The Union Quilters (39 page)

Suddenly, Charlotte stood, leaving her tea untasted. “Time is of the essence. Think of what my husband would have wanted before you make up your mind. Send word to me by the end of the day.”

Gerda was so shocked, she forgot to rise and see Charlotte to the door. The sound of Charlotte’s younger brother chirruping to the horses and the carriage driving off roused her. She rose and hurried to the window, her thoughts churning as she watched the carriage cross the bridge over Elm Creek and disappear behind the charred ruins of the barn.

Gerda went outside and paced on the front porch, pondering Charlotte’s request. What would Jonathan have wanted her to do? In their many conversations about the meaning of life and the divine purpose of mortality, Jonathan had often said that he believed the body should be respected as part of God’s creation and as the earthly vessel of the immortal soul, but after death, it was an empty shell. She did not believe that his spirit would remain restless for all eternity if his body were not buried beneath his home soil and the proper ceremonies performed. Jonathan would have scoffed at such a notion, just as he would have urged Charlotte and Gerda not to endanger themselves for his sake.

And yet, he would have wanted Charlotte, Dorothea, and his parents to be comforted. He would want his children to remember him. He would not want the people he loved most dearly to be distressed over his ignominious burial, even if it meant nothing to him. And, Gerda was forced to admit, if Charlotte needed Gerda’s help to make her grief easier to bear, Jonathan would want Gerda to help her.

She had little choice—but not because of any debt she owed Charlotte. She would help Charlotte out of love for Jonathan, as her own private memorial to her lost beloved.

When she told Hans what she intended to do, Hans tried to persuade her to reconsider, and when that failed, he offered to accompany them. Gerda would have preferred to have him along, but as a healthy Northern man of enlistment age, he was likely to be forbidden passage at the border or apprehended as a prisoner of war. When the Wrights heard of their plan, Abel too offered to escort them, but a veteran of the United States Colored Troops would fare even worse in the hands of Confederate soldiers than a civilian. Even Mr. Reinhart, who seemed to blame himself for their sorrow since he had delivered the heartbreaking news, wanted to help. “I would consider it an honor to accompany you and Mrs. Granger to Richmond,” he said after Gerda explained the reason for her most recent, most urgent letter to Miss Van Lew. “You may assure your brother that you will be safe under my protection.”

Gerda had never been fonder of the postmaster than at that moment. “You are kindness itself, but it is too great a risk for you. I couldn’t bear it if you were taken prisoner as other postmasters have been.”

Reluctantly, but graciously, he accepted her refusal, adding that he took it as the highest compliment that she cared so much for his safety. He also urged her to send Miss Van Lew a telegram in addition to the letter informing her of their imminent arrival and requesting her help; whether a telegram was any more likely to reach Miss Van Lew than a letter was impossible to say, but it would be a prudent measure.

Gerda thanked him for his advice, which was sound as always, and went to the telegraph office straightaway, where she sent messages to Miss Van Lew as well as Mrs. Philippa Whitehall, the friend living outside Richmond who acted as their intermediary, passing along letters they dared not risk to the Confederate mails. She prayed that Miss Van Lew would receive at least one of her messages and prepare for their arrival. Without the Richmond woman’s assistance, Gerda could not imagine how they could enter the city, much less Libby Prison.

They could not wait for Miss Van Lew’s reply but had to depart immediately. Gerda thought it cruel to remind Charlotte that they might already be too late. In her first letter to Gerda, Miss Van Lew had explained that bodies were stored in the prison basement until enough had accumulated for a full wagonload, and only then were the corpses hauled away for burial. As offensive as it was to imagine Jonathan’s body treated with such disrespect and disinterest, their only hope was that he had not yet been taken away. If he had already been buried, Gerda could not imagine how they would find his location in a mass grave or arrange for his disinterment.

She packed a satchel and, at the last moment, included the velvet purse containing her life savings, all the money she had earned selling preserves at the market and writing for the
Water’s Ford Register
. At one time she had thought she would use the money to buy Joanna’s freedom, but Josiah Chester had never responded to a single one of her letters and probably never would. Perhaps he had died, a casualty of the war. Perhaps Joanna had perished as well. Gerda and Charlotte would need cash to purchase railroad tickets, a coffin, and transportation home. Perhaps they would need bribes for the prison guards; Miss Van Lew would know. It would be foolhardy to save the money for the increasingly unlikely occasion of purchasing Joanna’s freedom, when she and Charlotte were likely to face urgent, immediate needs in the days ahead.

On the morning five days after receiving word of Jonathan’s death, Gerda bade Anneke and the children farewell and climbed onto the wagon seat beside her brother. First they drove north, to fetch Charlotte from the Granger farm. Once, it had belonged to Dorothea and Jonathan’s uncle, with whom their family had lived after losing their utopian community to the floodwaters of Elm Creek. The Claverton farm was adjacent to the north, and many years before, both families had noted that if their children were to wed, the properties likewise would make a prosperous union. Thus Jonathan and Charlotte had been intended for each other long before they were old enough to choose for themselves.

Gerda, a recent immigrant unaware of the families’ long-standing ties, had learned of their engagement in the cruelest of ways—Anneke had encountered Charlotte at the dressmakerʹs shop being fitted for her wedding gown. Stunned by the revelation, Gerda’s instinct was not to believe it. In the two years she and Jonathan had known each other, their friendship had deepened into affection enriched with respect and mutual understanding. Though Jonathan had never professed his love for her, he had given every indication of it in their many conversations and long walks, their lingering glances and accidental touches, his words, his actions, the smile that lit up his face whenever he saw her—no, she had not imagined love where only friendship resided. Nor in all their many conversations had Jonathan mentioned an engagement, the surest sign of all that it did not exist. Gerda prayed Anneke had simply misunderstood what she had seen at the dressmakerʹs shop.

But the next time Jonathan called on her, he had confessed the truth: He and Charlotte were to be married in six weeks. All his life he had understood that one day they would wed, and when he had come of age, he had dutifully proposed, believing that it was what he wanted, never thinking that he would find any greater happiness than satisfying his parents’ expectations. He had never imagined that one day he would meet Gerda, that he would discover a soul mate and know the meeting of true minds. Gerda was devastated. At last he had confessed that he loved her, but although she begged him to break off the engagement—for their sake as well as Charlotte’s, for it was deceptive and wrong to marry her when he loved someone else—he refused. Charlotte loved him, and he had promised to marry her. He could not put his own desires before honor and duty.

Thus Jonathan and Charlotte married, and thus Gerda was forsaken. So great was her anger and grief and confusion that for a long time, she could not bear to see him. They grew estranged, but those qualities they had admired in each other from the start did not alter with time, nor did their feelings fade, and so gradually they resumed their old friendship. Jonathan called on her, came for supper every Saturday, discussed with her literature and politics and religion and philosophy and many other subjects that, Gerda guessed, did not interest Charlotte. It was almost as it had been before his marriage, except that Gerda no longer entertained fanciful notions that one day she and Jonathan would marry. That they would love each other for the rest of their lives, she was certain. That she continued to nurture a small, wistful hope that someday they would be together, she could not deny. But although she had indulged in foolish dreams through the years, she had always known that the same sense of duty that had compelled Jonathan to marry Charlotte would prevent him from leaving her, nor could Gerda wish any misfortune to befall Charlotte, even if it meant that Jonathan would be free. She also knew that she could not forget how he had deceived her, how he had hurt her, though she tried her best to forgive. So Gerda had contented herself with the knowledge that Jonathan loved her, that he was as unhappy with their separation as she, and that he at last recognized his mistake in marrying Charlotte.

Or so she had told herself, until the war. The war had utterly separated them, especially after his imprisonment, when from conversations lasting hours they had been curtailed to one six-line letter every six weeks. He married Charlotte, lived with her, slept with her, fathered her children, and built a life with her, but always, always, Gerda had had his words. Her hours and days and thoughts and heart had been filled with his words, and then the war had stolen even that from her. The loss of that one small part of Jonathan she had retained, that one vital intimacy they had not sacrificed to his marriage, suddenly rekindled every longing she had sublimated into benign friendship. Suddenly she longed to share his life with the same intensity of passion she had felt before that fatal day she had learned of his engagement, as if none of the disappointment and betrayal of the intervening years had ever happened.

In the long, anxious months of his imprisonment, she had wondered if his thoughts followed the same path. They always had thought alike, and perhaps this time too they had reached the same conclusion. For Gerda had come to believe that if Jonathan found their separation as unbearable as she did, upon his release, he would be unable to let it continue. Confronted with the dreadful possibility of losing her forever, he would find the will to leave Charlotte and follow his heart. If he did, Gerda knew his heart would lead him to her.

But now Jonathan was dead, and her dreams of a life by his side were turned to ashes as surely as the barn and stables.

At the Granger farm, Hans hefted Charlotte’s satchel into the wagon and helped her onto the seat, clothed in mourning black and veiled. They said little as they traveled south through the valley and climbed the rolling Appalachians to Wright’s Pass. The militia guards recognized them but would not have hindered them even if had they not; they were concerned with Rebels entering, not a man and two women leaving.

The road to Harrisburg took them on a scenic route along the Susquehanna River. When they passed Camp Curtin on the outskirts of the city, Gerda could not help recalling that fateful day when the men of the Elm Creek Valley had gone off to join the 49th Pennsylvania. If only Jonathan had not been compelled to serve—but for Jonathan, there had never been any other choice but to put his skills to use for the Union cause. How sad it was that he would not see the end of the war, and the end of slavery in their reunified nation. Her heart welled up with grief when she thought of everything he would miss—the inevitable though distant Union victory and the peace that would follow, his postwar homecoming, his children’s first birthdays, all the wonderful books yet to be written that he would have loved, years and years by Gerda’s side. The earth would turn and days would pass without him, seasons would come and go, but Gerda wished to live forever in any day she had spent with him.

When they reached the Harrisburg train station, Hans queried them—whether they had enough money, their letters of introduction, food for the trip, the name and address of Thomas Nelson’s friend who would meet them in Washington City, second thoughts—and eventually seemed satisfied that they had done all they could to assure a safe journey. Still, his misgivings as he helped them board the train were apparent. “If you run into trouble, send a telegram at once, and I will come as quickly as I can,” he told Gerda as the train whistle blew. “Don’t hesitate to call on the Nelsons’ friends if you need them.”

She assured him they would be fine, and as the train started up, her brother stepped back upon the platform and watched, frowning worriedly beneath a furrowed brow, as the train pulled away from the station. Sighing and settling back into her seat, Gerda considered striking up a conversation with Charlotte, but the young woman had already opened a book and was reading, or pretending to read to avoid speaking with her. Gerda had brought a book of her own, but instead she gazed out the window at the passing scenery. The city soon gave way to rolling countryside, and she lost herself in memories of Jonathan from happier days.

They changed trains in Baltimore and continued on to Washington City. Gerda had often imagined traveling to the nation’s capital, but never under such circumstances. The sun shone as if it were midsummer, and unlike back home, little autumn color had touched the lush green trees. Soldiers guarded every train station, giving Gerda the unsettling sensation that they were hurtling into the thick of the fight.

It was early evening when they arrived. As they gathered their belongings and disembarked, they overheard other passengers discussing the places they planned to visit and the upcoming presidential election. “Perhaps we should stop by the Executive Mansion so you may advise Mr. Lincoln on his campaign,” said Charlotte. “Since you are such intimate friends.”

“He likely does not remember me,” said Gerda shortly, carrying her satchel to the exit without bothering to see if Charlotte followed. “It was more than a year ago that we met in Gettysburg, and it was an eventful day.”

“Surely the sheer brilliance of your report fixed you in his memory. You do recall your report, which was going to inspire Mr. Lincoln and the Union Army to liberate Libby Prison?”