The Union Quilters (24 page)

“Of course he will.” Gerda carefully folded the papers and tucked them into her basket. “He wouldn’t approve of Abel Wright’s defenses. That Copperhead would have been dissatisfied with anything short of a hero’s welcome for General Lee, and as Rebel troops stormed the Elm Creek Valley, he would have had us invite them home for tea and cakes.”

Mary laughed. “Somewhere in Bellefonte, he’s telling his wife, ‘That blasted G. A. Bergstrom. At least when the Confederacy finally does take over, they’ll burn his home first.’ ”

Gerda laughed, but then abruptly stopped. “Do you really believe my writing has made me a target?”

“No more so than Schultz’s Printers is.” Mary folded her arms and regarded Gerda curiously. “You mean to say you haven’t considered the consequence of boldly proclaiming your political views for all the world to read?”

“All the world? No indeed. I had no idea the
Register
boasted that sort of circulation.”

“Perhaps you should have chosen a more obscure nom de plume.” Mary tapped her chin with her finger thoughtfully, leaving a smudge of ink. “Wasn’t the Caledonia Iron Works burned—against General Lee’s strict orders that private property was not to be harmed, even—because Jubal Early was furious at the owner for the anti-Confederate remarks he made as a member of Congress?”

“Indeed,” said Gerda faintly. “I hadn’t considered that my words would outrage anyone but Mr. Meek and a handful of Pennsylvania Copperheads.” But she couldn’t discount Mary’s warnings, even though she had made them in jest. One of the people she had interviewed after Gettysburg had referred her to Dr. Samuel Schmucker, a professor at the same Lutheran Seminary that had been turned into a field hospital. The Confederates had vowed to arrest him because of his abolitionist statements, but thanks to a timely warning from a loyal former student, he had fled Gettysburg before the Rebel army had arrived. If not for that, he might have shared Jonathan’s fate—whatever that was.

“I wouldn’t worry,” Mary hastened to reassure her, sensing her dismay but only partially understanding the cause. “Once they discover that G. A. Bergstrom is a woman, they’ll likely decide you’re perfectly harmless and leave you alone.”

If not for the potential jeopardy to her brother, Anneke, and the children, Gerda might almost prefer to have her home burned to the ground than to have her writing dismissed merely because she was a woman. “They’ll have to invade the valley to get to me,” she said with false bravado. “I’m in no danger, not with the hero of Wright’s Gap manning the defenses.”

She bade Mary good-bye and carried the papers to Union Hall, where she found Anneke weeding the garden while the boys played ball nearby, the twins romping happily while their younger brother toddled after them. The boys ran to meet her, and as Anneke rose, smiling and brushing the soil from her hands, Gerda could not miss the pained look in her eyes that appeared when Stephen and David demanded, as they always did, why Aunt Gerda had not brought their father with her.

“You should come home,” Gerda said in an undertone when the boys ran off to play. “Hans misses you terribly.”

“He can’t miss me too badly or he would have come himself instead of sending you.”

“He didn’t send me. I came of my own accord. I’m worried about you.” Then, inspired, she resorted to the one argument she knew would strike home. “People are beginning to talk.”

Anneke’s brow furrowed. “What are they saying?”

“What do you expect? Nothing this scandalous has happened in the Elm Creek Valley since—well, since I gave birth to a bastard child. You’ve deserted your husband and you’re living alone in a public building with three small children. I’ve heard that the regulars at the High Street Tavern have placed bets upon when Hans will sue you for divorce.”

Anneke’s cheeks flushed pink. “He would never do such a thing.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do. He loves me.”

“And you love him, so for heaven’s sake, go home. Don’t stay here alone and become grist for the gossip mill. Believe me as someone who has been ground upon that millstone for many a year. It is not a pleasant experience.”

“I can’t go home,” said Anneke, although Gerda doubted very much that, if pressed, she would have been able to offer a single plausible reason why not. “Dorothea has invited us to stay with her. Perhaps I should accept.”

“But Dorothea is as much a pacifist as Hans,” protested Gerda. “How are you safer under her protection than your own husbandʹs?”

“We might not be, but at least it wouldn’t be as scandalous as living here on my own.” Anneke nodded, resolved. “I’ll move today. Did you bring the wagon?”

“I rode horseback.”

“Would you return with the wagon this afternoon, please?”

“Hans would never allow me to carry you and the boys and your baggage anywhere but home.”

“Then on your way home, would you be so kind as to stop and ask Dorothea to send her hired man?”

Exasperated, Gerda threw her hands in the air and agreed. At least Two Bears Farm was a few miles closer to home than Union Hall.

She hugged the children, made one last plea on Hans’s behalf, and departed, but before returning home, she stopped by the post office to mail a letter to Josiah Chester. She had a letter to Jonathan in progress at home, but she had no idea where to send it. There were no letters waiting for her, but the sympathetic postmaster confided that Charlotte Granger had received a letter from Virginia. “Isn’t that where Dr. Granger studied?” Mr. Reinhart asked.

“No,” she said, wondering. “He studied in Baltimore and Massachusetts.”

“Perhaps the Clavertons have family there? How strange that would be, for such loyal Unionists to have Confederate relatives.”

“Mrs. Granger has a cousin in North Carolina,” Gerda recalled. “I suppose it’s possible that a distant relative wrote to her. Not all families have allowed the war to divide them, and the state of one’s residence doesn’t necessarily determine one’s politics. There are loyalists in the South just as there are Southern sympathizers here.”

“True enough, Miss Bergstrom,” the gray-haired postmaster said admiringly. “You should have been a schoolteacher, you’re so clever.”

Gerda managed a smile as she departed, but the thought of Charlotte’s letter unsettled her. She hurried to her horse and set off quickly down the south road along Elm Creek, but as she approached Two Bears Farm, her heart grew heavy with dread. Dorothea might know who had sent the letter and what news it brought, but suddenly Gerda was afraid to ask. It was probably nothing of consequence, she told herself, merely a letter from a cousin full of family gossip and lamentations about the war. She could not avoid calling on Dorothea before the end of the day lest she break her promise to Anneke, but she could postpone her visit a little while longer, to give her nerves time to settle.

She passed the entrance to the winding road that led through the forest to Elm Creek Farm and continued another mile to the Wrights’ land. From a distance the dairy farm was the perfect image of pastoral splendor—a stout red barn, a spacious and sturdy milk house, a two-story whitewashed residence, chickens in the yard, golden grain in the fields, cows and goats grazing in their separate pastures.

Two dogs ran barking to greet her, tails wagging, and escorted her up to the barn. She tied up the horse and pumped water into the trough, then carried her basket around the side of the house to the kitchen garden, where she found Constance harvesting green beans. “We made the front page,” she declared, unfolding a copy of the
Register
with a triumphant flourish. “Where’s the Hero of Wright’s Pass? I confess I came dangerously close to panegyric in my description of his construction of the defenses and the skirmishes with those Copperheads. Let’s read this aloud in front of him and embarrass him tremendously.”

“He isn’t here,” said Constance shortly. “He’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?” Disappointed, Gerda folded the newspaper. She had wanted to give it to him herself. “Up to the pass?”

“To Philadelphia.” Deftly, Constance combed through the foliage, searching out ripe beans, and plucked them with one hand, dropping them into the basket she carried with the other. “They’re organizing colored regiments at long last. Abel, his brother, and their sisterʹs husband have gone off to Camp William Penn to enlist.”

“But this is good news, isn’t it?” Abel had wanted to enlist for years, and now it seemed his wishes would be fulfilled.

“I want what he wants.” Constance looked up from her work, and Gerda saw then that her eyes were red-rimmed as if she had spent hours crying alone. “I had hoped that he would be satisfied leading the colored company of the Valley Emergency Militia.”

“Not Abel.”

“No.” Constance snapped another bean off the vine. “Not Abel.”

“Are George and Joseph upset?”

“On the contrary, they’re delighted. They couldn’t be prouder.” Constance pressed the back of her hand to her brow. “George hopes the war lasts long enough so that he’ll be able to enlist when he’s old enough.”

“God forbid.” Gerda couldn’t imagine the war lasting another year, much less six. “Is there anything I can do to help you, Constance?”

Constance hesitated. “One of our heifers will calf soon. May I call on Hans when the time comes?”

“Of course,” said Gerda, certain her brother would be happy to help. “If there’s anything else—”

“Only one thing.” Constance wiped soil from her hands onto her apron. “I don’t know how the other Union Quilters will feel about this, but I’d like us to send a share of our fund-raising money to Abel’s regiment too.”

“I can’t imagine any of our circle would object,” said Gerda, but Constance frowned as if she could imagine it all too well.

Gerda offered to leave the newspaper inside so Constance could mail it to Abel. Constance seemed cheered by the idea, and she managed a smile when Gerda said that she was on her way to Dorothea’s house and she would be sure to propose that the Union Quilters support Abel’s regiment. Now she had double reason to call on Dorothea, and she could not allow jittery nerves to keep her from it any longer.

She backtracked north along the Elm Creek road and returned to Two Bears Farm. From a distance she spotted a wagon near the barn that had not been there when she passed earlier. As she drew closer she recognized the team belonging to Dorothea’s parents, Lorena and Robert, and her heart began to pound faster. Their presence on the same day Jonathan’s wife had received a letter from Virginia was very likely pure coincidence, she reminded herself as she halted near the trough, watered her horse, and tied him to a fence post near a patch of green grass. The elder Grangers visited their daughter and granddaughter often, all the more so since Thomas had marched off to war. And yet Gerda needed to steel herself before knocking on the kitchen door and letting herself in.

The family had gathered in the kitchen—Dorothea sitting in her usual chair, face pale and drawn; Lorena seated at her right with little Abigail on her lap; Robert stiffly pacing, the skin of his face and hands leathery brown from decades of farming; and Charlotte, cradling baby Jeannette while her son played with a wooden boat on the floor nearby.

Dorothea saw her first and rose to meet her. “Gerda, my dear friend,” she said, as if to remind her parents and sister-in-law to be civil.

“What is she doing here?” asked Charlotte flatly. Her eyes glistened with tears.

“Perhaps she’s heard from Jonathan too,” Dorothea reminded her, before taking Gerda’s hands in hers. “Have you? Have you had any word from my brother?”

“No,” said Gerda, her heart sinking. In their expressions she saw shock, worry, disbelief, fear. “What’s happened? Where’s Jonathan?”

They all looked to Charlotte, who pressed her lips together and shook her head, holding her daughter close.

“This morning Charlotte received a letter from Jonathan,” Lorena answered for her, voice trembling.

“Thank God he’s alive,” said Gerda, faint with relief. “Is he well? Is he coming home?”

Lorena shook her head, grief-stricken. “He’s being held at Libby Prison in Richmond as a prisoner of war.”

U
pon his arrival at Libby Prison, Jonathan had been permitted to send only one letter of no more than six lines. “My dear wife,” he had written in the margins of a piece of newspaper. “Imprisoned in Libby at Richmond, Virginia. No chance of exchange. Send food, socks, no money. Uninjured but want nourishment and clean water. Filthy and overcrowded, many sick here. Kiss the children. God bless you.” The hasty scrawl was nothing like Jonathan’s usual elegant flourishes, the abrupt phrases lacking all his poetry. Though she had read the letter only once, every word and pen stroke was seared into Gerda’s memory. She reminded herself that she was fortunate Charlotte had allowed her to see the letter at all; a more jealous wife would have forbidden the woman her husband loved to see his precious words. Only later, when Gerda’s shock subsided enough for her to reflect, did she consider that perhaps Charlotte had permitted her to read the letter out of spite rather than compassion. Gerda could not forget that, allowed only one letter, Jonathan had chosen to write to Charlotte. Likely, Charlotte wanted her to take note of that.

Upon hearing the terrible news, Dorothea had immediately written to Thomas’s family back east, beseeching them to ask their influential political acquaintances to obtain more information about Jonathan’s circumstances and to do all they could to secure his release. They were able to confirm that Jonathan was quartered with other officers at Libby Prison, a three-story brick warehouse on Tobacco Row that had held a ship’s chandlery and grocery business before the war, and to obtain permission for him to receive packages as the sporadic mail service permitted. From a sympathetic friend in Richmond, Thomas’s uncle received two newspaper clippings that he sent on to Dorothea, who shared them with Gerda. An article from the July 30 edition of the
Richmond Sentinel
listed several Yankee officers who had recently arrived at the prison and alluded to Jonathan, although it did not mention him by name: “Five hundred and twelve commissioned officers are now in our hands, exclusive of 21 surgeons and 9 chaplains.” Dorothea and Gerda agreed that the brief story’s frustrating lack of detail did little more than assure them that Jonathan was in good company. A second article, which ran in the
Richmond Enquirer
two weeks later, reported that three new officers and 110 men captured at Union City, Tennessee, had been incarcerated at the prison. “There are now 4,868 prisoners registered at the Libby,” the article concluded. The number seemed astonishingly high. Gerda, who knew how easily typesetting errors could occur, thought it must surely be a mistake, but Dorothea worried that unless the warehouse was enormous, the prison must be dangerously overcrowded, which would inevitably lead to discomfort and disease.