Annie, Between the States

by L. M. Elliott

  Cousin Eleanor stood up, a stiff statue of disapproval.

  Annie swallowed hard and readied herself.

  For a moment the old woman gazed sternly at Annie. But her face gave way and softened. “Oh, child, look at you.” She reached out and took Annie’s hand and drew her to a chair next to her own.

  Embarrassed, Annie tried to smooth her hair and realized it was a mass of stray, dirty strands. She had not been permitted a bath. Indeed, she would have feared taking one, knowing she would be observed through that peephole in the door. She had packed a comb and toothbrush the night she was arrested, but she’d lost the energy, or the desire, to worry about them a day or two ago. Or was it a week? She waited for Eleanor to speak.

  Eleanor turned to the junior officer who sat at a desk behind them, writing down their conversation. “Guard, this is unconscionable. This child needs fresh water and soap in her room.”

  The clerk shrugged and wrote it down. He answered in heavily accented English that he had no authority for that.

  “Who does?” Cousin Eleanor asked imperiously.

  “The superintendent.”

  “My husband, Francis, will contact the man tomorrow. He is a lawyer, mind you, and this girl has rights.”

  “She’s suspected of treason, ma’am.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Eleanor turned back to Annie. “Are you all right, child?”

  Annie was fighting back tears. Treason? She was a citizen of the Confederacy, not the United States, and therefore couldn’t betray it in treason. Could she? She didn’t answer.

  “Annie.” Eleanor squeezed her hand. “I’ve brought you a basket of food and a few clean clothes. Did you receive the other two baskets I brought?”

  Annie thought of the potted potatoes, stale bread, and porridge she’d been given and mostly refused to eat. No, she hadn’t received any fresh food baskets.

  She shook her head.

  Eleanor pursed her lips. “No cheese? No apples? No cake? Not even on Christmas Day?”

  Annie shook her head again.

  Eleanor turned on the clerk. “And what would have happened to that food?”

  “Must have had contraband items in’t,” he mumbled.

  “Contraband items? A little cake?” thundered Eleanor. The clerk began to cower as she continued, “Is this how you plan to win a war, starving a poor young girl who did nothing more than stand up for her family? No matter how erroneous it was?” Cousin Eleanor grew sarcastic. “Take a good look at her, sirrah. Lord knows she looks a monster, able to knock down whole armies with a flick of her finger. I’m stunned you don’t have her chained to the wall to prevent her laying waste to the entire city of Washington.” Eleanor stopped and was breathing hard against her corset. “This child will be allowed this basket. Today is her birthday, of all things. If I come back and find out that she has been denied these gifts, I will find you, sirrah, and bring down the wrath of your superiors upon you.”

  Annie guessed the clerk didn’t know half the words Cousin Eleanor used, but he certainly understood the tone. He dropped his eyes to his paper and scribbled furiously.

  Cousin Eleanor turned back to Annie and calmed down by straightening her black skirt and neatly folding her shaking hands in her lap. “Happy birthday, child,” she finally said.

  Birthday? Annie had lost track of time. Was it January fourth already? Then she’d be eighteen years old today. She felt one hundred.

  Eleanor pulled a cloth from the basket and revealed a small teacake, a loaf of bread, canned peaches, and a few dried apples. “Make sure you eat these, Annie.” She pulled out a clean towel, petticoat, nightshirt, and shawl. “Clean yourself. You are the daughter of Thaddeus Sinclair. Do not let yourself go like this.”

  She’d also brought a copy of Harper’s Weekly, the New York Herald, and a beautiful bound book, The Scarlet Letter. “I remembered that you had started reading this book at my house,” she said. “I hesitated to bring it, Annie, given your current circumstances, but perhaps the fortitude of the character Hester will help you bear your own imprisonment. I know how much joy you garner from reading. Your mother told me.”

  Reviving a bit, Annie reached for The Scarlet Letter. Yes, she remembered reading a passage about Hester standing poised and silent on the steps of the Puritan prison, withstanding the jeers and taunts and questions of the crowd before her. It was not the same as, but not unlike, Annie’s own predicament.

  “How did you come to know I was here?” asked Annie hesitantly. “They promised I could write letters—only eight lines a note, they said—but they would never provide me paper and pencil.”

  “Laurence sent a Major Walker to see us, thinking Francis would be able to plead your cause with the authorities. Laurence could not procure papers to travel, since he has been paroled but has not taken the oath of loyalty.” Cousin Eleanor paused and added, “I am sorry to hear of Laurence’s condition, Annie. But we must thank the Lord that it was only his arm that was lost.”

  “No oath?” the clerk behind them interrupted.

  “Why, no oath?”

  Eleanor turned even paler. “The U.S. army did not deem it necessary. He is a Confederate officer who has promised not to take up arms against us again. That is enough.”

  The clerk scribbled down the information.

  Eleanor frowned. “God forbid I’ve made matters worse with that,” she mumbled.

  “Annie, Francis has spoken to the authorities. He is doing his best. He hopes you will have a hearing soon, and he will be there when you do. This Major Walker has also written and contacted commanding officers about you. He has somehow gotten a message through the lines to Mosby, asking that Mosby send a letter stating you were never involved in any plots against officers.”

  She paused and they both listened to the clerk scribble.

  The sense of hopelessness that had kept Annie so downcast and lethargic was lifting. Thomas was helping? How did he dare risk his reputation with his own people? She started to ask, but then silenced herself. Any more talking about him would simply be recorded and perhaps endanger him.

  “Thank you, Cousin Eleanor,” she said meekly. She suddenly felt ashamed for tricking the older lady by riding out to Stuart on one of her carriage horses.

  Eleanor cleared her throat. “Of course, child. I do not condone or understand your”—she glanced over at the clerk and finished—“what happened to you. But we are family. The greatest tragedy of this war is what it has done to families.”

  That night, Annie and Millie devoured the fresh bread and one dried apple. Annie carefully tied up the rest in the towel and hung it on a peg next to her bonnet. Like that, the mice couldn’t get to it. Annie could only hope the roaches wouldn’t find it.

  A few days later, Millie was released. Annie was alone again.

  That first night of solitude was unbearable. Annie used up six candle stubs to make it through the hours of darkness. By the quavering, tiny beam of comfort she read and read and read.

  But The Scarlet Letter’s tale of a woman branded as a sinner by the letter A on her clothes brought Annie little comfort. She came to a passage describing Hester and her daughter walking through the woods, a symbolic “moral wilderness” in which Hester could never come out of the shadows into a sunbeam:

  …A gleam of flickering sunshine might now and then be seen at its solitary play along the path. This flitting cheerfulness was always at the farther extremity of some long vista through the forest. The sportive sunlight…withdrew itself as they came nigh, and left the spots where it had danced the drearier, because they had hoped to find them bright.

  “Mother,” said little Pearl, “the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom.”

  Without thinking, Annie raised her hand to her own chest, over her heart. Like Hester, she felt she had committed a crime against God and humanity by shooting that picket—a boy with a mother, a sister, a betrothed perhaps, who would mourn
dreadfully all their lives. Like Hester, Annie would carry the stain of it on her forever.

  Annie tried to shake off the thoughts. She slammed the book shut and closed her eyes for a moment. But the picket boy’s face loomed huge in front of her, his mouth open, screaming, his eyes wild in fear.

  She snapped her own eyes open and sat, like a sentry against her own thoughts.

  Finally, when dawn came, she laid her head on the windowsill. Feeling the warmth of the sun on her hair, she fell asleep.

  She awoke when the door to her room was flung open again. She raised her head and blinked.

  “Visitor,” the guard announced.

  Another?

  This time it was Charlotte. The detective who had escorted Annie to prison loafed beside the clerk’s desk.

  Seeing him, Annie began to tremble. She knew it was no accident that he was there. This was far too dangerous for Charlotte. She might be implicated somehow by coming and what she might say. Or, God forbid, she might blurt out something that could only make things worse for Annie.

  Annie roused her wits and rushed to embrace Charlotte. “Charlotte, my dear, you shouldn’t have come all this way,” she said. She kissed Charlotte quickly, caught her eye, looked urgently at the clerk and the detective and back again to Charlotte. Annie raised her eyebrows. Please understand me, she prayed silently.

  Charlotte looked puzzled. Annie repeated the glance so that Charlotte looked sideways as well. To her great relief, Charlotte nodded.

  “Oh, darling, I couldn’t not come while I was in town,” Charlotte prattled, playing the Southern belle. “Those delightful Union soldiers currently occupying us gave me a pass to come to Washington to buy dress material. There’s absolutely none to be had in Warrenton. And there are so many lovely parties to be going to. I do wish this silly war would end so that the shops could open again. Honestly, Annie, you could certainly use some new clothes yourself.” Charlotte’s eyes were filling with tears, but she kept her voice merry.

  Annie smiled encouragingly at Charlotte. That’s right, she thought, you’re doing well. She reached over and squeezed Charlotte’s hand.

  “Eh-hem,” the detective cleared his throat.

  Annie flushed but held her empty hand up and open so that he could see that Charlotte had not passed her anything.

  The detective nodded and then sauntered into the next room. Annie sighed in relief, although she knew the clerk still would record everything.

  She winked at Charlotte. “How is dear Eliza? I’ve so missed her.” Annie, of course, detested Eliza now, but one of her greatest fears was that somehow Eliza would compromise Annie concerning Stuart.

  Charlotte again appeared baffled but then a slow smile spread across her pretty face. She understood. Her answer told Annie that Eliza was precisely the reason Charlotte had braved the trip to come. Eliza had betrayed her—whether she had meant to or not.

  “Well,” Charlotte began with that voice of schoolgirl gossip, “don’t tell her I said this, but my goodness, that girl is a flirt. She has all sorts of Federal officers falling all over her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t marry one of them, and then she’ll never be received in society again!”

  Annie winced at the condemnation of a Yankee-Southerner marriage, but continued the jolly tone. “Oh, do tell.”

  Charlotte drew closer, her face quite serious and intent, even while her voice retained its party tinkle: “She loves to bedevil them. I heard her tell one of them that if he didn’t come back with an engagement ring for her, and right fast, she was going to ride out to Stuart’s cavalry and find herself a husband there. Said she knew a girl who rode out like that once to find Stuart.” Charlotte spoke the last words slowly and loudly, capable of only so much subtlety. Then she forced a giggle. “Can you imagine such brashness? I think Eliza has three or four rings already, from Yankees and Confederates both.”

  Annie’s heart plummeted. She’d gotten the message. Somehow, perhaps merely in a slip of silly chatter, or in a careless maneuver to garner information about Union troops, Eliza had told Federals in Warrenton that Annie had warned Stuart of an impending attack. The Washington prison officials would see it as further proof of her spying, sure. If Eliza had blabbed about the poems, they might search Hickory Heights to stack up evidence against her.

  She needed Charlotte to go to Hickory Heights and make sure those poems were destroyed or hidden where no one would ever find them. Annie forced herself to join in Charlotte’s throaty laughter. “Speaking of engagements, when do you and Laurence wed?”

  Charlotte blushed and glanced over at the clerk. He seemed not to have connected that Laurence was Annie’s brother. No longer able to keep up the pretense of merriment, Charlotte spoke haltingly. “Laurence is much changed, Annie. He himself seems to doubt we are suited for each other, and I…I…well…he is much changed.”

  Annie felt herself pull away from Charlotte. You can’t be that shallow, Annie thought. You can’t destroy Laurence that way!

  Charlotte saw Annie freeze up. “Oh, Annie, I’m not as good, as brave as you….”

  The scribbling of the clerk picked up. Charlotte broke off.

  “Nonsense,” Annie chirped. “He is changed because of not seeing you. You go to him and tell him to tear up that silly letter he wrote you. Tell him his sad poetry will do you no good right now.”

  Charlotte shook her head. She didn’t understand.

  Annie felt as if she would scream. After all, it was Charlotte’s snooping and gossiping about Annie that had given Eliza the information that might hang Annie. She forced herself to keep playing the game and to adopt a girlish whisper of confidential advice: “Don’t be afraid to be honest with the man you love, Charlotte. We ladies spend too much time worrying and waiting for them to make up their own minds. The war has brought a new urgency to life.” She leaned forward to say pointedly, “Tell him to tear up those ridiculous poems.”

  She sat back and waited a moment for her underlying meaning to sink in. Finally, Charlotte drew in her breath, as if fresh cold air had just hit her, and nodded.

  Annie felt her heart begin to beat normally again. She finished quietly, “And then marry him, Charlotte, for he loves you dearly. He needs you.”

  A few minutes later, the detective reappeared and announced that their visiting time was up.

  The friends stood and hugged. Annie wanted to warn Charlotte to flee the city at once before she was accused of something, to hurry to Hickory Heights. But she knew anything she said at that moment could bring terrible danger to Charlotte. She had been incredibly good to come. Now, if she could only be strong enough to go to Laurence. And then steady enough to marry him. How could she not marry him, just because Laurence was missing his arm?

  “I know you’ll find some beautiful material, Charlotte. Have a happy journey home,” Annie said as casually as she could.

  She turned and waited for the guard to shadow her back to her prison room.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  February 10, 1864

  Carrol Prison,

  Washington, D.C.

  “Room change. Come this way.”

  Annie gathered her few belongings and followed the guard upstairs. To her amazement, women were out in the hallway talking to one another. They greeted her with smiles as she passed.

  “In here.” The guard ushered Annie into a tiny but far more inviting room. The coarse unbleached sheets on the bed were actually clean. The barred window had all its panes. When Annie looked out it, she caught her breath with joy. Before, in the oppressive room she had occupied for six weeks, her view had been of the whitewashed courtyard of the prison, where male prisoners were allowed to walk and stretch during the day in a yard of dust and filth. Here she could see out to the Capitol grounds, to trees and sky and lawn. She put her cheek against the cool glass and looked and looked.

  It had snowed. It had been a mercilessly cold winter, she knew. She hoped that Isaac and Bob had remembered to cut ice from the cr
eek for the icehouse. Poor Laurence. He’d only be able to watch such work now. She tried to envision the twists and turns of Goose Creek, the stretch that was wide and still enough to freeze for ice skating. The few winters it had frozen solid, she, Laurence, and Jamie had slid about, laughing hysterically. She could hear them; remember the happy sting of her frozen nose; Laurence catching her when Jamie tackled her; great, stomach-hurting, gasping guffaws. In her current lonely sadness, the thought of such carefree happiness was too much to bear.

  Annie shut off the memory and turned. She jumped to see the door open and a woman standing in it.

  “They’ll lock the door at night,” the stranger said gently, introducing herself as a Mrs. Jackson. She was the widow of a diplomat, a North Carolina native but longtime resident of Washington, who’d gathered much information about Union troops and generals at parties she’d hosted. She’d been caught passing the valuable tidbits on south to Confederate president Jefferson Davis. He’d been her friend and neighbor when he’d served in the U.S. Senate.

  “I’ve been a boarder of Uncle Sam’s for a while now,” she joked, referring to the prison. “Come have a cup of tea with me.”

  Mrs. Jackson’s room seemed a small home. She had china, glasses, books, and a clean quilt upon her iron bedstead. Half a dozen dresses hung on the wall pegs. An African servant woman brought in the tea and left. Annie looked after her wonderingly.