The Brightest Day, The Darkest Night

Christ in every ear who listens to me.’

Even the words of the prayer seemed to take on an incongruity, far removed from their intended bidding.

‘Christ on my right foot,’ she prayed while handling a foot, pierced through like a stigmata. She remembered the poor wretch who had, in a state of fear, pulled the trigger of his rifle before raising it to the enemy and shot himself.

‘Christ on my left foot.’ She had it all out of kilter. But did it matter? She cast the stigmatic foot onto the mound, watched it slide down again in some crucified dance.

‘Christ with me,’ she intoned, invoking again the protection of the saint’s breastplate.

And the stench, the yellow dripping stench: powerful, unavoidable, permeating her clothes, her pores, the follicles of her hair. She thought she would drown in its noisome pool, it oozing over her whole body, closing out air and decency.

She redoubled her prayer but the drenching slime slid into her mouth, over her tongue and down her throat like the melt of Hell.

When they had finished she went straight to Dr Sawyer, gave him her mind about how ‘the great Abraham Lincoln couldn’t even run a decent abattoir, let alone this war or this country!’

That evening the regular cries for relief and ‘Sister! Oh Sister!’ were broken by a new sound. That of someone scratching out a tune on an asthmatic fiddle. Where the instrument came from nobody knew or, if they did, would not reveal.

Soon the fiddler, a Donny McLeod late of the Scottish Highlands, via East Tennessee, was madly flaking out the old mountain reels. For Ellen, the tunes recalled better days of sure-footed dancers, the men hob-nailing it out, striking splanks from the floor, while slender-waisted girls swung from their arms. Now, the magic of the wild fiddle music seemed to banish away forever the misfortunes of the waiting war.

It was Hercules O’Brien who started it.

Up he rose, arm in a sling – which he immediately cast off.

‘Head bandaged like a Turk, with only the ears out,’ as he described himself, he grabbed hold of the remaining arm of a grizzled old veteran.

‘C’mon, Alabarmy – let’s see if you can dance better than you fight!’ the little man challenged.

‘Well, I’ll be darned, O’Brien, if any o’ that Irish nigger-dancin’ will best ol’ Alabarmy,’ the Southron answered back.

And the two faced each other in the middle of the floor, Hercules O’Brien lashing it out heel to toe for all he was worth.

‘You’s sweatin’ like a hawg,’ Alabarmy goaded as the blood seeped out through his partner’s bandaged head. ‘Like a stuck hawg!’

A great roar of laughter arose at this goading of the Irishman.

Not to be outdone, Hercules O’Brien shouted back above the din, ‘And if you’d lost a leg ’stead of an arm, you’d be a better dancer,’ which raised another bout of laughter. Then the Irishman crooked his own good arm in Alabarmy’s one arm and swung him … and swung him in a dizzy circle with such a wicked delight. Until they all thought Alabarmy would leave this earth, courtesy of the buck-leppin’ O’Brien.

Next, another was up and then another, curtseying to prospective partners, the ‘ladies’ donning a strip of white bandage on whatever arm or leg they had left to distinguish themselves from the men.

‘Could I have the pleasure, Jennie Reb?’ Or ‘C’mon, Yankee, show us your nigger-jiggin’!’

Ellen stood watching them, the music reeling away the years. Back to the Maamtrasna crossroads, high above the two lakes – Lough Nafooey and Lough Mask. Them gathering in from every one of the four roads, the high bright moon lighting the way. Like souls summoned from sleep the dancers came, filtering out of the night to the gathering. There, under the moon and the great bejewelled sky they would merge out of shadow – a glance, a half-smile, then hand within hand, arm around waist, breath to breath. Then bodies in remembered rhythm would weave their spell, and they would rise above the ground, be lifted; the diamond sky now at their feet – a blanket of stars beneath them.

The priests were right – the devil was in the dancing, in the wicked reels; the way you danced out of your skin, out of yourself. ‘Going before themselves,’ the old women called it. Leaving sense and the imprisoned self behind. Being lost to the dance.

Remembering wasn’t good, Ellen reminded herself. A life could be lost to it … wasted, looking backwards. Looking forwards was as bad. She was of late looking too much backwards, and looking forwards, wondering where, if ever, she would find Lavelle and Patrick. Trapped between the future and the past, no control over either. Helplessly suspended in the now.

Ellen took in the scene in front of her. Was that all that mattered? All there was? The now of these broken men, momentarily lifted above the brutal earth to dance among the stars?

Across the room she saw Foots O’Reilly in conversation with Mary. Then she watched Mary bend, her arms encircling the man’s back, lifting him into a sitting position. He was from Cavan ‘and a mighty dancer,’ he had told Ellen, ‘could trip over the water of Lough Sheelin without dampening me toes.’ Hence, the nickname ‘Foots’. Then a Southern shell had ripped one dancing leg from under him.

‘That won’t hold Foots O’Reilly back none,’ he swore. Tomorrow he would undergo the surgeon’s saw to save the second leg, gangrened to the knee.

‘I could dance with the one, ma’am, but I can’t dance with the none. Now I’ll lose me name as well as me pegs. “Foots” with no foot at all to put under me.’ He had cried in her arms then.

Ellen watched Mary hoist the one-legged dancer, so that he half stood, half leaned against her, arms clasped to her, head draped over her shoulders. She dragged him out to the dancing square. The others witnessing it stopped, even the fiddle boy. Then Mary whispered into his ear, ‘Come on now, Mr O’Reilly. Dance with me … you show them!’

And she manoeuvred him slowly around in the silence, his gangrenous leg trailing behind them. Then again and again they turned, in grotesque pirouette, she in her white nun’s ballgown, he the mighty dancer, until Mary could support his dead weight no longer.

‘Thank you, Mr O’Reilly … Foots,’ Mary said to him. ‘I shall always remember this dance …’ and she sat him gently down again.

Then, all those who could were once more ‘footin’ it’: the wounded and the wasted, the stumped and the stunted. All flailed and flopped and picked themselves up again as the fiddler played his relentless reel. Then, suddenly, he changed into waltz-time.

‘I thought he’d kill the lot of them …’ Ellen said to Mary who had come beside her, ‘… but isn’t it wonderful to see?’

Mary smiled back at her.

As the young Tennessean, bow astride his fiddle, led them into the waltz, they watched Hercules O’Brien prop up Alabarmy in front of him, placing the Southerner’s shelled-out sleeve over his shoulder. Twins from Arkansas – a crutch apiece – hobbled around in a kind of teetering dance, Ellen ready to catch whichever one of them, who any minute must fall.

Then, someone bowing to Ellen … a deep bow. It was Herr Heidelberg, the Dutchman, as the men called the German soldier from the town of the same name. Like all who had come newly to America, Germans as well as the Irish, Poles and a host of other nations had joined in the fray to fight for their ‘new country’ – the North in Herr Heidelberg’s case.

‘I better likes dance mit de Frauen den de Herren,’ he said shyly.

What Ellen could see of Herr Heidelberg’s face was pink with both excitement and embarrassment. The German was the object of much ridicule from the rest of the men due to his manner of speaking, and now could risk further ridicule.

Ellen curtseyed to him.

‘Delighted, Herr Heidelberg!’ she replied.

It was the only name by which she knew him … and though denied his real name, the association with his hometown had always seemed to please him.

Herr Heidelberg swept her around like a Viennese princess, her dress spattered with the earlier work of the day, flouncing about her. The men made space for them, Ellen and her waltz king with half a face, clapping them on to twirl upon twirl, him counting to her under his breath.

‘Ein, zwei, drei, ein, zwei, drei.’ His bulk making her move like a turntable doll, just to keep pace with him. And all the while the young fiddler discoursing sweet music from his violin.

When they had finished, the others all clapped and cheered – and cheered again, more loudly; those who could not clap, clanking their crutches. He turned to her, flushed with delight.

‘Danke schön! Danke schön … I have not so very good time before in America,’ and she saw the tears form and spill down his bandaged cheek.

‘Thank you, Herr Heidelberg. You’re a brave dancer.’

He beamed at her and self-consciously retired away from her to the rear of the ward.

Finding herself beside the young fiddler Ellen enquired of him the tune. ‘It has no name … I picked it up from folk in the foothills.’ He smiled at her. ‘I could call it “The North and South Waltz”.’

‘More like “The Cripples’ Waltz”, ma’am, beggin’ your pardon,’ Hercules O’Brien chipped in, ‘’cos that’s what it was!’

‘If you was a gentleman, Sergeant O’Brien,’ the fiddler remonstrated, ‘you’d name it for the lady …“Mrs Lavelle’s”, or, with permission, ma’am, “Ellen’s Waltz”.’

‘Waltzes can be trouble …’ she said, remembering Stephen Joyce, and something about ‘the carnal pleasures of the waltz’.

‘I am honoured but perhaps there is a young lady in East Tennessee who more greatly deserves the honour,’ she said … and he struck up another waltz as if in answer.

All of a foam after her own decidedly non-carnal waltz with Herr Heidelberg, Ellen went to the open doorway for some cooling air. She stood there watching the sky, listening to the music, thinking of those whom she most dearly missed. The sky, the everlasting sky. Lavelle out there under it. Dead or alive. Maybe watching that same sky, thinking of her. An old poem-prayer – pagan or Christian, she didn’t know – formed on her lips. She had learned it at her father’s knee. All those nights of wonder long ago, under the sheltering stars. High on the Maamtrasna hill, above the Mask and Lough Nafooey. Above Finny’s singing river. Above the world.

‘I am the sky above Maamtrasna,

I am the deep pool of Lough Nafooey;

I am the song of the Finny river,

I am the silent Mask.

I am the low sound of cattle

And the bleating snipe;

I am the deer’s cry

And the cricket’s dance.

In the lover’s eye, am I;

In the beating heart;

I am the unlatched door;

I am the comforting breath.

Now and before, after and evermore,

I am the waiting shore.’

‘The waiting shore,’ she repeated, the great sky listening. ‘I am the waiting shore.’

Music, dancing, always seemed to start her thinking. Too much of it was bad. Thinking led to feelings. High, lonesome feelings like the fiddle-sound behind her. Still, these days she didn’t much give into herself. Just kept working with a kind of blind faith. That one day she’d find them, or they’d find her. Looking back on life was as bad as looking back on Ireland. She was done with all that, was now facing the new day – whatever that might bring … to wherever it might lead her. Like here … a pale ‘St Patrick’s night’ in Virginia – … Maryland … Carolina. She’d never thought of States as feminine. Then again, men were always 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,

Her nape is like the swan,

And her face it is the fairest,

That ’ere the sun shone on.

‘… And for Bonnie Annie Laurie

I’d lay down my head and die.’

They all liked him Ellen knew, both North and South, as did she. He was truly beautiful, in so far as one could ascribe beauty to a youth. But for all his seventeen youthful years, he had a manly bearing. Looked all straight in the eye, neither seeking favour, nor giving it. Yet with that generosity of youth that the cynicism of older age – and war – had not yet destroyed.

He sang as he looked. Clear voiced. Uninhibited by those present. Sang to ‘Annie Laurie’, as if she were there in the very room listening to him. And she was, Ellen knew, casting a glance towards Louisa. The girl’s white-bonnetted head was fixed on the boy. He did not look at her. He had no need to. The spirit within the song left his lips irrevocably bound for no other place than her.

Ellen stood transfixed. The boy reminded her so much of herself. Before she lost the gift. The gift was not the singing itself – the mere outpouring of notes – but the thing within and above the singing. She could still sing – as a person might. But the gift was lost to her. The gift came with purity – purity of intent, purity of the art itself. Letting go of desire, of ambition for the voice – the instrument – to be admired, the singer to be praised. The voice was not the gift, but the gift could inhabit the voice … but not by right or by skill alone.

The boy had the gift. Though he sang for Louisa, he did not sing to her. Then he had stopped before he had started it seemed, leaving them there suspended in the moment. The song, at one level, having passed them by. At another, having entered within, transcending them into some knowledge undefined by words or melody alone.

The listeners came back before he did. Clapped loudly, recognising that they had been transported and were now returned. ‘Arisht,’ the Irish called. ‘One more, lad!’ both friend and foe alike, echoed.

The boy just smiled, looked at Louisa, dropped his head slightly to gather himself and then looked at her again. Almost imperceptibly, she motioned her consent, the slightest tilt of her head towards him.

‘With your permission, ladies, I will dedicate this song to you all who daily raise us up.’

Acclamation arose from all those assembled. Again he looked at the ground, waiting until the burr of noise had receded.

‘When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary;

When troubles come and my heart burdened be;

Then, I am still and wait here in the silence,

Until you come and sit awhile with me.’

At the refrain, this time he looked directly at Louisa. She held his gaze, letting his sung words seep into her.

‘You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;

You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;

I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;

You raise me up … to more than I can be.’

All were hushed as the boy drew breath.

‘You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;

You raise me up to walk on stormy seas;’

This time they all joined in, raising their voices in the redemptive words. A chorus of broken angels but all fear lifted from them.

‘I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;

You raise me up … to more than I can be.’

At the final line his gaze never removed from Louisa, the rapture on her daughter’s face provoking the opposite emotion in Ellen. When he finished there was again the hiatus, no one wanting to break the moment, steal wonder away.

‘We’ll give you that – you can sing you Rebs!’ Hercules O’Brien eventually ventured, nodding his block of a head in approval at the boy. Then looking at Ellen he called for ‘A soothing Irish voice to calm the storms of battle’.

She resisted, didn’t want to follow the boy, break the spell he wove. Then the boy himself called her, ‘It would do us great honour. Mrs Lavelle – a parting song. A song some may not hear again … after tomorrow.’

All knew what he meant. Some did not look at her … shuffled uneasily. Those that could – those recovered by her healing hands who, tomorrow would go out again – she could not refuse them. For some reason the pale and riderless horse flashed by her mind.

She started falteringly, sang it to the boy. Her own favourite. Favourite of all whom she loved and who in turn had loved her.

‘Oh, my fair-haired boy, no more I’ll see,

You walk the meadows green;

Or hear your song run through the fields

Like yon mountain stream …’

She looked at the boy as she sang, something fiercely ominous in her, some darker shade of meaning she had not noticed before, now present in the words.

‘So take my hand and sing me now,

Just one last merry tune …’

His clear blue eyes never left hers as she sang her tune in answer to his.

‘Let no sad tear now stain your cheek,

As we kiss our last goodbye;

Think not upon when we might meet,

My love my fair-haired boy …’

They were all her fair-haired boys, all the crippled, the crutched, the maimed and the motherless. Some called her ‘Mother’ – and even when they didn’t, she knew she was their mother in-situ, the comforting words, the tender touch.

‘If not in life we’ll be as one,

Then, in death we’ll be …’

She did not mean to sadden them with thoughts of death but to comfort them. Death indeed would come to many here … maybe to Hercules O’Brien … maybe by the hand of Ol’ Alabarmy, his dancing partner. Perhaps death would dance with the shy Rhinelander. He had danced with her, as if it were the last waltz on this wounded earth. Or death could call time on the young fiddle player from East Tennessee. Or even, Ellen kept her eyes on the beautiful boy, to Jared Prudhomme, in love with her Louisa … and she with him.