Brendan Graham - The Brightest Day, The Darkest Night

There was none.

She sat there. Stunned beyond words. Only, ‘Mr Prudhomme! Mr Prudhomme!’ Cradling his stilled youth. Then, bent to his ear, whispered words the world could not hear. Words, she hoped the heavens would.

Mary gathered Souper Doyle in her arms, the neck reefed from him, his chest punctured. She tried to stem the hole in his throat with her hand. It was to no avail. He had seemed such a lonely man, didn’t mix much with the others. She knew what they said about him. Had spoken quietly to a few of them. That it wasn’t Christian to call him that. To judge.

‘Thomas,’ she said, gently. ‘The Lord is waiting. He will not judge you.’

He tried to respond. Made some distressing gurgling sounds in his throat … and died.

Mary waited with him, praying for the eternal repose of his soul and asking forgiveness for those whom Souper Doyle could no longer forgive.

Likewise, Ol’ Alabarmy – ‘long gone’ – when Mary reached him was finally home.

The young fiddle player lay on his back, beneath him his instrument … smithereened into the last silence. He was still alive, barely. Ellen knelt beside the boy, lifting his head against her breast.

‘We’ll get you back inside, fiddle player,’ she said, more in desperation than in hope. He rolled his eyes up at her.

‘No, lady,’ he said quietly.

‘Rosin’ up my bow – I’ll be at the crossroads and I hope the Devil don’t take me the wrong way!’

‘The Devil shouldn’t have all the best music,’ she answered grimly and got him to listen as she said an Act of Contrition into his ear.

‘You never let up with the white bonnet religion?’ he smiled.

‘Nothing else makes any sense,’ she said. ‘Are you hurting?’

‘Not in that way,’ he answered.

‘What then?’ she asked, anxious of any final comfort she could bring him.

He didn’t answer her immediately. Then, in a moment, raised his head to her. ‘If my mother were here with your son …’ he said, forming the words so slowly, so deliberately, that she would not mistake them, ‘… she would surely kiss him.’

And he kept his eyes open, fixed on her face, as she leaned down and gave him the tenderest mother-kiss.

Ellen just sat with him then, rocking him to herself, thinking of her own son and a mother in East Tennessee.

Beyond her, Ellen saw Louisa still sheltering the golden head of Jared Prudhomme.

‘He is dead – the beautiful youth!’ she heard Louisa say, in a far off voice. ‘Dead!’

She watched, as Mary went to Louisa, knelt beside her sister, and made the Sign of the Cross on the boy’s forehead.

‘He is home, Louisa, death exalts his face,’ Ellen heard Mary say.

Mary then came to Ellen. ‘The Lord is good, He will receive them all,’ she comforted and gave thanks that the young fiddle player had died ‘in a mother’s arms’.

Where Mary saw hope Ellen saw only hopelessness.

‘No young man believes he shall ever die,’ she said to Mary.

America was losing its young to this war … and in losing its young was losing its old.

‘The young are beautiful,’ Mary answered. ‘He takes them first to himself.’

‘Yes …’ Ellen said, looking at her daughter. ‘The young are truly beautiful.’

She herself felt old, unbeautiful. War killed all that was beautiful. Plucked out singing youth from life. Silenced it. Diseased men’s hearts and minds, eating up what measure of goodness there once was there. Poxing the soul as well as the body. The land would wait till it was ready – nurturing below its terrible fruit until the sons of sons had forgotten. Then there would be rivers of blood, seasons of storms, Lucifer rising.

Then would the land wreak its revenge.

With the men, Ellen and the two nuns helped lever the dead bodies onto the rude planks that would be their coffins. Until they were upended again from them – returned to the land.

Louisa’s petticoat now lay where she had placed it, on the boy’s breast – a mocking testament to safe passage. Ellen put her arm around Louisa’s shoulder, trying to salve the frantic heart within.

‘God decrees,’ Ellen thought, but didn’t say it.

Inside, Dr Sawyer summoned them, addressing Louisa.

‘It was against my disposition, Sister, that I agreed to Confederate soldiers being sheltered here. Events have proven me correct. We cannot be responsible for any but our own. Let the Rebels gather up their dead and wounded – and we ours!’

Displaying no hint of her private emotions, Louisa answered him. ‘It is not the Christian way. All men are brothers. In war, in life … and in death. The Lord is neither North nor South. Who are we to dispute with the Lord, to say mercy to this one because he is in blue uniform … no mercy to this one because he is in grey?’

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