Crossing

by Gilbert, Morris

  “Didn’t have the energy to complain, Rena,” Leslie said good-naturedly. He turned to Yancy. “So how long can you stay? Can you stay the night?”

  “Yes, I have to leave early in the morning, but I can stay the night.”

  “Good,” Lorena said happily then tempered it with, “Father said he may be late, and he would hate to miss you.”

  “Oh, yes, Father really wants to see you, Yancy. Father really misses you a lot,” Leslie teased, winking broadly at Lorena, who made a face at him.

  But these niceties were lost on Yancy. When he was younger he had always been very aware of feminine attentions and had been sensitive to the signals they sent him. Now he had grown to be a man so handsome, so striking, that women he met or even passed in the street would stare wide-eyed at him until they caught themselves and, blushing, dropped their gazes.

  He was now six feet, three inches tall. His shoulders were broad, his arms and legs muscular from his eternal horseback riding. His thick night black hair had grown somewhat, brushing his collar, the errant lock always falling rakishly over his forehead. In the outdoors his skin had deepened to a rich burnished bronze. As he had grown into a man, he had lost all traces of childhood in his face. His forehead was broad and fine, and with his dark, slightly slanted eyes and his high chiseled cheekbones, he looked exotic and mysterious.

  But for the last two years he had been at VMI and then in the army and had been much bereft of female company. He had lost that instinctive insight into women that he had formerly had. Now he was slightly puzzled at Leslie’s sally but shrugged it off. Lorena and Leslie often had exchanges he didn’t understand, and he assumed it usually was some private family joke.

  Missy came in with coffee then, and they talked and laughed, the lively conversation never wavering. Yancy amused them with Chuckins’s antics and with stories of odd, often funny things that happened in camp. Leslie had stories, too. Both of them kept the details of when and where very vague, and the characters were unnamed but always vivid.

  At about four o’clock, the late editions of the newspapers came out, and the Haydens had every newspaper within a thirty-mile radius of Richmond delivered to them. Yancy, Lily, Lorena, and Leslie all spent a companionable two hours reading in silence, sipping more tea and coffee. Occasionally Elijah came in with more firewood and stoked the fire. The room was warm and comfortable and inviting, and Yancy reflected that he felt more at home here than anywhere, except at Grandmother’s.

  Dr. Hayden came home about six o’clock, and at seven Missy served them a wonderful meal, as usual.

  When they finished, they were all getting ready to go back to the parlor and their newspapers, but Yancy stood, handed Lorena out of her chair, and asked very formally, “Miss Hayden, would you care to come sit in the garden with me for a while? I need some fresh air, and I would appreciate the company.”

  Hesitantly Lorena glanced at her father, who smiled and nodded slightly. “I’ll go get my cloak,” she said.

  Yancy pulled on his caped greatcoat and Lorena returned with a beautiful dark blue wool mantle trimmed with black piping. She pulled up the hood, and the color made her eyes look like the deepest midnight. They went out the kitchen door to the back garden.

  The Haydens’ garden was not so manicured as some, for Lily Hayden preferred a more natural woodland look. Cobbled paths wandered here and there, screened by large shrubs and small sculpted pear and dogwood trees. In the center was an enormous live oak tree, and underneath it was a stone garden bench that had been put there in Jesse Hayden’s father’s time.

  Arm in arm, Yancy and Lorena strolled slowly and sat down there. Most of the leaves had fallen, but occasionally, carried on the lightest air, a leaf fluttered down, dancing its final dance in the cold moonlight.

  They sat in silence for a while, looking up at the hard, brilliant stars. In a restless movement, Yancy took Lorena’s hand in his. He rarely touched her, although they had lately come to give each other very brief, tightly controlled hugs when he left. Now he felt Lorena stiffen slightly, but she left her hand in his.

  He turned to her. “I—I may not be seeing you for a while. I can’t tell how long it may be, but I expect it will be some time.”

  “You’re leaving Manassas, aren’t you?” she asked slowly, looking up as if she were speaking to the uncaring moon. It was common knowledge that the army was in the north. “General Jackson is moving, and you can’t tell me where.”

  “I’ll miss you so much, Lorena,” he said in a low tone. “I know we haven’t known each other for very long, but somehow that doesn’t matter to me. I think about you all the time, and the more time that goes by between my visits, the harder it is to be away from you.”

  She turned to him. Her white, perfectly shaped face and the great pools of dark eyes made her look unworldly, like a creature of secret streams and soft mists. “I have to tell you something. It’s—very difficult for me, a cruel memory of a bitter time in my life. But perhaps you may understand me a little better …”

  To Yancy’s surprise she took both of his hands in hers and turned so that she was very close to him. In an even voice she said, “When I was seventeen, I met a man, a gentleman from a good Richmond family. I was so much in love with him, and I thought he was the most wonderful man in the world. We decided to marry when I turned eighteen. My birthday is in January, so we decided to marry that very month. I ordered my dress. My mother and father and I planned a wonderful wedding in that very Episcopal church right over there. I was so happy. I thought that my life was, and always would be, perfect.” She stopped and dropped her gaze, and her hands grew unrestful.

  Yancy stroked them and said quietly, “He left you, didn’t he?”

  She nodded, and when she spoke her voice was slightly choked. “Yes, he left me. The weekend before the wedding he said he wanted to visit some family in New Orleans. As it turned out, he had found out about a woman he had known for several years, and she had just become widowed. He stayed in New Orleans, and within two months he had married her.”

  She looked back up at him, and her lips trembled. Tears stood in her eyes. “He didn’t even send me word. After he had been gone for four days, my father made inquiries with some friends he has in New Orleans. They found out about it. And that’s the only way I knew that my engagement, my trust, and my heart had been broken.” Now a single silver tear rolled down her smooth cheek.

  Gently Yancy brushed it away and then drew her to him, holding her close. He pulled the hood down so he could kiss her hair. It was soft and warm and smelled of flowers.

  She clung to him, and he could tell that she wept, but it was a gentle thing, not at all convulsive or wracking. For a long time they stayed that way, with Lorena’s face buried in his shoulder, him murmuring soothing things against her hair.

  After a while she moved slightly away and pulled a handkerchief from her pocket. “I’ve cried all over you,” she said in a slightly shaken voice as she wiped her eyes.

  “I’m glad,” he said.

  She took a deep, trembling breath. “Now you see that I have a very hard time trusting men.”

  He nodded. “With good reason. But Lorena, I must know. Do you trust me?”

  She looked at him for a very long time, studying his face. He met her gaze squarely. Finally she answered him. “Yes. Yes, I do trust you, Yancy.”

  He put his arms around her and pulled her to him again. This time she looked up at him. He kissed her, gently, her lips warm and vulnerable on his. She slipped her hands behind his neck and caressed him. It was a long, sweet, poignant kiss.

  They stayed in each other’s arms, contentedly. Then Yancy said, “You know what I’m telling you, Lorena. I’m falling in love with you.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “And right now I don’t quite know how I feel. I’ve been afraid for so long, and I’ve smothered my emotions for so long that I feel a little dazed. Like—like when your arm goes to sleep, and when it wakes up, it prickles and feels li
ke it doesn’t belong to your body, quite.”

  “I understand,” Yancy said. “And I don’t mind. But please, Lorena, can you tell me this?” He pulled back to look at her face. “Will you wait for me? Will you wait long enough to give me a chance?”

  She smiled. “I will, Yancy. Gladly, I will.”

  Yancy could only pray that she would wait for him and that she would remain the same sweet girl he had come to love in the meantime. He knew that only time would tell….

  Part Five: The Battles 1881—1882

  CHPTER NINETEEN

  The next morning Yancy collected his dispatches to General Jackson from the War Department and hurried out of Richmond. On the entire journey back to the camp at Manassas, Yancy could scarcely think of anything but Lorena Hayden. She had allowed him to give her a modest good-bye kiss that morning, and it had elated him.

  I think she does care for me. She’s just afraid, he thought, after what that dog did to her—no, that’s an insult to dogs. I’d like to meet that joker sometime, like in a dark alley so he couldn’t see me coming. Leaving a girl at eighteen—

  Suddenly Yancy laughed to himself. She must be … let’s see … she said two years ago, and her birthday is in January … She must be twenty now and turning twenty-one in a couple of months! She’s so proper sometimes—she’s going to have one hissy fit! Yancy, in the previous September, had just turned eighteen years old.

  Yancy didn’t mark birthdays, because the Cheyenne Indians didn’t mark birthdays. They observed and judged people according to where they stood in their journeys from childhood to adulthood. No numbering system figured in their assessment and acceptance of either boys or girls; they were simply recognized when they reached different stages of life. Of course the Cheyenne marked the passage of time, but no single day or even month was recognized as a landmark in a person’s life.

  Yancy, like his father, was very mature for his age. At sixteen years old, Daniel Tremayne had struck out on his own, hunting and trapping, and along the way he had met many coarse and hardbitten men. And he had earned their respect. Yancy was the same. He had reflected a man’s sense of duty and responsibility by the time he had reached sixteen and had gone to work for Thomas Jackson. He was, indeed, older than his years.

  I’m going to tease her about being an older woman, he reflected with amusement. The next time I see her …

  He hoped against hope that it would be soon.

  Major General Jackson had actually received his orders in the middle of October. United States Commanding General George McClellan was massing his sixty thousand men across the Potomac, intending to overtake Richmond. The plan was for General Irvin McDowell, with his forty thousand troops stationed north of McClellan, to join him at Richmond. This would mean the death of the Confederacy.

  General Robert E. Lee saw that only too well. His only hope, and it was a slim one, was Stonewall Jackson. If Jackson could defeat and chase the Federals out of the valley, and perhaps even draw some of McDowell’s forces across the Potomac to reinforce them, then Lee thought that he might be able to outfight McClellan. Lee’s were delicately worded orders, for naturally Lee could not state the case so baldly and place such a burden upon one single general.

  But Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson had a most peculiar understanding. Lee took special care of his temperamental and eccentric general and had immediately recognized him as one of the most capable men, so obviously born to command, that he had ever known. And Stonewall Jackson understood Lee’s aristocratic, gracious orders, always worded with the greatest courtesy and generally ending in some rather vague suggestions that left Jackson to interpret what Lee wanted, not what he said. And so he did; and so he readied himself to fight, and fight hard, in the Shenandoah Valley.

  On November 4, 1861, General Jackson gave a stirring good-bye speech to his beloved Stonewall Brigade. But as it turned out, all the high emotion and regret was wasted, because by November 12, they had joined him in Winchester. Jackson had been appalled at the troops stationed in the Shenandoah Valley.

  There were three little brigades numbering about 1,600, and they were dotted around the northern part of the valley. There were four hundred and eighty-five wild cavalrymen under the doubtful command of old Colonel Angus McDonald, a sixty-year-old Southern gentleman with rheumatism who had absolutely no control over the undisciplined boys that galloped around the valley at will.

  All this to fight General N. P. Banks, who was holding western Maryland directly across the Potomac with 18,000 men, and they were moving east. In addition, more than 22,000 Yankees were just across the Alleghenies in western Virginia, under General William S. Rosecrans. And worst of all, on Jackson’s western flank, General Benjamin F. Kelley and his 5,000 men had captured the village of Romney. It was only forty miles away from Jackson’s headquarters.

  As soon as Jackson understood his position, he had sent Yancy on a wild trip to Richmond demanding reinforcements. “Tell them,” he growled at Yancy, “that the Shenandoah Valley has almost no defenses.”

  Even before Yancy arrived, Secretary of War Benjamin had decided to send Jackson’s old brigade to the valley. He greeted Yancy with this happy news and promptly turned him right around to ride to Manassas with his orders.

  Yancy was happy to be reunited with the Stonewall Brigade, but he regretted that he didn’t have time to see Lorena.

  The Army of the Valley wintered in Winchester. Anna joined Jackson in December in his pleasant headquarters, the Tilghman home. She stayed December, January, and February, and wrote about that winter being one of the happiest times of their lives. All through those short winter days and long nights, Jackson made his plans and drilled his troops, ever the vigilant and disciplined general. At home with Anna he was, as always, happy and even jolly.

  In March, the general turned back to war, and he sent Anna home. On March 22, he began what was known as the Valley Campaign. And this campaign—it was understood in the Army of Northern Virginia and throughout the South—saved Richmond. Stonewall Jackson had understood General Lee’s orders, and like the extraordinary soldier that he was, he had followed them to the utmost.

  Basically, the Valley Campaign was a complicated series of maneuvers orchestrated by Stonewall Jackson, and by him alone. His staff never knew his plans. His officers never knew who they were attacking. His men never knew where they were marching to. Of course, this meant that the enemy never knew anything about the elusive Stonewall, either—until the day came that they, thunderstruck, were looking at the Army of the Valley—who were themselves often bemused, they had traveled so fast and so victoriously—from the field of defeat. Before they could decide which direction to run, forward or backward, the army, and Stonewall, was gone, and again they knew not where. In the Valley Campaign this was to happen to armies in places that were forever attached to Stonewall Jackson’s laurels—Front Royal, First Winchester, Cross Keys, and Port Republic.

  With 17,000 men, Stonewall Jackson had, from start to finish, faced about 62,000 Federals. The Federal defeats in the valley had so stunned Washington that they had frozen McDowell’s forces so he couldn’t join McClellan in the Peninsular Campaign against Richmond. So it may even be said that just the fear of Stonewall Jackson had stopped a force of 40,000 men.

  When it ended on June 9, 1862, there had been forty-eight marching days. The Army of the Shenandoah Valley had marched a total of 676 miles, an average of 14 miles a day. After this they were known as Jackson’s Foot Cavalry. They had fought six formal skirmishing actions and five pitched battles. They had taken 3,500 prisoners, and 3,500 Federals lay dead or were wounded in the valley. Considering the relative numbers of the armies, Confederate losses were low indeed—2,500 dead or wounded and 600 prisoners.

  Jackson had also added precious supplies and arms to the needy Confederate armies. He had captured over 10,000 muskets and rifles and nine cannons. He had burned or destroyed countless tons of Federal supplies.

  The Valley Campaign had succeeded
without costly battles. Outnumbered by more than three to one, Jackson’s superb tactics had soundly beaten a far superior force, although they were much more poorly led. In addition, his Army of the Shenandoah Valley had paralyzed McDowell’s forces. Stonewall Jackson’s name was now worth an army.

  Senator Blake Stevens of Virginia, Peyton Stevens’s father, was so proud of his son being in the famous Stonewall Brigade that he regularly sent special couriers with gifts for him. When the brigade had gone into winter quarters at Winchester, a wagon had arrived with a tent almost as large as General Jackson’s, a camp stove, a padded cot, six new uniforms, two pairs of boots, six pairs of wool socks, four blankets, and two crates crammed with tins of food.

  Peyton asked his old VMI roommates, Yancy and Chuckins and Sandy Owens, to share his tent with him. Yancy and Chuckins gladly did, though Sandy had to tent with the artillery. Still, whenever he got a chance he came and stayed with them.

  But on Monday, June 16, 1862, all of that finery had been packed away on the brigade wagon train, and the four of them were as humbly bivouacked as though they weren’t Stonewall’s Boys, which they called themselves though they kept it a supreme secret. They had built a campfire and were lying in a circle around it. On the ground was an oilcloth. They lay on that and covered themselves with one blanket and an oilcloth on top of that to guard against the dew.

  Sandy and Chuckins were asleep, but both Peyton and Yancy lay awake, hands behind their heads, staring up at the night sky. Yancy was thinking forlornly that he hadn’t seen Lorena for almost eight months. He was surprised at how deeply he missed her.

  “Can’t believe we’re marching tomorrow,” Peyton said, interrupting Yancy’s melancholy musings. “After the last few months we’ve had. And the battle in Port Republic was just what—yesterday?”