A Sound Among the Trees

by Susan Meissner

  That is a gift to me.

  Yours,

  Susannah Towsley Page

  7 January 1863

  Richmond, Virginia

  Dearest Eleanor,

  The Richmond paper reports that a dozen people suspected of espionage and crimes against the Confederacy have arrived from Northern Virginia to be imprisoned. They have been sent to Castle Thunder to await their trials; two of them are female. I simply had to know if Eliza was among them. I showed the paper to Nathaniel and told him Eliza had been escorted from Holly Oak by Confederate officers the day I left for Richmond—for reasons unknown to me. I told him the officers threatened to arrest her if she didn’t come with them willingly.

  Nathaniel grew concerned at once, not just for me, but for all of us. He asked me if I had reason to believe Eliza might be aiding the enemy.

  “The enemy,” he called them.

  I began to cry, and it was not an act to convince my husband of anything. The tears fell because my world is at war and there is an enemy and I do not even know really who it is. Nathaniel took my response as childlike fear for my aunt.

  “If she has indeed made herself a traitor to the Confederacy, it is nothing you could have seen or prevented,” he said, and this only made me cry the harder.

  Nathaniel kissed my forehead and told me he would learn the names of the newly arrived prisoners to Castle Thunder.

  Castle Thunder sounds like a place where knights and princesses might dance and dine, doesn’t it, Eleanor?

  It is a prison for traitors.

  Susannah Towsley Page

  10 January 1863

  Richmond, Virginia

  Eleanor,

  Nathaniel secured the list of names. Eliza’s name is there, as I had feared it would be. He went straight to his commandant’s office and showed the colonel Eliza’s name. He swore that his new wife—me—had no knowledge of her aunt’s alleged activities.

  Nathaniel said his commandant was pleased Nathaniel had been so forthright.

  And when I asked Nathaniel if I might be permitted to visit my aunt, he told me not only was that terribly unsafe for me, his commandant would not allow it.

  A letter from my grandmother arrived today. She congratulated me on my marriage. She wrote that my mother sends all her love.

  Did you hear the news, Eleanor? President Lincoln has proclaimed all slaves are emancipated. You wouldn’t know anything has changed here in Richmond. The Cause rumbles on as if he had merely welcomed the New Year with a toast to the weather.

  Susannah Towsley Page

  29 January 1863

  Richmond, Virginia

  Eleanor,

  Nathaniel is to be sent afield to oversee the Confederate Army’s supply wagons and sutlers across Northern Virginia. He came home with the news today at noon. He is distraught that we are to be parted, but he is hopeful that the war will end soon and that he will resign his commission, return to managing his deceased grandfather’s bank with his father, and we shall build a house of our own.

  He told me I will be warm and safe with his parents in Richmond while he is away, but Eleanor, I cannot live here while he is gone. Nathaniel’s physical presence, his daily care for me, his intense admiration and loyalty and devotion, and yes, even his nearness in my bed—these are what sustain me in this new life I have chosen. When he leaves, I will have nothing.

  I begged him to let me return to Fredericksburg to care for my grieving mother and grandmother. With Eliza gone, they have no one. It would be unkind and unchristian for me to ignore them when his absence would allow me to care for them in their grief. And he, of course, implored me to send for them, to have them come to Richmond. And again I reminded him that Holly Oak is their home and that my grandmother, especially now that she is in mourning, would never leave it. Then I told him that I couldn’t bear to be there in Richmond without him, which indeed is quite true.

  My pleading won him over, Eleanor. He is that disposed to grant me my every desire.

  I leave tomorrow on the first morning train north. His parents do not seem overly sad that I am leaving.

  Susannah Towsley Page

  1 February 1863

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  I am home, Eleanor. Tessie, round with the growing bulge of her unborn child, met me at the station. I had forgotten how much Fredericksburg had suffered at the close of the year. The ruins of houses and buildings still line the streets. Fences are gone; trees are gone—fuel for Yankee fires. People are gone too, having fled before the battle and now having heard there is little reason to return.

  Princess Anne Street is still littered with remnants of war and cruel revelry, and it saddened me only a little that I am only visiting this place. When the war is over, I will never call Fredericksburg home again. My home will be in Richmond with Nathaniel. It is a strangely acceptable notion.

  On my arrival, Holly Oak looked plain and gray and lonely. I stepped inside and immediately noticed its sparseness. Tessie had cleaned away every hint of death and injury, but in its place was a melancholy emptiness. It was like the house was in a state of quiet bewilderment. My grandmother was waiting for me in the parlor, looking both forlorn and elegant in black taffeta.

  “You didn’t have to come,” she said as she kissed me hello.

  “I wanted to. Nathaniel will be gone for perhaps many months. I did not wish to be alone there in Richmond,” I said.

  And she said, “But you would not have been alone.”

  I told her Nathaniel’s parents are very nice but I barely know them. I would’ve felt alone. For a second she said nothing, and then she asked Tessie if she might bring us some tea. Grandmother asked me to sit with her. When I had taken a chair, she asked me why I left for Richmond in such haste without saying good-bye, why I could not have told her I was taking the train to Richmond to marry Lt. Page.

  I reminded her that in my letter I had said the horrors of the battle and what had happened inside our house had taken their toll on me. I had to escape.

  “I know that is what you wrote, but that is not why you left. You left the same day Eliza was arrested. Did your leaving have something to do with that?” she said.

  I don’t know if it was this new knowledge that I belong to someone else or that I was only visiting Holly Oak now, but I suddenly had no great desire to keep up the pretense. “What does it really matter now, Grandmother?” I said. “You wished me to marry Lt. Page. I married him.”

  Tessie came in with the tea tray, but I stood. “I’d like to say hello to my mother before we have tea,” I said.

  And I left the parlor and climbed the stairs to my mother’s room. I found her seated at her writing table with a book open to the middle. As I approached her, she slowly raised her head. She looked afraid.

  “Hello, Mama,” I said gently.

  “Susannah.” She spoke my name not in greeting but more as if to remind herself that that name meant something to her. I kissed the top of her head and squeezed her shoulders. She stared at me.

  “I am married now, Mama.” I showed her my ring, and she stared at that.

  “Remember Lt. Page, who first brought us the uniforms to sew?” I continued. “Remember he asked me to marry him?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “He’s away at the war right now,” I said. “So I’ve come to stay with you and grandmother for a while. I’ve missed you.”

  She looked back to her book, unable I suppose, to deal with having been missed. I looked at her book too and saw that the pages were upside down.

  If I were going to send you this letter, Eleanor, I would tell you not to tell Grandmother Towsley or Aunt how poorly my mother is faring. She has all but disappeared. She has found a way to manage her losses—my father, her home, her father, her sense of peace and safety, the virtues of compassion and decency—missing now these many months. She has withdrawn from reality. I don’t know exactly where she spends her days mentally. Her nights I would guess she spends dreamin
g of my papa and our house in Washington and maybe of me as a little girl who hasn’t dashed off to be married.

  I kissed her head again and told her I would bring up some tea. We drank it in silence.

  I am suddenly very tired, Eleanor. I cannot hold the pen to write anymore.

  Susannah Towsley Page

  12 February 1863

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  I have been sick the last few days, Eleanor. Too ill to eat and lacking energy to write a word to you. Tessie came upstairs this morning with a warm drink to settle my stomach, and I told her I hoped I would be better soon so that she wouldn’t have to run the house all by herself in her condition.

  She smiled at me. Then she said, “You surely will get better, Miss Susannah. I’d say long about September.”

  It took me a full minute to realize what she was saying. She asked me when was the last time I had my monthly bleeding.

  Eleanor, I am with child.

  Susannah

  15 March 1863

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dearest Eleanor,

  I am finally feeling well enough to rise from my bed and not spend the morning retching into a basin. I asked Tessie if this is how her pregnancy began, and she said all pregnancies begin with the woman’s body struggling to leave off meddling with the little one growing inside. But she wasn’t nearly so sick as I.

  And then I asked her what I have wondered since she returned to us in November. I asked her if the father of her baby will come to Holly Oak looking for her. She answered that the child she carries has no father. A heartless man did what he did, not a father. So, no, there would be no father coming to Holly Oak to look for her. Then she offered to take a few of my dresses down to the parlor to begin letting out the seams.

  Grandmother seems pleased that I am to have a child but worried that we will not be able to properly outfit a nursery. Mama touched my stomach when I told her, a quiet recognition that she understood my words, but then she withdrew her hand and her mental presence and spent the rest of the day looking out her window.

  A man from the quartermaster’s office came a few days ago and asked us to again sew uniforms. He was short and portly and balding—nothing like Nathaniel at all. The cut pieces were delivered this afternoon. Tessie just stared at those sections of gray cloth, and I told her she didn’t have to sew anything for the Confederate Army if she didn’t want to, but she told me she will take my mother’s place at the sewing table. Mama will perhaps be aware enough to sew on buttons, but I doubt she will have the understanding to do anything else.

  Tessie knows President Lincoln says she’s free. But Holly Oak is the only home she has right now, and every baby needs a home.

  10 April 1863

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  My dear Eleanor,

  A birthday parcel arrived from you today! Somehow it made it across the trenches of battle and found its way to me. Your note was so lovely, short as it was. I know you would have said more if we were not at war. I shall send you a note thanking you. It will not be this note. This I will add to the hatbox where I have stashed all the others since I learned what Eliza had been doing with them.

  Thank you, dearest, for the lovely chemise. After the baby is born, I am sure it will fit me.

  I am nineteen. More than three years have passed since my papa was taken from my mother and me, since I have seen you and Aunt and Uncle and Grandmother Towsley. My life is not what I had imagined it would be.

  I wonder if you have heard from Will and John? Are they well? Are they safe? I wish you could have said more in your letter. You wrote that all is well. I am trusting you included Will and John in that declaration. Surely you did.

  Nathaniel writes that he will be traveling near Fredericksburg in late April to supply the troops near Chancellorsville and will ask for three days’ leave to come see me. He says he dreams of me every night. I have not written to him that we are to have a child. It seems something that should be told to someone face to face, not in a letter. He wrote that his father is sensing pressure to join the Cause and seek his commission. He will surely receive one. Alexander Page is a successful banker and respected in Richmond. No doubt he would be made an officer straightaway. He wrote that his mother will relocate to her parents’ home in Savannah if his father is to be sent afield. Perhaps it was providential that I had been called away to Fredericksburg, he said.

  Providential. Now there is a word that defies definition in these days of war. The Confederates pray for God’s protection and blessing and favor. And the Yankees pray the same prayer.

  Sometimes I sense within the walls of Holly Oak the bizarre state heaven must be in. Holly Oak is meant to be a refuge, as is heaven. A haven of rest and reward. A place where goodness dwells.

  What does heaven do with these opposing prayers? It must drive the angelic hosts to their knees, if they have them. It drives me to mine in this house of woes.

  We have heard nothing new regarding Eliza. She is still in Castle Thunder, awaiting her trial. At my urging, Grandmother attempted to visit her, but she was turned away. I don’t think she will attempt another visit for a while. And I think she was relieved she was turned away. She is appalled by what Eliza has done.

  Susannah Towsley Page

  28 April 1863

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dearest Eleanor,

  Tessie delivered a healthy baby boy on the twenty-sixth day of April. A midwife was summoned, and I assisted, despite my grandmother’s protestations. I wanted to see what childbirth will be like. It was both dreadful and wonderful to behold.

  The baby is light skinned with fine, fuzzy hair the color of tea. Tessie had not mentioned the man who attacked her was white, but why would she? And in the end it does not matter if an embittered Southerner forced himself upon her or a vindictive Yankee or a Negro whose life of deprivation had robbed him of decency, does it? It does not matter. Any man can be kind like Nathaniel or endearing like Will or cruel like the man who hurt Tessie. Any man of any color can be any of those things.

  She named him Samuel and asked me if she might give him the last name Holly. Tessie does not have a last name. I offered to give her mine if she would take it. But she would not, though she thanked me.

  My mother was drawn from her bedroom by the baby’s cries. She has scarce left his cradle. Tessie stayed abed only a day. The next morning she was up and about, seeing to the house and the garden, leaving Samuel in my mother’s care. For the first time in many months, my mother is smiling again.

  No word yet from Nathaniel. We hear there is much troop movement west of us.

  5 May 1863

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dearest Eleanor,

  There has been another battle on Marye’s Heights. We woke to the echoes of gunfire two mornings ago. But this battle was not like the last one. Scores of wounded Union soldiers did not come crawling back to Holly Oak this time. Not from Marye’s Heights. And not scores.

  That same morning, before the sun had even begun to glisten off the Rappahannock, Tessie came to my bedside and awakened me.

  “I need you to come downstairs to the cellar, Miss Susannah,” she said. Her voice was strained. “We might need a sheet from your linens. And your shears from the parlor. And thread and a needle.”

  A thousand questions rushed to my tongue, but she dashed out of my room and was on the stairs as I rose from bed. I dressed quickly, grabbed a bed sheet from my cabinet, and headed downstairs to the parlor for my shears and sewing things. My heart was pounding in my chest, and the tiny child within me fluttered about.

  Tessie stood by the cellar stairs just outside our back door with a jug in her hands, dusty and with web fragments clinging to it. A gray dawn rimmed the horizon.

  I pointed to the jug in her hands. “What is that?”

  “Spirits,” she said, and she reached for the things I carried. “Hold the rail, Miss Susannah
. You don’t want to fall down them stairs. And it will be a good idea not to wake the neighbors with any yellin’.”

  I swallowed hard. “What is down there, Tessie?”

  “Someone who needs our help.”

  Her tone didn’t frighten me; instead, it compelled me. I grasped the railing and took the stairs as quickly as I could. Two lamps had been lit, and the dank cellar was awash in sallow light. I saw a man stretched out on the floor on a bed of hay and another man leaning over him. As I neared them and my eyes adjusted to the light, I could see the uniforms—blue. And then the kneeling man turned around.

  Eleanor, it was Will. The man on the floor was John, bleeding from his side. I ran to them and dropped to my knees. I touched Will’s face, gashed a bit and bloody, and then John’s, wanting to embrace them, wanting to cry over them, wanting to erase their wounds and erase time too, I suppose.

  “What has happened?” I said, my eyes again on John. I felt Tessie kneeling beside me with the things we had gathered.

  “There was fighting in Chancellorsville.” Will gently tore away John’s shirt, revealing a gaping hole in John’s side. “There’s smallpox in our company from a bad vaccine we were fortunate to miss out on. We’ve been camping away and helping the First Division scout out weaknesses in the rebels’ flanks. We were fired upon, and John was hit. They chased us and had us surrounded. We couldn’t get back to the company, but we managed to lose them in the woods. I knew we were close to Fredericksburg, so we waited for nightfall and then rode here.”

  John moaned, and I reached for one of the lamps and pulled it closer to the wound. It looked big and dark and wicked. Eleanor, I’ve never seen anything that scared me as much. “He needs a doctor, Will!”