Two Girls of Gettysburg (34 page)

An explosion made us all start and scream. It sounded like the house itself had been hit.

“I was right!” shouted Jack.

Mrs. Weigel jumped to her feet.

“
Gott in Himmel!
I’m fetching that boy in here right now!” she said, as if Martin were at fault for playing with fireworks and needed to be punished.

I heard the pounding of feet overhead, and Martin appeared at the cellar door.

“That was a close one,” he said. “Tore up the field beside the barn. Pa made us come back to the house.” He ducked to avoid the overhead beams, and a pale-looking Annie followed him down the stairs, steadying herself with a hand on his shoulder. Her hair no longer hung in neat ringlets, but was tied underneath a headcloth like a servant’s.

“
Wo ist dein Vati?”
Mrs. Weigel demanded of Martin

“
In der Scheune, natürlich.
Papa is taking down the stalls in the barn and using the wood to build more cots. He says he is not afraid for himself.”

Mrs. Weigel threw up her hands and began to complain in German. Martin came over and sat next to me, his long legs sprawled out in front of him.

“Where have you been all day?” he asked.

“If I told you, you would never believe me,” I said, even though I was eager to tell him. Was I actually flirting?

“Try me. If you can look me in the eye, I’ll believe everything you say.”

Was Martin now teasing me? I couldn’t see his expression because he was in the shadows. So I shifted, letting the dim light from Louisa’s lamp fall on his face. Then I told him about meeting General Warren and General Meade and showing them up the logging path. Our faces were less than a foot apart, but I was too intent on my story to let myself become flustered.

Martin’s eyebrows lifted until horizontal lines crossed his forehead.

“And
you
got to see General Meade and the battlefield because I was
asleep?”

“Well, you said not to wake you unless the house was on fire,” I reminded him.

“And the reserves are on their way to the field now?”

I nodded and whispered, “I’m worried about Luke.”

“And Sam Pierpont and all the other fellows. Out there fighting while I’m hiding out in a cellar.” Martin leaped to his feet and bounded up the cellar stairs before I or his mother could stop him. The door slammed behind him.

“Martin?” Mrs. Weigel’s voice trembled. A look of pain crossed her face. She started to get up but changed her mind and sat down, squeezing her eyes shut. Louisa patted her hand.

Annie scuttled over to me on her hands and knees.

“I saw you two whispering together. What happened? He likes you, you know. Did he try to kiss you and you wouldn’t let him?”

I glared at Annie. “Don’t be a fool. His mother is right over there.”

“Well, if the boy I liked was sitting here, I wouldn’t go and say something to make him run off like that.”

“I didn’t,” I protested irritably. I decided not to tell Annie that my brother, the boy she supposedly liked, was fighting nearby.

“Luke is still writing to me, you know,” said Annie. “Rosanna hasn’t written at all, but she and I can swap nursing stories when she comes back—”

“She’ll never come back to Gettysburg,” I said knowingly.

Annie sighed and slid down until she was lying on her side, her head resting in the crook of her arm. I worried about Martin. Where had he gone so suddenly, and why?

“Lizzie, remember that huge flag we made at the beginning of the

war?” Annie said, touching my arm. “I also thought it was a bit useless. But I didn’t say anything because I wanted to be Rosanna’s friend. And then I didn’t even help her finish it.”

Annie’s confession astonished me. “That was a long time ago. Let’s just forget—” I heard a grunt and looked down to see that Annie had fallen asleep with her mouth wide open.

A lull came in the fighting. Jack and Clara fell asleep alongside Annie, and the rest of us ventured upstairs. Mrs. Weigel cleaned up a batch of bread dough that had risen beyond the bowl, spilled onto the table, and begun to dry out. I went outside to get fresh water from the pump near the porch. I figured that the rebels had been driven back, for if they had taken the hill, they would now be swarming the Weigel farm. Shadows crept across Taneytown Road until the sun lit only the distant fields, where white specks indicated the tents of a camp.

A sinking feeling came to me. Martin had gone off to join the soldiers there! He was ashamed of being at home while most young men were away fighting. It dismayed me to think that he was just like everyone else who thought that to be a man you had to be carrying a rifle in a war. “Please don’t get hurt!” I whispered.

“Ain’t gonna be long in comin’ now,” Grace said, interrupting my thoughts. Her words sounded like a prophecy of doom. Then with a start I realized she was referring to her baby.

“How can you tell?” I asked. “Don’t first babies come slow? Mama says Luke took forever and a day being born but I came out right after.”

“Feels like a rope tied aroun’ my middle.”

“Grace, just tell me when you need a doctor and I’ll fetch one.”

“You think the doctor will leave dyin’ soldiers to help a Negro gal have a baby?” Her tone was sharp, but not bitter.

“The Weigel sisters can help. A farmer’s wife always knows about giving birth,” I said.

I thought I heard Grace say, “I’ll bear it out myself,” but an empty artillery wagon rolled by at that moment. A few tattered soldiers stumbled toward the barn on makeshift crutches. The wounded were coming from Taneytown Road.

“I dreamed las’ night that Amos and Ben were somewhere safe,” Grace said softly.

Gazing out over the fields again, I nodded. “In your dream, was Luke with them?”

“No. Why you ask?”

“Because he might be out there now,” I said. “Oh, Grace, I showed the generals a path up Little Round Top, so they could hold back the rebels from coming over these hills.”

“Why, you are some kind of hero, Miz Lizzie,” Grace said with a smile.

I shook my head. “No! Luke’s regiment was one of those called to the battle. If something happens to him, it will be my fault!”

A hospital orderly came to fetch a bucket of water and we watched in silence as he pumped it and left again.

“I never tol’ you ‘bout my brother,” Grace said. She eased herself down onto the porch steps.

Full of curiosity, I sat down beside her, focusing all my attention on her face. She looked beyond me, into the past.

“Befo’ I belonged to Mastuh McCarrick an’ met Amos, I was a house Negro at a rice plantation. I looked after the young ‘uns of Mastuh Shelby an’ his missus. I also took care of my sister’s boy, Nate, who was raised in the big house too.” Grace paused. “Nate, he had lighter skin than my sister an’ had Mastuh Shelby’s blue eyes. You understand?”

I nodded, for I had heard of plantation owners fathering children with their slaves.

“I loved Nate like he was mine. When my sister died of a fever, I was all the boy had.”

“What about your brother?” I asked.

“Cyrus. He hated Mastuh Shelby for what he did to our sister an’ swore he’d run away. I begged him not to. I was scared he’d be caught by the dogs and tore to pieces.” Grace took a deep breath. “Then Mastuh Shelby heard that Cyrus were plannin’ an uprisin’. He demanded I tell him ever’thin’ I knowed an’ he’d go easy on Cyrus. He said if I lied to him he’d sell Nate an’ I’d never see the boy again.”

“What did you do?” I prompted. “Was your brother really planning a revolt?”

“He was, along with some others. I tol’ my mastuh where the guns was buried in the bean patch and rifles in the cemetery. But he went back on his word. He whipped Cyrus with a cat-o’-nine-tails till the blood run like a river, then hanged him from a tree. Said it was a lesson to anyone even thinkin’ ‘bout risin’ up.”

“Oh, how awful!” I reached toward Grace, but she leaned away from me.

“I betrayed my brother. Because of me, he was killed. An’ I live with that like a stone aroun’ my neck,” she said in a hard voice, without self-pity. “Lizzie, don’ you regret what you done. Your brother is fightin’ in a noble cause.”

“It wasn’t your fault that your master lied, Grace,” I said, trying to offer some comfort in return. “At least you had Nate.”

“No, I didn’t. Mastuh sold him anyway. He sold his own son!” Her voice rose with anguish. “So I ran away, not carin’ if I lived or died. But I was caught an’ taken back to Mastuh Shelby, who gave me forty lashes, then sold me to Mastuh McCarrick.”

“I’m so sorry, Grace,” I whispered through my tears. At last I understood the reason for Grace’s cool, reserved ways. Why she never talked about her family. And why she simply had to believe that Amos would find his way back. He was her savior. She had no one else.

I went to the pump and splashed water on my face, then wetted a corner of my apron and, crouching down, began to dab Grace’s face with it. She closed her eyes and did not resist my touch. The curves of her face were more gradual than my own, and her dark skin gleamed.

“Grace,” I said, “I’ve hated the war from the beginning.” I wiped her neck and she bent her head to the side. “But now I am proud of what Papa and Luke are fighting for.”

“Thank you,” she murmured. She patted her face dry with her own skirt.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move. I stood up to get a better look and noticed, at the edge of the grassy field that sloped into the wooded hillside, five or six rebels emerge from the brush. They held rifles across their chests and ran, hunched over, toward the house. A scream rose to my throat but stuck there. I moved in front of Grace. More gray-clad soldiers sprang from the bushes like rabbits. As they crossed the field to my right, a fife and drum sounded on my left, but the barn blocked my view of the approaching band. Were they leading more rebels? A standard-bearer suddenly ran into view from behind the barn, waving a tattered blue flag with a yellow fringe and a familiar seal. I recognized the flag of the Pennsylvania Reserves.

I found my voice and released a shout as a company of blue-clad soldiers ran between the Weigel barn and the foot of Little Round Top, trying to cut off the rebels. But when the shooting erupted not a hundred yards from where I stood, I dropped to my hands and knees and pulled Grace with me into a corner of the porch. The low stone wall barely shielded us. Grace curled into a ball, her arms
around her stomach. The sharp rifle fire made my ears throb with pain. I longed to see if Luke was among the soldiers but dared not lift my head to look.

The skirmish lasted only a few minutes. After the last shots had been fired, I peered over the ledge of the porch. Two rebels lay facedown in the grass and a third had fallen backward, his arm flung over his head. Another dragged himself toward the barn. The Pennsylvania soldiers had disappeared into the thickets of Little Round Top, and I guessed by the scattered rifle shots that they were chasing the last of the rebels back over the hill.

“Help me up, Lizzie. I’m goin’ inside,” said Grace. “You best come too.”

“I will, in a minute.”

But with the danger past, every ounce of strength had flowed out of me, and it was easier just to sink down onto the porch. So I sat there with my back against the stone house, thinking about the men who lay dead only yards away from me. Somewhere in the South, a girl my age would learn that her brother had been killed at a farmhouse near Gettysburg, and a mother would weep for her son. I wanted my papa and Luke to come home alive. Didn’t these soldiers also deserve to live?

An orderly finally came out and dragged the three dead rebels away. Dusk gave way to darkness and the fireflies began to flicker randomly, like tiny soundless explosions. Still I sat, not even bothering to wipe away the tears that rolled down my face and tickled my neck as I thought of my family. We had been thrown like grain to the four winds. Would we ever find our way together again? And where was Martin? Had he now joined the ranks of soldiers who might never return alive, leaving behind only women to mourn them?

Rosanna
Chapter 37

July 2, 1863 camp south of Lutheran Seminary, west of Gettysburg

The army made slow progress toward Gettysburg, so I was able to pick a large sack of blackberries without falling behind. I was also lucky enough to find a satchel thrown down by some overburdened soldier, containing a decent pair of field glasses. I expect they will prove useful.

It was nearly dusk when I saw the first evidence of battle, the smoldering remains of a barn and a house with only the brick chimney left standing. We crossed Willoughby Run, all mud and murky water littered with the debris of battle. Dead horses blocked the road, and a thick cloud of fat blueflies swarmed around them. Though I held a handkerchief over my nose, it was not enough to keep away the stench. At least the dead and wounded men have been removed from the field.