Ashes in the Wind (25 page)

“How did she go?” he demanded. “What did she look like? Is she garbed as a boy or girl?”

“So many angry questions, Captain. Tsk! Tsk! No wonder the girl ran away from you,” she chided.

“Did you give her a horse?” he inquired sharply.

“Will you have some tea, Captain?” she inquired, pouring a cup.

Cole waved it away impatiently. “Has she horse or buggy?”

“A horse, I think.” Mrs. Hawthorne nodded. “But then, it might have been a buggy. She rides very well, did you know that?”

“I don’t doubt that in the least,” he retorted. “But what disguise is she wearing?”

“ Now, Captain.” The elder smiled benevolently. “The girl made me promise not to tell you. And I am a woman of my word.”

“And you won’t tell me where she’s gone?”

“Alaina didn’t want me confiding in you at all, Captain.” Mrs. Hawthorne spread her wrinkled hands in apology. “I’m sorry. I can see that you are distressed. Do you fear for her safety?”

“Of course,” he snapped. “She has no money, no food—”

“I did pack a basket for her, so she won’t starve for three or four days at least, but she refused to take coin. She assured me that she could take care of herself.”

Cole snorted derisively.

“Captain?” Mrs. Hawthorne looked at him closely. “You seem overly concerned about the girl. Is she kin to you?”

“Only distantly by marriage,” he replied absently as he began to pace restlessly about the room.

“A special person then? Perhaps your mistress?”

Cole whirled to face the woman at her bold suggestion. “Hardly!” He hurled the blunt denial. “I thought she was a boy until yesterday.”

“Well, that leaves only one thing.” Mrs. Hawthorne seemed to settle the fact in her mind and folded her hands together as she made the firm accusation. “You’re in love with her.”

Cole folded his own hands behind him and struggled to contain his laughter at the ridiculous idea. He leaned forward and began as if to lecture a wayward orderly. “Madame Hawthorne—”

“You needn’t be so formal, Captain. I give you permission to use my given name, if you so desire. Tally is what most everybody calls me.” She seated herself primly to await his continuance.

“Tally.” Cole paused to re-form his thoughts and tried again. “I am a married man of only a few months, and I knew Alaina only as ‘Al’ before that. I simply feel responsible for the girl. She—uh—has a way of getting herself into the thickest fray and has too much temper to avoid trouble. I only wish to offer her my continued protection.”

“Of course, Captain.” Her voice and smile were sublimely innocent. “And you’ve done such a wonderful job, at that.”

As he stared down into those warm, shining brown eyes, Cole had the distinct impression that Tally Hawthorne was both for him and yet against him. From that confusion, he could draw no further argument. He retrieved his hat and gauntlets, then paused beside the door. “Good-night, Tally.”

“I really do wish you good fortune in your endeavor to find your girl, Captain. Now good-night.”

Cole opened his mouth to reply, but Mrs. Hawthorne was already picking up the tea service as if she had already dismissed him. He left.

C
APTAIN
Cole Latimer rose early in the morning on Monday, the seventh day of the windy month. With a last glance about his apartment, he hefted his saddlebags and departed, relieved that the night of dissatisfied, restless pacing was at an end and that he hard some purposeful activity to set his mind to. At the hospital he picked up the orders assigning him as physician to the First Division of the 19th Corps under General William H. Emory and accepted the issue of a surgeon’s field kit, a heavy, bulky, leather case curved on the bottom to fit behind the cantle of a saddle. He paused briefly in the doorway of the officer’s dayroom to look in, just in case “Al” might have decided to return. His doubts were magnified into disappointment, no less bitter for the fact that he had expected as much.

Passing the posting board, he plucked a handbill he had only casually noted before, but it was not until he had secured passage on the Gretna ferry and found a private moment to himself that he withdrew the parchment from his blouse and read it with more care.

BRIAR HILL

LEGALLY CONFISCATED

estate of the renegade

ALAINA MACGAREN

1500 acres, approximately

600 tillable (appraised)

House, stable, carriage house

intact. Other outbuildings in

need of repair.

Minimum acceptable bid:

$5,000 U.S. Currency

Sealed bids only.

Auction: 12 April, 1864

Cole leaned against the railing of the small steam packet and stared into the roiling river that flowed beneath his feet. He was as sure now as this grunting little boat made noise that Alaina was headed back to her home, if only for a last look. The route of the march would take the army through Cheneyville, from whence, he had been assured, it was only a few miles to Briar Hill. Just maybe, in the passing, he would be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a familiar slim form.

At Gretna, Cole led the roan into a stockcar of the train bound for Brashear City and the waiting army, then settled himself in a seat in the passenger car in hopes of reclaiming some of the sleep he had lost during the night. But failing to find succor for his tired mind, he was a victim of the sluggard, time. It dragged on interminably.

Major Magruder was anxiously awaiting his arrival at the Brashear City station. The man had stridently protested the orders assigning him to the campaign, but now with Cole as a willing volunteer, he was impatient for his comfortable quarters in New Orleans. As soon as the younger man stepped down from the car, he was at the captain’s elbow and bypassed all usual forms of greeting.

“You’ll find the medical camp about three miles west on the lakeshore. It’s a choice spot, but I must warn you about the mosquitoes. They’ve grown quite barbarous with so much Yankee blood to feed on.” His voice droned on in a rapid-fire summation of orders, directives, and the general state of readiness of the medical cadre, which, he assured Cole, were ready to move on a moment’s notice. It was several moments before he paused and cleared his throat. “Any questions, Captain?” At Cole’s negative reply, Magruder cheered up a bit. “Good! Then you won’t need me, and I’ll see to my horse.” He took a few steps, then turned back with a languid smile. “I’d wish you good luck, Captain Latimer, but I think your first real campaign will prove to be devoid of any such frivolities.”

Most of the units Cole passed on his way to the medical encampment appeared to be in a state of permanent repose rather than readiness for an impending march. Those who had avoided the labor parties lazed about and indulged in pastime inactivities. The medical camp was no exception. In fact, there was even more of a flavor of a Sunday outing that existed in the hospital corps.

The sun was just touching the treetops when the charge of quarters directed Cole to Major
Magruder’s recently evacuated tent, and the brief southern twilight had flown by the time he returned from the officer’s mess. A single oil lantern provided him light as he entered his name in the unit’s log and settled himself in.

The eighth of March dawned bright and clear, bearing the promise of continued fair weather. Captain Latimer had risen before the sun and, after a hearty breakfast, returned to the cantonment area to inspect the small detachment that would form his command. He could find no rosters of assignment, and a corporal in the administration tent informed him that no such thing existed and that Major Magruder had been responsible for the organizational matters of the medical unit. With a sense of hovering doom, Cole sought out the sergeant major and together they went out to the vehicle park. There were twenty-five supply wagons and as many ambulances of the sturdy “rucker” type, along with five medicine vans. Cole satisfied himself that these last were well provisioned. The ambulances were new and in good condition. But when he lowered the tailgate of a supply wagon and peered inside, Cole immediately hoped that Magruder had finally fallen into that privy Alaina had mentioned. He turned curtly to the sergeant
major, and his first question was as cool as a leftover breath of winter wind.

“Where are the lading bills for these wagons?”

“Ain’t no bills, sir,” the burly man stated without fanfare. “We just loaded ’em with whatever was handy. The major said it didn’t matter. If we came onto a fight, all the wagons would be grouped up anyway.”

“And how will we find anything without unloading them all? Perhaps you would like that
duty, Sergeant.” The sharp tone of Cole’s retort left little doubt in the sergeant’s mind that an error had been committed. “I suggest you break out the men and get these wagons unloaded so we can sort out this mess.”

“But, sir!” The sergeant major subsided into silence under the captain’s chilled glare.

“Sergeant,” Cole began slowly, almost gently. “If a shell hits this wagon, we’ll bandage about four acres of swamp, but not another soldier. The next one contains all the alcohol and laudanum. If that one tips into the bayou, you’ll have the happiest bunch of gators for miles around.”

“Yes, sir.” The sergeant major was properly chastened. “I’ll round up the men, sir. Right away, sir.”

It was a day to try any man’s soul. Rosters had to be made up detailing five supply wagons and five ambulances to each divisional wagon train, as ordered. Drivers had to be assigned to all vehicles, two stretcherbearers and a medical orderly for every ambulance. A surgeon’s assistant went with the pharmacy vans, and the vans were to accompany the division commander’s staff. Then, all the supplies had to be sorted, apportioned, and reloaded so that the loss of any one wagon would not jeopardize the entire campaign.

By nightfall, a semblance of order had been restored, and the wagons were all reloaded, this time properly. Cole arranged his mosquito bar and was busily assigning random titles to one Major Magruder when a messenger arrived at his tent. The young private saluted smartly and informed the captain that the Headquarters group and the two divisions
of the 13th Corps would lead out on the march at sunrise on the ninth. Cole’s division, the first of the 19th Corps, would follow the corps staff as soon as the road was clear past the intersection.

It might have been termed an ominous portent that the sun rose in a blood red sky. The day cleared as the mists disappeared with the first warmth, and dark thoughts were forgotten. The division broke camp and moved out on the road in midafternoon, yet was still in sight of the camp that they had just departed when the corps ahead called a halt for the night bivouac. Cole groaned within himself, wondering ruefully if Magruder was heading this campaign.

The tenth dawned gray and foggy, and before the breakfast fires were doused a light rain began to fall. Cole donned his oilskin slicker and pulled the Hardee hat low as he mounted the roan. Until it was needed elsewhere, he had claimed one of the ambulances as his quarters and left the bulky kit and his saddlebags in that venerable conveyance.

General Franklin’s army, though mostly seasoned men, had not been together long enough to meld as a unit. The columns accordioned as they marched, and halts had to be called more and more often as the once-firm, red clay roadway turned into an insidiously treacherous sea of mud. The Bayou Teche bordered on the right, and the dark, black muck of a swamp lay on the left. To leave the road was to pass from doubtful into hopeless.

The rain quickened from a light misting to a genuine downpour and, having attained that state, held it throughout the remainder of the day. The red mud took on a special quality of its own and tenaciously
clung to whatever touched it. Indeed, it seemed to be everywhere. When a halt was called for the night, the wagons stopped where they were, and the men sought out the nearest solid, or at least semisolid ground whereon to rest their weary bodies. Campfires flickered into existence as a few found dry tinder, then, with the darkness, a dense fog crept out of the swamp to muffle the twenty-mile-long column. One of Cole’s last thoughts before he sank into a much-needed slumber was that the forces of nature appeared destined to keep him from reaching Briar Hill while Alaina was still there. And in the next days he had more cause to despair, for the rain continued without ceasing.

That same drizzling moisture fell on the subject of his musings as she stared with brimming eyes down the long avenue of oaks. The windows of the white house were shuttered and boarded, the front door crisscrossed with planks of wood. It was a large, raised cottage of West Indian influence, possessing a long, sloping roof with dormers and pillared porches on three sides. For Alaina, it was home! Briar Hill! It had taken her almost five days, but she was finally, at last, home.

She slapped the reins against the horses’ backs, and the decrepit team splashed on through the puddles that marked the lane, pulling the rickety hearse behind them. One look at the black-draped coffin inside the glass-enclosed burial wagon was enough to dampen the curiosity of onlookers, but barely a handful of people had given any notice to the reed-slim mulatto boy who sat high in the driver’s seat,
for the yellow banners that waved from the staffs at each corner warned that the hearse bore a yellow fever victim, and most of those she passed had been anxious to keep a respectful distance.

A tall, stovepipe hat came down close over Alaina’s shaggy hair, and a long-tailed coat obscured the feminine shape of her. The dye of the butternuts had been used to darken her fair skin, allowing her to successfully pass as a young servant boy taking his dead master home. The hearse had belonged to Mrs. Hawthorne’s acquaintance who had proven to be an undertaker. Like the old woman, he had taken to the idea with humor, brushing off Alaina’s concern about returning the hearse. “If you’re a friend of Tally’s, my dear,” he had assured her, “I shall count it an honor to be of service. Besides, the wagon is nearly as old as I am, and not worth the bother to bring it back. Don’t trouble yourself.”

Thus, Alaina had made her way home and in a slow, plaintive voice, had warned away any who had witlessly drawn near. “Stay away! De massah done passed on from de fever, an’ de Yankees say he gotta be burned if’n he stays. But de missus jes’ want him buried in de ground near de home where he was born.”

A canopy of moss-bedecked branches arched high above her head, sifting raindrops of moisture down upon her as she passed beneath them. Memories came flitting back of her last days at Briar Hill and of her hardships when the Yankees had occupied Alexandria in the spring of ’63. The enemy had swept away the harvest of the land, confiscating livestock, cotton, and lumber where they could find it and burning homes as it met their
moods. Though Briar Hill had escaped the torch, it had not escaped the devastation of its fields and the theft of its livestock and cotton. A few of the planters had managed to hide barges of cotton in the swamps, but Banks had come away well supplied just the same. Still, her own losses had been only superficial when she took into account what she had given up to Captain Latimer. That night had scored its memory on her soul.

The leaves of the trees were new green, their growth no doubt spurred on by the endless spring rains. The azaleas were in bloom and, even in the heavy mists, were still the same rich, vibrant fuchsia of happier days. But then, it was only circumstances and people who changed in times of trouble. Spring still came with its burst of color and fragrance; the trees remained standing staunchly through grief to bring new life beneath a warming sun or pelting rains.

As she neared the house, Alaina’s eyes fastened on the bold red cross that had been painted on the front door of her home, and her spirits struggled beneath the weight of judgment against her. She had been condemned as a traitoress by her own people without benefit of a hearing. The cross bore out their verdict; they would kill her if they could.

On trembling limbs Alaina climbed down from the hearse and mounted the steps. The elusive laughter of her mother drifted through her mind, while the faces of her brothers and father passed wraithlike through her memory. She had been happy living in this house with her family, but nothing was left of the gaiety she had known here. Its charm, like the rest of her loved ones, was gone forever.

Slowly Alaina walked along the gallery to the side of the house, her eyes inspecting every boarded window. Sweet olive shrubs grew thick against the house, and their fragrance wafted up, mingling with the fresh scent of rain. It even smelled like home.

The cookhouse was to the rear of the house, detached from the main structure, and she found only one plank of wood blocking the back entrance to the house. Alaina ducked beneath it, thrusting her shoulder against the portal that had always been hard to open in damp weather. Once inside, she closed the door quickly behind her and blinked at the unfamiliar darkness that enveloped the dining room. Only a ray or two of dreary afternoon light filtered in through the shuttered windows, but an empty, hollow sound echoed with her footsteps as she crossed the room. When her eyes became accustomed to the meager light, she realized that a good many of the furnishings had been removed from the house. She ran to her parents’ bedroom and then the parlor, but both rooms were almost barren, only vacant shadows of her memory. Her eyes could not seek and touch and linger on those familiar bits and pieces of memorabilia that had been as much a part of her life as anything that remained. It was like the death of a loved one,
and her throat tightened with contained grief: