don’t really know. No garrison has declared him missing.” Joe chuckled. “Of course, there are company captains who would wish some of their worst miscreants to go missing.”
She gave him a long look. “You are being inscrutable, Major Randolph.”
“It’s all I can be. Nick showed up one hot August, rail-thin and full of lice. The adjutant brought him to me, and I cleaned him up.” He took a chance and put his arm around her as the wind strengthened. “He informed me that he was Saint Paul. Nick, not the adjutant.”
Joe smiled as her jaw dropped. “I would never lie to you, Mrs. Hopkins. I have no idea what his real name is.”
“Then why …”
“… is he Nick Martin? Jim O’Leary named him after the worst malcontent in his regiment during the Civil War.” Joe shrugged. “It seemed as good a name as any. Nick answers to it when he feels like it, or to Saint Paul.”
“He’s harmless?”
“Completely,” Joe assured her.
Mrs. Hopkins hurried along beside him, holding her dress down with both hands. In a few more minutes, they were in his hospital.
Joe looked around with pleasure. The building was only two years old, and had replaced a disgraceful structure that may have caused more illness than it ever cured. He probably sounded like his long-dead mother when he ushered her inside, apologizing for the odor of ether and carbolic.
“Hospitals are supposed to smell this way,” Mrs. Hopkins said, cutting through his commentary, a practical woman.
He laughed, which brought Nick Martin into the hall. Joe knew Nick generally lurked there, waiting for him to return so he could help him off with his overcoat, but he had surprised Mrs. Hopkins, who stepped back.
Trying to look at Nick Martin through her eyes—or the Apostle Paul, depending on his moods—Joe could understand her fright. Nick seemed to think long hair was a requirement, and he was taller than most mortals.
The only way to find out whether Nick was an apostle was to ask, but that seemed a little crass. “Nick, this is Mrs. Susanna Hopkins,” Joe said, when she had recovered.
“The Lord bless and keep you, Mrs. Hopkins. I know He has preserved me on my many missionary journeys,” Nick said.
“Saint Paul, he has certainly saved you from shipwrecks,” Mrs. Hopkins replied. She held out her hand and Nick shook it.
“I hear that Major Randolph plans for you to sit in my classroom and keep order,” she told the tall man.
“As long as it doesn’t interfere with those missionary journeys,” Nick told her. He nodded to Joe. “I must return to my duties. The church at Corinth is particularly fractious.” He left them in the hallway.
“My goodness,” Susanna said. “What duties does Saint Paul perform in your hospital? I mean, when he’s not helping Corinthians. Does he write letters? One would think Paul was good at that.”
You are a wit, Joe thought appreciatively. “He just sits there in the ward. No one seems to mind, or perhaps they’re too cowed to object. At any rate, I have an orderly hospital.”
He watched her lively face, wondering what she was really making of his madman.
“I hope his missionary duties are few this school term,” she said, as he opened the door to his office. “If he can’t read or write, I can probably teach him. That will make Romans through Hebrews easier to compose someday, don’t you think?”
Joe laughed out loud. “Generations of earnest Christians will applaud you! The rest of us, not so much.”
The door opened immediately and Nick brought in two cups of coffee. “Thank you, Saint Paul,” she told him. The door closed again.
Joe took a sip, satisfied. “Nick makes the best coffee.” He leaned back in his swivel chair. “I don’t know what creates people like Nick Martin. I think he was a teamster who suffered hard usage of one sort or other, and found a better world in madness.” He thought of her own ill usage. “I imagine it is a safe place.”
“Where does he live?”
“Here. I have a storeroom with space for a cot in the alcove. He eats with my hospital steward. You may have noticed the small house beside the hospital.” He eats better than I do, Joe wanted to add, but he was not a man to play a sympathy card.
“You’re a kind man.”
“I couldn’t send him to an asylum.”
Mrs. Hopkins sipped her coffee, breathing deeply of the government issue beans that Nick turned into something wonderful. Joe cleared his throat, and she looked at