That second day of Gettysburg they could not deal with the wounded who now littered the outside of the hospitals, as well as the floors, walls and every conceivable space within. That day Ellen could not quell the tears of hopelessness that arose in her.
It had always been awful, horrible – soul killing – this wanton waste of life. Yet somehow, somewhere she had found hope and strength to carry on. Hope that soon it all would be over, that peace would at last reign. Now it seemed hopeless, no end to the madness assaulting men’s minds; the lust for blood seemingly unquenchable.
Still, as darkness fell, she dragged herself out again to search through the wounded, Louisa accompanying her.
Now, her senses dulled by so much death, Ellen bypassed those calling for help. Over mangled mounds of limbs she stumbled, driven on by some madness, as if the malodorous air had taken her over, impregnated her body with its evil intent.
A hand clawed at her skirt. Frantically she brushed by it, intent only on covering as much ground – and as many bodies as she could.
Now, those clad in grey did not warrant even a cursory glance. For Lavelle was not in grey – but in blue. Where she could she untangled those in blue, tugging at an arm or foot to pull them clear for inspection. Then, her eyes closed to their wounds, her ears to their cries, she half ran, half crawled to where next she might find him. Once, while tugging at a body in grey, which lay over that of one in blue, a voice from a raggle of Confederate litter-bearers shouted ‘Git away from that boy!’ while another said loudly, ‘Damned Yankee women’d have the trousers off’n you quicker than a N’Orleans whorehouse!’
She scampered away, making no rebuke, hearing them talk as she retreated. ‘C’mon, pitch him up here, ’fore ’em maggots get him.’ While yet another said, ‘Bet he’d prefer maggots all over him than those Northern she-devils!’
Ellen, bent to examine another corpse, heard their laughter. She moved on, began whispering his name to herself. ‘Lavelle! Lavelle!’ As if it gave life to him, as if he were somewhere there – near her.
Then she began to say it louder over the bodies, summoning him from wherever among them he lay, until she was shouting it out – ‘Lavelle! Lavelle!’ – like the damned calling out for redemption.
Louisa, some distance behind her, struggled to keep up with her mother, fearful of whatever consequence might befall Ellen – whether she found Lavelle or not.
The dusk-light now cast its silvering hue over the giant battlefield. Low clouds of smoke or mist – she couldn’t tell – eerily etched the crutched, the crippled and the corpsed, into one. Grey became blue; blue became silver-hued – changelings all, metamorphosed into each other. A Stygian field filled with shadows, awaiting angels to bear them up out of the Dantean darkness.
A voice called out for ‘water!’, then another.
She hesitated. Could not see them.
Then the first voice again.
She went towards it. Hurrying. Something about it. She, still calling for – Lavelle! Lavelle!
At first she thought she was mistaken. Then she heard it again. Her own name being summoned.
‘Ellen! Ellen!’ the faint voice called.
It must be one of her boys – from the hospital. One whom she or the others had ‘made whole’. Sent out again for destruction.
Her mind was in turmoil. The men never addressed her in that manner.
She turned – saw the two bodies lumped together. Confederate grey … Union blue.
Ran to them.
Trembling.
Spilling the precious water from the canteen.
Then she saw him, hand outstretched to her.
‘Oh, Stephen! Oh, my God, Stephen!’ she cried. She fell to her knees beside him, looking for the wound.
‘Lavelle! Lavelle!’ he gasped into her face, his eyes frantically trying to get her to understand. His mind was altered – she could see the knife, its ornate hilt. But he was alive!
‘Oh, Stephen! It’s all right now! I’ll get … !’
‘No … No!’ he said, grabbing at her arm, mouthing something. ‘Lavelle!’
What was he saying?
‘Lavelle?’ she repeated, still wondering what Stephen meant.
Somehow he found the strength to tug harder, pull her arm around. ‘Lavelle … there!’ he gasped.
It took her a moment. She looked at the crumpled body in blue beside Stephen. Then looked back to Stephen, trying to make sense of it all.
Fearfully, she reached a hand for the half-buried face, slowly turning it towards her, into the dying light. Then she saw him – older, war-worn … but it was him.
‘Lavelle … ! Lavelle … ! How? … Stephen? Oh, Jesus … ! Oh, Jesus, Mary … !’
She turned from one to the other. Like some wild thing. Trapped. Beyond any utterance.
‘Oh God! Oh God!’
She turned Lavelle, seeing Stephen’s knife beside him, talking madly to herself, the tears flooding her face, trying to swallow, fighting for breath.
He was still alive but semi-conscious.
‘Louisa … !’ she shouted – ‘Oh, Sweet Jesus – Louisa!
‘Lavelle! Lavelle!’ she again shouted. ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ She slapped his face. Then harder, welting his skin.
‘It’s me, Lavelle! Me … Ellen! Oh, God, you found … ! I found … ! Wake up!’ she screamed.
He made a sound. Tried to open his eyes.
‘The water!’ She remembered. ‘The water!’ Somehow, she managed to hold his head and get the canteen free of her body. She wet the tips of her fingers, shaking – trying not to waste it – but it was still dripping on to his shirt.
Where was Louisa … anybody?
She put her fingers to his lips, moistened his eyes. Fumbled some more drops from the canteen. Repeated the anointing.
He opened his mouth. Now she forced the canteen against his lips. Then he opened his eyes, saw her.
‘Ellen! Ellen … ! Darling Ellen!’
‘Lavelle! Oh, thank God! Thank God – Louisa … Louisa?’ she called out, the names tumbling from her lips.
Stephen! She had to give him water. Save the two of them!
‘Stephen!’ She moved over to him – got her free arm around his shoulder, pulling him into her. Propped the two of them there, her face between them. The water! Stephen was able to half-hold it to his mouth but it sluiced out over his face and hers.
Then Lavelle. He couldn’t take it. She couldn’t manage the two of them.
‘Louisa!’ Where was Louisa?
She gulped a mouthful of water, held it there. Then with her lips forced open Lavelle’s mouth and expelled the water into it. The same she did for Stephen.
‘Ellen … !’ It was Lavelle … ‘I searched …’
‘Oh, Lavelle … ! I knew … I couldn’t go back … after …’ She looked at Stephen.
‘Stephen … ! Lavelle … ! I brought it to this.’
She held the two of them into her.
‘It was me … Ellen.’ Lavelle’s mouth moved against her breast, muffling the sound.
‘It was me … Ellen … I … Patrick … I didn’t … !’
‘I know, Lavelle … oh, I know,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t have known … there is no blame.
‘No blame,’ she repeated.
And she knelt between them, comforted by their nearness, as much as she sought to comfort them.
She spoke to them, ‘Lavelle …? Stephen …?’ They did not answer. Heads still bowed in silence – forgiven and forgiving her.
Behind her someone approaching … Louisa!
‘Lavelle … and Stephen!’ she said, without turning to face her child.
Louisa knelt beside her, releasing Ellen’s arm from Lavelle, the younger woman in turn holding him, kissing his fair hair, giving thanks to God. She found Lavelle’s wound. It was badly oozing blood. From some deep fold within her nun’s garb, she drew a wad of bandaging. This Louisa packed hard against the wound, to stem the further flow of his blood. Praying that she wasn’t already too late.
Ellen remained kneeling. ‘Soil is sacred,’ she whispered, absently.
Louisa watched as her mother, one arm still around Stephen, bent to the reddened earth, kissing the dark soil, in some primitive consecration. On the ground between them Louisa noticed the book. Somehow, managed to retrieve it. Love Elegies and Holy Sonnets. She remembered it. ‘Love elegies, holy songs – one and the same,’ she said aloud, ‘both searching the higher ground.’
Now in the after-mist of battle, the sounds of destruction had abated.
Beyond them Ellen saw the slow line of lanterns yellowing the fields. Criss-crossing, stopping, being lowered, then being lifted again, their clanking and creaking strangely comforting against the calls for comrades, long lost to the world.
She thought of them all – the young men. All the fine young men.
From Tennessee and Germany; from New York and New Jersey; from New England to New Orleans … and the four green fields of Ireland. The list was endless, every one of them a mother’s son – some mother’s fair-haired boy.
She stood then as Louisa held them both. Then keened out her song of lamentation over the plains of Gettysburg.
Keened it out for Lavelle and for Stephen. Keened it out over the bodies of all the fine young men …
‘Oh, my fair-haired boy, no more I’ll see,
You walk the meadows green,
Or hear your song run through the field,
Like yon mountain stream …
Absently she sang as if to block out the enormity of at last finding Lavelle and Stephen.
‘If not in life we’ll be as one
Then, in death we’ll be;
And there will grow two hawthorn trees
Above my love and me;
And they will reach up to the sky –
Intertwined be,
And the hawthorn flower will bloom where lie,
My fair-haired boy … and me …’
All around them the battlefield had gone quiet, the lanterns stilled. It would be her last song.
‘Stephen is gone, Mother!’ she heard Louisa say.
She knelt down again to take him from Louisa. Hold him in the last embrace, kissing his dark head. ‘Goodbye, a stor,’ she said fondly, offering a prayer over him, not that he was ever much for prayers, she remembered.
She looked at Louisa beside her, still cradling Lavelle, caressing his forehead. Louisa – Sister Veronica, as the nuns had re-christened her – wiping the face of Jesus. Ellen reached over a hand, touching Louisa’s face. She, stained with tears, looked up from holding Lavelle.
Everything had been stripped from this woman … stripped naked as the Cross. She was all Ellen had left now. Nothing between them. Not blood, not kith nor kin. Only a chance crossing. Nothing between them … but everything.
And now, Lavelle, and Stephen, both succumbed in the last sleep.
How they both did love her … and she them. Loved each of them in a different fashion, but truly, Louisa believed. Love, no more than hate, was not an exclusive emotion. She thought again of Jared Prudhomme … and her God. How the boy had almost come between them – for a while.
The night breeze caused a shiver in her. Someone walking over her grave, the old people held it to be. She looked down at Lavelle, about to unlock him from her arms – pass him to Ellen who had gently laid Stephen to rest and now waited to receive Lavelle.
Louisa felt the shiver again. She said nothing. Waited to be sure.
Then she felt it again, almost imperceptible – the shiver, not in her, but in Lavelle.
Louisa bowed her head a moment, giving thanks. Then, looking to Ellen kneeling stricken beside her, Louisa reached out, taking her mother’s hand in hers, the words trembling from her lips.
‘Níor éag sé fós!’
‘Mother – he’s alive … !’
‘Lavelle is alive!’