He sat on a stool while the barber removed the last of the hair that ringed his bald head. About thirty soldiers had turned out to watch the punishment. He was infuriated by some of the smirking faces. They belonged to men who had enlisted for the bounty under false names, just as he had, with every intention of deserting. Jones had joined up and run away four times during the year since he had conceived the idea at the height of the New York rioting. He knew men who had pulled it off seven or eight times, with never a capture. That kind of luck had eluded him, as luck had eluded him most of his life.
The May night was warm. An owl hooted somewhere. From the great sparking fire, the shirtless three-striper called, "Ready."
The ring of observers opened. Corporals pushed Jones through to the fire as the sergeant reached into it with a right hand protected by a thick gauntlet. The sergeant seized the handle of the branding iron and pulled. The end that slid from the coals was white.
While others held him, someone shoved a bottle of popskull at Jones. They forced him to drink several mouthfuls of the fiery swill. With liquor running down his chin and blood trickling around his left ear from one of the scalp nicks, he was thrust to the fire. The boisterous witnesses closed in behind.
The sweating three-striper lifted the iron. Bastards, Jones screamed in silence. I'll kill you. To those grasping him by the arms and shoulders, the sergeant said, "Hold him steady."
Rising toward his eyes, the white iron grew larger and larger. Jones writhed, began begging. "No — no, don't." A familiar face floated to one side of the intense light. The major had come out to watch.
"I said hold him," the sergeant snarled. Hands clamped Salem Jones's head. He began screaming several seconds before the sergeant pushed the iron against his face.
He flung the firebrand on the tent and ran.
Down a grassy embankment, up the far side, into an apple orchard. There he finally whirled around, clutching an overhanging branch and watching flames ignite the tent. Shouts, oaths came from within. He didn't really suppose he could burn the major to death, but at least he had given him a fright. He turned and ran on.
Three days after the punishment, Jones had been returned to duty, because the army was preparing to march — by night, which seemed to be the rule now — and the fools believed that head shaving and branding had broken him. Besides, they needed bodies to throw into the war machine. His was good enough. Those of immigrants, thugs, physical cripples were good enough. The Union Army was full of splendid specimens these days.
Brimming with rage and a pain that would last far longer than that in his face, Jones met the order to march by stealing some nondescript trousers from another regiment, encamped nearby. He threw away his tartan pantaloons, donned the plain ones, and ripped all the military buttons from his rancid jacket. He had no cash; more gambling had disposed of that. He had no weapon, and he had no identification except the one burned on him. He was preparing for his last desertion.
Even if he could manage to reenlist for another bounty, he wouldn't do it. The war had grown too savage. Lee had withstood Butcher Grant in the Wilderness and bloodied him at Spotsylvania — during the latter action, Jones kept busy straggling or dodging to the safest sectors — but Grant wouldn't quit. The major who had ordered the punishment had once told his assembled regiment about Grant sending a telegraphic dispatch to Washington to express his determination to win in Virginia. The heart of Grant's message was printed in papers all over the North to improve civilian morale, the major said. He could even quote the essence of the message: "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."
Well, he would do it without Salem Jones, by God. Jones had enjoyed the benefits of the bounty system for a while, but recapture and the ordeal at the fire had put an end to that. He was bound south, as fast and as far as he could travel. He might go as far as South Carolina. He would love to be there when the Confederacy fell, as it surely would now that Grant's bloody engine was rolling. It amused Jones to imagine what he could do to Mont Royal and the people who had discharged him when Carolina became a conquered province —
As he fled through the orchard, the scene behind him — shadowmen running, shouting — convinced him the major had escaped from the burning tent. Too bad, but he had done his best. Now he must worry about slipping through the Union lines and the Confederate ones farther south.
At the adjoining regimental bivouac, he dashed through a gap between picket posts. A few moments later, the May moon sailed from behind a cloud, drenching him with light. Two inches high, the D stood out black and clear beneath his right eye.
Within twenty-four hours of the arrival of the nurses, conditions at the field hospital improved. Sanitary Commission wagons with flocks of black youngsters merrily chasing them brought bottled morphine, tinctured opium, chloride of lime. And food. In the first hours, while the hurt, dying, and dead had been shuttled in and out at dizzying speed, only hardtack and coffee had been available.
Amidst the constant activity and occasional confusion, Virgilia managed to marshal her wits and courage for the confrontation that had become inevitable the moment Mrs. Neal raised the dead boy's blanket. She suspected the supervisor would approach her first, rather than go to the surgeon in charge; she would want that satisfaction.
At the end of Virgilia's first full day on duty, there came a lull. No new patients, and nothing more to be done for those already there. Virgilia wiped a tin cup on her apron and ladled hot coffee into it. She was spent, having slept less than an hour in one of the commission wagons that afternoon.
She wandered outside. It was dusk. Fire-blackened stumps and tree trunks surrounding the hospital still gave off the smell of charred wood. Dull pain reached from Virgilia's feet to her lower back, the result of standing for so long. She wandered past the corner of her pavilion, tensing when she heard a rustle of skirts behind her. Without turning, she sat on a stump and brushed away a fly.
"Miss Hazard?"
Her face composed, Virgilia shifted her position to acknowledge the presence of the older woman.
"I have an extremely serious matter to discuss. I fear we both know what it is."
You fear? she thought, wrathful. You revel in it. She detected a sparkle of malice in Mrs. Neal's eyes. The supervisor walked to another stump and stopped behind it, facing her subordinate like a presiding judge.
"You allowed that young Southerner to bleed to death, didn't you? In other words, you killed him."
"Of all the ridiculous, insulting —"
"Taking the offensive with protests and bluster will do you no good," Mrs. Neal interrupted. "You told me on the train, very explicitly and before witnesses, that you would not minister to enemy wounded. Your extreme hatred of the South is well known. You covered that young soldier with blankets when you knew full well that warming him would start the damaged vessel bleeding again."
"Yes, I did cover him. I admit to that mistake. In the confusion — so many needing help — the surgeons all yelling at once —"
"Nonsense. You are one of the best nurses I have ever met. I have always disliked you, but I don't minimize your ability. You would not make that sort of mistake unless it was deliberate."
Feeling dampness under her arms and a series of tight little convulsions in her middle, Virgilia rose. She had gambled that admission of one mistake might lend credibility to a denial of greater guilt. Mrs. Neal was not taken in. Without looking at the supervisor, Virgilia bluffed. "If I confess to the error in judgment, you'll have a hard time proving it was anything more."