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Si known the president since they’d served in the war together, on the ground and on horseback, in uniforms instead of suits … decided (wisely, in Grant’s estio back inside

The president assus and send the cabinet hos in the history of such ? No Not with that woeons

And Deseon of theht behind her His hand on her shoulder, not to control her but to take direction frohtest Because Foas right about several things, including a few he hadn’t said, but only iht hiht Fowler in to be the Secretary of State because Fowler understood the way Washington worked He understood politics, and politicking, as a duck knoater That’s why he’d needed hiht years before, and that’s why he’d become so powerful: because Grant was a soldier, not a statesman He did not know--and had never understood, not for five sober seconds--how things worked betweenof all It was easy to understand, for all the carnage and misery Here is one side Here is another You try to kill each other, and the best ar unexpected interference

As his thoughts tuether, he found his way to a small library, one he’d only ever entered once or twice It had a door, one he could shut behind himself It even had a lock, which he used, then turned a switch to raise the diain, because they made his head hurt

"A patriot," he mumbled

That’s what Katharine Haymes had called herself And he was certain Desht the same of himself, as did the rest of thosefoot inside it, or not any the roo one He rubbed his eyes and sat down on the floor before his legs gave out underneath him

"To hell with us all"

Six

It took so little titon, DC, that Maria wondered how the two cities ht on opposite sides of the same war It wasn’t even terribly difficult to travel between them; all it took was a false set of paperwork (provided by Mr Pinkerton) clai that she was a Red Cross nurse, a train ticket, and finally a carriage that took her to the doorstep of the Robertson Hospital

The hospital was once a very large house, owned by a judge who’d fled the pre, back in 1861 As the Confederacy stabilized into a state of war, the house’s original owner had made several attempts to return and reclairounds that possession is nine-tenths of the law … and besides, she was perforued was more important than the cowardly relocation effort that left the house abandoned in the first place Since then, the house had been augmented extensively in order to accommodate the thousand or so men who found their way to Robertson from the fronts each year Now it sat in the center of a se lean-tos, and a carriage house for the single ambulance that operated on the hospital’s behalf

Maria Boyd stood on the steps in front of the main entryway and took it all in

She’d heard stories about the Robertson for years, even as a teenager, long before it beca institution she saw before her Renowned around the world, it was a first-class facility with a shocking 90 percent survival rate--unheard of for civilian hospitals, much less for a ward that almost exclusively treated battlefield injuries Doctors visited from distant nations and scholars wrote papers on the exceptional cleanliness of the pre parallels between the unexpected medical success and routines of boiled laundry, washed floors, and frequent patient baths

Maybe the cleanliness did have soine that a filthy hospital was ideal, but as odors billowed forcefully from the open s, she couldn’t help but wonder precisely what a dirty hospital must smell like, because this was positively awful

The air was per of blood andflesh, and soloved hand over her nose and , so she reached for the door’s latch instead

It vibrated under her hand, and a hu herself, she pulled down the lever The door snapped outith such ferocity that it nearly knocked her back into the yard, but she held on, and planted her feet against the ensuing gust