Annie, Between the States

by L. M. Elliott

  One of the ladies she had helped turned to her. “He’s gone, honey, carried off.” She nodded toward the east.

  Annie fought off a most unladylike curse. No telling when the bluecoats would release the doctor. They would eventually, but how long would Miriam have to suffer before he’d be back? And would he even have anything left in his saddlebags then?

  Annie felt a tug at her skirts. Will was looking up at her again, with those huge eyes of his. He looked more and more like a startled kitten. “Ma knows,” he whispered.

  “Aunt Molly knows what?”

  “How to chase the Devil away from your head,” Will said with a solemn nod.

  Annie looked at him skeptically. “You mean she prays?”

  “Naw.” Will shook his head. “She mixes the bark of willow and dogwood trees into shrub.”

  Shrub was a drink of vinegar and fruit juice given to the sick. “Does it work?”

  “Rightly so. Most times,” he said.

  “Why didn’t she say so and save us this trip?” Annie asked with annoyance.

  “She’s afraid of the black witch,” Will parroted his mother.

  “Aunt May,” Annie corrected him. She frowned. Her blood aunt was becoming a real nuisance.

  “Well, let’s go home then.” As she started to get back on Angel, there was a popping sound.

  Not again, she thought.

  Pop-pop-pop. Pause. A riot of blasts sounded.

  The Federals were fighting someone.

  Evidently, Mosby had been at a nearby house. Alerted by a servant, he had managed to collect a handful of his riders and was charging after the Federals.

  “Oh, he can’t be that reckless,” breathed Annie. “He’s got to be completely outnumbered.”

  Within moments of the crackling exchange of guns, Annie could hear the sound of a horse thundering up the road from the east.

  Pop-pop-pop.

  “Oh, hurrah, our boys are coming!” cried the women.

  Yes, at a gallop, thought Annie, and running hard from something.

  Pop-pop-pop.

  Rifle fire sounded closer.

  Annie grabbed Will’s hand and the reins of both horses, setting Angel into a fit of whinnying and dancing. “This way. Hurry!” Annie shouted.

  Just in time, she darted around the corner of a building.

  In rode Mosby, barely controlling his frothing horse. He wheeled the horse around and shouted toward the east, shaking his fist. “I dare you to shoot at me!” he cursed the bluecoats.

  They did, sending bullets winging down the village. Mosby turned again and fled west, out of town.

  A few more gunshots. Then silence.

  Finally, Annie emerged from her hiding spot, still keeping Will behind her.

  Mosby had disappeared. Annie wasn’t so certain that this was the Confederate savior they’d hoped for.

  Two weeks later, though, Annie wouldn’t stop to question Mosby’s methods or benefits to her community. She was again trying to find medicine for Miriam. Aunt Molly’s home remedies had only twisted Miriam’s stomach into spasms. She’d heard that a doctor who lived just south of Aldie might have supplies. She was thinking about begging him to come see her mother. In any case, it was going to be a long ride east from Middleburg. The roads were hard and icy in spots, crusted with mid-February snow that refused to melt. She’d stopped with Jamie at the mill in Aldie to warm up a bit. The miller had kindly given them a cup of hot coffee. It wasn’t real coffee, of course, just ground-up chicory, but the hot liquid felt good going down.

  “Hey,” said Jamie, who’d been pacing at the window. “What’s that coming?”

  Annie and the miller joined him. On the road was a line of six covered wagons, slowly rumbling along the frozen dirt. Escorting it were eighteen Union cavalrymen.

  “Supply train,” said the miller, who’d gotten accustomed to the comings and goings of Union men in front of his mill. “Wonder where it’s heading.”

  “Who’s that in the lead?” Annie asked, pointing.

  The miller rubbed the window glass clean with his shirt sleeve and squinted. “Humpf,” he grunted.

  “That’s Yankee Davis. A Union sympathizer who lives just up the road.” The miller scowled. “I swear I’ll never sell that man another grain of flour, even if he pays for it in gold.”

  Jamie was still glued to the window. He whistled. “Wouldn’t that be a prize for old Mosby. Yes, sir. He’d swoop right down on that, I bet, like a hawk on a field mouse.”

  Annie looked at her brother and then back out at the train. Something about it bothered her. As she watched, the final wagon hit a huge hole in the road and swayed violently, rattling the canvas cover. For a split second, the barrels of two guns lurched out the back, and then, just as quickly, were pulled back in. Annie leaned forward, breathless, and studied the wagons hard. She saw nothing else poking out. But as the wagons struggled up the road, she noted how weighed down they seemed.

  Then she thought about an ambush she’d heard Wyndham had set for Mosby several days before that the Confederate had thwarted. Annie swallowed hard. She recognized a Trojan horse when she saw one. And it made her furious.

  She grabbed Jamie’s arm. “Jamie,” she blurted, “you finished the Aeneid, didn’t you?”

  “Aw, for pity’s sake, Annie, don’t be pestering me about books now.”

  She couldn’t help shaking him slightly. “Think, Jamie. Think of how the Greeks got into Troy and destroyed it. Remember they built a huge wooden horse and stuffed it full of their warriors, who couldn’t be seen from the outside. A wagon train like that looks mighty tempting to Mosby, just like that wooden horse looked like a tribute to the Trojans. That’s a trap the Yankees are setting, for sure.”

  Jamie smirked. “You’ve been reading too much, Annie.”

  Annie huffed in frustration. “I saw rifles pop out the back when that wagon seesawed. Didn’t you?”

  The miller interrupted. “I thought it was just my old eyes playing tricks on me. I don’t know anything about a Trojan horse, but I think you’re right about it being a trap. And if old Davis is with them, there’s something rotten about it.”

  “Do you know where Lieutenant Mosby is?” she asked.

  The miller shook his head. “I know the rendezvous point for his men now is Rector’s Crossroads. And sometimes he stays at Lakeland or Rockburn or Heartland.” All were manor homes near Hickory Heights. Annie knew and trusted the families. Getting to all three of them, though, would take a hard, fast ride. Rector’s Crossroads was just on the western side of Middleburg. To cover every point, both she and Jamie would need to ride.

  Annie turned to Jamie. “You need to ride to the houses and see if you can get word to Mosby. Be careful who you talk to, Jamie. I’m going to head straight to the crossroads, in case they’ve gotten wind of the train and are gathering to attack it.”

  Jamie’s face lit up with joy. Without a word, he buttoned his coat and ran out the door.

  The miller caught Annie’s arm as she tried to follow. “That’s not a job for you, missie.”

  There was no time for this. The wagon train was already down the road. “Do you have a horse?” Annie asked him urgently.

  The heavyset man shook his head.

  “Then let go of me, because Angel would never carry you.”

  The miller looked shocked by her bluntness. But he released her.

  “Warn anyone else you can think of,” Annie called as she dashed out the door.

  This ride would be different from the helter-skelter one she’d made with Cousin Eleanor’s old carthorse in Lewinsville. This was Angel. This was Annie’s territory. She knew the way and she knew the horse and she knew why she was riding. It had nothing to do with politics or philosophies that now she wasn’t even sure she agreed with. No, Annie was tired of the gunfire, tired of her county being ransacked and threatened. She might not admire Mosby or his methods the way she did Stuart. But Stuart and Laurence were across the Rappahannock Riv
er, far away. Lee’s armies had abandoned them. Mosby was here.

  Annie lit out across the fields. She’d have to avoid the turnpike, and she’d have to keep Angel at a slow canter, no faster, because of the slippery snow that dusted the rolling hills. Angel tossed her head, fighting the bit, wanting to stretch out in a run. She snorted, and white puffs of her breath wreathed them as they flew.

  Over a fence. Down a slope, up again. Through a sleeping cornfield. Across a tiny sliver of stream, where the earth had opened itself up a crack to let water pass, bringing green, bringing life. Annie crossed one slippery lane, another, and another. She was close now.

  Annie brought Angel down to a trot, prayed that the cold and the long exercise would not break her lungs. She patted Angel’s neck, stroked her soft mane, and brought the panting mare to a walk, then to a stop atop a hill. From her vantage point she could plainly see Mosby’s meeting point, where the Atoka Road crossed Ashby’s Gap Turnpike. This was only a mile or so from Hickory Heights. She knew the terrain well. She scanned the horizon, first north, then west, where the Blue Ridge Mountains crested along the earth, disappearing here and there in the clouds, their hazy purple line like the parapets of a castle. She saw no riders.

  Frustrated, Annie let Angel trot around in a circle to keep the mare’s muscles warm. She’d need to take Angel home if she didn’t spot Mosby soon. She’d pushed the horse hard to cover close to ten miles in an hour. As Angel turned, Annie continued to search.

  “Are you looking for me?” a voice suddenly called along the cold air from a grove of trees.

  Annie whirled, her heart thumping at the sound. Someone had been watching her. What should she answer? She started to reply that it depended on who he was. But then she realized if the voice belonged to a Federal picket, that would open her to the question of just whom was she seeking. No, better to use arrogance as a shield. At least she had learned something about tactics from all the stories Laurence had told her about Stuart bluffing the enemy.

  “Show yourself, sir,” she called back. “I’m not in the habit of shouting to bushes.”

  Three riders emerged. They were bundled in Yankee blue!

  Annie sucked in her breath, the frigid air bracing her. Think, Annie. Think. Why would you be out riding in such cold, in such a hurry? Think!

  The blue-clad riders sat waiting. Annie felt herself begin to tremble under her layers of wool. Ride it out. Don’t say anything until they do.

  The four sat silently, eyeing one another. It felt like an eternity. Annie steeled herself to stare at them defiantly, even haughtily, as if their presence was a mere annoyance to her. Then she began to look at the one in the middle more carefully. He was thin, almost frail, clean-shaven, familiar-looking. Could it be Mosby? Dressed in a Federal overcoat?

  The horsemen clearly weren’t going to speak—it was part of the game played across picket lines every day during the war. If she said the wrong thing, she’d set and spring her own trap.

  Suddenly Annie thought of a safe way. “I’m Annie Sinclair,” she said with as much disdain and superiority as she could manage. “And who, may I ask, are you?”

  The middle rider clucked his horse forward. He nodded at her. It was he—Mosby.

  Annie told the story of the wagon train hastily. She saw Mosby poke out his lower lip and nod approvingly when she described it as a Trojan horse.

  “Obliged, Miss Sinclair.” Mosby tipped his hat in thanks. “Gentlemen,” he said to his companions as he turned his horse. Off they rode, with no other words.

  Annie watched them disappear into the cover of a glade and then emerge on the other side with about a dozen riders. They headed east, toward Middleburg.

  He’s going right for it, thought Annie, shaking her head. Just like Stuart.

  Well, she’d done her part. She’d warned them. She headed for home.

  That night, Jamie returned afire with news. Just as the Trojan horse wagon train neared Middleburg, fourteen of Mosby’s men charged it, attacking the cavalry bluecoats who were riding far in front. They had panicked and galloped back toward the wagons. The Federal soldiers hidden inside heard the frantic hoofbeats. Blinded by the wagons’ covering, they assumed it was Mosby. The Yankees threw back the canvas and began shooting—at their own riders. Mosby captured most of them.

  Jamie had a new prize, an advanced Spencer seven-shot repeating rifle that the “Trojan” soldiers had been carrying. He showed it to Annie and then danced around the room.

  Annie waited for elation, the triumph she had expected to feel for successfully warning Mosby. This time she had made a difference. This time she had known exactly what to do and how to do it. And yet she felt no joy, just a cold, clammy sense of responsibility. She didn’t ask Jamie if any of the men had died. She didn’t want to know.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  April 15, 1863

  Hickory Heights

  “Jamie, what in the world are you doing?” Annie grabbed her brother by the collar.

  He looked up at her with a grin. “Making a trapdoor, silly. What do you think?” He shrugged her off and shoved the saw back down through the floorboards.

  “Jamie!” Annie pushed him so hard that he fell over, the saw left standing and wobbling, making a strange metallic warbling. “Are you out of your mind? You’re ruining the dining room!”

  Jamie sat cross-legged on the carpet that he had rolled up. “You of all people should know, Annie. You’re the Confederate spy, the friend of generals, the all-seeing rider who recognizes Trojan horses.” He grinned up at her again.

  Was the boy mad? “Jamie, don’t ever call me that. What if someone heard you? I could get arrested, you know. Besides, I’m not a…a…” She choked on the word—it sounded so clandestine. “A spy. I just did my part.”

  “That’s right, and I’m doing mine,” Jamie said. He was absurdly happy and good-natured.

  “By hacking up the dining room floor?” Annie nearly shouted.

  Jamie made a face and spoke in a patronizing tone. “Underneath this flooring is a part of the cellar that was dug but was never completely finished. I discovered it this morning. It’s a little cavern, about four feet wide and ten deep, right behind the jelly closet. I don’t know why they didn’t extend the cellar into it, but they didn’t. I guess because it’s not really square and they got tired of digging. Anyway, it’s a perfect hiding spot. The wall of the jelly closet has lots of cracks and seams in it—I stuck my hand through it; that’s how I found the hole—so there’ll be air aplenty for two men.”

  “Air?” Annie couldn’t understand this mischief of Jamie’s at all. “Two men?”

  “Me and Joseph Dickinson.”

  “Joseph Dickinson?”

  “Another Mosby ranger. I promised Major Mosby that we’d board him here.”

  Annie plopped down onto one of the dining room chairs as Jamie turned and went back to work. She had feared this—that Mosby would want them to house one of his men. It was a dangerous business. If one of the Union raiding parties came through and found the riders…well, the least they did was arrest everyone. One house had already been burned down as punishment and warning.

  Still, most of their neighbors were keeping at least one rider, especially after Mosby’s capture of the Union general Stoughton in March. That had been perhaps the most amazing feat of the war so far—one that reportedly had President Lincoln and other Washington officials so worried about Mosby that ten flooring planks on each side of the Chain Bridge were taken up each night to prevent him crossing the Potomac River into the city. It was a capture that had emboldened everyone in Fauquier and was drawing dozens of volunteers into Mosby’s rangers. Mosby himself had jumped up two grades in rank from lieutenant to major in two weeks—General Lee was that pleased by his performance.

  In the middle of the night of March ninth, Mosby and twenty-nine of his rangers had ridden straight into Federal headquarters at Fairfax Courthouse. They slipped past miles of Yankee picket posts and the garrison�
�s guards, going right into the general’s bedroom and out again, without firing a shot and without waking anyone—anyone, that is, but the captured Union general, two captains, thirty soldiers, a telegraph operator, and fifty-eight horses.

  Such joy there’d been among Annie’s friends and neighbors as they retold the story of Mosby pulling back the bedsheets on the snoring general and asking him if he knew of Mosby.

  “Yes,” the general had replied sleepily, evidently groggy from too much champagne before bedtime. “Have you caught the devil?”

  “No, sir,” came the reply of the Gray Ghost. “He has captured you!”

  It was already legend.

  Annie watched Jamie saw. She understood why Mosby wanted his riders spread out among the hills. He had camped as a group only once—seventy of them together in a barnyard—and it had been a disaster. A local woman had betrayed them, reporting them to a nearby Union cavalry post. The Federals had brought double Mosby’s numbers and charged down the farm’s narrow lane. Mosby’s rangers were trapped, hemmed in by fences and hedgerows and the tight driveway. They escaped through pure pluck, jumping the tall fences with their horses and shooting wildly. The Federal commander had also made a stupid error—ordering a saber charge. Their swords were no match for Mosby’s revolvers.

  And so from now on, Mosby’s men would vaporize into the night, like the mists of the Blue Ridge breaking up and settling into different pockets of the mountains, remaining hidden and secret, alone or in pairs, until he sent word for them. It would certainly build up Mosby’s mystery, enhancing his partisans’ allure to Southerners and their threatening unpredictability to Union troops.

  Sighing, Annie made a decision. She was having to make so many these days, and this was definitely not something to bother Miriam with. Hickory Heights would take on this Mosby partisan, feed him, and protect him. She stood up and was about to ask Jamie what he would need to finish the trapdoor when Jamie’s words came back to her. Another. Annie’s heart began to beat quick-time. “Jamie,” she whispered hoarsely, “you said ‘another ranger.’ Who’s the other?”