Funny, he didn’t like to hear Jesse called an enemy. Even if it was true. But the look on the young man’s face was so earnest that Daniel bit back a retort.
“Ah, Liam McCloskey.” He rose and came around his desk, offering the man his hand. He studied him carefully once again. The earnestness remained.
“I meant no offense, sir. Christa has made it quite plain to me that she loves her family intensely, and I have assured her that whatever my mind concerning the North, my thoughts will be kept to myself should the Yank Colonel Cameron and I manage to meet. Truly, Colonel, I mean no offense.”
“None taken.” Obviously, there were no split loyalties within McCloskey’s family. He was suddenly reminded of what Jeb Stuart had told him he’d written to a family member when he heard his father-in-law was determined to stay with the Union. “He will regret it but once, and that will be continuously.”
But Jeb had also said upon a number of occasions that he would rather die than lose the war.
He had been so furious with his father-in-law that he had renamed his son, since the boy had been named after his grandfather. Philip St. George Cooke Stuart became James Ewell Brown Stuart II.
Daniel was no longer certain what he felt. He’d never hated Jesse. He’d never even been angry. He’d often seen Jesse’s side.
In the long days and nights, Daniel could too often remember Callie’s words, telling him that he knew slavery was wrong.
The North had made it a question of slavery. He believed with his whole heart that he and the state of Virginia were fighting for states’ rights.
But he had to admit that the southern states were fighting for the right to keep their way of life.
And that way of life meant slaves.
“Sir?”
“Yes, yes, I’m sorry.”
“I believe that Christa might have mentioned—”
“Indeed, sir, she did.”
“Colonel, I must tell you that I hail from a decent-sized farm down Norfolk way. I’m never quite sure of what is going to be left of it once this thing is over and the Yanks are beat back, but I can promise you this—I will love her with every breath in my body, from now unto eternity!”
Daniel lowered his lashes quickly, not wanting the very passionate young McCloskey to see his amusement. Yes, he did love Christa. He seemed to embody all the right virtues for a young man.
And Christa loved him.
“I’m glad we’ve met, Captain. Christa has expressed a desire for a June wedding.”
“Yes, sir. With your blessing, sir.”
“You’ve got my blessing, Captain. I’ve promised to do my best to be there to give my sister away.”
“Thank you. I’ve requested my leave for June fifteenth, just in case we don’t get a chance to whip the Yanks by then, sir. Again, I thank you so much.” He saluted and turned sharply, striding out of the large field tent. He paused at the flap. “Rest assured, sir. I do love her!”
The words were so soft and so fervent Daniel couldn’t help but smile as the young man left at last.
For days, the fervent passion in McCloskey’s voice haunted Daniel and left him thinking of his own wife again. Sometimes speculating, sometimes hurting, and always wishing that he could get home again.
The skirmishing dragged on, the Yanks and the Rebs skirting one another.
On the western front, great armies clashed at Chicamauga and then at Chattanooga, and southern casualties were high. Those losses brought further weight down upon the laboring shoulders of the Confederacy, and yet few men spoke of a true defeat.
Daniel’s forces battled fiercely at Bristoe, then the armies shifted again.
By December 1, the Union army moved across the Rapidan.
Southern commanders were wary, and Daniel knew there would be no way he could take another leave to go home for Christmas.
He managed to get a letter through to Jesse, assuring him that his wife and child were fine, and telling him about Christa’s wedding plans. “She would dearly love to have you there, but God alone knows when this war will end. I believe she knows her own mind and is determined upon marriage now. Don’t risk yourself.”
He had not heard back from his brother, and he was worried.
He ached for home.
Or maybe it wasn’t home that he pined for anymore. He lay awake each night and relived every last moment he had spent with Callie.
He had tried to write to her but his notes never sounded quite right, and so he had given up the effort, addressing his letters to all three of the women in his household and keeping them as light as he could.
She did not write in return. Christa wrote, and Kiernan wrote, and sometimes when he was lucky, mail came through. But Callie did not write.
She remained at Cameron Hall, and must have been resigned to life there, for Christa and Kiernan both mentioned her and the children constantly. John Daniel was speaking more clearly daily, and Jared was tearing around the house on his knees. Ships were still managing to come and go on the river, despite the Yankee blockade. They hadn’t heard of any troops anywhere near them for quite some time.
On Christmas morning, Daniel was in a command tent along the Rapidan River when one of his sergeants made an appearance before him.
“Yanks across the river, sir!”
“Yes, I know,” he said dryly. “They’ve been there for quite some time. I don’t think they’re planning on any hostilities today. It is Christmas day.” Sometimes fighting did break out on Christmas. Both sides tried to avoid it.
“No, sir. They aren’t planning any hostilities. Come on out, sir. I promised that I’d bring you down to the river.”
Curious, Daniel rose, buckled on his sword, and followed his sergeant.
Far across a new layer of snow and ice-clogged water, he could see a detachment of mounted soldiers, Yankee cavalry.
One of the mounted men raced forward, close to the glistening river, and shouted out.
“In your honor, sir! Your brother, Colonel Jesse Cameron, has recently heard of your marriage, and the birth of your son. He—and many other officers with whom you studied at West Point and rode with in Kansas—now salute you, sir! Also, sir, Colonel Jesse Cameron sends his love to his wife and his sister, and congragulates the latter on her upcoming nuptials, sir!”
And there, on Christmas day, guns exploded into the air and a series of cries went up.
Daniel grinned broadly, shouting back to the Yank across the river. “Tell my brother, and the other gentlemen, thank you, sir!”
They both saluted. The Yankees rode away, disappearing into a haze of snow.
“Well, Jess,” he murmured to himself, “at least I know that you are alive and well.”
Daniel turned, startled to discover that he was more weary than ever and returned to his tent.
It was Christmas. A dark day for the men and women of the Confederacy.
With a new, dark year stretching before them.
As yet, they couldn’t guess how dark that year would be.
Christmas came to Cameron Hall.
By that time, Callie was very comfortable in her new home and with everyone in it.
During the long fall, she had earned herself a place there, startling both Kiernan and Christa with her abilities with both the plantation lifestock and the garden planting.
She didn’t know anything about cotton at all, but that didn’t matter because both Christa and Kiernan did, as did the very able ex-slaves who had served the Camerons for years.
Christa told her that there had been a time when she had worried deeply about running the place herself, because a number of their freed people had determined to move to the North.
But a large group of blacks from Cameron Hall had been in New York when the draft riots had exploded in mid-July of ‘63. In a period of four days, mobs had burned the draft office, the offices of the Tribune, and other buildings. The violence had turned toward the blacks—held to be responsible for the war by many of the
northerners. White men had died, too, but it had been mostly blacks killed, and in that four-day period, nearly a thousand people had died or been wounded.
It had been a dark day for the North.
But it had brought a number of Cameron Hall’s freed slaves back to work her fields, and Christa had been relieved to have them return.
Before the war, there had been nearly a hundred field hands at Cameron Hall. Now there were only thirty-eight, but before the men had made their way back from New York, there had been a scant twenty-two.
In November they had acquired some more help, in the form of Joseph Ashby, a Confederate soldier honorably discharged after he lost his left leg at Gettysburg. Joseph was as cheerful as the day was long—still convinced that the Yanks would never win—and the best overseer any plantation had ever seen. With Joseph up every morning at the crack of dawn to hobble along on his wooden leg, life became much easier not just for Christa, but for all of the Cameron women. Not that Callie had ever minded work—work kept her mind off the future—but Jared was constantly changing now, learning new things, and she cherished her time with him. The household could also be fun, with John Daniel running about everywhere, and Jared now trying to keep up on his knees.
Callie discovered that she liked both of her sister-in-laws very much. They were both headstrong, and determined, but also very kind. While Callie could make a garden grow under the most difficult situation, Kiernan and Christa knew every little nuance of proper dress and society, and even in the midst of war with her own inner conflict almost always raging, Callie learned that her sisters-in-law could make her laugh, exaggerating the proper way to hold a teacup, to walk, to laugh, to flutter eyelashes, to lift a chin imperiously, in short, to charm a man—or stop him cold.
They lived for the days when a letter would come through, brought more and more often by passing friends or even strangers as the war disrupted regular mail service. Letters came most frequently from Daniel, but they were never addressed to Callie alone, and she tried to hide her feelings of both embarrassment and desolation that he would not make a special effort to write to his own wife.
Two letters came through from Jesse, and they were for Kiernan alone, although she assured both Christa and Callie that he had sent them both his love. After the first, Kiernan had seemed strange for a day or two, and then she had come to Callie’s room one evening to ask just how Callie had come to know Jesse.
Callie explained that he had come by after the battle of Antietam, when he had been looking for Daniel. And that she had known, of course, where Daniel was.
Kiernan watched Callie as she spoke, then she exclaimed softly, “That’s it! Daniel thinks you were responsible for his being in prison!”
Callie looked down at her hands. “I was responsible,” she said quietly.
Kiernan gasped. “Dear Lord, I could have sworn that you cared something for him!”
“I do,” Callie told her. She shrugged and added, “I love him. That’s why I did what I did.” She tried very hard to explain everything that happened. She couldn’t quite meet Kiernan’s eyes when she told her almost exactly what she had done, but she stuttered through a story very close to the entire truth. “They would have killed him, Kiernan. I didn’t want him to die.”
Kiernan sat beside her and hugged her tightly. “Oh, Callie! But if you’ve explained things to Daniel the way that you’ve explained them to me—”
“I’ve tried, but I don’t think he believes me. Maybe he can’t believe me. And maybe it’s just the war that now makes enemies of us.”
“And maybe he ought to be smacked right in the face,” Kiernan said determinedly.
“I’ve tried that too,” Callie admitted, smiling ruefully.
“Perhaps if I were to intercede—” Kiernan began.
“No,” Callie told her. “Kiernan, don’t you see? He has to believe in me again, or nothing will ever be any good. The fates don’t seem to be looking on me very kindly. As soon as we started heading for Virginia, the same Yankee came after us again. He’s Lieutenant Colonel Dabney now—he received a promotion for bringing Daniel in. What’s worse, he was a friend before the war. I had asked Daniel to stop to say goodbye to the people who had helped me when I was alone. Dabney came after us because one of the Weisses—concerned for my welfare or that of the baby, I’m sure—told him where I had gone.”
“I see,” Kiernan murmured.
“And there’s more, of course.”
“What’s that?”
“I am a Yankee,” Callie said. “Oh, Kiernan, I’m sorry, I know how you love your South! But I believe in the Union, I believe that as a whole we can be great, I—”
“Wait! I’ve heard it!” Kiernan interrupted her. She smiled. “You forget, I’ve a Yankee physician for a husband. Callie! I’ve seen Virginia ravaged, I’ve seen men die—God, help me! I’ve assisted in removing their limbs. I cannot bear what has happened here, the rape of the land, the cruelties that exist. But I have discovered more than ever that the war has brought out the best in good men, and the worst in those less noble, North and South. I don’t want to see this, my home burned, nor my father’s home burned. What I want, more than anything, is for the war to end.”
Callie smiled, and hugged Kiernan fiercely. “It’s what I want too.”
Kiernan sat back, studying her. “Daniel does love you, you know.”
“Once, I think that he did. Sometimes now I’m convinced that he hates me.”
“No. I’ve known Daniel all my life. I have never seen him so intense before, so passionate, so torn. Don’t you see, Callie, if he did not care, his manners would be far better!”
Callie thought of the beautiful white dress with its red flowers, left at the foot of the bed.
Let’s pretend …
“But I can’t tell him that I love him—he does not trust me. And I try so very hard to keep my distance, because I am lost if I ever surrender—”
“I agree! You can never, never surrender to Cameron men,” Kiernan assured her. “But you can sue for a negotiated peace.”
“Perhaps,” Callie agreed.
“Time will tell.”
“And the war will end!”
But the war didn’t end.
Christmas day brought the three Cameron women outside, despite the cold. They sat on the porch, watching the drive, all praying that a loved one would come to them.
No soldiers came home that day.
Callie prayed for safety, for Daniel, for Jesse, for her brothers on some distant front. She wrote to them time and time again, but so far, had received no replies. Maybe her letters had never reached them. Maybe they didn’t know where she was. She could only pray that they were safe.
In early February, Kiernan received a request to come and help one of the matrons at the military hospital on the outskirts of Richmond. Again, she sought Callie out at night, reading the letter.
“/ know, dear, that some of our Richmond ladies have been less than kind since hearing of your marriage to the Cameron who turned his back on his people, but as I knew your heart to be strong and true—and at the utmost, loyal—/ am begging you to suffer their slings and arrows, as it were, to come give me some assistance here. Supplies are woefully low, and the men are dearly in need of good cheer. I have heard from a young man your husband assisted (an officer injured and imprisoned and exchanged) that you are an excellent nurse, with better qualifications gained at your husband’s side than many a man who titles himself ‘doctor.’ Please come. But take extreme care. Yankees are ever trying to reach our dear capital!”
“What will you do?” Callie asked her.
“I will go, of course.”
“I’m coming with you,” Callie determined suddenly.
“To save Rebel lives?” Kiernan asked her.
“To save human lives.”
Kiernan grinned. “Good! I was hoping you would come!”
Yankees were very near the capital.
At the end of February Daniel
was summoned to a meeting. A courier had arrived with dispatches warning of the discovery of a planned raid on Richmond. Federal General Judson Kilpatrick and Federal Colonel Ulric Dahlgren were leading forces that would separate, meet, seize the capital, distribute amnesty proclamations, and free the Federal prisoners in Richmond.
Daniel, who knew the countryside like the back of his hand, was ordered to leave his troops to ride communications for the troops who would defend against these raiders.
By nightfall of the first of March, Dahlgren and his men were within two and a half miles of the capital. Daniel was there with the Confederate forces who fought him.
Riding around Dahlgren’s forces, Daniel discovered that he had ordered a retreat.
The next day, the Confederates pursued him. Late that night they set up an ambush. In the fighting that followed, Dahlgren was killed.
The raid might have been considered a minor incident in a war in which thousands sometimes died in a battle, except for the fact that startling documents were found on Dahlgren’s body.
There were orders to his men—signed by Dahlgren—that they must burn Richmond, “the hated city,” to the ground.
A second paper, unsigned, said that they must find Jeff Davis and his cabinet, and kill them.
Daniel returned to his command with the couriers carrying the photographic copies of the letters to Lee. Word was out about the letters, and emotions were running high against the Union. Southerners, on the field of battle and off, were outraged.
Lee sent copies of the letters to Meade. In turn, Meade replied to Lee assuring him that the United States government had never sanctioned such orders, had indeed, sanctioned nothing but what action might be necessary by war.
Whether it was a cover-up or the truth, no one knew.
Beauty Stuart had summoned Daniel when the reply came in. He showed him a copy. “Well, what do you think?”
“I think it’s a good thing that Dahlgren did not succeed with his raid,” Daniel said.
“And what of our one-time friends in the North?”
“I cannot believe that they would condone murder.”
Stuart shrugged. “Perhaps not.” He gazed at Daniel sharply. “Well, did you see your wife in Richmond?”