To Whisper Her Name

by Tamera Alexander

  Wiping his mouth, he straightened and braced himself as jagged-edged memories rose inside him. Every evening they came, uninvited guests. They brought with them the dark, bone-numbing cold of Andersonville. Days on end without food. Nights spent sleeping in shallow trenches six inches deep in water, so full of filth and vermin he’d wake up feeling more like a corpse than a man.

  He walked to the door of the stable and stepped outside into the night, then reached into his pocket and pulled out the seashell. The day he’d entered Andersonville, the corporal on duty ordered all the prisoners to empty their pockets of valuables. He had, except for this shell, knowing it would mean nothing to anyone else. Still, he’d expected them to find it when they patted him down. Either they didn’t feel it or didn’t care … but he sure did.

  With his thumb, he rubbed the smooth inside of the shell, and with the nail of his forefinger, he ticked off the twenty-eight tiny ridges on the outside. He turned the shell over in his palm, always feeling a little homesick when he stared at it, yet feeling the comfort of home as well.

  The pale sheen of a full moon lit the yard in a silvery half light, and he drew in a deep breath, the faces of men he’d known in prison passing before him. Soldiers he’d served with, who — after only a few months — were hardly recognizable as men anymore, much less the soldiers they’d once been.

  A breeze kicked up and a sudden cool hit his cheeks. He quickly wiped them dry, hearing steps coming up behind him. He slipped the shell back into his pocket.

  “Well done, Lieutenant.” Robert Green held up a lantern. “You hungry?”

  Ridley cleared his throat and shrugged. “I could eat.”

  Green laughed. “‘I could eat,’” he parroted back. “I bet you could. Come on with me.”

  Ridley grabbed his pack. “What about the other lanterns?”

  “Leave ‘em. We got a man who’ll see to that.”

  Ridley followed, not knowing where they were going.

  He figured four weeks, six at most, and he’d have learned what he needed to know and would be on his way west. No later than the end of June for sure, which was when the last group of wagons left Missouri for the Colorado Territory. The letter in his pack from a trail guide outlined the details. They had to make it across Kansas before the first snowfall. He’d filed his application for 160 acres of land under the Homestead Act three years earlier, during the war. It had been accepted with the agreement that he improve the land within five years — easily done if he left this summer — then he’d file for deed of title. He had the money from the sale of the house and farm, what little it had brought. But it was a fair start compared to most. Add some to that amount by working here — if that worked out — and he’d have enough since it was just him alone. Then he’d be gone.

  On the far side of the meadow he made out a cluster of cabins, ones he’d seen earlier that day. “Is that where the stable hands bunk?”

  “Some of ‘em. Others come and go from town. The servants and their families live over there too. But ain’t no way I’m puttin’ you in with them, Lieutenant.” Green humphed. “Not with what done happened ‘tween you and Grady today. No, sir.”

  “But I was provoked. I was just defending myself.”

  Robert Green stopped short. “You look me straight in the eye and tell me you didn’t take pleasure in poppin’ him a good one.”

  Whether it was Green’s surprisingly parental tone or that he was dead on right, Ridley couldn’t keep from smiling.

  “Mmm-hmm …” Green eyed him. “We got us a good share of Rebel boys workin’ here, and seems to me it ain’t too wise for you to be mixin’ with that crowd. So you ain’t stayin’ with the other workers, Lieutenant. Not knowin’ what I know ‘bout you.” He took off walking again.

  Ridley easily caught up. “I’m obliged to you for thinking about me.”

  Green huffed. “It’s me I’s thinkin’ about. You get yourself found out and I’m the one who be in trouble.”

  While Ridley knew that was true, he also sensed the man was actually being kind but didn’t want a fuss made over it. “Where’re we going?” he finally asked.

  “Home.” Green motioned ahead to a cabin set off from the others.

  “That’s your place?”

  “Yes, sir, it is. Old Mr. Harding, the general’s father, built it hisself. Well, half of it anyways. That part” — Green pointed to one side — “used to be Dunham’s Station, a place to trade along the route.”

  Sure enough, as they got closer, Ridley made out what actually appeared to be two tiny cabins, joined by a dogtrot.

  “When Old Mr. Harding bought it some sixty years back,” Green continued, “he added the other side for his family and they lived here ‘til they built the big house.”

  At mention of the big house, Ridley looked back to see the windows on the main floor of the home glowing a warm yellow. They looked so welcoming, he could almost imagine walking up the front steps, knocking on the door all proper like, and being invited inside. Almost. He wondered which room Olivia Aberdeen was in right now and whether or not she’d eaten dinner or knew what her responsibilities in the home would be yet.

  He still couldn’t imagine her being a head housekeeper. Didn’t fit, for some reason. Then again, he never would’ve imagined he would have apprenticed himself to a Negro.

  Green strode through the night with ease, the full moon lighting their way, and Ridley recalled what the man had said about him and his parents being “a present” to the Hardings when Green was just a little boy. “You been here all your life, is that right?”

  “Sure ‘nough. Since I’s two.” Green gestured ahead. “And this cabin be where the general was born. So the place got special meanin’ to him. And me too, I guess.”

  Ridley contrasted the modest cabin with the comparative wealth and beauty of Belle Meade. “General Harding certainly has made his way in the world, hasn’t he, Mr. Green?”

  “Yes, sir, he sure done that.” Green took the stairs to the porch and paused on the open breezeway connecting the cabins, frowning. “But somethin’ you got to do, sir. You gotta stop callin’ me Mr. Green. No white man in a hundred miles of here does that. Most folks don’t even know my last name. Everybody ‘round here just calls me Uncle Bob.”

  Ridley smiled. “All right then. Uncle Bob. You best stop calling me lieutenant too. Most folks back home called me by my last name. You can too, if you want.”

  Green shook his head. “Think I like your Christian name better, sir. Ridley. It’s a good name. A strong name. ‘Sides …” He chuckled. “I once had me a dog by the name of Cooper.”

  Ridley laughed as Green reached to open the door.

  Green stilled and looked back in the direction of the big house. “Lawd, what is that?”

  Ridley turned in time to see a ball of flame streaking through the dark. It arched upward, upward, then crashed in a flurry of sparks against the stallions’ stable.

  “What in tarnation is —”

  Ridley was off the porch and running. The distance that would have taken five minutes to cover at Robert Green’s pace, he covered in one. As he drew closer, he spotted a shadow headed for the woods.

  But it was either the shadow or the stable.

  The torch lay burning against the wall and he kicked it away, quickly determining the arsonist had failed in his original intent — to reach the open door at the top. Instead, the fingers of flame slowly licked and curled their way up the dry wood. Ridley shed his outer shirt and began beating the flames, but they were too many and too spread out. He raced inside the stable, hearing a volley of gunfire signal behind him and, seconds later, the peel of a bell.

  The stallions, frenzied by acrid smoke, reared as Ridley opened the double doors to the stables, then bolted past him. He came to Jack Malone’s stable and the newly arrived stallion pawed the ground in protest, then leaped forward, nearly taking Ridley down as he tore out of the stall. At the far end of the stable, a man — a stable hand Rid
ley had met earlier in the day — began flinging open the remaining doors. Ridley grabbed an armful of blankets when he heard the crack of a whip.

  “Get outta here, you stupid —”

  Ridley saw which stall the man was in and reached the doorway in time to see the tapered end of the whip slash the haunch of the wounded mare. Cornered, the mare reared and fell into the wall. The man raised his arm a second time, but Ridley grabbed him. “Green told me no whips!”

  The man jerked away. “It don’t matter with her. She’s bein’ put down tomorrow anyway.”

  The mare gained her feet and pawed the ground with her good leg, her eyes stark with fear and confusion. It was a look Ridley had seen before.

  The man raised the whip again, and Ridley started to charge him. The mare let out a high-pitched scream, then charged from the stall into the night.

  Ridley grabbed the horse blankets and raced back outside. The lower half of the stable wall was engulfed in flames, which steadily crept higher. A dozen men — Bob Green among them — fought its progress with shirts and quilts and whatever else they could lay hands on. Ridley threw them blankets and set to work. Together, they fought from all angles, confining the flame, working to smother its life.

  Without warning, water rained down, and Ridley turned to see men and women — dark-skinned and light — formed into a line. The human chain passed buckets of water between them with practiced efficiency, sending bucketful after bucketful sailing overhead, dousing both the wall and the soot-covered men.

  Finally, in the haze of smoke and hacking coughs, someone called out, “I think we got it!”

  A minute later, “The inside is clear too, Uncle Bob!”

  Then a collective sigh wove its way through the group.

  Fully spent, Ridley leaned over, hands on his thighs, to catch his breath. His eyes and lungs burned, and the pounding at the back of his head had grown worse.

  “That’s the man right there, General! The one who set the fire!”

  Ridley looked up and saw Grady Matthews — the man responsible for the ache in his head — striding toward him, his chin bandaged. But it was who was with him, rifle in hand, that brought him upright.

  Uncle Bob had been right about his meeting with General Harding coming soon enough. But Ridley could already tell it wasn’t going to be the introduction he’d hoped for.

  Chapter

  NINE

  Who can tell me what happened here?” Harding’s voice carried over the crowd, pushing aside the sudden silence.

  Ridley quelled the urge to answer, having learned the hard way that sometimes it was best to keep his mouth shut. Especially when a man with a gun was staring him down.

  “I can, General.” Bob Green worked his way to Ridley’s side. “And it weren’t this man’s fault, sir. He was with me when the fire started. We saw it from my cabin, and he went runnin’. Got here first and started puttin’ out the flames. Got the horses out too, sir.”

  “You arrived here first?” Harding asked, his focus shifting back to Ridley.

  “Yes, sir.” Ridley nodded, noting suspicion in the general’s tone.

  Closer up, General William Giles Harding was taller than he’d imagined. In fact, the man was pretty much his match in stature and weight. He’d always heard Harding had a presence, a commanding quality that inspired men to follow. And while Ridley would have to concede that point, he also knew he rubbed men like Harding the wrong way. He didn’t know why exactly, but they had the same effect on him.

  “And just who might you be?” Harding continued.

  “This here’s Mr. Ridley —”

  “Thank you, Uncle Bob,” Harding interrupted. “But I’d rather hear it from him.”

  Ridley felt Green look over at him and could almost hear the man thinking, Come on now, Ridley. Don’t you go messin’ things up from the start. Ridley took a step toward Harding. “I’m Ridley Cooper, sir. I arrived here this afternoon, hoping to get a job.”

  “And just where are you from, Mr. Cooper?”

  “South Carolina, sir.”

  “That’s a long way from Nashville. How did you come to hear about Belle Meade?”

  If he’d had a dollar to spare, Ridley would’ve bet it Bob Green was piling up prayers about now. He gave a relaxed laugh, confident it would appeal to a man like Harding. “Beg your pardon, General, but it’s more like who hasn’t heard of Belle Meade.”

  The comment drew laughter and nods from those gathered, but only the faintest of smiles from General Harding.

  “I asked Uncle Bob about a job this afternoon,” Ridley continued. “He told me I’d need to speak to you about it. Of course he didn’t tell me that until after I’d already mucked out every stall there was and nearly got trampled by Jack Malone.”

  That drew even more laughter, along with a widening, more genuine smile from General Harding. Ridley felt the tension drain. Movement behind the general drew Ridley’s eye, and he spotted the silhouettes of five women standing on the front porch. He was cloaked by darkness and hidden in the crowd, but the soft glow of lantern light coming from the house backlit the women’s forms, and he thought he recognized Olivia Aberdeen standing particularly close to Mrs. Harding. A second later, his hunch was confirmed when the women turned to go inside. He’d recognize Olivia Aberdeen’s bustle anywhere.

  “I did see who set the fire though, sir,” he said, returning his attention to the matter at hand. “The man ran off into the woods.” He pointed. “Right over there.”

  Harding briefly glanced in that direction. “And you didn’t see fit to give chase, Mr. Cooper? You just let a man like that run off, so he can come back any night and try the same thing again?” He shook his head. “I thought you boys from South Carolina were made of stiffer mettle than that.”

  A ripple of expectancy moved through the crowd, but Ridley’s smile came easily. “I thought about chasing him, General Harding. Then figured that catching a fool like that” — he purposefully glanced at Grady — “wasn’t worth risking a thoroughbred like Jack Malone. Much less a stable full of them, sir.”

  Wordless, General Harding studied him for a moment, and Ridley began to wonder if he’d overstepped his bounds. Wouldn’t be the first time.

  Then Harding stepped forward. “I couldn’t agree more, Mr. Cooper.” He reached out a hand.

  Ridley accepted, finding the general’s grip firm and unyielding. He heard Bob Green sigh beside him and figured the man was satisfied in how things had turned out.

  And he was pretty sure he had himself a job.

  Olivia awakened before sunup from a fitful night’s rest. She curled in the bed, the general’s request playing like a sad, dissonant chord over and over in her mind. I need you to help my sweet Elizabeth to die.

  She shivered, even though the room wasn’t cold. She’d come up here last night and cried tears she didn’t know she had left. General Harding was mistaken, that’s all. He had to be. Aunt Elizabeth couldn’t be that sick. Yes, she had appeared a little fatigued. But seriously ill?

  Olivia rolled onto her back, unable to believe it. Unwilling. She could name a dozen situations where doctors predicted one thing, only to see the opposite. Doctors weren’t infallible. She knew that well enough.

  The first hint of pink filtered through the lace curtains on the east-facing window, and she pushed back the bedcovers and padded softly across the carpeted floor. She nudged the window up further, wanting to smell the newness of morning, then knelt and peered at the grounds just a floor below. It was so peaceful …

  The estate and meadow beyond lay shrouded in low-hanging fog, feathery wisps clinging to tree branches and hovering in the low places where the meadow sagged. Outside her window, wisteria — thick and hearty — wove its way through a trellis. She breathed deeply, loving the aroma of the fragrant purple flowers.

  From this vantage point, she had a full view of the beautiful meadow for which Belle Meade was named and of the old Harding cabin. The one the general’s father b
uilt, as Elizabeth had once written. A curl of smoke rose from its chimney. Set against the misty morning, the scene looked more like a portrait on canvas than reality. She could see someone moving about inside the cabin and wondered who lived there now.

  A bell tolled, echoing across the meadow. One, two, three, four … Minutes later, servants appeared on the grounds below, their workday begun.

  Elizabeth will not die.

  The thought came so vividly, she felt the certainty of it as surely as her own heart beating solid and strong in her chest. “Elizabeth hasn’t been told,” the general had explained last night. “The doctor counseled that would be best, at least for now. After thorough consideration, I agree. She could live for several months yet, or … only a matter of weeks,” he’d finished softly, displaying remarkable stoicism. “I see no reason to upset her nerves and cause her undue stress with this revelation. And I must insist, Olivia, that you keep our confidence as well.”

  That’s when she’d started to cry. “Do Selene and Mary know?”

  He had shaken his head. “Again, I request that you allow me to share that news with my daughters when the time is right.” He’d risen from his desk then and accompanied her to the door, his hand resting on the latch. “Elizabeth needs someone to help care for her. Not all the time yet, certainly. But that time will come. And” — his voice lowered — “according to what your dear mother shared with Elizabeth before she passed, your tender care greatly eased her own journey home. That’s what I’m asking of you, Olivia … please. To ease Elizabeth’s journey home.”

  Now, with knees aching from kneeling at the window, Olivia stood and pressed her palm flat against the pane. She would help Elizabeth in every way she could. But to gain strength, to get better. Not to die. Having cared for her mother, she knew something about nurturing the sick. When the doctor had first diagnosed her mother, he’d told the family she didn’t have long to live. Olivia looked at the framed drawing of her mother she’d placed on the bureau. Her mother had died just one day shy of Olivia’s fifteenth birthday — five years after the doctor’s diagnosis.