A Secret Refuge [02] Sisters of the Confederacy

by Lauraine Snelling

  When Abby brought a tray with teacups and teapot and a platter of cookies, he thanked her and helped himself. The scent of narcissus wafted in the half-opened window, the breeze billowing the lace curtains. Louisa shivered and got up to close the window. While the day had been mild for February, evening was bringing back the chill.

  She crossed the room and kissed her aunt. “Think I’ll go finish Jesselynn’s letter with our good news. Do you have a message for her?”

  “Just tell her I am praying that our Father will keep them all safe and bring us all back together one day.”

  “I will. Good night, dear.” She knew if she could get up the stairs, Zachary most likely wouldn’t try to question her tonight.

  “So soon? Here, I have something I’d like to show you.” He heaved himself to his foot, and short of running away, she was trapped. The thought of stealing his crutch almost made her laugh. Now, wouldn’t that be a trick?

  Waiting for him to get moving forward gave her time to finish her cup of tea and set it back on the tray. Then taking another cookie, she followed his no-longer-stumping gait down the hall. When he wanted to, he could move fairly swiftly. Shutting the door behind them, he turned to her.

  “All right. Now what are you up to?”

  He knew her too well. Nothing would not work. She sent up a help prayer and took a seat on the horsehair settee. She could hear her mother’s voice, the slow drawl emphasizing her wisdom all the more. “Honesty is the best policy.”

  “So be it.”

  “Pardon?” He sank down into his chair and with his one hand began unbuckling the straps that held his peg in place.

  “You are aware that we are out of morphine?” She waited for an answer but received only a studied glance. Laying the contraption aside, he rubbed the end of his leg encased in a footless stocking knit of the finest wool Louisa could find.

  “So?”

  “So I propose we go and obtain some.”

  “You what?” He stared at her openmouthed.

  “You heard me. I thought to do this by myself, but I believe the two of us would be a lot more effective.”

  “And how are you planning to bring this commodity back?” He leaned back in his chair, feigning nonchalance.

  She could tell he was acting because of the little finger twitching on his remaining hand. Always some portion of his body moved, especially when he was attempting to make her think otherwise.

  “I don’t know. I heard of a woman bringing something back tied to the inside of her hoops. I imagine I could do that.”

  “They shoot spies.”

  “We wouldn’t be spies. We would be visiting our cousin. Perhaps we could call on other Southern sympathizers and seek their aid.”

  “Louisa, drop it.”

  His tone set her teeth on edge. She leaned forward. “In a word, my dear brother, no. If you don’t want to go with me, I will go alone.” She arched an eyebrow. “I know the trip would be very hard on you.” Her voice dripped with honey.

  “Louisa, as the head of this family, I forbid you to even consider such an action.”

  “You know, perhaps we could carve out your peg and store morphine in there. And in the handle of your crutch.”

  “Louisa!”

  “I heard tell of a false bottom in a carpetbag, and some people store their jewelry in a book, hollowed out for just that purpose. Why, if we used the family Bible, no one would question—”

  “Louisa Marie Highwood, you are beyond the realms of possibility.”

  “Now, what could we take Cousin Arlington that he might not be able to get in that big city? Something of home?”

  “Louisa, I swear I will lock you in your room.”

  “Zachary James Highwood, those ideas went out with the dark ages. Now, when do you think would be a good time to leave? Are the trains running north, or is there fighting between here and there? If there is, perhaps we should go by sea or head west and come into Washington from the North. Surely you would know the best route, since you traveled up there that summer during college.” She waited a moment. “Or, if you won’t go, perhaps I’ll ask Carrie Mae. Two sisters traveling together . . .”

  Zachary groaned.

  “If only Jefferson would let her go without him. He is so solicitous of her.”

  Zachary leaned back and closed his eye.

  The new lines on his face made her almost stop her planning, but not quite. She had her brother home safe, albeit much the worse for wear. Other mothers and sisters were far less fortunate.

  “We must do this, Zachary. If there is any way to alleviate the suffering of our men, we must.”

  SPRINGFIELD, MISSOURI

  “Hey, young Highwood, that black of your’n still lookin’ for work?”

  “Yes, suh. But he’s a free man, not mine.”

  “He works for you, don’t he?” Dummont leaned on his arms. “Jules needs a blacksmith. His man took sick and died. The influenza, it be bad this year.”

  “I’ll tell him.” And Meshach can ride Roman in now, so that will be easier. Don’t think he’d take it otherwise. She let her thoughts range as she browsed the aisles of the store that had merchandise up the walls and hanging from the ceiling. So much to do to get ready.

  With her horse and mule loaded, she rode over to the house where Aunt Agatha now lived. Knocking at the door, she glanced around. Daffodils were sprouting, their green spears breaking through the leaves blanketing the flower beds. Crocus, purple and white, bloomed around the base of a redbud whose stems bore fat buds, promising blossoms soon.

  “Ah, Jesse, how good to see you.” Aunt Agatha opened the door wide. “Can you stay for a cup of tea?”

  Jesselynn’s mouth craved a cup of tea as a drowning victim craved air. “I wish I could, but look how late it is. I need to be back by dark.” She handed her gifts to her aunt and gave her a hug. “Are you managing here?”

  “Yes, the poor dears. They are so happy to have me here, and I feel at home. This . . .” She paused, indicating with a sweep of her arm the cheery kitchen with blue-and-white plates on a rail below the ceiling and blue-and-white checked curtains at the windows. A black-and-white cat lay curled asleep on a chair cushion. “This is more like my home. I wish you had seen Oakfield.” She shook herself and set the packet of food in the dry sink. “Thank you, my dear. You are so thoughtful. We shall have rabbit fricassee for supper.”

  Jesselynn watched her aunt. She appeared to have gained some of her weight back, and the sparkle had returned to her eyes. Maybe she would do fine here and not need to go west with them. For one so used to ordering her own home, with slaves waiting on her, she didn’t seem to mind being the one who cared for the two old people.

  “I’ll tell cook. She’s off to the market right now.”

  “Ah.” That answered many questions. “I’ll be on the road, then.” She kissed her aunt’s papery cheek. She smelled of rose water and happiness.

  Jesselynn left town feeling more hopeful than she had for days.

  Until the rain started again. Cold, wet, the dark cloud over her soul returned with a vengeance. Would she ever know simple joy again?

  MARCH 15, 1863

  Three weeks later they were on the road west.

  Jesselynn slapped the reins over the backs of Chess and the mule. “Giddyup there.” She looked over her shoulder to see Aunt Agatha sitting in her rocking chair, knitting as long as the light lasted. Ophelia had the two boys singing with their feet waving over the tailgate of the wagon. Their sweet voices carried over the undulating grass of the prairie. The sun had just set, so the sky changed from vermilion to cerise and faded to lavender and finally gray. The evening star shone like a crystal against the deepening blue of the heavens.

  “Come on, Jesselynn, make a wish upon a star.” It was her brother Adam’s voice, as familiar as if they were playing on the closely clipped lawns of Twin Oaks. Adam, the first of the Highwood men to fall to enemy fire. But so real. She tried to ignore the star that pulled
her gaze like a magnet. I wish . . . I wish for a safe journey and a home at the end . . . for all of us. So two wishes. After all, she hadn’t wished on that particular star for a very long time.

  The jingle of the harness, the clop, clop of trotting horses’ feet, and the singing reminded her more of a picnic than the long journey ahead. But here there were no rolling, bluegrass-waving hills of Kentucky, only flat prairie, broken by scattered farms like toys tossed out by children at play. They not only had a full wagon but two horses bearing packs and a new member, who sat rocking. Aunt Agatha, without a home since the old people she cared for had died from the flu, came along only out of sheer desperation and Jesselynn’s threatening everything but force.

  Daddy, you’d better be appreciating this.

  Ophelia sat beside Jesselynn on the wagon seat, her stomach barely rounding in the first months of growing a baby. Both mares bred again, hopefully settled, but with their foals cavorting at their sides. Daniel, as the lightest, rode the filly, and Meshach and Benjamin the stallions.

  If only they didn’t have so far to go. The things she’d heard of the journey ahead made her long to remain in Missouri, or return to Twin Oaks. The last letter from Louisa told of the devastation of their home, according to a letter from the Marshes, their nearest neighbors. But the land was still there. And perhaps the silver and other treasures they’d buried in the rose garden. The land would still grow tobacco and feed Thoroughbred horses.

  Meshach pulled back to ride alongside the wagon. The smile he gave Ophelia spoke of love and adoration, two things surely lacking in Jesselynn’s life. When the letter came from Barnabas White, she’d waited for her heart to beat a bit faster, but even at his pledge to find them, she could only stir dead embers. Surely there was a man somewhere who would make her heart leap with joy at the sound of his voice—as it had for John’s. Surely there was joy—somewhere.

  She glanced down at the boots and britches she wore. Humph. That is, if anyone could ever get close enough to figure out there was a woman under this garb. Longing to wear a soft cotton dress caught her by surprise. To feel the swish of silk against her legs, soft shoes on her feet, hair falling down her back, inviting the fingers of the man she . . .

  “Good grief!”

  Her mutter gave Ophelia a start. “What dat?”

  “Nothing. Just dreaming, I guess.” She hupped the horses again. They had to make good time while they could. Who knew what tomorrow would bring? Right now they had the cover of darkness. All they had to do was get to the safety of Independence, Missouri, and sign on with a wagon train. Before the end of April.

  They should have started earlier, but the land just now had dried out enough to travel after an unusually wet winter and spring.

  “We got to slow down for de little’uns,” Meshach said after they’d been riding several hours. So long about midnight they stopped for a breather. Meshach checked the straps and girths on the pack animals. Both foals started to nurse as soon as the mares stopped; then they collapsed on the grass, stick legs straight out. The horses immediately put their heads down to graze, the new grass already knee-deep.

  “Milk. We’ll buy milk for breakfast.” Jesselynn had dreamed one night of buying a cow and taking her with them. Could they take a crate of chickens clear to Oregon? They had to have livestock if they were going to farm. She caught herself dozing before they started out again.

  Benjamin, riding point, returned before the dawn made itself known.

  “Good place up ahead.” He rode beside Jesselynn. “Dere’s a small creek. We can camp over de edge of de ridge, so be out of sight of de road.”

  “How’d you find it?” Jesselynn covered a yawn with her hand.

  “Ahab tell me. Him thirsty.” Benjamin slapped the shoulder of his mount. “Him better’n a hound dog for findin’ water.”

  “Good. You tell ol’ Ahab thank you for all of us.” She pulled the wagon to a stop and staggered to the ground. One foot had gone to sleep and was letting her know about it in no uncertain terms, threatening to collapse at the slightest weight. She wiggled her toes and waited until she could hobble.

  By that time Meshach had unhooked the traces and was leading the team out to graze.

  They all went about their work silently, hoping those sleeping in the wagon would stay asleep. When Meshach volunteered to take the first watch, Jesselynn only nodded, took her deer hide and her quilt, and crawled underneath the wagon just as she had those months before they sheltered in the caves around Springfield. The thick grass formed a soft pallet, and the songs of peeper frogs composed her lullaby.

  A rifle shot yanked her awake.

  “Mercy sakes. What was that?” Aunt Agatha didn’t sound particularly happy, but then she hadn’t ever since she arrived at their cave. If the couple she’d cared for had not succumbed to the influenza, she would still be in their lovely home in Springfield. If could be a mighty big word.

  “Sounds like Meshach shot somethin—maybe our breakfast.” Ophelia passed by Jesselynn’s bed without checking to make sure she was awake. Birdsong replaced rifle song, and the fragrance of boiling coffee convinced Jesselynn it was indeed time to get up. This wasn’t the first time she’d been awakened by rifle fire, and it most likely wouldn’t be the last. Gratitude that it wasn’t an enemy rifle flooded her as she pulled on her boots. She could hear the boys jabbering. They had their own language when they played, Thaddeus often translating for Sammy when the little one didn’t have words for what he needed.

  Jesselynn and the others had gotten used to that.

  “Bring me a pan of warm water.”

  Jesselynn spun around in time to see Ophelia doing just that. The tone of Agatha’s voice screamed mistress and slave.

  “Put it there.”

  Jesselynn felt the anger swelling hot in her middle. When Ophelia returned to the fire, Jesselynn went on the attack. Only her mother’s voice counseling patience kept her from dragging Agatha off behind the two trees and lambasting her good. Instead, she stopped beside her aunt and said in the calmest voice possible with ricocheting insides, “Please, Aunt Agatha, may I speak with you for a minute?”

  Agatha, bending over the washbasin with a wet cloth applied to her face, turned her head with a frown. “Can it not wait? As you see, I am in—”

  “No, it cannot!”

  Jesselynn’s clipped voice and tense jaw must have communicated the message to the older woman, for she straightened and dropped her cloth back in the water.

  “Yes, dear, what is it?”

  Dear? I am not your dear, and when we finish this tête-à-tête, you will most likely wish you had stayed in Springfield. Jesselynn strode the ten paces to the tree line, her heels digging into the tender grasses. She spun and barely kept from crossing her arms over her chest. What do I do with her? “Patience is a virtue well worth cultivating.” Her mother’s voice again.

  Jesselynn sucked in a deep breath and let it all out as she waited for her aunt to approach. Keeping her voice low so that Ophelia wouldn’t hear, she began. “I know this trip was not of your making, mine either, but we need to get a couple of things clear.”

  “Really?” Her aunt’s chin rose a fraction, and her shoulders straightened.

  “Really. First off, Ophelia is not a slave to be ordered around, nor even a servant. She is a free black woman who chooses to go west with us. She and Meshach are married, by a minister, and are doing their part to help us all get safely where we need to go.” She could tell her aunt was digesting these words by the expressions that flitted across her face.

  “Besides that, in our family, we did not order the slaves about but rather asked them, said please and thank you, and treated them as civilly as we treated others.”

  “But—”

  Jesselynn held up a hand. “I understand that is not the way of most slaveholders, but that will be the way here.” Her words were coming faster and more clipped, if possible. “Also, for us to all be safe, I am Marse Jesse, not dear or Jessely
nn.”

  “I know that.”

  “Yes, but you slip sometimes, and that very slip could cost someone their life.”

  “Well, I never!” Agatha drew her huff up around her ears. “If your daddy could hear you now, he would turn right over in his grave.” She clenched her hands at her sides and leaned slightly forward. “You say your mama treated the slaves”—she gave the word a twist with a sneer—“so proper, well, she surely failed with her eldest daughter.”

  “Yes, I am sure she feels she did. But failed or not, whether I wanted this or not, I am in charge, and until we get to Independence, we all have to live with that.” She let the silence lengthen, sure at any moment that Agatha was going to stalk off. Maybe even head back to Springfield. It would be easy to follow the road.

  The boys’ laughing made her want to join the circle around the fire, eat her breakfast in peace, and then do the chores of the day. She did not want to stand nose to nose with her aunt and create an enmity that could last forever.

  “We will discuss this again later.” Agatha turned on her heel and returned to her washbasin as if nothing had been said.

  Jesselynn stared after her. So was this win, lose, or draw? Did it matter?

  HEADING WEST

  Jesselynn felt as though a cloud hung over her, no matter how bright the sun.

  While the boys laughed at the antics of the foals in the morning before they began to tire, she saw it all but couldn’t drum up any joy from it. Even Aunt Agatha chuckled.

  Every hoofprint carried them farther from Twin Oaks, her sisters, her brother. I’ll never see them again, nor the rebuilding of the big house. Morbid thoughts dogged her, burrowed under her skin, and refused to let go. Worse than a tick head sunk under the skin that itched and festered, these thoughts poisoned her spirit and added the crack of a whip to her voice.