One Nation Afire by Sarah Goodwin

Author:Sarah Goodwin [Goodwin, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-08-27T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Cecelia

I was the first to see the flatbed cart being pulled along the road.

In friendlier times I might have raised my hand and offered a welcoming call, but those times were past now. Since the news had reached our town of the slaughter at Manassas, the people we had once called friends and neighbours had turned cool towards us. It was common knowledge that Tom had gone to fight for the Union. Though there were a great many Union supporters in town, the defeat of our petition was a clear signal that we were outnumbered. Twenty-six men from town and the surrounding settlements had been lost fighting the Union at Bull Run. The sons, brothers and husbands of women I knew. I was very aware, as was Laura, that those women had a lot to grieve for, and that in that grief, they needed to lash out at the only face of the enemy they could reach – ours.

So we had gone unvisited, and been left ungreeted when we passed acquaintances in town. We had kept ourselves to ourselves and maintained a cordial manner with anyone we dealt with. Things had only become more strained, and since Job had closed up his hotel and come to live with us, it seemed that we were our own Union camp, beside the town where, in increasing numbers, Confederate flags could be seen, and their songs could be heard. There were other Unionist families in town, we knew, but they had gone quiet and many had moved away to the homes of relatives in the north.

Only a week before the arrival of the mule driven cart, a number of Confederate troops had arrived and set up camp in Job’s hotel – requisitioning it. It was fortunate that most of the supplies from there had been brought up to our house and hidden away – a dozen candles under a floor board here, a barrel of ale buried there.

On the night the troops arrived, a haystack on Tom’s land was scattered and ruined in the rain, with a great deal of it being carried away by something other than the wind – something that left wheel ruts in the mud. Sheep were also going missing at an alarming rate from Tom and Carin’s fields. Even our house had not gone unmolested – the cold house had been broken in to, and several items were missing, including our entire stock of cheese. Laura was furious, I was mostly saddened.

I shielded my eyes from the sun, wondering what to expect from this visitor. My heart clenched when I saw that there was a person lying in the back of the cart, on a thin bed of straw. A person in a blue uniform.

I cried out, unable to keep the sound of shock locked inside me. Laura came running from around the back of the house, and soon she and Carin had joined me on the porch. I dropped my broom and covered my mouth with my hands.

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