Patricia Hagan

Dedication

For Erik, who shared the discovery that love is not trapped in fantasy…but awaits those who dare to sail the turbulent waters of reality.

Chapter One

Holly stood before the shattered window and stared pensively at the lawn sloping gently down to the riverbank.

The warm breeze of evening danced through the shards of glass to caress her gently and blow long strands of auburn hair about her face. Evenings, she reflected somberly, had always been the loveliest time, but that was before the war. Then, the lawn had been a carpet of thick green grass, the air scented by the pungent sweet magnolia trees that bordered the lawn.

There was no velvety emerald grass now. Now the earth was red and raw, as parched and dead as all of Mississippi since the Yankees had come.

Neither were there any more ivory blossoms on the blackened tree limbs. The trees had burned along with everything else that had thrived there once.

Holly turned from the window and its fragments of glass hanging from the cracked and splintered frames. As her gaze swept the room, she blinked back tears. It was so hard to recall how the parlor of her home had once looked. Silk tapestry of watered shades of peach and gold had adorned the walls, stretching up to the high, intricate walnut molding at the ceiling’s edge. Thick coral velvet had gracefully draped the tall, narrow windows. Now everything hung in shreds, ripped by plundering Yankees.

The furniture had been dragged outdoors to feed huge bonfires as the Yankees cooked and ate the livestock during a three-day occupation. After that, they had torched the inside of the house. Only a sudden, furious rain had kept the house from being destroyed.

Holly squeezed her eyes shut to obliterate the flashing images of the nightmare, but it was all still vivid, alive in her mind forever…

Two years had passed since that late spring day in 1863, but Holly could remember everything. She and her mother had been sitting on the front porch making lint bandages to be sent to the Confederate hospital in Vicksburg. Her mother made a social event out of everything in her life. Twyla Cunningham and Nolia Pope had traveled from Port Gibson, twelve miles south. The ladies, like everyone else, knew there was a constant threat of Yankee invasion, but life had to go on, and no socially concerned woman within riding distance of Magnolia Hall ever turned down an invitation from Claudia Maxwell. So they had come that morning, enjoying the feeling of helping their beloved boys in gray, enjoying the gossip as well. And there was the tantalizing aroma of Mammy Portia’s fried chicken from the kitchen house out back, and the sweet smell of strawberry pies cooling on the windowsills.

Holly remembered so clearly Twyla Cunningham lamenting her fifteen-year-old’s decision to join the Confederate Army. Billy Ray was at home packing his things that very day. She was glad, she’d said, to have an excuse to be away, for she could only watch him and cry, and that made Billy Ray and the rest of the family feel so bad. To change the subject, Nolia asked Claudia when she’d last heard from Major Maxwell.

Claudia’s face glowed as she spoke of Papa and how relieved she was to know he was just up the road in Vicksburg. He came home at least once a month to see how things were at the Hall. It was really to see her, Claudia had confided with a giggle, like a young girl caught up in her first love. Grandpa Maxwell kept an eye on things at the Hall, so his son had no worries on that score. True, Grandpa refused to live in the lavish house with his family; he loved his isolated fishing shack in the slough of the river to the northeast, and he wouldn’t leave it.

Holly had always felt a rush of warmth at the mere mention of her beloved grandfather. Why, if she’d had her way, she’d have been living down there with him. She loved the tranquil beauty, the mysterious swamps. He’d taught her to fish and swim and shoot and hunt as well as any man. Her mother had tolerated it when Holly was a child, but when Holly began to blossom into young womanhood, her mother had begun to object.

Holly distinctly did not share her feelings. Why would anybody prefer to spend hours reading poetry when she could be exploring the wonders of the swamp and the forest? Why would anyone rather learn needlepoint than sit in a boat watching the sun go down, munching corn pone and listening to Grandpa’s stories?

It had been at that precise moment, that blue and gold day in May when the war seemed too far away to be real, that moment when Claudia spoke of Grandpa, that he came loping out of the woods to the northeast, waving his arms and yelling.

The women dropped their bandages, standing up in fearful apprehension. Holly grasped the porch railing and bolted over it. Landing solidly, she broke into a run. Grandpa’s cries rode to her on the wind and she halted, frozen. “Yankees! Yankees in Port Gibson!”

He reached her, drawing her against him protectively as he approached the women. Quickly he told them about the man traveling up the river on his boat to warn everyone he could. “Get what valuables you can carry, Claudia,” he ordered brusquely. “You, too, Holly. They won’t be able to find us deep in the swamps.”

He nodded to Twyla and Nolia. “You ladies come, too. You can’t go home now.”

Claudia turned to go inside the house, calling over her shoulder, “I’ll get Mammy to get Zebediah and help bury the silver. Holly, you come with me and help gather our good jewelry.”

Twyla Cunningham suddenly cried, “I’ve got to go home. My children…oh, dear God.” She swung her head from side to side, eyes wide with terror.

Grandpa reached out to grasp her arms. “Miz Cunningham, there’s nothin’ you can do. Just calm down. Stay with us, and when it’s safe, I promise I’ll take you home myself.”

But Twyla Cunningham was beyond reason. She had but one thought, to get to her family. Nolia Pope was in the same state of mind, and with both of them hysterical, Grandpa Maxwell could do nothing but watch as they headed for their wagon.

He looked at Holly, shook his head, and told her, “They’re doin’ what their hearts are tellin’ ’em to do, girl. I tried. Now let’s you and me go help your mother.”

They buried the silver tableware and candlesticks and bowls and platters under the outhouse, where Grandpa figured the Yankees wouldn’t search. Then they gathered up their jewelry and ran for the woods after telling Mammy to order the servants to hide…

What had followed, Holly would always remember as a glimpse into hell.

They hid deep in the swamps for almost three weeks. Grandpa slipped out to hunt for rabbits and squirrels so they wouldn’t starve, and sometimes he encountered others running from the Yankees who told him what was going on. He learned that the Confederates at Raymond, twenty miles northeast, had been defeated by General Grant and his troops were headed for Vicksburg. A few days later, he heard that Vicksburg was under fire.

Holly watched, stunned, as her mother fell into sobbing despair. She could not bear to be around her, realizing, to her surprise, that she resented her mother’s lack of strength. Why didn’t Claudia burn with anger, as Holly did? Why couldn’t she do something—anything—instead of lie on a pallet and cry for her husband? Did she have no spirit without him? Holly vowed she would never be so weak as to transmit her own personal strength to another person. She would never let herself disintegrate like that.

Holly sneaked out of the swamps on her own, hiding in the woods until she could creep up on her house. To her horror, she found Magnolia Hall occupied by Yankees. Her home was being ransacked.

Grandpa found her there. “Don’t torture yourself, honey,” he coaxed. She didn’t take her eyes off the bonfire, and he knelt beside her as her own mahogany four-poster was carried out and thrown into the bonfire. “Come on, Holly. It’s dangerous here,” he pleaded.

“You knew, didn’t you?” she accused, hot tears of bitterness and rage streaming down her cheeks. “You knew the Yankees were here, and you didn’t tell us.”

He nodded miserably. “What good would it have done? Just like it ain’t doin’ a bit of good for you to be watchin’. There’s nothin’ we can do, nothin’. You come along, now.”

“Why?” Holly demanded, fists clenched. “Why are they doing this to my home, Grandpa? Why?”

“It’s war, honey. War destroys and nobody ever really understands why it happens but it does. But look at it like this.” He drew her close to him. “They can burn the furniture and the house and everything on the land, but they can’t destroy the soul of that land. When it comes right down to it, land is the only thing that’s eternal, that lives forever, and when all this is over with, that land is still goin’ to be there, and your papa can build another house and start over again. Land lives forever, Holly. Don’t ever lose it.”

When the horror over what had befallen their home subsided a little for the three of them, something far more devastating happened.

Major Wesley Maxwell was killed during the siege of Vicksburg.

He was brought home, and they buried him in the family cemetery beneath a grove of pecan trees now standing with blackened limbs outstretched grotesquely, companions in death.

A few neighbors and friends came to the burial, but Twyla Cunningham and Nolia Pope were not among them. They had been killed on their way home that terrible day, caught in crossfire. Holly felt no defined sorrow for them because, in the abyss of grief that had become her whole life, each new tragedy merely blended with the rest.

Papa was gone. Magnolia Hall was ruined. Life would never be the same.

There would be no more abundant cotton crops at summer’s end or gathering of pecans. No gala balls in the splendid house or barbecues on the lush lawn.

Holly and her mother had nowhere else to go, so they moved into Grandpa’s shack. There was no way of fixing Magnolia Hall.

Time passed. Grandpa’s trips out of the swamp to gather news became less frequent, for the news was too sorrowful to be endured any longer. Claudia spent her hours in a protective stupor, so Holly and her grandfather became even closer, thrown entirely on each other.

Over and over he told her how the South would surely rise and whip the Yankees all the way to hell. Again and again, he told her that land was the most precious thing a person could have. If you had land, then you had a piece of eternity—even if only for your time on earth.

One evening as Holly sat beside the fire and stared at her almost constantly weeping mother, Grandpa reached out to caress Holly’s cheek with his fingertips. He whispered, “Don’t sit in judgment, girl. You don’t know what she’s feelin’. She loved your pa more’n anything in this world, and she’s hurtin’ somethin’ fierce.”

Holly shook her head. “I just never knew before how weak my mother really is. Love should make a woman stronger. She shouldn’t give all her spirit to a man, not if this is what happens when she loses him.”

Grandpa gave her a shrewd look. “That’s awful big talk for a snip of a girl who ain’t never been in love.”

Holly snapped, “Then I hope I never fall in love. I don’t want to be weak.”

This time, her grandfather didn’t scoff. “If you feel all that strong, maybe you’d better think about a lifetime of tendin’ your land instead of gettin’ married and havin’ young’uns. It’d save you—and some man—a lot of misery.”

Then came the day an old trapper chanced by and told them General Lee had surrendered the Army of Virginia. The war was over. The South had lost.

From that time on, Holly watched her grandfather die. Every night she sat by his bed, holding his hand, urging him to regain his spirit, but he slipped further and further away.

“Promise,” he implored over and over again, “promise me you won’t lose this land. It’s our piece of eternity. I’m going to die, Holly. You hang on to the only piece of eternity I knew in this world.”

Holly promised. She held his wrinkled, gnarled old hand night after night and made the vow again and again, and he smiled and closed his eyes and drifted into a peaceful sleep each night.

Then one morning, he did not wake up.

“They did this to him,” Holly hissed between clenched teeth. She knelt beside his body and finished making her transition from innocence to cold, smoldering rage at the world around her. “The Yankees did this. They killed Papa and Grandpa, destroyed my home, and may God damn every one of them to eternal fire and damnation!”

Claudia cried, “Stop it! I won’t have you behaving this way, Holly. Your grandfather was old, and—”

“Papa wasn’t!” Holly snapped, glaring at her defiantly.