One Wore Blue (32 page)

Either it was the realization that Anthony was dead and gone, or it was the sudden knowledge, deep, swift and sure, that the bloodshed had just begun. But suddenly the numbness left her, and her tears trailed down her cheeks in silent streams. At last she was able to grieve.

The bodies were placed in a fine black hearse and drawn uphill by an ebony gelding to the cemetery. Behind it, in Thomas Donahue’s black-draped carriage, the Donahues, Kiernan, Jacob, and Patricia followed. Up at the crest of the hill, in the old cemetery, Anthony and his father were laid to rest in a gated family plot with their kin.

Dust to dust, ashes to ashes …

As they stood by the grave site, even Jacob’s fingers curled around hers.

The Confederate flag that had draped Andrew’s coffin was handed over to Patricia. The one that draped Anthony’s was
given to Kiernan. She and Patricia stepped forward to toss summer roses into the ground atop the coffins.

Soon those roses would die, she thought.

Dust to dust … like the men beneath them.

The funeral was over.

All that had to be endured now was the meal back at Montemarte. When they returned to the house, there was frightfully little on the tables, but there were very few people there.

The war had already stripped Harpers Ferry and Bolivar and the surrounding countryside of much of their population.

Still, Kiernan thought that she should speak to Janey about the poor spread that had been put on the table for the mourners.

Janey looked at her with dark eyes that were weary and sad. “Miz Kiernan, I put out everything I could manage.”

“Janey, if you needed help, you should have gotten it!”

Janey was quiet for a minute.

“Janey?”

“Well, Miz Kiernan, this place never was a plantation, not like your home back in the Tidewater region.”

“Well, of course not, but—”

“We have gardens here. Chickens, a cow, and a few pigs. We used to have two more house slaves and ten to tend to the stables and the grounds.”

“That’s what I mean. If you needed help—”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Miz Kiernan. Outside the house, there’s Jeremiah and his sons David and Tyne left, and there’s me left inside. Mr. Andrew and Mr. Anthony were gone when the Union troops were here. All but Jeremiah’s family and me done gone and run off.” She lifted her hands expressively. “Mr. Andrew were never a hard man on nobody—he never whipped a man that I know of—but that taste of freedom was too strong. They just run off. Now, if we were on the Maryland side of the river, the law would probably have gone after them all. But this is Virginia, and it’s a state in rebellion, and no one were going
to try to give slaves back to a southern man, especially not the man who owns the Miller Firearms Factories.”

Kiernan looked at Janey, and her heart sank. The huge house had to be taken care of. The gardens and the livestock … and they had to eat.

But everyone was gone—everyone but Janey and a man named Jeremiah and his sons. However was she going to manage?

She felt hysteria rise within her. She didn’t belong here, she should be home. She hated the empty mountain roads, the shell-shot streets in town, and the darkness and the depression that had settled over the area. She hated the Yankees for killing Anthony and Andrew, and most of all she hated Jesse.

It was all his fault.

No, she couldn’t hate him, she couldn’t even think about him anymore. She couldn’t afford to pray for his life, and she didn’t dare let herself realize that she was grateful she hadn’t heard about his death.

She inhaled and exhaled quickly. She heard the voices of the mourners speaking softly and gently to Jacob and Patricia. There weren’t many of them—the food would suffice. They would do very well there at Montemarte—she would see to it that they did.

There were things to be grateful for.

“Janey, thank you for not running off.”

Janey smiled, a proud, handsome woman. “I am a free woman, Miz Kiernan. I love those children like my own, and they love me. Why would I run off?”

“Thank you just the same,” Kiernan said. “Because I need you very badly. Tomorrow, I’ll go and tell Jeremiah the same.” She started to walk away, but turned back. “Janey, I’ve been in something of a fog lately, I’m afraid. Do you know if Mr. Andrew made any considerations for Jeremiah in his will?”

“I don’t think so, Miz Kiernan.”

“Then you can tell Jeremiah that I will see to it myself that he is legally made a free man.”

Janey smiled broadly. “He’ll like that just fine—indeed, he will.”

To her complete dismay, Kiernan realized that she was very near hysterical tears. “Oh, Janey!” she murmured. Suddenly, she was in the other woman’s arms.

“It’s gonna be all right, Miz Kiernan. We’re gonna make it.”

Yes, Kiernan decided, they were going to make it. And not just make it—she was going to do a damned good job of it.

She pulled away from Janey. “We’ll make it just fine, Janey. I know we will. Let’s get through the rest of today, shall we?”

By evening, the last of their guests, including Thomas and Lacey, had gone. Jacob insisted on seeing himself to bed. Kiernan tucked in Patricia, staying with her while the little girl clung to her. When Patricia’s arms at last went limp around her, Kiernan eased herself away. She left Patricia’s room and walked across the hallway to the guest room she had chosen for herself.

She hadn’t taken Anthony’s room. There was still way too much of Anthony about the room—his combs, his shaving equipment, his clothing, diplomas, papers, and memorabilia. Wandering there, she had felt too much as if he were still alive.

She would never be able to sleep there.

One day, Jacob would grow up and marry. He would be the one to take over his father’s room, the big master room with the heavy four-postered bed that looked big enough to sleep six.

She had taken the guest room that looked south over the mountains to the back. It was a peaceful view.

She stood by the window, her hands shaking. Leaning against the window frame, she looked out into the darkness and remembered the day Jesse had left. She had been bitterly miserable. But it had been easy to be miserable then. She had had a home where everything had been taken care of for her.

Now she was here, where everything could only be taken care of by her.

She couldn’t fret over it any longer, she decided, and morning would come early. She dressed in a cool nightgown and crawled beneath the covers of her bed. The sheets were crisp and comfortable against her skin. The night breeze carried the scent of jasmine upon it. Tears stung her eyes again, but she blinked them away. She told herself that she had to sleep.

And to her amazement, she did.

Eight weeks later, down on her hands and knees in the garden, Kiernan cried out with soft elation as she studied the tomato vines. Janey, plucking the perfectly ripe red orbs behind her, paused and looked behind her.

“They’re beautiful!” she exclaimed, flushing, and then laughed as Janey smiled at her pleasure. Kiernan had turned her attention to lovingly tending the garden, and she was amazed by the perfection of the fruit she was growing.

“I’ve never seen such fine tomatoes in all my born days,” Janey assured her.

Kiernan stood up and took a bow. “My lettuce is equally exquisite,” she assured Janey. She noticed that Jacob, who still had not warmed to her, was up on the step watching her. He was smiling.

“Exquisite?” he asked her politely, and a smile that reminded her very much of his brother’s smile curved his lip.

“Entirely,” she told him. Taking two tomatoes from a vine, she tossed the first one over to him. “Catch!”

His reflexes were good, and he caught the tomato. But his smile suddenly faded, as did Kiernan’s, as he heard the sound of hoofbeats.

Kiernan swung around. Riders were coming, three of them, dressed in Union blue.

They must be from the 13th Massachusetts, she thought. Harpers Ferry had been quiet—dead quiet—since she had come. Neither army had occupied the area, and the snipers from both sides kept to their action in the heart of town.

But Union General Nathaniel Banks—whom even the
most stalwart of the Confederate sympathizers regarded as a gentleman—had moved on, leaving only a few troops at Sandy Hook, the Maryland point across the river.

The people hated the 13th Massachusetts. They had harassed and shot at the people and had taken everything that they had ever owned from them. Kiernan had not met up with any of those Yanks, but she had heard about them from Lacey.

She was certain that these three men were from Sandy Hook. They were the only Yanks in the area.

It was too late to get a gun, too late to do anything but stand and wait.

“Kiernan,” Jacob said nervously.

“There are only three men. Just stand your ground.”

“Kiernan, you’ve been supplying lots of men out of the factory in the valley!” Jacob reminded her with a wisdom well beyond his years. “What if—”

“If they meant real harm, there would be more of them,” she said.

“If they try to touch this house, I’ll kill them with my bare hands!” Jacob claimed.

One of the men suddenly let out a loud shot and came tearing down on them. Kiernan’s eyes widened with horror and she almost shrieked and turned away.

The rider halted and leaped down. He was young, maybe twenty, and his face was riddled with pimples. “Tomatoes, eh? Well, we’ll take them. And anything else that you have, you Rebel-lovin’ Confederates.” He stepped forward, placing a hand on Kiernan’s shoulders. She wrenched free, never having know such deep hatred as she knew that moment.

“You won’t touch a thing on this property!” she swore.

“I’ll have me those tomatoes, sure as the mornin’ comes!” he told her.

She still held the one tomato in her hands. If he wanted it so damned badly, he was going to get it. She backed away and hurled it into his face it with force that surprised even herself.

He swore, and to Kiernan’s sudden alarm, he pulled his pistol.

A shot rang out. Her hand instantly flew to her throat, and she wondered, dazed, if she had been hit.

But she had not.

It was the Union soldier sinking down to her feet who had been hit. He clutched a bloody stain at his abdomen that spread to engulf his lower body even as he fell.

Fifteen

Jacob screamed to Kiernan as the fire that had been aimed against the Yankee was returned by his two companions. Instinctively, she fell flat, looking around her.

The barrage of fire was coming from more horsemen, these clad in gray, who were coming up the rise of the lawn. There were two of them, Kiernan dimly realized.

The fight did not last long. Even as she lay flat upon the grass, frozen and numb, the gunfire around her ceased.

The three Yankees lay dead.

There was no question of seeing to their wounds or discovering if they still breathed. The first man lay with his glazed eyes open to the heaven above. The second wore a clean hole through his temple, and the third had been caught in the heart.

She stared at them all, a scream rising in her throat, bile forming in her stomach.

Kiernan looked up. Jacob was by her side, helping her to her feet, even as the two Rebs came riding up. The first instantly leaped off his horse. He was a man of her father’s age, white-haired, white-bearded, with fine, weathered features. “Mrs. Miller, are you all right?”

The courteous voice, the trembling in the man’s tone, brough the first realization to her that she might easily have been killed by either side. She almost fell to the ground, but she felt Jacob’s arm of support and she knew that she
couldn’t fall apart in front of him. Janey was running to her side too. Patricia would have heard the shots from inside, and she would soon be running out. Jeremiah and the boys were out back feeding the hens and choosing a fryer for the night, but they had heard the shots. It was no time to fall apart.

“I’m fine,” she told the man. She glanced back to the bodies on her lawn, then stared straight at the Reb soldier again. “I—thank you. It seems that you came upon us just in time.”