Songs the Soldiers Sang

by Bette McNicholas

  Table of Contents

  Songs the Soldiers Sang

  Copyright

  Praise for Bette McNicholas and…

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  A word about the author...

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Songs

  the Soldiers

  Sang

  by

  Bette McNicholas

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Songs the Soldiers Sang

  COPYRIGHT © 2012 by Bette McNicholas

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: info@thewildrosepress.com

  Cover Art by Rae Monet, Inc. Design

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First American Rose Edition, 2012

  Print ISBN 978-1-61217-253-8

  Digital ISBN 978-1-61217-254-5

  Published in the United States of America

  Praise for Bette McNicholas and…

  SONGS THE SOLDIERS SANG

  “Bette McNicholas delivers a deeply moving love story set against the heartbreaking backdrop of post Civil War America. Like a haunting melody, SONGS THE SOLDIERS SANG will stay in your mind long after you’ve read the end.”

  ~Erin Quinn, best-selling author

  “A sweeping tale of tragedy and adversity and of an unexpected love, rising from the ashes of the Civil War. I thoroughly enjoyed the read.”

  ~Kathleen Kirkwood, award-winning author

  “Bette McNicholas has created an intelligent read, well researched and most heartwarming...”

  ~Cherokee Sanders, Coffee Time Romance & More

  ~*~

  MEMORY’S EDGE: A CIVIL WAR NOVEL

  “A poignant story that takes one directly into the action of the war.”

  ~Coffee Time Romance (5 Cups)

  “Five hearts!”

  ~The Romance Studio (5 Hearts)

  ~*~

  FARRAGUT SQUARE: A ROMANTIC SUSPENSE

  “I highly suggest you give this book a try. I don’t think you’ll be sorry you did!”

  ~The Long and Short of It (4 Books)

  ~*~

  Bette McNicholas received

  a Coffee Time Reviewers Recommended Award

  in recognition for outstanding writing

  “above and beyond a Five Cup Rating.”

  Dedication

  To my sister, Mary Jo Fidance,

  My sisters-in-law

  Mary Rita Carney and Kathleen Constantini,

  and

  My Best Friends

  from

  Glen Park, Desert Rose, and

  The Washington Romance Writers

  Acknowledgments

  To the Wild Rose Press for giving me this great opportunity and

  To Amanda Barnett, my editor.

  Thanks to Erin Quinn, Kathleen Kirkwood and Cherokee Sanders

  For the wonderful quotes.

  I am forever grateful…

  “I was faint, but could not eat;

  Weary, but could not sleep;

  Depressed but could not weep…”

  ~Clara Barton 1862

  Chapter One

  Mainland, South Carolina—1865

  Emaciated and bone-weary, that’s how Laurel Bray felt. Barely eighteen years old and stripped of all worldly possessions. Her physical strength sapped to where she found putting one foot in front of the other, difficult. Yet, today, she felt a spur of obstinacy. Drawing on that inner-resource, she found the determination to resist. “Nothing and no one will ever defeat me. Do you hear me?” She shouted to no one there.

  She was angry. Angry with everyone, including God. She’d no sooner convince herself that nothing else could possibly go wrong when out of nowhere she was struck by another disaster or disappointment.

  She held a letter she had recently received from the government agent at Fort Royal informing her that four years of taxes were due on the family home, Mossland, as well as the house on the plantation in St. Helena. If the taxes were not forwarded immediately, the properties were to be sold at auction. At least someone in the Union Army knew how to contact her, she thought, in a weak attempt to console herself.

  She shredded the letter into bits and watched the torn pieces of paper tumble and blow across the yard. She stood there and stared, no longer caring about anything except finding her father. “How much more, God? I’ve tried terribly hard…”

  Ever since the War Between the States ended, Laurel had attempted unsuccessfully to find her father and a means to return to her home. She wasn’t even sure what town she lived in now, only that she and her mammy were somewhere on the outskirts of a nearby port, west of Columbia, South Carolina, and a long way from their hometown of Beaufort.

  There had not been any money to buy food or even postage for months. They literally lived off the land. Work was scarce as towns became crowded with soldiers returning from war looking for jobs. At least there were none suitable for a properly brought up young lady.

  Stranded near the Savannah River, north of Augusta, Georgia, and through letters she had written home on scraps of paper, and given to her network of new friends to deliver, she had tried to let everyone at Mossland know they were alive. But she had no information about whether or not Mossland still stood majestically on the island or if Sherman and his band of marauders had burnt the mansion to the ground. No way of knowing if any of the slaves still lived there, or if any of them had even survived the war and its aftermath.

  Disdainfully, Laurel looked down at the laundry that needed to be washed and bit her lip, forcing back tears. She placed her lye-damaged hands in the slimy water, shut her eyes tight, took in a deep breath, and winced. Her hands were red and swollen, and the soap caused her cracked dry skin to burn and bleed.

  Lifting a garment out of the huge oaken washtub, she twisted the excess water out of the lifeless material before draping the dress across the sagging clothesline. She blew on her hands to ease the stinging pain, to no avail, and then gave way to her tears. The pain was merely a feeble excuse to cry. Laurel cried from sheer despair and exhaustion.

  Once more, she reached in the water for another piece of clothing, and immediately threw the rag back into the tub, causing water to slosh over the sides. Gently, she wrapped her mutilated hands in the skirt of her dress, soaking the colorless threadbare cloth. She straightened her carriage, wiped her tears on her sleeves, and walked away.

  Laurel shook her head back and forth, befo
re noticing her mammy sitting on the porch of the dilapidated shack they resided in with other homeless South Carolina refugees. Junie smiled at her, and Laurel put a little stride in her gait and held her head high, trying to hide the look of fear in her eyes. She knew Junie didn’t worry about her as much as she used to when they first escaped the Yankee invasion. Laurel had proven over and over again that no matter how bad their situation became, her stronger sense of survival and resourcefulness always pulled them through, except this time, she wasn’t convinced she’d be able to find a way to save them.

  “I’m going to walk to town, Ol’ Junie, and even if it takes me all day, I’m going to find someone or some way to get us home.”

  “Youse not goin’ t’ walk alone, chile. I didn’t spend all my time protecktin’ ya’ from harm to have sumpin’ happen t’ ya’ now.”

  “Junie, I’ll be fine. Stay here until I return. Some of the others have already gone into town, and I promise not to walk home alone. I’ll ask someone to wait for me and escort me back before dark.”

  ****

  Day after day, Laurel had taken the long walk to the river looking for a familiar face and a means to travel home. Time passed by quickly, but thoughts of trodding across the state made her shudder. She had neither the will nor the heart to force her mammy to wander home with her through lands that had been laid to waste by the Yankees. The soldiers had looted their homes, killed the animals and destroyed what they didn’t want, without a thought to leaving women and children behind to starve.

  She didn’t want to remember, but the last four years always seemed to intrude on her solitude. She witnessed the progress of the war deteriorate as early tides of victory for the Confederacy began to ebb soon after Gettysburg. Union troops invaded the South in droves and penetrated the stately plantations with their once manicured gardens, like boll weevils in a cotton field. Inevitably, increasing the homeless in vast numbers.

  And, on roads leading in every direction, roads seemingly going nowhere, the wounded men who had been sent home from the front had swelled the bands of women and children and the elderly in number. She shivered, remembering the horror of her first sight of a young man, once robust and athletic, who had lost his legs at Shiloh, or was it Antietam? She’d forgotten. Every day, more and more men joined them—men without arms or legs, blind men, men without functioning bodies or minds. Hundreds of them joined the already homeless during those last days, burdening the able-bodied to increase the amount of food needed to sustain the larger group.

  In the beginning, their exile seemed like an adventure…they were treated like great heroines returning from battle. After all, didn’t they outsmart the Union soldiers by burning their crops and evacuating the island before they arrived? The newspapers reported that the island residents burned over two and a half million bales of cotton waiting to be shipped to England. They became like prizes to be won and flaunted by women who competed amongst themselves to entertain the celebrated refugees, so frenzied were the women who had been deprived of their social life.

  Time had lost all meaning for Laurel. When did she and Junie become separated from the families with whom they had originally escaped from their island homes in Beaufort? When did the warm receptions change to cold shoulders? When did they join the ranks of the homeless?

  All too soon, the celebrations came to an abrupt end. The poverty of war spread like an epidemic of the Black Death and touched even the wealthiest of families, as one plantation house after another fell prey to the torch or the invasion of Union soldiers. Dowagers and widows, traders and merchants, planters and bankers lost all they once possessed.

  One by one her hostesses became boarders themselves as they were assigned to move in with other families. What had briefly been exciting became frightening. How had they survived? How had she ended up being responsible for Junie? How had they existed amongst strangers with no money?

  Now that the war was over, she could remember only some of the faces and some of the kindnesses. The elderly Mrs. Barnwell who had rescued her and Junie from their island, along with her friends, had been their first hostess. But not long after that, food and money started to become scarce, and when Mrs. Barnwell died, Laurel and Junie left because provisions on the small farm were almost non-existent.

  They were forced to take to the crowded roads, along with Mrs. Barnwell’s helpless and lost slaves. Unknowingly, the male slaves gave her some protection along the highways and for that she was grateful. Life was difficult, but she was young and full of hope. She was strong and able to work long hours in the fields alongside the slaves for free meals and a place to sleep. But little by little, the slaves departed company and headed north toward freedom when the cotton fields became barren. She didn’t blame them.

  Now as she entered the nameless little town that had sprung up on the banks of the Savannah River, with its makeshift docks and stores that were nothing more than tents, Laurel scanned the throng of people for a familiar face. Drawing her pride together, she ignored the loud invitations of the carpetbaggers who founded this new town.

  She swallowed hard to dispel the nausea and hunger that gnarled at her stomach. Callous men stood boldly in front of the victims whose wares they now sold to Northern immigrants who rushed to take advantage of the bargains the South had to offer. Their presence insulted her when they confronted her with items they attempted to sell, when they couldn’t help but notice from her appearance she was penniless and starving.

  A loud whistle from a riverboat drew Laurel’s attention to the docks. Her mouth fell open, and she stood on her tiptoes to get a better look. The Savannah, a vessel she was familiar with, sitting in decrepit splendor, dropped its gangplank.

  Sections of its railing were missing and were held together with heavy rope. Layers of paint were now blistered on the sides of this once beautiful boat. Her heart raced, as she edged her way through the crowd and fought her way up the gangplank to the bridge—pushing against those who attempted to disembark at the same time. She ignored their stares and rude barbs.

  “Captain Henson!”

  Captain Henson was a veteran of the Mexican War, and had fought side by side with her father. When the captain was wounded, her father carried him to safety and saved his life. They had remained friends ever since. The captain leaned heavily on his cane, and his limp was as pronounced as the last time he came to Beaufort to visit—an injury that had kept him from serving in the Civil War.

  As he limped toward her, she feared he wouldn’t remember her. He stuck out his neck like a goose and peered at her, scowling.

  “It’s Laurel Bray.”

  His face brightened and he smiled. “Lawd, don’t tell me. Is that really you, Laurel?”

  Laurel nodded continually as tears streamed down her cheeks, even though she smiled broadly. This was the first time she remembered crying because she was deliriously happy.

  “I almost didn’t recognize you. Gawd, how you’ve grown, child. Now let’s see, I haven’t seen you since right before your daddy went to Manassas. What’re you doing way up here in this gawdforsaken part of the state?”

  Laurel’s tears of happiness gave way to genuine tears of despair. Captain Henson reached for her and wrapped his robust arms around her. She lost all bravado in the warm comforting embrace of her father’s friend.

  “We’d best get us below to my cabin, and you can tell me what’s happened…”

  Chapter Two

  The Savannah River

  In the quiet of the night as the riverboat slowly made its way toward its destination, the water lapping at its bow, Laurel raised her face to the wind, enjoying the cool salty mist that blew over her.

  At last free from the fear and the dangers of war, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She could still smell the dank odor of the black and gray smoke that hovered over the battlefields and envision the devastation of the once beautiful cities, and when she listened, she heard the songs the soldiers sang.

  She gently ru
bbed her hands together. They were healing now, but she still felt the pain from picking cotton with her bare hands and washing clothes and dishes in strong, stinging lye soap.

  Tomorrow morning, she and Junie would switch ships and board the Carolina Queen, a side-wheel steamer with a paddle wheel on each side that enabled the boat to go out into the ocean from the mouth of the Savannah River.

  Beaufort. She was almost home. The days she spent with Captain Henson were the most peaceful she’d had in a long time. The meals were hearty, and although she dreaded leaving the sense of security he offered, the reasons to reach home were greater than her need for protection.

  Captain Henson tried to convince her to stay aboard the Savannah and travel up and down the river and back again to wait for word from her father, but she refused. She had been experiencing strange dreams lately that compelled her to return to the islands. Dreams that woke her from a fretful sleep and when they did, the anxiety they brought kept her awake for the remainder of the night. She shivered and ran her hands up and down her arms. Reluctantly, she turned to go to her cabin. She didn’t want to sleep, but she was afraid to lose the little bit of strength she had regained. Tomorrow she would be home.

  She spotted Junie huddled in a dark corner on top of an old crate and immediately felt guilty.

  “Oh, Junie, you shouldn’t be out here waiting for me. You need your rest.”

  “I’ll rest when yo’ is safe inside da cabin,” she replied, sliding her portly frame off the crate and twisting her body to get out the kinks. “What would yo’ po’ mama say,” she continued, raising her eyes toward the heavens, “God rest her soul, if’n she thought I let yo’ go roamin’ round the deck of dis here riverboat all alone. Chile, doan yo’ know what kind o’ men travel on dese boats? I spent four years protecktin’ ya from da likes of such.”

  As she unlocked the door to their tiny cabin, Laurel chuckled. “Why don’t you tell me what kind of men travel on dese boats,” she mimicked. “Funny, but I didn’t see anyone lurking in the shadows,” she continued, smiling.