Nellie grinned back. She hadn’t realized how tentative she had felt around the slaves until they began treating her as one of their own. Now the yard felt like she was coming home, and she basked in the warmth of their acceptance. Her footsteps were light as she hurried up the stairs to visit her littlest patient. She hesitated at the door to Maybelle’s room.
“Hello, Glory. May I come in?”
“Oh, Miss Nellie! I’s glad to see you.”
“How are you feeling, honey?”
“Pretty good. Look! Mama made me some mittens for my hands, and she be gonna sew buttons on dem tonight so dey has eyes. Den I kin talk to ‘em when nobody be ‘round.”
Nellie’s heart broke at the sound of loneliness in the child’s voice. “I know it’s hard, being up here all alone, but you’ll be better soon, I promise. Did Mama tell you? Slave Yule won’t happen for ten days yet. You’re not going to miss it after all.”
“Goody! It be lots of fun, even if dere won’t be no presents dis year.”
“No presents? Why is that? You’ve been good, haven’t you?”
“Yes’m, but it’s Massa Lev’rett who be givin’ us our presents, an’ he done skedaddled, ‘long with all de other white folk.”
“Oh!” Nellie was at a loss as to what to say. This child had the power to move her to tears with her combination of childish longing and bravery.
The little voice went on, filling the silent void that threatened to swallow Nellie on the spot. “But we can dig our own sweet ‘taters and get our own oysters, so it still be a party. Be you gonna come?”
“Ah, we’ll see. For now, let’s put some of this nice lotion I brought on the itchiest of your sores. It’ll help them heal.” Nellie had stirred up a thin paste of boiled oatmeal, soda, and watered vinegar. She dabbed it cautiously on the most inflamed areas of the rash, not wanting to overwhelm the child by the vinegary smell. Glory, however, did not seem to mind. She lay back, visibly soothed by the coolness of the treatment. “I’ll leave the bottle over here on the table so your mama can put more on when you need it. But don’t you use it,” Nellie cautioned. Wait for a grownup to help, OK?”
“Yes’m.” Glory was already drifting off to sleep as Nellie left.
As she picked her way down the rickety staircase, Nellie spotted Colonel Leasure walking through the yard. On an impulse, she shouted for him to wait a moment. Going only as far as the door, she beckoned for him to come inside.
“What is it, Nellie? I can hardly see in here.”
“Well, that’s part of my point. I want you to see how dangerous this staircase is. Our house servants all live in rooms upstairs, and they have to go up and down here because it’s their only access to their quarters. Can we get a couple of our soldiers who are handy with tools to come in and reinforce the treads? And maybe put a railing on the outer edge, too? I’m terrified every time I go up to see little Glory.”
“I understand why! We’ll get somebody to fix it right away, and we’ll call it a Christmas present from us to the servants. Speaking of which, may I see you in my office in an hour or so? We need to talk about Christmas.”
With that pronouncement, he hurried out again into the yard, off to deal with one of his never-ending responsibilities. Nellie followed, but almost stumbled as she saw Reverend Brown standing on the back porch of the residence, watching them both with one of his disapproving frowns on his face. He shouldn’t even be out of bed, she grumbled to herself. But look at him. Spying and passing judgments as usual. Shaking her head, she headed toward the house. If he saw the colonel and me coming out of somewhere we don’t belong, I’m sure we’ll hear about it. Might as well get it over with.
Shoulders thrust back in fighting posture, she climbed the stairs. “Good afternoon, Reverend. Are you feeling well? Do you need help in returning to your bed?”
“Humph! Don’t patronize me, Missy! What lies beyond that doorway you came out of?”
“The slaves’ rooms.” She smiled brightly.
“And I suppose you had business in there?”
“Yes.” No sense in giving him more information than he asked for.
“And the colonel, too, I suppose?” Browne’s eyebrows were raised almost high enough to meet his hairline.
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“And that would be? . . .”
“You’ll have to ask him,” Nellie replied, giving him a rude toss of her head as she shouldered past him and headed for her room. Closing the door behind her, she leaned for a moment on the doorframe. Her temporary anger flowed from her, leaving her limp and somewhat ashamed. I don’t know why I let him provoke me so, she realized. It only makes matters worse, somehow.
As the late afternoon shadows began to spread over the front yard, Nellie made her way to the colonel’s office. She loved the view from the front windows that looked over the bay, where the water was now still and glassy. “How do you ever get any work done in here?” she asked as the colonel ushered her to an armchair in front of the window. “I’m afraid I’d sit and gawk at the beauty of this place.”
“Sometimes I do,” Leasure answered with a grin. He stood at the window for a moment and then turned away deliberately. “Christmas,” he pronounced.
“Yes. We definitely need to do something.” Nellie said, and then stopped as the colonel held up his hand.
“I’ve been doing some checking. It seems the tradition down here is that the slave owners give their slaves gifts at Christmas—new clothes, a pocket knife, a pipe, a head kerchief, shoes, a bit of cash, extra food rations—that sort of thing. And the children get candy, nuts, maybe a ball. These people are working for us now, and the least we can do is fill their owners’ shoes in this regard.”
Nellie breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes indeed. Little Glory told me earlier today there wouldn’t be any Christmas presents this year because ‘Massa Leverett done skedaddled.’ She broke my heart.”
“Well, we’ll do our best to fix that. I’ll add the cost into our expenses for labor. How would you like to go shopping?”
“Shopping? But where?”
“I’ve learned some of the free blacks in town are opening up the stores again. Why don’t you take Mary Pollack with you, and a couple of the young blades around here to carry the packages, and make a day of it?”
“I’d love to. But I’ll need a list of the slaves. I’ve seen many of them in the yard, but I don’t know all their names.”
“Uncle Bob can take care of that for you.”
“All right! I’ll get started planning right away.” Nellie began to rise from her chair, but the colonel motioned her to wait.
“I’m not through, I’m afraid. I have more chores for you. We need to throw a party.”
“A party.” Nellie let her breathe out in a swoosh as she sat down again. “For?”
“We’re going to have lots of homesick soldiers around here, come Christmas. They’ll have a day off and a good meal—maybe some games in their companies. But I’d like to invite the staff, the officers and the non-commissioned officers, along with the band, to come here on Christmas afternoon. I thought we could serve some punch, eggnog, cookies, that sort of thing. The band can play some music. Just try to make the day a bit more festive for them.”
“Of course we can do that. I’ll talk to Cook and see what ideas she may have.”
ggg
15
A Southern Christmas
Slave Yule was a resounding success. Colonel Leasure invited the slaves to gather in the forecourt on the Saturday morning before Christmas and distributed their Christmas gifts. “It’s early,” he explained, “but this way you will get to enjoy your gifts as part of your celebration for the next few days.”
Nellie had done a wonderful job of Christmas shopping. Her trip to the ransacked stores in downtown Beaufort was disappointing, but she had found many great ideas when she talked to the camp sutler. Each of the men received a pipe and a plug of tobacco. The teenaged boys got pocketknive
s, while the younger boys received slingshots and balls. The women had new headscarves and the army ‘housewives,’ or sewing kits. Teenaged girls received mirrors and ribbons, and there were rag dolls for the littlest girls. All adults were given a small amount of money to spend on whatever they chose, and the children had enough peppermint sticks and oranges to last for days.
While the slaves had been busy at their tasks, a couple of the regimental carpenters had slipped into the stairwells that led to the slave quarters. They patched the stairs and installed handrails, both for the family rooms above the kitchen and the stable hands’ quarters above the carriage house. And when Cook opened the door to her cookhouse on Saturday morning, she found hams, barrels of flour and cornmeal, prized sugar and coffee, and bags of beans and rice. “All of dis fo’ us? We’uns gonna has oursel’s a feast.” When Nellie stopped by later in the morning to see if Cook had everything she needed, the bustling slave woman hugged her. “Thank you. You be doin’ so much for us black folk.” She hesitated, and then added, “You can calls me Bessie if you wants.” Nellie felt as if she had been given a gift all her own.
The officers and staff of the regiment watched the activities in the yard with a mixture of amazement and puzzlement. “What’s that huge pile of brush for?” Private Stevenson asked Uncle Bob. “There’s enough of it, but it doesn’t look like it would make a good bonfire.”
“No, we not be gonna burn dat. Dat’s wild grape vine, wisteria, an’ greenery fo’ makin’ de wreaths. You come out back later dis afternoon an’ we’ be showin’you how we puts ‘em t’gether.”
“Wreaths? Oh, as in decorations!”
“Yessir. We be doin’ some big ‘uns for de front of de big house, and some little ‘uns for oursel’s. De women be makin’ swags, too, for all de mantels in de main house.”
“No Christmas tree?”
“Ain’t no good Christmas trees growin’ round here, ‘lessin you wants to hang some paper chains on a palmetto bush. And dem things so sharp, you doesn’t want ‘em in de house. But der gonna be candles, once we gits through dippin’ ‘em and dryin’ ‘em tonight.”
The festive mood was contagious, and the Union soldiers soon found themselves humming Christmas carols as they went about their business. Some even pitched in to help the slaves dig their fire pit in the back yard. The only soul who seemed less than jovial was the recovering Reverend Browne, who wandered downstairs from his sickroom to find out what all the racket was about. “Do these people realize Christmas is a holy day?” he asked Colonel Leasure. “Are they planning to go to their church? Or should I be making arrangements to preach to them?”
“I think they’ll hold their own kind of worship, Robert. Let them be.”
“Humph! Looks like heathen stuff out there to me,” he grumbled. “What are we doing about our own Christian men, Daniel? Is there a place here where we can hold services?”
“There’s a Presbyterian Church in town, and our men have already been holding regular prayer services. If you’d like, we can have a Christmas service there. Would you sketch out a worship program? I can have John Nicklin and his boys provide the music.”
“And a proper Christmas dinner?”
“All taken care of, Robert. Nellie is a superb manager, and she and Cook have been working on menus for days. We’ll serve our own resident staff here just after noon on Christmas Day, and then we’re opening the house for visits from all the company staffs. We’ll have syllabub and desserts, along with some good camaraderie. I want to help our men feel a bit less lost here in the deep south at Christmas.”
“Syllabub? What’s that?”
“Well, Nellie says it’s Cook’s special holiday drink. Contains whipped milk, fruit juice, and other flavorings. I thought it best not to inquire too closely about that.”
“And who will serve all this, since you seem to have given the slaves a vacation?”
Colonel Leasure was rapidly losing patience with his cantankerous old friend. “Robert! Give me credit for being in control of this regiment. The slaves are doing their celebrating now, and we’re letting them enjoy themselves to the fullest. By Christmas morning, they’ll be back at work, and we’ll have our holiday, as nice as I can make it for Pennsylvanians stranded in South Carolina. You don’t need to worry about it, nor supervise it, for that matter. Oh, and by the way. You may want to keep to your room at the front of the house for the next few evenings, with the door closed. There’ll be some singing and dancing in the yard, with my full approval!”
The slaves’ celebration was every bit as much fun as little Glory had predicted it would be. It lasted from Saturday afternoon to Tuesday evening, which was also Christmas Eve. For Nellie, the days ran seamlessly into each other. She had wandered out with Private Stevenson on Saturday afternoon to learn how the slaves made their wreaths. Uncle Bob was eager to teach them, but Nellie soon found her hands were not strong enough to control the thick grape vines that formed the foundation of each wreath. Bob took the thick end of a vine, twisted it into a symmetrical loop, and then began to wind the rest of the vine in and out of the first loop. Soon he had a circle of four or five intertwined vines that held its own shape. Then he picked a second strand of wisteria vine, keeping up the same braiding motion, but weaving the thinner vine more closely. It formed a network over the sturdy frame, one that could be used to hold the various pieces of greenery in place.
At that point Nellie stepped in again, trying her hand at adding individual pine needle clusters, sprigs of boxwood, sprays of leathery magnolia leaves, and holly branches. “Don’t be puttin’ too much holly dere,” Uncle Bob warned. “Dose leaves be prickly and you be havin’ trouble holding de wreath if de holly branches be too close together.”
“How do you fasten the pine cones to the wreath?” Nelly asked.
“Jist use a piece of wisteria like a string. I ties mine right under de top row of spines and then ties de whole thing to de form.”
“But the one I did just hangs there,” she said.
“If’n you tie de cones on first and then fill around ‘em wit’ de pine, dey stays put,” Bob said. “You does the same wit’ des here Japonica blossoms.”
“Oh, those are beautiful. I’ve never seen them before.”
“Dey’s de flowers from a tea bush, so I hears. De’re common around old plantation houses.”
Nellie had to admit her efforts were producing a lopsided and straggly wreath. “Better hide this one on the warming kitchen door so no one sees it.” She laughed at her efforts. Still, she enjoyed the experience tremendously, and the smell of pine sap and fresh flowers made Christmas seem more real. The slaves already had an impressive array of decorations, and Bob hurried off to supervise the hanging of wreaths on doors and windows all over the property.
Feeling a bit self-conscious about intruding on the slaves’ celebration, Nellie returned to the house. But on Christmas Eve, the sounds coming from the yard tempted her to watch the festivities. She had finished laying out the cold supper of biscuits, ham, and salad Maybelle had left for the officers, when a cry of “Hear me!” drew her back to the door. An incredibly old black woman stood in the doorway to the slave quarters. Dusk was settling over the yard, and firelight reflected off light surfaces and drew attention to those who moved. Bent almost double, leaning heavily on a walking stick as gnarled as she was, she summoned the children. “Come, an’ I be gonna tell you ‘bout how de baby Jesus done come.”
Old Letitia slowly made her way toward a stool near the huge bonfire in the yard. She launched into her tale as she walked, speaking the Gullah language Nellie had come to recognize as the slaves’ private means of communication. The children flocked behind to hear her words.
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