by Ann Rinaldi
"Charity, dear," Chloe Fletcher interrupted, "we're all in the same boat. I'm sure Sue Mundy is in even greater danger than the rest of us, being she actually fought the Yankees. So leave her alone. Please, darling."
She spoke as if Charity were a little girl. But in the next moment I found out Charity was the wife of one of Quantrill's men. Kerr was her marriage name. And there was a wedding band on her finger.
Charity had reverted in her mind, these last three weeks, to a child. One girl standing behind Chloe Fletcher put her finger to her temple and pointed to Charity and twirled that finger around.
"I can make a sound like a piano," Charity told us, "without assistance of any instrument. I drive the Yankees to distraction at night. I'll play for you all later."
"Go back to your corner now, sweetheart," Chloe directed. And Charity did. She sat down on the floor in a far corner, humming to herself and to her doll baby.
"Poor dear," Chloe whispered. "Her mind is completely gone." She gave a deep sigh. "And I'm afraid of what her husband, Johnny Kerr, will do, when he finds out."
"Will he find out?" I asked boldly. "I mean, will we all ever see our kin again?"
"Have they tried to force themselves on any of you?" Jenny Anderson asked.
"Do they speak of keeping us here? Or sending us somewhere else?" asked Fanny Anderson.
Sue Mundy had been quiet. Finally she spoke. "More to the point, have they questioned any of you?"
Silence. Only Sue Mundy would ask such a pertinent question.
"Some," Chloe answered. Behind her a few hands went up and we heard some yeses.
"Chloe," Sue asked, "do you mind if I have a session with your girls and ask what they've been questioned about? And advise them how to talk to the Yankees in the future?"
Chloe was taken aback, but she said, "Of course." And immediately Sue Mundy ushered the girls to one side of the room and had them sit on the floor as she stood in front of them.
"Go," Martha directed me.
"Do I have to?" I was angry at Sue Mundy and she knew it.
"Yes. This could help you. Seth is a captain now. Directly under Quantrill. They likely know this and will want to question you. Go."
I went and sat down.
The girls who had been questioned by the Yankees were telling Sue Mundy what the tone of the questions had been.
"They wanted to know when my brother was coming home again," said Eugenia Gregg.
"They wanted me to tell them if we had any ammunition around the house, and if I made any cartridges for my brother," stated a girl whom I did not know.
"Does your brother ever tell you about the next raid?" put in Lucy Younger. Then she laughed. "I wouldn't ask. Besides, he wouldn't tell. For my own protection."
It went on like that. Then Sue told them what to say if questioned again by the Yankees. "'I don't know anything. My brother—husband—cousin—said it was for my own protection.' And don't let them threaten you. They can't shoot you as a traitor. The army doesn't make war on women."
Nobody thanked Sue Mundy when she was finished. As a matter of fact, the girls seemed to resent her. Armenia Crawford came over to me. "Who does she think she is in those fancy clothes? She hasn't been sat down across from a dirty-dog Yankee and sneered at and threatened and scared out of her wits. How dare she tell us what to do?"
"The Yankees admire her," I said. "When they came to the house to get us, they were delighted to meet her. The captain even kissed her hand."
She stood stock-still. "Just because she dresses up like a man and shoots them?"
"I guess so."
"There's got to be more to it than that."
"What?"
"I don't know. Let me sleep on it. If I ever sleep in this godforsaken place. Oh, another session this night yet. Now our Chloe is going to give you all the two-cent tour of the place. You better go listen. I wouldn't miss it for the world."
"THE ONLY large windows to let in air are in front," Chloe pointed out. "The side and back of the building have the smaller windows that look out onto weed-choked lots. There is no crosscurrent of air and that's why the place gets stifling hot. As you can see the bunks are set along the other three walls.
"You empty your own slop jars," she went on, to the groans of Jenny and Fanny and Mary, Martha, and even Sue Mundy. "Just throw the contents out the side or back windows. The hogs are waiting below.
"And to change the subject, remember there are guards at the entrance to the building, down on the street, and more at the second-floor landing. The Yankees have a meeting room just outside this room. The walls are thin. So we must be careful of our chatter."
She looked into our fearful faces. "Our girls get so hot during the day they like to take off their dresses and walk around in their shimmies. I can't blame them. Just be careful to carry a shawl or something in case a Yankee comes in. They like to leer at us. They've been away from women a long time, and we don't want to tempt them. Now the food is bad, and it sometimes isn't enough. But eat it if you can. You all have to survive. Thank you."
THAT FIRST night, after a watery dinner of beans and old corn bread, a man came around who was known as Leonard Richardson. He wore an eye patch. Word soon went around the room in a buzz that he was a supplier to wagon train companies.
"I hope he doesn't supply them with this," said Charity McCorkle Kerr. "This food is poison!"
Mr. Richardson gave a short smile as he glanced around the room at the girls seated on the floor. "I represent the town fathers," he told us. "I want to make sure your needs are met."
Always spotless, Martha Anderson stood up then. But I could see her blouse was already stained with sweat, her hair disheveled. "Our needs!" she said. "Sir, we need clean bed ticking, better food, and clean water. Do you know they bring us our water in the slop jars and expect us to drink it?"
"I'll see what I can do about it. Your name is Anderson, isn't it?"
"What difference does it make? I speak for us all."
"We hear your brother, Bill, has offered ten Union prisoners for you and your sisters, that's what difference it makes."
A murmur of oohs and aahs went through the room. I sighed. My brother doesn't even want me for a sister anymore, I thought.
Then Leonard Richardson looked around. "Who is Juliet Bradshaw?"
Uncertainly, I raised my hand.
"Your brother, Seth, offered five prisoners for your freedom."
A flood of disbelief and gladness rushed through me, even while tears came to my eyes. Your brother, Seth, offered five prisoners for your freedom. So he still considered me his sister. He hadn't meant it when he said to stay clear of him, that he didn't want anything to do with me. And all that talk about the orphanage looking good to him? He hadn't meant it after all. Oh, Seth, I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't!
"So what happens now?" I was brave enough to ask.
"It depends on how the Yankees accept the offer. But they're both generous gestures. You girls sure are lucky."
Then another thought came to me. How did Seth know we were here? I put the question to Richardson, who only gave that small smile of his. "There's not much Quantrill doesn't know," he told us. "He's got spies." And he shifted his eyes over to a nearby window where Sue Mundy stood smoking a cheroot. "Settle down now. I'll have some clean water sent up."
I set my supper aside. I'd go hungry before I'd eat it.
Chapter Nine
THAT NIGHT, as Charity McCorkle Kerr promised, she played the piano, indeed, without assistance from any instrument. In the summer darkness and with thunder rumbling low in the sky, she played such songs as "Just Before the Battle, Mother" and "Home, Sweet Home." When she started in on "Amazing Grace," some of the girls started to cry, and Chloe Fletcher had to tell her it was enough. So she fell silent, and then we were treated to the sound of her own quiet sobbing and the scratching of rats and other vermin as they ran across the floor.
"Don't bother them and they won't bother us," Chloe directed.
But never, in a hundred years, could I get used to rats under my bed.
Although all the other girls took off their outer clothing, Sue Mundy never did. And because I lay awake long after the others were tossing and turning, snoring and whimpering, I saw her get up and creep across the floorboards and go into the Yankees' room next door. They were all awake in there, and I heard them welcome her.
What was she doing? Did she know them? I sat up but couldn't hear.
"What's she doing in there?" It was Jenny Anderson, whose bed was next to mine.
"I don't know."
"I have a bad feeling about her," Jenny said softly.
"Why?"
"I don't know. Why is she so friendly with the Yankees?"
"Go back to sleep!" Martha Anderson ordered sharply.
I fell asleep before Sue Mundy came back out. And the next morning I awoke about starved. I could not recollect ever being hungry in my life. Besides good food being spread on our table at home, there were always plenty of snacks on the sideboard in the way of nuts and fresh fruit and cake and pie.
Now I understood what the absence of these foods meant. Hunger. Hunger in its worst I-have-a-headache and-a-pounding-stomachache form. The food the Yankees gave us was no better than what we'd given our pigs at home. It made me want to throw up.
To add to all this, as the day went by the girls decided they wanted to play a game. They wanted each of us to remember some favorite thing from home and tell everyone about it. And so we did.
"I'm thinking of fruit from our trees," said Eugenia Gregg.
"Preserves, especially jelly, from our garden," said Lucy Younger.
"Fresh beans and corn, just picked," said a girl by the name of Trish Taylor.
"Just-made coffee, poured into a cup," added Chloe Fletcher.
"Waffles with powdered sugar on them," said Mary Anderson.
"I remember my cherry chiffonier," I said, changing the subject from food, "with the little round mirror on top. And my cherry washstand with the washbowl of white china. Maxine would have hot water in it for me to wash, every morning."
Charity McCorkle Kerr started to cry softly. "I remember how my husband, Johnny, let me watch when Louie, his personal man, shaved him. I used to love to watch. I wonder if Johnny shaves now." The crying became sobbing then, and Chloe Fletcher said we should stop. So we did.
WITHIN TWO days that second-story room became a hellhole. My brother, Seth, always said he does not believe in hell, that hell is here on earth, in certain places and in certain people. It certainly was in that second-story room of that prison on Grand Avenue.
We girls got just enough clean water to drink. No more. None to wash in. The days and nights were stifling hot. Except for talking about home we had nothing to do but sit around on the floor or stare out the front windows and watch the people walk by.
The place attracted mosquitoes and flies as well as vermin. And it was the year of the cicadas. The trees were full of them, and the echo of their shrill sound resounded through the nights and days until I thought I would go mad.
Our clothing became dirty and ripped and ragged. Sooner or later we tore off part of our petticoats to wipe our faces of sweat. We took off our shoes and walked about in stocking feet, or better yet, in no stockings at all.
I began to know all the girls' idiosyncrasies.
Amanda Selvey could not tolerate the food at all and threw up all over herself.
Sue Vandiver cried all the time. If Charity McCorkle Kerr started, then so did she, and we couldn't stop them.
Constance Moore was twelve, like me, but she looked and acted sixteen. She had real hefty bosoms and curled up her hair in rags every night as if she were going someplace the next day. She fussed with that hair all the time. I longed to take a scissor and cut it off. She had a book she was reading, and one time when she left it on the floor, unattended, I caught the title of it. Moll Flanders. I'd wanted that book when we went into town. I'd asked Seth if I could buy it and he'd said no.
SUE MUNDY constantly visited the Yankees in their room. And we soon learned why: for meals, for washing, for having her dresses laundered by their servant. The Yankees couldn't get enough of talking to her. One of them was taking notes for a book he was writing on her, he said. I felt sorry for him. Sue Mundy was telling him all lies.
Juliette Wilson, whose brother rode with Dick Yeager, had a talent like Charity McCorkle Kerr, only hers involved a guitar. She pretended she was strumming one and with her tongue and palate she could sound so like one that it frightened everybody. The Yankees made her stop every time they heard it.
By the third day, I had been approached by at least three or four girls about Sue Mundy's friendliness with the Yankees.
"Why do they like her?" wondered Fanny Anderson.
"Is she a spy?" asked Chloe Fletcher. "We were told she is one for Quantrill. But do you suppose she's a double agent, spying for the Yankees, too?"
The questions came down on me fast and furious, since my brother fought beside her. I had to tell them I didn't know. Because I didn't. Though I did remember what Sue Mundy had told me the day she revealed her true sex to me.
My disguise is important to Quantrill and the Confederate army. I can't tell you why now, but I will soon.
***
THOUGH EVERYONE said Jenny Anderson and I looked alike, Jenny had beautiful brown curls. One of the guards who came in every day to check on things was Arnold Rucker. He looked to be about seventeen, but he was raw, untamed. And he started making passes at Jenny.
She wouldn't abide it. First she slapped him. Then he grabbed her and attempted to kiss her. Martha tried to intervene, but he pushed Martha aside and she lost her balance and fell backward. Jenny, angered, kicked him in the groin, and he yelled and crumpled to the floor. A second guard came in, a brutish-looking fellow, who cussed and ordered our drinking water taken from us, then demanded that a twelve-pound ball and chain be put around Jenny's ankle for punishment.
Martha argued. "She's my little sister. I strongly object."
"Object all you want to, lady," said the brutish-looking fellow. "Rules are rules. And I can't have her kicking my men."
"But what about what he did to her? And to me? We want Leonard Richardson. He's our intermediary."
"He's not here today."
"We demand to see him. It's our right."
The man laughed. "You don't get it, do you, lady. You got no rights. This ain't no democracy. You gave up all that stuff when you quit the Union, and Jeff Davis is far away. Now shut your mouth. We got more balls and chains."
What hurt Martha most was being spoken to suchlike. Never in her life had she had to endure such rudeness. She went and sat down in a far corner to hide her tears, and I sought her out. I knelt on the floor in front of her. She was a big sister to me.
"I'm sorry the brute spoke to you so," I told her. "If Seth were here that brute would be picking himself up off the floor."
She sniffed into her handkerchief. "I'm ashamed to let you see me cry. I wanted so to be strong for you all. You won't tell Seth I cried, will you?"
I shook my head. "We've all got secrets to keep," I said. "I only wish I knew where Seth and the others were."
Now she shook her head. "Nearby," she whispered. "But I won't tell you. The less you know, the more you're out of danger."
"How do you know?"
"Sue Mundy. She found out from the Yankees."
"Martha, everybody is saying she's a double agent. Is she?"
"I don't know, Juliet. But she finds information out from them, whatever you call her."
"Well, if they know, why don't they attack Quantrill and his men?"
"Because they move around too fast. They can never be found. All the Yankees know is that they're in the area. They spy on each other, the two groups. And Sue Mundy is right in the middle."
"Martha," I said, giving the conversation a new turn, "you should know, my brother doesn't love her. He's never kissed he
r. He wanted me to tell you that. He loves you."
She smiled through her tears. "I know."
"You know?"
"Of course. A woman always knows."
"Are you going to marry him?"
"If he ever comes to his senses, yes."
"Oh, Martha." I grabbed her hand. "You'll be my real sister then."
She dried her eyes. "He loves you, too," she said. "Don't let all his strutting and spitting out hard words frighten you. When it comes down to it, he's soft on the inside. He just doesn't know how to show it, is all."
I went to bed that night with a warm glow inside me. You would never know the cicadas were screaming outside and the girls crying inside, and those who weren't crying were whimpering and restless. It's funny what knowing you are loved can do. Too bad it didn't last long.
Chapter Ten
EVERY FEW minutes, Jenny Anderson tried to turn over in her bunk, could not for the ball and chain, and whimpered heartbreakingly. Martha stayed beside her, soothing her with words. Sue Mundy had gone into the Yankees' room to beg forgiveness for Jenny and ask that the contraption be taken off, at least for the night.
"I'll sign all the memo pads or pieces of paper you want," she promised. For they all wanted her signature. But this time her magic did not work. And she came out of the Yankee headquarters disheartened. She circulated from girl to girl that night, saying a few words to each one to comfort them.
I thought it was decent of her not to try to squeeze into the bunks with the girls. After all, when all was said and done, she was still a man.
Finally she made her way over to me. "Don't you come near me, you gypsy, you," I told her/him. "Shame on you, here in a room full of half-dressed women who all need baths. And you prettified up as for a ball. How do you get those Yankees to wash and clean your clothing?"
"They are thrilled by me and my exploits," Sue Mundy said. "They all can't wait to go home and tell their relatives that they met me. My name is currency, in the North as well as the South. Many of them will have dinners bought for them at inns with the promise to tell that they met me."