September 11, 1861
Lewinsville, Virginia, just
outside Washington,
D.C.
Annie was sitting in the parlor of her father’s cousin, trying to pay attention to a cake recipe. She and Miriam were houseguests in Cousin Eleanor’s home in Lewinsville, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. They were on their way home to Hickory Heights, but Annie and Miriam had traveled twenty miles in the opposite direction first to say good-bye to Laurence. Colonel Stuart’s camp was just down the road in Falls Church, on a ridge that offered a distant view of the U.S. Capitol building. The carriage ride from Manassas had been long—almost five hours—and required an overnight stay.
Annie had argued mightily with Miriam over the choice of Cousin Eleanor for their host. Annie was frightened of the rather stern older lady, who clearly didn’t much approve of Miriam. To make it worse, she was a staunch Unionist. Her husband, Francis, was a lawyer and often argued cases in the Federal court in Washington city. He’d joined the U.S. army in the spring and had been put to work in the quartermaster general’s office making sure the army was well fed and outfitted with shoes and blankets. As a clerk, he would never aim a gun at Laurence. But Annie still couldn’t believe that Miriam seemed so comfortable sitting and drinking tea with someone committed to crushing the Confederacy.
“It’s not like that,” Miriam had said the night before. “This war will put all of us in strange positions. No matter what happens, we are family. I myself would have preferred that we stayed in the Union, darling. There were many Virginians who cast their voices against secession, you know, when the legislature called for a popular vote. But ultimately Virginia felt it could not fight against its closest neighbors, that it could not stay without dishonor. Meanwhile, Annie, we will not forget our manners, especially toward a lady who is showing us kindness.”
Annie had nodded silently, recognizing that Miriam was repeating many of Laurence’s sentiments. He had expressed little confidence in the political party that had advocated secession, calling its leaders erratic, unprincipled, bombastic men. He felt it a bitter tragedy that the government created by fellow Virginians—Jefferson, Washington, and Madison—was being torn apart. And yet, when the breakaway politicians held sway and Virginia voted to secede, Laurence joined ranks immediately. “Virginia is my country,” he’d said simply.
And in truth, things had become strangely quiet since the Battle of Manassas in July. Perhaps Annie’s foreboding had been wrong. The Federals had settled quietly into their camps and the Confederates into theirs in a seemingly peaceful standoff. Right this very moment, Union troops were guarding the Chain Bridge, not five miles from where Stuart and his cavalry sat.
Oh, there had been the terrible cleanup of the Manassas battlefield. The Federals had left their dead behind, lying where they fell in the fight, expecting the Confederates or the locals to bury them. July downpours had made the work harder, more time-consuming, and more gruesome. And there’d been the sad funeral for Mrs. Henry, an eighty-five-year-old widow. She was bedridden and had refused to leave her home atop the hill named for her family. That hill became the center of fighting, a perfect landmark for the artillery of both sides to sight their targets.
More than a dozen cannonballs had crashed through Mrs. Henry’s roof. Windows shattered. The house was riddled with bullets. A shell explosion had killed her.
This peaceful September morning, Annie refused to remember the revolting horrors she’d seen on her way to Mrs. Henry’s funeral. Instead, she pictured the beautiful hedge of althea that circled the Henry house and had miraculously survived the battle. Annie had gathered an armload of the crimson-and-white blossoms to put on Mrs. Henry’s coffin. As they’d crossed the fields in procession, Miriam had found several letters littering the ground, including a beautiful one written by a Northern lady to her husband, George. It had a return address. Miriam sent the touching letter home to the woman, with a note explaining how she’d found it and that she hoped George had survived the battle.
These were strange times indeed.
Annie shifted in her needlepoint chair and tried to focus on Cousin Eleanor. Now she was talking about how long the cake needed to bake. As if she really did the cooking. Cousin Eleanor had three freed Africans working for her—a cook, a gardener, and a driver who minded their carriage horses. Lizzie was a superb cook, but she didn’t like visitors to her kitchen. Not like Annie’s cook, their beloved “Aunt” May, who always had sweet tidbits hidden in the cupboards and who had encouraged Annie and Jamie to play marbles on the kitchen floor as she worked. Aunt May’s hugs always left them dusty with flour.
Annie settled down to listen dutifully by reminding herself that the next day she’d be heading home to Aunt May, to Angel, to the hills, to the wind clouds that slid up to rest against the Blue Ridge. She’d even be glad to see Jamie, that rapscallion brother of hers, who was as full of himself as only a rooster or a thirteen-year-old boy could be. He evidently had tried to saddle up and head to Manassas when news of the fighting reached home. Fortunately, Aunt May and her husband, Isaac, had locked Jamie in his room.
Without realizing it, Annie giggled at the thought of the scene.
“Annie?” Miriam’s gentle voice jerked Annie back to the parlor. “What’s so funny, dear? Cousin Eleanor can surely use the benefit of something amusing.”
“I’m sorry, Mother, Cousin Eleanor, I was…I was just thinking about…” Annie stalled for time. Somehow she didn’t think her prim, Unionist cousin would be amused by Jamie’s antics. “I was just thinking about…that scene!” Praise God, Mr. Burton’s literature class came back to her. “That scene in Hamlet, where the gravedigger pulls up Yorick’s skull and…”
Miriam looked shocked. “A gravedigger? Mercy, that doesn’t sound particularly amusing.” She crossed herself superstitiously and then flushed at Cousin Eleanor’s look of disapproval for her papist gesture. Miriam made her try-to-think-of-something-more-ladylike expression at Annie, a look Annie had seen a hundred times, then turned to Cousin Eleanor. “This”—she gestured toward Annie—“is my best-read child. I so wish her father had lived to enjoy her conversation. Thaddeus read everything. I’m afraid Annie is beyond me.”
“I can see that, Miriam.” Annie caught the contempt for her mother in Cousin Eleanor’s remark. Why did her mother tolerate such things? But Annie’s anger vanished at her cousin’s next statement: “I have a great many books, child. Your father often lent volumes to me when we were younger. Would you care to pick out something to read this evening?”
“Oh yes,” said Annie. She couldn’t help swallowing the invitation whole, as a greedy duck would a June bug.
Cousin Eleanor’s stiff skirt rustled as she led Annie to the next room, which was only a little alcove really, a circle of windows and a huge bookcase.
Annie ran her fingertips along the leather-bound books. So many of them—Shakespeare’s tragedies; sets of poems by Robert Burns and Francis Scott Key; Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and The Blithedale Romance surprised her a bit. They were recent Yankee novels, but she supposed that made sense given Cousin Eleanor’s politics. Curiosity got the better of her, and she pulled The Scarlet Letter from the shelf.
Cousin Eleanor smiled—yet another surprise for Annie. Maybe the old lady wasn’t really so bad. “You remind me of your father, Anne. I was quite fond of him really.” As she turned, she murmured more to herself than to Annie, “Such a pity that hair is so red.”
The ragged-edged pages were thick, the printing fine. This was a costly edition of the novel, Annie knew. She came to Hawthorne’s description of Hester Prynne emerging from jail, holding her baby and stunning a jeering crowd with her dark-eyed dignity and the defiant, richly embroidered letter A on her clothes that branded her an adulteress.
Annie let out a schoolgirl’s sigh. “How romantic and strong Hester is.”
She stared out the window, daydreaming. After a few moments, Annie looked over her shoulder to make sure Miriam and Cousin Eleanor were still caught up in their conversation about household arts. She could hear Miriam worrying over the fact that Annie could never seem to complete a sampler. Annie rolled her eyes. “God save me from such conversations and concerns.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out an envelope. Her hands shook a bit as she unfolded a stiff piece of paper. It was a poem about Annie. And it was written by Colonel Jeb Stuart.
We met by chance; yet in that ’ventful chance
The mystic web of destiny was woven:
I saw thy beauteous image bending o’er
The prostrate form of one that day had proven
A hero fully nerved to deal
To tyrant hordes—the south avenging steel.
The handwriting was elegant, strong. No inkblots, no corrections. His signature was bold and large. It was a mild, Indian-summer morning, but Annie felt hot and jittery. Surely this was just a crusader’s poem dashed off to honor a lady’s youth and face. There is nothing to it, she cautioned herself. Just like you, Annie, to lose your head over nothing.
The day before, when visiting Laurence, Annie had seen several young women at the camp Stuart had set on Munson’s Hill. Escorted by their mothers or brothers, the girls were all aflutter with the colonel’s compliments and patriotic excitement. The colonel was even planning to award one pretty girl named Antonia Ford with a commission as an aide-de-camp in thanks and praise for the daring she had shown in delivering to him useful information she had overheard being discussed by Federal troops occupying her hometown, Fairfax Courthouse.
“He is forever swarmed by ladies,” Laurence told Annie later. He grinned as he spoke, but there was a touch of disapproval in his voice, too. “He suggests we cultivate ladies to keep an eye on troop movements,” Laurence continued, “but I don’t like the idea of endangering them. We have plenty of scouts to do that job.”
Stuart had presented his poem to Annie when Laurence was with Miriam, as if Stuart knew that Laurence might not like her receiving such attention.
Sitting in the alcove, Annie closed her eyes and relived what was surely the most exciting moment of her life.
Stuart had been dressed in his finest attire that day. His gray coat was slightly unbuttoned to reveal red silk lining. Huge gold braid climbed up his sleeves from his wrists in showy epaulets. A tasseled silk sash was tied about his waist. Tucked into it were white buckskin gloves. And his eyes—she hadn’t been able to see them before on that night of Manassas—his eyes were shockingly clear, bright blue against his sun-browned face and his bushy beard.
Annie remembered the scent of well-worn leather as he leaned over her hand to kiss it. She felt him squeeze her fingers, felt the warmth of his breath against her glove. He had pressed the envelope into her hand as he straightened up. His jovial blue eyes never left her green ones as he spoke.
“This is a token of my appreciation of your devotion to our country, Miss Annie. Please accept my pledge of lasting friendship.” His gaze made her quivery, and he laughed gently as he stepped back, clearly aware of his effect on her. Yet there was no flirtation in what Stuart said next. His voice was matter-of-fact. “You don’t know it yet, but you are a soldier’s dream. As this war goes on, you will serve as inspiration to our men. Not all our ladies will prove as true. Take care of yourself.”
He’d walked away in that bold stride of his, followed by his two setters, Nip and Tuck, calling out to a ventriloquist who’d come to entertain the camp. Annie’s heart kept pounding until he was out of sight, swallowed up by the carnival-like crowd.
Now Annie sighed again, and read the poem to memorize it.
I saw thee soothe the soldier’s aching brow
And ardent wished his lot were mine.
….….….….….….….….
And fortune smile upon thee ever,
And when this page shall meet your glance
Forget not him you met by chance.
Restless, Annie wandered out into Cousin Eleanor’s garden for some air. Hundreds of pink rosebuds paraded along the white picket fence. Annie bent to inhale their delicate scent. She cupped her hands around some of the blooms, as if they were a bride’s bouquet. A honeybee crawled off a rose onto her hand, and its hairy legs tickled her before it drifted off. Annie could see the white beehive in the back of the garden and knew it was probably stuffed with honey.
Inside the fence, lima bean, squash, and grape vines, plus currant and raspberry bushes, were already picked clean. Only the pumpkin vines were still thick and green. It was a tiny garden by Annie’s standards. Clearly her cousins depended on local markets for a great deal of their food, something she would find alarming. Hickory Heights’ fields and livestock filled almost all their needs.
As she lingered, Annie heard voices. At first, she thought nothing of it. Cousin Eleanor’s house was near the road that ran from Langley to Falls Church. The dirt byway was often traveled.
But she also knew that Stuart placed pickets along the road, men hidden behind trees and bushes, to watch for possible Union movement. Laurence had told her that they were constantly sending out scouts to check on the whereabouts of the “bluebirds,” as he called them. Federals did the same. Could these voices be such a reconnaissance group? She stood frozen in stillness, straining her ears, wishing a catbird would shut its beak and stop singing!
She could hear horses kicking up stones as they trotted. They must be coming up the road from Falls Church. Stuart’s boys? Annie straightened her skirts and pinched her cheeks to make them pink. But as she put her hand on the gate to swing it open and to step out to greet them, the sound of their voices stopped her.
One was calling into the woods along the road. “Captain wants you back right now. How many did you see?”
“Must have been fifty, camped out for the night. Maybe a hundred. Maybe more. They took off lickety-split all right.”
“Confound it, man, how many was it?”
Another voice interrupted: “You mean they saw you?”
There was a silence and then: “Suppose so, sir.”
Annie felt a tingling up her spine. There were no drawls in those voices, no soft rounded rs. The voices were clipped and nasal. The last voice she’d heard like that had belonged to that insolent Thomas Walker, the Massachusetts man lying on Aunt Molly’s front porch.
Annie hurled herself behind the veil of grapevines that had been trained to grow up a trellis. The men weren’t coming along the road. It sounded as if they were moving through the woods to conceal themselves.
“There was an exchange of fire between a handful of Stuart’s riders and some of our Vermont boys as they came back from reconnaissance. We’re bringing out more artillery guns, cavalry, and three regiments of infantry from Camp Advance right now. Upward of eighteen hundred men. The plan’s to go ahead and occupy Lewinsville today. Five roads cross here; they’re important.”
As the man talked, Annie felt them pass along the length of the garden, hidden behind a thick grove of trees.
The voices were getting fainter. “There’s an engineer officer with the expedition, says he was a classmate of Stuart’s at West Point. You know, it seems they all know one another from there. ‘Old Beaut,’ the officer said, ‘is just like a cat. Curiosity will get him. He won’t take time to figure our number. He’ll just ride out.’ Then the officer told us not to hurt him any; he wanted to treat Stuart to dinner in Washington….”
Annie could hear no more. It didn’t matter. She was going. Going to warn Stuart and Laurence.