“We’ve got the bastards on the run!”
“Help! Help! A man’s been pinned under a wheel!”
“Robert? Robert? Where are you?”
The baby went on wailing.
Sweating, her head throbbing, Amélie jerked and yanked her sister across a broken seat. Her foot stepped on something soft and yielding but she did not look down. Intent on her task, her hair tumbling about her heated face, she strained upward inch by aching inch. The window, an oblong of light, seemed miles away.
She thought fleetingly of the doctor but did not have the strength to call his name. The smell of singed cloth grew strong in her nostrils and now she could feel the heat of the blaze.
Babette’s skirt! She dropped her burden and reaching down pulled Babette’s dress up and beat the flame out against the back of a plush seat. Then she grabbed Babette again, getting fresh purchase on her armpits. Desperation gave her strength as she tugged and pulled Babette up to the window. Someone had left a torn coat behind on the jagged glass. Amélie seized it and, wrapping it about her fist, knocked the fragmented glass from the sill. Then she crawled out, hanging onto the side of the car to keep from sliding. Reaching in, she hauled Babette through the window but lost her footing. They went crashing down the slope, rolling over stones, fallen twigs, and thorny ivy until they stopped at the stream below.
Stunned, the wind knocked out of her, Amélie lay for a few moments on the muddy bank, listening to the purling water as it ran by. Thin banners of black smoke drifted over the treetops. She heard a moan.
“Babette?” Amélie pushed herself up.
A few feet away Babette lay sprawled on her back, one hand trailing in the water. Amélie crept to her side and lifting a limp arm began to chafe her wrist. At the top of the incline the engine, shelved at a crazy angle, hissed steam. Men ran back and forth, shouting, their voices loud and urgent. A flame shot up into the blue-gray sky and quickly disappeared. Amélie sprinkled some water on Babette’s face.
Her eyes fluttered open. “Amélie? Wh—what happened?”
“We had a train wreck. Can you sit up?”
“I—oh, ouch! Don’t pull!”
Several Yankee soldiers carrying buckets came loping down to the stream.
“Are you ladies all right?”
“Yes,” Amélie said.
“Why did the train go off the track?” Babette asked.
“The Rebs, ma’am. They pulled the spikes from the rail up yonder, but left the rail in place with a length of telegraph wire tied to it. As soon as they saw us coming they jerked the rail away. Then tried to ambush us. When we started shooting they hightailed it out of here. Dirty cowards.”
Amélie tugged at Babette. “We have to find the doctor.”
Painfully they started up the bank. Halfway to the top they found him lying doubled over his opened portmanteau, its contents spilled on the ground around him.
“Dr. Johnson!” Amélie knelt and turned him over. His face and throat had been cut when he was hurtled through the train window.
Babette clasped her hands over her face. “I can’t look; I don’t want to see.”
“He’s dead,” Amélie said, a lump rising in her throat. The cheerful little companion of three days dead. Kind, generous man, he had done nothing but succor the sick and wounded and now he was gone, his useful life snuffed out. She found a handkerchief among the strewn articles of the portmanteau and covered his face, discovering as she did so that her hands were shaking. But it was more than her hands; her whole body was trembling.
“Come away,” Babette pleaded.
“We can’t just leave him here.” But there was nothing they could do for him now.
Somewhere above in a beech tree a bird called, a liquid trill that seemed to mock the destruction below: the tangled mass of steel, overturned wooden cars, broken glass, and bodies scattered over the embankment. Amélie heard someone weeping and turned her head. A woman was kneeling beside a fallen Yankee soldier. A small child clung to her shoulder, a brown-headed boy of two or three. Wide-eyed with fear, one finger in his mouth, he stared at Amélie, a heart-piercing look that suddenly made her think of little Charles. Her son would have been the same age now. Poor, poor darling. The Yankee soldier must be the woman’s husband, the child's father. And he, like the doctor, was dead. The child continued to stare; the woman wept over the body. The sad tableau moved Amélie to the tears she had been unable to summon for Horace Johnson. It was a picture that would recur time and time again in her darkest moments, when she strove to understand a world steeped in violence and despair.
“Are you coming?” Babette asked, her back to her sister.
“In a moment.” Amélie got up and went over to the woman. “Can I help?” she asked.
The woman looked up at her with a young face streaked with grime and tears. “No—he was shot,” she explained, “murdered by those terrible Rebs.”
Yes, Amélie thought, and it was a terrible Yankee who killed my husband. I shouldn’t feel any pity toward her. I shouldn’t, but I do. For both of them, the child especially. If Charles were alive he’d be an orphan, too. Little Charles . . .
“Come away,” Babette urged.
Amélie turned and looked up the hill. The fire had apparently been put out for the smoke had almost disappeared. People were still being pulled from the overturned coaches. The boxcars at the tail end of the train were upright, however, and guards had been mounted atop them.
“There’s that man!” Babette cried.
It was the Yankee sentry, his arm in an improvised sling, and he was peering down at them.
“I can’t go back up there,” Amélie said, holding Babette’s arm. “He’ll arrest me.”
“What will we do?”
The sentry disappeared. Amélie guessed that he had gone to fetch the same officer she had seen with him before the wreck.
“We’ll hide for now,” Amélie said. “I’ll think of something. But I’m not about to go up there and let him send me back to Baltimore.” She drew Babette across the rough ground into a clump of tall, leafy bushes.
”I want my luggage,” Babette said. “It must still be on the train unless someone has stolen it. I have two gowns, and my best petticoat, and—”
“We’ll have to forget the luggage,” Amélie said. She was glad she had had the foresight to procure a money belt before they left. Changing all her cash into gold and greenbacks, she had stuffed the pouches and strapped the belt around her hips.
“I don’t see why,” Babette said. “I had a perfectly good—”
“Hush!”
The sentry and the officer were descending the hill. Amélie felt her lungs tighten and she clutched Babette’s arm with a grip that made the latter whimper. The two men passed scarcely a few yards from where the girls were hidden.
“I seen her a minute ago,” the sentry said. “She was wearing a black dress. And her sister had a blue one on.
“They can’t be far.”
“Maybe they’ve gone up to the train.”
They turned and climbed the bank.
Amélie let out her breath. “Well, they know what we’re wearing.”
“Then we might as well give ourselves up,” Babette said.
“Be quiet! And don’t move. The guards on the boxcars will think we’re Confederates and shoot us.”
“But we are Confederates,” Babette reminded her with a primness Amélie found irritating.
“Oh, do hush up!”
It seemed hours before the sky began to turn pink, then gold, then darkening to a leaden gray. They heard crunching footsteps again, and voices.
“Find anyone else down there?”
“Nope—no bodies. Those two women must have skedaddled.”
“Train from Bristol will be along sometime tomorrow. Guess the passengers will have to camp out.”
“I allus thought it bad policy to take civilians on a military train.”
It grew chilly, with a nip of frost in the air
. Without coats or shawls Amélie and Babette huddled together for warmth. Through the leaves they could see the light of the fires above.
“Amélie, can’t we go back? At least they’ll have something to eat, even if it’s only soldiers’ rations. And we’ll be warm. If we stay here we’ll freeze to death.”
“We’re not going to stay here. We’ll start walking as soon as the moon comes up.”
“Walking? Where?”
“To the nearest farmhouse. You forget this is Virginia. The Federals may have the railroads but they don't have the people. They seceded.”
“Then what?”
“Why, then, they’ll help us to get to a point further down the line where we can board another train.”
“Without Dr. Johnson, without a permit?”
“I’ll find a way. I did it in Baltimore, didn’t I?”
The moon was in its first quarter, a pale slice in the night sky, giving off little illumination. But the stars were out and they cast just enough light for Amélie to distinguish one tree from the next. Leading the way, she set out in a direction away from the railroad although she sensed that following the stream would be more logical. People had a tendency to settle near water. But the train also ran alongside the stream and Amélie was afraid of being caught. Her lack of a permit in addition to her flight from the wreck would convince the Yankees that she was actively opposed to the Union. They might even accuse her of being a spy.
Their wide skirts catching on shrubbery and their heeled slippers tripping over exposed roots or sinking into animal holes hampered their progress. It wasn’t long before Babette let out an aggrieved, “Ouch! Damn! I’ve twisted my ankle. Can’t we sit down?”
“No,” Amélie said. “Hobble on it as best you can.”
“You’re cruel! Inhuman!”
Amélie set her lips and said nothing.
They went on at a slower pace, Babette muttering and threatening, at one point weeping. But Amélie dared not pause. She did not know how many miles they had gone or how long they had been walking but she wanted to be well away from the railroad before daylight. The woods gave way to savanna, then marsh in which they wallowed up to their ankles in mud. Then they were in among the trees again.
“I can’t,” Babette gasped. “I can’t take another step. Just leave me here to die. Go on, leave me.”
“Stop talking nonsense!”
Amélie’s own head was throbbing. She touched the egg-shaped lump on her forehead with tentative fingers. Her feet ached, too. Had she been wrong in insisting they walk away from the train? They might be angling back to it for all she knew. In the darkness it was impossible to single out a landmark, such as a lightning struck oak or a towering pine. She had never learned to read the stars so it was useless to search for the Big Dipper or the Southern Cross. She didn’t like to think they were lost or of the possibility of stumbling upon a Yankee camp. Perhaps it would have been better to take their chances with the sentry. But the image of the sharp-eyed Yankee so clear in her mind convinced her she had made the right decision.
A twig snapped and leaves rustled ominously behind them. Babette drew closer to her sister.
“Really, Babette,” Amélie said, “you surprise me. Where is the brave girl who hid one of our boys beneath her skirts?”
“That was fun. It was at home, not out here in the dark, miles from nowhere. If I had been discovered then, everyone might have had a good laugh. Not like now where there’s no one to laugh or even to cry, only the vultures to pick our bones clean.”
“Don’t be melodramatic.”
Babette, as she tottered along, was bitter with regret. Oh, why had she ever left Baltimore? Why had she thought it dull? Blast her sister for her stupid principles, her stubborn refusal to take the oath. If it had not been for Amélie’s stubbornness she would have had her permit and none of this would be happening. They’d be back at the train, waiting for rescue among warm, friendly people, sitting by a fire with hot food in their stomachs.
The darkness went on and on, relieved only by the faint glimmer of stars. Cold gnawed and pinched while over their heads pines soughed mournfully. Babette had ceased to complain. Stumbling, she clung to Amélie’s arm as they plodded jerkily over the uneven, leaf-littered forest floor.
Suddenly they heard a dog barking. Civilization! The homely barking was like music to their ears. It signified people, a farm, some sort of shelter.
They emerged from the trees like two exhausted voyagers sighting land. The house, a two-story board and batten, though completely dark seemed to welcome them. But their relief was short-lived as the dog, a splotched hound, with a series of excited, menacing barks raced across a vegetable patch toward them. Amélie snatched a hickory stick from the ground and as the dog leapt at her she gave it a good whack across the snout. It went yelping off, its tail between its legs. A light flickered on in an upstairs window.
Amélie dragged Babette across the garden and unhitched the gate. “Come on, Babs, just a few more steps.” A ground floor window bloomed with the same flickering illumination.
Amélie knocked on the door. After what seemed like an eternity, with the dog now barking at a safe distance, the door inched open. There was no face, no figure, just a wedge of light.
“If you will,” Amélie began in her politest Maryland accents, “my sister and I have lost our way, and ...”
A rifle barrel poked through, its muzzle catching Amélie at the throat.
“Git!” a harsh voice ordered. “Git or I’ll blow your head off!”
It was at this moment Babette chose to faint.
Chapter
❖ 15 ❖
Petrified, Amélie, supporting an inert Babette, stared down at the rifle barrel. The dog had come closer and its low growling and sharp yipping behind her finally galvanized her dry tongue into speech.
“Please—my sister . .
The gun was lowered and a gray-bearded man in a nightshirt stepped out.
“She’s fainted,” Amélie said.
“You ain’t foolin’?” the man asked suspiciously, peering into Babette’s ashen face.
Amélie staggered back under Babette’s weight. What was the matter with the man? More to the point was Babette fooling? Was this a trick to get them out of a tight spot? Or simply a ruse to disassociate herself from this latest crisis?
“She’s unconscious. We’ve walked a long way. Could you help us?”
A woman’s voice behind the door called, “Edgar! Edgar, who is it?”
“Two women. Where you from?” he asked, still suspicious.
“Anne Arundel County, Maryland.” She wanted to add, “we’re Confederates,” but was afraid he might be a Union sympathizer.
A short woman swathed in a shawl pushed through the door. “Why, I do declare!”
“Ma’am,” Amélie addressed the woman. “My sister’s fainted.”
“Why, so she has. Edgar, bring that girl in.”
“But they might be Yankee spies,” her husband objected.
“Don’t look like it to me. Here—give us a hand.” She eased Babette from Amélie’s arms and the man lifted her and carried her into the house.
They were Edgar and Sarah Ashton, yeoman farmers. Confederates, with two sons fighting at Sabine Pass the last they heard. Two younger boys were asleep upstairs. Ten days earlier Yankee foragers had visited the farm and cleaned it of livestock, a brace of plow horses, and the tobacco, corn, and cotton crops. They had left a decrepit mule and had overlooked a cache of food in the woods beyond the house.
All this was explained over a hastily got together meal of dried peas and yams. Amélie, and the now revived Babette, ate at the table in the kitchen while their hosts looked on.
“I thought you was sent by the Yanks,” Edgar said. “Tuesday last our neighbors was visited by a woman pretending to be a preacher’s wife. But she was spyin’ out to see if the Dawsons hid anythin’ from the foragers.”
“We don’t know for sure,” Sarah amen
ded.
“Then why’d the bluecoats come the next mornin’ and make a beeline for the spring where they’d hid a ham and a tub of butter?”
“Guesswork, mebbe.”
Amélie explained about what had happened to her and Babette, why they were on foot, and how she was trying to get to Fort Donelson.
When she was through Edgar sucked thoughtfully on his meerschaum pipe. “Best to wait here for a few days. We’ll take you over to Culpepper where you can catch another train. I don’t think they’ll bother you ’bout permits, do you, Sarry?’’
“The Franklins had no trouble when they went to their daughter at Waynesboro.”
“Only thing is,” said Edgar, “you might be takin’ a chance some busybody’ll recognize you. Them two soldiers who wanted to arrest you could have sent your description over the tellygraph.”
They were silent for a few moments.
“I got an idea,” Sarah said, her face lighting up. “We could dress you up in the boys’ clothes.”
“Right smart,” her husband concurred.
Babette twisted and turned before the wavy mirror in the Ashtons’ upstairs bedroom.
“Don’t I make a handsome boy?” she asked, winking at her reflection. The much mended trousers were a little too snug at the hips but the wool jacket, made for broader shoulders, fell past her bound breasts, concealing the curves. She looked slim, young, and implausibly innocent.
Amélie, also clad in wool, adjusted a slouch hat over her golden hair, gathered high now and pinned to her head. After a few days of rest and good food, though simple and unvaried, she, too, looked fresh and youthful again, the skin glowing with health, the eyes blue and clear as a mountain lake. “Just remember who you are, Babette, and don’t start flirting with the first man you see.
Babette giggled. “Oh, I won’t, I won’t!”
The next morning they left with Edgar Ashton in a mule-drawn cart. The girls looked exactly like the two smooth-cheeked boys they pretended to be. Dressed in their shabby “Sunday best” they were to pass as a pair of brothers on their way to visit Granny. Each carried a napkin-covered basket of watermelon preserves and a tied sack, which contained their gowns. Amélie had offered Sarah several of her gold coins in payment for their clothes and food, an offer Sarah obstinately refused. Nevertheless Amélie had left the coins under a crocheted doily on the kitchen table where she was sure Sarah would find them.
Honor's Fury Page 17
