With this Pledge

by Tamera Alexander

  She laid her Bible on the kitchen table and replenished the fire in the hearth, then stoked the flames until the fresh wood caught. The firelight cast a warm umber glow around her. Tempy had left the coffee kettle filled with water and hanging from the pot crane in the hearth. Lizzie swung the kettle over the fire to start the water boiling. She prayed Conrad and the other men the Federals had taken one week ago were faring well. She could still see Conrad waving from the back of the wagon, his expression full of uncertainty and fear.

  She’d promised the remaining soldiers she’d read the final installment of A Christmas Carol tonight, and she and Tempy had a special surprise for James too. Then she planned on sending the book to Conrad and the other men, if that were possible. Sister Mary Grace told her yesterday that they had not yet received word from Sister Catherine Margaret. Only after Lizzie was in bed last night did she recall the nun’s last instruction to her.

  She sat down at the kitchen table, lit the oil lamp, and turned in the Old Testament to the book of Psalms. Psalm 27, Miss Clouston. Do you know it? Lizzie felt the touch of a smile recalling the ever-present hope in Sister Catherine’s voice. Well, read it again. Soon. And be encouraged!

  Lizzie pulled the oil lamp closer, and as she read the first verse, she felt the heaviness inside begin to lift. The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

  Her eyes devoured the text. Her heart drank it in. Only once she finished reading did she hear the water boiling for the coffee. She added coffee grounds to the pot, gave it a quick stir, and began reading the psalm a second time. She knew she’d read these verses before, but the way they spoke to her now, the words so applicable to what the country was going through at the—

  “I said good mornin’, Miss Lizzie!”

  Lizzie looked up to see Tempy standing there watching her, an inquisitive smile on her face.

  Lizzie breathed a little laugh. “Good morning, Tempy. I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.”

  Tempy’s gaze dropped to the open Bible. “What you reading there?” She claimed the chair beside Lizzie.

  “Some verses Sister Catherine encouraged me to read before she left with the men last weekend.”

  Tempy looked back at the Bible, then up at her. “What’s the good Lord say in them verses?”

  Lizzie turned the Bible around so Tempy could see it too, and with her forefinger she traced a path beneath the words as she read. Tempy stared intently at the page. Lizzie looked up when she finished.

  Tempy gestured. “Would you read the part again about waitin’ on the Lord? That’s my favorite of all.”

  Lizzie nodded. “That’s the very last verse. ‘Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.’”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Tempy murmured as though tasting the words. “Be o’ good courage. I like that too. And I got a feelin’ we gonna be needin’ a whole lot more of that in comin’ days.”

  FOLLOWING DINNER THAT night, Lizzie stuck her head inside each of the bedrooms upstairs and let the soldiers know that the reading would commence soon for anyone interested. She forced a cheeriness to her voice, not feeling up to the theatrics of reading aloud tonight. But when she came to Winder’s room and spotted Roland absorbed in a book—and not just any book—she found her humor encouraged.

  Looking thoroughly engaged, he didn’t seem to notice her approach.

  “You’re reading Sense and Sensibility?”

  He didn’t look up, but a roguish smile turned his mouth. “The way you say it makes it sound almost wrong.”

  “Not wrong.” She grinned. “Just a little surprising.”

  He peered up. His gaze was a mixture of shyness and playful challenge, and some other emotion she couldn’t define. “I heard from somebody that this was her favorite book. So”—he shrugged—“I thought I’d try it on for size.”

  “And how does the story fit, Captain Jones?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Fairly well, Miss Clouston. But right now I’m wishing I could throw that half brother’s greedy little banty hen of a wife, Fanny, into the stockade.”

  Lizzie laughed, feeling a measure of ease returning between them. “I feel that way every time I read it. I’ll be interested to know what you think of the novel once you’re finished.”

  He gave a nod. “Then I’ll be sure to tell you.” He looked past her. “You getting ready to finish reading the Christmas story?”

  She nodded.

  “I take it we’re going to see how things end up for old Scrooge.”

  She eyed him. “So you haven’t read the book before? I wasn’t certain.”

  “No, I haven’t.” He tucked a torn piece of paper into the pages of the novel and shut the book with a clap. “So I guess I’ll just have to wait and find out later whether or not Miss Elinor bumps into Edward Farrars at the party.”

  She noticed he hadn’t commented on A Christmas Carol. Perhaps the story wasn’t to his liking.

  “Count me in on hearing the rest of the Scrooge story, Miss Clouston!”

  Lizzie turned to see James sitting up in bed, a big smile on his face.

  “We’ve already met two of them ghosts,” the young man continued. “I’m ready for the third!”

  Lizzie laughed. “It’s good to see you feeling better, James.”

  “I do feel good, ma’am. Real good.”

  Grateful to see such improvement in him, she heard the heavy tread of footsteps on the stairs and knew it had to be George helping Tempy with the surprise. It was a treat for all the men, but she’d gotten the idea from something James had shared with her.

  A photograph on the table beside James’s bed caught her eye. “What a nice picture,” she said softly, guessing the identity of the person seated next to James.

  “That’s my younger brother, Thomas. Before we joined up to fight, he said he wanted to get an image of us in our uniforms for Mama. Said she’d be so proud.” His smile faded a touch. “But she just cried when she saw it, Miss Clouston. I don’t think it made her happy like Thomas thought it would.”

  “I’m sure your mother was very proud of you both, James. But I imagine it was very difficult for her to say good-bye to you and your brother.”

  He nodded, looking at the picture.

  “You and Thomas favor each other a great deal.”

  “People were all the time gettin’ us mixed up. Even Mama couldn’t tell us apart from behind.”

  Lizzie smiled and glanced over at Roland to find him watching her, and something in his eyes, a yearning perhaps, stirred a desire within her. Or maybe it was her own yearning she was wishfully seeing mirrored in his eyes. She looked away, noting he did likewise at the very same time.

  As Lizzie always did, Roland had observed, she waited until everyone was quiet and still before she began. As was her custom, she flipped back a page and read the final sentences of the previous section to remind them where they’d left off in the story.

  “‘The bell struck twelve.’” She read slowly, deliberately.

  “‘Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, toward him.’”

  Roland saw the nuns lean in as she turned the page. Young Lieutenant Shuler downed the rest of his apple-brandy hot toddy, a special refreshment Lizzie and Tempy had made for everyone in memory of the lieutenant’s mother. Everyone except for Hattie and Winder, that is, who were enjoying warm apple cider.

  “‘Stave Four,’” Lizzie announced. “‘The Last of the Spirits.’”

  She was truly gifted at reading aloud. She rarely even had to look at the page; it was as though she already knew the words. And she captured the nuances of the people in the story and of the places. She quieted her voice at the right times, made it louder at others. Made h
im feel as if he was right there in the midst of it, instead of just reading along, or being read to. Charles Dickens would be proud.

  She held up the book to show another drawing of Scrooge. And watching her, feeling himself respond to her not merely physically but deep within himself, Roland tasted again the bitter news Phillips had delivered to him. After Weet and Lena died, he’d accepted that there was no guarantee he’d marry again, much less have more children. And that was if he even lived through the war, which had been doubtful. Then he’d met Lizzie. And he’d felt that faint pulse of life begin to stir inside him again. And even without being conscious of it, he’d begun to hope. Which was a dangerous thing. But knowing now that the odds were stacked against him in regard to ever being a father again felt like yet another death. One he couldn’t even properly mourn.

  “‘The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached,’” Lizzie read.

  “‘When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.’”

  The words she read, or maybe it was the way she read them, tugged on Roland’s attention. And he wondered what the third ghost in the story was going to be like. The first, the Ghost of Christmas Past, had been an odd sort of phantom, childlike in appearance with a glowing head. Not frightening, to him at least. Although the journey the child phantom had thrust upon Scrooge had been unsettling. But Roland had walked that particular road before. He was expert in revisiting past mistakes and wishing, hopelessly so, that he could make them right. Scrooge had come to learn what he knew only too well. That the past was written in stone.

  The second phantom, the Ghost of Christmas Present, while definitely distressing in what he’d shown Scrooge, seemed akin to a majestic giant clad in a green mantle bordered with white fur with a holly wreath on his head. Hardly an intimidating figure. Still, the lens through which the giant had led Scrooge to view the unfolding of his present circumstances had been disturbing. And even though Roland had tried not to, he’d drawn comparisons between Scrooge’s life and his own. Few of them favorable. Especially the crutch without an owner, which portended the death of the child. Something Scrooge was wise to have dreaded.

  “‘It was shrouded in a deep black garment,’” Lizzie continued, her soft voice intense, “‘which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded. He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.’”

  Roland realized he’d guessed correctly. This ghost promised to be far more compelling than its two predecessors.

  “‘“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?” said Scrooge.

  “‘The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.

  “‘“You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,” Scrooge pursued. “Is that so, Spirit?”’”

  Lieutenant Shuler and Winder both bobbed their heads up and down as though answering Scrooge’s question.

  “‘The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received.’”

  As Lizzie continued, Roland wondered what it would be like to see his future as it would be, given his life on its present course. There was something sinister in the silence of this phantom. It didn’t speak. Only pointed. Roland closed his eyes as the words created images he could all but see.

  The ghost stopped beside a group of businessmen, and Scrooge moved closer to listen, only to hear the men speaking of someone’s death in a rather callous and offhanded manner. The men even laughed. And as it turned out, Scrooge knew the men. The ghost led Scrooge to another setting, then another. And as the story unfolded, Roland felt an impending sense of doom. But no matter how Scrooge pleaded for the spirit to answer his many questions, the ghost only pointed, its spectral finger extending beyond the sleeve of its garment. Until, finally, it led Scrooge to a cemetery, then to a grave overgrown with weeds and forgotten with time.

  “‘“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”’”

  Roland’s eyes came open, Scrooge’s question resonating within him. If a person changed on the inside and therefore made different decisions than he would have before, could the course of his life be altered? Of course, that assumed the decisions he’d initially made were poor ones.

  “‘Scrooge crept toward it, trembling as he went,’” Lizzie read, her voice never faltering. “‘And following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name . . . Ebenezer Scrooge.’”

  One of the nuns gave a soft gasp, but Roland didn’t laugh this time. Neither did anyone else.

  “‘“Am I that man who lay upon the bed,” Scrooge cried, upon his knees.

  “‘The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.

  “‘“No, Spirit! Oh no, no!”’”

  Roland shifted on his cot, feeling a measure of discomfort similar to that he’d experienced the night Lizzie challenged him about owning slaves. When the day of his passing came, hopefully years from this one, who would mourn his death? But far more important, what difference would his life have made? And would his life have been well spent? He turned the questions over in his mind, feeling as though the answers he sought were just beyond his grasp. Hidden from him. Frustration swept through him, followed by a cold rush of fear.

  From where he sat he could see the wash of emotion in Lizzie’s eyes, and he felt the hint of it in his own. He heard the clock chime from somewhere downstairs, but paid it no mind. Neither did the others around him, as Scrooge clutched at the spirit’s robe.

  “‘“Hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope!” For the first time,’” Lizzie whispered, her own voice thinning, “‘the hand appeared to shake.

  “‘“Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!”’”

  Roland would have sworn he felt a brush of wind sweep across the hallway. Yet no one had moved. No window or door had opened. A prickle skittered up his spine.

  “‘“I will honour Christmas in my heart,” cried Scrooge.’” Lizzie’s expression grew earnest. “‘“I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”’”

  “Oh, praise God!” Sister Mary Grace exclaimed, kissing the cross hanging from her neck.

  Roland laughed along with everyone else as Sister Mary blushed and gestured for them to look elsewhere. As Lizzie read of Scrooge’s transformation, an unmistakable lightness and joy replaced the former tension and despair in the room.

  “‘And it was always said of Scrooge, that he knew how to keep Christmas well . . . May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed’”—Lizzie paused and looked around the room, inviting everyone to repeat with her—“‘“God bless Us, Every One!”’”

  Lizzie closed the book, and applause broke out. Soldiers whistled in approval. At their encouragement, she stood and took a bow. It was the happiest Roland could remember having seen her. Same for his fellow soldiers.

  “Well done,” he whispered to her as George rolled his cot back into the bedroom.

  “Why, thank you, Captain Jones.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” George gave her a smile. “That sure was some mighty fine readin’.”

  Her eyes twinkled. “Thank you, George. I appreciate that compliment.”


  “You welcome, Miss Lizzie!”

  Roland looked between the two of them, sensing a definite familiarity that hadn’t been there before. And one he wasn’t completely comfortable with. He realized that George helped Tempy in the kitchen and so did Lizzie, on occasion. No doubt, knowing Lizzie, she’d engaged George in conversation and they’d become better acquainted. But there was still such a thing as respecting social boundaries. For everyone. George, he knew how to approach. Lizzie was another matter. He saw his opportunity when George left to help the nuns move soldiers back to the other rooms.

  “Lizzie,” he whispered, and her quick glance said she’d be right there.

  She finished helping Lieutenant Shuler to bed and gave him his medication. Judging by the young man’s adoring expression, her nurturing demeanor was of great comfort to him. When she turned to Roland, she was all smiles.

  “I’m so glad the reading went well. Between the two of us?” She leaned closer. “I wasn’t all that excited about doing it tonight. But once I started reading and felt everyone beginning to—”

  Roland held up a hand, needing to seize the moment while the rest of the room was engaged in conversation. “Yes, I’m glad it went well too. You did a wonderful job. But I need to ask something of you.”

  “Of course.” Her brows rose.

  He chose his tone carefully. “I gather that you and George have become fairly well acquainted while he’s been here. And I know we feel differently about this, Lizzie. But it’s simply not appropriate for someone of George’s position to be so informal with someone of yours.”

  Her brows lowered.

  “There are certain . . .” He searched for the right words, half expecting her to fill in the blank for him. She didn’t.

  “Rules of decorum,” he continued, further gentling his tone, “that are applicable in such situations. I’m asking you to respect my wishes in this regard. That’s all.”