The Union Quilters (38 page)

Gerda was accustomed to waking before dawn to the sound of her brother’s footfalls on the steps as he left to do his morning chores, but the next morning she slept past sunrise and lingered in bed, staring up at the ceiling, dreading the work that awaited her that day. She wondered if she had not heard Hans that morning because he too still lay abed, his usual morning chores gone off with the livestock. Perhaps he had risen and was even now digging through the embers. Yes, that was far more likely. She threw off the quilt and forced herself to her feet, made a quick toilet and dressed, steeling herself for the day. Hans would not linger in bed feeling sorry for himself. He was probably even at that moment salvaging tools or door hinges from the ruins and awaiting Mr. Craigmile’s visit. He would want his breakfast.

As she left her room, she heard the clatter of a coal scuttle in the kitchen and smelled coffee brewing. She quickened her pace; Hans had enough to do without fetching his own breakfast. Hurrying into the kitchen, she snatched an apron off the hook beside the door—and stopped short at the sight of Dorothea at the cookstove, frying eggs and ham.

“Dorothea,” she said, tears springing into her eyes. “How kind of you to come.”

Dorothea set down her spatula and rounded the table to embrace her. “I’m so sorry,” she said, her own eyes shining with unshed tears. “Such monstrous deeds—I can hardly believe it.”

“I know.” Gerda clung to her. “When I woke this morning, I hoped it had been a terrible nightmare, but it’s real. The barn, the stables, the livestock—all of it gone.”

Dorothea nodded, and Gerda realized that Dorothea, of all her friends, would understand her loss completely.

“It’ll be all right. Somehow.” Dorothea hugged her firmly and returned to the cookstove. “Mr. Craigmile is here,” she continued, turning the eggs so they wouldn’t burn. “He and Hans are talking out by the ruins.”

Gerda nodded. “Mr. Craigmile reported the fire to the sheriff last night. Hans had no horse to ride or he would have gone himself. Mr. Craigmile promised to tell us what came of it.”

“Well,” a familiar voice declared from the doorway, “I for one hope he’s come to tell us that those horrid men are behind bars and someone’s driving our horses and cows back home where they belong even as we speak.”

Gerda looked over her shoulder, hardly daring to believe that Anneke had returned, but there she was, red-eyed from weeping, chin raised in determination, Albert on her hip, and David tugging on her skirt and asking if he and Stephen could go out to play.

With a cry of relief and joy, Gerda hurried to embrace them all.

When Hans came in to breakfast, his hands and face scrubbed clean of the ash and soot that lingered on his clothes, he kissed his wife tenderly, took his place at the head of the table, looked around at the faces of his family—and one dear neighbor—and seemed for all the world to be a man who considered himself richly blessed. As they ate, he told them that when Mr. Craigmile had described the two unfamiliar men, the sheriff had recognized them immediately and had dispatched deputies to the four men’s homes. The man with the Vandyke beard had come as a refugee from Gettysburg and had remained in Waterʹs Ford ever since, taking a job at the livery stable. He did not answer the deputy’s knock, and the woman who kept his boardinghouse said she had not seen him since the previous afternoon, but he had paid his rent through the end of the month and his belongings remained in his room. Mrs. Gilbert, the wife of the man Gerda recognized from the construction crew, reported that her husband had left the previous morning to go hunting and she expected him back within a week. The wife of the eldest raider said that her husband had been hired to collect horses for the Union Army and was driving a small herd to Camp Curtin; he had promised to return in a few days. As for the youngest of the men, his weeping mother reported that he had taken his late father’s prize stallion, one of the best of Mr. Bergstrom’s famous stables, and had ridden off to join the cavalry, having recently come of age.

Upon receiving his deputies’ reports, the sheriff had immediately dispatched a rider to Wright’s Pass, where the militia guard confirmed that four men meeting the riders’ description had left the valley shortly after noon, leading about a dozen fine horses that they claimed had been confiscated for the United States Cavalry.

“So it would seem our horses have been drafted,” said Hans, smiling ruefully at Anneke as she cut him a second thick slice of bread and buttered it.

“What about our cows and the calf?” said Gerda. “The guards at Wright’s Pass made no mention of them.”

“Perhaps the riders kept them as a commission,” said Anneke. “As a reward for their selfless service to the nation.”

“They’re branded. If they’re still in the valley, we’ll find them, and we know where to start looking.” Hans sighed and rubbed at his beard. “I fear we will not see those horses again.”

“But when the raiders return home—as it seems they soon will, except for the one who intends to enlist—the sheriff will arrest them,” said Dorothea, but she seemed uncertain. “Surely they’ll be obliged to pay for the damages to your property, and for the theft of your livestock if it can’t be restored to you.”

“I’m sure the sheriff will do all he can,” said Hans, resigned. “I confess the loss of my best sires and brood mares grieves me. I have to start over. It’s as if I just got off the boat from Germany, only I’m older than I was then and not quite so daring.”

“You’re not starting over completely,” said Anneke. “We have this lovely home. You have me and the children.”

“You have friends,” added Dorothea. “You’re not alone on the western frontier. We will all do what we can to help you get back on your feet again.”

Hans smiled wanly. “Will the Union Quilters make an opportunity quilt to rescue me from ruin?”

“You are not even close to the edge of ruin,” said Dorothea, “but if it would keep you from tumbling in, of course we would make you a quilt. Our first task, however, should be a barn raising. By the time the barn is finished, we might have something for you to put in it.”

When Hans laughed, it was as if a dark cloud blocking the sun had drifted aside, illuminating them in diffuse light, a promise of better days to come. Their world had been shattered, but Anneke had come home, and the children were smiling and happy to see their family reunited. Dorothea’s words gave Gerda hope that with the help of their friends, they would be able to gather the scattered pieces and stitch them back together.

A knock sounded on the front door. Anneke had Albert on her lap, so Gerda excused herself and went to answer it. To her astonishment, she discovered the kindly postmaster standing on the front porch. He had never visited them at the farm before. “Mr. Reinhart,” she said, opening the door wider. “What a surprise. Do come in. You must have heard about the fire.”

“I did,” he said, removing his postmasterʹs cap and coming inside. “My daughter, Harriet, sends you her sympathies. She’s put together a basket for you—some preserves and bread and a cake, I think. I planned to bring her to call on you this afternoon, but there was news, sorrowful news, and I had to come right away. I am so terribly sorry, Miss Bergstrom. The army messenger went to Mrs. Granger, and Mr. Schultz sent his son to Two Bears Farm, but, I thought, who would come to you?”

Cold, ominous dread stole over her. “What’s happened?”

His kind face was shadowed with sorrow—but not for himself. For her. “Perhaps you should sit down, Miss Bergstrom.”

She stared at him, disbelieving. Before she could reach for a chair, Dorothea was at her side. “Why would Mr. Schultz send his son to my home?”

“Mrs. Nelson.” Surprised and dismayed, Mr. Reinhart guided them to the sofa and gently eased them down upon it. “I am terribly grieved to bring you unhappy news.”

Gerda could not bear not knowing for a moment longer. “What is it? Please, Mr. Reinhart. Tell us.”

“A casualty list came this morning by telegraph,” he said. “It included a list of men lost at Libby Prison.”

Gerda felt the room spinning. She heard Dorothea gasp.

“It grieves me to tell you this, my dear ladies, but Dr. Grangerʹs name was on it.”

W
hen Charlotte received the news, Gerda later learned, she fainted.

There had been a prisoner exchange. Jonathan was supposed to have been included, but when the prisoners lined up to march under armed guard to the train station, Jonathan was not among them. Upon arriving in Washington City, a captain from the 5th New York Cavalry reported that the surgeon had perished from typhoid two weeks before he would have been released.

After Mr. Schultz ran a lengthy, laudatory obituary in the
Register
, the entire Elm Creek Valley mourned the loss of its beloved physician. Somehow, despite his earlier proximity to the front lines and his later imprisonment, few people, it seemed, had considered Jonathan to be in any real danger. He did not engage in battle; he tended the sick and wounded. Of all the men of the 49th, he had been expected to survive.

Reeling from grief, Gerda paid little attention to the calls for a public funeral. Her beloved was gone. What did it matter how the town honored him, how they paid tribute to his honorable sacrifice? He was gone, and the world seemed drained of color and light.

It was a shock, a few days later, when she answered a knock on the door and discovered Charlotte standing there, clad from head to toe in mourning black, her eyes shadowed and skin pale as if she had not slept since receiving the terrible news. “Charlotte,” Gerda greeted her numbly. The young woman had not set foot on Elm Creek Farm since before her marriage. “I—I—” She opened the door wider, glancing beyond Charlotte to the buggy where her younger brother waited, still holding the reins. Apparently the young widow did not intend to stay long. “Please, do come in.”

Charlotte entered without a word and accepted Gerda’s invitation to sit in the front room while she made tea. With shaking hands she carried the tray from the kitchen to the front room, wishing Anneke were there, but she and the boys were off playing near the creek.

“I . . . should have called on you to express my condolences,” Gerda said haltingly as she poured. “I thought, perhaps, it would be better if I stayed away.”

“Indeed it was.” Charlotte added sugar to her cup, but left it steaming on the table. “I would not have wished to see you.”

Gerda sat down and knotted her fingers together in her lap. “I understand.”

“I don’t believe you do.” Charlotte regarded her squarely. “Even so, I would not have come to you except that I need your help, and I can think of no one who would understand my desires more than you, nor anyone more indebted to me and obliged to help me.”

“Indebted to you?”

“For all the grief and sorrow you have caused me through the years.”

Heat rising in her face, Gerda cleared her throat and took a deep, steadying breath. “I never meant to cause you any distress.”

“And yet you did all the same, carelessly, without thinking.” Charlotte pursed her lips and inhaled deeply. “My husband deserves a proper Christian burial in his family plot on Granger land. I cannot bear to think of him coldly disposed of in some pit with dozens of others hundreds of miles from home.”

Gerda closed her eyes and shook her head, a futile gesture that failed to block the dreadful image from her imagination. “I cannot either.”

“He should be put to rest where his loved ones can visit him and tend his grave.”

Gerda wished it could be so. It would be a cold comfort to lay flowers upon his grave, but it would offer him the dignity he had earned in life. She nodded and sipped her tea, unwilling to speak lest she break down in sobs in front of her longtime adversary.

“I intend to go to Libby Prison to retrieve his body, and as I cannot go alone, I want you to accompany me.”

Gerda stared at her. “You cannot mean it.”

“I do.”

“Richmond is the capital of the Confederacy. It is surrounded by the Rebel army.”

“Yes, so I’ve heard.”

Gerda uttered an incredulous laugh. “General Grant and General Meade and the entire Union Army haven’t been able to enter Richmond, and yet you believe you could?”

“No,” said Charlotte. “I believe
you
could, with the help of your friend Miss Van Lew. You’ve said that she regularly sends her servants from her home into her gardens outside the city. Surely if her servants are permitted through the lines, they would be able to escort us back in.”

Gerda shook her head. “This is madness. The Rebels would never let us pass.”

“I disagree. We are two women in mourning, not soldiers or scouts. Why should we not be allowed into the city? We won’t be smuggling anything in, and we will take only my husband’s remains out.”

“You don’t need me for this,” said Gerda. “Dorothea will accompany you. As Jonathan’s sister she is a far more appropriate companion for you, and she’s clever enough to outwit any Rebel who might attempt to interfere. I’ll write you a letter of introduction to Miss Van Lew. That should suffice.”

Charlotte shook her head, the black ribbon of her black silk bonnet tied so firmly that the bonnet barely moved. “Dorothea couldn’t leave Abigail.”

“Then take your mother.”

“My mother will be caring for my children in my absence.”

“Your mother can go with you, and I will look after your children.”

“Absolutely not,” said Charlotte. “Jonathan always respected my wishes to keep you as far from our children as possible, and my resolve in that regard has not altered one bit. Don’t think his death has softened my heart toward you. Don’t mistake my presence here as an overture of friendship. I need you for this one duty, that is all.”

Gerda looked away, her heart wrenching in pain as she imagined the conversation between husband and wife. She had not realized that Jonathan had intentionally kept her away from his children. She had assumed that Charlotte had wanted to avoid her, and since Charlotte was always with her children except when the Union Quilters met—under such circumstances, of course Gerda rarely saw the children except at large public gatherings. She had thought nothing of it, until now. But perhaps there had been nothing to think of. For all she knew, there had been no such agreement, and Charlotte was merely trying to wound her.