of the world and her higher calling. More passionate, more reckless than Mary, Louisa went headlong at life. Not always a good thing. In moments left Louisa unguarded against herself. Much as Ellen herself had been.

      Ellen looked again. Mary too was caught up with the celebrations. But it was different. This Earth, with all its hollow baubles, was merely a waiting place for Mary. Until she was borne away by an angel band to eternal glory. Even in that, Mary had an unsullied purity of thought. She did not seek everlasting life, as a thing in itself. With her, it was ever the higher ideal – to see His face, to continue her worship of Him in Heaven as she had on Earth. Mary was fallible humanity at its most beautiful. Mary was a saint.

      The sound of a galloping horse startled Ellen. Some news of a battle? Surrender? Peace?

      Her heart leaped at the thought.

      The horse, pale against the rising moon had no rider. It galloped by her, so close she could smell the thick odour of its lathering skin. On it ran until she could hear its distant drumming but see it no more.

      ‘“Behold a pale horse, And his name that sat on him was Death; And Hell followed with him;” Revelations, Chapter Six, Verse eight,’ she said, after it.

      She remembered the Hades horse in the woods – the memories it had evoked. Black horse, pale horse. It reminded her of something. Out there too champing for battle was the red horse of slaughter, the white horse of conquest. Four horses in all, ever present at the revelation of evil – the Apocalypse. She felt a tremor run over her body.

      She walked out a piece into the night, following the sound of the retreating hooves, the horse bringing back her old dream. Lavelle, constant, loving Lavelle, true as the guiding moon. Out there somewhere beneath it. And Stephen, he, who had excited such a temporary madness in her, awaking every reckless passion. She lingered on thoughts of him, their times together, her skin alive with the remembering. Under what moon, what banner, was Stephen Joyce? She dared not think. She and Stephen Joyce could never meet again. She dismissed him from her mind, irritated by her lapse, thinking she long ago had.

      When Ellen turned to come back, she saw two figures flit away from the din of the hospital into the glinting night and towards the woods. She hoped they would not arouse the interest of jittery-fingered pickets who lay at every pillar and post between them and the enemy. Especially, as he was a Southern boy.

      She would need to speak to Louisa. Urgently.

       THIRTEEN

      Jared Prudhomme raised his hand to the winged headdress which Louisa wore.

      ‘I am afraid to remove it.’

      ‘As am I,’ she said simply.

      Reverentially, the boy raised the starched white edifice above Louisa’s forehead. If he had been expecting her hair to fall, covering her face – it did not. She was cropped more closely than a boy. He touched her cheek. Her eyes never left his for a moment, as if nothing had been revealed. In the far distance, the odd shot loosed by an edgy picket punctured the night. In the near distance she heard a horse.

      Tomorrow, she knew, he would return to it. Be out there in some bare, unsheltering plain, or in some fiery copse. Or moving through some ripening wheat field, his golden head … She shivered at the thought. Already he had some fixed premonition regarding tomorrow. She had seen it before in men. Invariably they were right, the death prophecy fulfilling itself. But its foretelling allowed them to prepare. Write the last letter; leave some memento; make final amends with their Maker. The grizzled older campaigners took it all in their stride. They had all ‘seen the elephant’ before. Death, to them was as inevitable as the sun rising. But he was just a boy – a golden boy – and a boy in love.

      ‘You are more beautiful …’ he began.

      ‘Sshh!’ she said. ‘Nothing is required.’

      When she left him, returned past the silent, growing mounds of limbs, she crossed herself for the limbless and un-whole who, inside the rickety hospital, awaited her.

      She considered her solemn vow of chastity not to have been broken.

       FOURTEEN

      Inside, the limbless continued dancing unabated, and the un-whole undeterred. Now, songs were interspersed to allow some respite to the dancers, most of the songs hurled insults at the opposite side. The ‘Southern Dixie’ answered by the ‘Union Dixie’.

      Way down South in the land of traitors,

      Rattlesnakes and alligators …

      Or, another ‘Yankee Doodle’.

      Yankee Doodle said he found,

      By all the census figures,

      That he could starve the rebels out,

      If he could steal their niggers.

      Answered by

      We do not want your cotton,

      We do not want your slaves,

       But rather than divide the land,

      We’ll fill your Southern graves.

      Then ‘The Irish Volunteer’ of the North clashed with ‘The Bonnie Blue Flag’ of the South. Both, Ellen recognised, sung to the same air of ‘The Irish Jaunting Car’!

      The dancing resumed and Ellen was aware that Louisa was back in the midst of things. Shortly thereafter Jared Prudhomme re-appeared and Alabarmy called on him.

      ‘Lad, if these Yankees can’t whup us with minié balls, they ain’t gonna whup us with songs … so give us one of yer best, boy!’

      Jared Prudhomme stood tall, laughed and started to sing.

      ‘Her brow is like the snowdrift,

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