“I don’t think so, Miz Kiernan.”
“Then you can tell Jeremiah that I will see to it myself that he is legally made a free man.”
Janey smiled broadly. “He’ll like that just fine—indeed, he will.”
To her complete dismay, Kiernan realized that she was very near hysterical tears. “Oh, Janey!” she murmured. Suddenly, she was in the other woman’s arms.
“It’s gonna be all right, Miz Kiernan. We’re gonna make it.”
Yes, Kiernan decided, they were going to make it. And not just make it—she was going to do a damned good job of it.
She pulled away from Janey. “We’ll make it just fine, Janey. I know we will. Let’s get through the rest of today, shall we?”
By evening, the last of their guests, including Thomas and Lacey, had gone. Jacob insisted on seeing himself to bed. Kiernan tucked in Patricia, staying with her while the little girl clung to her. When Patricia’s arms at last went limp around her, Kiernan eased herself away. She left Patricia’s room and walked across the hallway to the guest room she had chosen for herself.
She hadn’t taken Anthony’s room. There was still way too much of Anthony about the room—his combs, his shaving equipment, his clothing, diplomas, papers, and memorabilia. Wandering there, she had felt too much as if he were still alive.
She would never be able to sleep there.
One day, Jacob would grow up and marry. He would be the one to take over his father’s room, the big master room with the heavy four-postered bed that looked big enough to sleep six.
She had taken the guest room that looked south over the mountains to the back. It was a peaceful view.
She stood by the window, her hands shaking. Leaning against the window frame, she looked out into the darkness and remembered the day Jesse had left. She had been bitterly miserable. But it had been easy to be miserable then. She had had a home where everything had been taken care of for her.
Now she was here, where everything could only be taken care of by her.
She couldn’t fret over it any longer, she decided, and morning would come early. She dressed in a cool nightgown and crawled beneath the covers of her bed. The sheets were crisp and comfortable against her skin. The night breeze carried the scent of jasmine upon it. Tears stung her eyes again, but she blinked them away. She told herself that she had to sleep.
And to her amazement, she did.
Eight weeks later, down on her hands and knees in the garden, Kiernan cried out with soft elation as she studied the tomato vines. Janey, plucking the perfectly ripe red orbs behind her, paused and looked behind her.
“They’re beautiful!” she exclaimed, flushing, and then laughed as Janey smiled at her pleasure. Kiernan had turned her attention to lovingly tending the garden, and she was amazed by the perfection of the fruit she was growing.
“I’ve never seen such fine tomatoes in all my born days,” Janey assured her.
Kiernan stood up and took a bow. “My lettuce is equally exquisite,” she assured Janey. She noticed that Jacob, who still had not warmed to her, was up on the step watching her. He was smiling.
“Exquisite?” he asked her politely, and a smile that reminded her very much of his brother’s smile curved his lip.
“Entirely,” she told him. Taking two tomatoes from a vine, she tossed the first one over to him. “Catch!”
His reflexes were good, and he caught the tomato. But his smile suddenly faded, as did Kiernan’s, as he heard the sound of hoofbeats.
Kiernan swung around. Riders were coming, three of them, dressed in Union blue.
They must be from the 13th Massachusetts, she thought. Harpers Ferry had been quiet—dead quiet—since she had come. Neither army had occupied the area, and the snipers from both sides kept to their action in the heart of town.
But Union General Nathaniel Banks—whom even the most stalwart of the Confederate sympathizers regarded as a gentleman—had moved on, leaving only a few troops at Sandy Hook, the Maryland point across the river.
The people hated the 13th Massachusetts. They had harassed and shot at the people and had taken everything that they had ever owned from them. Kiernan had not met up with any of those Yanks, but she had heard about them from Lacey.
She was certain that these three men were from Sandy Hook. They were the only Yanks in the area.
It was too late to get a gun, too late to do anything but stand and wait.
“Kiernan,” Jacob said nervously.
“There are only three men. Just stand your ground.”
“Kiernan, you’ve been supplying lots of men out of the factory in the valley!” Jacob reminded her with a wisdom well beyond his years. “What if—”
“If they meant real harm, there would be more of them,” she said.
“If they try to touch this house, I’ll kill them with my bare hands!” Jacob claimed.
One of the men suddenly let out a loud shot and came tearing down on them. Kiernan’s eyes widened with horror and she almost shrieked and turned away.
The rider halted and leaped down. He was young, maybe twenty, and his face was riddled with pimples. “Tomatoes, eh? Well, we’ll take them. And anything else that you have, you Rebel-lovin’ Confederates.” He stepped forward, placing a hand on Kiernan’s shoulders. She wrenched free, never having know such deep hatred as she knew that moment.
“You won’t touch a thing on this property!” she swore.
“I’ll have me those tomatoes, sure as the mornin’ comes!” he told her.
She still held the one tomato in her hands. If he wanted it so damned badly, he was going to get it. She backed away and hurled it into his face it with force that surprised even herself.
He swore, and to Kiernan’s sudden alarm, he pulled his pistol.
A shot rang out. Her hand instantly flew to her throat, and she wondered, dazed, if she had been hit.
But she had not.
It was the Union soldier sinking down to her feet who had been hit. He clutched a bloody stain at his abdomen that spread to engulf his lower body even as he fell.
Fifteen
Jacob screamed to Kiernan as the fire that had been aimed against the Yankee was returned by his two companions. Instinctively, she fell flat, looking around her.
The barrage of fire was coming from more horsemen, these clad in gray, who were coming up the rise of the lawn. There were two of them, Kiernan dimly realized.
The fight did not last long. Even as she lay flat upon the grass, frozen and numb, the gunfire around her ceased.
The three Yankees lay dead.
There was no question of seeing to their wounds or discovering if they still breathed. The first man lay with his glazed eyes open to the heaven above. The second wore a clean hole through his temple, and the third had been caught in the heart.
She stared at them all, a scream rising in her throat, bile forming in her stomach.
Kiernan looked up. Jacob was by her side, helping her to her feet, even as the two Rebs came riding up. The first instantly leaped off his horse. He was a man of her father’s age, white-haired, white-bearded, with fine, weathered features. “Mrs. Miller, are you all right?”
The courteous voice, the trembling in the man’s tone, brough the first realization to her that she might easily have been killed by either side. She almost fell to the ground, but she felt Jacob’s arm of support and she knew that she couldn’t fall apart in front of him. Janey was running to her side too. Patricia would have heard the shots from inside, and she would soon be running out. Jeremiah and the boys were out back feeding the hens and choosing a fryer for the night, but they had heard the shots. It was no time to fall apart.
“I’m fine,” she told the man. She glanced back to the bodies on her lawn, then stared straight at the Reb soldier again. “I—thank you. It seems that you came upon us just in time.”
The second Rebel, a younger man, had also dismounted from his horse and was inspecting the dead. He spat out a stream of juice
from his chewing tobacco, and his voice was laced with disgust when he spoke. “These boys ain’t no regular troops. There ain’t been none of this regiment around here in months. Looks like a group of deserters tome. Not even guerrillas—just plain old deserters.”
He looked from his commander to Kiernan and started to spit again. “Oh, pardon me, ma’am.”
Kiernan lifted her arms in a gesture that said he must make himself comfortable.
What was a little tobacco spit after the blood and … the blood and innards of a man still warm upon her lawn. The Reb was telling her something very serious. Kiernan looked curiously to him, trying to understand.
“Yanks is still men for the most part, Mrs. Miller,” he told her. “My youngest son is bearing arms up there for the 47th Maryland artillery corps, and I can tell you that he may be a ferocious fighter and he may be waving a flag for Abe Lincoln, but if he needed food or to use someone’s home—in the South or in the North—he’d be wiping his boots clean before he entered and he’d be saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ all the while. He was raised right, and so were most of them northern boys. But on both sides you got no-good-no-accounts, too, and that’s what you had here, young lady. Them’s what you got to watch out for.”
“Then I do thank you, indeed, for coming along at the right time,” Kiernan told him. “I don’t even know your names to thank you properly.” She paused. “But you know me.”
“Course, we do, ma’am.” He lifted his hat to her. “You’re old Andrew’s daughter-in-law, Anthony’s wife. And your rifle works are keeping a lot of boys in good supply. Whatever we can do for you, we’ll always be glad to do. My name is Geary, Sergeant Angus Geary. This here is T.J. Castleman, one of the finest sharpshooters you ever will meet.”
“Are you stationed near here?” Kiernan asked. “Is a Rebel army moving back in?”
“Well, now, ma’am, we’re not exactly moving back in, but we’re not exactly moving out either. We’ve got ourselves an intriguing job, it seems, harassing Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley. We’re up and down it seems, sometimes in the mountains, sometimes down low.”
“We’re with Stonewall—General Thomas Jackson, that is. The finest commander ever drew breath this or any other side of the border.”
“Well,” Kiernan told Sergeant Geary, flashing a quick glance to his sharpshooting companion, “since you did a great deal to improve my day, I’d very much like to do something for yours. Can we offer you gentlemen a home-cooked meal?” She realized, even as the words left her mouth, that she was inviting them to dinner over three corpses. “Oh,” she murmured, certain that she herself could not eat, “perhaps we could—er, get these men onto a wagon, and I could have Jeremiah drive them into town, and they could be sent back—”
“No ma’am, I don’t think that that would be a right good idea,” T.J. Castleman told her. “Don’t you worry none. Sarge and I will see to these Yanks.”
She opened her mouth, but no sound left it. Angus spoke to her again. “You see, Mrs. Miller, if we send them back, the Yanks will know we caught up with them, and they’ll know just whereabout we caught up with them too. As far as Yanks go, we need them to think that you’re just living over here somewhere on the Rebel side just as sweet and quiet as can be. Like as not, sooner or later, someone might decide that this fine house shouldn’t stand no more. But till that day comes—” He broke off and shrugged. “You got any weapons in the house?”
Jacob grinned and replied for her. “What do you think, Sarge? Sure, we got a gun in the house. We got a cabinet full of some of my pa’s best, and I’ve got my very own rifle, handmade for me. And I got a fine supply of shells too.”
“Well, that’s good, boy, that’s real good. ’Cause if you ever see a few stragglers like this again, you shoot, and you shoot to kill. But mark my next words just the same—if you see a whole army heading your way, you stand aside. If the army comes, they won’t come to hurt you. They’ll just rip up the place a bit. ’Course if you shoot at them, they’ll have to shoot at you. And even if one Reb is worth ten Yanks”—he winked at Kiernan—“there just isn’t any way for one Reb to take on a whole company or a brigade. You understand, Mrs. Miller?”
“Yes,” Kiernan said, studying the man’s fine gray eyes. She understood completely. She wouldn’t let Jacob foolishly kill himself taking on a regular unit.
She understood, too, that there were deserters and some less-than-honorable guerrillas from both sides who might just come by. And if they came by, then they might as well shoot, because if they didn’t, there was a good chance that they would die anyway.
“Sarge, I’ll take care of the bluebellies,” T.J. said. He spat out a wad of tobacco juice, then looked at Kiernan guiltily again. She shook her head, almost smiling.
“Please, sir, you must be comfortable here. We’re very grateful.”
He grinned to her in turn. She thought that he had the good rugged sense of a mountain man, and that, along with the Virginia gentry who knew so much about horses and guns and riding and the terrain, the fine solid citizens like T.J. were the ones who were going to win the war.
“That meal sounds real fine to me,” he told her.
She didn’t dare look at the corpses again. She took Janey by the elbow. “Let’s go on in and see if Jeremiah has gotten hold of one of those chickens yet. Then we’ll get something on the table mighty quick.”
* * *
Kiernan never asked what they did with the Yank bodies—she didn’t really want to know. She was certain, though, that they had seen to it that the bodies were well away from the house.
Certain that the two men didn’t have much time, Kiernan saw to it that they ate within the hour. She was excited at this prospect of company. Not that she’d really been deprived or lonely. Thomas and Lacey had been up to see her several times, and she’d been into town often enough. The foreman of the rifleworks in the valley had been up to see her, and she had sat through her first business meeting with him.
But this was different. She knew almost nothing about the rifleworks, and Thomas was as worthy a partner as her own father, so she had done more listening than anything else, and she had asked them both to assure her that the majority of their sales were to either the Confederate government or to private concerns wishing to equip military companies they were raising on their own.
Bull Run, the first major engagement of the war, had shown everyone that Virginia—so slow to pull away from the old government—was going to pay for her alliance with the new. Their land, it already seemed to be apparent, was going to be the major battlefield.
Having Sergeant Angus and T.J. in the house was the first time she herself was involved in the war effort. She suddenly deeply and desperately wanted to be involved. It seemed to be the only way to survive it all.
She thought about it during the meal. She couldn’t eat a thing herself, but she was glad that T.J. and Angus seemed to enjoy every single mouthful as well as the house, and the snowy table linen, and the silverware.
Janey had been against the use of the good family silverware. To convince her that they must put it on the table tonight, Kiernan promised her they would bury it very soon, what with rogue Rebels and rogue Yanks in the area.
She trusted both T.J. and Angus implicitly. She was glad that she did, for T.J.—much more evidently than the world-worn Angus—showed his awe and pleasure at the beauty of the simple things within the house—the fine lace drapes, the beautifully hewn English furniture, the crystal sconces, and the elegant tableware. When the meal was finished, she played old Irish ballads and lively Virginia reels for them on the spinet. Jacob danced with his sister, and then sweet Patricia politely urged T.J. to be her partner. To teach T.J., Kiernan bowed low to Angus and became his partner.
Then it seemed that Angus became serious very quickly, realizing that they had been gone a long time.
He thanked Kiernan and the family, and he promised them that he’d guard them whenever he could.
> “We’re often near, in the valley,” he said, looking directly at her. “In fact, if you’ve ever a need for us that you might be knowing in advance, you might want to look in that ancient old oak back by the ruins of the old Chagall estate. Do you know where that is?” he asked Kiernan.
She nodded, meeting his eyes. “I rode there once, long ago, with Anthony.”
“Well, you keep us in mind,” Angus said.
When the two Rebs departed, Kiernan was delighted to see that Angus had left his hat. With a brief word to the twins and Janey, she went flying after him. She found Angus just about to dismount from his horse—evidently, the grinning T.J. had waited to inform him that he was hatless until he was about to ride away.
“Ah, Mrs. Miller, I’ll be thanking you again!” he told her.
Kiernan handed him his hat and stepped back, smiling, shielding her eyes from the sun that was slipping into the earth.
“I owe you the thanks, sir,” she reminded him. She stepped forward again. It wasn’t necessary to whisper—the twins couldn’t possibly hear her—but she felt compelled to speak as softly as she could and get as close to the gentleman as she could be. “I’d like to do something that I might be really thanked for myself,” she said. Angus stared at her, sternly. “Did I misunderstand something?” she demanded. “Didn’t you tell me about the oak because I might be able to bring you information?”
T.J. and Angus exchanged a quick glance. Angus looked down at his hands, then at her. “Yes,” he admitted. “Not that I had any right to do so, ma’am. You’ve already given far and above the call of duty, what with a brave young lad of a husband dead and in the ground. And with the rifleworks.”
“I’d like to be a spy,” she said frankly.
Angus winced. “Spying is a dangerous trade, Mrs. Miller.”
Dangerous, yes. But the mere thought of it made her feel alive.
Male spies, if caught, were hanged, she reminded herself.
She gritted her teeth. Not even Yankees hanged women.