The Union Quilters, page 29
As the men approached the house, Gerda braced herself for terrible news from the war, wondering what it could be. Surely not a Union surrender, surely not that. A terrible loss in battle, perhaps, but even that could be overcome. Anything short of losing the war could be overcome. Except for losing Jonathan—She took a deep, steadying breath. No, if Jonathan had died in Libby Prison, the news would not come to her by four men on horseback.
The eldest of the four men, his face lined and sunburned, squinted at Hans as the men brought their horses to a halt in front of the house. “You’re Hans Bergstrom?”
Hans nodded. “That’s right.”
“We read about you in the papers and figured it was only fair to let you speak your piece.”
“What piece would that be?”
“Your defense against the charges,” said the man from the construction crew.
“What charges?” asked Gerda, looking from one stern, smoldering face to another. “My brotherʹs done nothing wrong.”
“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” said the youngest man, who looked to be barely eighteen and rode a black stallion with white fetlocks Gerda recognized as one raised in Hans’s stables. “Maybe you should go back inside.”
Apprehension seized her. “What do you intend to do that you don’t want me to see?”
“You’re accused of being a Copperhead,” said the eldest man to Hans, “of sympathizing with the Confederate Rebels, of refusing to become a naturalized citizen in order to avoid the draft, of neglecting to pay the three hundred dollar fee to pay for a substitute, and of failing to support the Union cause.”
“I’m no Copperhead,” said Hans evenly, “nor am I a Republican.”
“You must be one or the other,” the fourth man spat.
“On the contrary, I don’t, because I’m not, and yet here I stand,” said Hans, seeming indifferent to the men’s scowls at his brash tone. “As for neglecting to pay for a substitute, it was never required of me, since I was never drafted. As for failing to support the Union cause, well, I pay my taxes, amply and on time, and although I don’t know what specific use my share was put to, I’m sure it was enough to purchase a cannon or two.”
“My brother helped build Union Hall,” said Gerda, directing her remark to the man who had served on his crew and knew she spoke the truth. “He has supported the work of the Union Quilters throughout the war, and each one of you knows what we’ve done to provide for the men of the Forty-ninth and the Sixth Colored. Mr. Gilbert, your wife made ten blocks for the Loyal Union Sampler. Ask her what we’ve done.”
Mr. Gilbert regarded her grimly without replying, but the fourth man, who wore his strawberry-blond beard cut in a Vandyke reminiscent of the illustrations Gerda had seen of General Custer, glared at Hans. “More shame on you, that you leave your family’s share of the work to your womenfolk.”
“I support the Union, but I don’t support war,” said Hans. “My wife and sister are capable of making their own decisions and may support whatever cause they choose.”
“How can you say you support the Union but not the Union’s war?” said the man with the Vandyke, incredulous. “You’re just going to stand there and tell us you’re no Rebel sympathizer and expect us to believe it?”
Hans removed his hat, studied the brim, ran a hand through his hair, and tugged the hat back on his head. “I don’t expect you to listen to or believe a word I say, but the truth is, I have very little sympathy for any man who would hold another in bondage, or anyone else who would kill him for it.”
“How short are your memories?” Gerda exclaimed. “Not five years ago, this farm was a station on the Underground Railroad. My brother and I went to prison for protecting runaway slaves. And now you believe our family supports the Confederacy?”
“Not your family, ma’am, just your brother,” said the eldest. “Like I said, we read the papers. We know who you are and what you believe. If you tell us your brother shares your opinions but is just too fool stubborn to admit it, we’ll leave you in peace.”
Gerda threw her brother a desperate look, but he merely regarded her stoically. “My brother and I don’t share every opinion, but I challenge you to find any two siblings who do,” said Gerda defiantly. “I swear to you that he is no Copperhead and that he wants the Union to thrive and democracy to prosper as much as any of you.”
“That’s not good enough,” the Vandyke rider snapped, moving his horse closer to Hans. “Defend yourself or face judgment.”
Hans looked up at him, squinting into the sun. “Who are you to judge me?”
In response, the man lashed out with the butt of his rifle, striking Hans on the head. As Hans reeled from the blow, the horseman kicked, the toe of his boot connecting with Hans’s ribs.
Gerda cried out and dashed to her brotherʹs side. “Why would you do such a thing?” she demanded, shaken. “My brother has done nothing wrong. He’s told you he’s no Copperhead.”
“He’s no loyal Union man, that’s for certain,” said the eldest rider. “If he’s not with us, he’s against us.” He nodded to the man with the Vandyke, who kicked Hans a second time, harder. Gerda tried to hold him up but his legs gave out and he collapsed to the ground.
“If you won’t support the Union one way, you’ll support it another,” the eldest rider declared. Turning to his men, he added, “Round up the livestock. Fire the barn.”
“Don’t you dare,” Gerda exclaimed, holding Hans as he groaned through clenched teeth.
The youngest man glanced at Gerda, and then to the eldest rider. “What about the house?”
“Leave the house.” The eldest man turned his horse toward the barn. “The women are loyal. Let the house stand for their sake.”
As the men rode off, Hans struggled to his feet. “We’ve got to stop them,” said Gerda, desperate. Fighting to catch his breath, Hans shot her a grim look, and she knew there was nothing they could do, no way to summon help in time, no way to hold off four armed, angry men determined to do wrong.
Hans leaned upon Gerda as they made their way from the house toward the barn. They watched from the bridge over Elm Creek as the men rounded up the horses from the stables and the corral, herded the cows from the pasture, and chased squealing pigs around the sty until the men gave up in frustration. The man with the Vandyke disappeared into the barn. Soon after he emerged, thick plumes of gray-black smoke began to billow from the doors and windows, red sparks rising and falling to earth, the cracking of burning hay eventually drowned out by the roaring of the blaze. Another man lit the end of a long tree branch in the flames and carried his makeshift torch to the stables, while another set fire to the smokehouse. Instinctively, Gerda rushed forward, but Hans caught her arm and held her back, and only then did she become aware of the other men’s guns leveled at them so they dared not attempt to put out the fire. Brother and sister stood watching silently as one by one the outbuildings went up in flames. Only when the barn was fully engulfed did the four men ride off with the livestock.
Gerda and Hans ran across the bridge, ashes whirling about them in the windstorm created by the heat of the fire and settling upon the ground like snowflakes. Hans sprinted ahead and made for the barn door, where he hesitated. Gerda screamed at him not to go in, for nothing he might salvage was worth his life, but he darted inside. Moments later he emerged dragging the plow, with harnesses and tack flung over his shoulder, but just as he turned to make another attempt, the roof fell in with a terrible groan of timber and iron.
“There’s nothing more you can do,” Gerda shouted, flinging herself between her brother and the barn. His gaze darted to the stables and he tore himself free. There too he was driven back by smoke and heat, though the blaze was less intense than in the barn.
“Fetch buckets and sacks,” he shouted. Reluctant to leave him lest he plunge into one of the outbuildings, Gerda nevertheless picked up her skirts and fled to the house. She filled a washbasin with smaller vessels and old gunnysacks and hauled them back to the burning buildings, balancing the basin on her hip, stumbling all the way. Hans met her on the bridge, and as they filled basins in the creek and flung the water upon the stable, Gerda saw that he had saved a half-dozen saddles, a pile of blankets and pads, and a long coil of rope from the stables.
Suddenly a wagon emerged from the forest; Gerda feared the riders had returned, until she recognized the Wrights, Constance at the reins, Abel in the back with the boys. They halted at a safe distance and within moments were hauling buckets of water from the creek and soaking gunnysacks in the cold water, beating out fires that caught when embers fell upon the dry grass. Gerda’s nostrils stung from the smell of wood smoke and burnt tar.
“What happened?” Constance shouted over the roar of the fire as she and Gerda hauled the washbasin full of water to the smokehouse. “Lightning? A lantern?”
“Men,” Gerda choked out, heaving the water onto the flames. As they fled back to the creek, she glimpsed more horses coming from the north; after a moment of fear, she saw that they were Dorothea’s hired men. Soon another wagon brought Mr. Craigmile and his son, and in due course other neighbors, alerted by the plume of rising smoke, came from far and near to help.
For hours they worked to save what they could of the stables and the other outbuildings, knowing an attempt to extinguish the barn would prove futile. By evening, only smoldering ruins above charred stone foundations remained of the barn, but half of the stable survived, and the smokehouse and other outbuildings showed minimal damage. Exhausted and heartbroken, Gerda brought water to her weary friends and neighbors, coughing and barely able to see for her smoke-stung eyes. Hans’s voice broke as he thanked them for their help and told them, at last, what had happened. Mr. Craigmile vowed to go to the authorities at once, and the other men promised to help the Bergstroms regain their livestock. Hans coughed, cleared his throat, and thanked them again, adding, “If I don’t get the horses back, I’ll be ruined.”
The neighbors fell into somber silence. Gerda knew they were thinking of their own farms and business, and how everything they earned above what they used to feed and clothe their families went right back into the farm in the form of new tools, new outbuildings, new livestock. Gerda felt faint when she thought of how many years and seasons her brother had put into breeding his horses, all that they had planned to do with the money he would earn selling the foals, and all they would have to do without if they could not get the horses back.
“Let’s round them up now,” said Abel, eyes narrowed in anger. “The men as well as the livestock.”
“I say we string ’em up,” declared one of Dorothea’s hired men.
As a few others chimed in their assent, Hans waved them to silence. “I’m all for restraining them until the police arrive or escorting them to prison ourselves, but we’re rational men, not a crazed mob, and I want no one lynched on my behalf.”
The men agreed, some of them reluctantly. Mr. Craigmile mounted his horse and rode off to the courthouse with the names of the two men the Bergstroms had recognized and descriptions of the others. Dazed, Gerda sat on a smooth, flat stone beneath a willow tree and let the sound of the water rushing over the creek bed lull her into a numb calm as she watched wisps of smoke rise from the ruins. Later, when the embers cooled, they could comb through the debris and search for anything salvageable. Until then, there was little else their neighbors could do to help, so they left for their own homes. The Wrights departed last of all, after Hans and Abel conversed in hushed tones that Gerda didn’t think she was meant to overhear, debating whether Abel ought to spend the night in case the raiders returned. Not until Gerda returned to the house and found the pork and apples on the stove, the table set, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers tossed with vinegar for a salad, bread and butter sliced, coffee brewing, did Gerda realize that Constance had not been among the neighbors working in the rubble. Now she knew why she had not seen Constance toiling with the others, and her heart was full to overflowing with grief and gratitude.
She and Hans were ravenous. They scrubbed their faces and hands clean at the pump and changed out of their sooty clothes, but the odor of burning had infused their skin and hair, and Gerda could imagine never being rid of it.
“If any good will come of this,” Gerda said, as they finished the last of their supper, “it is that we now know who our true friends are.”
“And our enemies,” said Hans, taking the last slice of pork from the platter.
Gerda pushed her plate aside and rested her head on her arms. “This is all my fault. If I had not been so outspoken in the newspaper, if I had not antagonized Mr. Meek—”
“No, Gerda, I won’t have you talk that way,” said Hans firmly. “You spoke the truth as you know it. You wrote what you believe in, but you never encouraged anyone to do wrong. Mr. Meek, on the other hand—” He took a bite of baked apple and shook his head. “His closing words in his denunciation of you were calculated to incite men to violence. To hear his account of it, you’d think I was offered citizenship and turned it down because of the war, when the truth is I never sought citizenship.”
“Why didn’t you?” asked Gerda. “In your heart, are you still loyal to King Wilhelm?”
Hans snorted, then winced and clutched his side where the Vandyke rider had kicked him. “No. I admire Mr. Lincoln very much, and if I could choose my leader, he’d do as well as any. I just didn’t like the idea of renouncing the land of my birth. Can’t a man be loyal to both countries that made him who he is?”
“Some people would say no.”
“Well, I don’t like someone else telling me I have to choose.”
“I see.” Gerda managed a smile. “Principle and stubbornness, yet again.”
“My tragic flaws.” Hans sighed and ran a hand through his hair, wincing again when his fingers brushed over the lump left behind from the blow he had taken from the rifle butt. He did not seem to notice the ashes that drifted to the tabletop. “All I lack is hubris and I could be a hero from a Greek tragedy.”
Alarmed by her brotherʹs wincing and stiff, painful movements, Gerda asked, “Shall we call a doctor to look at your injuries?”
Hans waved her off. “It’s nothing. It’ll pass. With Jonathan gone, the nearest doctor is in Grangerville. Hardly worth the ride.”
“Hubris,” Gerda declared. “You weren’t lacking it after all.”
Hans smiled wryly. “My point was that you did nothing wrong. Meek all but told those men to rob us since we’d given nothing to the Union cause—”
“Nothing, indeed,” scoffed Gerda bitterly.
Hans held up a hand. “But even then I can’t place the blame on Meek. He probably won’t lose any sleep when he hears about our losses, and I’m confident he’ll persuade himself that he bears no responsibility whatsoever, but in the end, whether Meek influenced them or not, those men chose to come here and do what they did. In the end, the blame lies with them, not with you and not with Mr. Meek.”
Gerda inhaled deeply, instinctively coughing from the lingering wood smoke. “I reserve the right to be a trifle angry at Mr. Meek.”
“Do what you must, sister,” said Hans. “Just don’t burn down his barn.”
They lingered at the table a moment longer, finishing the coffee Constance had brewed for them. Then, while Hans went outside to tend to the pigs and chickens, which the raiders had not taken, Gerda cleared the table and washed the dishes. When Hans returned, they dragged themselves upstairs to bed. “I will miss my horses,” said Hans just before he closed his bedroom door. “They were fine horses, the best I’ve bred. I hate to think of some Rebel shooting at them.”
Only then, as she climbed into her own bed, did Gerda realize that he never expected to see his beloved horses again. He expected the raiders to turn the livestock over to the Union Army; Gerda had assumed that was mere talk and that all along they meant to keep their stolen goods for themselves. Mr. Craigmile had promised to return in the morning to report on his meeting with the sheriff. She supposed they would learn the fate of their livestock—and consequently, the fate of Elm Creek Farm—when he came.
Gerda was accustomed to waking before dawn to the sound of her brother’s footfalls on the steps as he left to do his morning chores, but the next morning she slept past sunrise and lingered in bed, staring up at the ceiling, dreading the work that awaited her that day. She wondered if she had not heard Hans that morning because he too still lay abed, his usual morning chores gone off with the livestock. Perhaps he had risen and was even now digging through the embers. Yes, that was far more likely. She threw off the quilt and forced herself to her feet, made a quick toilet and dressed, steeling herself for the day. Hans would not linger in bed feeling sorry for himself. He was probably even at that moment salvaging tools or door hinges from the ruins and awaiting Mr. Craigmile’s visit. He would want his breakfast.
As she left her room, she heard the clatter of a coal scuttle in the kitchen and smelled coffee brewing. She quickened her pace; Hans had enough to do without fetching his own breakfast. Hurrying into the kitchen, she snatched an apron off the hook beside the door—and stopped short at the sight of Dorothea at the cookstove, frying eggs and ham.
“Dorothea,” she said, tears springing into her eyes. “How kind of you to come.”
Dorothea set down her spatula and rounded the table to embrace her. “I’m so sorry,” she said, her own eyes shining with unshed tears. “Such monstrous deeds—I can hardly believe it.”
“I know.” Gerda clung to her. “When I woke this morning, I hoped it had been a terrible nightmare, but it’s real. The barn, the stables, the livestock—all of it gone.”
Dorothea nodded, and Gerda realized that Dorothea, of all her friends, would understand her loss completely.
