Cheryl Reavis (23 page)

Toby came back outside, standing at several different places on the porch until he found one to his liking.
He’s just a boy,
Frederich thought.
Like William. Like thousands of others.
He glanced up at him several times; each time the boy was staring at him.

“That your wife in there?” Toby asked finally.

Frederich didn’t answer him.

“She’s…pretty, ain’t she? I think she’s real pretty,” he offered next. “And she sure is worried about you. How long you been married?”

“Not…long,” Frederich said after a time, because the boy was so earnest and so like William when he needed to talk.

Toby grinned. “That right? I reckoned that you was still a bridegroom—ain’t nobody else would do something this
crazy. I’m wanting to get married myself—soon as I can find somebody that’ll have me.”

Frederich smiled at this irrepressible boy in spite of himself, in spite of the predicament he was in. But his amusement died quickly, fading into a grim desperation he couldn’t hide.

“You had anything to eat?” Toby asked him.

Once again, Frederich didn’t answer him, but the boy was undeterred.

“Well, it won’t hurt to ask if I can feed you,” he said, opening the back door and stepping inside.

Toby was gone a long time. Frederich sat there, his hands numb from the cold and the too tight rope around his wrists. He kept trying to form some plan, but his mind fretted over his not having cut enough wood and not having celebrated Lise’s birthday. He was caught, and he should be regretting his impulse to see Caroline one last time.

No, he decided. Whatever happened, he regretted nothing, not the marriage, not last night. Nothing.

Caroline.

The door abruptly opened, and she came out. She carried a red-checked cloth with something in it—potatoes, hot potatoes that steamed in the cold air. She came quickly down the steps and stood on the ground beside him.

“He said I can give you these—they’re too hot,” she said, glancing at the door.

Too hot and his hands were tied.

She opened the cloth more to let the potatoes cool faster.

“He wants me to ask him to untie you,” she whispered. “I’m not going to do it.” She let her eyes meet his.

He nodded his understanding. It would give this officer great pleasure to deny her such a favor.

She began to break apart one of the potatoes. The steam rose. He could smell it and his stomach rumbled with hunger. He could smell the soft woman scent that was her.

My wife,
he thought.
Mine.

“He’s going through your gear,” she said, feeding him a piece of potato and then another. Her fingers touched his lips and quickly withdrew. “He’s read the letter of commendation—from the Sharpsburg battle. You didn’t tell anyone—”

“There was nothing to tell. I was trained for the military. The training will take a soldier where he needs to go without his effort. There is nothing to commend in that.”

“William said you kept him alive—and Avery.”

He didn’t comment. “More…” he said, nodding toward the potatoes, because he was hungrier than he realized and because he might never be this close to her again.

She fed him another portion, and another, and she kept glancing at the door and at Toby who paced around the porch, obviously trying to hear.

“What’s going to happen?” she whispered.

“I don’t know. Caroline, listen to me—”

She looked at him.

“If I’ve given you a child—”

“No,” she said sharply. “I’ve been trapped by that once. We both have. I won’t let it happen again.”

“What do you mean?” he said too loudly, causing Toby to step closer. “You wouldn’t try to…” He stopped because she looked so stricken—as if he had physically hurt her.

“I mean it’s over,” she said. “I’m giving this dying marriage its coup de grace, and whatever comes of last night is no concern of yours.”

“You would go to Eli anyway? Even if—”

“There is no going to Eli!” she whispered fiercely. “How can I make you understand? There is no going to Eli!” She bowed her head for a moment, then looked up at him and gave a heavy sigh. “It doesn’t matter. I just want you to answer me one thing. Why did you marry me in the first place? Tell me that. Why?”

Her eyes searched his. He waited a long time to answer.

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully, because there was no one reason he could name but a thousand he couldn’t. He had married her because at the time he had needed to. It was as simple as that and as complex.

“I married you because I thought I was supposed to suffer for my sin,” she said bluntly. “And how well you have provided that.”

“Mein Gott,
you are a sharp-tongued woman!”

“If I am, it’s because men like you and Avery have made me so.”

“I don’t know what you expect from me!”

“I expect you to believe me!”

“How can I?” he said. “How-can I?”

“Because you have enough trust in me to do it. For no other reason than that, Frederich.”

He stared at her, and she shook her head.

“I thought we had come so far, you and I—from that terrible wedding ceremony to last night when we were—" She broke off and looked away. “I was wrong,” she said, looking at him. “Nothing has changed. You still look at me in that way and I finally understand what it means. You don’t see me. You only see Ann. If it was revenge on her you wanted, you have it—only she can’t feel it. I feel the hurt, not her—”

He hadn’t realized she was about to cry, but the tears suddenly spilled down her cheeks. She stood there, her face completely impassive in spite of the tears, and she folded the rest of the potatoes inside the red-checked cloth and stuffed it into his coat pocket. Then she stepped away from him.

“Caroline…” he said, forgetting that he was tied. The rope brought him up sharply. “You ask too much of me!" he said, still straining against his bonds.

She turned to face him. “I ask nothing. I’m worth having, Frederich. Sinful as I have been, I’m worth having! And I don’t want the kind of marriage we’ve made.”

He looked around at the sound of horses—five or six Confederate soldiers coming up the road that led to the house. A foraging wagon followed along behind them. Toby immediately summoned the officer, then came to untie Frederich from the post.

“You never should have come home!” Caroline whispered, her mouth trembling.

No,
he thought.
I shouldn’t have.
Then he might have lived for a time ignorant of yet another betrayal at the hands of a Holt.

He looked at her, trying to take in everything about her. If he had not come, he would have been ignorant of what it meant to finally be her husband.

Toby was dragging him off the porch and pushing him along toward the wagon. Caroline stood nearby, her arms folded over her breasts.

“Whatever happens—if they kill me or not—if the war kills me or not—you are done with us?” he managed to ask her in passing.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes locked with his, her beautiful, still crying eyes. “There is no ‘us’ Frederich. I have no place—I
want
no place—in this thing between you and Eli and Ann.”

Toby gave him no time to say anything else and shoved him on. He looked over his shoulder to see her one last time.

Yes,
he thought. He was foolish enough to love her, but how fortunate he was to have never said so.

P
lease…

She began and ended every day with that one-word prayer, but if she had had to say exactly what she was petitioning for, she would have been hard-pressed to do so.

Please keep Frederich safe?

Please don’t let me be pregnant?

Please let me have Frederich’s child?

She stayed in the Holt house, desperate for some word of what had happened to him. Johann Rial had been to the garrison in town several times and had learned nothing. If Frederich had been imprisoned there, his name was not on any roster. If he had been sent to Castle Thunder in Richmond, no one would say. Whatever the trouble between her and Frederich, she wanted no harm to come to him. She even tried to convince herself that imprisonment might be safer for him than the battlefield. But she kept remembering the small notice in the newspaper about the execution of a deserter from the 18th Virginia Battalion in Richmond. She even remembered his name—Daniel Kennedy.

She constantly looked for some task to do to keep from worrying, because the reminders of Frederich here were far more disturbing than they would have been in the Graeber house. There was no place she could turn without reliving some painful event, and sleeping in the bed they had shared
offered its own exquisite torture. Sometimes she dreamed of lying in his arms again, with no anger between them and all the time in the world. Sometimes she woke in a terrible nightmare, afraid and lost and unable to find him. She dreaded the arrival of any letters from William or Avery. They would soon learn of her estrangement from Frederich—either from the other men in the company or from Beata. She didn’t worry about Avery’s reaction—his only concern would be whether she had jeopardized his ownership of the acre of land with the spring. It was William she worried about. William loved her and believed the best of her, regardless of whether she deserved it. She couldn’t bear for him to be told this terrible thing about her and Eli. And if she was thankful for anything it was that he didn’t know about Ann.

She harbored no illusions about the reality of her situation. It was no wonder that she had nightmares. She was utterly alone. Beata had cut her off completely from the children, sending her belongings to the Holt house via Johann almost immediately. And the worst of it was the certain knowledge that she, the proud, town-educated and once proper Caroline Holt, had meant even less to Frederich Graeber than she had to the indifferent, lecherous schoolmaster. The confederate officer had threatened her with arrest for aiding an army deserter, husband or no. Perhaps she would have been better off it he had done so and locked her away in a place that had no painful memories.

In spite of Johann’s reassurances that he spoke to the children regularly, she missed them both terribly. One afternoon she walked in the cold air almost to the edge of Graeber land, close enough to see the house through the bare trees, hoping for some glimpse of them, however brief. But she saw no one, and as she turned to go, she heard the C scale being diligently practiced on the parlor piano, over and over, interrupted for a time by some equally diligent banging.

Mary Louise and Lise,
she thought, giving a half smile. What Ann’s children lacked in expertise they made up for in enthusiasm. She missed them so! But at least Beata was carrying on some kind of normal routine for them. Caroline had no idea what the girls might have been told about their father, and what they had been told about their Aunt Caroline, she didn’t even want to consider. It was better that she hadn’t seen them, she thought as she walked home. Better that than to provoke Beata into another one of her self-righteous fits. There was still enough of the Holt pride left, however, to let her imagine herself knocking on the Graeber back door and challenging Beata to do her worst.

But Beata had already done her worst and there was no help for it. None. Caroline kept thinking about Eli’s letter as she walked along. She had read it again and again without enlightenment. She accepted that the promise Eli mentioned must have been to Ann—but why had the letter come now? That, she didn’t understand.

Johann Rial was waiting for her when she finally reached the house, and once again, his surprise arrival made her expect the worse. Johann had no guile, and she had only to look into his eyes to know if the news he brought was bad, but she was walking into the afternoon sun and she could barely see him.

“Have you found him, Johann?” she asked, immediately asking the question that haunted her night and day to keep from prolonging her anxiety.

“Not Frederich, no,” he said. “But I have found Eli.”

She stepped up on the porch, but she made no comment.

“I have been sent word that he’s with his—and Frederich’s—Pennsylvania relatives.”

“Word from whom?”

“From a German clergyman in the area.”

“I see,” she said.

“Eli wants to come back here, Caroline,” Johann added quietly, and she looked at him in alarm.

“I have answered that that would be most unwise—because of the conscription—as a landowner he’s bound to be taken. And because of the position he has put you in.”

She gave a quiet sigh and looked out across the fields toward the Graeber place.

“You have nothing to say about this, Caroline,” he said after a time.

“Beata could use his help,” she said, still looking away.

“She wouldn’t have his help for long—just until the next conscription detail—if indeed she’d allow him to return. He
is
a sinner in Beata’s eyes.”

“A sinner who owns half the land,” Caroline said simply.

“Yes,” Johann agreed. “There is that.”

“Now that you know where he is, I want you to send his money back to him.”

“You may have need of it.”

“I don’t want to ever have to use Eli Graeber’s money. And I won’t—if it’s not here.”

“I was thinking that you might need it for Frederich. If it turns out that he is in prison—here—or elsewhere. You may need a bribe to see him.”

She looked at him. “I’m afraid he’s dead, Johann. I’m afraid I’ll never know what’s happened to him.”

“You must be strong, Caroline. I think Frederich will come through this. I think he will come back to you.”

“You don’t understand. Just before they took him away—I told him the marriage was over—whether he lives or dies. I meant it. I still do.”

“Caroline…” He stopped and sighed.

“The children are all right?” she asked.

“They…miss their Aunt Caroline.”

“I want to see them, Johann.”

“It isn’t wise. You know how Beata is. They are the ones who will suffer if you challenge her. You must be strong,” he said again.

She gave him a sad look.

“You must be strong,” he insisted. “And you must pray.”

Yes,
she thought.
I can do that at least.

She prayed all through February and March as she tried to work Avery’s land. She prevailed upon Johann to recover some of the Holt stock from Beata, identifying the cows by their notched ears so that Beata couldn’t later accuse her of perpetrating some kind of thievery. A few of the chickens returned on their own, enticed by the scattered trail of corn she left from the woods to the chicken lot. She had eggs and milk and cream for butter at least, and enough pieces of dried cow stomach lining left to make several batches of cheese. She found two brown paper packets of seeds she’d saved and dried and put away so carefully last year, and she started early seedlings in egg shells to give herself a head start when the danger of frost had passed. She readied the beds for planting cabbages and onions. What few hams remained in the smokehouse she moved to the attic space where she could keep an intense vigil to ward off the beetles and the rats and the foragers.

It had occurred to her that she might greet the spring in the same condition as she had last year—pregnant and abandoned, but that was not the case. She was relieved when her monthly bleeding finally came, and sad, because her marriage to Frederich Graeber would indeed count for nothing.

Still there was no word of him. She didn’t know what to do, where to look. For all intents and purposes, he had completely disappeared. She agonized over what kind of situation he must be in. She knew he would not write to her, but he would write to Johann or Beata—if he were able. And Johann was certainly working on Frederich’s behalf, sending out letters to his commanding officers, reminding them of Frederich’s Badge of Distinction at Sharpsburg. She thought Johann was likely writing to Eli as well and getting the letters north via his network of German clergy, who
seemed to be undeterred by either the Confederate or the Union lines. He gave her no reports about those writings, however, and she asked for none.

In the middle of April a letter from William came:

Dear Caroline I take pen in hand to ask you a question. Everybody is saying how you wont live with Frederich any more. Nobody knows where he is got and Avery and me wont to know what is the matter with you. Both of us is worrying more than we shud—we got this war business to take care of and we aint got the time to be vexed over you leaving your husband. Avery is already upset enough on account of Leeah S. marrying Mr. Gerhart—though between you and me he dont act like a man about to get married. Him and Avery are going to get into it yet and Frederich aint here to keep them straight. It is too much for me. Cant you tell us what happened with you and Frederich so me and Avery will know how to act?

Respectfully your brother in the army, William

P.S. If you see Frederich, you tell him to come back here because this company needs him if you dont.

P.P.S. If you get a letter from Avery I wuld not read it. That is my best advice.

She didn’t get a letter from Avery, and she didn’t answer William’s. There was nothing she wanted to say to him, no explanation she wanted to make. The first week in May, Johann brought news that the 5th North Carolina had been in a battle near Chancellorsville, Virginia. The names of the soldiers from the German community had been copied from the casualty lists and hand-delivered by Jacob Goodman—one
killed, ten wounded and captured, one missing from among the families here, and Caroline knew all of them.

Jacob also brought a letter for her; she recognized the fine script on the envelope immediately, even without a return address. Incredibly, it was from Kader Gerhardt. She had the presence of mind to thank Jacob as was expected, all the while giving thanks that it was he and not Johann Rial who had been the bearer. Regardless of what it said, she had no wish to get into a discussion about it with Johann.

The letter was very brief and to the point, beginning with the terse salutation, Frau Graeber, and ending with Kader’s signing himself Herr Gerhardt. The in-between was equally as cold, and it advised her that, in view of her notoriety and her sullied reputation, she could not reasonably expect to stand in such prominent attendance at his marriage to Fräulein Steigermann—regardless of Fräulein Steigermann’s generous but misguided invitation to do so. He had already advised his soon-to-be bride that decorum must be observed, he said, and he expected Frau Graeber to comply with his wishes and not inflict any more embarrassment upon him and his intended on this their most special day.

Caroline read the letter two more times, then she walked out onto the porch and stood staring at nothing. She crumpled the letter slowly in her fist, just seconds away from an observation only one so allegedly notorious and sullied as she could make—when she realized that she had visitors.

“What are you doing, Aunt Caroline?” Lise asked politely from the edge of the porch, as if there had been no time at all since their last meeting.

“What are you doing, Aunt Caroline?” Mary Louise echoed, full of giggles. She rushed forward and grabbed Caroline around the knees.

Caroline stuck the balled-up letter into her pocket and smiled broadly, happier suddenly than she’d been in weeks.

“Oh, nothing, my loves,” she said, hugging them both hard and trying not to cry. “Just wondering where I can get myself a red dress.”

Their visit was bittersweet and flagrantly clandestine, in spite of Lise’s assertion that Beata had them out looking for some of her hens’ nesting places and that there certainly might be some around here. To her great relief and her disappointment, neither of the girls seemed to be any the worse for their Aunt Caroline’s absence. Beata was humorless and quarrelsome, but she would never deliberately neglect Frederich’s children—unless she felt threatened. It was Beata’s mindless need to keep Caroline Holt from getting “above herself” that caused Caroline concern. She knew how reckless a jealous and indignant Beata could be, and for Mary Louise and Lise’s sake, she resolved to stay in “her place.” No confrontations with Beata over the children. No arguments over property. Nothing.

She didn’t let the girls tarry long, no matter how badly she wanted it. She walked with them back across the field toward the Graeber house after only a short while.

“Papa’s got lost,” Mary Louise told her as they neared the woods path. “I got lost and you got lost and Papa got lost. Lise’s looking for baby chicks—but
I’m
looking for Papa.”

“Papa’s gone back to the army, silly,” Lise said. “Hasn’t he, Aunt Caroline?”

“Yes,” Caroline said, willing herself to believe it. She hated having to lie so shamelessly, but for their sakes—and hers—she did it.

“No,” Mary Louise said. “He’s
lost. Everybody
gets lost—even Mama. And even Eli—you’re going to get lost too, Lise.”

“I am not.”

“Are too, are too. Lost, lost,
lost!”

Mary Louise ran on ahead, but she turned abruptly and came running back again when she realized that Lise hadn’t followed.

“I won’t come with you any farther,” Caroline said to them, trying her best to sound calm. “Give me a goodbye kiss—”

“Can’t you come back with us, Aunt Caroline?” Lise asked. She clung to Caroline’s hand and kissed her cheek. “Can’t you?”

“No, honey, I have to stay here.”

“Why, Aunt Caroline?”