twenty-one
Lapeer County, December 1863
In the soft gray before the dawn, Mary awoke but did not open her eyes. She could still see Nathaniel coming up the road toward the house, could still feel the cold wind on her face as she rushed out to greet him in the snow, could still hear the yells and clapping behind her as everyone called out their jubilation. But if she opened her eyes, it would all be gone, replaced by a cold room and the final dying embers of last night’s fire. Then she felt a warm hand on her cheek.
“Good morning, my love.” Nathaniel’s sleepy blue eyes lay inches from hers.
“So you are real,” Mary said. “I thought I might wake up to find that yesterday had been a dream.”
“I am here,” he whispered as he stroked her cheek. “And so happy to be waking up next to you in my own bed.”
Mary tested the air outside of the covers with one foot. “I’ll stoke the fire.”
“No, stay. Let’s just stay here in bed all day.”
She laughed. “I have a houseful of people who might wonder at such behavior.”
Nathaniel frowned, then stood and walked over to the hearth. His nightshirt hung limply on his angular frame. He was thinner, his face drawn, his gait uneven. He poked at the ash, added a bit of paper and a few slim pieces of kindling, and blew on the embers.
“You’re not upset, are you?” Mary asked him.
“Upset?”
“About how many are living here. I thought I had written you about each of them, and so I had until Loretta came. But she just arrived in July, and when we heard the news about Gettysburg, of course it slipped my mind.”
“I’m not upset, Mary. I think it’s wonderful. I’ve been so happy to know you’ve not been alone. I do wish you’d told me about John Grouse and Mrs. Maggin a little earlier. I’d have sent you to live with Mother.”
Exactly, Mary thought. “But then what would have happened to George? You couldn’t have sent him to your mother’s house. She might have had an attack if it were her opening that trunk.”
Nathaniel looked grave. “But perhaps then you wouldn’t have lost the baby.”
“Perhaps,” she said softly. “But what of the Dixons and Jacob and Thomas? And Loretta and Simon? I know it was wrong to keep the business about John and Mrs. Maggin from you, but perhaps God used my deception for his own ends.”
Nathaniel smiled then. “Anyway, what’s done is done, and I am certain God is using this house for his purposes. It is his safe haven for the oppressed. And you are his instrument of love and care.”
“Hardly,” she demurred. “George is more his instrument than I. I don’t know what we’d do without him.”
“Let’s hope we don’t find out. Now, can we get this starving soldier his breakfast? You can’t imagine how I am looking forward to eggs and bacon and flapjacks with maple syrup.”
Downstairs the house was abuzz with activity as Bridget, Martha, and Loretta made breakfast and continued to prepare all of the special dishes for their Christmas celebration. Pots clanged, dishes clinked, and Angelica was shooed out of the kitchen half a dozen times in as many minutes.
“Why don’t you entertain Simon in the parlor, Angelica?” Mary finally suggested. “You can let him play with some of these ribbons.” She handed the girl a tangled mass of red ribbons left over from the making of garlands and wreaths the day before.
“Okay,” Angelica acquiesced, “but if he start stinkin’ I’s gone.”
Nathaniel laughed out loud.
Mary silenced him with a look. “You’ll do no such thing,” she said. “You’ll take him upstairs and change him.”
Angelica looked at her shoes. “Yes, ma’am.”
“My, my,” Nathaniel teased. “You certainly have become a force to reckon with.”
Mary picked up Nathaniel’s dishes and paused at the kitchen door. “When one is suddenly left in charge of an entire household, one does what one must to keep things running.”
Thus chastened, Nathaniel followed the men into the library to get an update on the farm and the finances. Mary was still in the kitchen when they all filed through to the backyard to feed and water the animals and chop more wood. She measured flour and butter and cinnamon, sliced through apples, crushed walnuts—each movement precise, each result of her efforts predictable. She had done more than manage without her husband. Here she reigned supreme and unquestioned. Until now.
It felt good to have Nathaniel in the house again. Yet Mary had to admit that it wasn’t the same. She wondered if it ever could be. She could tell by the way his sharp eyes lingered on the woodpile and the pantry and the people living and working in the house that he was assessing. Mary hated that she wondered how she measured up.
For his part, Nathaniel seemed distant despite the proximity, lost perhaps in thoughts of the soldiering life. So accustomed was he to the constant company of men and lack of women that she overheard him tell more than one crude joke she had never imagined he would make. The rest of the men stopped their chopping and stacking outside the kitchen and laughed. Except George. She had not heard his familiar low, sweet laugh among the voices.
That evening, they made the trip to church for the Christmas Eve service. Mary was grateful that Nathaniel would be with them. Reverend Whittaker’s acceptance of her ever-multiplying houseguests at worship services each Sunday had held for many months. But when Loretta and Simon had been added to the group, the minister had taken Mary aside after service one day with concern written in his eyes.
“I wonder if I might have a quick word with you, Mrs. Balsam.”
“Of course, Reverend.”
“As you know, we are all impressed at your fervor for abolition and your willingness to aid the escape of Negroes from the South. And I know that I gave you permission to bring George to services. But I must pass on a concern that has been brought to my attention.”
“What is it?”
He furrowed his brow and hesitated as though he were not sure he should tell her after all. “There are some in the congregation who are beginning to wonder why some of these folks are not moving on. Most seem to use our town as a resting point on a longer journey, and we’ve seen them once or twice. And I don’t believe I have heard concerns about them particularly. But people are questioning those who have been under your roof for more than a year—and in George’s case, more than two years. Isn’t it time they moved on?”
“Is it?” she asked in surprise.
Reverend Whittaker looked uncomfortable. “Well, some would say so.”
“Would you?”
“Mrs. Balsam, I know you mean well, but on one end some are complaining about having these Negroes at our services at all and about them doing business around town in your name. I’m not among them. I believe as you do that they are God’s children the same as you and I. But there is that sentiment. And on the other end, some of your former supporters are now comparing your farm to a Southern plantation.”
Mary gasped. “But—”
“I know that you pay them what you can and that they are free to leave whenever they choose. But I wanted you to know that there has been murmuring about it.”
“I won’t turn them out of my home, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“Of course not. But I wonder if it would be best to limit their contact with certain members of the church.”
After that unsavory conversation, Mary had suggested to George that they hold their own services in the parlor on Sunday mornings. She framed it as a way to give the horses a Sabbath of their own by sparing them the long trip pulling a wagon full of people, but she was sure that they all suspected otherwise. She was certain that Reverend Whittaker had meant for her to continue coming with Bridget and leave the others behind. But this she would not do.
Now, as they all stomped the snow from their boots and filed into the little church for this special service, Mary examined the faces of the parishioners to determine who might be standing in judgment of her. It was difficult to tell, as most were preoccupied with Nathaniel and the few other soldiers home on a rare furlough.
So many families had been touched by grief, and it seemed that every battle was worse than the one before it. These survivors were claimed as evidence that all had not yet been lost. Mary looked at those who had lost a son or husband or brother at Gettysburg or Chancellorsville or Antietam and was ashamed of her pettiness. Why should it matter if some disapproved? Her family was still untouched by war’s deathly finger. Even Nathaniel’s brothers had managed to stay alive thus far, though one had sacrificed a leg.
“Why so gloomy?” Bridget said in her ear.
“Not gloomy. Humbled.”
Later that evening they were gathered around the hearth in the parlor as Nathaniel read from Luke. Little by little the crowd thinned. Loretta went up with Simon, Martha retired with Angelica and her new baby, Elwin, and Bridget tumbled exhausted into her cot, which had been moved into Loretta’s already small room while Nathaniel was home. Soon it was only Mary, Nathaniel, and four emancipated men who were eager for a backstage look at the war effort.
Mary pulled out the quilt she was working on. Not long after losing the baby, she had begun cutting up some of her fine dresses and remnants from pillows and curtains she had made for the house when they first moved in. Stitch by stitch, she had pulled these colorful scraps together until she had enough to cover her bed. Now she chose from varied colors of embroidery thread to embellish it as Nathaniel commanded the room.
“It is hard to bear the bitterness of the Southern women whose houses we often use as our headquarters,” he said. “And well I understand it. While this farm is enjoying prosperity in the Union’s efforts to supply the troops, Southern farms are stripped bare of every conceivable useful thing. Soldiers take meat from smokehouses, flour and sugar from barrels, onions and potatoes from the root cellar, pigs and chickens from the fields, fence rails for firewood, and every scrap of leather or piece of silver is pocketed.”
“You could not imagine it unless you were there.”
Mary threaded a needle with red embroidery floss and pushed it into a patch of green silk left over from the dress she had dismantled to replace the lining in Nathaniel’s trunk.
“The night after a skirmish the field is covered in the dead. And once the sound of cannons and rifles dies down, you can hear the moaning of the wounded out among the corpses. You can’t sleep for the groans and screams. But if the battle has not yet been won, you dare not go out to them and draw fire.”
Mary shivered as she pulled the needle toward her, the long red trail of thread making a shushing sound as she drew it through the stiff silk. She didn’t want to hear of the horrors of war, especially since Nathaniel must soon return to them. Neither did she want to leave the faces glowing in the firelight for her dark, empty room.
“I made the mistake one night of looking out to see if I could identify the source of a voice I thought I knew. The moon was almost full and I could see the field. It was moving, like waves on a lake after a boat has passed by.”
Mary put down her needle and looked up. Jacob’s face was frozen in hypnotic terror.
“What was it?” he whispered.
“The wounded. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.”
“Nathaniel, I don’t think we should talk about this so late at night,” Mary admonished. “And on Christmas Eve, after all.”
Nathaniel rubbed his hands over his face. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
The spell was broken. The other men sat back in their seats. Jacob shook his head, perhaps to dislodge the frightening images from his brain.
Thomas, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, slapped his knees and got to his feet. “I gotta get some sleep,” he said. “Good night.”
“Good night, Thomas,” Mary said.
Jacob rushed after him with a hasty good night, then John stood and took his leave.
Mary tied off the red thread and pulled the knot through the fabric with a popping sound.
“What is this you’re doing, Mary?” Nathaniel asked.
“I’m making a quilt. It’s quite popular now. And it gives me something to do in the evenings.”
“Mrs. Balsam has been working on that almost since the day I got here,” George offered.
Nathaniel leaned closer. “My heavens,” he said, pointing to the stitching she had just completed, “it looks like a river. How is that accomplished?”
“A river? Oh dear. It’s supposed to look like a ribbon. Why would a river be red?”
“Oh, I see. It does look like a ribbon.”
But now as she examined it, Mary did see a river. A river running red with blood.
“It’s deceptively simple,” she said, pushing the image from her mind.
Nathaniel yawned. “Perhaps you can show me tomorrow. I must retire. Are you coming up?”
“Soon,” she said. “I just want to do a little more while I still have the firelight.”
Nathaniel nodded and stood. “Don’t be too long. It can’t be good for your eyes. Good night, George.”
“Good night, sir.”
He disappeared beyond the ring of light around the hearth.
Mary threaded her needle again. “I wish now I hadn’t made this red. I’ll never be able to look at it again without thinking of the blood of those dying men. What a dreadful story to tell us.”
George nodded. “But I suppose in the telling a man gets some relief of his burden.”
“I suppose.”
“It’s terrible hard to carry around a secret pain all by yourself.”
“Yes. Yes it is.”
Mary thought of her stillborn baby. But no. That was not secret. Thousands of other women suffered such pain, including some of those who had given her love and support after her own tragedy.
She looked at George, who was staring into the fire. “Do you carry such a pain, George?” It felt like too intimate a question, but there was no getting back the words. “How stupid of me. Of course you all do.”
“The pain of slavery is no secret.”
They were both quiet.
“But I do carry one,” he said.
He met her gaze in that same sad and tender way he had at the kitchen door the day they learned of the devastation at Gettysburg, the day she felt she might have lost Nathaniel for good. It was the same expression she’d seen in Nathaniel’s face when he had looked at her that morning.
Love.
At that moment, Mary knew she must write her long-tardy response to George’s request for a letter.