“What gonna happen to us, Miss Libbie?”
In the gray light, Libbie had no idea who’d asked the question. And no idea how to answer it.
Chapter 22
Bursting in the front door of the plantation house, Colt and Jack darted past the rooms on the main floor and charged to the stairs. They hadn’t reached the top when two rebels ran to the railing. Gunfire erupted, bits of plaster flying, as Colt and Jack fought their way up to the second floor. One rebel fell in the hall while the other one ducked into a back room. Jack charged after him.
More gunfire, and Jack appeared in the doorway and shouted, “Room’s clear!”
Together, he and Colt moved toward the rooms opening onto the far end of the hall.
“We’re medical personnel in here,” a voice called out. “Three of us. Surgeon Johnson and two assistants. Only wounded men in the room across the hall.”
There was a moment of silence, with Colt wondering what to do next, and then hades itself came charging in the back door down on the main floor in the guise of a squad of the Wildwood Guard. One of them hit the bottom step just as Colt glanced over the railing. He fell back, shot by one of Colt’s squad, who were just now pouring into the house through the front door. Colt and Jack ducked out of the line of fire and into the room where three men stood in a corner, their hands raised above their heads.
Colt motioned for the three men to sit down. They obeyed. When he’d determined that the rebels were indeed unarmed, he and Jack crossed to the other room, where, as the surgeon had said, half a dozen wounded men lay on makeshift cots on the floor.
They waited, listening as the conflict below disintegrated into shouts and a few shots punctuated, finally, with a profane declaration of surrender that was not at all complementary to the United States Army. Jack stepped out of the room, and someone shot through the floor, barely missing him.
“Hold your fire!” he yelled.
“Who goes there?”
“Seamus, is that you? It’s Jack, and you darned near shot my foot off.”
Colt went to the top of the stairs, where Seamus could see him. “Two dead, three unarmed, six wounded up here.”
Jack motioned for the surgeon and his assistants to come out, sending them down the stairs ahead of him and Colt.
Wallpaper that had once depicted a pastoral scene with willow trees mirrored in a lake was now peppered with blotches of brown and white where the plaster and lathe showed through. Strangely, the brass light with crystal shades hanging from the center of the ceiling had survived the indoor skirmish unscathed. Three wounded rebels leaned against one wall—and each other.
The surgeon spoke up. “May I attend to the wounded?”
Colt nodded, and the doctor went to work. He was kneeling beside the first patient when he looked up and said, “Now that the house really is nothing more than a hospital, you might wish to inform the lady in the basement that it’s safe for her and her Negroes to come out.”
Maggie didn’t know how long it had been since John had screamed at her to go back to safety in the rear. He’d been astride Blue and he’d kept going, tearing across the battlefield, finally dismounting and disappearing into the fray. She’d watched with a horrible kind of fascination as Blue galloped away, willing both horse and rider to somehow fill only the spaces between the bullets. And then, when Colt dropped out of sight, she’d looked down at the boy she was tending and was jerked back to another terrible reality.
She could not stop the bleeding, and when she raised her hand from the neck wound and saw why, her heart lurched. She could smell the blood. Bile rose to her mouth. The boy was staring up at her with panic in his eyes, and with everything that was in her, Maggie mustered kindness and an expression that she desperately willed to feign hope. He was barely old enough to grow a beard. The patchy blond stubble served only to make him look like a child trying to be a man. He was going to die, and she would have to watch, for she would not let him die alone. She hunkered down beside him. “Tell me your name.”
One hand fluttered toward his chest. He gurgled something about a message in his pocket.
“Don’t worry,” Maggie said. “I’ll see to it.” She put her hand over his and stared into his pale eyes. “Look at me, Private. You aren’t alone. The Good Lord is here and so is Maggie Malone. Neither of us is leaving you.” She had just begun to recite the Our Father when the light in his pale eyes flickered and went out.
Not far away, a shell burst. A horse screamed. Thinking of Blue, Maggie spun about, but the victim was a bay, and both horse and rider had gone down, the horse landing on its side and never moving. Maggie left the boy she’d just seen off and ran to the rider. Already gone. Nothing to do. She inched her way up the horse’s carcass and peered out over the field, not wanting to believe what was before her. It was impossible to tell who might yet be alive. For a moment all she could think of was that she would be safe here, beside the animal’s carcass. Hunkered down, nothing would harm her.
A yell made her look toward a copse of low bushes and a wounded man trying to drag himself beneath them. The same instincts drove them both. Find shelter. Get away. Swallowing, Maggie closed her eyes. Our Father… help me! Before she could think another word, she ran for the soldier. He’d passed out—or so she thought.
When she sank down beside him, he groaned. He opened his eyes and, with a look of horror, begged, “Help me. Please. Just—I’m sorry. Don’t let me die.”
A rebel. No uniform to identify him as such, but there was no mistaking that drawl. Somebody’s brother-son-father. She could not cry out to God for help and then turn away from the first man He brought her way.
“You’re not dying today,” she snapped. “Not if I can help it.” She ripped the blood-soaked shirt open and saw it. Not the wound, but a filthy length of braided string fashioned into a kind of necklace threaded with beads and shells. And a coin. A battered, ancient coin from Ireland. Her mother’s coin.
The bushwhacker grabbed her hand, croaked another plea, and either lost consciousness or died. Maggie wasn’t sure which at first, and she wasn’t sure she cared, for rage and anger threatened to dissolve compassion. For a moment, she sat frozen, the bandage roll clenched so tightly in her palm that her hand went numb. She closed her eyes. Swallowed. And went back to work. What she’d thought to be blood from a gut wound had actually spread from the bushwhacker’s arm. He must have cradled it against himself as he scrambled off the field. He would lose the arm, but thanks to Maggie, he wouldn’t bleed to death.
Lord have mercy. Help me. Help me. Help. A scream brought her back into the battle. As if waking from a nightmare, she ran to the next fallen man. And then the next. And the next. Crawling when she had to. Crouching. Running. Praying. Our Father… help. Father… help. As all around her, boys lay dying.
After what felt like hours of waiting, Libbie convinced Malachi to come with her to the far end of the tunnel. Just to listen, she said. To try and understand what was happening. If it might be safe to venture out. The room echoed with the sound as they slid the crates they’d used to bar the door out of the way and slowly opened it. They decided not to take candles this time. They knew about the crates off to the left. If they stayed to the right and moved toward the light, nothing would impede their progress.
Grateful for the weeds and the tangle of vines that undoubtedly obscured the narrow tunnel opening from any casual observer, Libbie paused, listening for the battle. Hearing nothing. Frowning she looked over at Malachi. “Could it be finished already?”
When she moved as if to step into the sunlight, Malachi touched her arm. “Sorry, Miss Libbie, but—you best be sure.”
And so they waited. And waited. And finally retreated back to the hidden room. After a few moments, they opened the door into the basement. Only a few inches at first. Libbie was afraid to go farther. There might be silence down by the river, but men were fighting inside the house. Gunshots. Yells. And the faint smell of burned gunpowder, even here in the
basement. Who was up there? Friend or enemy? Libbie stepped back into the safe room and pulled the door closed behind her. After another few moments, she decided that she couldn’t stand to wait any longer. “I’m going to go out through the tunnel and see what I can learn.”
There was a murmur of dissent. Annabelle spoke up. “Not by yourself you ain’t. I ain’t fed you all these years to have you shot by some fool shooting first and looking later.”
“I’ll come, too,” Ora Lee said.
Annabelle nodded. “Be good if you come with us.” She glanced over at her husband. “Stay with these field hands and don’t let ’em get in any trouble. We be back directly and see to y’all.” She spoke to the field hands. “Just don’t be runnin’ off. You be safe and you won’t go hungry if you stay put with the rest of us.” Annabelle gestured at the door to the tunnel. “Best be getting on with it, Miss Libbie. I got a bad feeling about leavin’ my kitchen to whosoever might take a notion to inspect the premises. Sooner I get back to it, better I’ll feel.”
Libbie suspected it was mostly bravado, but somehow Annabelle’s speech and attitude gave her courage, and so she led the way back up the tunnel. Once again, she paused to listen, and once again she heard nothing to warn her away from ducking into the light to take stock of things.
The first thing she saw was the burned hemp and, at the base of the hemp, shattered glass and a broken lantern. The fire had sputtered out, but most of the bales were badly damaged. Stepping carefully, Libbie made her way past the levee. She saw the first body—and clamped both hands over her mouth to keep from screaming. When she took a step back, Annabelle reached from behind to grasp her forearms and to turn her toward the trail that led up the hill to the house. She could hear drums and a bugle, but no accompanying gunfire. What did the drums mean? The bugle?
The three women picked their way along the edge of the woods growing up the hillside from the river, pausing when the roof of the kitchen came into view. And then the main floor windows. They crept up the hill, past the necessary, to the back wall of the kitchen and the one window on this side that faced the river. It was open, and they could hear someone inside.
Annabelle took a peek, and practically growled, “You better get your no-account Yankee hands off them preserves!”
Before Libbie could hold her back, Annabelle hurried away. The three women rounded the corner just as a Yankee soldier stepped through the door, cradling two jars of preserves in one arm.
The man quickly rearranged his expression of surprise into a not-very-convincing smile. “Lookee here, Mammy—I think I earned the right—”
“I ain’t your Mammy,” Annabelle snapped, and she grabbed the preserves. “And these here is Miss Libbie’s. She say you can have some, you can have ’em. Until then—they belong to her and Mastah Blair.”
If Annabelle expected the soldier to pale beneath her diatribe, she was disappointed, for the man growled an epithet and took a step forward. Annabelle stood her ground. Libbie was just about to invite him to help himself to anything in the kitchen he wanted when a voice sounded from the back door of the house.
“Private O’Malley. I don’t believe your orders included a stop at the kitchen.”
Libbie had never seen insolence salute, but she saw it now, although the man’s sneer faded when he turned to face the man giving the order. “No sir. Just doing a little—reconnoitering, sir. Making sure there wasn’t some rebel coward hiding in one of the outbuildings.”
Relief flooded through her when Libbie recognized Jack Malone. Malone met her gaze and gave a little nod before glaring back at the private. “Don’t see a single coward. Do you?”
The private hurried off in the general direction of the garden and what had been the Wildwood Guard encampment. Libbie watched him go. And then she saw the battlefield. A sea of men… wounded… or dead? Surely not all of them dead. Horses. Shattered caissons. Splintered trees. Ruin.
“Lord have mercy.”
Ora Lee said it. Annabelle echoed it. Libbie whispered it, even as she staggered forward toward the garden, unbelieving, her hand at her mouth. She paused beside the well, staring across the field to the row of cabins in the distance that had been the quarters. Avoiding the sight of the men on the field, she looked back at the stable. Something had blown away the far end of the roof. The corner beneath that part of the roof had dissolved into red brick rubble. Libbie swallowed, remembering the fit she’d thrown when Walker insisted they take Pilot and the carriage horse into town and board them there. Now she was grateful he’d done it.
Malone had come to stand beside her. “Part of the intelligence I gathered in Littleton indicated that your brother had sent you to Omaha.”
Libbie shrugged. “He tried. I refused.” She gazed back out at the battlefield. Where was Walker in all of this? “Do you know—have you seen my brother?”
“I’m sorry, no.” Malone gestured toward the battlefield. “It could be a while before we know much. Some of the Ellerbe Militia hightailed it toward Littleton—probably planning to take a stand there. I doubt it’ll be more than a skirmish.”
“More fighting,” Libbie said. “In Littleton.” She took a deep breath.
Malone must have thought she might faint, for he reached out to take her arm. “Where—I mean how—where’d you come from?” he asked. “The surgeon told me there was a woman in the basement, but we searched. There was no sign of anyone.”
For a moment, Libbie hesitated to explain. Would she perhaps need that secret room again? But then she gazed back at the house and noticed the pockmarks in the brick walls, the broken windows, the screen door ripped from its hinges and lying in the grass. The white flag tied to the upstairs balcony, fluttering in the breeze. It was over—at least for Wildwood Grove. The battle was over and they had lost, and what did it matter if Jack Malone knew about Walker’s secret room?
The warmth of Malone’s hand on her arm steadied her. “I am very glad to see that you are all right,” he said. He looked past her at Annabelle and Ora Lee. “I’m glad you’re all safe.”
Annabelle eyed him for a moment before asking, “Yankees eat corn pone?”
Malone smiled. “These days, Yankees are grateful for anything that’s offered, ma’am.”
Ma’am. Annabelle narrowed her gaze. “Don’t you be ‘ma’am-in’ ’ me. Name’s Annabelle.”
“Yes, ma—Annabelle.” Malone nodded.
“Can’t feed the whole army,” Annabelle said, “but I’ll see what I can rustle up for you and the doctors in the house. They be workin’ all through the night, I expect.”
Malone sighed audibly. Nodded.
Libbie reached into her pocket and took out the keys. “Come with me,” she said. “I’ll show you.” She took a step toward the house, then turned back. “Ora Lee. You stay and help Annabelle. I’ll be back directly with Betty and the others. Then we’ll—” She glanced at Jack Malone. “Maybe we’ll know what we should do.”
Malachi and Cooper showed no fear and seemed to recognize Jack when he and Libbie stepped into the basement. As far as Libbie knew, Betty had never seen Jack Malone, but she followed Malachi and Cooper’s lead. The field hands, however, shrank back into the corner they’d first occupied a few hours ago.
Malone tried to reassure them, but it wasn’t until Malachi spoke up that they seemed to relax a little. “This here Mr. Jack Malone. He and his brother own a farm just past the Grove. They good people. You be all right if you do what Mr. Malone say.”
The taller of the two men who hadn’t run off stood a little straighter. “We got to go back to the quarters, Miss Libbie?”
Libbie didn’t know. When she hesitated, Malone spoke up, and before long the field hands followed him upstairs and back outside in search of the quartermaster. Jack said he would welcome their help and see that they shared army rations in return for their work. Libbie heard one of the women say that that was just fine but the Yankees would have to make arrangements with Mastah Blair once the mastah returned
to the Grove.
Everyone carried a water bucket and one of the baskets of food they’d brought down with them as they made their way back up the stairs and outside. A buggy was driving in from the direction of town. Libbie recognized Dr. Feeny.
In the time it had taken for her to lead Jack Malone down to the basement, a dozen wounded men had made their way to the yard. They were seated near one another in the shade of one of the oldest apple trees on the place. The only apple tree in the yard. Another wagon pulled up in the drive, this one pulled by mules. Jack Malone hurried to it, and as Libbie watched, two of the field hands took litters from the wagon bed and headed for the battlefield. Jack led the women toward Dr. Feeny. Apparently they would become nurses, at least for the next few hours.
Libbie handed the basket she’d carried up from the basement to Betty. Water bucket in hand, she stood staring out at the battlefield. This must be what it was like to live inside a nightmare. She caught a glimpse of someone trotting across the field in the distance. A woman. A woman? Whoever she was, she knelt beside a man… tending him, it seemed. As Libbie watched, another man lifted his hand. The woman moved to him, bending low, obviously comforting him. And again Libbie wondered. Was Walker out there somewhere?
The image of Walker lying on the battlefield, alone and wounded, somehow pierced the fog that had shrouded her mind since she’d seen the slain soldier down by the levee. And the burned hemp… and everything else. Since then, she’d been reacting to whatever happened. Not really thinking so much as scrambling just to stay ahead of the immediate. Now, she rallied.
If Walker was out there, it was her duty to find him. To see that he was cared for. She refused the other possibility. Forced the word death out of her thoughts. She wouldn’t think about that now. Now… she needed to move. But first, the men beneath the apple tree. She set her own water bucket down and stepped to the kitchen. “Ora Lee. Betty. I’m going to take this water and go look for my brother. There’s wounded men out here in the yard. Get some more buckets and start hauling water. When you’ve seen to these men, I want you to go inside the house and ask the surgeon if you can help him.” She glanced over at the men. They weren’t so badly hurt that they wouldn’t welcome a bit of food. “Offer the bread we had downstairs to anyone here in the yard who wants it. Small pieces. Make it go as far as you can.”
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