I sometimes feel sure that, if we had known it was to be the last fight of our career, every man of us would have died rather than suffer the defeat that followed.
— John Munson, Mosby Ranger
Andrea sat and watched the lamplight flicker in the night and then gazed at the gray morning crawling over the hills. Instinctively she knew the day she had dreaded had arrived.
Alex’s strength had vanished over the past few days, the effects of the infection noticeably consuming his vitality now. Most of the time he knew her and his dull eyes followed her every move. But sometimes his gaze would lock in an unfocused stare and confused mutterings of orders and commands would ensue. The fire that love of liberty had lighted within him remained burning despite his deteriorating physical state.
“He grows restless without you,” Mattie said when Andrea entered the chamber after a brief absence.
“I am here, Alex.” Andrea stroked his brow to calm his murmuring. “I will not leave again.”
His cheeks were rosy with fever, but when he opened his lids and saw her, he seemed to rally and refuse more fervently to give in to the inevitable.
“Andrea.” He tried to smile. “I was dreaming, I think. I heard bells.”
Andrea looked up at Mattie who stood on the other side of the bed. “No, dear. You were not dreaming.”
“It is,” he paused and swallowed hard, “over then?” He turned his head slightly toward her and gave a dreary stare.
Andrea nodded and squeezed his hand.
“The Cause is lost?”
Andrea did not want to answer. She had left his bedside to receive word from Carter that Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Courthouse. “The struggle was valiant,” was all she said.
Alex’s fingers closed around the blankets on the bed as if a surge of pain passed through him. “Then I will die on a glorious day.” He took a deep breath. “I suppose.”
Andrea bowed her head, knowing he would have preferred to die on the battlefield than live to witness such an end to the war. She placed her hand on his shoulder and answered his next question before he asked it. “Major Carter disbanded the men. They did not choose to surrender.”
He gazed up at her and a peaceful look crossed his face. “No,” he said, closing his eyes, “my men would never surrender.”
“They wished you to have this.” She placed a small fragment of cloth in his hand and closed his fingers around it. “It’s a remnant of your battle flag. Each man of the Command has a piece.”
“They are good men,” he murmured. “Tell them—”
He never finished the sentence. Andrea watched his chest rise and fall with each breath, and could not resist pressing a kiss of love upon his feverish lips.
Slowly he opened his eyes. “A gloomy peace this morning with it brings,” he said weakly.
“The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head.” She finished the quote from Romeo and Juliet, gently touching his cheek as a lone tear spilled down her own. She could feel his pulse weakening, knew his heart was wearying of its mission—while hers writhed in its cage, revolting against the hours and years that lay ahead.
Andrea stared at the shadows on the wall cast by the rising sun, and listened sullenly to a clock ticking with merciless persistence in her ears. She kept a vigil on his restless sleep in voiceless agony, suffering as he suffered, and waiting as he waited. Her eyes roamed the room as she forced her thoughts to the joyous and passionate moments of her short marriage, trying to ignore the smell of medicine and suffering and death.
When again Alex opened his eyes some hours later, they were no longer burning with the gray intensity Andrea remembered. They reflected a helpless look of acknowledgment that he knew his physical strength was giving out. Andrea was gazing upon a life losing a valiant endeavor to combat death.
“I won’t…be far…Andrea,” he murmured, barely moving his lips. His face was calm as his gaze rested longingly upon her. Andrea leaned forward, her very life depending on hearing every word. She held her breath and waited for him to speak, waited for him to take another breath. It seemed like a lifetime before he did.
“You are all to me, Andrea.”
Despite his physical weakness, she could still hear the adoration in his voice. New tears welled in Andrea’s eyes, but she forced them away. Though she yearned to scream and hold him and beg him to stay, she nerved herself to endure these last painful moments bravely. She did not wish him to suffer any longer. She must let him go.
Alex took a deep, quivering breath and gazed directly into her eyes. “I will…wait…for you there.”
Andrea knew it was the last time she would hear him speak, knew it was the last time his knightly hand would clasp hers. His pulse began to stagger and fade. She felt him sliding away from her, though through it all he wore an expression of utter calm.
“As promised, Alex, I give you to Virginia and God,” she whispered, pushing a dampened curl from his forehead. “Until we meet again—”
Only a few moments later she felt his life leave him. Although she held him tighter and tighter, trying to shield him from the Angel of Death, it was not to be.
In her arms, he yielded his life without a struggle, without fear, his precious gray eyes fixed on hers to the end.