Irish Mary and Bruna stumbled out together, quite pleased with themselves. The Chaplain followed cautiously, although quite mollified by the bottle of whisky and a large sack of coffee beans that Bruna had produced as payment.
Jeremiah pulled a chair over to Mary Jane’s bedside and sat holding her hand, waiting for her to slip away as so many others had recently.
*****
“Captain?”
Jeremiah blinked more fully awake and turned to look down at the woman whose hand he held. Whose hand he’d been holding every night for six days as he read passages to her from his Bible. The tone was so soft and peaceful that he barely recognized the voice. “Miss Green?”
She stared up at him for a long moment. “Am I still? ‘Miss Green,’ I mean, I had a dream. It seemed real.” She squinted slowly at the ceiling. “We were…hitched. Married.”
He stopped for a second and considered, then laughed for a moment. “I don’t really know.”
Mary blinked a couple of times. “You don’t know?”
He gave her a bemused look. “I really don’t. We will have to ask the Minister.”
“I remember…” She broke off shuddering in revulsion and gripping his hand like an iron band. “It…or Him. Waiting for me…and you reached over to me and pulled me away.” She flushed red, though not the red of fever for a change.
Jeremiah explained Irish Mary and Bruna’s plan to fool the Devil. “But I don’t know whether that Chaplain married us or merely went along with them to keep himself in one piece. I’m not Episcopalian, and I was more concerned with your condition than with what he was saying.”
“We might be married or we might not?” Mary studied him for a moment. “How do we find out?”
Jeremiah sighed. “We will have to find the man and ask him if we are truly married in the eyes of God.”
Mary nodded slowly. “I think we probably need to know. Why haven’t you asked him?”
“It seemed…unnecessary at the time. And I think Irish Mary and Bruna may well have beaten us senseless for even discussing it.”
A tiny hint of a smile pulled at the corner of Mary’s mouth as she imagined that. Then the smile disappeared. “Why?”
Jeremiah refused to make eye contact for a long moment. “I did not think it would be important because we did not think you would survive the night.”
“Oh.” She shrunk into her bedding a bit, her emaciated form almost disappearing.
“You didn’t die though, Mary.”
“No. I did not, and we may, or may not, be married.” She seemed far less upset than he would have guessed. Perhaps the illness had temporarily blunted her edges.
“I hope you weren’t betrothed.” The concern and earnest tone caught Mary a little off guard.
She looked up at him with a weary shake of her head. “Most of the menfolk are gone for Soldier and them that remain are simple, old or already married.” She gave a sigh that might have been a laugh if she’d have had the strength. “Or they’re Black Republican Yankee mercenaries.”
Jeremiah smiled ruefully. “Isn’t that the same as simple?”
She gave a weak smile in return. “Wasn’t gonna say that out loud an’ all. Can’t be rude to the man who might have saved me from the Devil.”