by Ann Rinaldi
"Why must I when the other girls don't have to?"
"Because I said so," he told me mildly.
I didn't protest. He didn't expect me to.
I baked the cake for Theophile Roche that evening. I made my favorite, pound cake with vanilla icing.
Louis came into the kitchen.
"Your elderly lady is Mrs. Stapleton. She lives across town. Tomorrow is Saturday, but your assignment doesn't start until next week. So we'll take the cake to Mr. Roche tomorrow morning. Be ready."
"I can ride my horse to Mrs. Stapleton's," I said.
"No. Teddy and I don't want you coming home in near dark. It's winter, remember. Jon will take and fetch you."
I made a face. "Does it have to be Jon?"
He eyed me wisely. "Teddy says you don't like him. Is there a reason?"
I couldn't lie to Louis. With his Indian powers he saw through lies.
"He touched me."
"Where?"
I blushed. "On my bottom."
Louis's eyes got red flames in them that I'd never seen before. "I'll give him a sound beating."
"No, no. It's why I never told Teddy. Please, Louis, if you love me, please listen before you beat him."
"What is there to listen to?" But he listened.
"I know Teddy would duel him. But in Florida, where Jon comes from, he's the best duelist there is."
"How do you know?"
"He told me and—"
"He told you?"
"Yes. He said he dueled and killed three people there. And that's how he got his bad arm. And that's why I wouldn't tell Teddy about it, because I knew Teddy would duel him and he'd kill Teddy. So I told him if he touched me again I'd get a bad root from Cannice and poison his food. And I will if I have to."
"He's lying. He isn't a gentleman. Only gentlemen of honor duel. And Teddy wouldn't stoop to duel him. And neither will I. But to protect your honor I must give him a sound whipping."
"Oh, Louis!"
He swore. My brother took the Lord's name in vain. Twice. He said, "I'm sorry, little sister mine, that you have to put up with all this. He'll never touch you again when I get through with him."
He held me to him. He kissed the top of my head and prayed right there in the kitchen that God would wash him thoroughly from his wickedness and cleanse him from his sins. He acknowledged that his sins were forever before him.
What sins does he have? He was the most sinless person I knew.
I had never seen or heard Louis pray before. He never spoke about God. I was so touched by his reverence and humility that I was afraid to interrupt him. When he finished I looked up at him. "Those are the words Mother made me memorize when she kidnapped me."
He tweaked my nose. He kissed me. "Check the cake. It must be done. Then go to bed. I have an affair of honor to attend to."
After I iced the cake I went to bed, but before that, I peeked out the upstairs hall window in back of the house just in time to see Louis attending to his affair of honor.
He was dragging Jon by one arm out to the barn. Primus had the other arm. Of course, I thought. Louis could not do this without help. He walked without crutches now, but he still limped, and in a fracas he would lose his balance. I watched as they brought a struggling Jon into the barn. Then I went to bed.
Jon was not at the breakfast table serving Pa the next morning. Teddy did not ask why. Viola did.
"He's got the measles," Teddy told her. "He's recuperating in the groom's room in the barn. Stay away from him. Primus's wife, Eulah, is caring for him."
We took the cake to Mr. Roche's.
In the carriage, which was driven by Primus, Louis said that he had something to tell me.
"The truth of the matter is that Teddy has been wanting to invite Theophile Roche to dinner," he said, "but he has not found the man approachable."
"Why does he want to invite him to dinner?"
It was then that Louis told me, swearing me to secrecy. "Teddy 'imported' Theophile Roche for a special reason. Not to be a weaver at the mill. But to help out if and when the Yankees come, because Roche is a French national. Teddy has plans for him. That's all you need to know now. But what you and your friends did has made Roche less approachable. This morning you and I are supposed to help mend things."
I nodded. "Should I invite him?"
"Depends on how he receives you. I'll give you a signal if I think so."
Louis was holding the cake, but he gave it to me when we got out of the carriage. When he knocked at the front door it was answered immediately, and when it opened, Louis said, "Enfin nous sommes arrives!" That meant, as he told me later, "Finally we have arrived."
Louis knew French. I wished I did. Louis introduced me immediately as his sister and one of the girls who had broken into his home. And I was here now to apologize.
I curtsied. And told Mr. Roche I was sorry, that I knew I had done wrong. I handed him the cake, prettily wrapped and tied with a ribbon.
He set it down and stared at me. At first I thought he was going to send me from the house. But he took my hand and kissed it and said, "Oh, my sweet."
He took our wraps. He made us sit on the one couch in the room and offered Louis some French wine and made me a cup of tea. He sliced the cake and served it on plates that looked as if they had come from France. He gave us delicate napkins that were embroidered with his initials.
He was dressed in regular trousers, suspenders, and boots, but his shirt was of the whitest cotton, with ruffles at the wrists and the neck. I could see how broad his shoulders were. And how strong his neck muscles.
On the wall hung a sword in a scabbard. A sword for dueling. I stared. Louis nudged me.
"Do you like it here in America?" Louis was asking him.
"Ah, yes. So much land."
Then he fell silent.
"Well, I hope you'll accept my apology, too, for what my sister did," Louis said.
"Of course, of course." Mr. Roche shrugged. "I do not press charges. Children." More shrugging. "The cake." He put his fingers to his mouth and made a kissing gesture. "It is delicious. Tell your cook I send my compliments."
"She's right here," Louis told him. "Leigh Ann made it."
"Ah!" He raised his eyebrows in surprise. "That you should have such a sister! And so pretty, too. Do you take exception that I say it?"
"No, don't mind at all," Louis said.
Mr. Roche nodded wisely, all the time looking at me.
Louis nudged me and I knew it was the signal.
"Mr. Roche," I said quietly, and with dignity, "my other brother, Teddy, who is night manager of the mill, wants us to invite you to our house for dinner some Sunday in March. Would you like to come?"
"Mr. Teddy," he mused. "Yes, I know him. He hired me. A good man. A good man. I would be honored to come. What is the day and the time?"
"My brother Teddy will work that out with you. It will be at your convenience," Louis said.
When we left, with Louis's permission, Mr. Roche gave me a book, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
And so it was that I met Mr. Theophile Roche, who was to play an important role in trying to save our mill when the Yankees came. And whom, as it turned out, I helped, trying to save it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I did not pay much mind to what was going on with the war. But I did listen around the edges of my brothers' conversations at the table. I came away with some sense of the madness.
In Tennessee it was ten above zero when the fighting was going on and the Yankees took Fort Donelson away from us. Ten above zero! How could you even hold a rifle in cold like that?
Twelve-year-old Willie Lincoln died in the White House and they say Mr. Lincoln cried and it took all the joy of winning Fort Donelson away from him. I wondered, Would he give it back to us if he could have Willie returned to him again?
The Yankees were doing things on our rivers—the Tennessee, the Cumberland, and the Mississippi—that were not nice. My brothers did not elabora
te about what they were doing.
The Virginia House of Delegates wanted to enroll free negroes to fight in the Confederate army. I knew of only two free negroes, and they worked as janitors in the mill. I wagered they'd like to have Primus. Bonded or not, he could whip several Yankees with one hand tied behind his back.
***
In February, Governor Joseph Brown must have woken up at night unable to sleep. His wife must have asked him what the matter was.
"Georgia needs twelve more regiments before the fifteenth of March," he likely told her. Because that's what he told the state of Georgia.
Georgia raised thirteen regiments and three battalions by the fifteenth of March.
My brother Louis organized the Roswell Battalion. His ankle still bothered him and he could not mount a horse without help, but he trained them every day.
"I hope you're not planning on going back to the field," Teddy said.
Louis did not answer.
"Some Yankee will pick you off just trying to mount your horse." It was cruel of Teddy, but Teddy could be cruel when he had to be. He had a talent for it.
Louis had been planning on it. His men of the Ros-well Battalion talked him out of it. The town fathers talked him out of it. Governor Brown wrote him a letter and ordered him out of it. Pa came out of his other world and mumbled him out of it.
Camille got him in the back parlor and kissed him and whispered him out of it.
He and Primus spent an afternoon talking in the barn.
In the end, he didn't go, but he spent a lot of time alone. One cold night we couldn't find him, so I went out looking for him with Teddy. There he was, down by the stream.
He had built a small fire. Four long logs jutted out on each side and in the middle of these were smaller pieces of wood. Cooking in the center were pieces of venison. A great deal of smoke curled up overhead.
His only clothing was a leather breechclout to cover his private parts. His legs, folded under him, were bare, as was his chest. Around his neck he wore a large silver medallion. He huddled in an old gray blanket. His hair was wet, as if he had just come out of the stream. He was moving his lips, praying.
And on his shoulder was a hooty owl. It stared at us out of yellow-green eyes. But it never moved.
I became frightened and moved closer to Teddy, who put a protective arm around my shoulder and said, "Don't be afraid."
But I was. This was my beloved Louis, my darling brother, whom I looked up to so. Had he gone mad? I looked up at Teddy.
"Eh, Louis," he said, "you going to include us in your prayers?"
Louis nodded yes. He had heard.
"Look at that," Teddy told me. "There's wind around us. But none around him."
It was true. The bitter February wind that whipped around us stopped in the line bounding Louis. My mouth fell open. Teddy grinned down at me.
"Damn, that venison smells good," he said.
That Teddy was taking this all so lightly made me feel better.
"Is he going to stay here all night?" I asked.
"He better not. Or I'll have Primus fetch him in. Well, good night now, brother. I've got to get to the mill. Can I trust you to tell the Indian powers good night and come in soon to see to the safety of our women?"
Louis looked at us placidly, first at Teddy, then at me. "Go in peace," he said. It was in his regular Louis voice.
We turned and left. I felt a sense of peace come over me, as if everything was going to be all right and I would never have to worry again.
***
The elderly lady I was assigned to by Louis, Mrs. Stapleton, lived alone with a sixteen-year-old grandson. But I never met him. Yet for the first three Saturdays, when I was writing letters to her sister in England, stirring the soup her negro servant had made, and having lunch with her, all she did was talk about him.
It was James this and it was James that.
"I raised him since he was a knee-baby."
And, "He looks just like his father."
And, "His father was killed in a terrible fight in Dranesville, Virginia, on the twentieth of December. Right before Christmas. I haven't been able to get that boy to go to church since."
And, "His mother died when he was a child."
And, "He loves me so, that boy. He couldn't love me more if I were his mother."
Then why, I wondered, is he never around? But I did not ask.
She told me anyway. "He is fading away into nothing. He wanted to join the Roswell Troopers. I had to let him. But they discharged him because he is too young. Now he stays away from home a good deal. I don't know where he goes. Someone told me he goes to the town square to watch the young men drill. But after that, where? I hope he isn't falling in with bad company. Sometimes he doesn't even come home for supper. Oh, I am so worried about him."
She fell silent. We were in her solarium and she was knitting him a muffler. Gray. Then she said to me, "Leigh Ann, I would ask a favor of you, child."
"Yes, ma'am."
"If you would just do this one thing for me. Your brother Louis is the commander of the Roswell Battalion, is he not?"
"Yes, ma'am."
She leaned forward and put a hand on my knee. "Leigh Ann, would you ask him if he would please take my James in his battalion? At least ask him if I may send my James around to see him about it. When he meets James I just know he will take him."
"But, ma'am, I don't understand. You lost your son. Aren't you afraid you'll lose James, too?"
A look of peaceful understanding came over her face. "Oh, child, I've already lost my James. There is more than one way to lose people. If he could go away and fight, at least I know I will find him again. Or at least he'll find himself. And I don't want him to think he has to stay home for an old lady like me."
I hugged her. I told her I would ask Louis. And I did.
***
Louis listened solemnly to me about James Stapleton. We lingered over the supper table one night to talk. And I poured out the story of James.
He understood. I saw it in his face. He understood James's need to go to war. James had an ally in my brother Louis.
"Send him to me, here, tomorrow night at eight," he said.
I sent a note around to Mrs. Stapleton.
***
At eight precisely, James knocked on our front door. Careen let him in. She curtsied to him and showed him in to the library, where Louis waited. I was standing in the doorway of the front parlor where I could get a glimpse of him.
He was tall and thin, but someday he would grow into those shoulders just as my brothers had into theirs, and when he did I wanted to be around.
He had a shock of dark brown hair and a well-shaped, pleasant face, and he stood straight and tall. He nodded graciously at Careen, stopped at seeing me, and bowed, then did something that near broke my heart.
He saluted me, a perfect salute.
I curtsied. And in that brief moment all eternity stopped and I fell in love with this young man.
Louis appeared in the doorway of the library just in time to see this exchange, to see us staring at each other. Just in time to understand what was happening.
"Are you coming in, young man?" he asked.
"Yes, sir." But still James stared at me.
"Is this how you obey orders? Allow yourself to be distracted by a pretty girl?"
James collected himself and went into the library. The door closed behind them.
They were in there a good hour. I stood in the doorway of the front parlor that long. Careen came to me.
"Doan make it so obvious," she told me. "He comes out an' sees you here, he'll know you fancy him from the get-go."
"I don't care," I said. "I've never seen anyone so beautiful. You've been in there. Tell me, what's going on?"
"I just brung them some coffee and cakes. Your brother, he stop talkin' when I come in. You know how they do. But I see he give that young man some rum. Suppose he wanna see how much of a man he be. That James, he come f
rom a good family. That Stapleton family, they go way back. My mama, she know the lady what take care of Mrs. Stapleton."
"I don't care if they're nobody."
"You oughta sit down before you fall down. I gonna get you a cuppa tea."
Careen was my age, but she was physically more mature. She no longer ran around getting into mischief with me. She had a respectable bosom already, at twelve, and had gotten her woman's time of the month. She was now chief housegirl, which meant she answered the doors, showed people in, introduced them to my brothers and Viola, delivered notes and mail, saw to it that visitors' rooms were properly readied, and carried out myriad other responsibilities.
With all this, of course, came the "right" to scold the lot of us on occasion. Lovingly, of course.
She brought me tea and stood over me while I sipped it. "Your brother, he introduce you proper-like," she told me.
"How do you know?"
" 'Cause he be a proper-like gentleman. An' when he call you, you doan run. You come on out slow-like, makin' like you couldn't care a fig's worth."
She was right. After another agonizing fifteen minutes, when the door of that library finally opened and they came out and shook hands, Louis called my name.
I came out of the parlor, slow. Like I couldn't care a fig's worth.
"This is my little sister, Leigh Ann," Louis said. "Leigh Ann, this is James Stapleton, the newest member of the Roswell Battalion."
First, respectfully, I hugged Louis and thanked him. James stepped aside.
Then James bowed. I curtsied. He took my hand and kissed it. "Captain Conners," he asked, "may I have the honor of writing to your sister while I am away at war?"
I saw my brother's face. No expression. "Of course," he said, "but I think you ought to also ask my brother, Teddy. He's really her guardian."
"Yes, sir. I will."
Careen was waiting to open the door. I looked at Louis. He glanced at me speculatively, but I went ahead and did what I wanted to do, anyway.
I stood on tiptoe and kissed James on the cheek. "Good luck," I said.
That's all it was. A good luck kiss. Careen rolled her eyes. James left. The door closed behind him.