The man spoke to him, his voice cutting across the crystal-clear cool of the October afternoon. “Captain Peyton? Captain Bolling Peyton?”

The blue of the uniform mingled with the cadence of the words, and Bolling was transported back to that other time, always lurking beneath the surface of his foggy present. It was a time of war when his name was shrieked in pain, and bore the echo-marks of hundreds of men—his men in gray—as they clamored over a rise to face a hailstorm of Union shells; his men, as they huddled behind twisted tree trunks watching blue uniforms surround them; his men as . . .

He felt the touch of the small hand invade the landscape of his nightmare, the small hand that settled on his arm as softly as a butterfly rests on a dew-stained leaf.

“Uncle Bolling? Are you all right?” Her fragile voice floated toward him, the voice of Amanda, his goddaughter.

He heard her concern and worry, and those emotions resonated with him, with the need to please the sweetest presence in his life. He wrenched himself from the battlefield of his memory and looked down at the ten year-old girl. He attempted to smile to reassure her, then frowned when he saw the blue uniform out of the corner of his eye. It was standing closer to him now.

“You are Captain Peyton?”

“Once I was, yes,” came Bolling’s tired voice. “But, no longer. You and yours took care of that by accepting our surrender at Appomattox Courthouse.”

He looked past the uniform to the woman standing behind it. She was older than the soldier, in her fifties, probably. With soft brown hair and soft brown eyes. It was the gentleness in her eyes that demanded his attention, gentleness that merged with the sweetness of his little Amanda, and together, threatened to exorcise his dark memories and burst through his lethargic shell.

He heard his dead voice continue. “I ended any official business I might have with your kind last April, when the war ended. I mean you no disrespect, sir, ma’am, but I’ve made it a point of avoiding all contact with the military these last six months. I’m asking you to leave me in peace.”

The woman’s eyes were compassionate, and searching. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but the next words he heard rose from above the blue uniform.

“We have business with you, Captain—Mr. Peyton.”

Something in the clipped tones, the assured security that comes with victory, pierced Bolling’s numbed indifference. He felt the fury build and grow in his gut, starting as a tiny whisper of discontent and fueling itself until it was an anguished roar that demanded voice.

“Get off my property,” he growled.

The woman shrank away from his harsh words. She wore the clothing of mourning; the mark of death and loss rested heavily on her. He inhaled sharply, ordering himself to calm down. Out of respect for her loss.

“Sir,” the Federal officer’s words were also clipped, an efficient use of vowel, consonant, and breath. “I mean you no distress, and we apologize for having disturbed you by appearing at your doorstep unannounced, but, we’ve had trouble finding you, sir. And, we’ve traveled a long way. The fact is, we have a matter of utmost importance to discuss with you.”

Bolling said in a calmer voice, “I signed your Oath of Allegiance months ago. And that was it. I signed, and then I washed my hands of the lot of you. Now, please get off my property.”

The soldier and woman looked at each other. The man sighed, and pulled an envelope from his breast pocket, the crisply pressed blue uniform rustling at his touch. He extended the white envelope toward the ex-Confederate officer.

“This explains the nature of our business. I would ask you to review its contents, sir. You’ll be contacted in a day or so, in case you’ve had a change of heart and will agree to talk with us after all.”

Bolling sank into his porch rocker, and made no move to take the paper from the man’s hand. Instead, his trembling fingers dropped to the worn gray trousers stretched paper-thin across his thighs, and stayed there. His eyes followed the movement of his fingers, mesmerized by the sight of his pale white flesh splayed against the bleached-out gray, the remnant of a uniform he had proudly worn. When he looked up, the soldier and woman had disappeared.

“Uncle Bolling?” came the frail voice, and he looked over to see Amanda’s beloved face. Her eyes were large, filled with questions she was too wise to stuff with sound.

Such sad eyes, Bolling thought. Sad eyes in a pale face drawn tight and strained from prolonged illness. Before the war, she had been a chubby-cheeked five-year-old, rosy and round, full of energy and the joy of each day. But, the legacy of four years of deprivation, malnutrition, destruction, rested firmly on her gaunt shoulders. Living in the heart of the most contested piece of ground in the country had exacted a heavy price. And Amanda, like the lower Shenandoah Valley around her, had suffered cruelly on the sidelines as men from the north and south rained bullets around her home, trampled her father’s wheat fields, ripped to shreds the fabric of her family’s life.

His melancholy thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Amanda’s cough—ever-present, dry, starved of energy. She’d never recovered from the influenza she’d contracted the year before. The same disease that had killed her mother. Now, he feared that the hand of consumption was beckoning to her.

“You should take this, Uncle Bolling.” Amanda clutched the white envelope in her delicate hand.

“Put it down, honey.”

Amanda set the paper on the seat of a camp chair next to her, and turned back to face him. “Are you going to open it?”

“I don’t know, Amanda.” Bolling stroked refugee strands of her dull brown hair back into place with a soothing hand. He smiled at her, forcing his stiff white bristly whiskers to follow his tan-hardened skin as they obliged the moving muscles around his lips. “I’ll think about it. But, right now, I need to see you home, before your father wonders what happened to you.”

Amanda nodded, pulling at cotton strings that were attached to a sunbonnet bouncing against her back. She settled the hat on her head, and smoothed her faded brown-striped dress with delicate fingers that seemed to flit over the worn fabric, caressing and tender. The dress had belonged to her mother, the washed-out cotton cut down to fit her rail-thin figure by a neighbor lady.

Bolling held out a hand to her, and she grasped it, trusting and eager. The pair set off through the wire grass, towards the nearby farmhouse where Amanda and her father lived. Fading sunlight glowed bright yellow and red around them as it reflected the leaves of poplars and beeches. These were the trees that had survived exploding shells screaming from soldiers’ rifles, and axes of desperate civilians scavenging for firewood. Just beyond the trees lay the wheat field Amanda’s father and Bolling were attempting to induce back to life, its rich limestone soil still rock-hard after four years of trampling by thousands of marching boots.

A slight movement in a tangled mass of dead branches, strewn on the ground to their right, attracted Bolling’s attention. A tiny white kitten struggled to climb out of an object lying among the wood. As he drew closer, he saw that the kitten was being held prisoner by a tattered kepi cap—part of the debris left to the Shenandoah by troops who had swarmed over the land, part of the legacy of a war they had brought to the civilians’ doorsteps.

Amanda dropped to her knees next to the helpless animal, and freed the quivering body from the frayed cap.

“This has got to be one of Betsy’s kittens, Uncle Bolling! So new to this world, it hasn’t even opened its eyes.” As she stroked it, the kitten nuzzled into the palm of her hand, seeking warmth and security, its face crinkled tight, bunched around eyes clamped shut.

“You’re right, dear. It’s probably only a few days old. Newborns are a helpless lot, especially animals like cats who are born blind. Good thing they grow into their eyes. Can’t live in the world very well if you can’t see what’s around you.”

She turned to look at him, concern crossing her face. “It’s too young to be off on its own. I hope Betsy’s close by.”

Bolling smiled down at her. “I’m certain she is. I wonder where—” He broke off, and pointed to a laurel bush. At its base, an enormous white cat was hunched, patiently watching them. “There’s Betsy. She’s probably moving her kittens, and is just waiting for us to leave before she continues on her way.” He took Amanda by the arm and urged her forward.

After the pair had walked a few feet, Bolling motioned behind them. “Look, Amanda. See? There goes Betsy with the little one. All’s well.”

The pair lingered for a moment, watching the mother cat with kitten dangling out of her mouth trot across a plot of scorched earth.

“Where’s she taking it?” asked Amanda.

“From her direction, I’d say she’s probably keeping her babies in the old mill.”

“Why in that place? It’s nothing but a heap of rubble.”

“It still offers her protection from the elements.”

“Our house would have been a better choice,” Amanda said, disappointment in her voice.

“Want to see where she’s going?”

Amanda nodded, her haggard face bright with excitement.

The two began following the mother cat. Around them, remnants of war were ever-present. Tree trunks were chipped and stripped clean of bark after being battered by shells. Tin plates, dented cups, scraps of gum blankets lay in haphazard profusion, along with shreds of weather-bleached uniforms, cap boxes, haversacks, all partially hidden by the season’s growth of wire grass and wildflowers.

Ahead of them, sitting along the bank where Abraham’s Creek met Mill Race, stood the charred skeleton of a woolen mill. The marks left from angry licks of fire had paled over the two years since the Federals had torched it. A blackened brick chimney rose above an abundance of ferns and wild violets that had flourished in the rich soil since the war’s end, bursting through wide spaces between the few blackened floorboards that had survived scavengers. Vines climbed and entwined around rusted fragments of machinery—a contorted mass of metal that had been tortured by the intense heat from a wartime inferno.

“There she goes.” Bolling pointed to the heart of the mill as the long white cat tail disappeared underneath a wood plank. “She and her kittens will be snug and warm under those boards.”

“I suppose. Do you think we’ll see the kitten, again?”

Bolling tweaked her nose, grinning at her. “Now, you know Betsy’s never more than a few feet behind you most of the time. She’s just waiting for her babies to grow up a bit before she makes her introductions.”

He nodded toward a farmhouse disfigured by shot and shell, just visible through the stand of trees. “Come on, honey. I need to get you home before you’re late for supper, and I hear from your father.”

He waited at the edge of the trees until he saw the frail figure disappear inside the house, then returned to the tranquility of his front porch. Settling heavily in the cane-bottomed rocker, he reached for a book in the chair next to him. His movement disturbed the envelope Amanda had placed there, and it fell to the sagging floorboards. As Bolling retrieved it, a calling card tumbled out. He picked up the black-bordered paper and read, “Mrs. Claire-Marie Dandridge.”

His female visitor, he thought. Dandridge. That name sounded familiar. Somewhere, it resided in the dark recesses of his memory.

He stuffed the card and the envelope into a fraying pocket of his ancient frock coat, and turned his attention back to the book. Cradling the soiled leather tome in one rough hand, he stroked its pages with callused fingers, his eyes caressing the magical words printed there. It was the only survivor of his prewar days, this book of Wordsworth’s poetry. The only clue of the life he’d lived before, when he’d taught poetry at Winchester Academy.

That life was over for him. Winchester Academy was closed—the war had sealed its fate in the early years of fighting. His modest rented rooms in the town of Winchester had gone up in smoke thanks to the Federals. After the First Battle of Winchester, they’d retreated through the streets of the town, and torched Coontz’s Foundry as they went. Bolling’s rooms were nearby, engulfed in the resulting fire.

He’d accepted the demise of his comfortable bachelor life through a numbed fog . . . he had no heart to return to teaching . . . had no energy nor motivation to do much of anything any more.

He felt self-derision swarm over him like a mass of honey bees disturbed from their hive. The Oxford-educated teacher, the literary scholar, that was what he had once been. And then, the War of Attempted Secession had transformed him into a dutiful soldier who had become nothing more than a killing machine for the Cause as he’d served the Army of Northern Virginia in the Stonewall Brigade. He’d given the Confederacy all he had to give. Now, he felt hollow and empty inside. Used up. Existing in a sea of gray and muffled sound only punctuated with Amanda’s color and laughter.

In fact, the only element of his life that seemed real was the friendship he shared with Amanda and her father. What would he have done without them these last six months? They had offered him shelter and a meager subsistence on their ravaged farm outside Winchester in exchange for his help with the work. Amanda’s father had suffered an injury to his leg at Cold Harbor that had never healed properly. Now, the man was unable to use the leg for sustained periods of time, and walked with a pronounced limp. Bolling’s presence on the farm was not charity—it was necessary for the survival of the family. Bolling had accepted the responsibility gratefully.

His thoughts returned to Amanda—his goddaughter, his best friend’s daughter. How much longer could she cling to the silken thread that connected her to life? He prayed to God she wouldn’t share the same fate as many of their neighbors, who had fallen into consumption. But the telltale signs of the condition were there—the growing weakness, chronic cough, the fatigue and distinctive pallor.

Still, a healthy diet of plentiful nourishing food would make all the difference. She could live a happy, long life with the right food. Unfortunately, food was in short supply where money was scarce, even six months after the war. The first postwar harvest had been woefully meager, hampered by compacted ground, a decimated workforce, and little seed money—another legacy of war and the scorched earth policy adopted by the Federals in the Valley.

“Black Dave” Hunter and Phil Sheridan had implemented the barbaric policy, ordering their men to strip bare the once-verdant region. Their soldiers had carried away or destroyed every resource that would have enabled the Valley’s civilians to resume their livelihoods after the war. The precious contents of homes, barns, smokehouses, orchards, gardens, spring houses—all gone. Most trees had been cut down or burned; orchards decimated; barns, outbuildings, and mills torched; snake fences broken up; livestock stolen. Every sight on which the eye rested represented that malicious waste and evil intent. A black force of destruction—a plague, an epidemic that permeated the ground, seeped into the soul, ravaged the spirit.

His mind flickered on the Bluecoat who had invaded his world earlier that day. He couldn’t even summon the hint of curiosity about him, or the woman. Let them go back from whence they came, and leave him alone to struggle in the fractured, tortured peace their kind had manufactured for him and his loved ones.

When he finally laid eyes on the delicate, drawn girl coming down his path, it was not a smile that greeted him. Instead, she looked distracted and contemplative. Deeply entrenched lines of weariness crossed her face.

As she settled on the top step of the porch, next to him, he said, “Are you having a bad morning, little girl?” He placed a gentle hand on her bare head. “And where’s your bonnet?”

She shrugged her shoulders, taking a shallow breath. Bolling winced at the labored, wheezing sound of her.

She gave him a swift glance, then looked away. “They came to visit us last night, Uncle Bolling.”

“Who did?” he said more sharply than he had intended.

“The Yankee and the woman who were here to see you yesterday.”

“What business did they have with your father?”

Amanda turned back to him, her wispy eyes studying him, intently. “You didn’t read the paper they left you, did you?”

“No, honey. I’m not even certain what I did with it.”

“Well, sir. Their business is you.”

Amanda leaned toward him, and Bolling could feel the warmth of her sweet breath brush across his face. Her words came out in a rush of pent-up nervousness. “Please, Uncle Bolling. Please don’t be cross with me for talking to them. I know you didn’t like them. But, well, I thought they seemed quite nice. Even the Yankee. And, they were very polite to Father and me. They’re not here to do anything bad. I’m sure of it. They just want to speak with you, Uncle Bolling.”

“Did they ask you to talk to me, Amanda?”

Her eyes dropped away from his face and he got his answer. Bolling rose from the step and walked across the porch, seeking to quiet the anger and sense of betrayal that surged through him.

“They . . . they said it’s very important,” she whispered behind him.

“Important for whom?” Bolling’s bitter voice bit through the crisp air.

“I think they meant for you, Uncle Bolling.”

He turned to look at her. Her eyes were upon him, filled with earnestness and pleading.

She wants you to talk to the Federal and the woman, he chided himself. Is that so difficult? For her? That he would disappoint this cherished little girl rather than agree to it?

Amanda had been watching his face, reading his expression, and he saw her delicate features broaden into a wide, delighted smile. She came at him in a rush, and flung her arms around his waist.

“I knew you’d agree.” She beamed up at him.

Later that day, Bolling sat on his rotting porch, in the creaky rush-bottom rocker, and watched the Federal and the woman approach the foot of his porch steps, again. This time, he stood, ramrod straight, and gestured to two wooden camp chairs with a stiff jerk of his arm.

“Sit!” he commanded through numbed lips. He kept his eyes on the uniform—watching it invade the perimeter of his home, his refuge, his sanctuary.

The soldier leaned forward, toward him, carefully, as one would approach an invalid in precarious health. He opened his mouth to speak, but the woman laid a hand on his arm. It was a gesture restraining him, asking him to remain silent.

“I’m Mrs. Claire-Marie Dandridge, Captain,” she said in a voice as light as an early spring rainfall. “This is my son, Major Fitzgerald Dandridge. We’re family of the late Captain Asa Dandridge.”

The woman dropped her eyes, and Bolling could feel waves of pain radiate from her. He felt her emotions pull at him, beckon to him. It was if she was able to reach into the deep heart of him that still struggled and chafed to make sense of the carnage of his war experience, the core that always threatened to disrupt the delicate equilibrium he had constructed so he could stumble through his days.

She was speaking to him again in her soft voice. “You . . . did you read the documents we left, last night?”

He shook his head.

“Captain—Mr. Peyton, do you remember my son? Federal Captain Asa Dandridge?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. Should I?”

“Well, sir, I’d have thought you might.”

“Mrs. Dandridge, except for the obvious possibility that your son and I faced each other across the no-man’s-land of a battlefield, why would I know him, in particular?”

“May 5, 1864, Captain. The first day of the battle at the Wilderness. You made the acquaintance of my son, then.”

Bolling could hear the pleading in her voice. Please try to remember, her voice begged him. Think back. Open your heart to the memory. Her voice was joined by the touch of Amanda, as his goddaughter stepped to the side of his chair and placed her hand on his shoulder. Please remember, her nearness begged.

And Bolling did. With the name of Asa Dandridge drumming a steady tattoo in his consciousness, in a monumental struggle of will, he marshaled the ragged fragments of his courage and forced his mind back to that awful time—the killing time when the world drowned in a sea of blood and grew deaf from the hellish cacophony of brothers destroying brothers . . .

South of Virginia’s Rapidan River, hard by the Orange Turnpike and Orange Plank Road, across the trampled stubble of Saunder’s corn field and in the tangled mass of trees and shrub, thousands of boys in blue and gray lay in states of mutilation and death on the afternoon of May 5th, 1864. Fires brought on by shells exploding amidst dry wood had flashed to life, adding to the horror of the scene as they roasted the fallen bodies. The stench of burning flesh mingled with the fetor of blood, the pungency of gun powder. Smoke swirled, pressing down in heavy layers, adding a cruel mystery to the scene.

The two sides had been struggling to find each other’s northern flank throughout the afternoon. As Stafford’s Louisiana Brigade stretched the Confederate line northward, it had become separated from the Stonewall Brigade—Bolling’s unit. The gap between the two brigades had widened, and Union Colonel Henry Brown’s New Jersey men had rushed into the midst of the Confederate position, volleying heavy fire into the Virginians’ front and flank.

Under blistering fire, Bolling’s commander, General “Stonewall Jim” Walker had reorganized his men to meet the onslaught, receiving point-blank volleys in the process. The Brigade’s 4th Regiment had stopped the flank attack, and for the better part of the last two hours, Bolling’s 2nd regiment, along with the 33rd, had held against the Federal onslaught.

Now, Captain Peyton hunkered behind the breastworks with the rest of the Stonewall Brigade, watching soldiers from “Uncle John” Sedgewick’s 6th Corps stumble toward them across the brambly, bloody Saunder’s field. The Federals were attempting to crack the Confederate position, again.

The fighting intensified, and the air around Bolling became thick with sheets of iron as the men in blue surged towards the Confederates on a frenzied tide. Wave after wave, they rode, only to dissolve before the withering fire Bolling and his men threw at them.

Suddenly, one of the Federals broke from the jagged formation and started advancing toward Bolling. Somehow, the infantryman dodged the rain of shells spewing at him from Peyton’s company. On he came. Closer, eyes fixed on Bolling, Spencer rifle aimed at him.

Peyton found himself mesmerized by the Yankee’s eyes, those pale gray eyes. Wild and wide, they were, flecked with fear, fury, panic. Resignation. It was as if the Union soldier had stepped inside him and plunged into his own sea of anguish and misery. Those eyes could have been his own. The war had never been so close, so personal to Captain Peyton.

The battle clashing around him—the roar of thousands of rifles, shrieking shells, yelling men—receded until it nothing but a distant echo. In its place, Bolling heard the mournful refrain of a fighter’s dirge. And before his mind’s eye, strutting in formation to this martial lament, marched the ghosts of all those soldiers whose lives he’d taken. A long parade, tramping through blood that had spilled at his hands. He looked down, and he could see the blood flowing toward him, threatening to drown him. He could feel the warm moisture ooze around his ripped Jefferson boots, his tattered trousers, climbing, slimy and thick, oozing in broad rivulets across the jagged plane of his conscience.

He shrank away from the vision, focusing again on the Union soldier’s eyes, seeing that the man shared his nightmare. Bolling felt himself rise above the breastworks until he stood at full height. He lowered his rifle before the man. The Union soldier did the same. They would not shoot each other. They would not shoot a kindred spirit, a man with whom each had shared such intimate feelings. These men would not die at each other’s hand, this day anyway.

Bolling reached out to the man. His enemy. His soulmate.

And then, as Bolling watched, the Federal’s eyes disappeared before him, dissolved into bloody pulp as the lead from the Confederates’ rifles around Bolling met their mark. The man dropped before the breastworks, his torso draped over the gummy pine logs. Even as the man fell forward, the memory of his gray eyes dangled before Bolling. Gray eyes now dissolved red.

He reached toward the soldier again, seeking contact, meeting nothing but murky dense air. The soldier had slipped away, disappeared into the smoke beyond the battered breastworks.

Vaguely, behind him, Bolling became aware of an order to move out. Under a blizzard of lead, Stonewall Jim had decided to move his men to a stronger position 75 yards to the rear.

While Bolling’s comrades moved back in good order, Bolling, still reeling from the image of the Federal he’d faced across the breastworks, lost his bearings for a brief moment. Blurred ghostly figures swirled behind him, then dissolved into the thick air as his men disappeared into the folds of the Wilderness. He shook off his confusion, and began to maneuver toward his line, threading his way through stands of stunted evergreen, dwarf chestnuts, and hazel trees.

He struggled forward in this fashion for a short time, making steady progress in the tangled mass of foliage. At one point, as he paused to chop through a thick wall of grapevines coiling before him, he heard an anguished cry coming from the area immediately to his right. He felt drawn to the sound, and without questioning his actions, he turned toward it.

Pushing through thick white smoke that spiraled around the sultry air, heavy and lazy, Bolling almost tripped over the Federal soldier. The man was crouched against the thick trunk of an oak, his arms embracing the slimy wood as a child grabs for the security of his mother’s skirts. Bolling raised his Enfield, prepared to take the Union captain as prisoner. The man raised a blackened face to Bolling, staring ahead of him with wild, unfocused eyes. He gave no indication that he saw Bolling standing within a few feet of him.

“Someone—someone help me!” he cried in a panicked voice. “Don’t let the fires burn me alive. Good Christ! I can’t see them! Where are the fires?

“There’s no fire near you, at present, Captain,” said Bolling.

“Where—I can’t see you. God almighty! I can’t see at all!”

Bolling crouched next to him.

“Are you—are you there?” The Union soldier’s arms thrashed wildly in front of him.

Bolling grasped the man’s arm, steadied him, then released him. “What happened to you? You don’t look injured.”

The man pulled himself up alongside the tree. “Flash of gunpowder—some Reb’s powder bag exploded in my face back there. Saw crimson and gold all over everywhere. Then, nothing. Just black.” He raised trembling blackened fingers to his eyes. “I . . . I can’t see a thing. Who are you? Listening to you . . . you’re a Reb, aren’t you? Part of that brigade we flanked earlier this afternoon.”

“Yes.”

Bolling watched the frenzied soldier push off from the anchor of the tree, flail through the bristling shrubs, and crash to the ground. He brought the man back to his feet, feeling the pressure of the Federal’s weight as the blinded soldier leaned on him, seeking clear ground upon which to stand. Bolling knew that he should take this man back to his lines. Now. As his prisoner. But, as Bolling watched him struggle for equilibrium in a world suddenly gone dark, the Confederate captain was flooded with another image—the Union soldier who had charged his line, eye sockets flowing blood as his body was pummeled with Confederate lead.

As the image of those empty sockets lingered before his mind’s eye, Bolling knew that he’d been given another chance to save a life. And by so doing, save the tattered fragment of soul that still clung to him.

Bolling wrapped an arm around the Captain’s back, bracing him, urging him forward.

“Where—where are you taking me?” The Federal’s voice was steadier. It was the voice of a man preparing himself to become a prisoner, or die.

“Back to your own people, Captain,” Bolling said in a gruff voice.

“Why are you doing this?”

Bolling didn’t speak immediately, as he slipped into the heart of the manic confusion that clamored around them, concentrating on skirting the shadowy figures of passing soldiers. Minié bullets snapped and tore through tree limbs next to them. Splinters flew into their faces. Still Bolling moved on, seeking the densest swirls of smoke, the thickest trees, the jungle of switch that rose 20 feet around them—using these natural obstacles as cover.

Bolling spoke into the Federal’s ear. “I’m doing this because I need to, I guess. I need to help you. Can you understand that?”

“I thank God for you. What’s your name, soldier?”

“Captain Bolling Peyton, Second Virginia, Stonewall Brigade. And you?”

“Captain Asa Dandridge, Third New Jersey, Brown’s Brigade.”

Bolling had been maneuvering east toward the Federal line. Now, as a patch of clear air swept away the swirling smoke for several seconds, he could see a solid body of blue uniforms ahead of him. The Union soldiers were heading in his direction.

“Well, Captain Dandridge, this is as far as I can take you. Your men are approaching.”

“Captain Peyton, there are no words to express my thanks. I owe you my life.”

“Not yet, you don’t. But, I did what I could. Pray God it’s enough.”

As Bolling eased the Federal to the ground by a clump of pine trees, he could see the captain flinch as shells exploded in the ground a few feet away.

“Jesus, I can’t even see the lead coming at me.” Dandridge’s voice quivered. “I’m totally helpless. Once you leave me, Captain, I’ll be at the mercy of fate. Blind fate.”

“You’re in the path of your comrades. They can’t miss you. And then, you’ll be as safe as is possible in this mess.” Bolling started to walk away, aware that with every second he lingered, he was risking capture by the approaching Union soldiers. Still, he hesitated, looking back at the shaken, terrified man. Bolling couldn’t leave him that way. So alone, with nothing to comfort him.

Reaching inside his tattered frock coat, Captain Peyton pulled out a small silver cross. It had been a gift from his mother just before she died, a momento of her love, her faith, her conviction that as long as he carried it, he would be protected from harm.

He placed the cross between Dandridge’s shaking fingers. As he turned to leave, he saw the Union soldier clutch the cross against his chest, and lower his head in prayer. And then, Captain Dandridge disappeared from Bolling’s sight in a spiral of scrolling smoke.

Seventeen months after Captain Peyton left the blinded soldier crouched on the ground waiting to be rescued, he looked into the face of Asa Dandridge’s mother, shaking off the painful memories.

“Was he . . . was he found by his men?” Bolling asked Mrs. Dandridge.

She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “Thanks to your heroic efforts, he was rescued and taken to a field hospital. Unfortunately—” She broke off with a sob.

Fitzgerald Dandridge placed a comforting hand on his mother’s shoulder, saying, “The field hospital was shelled the next day. Asa was wounded. He never recovered, and died in the depot hospital at Fredericksburg a few days later.” The Major looked at Bolling with eyes draped in heavy grief. “But not before he was able to write us a letter, telling us what happened. How you saved him. What you did for him.”

Claire-Marie Dandridge fumbled in her reticule. “He wanted us to find you, and to give you these things.” She held two envelopes in her hand. She handed Bolling one of them. As he opened it, she said, “This is returned to you with Asa’s gratitude and deep thanks. And ours.”

Bolling pulled out the silver cross he had given Asa on the battlefield. He cradled it in his hand, watching the sunlight skim across the lustrous surface, radiating waves of shimmering light. He felt its warmth and the love of his mother course through his hand, up his arm, and through his body. He placed it in his vest pocket and nodded his thanks, not trusting his voice to support words.

The second envelope was thrust into his hands. He shook his head in confusion. “I didn’t give your son anything else.”

“You gave him more than you could ever know,” Asa’s mother said, nodding toward the envelope. “That’s a copy of what we left with you, yesterday. You’d be honoring us if you’d look at it.”

Bolling pulled out a sheet of paper. It was an account statement from a bank in Baltimore. He stared at the dollar amount—a fortune. Enough money for several lifetimes. All in his name.

“There must be some mistake. I can’t accept this.”

“The money is there for you,” said Fitzgerald Dandridge. “And will remain there for you. Asa wanted you to have it. And so do we. What you choose to do with it is your decision.”

Bolling’s eyes bore into the sheet, its neatly printed columns of figures marching before his eyes. Yankee money. Probably accumulated during the war at the expense of rebel blood—his blood. No, he thought. The price was too high. He wanted nothing from the Union but to be left alone.

“Maybe the money would make you happy.” Amanda’s words wafted across the ledger sheet toward his heart.

“Make me—”

“You’ve been so sad since you’ve returned from the war, Uncle Bolling. If this money would make you happy, you should accept it as the gift it’s meant to be.”

He looked at Amanda, her pinched face glowing. In her eyes, he saw the ravaged fields, ransacked home, torched barn, empty larder.

With the wealth represented by those impersonal figures printed on a sheet of paper, he could buy nourishing food to strengthen her, materials to rebuild her home and farm buildings, and tools to properly work the fields. How high would be the price if he didn’t accept the money?

He turned to Fitzgerald and Claire-Marie Dandridge and slowly nodded his head. “Thank you.”

As soon as Bolling uttered those words, a sense of redemption and a heightened awareness infused him. Before his mind’s eye, a vision of crystal clarity escaped the confines of the ledger sheet and beckoned to him, inviting him to look at the blessings his actions had wrought. It danced in front of him, its graceful steps showing him the path toward a future of sustained health and fulfilled potential for his loved ones. And, when he stumbled over its promises, it set him upright, guaranteeing those things on the blood of an oath made by an enemy in the grip of terror and thankfulness, at the heart of a battlefield in the wilderness.