September 26, 1862
Rain fell down in sheets, flooding the garden and washing soil away from the plants. It rained like it was trying to wash the land clean. Two weeks had passed since Mr. Harper had left them. Every day Ruth wondered if Noah would keep his decision to leave. So every day she lingered near the kitchen door as she did now, waiting to catch a glimpse of him around the barn. Just a glimpse; then she would go.
She couldn’t tell how late it was, not with the thunderclouds obscuring the sky. Past supper, she knew that much, though it was no longer served at any given time. Just whenever Betsy finished cooking, Ruth would take a meal up to Miss Lydia’s room and try to get her to actually eat it. The mistress no longer wore a corset. Not that she needed it. She had dropped too much weight already with her worrying.
Movement caught Ruth’s attention, and her gaze flicked to the barn. Two silhouettes hunkered against the rain and slinked through the doors. Ruth frowned. She waited silently under the cover of the stairwell that led to the quarters above the kitchen. Even through the storm she could hear Betsy singing an old hymn, her soulful voice slipping through the crack under the kitchen door.
Ruth pulled the hood of Miss Lydia’s old cloak over her head to protect her from the drips that made their way through the cracks in the planks serving as her shelter. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. Just a few more moments—then she would have to give up her watch. He probably wouldn’t come out in this anyway.
A group of several more figures appeared around the edge of the barn, ranging in size and shape. Ruth squinted. What were all these people doing going to the barn…? She gasped. The group. This had to be the group planning on leaving. It was happening. Tonight.
She glanced back at the kitchen. Should she tell Betsy? No. She should just go upstairs, climb into her bed, and forget all about the danger they were about to put themselves in. It was their choice. Their need for freedom. She stepped into the brunt of the rain and wrapped the heavy wrap tighter. She made it half way up the stairs before sighing and turning around.
Her feet slipped in the mud. Little rivers that ran like the mighty Mississippi through the garden soaked through her shoes and crept up the hem of her skirt. She shivered and slipped up to the barn. Faint light seeped through a small crack between the two large sliding doors at the short end of the building. Ruth put her eye to the crack.
Inside, more than twenty or so field hands sat on hay bales. Some looked at the floor, some glanced around with nervous expressions, and others hunched together in small groups of two or three. All adults. Thankfully, no children. Maybe those with families were smart enough not to risk their lives.
Noah stepped into view, his broad presence gaining the stares of all in the room. Ruth swallowed the lump that gathered in the back of her throat. He began to speak, too soft for her to hear over the rage of the rain and thunder. Many of the people nodded, pulling up packs and bags scattered on the floor.
Before she could convince herself otherwise, her fingers slipped into the crack and she pulled the door open, stepping inside. All eyes turned on her. She straightened her posture and shook the water from her skirts onto the dusty floor. The only sound came from the soft call of a horse somewhere in the back. Her gaze locked on Noah. He broke into a big grin.
Ruth’s heart sank, and she slowly shook her head. “I know what y’all plan on doing. But I don’t think y’all understand the danger you is going to find.” She slid her gaze over the people in front of her. Some frowned, and some seemed as if they wanted to bolt. She looked back at Noah. His face remained stoic.
“I been out there. Seen what happens when white men catch colored folk off their lands. Me and my sister….” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “Me and my sister were still on our master’s lands when they took us. Said we was runaways. We were beaten,” her eyes fell on a young woman about her age, “given to men’s lust, humiliated and tied together to sit in our own filth. Those that survived were drug into town and sold for a pitiful sum.”
Some of the people started to mumble. An expression she couldn’t quite place filled Noah’s face. She shifted her gaze back to the people. “I know you want freedom. But don’t think there ain’t white men that haunt them woods. Men that’d rather hang you than see you returned to you plantation. Or men who’d take your women and do what they want with ’em before leaving ’em for dead. You might make it to Union lines. But then what? You really think they is going to feed you? Let you sleep in they tents? I heard tell slaves without proper papers is sent back.”
The people began murmuring again. One young man, probably not too many years past the time his voice deepened and hair sprouted on his thin face, stood up.
“It’s a chance we got to take. A chance at freedom.”
“And if you die chasing it?”
He shrugged. “Better to die for freedom than to live as a slave.”
Ruth crossed her arms over her chest. “You ever been anywhere other than Ironwood?”
He shook his head. “Not that I remember. Came here when I was still clinging to my ma’s skirts when they built the new big house.”
“Then maybe you don’t know how good you got it here. Other places, you barely get ’nough to eat to keep your stomach from shrinking to nothing. You work all day, every day. No breaks on Sundays. And if you don’t work hard ’nough, or fast ’nough, or maybe you just don’t look right to a foreman, you get beat.”
The young man shifted his focus to the ground. “But we is still a white man’s property. No better than his horses.”
“And what if the Union wins this war? You gonna be granted your freedom anyway. Why risk it like this?”
“And what if they lose?” said gruff voice from somewhere behind Noah, who still hadn’t pulled his gaze from her face.
The young man nodded. “Yeah. What then? We lost our only chance to make it to the North.”
The others nodded their agreement. She knew there would be no convincing them.
Noah spoke up. “We done discussed it for weeks. The decision’s done been made. Many will stay. The rest of us, we’ll take our fate into our own hands.”
“Then that fate may be death.”
“But it’ll be death as a free people.”
Ruth’s stomach clenched and she stared into Noah’s eyes, trying to beg him to stay but unable to utter the words.
“Come with me,” he said.
She pressed her lips together. “I done told you. I can’t.”
He stepped close to her and she forgot about all the others watching them. There was only Noah with his strong hands and ever gentle eyes. Eyes that glittered now in the flickering lamplight. “You didn’t say why.”
He gripped her shoulders and stared down into her eyes. Her heart galloped. “Tell me why, Ruth. I got to know. I’ll protect you. You don’t have to be afraid of what happened to you before. I swear on my life no man’ll ever touch you again or raise his hand to you.”
“It’s not that.” She could scarcely get the words past the thickness in her throat.
He gripped her tighter, confusion in his features. “Why then? Is it ’cause you don’t feel for me what I feel for you?”
She shuddered under the conviction in his voice and in that moment knew that she would never again love another as honorable as the one in front of her. “I owes her my life. I can’t abandon her,” she whispered.
Shock flashed across his face. He dropped his hands. “You is choosing the white lady over your people?” His jaw worked. “Over me?”
“You don’t understand!”
“I understand. You done made your choice. We made ours.”
“Noah, please.”
He drew a long breath. “Maybe you should go now.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Please. Stay here…with me.”
He stared at her for a long, excruciating moment. Ruth’s breath stuck in her lungs. She’d laid her heart bare.
“I can’t. I done pr
omised to lead them.”
She swallowed hard and nodded. “And I promised to protect her like she done for me. Twice, I owed her my life. I won’t abandon her.”
A long moment passed and someone cleared their throat, reminding Ruth they were not alone.
“Then it’s settled.” Noah said, clenching and unclenching his hands at his sides.
A single tear slid down her cheek. “I guess it is.” She turned her focus on the band of runaways and wondered how many, if any at all, would find the new life they hoped for. “I hope y’all find what you is looking for.”
Ruth spun away from the pain in Noah’s eyes and fled into the night, the storm’s furry overshadowed by the tempest in her heart.
Corinth, Mississippi
October 4, 1862
Sweat pricked across Charles’s brow. Had an October ever birthed so much heat? If it had, he could not remember it. They’d reached Corinth yesterday on tired legs and empty stomachs. How many had dropped from heat stroke on the march he couldn’t say, but those who made it to the outer fringes of the earthen fortifications were struggling from dehydration and fatigue.
Charles looked through the remaining cover of woods to the raised grounds of the fortification a hundred yards or so ahead. Sharpened tree trunks burst from the compacted ground like needled teeth from a demon’s jaw. Battery Robinett.
He checked Draco’s tack again, fidgeting with the harness and the buckles. Everything was well secured, just as it had been the last two times he’d checked it. Men shuffled their feet around him, examining weapons, gear, and each other. Nearly one hundred men were positioned under him, a regiment of men he was not fit to lead. How many would survive this day? Would he?
He’d heard plenty of tales of the gore and glory of battle. He gripped the handle of the sword at his side, his sweaty palms slick against the hilt. He’d heard Union soldiers had walked through the field of wounded Confederates at Manassas, severing limbs from bodies and heads from shoulders. A shudder ran down his spine.
“Captain?”
Lieutenant Monroe’s voice jarred him from his thoughts. “Yes?”
“General Moore says they finally located General Herbert. Says he was sick. They didn’t attack when they were supposed to. The entire plan’s run amuck.”
That would explain the delays, although not why such a thing wasn’t reported earlier. Charles could only imagine how furious Van Dorn would be at the disruption of his perfectly timed plan. Guns had been moved into position a mere four hundred feet from Federal lines. Their four a.m. reveille, meant to signal the Confederate and startle the Union, seemed only to have readied the Fed’s for the attack. His mind raced with the thoughts in a single breath.
“What are the orders?”
“There’s heavy fighting in the center and left. Moore’s ordering us forward.” The lieutenant spurred his horse and shot down the line to spread the message. Moments later a blast from the bugle somewhere in the rear brought forth a yell from the men behind him.
Time to move. Charles swung onto the back of his prancing stallion, the familiarity of the saddle and horseflesh underneath him shoring up nerves that threatened to fray.
Charles raised his pistol overhead and Draco lurched forward, nearly thrusting him from his seat. Draco pushed through the woods, snorting as limbs slapped at them and tore through cloth and flesh. A hissing sound sped past him. Then another. The bark of a nearby pine suddenly exploded.
He was being shot at!
Bullets peppered the woods with increased regularity. Two smacked into a tree a mere arm’s length from his head. The men ducked behind and around them. Some cowered behind the cover while others raced forward with a near wild look of glee on their faces. Draco tossed his head and pranced underneath Charles, the mass of him frightened by the hissing sound of bullets and men straying too close to his legs.
“Easy, boy.” Charles ran his hand along the horse’s mane, his words doing little to soothe the quivering muscles under his fingers. What a prideful fool he’d been! Fox hunting was nothing like war. The stallion was not meant for the battlefield. The smell of equine sweat mingled with the nervous perspiration of hundreds of unwashed bodies, saturating his senses.
They burst forth from the tree line. The looming battery ahead roared to life, belching forth fire that would put a dragon to shame.
Suddenly the horse gave forth a shrill equine scream and bolted. Charles pulled back on the bit and dug a hand into Draco’s mane. Blood coated his palm, flowing from a deep gash along the top of the horse’s thick neck.
Charles caught movement in his peripheral vision and snapped his head around to see two other mounted officers on his left with Confederate colors flying proudly behind them. He lowered his head and urged Draco faster. Behind him, the famed Rebel yell was no longer something of exaggerated stories but a gut-wrenching cry that would cause the hair on a man’s neck to stand at attention.
Musket and cannon fire blackened the air, screeching projectiles narrowly missing his head. Iron hail rained down from above. The ground just in front of him exploded, black earth spraying like a geyser. Draco reared. Charles shifted in the saddle to maintain his hold on the horse, but he felt the heaving body under him shudder and begin to sway. He launched himself from the saddle and hit the ground just as the horse fell, the weight of him narrowly missing Charles’ foot.
Draco kicked his massive legs and thrashed his head. Then he quit moving.
“No!” The word tore from his throat, lost in the thunder of the cannon fire. He crawled to Draco, running his hand down the smooth muzzle. The horse snorted once and lay still, his big eyes wide. Charles stumbled to his feet, forgetting the screams of the men surging around him. A shell had left a massive hole in the horse’s tender underbelly. Charles turned away.
He snatched his pistol from where it had fallen and joined the swell of men in the column pushing on to Robinett. Fire fell from heaven, and the man to his right shrieked, his body ripped through with shards of metal. He fell to the ground, his gazed fixed above and his mouth twisted at a garish angle. The right side of his face was nearly gone. Charles coughed on the bile that rose to his throat. The boy couldn’t have seen more than fifteen summers.
Screams pulled his attention from the mangled youth. Men in blue were nearly upon him! They tore into the lines of Confederate soldiers and mowed down the regiment that struggled to maintain their advance. Charles leapt forward, his foot catching and catapulting him to one side. Something whistled by as he hit the ground. A bullet?
He lurched to his feet, dashing forward in an effort to regain his position at the fore of his regiment. Men fell around him, and still he moved forward. Soon he had to step over them as they piled closer together on the ground. His mind gave over to the madness of battle, firing upon men once called countrymen, his sword sinking into the flesh of fellow Americans. For how long he struggled to survive, he could not say. On they pushed through the ceaseless roar of cannon fire and crashing volleys, choking on dust and death.
Through the five-foot ditch already filled with bodies, past the spikes, and up the hill of Robinett they pressed on, sweat and blood staining their uniforms and smoke stealing their breath. Hurling shells hummed overhead, fiery tails blazing behind them in a display that, if it had not caused his blood to run cold, might have been quite beautiful. The projectiles exploded, showering them with bits of molten metal.
When they breached the fortification, the sun was well into the sky. How many had he killed? How many families would be without a father, a son, or a brother because of him? Charles pushed through the lines and into Corinth with foreign screams too uncivilized to be his own bursting forth from his chest.
He and what he guessed to be twenty or so other survivors of the massacre that had been the siege of Robinett were too battered to do anything other than to keep moving. Simple thoughts throbbed in Charles’s mind. Root out the enemy. Take Corinth. Survive to see Lydia again.
They fired i
nto windows of what had once been fine homes, forcing Federals out and to their deaths. Charles ducked behind the whitewashed wall of one such dwelling, his pistol ready.
Shouts rang out through the air as the men scrambled into position. Men in blue uniforms flooded the streets. Charles blinked his thoughts clear. Too many. Fresh troops without a stain on their pressed blue jackets. How many more were embedded within Corinth?
Something jammed hard into his back.
“Don’t move, Reb!”
He lowered his pistol slowly to his side, heart pounding in his chest. So this would be his end. Shot in the back while covered in filth. He would never see Lydia or Ironwood again. Would never give her children and raise heirs.
“Move forward.”
Charles took one step and halted. The rifle jammed into his spine again. “And drop that gun.”
Charles let the weapon slide from his fingers and hit the ground with a thud. He walked out into the street, where men in gray were herded together like livestock. His gaze traveled past them to a large building ahead.
The Tishomingo Hotel. He’d stayed there once as a youth traveling with his father. Where once gentlemen had strolled, soldiers were now being dragged inside. Many screamed. Some were missing limbs.
They trudged closer to the hotel, stopping just outside the steps. A Union man shouted something at them, but Charles couldn’t make out what he said. Prisoners? Or men to be executed?
A cannon ball tore through the air and slammed into the hotel, wood splintering in every direction and the hysterical screams of women cutting through the fog of his brain. He dropped to the ground and rolled away. Men shouted, and everything erupted into chaos. Blackness crowded the edges of his vision. He blinked. Why did he feel dizzy?
Charles rubbed his chest and felt warm wetness. He looked down to see a shard of wood about the size of a stake protruding from his right shoulder. Pain erupted in his chest. He gasped and ripped the offending object free. Blood gushed out and his head swam.
Clutching the wound with his left hand, Charles crawled away from the chaos around him. If he could just reach the safety of cover. He crept to the side of the hotel, willing himself to stay conscious. He must stay awake to keep pressure on the wound.
The Whistle Walk: A Civil War Novel (Ironwood Plantation Family Saga Book 1) Page 22
