Annie, Between the States

by L. M. Elliott

  Jamie sputtered his hellos, and Stuart bowed formally to the boy. “I am glad to make your acquaintance, James.”

  “I…I…I hope very much to join your ranks, soon, General. Laurence here”—he glanced sideways at his brother, who rolled his eyes—“won’t let me.”

  Trying to hide his growing amusement, Stuart asked solemnly, “How old are you, son?”

  “Fifteen come March.” Jamie was wriggling all over, like a happy puppy.

  “Well,” drawled Stuart, “this is December, which still makes you fourteen. Am I correct?”

  The wriggling stopped. Jamie blurted, “I have a friend who’s a drummer boy. He’s only three weeks older than I.”

  “I have no need for drummer boys, James. A drum cadence would take away the cavalry’s surprise, now wouldn’t it? But if you are as good a rider, as cool a head as your brother, and wait a year, I would be glad to—”

  A brusque voice from the corner interrupted. “I’ll take him. He knows the area.”

  Laurence turned, and his eyes narrowed when he saw Mosby. “For what?”

  “For my ranger operations.”

  Laurence looked to Stuart, who explained.

  “I see. Guerilla tactics.” Annie noticed that Laurence’s jaw had set, his eyebrow had twitched then quieted—a look she knew well. Laurence was controlling his temper and his words. There was something about Mosby he didn’t like. His next statement was careful. “I need James at home, for my mother’s sake. This spring, for instance, in my absence, he will oversee the planting of crops that my family needs to live.”

  “If we don’t rout the Yankees, there will be no need for crops, Sinclair,” Mosby answered quietly.

  “Remember a statement of Napoleon’s—an army marches on its stomach. If the Federals are here, they will strip the land. We need to stop them first. I will need the help of people like your brother, your sister, to trip them up.”

  Laurence’s fair face began to tint pink. “My sister is no soldier, Mosby. And my brother is a boy.”

  Mosby said nothing. Jamie looked like thunder.

  Sensing trouble, Stuart stepped in. “This is all temporary duty, in any case, Laurence. And here we are wasting the presence of a lovely lady to argue over soldiering. Miss Annie, do you play?” He gestured toward the piano.

  Annie didn’t play brilliantly, but well enough. There had been so little time of late to practice.

  “Do you know ‘The Dew Is on the Blossom’?” Stuart asked.

  Dutifully, Annie played while Stuart and his companions sang:

  “The dew is on the blossom,

  And the young moon on the sea.

  It is the twilight hour,

  The hour for you and me….”

  When she was done, and most of the group had begun playing charades, Laurence requested a three-day furlough from Stuart. Sam had asked to marry Rachel. Laurence wanted to give him a wedding feast before they returned to Stuart’s encampment near Fredericksburg. “Who knows when we will be back this way, General, and it is very important to Sam. I want to do this for him. He saved my life, after all, in Sharpsburg.”

  …to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish…

  Sam held Rachel’s hands as he repeated the vows, steady, sure. Rachel smiled up at him. She looked ethereal in the candlelight. She wore a white muslin dress that Annie’s grandmother had given Aunt May to wear when she married Isaac. Aunt May had had to take it in considerably to fit Rachel. Lenah and Annie stood beside Rachel, Laurence by Sam. Miriam was bundled into a chair by the fire, listening. Aunt May stood behind her, tears streaming down her face. Molly and her brood huddled beside Jamie. Isaac had played the wedding march on his fiddle as Rachel passed through the parlor door. He stayed there now, sniffing loudly.

  “Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder. I now pronounce you man and wife, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” said the traveling minister Laurence had found to perform the ceremony. Then, in an abruptly loud, resounding voice, the gangly, black-clad man added, “Obey your masters as you would the Lord.”

  Everyone froze. Annie felt sick to her stomach as she saw Rachel’s face switch from happiness to defiance to nothing. Surely, this man didn’t compare a master’s authority to God’s, even if he was a believer in slavery. She started to open her mouth to say something, to push away the despicable nastiness of the moment, but Laurence put his hand on Sam’s shoulder and stepped in front of the minister.

  “This is not the way I wanted to do this, but now seems the best time to speak. I have made a decision, and Mother agrees with me. Tomorrow is New Year’s Day. Tomorrow is the day a statement from the Union president called the Emancipation Proclamation will go into effect, freeing slaves in areas Lincoln considers to be in rebellion. Officially, the Confederacy will ignore it. But I have long held the institution of slavery to be wrong. I had meant to do this myself last year when I turned twenty-one and legally was able to do so, but the war interrupted all my plans. Forgive me.

  “Sam, Rachel, it is perhaps more fitting that you be granted your freedom today, your wedding day. You and everyone else here at Hickory Heights who have for so long been part of our family and our concerns are free. Two weeks ago, I filed the papers to make it all legally binding. I cannot undo the way you came to be part of our lives, but I can change the way you remain in it. The choice to stay is yours.”

  Rachel caught her breath and Sam’s arm. He beamed. But no one knew what exactly to say.

  Laurence tried: “May I kiss the bride?”

  Rachel nodded vehemently and held her cheek toward him. Laurence brushed her face with his lips and then turned back to everyone else. There was a stunned silence.

  Laurence cocked his head, frowning slightly. He tried again. “Let us enjoy the feast.” He held up his arm, gesturing toward the dinner room, where awaited an enormous dinner of fried chicken, sweet-potato custards, and apple pies. There were two tables, one for the servants and one for the family, both laid out with the best silver and china, drawn out from their hiding places and polished to shining.

  No one moved.

  “What’s wrong?” Laurence finally asked.

  It was Bob who stepped forward. “What that mean, Mister Laurence? Do we have to leave Hickory Heights? Where we go?”

  Laurence put his hand to his forehead. “Of course not, Bob. I’m sorry. I should have said that you are all welcome to stay here forever. This is your home. I have to be honest that I don’t know how I’ll pay you, but I will once the war is over. I’m thinking that maybe I could give each of you some land to work and then we’d share the profits. But each of you needs to think about what you want to do. All you need to know right now is that you are free to leave if you wish. I have legal papers that say you are free. Or you can stay. If you do, and I hope you will, we’ll do the best we can to keep everyone fed and healthy until the war ends. Just as we always have.”

  Still puzzled, Bob nodded. Then he brightened. “Land of my own to work?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I ain’t going nowheres,” announced Aunt May loudly, “except to eat that dinner we worked hard to make for my baby and her new husband.” She grinned and wagged a finger at Sam. “Don’t you forget who her mama is and what I’ll do to you if you turns into a varmint on her!” She hugged Sam hard. Sam laughed.

  “Aren’t you going to have them jump the broomstick?” Lenah asked.

  “Lord have mercy, no, child. That’s a superstition for ignorant darkies,” said Aunt May. “My children are book-learned, thanks to this family. But we will have some fiddling later on. That all right, Mister Laurence?”

  Laurence nodded.

  Miriam smiled at Aunt May. “Does Isaac know ‘Star of the County Down’?” It was an old Irish song that Miriam had sung often at bedtime when Annie was little.

  “If you hum it for
him, missus, he can pick it out,” Aunt May said gently as she helped Miriam to her feet and guided her to the dining room. Annie heard her whisper, “You ain’t getting rid of me nohow, Missus Miriam, you remember that.”

  Annie stopped Laurence and let all the others pass. “I’m so glad you did that, brother. I’ve been worrying about…about…,” she stumbled, “about how happy our people are, even though we’ve tried hard to make their lives good, ever since Gabriel…well…left. I’ve been so troubled about my relationship with Rachel, too. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before. No matter how kind we were to them, no matter how good their lives might be here at Hickory Heights, the premise for it was so wrong. Nothing could make up for it except what you have just done. Do you suppose…” She tried to ask if he thought Sam and Rachel could now see them as true friends, but stopped again and shrugged. Laurence couldn’t answer that for her. She simply ended with “Thank you, Laurence.”

  “I should have done it before, Annie. I meant to. Gabriel and Jacob running off hit me hard, too. I would have let them go if they’d asked. I guess they didn’t realize I felt that way. So I wanted to make their choice legal, just as we say we have the right, the freedom, to choose whether we want to remain in the Union of states.

  “Beginning of the month, General Lee filed papers in Spotsylvania Courthouse to free all his servants, according to the wishes set out in his father-in-law’s will. Mrs. Lee had inherited them, you see. Her mother was evidently a big proponent of educating and freeing slaves and helping them colonize in Liberia. Two of their servants travel with General Lee in the Confederate army. He’s freed them, too, and pays them the equivalent of a soldier’s wage. I’ve heard that Lee feels slavery to be a moral and political evil. If the general can take time out to do what’s right while he’s planning the defense of our country, then surely a lowly lieutenant can as well.”

  He shook his head and added with bitterness in his voice, “Lincoln’s proclamation applies only to Confederate states, not to slave-holding Union states such as Maryland or to the Southern territory under Federal control. It’s so hypocritical. There are still many Northern leaders who own slaves. General Grant—a rather ruthless leader who commanded at that slaughter in Shiloh—his wife evidently still owns slaves and has brought them with her when she visits Grant in camp.

  “Truth is, some Yankees are as bigoted as some of our countrymen. I have seen and heard Confederate mistreatment of servants during my travels with the cavalry that I could never have imagined before, and it shames me, Annie. Our family just never thought of our people in such ways. And I hear about how some Federals treat the runaways they call ‘contraband’—lots of demands for them to dance at gunpoint as evening entertainment for the troops. God forbid they do that to Gabriel or Jacob. We are all tainted by this. Slavery should have been outlawed in the Declaration of Independence or the original Constitution. And I wish to God that the South had not allowed itself to become a bastion of it. The reality is, if we do manage to win this accursed war, it will become even harder to try to abolish slavery in the South. But I can do right by our own people. And when this war is over, I plan to argue the point beyond Hickory Heights. I don’t know how far I’ll get with it, but I need to try. Right now, all I can focus on is protecting Virginia.”

  He stopped, thoughtful, and Annie’s mind wandered to the long-ago words of Thomas Walker. Funny, thought Annie: In another day, another time, Laurence and he probably would have liked each other a great deal.

  “Let’s go in for dinner.” Laurence interrupted her musings. He held up his arm to escort Annie into the dining room.

  She took it and then paused. “Where’s Jamie?” Their brother was nowhere to be seen. “I didn’t see him leave the room.”

  “Oh, Lord,” sighed Laurence. “I should have told that hothead about my decision beforehand. I just hadn’t planned to announce it right after the service. That fool preacher. Oh, that reminds me, Annie; I need to pay him and send him on his way. I don’t think he needs to join us for dinner, given his obvious sentiments. Could you find James and herd him into the dining room so they can begin, please?”

  Annie went in search of Jamie. To her amazement, she found him in his bedroom, reading. She hated to interrupt; she’d tried so often to encourage any interest in literature. “Jamie, it’s time for dinner.”

  Jamie looked up at her with the surprise of someone who’d been completely lost in his book.

  “What are you reading?”

  “Lieutenant Mosby told me his riders would be ‘Tam O’Shanter’ Rebels, or like Robert MacGregor in Rob Roy, snookering the English. He told me to read them both, and then in March, when I turn fifteen, to find him. I couldn’t make any sense of Burns’ poem.” He pointed to a volume of Burns’ poetry, lying discarded on the table. “But this MacGregor fellow.” Jamie grinned. “Now there’s a man!”

  Indeed, thought Annie, recalling the Sir Walter Scott novel. The real-life Scottish rebel MacGregor whom Scott immortalized was quite the fighter—clever, idealistic, tenacious, and incredibly courageous in the face of better-armed, more numerous foes. But his actions also sparked horrendous acts of retribution by the English on Scottish villages, on women and children. Would Mosby bring about the same?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  January 29, 1863

  Middleburg

  “They won’t be hauling you off, will they, Annie?” Her little cousin Will looked up, his huge eyes agleam with worry.

  “No, darling.” Annie leaned down so that their faces were very close. “Even the Yankees haven’t sunk to that level. I’m not going to leave you.” She squeezed the little hand that lay in hers.

  Annie had ridden into Middleburg, hoping to purchase medicine for her mother. Miriam was suffering terrible headaches that seemed to shove her heart into convulsions. Before dawn, Jamie had gone out deer hunting with Isaac. It had snowed recently. The animals’ tracks would be easy to find and follow. They were running dangerously low on meat and had to keep the livestock alive somehow through the winter to breed babies in the spring. If Jamie could kill a deer, the venison would be a welcome relief for the twelve hungry people living at Hickory Heights.

  Since Jamie couldn’t accompany her to town, Annie had brought Will along, just for fun. The boy had been so quiet and skittish since arriving at her home. He’d begun to shadow Annie everywhere. One night she’d even awakened to find him curled up at the bottom of her bed. He told her he’d had a terrible nightmare, that Bull Run skeletons had him by the throat. Annie had thought coming into Middleburg might show him that life was still going on, was still safe even with the Union army ranging so close.

  She couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Two hundred New Jersey cavalrymen had galloped into Middleburg under Colonel Percy Wyndham. They were hot after Mosby and anyone helping him.

  Mosby had begun his midnight raids on Union encampments with a vengeance. In the past ten days, he’d snatched horses, food, ammunition, and officers from Herndon and Chantilly. These were picket posts along the chain of Union camps that stretched in a protective arc from the Potomac River west of Washington, D.C., south to the Potomac River east of it. Along that line were 3,300 Union cavalry. Yet, with his minuscule band, Mosby had slipped through the night, struck, and then melted back into the darkness. Already he was being called the Gray Ghost.

  But Union commander Wyndham was not going to be undone by this sneaking, upstart rebel. Wyndham was an English mercenary, knighted in Italy for his distinguished military service. Mosby was besmirching his honor, his reputation. He was going to harass the locals until they gave up Mosby.

  “Search every building,” the Englishman shouted.

  The Federal cavalrymen dashed into houses, overturned beds, ripped clothes out of closets. They found no Mosby riders. Instead, they rounded up the twenty-one male civilians, mostly ancient, still in the village.

  Unaware of the turmoil, Annie and Will had ridden up Ashby’s Gap Turnpike
toward the outskirts of Middleburg, loudly singing:

  “In Dixie’s Land where I was born in,

  Early on one frosty morning,

  Look away! Look away! Look away,

  Dixie’s Land!”

  Two bluecoats posted on the town’s perimeter cantered out to meet them and roughly ordered them into town. “Why are you coming into the village?” one asked.

  “For medicine,” Annie answered truthfully.

  “Do you have knowledge of the whereabouts of Mosby or his men?”

  “No, sir.” Again, the truth. She hadn’t seen Mosby since before the New Year.

  From his horse, the man then loomed over Will, setting him atremble. “What about you, boy? Know anything? If you lie, we’ll find out.”

  Will’s eyes welled up with tears.

  “Shame on you,” Annie blurted out. Will was already broken up by what he’d seen at Manassas. Annie jumped off Angel and went to hold the reins of the small old mare Will sat atop. “Are you Federals so afraid that you must terrorize a child?”

  The Union man sat back. “Stand over there,” he grunted, and rode back to his position.

  Annie and Will took their places beside the wives, sisters, daughters, and mothers of the arrested men as the Federals herded their prisoners to the middle of Washington Street.

  Sitting erect in his saddle, Wyndham shouted at the citizens. Mosby was a coward, a horse thief, he said, and would be treated as such. “If these raids continue,” he warned, his horse pawing and pacing, “I will burn this village to the ground.”

  Then he left, carting off Middleburg’s men. Women sank to their knees, crying, praying, asking dozens of unanswerable questions of one another.

  Annie watched the Federals thunder past the row of brick houses, climb a hill, and then disappear on the other side. Anger and disgust welled up inside her until she felt as if she would vomit. She helped lift a few of the elderly women to their feet, dusted off their dresses, and then turned to Will. “Let’s see if the doctor still has some powder left.”