When the Splendor Falls

by Laurie McBain

  “There was little we could do to refuse the Yankees’ request, out of fear of being shot because we didn’t open our homes and hearts to the Yankee invaders. A General Pope decreed that any Virginian caught aiding the enemy would be executed. His troops would live off the land, meaning they could steal whatever they wanted from us, leaving us to starve, and if there was any guerrilla activity nearby, we would be held responsible and dealt with accordingly. We could, however, to save ourselves, sign an oath of allegiance to the Union.”

  “Yes, I heard about that madman in Richmond. It caused quite an outrage.” Althea sighed, thinking not for the first time that they found themselves in a never-ending nightmare. It was madness. Nothing made sense any longer. And what used to seem important, no longer did.

  She smiled sadly. “I wonder what Mama would say to see us eating in here. She was always so very proper. Even now, I fear she’d have us sitting down to dine in our Sunday best, and ever cordial and the perfect hostess, she would’ve invited those Yankees to dine. I can just hear her asking Stephen to bring in the tea service. No one, not even a Yankee, would ever accuse her of being inhospitable, she was always declaring. And somehow, she’d have had a clean, pressed damask tablecloth spread beneath our finest china, even with cannon fire in the distance, and she’d sit there serving chicken curry and rice. Remember how we used to have it every Sunday? Odd, isn’t it, the little things like that you remember, and you miss.”

  Leigh glanced down at her work-roughened hands for a moment, realizing that their mother had never been able to accept the war that had taken her loved ones from her one by one, destroying the genteel way of life at Travers Hill. She’d tried to carry on as if nothing had happened, as if nothing had changed. And, eventually, she had begun to believe that nothing had, that it was the summer of ’60 again, not 1863, and Travers Hill was filled with family and friends. There were so many things for her to do, she would say, looking dazed as she hurried from one empty room to another, dragging Jolie after her, never seeing the change, always calling out for a member of the family who’d never appear before her again. There would be a fish fry beneath the willows on the riverbank, and the barbecue on Sunday, then the routs and races, and she had to see to the preparations for Blythe’s sixteenth birthday party. Her daughters would do her proud, she had said with the old gleam in her dark blue eyes.

  That had been in summer, when she could walk in her garden, the fragrance of her beloved roses surrounding her, and lose herself in long-forgotten dreams of days that were no more. But winter had come all too soon. And one cold morning, the frozen ground covered with the first snowfall of the season, they had found Beatrice Amelia in her garden. Barefoot, the cashmere of her dusky rose dressing gown no protection against the cold, she had wandered out in the night to prune her roses. A week later, she had died. Leigh’s only consolation had been that her mother had, in death, finally found the peace she had been searching for.

  Leigh looked around the room, and saw only too clearly the changes that’d had to be made if they were to survive. “It’s the warmest room in the house,” she told Althea. “We keep most of the other rooms closed, and we don’t have a fire in here until evening. We light one in your room, and in the kitchen before dawn, bank it so it burns low and lasts, then light it after dusk again. It’s better not to draw too much attention to Travers Hill,” she added, thinking again of the gangs of deserters that drifted around the countryside looting abandoned homes, or those protected only by women. “And at night, we use only a couple of the bedchambers. I don’t like to waste our wood. I’m not very good at chopping it up into kindling. I’m afraid Stephen is even worse. He never had to chop wood before,” she explained, remembering his look of offended dignity when she’d suggested they needed wood and would have to chop it themselves. “We try to use what is close at hand, I don’t like anyone to go far from the house. There are so many strangers around, and you don’t know your enemy. You can’t trust the color of a uniform any longer.”

  “I think you are being very wise,” Althea said nervously, noticing for the first time the rifle next to the door, and hanging just out of reach of small hands. “Where do Noelle and Steward, and the baby, sleep?”

  “They’ve been sleeping in the trundle bed in my room. Jolie has been staying with you at night in case you needed anything.”

  “Now that I’m feeling better, I’ll move them in with me. You need your rest, my dear, and it will be comforting for me to have my children with me again. I’d be happy to have Lucinda too,” she offered, worrying about the dark circles beneath her sister’s eyes that bore proof of the long hours she worked and the restless nights, her sleep disturbed as she tended to the children.

  “No!” Leigh answered abruptly. Then she said more quietly as she glanced over at the sleeping child in the cradle, “I’ll keep Lucinda with me. Noelle and Steward can start sleeping with you, but you mustn’t let them tire you. You are still very weak, Althea, and it will take you a while to recover your strength,” Leigh reminded her, taking the empty dish. “Would you like a little more?”

  Althea nodded. “Yes, I would. I’m being a pig. But I’ve discovered I have a ravenous appetite for possum all of a sudden.”

  “Possum,” Stephen muttered, watching unhappily as Leigh dished up another plate for Althea. “Not fit food even for peckerwoods. An’ last night you served this family peanut soup.”

  “An’ we’re goin’ to have it tomorrow night too, with mashed yams fried into cakes from what’s left over tonight,” Jolie told him, the look in her eye brooking no opposition.

  “I don’t know what the colonel would say if he could see us, woman,” Stephen fretted, eyeing the steaming contents of the tureen with a despairing shake of his head, amazed at how fast it was disappearing right before his eyes.

  “An’ day after, if I can get my hands on that sneaky hen’s eggs, she’s been hidin’ them from me, then we’re goin’ to have squirrel pie, ’cause I’ve been watchin’ him like a fox.”

  “If little Mister Steward’s Gran’papa Noble knew his only gran’son was eatin’ possum an’ hog fodder, well, I couldn’t look him straight in the eye. It’s just not right.”

  “Now you listen to me, ol’ man,” Jolie said, a glint in her yellowish eyes as she glared at him. “The colonel might jus’ be turnin’ in his grave to know we’ve been servin’ his kin what poor white trash wouldn’t even throw to their hogs, but he’d be spinnin’ if we let his grandchildren, an’ one named in honor of him, an’ his great-grandchildren, starve to death. Same with Mister Noble. You jus’ think about that, you fussbudget. An’ I’ll tell you this, I’d serve this to the colonel himself, an’ he’d eat it too, it’s that good. Went out an’ got myself all the herbs I needed an’ been storin’ them away since fall like that fat-cheeked squirrel. I know those woods good as my papa would have. Creepin’ Fox didn’t sire no fools. There’s nothin’ Jolie can’t find if she wants to. Simmered this possum in thyme, laurel, cloves, parsley, an’ celery, dash of red pepper an’ a bud of garlic, then found some yams growing wild, baked them nice an’ tender an’ plumb full of nutmeg, an’ made up a pan of corn bread, crisp an’ hot. We’ve got ourselves a mighty fine supper here. So you quit’cher complainin’. I’ve got enough to do. Still can’t believe that Rosamundi and those fool maids runnin’ off with those Yankees. Goin’ to cook and wash for them, she tells me. Thinks they’ll be safer with them. Hmmmph!”

  “Well, I’m not complainin’ any,” the gray-uniformed man in the chair said, the aroma having drifted to him. “And you really can’t blame the Yankees, after all, you taught Rosamundi how to cook. They’d have been fools not to have wanted her fixing them up some good Southern cooking. You’re truly a jewel, Jolie. I don’t know what the Travers family would do without you and Stephen. Thanks to Stephen, I’d wager Travers Hill still has the best corn whiskey in all of the Old Dominion. Don’t know where he hid that still when the Yanks came callin’. Glad I had some with me to
pour on my wound until I could get here, probably kept me alive, or at least pickled nicely, and combined with that horrible smelling salve you keep putting on me, Jolie, I’m surprised you don’t have me bunking out in the stables. I have detected a hint of garlic in it,” he said. “I’m glad you stayed,” he added softly, feeling that same sense of gratitude he had when arriving at Travers Hill to find Jolie and Stephen still running the house and what was left of the Travers family, despite Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and, before that, the Confederacy’s order demanding half of all the able-bodied male slaves on every farm or plantation to report to work camps.

  Jolie snorted, hastily wiping away a tear as she gave the mixture a brisk stir. “Got nowhere else to go, Mister Guy. Travers Hill is home, an’ this is our family. Miss Leigh read that proclamation to us herself, an’ she told us that we were free to do as we liked. Got it folded up right here in my pocket, so I can tell anybody who asks that I know I’m free. Heard tell them Canbys didn’t tell their slaves they’d been freed. ’Course, weren’t many left there anyway. First chance they got they run off. Well, I told Miss Leigh that I got things to do in the kitchens, so if she wouldn’t mind, I’d just get on with my chores. For me an’ Steban, it’s no different today than was yesterday. Your mama, Miss Beatrice Amelia, was a real fine lady. Never raised her voice nor a hand against me nor any of my kin. An’ she worked just as hard as I did. Same with Mister Stuart. He treated Sweet John like he was his own flesh an’ blood. He was real proud of that boy, same as he was of you, Mister Guy. Your papa died tryin’ to save my Sweet John from those deserters that come lootin’ here at Travers Hill, an’ they were wearin’ gray, Mister Guy. Wearin’ gray. Mister Stuart didn’t have to do that. He could’ve shot at them from the house. But he was cussin’ somethin’ terrible, tears rolling down his face when he sees them takin’ my Sweet John to that oak. Sweet John had already knocked one of them against the side of the stables, split his head wide open. Then Mister Stuart, he shot one of them dead, but they’d already beat an’ hanged my Sweet John by then. Sweet John didn’t want them stealin’ that sweet mare of Miss Leigh’s. She was the only horse we had left outa all the fine horses we once had at Travers Hill. Everything else, includin’ Mister Stuart’s favorite, Apothecary Rose, from pigs an’ hens an’ cattle, to them fat milk cows an’ plump geese was taken by the soldiers long ago, along with all the oats an’ corn. Hardly anything left,” she said, sniffing loudly.

  “Then the other man, he got off a shot, an’ poor Mister Stuart, he fell dead. Never suffered none, he didn’t. Miss Leigh, she come runnin’ from the house ’bout then, totin’ that gun of yer grandpapa’s, a bunch of your hounds barking at her heels. Those river rats didn’t think she knew how to shoot, not knowin’ she was Mister Stuart’s lil’ gal, that she was a Travers. She shot him dead, Mister Guy, blew away that C that’d been branded on his face for bein’ a coward. Figure he should’ve been shot then. An’ the other two, they figured to jump her when she’d fired off that gun, knowin’ she couldn’t shoot them too, but she up an’ pulls out a pistol she’d been carryin’ in her apron an’ shoots the varmit between the eyes. Scared the other one yellow, seein’ her shoot like that, ’cause he took to his heels, squealin’ like a stuck pig when she winged him, an’ runs back down to the riverbank and this barge they’d come floatin’ down the river on like a pack of rats. Last we seen of him, but I doubt he lasted very long, ’cause we found a mighty deep pool of blood down there in the sand before the current got him an’ he got carried downriver.”

  Guy’s trembling hands balled into fists on the arms of the chair as he felt the rage filling him that he couldn’t control, and couldn’t do anything to vent, when thinking of his father’s and Sweet John’s deaths, and the danger that Leigh and the rest of his family had been in that day. And they were still in danger. Nothing had changed. In fact, it had gotten worse, with deserters almost outnumbering those willing to serve, or so it seemed to those on the front lines. And the next time deserters came to Travers Hill his family might not escape them. And he wouldn’t be any good to them.

  “An’ since I raised your mama from the cradle, an’ helped bring each of you Traverses into this world, I’m not leavin’ this family to those Yankees, or yellow-bellied deserters. Where’d me an’ Steban go anyway?” she asked him, her eyes becoming watery as she stared at Guy, but she didn’t bother to hide her tears this time.

  The light from the fire couldn’t soften the thin, cruel-looking scar that cut across his face from brow to cheek, the black patch he wore over his sightless, scarred eye a vivid reminder of the fierce fighting on the battlefield the day he had been wounded. His right eye, still a bright shade of green, unclouded and unmarred, stared at them from behind a fringe of thick lashes, but he could not see them. The concussion he’d suffered from the shell that had exploded beneath his horse during a charge had cost him his sight in the other eye as well, even though there had been no physical damage to it. But whether or not he’d ever see again, the doctors had been unable to reassure him. Time, they had said. Only time would bring him the answer.

  Restlessly, he moved his shoulder, easing the stiffness. The wound was almost completely healed, giving him only an occasional twinge as the flesh tightened along the puckered scar from the saber’s blade that had sliced across his shoulder. “Poor ol’ Rambler,” he murmured to himself. He would never forget the roan hunter that had carried him safely through so many battles, easily jumping the open trenches and earthworks the enemy had sought to trap them with, never faltering, never panicking even as cannon fire roared deafeningly and smoke obscured the field. Rambler had proven himself a great warhorse. As great as General Lee’s Lucy Long, Guy thought, smiling as he thought of his own sister, little long-legged Lucy. And Rambler had been as fast as Jeb Stuart’s Thoroughbred mare, Virginia. And even that damned bluebelly Grant had a horse he could be proud of; Kangaroo, left by a Confederate officer on the battlefield at Shiloh, they said. Guy’s smile turned bitter as he thought of the ironies of war.

  But Rambler had held his ground, carrying his rider like a knight of old into the fray, leading the charge time and time again. And he had died on the field of battle, protecting his rider from being mortally wounded. Guy’s hands relaxed, as if he were still lightly holding Rambler’s reins, only this time they were riding across a field of rolling bluegrass, his hounds racing ahead, their barking sounding soft and sweet to the ear, and disturbed only by the melodic notes of his hunting horn, not the bugler’s frenzied warning cry.

  Guy dropped his hand down beside his leg, gently tugging at the soft ear of one of the two hounds that still remained at Travers Hill. The others had either died or run off, frightened into running wild by the sound of cannon fire. He felt the roughness of a tongue licking his hand, and patted the dog on top of his head, comforted by the familiar feel.

  “Here you are, Guy.” Leigh spoke softly beside him, startling him, so lost in his thoughts had he become that he hadn’t heard her approach.

  “Careful,” she warned, stepping back to avoid his jerky movement of surprise.

  “Shouldn’t sneak up on a person like that. Especially a blind man,” he joked.

  “Sorry,” Leigh said, placing the tray across his lap, then guiding his hand to the spoon next to the plate.

  “Did I hear Althea’s voice?” he asked, beginning to eat, his spoon moving slowly and carefully between his mouth and the plate. “Damn!” he muttered, feeling the hot gravy seeping through his pants leg where he’d spilled a drop. “Clumsy oaf.”

  Leigh looked away, still finding it hard to watch Guy in his helplessness, to see his frustration day after day. “Yes, I think she is going to get better. She actually ate some supper, and she asked about Noelle and Steward. She wants them back in her room at night.”

  “That’s a good sign. No word about Nathan?” he asked, slipping a piece of corn bread to his hounds, and hoping Leigh hadn’t seen him do it.

  “No, no
word,” Leigh said, watching as Noelle helped Steward into his chair at the table, the stack of books beneath his chubby rear end putting him close enough to his plate for him to eat.

  “Miss Leigh, you get over here an’ eat before your supper gets cold,” Jolie warned.

  “Can I get you anything else, Guy?” she asked solicitously, thinking he’d eaten his corn bread rather fast, but then that was easier for him to eat than the possum in gravy. “More corn bread?”

  “No, nothing more, Leigh,” Guy said, sounding slightly impatient. “I’ve got to learn to feed myself. You go eat. You need it more than I do,” he said without self-pity, for even though he knew great frustration, he had learned to live with his blindness, even if others hadn’t.

  Leigh continued to stand beside Guy for a moment, staring down at him and thinking he was no less handsome even with the black patch across one eye, and she found herself remembering his words, spoken so carelessly when he’d arrived at Travers Hill. “Makes me look quite piratical, doesn’t it? I’ll have the ladies swooning when in my presence.” Neither of them had spoken aloud the memory of Sarette Canby breaking off the engagement when hearing of his disfigurement. They’d heard rumors that she was to marry a general from Georgia this spring.

  Good riddance, Leigh thought, smiling as she watched Guy sneak a piece of corn bread to one of his beloved hounds. Unaware that she sighed, her expression turned to one of pity as he dropped his napkin onto the carpet.

  Leigh reached out automatically to help him, then drew back her hand as he fumbled for it.