Annie, Between the States

by L. M. Elliott

  Rachel and Sam nodded, perplexed by the obviousness of Annie’s statement.

  “Did…did…” Annie couldn’t even hope enough to ask the question.

  Seeing Annie’s fluster, everyone stopped jumping and crying and dancing, wondering what she wanted.

  But Laurence knew. He took her hand and motioned to Thomas to follow. “I have a surprise for you.” He led Annie to the stable paddock, and there she was—thin, her coat dull and gone in patches, her front legs lumpy and bowed, long jagged scars across her flanks, but alive. Angel.

  “I’ve got to warn you, honey, she’s skittish these days. It’s taking her a while to trust anybody.”

  Slowly, tears falling fast, Annie held out her hands and inched toward her horse. “Angel, come here, girl, pretty girl.”

  Angel reared her head back and rolled her eyes wildly so mostly white showed.

  Annie stopped. “Angel, girl. It’s me. Come here, girl,” she coaxed.

  Uncertainly, Angel lowered her head. Her nostrils flared and she sucked in great whiffs of smells. She took one shaky step forward. Annie did likewise. Another and another, until Angel’s muzzle rested on Annie’s shoulders. She began to nibble Annie’s hair, the way she’d always greeted her in the field when she was ready to give up her pasture freedom and grant Annie a ride.

  Annie reached up and wrapped her arms around the gaunt black neck.

  “She’s broken up pretty badly, Annie. I don’t think she can ever be ridden again,” said Laurence.

  “She can barely trot, she limps so badly. It was Sam who saved her. They were about to put her down for meat when he found her. Took a lot for him to barter—everything he had almost—to get her. Then he had to walk her home. That’s what took him so long to reach Hickory Heights.”

  Annie kept her face against Angel’s. Lord, the price they’d all paid.

  “But she can bear foals,” Laurence continued.

  “They’d be beautiful, too. If it’s all right by you, Annie, I’d like to keep her here and let her be a brood mare. She’s the only horse I’ve got,” he said with a laugh, “but maybe, after the fighting’s over, I can find a stallion for her and we can rebuild the legendary herd of Hickory Heights.”

  He stroked Angel’s head.

  Annie stepped back and let Angel jostle Laurence, looking for treats. He pulled a carrot stub out of his pocket that he’d obviously been saving for her, and let her take it.

  Gladness filled Annie as she watched Laurence. The war hadn’t broken his core. But could he be happy? Where was Charlotte?

  “Laurence,” Annie dared to begin, “what happened with you and—”

  But she was interrupted by a rider hurtling up the drive in a tornado of dust and gravel. The man jumped off his sweat-lathered horse and dragged it, its chest heaving, toward the stable. When he pulled off his slouch hat, Annie recognized Jamie’s flaming hair.

  Worried, protective of Jamie, Laurence shot a sharp, aggressive look toward Thomas.

  Annie did, too. She couldn’t help it.

  Hurt, Thomas shook his head at Annie. She blushed in shame at her instinctive distrust of her own husband.

  To Laurence, Thomas said, “I resigned my commission, Laurence, to marry your sister. Like you, I am now an avowed bystander of the war. That is, of course,” he added, stepping forward, “what I hope you are doing. If you are harboring a Mosby ranger in your house, there will be nothing I can do to help you.”

  “He does not stay here any longer,” Laurence answered. “All Mosby’s men are staying in shebangs now. It was too easy for Union cavalry to find them in their homes.”

  “Shebangs?”

  “Shanties and lean-tos they’ve built in the woods. I have not seen my brother for several weeks. I honestly do not know why he is here. I just hope he is not injured.”

  Laurence walked ahead to meet Jamie. Annie stiffened. Although she had been unsure of what Laurence would think of her marriage, she knew at least that he would be reasonable about it. Jamie was a different story. She’d tried to convince herself that it wouldn’t matter to her what her impetuous little brother might say. But it was a lie. She cared.

  “Laurence!” Jamie was shouting. “I need another horse.”

  “I haven’t got one.”

  “I’ll take Angel.”

  “She can barely walk, Jamie. You can’t ride her.”

  Jamie was beside himself, frantically pacing and waving his arms about. “I need another horse! Now! I must avenge Henry! Those murderers, those dogs!”

  “James, what has happened?”

  Jamie kept pacing until finally he seemed to wear himself out. “Yesterday, the Yankees dragged him, lashed to two horses, into a field and shot him down. Right in front of his mother.” He covered his face as if to block the sight of it.

  “Who?”

  “Henry! A schoolmate of mine. We were riding near Front Royal after a train of supply wagons and ambulances and we passed Henry’s farm. Henry’d stayed home all this time to take care of his widowed mother. When he saw me, I told him to grab a horse and come on along, that we’d have some fun. His mother ran after us, begging him not to do it…. Well, we hit some bad fire and we had to hoof it out of there double-quick, toward Chester Gap. But Henry’s horse collapsed and the Feds got him.

  “The Yankees went crazy, claiming we’d shot one of their officers after he surrendered. So they tied Henry’s arms to the saddles of two Yankee cavalrymen and they dragged him along, between them, through the town. When his poor old mother saw him, she hung on to him and begged for his life. The Yankees threatened to behead her with their sabers unless she got out of their way. She followed, weeping, as they pulled Henry to a farm outside of town, untied him, and then shot him as he fell to his knees and prayed for mercy.”

  Jamie pulled his hands away from his face. It was twisted with hatred.

  “They stood two more of our riders, who’d surrendered, up against a church wall and riddled them with bullets. One of them, Lucien, was only seventeen, just like Henry. They hanged two others for refusing to tell where Mosby was. One I swear they shot just for fun. I’m going to kill every last Yankee I set my eyes on.”

  They all stood silent, shocked at the barbarity of what Jamie related.

  It was Thomas who spoke first, outraged. “Who did this?”

  Jamie had covered his face again and didn’t notice who asked. “Michiganders.”

  “Under Custer?” Thomas asked.

  “Yes, that cur in his black velvet uniform and perfect curls.”

  “Who’s that?” Annie whispered.

  “A man I went to West Point with. Thank God, it wasn’t the 2nd Massachusetts,” breathed Thomas.

  “I swear Custer is going to meet a bloody end someday.”

  Jamie’s head shot out of his hands. He turned to glare at Annie and Thomas as if he had just then noticed them. Perhaps he had.

  Without hesitating, Jamie pulled out his revolver and pointed it at Thomas.

  “No!” shrieked Annie, stumbling to shield her husband.

  “James!” shouted Laurence, hurling himself at his brother.

  The two fell to the ground. The revolver fired, the bullet going wide, rebounding off the stable wall. Wrestling, Laurence somehow managed to kick the gun free of Jamie’s flailing grabs. Annie snatched it up.

  “Stop it! Stop it!” she cried.

  All the while, Thomas had stood stock-still.

  Laurence picked himself up. Looking down at Jamie, he said, “This man managed to win the release of Annie from prison. They’ve married. He’s our brother now.”

  Jamie sat on the ground, panting. He looked from one to the other, and his eyes narrowed to slits. “He’s no brother of mine.” He stood, dusting himself off, and turned to Annie. “So, you sold yourself for freedom?” He spat on the ground at her feet.

  “That’s enough!” Laurence roared.

  “Enough? Maybe you’ve had enough. But I haven’t. I’ll never give up.
I don’t care if Lee himself surrenders; I never will.”

  Annie was quaking, unable to speak. The scene, Jamie’s rage and contempt for her, were all too horrible.

  “James.” Thomas spoke, controlling his anger.

  “There is something you ought to know. While I was petitioning the War Department and the prison for your sister, I learned that you once signed the loyalty oath. They just executed a twenty-one-year-old boy at Old Capitol Prison—not for spying, not for his activities with Mosby, but because he had violated that oath. If they catch you in a skirmish, they can hang you immediately. You must honor the oath you took if you wish to survive this war.

  “The South will not win,” Thomas continued.

  “You cannot. The Union is too strong, too determined now. From now on, there’ll just be more irrational blood revenges like this one. You know the Union men executed those boys in retaliation for all the pickets and train guards Mosby’s men have surprised and killed in the night.”

  Jamie stared right through Thomas. He picked up his hat and held his hand out for his revolver. Laurence took it from Annie, emptied its cylinder of percussion caps to disable it, and handed it to Jamie.

  Jamie remounted his horse, which trembled with tiredness, and kicked him to walk down the lane. “If the war ends and we haven’t won,” Jamie shouted over his shoulder, “I’m heading out west. I won’t live in a country ruled by Yankees or turncoat cowards and traitors.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The road leading away

  from Hickory Heights

  Jamie’s bitterness and his base condemnation of her haunted Annie and everyone else at Hickory Heights. It was a meager, quiet dinner that she and Thomas shared with Laurence and her cousins. At dawn, she’d have to pack what belongings she could carry on horseback to begin the long journey to her new home. Most of her clothes she was giving to Rachel, with the exception of her emerald green princess gown and the elegant dinner gown her mother had made of the midnight blue velvet Thomas’ mother had sent. Annie slept little. She and Thomas were in Miriam’s room, and Annie kept waking to look about, remembering. Finally, she arose and tiptoed downstairs. She was going to leave all the books for Laurence. She knew Thomas had plenty. She just wanted to sit in the parlor and people it with all she loved, before war had broken them apart.

  She paused at Miriam’s desk, remembering the arc of her mother’s slender neck, the crispness of her lace collar as she bent over her letters or accounting. She heard the sound of her own laughter, when as a child Annie snuck up behind Miriam and threw her hands in front of her eyes, and Miriam’s fond chuckle as she laid down her papers and reached behind to catch Annie up in her arms. A tiny patch of silver gleamed in the moonlight drifting through the windows. Annie reached for it and found one of Miriam’s thimbles. She slipped it onto her thumb, thinking of all the gorgeous needlework Miriam had made, and kissed it. That she would take with her for luck.

  Annie eased herself into the window seat, imagining Laurence reading a book aloud to them, so vital, so handsome; Miriam by the fire, sewing, looking up occasionally to smile at Laurence; Jamie, youthful, impish, darting to the piano to bang out marches and camp songs.

  It had been a loving, pretty place.

  “Annie?”

  Annie startled, thinking sure a ghost was speaking to her. But it was Will.

  She held her arms open for him and he cuddled against her. “I’m going to miss you,” she whispered. “Will you be all right here, with Laurence? He’ll take good care of you. Or maybe I should ask you to take care of him, the same way you helped me, especially when the soldiers came.”

  He nodded solemnly. Then he handed her tightly folded papers—Stuart’s poems.

  Annie gasped. “Where did you have them?”

  “In my shoe,” he answered quietly.

  “That was very brave of you, Will. Promise me that you’ll always be brave enough to be kind, just as you are now,” said Annie.

  He nodded again.

  Annie weighed the cherished poems. They would only endanger the family now. She went to the fireplace, threw them in, and struck a flint to set them on fire. Forget not him you met by chance. She’d remember.

  The next morning, early, as dawn seeped crimson along the sky, Annie waded through heavy dew to the family cemetery. She didn’t know what to say to her father and brothers buried there, but Miriam she told about prison, about Thomas, about Laurence, and finally about Jamie. “I’m so sorry, Mother. I can’t keep my promise about Jamie. He’s disowned me. He called me a coward and a traitor. He thinks I sold myself in marriage to Thomas for my freedom. It wasn’t like that.” She ached to hear an answer, some reassurance, but there was none save the wind and a whirling cascade of falling leaves. Annie picked up some of the tiny, wild purple asters dappling Miriam’s grave.

  Anne turned back slowly. When she reached the house, she put her hand on its wall, dragging her fingertips along the fieldstone as she walked around to the front door. She memorized the stubbly feeling, the smell of the morning-damp stone, the occasional prickle of the horsehair mixed in the mortar, the touch of cool ivy that grew up it here and there. Her hand dislodged a tiny sliver of the stone. She bent and picked it up, lovingly stuffing it into her pocket along with the thimble and the asters. Silly, little bits of her childhood home, but she needed them for strength. She knew that most likely she’d never see Hickory Heights again. She closed her eyes and etched its picture in her mind. Then, each footstep feeling so final, she made her way to the front gate, where the people she’d loved all her life waited to send her away.

  Everything was packed; the horses were saddled and ready. She said her good-byes to everyone but Laurence. That was the hardest.

  As much as she was suffering to leave her home, she knew she would be all right with Thomas. They had a promising life, their own frontier, ahead of them, away from the ashes of the war. Jamie was lost. The war had ruined him, perhaps forever. Annie would mourn him as surely as if he had died. But Laurence, dear Laurence, he had the chance to begin again. As he’d said himself, he’d fought a good fight. He could honor a truce, knowing he had fought his battles with bravery and honesty and respect for his enemy. His body was sound now. He seemed committed to living, breathing in, breathing out. But Laurence wasn’t yet healed enough to be capable of looking for happiness; she could sense it. He was simply strong enough to be stoic.

  Oh, how Annie wished Miriam could tell her what to say to Laurence at this parting. Instinctively she knew Laurence would read but ultimately dismiss any worry or advice she expressed in a letter. The time to help him was now, before she left.

  Annie braced herself. “Laurence, what happened with Charlotte?”

  “We needn’t discuss it,” Laurence growled.

  Annie ignored the warning in his tone. “Yes, brother, we do need to. I have to leave in a moment, and it is important to me to know.” She tugged on his sleeve. “Please, Laurence.” She smiled up at him.

  “Well,” Laurence began grudgingly, “she came back here after seeing you, to tell me about those…” He looked over at Thomas, who was talking to the children, and lowered his voice. “About those fool poems General Stuart wrote you.”

  “It wouldn’t matter now to Thomas,” Annie reassured him. “He’s remarkable that way. Go on about Charlotte. It was incredibly courageous and loyal of her to come to the prison, you know.”

  Laurence’s face clouded and his hand balled into a fist. “I know that! That’s why I couldn’t…I can’t shackle her with someone like me.”

  “And what did she say about it, Laurence?”

  He shuffled his feet and didn’t answer.

  “What did she say?” Annie prodded.

  “She said she didn’t care and that she loved me all the same, perhaps more,” he mumbled.

  “Why aren’t you married then?”

  “I’m missing my arm, Annie! Can’t you see? I don’t want to be married for pity. I can’t even dance
with the girl anymore.” His voice caught and he turned his head, ashamed.

  “Laurence.” Annie shook her head. She thought of the radiant couple he and Charlotte had been that night of the Culpeper ball—the gallant officer and the breathtaking girl circling the dance floor. It was tragic that that picture could be no more. But there could be bits of it for them.

  Annie had an idea. Gently, she took her brother’s left hand in her right and held them up at shoulder’s height. Then she put her left hand on his right shoulder, steadily, not flinching from the lump of scar tissue she could feel underneath the fabric of his coat.

  She began singing an old Stephen Foster tune they’d sung together in those earlier, easy times: “Open thy lattice, love, listen to me! / While the moon’s in the sky and the breeze on the sea!”

  It was a perfect slow waltz melody. Up on her toes, slowly she turned, pulling Laurence with her. At first he scowled and tried to pull away, but she refused to let go of his hand. “Sing with me, Laurence. Remember what music sounds like?”

  He shook his head. His hazel eyes grew foggy with unshed tears and a storm of conflicted, raging thoughts.

  “Yes, you can, Laurence. You can remember. You see, you can still lead Charlotte in a dance. You can still look in her eyes and sweep her across the floor. The only thing she might need to do is hold you tight with her arm. She can do that, Laurence. Give her that credit. Give her that chance.”

  Annie continued singing and turning. “The moon like a queen, roams her realms of blue, / And the stars keep their vigils in heaven for you….”

  All the while Laurence struggled with his pride, his embarrassment, his anger at Annie’s insistence. Annie could see it. But she refused to stop. It was like riding Angel to jump a stone wall. If she faltered, they’d turn away, never to try the fence again. She sang on, pulling his rigid body along in the dance: “Or skim like a bird o’er the waters away…”