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  Or hated us.

  Lots of folks quietly decided not to observe Christmas that year. There wasn’t any food to eat, nobody felt much like celebrating anything, and few people even had stockings, let alone the wherewithal to fill them. Most mothers told their children Santa Claus couldn’t get through the Federal blockade. Others just flat out said the Yankees had shot him.

  But Mama decided we were going to give Lisette and Hatch Magruder and little Althea a real Christmas – or at least, as good of a one as we could manage. She cut down a three-foot pine tree that we set up on the ruined piano and decorated with pine cones and holly berries. Adelaide sewed rag dolls for Lisette and Althea, and Mahalia traded some onions for an old snare drum. You could still sorta see where someone had scratched off the US to replace it with CSA, and there weren’t any sticks, but like most boys his age, Hatch was army-mad. Come Christmas morning he pretty near drove us all crazy by marching around the house and rapping on his new drum with his knuckles until his mother finally took it away from him, saying, ‘Soldier-boy, you keep bangin’ on that-there drum, somebody’s gonna stand you up agin a wall and shoot you daid.’

  I’d gone out early that morning and shot a big, twenty-pound tom that Mahalia roasted with a pile of potatoes and carrots. I was just helping her carry it all into the house when a band of half a dozen bushwhackers descended on the yard, whooping like Indians and laughing like the demented demons of hell.

  They rode around us in an ever-tightening circle, their breath forming white clouds in the frosty air. ‘Whatcha got there, girl?’ asked one of them, an appallingly filthy, brown-haired, bearded man who leaned sideways in his saddle and made a play out of inhaling the hot turkey’s aroma. ‘Mmm-mm, that smells mighty good.’

  He was built long and skinny, with a big hooked nose and hair so matted and greasy that it glistened. He wore nearly new, sky-blue Federal trousers with a yellow stripe up the sides, a grubby shirt made out of mattress ticking, and a gray Confederate officer’s frock coat festooned on the sleeves with golden Hungarian knots and showing a charred hole in the breast that suggested how its previous owner had met his end.

  I edged closer to Mahalia, the dish of precious carrots and potatoes gripped tightly against me. I could feel my mouth going dry, my heart seizing up so that it hurt.

  ‘Looks mighty good, too,’ said another man with an ugly laugh. These were no Yankees, for their accents were as broad and twangy as Rhoda’s. ‘That was right thoughtful of y’all to fix us Christmas dinner. But you ain’t invited us in to eat yet. You don’t expect us to sit out here in the yard, now do ya? We ain’t niggers.’

  All the other men laughed uproariously, edging their mounts ever closer, the horses’ powerful hindquarters bunching and flexing, steam rising from their hot, sweaty hides.

  ‘What else ya got for us?’ asked the first man, and it occurred to me, from the way the others deferred to him, that he must be their leader.

  ‘How ’bout a lead bullet?’ said Rhoda Magruder, her voice carrying clearly across the yard.

  For one intense moment, the bushwhackers all froze, their horses tossing their heads as the men reined in sharply. Then their gazes turned toward the back gallery.

  She stood at the top of the steps, her big revolver held in a steady, two-handed grip, the muzzle trained squarely on the chest of the black-bearded man in the gold-trimmed frock coat and black felt hat. She had filled out in the weeks she’d been with us, so that she now looked more her age, her glorious red hair wild around her head.

  ‘I got one bullet fer each of you varmints,’ she said, thumbing back the hammer. ‘Way I figure it, y’all are a waste of good ammunition, seeing as how I reckon you’re too scrawny and tough to make good eatin’. But I’m willin’ to make the sacrifice, if’n you insist on pressin’ the point.’

  Black Beard threw back his head and laughed, and after a moment, his companions joined in. ‘Little lady, I reckon you couldn’t hit the broad side of a barge with that thing.’ He leaned forward to rest one forearm across the pommel of his saddle. ‘But it was right kind of you to sashay out here and spare us the trouble of comin’ in there after you. You ain’t a bad lookin’ woman, if a man likes red h—’

  I jumped as the report of a pistol shot echoed across the yard. The black-bearded bushwhacker pitched backward off his horse, his chest blooming crimson, the smoke from the burnt powder drifting on the cold wind as Rhoda Magruder thumbed back the hammer again.

  ‘I got me five more bullets. My daddy taught me t’shoot by picking off the squirrels running along the top of a fence rail, so if yer countin’ on me missin’ yer ugly hides, yer all plumb stupid.’

  I knew for a fact that she only had three more bullets. But the men didn’t know that. They looked at each other, their horses sidling nervously beneath them.

  ‘Y’all can just turn around and ride right out of here. And don’t even think of comin’ back. I see yer ugly faces again, I swear to God, I’ll cut off all yer preckers and feed ’em to the hogs. Now git.’

  Without even bothering to pick up their fallen leader, the bushwhackers snagged the reins of his riderless bay and dug their spurs into their own horses’ sides, the churning hooves flinging up tufts of brown grass as they galloped toward the road.

  ‘Think they’ll be back?’ I asked.

  Rhoda shook her head. ‘Nah. Them kind’s cowards. They’ll just move on to whoever they reckon’ll be an easier target.’

  ‘Too bad you didn’t shoot more of them,’ I said, and to my surprise, Rhoda laughed.

  ‘What we gonna do wit him?’ asked Mahalia, nodding toward the dead bushwhacker who lay sprawled on the frozen earth, one leg crumpled awkwardly beneath him, his unseeing gaze fixed on the white winter sky above.

  ‘Reckon there’s enough hungry critters to take care of him quick enough, if we drag him down into that coulee back there,’ said Rhoda. ‘But he can jist bleed all over the yard fer now, as far as I’m concerned. Ain’t no sense lettin’ Christmas dinner git cold.’

  That night, the wind blew away the clouds, leaving the sky a clear blue-black panorama of infinity glittering with a universe of stars.

  I stood at my dormer window, wrapped in a ragged quilt against the cold radiating off the glass, my gaze on the black shapes of the live oaks and pecans shifting in the darkness. Somewhere out there, hungry wild animals were doubtless already tearing at what was left of the dead bushwhacker. I tried not to picture it, but I couldn’t help it.

  Before we dumped him in the coulee, Rhoda Magruder had calmly stripped the body of anything useful – which meant everything except his ragged, stained drawers. Mahalia and I both expected Mama to insist that he ought to be buried, and I spent most of Christmas dinner dreading another midnight visit to the swamps. But she didn’t. I wasn’t sure if it was because he wasn’t a Federal, or because she didn’t feel so personally responsible for his death, or if the events of the past six months had simply altered her attitude towards the proper disposal of inconvenient corpses.

  Clutching my quilt tighter, I stared up at the cold night sky. Despite the little pine tree on the ruined piano and the turkey dinner, it still didn’t feel like Christmas. I wondered if I’d ever be able to celebrate Christmas again without remembering those howling, jeering, unwashed men, or the pulpy red mess Rhoda Magruder’s bullet made of Black Beard’s chest.

  I decided, probably not.

  ‘“Peace on earth, and good will toward men”,’ I quoted softly, one hand coming up to touch the icy, frosted windowpane. I thought about what my mother had said, that most bushwhackers and jayhawkers probably belonged in a lunatic asylum. It seemed to me that if this war kept going long enough, the same could probably be said about most of us.

  I was about to turn back to bed when I thought I saw something move in the yard. I paused, my breath rasping in my tight throat, my eyes straining to see in the darkness. But the night was full of shadows, the moon a faint silvery sliver tossed by a fitful wind. I told
myself it was just the product of an overactive imagination that saw a boy’s familiar way of moving when nothing was even there.

  But it was still long before I slept. And in the morning, I crept down the stairs early to open the front door.

  A sack of real, honest-to-God flour and a bag of coffee leaned against the jamb. And in case I wasn’t sure who’d left them, there was also a fistful of arrows fletched with turkey feathers and crafted by a boy-man who could move as silently as a moonbeam over frosted ground.

  Forty-Nine

  We could have hoarded the flour and coffee, and feasted on it in secret for months. I knew there were some who did such things. But not many. These days, when folks got their hands on a supply of flour, they threw what we called a biscuit party. It was sort of like a recipe party, only a whole lot more satisfying.

  The appointed day dawned overcast but blessedly warm, and the ladies of St Francisville came wearing their best salvaged or carefully preserved dresses, with darned gloves and homemade palmetto hats decorated with sprigs of holly and mistletoe. Even habitual sourpusses like old Mrs Mumford and Jane Gastrell were there, smiling something fierce and near giddy with anticipation. I don’t think there was anything we’d come to pine after more than honest-to-God wheat flour. There were lots of substitutes, but after a while they all just sorta stuck in your caw and left you dreaming of the real thing.

  While Mahalia and Rhoda Magruder whipped up batch after batch of flaky, golden-brown biscuits, the ladies crowded into our ruined parlor and dining room, and even spilled out onto the galleries. Each was careful to only take one biscuit at a time.

  ‘Mmm,’ sighed Maisie Sparrow, her eyes closing as she bit into her first biscuit. ‘I done died and met the Lord, and he’s handed me this here biscuit at the pearly gates.’

  Beside her, Jemma Huber held her own biscuit in her hands, a look of wonder suffusing her face. ‘Me, I’m just gonna stand here and look at this biscuit and smell it. I’m afraid if I try to eat it, it’s gonna disappear.’

  ‘Jemma,’ said Rowena Walford, ‘the way you save everything, that biscuit’s going to be a rock before you get around to eating it.’

  Everyone laughed, including Miss Jemma, who opened her eyes and took a tentative nibble.

  There was no denying the biscuits would’ve tasted better with butter melting into their soft white goodness. But some of the ladies had brought with them clay crocks of honey and preserves, and shared them generously. Nobody asked where the flour came from. We all knew the only flour that ever appeared in our parts came from the Yankees, sometimes through speculators, but most often from raids on the Federal supply lines. And the less said openly about that sort of thing, the better.

  I walked amongst the ladies with trays of hot biscuits and listened, faintly smiling, as they all talked at once.

  ‘… he was shoving all my dresses and the children’s clothes, too, into pillowcases, and I said to him, “What use does a man like you have for such things?” And he looks up at me like I’m daft and says, “Ain’t I got a wife and four children up North?”.’

  ‘… don’t know what it is about Yankees and crockery,’ said Margaret Mason. ‘It’s like they’ve got an aversion to it or something. They see a plate or a bowl, and they’ve just got to smash it. By the time they were done, there wasn’t an unbroken piece in the house. I’m eating off a part of what used to be a platter, while Mercy uses the side of one of my big old crocks—’

  ‘… a bunch of ’em grabbed Ada Wolfe’s pretty young gal, Heidi, when she was comin’ back from her grandma’s last week. Took Ada two days to find her, barely alive and all covered in her own blood down by the creek. Tried to keep it quiet, of course, but how can you, with the poor thing doing nothing but alternately laughing and crying and saying, “Please don’t; oh, please stop,”? Mind’s gone—’

  ‘… they said he died real quick and easy, but that’s what they always say, isn’t it? Whether it’s true or not—’

  ‘… I’ve just about got Danny’s uniform ready; all I need is to find a couple more buttons. He’s only turned fifteen, but with his brothers all dead, he feels somebody from the family ought to be fightin’ for our independence. Me, I was hoping this damned war’d be over before he was old enough to go. But I can’t stand in his way. All I can do is pray—’

  My tray was empty again, but for a moment I simply stood in the doorway to the parlor and let my gaze drift over the familiar faces of the women. I could see the Widow Carlyle and Delia Stocking, Sophie Gantry and Trudi Easton – even Amelia Ferguson was there. After little Theodore died, I thought for sure she’d die of grief or lose her senses completely. But she was starting to get out more and more.

  These women had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember. And yet I’d always felt somehow apart from them, alienated and alone and isolated. I wasn’t sure when exactly that all changed. We’d been through so much together, years of increasing suffering and brutal want. Somehow it had forged a sense of unity, a bond of commonality and deep affection as precious as it was unexpected. We had starved together, frozen together, feared and grieved together. We’d shared our food, our joys, and our sorrows; we read each others’ precious letters, knew the intimate details of each others’ lives that in times of peace were kept hidden and private. With life stripped down to its most basic elements, it was hard to remember the differences that had once divided us. We now understood that our fears and hopes were all the same. And I knew a rush of affection for these women that both humbled me and buoyed me up and strengthened me.

  I suppose it was a version of the comradeship known to fighting men – that uniquely masculine bond forged by war that historians and poets and novelists were always lauding. But the likes of Homer and Sir Walter Scott never talked about what we experienced, about the bonds formed amongst the women and children left alone in times of war to face hardship and deprivation and danger, to confront marauding armies and battle every day to find food and stay warm and simply survive.

  ‘Amrie,’ said my mother, gently recalling me to the task at hand. ‘More biscuits.’

  Fifty

  Nobody celebrated New Year’s Eve anymore. As glad as we were to see the back of 1863, the thought of what 1864 might bring was too frightening to contemplate for long.

  A couple of weeks later, on a cold January afternoon, the Federal gunboat Lafayette subjected St Francisville to the worst bombardment we’d yet endured. We heard later that the commander, Foster, claimed he’d given the women and children of the city twenty-four hours to evacuate before he started firing. It was a lie. For what seemed like forever, frantic mothers sheltered their shrieking children as best they could in cellars and behind brick stoops as hundreds of exploding shells and whistling rockets rained down on us.

  We were told the bombardment was in punishment for the recent arrest in the area of a Confederate deserter. The problem was, no one could figure out how the Yankees even knew the deserter had been nabbed, let alone why they should care what happened to him.

  It had been a long time since I’d given much consideration to the Federal messenger who’d drowned down on Thompson’s Creek or to the ‘Dear Madam’ who lived amongst us. But I now found it hard to think about much else. I refused to believe that one of the laughing, warm-hearted women who’d filled our house and shared our biscuits could somehow be a traitor. And so my suspicions turned, inevitably, to the one woman who would never throw a biscuit party: Hilda Meyers.

  It was no secret that Hilda Meyers had all the flour she could eat and never shared it with anybody. She had taken the dreaded Oath of Allegiance without a second thought, and was in constant communication with a son who lived in New Orleans and was said to be in thick with the occupation authorities. I’d only recently learned that she even had a son. It’d come as something of a shock, for there was nothing the least bit gentle or maternal about Hilda Meyers.

  I was careful not to voice any of these suspicions to my mother. But a
few days later, Castile hurt his leg while helping Reverend Lewis stabilize the church after the Federal bombardment, and the subject came up when I went to see how he was doing.

  I found him in his tack room, fixing a shelf that had been jarred loose in the same bombardment. I said, ‘I thought Mama told you to rest that leg?’

  He settled on a stool beside the stove and gave me a grin. ‘I’m restin’, I’m restin’.’

  I made him a cup of real coffee with the beans I’d brought him, then sat and listened while he told me about how the reverend reckoned it was a miracle that his Pilcher organ had come through another shelling without hardly a scratch on it.

  I said, ‘Seems to me that if the good Lord was working miracles, them Yankee shells wouldn’t have hit the church at all.’

  Castile ‘tssked’ and shook his head. ‘Child, child; you gotta have faith.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cause that’s the only way a body’s ever gonna make it through this world of woe.’

  ‘Huh.’

  He smiled with his eyes and took another sip of his coffee. ‘I hear yor grandma’s doin’ poorly.’

  ‘She ain’t said nothin’ to me.’

  ‘Well, she wouldn’t, would she? That ain’t your grandma’s way. But Mahalia says yor momma thinks her heart is givin’ out on her.’

  I found the idea that something could be wrong with Adelaide too fantastical to consider. The woman was an indomitable rock, as constant and indestructible as all get out, and too mean and ornery to ever be ill.

  I said as much to Castile, but he just got that pained expression on his face – the same one provoked by my mockery of Reverend Lewis’s determined belief in miracles. ‘One of these days, Amrie, you gotta see your way to get over this.’ He pointed to his ruined face. ‘If’n yor grandma dies and you ain’t forgiven her, you’re gonna feel bad the rest of yor life. Guaranteed.’