A Sound Among the Trees

by Susan Meissner

  She hushed me. “Susannah. You must do exactly what I tell you. You must stay in your bed and pretend to be ill. Do you understand? Under no circumstances are you to get out of your bed. You are ill.”

  The voices downstairs were male.

  “What is happening?” I asked. I started to get up, but she pushed me back onto my pillow. She placed a hot compress on my forehead. It burned.

  “The Yankees have crossed the bridges. They are in Fredericksburg. They are here. And they are downstairs.”

  I heard footsteps on the stairs. The Yankees were outside my door. Grandmother was yelling at them. One of them yelled back at her. And then my door was thrust open.

  I gasped and Eliza pinched my arm. She held the compress to my head with her other hand.

  “Get out of my house!” Grandmother was yelling. I had no idea where Tessie and my mother were.

  One of the soldiers took a step inside. He looked young, and he was not an officer. “What have we here?” he said.

  “My niece is very ill. You risk contagion if you come any closer. I do not advise it.” Eliza said in that calm voice she has. The soldier stared at me. My chest was heaving—in fear, not illness—but to him it must have appeared that I was deathly sick. He took a step back out.

  “Keep this door closed then!” he barked, as though he were a pharaoh or a god. He turned to my grandmother. “We’d like breakfast. And tobacco. And some decent coffee.”

  “You’ll not get a—,” she began, but Eliza stood and interrupted her. “Come sit with Susannah, Mother. I will make these scoundrels breakfast.” The soldiers laughed heartily and proceeded to tell Eliza they would also like hot baths and a shave. Grandmother looked as if she would spit daggers. Eliza gently guided her into the room to take her place at my bedside. Then she left with the soldiers, closing the door behind her.

  “What has happened?” I whispered to my grandmother. “Where is my mother?”

  Grandmother sprang off the bed and began to pace the floor, surely to cool her anger. “Your mother is sitting in the parlor with a cup of tea as if it’s Easter Sunday. As if those damned Yankees haven’t plundered what is left of the city. They are looting every store they haven’t smashed to bits with their cannons, and they are dumping the contents of bureau drawers into the streets and tossing furniture out of windows. It is hell outside your window, Susannah.”

  I rose from my bed and parted my curtains. In the sallow glow of a December sun, I saw the smoldering ruins of my street—timbers, stone, and glass—and the incongruous addition of beds and broken pianos and chairs and tea carts, all strewn about with plumed hats, hoops, and parasols, as if there had been a concert for sick people in the street and a devil had come and scattered the musicians and spectators with a giant hammer. A couple of soldiers were laughing as they pretended to waltz, drunk and wearing hoop skirts and summer hats. A stray horse galloped past them, dodging debris. The stretch of destruction in the street had no end.

  Before, the Yankees had wanted what we had; now it appeared they wanted to destroy what we had. Eleanor, I do not understand what these Yankees hoped to gain by such senseless destruction. I think I might have whispered, “Why?” at the window.

  I turned back to my grandmother. She had stopped pacing. “Why does Eliza want you to stay in bed and pretend you are ill?”

  I was about to say I didn’t know, but then I looked at the warm whiteness of my feather bed and remembered what lay hidden inside it. My grandmother didn’t know about the uniforms. And apparently Eliza did not want these Yankees to know about them either.

  “She didn’t tell me why,” I said as I climbed back into bed and replaced the compress.

  By late afternoon, Holly Oak was bursting with Yankees who were tired of sleeping in tents and eating camp stew. They wanted the warmth of our house and full bellies and every tin of tobacco my grandfather had. I stayed in my bed as Eliza had asked me to. Mama joined me in my room later and then Grandmother, and then finally at nightfall Eliza and Tessie joined us. Grandmother gave Eliza a grating look for bringing Tessie into my bedroom, but Eliza just said it was not safe for a woman of any color downstairs.

  The house was quiet when we awoke. Eliza went downstairs first. She came back within minutes and told us the Yankees who had slept in Holly Oak were gone but we were to prepare ourselves for how they had occupied themselves during the night. We dressed and then made our way downstairs. The rooms smelled of wood smoke and tobacco and men. Evidences of where they had eaten and slept were everywhere, and they had burned nearly every chair and table in the fireplaces, obviously intoxicated with warmth after many nights sleeping in a tent. The larger tables were too big to burn, and the sofas and rugs were too convenient a place to sleep to have wanted to burn them. They had drunk all of Grandfather’s whiskey and port and the remains of glasses and decanters lay in sticky pieces across the parlor floor. The pantry was strewn about with the remnants of their meals. Every jar that we hadn’t brought down into the cellar with us was empty and broken. Every tin had been opened and scraped clean. On our back doorstep I found the heads of our two remaining chickens along with their feet and feathers. I found out later the soldiers had roasted them in the drawing room fireplace. And had relieved themselves wherever they pleased.

  We took it all in in stunned silence. Tessie was the first to find a broom and begin to clean up.

  I asked Eliza where the soldiers had gone. And then I heard gunfire and the booming of cannons, and I knew. They had gone to fight.

  We checked on our immediate neighbors, but they had fled during the night. After we had cleaned the worst of the filth, we again retreated back to the cellar. The battle was being waged where the Confederate army had dug their trenches on Marye’s Heights, a mile or so away from us. It was not safe for us to leave, and it was not safe to stay.

  By midafternoon the wounded started pouring back into the city. And the dead were carried in. Eleanor, I have never seen the human body treated this way. Were I to describe it to you, you would think I was a demon. These men, no doubt the same who had reveled in our streets the night before, were now half-men, crawling and being carried through our streets, some without arms, some without legs, some, if you could believe it, without faces.

  No one asked if they could bring the bleeding men into Holly Oak or any of the other houses still standing. They just began to bring them in. And the Yankee doctors did not ask us to help them with their horrific task; they just handed us a basin or towel or—God preserve me—a saw and told us to hold this or pull that or take this outside. And as we obeyed, we heard the soldiers talking, crying, pleading, cursing, and praying.

  As the cold day gave way to an even colder night and the ghastly work continued, we learned that the Confederate army had held the Yankees. The Union soldiers had not been able to gain the Heights. Most of the dead and wounded—hundreds of them—still lay in the field, where one soldier said you could not take a step without walking atop a dead or wounded man. He said he was able to be spirited away but many others could not even raise an arm to signal a stretcher bearer because Confederate riflemen on the Heights would shoot it clean off. This same man grabbed me with the one arm he had left and asked if I had a Bible. He was pale with blood loss and had a hole in his torso where something round and black had careened into him and then sped out the other side. I said we did, and as I left to go find it, I heard Eliza ask the man what unit he was from. He said the Twentieth Maine, and she straightaway asked if he knew John Towsley and Will Black. I hurried back to the man’s side. The soldier asked if they were the West Point cadets that joined up with them in October. And Eliza said yes, they were. She asked if John and Will were also out there on that field where he had been. And I sensed a rare thing in her voice. Dread. It matched the fear that had immediately sprung into my heart as well.

  The man coughed and we waited. It seemed a very long time before he finally said no, they were not. But our joy lasted only a moment. He told us John and
Will had been on a scouting mission in November and had been captured. They were in Richmond. In the Libby Prison.

  Eliza raised her eyes to mine and implored me with her eyes to say nothing. She held my gaze for several long seconds as we each adjusted to this news. I would’ve thought the soldier might ask how we knew two Union soldiers. Maybe on a better day he might have asked. But he didn’t. He just asked again for the Bible. And Eliza nodded to me to go get one.

  When I came back to his side, the man asked me, in as polite a voice as I have ever heard, if I might please read to him the 145th psalm. And I did. And then he asked for the 34th psalm and then the 90th. When I had finished the 90th, I looked up to see which psalm he wanted next. The man’s eyes were open and unmoving, and I realized at some point during my reading he had begun to see in another place. I closed his eyes and left him. I left it all. I climbed the stairs to my room and fell upon my bed, my blood-soaked dress staining my coverlet, and I did not care.

  I wished to see what that dead solider in my parlor was seeing. Heaven. Heaven without war.

  I cannot write any more.

  Susannah

  17 December 1862

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dear Eleanor,

  The defeated Union army has left. They have retreated back over the river, leaving us with their dead. The ground is too hard and cold to bury them very deep. Tessie says there are two Union soldiers buried now in our cellar where the ground is not so cold. I cannot take even one step down there to see if she is right. But why would she lie?

  And all the gold, silver, and jewelry we had buried there this spring? Did the Union gravediggers find it as they dug? Did they take it? Were they too tired of war and loss to care? Did they find some poetic justice in burying their fallen comrades atop Southern trinkets?

  Tessie has brought up from the cellar the few jars of preserves that are left. The jugs of water and our blankets are gone. Union medics used them. The blankets that they didn’t take with them are bloodied beyond use. Eliza has taken them outside to be burned.

  Mama, who went wordlessly from wounded man to wounded man, offering the comfort of a kind face and feminine touch, has taken to her room now that the soldiers are gone and has not uttered a word in three days. Not even one of her eerie whispers. It is as if she has taken a trip but left without her body.

  Eliza went out this afternoon and has not come back. It is long past nightfall.

  20 December 1862

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dear Eleanor,

  We have received word that Grandfather has died of dysentery in a field hospital. Grandmother is still holding the message in her hand as I write this, hours after receiving it. She is sitting by a fire Tessie made using splintered wood from the house that used to stand across the street from us. I am glad our neighbors are not here to see what is left of their home. The more of their sad ruin we burn away, the less they will have to face when they return.

  I don’t know how to feel regarding my grandfather’s passing. I sense an odd relief that he died of illness on a hospital cot instead of in pieces in the muddy snow somewhere. It doesn’t seem right that I didn’t miss him after he left. I reminded him too much of the Northern man who married his daughter, I think. Grandmother wants his body to be sent to us by train. No one can promise that it will be.

  A message also arrived today from Lt. Page. He wrote that he is desperate to know if we are well and safe. I do not know how to reply to him. Are we well? Are we safe? We are breathing. We are awaking each morning. We are watching the sun set each evening. We are here.

  21 December 1862

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  O my dearest Eleanor! Eliza has been arrested! I hardly know what to think. She came to my room this morning wearing traveling clothes and carrying a traveling case, the kind of case a man might carry. Her face was flushed, and she appeared to be out of breath. She had been gone when I awoke at dawn, and when I asked her where she had been, she ignored me. She asked me instead to remove the two uniforms hidden inside my bed and to do it quickly. When I asked her what she was going to do with them, she told me she had a plan to help John and Will escape prison, but she needed to leave right then and she needed the uniforms. She told me to hurry. I was afraid for her, but I turned over my bed anyway and exposed the seam. Eliza opened the case and drew out two dresses. Again she told me to hurry. I took my sewing scissors from my mending basket and cut the seam in my bed. I reached into the feathers and drew out the wrapped bundle. A flurry of feathers spilled out. Eliza grabbed the package from me.

  “Help me place them inside the folds of the dresses. Don’t let any of the gray wool show!” Her voice was urgent. My fear for her doubled. She told me that if Grandmother asks where she has gone, I am to say I do not know. If anyone comes to Holly Oak asking for her, I do not know where she is.

  “Do you understand, Susannah?” she asked me. “John’s and Will’s safety depends on it.”

  I could only nod my head. Terror silenced me.

  “Are you bringing them back here?” I whispered, knowing, of course, she could not. Fredericksburg was again under Confederate control. She could not bring John and Will back here.

  “Sew up the seam at once,” she said. “Turn your bed back over as soon as I leave.” She took the dresses with the uniforms now inside their skirts and placed them carefully back inside her traveling case. She latched it shut and reached for the handle.

  Then we heard the front door open and voices. The voices of men. Eliza froze. We both heard someone ask for her. She whirled to face me. “Cover the opening!” she whispered. My heart clanged inside my chest as I grabbed the coverlet for my bed and flung it across the open seam. A few stray feathers fluttered into the air like white butterflies. Again we heard her name, this time louder.

  She handed me the case. “Put it under your bed. Let no one see it.”

  I took the case, bent down, and shoved it under my bed.

  “Now take the chair by your window. Pick up a book. You are reading.”

  I wordlessly obeyed, tears of dread forming as I sat down and opened a volume of poetry. One of my father’s favorite books. Eliza listened at the door. Then she ran to me wide eyed and knelt before me.

  “I think they are coming for me, Susannah. You must listen to me. Will has taken ill. We must get him and John out of Libby Prison. Will is sure to die there if we don’t. Take the noon train to Richmond. Today is the only day it will be available for civilians until after Christmas. Take the case with you. Go to the Libby Prison on the corner of Twentieth and Cary Street. Make your way to the southeast entrance. The southeast entrance, do you understand?”

  “The southeast entrance,” I whispered, as tears slipped down my face.

  “Ask for Cpl. Stiles. Say his name.”

  “Cpl. Stiles,” I gasped.

  “Tell him Dr. Prewitt has sent the medicine that has been requested. Repeat it to me!”

  “Dr. Prewitt has sent the medicine that has been requested.” The words tasted like shards, Eleanor. I could nearly feel the blood on my tongue.

  Then Eliza handed me a small leather pouch from the pocket of her cloak. I could feel the heavy weight of gold inside it. “When you see Cpl. Stiles, he will take the case from you, and you are to give him this. Do you understand?”

  The men were on the landing.

  “Hide it!” Eliza whispered. And I shoved the leather pouch under the cloth-draped side table next to me. There was a knock at the door, and then Tessie was telling us there were some officers here to see Miss Eliza.

  “What do I do if I get caught?” I whispered.

  Eliza stood and smoothed the hair at her temples. “Do not get caught. And Susannah, when they open the door, you must pretend to be surprised.”

  “Miss Eliza?” Tessie said from behind the door.

  “Don’t leave me!” I mouthed. And Eliza reached out and stroked my cheek and chin.
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  “Be who I already know you are,” she said.

  And the door flew open.

  I gasped as three men in gray wool uniforms stepped into my room as though it were a common parlor.

  “You can’t just walk in there!” Tessie yelled, and one of them told her to mind her own affairs.

  One of the officers, blond and tall and heavily mustached, walked over to Eliza. His accent was sugary slow and lyrical. “Miss Pembroke. If you would be so kind as to accompany me and my men to our field headquarters, we have some matters to discuss.”

  It took every ounce of my being to stand and ask them what, pray tell, was the meaning of such an intrusion. What matters did they wish to discuss?

  The blond officer turned to me. “I believe your aunt knows exactly what matters we need to discuss.” He turned back to Eliza. “Don’t you, Miss Pembroke?”

  Again I fought for courage and asked what they could possibly want from my aunt.

  But the blond officer ignored me and asked Eliza if she would prefer he arrest her in front of her family. He pointed to the door.

  She turned and without a word began to walk to it. I played my part.

  “Eliza! Where are you going? What is happening?” I called out.

  She turned to me, and I saw such peace and relief there; she was proud of me. She was proud of me. “Tell your grandmother not to worry about me, Susannah.”

  And then she was out the door. The men followed her. I ran down the stairs after them to the front door and watched them take her outside to a waiting wagon. She climbed into it. A frosty morning mist had turned the bare and splintered trees into silvery spikes and arrows. They glistened as the wagon rumbled away.

  Tessie said nothing beside me. Not at first. Then she said she would accompany me to the train station. Surprised, I turned to face her. She knew. She knew everything.

  “Please tell me they will not hang her,” I said.

  “I seriously doubt they will hang a woman, Miss Susannah.”