The Union Quilters (4 page)

“It depends whether you consider their secession legitimate,” Gerda had replied. “I would argue that secession is illegal and that therefore North Carolina remains a part of the United States.”

Charlotte, who acquiesced too easily when challenged in debate and often agreed simply to be agreeable, merely shrugged, tossing her glossy black curls and frowning prettily. Beautiful Charlotte—complacent wife, happy mother, the object of Gerda’s envy—exasperated Gerda most when she refused to engage her in argument.

In March, the women of the sewing circle had welcomed Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration with relief and hope tempered by concern for how he would resolve the enormous challenges bequeathed to him by his predecessor. They were staunch Republicans one and all, and they would have voted for Mr. Lincoln in the last election had they been permitted. Dorothea, in fact, had tried, but had been turned away at the polls by the exasperated mayor, who had been warned of her intentions the day before.

Dorothea had told no one but her family and friends of her determination to cast her vote, which had convinced Gerda that a weak-willed member of their circle must have unwisely confided in her husband, whose loyalty to his sex had driven him to warn Mayor Bauer. Gerda had proposed that they question their friends subtly until the guilty party was compelled to confess, but Dorothea, not surprisingly, had objected. “One of our friends trusted her husband with my secret, and he betrayed her,” Dorothea had said. “I can’t fault any of our friends for mistakenly believing her husband to be trustworthy. How could any rebuke from me sting more than her sad discovery that he isn’t?”

Gerda, who knew what it was to be betrayed by someone she loved, could not pursue the matter. The women of the sewing circle had stood by her in difficult times when less courageous women would have withdrawn their friendship.

Gerda, Hans, and Anneke had come to the Elm Creek Valley in 1856 after Hans had won title to a farm in a horse race. Dorothea and Thomas, their nearest neighbors, had become their first and most treasured friends. Anneke, a gifted seamstress, had admired Dorothea’s quilt making so much that she copied one of her designs. Only after an unexpected arrival of a fugitive slave at their front door did the Bergstroms discover that the quilt hanging on the clothesline was a secret signal marking their home as a station on the Underground Railroad. Joanna—feverish from an untreated burn inflicted by her master with a flatiron, pregnant with his child—had become lost in a snowstorm on her way from Constance and Abel Wright’s farm to Dorothea and Thomas Nelson’s. Until Joanna stumbled into their care, the Bergstroms had been completely unaware of their friends’ roles as stationmasters. Throughout the long, hazardous winter, the Bergstroms had sheltered Joanna, awaited the birth of her child, and devised a plan to spirit away mother and child to Canada when they were well and strong. As the months passed, Gerda had taught Joanna to read and they became friends. But just when freedom seemed imminent, Anneke, fearful for her own family’s safety, was deceived into betraying their secret. Slave catchers stormed their home, dragged Joanna from her hiding place, bound her wrists, and led her stumbling after their horses as they rode off toward the southern pass, toward Virginia and slavery.

As Joanna was taken away, Gerda, Hans, the Nelsons, and the Wrights—including their two young sons—were arrested for defying the Fugitive Slave Law, a law mostly ignored in the free North. Only after their release a few days later did Gerda and Hans discover that in the confusion, the slave catchers had missed Joanna’s infant son.

In the months that followed, the Bergstroms cared for Joanna’s baby, passing off the light-skinned boy as the twin to Anneke’s own son, born only a few weeks before him. To foster the illusion, Gerda led people to believe that the boy was her own illegitimate son by Jonathan—and since Jonathan never expressly denied it, for he had delivered the child and was as determined as the Bergstroms to protect him, that was as good as an admission of guilt for most people. The rumor spread swiftly, as rumors of a woman’s shame always did, and although Jonathan never suffered for it, Gerda’s reputation was destroyed forever. It did not help her that the arrests brought the town unexpected notoriety. As newspapers across the Northeast repeated the story of how local police had allowed Southern slave catchers to invade citizens’ private homes, Creek’s Crossing became synonymous with ignorance and mob rule. Civic leaders endeavored to correct the record by pointing out that all charges had been promptly dismissed as soon as the investigation concluded they had done no wrong, but their rebuttals never captured the imagination the way the scandal had, and Creek’s Crossing’s reputation never recovered. Only two months before South Carolina seceded from the Union, the hapless civic leaders ruled to change the town’s name to Water’s Ford, retaining the original sense of Creek’s Crossing while setting aside the taint it had acquired. It remained to be seen whether their efforts would be rewarded, or even if the new name would be adapted into popular use. Elderly residents stubbornly insisted upon calling their town by the name it had borne all their lives; distant friends still mailed letters to Creek’s Crossing and the letters still reached the post office on First Street as reliably as before.

Gerda, of course, could not change her name and quash the memory of the story she had concocted to conceal the truth about Joanna’s son. Except for Dorothea and Anneke, even her friends in the sewing circle believed the lie she had devised to conceal another lie. They could have cast her out or quit the quilting circle rather than risk damaging their own reputations, but they had not. No one ever discussed the rumors about Gerda’s secret shame in her presence, nor spoke of the boy as anything but Anneke’s own son—not even Charlotte, who determinedly pretended to be unaware of the rumors that would forever bind Gerda and Jonathan as illicit lovers. As for the children, by the time they were old enough to understand the townspeople’s thoughtless whispers, Gerda prayed Joanna would be free and reunited with her son, so she could explain the truth to him herself.

Finding Joanna had become the ruling passion of Gerda’s life. For more than two years, she had written at least once a week to Joanna’s owner, Josiah Chester at Greenfields Plantation in Wentworth County, Virginia, to inquire about her captive friend. More recently, after she had saved up enough money, she had also offered to purchase Joanna’s freedom. She had yet to receive a single word in reply. Her brother and most of her friends urged her to give up her fruitless quest, but she could not accept Joanna as lost forever.

War might thwart Gerda’s attempts to find Joanna and purchase her freedom, but a Union victory would hasten the abolition of slavery. Perhaps for the immediate future, Josiah Chester could refuse to ransom a single slave, but he would be powerless to prevent Joanna from returning to Elm Creek Farm if slavery were destroyed altogether. Knowing that the war would hasten the demise of slavery made it easier to accept Jonathan’s enlistment—that, and her confidence that he would be relatively safe, a mile or more behind the front lines in a field hospital.

A sudden flurry of activity as Mayor Bauer emerged from his office roused Gerda from her reverie. “Help Charlotte and her mother get the girls in place,” she instructed Anneke and Prudence, wishing she possessed half of Dorothea’s calm authority. All would be in order if Dorothea were there. “I’ll help Mary sort out this nonsense between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.”

Not five minutes later, the pretty young women in their appropriate sashes took their places on the courthouse steps and recited their lines with patriotic passion. High above them, the banner Gerda and Prudence had hung declared, “Pennsylvania for the Union Forever.” Red, white, and blue bunting graced every window up and down High Street, and the entire block was filled with people, young and old, waving flags and cheering. By Gerda’s estimation, a good fifth of the men were dressed for travel. Scanning the crowd, she spotted her friend Eliza Stokey making her way through the crowd to join her husband, Charley. He was entertaining his friends with some story or joke or another, the fine line of a faded scar running from temple to jaw, the remnant of a harvesting accident with a scythe, barely visible in his thick blond beard. Mary Schultz Currier had also left the courthouse and had joined her husband, Abner, a few feet from the podium, where they would enjoy an excellent view of the pageant. Gerda wondered if Mary’s father intended to come out of retirement and resume control of Schultz’s Printers during Abner’s absence. If Mr. Schultz did not, what would become of the newspaper? Surely they needed the
Water’s Ford Register
at wartime more than ever. Across the street, Constance stood soberly with her husband and sons near the back of the crowd. Abel rocked back and forth on his heels and threw back his shoulders as if he couldn’t wait to depart, while his boys eagerly took in the spectacle without straying more than a few paces from their father’s side. Alone amidst the celebration, Gerda’s brother Hans leaned against a post at the end of the block, his arms folded over his chest, his expression one of resigned bemusement. When his eyes met Gerda’s, he grinned, doffed his hat, and offered her an elegant, sweeping bow. She frowned and shook her head in disapproval before returning his grin. He was incorrigible and irreverent, but she couldn’t help adoring him.

Gerda estimated that nearly every citizen of Water’s Ford and many from surrounding towns had turned out for the occasion, and she quickly found herself swept up in their patriotic fervor. After the pageant concluded, the band struck up “Hail Columbia,” and the mayor was introduced to enthusiastic applause. He spoke for a half hour about the importance of preserving the Union, and of heeding the call to arms to fight for liberty and freedom, and of the noble courage of Pennsylvania’s brave youth, who would gladly offer up their lives for their country. It was a stirring speech, or at least the crowd seemed to appreciate it, but Gerda, searching for Dorothea and Jonathan, could not have recited back a single phrase. As her friends and neighbors and strangers from throughout the valley cheered and waved flags and tossed hats in the air and clapped in time with the band, her heart pounded with the realization that war was no longer merely a foreboding subject for lively debate around the dinner table and sewing circle. War had come, and Jonathan was leaving, and she might never see him again.

Her throat constricted as the Lutheran and Methodist ministers took the podium together to offer a joint benediction for the brave men who would soon depart the Elm Creek Valley, some perhaps forever. As the young girls showered the volunteers with late summer blossoms, the men formed ranks in the street in front of the courthouse, rucksacks on their backs or bags slung over their shoulders, the crowd parting before them. Abner fell in, as did Abel, as did one man after another, some perhaps who had not intended to enlist that day but had succumbed to the fevered nationalism of the moment. Gerda searched the men’s faces, praying for one last glimpse of Jonathan before he marched off to war, but she despaired of finding him in time.

A hand closed around her elbow. “Gerda.”

With a gasp she spun to face him, her beloved Jonathan, and without thinking she flung her arms around him. “I thought you had gone,” she murmured, her lips brushing his neck. She smelled rainwater and shaving soap, and the new wool of his long overcoat.

“Without saying good-bye?” He held her for the briefest of moments, then released her and gave her a look of mock reproach. “You’d never let me hear the end of it.”

A cheer went up from the crowd as the men began to march away. “Shouldn’t you—” Gerda broke off, unwilling to prompt him to go.

Jonathan grinned and spoke close to her ear so that she would hear him above the din. “This is mostly for show,” he confided. “Those of us with horses are riding to Lewistown. Mine’s tied up on Church Street with Thomas’s, out of the way of this throng. Hans offered to accompany us as far as the camp, and he’ll bring the horses home.”

Hans had not mentioned this to Gerda, or, she suspected, to Anneke. But riding or walking, Jonathan would be leaving soon. Boldly she reached for his hand, not caring who in the weeping, shouting, cheering throng might observe them. “Take good care of yourself,” she implored. “Stay out of harm’s way as best you can.”

“No one would fire upon a hospital,” he assured her. “Rebels or not, they’re still civilized men, and they’ll respect the rules of war.”

She nodded, but her heart sank. “Come back sound and soon.” She meant
Come home safe to me
, and when he held her gaze and nodded, she knew he understood.

Suddenly a sweet cry pierced the din. “Papa!”

Gerda and Jonathan turned toward the courthouse just as a dark-haired boy jumped the bottom two steps and plowed into Jonathan, wrapping his arms around his legs. “Robert,” Jonathan cried joyfully, laughing as he pried the boy loose and swung him into the air. “I thought you’d marched off with the soldiers.”

With a pang, Gerda watched as Robert placed his hands on his father’s cheeks and regarded him solemnly. “Are you going to shoot the bad Rebels, Papa?”

“No, I’m going to stitch people up and give them medicine and bandages just as I do here at home.” Jonathan caught Gerda’s eye and shook his head, amused, but Gerda found no merriment in the scene and could not manage even a halfhearted smile. Glancing past the father and son, Gerda caught sight of Charlotte descending the courthouse steps, her lips set in a line of displeasure, her porcelain skin flushed pink, her ebony ringlets spilling down her back from beneath her best bonnet. Gerda stepped back, putting a discreet distance between herself and Jonathan, her heart sinking as she realized the time for their private farewell had come and gone.

Charlotte tucked her small, gloved hand into the crook of her husband’s elbow. “My brother found the other bottle of morphine just where you said it would be,” she said, acknowledging Gerda with a nod and laying a hand upon the almost imperceptible swell of her belly. Painful realization seared Gerda: Charlotte
was
with child again. “He wrapped it in cloth and packed it in your saddlebag. It should be safe until you can move it to your satchel.”