The swans were forgotten, once they reached Dr. Kirkwood’s office.
“The Bible!” Ginna’s words were like a benediction.
She hurried around the doctor’s desk and sat down. Slowly, carefully, she opened the great book to the place marked by a faded purple satin ribbon. Before her eyes were pages and pages, line after line of spidery script, recounting the entire history of the Swan family of Virginia in marriage, birth, and death notations.
“Oh, Neal,” she breathed. “Come look. It’s all right here.”
He moved to her side and placed a hand on her shoulder. Leaning down, he squinted at the flouished writing. “I hope the doc has a magnifying glass. I can’t make out a word of that.”
Ginna wasn’t really listening. Instead, she was scanning the lines, searching for the entry that announced the birth of Agnes and Rodney Swan’s daughter, little Roslyn.
“Here it is!” She spoke, as much to herself as to Neal. “I remember that day so well. I even recall watching Mother—I mean, Melora Swan—write in the name and date.”
She checked the next line, sure that she would see Virginia and Channing’s names and the date of their broomstick wedding. There was no mention of any such a happy occasion.
“It’s not here!” she cried.
“What, darlin’? What are you looking for?”
She rubbed a hand over her eyes. “Surely I didn’t imagine it. I know it happened. Afterward, we made love until dawn. I became pregnant that very night.”
Neal crouched down beside her chair and took her hand. His face filled with concern, he gazed up at her. “Take it easy, Ginna. You’re getting too caught up in all this. Are you talking about Virginia? You said ‘I,’ honey. What is it that’s missing?”
She leaned her head down on her arm. “Oh, Neal, I’m so tired, so confused. Of course, I meant Virginia. Why wouldn’t their marriage be recorded here in the Bible?”
Thinking the matter through logically, he answered, “Maybe Melora Swan was too busy with all that was going on, and she just forgot. Or maybe she still planned on a big wedding, after the war was over, and she didn’t want to confuse things by listing two weddings in the Bible.”
Ginna sat up straight and wiped her eyes. “More likely, Virginia’s mother never considered that broomstick jumping a legal marriage. There was no real minister, just old Brother Zebulon. And I doubt any other bride in the Swan family ever married in the slave fashion. No, Melora only allowed Virginia and Channing to believe they were married. It was all a sham, Neal. It might as well not have happened.”
Gently, he gripped Ginna’s shoulders and turned her to look at him. “If ever there were two people who were married in their hearts and souls—where it really counts, darlin’—those two were Channing and Virginia. The fact that Melora Swan failed to write it down means nothing. You are the living proof that Virginia Swan married Channing McNeal and gave birth to his child.”
“Yes,” Ginna said. You’re right, Neal. I am the proof of their love, if not their marriage.”
Trying to distract her, Neal asked, “What’s on the next line?”
Ginna leaned close, trying to decipher the tear-stained scrawl. “Oh, no!” she cried.
“What?” Neal was beginning to be alarmed. All these revelations from the past could not be good for Ginna’s weak heart. He found himself worrying over her, even after he had promised her he would not.
“Jed died. Captain Royal told us the last time I saw him that Jed had been wounded, but he said it wasn’t serious. What could have happened?”
Neal thought about the primitive medical practices back during the war, the lack of drugs, especially among the Confederate ranks. Disease had been rampant throughout both armies. He decided against expressing such thoughts to Ginna. That might only upset her more.
“What could have happened?” he said. “In wartime, Ginna? Anything. Does it say where he was killed?”
She read from the tear-blurred page. “‘Jedediah Swan, Junior, killed at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland on the seventeenth of September, 1862, fighting for our Cause.’”
“He had probably recovered from his first wound,” Neal said, “then got hit at Antietam. If I remember my history, that was one of the bloodiest battles of the war.” He recalled seeing an old Alexander Gardner photograph of Confederate corpses lined up by a fence bordering Farmer Miller’s cornfield.
“Yes. That’s probably what happened,” Ginna answered quietly, her eyes focused on the next entry.
“Can’t you read that next one?” Neal asked, when she studied it for so long.
“This one’s different,” she said. “It’s just a note Melora jotted in between the lines.”
“What does it say?”
Ginna’s voice quivered as she began reading. “’As of the first day of July, 1863, my husband, Colonel Jedediah Swan, was still alive and well. I have saved his dear letter written on that date, the first to arrive in months, for I felt in my heart that it will be his last. On the third day of July, I felt a strange emptiness, a loss, a slipping away of cherished bonds. My husband is dead. I know not how I know. God, please grant him safe passage into Heaven, and bring my two remaining sons home safely.*”
“Only two sons?”
Ginna ignored Neal’s question. She was too busy turning the pages, hoping to find Colonel Swan’s last letter to his wife. She found many things—pressed flowers, fancy calling cards, a few faded Confederate bills, and, finally, the Colonel’s precious last words to his wife. She unfolded the ragged square of brown paper and scanned the lines.
1 July 1863
Pennsylvania
My darling Wife,
It is time to send our Rodney home to you. He still breathes and his heart still beats, but he is otherwise dead to us. Poor, brave boy! The surgeons here say there is naught else to be done for him, save seeing to his bodily needs and providing him a comfortable place to rest. Please soothe his little wife as best you can. This will not be an easy blow for her to take. At least Agnes has baby Roslyn to cherish for years to come. Perhaps, with God’s mercy, and your tender care, our son will return to himself, once he reaches Swan’s Quarter. I pray so, my dearest.
Hopes run high in camp these days. We have crossed into the North, the very homeland of the enemy. They shall soon get a taste of the suffering they have caused us. Rumor has it that both armies will meet near here at a town called Gettysburg. I scouted the area yesterday and found it to be a quiet hamlet, nestled among green, rolling hills, one dominated by a seminary for young men. Battle in such a quiet place seems unthinkable, but so it must be. This is to be the turning point, according to General Lee, our chance to end this long and bloody conflict. Another prayer to God, if He is still listening, to put a swift and merciful conclusion to all this madness.
Melora, my dearest, I have always been a man of action, but few words. On the eve of this battle, I feel the need to tell you how adored you are, how cherished and loved by your husband. I hope that when you look past the swan pond to the tulip poplar we planted on the day we were wed, you think of me as I am thinking of you always.
My love and affection to Virginia, Agnes, and Roslyn.
Ever faithfully,
Your adoring Husband
Col. Jedediah Swan
Ginna’s eyes were swimming with tears by the time she finished reading the Colonel’s letter silently. She handed it to Neal, too choked up to say a word. She used the few minutes, which Neal took deciphering Jedediah Swan’s old-fashioned handwriting, to compose herself. All she could think of was Melora, hundreds of miles away, feeling a physical loss at the moment her beloved husband was killed on the battlefield at Gettysburg. Had Virginia felt that same loss? she wondered. Had Channing returned to her after the war, or had he, too, fallen in some farmer’s corpse-strewn pasture?
“This explains why Melora turned Swan’s Quarter into a home f
or Confederate soliders,” Neal said, reading through the letter a second time. “I wonder how long Rodney lived and if he ever recovered.”
Ginna thumbed back through the pages and traced the lines with one finger. “He lived through the end of the war,” she said. “’He died quietly in his sleep’—Melora wrote—’on the very day that General Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, the ninth of April, 1865.’”
Both of them remained silent for a time, experiencing the weight and sorrow of that terrible war, as if it were a personal tragedy. It was, in fact. They were not simply reading about strangers who had lived and died over a century ago. They knew these people; they had lived among them for brief periods and had come to know and love them.
Dr. Kirkwood came in. “Have you found what you were looking for?”
“Not everything,” Ginna answered. “Not yet.”
Neal filled the doctor in on the facts they had leaned so far. Meanwhile, Ginna had gone on to the next entry.
“Here’s another of Melon’s notes,” she said. “After Rodney’s death, Agnes took Roslyn and moved away. Her mother needed to go the a healthier climate, so Agnes accompanied her.”
“What about Virginia?” Neal asked. “And Channing?”
Ginna shook her head. “Not a word. It’s as if both of them dropped completely out of the picture.” Still reading, she cried, “Oh, wait! Here’s something. It’s out of sequence, as if Melora jotted it down as an afterthought. No, it’s simply a sad update.”
“Well, read it,” Neal urged.
“It’s dated the tenth of May, 1865. ‘The twins arrived home today, both in good health, but thin and downcast. They are making plans even now to head West and seek their fortunes. I had hoped they might bring news of Virginia. When she received word nearly a year ago that Channing had been wounded at Petersburg, she insisted on going to find him and bring him home. Since that time, I have taken care of her darling baby, Channelle, who was born nine months to the day after Channing McNeal’s last visit to Swan’s Quarter, the occasion of the broomstick ceremony. After all this time, I have about given up hope. Surely tragedy has befallen both my daughter and the man she loved. Will I ever see their dear faces again? Will Channelle ever know her parents?’” Ginna finished reading with a shudder and a sob.
Neal closed his arms around her, trying to comfort her. “This isn’t the end of it, darlin’. We can go to Washington, to the Library of Congress. They have records there. Maybe we’ll find Channing listed.”
“Ginna?” Dr. Kirkwood said, in a tone of alarm. “What’s wrong?”
She had sagged in Neal’s arms, her eyes closed, her breathing labored.
Neal looked up at the doctor, stricken, pleading. “Do something, Doc!”
Kirkwood reached for the phone to call an ambulance, but Ginna, rousing, caught his sleeve to stop him.
“No,” she gasped. “I won’t leave Neal.”
“I’ll go with you, Ginna. I’ll stay with you. I promise.”
“Too late,” she whispered. “Time’s run out. Take me to the greenhouse. Take me back, Neal. Back to Virginia.”
“What’s she talking about?” Kirkwood asked. “She’s delirious.”
“No, she’s not. There’s no time to explain now, but she knows exactly what she wants, and it makes sense.”
He lifted Ginna gently in his arms and started out of the room. They would go to the greenhouse, go back to the past, and live long and happily as. Virginia and Channing. Neal felt a new confidence, a new excitement. Then he stopped.
“It’s dark out,” he said.
“Of course it is. It’s nearly nine o’clock, and I’m not waiting another minute. Ginna needs to be in a hospital.”
Elspeth suddenly appeared at the door to Dr. Kirkwood’s office. She was smiling, even though she could see Ginna’s limp form in Neal’s arms.
“You come with me,” she said to Neal. “Don’t need no noontime sun. I know the secret. Come quick, now!”
All the way to the greenhouse, Neal was aware of Elspeth muttering to herself. Every now and again, he would catch a word or two.
“Love don’t die … we gone have us a weddin’ … full moon tonight… ghosts come out sure enough … you hurry along now … come one, come all…”
Neal never noticed that, as they moved through the hall, the others fell in behind them—Pansy, Sister, Marcellus, Big George—they all came. Elspeth drew the inmates of Swan’s Quarter like the Pied Piper. Only when they reached the greenhouse and people came pouring in, did Neal realize that everyone was there.
“Elspeth, what’s going on? It’s too crowded in here. Ginna can’t breath.”
The old woman smiled at him, still unperturbed. “But Miss Virginia, she breathe just fine.” She pointed toward the glass plate negative high up on the greenhouse wall. “You watch that old moon. It gonna shine to beat all. Shine for Ginna, it will.”
“Neal?” Ginna moaned. “Neal, kiss me.”
He leaned down and covered her lips with his. Would this be their last kiss? She felt so cold.
“Ginna, please,” he whispered, “don’t leave me, darlin’. I love you. I can’t live without you.”
Just as he leaned down to kiss her again, a great wind whipped through the greenhouse, showering everyone with purple blossoms from the gnarled wisteria vine that Virginia Swan had once carried as her bridal bouquet, then planted as a symbol of her never-ending love for Channing McNeal.
The moon rose. The ghosts appeared. A great bolt of lightning flashed.
“Neal!” Ginna cried. “Hold me tight!”
He tried to hold onto her. He really did.
Chapter Nineteen
With a jolt that almost took away what little breath she had left, Ginna Jones found herself once more inside Virginia Swan. By the brilliant green of the landscape, she knew it was early summer. She was alone—dusty and weary—walking up the path from the woods. She gazed toward the house on the hill, thinking how much she had missed the place and how wonderful it was to be home, after all this time. She paused at the swan pond and smiled. The old cob and his pen had their heads bowed together to form a perfect heart.
Looking back at Swan’s Quarter, she thought she saw people on the veranda, rocking slowly, waving to her and smiling. But a moment later, they vanished.
A happy cry greeted her, as she drew nearer. “Virginia?” Her mother came rushing out of the front door, a pretty toddler clinging to her long, black skirt. “Virginia, can that really be you?”
She broke into a trot, eager to feel her mother’s sheltering arms around her again, dying to hold her little daughter, Channelle.
“Oh, my sweet, dear girl!” Melora wept. “I never thought I’d see you again. Where have you been? How have you survived all this time?”
Polly came bustling around the side of the house. “I swannee, if it ain’t Miss Virginia, in the flesh! You had us mighty worried, I can tell you, ma’am.”
Virginia, holding Channelle and kissing her sunlit curls, hugged Polly. “You wouldn’t happen to have some fried chicken on the place, would you? I’m starved!”
While Polly fried the chicken, Virginia bathed and changed clothes up in her bedroom, with Melora and Channelle by her side every moment.
Melora caught her up on all that had happened in their family since she left. Agnes and Roslyn were fine, still with her mother at the sulfur springs. The twins had gone all the way to California, where they were both married and raising families now. They had opened up a mercantile store in San Francisco. Most of the slaves had taken off for the North, but a few, who were “family,” had stayed on to work for wages.
“And Channing’s family?” Virginia asked, pulling on a frock that had been far too small for her before she left, but fit perfectly now.
“They arrived home from Paris a few months after the surrender,” Melora said. “Channing’s father is in the wine business now. He brought cuttings ba
ck from France, and they seem to thrive in our rich soil.” Melora beamed at her daughter. “And Letitia is teaching me to paint. I’ve already done a portrait of Channelle, and I believe it’s quiet good.”
Virginia reached for her daughter and drew her onto her lap. “With such a pretty subject, how could it be anything but beautiful?”
The little girl, still shy with her mother, gazed up at her with Channing’s dark eyes.
Melora took the girl from Virginia and said, “Why don’t you go down and ask Polly if that chicken is done yet, dear?”
With a wave and a smile, Channelle skipped out of the room. Melora hadn’t wanted the child to hear her next question.
“What of Channing, Virginia? Did you find him?”
Her daughter’s beaming face answered the question, even before she spoke. “I did. He was wounded at Petersburg, as we heard. I searched and searched, before I found him in a makeshift hospital. Had I not gone to nurse him, he would have died, Mother. The conditions were beyond deplorable. I don’t want to think about it, much less talk about it.”
“But where is he now? Why didn’t he come home with you?”
“He will be here soon. He had to go to Washington to take care of some business first—something about a woman who was thought to have died, but is really alive. He didn’t tell me all the details. It’s army business, I suppose. We came most of the way together, then parted at Winchester. He said the sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he could come to Swan’s Quarter to marry me in proper fashion.”
Melora clapped her hands, then hugged her daughter. “Oh, I can’t tell you how happy this makes me!”
“We both knew that you never considered our broomstick-jumping a proper ceremony. We want to make it perfectly legal.”
“And perfectly lovely! Channing’s mother brought you a beautiful gown from Paris. Polly and I will see to all the other arrangements.”
Virginia soon discovered that there had been more changes at Swan’s Quarter than she had suspected. Her mother had taken in several wounded veterans, and their wives had come to be with them. Some of the people seemed so familiar, yet she knew she had never met them before. There was one couple in particular, his name was Billy and his pretty wife was called Pansy. Many of the guests at Swan’s Quarter joined Virginia, Melora, and Channelle for some of Polly’s fried chicken, mashed potatoes, spring squash, and lemon-cheese cake.
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