Undaunted Love (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

September 3, 1862

My Love,

Once again, I know you have been worried with the news of the latest battle at Bull Run. General Hill only sent in half our men, and I wasn’t among them. Sadly, more than half of them in the battle were wounded, including Satchel, who was shot through the arm. He didn’t lose it, and is recovering at the home of a nearby plantation owner, under the care of the women from town who are running a nice little hospital.

I have not heard word of Wyman Phelps, although our division has received many of the conscripts to refill our ranks. The volunteer soldiers aren’t best pleased with them, as they complain and moan about everything from the food to the work to the tents. We all know things are bad, but we’re here of our will, and it’s galling coming from the ones that didn’t want to come and fight. We lost a few men during Bull Run – not men that died, but conscripts that skulked off like a kicked dog and haven’t come back since. Good riddance, I say. Many are no account deadbeats, and we sure aren’t spending time looking for them.

Master Sergeant Lawrence has told me that I am in line for another promotion. Many people are getting promotions on the battlefield, as others drop. I’d just as soon get it on my own, not just on account of a first sergeant being wounded or killed, but however it comes I shall be happy for the extra stripe and the extra $3 a month. I know that prices are rising all the time back home, and I thank you for all your help with things at the house.

Please tell your sister thank you for the socks. I gave them out to my men and they were right pleased. Her love for me gives me hope. Pray for us, and pray that we will win this War soon and all the boys can go home.

Yours Faithfully,

Rafe

December 15, 1862

Dearest Liv,

We’ve survived three battles in only four months, and have lost many thousands of men from General Hill’s division, but we’ve suffered our most grievous loss yet. General Gregg has died from a bullet to the back, a most terrible loss for the 1st South Carolina. General Hill himself sat at his bedside, but the doctors couldn’t do anything and now he has gone home. There is a black mood amongst the South Carolina boys especially, and we don’t know who is to lead us now, although for the moment we are reporting to Colonel McCreary. We are tired of death and struggle, and the sounds of guns and screams, but we fight on, knowing we are fighting for our wives and mothers and daughters.

I’ve gotten word that Wyman Phelps is a second lieutenant in General D.H. Hill’s division, and a poor job he’s doing. They say he flees from fighting when he can, leaving his men on the battlefield, and they have no love of him. Many gentlemen have been made officers in this War who got no business with a gun in their hand, nor leading men to die. But we continue on, don’t we?

Tell Nackie that I am keeping an extra $2 for myself from the new pay since I made first sergeant. I been getting by on $2 a month, but the cost of everything is dear now, even the postage for my letters. I know they’re struggling, and I can only pray that this War will end quickly, and I can come home. It will be a drear Christmas, I’m afraid.

All My Love,

Rafe

July 4, 1863

My Love,

I don’t have the words to tell you thank you for the letter I received today, which gave me great comfort at a terrible time We have been in the worst fighting yet at Gettysburg, and most counts put our casualties at over twenty thousand men. The newspapermen assure us that the Federals have lost as many, but we find scant comfort in the thought. Our regiment had over three hundred in the fight, and more than half are lost. How I am alive when so many are gone is a mystery only God can answer.

I am injured, but please don’t worry. My wounds, they say, will not send me home, however much I may wish them to, and I will be out of the generous care of Mr. and Mrs. Hubert within the week. We lost our own lieutenant, and Sergeant Lawrence was wounded grievously in the head, although I am assured he will recover. We have lost so many that I have been made a lieutenant, in fact. While I should feel happy at this miracle and the help it will bring to Mama and Nackie, it comes at such a cost that I am sore convicted of any celebration.

It has been so long since my visit to Byrd’s Creek, and I feel that all my life is death and smoke and noise and foul smells. But in the night, I dream of you and of our children to come, and I thank God for every breath he has allowed me to take that brings us closer to the end of this War. I feel your prayers, and thank you for them.

Tell your students that the men laughed and cried over their letters. Many of them can’t read, so we read them aloud one night around the fire, and it made all of us feel all that much better. It was well done, Livvie my love, well done.

Always,

Rafe

January 1, 1864

Dearest Liv,

Happy New Year! I hope that you received the gift I sent you. I know that the Federals are seizing mail where they find it, and so my small gift might not have gotten to you. But you were in my thoughts, as you are today as we start this third year of our “short” War.

Spirits are low here, as the battles most often go against us. We have little in the way of supplies, and spend as much time foraging for food and taking poor farmers’ crops and cattle to feed the division as we do fighting the Union. Packages arrive from home, but scarcely, and we are all sure that there are many a Federal walking around in socks made by Confederate women.

Your news of Wyman Phelps was not new to me, as I had heard tell of his inglorious injury, shot in the back as he fled. It was no surprise to anyone, nor was his lack of promotion. General Lee might have been better off if Wyman had stayed in Byrd’s Creek and continued working for your father. I do mislike his being back there, and most especially that your father has put him up in your house for nursing, but perhaps word of his craven doings will reach Mr. Byrd and he won’t thrust him upon you anymore.

Tell Nackie that, if Mr. Greene would allow, he should purchase the poor horse we’ve borrowed so long. I know it will cut sorely into the purse, but I doubt even generous Mr. Greene thought he’d be lending his animal for nigh on three years!

I hope that Emmy recovers from her fever, and that no one else in town gets ill. Many here have suffered fevers and the shakes and the flux, and now the bitter cold. I dream of my nice warm bed, and you in it next to me.

Faithfully,

Rafe

May 30, 1864

My Love,

I apologize that I haven’t written in so many weeks. We have been fighting a long and wearying battle in Spotsylvania, Virginia, the last near on two weeks. My men are exhausted beyond sense, and our forces took thirteen and a half thousand casualties. By all accounts many less than the Federals, who lost eighteen to twenty thousand, depending on who’s doing the telling, but there was no winner that we can decipher, and morale is miserably low. I have been promoted again, to first lieutenant, but I would give it all up, even the pay, to come home.

Your tales of scavenging for food, of rogue bands of Federals stealing and burning fields, of even worse things… They are only more of the same that we hear daily. More and more men have slipped away in the night to go protect their families, but we hear also that many of them are captured for deserters or, worse, by the Federals and taken prisoner. We all have wives and mothers at home, and it is all we can do to remain faithful to our duty, as hopeless as it now seems.

Also we have heard of the high cost of things, and that our money is worthless now. Another reason I would leave happily – what is $90 a month when a pound of butter is $15 and a pair of boots $50? Fortunately it’s summer, so most of us are barefoot anyway, but if we’re still fighting when winter comes, I don’t know how any of us will have shoes.

My Love to All,

Rafe

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Thanksgiving, 1864

Byrd’s Creek, SC

W
YMAN SAT NEXT TO LIVVIE at the long dining table, Madeline and Gardner across. There was no roast bird. No one had been able to find one in the woods of Edisto, which had been picked clean by Northern troops and Southern women. Two red drum, caught by Nackie from the beach behind the Colton house, were roasted whole, stuffed with cornbread. A few mealy potatoes were in a bowl, some wild greens in another, available only because of the warm fall. The Kinneys had brought an apple pie, and Emmy had traded sugar for cream.

Hugh Byrd said the prayer, and there was a listless and unenthusiastic “Amen” from the family. Clara Byrd sat at her place at the end of the table, but she was pale and thin and prone to long bouts of coughing. The doctor had diagnosed the consumption, and had had no medicine available to give her. Livvie glanced at her frequently, worried that she would tire herself unduly.

Under the table Wyman put his hand on her knee, and Livvie jumped in her chair. Her face flushed and she swiped the hand away. Wyman grinned at her, sipping more wine and leering. Her father, much aged by the War and their diminishing prospects, paid him no mind. The young man had recovered long since, but had never moved out of the Byrd house, and Hugh now seemed to accept him as a son-in-law, ignoring the fact that there had been no wedding. Livvie didn’t even think her daddy
liked
Wyman anymore, but having him there, and pairing them off, took the weight of her future off his mind.

Madeline saw her discomfiture and tried to lighten the mood.

“Daddy,” she said, “Thomas was out playing soldier the other day with Jerutha and the other slaves. You would have been proud of his marching, I am sure!”

“We’ve got enough soldiers dying, Madeline, you shouldn’t encourage him,” Hugh said. Madeline flushed.

“He’s just proud, Daddy,” she said.

“We’re losing the War, we’ve lost our money, our crops. Many people have lost their land and homes. What is he proud of, exactly?”

Gardner squeezed his wife’s hand, and she pressed her lips together. She was again heavy with child, and she laid a hand protectively over her belly.

“How are you feeling, Miss Clara?” Gardner asked.

Managing a weak smile, Clara said, “Oh, better every day, Gardner, better every day. Soon I’ll get back to my ladies at the church. You know, the young men need so much now, and while no one has the money to buy things anymore, why, we can still make bandages from scraps and darn old socks for them.” She began to cough, bracing herself with one hand on the edge of the table, the other over her mouth. Tears began to stream down her face as she fought to take a breath.

“Mama!” Livvie exclaimed and got to her feet. She rushed to her mother and helped her up. “I’ll take her upstairs. She’s gotten overtired with all this.” Madeline got up as well, and they each got on one side of Clara and helped her up and out the door.

Once they got her into the bed and Emmy had brought up hot sweet tea, Clara fell asleep and the sisters sat at the small settee under the window. Madeline had Livvie’s hand in hers, the other rubbing her belly.

“It won’t be long now, by Christmas, I think,” she said.

Livvie smiled. “I wish I’d gotten with child the last time Rafe was home.”

“Well, you’d be quit of Wyman, anyway. Daddy might not have gotten over it.” She laughed.

“I could have lived at Rafe’s house with Nackie and Mrs. Colton – sometimes I long to do that anyway, to just be Mrs. Rafe Colton, and sleep in our bed.” She closed her eyes. “I haven’t seen him in over two years, Madeline. It’s more than a mite too long.”

“Gardner got out of going to fight because of the slave exemption, and we really needed him to stay anyway. His daddy’s passed, and his mama and me couldn’t have run two farms. Plenty of nights I lay awake prayin’ he wouldn’t have to go. He’s not a coward, and he changed over some of the fields to food, to help folks, not like some farmers who’ve only grown cotton and tobacco.” She rubbed her swollen belly again. “God help me, I didn’t want him to go. I didn’t encourage him, didn’t tell him how honorable it was.”

“I asked Rafe not to go, too, before we got married. But he didn’t have a farm anymore, nor any way to support his family.” She shrugged. “I guess I understood. And he’s done well – he’s a captain now, you know!”

“You didn’t tell me! That’s wonderful, Liv,” Madeline said, genuinely pleased.

Livvie shrugged. “He says he’s a captain because so many others have died. He’s a good soldier, but he’s ready to be quit of the War.”

“Aren’t we all?”

There was a light knock on the door and Emmy poked her head in. The old woman had lost considerable weight between her bouts of fever and the food shortages, and the roundness in her cheeks had melted away. She was as cheerful as ever, though.

“I thought you might be up here hidin’. Your daddy says to come down and leave your mama be.” She grimaced.

The girls stood up, walking to the door like they were walking the plank on a blockade ship.

It was past ten o’clock when Hugh decided to go to bed. Madeline had been able to excuse herself early, claiming exhaustion, and Livvie envied her fiercely. She’d been made to sit with the men as they discussed the War, the shortages, the politics, and Lincoln’s landslide reelection. For several months before the election, the Union forces had not fared particularly well, and there was some hope that Lincoln would be defeated and McClellan unable to put the pieces back together, but the battles had begun to turn again, and there were rumors that Lincoln was already planning how to integrate the conquered Confederacy back into the Union.

Gardner walked out with her father, leaving Livvie alone with Wyman. They were sitting in front of the fire in two large upholstered chairs. She was usually successful at avoiding him, especially at not being alone with him, and she felt uncomfortable as he sat and smiled at her. She stood up, smoothing her skirts.

“Well, I’m gonna go on up too, then. Happy Thanksgiving to you, and sleep well.” She moved around her chair to go, but found her way blocked by Wyman.

“Stay awhile, Livvie. We’re finally alone.” He reached out and grabbed both of her hands, pulling her close to him. She yanked one free, but he held fast to the other.

“I’m tuckered out, Wyman, and I’m sure Daddy didn’t mean to leave us unaccompanied.” She tried to step back, but he still held her hand. He pulled again, and she stumbled forward. He grabbed her shoulders and suddenly she was pressed against him and he was kissing her. She put both of her hands on his chest and pushed, shaking her head and trying to get a breath, but he was bigger and stronger, and she was unable to get free.

“I know you’ve wanted this as long as I have. Your father meant for us to get married a long time ago, but he’s been so busy with the stupid
War
and all his important men, he hasn’t made time for the arrangements. I am growing tired of waiting!” He pulled her in again, his hand behind her head forcing her to him. She tried to fight, but knew she would never get away. She tried to scream, but his mouth covered hers, pressing hard and bruising her lips. His other hand was around her waist, pressing, pressing, keeping her hard against him. Her skirts kept her kicks from doing any damage, and although her hands pounded on his chest, his back, his ribs, he didn’t let go. He merely laughed.

“You’ve pranced around this house in front of me for years, batting your lashes and pretending disinterest, pretending to be a lady. But your mama and daddy ain’t here now, and I know you’re no lady, not really, not down deep. I know what you want.” He pushed her back, over towards the window, and Livvie knew that, if he got her down on the settee, there would be no getting up. If he ever got his weight on her, he would have her. She pulled her knee back, and then shoved it forward as hard as it would go into his groin, feeling as well as hearing when the breath left him. He released her and slumped forward, clutching himself, his face white as a sheet. She grabbed for the chair, then walked around him and towards the door.

She hadn’t reached it when it opened, and Gardner stepped in.

“Liv, I didn’t mean to leave you down here…” He stopped when he saw Wyman and the state he was in. He glanced at his sister-in-law and saw her hair awry, her cheeks flushed but the rest of her face white, her skirts rumpled. His teeth clenched, his jaw tightened, and he walked straight over to the groaning young man. Gardner’s right arm went back, and he landed a solid punch to Wyman’s jaw. After a brief look of shock, Wyman crumpled to the ground.