Annie, Between the States

by L. M. Elliott

  Annie silently reveled in their victory. She hadn’t really had anything to do with it. Colonel Stuart had already known everything she’d ridden out to tell him. But she was pleased with herself all the same. She was especially smug about the fact that she’d managed to keep her ride a secret. That hadn’t been easy to accomplish, either. It’d been a long time until Annie had been able to slip upstairs and grab another pair of shoes and a clean petticoat. Getting back out into the garden to retrieve the one she’d left behind was impossible. Miriam wouldn’t let her out of the house again for fear of soldiers.

  As she crawled into bed, Annie resolved to wake up before dawn and retrieve her underwear from the garden before anyone else was awake. Then her subterfuge would be complete! Annie flopped over and closed her eyes with a self-satisfied smile on her face.

  The door clicked open and Miriam tiptoed into the room. Annie sat up. She chirped: “Good night, Mo—” But she didn’t finish, clapping her hands over her mouth.

  In Miriam’s hand was Annie’s telltale petticoat. Her mother dropped it on the floor and gave Annie that raised eyebrow look she knew so well.

  Annie scrambled to explain.

  “I don’t want the details, child,” Miriam silenced her. “I know how many times you and your brother have conspired against me. I trust Laurence to know what he’s doing. And you”—she kissed Annie on the forehead—“I trust you will have all your things put together before we leave tomorrow morning. I don’t think Cousin Eleanor needs to know of any shenanigans.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  December 24, 1861

  Hickory Heights, between

  Middleburg and Upperville,

  Virginia

  “They’re pulling in a Yule log the size of a hog,” Jamie said as he reached for the raspberry preserves. “You seen it, Mother? It’ll burn all twelve nights for sure.”

  Gently, Miriam laid her hand over Jamie’s. “Don’t reach across the table, son. Say, ‘Please pass the preserves,’ and then wait for us to do so.”

  “Aw, for pity’s sake, Mother, no one cares about manners in these times. There’s a war on! Besides, I’m the man of the house nowadays. Laurence says so, until he gets back. You can’t go correcting the man of the house, you know.” Jamie swelled himself up like a turkey about to gobble.

  “I certainly can if that man acts like a baby and leans over the table for sweets. Now finish your breakfast, darling. I want you and Annie to collect holly for me to put on the mantelpieces. The servants are busy stacking wood and preparing the feasts for us and for them.”

  Jamie made another unhappy face and slumped in his chair. Annie rolled her eyes. Jamie had been near impossible since they’d returned home. The idea of spending an hour in the woods clipping holly branches and listening to his complaints didn’t sound like much fun at all. Whenever he had Annie alone, he’d start in on her about wanting to join up as a drummer boy like one of his schoolmates at Middleburg Academy had done. Miriam, of course, would have none of it. Annie agreed with her.

  “You don’t know anything about how it is,” Annie had told him.

  “Oh, and you do, I suppose?” he’d snapped back.

  “As a matter of fact, Mr. Smarty, Mother and I both saw what a battle is like, and it’s no place for a child, especially a hothead like you, Jamie.”

  That’s when he’d thrown a checkers piece at her. She’d hurled one back and they’d both ended up in their bedrooms for the rest of the day with only bread and milk for dinner.

  “Doesn’t Miss Miriam have enough to worry about without having two varmints for children?” Aunt May had scolded them when she’d brought their dinner trays. “What would Mr. Thaddeus have said? Don’t you be shaming his memory.”

  Annie didn’t know which was worse—a tongue-lashing from Aunt May or her mother’s quiet look of disappointment. On Christmas Eve she wanted to be a help, not a nuisance. “Mother, I can gather the holly myself,” she offered. “I’ll enjoy the walk. It’s not so very cold today. Give Jamie some other chore, something appropriate for a man of the house.” She smiled at Jamie to reassure him that she wasn’t goosing him with sarcasm. She meant it as a compliment.

  “Thank you, Annie,” said Miriam. “But I’d rather Jamie go along. I worry how safe the woods are these days.”

  “But Mother, it’s safe as can be. General Stuart is encamped in Centreville along with Johnston’s infantry. That’s several thousand men in gray. The Federals aren’t going to get past that to us.”

  But Annie knew what was worrying Miriam. Stuart had suffered his first real defeat just a few days before in Dranesville. Word had spread like a forest fire through Fauquier and Loudoun counties, from which so many of Stuart’s riders came. While escorting Confederate army wagons out foraging for food, Stuart had stumbled onto three thousand Union soldiers doing the exact same thing. Stuart had only twelve hundred men. Stuart held on against two and a half times his number for two hours, but finally had to withdraw when the Federals brought in three more regiments from their nearby camps. Against such odds, Stuart amazingly had lost few men: only twenty-seven men killed, about a hundred wounded or captured. But Annie and Miriam didn’t know for sure yet that Laurence had survived the fray safely.

  Miriam shook her head at Annie and her voice was shaky as she said: “I’ll feel better if you have him with you, Annie.”

  For once, Annie knew better than argue. She looked at Jamie and used what little big-sister authority she had. “We’ll leave in an hour, Jamie. Let’s wait until the sun’s a little warmer.”

  Jamie actually agreed, obviously satisfied with the notion that he was to be her protector. As if he and his freckles could do anything to fend off a bunch of Yankees.

  Upstairs in her room, Annie found Rachel changing the linens. The daughter of Aunt May and Isaac, Rachel was three years older than Annie. She was a beautiful girl with huge dark eyes and a slender build. Laurence’s man, Sam, was way sweet on her. Annie was sure they’d marry someday. Since Rachel was the only other girl vaguely her age at the house, Annie easily shared her thoughts with her, just as she had with her closest friends at school. Rachel, in fact, was the only person to whom she’d shown Stuart’s poem. Miriam had taught Rachel to read, often alongside Annie, and Rachel had a hunger for pretty verse as well.

  “Those are some handsome words, Miss Annie,” she’d said.

  Annie had flinched that time when Rachel had said miss. Ever since her heated exchange with the Massachusetts man, she had felt a new unease about her relationship with her servant. Annie considered Rachel a friend, family almost, but did Rachel feel the same?

  “Rachel?” Annie began.

  “Yes?” Rachel muttered. She had a pillow tucked beneath her chin as she pulled a new pillow-case on it.

  “Have you had word from Sam?”

  “No.” Her lovely face clouded. “Maybe Gabriel could go into the village to find out?”

  Annie nodded. “I’ll ask Mother.”

  Annie pulled on two shawls, a cape, and a hand-knitted hat and mittens. She teased, “I’m heading out to pick holly. Should I find some mistletoe in case Laurence is granted a pass and Sam is here for Christmas?”

  Rachel whacked Annie with the pillow. Annie grabbed another and whacked Rachel back. Whack-whack. Whack-whack. The girls giggled as goose down flew.

  Falling onto the bed, gasping, Annie gave up. Rachel fell down beside her. “Get the mistletoe if you want, Annie,” she whispered, “but be sure to invite that General Stuart of yours.”

  Annie sat up, instantly red-faced. “It’s not like that, Rachel,” she cried. “Not like that at all. He’s just like…I don’t know…like Ivanhoe and Rebecca. He’s just gallant enough to compliment a lady’s devotion to soldiers.”

  “Who?” Rachel looked at Annie blankly.

  “Ivanhoe.” Annie jumped off the bed and went to her dresser. There were three books atop it.

  “Here, read this.” Annie held out Sir Walter Scott’s no
vel.

  “I can’t take that.”

  “Yes, you can, Rachel. I know you can read this. We’ve read harder things together. I can explain some of it as you go, if you need.”

  “I mean I can’t take that out of the house. Missus Miriam never gave me a book to read on my own. What if I got caught with that?”

  “What do you mean?” Annie couldn’t understand Rachel’s having such a fear at Hickory Heights. “I’m lending it to you. Don’t be silly, Rachel. You know Mother wouldn’t mind.”

  Rachel looked at her skeptically. Annie took her hand and put the book in it. “It’s fine. Please read it. I think you’ll like it. It’ll be lovely to talk about a book with someone. Poor Mother is too busy, and you know Jamie. I’m not sure he knows his ABCs.”

  Rachel sat looking at the book, running her hands along its smooth cover. She nodded.

  “Good. That’s settled.” Annie left the room. Seeing Rachel hold the novel as if it were a jewel made Annie’s face flush with embarrassment.

  It hadn’t really occurred to her before that Rachel might long for books of her own or feel that Annie and Miriam would begrudge her borrowing them. But of course, she would, wouldn’t she, Annie puzzled out. We gave her the education to relish books, but not the means or environment to go out and buy them herself. Nobody in the area would sell Rachel a book if she did manage to save enough money through selling her own chickens or vegetables, as Miriam allowed their servants to do. No matter how progressive they were at Hickory Heights, the general outside culture in Virginia was not.

  Annie knew that Miriam considered Rachel part of the whole of Hickory Heights, her health and happiness Miriam’s responsibility just as much as Annie’s well-being was. And yet it was a second-class existence, the life of her servant, wasn’t it?

  Annie welcomed the cold air outside that shocked her brain clear of such troublesome thoughts. It was a beautiful December day with a cloudless sky, the blue made sharper by its being a backdrop to the black latticework of bare trees. As Annie waited for Jamie to come out the front door, she took in the sight of her home. Since returning in September, she’d so relished being there. Perhaps it was because she’d arrived just as the hickory trees surrounding the house flamed golden for autumn. Perhaps it was because she now knew there was always the possibility of losing their home if the war came their way. Nothing could be taken for granted these days.

  Hickory Heights had been built in the late 1700s and had spread itself out as her ancestors had grown in number. The kitchen addition was constructed of clapboard over logs. But the main part of the house was made of the dark gray fieldstone that surfaced everywhere in the surrounding foothills as they rolled themselves up to build the Bull Run Mountains to the east and the Blue Ridge Mountains to the west. In fact, Hickory Heights sat near three important westward passages to the Shenandoah Valley, the breadbasket of the Confederacy—Snicker’s Gap, Ashby’s Gap, and Manassas Gap. Laurence had worried mightily over this fact before he left, sensing that the gaps were dangerous back doors for Union troops. But so far the gaps had remained quiet and safe.

  Annie could almost see Ashby’s Gap from her bedroom window. Her room was in the back of the house—the northwest corner, from whence came the coldest winter winds. But though it was often frigid, the view was magnificent. Jamie’s and Laurence’s rooms were in the front, where it was sunniest, claiming the view down their lane to the main road, almost half a mile off. They had the advantage of looking out to see what visitors had arrived. Miriam had given up that master room to Laurence when he was eighteen years old and taken the other small, back bedroom beside Annie’s. None of the four bedrooms were that big, and Annie marveled to remember—vaguely—how crowded the house had been when her three other brothers and her father had lived.

  Jamie appeared at his bedroom window. She waved at him to come on. She could feel her nose beginning to numb. She imagined his route. Knowing Jamie, he’d slide down the banister and run into the parlor to kiss Miriam, who was undoubtedly figuring accounts or writing a letter at the corner desk. Then he’d run through the dining room and out the kitchen, hoping to steal another biscuit on his way.

  She laughed out loud as he predictably popped out the side porch, holding up two biscuits like stolen loot. Some things the war hadn’t changed.

  Annie led their way past the herb gardens, the smokehouse, the icehouse, the chicken coops, and the stable and carriage house. She thought about riding Angel later. Her horse would be frisky in this cold.

  Jamie tossed the remainder of his biscuit into the hog pen.

  “You could have given that to me, you know, little brother,” she chided.

  “Don’t want you fat like some old lady,” he joked. Womanly roundness was the fashion. Miriam was always complaining that Annie was too thin.

  They passed the fenced orchards and the stubbly brown hay field, shorn of its timothy. Jamie scraped a stick along the fieldstone fence, scaring up into the air a covey of small brown quail. They paused to fill their basket with some chestnuts fallen to the ground, their prickly casings popped open. “We can roast these tonight,” Annie suggested. “Let’s try to be good for Mother. It’s Christmas Eve, you know, and she’s worried about Laurence.”

  “I know that,” he said defensively, and then shrugged. “I can do that.” He squared himself up and added: “And this!” Reaching underneath his coat to his back belt, Jamie pulled out a gun, aimed, and fired, knocking off a thin branch from a nearby dogwood tree. He staggered several steps from the explosion and coughed from the stench of burned powder.

  The blast and the surprise of it knocked the breath from Annie. “Good God, Jamie!” She held her hand to her pounding heart. “What are you doing?” She reached out and grabbed the thing from Jamie. “Are you mad?”

  The gun was hot and heavy, and she almost dropped it to the ground.

  Jamie started laughing. “You’re such a girl, Annie. That’s why I’m here to protect you.”

  “Oh, Jamie, I could tell you…you…” She ached to tell him about her ride to Stuart. She was better than most girls. She could do a thing when she had to.

  “Tell me what?” he sniped.

  She started to tell him exactly what, but the thing in her hand stopped her. The heaviness of it—at least two pounds, maybe more—made her look down at it. There was a naval scene etched on its cylinder, a long barrel, and a walnut handle. But it was the cylinder that puzzled Annie. It looked as if it rotated and could hold more than one bullet at a time. Laurence didn’t have anything like this gun.

  “Jamie, what is this? Where did you get it?”

  He smiled slyly and stuck his thumbs in his pockets the way gentlemen did as they discussed politics in front of a fireplace. “I have my ways, little lady.”

  “Jamie, stop it. This isn’t a game. This is real. Where did you get this thing?”

  “I bought it off Edward for a gold piece. He’d ridden down to Manassas to look for souvenirs and found this lying by a dead Yankee. Edward took some of his buttons, too, but I didn’t want any of those.” Jamie jerked the foot-long gun back from Annie. “Edward came home with four of these—.44 army Colt revolvers. It’s a six-shooter, Annie. I aim to use it myself to pick off as many of them Yankees as I can.”

  “Oh, Jamie.” Annie felt sick. “You mustn’t think that way. If you could see the misery these guns do to the body. You’re just a boy, don’t…”

  “Just a boy.” Jamie stepped back from her. “You wait and see, Annie. It’ll be ‘just boys’ who’ll save this country. Mother will be proud of me, if you’re not. She’ll finally think me as good as Laurence. You’ll see.”

  “Jamie.” Annie laid her hand on his shoulder. She hated hearing his jealousy of Miriam’s affection for Laurence, because it reminded her of her own. And she was ashamed of it. Put into words, the thoughts sounded so petty and selfish. But they were there for both of them; she couldn’t deny it. She recited to Jamie things she often said to herself:<
br />
  “Laurence is already a man; that’s why she admires him so. When you’re grown, she’ll feel the exact same way about you. You’ll see.” But how could Miriam? Laurence was so fine. How could she and Jamie ever compare?

  Jamie shrugged her off and took aim again, this time back toward the house.

  “Don’t shoot again. You’ll scare Mother silly,” Annie cried, and pulled on his arm.

  And just in time.

  Over the knoll struggled Aunt May’s husband. “Miss Annie? Master Jamie? You all right?”

  “See?” Annie shook his arm as she let go. “You could have killed poor old Isaac.”

  “It’d serve him right for locking me up in my room when I wanted to get to Manassas,” Jamie muttered as he thrust the revolver into his belt and covered it with his coat. “Oh, I don’t mean it,” he added when he saw Annie’s shock.

  He waved to Isaac. “We’re down here. We’re all right. I just tried to get us some squirrel.” He whispered to Annie, “And someday I will, too. I could shoot the hat off a galloping Yankee with this if I had to.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Christmas Day, 1861

  Hickory Heights

  Annie sat up, shaking all over. She forced her eyes to clear and scan the blackness, her ears to listen carefully to the silence. Nothing. No cannon. No broken bodies rushing at her. It’d been a dream. Manassas again.

  Wrapping her arms around her legs, Annie pushed the nightmare from her brain with daylight thoughts. How cold was it, anyway? Annie breathed out a thin vapor of steam. Frosty. She shuddered as she jumped out of bed and bundled herself in her quilt. Her feet ached at the bite of the cold pinewood floor. It was Christmas Day, and except for fixing meals and feeding the livestock, the servants were off work the twelve days of Christmas while the Yule log burned. Rachel did not have to help Annie kindle her bedroom fire this morning or the next eleven.