Stanley, however, continued to regard Abraham Lincoln as a pathetic clod. At the moment, the President was resting on his side on the couch, reminding Stanley of a cadaver or some piece of sculpture by a talentless beginner. Lincoln's secretaries had secret nicknames for various people. Some, such as Hellcat for Mary Lincoln, couldn't be more appropriate. But how could they refer to their chief as the Tycoon unless in mockery? The man would never be reelected, not even if the war reached a swift and successful conclusion, which looked unlikely.
The door of the cipher room opened. Johnson halted. Stanley jumped up. Stanton emerged with several of the flimsy yellow sheets on which decoded dispatches from the front were copied. The secretary smelled of cologne and strong soap, which told Stanley he had been at some large function late in the day. Stanton always scrubbed and anointed himself after contact with the public.
"What is the news?" Lincoln asked.
Reflected gaslight turned the lenses of Stanton's glasses to shimmering mirrors. "Not good."
"I asked for the news, not a description of it." The President's voice rasped with weariness. He shifted higher on his left elbow, his loosened cravat falling over the edge of the couch.
Stanton folded down corners on the first two flimsies. "I regret that it appears young Villard was right. There were repeated assaults within the town."
"What was the objective?"
"Marye's Heights. A position all but impregnable."
Lincoln stared with that bereaved face. "Are we defeated?"
Stanton did not look away. "Yes, Mr. President."
Slowly, as if suffering arthritic pain, Lincoln sat up. Stanley heard a knee joint creak. Stanton gave him the flimsies, continuing quietly, "A dispatch presently being copied indicates General Burnside wished to assault the rebel positions again this morning, perhaps in hopes of compensating for yesterday. His senior officers dissuaded him from that rash course."
Momentary doubts about the worth of the telegraph struck Stanley. Certainly the device was changing warfare in a revolutionary way. Orders could be transmitted to commanding officers at a speed never thought possible. On the other hand, bad news could be returned just as fast, and that had all sorts of ramifications in the stock and gold markets, which tended to fluctuate wildly in response to the war news. Of course, if one had a way to get an early look at key dispatches, then telegraphed appropriate buy or sell orders before the news became known, huge killings could be made. He was delighted with himself for having thought of that. The telegraph was a remarkable creation.
Lincoln leafed through the flimsies, then flung them on the couch. "First I had a general who employed the Army of the Potomac as his bodyguard. Now I have one who celebrates a rout by suggesting another." Shaking his head, he strode to the window and peered into the mist, as if seeking answers there.
Stanton cleared his throat. After a strained silence, Lincoln swung around. His face was a study in aggrieved fury. "I presume the steamers will be bringing us more wounded soon."
"They already are, Mr. President. The first ones from Aquia Creek docked last night. Those flimsies contain the information."
"I didn't read them closely. I can't bear to — instead of numbers, I see faces. I presume the numbers are large and the casualties heavy?"
"Yes, sir, so the first reports would indicate."
Looking paler than ever, the President once more turned to confront the night. "Stanton, I've said it before. If there is a worse place than hell, I am in it."
"We share that feeling, Mr. President. To a man."
Stanley made sure he maintained an appropriately sorrowful expression.
Distant cries woke Virgilia on Tuesday morning. She turned her head toward the small window. Black. Not yet daylight.
The window was unbroken, a rarity in the ancient Union Hotel. New-style hospitals — pavilions on the Nightingale plan — were under construction to supply fifteen thousand beds and promote healing rather than impede it. Construction funds had been appropriated a year ago July. Until the work was finished, however, all sorts of unsuitable structures, from public buildings and churches to warehouses and private homes, had to be used — especially in this bleak December when Burnside's bungling had cost over twelve thousand casualties.
The cries kept on. Virgilia sat up hurriedly. Something fell to the floor from her hard, narrow bed. She groped and retrieved the small book, slipping it under a thin pillow. She reread certain passages in Coriolanus frequently because they seemed to have relevance to her situation. Ironically, the lines she loved most, from the third scene of the first act, were delivered not by her namesake, the insipid wife of Caius Marcius, but by his mother, Volumnia, the Roman matron whose temperament Virgilia shared.
She reached for the lamp on the floor. She had gone to sleep in her plain gray dress and long white apron with the tabard top. She hadn't known when she would be needed because no one had said whether casualties destined for the Union Hotel Hospital would arrive in Washington by rail or by steamer.
She knew how they were arriving in Georgetown. "Those infernal two-wheelers," she muttered as she lit the lamp. The outcries, characterized by abruptness as well as anguish, told her the wounded were coming in the ambulances that were the curse of the medical service. Some of the patients she had attended since joining Miss Dix's corps said that after riding in one of the tilting, bouncing conveyances, they found themselves wishing they had remained where they had fallen. Better four-wheel models were being tested, but getting them took money and time.
The shimmery lamp revealed the room's tawdry furnishings, warped flooring, peeling paper. The entire hotel was like that, a ruin. But it was where she had been sent. Ironically, she was less than half a mile from the house of George and Constance. She didn't know if her brother knew she was a nurse in Washington, but she had no plans to call and inform him.
She did remain grudgingly grateful to Constance and even to Billy's wife for helping her improve her appearance and showing her a better course. Beyond that, if she never saw any of them again, it wouldn't trouble her.
Virgilia straightened her hairnet, left her room, and strode downstairs with the lamp. A neat, full-bosomed figure, with an aura of authority, she smelled of the brown soap with which she was careful to wash frequently. Already she had been put in charge of Ward One. Virgilia accepted the customary salary of twelve dollars a month, which some of the volunteers did not take. For her it was a necessity, a hedge against some future misfortune.
The hotel was astir. She smelled coffee and beef soup from the kitchen. Soldier nurses, men still convalescing, were rising from none too clean pallets and cots in the halls and ground-floor parlors. Her wardmaster, a youthful Illinois artilleryman named Bob Pip, yawned and squinted at her as she approached.