If those bees attack my uncle one more time, the old keeper will be dragged away in chains for treason, my cousin whispered as we stood on the portico of Elmwood Manor.
Julian’s screams echoed through the greenhouse, a chilling symphony of panic and pain. The arriving guards, armed and wary, hesitated at the threshold, unwilling to face the enraged swarm.
It took several tense minutes, and a brave but stinging provost, to finally subdue the bees enough for Julian to be pulled from the glasshouse, his face and hands swollen and peppered with stingers. He looked like a grotesque, puffy caricature of his former self.
Four days later, on May 18, 1863, the grand parlor of Elmwood Manor, typically a place of genteel gatherings, was transformed into a formal Military Court of Inquiry. Colonel Harrison of the Inspector General’s office presided, his stern gaze sweeping across the room.
The air was heavy with anticipation, thick with the scent of beeswax polish and the faint, unsettling odor of liniment.
Julian Montgomery sat at a long oak table, his face still heavily bandaged from the bee stings, an angry flush visible beneath the gauze. Beside him, Major Pryce, looking stiff and uncomfortable, presented their signed land seizure documents.
They argued for their case with a practiced air of authority. Pryce, referencing the “biological hazard” injunction, demanded my immediate imprisonment for theft of army files, pointing to the missing receipt book. Julian, in turn, insisted on the legality of his inheritance, citing General Silas’s frail health and the probate documents.
The tribunal panel, composed of three grim-faced senior officers, listened impassively. They were men of rank, accustomed to order and military protocol. Julian’s family standing, his status as brother to a Brigadier General, held considerable weight.
It appeared the tribunal was ready to rule in Julian’s favor. The weight of his connections, the official-looking papers he presented, seemed to override any whispers of foul play. Without tangible, irrefutable evidence, my testimony as a civilian nurse against a high-ranking officer and a Major meant little.
I sat beside Sister Beatrice, my heart sinking. Ebenezer, released from the wagon and under house arrest, stood near the back, his face a picture of despair. General Silas, too ill to attend, lay confined to his quarters, his fate hanging in the balance.
Colonel Harrison cleared his throat, adjusting his spectacles. He looked down at the documents before him, then back at Julian and Pryce.
“Considering the evidence presented,” Colonel Harrison began, his voice slow and deliberate, “and the apparent lack of substantiating proof from Nurse Albright’s claims…”
Just as he seemed poised to deliver his ruling, a sudden, thunderous crash echoed from the double doors leading into the parlor.
They burst open, slamming against the polished wood of the walls.
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