Secret Lady

by Beth Trissel

  ‘Hold on,’ she told herself, fighting the hysteria that threatened to dissolve her into a quivering blob. Even if remaining here had been an ill-fated decision, she wouldn’t change it. The three of them must survive or fall together.

  She turned toward Jack who knelt behind her by Sam, holding a cold cloth to his forehead. “How’s he doing?”

  “The same.” He dipped the linen in the basin of water, wrung out the excess liquid, and placed the folded cloth on Sam’s brow.

  Jack’s taut expression, his lips pressed together in a hard line, must be how he’d marched into battle at Gettysburg. Unflinching resolve had gotten him this far in a harsh war. Beneath his stern expression, did he battle the emotion threatening to tear her apart?

  She studied Sam. Despite the willow bark tea Hettie had administered, his temperature had risen, and it was the herbal version of aspirin. His pale face, glassy eyes, and listlessness told the tale. There was no sign of infection in his wound, but something was wrong. He’d reached a critical juncture in his illness. The fever must break soon, or it would carry him off.

  Seeing Jack bent beside the man who was like a brother to him, with nothing to do but sponge his forehead, was exceedingly difficult to watch. She was used to having a well-equipped hospital in town and an ambulance a phone call away. How futile his action seemed.

  “Jack,” she summoned, keeping her voice down. “Medicine is highly advanced in the future. We better take him with us when we go.”

  His dozing cousin didn’t ask what she was talking about, but Jack regarded her with bemusement in his reddened eyes. “If the pathway appears. Better pray for a miracle.”

  “I am. Ceaselessly.” She froze at the approach of hooves. “Oh, God. They’re here.” Clapping a hand to her mouth, she pivoted toward the window.

  “How many men do you see?” He spoke calmly while she shook, and her heart beat as if a fish thrashed inside it.

  The haze obscured her sight as she rapidly counted the mounted figures speeding by in the whiteness like ghosts. “About a dozen bluecoats are riding up the lane.”

  “A significant party. I was hoping for less.”

  She swallowed hard. “I was hoping for none but figured that wasn’t likely.”

  “No.” His voice was flat. “I pray Hettie refrains from interfering.”

  Sam grunted in agreement at her name. Fluttering his eyes, he struggled to sit. “She mustn’t. Those bastards will shove her to the ground. Backhand her.”

  Jack restrained him. “Only the worst of the men are rough. Her mother and sisters are with her.”

  “What can they do?” Coughing from the smoke and whatever else afflicted him, Sam grasped his arm. “I wish we were out there with our rifles like before. Remember those shots we made?” A smile creased his dry lips.

  “I will never forget, for the rest of…” Jack neglected to add, ‘my life.’ Considering that might only be the next twenty minutes, Evie assumed he chose not to bother.

  Hettie had begged to stay in the attic with them, and Mary wisely refused. The matriarch had ushered her daughters downstairs to await the inevitable arrival of the soldiers. ‘We will plead with the men for Christian charity,’ the devout woman had assured Evie and Jack. He gave a nod and Evie had summoned a faint smile, both knowing her efforts would do no good. With rare exceptions, these soldiers were immune to pleas, their humanity extinguished by the war.

  Evie glued her eyes on the riders until they disappeared. The instant they were out of sight, she scurried to the window on the other side of her hideaway. “They are in the barn yard, and dismounting,” she said breathlessly. “They’re wasting no time. Three are coming toward the house.” If the sun shone, it would glint off the hardware on their rifles, but the light was eclipsed by haze.

  “Oh no,” she gasped. “Hettie ran down the steps and into the yard.”

  “What’s happening to her?” Sam asked hoarsely.

  “She’s dropped on her knees, with her hands upraised, while she entreats them.”

  Jack gave a low whistle. “Courageous girl.”

  Sam struggled to rise, with Jack preventing him. “Have they hurt her?”

  “No. Just shook their heads, laughed, and passed her by. Then—” Evie broke off as male voices sounded downstairs.

  The exchange was muffled to the three anxiously waiting in the attic. But the female outcry was unmistakable, increasing in volume, and there were scuffling sounds. Was furniture being dragged, or worse?

  She swiveled her head at Jack, eyeing him in alarm. “Dear God. Do they abuse women?”

  “Not in the manner you mean. Sheridan wouldn’t allow it.”

  Sam thrashed in his grip. “I don’t trust him to know their actions. You go and put a stop to it, Jack.”

  “If I thought the girls were suffering abuse I would shove the dresser aside, force open the door, and descend in a fury. I still have my pistol.”

  He had hidden his and Sam’s carbines in the woods.

  More cries reached them from the female cluster. “Then what’s going on with the girls?” Evie hissed.

  “Not that,” Jack insisted. “They are probably pleading for their farm.”

  She darted her gaze at the window as a blue-clad figure charged down the front steps. “One man is heading to the barn with a flaming stick of kindling.”

  “Sounds about right,” Sam muttered.

  Sick with horror, she said, “It’s been lit.”

  Smoke curled from the doorway and rose around the great timbered structure she regarded as a sort of earthy cathedral. Orange flames shot through the slats beneath the eves, feeding on hay, chaff, and abundant wood. The ominous crackle reached them in the attic. But the winds were calm. The house wasn’t in danger from the barn.

  “Another man is torching the chicken coop,” she sadly reported. “And the smokehouse.”

  Jack snorted in disgust. “When you think how long these structures take to build, and how little they further the war effort, it’s monstrous to destroy them.”

  The washhouse was next, but she said nothing. Her companions knew every building would be lit. Thankfully, Sam’s clothes had been cleaned and restored to him before they were spotted by inquiring eyes.

  Smoke billowed in the yard, and dismay flooded Evie. The house was an island in a sea of smoke. If only Mary had let Jack fire warning shots at the burners. He might have frightened them off. Fear of escalating violence had prevented her from agreeing to any defense, and maybe she was right. He was only one against a dozen or more.

  Cries sharpened downstairs. Was the remaining man threatening to set the house on fire?

  Every girl set up a lament that would have moved all but the flintiest hearts. The family didn’t dare plead for the lives upstairs, or Jack and Sam would be taken and imprisoned or executed. And Sam would never survive. But they entreated their tormenters for the mercy they did not possess.

  She exchanged glances with Jack, trying to still his cousin. They could but pray the soldiers rode off before the fire was beyond the families’ ability to extinguish. Hysteria engulfed the downstairs. Guttural shouts resounded from the men. Footfalls creaked on the steps and in the hall.

  Were soldiers searching the house? Were they looting what little the family had, or were the sisters claiming a few last-minute articles?

  Tumult beyond the window drew Evie’s focus. Converging bluecoats hauled Mary and the girls down the front steps, and away from the house. In their arms, the forlorn sisters carried some bedding. The largest girl hugged the big family Bible. No one cried harder than Hettie, reaching her arms to the attic, though to the men it would appear she reached for her home.

  “You cannot!” she shrieked.

  But they could.

  There were no words for the anguish inside Evie. She looked at Jack. This was it.

  The alleluia moment when angels appeared had better transpire soon. In seconds, a choking cloud would roll upstairs and into their hiding space.
Smoke surging ahead of the flames would get them. And it would happen very fast.

  What she sought, she couldn’t say, but would know when she found it. Circling her numb gaze at the attic, she took in the bunches of herbs, the braided onions, her pile of clothing and the carpet bag. A single trunk, the low stool with an unlit candle, a plate and cups, the blankets on the floor…little else. These simple, sparse furnishing comprised the décor.

  After what seemed forever, but was only a moment, an alternate reality floated into her vision. She glimpsed the jumble accumulated over the years by people with a lot more ‘stuff’ to collect. This hadn’t been here before and didn’t belong to the Wengers.

  God in heaven, the warble had arrived. Her angel moment. A halleluiah choir should accompany it.

  She waved her hand at what she trusted wasn’t a mirage. “Jack do you see?” She forced the hoarse question from her burning throat.

  He stared where she gestured with reddened eyes. As he did so, the phenomenon disappeared, and he turned his disbelieving gaze at her. “What?”

  “The warble was there a second ago. Fading in and out. We’ve got to take Sam down the attic stairs to my room. It will come again. Stronger, the next time, I pray.”

  “If we go down there and open the door to your chamber and you are wrong, the smoke will get to us that much sooner. We will forfeit any chance we might have.”

  “I know. But every instinct urges me on. It’s now, Jack.”

  Fatalism in his gaze, he nodded. He had resigned himself to his fate. But this was their salvation.

  Sam twisted in his grip. “What is she going on about? Not that it much matters. We’re as good as dead.”

  “No. We are getting out of here, Cousin. Let’s go.” Jack unfolded the wet linen and tied it around Sam’s nose and mouth.

  Evie wet her handkerchief and bound it around her face below her eyes. Jack did the same with his kerchief and heaved the ill and injured man to his feet. Sam sagged in his arms. Evie lent her aid. Sam could barely stand. Together, they helped him across the attic floor, her skirts trailing behind, and paused at the opening.

  “I’ll go first.” Jack turned and descended the steps backward, bracing Sam between them.

  She followed, crippled by her skirts. Wrenching the lengths up with one hand, she helped Sam with the other. But the lethal vapor traveled up the narrow steps.

  How would she see the warble in this murky mist, coughing her head off? The three of them choked, gasping for air. They would succumb to the smoke before they took another step.

  Jack paused before her bedroom door in the tight space between it and the stairs leading to the attic. There wasn’t room for three of them and she waited behind him and Sam on the steps. He hesitated. The door formed their only barrier.

  He gestured for silence, and they tried unsuccessfully to stifle coughs. A loud grating of wood across the floor sounded on the other side of the door, the dresser being moved. Then a hand turned the knob.

  Whose?

  Soldiers? She couldn’t see who it was.

  The door wrenched open and he reached for his pistol.

  “Come on. Quickly,” a woman rapped.

  “Wait, Jack.” Evie knew that voice. Recognition washed her with hope.

  Chapter Twenty

  Despite Evie’s assurance of coming help, Jack surveyed their rescuer as if she had sailed from the moon. The plump middle-aged woman wore a lavender gown, silver hair mounded on her head, and a white mask covering her nose and mouth. Reaching out an able arm, she snagged Sam and helped Jack get him through the door into Evie’s room. The poor girl tumbled after them. He steadied her before she fell in a heap.

  As she straightened, a phenomenon occurred, as miraculous as if they were shielded by angels’ wings. He and the others were enveloped in what must be Evie’s warble, like the eye of a storm. Beyond this clear circle was the odious cloud, while inside the air was clean and herb-scented, and the furnishings different than those he’d known before. The Wengers never owned this opulent carpet in rich shades of purple and gold.

  They didn’t have a brass lamp with an ornamental white shade on the stand beside a four-poster bed. Their bed and comforter were plain. No colorful guilt spread over the mattress. If they’d had these possessions, they would have been stolen from them by Rebels or the looting bluecoats.

  They pulled the cloths from their faces in wonder and crumpled the linen in their hands.

  “What in the name of Sam Hill is this?” Sam croaked. “Have we entered heaven, with a view of Hell?”

  “You are in between times,” the woman explained, stuffing a sealed envelope into his coat pocket. “Take one of the enclosed pills morning and evening, and you will be well.”

  “Are you an angel?” He voiced Jack’s query.

  Blue eyes the same hue as Evie’s sparkled above her mask. “Near enough. I’m this young lady’s grandmother.”

  Realization dawned. Here stood the benevolent being he had heard so much about.

  Evie squeezed his arm. “Grandma G. this is my Jack, and his cousin, Sam.”

  The tidings seemed to come as no surprise to the woman. “I’ve been expecting you. We have work to do. Come on.” She picked up an unfamiliar instrument he hadn’t noticed—a foreign rifle, or cannon, perhaps—and charged ahead.

  They stepped behind her through the wavering bubble. He and Evie followed, supporting Sam between them. The hateful miasma enclosed the trio, and wrenching coughs returned.

  Their dogged commander charged down the foggy staircase in a swirl of lavender. They were hard-pressed to keep pace with her and arrived, choking, at the bottom of the steps to see her blast the inferno billowing from the horsehair couch. This must be where the fire had begun with a stick of tossed kindling. Typical of the soldiers. She doused a nearby chair catching fire and smothered orange tendrils climbing the wall.

  How on earth did she do it? He had never seen a fire put out with white foam before, nor had Sam. Or anybody.

  Her task completed, she tore outdoors, yelling, “Get away from here!” And put the weapon to a second good use. “Let these people go and leave now!” She turned the frothy deluge on the soldiers keeping the distraught family at bay while their home burned. Or so they thought.

  The men lurched back at the arrival of this seemingly insane woman wielding an alien weapon. She covered the scrambling Yankees with the white spray. No need to repeat her order. Fearful for their lives, they bolted for their horses and galloped away. Comical to see, if they hadn’t left such devastation behind.

  She scanned the result of their deeds with narrow eyes. Jack knew that look. Pure rage. Then the anger in her expression faded and she turned to the stunned family.

  Circling an arm around Mary, she explained. “I am Mrs. McIntyre, Evie’s grandmother. I’ve come to take her and Jack home with me.”

  Had she truly? He was leaving? Too flabbergasted for speech, he stood with Evie, and upheld Sam.

  The woman she called Grandma G. tapped the unlikely weapon. “This is a fire extinguisher, not normally used for battle. The soldiers will recover. I’m sorry the outbuildings are too far gone for me to save, but your house is spared.”

  “Denki,” Mary offered with trembling lips, between the coughs tearing from her chest. “We feared all lost, and these dear souls perished.” She gestured at Jack. “Like a son to me.” She could not continue. Emotions were too great, as was the noxious vapor.

  He nodded at her, and she blurred before his brimming eyes.

  “I understand.” Their rescuer turned from Mary to Hettie, her dumbfounded expression a reflection of his incredulity. “Take care of Sam, dear girl. I left him some healing tablets. See he takes one morning and evening until they’re gone. He will be all right.”

  “Thank you. You are an angel sent from heaven above.” Praising their rescuer, Hettie sprang forward. She closed strong arms around Sam, and Jack relinquished his grip. Fixing her astonished gaze on Mrs. McIntyre
, she asked, “How did you make it past the soldiers to gain entrance to the house?”

  Mystery cloaked the newcomer’s eyes. “I know another way.”

  “The back?” Hettie faltered.

  “Another route besides that.”

  “But there is none,” the girl persisted.

  “There is. One day you may discover it. Thank you for looking after my granddaughter. We three must go now.” She nudged Evie and Jack. “Say your goodbyes.”

  He didn’t know where to begin. How was he to part from these dear people? Was he leaving forever? Did he have a choice? Questions tumbled in his dizzied senses.

  He shot a last look around. The barn shuddered and hissed in the greedy flames consuming the once comforting shelter. Outbuildings crackled, and he could see little of the loved farmstead through the blackened smoke. The familiar faces around him were a mix of wonder and grief.

  Stumbling through the motions, he embraced Sam. “Take care of yourself and Buck.” Pain knifed him at the thought of leaving them both.

  His cousin closed a weak arm around him. “I will keep him safe for your return.”

  “Sam,” he said huskily in his ear. “I’m not sure I am coming back.”

  He tightened his embrace as much as a sick man could. “I’ll miss you, Jack,” he choked out.

  “Yeah. Me, too. There’s food and fodder at my cabin, remember.” He turned to Mary, tears streaking her lined cheeks. “I would stay if I could.”

  She flung her arms around his neck in an unusually demonstrative embrace. “Gott segen eich.”

  “God bless you,” he answered in turn, enfolding the petite figure. “You have been like a mother. Say goodbye to Paul for me.” He detached himself from her and lifted a shaky hand to the weeping girls. “Gott segen eich.”

  Their world had turned on its head, and here he was leaving them. Why now?

  He only knew his rescuer was insistent and an inner voice nudged him to do as she decreed.

  Hettie pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Have care, Jack, wherever life takes you.”

  Weeping so hard, she could scarcely see, let alone talk, Evie hugged her friend. “I will miss you more than I can say,” she gulped out, mopping her face with the handkerchief. She bade a tearful farewell to Mary and the huddled family. “I wish I could help you rebuild.”