A Sound Among the Trees

by Susan Meissner

  When I awoke in the gray light of dawn, the baby was stiff in my arms. The mother had also died in the night. Eliza took the baby from me and placed the child in the dead mother’s embrace. Two Negro men took two of our shovels and went to dig a grave for them at the slaves’ cemetery at the edge of town. We asked them if they knew the dead mother’s name, and they said they did not. No one else did either. Eliza told them to give the mother her name, Elizabeth. And to make sure someone put up a marker for her and the baby.

  I went into the house with the weight of the dead child still in my arms. My hair had fallen from its pins and was tumbling about my shoulders, my dress was wrinkled, and I smelled of campfire.

  I could not get the smell of smoke out of my hair and skin. I can still smell it. And I have bathed twice.

  Now that the Yankees are gone, we are getting news from the outside again. A newspaper from Richmond reached us today, nearly a month old. I could not bear to read the front page. A Union spy posing as a secessionist was hung in Richmond. Eliza read it, but I think she had already heard of this man’s execution before. She did not seem surprised. And she would not speak to me of it, not even in whispers.

  Susannah

  17 June 1862

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dearest Eleanor,

  There are fewer Yankee troops in Fredericksburg, but those that are here are still looking to us for meals and soap and lamp oil. The chickens have soiled the attic beyond belief, but at least we have eggs. Several of the chicks are roosters. Perhaps, if we can keep their crowing from drawing attention, we will soon have more chicks and then something besides cured ham to eat.

  The time I used to spend sewing uniforms I now spend tending Cook’s vegetable garden. Half of what I planted has shriveled and died or been eaten by rabbits. I don’t know how Cook managed to grow anything. Eliza says it doesn’t matter how much I lose to my ineptness or the rabbits; it only matters how much I can save. At least the trees in the orchard are faring well. We shall have peaches, if not carrots and peas.

  Negroes continue to move in and out of Holly Oak’s slave quarters. I think word has traveled—albeit quietly—that if you are a contraband on your way north, there is a house in Fredericksburg where you can rest and gather your family members together. That house is our house. Eliza is down there every night making sure there are no quarrels or hurting children or hungry souls. I go with her sometimes.

  The haberdashery is open again, but Yankee customers must pay for what they want. Business is actually good, but there isn’t much to buy with the gold they pay us, nor will we be able to restock the inventory we have sold. At least not for a while. The Yankee soldiers are the only men in town, and when you own a men’s haberdashery, that makes a difference. Eliza refuses to be genial with the Yankees who come to the store; she treats them with the same disdain as do all the other shopkeepers who were treated poorly during the first days of the occupation. I do not think it is an act for the other townspeople. She is highly aware of what would happen if her liaisons were found out. We do not speak of it, she and I. Mama doesn’t seem to know or care. And Grandmother doesn’t want to know and asks no questions.

  We are being pressed by the Union soldiers who are still here to declare our loyalty to the Union. Some townspeople have been ordered to sign oaths of allegiance. As if you can obtain allegiance by brute force. I told Eliza this was a very strange concept—the idea of forcing someone to be loyal to you. And she just said, in that way of hers when I say something she finds silly, that it’s been happening in the South since the first slave ship docked.

  I have had no word at all from Lt. Page.

  Susannah

  20 July 1862

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  My dear cousin,

  Will and John were here again. I think perhaps I was not meant to see them. They came in the early morning hours. I had awakened before the sun and was making tea when I heard low voices in the parlor. I found them there with Eliza. She was fully dressed and so were they, although they were unshaven and dirt covered. And there I was in my dressing gown. They looked surprised and Eliza looked annoyed. She told me I may as well make them tea too. When I came back with a tray, I think they had discussed what they needed to and had made a point to be finished when I reentered the room.

  After only a sip of tea, John asked to be able to shave and bathe, and he and Eliza left to see about hot water. Will sipped his tea slowly as he watched them leave. It stung a little, watching him watch Eliza.

  “There has been no more ill treatment from the Union soldiers, has there, Susannah?” he asked me. “You seem troubled.”

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t seem the time to be tranquil.”

  “But you haven’t … There hasn’t been any … No soldiers have harmed you?”

  I blushed as I realized what he meant. “I have not been harmed.” And he nodded, clearly relieved. And I hung onto that relief like a warm embrace for several seconds.

  “And Eliza?”

  As the embrace seemed to slump away, I told him that I did not think Eliza had been harmed in any way either.

  “Do you hear from your lieutenant?” he asked.

  I bristled a bit. “He is not mine. And I have not heard from him.” I stood, ready to clear away the tea things, to go back to the simple quiet of a nameless dawn. He reached out and touched my arm.

  “I know your grandmother wants you to marry this man,” Will said. “But do not marry him to make her happy. Or to escape this house. I would not want to think of you shackled to a man you did not love.”

  The tenderness in his voice moved me to wordless silence, Eleanor. Oh, that I would’ve had the audacity to tell him the name of the man I do love. But I didn’t have it. I don’t have it. How could I tell him, knowing the way he looks after Eliza whenever she is near?

  “I am fond of you, Susannah. I don’t want to see you hurt. Promise me you will only marry for love?” he continued.

  I promised him. They were gone by noon.

  15 August 1862

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dearest Eleanor,

  There are no more Negroes staying in the slaves’ quarters, and the Yankee troops are continuing to thin. Eliza and I moved the hens and roosters out of the attic and put them in Tessie’s old quarters, which was no small feat. I have the wounds to prove it.

  It took us two days to clean out the attic. And it still smells like chicken manure.

  The vegetable garden is a sight to behold. You would be proud of me. Grandmother has been washing out the preserve jars. We shall have vegetables this winter. And peaches. And chickens.

  1 September 1862

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  My dear Eleanor!

  The Yankees are gone! The last of them marched away two days ago. We have survived. The Yankees have moved on to other campaigns, and we have our city back. Confederate troops have arrived on the outskirts of Fredericksburg and some are now patrolling our streets. Some folks wonder where they have been all this time. Others are cheering them.

  Eliza told us not to remove the gold and jewelry we buried in the cellar, however. She said the war is not over.

  And I have heard from Lt. Page. He was most anxious to know that we were all well and unharmed from our long, troublesome summer. I wrote to him and told him we had lost little compared to some and that we were glad to see the Union soldiers make their exit. I didn’t mention who our houseguests had been nor that our slaves’ quarters had been a meeting point for contrabands.

  He is hoping to come see me in October. I did not encourage or discourage his desire to visit. I made a promise and I must keep it. You cannot break a promise you have made to someone you love.

  4 October 1862

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dear Eleanor,

  The canning is at last done, and the chickens have all been transported to the farm for Abner to care
for. He is now a foreman to chickens and a handful of sheep. We kept just a couple of laying hens here at the house for eggs in the morning. I am quite happy to see the chickens gone.

  I think the trains are running again. And there is mail. We have received letters from Grandfather. He has not been well. There is no mail going to the North, however, hence my pile of unsent letters to you continues to grow. Some who left Fredericksburg this summer have returned. But not the Lacys. The big house on the other side of the river is dark.

  20 November 1862

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dearest Eleanor,

  A brittle wind is blowing today, and with it comes news to chill us. The Union armies are again amassing across the river on the Lacy house hilltop, more of them this time. But there are Confederate troops here in town daily watching them. We have heard that there are scores of Southern militia settling in behind us on nearby Marye’s Heights. The only thing standing between the two growing armies are the Rappahannock—and us. Not a pleasant thought.

  Eliza has been out and about at night again, doing who knows what. I have begged her to please cease her forays into activities not meant for a woman to engage in. Especially with Confederate snipers patrolling the streets. But she will not listen.

  And Tessie is back, Eleanor. She told us she is with child. She came to us sick, numb with cold, and broken in spirit. Mama was the one who found her slumped against the door of her old quarters, which we keep locked because of the chickens.

  Mama brought her in, took her to Cook’s room, and put her to bed. My mother hasn’t shown any interest in anyone’s affairs since Papa’s death, not even mine. Her exuberant compassion for Tessie has surprised and flummoxed me. While she was preparing dinner for Tessie today, I asked her why Tessie had decided to come back. Mama said Tessie had been hurt in the worst way and had nowhere to go. Something beautiful and precious had been taken from her—the last thing which had been truly hers.

  And then I understood what drove my mother to Tessie’s bedside. Loss.

  Lt. Page was not able to come see me in October, but I did receive another letter from him. He said with the activity around Fredericksburg, the quartermaster’s office is supplying Virginian troops via other routes. He thought perhaps after Christmas he would be able to come see me. He wrote that he missed me, that the thought of Yankees again nearby was driving him mad. He said we should leave Holly Oak and come to Richmond and that he and his family would take us in. And he closed by writing that I was the first thing he thought of when he woke and the last thing he thought of when he fell asleep.

  I wrote back that I missed his company as well and that Grandmother would never leave Holly Oak. Neither was a lie.

  We’ve had our first dusting of snow. It fell like tiny pieces of ice. It seems we are in for a long, brutal winter.

  Susannah

  9 December 1862

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  My dear Eleanor,

  There are no conversations about the coming Christmas holiday. The only talk is of the amassed Union army on the other side of the Rappahannock. The troops have been there for weeks and have only now begun to move about. It was as if they had moved to the Lacy House and Stafford Heights to stay until spring and had no plans to do anything until then but scrape the hillside bare for their campfires and play cards.

  Eliza is very quiet these days. I am sure she knows there is more to the troops’ recent inactivity than the desire to play cards.

  Lt. Page has written me and again begged us to come to Richmond for our safety. He told me we could marry straightaway at his parents’ church and that my mother and grandmother and aunt could come with me and we could all live at their spacious home in Richmond. He doesn’t like our being in Fredericksburg with two massive armies on either side of us.

  I told my Grandmother that Lt. Page had asked us to come to Richmond to live with his family. I did not tell her he wanted to marry me the moment we arrived.

  She told me for the third time that she will never leave Holly Oak but that I should certainly consider it. I told her I could not leave my mother. Nor her. Not now. Not while our world is at war. This seemed to please her somewhat. And she let the matter drop. I wrote to Lt. Page that my grandmother and mother are not willing to leave Holly Oak and that I could not leave them.

  Tessie has begun taking care of the cooking and cleaning, but Eliza told her she will never again sleep in the slaves’ quarters and that she would be paid a fair wage for her services from now on. She also told her that she and her unborn child would always have a home at Holly Oak if they wanted it, but that she was free to leave if she wanted that instead. Grandmother was strangely absent from that conversation. Tessie thanked her, saying that she was grateful, but I think she is sad to have had to come back to us. I doubt she ever made it to North Carolina to find her parents.

  There is no garden for me to keep or uniforms for us all to sew or silver to polish, since it is all buried, or even cooking to do now that Tessie is here—she is a better cook than Grandmother, Eliza, and me put together—so I spend my days wondering and waiting to see what will become of us.

  14 December 1862

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  My dear Eleanor,

  I am glad you shall never see this letter. No one should have to read words as miserable as these will be. I would ask you to brace yourself, Eleanor, if I knew you would be reading this.

  Fredericksburg is decimated. Houses and stores lie in ruins, smoldering still, even as I write this. And among the shards of devastation are the ruins of men. Blood, like the Rappahannock after too much rain, runs everywhere—in every frozen field, on every gray street, in every parlor of every house still standing in Fredericksburg. Our downstairs has been transformed into a hospital for dying Northern men. It is too much for the mind to make sense of. Hospitals are places to get well. But our odd hospital is a place to bleed and groan and die.

  How can I begin to record for you what has transpired here? We awoke three days ago to the warnings of gunfire and the sight of Union soldiers on the other side of the river lacing pontoon bridges together—bridges wide enough for many men to march across. On the banks, wagons and Union soldiers—as far as my eye could see—stood ready to cross. And if that weren’t appalling enough, in the ethereal morning mist, two giant orbs floated above the bridge builders—like strange, silent ghosts—balloons that carried armed Yankee surveyors. Every so often a Union cannon would boom and we would see the blink of its fiery charge. From my mother’s bedroom window I could see various bridge builders fall into the water as Confederate sharpshooters, crouched in the windows of nearby houses, picked them off. But others quickly took their places.

  When we first awoke, Eliza was nowhere in the house. But she soon returned and told us, with great intensity, that we must leave at once, that all the rest of Fredericksburg was also fleeing. Fleeing to where, I wondered? Where would we go? When Grandmother said she’d rather die than let a Yankee desecrate Holly Oak, Eliza grudgingly instructed us to take blankets and candles to the cellar and as much food from the pantry as we could carry. Tessie moved at once to obey. Her urgency compelled me to set about Eliza’s directions. But Grandmother chased after Eliza, demanding to be told what the Union soldiers were doing. As I raced up the stairs to gather my blankets, I heard Eliza exclaim, “For heaven’s sake, Mother. Isn’t it obvious what the Union soldiers are doing? They are building a bridge!”

  Mama was reluctant to leave her room. When I told her she could take all of Papa’s pictures and books with her to the cellar, she began to slowly gather her things. By late morning we had the cellar floor lined with jugs of water and blankets and candles. We came back into the house for a quick meal and soon learned our timing had been providential. Not long after the clock struck noon, the sporadic booming of guns became instead a piercing hailstorm of wrath. There are no words to describe the sound of it, Eleanor. It was as if God Hi
mself were splitting the sky in two and raining down destruction on us. Only this was not of God. These were Union soldiers and their barrage of shells.

  Holly Oak shuddered against the assault, and we ran to the cellar. My mother, thinking it was the end for us, was actually smiling as we hurried her down the stairs. She believed she would be in heaven with Papa in a matter of minutes. And as I heard something wicked and demanding slam into the wall next to us, I nearly believed I would see him too.

  All afternoon we cowered in the cellar, the five of us, listening to the hostile roar and wondering if Holly Oak broke apart above us, would she entomb us or protect us? Would we die in her loving embrace or in the collapse of her furious ruin?

  We huddled and prayed and waited for the nightmare to end. When at last there was quiet, we emerged from the cellar. Holly Oak still stood. We stepped outside onto our porch, and Grandmother nearly fell into my arms with the shock of what we saw. Columns of smoke, banners of dying flame, and shattered homes and buildings. Night had fallen. It was too dark to see the ruin in its entirety. My grandmother began to cry, something I had never heard her do. Mama, moved by her mother’s tears of grief, took her inside. Tessie followed them.

  As Eliza and I stood on our steps and looked to the plumes of smoke coming from the direction of Princess Anne Street and the haberdashery, I asked her if we could sleep in our beds that night. Was it over?

  And she said it was only beginning.

  We did sleep in our beds. I lay awake for a long time, and it was nearly dawn when I finally fell asleep. I was awakened midmorning by Eliza and other sounds. I heard a far-off yelling. And voices in our entry. She was sitting on my bed next to me. She had shaken me awake.

  “What is it? What’s going on?” I said.