A Sound Among the Trees (40 page)

Nathaniel and I heard her raised voice from upstairs, where Nathaniel was packing his things. We went at once into the parlor, where Tessie had shown the men. As we took the stairs, I quietly asked Nathaniel what we should do, and he said I was to entrust the matter to him. He patted my arm
.

Nathaniel was resplendent in a clean uniform when we entered the room, and the men rose, uncertainly, it seemed, to meet him. He asked them what their business was at Holly Oak. They again said they had come on information of the most grievous nature. Someone had told them we were hiding Union soldiers in our house
.

In a calm and authoritative tone, Nathaniel told them they had received faulty information. He assured them as an officer in the Confederate Army that there were no Yankees in the house
.

One of them begged Nathaniel’s pardon and said that perhaps Nathaniel did not know that Eliza Pembroke of Holly Oak had been arrested last fall for conspiring with Yankees and now sat behind a locked door at Castle Thunder
.

“What has that to do with your unfounded accusations?” Nathaniel said politely
.

The men both looked at me, and the same one said, “These Yankees were seen before you arrived, Lt. Page. And your wife, we know, is very fond of her aunt.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. “What … are you suggesting?” I stammered. I sounded appalled, which, lucky for me, is very much like sounding terrified
.

Nathaniel did not give them time to answer. “You will respect my wife in her home and in my presence,” he said evenly
.

“We mean no disrespect, sir, but—”

Again Nathaniel cut him off. “I find it highly disrespectful that you do not take my wife at her word—or mine. I swear to you before God there are no Yankees in this house.”

They stood there a moment longer, running their fingers along the brims of their hats. Finally, the one who had been doing all the talking bowed to me. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Page.”

I said nothing. I tipped my chin in silence
.

They bade my grandmother and Nathaniel good-bye. Grandmother rewarded them with stony silence. Nathaniel maintained his polite but firm tone and asked Tessie to kindly show them out
.

When the front door closed behind them, Grandmother rose from the chair she’d been sitting in, smoothed her skirt, and then began to walk regally out of the room
.

“I do not wish to know anything about this, Susannah,” she said. But her back was to me, indicating she wanted no response from me, not even confirmation that I had heard her
.

I looked to Nathaniel, and he just patted my arm and nodded once. It was over. This situation with Will and John was over
.

Nathaniel left within the hour. I asked if he could tell me where he was headed, and he said all eyes are on Pennsylvania, including the regiment Will and John are hoping to reconnect with. Nathaniel told me his supply wagons were numerous. Gen. Lee was amassing a huge army to march north into Union territory
.

He kissed me good-bye and then placed his hand over my abdomen. “If it is a boy, would you consider naming him Albert?”
he asked. “That was my grandfather’s name. He was a great man. You would’ve liked him, Susannah.”

I had not given any thought to the notion that I would deliver this child at Holly Oak alone, without Nathaniel pacing an adjoining room. “Of course,” I whispered, though I could hardly imagine the moment of the child being real and outside of me and needing a name
.

He took me in his arms for one last embrace. “I love you, Susannah,” he said
.

It took only a moment for me to say, “And I, you.”

There are many shapes to love, Eleanor
.

I watched him ride away, alone this time and into the streets of Fredericksburg, not the woods behind the house. It was a different sound this time
.

As soon as he was gone, I stepped back into the house. Holly Oak seemed tomblike again as it had when I first returned. An air of foreboding seemed to seep through its walls. Like it knew something that we did not yet know
.

15 June 1863
Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

Dear Eleanor
,

The summer heat is ovenlike, pressing in on us like a punishing hand. I spend as much time as I can out of doors among the remaining peach trees that the Union Army did not cut down for firewood last winter; it is unbearable inside the house. Mama and Samuel often sit with me under the shady boughs
.

Tessie’s garden enjoys the jungle warmth and is green with
happy, living things. We are all of us looking forward to eating something besides fish from the river and cornmeal cakes. The only good thing about the heat is it strips us of appetite most of the time
.

There is no wind, Eleanor. The air is still and wet and heavy. Like a hammer ready to fall
.

Susannah

5 July 1863
Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

Dearest Eleanor
,

There has been a terrible battle in a place in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg. We have been told there have been thousands of Confederate casualties. Thousands. We’ve had no word from Nathaniel and certainly nothing from Will or John. All we can do is wait for the list of names to be posted
.

And still the unrelenting heat rails on
.

I long for a blinding white blizzard to sweep us all under its icy coat, to cover our horrors, bury our cannons and trenches and, yes, even our dead. I want it to freeze us into statues that cannot pull triggers or thrust bayonets or even walk to the post office to see who has died and who has not
.

I am almost out of paper and ink, Eleanor, none of which are available anymore. That is why I am writing as small a script as I can, pressing my letters together to the point of bare legibility
.

Perhaps it is well that I shall soon be unable to pacify myself with writing sentences you will never see and I, no doubt, should not be writing
.

Susannah

23 September 1863
Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

Dearest Eleanor
,

This shall be my last letter to you. I have no more paper beyond these last two pages, and there is no more ink in Fredericksburg
.

It is fitting that when this letter is complete, I shall bind all these letters together and hide them away somewhere inside Holly Oak, perhaps forever. You will never know I wrote them, and perhaps one day I will forget that I did
.

Nathaniel was one of the thousands of men catastrophically wounded at Gettysburg. The sharpshooter’s bullet that sliced through his neck did not kill him, but he lost a terrible amount of blood. He was expected to die
.

Perhaps it would have been a kindness if he had. But I do not deserve such kindness, and he is not aware that he does
.

Nathaniel returned to me from a field hospital on the nineteenth of July, whole but broken. He can barely speak or walk, and he does not quite remember me. He doesn’t remember that he loves me
.

This, Eleanor, is my recompense for marrying a man I did not love and loving a man I did not marry. Nathaniel’s devotion to me, his ardent affection, and even his physical presence was what I fed upon since I was denied what I truly desired. And now I am a stranger to him
.

He sits in a chair all day long, unable to read a book or strike a match or even run his hands through my hair. When he first came home, it took Tessie and my mother both to get him out of bed in the morning. Tessie would not allow me to help. She was afraid the baby might come early
.

Tessie told me it would be up to us to teach Nathaniel how to walk and talk again. How to live again. This thought terrified me to my core, that I was now burdened with restoring to Nathaniel all that the war had stolen from him. I told her it was too much, I could not do it. And she said, “You owe him at least that much.”

Tessie has always known more than we gave her recognition for
.

And she is right, of course. I owe Nathaniel that much. He would do as much for me and not have thought twice about it. This is how I will learn to love him, Eleanor. It shall do no good to ask who will teach me how to live again. My mother is proof enough that sometimes you either teach yourself to live again or you sentence yourself to slowly disappear
.

Eliza came home on the tenth of August, released along with four hundred other wayward Southerners and Confederates. She only stayed a week, though I begged her not to leave. Even Grandmother cried when she told us she was leaving for Ohio; she had made friends with Southern abolitionists while in Castle Thunder, and that’s where they were headed. She told us it would be unbearable for us if she stayed, far more so than if she left. There are probably only five hundred people left in Fredericksburg, but they all despise her. Eliza wasn’t found guilty, but apparently eight months in prison as a suspected traitor and Union sympathizer is the same as a conviction
.

Nathaniel mumbled good-bye to her, though I do not think he remembers her. She had procured a pass to travel; how she got it, I do not know. She asked Tessie to accompany her to the train station. The rest of us were to remain at home. She told us when the war is over she will write. She did not say when the war is over she will return
.

And she did not say she had any plans to travel to Maine when the war is over. I wonder, Eleanor, if Eliza knows of my feelings for
Will, these feelings that I am slowly learning to pound out of myself. She said she didn’t read my letters to you, but I know she had to have seen the words. She wrote her secret messages above my words. How could she not have seen them? And so I wonder if perhaps she does not entertain the thought of responding to Will’s advances because of me. I think she knows what I sacrificed to secure Will and John’s escape from Libby Prison. And if she allowed herself to fall in love with Will and to marry him—think of it, Eleanor! He would be my uncle! Always a part of my family, my world, my heart, and in the most awkward and torturous of ways. Out of her love for me, she will not do this
.

You see? Love has many shapes
.

And dearest cousin, the baby did come early after all, by three weeks. On September 6, I delivered a small but healthy baby girl. I named her Annabel Grace. And do you know what, Eleanor? Nathaniel, who struggles to say her name, loves to hold her. He loves it. I do not know if he understands she is his daughter, but I am optimistic that someday he will
.