Crossing (34 page)

“Here’s the buggy the Kyles have been kind enough to loan me. We’re going to go to my headquarters,” he said, entwining her arm with his. “Such a grand name for a tent in the Kyles’ yard.” He smiled down at her, for she was so tiny that she barely reached his chest. He smiled often with Anna … but almost never without her.

She squeezed his arm and said, “It doesn’t matter, Thomas. You are my home, and wherever and whatever it is, it is a joyous home indeed to me.”

Jackson, disdaining a driver, drove the buggy himself. Theodorus Kyle’s farm was about two miles from the Manassas railroad junction, and the brigade had encamped around the farm.

Theodorus and Deidre Kyle had a large boisterous family. Their own four daughters lived with them—for their husbands were serving in the 1
^st
Brigade—and between them they had nine children. The Kyle farmhouse was large and spacious, of two floors, with two wings that had been added over time as sleeping porches. The Kyles had begged Jackson to stay with them, but with his customary humility—in some matters—he declined, insisting that he would be much more comfortable in a command tent, with his long hours and men constantly coming and going. He never realized what an honor and a boost of reputation it would have been for the Kyles to have him as a houseguest, for his fame had spread throughout the South. Without doubt he was the the most revered and admired commander in the Confederate Army.

Anna confided her discomfort on the train to her husband, though softening the effect to a mild embarrassment.

On later trips Jackson promised to send her an escort. However, he knew, even this soon after Manassas, if the soldiers would have known Anna to be Stonewall Jackson’s wife, she would never have suffered the slightest disquiet. Indeed, the 1
^st
Brigade regarded her with true reverence, believing she was a saint walking on earth. It wouldn’t be long before the entire army believed it, too.

They passed the first camp tents, with two men sitting outside playing cards. As the buggy went by, one of them jumped up and called out the now-famous Rebel yell, and men flooded out of the tents and to the roadside. They hoorahed and called and whistled and cheered. The Stonewall Brigade did this every single time Jackson rode through the camp, even if they were in drill formation. The officers, grinning, allowed it.

For his part, Jackson gave no sign of recognition at all, driving and looking straight ahead. It had become his habit when he was on horseback to ride around the camp for precisely this reason, but in the buggy he had to take the farm road right down the middle of the brigade’s tents. As they passed, the wild chorus went on and on, with men crowding to the very sides of the buggy, waving their hats and grinning.

Anna pinched his arm lightly. “Impressive, Stonewall.”

“Don’t tease, my darling,” he said awkwardly. “They’re a bunch of holloing fools, is all.”

Finally they went up the private lane to the Kyle farmhouse, and there in the shady side yard was Jackson’s spacious command tent. Lined up in precise rows outside were his staff officers and aides. Slightly to the side were Yancy, Chuckins Satterfield, Peyton Stevens, and Sandy Owens. Every single man in attendance was grinning like the village idiot. There was very little time for levity on Stonewall Jackson’s staff, but he had been so excited about Anna’s arrival that they all were in a lighthearted mood.

Jackson helped Anna down from the buggy, and to the colonel’s and major’s bemusement, the first person he introduced her to was his manservant Jim, who had come to take the buggy to the farm’s stables. He was a tall handsome mulatto with a flashing toothy smile, and he bowed as deeply as any courtier when Jackson said, “My dear, this is Jim, who came to me after the Battle of Falling Waters. Jim, I have the pleasure and honor to introduce you to my wife, Mrs. Jackson.”

Anna smiled at him and inclined her head, as ladies do when introduced to gentlemen.

A smile of pleasure lit Jim’s face. “It’s a right honor to meet you, ma’am. And I want you to know that I takes good care of the general, I surely do.”

“I’m so glad,” Anna said kindly. “I shall rest better now, knowing that he is in such capable hands.”

Now Jackson escorted her to meet his staff, and she greeted each one of them, from colonel to waterboy, with the same warmth and grace. When she came to Yancy, she held out both her hands for him to hold. Then, to the envy of every man present, she said with obvious delight, “Oh Yancy, how good it is to see you again! Hetty and I have missed you so much. You were always so very helpful to us. And especially this summer I have missed you in the garden. I believe you have a gift for gardening, for everything you did for me has prospered amazingly.”

Still holding her hands in his, Yancy said somewhat shyly, “Thank you, ma’am, but it’s not me that the plants and flowers love. It’s you and your tender care.”

“Perhaps, but I must share the glory of the daisy-mums with you and your grandmother,” she said lightly. “Tell me, how is your family?”

“Very well, ma’am. We write regularly, and it seems they are having a peaceful and prosperous year,” he answered somewhat wistfully.

“I’m glad,” Anna said. Finally she withdrew her hands from his and finished, “I hope while I am here that you may take me to see Midnight. I should like to see him again, such a glorious horse.”

“I hope so, too, ma’am,” Yancy said gratefully.

She moved on to Chuckins Satterfield, and the general introduced him. Despite Anna’s best efforts at making him feel at ease, Chuckins’s round chubby face turned scarlet, and he could only bow and gulp and mumble.

Next was the sophisticated, aristocratic Peyton Stevens. Jackson introduced him, and he swept off his dashing hat, a wide-brimmed gray felt with one side pinned up with a gold pin and sporting two small red feathers. He bent one knee, crossed one arm over, and bowed deeply, an old-fashioned court obeisance. “Mrs. Jackson, if I may say, I thought this day to be beautiful, but it is nothing compared to you.”

General Jackson growled, “Impertinent young pup.”

Anna gave him a mischievous sidelong glance. “Why, Thomas, I did not know that you had such chivalrous young gentlemen on your staff. I am very pleased to meet you, Sergeant Stevens.”

Next she met Sandy Owens, who also was something of a ladies’ man but who didn’t have the panache of Peyton Stevens. “Mrs. Jackson, all I can say is that now I can see that indeed our general is a fortunate man,” he said with obvious sincerity.

“Thomas and I are both blessed that the Lord led us to each other,” she said.

And this began a brief holiday for General Jackson.

Anna had a sweet voice, both in speech and song. Jackson enjoyed when she read aloud, but he especially loved for her to sing to him. She sang “Dixie” for him; it was the first time he had heard it. He loved the song and made her sing the lively ditty over and over until they were both giggling like children.

Anna met the officers of the army and seemed especially impressed by General Joe Johnston, the commanding officer of what had come to be called the Army of the Valley. He spoke highly of Jackson, which, though Thomas was characteristically a modest man, was certainly gratifying to him.

Nearly every officer spoke of his valor and steadfastness at the Battle of Manassas. One officer commented, “If it hadn’t been for your husband, I think we might have lost the battle.”

Jackson said, with a reply that was to become characteristic, “No, Major, you must give credit to God and to the noble men who did the fighting.”

It was a wonderful visit for Anna and Jackson, but of course it had to come to an end. He took her back to the train station at Manassas Crossing, this time with an escort of two slightly wounded men—one of them the shy corporal, who was almost beside himself with the sense of honor—who would accompany her all the way to their home in Lexington. She found herself struggling not to cry, for it upset Thomas very much when she wept.

He clasped her to him. “Sometimes I think the hardest thing about this war is being separated from you. I’ll have you come again when I can, esposita.”

“Soon, God willing, Thomas, my dear. I pray that it will be soon.”

The sweltering July melted into a sizzling August. Oddly, as if the seasons were to be separated by the stroke of a sharp knife, the first week of September 1861 suddenly turned into autumn, with cool dewy mornings, fine freshening breezes in the afternoon, and evenings just chilly enough to really enjoy sitting around a fire, one of the few pleasures of camp life. These two months passed idyllically, with only a few very minor skirmishes, usually caused by Federals lurking around the lines, getting lost, and blundering into Confederate territory. The casualties were light and the skies were clear of the smoke of cannons and thousands of rounds of musket fire.

But idleness in a soldier’s camp can become very monotonous and boring. Yancy and Peyton were glad that they were couriers, because at least they kept busy, mostly riding back and forth to the different commands of the Army of the Shenandoah that were still ranged up and down northern Virginia.

Yancy only went to Richmond once in August and twice in September, when he got to visit the Haydens. Leslie had been on a steady mend, and though he and Yancy didn’t directly speak of it, Yancy knew he was planning on rejoining the Army of the Potomac soon.

As September wore on, the weather got steadily colder, and in the first week of October, the camp at Manassas had their first hard frost. The Kyle family had donated an unused cast-iron stove to General Jackson. On Monday, October 7, Jim and Yancy were struggling to install the stove in Jackson’s tent. Yancy often still did chores like this for General Jackson, much as he did when he worked at the Jackson home in Lexington.

The struggle to install the stove was because General Jackson was supervising them. Inactivity irritated Yancy, but it made Thomas Jackson as grouchy and touchy as a wounded bear. Now he barked, “No, I don’t want it that close to my cot. I’ll be too hot trying to sleep! And not too close to my prayer bench, either. If that should get scorched I’d have the hide of both of you. Go on, put it over there by the aide’s desk.”

At this desk sat Chuckins, scribbling fanatically. He didn’t dare look up or make a sound.

“But, sir,” Jim said placatingly, “that there desk is right by the tent flap. Sure enough all the heat would go out that hole every time there’s all the comin’s and the goin’s.”

“Then put it—” Jackson began.

But he was interrupted when a voice from outside the said tent flap called, “Sir? Orders from Secretary Benjamin, General Jackson.”

“What? Come in, come in,” Jackson ordered quickly.

The courier came in, a young bespectacled captain in the uniform of the War Department Army Staff.

Yancy recognized him; in fact, he had handed over a couple of dispatch bags to this man.

The captain came to strict attention and saluted. “Captain Monroe Hillyard, sir, of Secretary of War Benjamin’s staff.”

Jackson returned the salute and bid him, “Come here, come here.” He took the courier’s knapsack and took out a bundle of four thick envelopes. Opening the first one, he frowned, took out his spectacles, read it again, then looked up. “You men are dismissed,” he said, now calmly and quietly, to Jim, Yancy, and Chuckins.

They fled. But Yancy loitered around outside the tent with Chuckins, for he was almost certain he had seen a glance of recognition from Captain Hillyard. Couriers, of course, rarely knew the contents of their dispatches, but for a captain on Secretary Judah Benjamin’s staff to act as a courier meant that likely he knew very well the messages he was carrying. The chances of his telling Yancy or anyone else about them was extremely remote, but Yancy was so feverishly curious that he wanted to take the chance. He and Chuckins manifestly had nothing to do outside the tent, but they drew away a discreet distance and paced up and down anyway.

Jim fetched a pail of water and went to the captain’s horse to give him a drink. Then, as if he had strictly been assigned the job, he began brushing the horse down, whistling softly between his teeth.