Chapter 18
18
Overnight, it seemed, the maples turned, and Weybridge thought of Vermont. They had probably changed a week and a half ago there. Maybe two. He stood on his crutches in the yard, not far from where only yesterday he had given Libby her first lesson with a gun, observing how now the leaves were the colors of ripe apples and red wine. It was as if when the morning fog washed over them, it transformed them alchemically with its touch.
He thought of the letter he had dictated to Emily, and experienced a dagger of guilt. He wanted to believe that the kindness he felt toward Libby was gratitude and not desire. But this was prevarication at best, and delusion most likely. He almost—but only almost—wished that Peter Steadman would suddenly come tramping down the road and into the dooryard, a prisoner who had managed to escape and work his way home. That would put a damper on any fledgling spark. But who knew if the man was even still alive? Weybridge had come to doubt it. He had a feeling that Libby had, too.
Ah, but Emily was alive, thank God, and as recently as mere weeks ago, he would have viewed the idea that he might ever have thought about another woman as absurd. Beneath him. This morning he had eaten fried eggs and grits at the table with Libby and Jubilee and Joseph and Sally, but there was a moment when everyone but her fell away, their voices—even Jubilee’s—the buzzing of flies, and he saw only Libby.
He looked at his left hand, studying where the pinky and ring fingers had once been. The skin that was growing back was reminiscent of the new flesh after a terrible burn. He had seen it before on other men, the skin smooth and red and vaguely transparent. The same was true on his leg.
This morning he had asked both Joseph and Libby if there was work he could do at the mill, ways to earn his keep, but there had not been a delivery of wheat or grain since that last delivery from Leveritt Covington, and they were caught up: the mill had been inactive for days now. And so, again today, he was going to help Joseph put in wood for the winter. Even with but two fingers and a thumb on his left hand, he could hold down a branch small enough to be cut into usable pieces with Peter Steadman’s compass saw. He had found that he could swing an axe, though not hard enough to split actual logs.
“You ready?”
Weybridge turned at the sound of the voice, and there was Joseph. The man’s height surprised him sometimes: for a fellow on the far side of sixty, he had shrunk hardly at all. He nodded, and together they started down to the woodlot. Weybridge was pleased he could keep up with him on his crutches, even a little proud, because despite his age, Joseph was one hell of a fast walker. He would have schooled the Vermont boys in Weybridge’s company, many of whom were not yet twenty.
Joseph sat down on a tree stump in the shade, stretched his long legs before him, and ran a handkerchief across his forehead. He had rolled up his sleeves, his shirt a blue-check calico, and loosened his collar. The stump was wide and flat and, Weybridge guessed, had been cut four or five years ago, when Peter Steadman, Joseph, and who knew how many other men were logging here. The tree would have been far too broad for Joseph and him to have felled today with the small saws and axes they’d brought, or the reality that half the crew had one leg and eight fingers. Still, in three hours they’d created a nice pile. Soon they’d bring the wagon to the edge of the woodlot, and one of the horses would pull their work back to the house.
“How’s your hand?” asked Joseph.
“Hurts a bit. But manageable. Really, not too bad.”
“And the leg?”
“It’s the leg that’s whole that’s sore. The good one. It’s not used to carrying so much weight on its own.”
“Doctor thinks you’re mendin’. He’s happy.”
Weybridge pulled the stopper from the canteen and took a long swallow. It had C-S-A stamped on the wood, Confederate States of America, and Libby was unsure where she had gotten it. He knew well that in a war, even the most prosaic things were often lost and found, especially here in a corner of the Shenandoah Valley that had changed hands so many times in the three-plus years of fighting.
“Well, there’s nothing I want more than for Doc Norton to be happy.” His sarcasm, he supposed, made him seem ungrateful.
“You sound like you’re in a mood.”
“No. I just don’t care about the man’s happiness.”
“He’s a drunk. But he did his best for you. And the whole idea you’re helpin’ me get some wood? That’s either a miracle or proof that he knows what he’s doin’.”
Weybridge offered the canteen to Joseph, but the older man shook his head, and so he plugged the stopper back in. “I don’t question his competency. I swear I don’t. I just think he was the one who told someone I’m here. He put you and Sally and Libby and Jubilee in danger. Not just me. The four of you.”
“My biggest fear when Libby and me went to Harper’s Ferry? Slave catchers. It’s why Sally and me don’t go far and why we have never once been to Richmond to see our children. But you know what?”
Weybridge waited.
“I don’t think it was Doc Norton.”
“You don’t?”
Joseph shook his head. “First off, he’s a good doctor: I got a boy alive because of him, my son in Richmond. He wants people breathin’, not danglin’ from trees. Does he also like his whiskey too much, especially since his own boys were killed in the fightin’? Sure does. Both things can be true. But here’s the thing. Mrs.Steadman has plenty of enemies in these parts. So does Peter.” He reached into his haversack for the bread and broke off a piece for Weybridge.
“I can’t see how Libby could antagonize anybody,” said Weybridge.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Well, let’s think about that. In a couple weeks, it will be five years—five years exactly—since John Brown took Harper’s Ferry. Whole Valley thought every slave between there and New Market was about to rebel. We would just rise up and kill our masters and do God knows what to their wives. And then Peter Steadman’s father dies. And what does Peter do? Sets us free. Whole Valley’s on edge about slaves takin’ up arms, and he sets us free. No one appreciated that—’cept us, of course, his slaves. Seems to me, we had every right to take up arms.”
“Peter’s father. What did you think of him?”
Joseph met his gaze, contemplating a response. This man was a Yankee, but he was still a white man. “Nope. Not goin’ to be talkin’ about that.”
“I wouldn’t say anything to Libby.”
“Captain. No.”
“I’m an abolitionist,” Weybridge said defensively.
He stared at the Vermonter. “We never grew cotton here. Didn’t grow tobacco. A little corn, a little wheat. Was never a serious plantation. You know, a big one. You ever set foot on a serious plantation?”
“No.”
“Ever watch men and women pick cotton or tobacco?”
He shook his head.
“I am sure you ain’t ever seen a Negro whipped. You ain’t ever seen a human being stripped to the waist and put in chains, have you?”
“Joseph—”
“We was a small group ’cause this was a small farm. Peter Steadman’s father had three overseers in my lifetime. First and last were better than the middle one, but that didn’t make ’em good people. Sally and me have five children, three on this earth and two in heaven. Two are in Richmond, and one is I don’t know where. Why? Because Peter’s father sold him when he was thirteen years old. Sold him. He was only a little bit older than Jubilee. And the other slaves who used to be here? I got no clue where they went. None. Some went north, thank the Lord. I wish my two children who went to Richmond had gone that way.”
“And—”
“I already said too much.”
“Why didn’t you and Sally leave?”
“Because we were both too damn old to start again someplace new. And because Peter promised us something different. Help him run the mill and help him raise a family, and we’d be paid and treated like white people.”
“Did he do that?”
“He wanted to. Who knows how it really would have worked out. But Virginia left the Union and he’s a Virginian, and so he was off. Look, Sally and me appreciate what you Yankees want to do, Captain. We appreciate you givin’ a leg and a hand on our behalf. But you asked me why folks ’round here might not cotton to Mrs.Steadman. A lady you can call Libby and I can’t. I ain’t sayin’ people blame Libby for Peter settin’ us free. I ain’t sayin’ people think she talked him into it. But she’s his wife, and they know her kin never had slaves.”
“Did she talk him into it?”
“They weren’t even married yet. They were just courtin’ then. But she approved. So, if anyone around here was goin’ to hide a Yankee captain, she’s the one everyone would suspect.”
Weybridge ran his fingers over the three letters on the canteen. “Still, she provides a lot of flour to the army. And her husband fought for Virginia.”
“Like I just said. Two things can be true.”
“Do you believe Peter’s alive?”
He finished the bread, chewing thoughtfully, and then said, “He’s a good man, so I hope so. And I hope so for Mrs.Steadman.”
Weybridge knew he had asked an impossible question. What was more important was that he feared his own motives for asking.
And as if Joseph could read his mind, protective of both Libby and the man who had freed him, he said to Weybridge, “They had almost no time together as man and wife, those two. Broke Sally’s heart more than a little bit when he went away and then when he was wounded and captured. So, I’ll tell you something plain, Captain. If I thought for one minute you were goin’ to try and come between those two young people, I would send you hobblin’ north on your crutches, and let Mosby’s bandits or some trigger-happy rebel decide how to deal with you.”
Weybridge tried to smile, but his lips felt frozen in place. When he spoke, the words sounded uncharacteristically guttural and hoarse. “I’m married,” he croaked simply.
“I know you are,” said Joseph, and he stood. “And I ain’t questionin’ your character. I’m just sharin’ with you the lay of the land.” He wiped his hands on his pants and then clapped them together. “Well, sir. Should we get back to work?”
Joseph saw the men first: two of them on horseback, both in gray uniforms, in the road in front of Libby’s house. He put one hand on Weybridge’s arm, silencing him, and nodded in the direction of the riders. They were too far away for Joseph to determine if they were from the quartermaster or he might know them—his eyes had barely missed the turn of the last century—but instantly he was on alert. The Yankee was seated beside him at the front of the wagon, the wood they’d cut in the bed behind them.
“Captain, get out now, as best you can,” he said, and Weybridge tossed his crutches over the side and climbed down.
“The woods?” Weybridge asked him, suggesting a place he could hide.
“That’s right. Stay behind the wagon ’til you’ve seen me wave to whoever that is. Then wait a few seconds more before you start. Try and keep the wagon between you and those men ’til you get there.”
It was no more than fifty yards to the forest, but the field here had ruts and hillocks and gnarled ground that was sure to slow a man on crutches, and then there was the goutweed and dead yarrow. It would take time, and Joseph didn’t want to draw the attention of the soldiers. These men were talking to Sally, who looked tiny beside the horses and the riders, both of them tall in their saddles. Only when the pair noticed him did he remove his hat and wave. When they’d turned back to Sally, he prodded the horse forward, and heard Weybridge huffing his way double-quick to the woods.
When he reached the house, the soldier in charge, a lieutenant, said to him, “You’re Joseph, I gather?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I hear there’s a Yankee captain near here.”
“Could be,” he said. “But I ain’t seen a single bluebelly since the battle in September. And that was just some cavalry racing down the pike.”
“Your wife says the same thing,” the lieutenant grumbled. He turned to Sally and asked, “Where’s your mistress?”
Joseph knew not to correct him, though the idea that the soldier was still speaking to the two of them as if they were slaves rankled.
“She and her niece, Jubilee, are in town, sir.”
“They walk?”
She nodded.
“You got a mouth and you got a brain, woman. I’ll ask you again: They walk?”
“Yes, sir.”
The other soldier, a corporal, said to the officer, “Lieutenant Morgan, I think she’s lyin’. I think they both are.”
“Maybe.” His head moved back and forth between Joseph and Sally. “But my grandfather says these two are the only ones who didn’t hightail it outta here when Peter Steadman set ’em all free. The way Leveritt tells it, Joseph here’s the main reason Mrs.Steadman can still run the mill.”
Joseph knew not to speak unless spoken to. Still, his mind was moving fast as he tried to anticipate what he could do if the lieutenant announced that he was going to search the house. He knew evidence of the man’s presence existed in Libby’s bedroom, including all of the lint and ticking and bandages. He knew the soldier’s blue uniform jacket hung on a peg in that room. More than anything, he wanted to ask the lieutenant who it was who had told them that he and Sally might have seen a Union officer, but he didn’t dare.
“Want me to look around, sir?” the corporal asked.
The lieutenant scanned the area, his eyes moving first toward the gristmill and then toward the smokehouse and corncrib.
“Joseph, which slave cabin you call home?”
“We live in what was the overseer’s house, sir.”
“The overseer’s house. Really?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, if that don’t beat all. The servants with an A-number-one roof over their heads.”
“Would you like to see it, sir?” Sally inquired, and Joseph liked the idea that she was offering to lead them away from the house. It was smart. Perhaps while she was showing them their home and, undoubtedly, the slave quarters, he could find a way to hide Weybridge’s things and the medical supplies.
“You know something,” the lieutenant said, thinking aloud. “I’m tempted to take you up on that. But I’m here because my grandfather is worried about your mistress. Pardon me: the woman who was once and should be your mistress. He’s heard talk that a Lincoln man was left for dead and then disappeared. That’s why he asked me to ride by…again. Make sure she’s okay. Safe. Now, me? Slightly different agenda. Here’s what has me scratching my head. Yankee captain vanishes—Poof!—and suddenly Doc Norton has quinine and carbolic acid and whiskey. You follow me?” he pressed Sally.
“I don’t, sir. But it’s good that he has medicine, right?”
“And there’s this: when I first met Libby Steadman last month, she was waving a Colt pistol at me.”
Sally held the man’s gaze. Joseph had known her long enough to understand she wouldn’t give anything away by glancing at him. And so, like her, he waited to see what the officer would say next.
“You two aware she has that gun?” he asked, not directing his question at either of them specifically. And so Joseph jumped in.
“Yes, sir. She probably has it with her right now. Keep her and her niece safe.”
“Her aim any good?”
“I don’t know if she’s ever fired it.”
“Friend of my grandfather’s went missing last month. He carried a Colt, too. So, there are any number of…of sources where she might have gotten herself the pistol.”
Again, Joseph said nothing. Neither did Sally. He was already sweating from his and Weybridge’s exertions in the woods, and now the air felt more humid than ever.
“Where’d she get it? The gun?”
“I don’t know that, either. But I could tell her you was asking when she and Jubilee get home.”
“Joseph?”
“Yes, sir?”
“You sit right where you are. Do not climb down.” Then the lieutenant ordered the corporal, “Stanton, go check the slave quarters. I’ll go to the overseer’s house. Then we’ll both scour this place.”
“Sir, may I go get the bread out of the bake oven?” Sally asked.
“Fine. Get your bread.”
Only now, when the soldiers had started riding toward the outbuildings, did he glance at Sally. She bobbed her head slightly, an almost imperceptible nod, and he felt a modicum of relief that, somehow, she would find everything that incriminated Libby and the two of them, and hide it someplace where this lieutenant wouldn’t think to look. He watched her race up the steps, hoping he was right and she’d have enough time.
The bread was not quite done, which was a relief, and so Sally raced upstairs to Libby’s bedroom and shoved all of the ticking and cotton she could behind the pillows on the bed. What didn’t fit she would have to toss into the fire box in the iron stove in the kitchen. The captain had been wearing Peter Steadman’s clothes these days, with the exception of his Union Army coat some nights when there had been a chill. All of it she wedged into the bottom dresser drawer.
Then, before returning to the kitchen, she took Libby’s sleep shift and the other clothing that belonged to the woman from Jubilee’s bedroom—a day dress, a sunbonnet, a chemise—and tossed them on a chair in the woman’s own room. She brought two jugs of whiskey downstairs.
When the evidence of Jonathan Weybridge was hidden, she moved a chair to the kitchen cabinets, because she knew that Libby had hidden the man’s papers above them: the envelope from the Union War Office and the letter from his wife that she had brought to Harper’s Ferry to try and convince the Yankees that Weybridge was alive. Libby and Weybridge had agreed that she would secure them here, because they were invisible from the floor. But Sally decided she’d hold on to the papers herself until this lieutenant was gone.
And it was when she was standing on the chair, planning to retrieve the letter and the envelope, that she saw atop the cabinet and flush against the wall four more Colt pistols, a powder flask, and two boxes of bullets. There was no time to find a better place to hide them. She’d have to hope that Morgan wasn’t as diligent as she feared. Nevertheless, she took one pistol down, checked that it was loaded, and placed it inside her dress. It fit…barely. She couldn’t imagine shooting this lieutenant: she was still surprised that Joseph had been capable of killing the drunken straggler who’d attacked Libby in this very kitchen. But she was also not going to be hanged if this soldier found evidence of the Yankee they’d brought back from the dead.
The lieutenant was thorough, but she got lucky. They all got lucky. He didn’t think to stand on a chair and explore the top of the cabinet or the hutch on the wall opposite the iron stove. He didn’t open the firebox. Now he and the corporal and Joseph were standing around the table, all of them, it seemed to Sally, uncomfortable—though the reasons that these white men felt this way differed from hers and Joseph’s. The soldiers were annoyed that they had found nothing; she and Joseph were anxious they still might.
And Sally wanted these men gone because she wanted to ask Joseph what he knew about those pistols and the ammunition. What secrets were he and Libby hiding from her and, undoubtedly, from Jubilee? She had found four guns. Were there more?
“Tell your mistress we were here: Lieutenant Henry Morgan. Sixth Virginia Cavalry. She’ll remember me,” he told them, though he was speaking primarily to Joseph.
“We will,” her husband said. “And we’ll let you or Mr.Covington know if we see any Yankees.”
The lieutenant still eyed him suspiciously. He eyed them both with skepticism. Finally, he said, “No. I don’t think you will. And that’s a problem for me.” Then he ripped off a piece of bread from one of the loaves she had taken from the stove, still warm, and said to the corporal, “Let’s get out of here, Stanton. I won’t enjoy this bread with the stink of these two polluting my nose.”