I awakened to the clatter of keys and a brusque voice.
“Get up, get up now,” barked the jailer. He pushed a tin cup and bowl towards me, rattling them across the rough, filthy floor. “You get what everybody else gets, even if ya are a lady-prisoner.”
By the early light, my dim and barren cell slowly came into focus. My nerves, jostled awake, felt the sting of cold under a thin blanket. I’d awakened quickly and lost my dream. Four days? Five? All I knew was that I was still on the other side of the prison door. Laying back on the mattress just inches above the floor, I saw a quick movement in the far wall. There it was again. It had fur. And it was bigger than a mouse. Turning away from the rodent and the food that sat waiting for me, I nearly wretched, but there was nothing in my stomach.
Holding my hands to my face I remember saying aloud as if confiding in a friend, “Okay, held as a spy, I might be tried, convicted, and shot. Or, I might be tried, convicted, and hanged. Or, indeed, they may choose to slowly starve me to death, letting the vermin and disease of the place do the work for them.”
A slop bucket in one corner , dared me to relieve myself but the voice outside the cell door barked at me again.
“I’m coming back for you in ten minutes. The Warden wants to ask you a few questions. You must have done something real good to get yourself into this one.” When I didn’t respond, he left, muttering to himself all the way down the hall.
What did he know? Such a crazy old man. Could this be my end? What would the Warden want with me? I had to rely on my wit and my luck, but I was too tired and weak to put up my usual fight. I was dirty and hungry and exhausted by the ordeal.
I had to face the Warden in a calm manner; I’d have to keep my wits about me and show strength. But I was cold, shaky, and very hungry. I knew that I had only myself to count on. Closing my eyes, I began to breathe deeply, something I did when I needed to collect my thoughts.
I practiced what I called ‘gathering myself.’ Concentrating, I imagined a strong and whole Annie. Like clay on a kick wheel, I pulled the very core of my being together in my mind and imagined a pulsing, tiny sun at my very Center. It spun as I did, fibers and vision, slip and spin, clay and calm. Breathing in, out, in, I began to relax, and warm up. I began to feel stronger and surer of things. I just wished I could talk to Warren, both to warn him and to have him hold me again. I’d grown so fond of his gentle ways with me and I loved his easy humor. Even in all this he’d look at me if he could, knowingly, and reach deep down into the pockets of himself pronouncing with his eyes that we would go on. Somehow, we’d go on.
It wasn’t long before the nameless guard returned. Sitting up and standing in the same clothes I’d arrived in days earlier, I followed him to the Warden’s headquarters, a low building with a flag waving out front. Inside we found a small dreary office in the back of the complex of larger buildings. The warden was a man who had once carried more weight on his frame, but looked sunken and gray from head to toe; not just in uniform, but his wiry beard matched his sallow complexion. He looked like a balloon losing air, which might collapse at any moment. Surely, he did not fit the image of a top official that I had expected. And he surprised me in other ways. Looking at me for what seemed like an epoch, he tightened his jaw and began to speak in a deep guttural manner.
“It is within my power, Miss Cunningham, to see that you are hanged.” He continued to meet my eyes with his dark marble-like glass gaze and I dared not turn away, or blink. “You are clearly guilty of treason against the Confederacy.” He spoke very slowly in a thick, determined voice, pausing, as if stringing his words like hooks on a fishing line.
“However, you’ve been quite lucky. It appears that your womanly neck will be spared due to an unlikely turn of events. You see, we’ve been offered a prisoner now in the north, one of ours, who is of greater value to us than you are. It appears, Miss Cunningham, that you are quite fortunate.
Therefore, I want to review some very specific conditions of your release. Listen carefully I will not repeat myself.” He cleared his throat and I swallowed, but my mouth was dry.
He continued, “Upon your release you must leave any and all Confederate territory immediately and you are ordered not to enter Confederate territory until the war has concluded in one side’s favor or another. Is that clear?” In shock, I must have stared straight ahead.
He bellowed, “Is that clear, Miss Cunningham?”
I nodded. “Yes, clear Sir.”
He went on. “If you do attempt such movement and get caught, you will be shot without question. Is that clear as well, Miss Cunningham?”
Again, I nodded. “Yes, Sir.”
“Then, promptly, you will be escorted to the border. It may take about a day to get you to the closest Federal line, and it may be very dangerous, Miss Cunningham.”
His words ricocheted off the stone walls of the makeshift office, striking me with both relief and distress. I had nothing to say. Everything had suddenly changed. My life was given back to me. I was free to go, but I’d have to leave Virginia, leave Marsh Station, and leave Warren until of course, the war ended. But that ending was nowhere in sight. And, who would do my work? I’d have to get word to Sarah for her own safety, but how?
“Yes, Sir, I understand,” I said.
Stunned, I turned to leave with a guard who led me out of that iron cold office, to the center of the barren, dusty work yard. No one else was around except for distant guards on the yard’s perimeter and a blue blur in the distance being led with what looked like a white flag held high on a stick.
Outside with the sun on my face and an early autumn breeze picking up, I noticed things as if I’d emerged from a dark mine. Taking the events of the past week into account, I began to see that the distant blue blur was actually two Union soldiers on horseback approaching Westerly. They rode with purpose, with dignity, as if to deliver two lives instead one. I’d be leaving shortly, with no opportunity to say goodbye or to retrieve any of my possessions. I’d have to locate Sarah, at least get a note to her, telling her not to attempt to return to the house in Marsh Station. I wouldn’t be there. If she came back through, she’d have to get a room from Kate. I’d soon be leaving Virginia, and worst of all, losing time with Warren. Tears began to fill my eyes and quickly found my cheeks.
It was then that I saw him approaching from a distance. He had stayed way back of the Union officers as if he had been asked to bring up the rear of the procession for the Rebel cause. ‘He’d made a point to see me,’ I thought to myself. ‘Could he have been in on the prisoner trade?’ I asked myself. ‘Of course he had.’
“There’s a story,” I whispered to myself under my breath.
All I could think about were the letters that I had written him. I’d been careful not to use his first name in writing them, and they’d been hidden away. Perhaps he’d already found them. After all, he was the only one who knew about that box. I hoped he’d take them out to the forest, find a glade like the one we’d found in Ashburg and read them there.
As I watched the approaching entourage, I realized that my Virginia life hung in strands around me. I knew that I’d miss the simple life I had created there. I’d miss my garden. I’d miss Lucy and her ladybug mole. I could only hope that with her flotilla of friends they could gather and prepare plenty of yarrow, shepherd’s purse, comfrey and slippery elm and concoct poultices, syrups and salves to soothe the wounds of the men in their care. I’d even miss Katherine and her crazy ways. And what about the prisoners? What would become of their escape plans?
As Warren approached, I tried not to stare directly at him. And, as the procession approached there was some commotion to the side of the clearing. A horse had moved too quickly towards the water trough and upset another one drinking. The soldiers fell in line to water their horses and briefly, for just a few seconds I found his face again above the din. I wasn’t even going to look him in the eye, but once he was about four yards away, I had to. I was locked into the moment like a barnacle fixed
to rock. His eyes drew me in, welcomed me to him and told that he knew, like I did, that this love was not over; it was not the end of us. There, in that brief space, we found one another in the greater universe beyond, beyond seasons and sorrows, even beyond time itself to the deeper core of each other.
Warren looked down from Ches’ saddle and captured all of me with his eyes. Aware of those around him, he caught my glance like a handhold on a granite cliff, just barely, and seemed relieved for the respite. I responded in kind. The magnetism of our physical bodies, harnessed, was then diffused into the light within our eyes. In that moment, that shared look crossed over time and substance, reached into each of us and found a richness that nearly drowned us with it. Like an enormous wave that bounds through miles of open sea then crashes into shattered foam, our gaze slowly dissolved back into its dynamic depths, lost to time itself.
Fortunately, for both of us, the activities of the exchange had distracted the others. That moment surely went undetected by anyone else. It was ours alone. I can still recall it vividly.