Startled, I jumped back then and saw a distinct figure at my side. Reaching for the door handle, I instinctively looked around us and into the yard, and then I whispered a question, testing my visitor.
“What brings you here?”
“The new moon can never shine bright enough,” came the response.
“All right then, let’s see what we can find for you.”
I opened the door to the darkened kitchen. Reaching for matches, I struck the side of the stove and got a flame. Lifting a lamp’s chimney, I lit the trimmed wick and before long it cast its clear light on us.
My visitor was a woman. Standing in the middle of the kitchen she not only looked taller than most women, but taller than most men as well. Removing her hat and putting down her bag, she shook out her short hair and began to unbutton her jacket.
Two lamps were necessary. Striking another match, I repeated the process and turned down the flame on both lamps so as not to soot the glass. The lamplight lit up the simple kitchen and revealed a wooden table and chairs and a large wooden cutting board with clumps of carrots beside it. Jars of dried beans and spices were arranged neatly nearby. From the beams overhead, dried herbs of various colors hung in bunches like newly dyed wool. Pungent fragrances wafted across the kitchen and followed us as we moved through the house. I always hoped that my “guests” as I called them, would find comfort in my humble, but homey surroundings.
“Follow me,” I gestured, picking up the smaller lamp. “You need a uniform?” I asked her. She nodded.
“That’s exactly what I need, do you happen to have one for me?” she asked hopefully.
Leading the way down the hallway and into my bedroom, I set the lamp on a chest of drawers and stared down at the old trunk that sat at the foot of my large bed. I’d been fortunate to find a room to rent at all, much less a house that came fully furnished. The trunk was the only furniture I’d brought with me.
My visitor, a thin woman, probably about my age, in her mid-twenties, looked gaunt as she stood beside me, fatigue dominating her face. We’d never met before.
“What is your name…I mean your given name?” I asked her. Then realizing I hadn’t had the courtesy of introducing myself, I managed, “Oh, I’m Annie. You’ve probably been told my other name too: I go by ‘Gardener’”.
“So, I’ve heard,” she said. “I’m Constance Lambrecht, but I go by Dan,” she replied, “‘Daniel Pierce’ is my name for now.”
To look at Constance, one could not readily identify her features as female, particularly in the untailored jacket that she wore. Her features were large, not delicate. It was her mouth that could give her identity away if an observer paid close attention. Certainly her full lips had weathered along with the rest of her features, reflecting the natural aging process that comes from hardship, living in the woods by day and travelling by foot, often at night. I could see in the way she held her expression that she had worked at finding a position with her neck and chin that tightened her mouth forcing her lower lip down to look less feminine, more severe.
Working for the Union, Constance and I called ourselves spies but mostly we gathered information, secretly of course, and passed it on through our newly established channels that guided information from south to north and back again.
With the lamp on a side table, we knelt down in front of the old trunk looking at it as if it was a shrine in some sort of religious ritual. The familiar trunk had a heavy lid and as I opened it a faint smell of cedar wafted out from inside. In the soft light, portions of paper pictures pasted on its inside walls were memories of ports and places that the vessel had been. Deep within the shadowy interior, I found a soft, summer quilt and placed it at the end of the bed.
“You can use this to rest for the night,” I said to her.
The next layer of clothes included a pair of knee length pants, a topcoat, and a long flowered dress.
“These are the costumes I used with a theater troupe,” I told her.
Laying those items on the wide bed beside the quilt, I again returned to the trunk, digging still deeper to find what I needed. This time I pulled out two folded uniforms, one gray and one blue and we carefully laid them out side by side on the bed, comparing sizes, as if putting the dead to rest. Stretched out before us, the uniforms looked more like the withered remains of young soldiers lost to battle. I thought of my youngest brother Joseph, dead nearly a year already.
“These uniforms,” said Constance, “They look like those boys in the field,” she paused. Then added, “After a battle.”
We stood silently, standing over the bed as if it was a burying ground.
“I lost a brother nearly a year ago, at the very beginning of the war,” I said. “My sweet, little Joseph.” Turning sharply to shake the memory I turned to Constance and asked, “Well, what’ll it be tonight? Are you headed North or South?”
“South, near Richmond, to gather information on prisoners at Belle Isle.”