Widow of Gettysburg (49 page)

But it wasn’t just the structure that was new. The four bedrooms on the first floor each had new beds with handmade quilts, wash stands, writing desks, bureaus and lamps. The dining room had a mahogany sideboard again, and matching table and chairs. The kitchen, too, was entirely refurbished.

Liberty ran upstairs to the room that had once been hers. It was repainted a warm butter color, and new curtains sashayed in the autumn air. But when she came to her bed, she stopped. For there across the mattress, was her old baby quilt sewn into a larger one. Somehow, Bella had turned a remnant into a masterpiece, matching odd shapes together until it was a perfect fit, old and new together.

“Perfect,” she whispered, and Bella joined her side.

“Now,” Bella said as she circled her waist with her arm. “Don’t you think it’s time to cast off these mourning clothes?”

Liberty’s eyes widened as Bella threw open the doors of her bureau to reveal four new dresses. None of them were black. Bella pulled out a cornflower blue light wool with black velvet edging.

“Let’s see if I got the measurements right.” Bella unfastened Liberty’s buttons for her and helped her out of the rusty black gown. “Don’t forget your hoops.” She smiled. It had been more than four months since
Liberty had worn hoops under her skirts. She had forgotten what it felt like to look—and feel—like a lady. Liberty stepped into them and Bella tied them over her drawers and camisole. Next was the dress. It skimmed her curves in all the right places.

Hoofbeats grew louder on the dirt lane outside her house.

“Someone’s coming.” Liberty leaned out the window to look. A single horseman trotted up the lane. Looking up at her from beneath the brim of his hat, he grinned and winked.

Liberty sucked in her breath and jumped away from the window. “Bella.” She grabbed her hands. “Bella.” Her heart pounded against her corset. “Am I seeing things that are not there?”

“Go on and see for yourself.”

Slowly, Liberty glided down the staircase, afraid that every step brought her closer to having her wild hope crushed with some practical reality.
It’s a salesman. Or a traveler arriving for the dedication ceremony.

With her heart in her throat, she pushed open the door and swept out onto the porch. The man dismounted, a little stiffly, but successfully, and walked toward her.

Standing in front of her, he removed his hat and looked down into her eyes. A strand of her hair blew across her face, and he tucked it behind her ear, his thumb resting on her cheek for a heartbeat.

“You don’t look like a Rebel,” she whispered.

Silas laughed out loud. “And you, my dear, don’t look like a widow.”

She flung her arms around his neck and felt her feet leave the earth as he held her tightly in an embrace. Her tears wet his neck as she whispered, “I thought I’d never see you again.”

His lips found hers, and he kissed her tenderly, as if unsure of her reaction. She deepened the kiss and felt his fingers in her hair.

“I have a feeling we’re being watched.” She turned and pointed to her bedroom window, where the curtain fell quickly back into place.

“I have a feeling she wouldn’t mind.”

“Do you mean you two were in on this together?” Liberty was stunned.

Silas nodded. “But I had help. Bella and some women from her church made the quilts and curtains for the entire house. I hear a few women from the Ladies Union Relief Society pitched in, too. Can you guess who helped me make the furniture and repair the damage to the house and outbuildings?”

She shook her head. Who would have helped him?

His smile warmed her. “Wood-working students from Pennsylvania College and the Lutheran Theological Seminary.” Silas laughed at the shock that must have been written on her face. “I met with my old professor, Dr. Schmucker, in September. I wanted to tell him my story, vindicate myself from that little rhyme his students love to chant. And I—” he licked his lips. “I asked if I could come back. Complete my training at the seminary.”

Liberty clutched his arms. “And?”

“And he said yes. Next fall, I’ll begin. In the meantime, I have other business to attend to here.”

“So you’re staying? Another year in Gettysburg?”

“Oh, at least.” He winked. “Then when Rev. Schmucker asked about you—he reads the papers like anyone else—I told him about my project here to fix up your place. That’s when he recruited more than a dozen of his students to pitch in and help. They were only too eager to meet the legendary ‘Silas Ford, man of the Lord,’ especially after Rev. Schmucker reclaimed my reputation. I couldn’t have done all this without them.”

“But how did you pay for it all? I don’t have any money to pay anything back!”

“You happen to have a benefactor.”

“What?”

“Come with me.” He led her by the hand to where the barn once stood. “We razed the old building to the ground and rebuilt this carriage house, big enough to accommodate a full house at Liberty Inn.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “But who’s we?”

Liberty gasped as Harrison Caldwell and Amelia Sanger emerged from the new structure.

Amelia wrapped her in an embrace. “I wrote you letters!”

“I’m sorry I didn’t get them, Amelia—I left for Camp Letterman and never came back until now.”

Harrison toed the ground with his shoe. “Hi, Miss Holloway.”

“Don’t you have a newspaper to write for?”

“I’m on my own now. I go where I want to, write the stories I want to. But this time, I took a break to help pick up the pieces from a mess I had a hand in creating.” He smiled past Liberty’s shoulder and she turned to see Bella smiling back at him. Had the entire world changed in the few months she was at Camp Letterman?

“There’s one more surprise,” Silas said. “The carriage and horses that Bella used to bring you home in? They’re yours.”

Liberty’s knees weakened, and she leaned against Silas. “How?”

“I’m getting old, Liberty,” said Amelia. “And I’ve got gobs of money. Levi would have wanted some of it to go to you. I told you that.”

Silas drew Liberty in and kissed her again before tucking her against his chest. “Welcome home, Liberty. This is where you belong.”

“Thousands of visitors will soon descend upon you for the dedication ceremony, and you’ll be able to charge whatever you like,” said Amelia. “Put two in a room, put them on the parlor floor, charge them just the same. Gettysburg style.” She laughed. “You’ve already got your first customers right here.”

Liberty looked around. “All of you?” Silas, Harrison, and Amelia all nodded.

“Just name your price.”

The November wind scraped Liberty’s face, as Carrie Daws appeared in her mind, along with Betty, Virginia, and Samuel. They were gone now, but there would be other widows and orphans making the pilgrimage to Gettysburg, especially now that the Federal government no longer required them to pledge allegiance to the Union in order to retrieve the bodies. Each fallen soldier had a mother, father, siblings,
perhaps a wife and children. Wouldn’t they long to visit the final resting place of their loved one?

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.
Let them spend their night at Liberty Inn.

“So what will you charge?” Harrison buried his hands in his pockets.

“Nothing.” She paused. “That is, widows and children of the men buried here can stay free of charge, whether they hail from Minnesota or Alabama. Liberty Inn can be much more than just a livelihood for me. It can be respite for the grieving. Other visitors will come and go and pay a normal fare. But widows and orphans who lack the means can stay at Liberty Inn for free.”

Silas wrapped his arm around her shoulders, but Harrison frowned. “So they’ll twiddle their thumbs while they stay for free.”

Bella caught Liberty’s eyes. “No, that wouldn’t help them at all,” she said. “They’re going to keep their hands busy, aren’t they, Liberty? While they stay, they can help in the garden and kitchen. They can make jams and jellies, needlework and quilts. We can sell their work at the Fahnestock Brothers Store as products made by the widows of Gettysburg. All proceeds will go to the maintenance of Liberty Inn.”

“It’s perfect.” Amelia’s pale face creased into a smile. “‘… we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.’”

The war had not ended with Gettysburg, as both North and South had hoped, but it was no longer a time to hate.
At least not here, at Liberty Inn.

Liberty blinked away the moisture in her eyes and looked down at her hand, her fingers entwined with Silas’s. A Union widow and a Rebel veteran. The daughter of a slave, the son of a slave holder. Children of God. Where prejudice and hatred and fear had sought to unravel them, love and forgiveness had bound them together. “It’s time to heal.”

T
he weather was unseasonably mild for the dedication of the National Soldiers’ Cemetery on Cemetery Hill, and warmth flooded Liberty as the crowd pressed her closer to Silas. Twenty thousand people had descended upon Gettysburg for the occasion. The sea of faces, fevered with patriotic zeal during the parade this morning, were now cloaked in solemnity. But none were as sober as the people who had lived through the ordeal personally. Liberty caught Evergreen Cemetery keeper Elizabeth Thorn’s eye and offered a smile for the one-month-old baby in her arms.

As the honorable Edward Everett, former secretary of state, took the platform now for the dedication ceremony, Silas wrapped his arm around Liberty’s shoulders, and she nestled into his chest, inhaling his bay rum scent as the orator began. Amelia and Bella stood just in front of them.

“Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed;–grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and your sympathy.”

For the next hour, Everett held the crowd captive, and Liberty noticed Harrison Caldwell scribbling notes on his pad of paper. Everett spoke of Roman, Italian, French, and British governments, took the audience through the events of the American Revolution, the definition of rebellion, the birth and plan of the Confederacy, and the movements of both armies from the days of late June until the glorious Fourth of July when victory was secured for the Union.

Then, it was the women’s turn. Liberty leaned in to listen as Everett spoke several sentences to commend matrons and maidens for delighting in their labors and serving the “least of these.”

Liberty kept her gaze on the speaker, but her thoughts wrapped themselves around the man standing next to her. She had considered him the “least of these,” and God had rewarded her with love and belonging she had never known before. She could never have imagined where loving her enemy would lead.

Everett went on for another hour after that, and the people punctuated his conclusion with thunderous applause. Then, President Abraham Lincoln traded places with him, and the contrast could not have been starker. Everett, of average height and whose head was framed by such fuzzy white hair it looked like a thick layer of lint was stuck to it, his face that of a victor. Lincoln, taller than anyone else in the crowd, whose stovepipe hat matched his dark hair and beard, his face, that of a sufferer. He looked so sad, so tired. He was not celebrating victory, but still solemnly in the fight. His voice was higher pitched than she had imagined it would be for a man of his stature, but his words, though simpler and far fewer than Everett’s, captured the essence of the occasion.

Not even the wind stirred as the president spoke. “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Mr. Lincoln left the stage. Liberty, along with the rest of the crowd, was stunned at the brevity of his remarks. An awkward moment passed as twenty thousand people came to the realization that Lincoln’s speech was over almost as soon as it had begun, then erupted into a delayed cheer for their burdened commander in chief.

Harrison Caldwell jostled his way next to Silas, Liberty, Amelia, and Bella. “So.” He tucked his pencil and paper into his knapsack. “Two hours and two minutes later, the National Soldiers’ Cemetery is dedicated.”

“How did you rate our speakers?” Silas asked.

Harrison straightened the slouch hat on his head. “I preferred Lincoln.”

“A newsman would. Shorter is better, right?”

The reporter chuckled. “Usually, yes. But a little clarification would have been appropriate. Lincoln said that the men who died here gave their last full measure of devotion in doing so. But I believe the fullest measure of our devotion to the cause is not just dying for it, but living for it. From where I’m standing, each one of you is giving your full measures of devotion in your own ways.”