Seidel, Kathleen Gilles (19 page)

At dawn Phillip returned to Briar Ridge, swinging a loaded blanket off his saddlehorn, hams and cheese rolling across the fading white verandah.

Mary Deas looked up at his soot-stained face. "I've no call to tell you what to do."

He sobered, the laughter draining out of his dark eyes. "No, Mary Deas, no, you do."

"Then there shall be no more of this. If you must go to war, follow the way of honor. Join General Jackson and take all the horses with you. I will go live with Mrs. McGuire."

So Phillip never again rode with Mosby.

Life grew hard and hungry. The colored servants sickened or were swept away by one army or the other. Phillip minded none of it for himself, but he hated that it was also happening to Mary Deas.

"Take care of her," Booth had said, and Phillip knew that he was not keeping his promise to do so. "Take care of her" had been said when the land was soft, not worn lean and bitter by an invading army.

They worked side by side, leading the stallions into the breeding pen, assisting the births, cleaning stables, breaking the colts, Mary Deas doing things that no lady should ever have to do. The girl became a woman, and the reckless cavalier became a man.

Mary Deas had loved her orderly, silent husband; Phillip's laughing gallantry had never attracted her. But Phillip was changing, tempered by the soul-burning anguish of his constant sacrifice.

They said nothing, but sometimes, at night, in the wide upstairs hall, Phillip would pause at a closed bedroom door, his face contracting with pain and longing. But he would always move on, the heels of his worn boots thudding against the exposed floorboards. Inside the room, Mary Deas, her white nightdress gleaming in the dark room, would hear the footsteps stop. Her hand at her throat, she would wait, not knowing what she wanted, for the door handle to turn or for the footsteps to move on.

Then, in August of '64, Sheridan came, Phil Sheridan who was to the Valley what Sherman would be to Georgia.

Briar Ridge was warned. A lean, narrow-eyed rider, one of Mosby's men, found Phillip and Mary Deas breaking colts. They stopped, and while the wind swirled Mary Deas's limp, heavy skirts, they heard about Grant's order to Sheridan, to pick the Valley so clean that a crow flying across would have to carry his own provender.

"They've got orders to burn the barns, but not the houses, and they're supposed to leave folks enough to get themselves through the winter."

"But they aren't," Mary Deas said.

It wasn't a question. The days of courtesy between soldier and civilian were four long summers gone.

"No, ma'am, I don't know that they are."

He helped them gather the ever-decreasing number of horses, but before driving them back into the secrets of Massanutten, Phillip gave him a fresh horse and bade him leave. Mosby's Rangers needed horses, too.

Mary Deas followed Phillip into the barn. He swung a saddle across his mare's back. The air in the barn was ripe with the sharp, thick odor of dung.

Phillip tightened the girth. "Those Yanks can't be as wooden-headed as they used to be. They're going to know that there've been horses here."

In the first summer of the war the Yankees—or so the people of the Valley thought—had to tie their cavalry men to their horses, such inept riders they were. But the years had taught them much. Sheridan's men would know that the horses had been stabled here. They would tear the Valley apart to find them.

"Then we must burn the barns ourselves," Mary Deas said.

They sprinkled benzene on the hay, and as the fierce flames shot between the weathered boards, Phillip took her by the shoulders.

"I can't leave you here. Come with me."

She shook her head. "Maybe I can keep them from burning the house."

"They might hurt you."

"I'll be all right. It's the horses that count."

Phillip settled into his saddle, his face a dark mask, his eyes glowing with pain. He had to choose. The horses were his duty, what he owed to his young country. Mary Deas was his love.

She watched him leave, the horses stirring up a cloud of dust that was swallowed by the smoke. She drove the pigs and the chickens to the creek bottom, the willows brushing against her face, and then there was nothing to do but wait.

At last they came, the Yankees. Spiritless, without even an adolescent's joy in destruction, they moved through the house in blank silence, emptying drawers, slashing mattresses, kicking through linens. Mary stood at the turning of the staircase, her shoulder blades pressed tight against the landing wall. What she saw was their boots, unpatched and thick-soled. Phillip's boots were so worn that his footsteps sounded like he were wearing moccasins.

Through the long dining room windows she could see men on horseback trampling the garden. Others were breaking through the thicket, looking for the creek bottom, for the pigs and chickens. They were organized, intent; a weary captain sat on his horse, watching.

Men came around from the back of the house, sacks of dried apples over their shoulders, hams swinging at their side, food intended for the starving Confederates. The Yankees must not have needed it; they threw it into the angry flames of the burning barn. It was hot work on this August afternoon. They pulled off their thick blue coats, coats that would be warm against a mountain winter.

Those who came into the house did not look at Mary Deas or speak to her. There was no taunting, no Rebel- baiting, no eyes shifting away from hers in half-admitted shame. They didn't care. They were tired, and this was their job, something they just needed to get on with.

It took them little more than an hour. The chimes of the Winchester clock jangled against a clumsy blue shoulder, and the captain lifted his hand in a silent signal. Mary stayed on the stairwell, watching through the fanlight over the mahogany door as they formed into straggling ranks and marched off.

She remained motionless, waiting until she could hear nothing but the ticking of the old clock. Then she walked through the house, touching nothing, only looking at the remains of the joyless plunder, at the scattered linens, the sliced feather beds, the bare sideboard. The cellar storeroom was empty, the thick soles of the Yankee boots having tracked white flour dust up the stairs.

Still in the storeroom, she heard a frantic calling, her name. She moved up the cellar steps, into the sunlight of the ruined garden.

Strong hands closed around her arms. "Mary Deas, are you all right? What have they done to you?"

"They got the pigs and the chickens," she reported, her voice flat. "They rode through the garden and set fire to the fields."

"I don't care about that. Did they hurt you?"

"No one spoke to me, no one looked at me, no one touched me... I'd almost rather that they had—"

Even now she couldn't say it. Phillip gathered her up, holding her long and close.

What followed happened only once, but come October, Mary Deas set a cup of the weak chicory coffee in front of Phillip and spoke. "There's to be a baby."

It was a long and bitter winter. There was scant food for the horses, even less for the humans. Mary Deas had little hope for herself or her baby. Phillip heard tell that one of the Germans across the Valley still had a cow. He cut from the steadily diminishing herd three of the best mares, all in foal. They were proud horses, not bred for the plows to which the Germans would hitch them. But Mary Deas had sacrificed enough for these animals; now, Phillip thought, it was their turn.

They saw the rest of the county little that winter. When they did, their neighbors assumed that Booth had come home for one of the "spring plowing" leaves that Confederates so often took.

Lee surrendered in April; two days later Mary Deas gave birth to a tiny girl.

A part of Lee's army, Booth got his parole and began his weary journey home. He was on foot. Of all the magnificent horses that had left Briar Ridge spring after spring, Booth had only one war-worn mare, and he put the loyal, nearly crippled Pompey on that.

At last they turned up Briar Ridge's muddy lane. The stone fences now enclosed fields overrun with blue thistle. The white gates were gone, long since having been used for firewood by stragglers from General Banks's army.

But Briar Ridge was more recognizable than Booth. Suffering had starved his massive strength into a sinewy power. His gaunt face was bearded, his eyes sad beyond all imagining.

"We had best expect the worst," he said to Pompey as they plodded up the lane. They had already seen the charred chimneys and ruined houses, had spoken to women with minds as vague and wandering as their eyes.

They came up over the last rise, braced to find ruin. The big bam was gone, its charred timbers dragged into a makeshift paddock. But the house was there, solidly brick, its twin chimneys still presiding over the ruined kingdom. And coming down the steps of the verandah was Mary Deas.

Booth gripped her silently, engulfing her, lifting his head only when the spring stillness was broken by the cry of a newborn baby.

That there should be any new life in the burnt and desolate Valley seemed a miracle to this weary man. Booth followed Mary Deas to the cradle. She lifted up the crying baby, and Booth touched the child, letting her tiny fist curl around his war-roughened finger. It was not until she cried again, and Mary Deas turned away to unfasten her dress, that he realized that the baby was hers.

So certain that neither she nor the baby would survive, Mary Deas had not thought about what would happen when Booth came home. She loved Phillip. She could hardly remember the girl who had loved Booth. But Booth was her husband, and he had spent four years on ruin's darkest river.

Throughout his first day home, she, in her guilt, was newly conscious of how Briar Ridge had changed. She and Phillip had witnessed the decay gradually, but for Booth the curtainless windows, the scarred walls, and the ruined furnishings had happened in an instant, replacing his memory of warmth and elegance.

It was not until sunset that she could speak. "The house, Booth... it's not what you left, and you must think we didn't—"

He shook his head. "It's home, Mary Deas, and it's standing and you're in it. I don't care what it looks like."

His voice was so gentle and weary that she could hardly breathe. "But the baby..."

He stood, putting his hands on her shoulders, turning her face toward the fading light. "If she is yours, then she is mine, and we shall never discuss it again."

But he did have one question, which he saved for his brother. In a few days they started clearing the thistle from the field that their great-grandfather had cleared in his day. As they struggled to mend the worn harness traces, Booth spoke.

"It wasn't some Yankee, was it?"

"No," Phillip answered.

And they both knew that that truly was the end of the subject.

Phillip also knew that there was no longer a place for him at Briar Ridge. Surely whatever meager living that could be eked out of the blackened Valley belonged to the men who had fought for her.

Four years before, he had cared nothing about a wife's soft eyes and a baby's warm breath. Now they held joys offering more than he had ever dreamed of. But the woman he loved and the child she had borne him were his brother's. He had to step aside. Donning his old jaunty manner, he cuffed his brother on the shoulder and declared that it was now Booth's turn to stay home— Phillip was off to join the cavalry. He was going to go west and fight the Indians. But he was going to have to do it in a blue coat.

CHAPTER 9

Doug stretched forward, picked up the remote control and, with a quick touch, shut off the television's bold glare. The room went dark, lit only by the starlight filtering through the paned windows. In a moment the darkness eased into a quiet gray as his eyes adjusted to the soft, dreamy light.

During the last half hour of the movie Jill had sat forward, pulling her legs in, wrapping her arms around her knees. It was not a position most women would have found comfortable, but most women did not have her lean torso and long legs.

She turned her head to look at him, her long hair falling down over her shoulder. "I was afraid that you had ruined the movie for me."

He linked his hands behind his head. He felt good, relaxed, comfortable with her. He was glad she had spoken. "How so?"

"I tried to watch it after you came to California. I couldn't. I kept thinking about you instead of Phillip."

"But this time?"

"It was fine. I loved it."

"I'm glad," he said... even though she had ruined it for him. He had been more aware of her than he had of Phillip and Mary Deas, more sensitive to her movements and reactions than to anything on the screen.

He wanted to touch her. Nothing much, perhaps just her arm or her cheek. One long lock of her hair had caught on the knit of her shirt. He could lift it, smooth it back into the shimmery cascade spilling over her far shoulder.

He kept his hands resolutely linked behind his head.

She noticed the stray hair. She scooped up the lock, sweeping it back across her neck. Her hand followed the flow of her hair down her body until she crossed her arms around her knees again. Then, almost absentmindedly, she ran a hand down the length of her calf. It was too dark for him to see her legs well, but he remembered them, smooth and golden, with long sleek muscles.

Through his own thick hair he felt his hands grip each other, united in their determination to stay off her. His thumbs pushed tight against the tendons in his neck.

This was not going perfectly. They had watched this movie for a purpose: to locate precisely which shots Don Pleasant's chubby little face had been in. Doug cared about this movie. He wanted to find out what had happened when it had been made forty years ago; he wanted to redeem Bix's reputation. He should have been attentive, he should have been taking notes.

But when Don had come on screen, Doug had paid absolutely no attention. He had been watching Jill.

Perhaps she had done a better job. He could ask her.
So did you get anything out of the baby's scenes?
That was the thing to ask.