Ambrosia rejoiced with the entire city of Columbia at the exciting news of the victory at Bull Run. The gallantry and courage of the Confederate troops was proven, once and for all. Yet as winter came upon the South, the news became less encouraging. Little by little the Union army chipped away at the Confederate border, and by spring of 1862, Lincoln’s soldiers held Memphis and most of Missouri, and were very close to opening up the Mississippi River.
During that same spring a group of women from church and lay organizations in Columbia undertook to transform a resting room for soldiers at the train depot into a hospital. Ambrosia immediately volunteered her services, but because she was young and unmarried, it was several months before she was allowed to do more than scrape and roll bandages and launder linens. Only after the second Bull Run did the matrons allow her to share in the hours of dirty, backbreaking labor, assisting surgeons in their often futile attempts to patch together mutilated bodies; cleaning up human refuse and vomit; and offering what small comfort one could to men who had seen their last battle. For Ambrosia, the new challenge proved a godsend.
She was stronger of will and more capable than most gently reared women, accustomed to driving herself and to keeping her emotions under tight rein. When others collapsed in utter exhaustion or fled to empty their stomachs in revulsion, Ambrosia clenched her teeth and stood her ground. Her carefully guarded eyes; her smooth, level voice; her calm, steady hand masked the terrible anguish she felt day after day, as she tended the broken men who tearfully thanked her for her kindness. So many times a patient with a shock of unruly blond curls or a pair of dancing blue eyes reminded her of Ledger. And she had to steel herself against remembering the hopes in her heart that had been shattered so many months before. She was beginning to realize that she would always love him, that she would never, ever forget what she had felt for him, that concealing the pain of that love in her heart would probably be the most difficult thing in her life. She thought often of her father too whenever one of the men spoke in a low, authoritative tone, or eagerly engaged in political debate with one of the other patients. She could not help but wonder if one of the men she loved would someday... But she refused to allow herself to speculate. There was more than enough reality to be reckoned with at Wayside Hospital.
In May of 1863 Ambrosia received an urgent letter from the mistress of a plantation bordering on Heritage informing her that her mother was gravely ill; that Mr. Partkin, the overseer, had been killed in an accident; and that the remaining slaves were left completely without proper supervision. Ambrosia arrived home less than a week later, totally unprepared for what awaited her. No one had tended to the flowers, the shrubs, or the lawn for months; and the house had been picked clean of curios and keepsakes, even easily transportable pieces of furniture. She listened quietly as Sheba, the head cook, and Andrew, her mother’s favorite house-slave, told all that had happened in her absence.
“Massuh Jackson ain’ been heah since way ‘for las’ spring; Miz Ambrosia,” Andrew told her solemnly. “An’ Mr. Partkin, he die two months back, aftah he fall from dat wil’ horse he liked t’ ride so much. Miz Elly, she try t’ take ovah de runin’ o’ de place. She move herself right into de big house, since Miz Lucille been feelin’ so poorly. But she don’ know how t’ gib de ordahs like a lady,’’ he added with a wary glance over his shoulder and a noticeable lowering of his voice.
Ambrosia closed her eyes for a moment, fully aware of what Andrew meant by that. Everyone knew why Elly, the pretty, fifteen-year-old daughter of a poor tenant farmer had married the physically unattractive, fifty year-old overseer of Heritage. There had always been talk about Elly and the airs she’d put on the moment she’d taken Mr. Partkin’s name. For all her attempts to dress and act like a lady, Ambrosia vividly recalled the few times she’d seen Elly deal with slaves, screaming and slapping at them with a smile on her face, as if it gave her some feeling of triumph. “I’m home now, Andrew,” Ambrosia told him quietly. “Elly won’t be giving any more orders around here.”
“Ain’ many ordahs lef’ t’ give, Miz Ambrosia,” Sheba told her sadly. “Aftah Elly take ovah, de people run off a dozen at a time. Only me, Andrew an’ Sally lef’ now,’’ eyeing the young black girl who stood nodding in silent agreement. “I try t’ tell dem t’ stay on fo’ while, but ain’ nobody an’ nothin’ but me t’ kep ‘em heah, so dey run off.” She snorted derisively. “Dey say Pres’dent Lincoln make dem free. Dey don’ hab no massuh t’ gib dem clothes an’ a house an’ food, but dey’s free.”
‘’Ain’ nothin’ been done ‘bout spring plantin’, Missy,’’ she went on apologetically. ‘’An Massuh Jackson, he write an’ say he ain’ comin’ home for long while yet. De supplies is runnin ‘ real low too. We been livin’ on eggs an’ de las’ o’ de flour. Don’ know what we do when dey runs out. Maybe we have t’ leave heah too.” “Leave here?” Ambrosia repeated in disbelief. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “No, Sheba. We’ll never leave here. Heritage is our home.” This place and its way of life were her birthright, and they were the reason why so many good men had already spilled their lifeblood. She did not intend to Jet this plantation, or the dream that had inspired it, die. “Heritage is our home,” she repeated softly.
Survival became a private war for the women whose husbands’ and brothers’ and fathers’ bodies littered faraway battlefields like Gettysburg, Spotsylvania Court House, and Cold Harbor. There were too many places like those to remember the names after a while. Long lists of the dead, wounded, and missing were distributed almost daily at the depots of major cities and, from there, passed on from plantation to plantation. Ambrosia always braced herself for the worst whenever such a list found its way to Heritage but had thus far been spared the horror of finding her father’s or Ledger’s name. With a half-sigh of relief, she would return to working with the blacks on the vegetable garden, which now offered their principal source of food, or to directing the making of soap, or molding of candles, or hand-lapping of threads for cloth, or knitting, or any one of a score of tasks that she now performed as a matter of course. She found a strange sort of comfort in forcing herself to work so hard, in allowing herself so little time to think about what life might have been like had there not been a war, or what might have happened had Ledger returned her love. She simply concentrated on holding on to Heritage, on proving herself worthy of the task which lay before her. Only once did she feel a pang of regret for the turn her life had taken, and that was just after her mother’s death, when Melissa came to Heritage. She arrived from Charleston on the verge of hysteria, sobbing about the terrible shelling that had gone on for weeks and assuring Ambrosia that General Sherman was coming to burn the city just as he had burned Atlanta and Savannah. But it was only a matter of minutes before Melissa noticed the changes at Heritage. Ambrosia’s weekly letters had pre pared her for her mother’s death, but not for what she found here. She walked slowly about the house, staring in disbelief at the worn draperies, the threadbare carpets, the empty shelves which had once held Mama’s favorite porcelain figurines. Some of the furniture was even missing from the parlor!
“Lord! Your hands look like a field-slave’s, Ambrosia,’’ Melissa told her with a horrified gasp when she found her making candles. “You work like a slave here! You even eat at Mama’s table with that Elly Partkin, like she was acceptable folk. And how do you think you’ll ever catch a decent husband dressed in stained homespun and those awful prunella shoes!”
Ambrosia turned away from the cauldron of hot wax for a moment and stared at her hands, remembering, in spite of herself, the way Ledger had kissed her palm so long ago. “There aren’t any men to come courting these days,’’ she said bluntly as she wiped her soiled hands on a worn apron and pushed aside any frivolous regrets about her appearance. She lifted her chin. ‘’Elly’s a hard worker and I’m glad of her help. And I really don’t have a choice of whether or not to work, Melissa,” she went on, her e
yes sparking indignantly as her sister gave a grimace of distaste. “There isn’t anyone else to do it.”
“If you had any pride at all, you’d leave here,” Melissa snapped back. “What in God’s name are you holding on to? I’d rather starve than live like you do. I’d rather face General Sherman’s army!”
“Then maybe you’d better go back to Charleston,” Ambrosia returned evenly. “If you stay here at Heritage, you’re going to have to do your share.”
With a gasp of outrage, Melissa turned her back. She started for Charleston the following morning.
What in God’s name are you holding on to? The question echoed in Ambrosia’s mind as she stood alone in silence, watching the bright yellow rays of the sun dancing across the sleeping fields of Heritage, gently nudging seeds and roots and bulbs to waken to a newborn spring. In the distance, the windows of the house reflected the glory of the dawn like polished gems set to catch the light. This was her pride, her hope, her future. Wars might rage and cities might burn, but there would always be this: the beauty of a sunrise, the miracle of spring at Heritage. This was what she was holding on to, what gave her the strength to go on.
She drew deeply of the sweet, dew-kissed air and let her eyes roam lovingly over all the land that stretched before her. And then she bravely turned away to face the day.
Chapter 2
‘’The army will forage liberally on the country during the march...’’
That simple phrase, part of the lengthy orders General William Tecumseh Sherman gave his troops after leaving Atlanta, transformed his army into an instrument of terror. Union forces had penetrated the South during earlier campaigns, but never like this. The rural lands of Georgia and the Carolinas lay largely undefended, prone before the attacking Union forces who eagerly sought to destroy what little strength remained.
General Sherman’s primary objective was to end the war by destroying the South’s railway system, but he also believed that the South deserved to be driven to her knees, that every man, woman, and child bore responsibility for secession, and that the civilians as well as the soldiers must be conquered. His foraging parties effectively accomplished that task as they trampled and burned an eighty-mile-wide swath through Georgia and on to Carolina. Though Sherman’s original orders forbade the entering of homes along the route and encouraged the parties to proceed under the direction of a trustworthy officer, there was little or no disciplinary action taken against men who looted and burned at will. Indeed, these men found subtle encouragement for their actions in the lax control of their superiors. Many a homesick soldier, bitter after the long, hard years of war, mindlessly vented his frustrations on all that lay in his path. During the second week of February 1865, the results of the “foraging” had left deep scars on the lands of Bamberg County, South Carolina.
Major Drayton Rambert drew back on his reins with the skill of a natural-born equestrian and slowed his mount to a halt at the crest of a hill. He was a striking man, tall, broad shouldered, and hard muscled, his jet black hair and bronze skin contrasting sharply with his piercing ice-blue eyes. He frowned thoughtfully at the dark, clouded sky and, for a moment, gave in to his fatigue. He was weary of this endless traveling through swollen streams and swamps and wet, marshy ground. And he was weary of the lingering smell of smoke, the stench of rotting farm animals slaughtered for no reason at all, and the stark, blackened chimneys rising ghostlike from still-smoldering ruins. He took no pleasure in the burning, the smashing, and the destruction of what once must have been a quiet, gracious way of life. It sickened him. Nevertheless his broad back was straight and his posture erect as he paused on the hilltop and scanned the scarred landscape. Only his eyes mirrored his disgust with the scene that lay before him, a scene which had grown all too familiar in past weeks. He sighed and turned his gaze northward, wondering how far out of his way he would have to go to find food for his regiment. He had taken the assignment to prevent a less scrupulous officer from taking it, and it was certainly not a task he enjoyed. The first wave of “foragers” always rushed madly forward, stripping the land to the bone, leaving the legitimate parties who followed to travel miles out of their way just to find an unbutchered cow or chicken. The senseless destruction had made foraging dangerous business too, for the outnumbered Confederates often chose to ambush smaller parties such as this one and were constantly on the lookout for Yankee stragglers. There were countless stories of Yankees being tortured and murdered in retaliation, and most of them were true.
The gray swirls of smoke, some from fires set days before, rose in every direction to meet the angry gray sky. Drayton considered for a moment, then with a slight movement of his hand, directed his men north, toward a patch of untouched land on the horizon. A dozen men took up the determined pace, sensing that their mission would soon be accomplished.
The men who rode behind Major Drayton Rambert had been selected by him specifically, and each would have followed him into hell without ever questioning his sense of direction. A few of them were “old-timers” who had been with Drayton since the first Battle of Bull Run and had seen the stuff of which he was made in countless battles since. Corporal Laird, the only member of the troop who .was over forty, liked to tell how the major had taken two bullets at Gettysburg and still managed to bayonet a Reb as the corporal tried to drag him off the field. And that was not the only time Corporal Laird had saved the major’s life. Like most of the others, Laird was proud to serve under “Die-hard Drayt,” as they affectionately called him behind his back, but the corporal wondered every now and again if Rambert really cared whether he made it home or not.
Men shared a lot when they lived together for months at a time, and Laird knew something personal about just about every man in the company, except Rambert. Jim Crawford, for example, a man almost as old as Laird, who claimed to be a ladies’ man and the father of eighteen children... only six of them by his wife. Andy Essex was the freckle-faced clown of the group, always ready with a witty comeback, usually managing to keep the men in high spirits in spite of the homesickness and hardships they shared. Privates William and Kelly Riley were brothers as different as night and day, yet close to one another as two brothers could be. Kelly was quiet and even-tempered he managed to keep hotheaded William in line most of the time. Jamie Clark was the skinny, blond boy fresh from Pennsylvania farm country, the youngest man in the company, just turned sixteen. Privates Jake, Cristoff, Jameson, Hunt, and Swenson were all simple family men brought into the war by a sense of duty or the Enrollment Act of 1863. They were a close knit group of soldiers, all good fighters, loyal to their country and to each other. “Salt of the earth,” Laird liked to think. Men who would gladly leave this god awful war behind them and take up the lives they’d left behind them.
But Rambert was a different kind of man, a loner. He never spoke of home, or a wife or family, and was pointedly silent whenever the other men spoke of theirs. It was clear from his speech that he’d been well-educated, that he wasn’t from rural Pennsylvania, like the others, though he’d enlisted there at the beginning of the war. The few clues Laird had to Rambert’s past had come from a single incident just a few months before. The major had received a letter from New York saying that his father had died, that he should resign his commission and return home. That night Rambert had gotten himself very drunk and mumbled things Laird was sure he hadn’t meant to share. He talked again and again about a woman named Kathryn, calling her name, breaking down as he cried out for her.
Drayton had ignored the request that he return to New York, but there had been a change in him after the arrival of that letter, an anger seething just beneath his surface, threatening to explode at the slightest provocation. He had always seemed to thrive on combat, on walking that thin, dangerous line between life and death, as if existing on the edge and proving himself gave him his only peace. But it was as if the reminder of home had triggered something inside him, a frustration, a bitterness that ma
de him lash out at life itself.
In Atlanta, after the fighting for that city was finished, Drayton had even gotten himself into a barroom brawl with a newspaper reporter over a loose woman the major hadn’t really wanted at all. Of course, the reporter had been one of those flashy, conceited types taken with his own importance, the kind who collected fees from soldiers for mentioning their names and exploits in print. But this man had done nothing to Major Rambert personally, and Laird had been surprised when Drayton challenged his claim to a garish blonde whose eyes said she would willingly accommodate every soldier in the place if each would wait his turn. The major fought for her in that same passionate way he always fought, making an enemy of the newspaperman and three other soldiers who foolishly assumed there was safety in numbers. Drayton had beaten them all, then calmly paid for the damage to the place and turned his back on the woman he’d fought for, walking away from her without a second glance. Laird hadn’t really been surprised to see the major walk away, since he’d never seen Drayton take anything but a brief interest in any woman. He was a strange man in that respect, hard and distant, a mystery to everyone. But he was the best man Laird had ever ridden under, a man who possessed a natural ability to lead, a man who always saw to his men’s needs before seeing to his own. For that Laird and the others respected and revered him.
Rambert led his men over another rise of land without pausing, but from the hilltop he noted what seemed to be a small outbuilding across a stream and just a few miles to the east. He instinctively checked his direction and proceeded toward it. The air was becoming cool and uncomfortably humid, and Rambert frowned darkly as the first rumbles of distant thunder shook the sky. He prodded his mount to take the first few hesitant steps into the swollen creek, then dug his heels lightly into the horse’s stomach until they had nearly crossed the remain der. The horse snorted and tossed his head as he drew closer to dry ground, jerking insistently against the firm hands which held him back until all the others had crossed the stream. The major scowled as he turned his head to check the progress of his men, feeling a strong sensation of impending doom. He saw and heard nothing beyond the splashing hooves and rushing water. Everything was quiet...too quiet.
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