“I can go anywhere I want. In the kennels, in the cabins. All of Aldie is mine.”
“How come I can see through you?” Pirate asked.
“I live in a different dimension.”
“I don’t know what that means.” The big puppy was confused.
“Just accept it, Pirate,” Tucker commanded. “Ruffy, I believe you’re a ghost. Why are you here?”
“I’m here to stay with my friend,” Ruffy replied.
“Is your friend dead?” Tucker was blunt.
“Yes,” came the reply.
“Come on, you two bums,” Harry hollered.
Tucker turned her head, then turned it back. “Ruffy, I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. Will you all be back?”
“Next weekend, I hope,” Tucker answered.
“That would be nice.” Then Ruffy walked away, fading with each step.
Once in the station wagon, doors locked because Pewter knew how to open them, Susan steered down the long driveway. “Look at that sky.”
“Why is it that spring snowstorms are the worst?” Harry peered out through the passenger-side window. “I think we’ll just make it. Then again, I don’t know. Looks ominous.”
“Spring snowstorms are the worst because we all want winter to be over. Maybe we let our defenses down.” Susan reached the paved state road.
They drove in silence along winding roads until they reached Route 50, called the Little River Turnpike at the time of the Battle of Aldie, where Susan turned left, east, then turned right at the circle. She’d hit Route 29 above Warrenton. They drove in companionable silence, the animals now asleep.
Harry broke the silence. “Don’t know what it is about that mound, but it kind of makes me shiver.”
“Well, arms and legs are one thing, but I think it’s creepy that no one knows where the bodies are buried. I mean, how could you forget that?”
“Beats me.” Harry swore she saw a tiny snowflake fall. “Maybe when there are that many wounded in a hospital, you lose track. You’re so busy trying to keep men alive, you don’t fret over where someone has put the dead. I expect all of our battlefields are full of unknown burial spots. I mean, it isn’t like Manassas or Gettysburg, which are shrines. And who really knows where all their dead are there?”
Susan thought, then replied, “But they had burial details.”
“Depends on the battle, doesn’t it? First Manassas the Federals ran, leaving behind their dead, their wounded, and their dancing clothes. They thought they’d be dancing in Richmond. Can you imagine just leaving your wounded screaming on the ground? We took them to our hospital tents.”
“No. Then again, with the exception of those men who had fought in the Mexican-American War, no one had seen wounded, heard the guns, moved forward in clouds of gun smoke, blinded. The smells and the noise alone would be terrifying and there you are, an eighteen-year-old farm boy from Iowa or a kid off a fishing boat in the Chesapeake Bay. Chaos. So I expect it was chaos in the field hospitals, too, and then the wounded were transferred to anyplace that could hold them. All transferred south. The North just ignored them.”
“You’re the history student. But I swear I feel something at Aldie and it’s concentrated sorrow.”
Susan nodded. “Yes, being there, I could almost believe in ghosts.” She leaned over to turn up the heat on her side. “Actually, I do believe in ghosts.”
“For thousands of years people have sworn they’ve seen spirits. I’m not arguing with thousands of years. I’m not saying I want to see one.” Harry saw another snowflake.
“Me neither. What I’d like to see is sunshine.”
“Forget that. I have seen two little snowflakes.”
“Well, Harry, let’s hope they stay little because if the heavens open up, we’ll have a devil of a time getting home. You know Southerners can’t drive in the snow.”
“Hey, we’re Southerners.” Harry sat up straight.
“We’re the exception that proves the rule.” Susan smiled. “Like Northerners not knowing how to pass and repass. It’s kind of equal, driving versus talking.”
“They don’t.” Harry pronounced this as though it was an edict from the Supreme Court.
Passing and repassing means when you run errands or encounter someone, known or unknown, you bid them hello or good day or whatever. If it’s someone you know, you must ask about their day, their health, their family, all that stuff. They reply, the repass. This is why any errand takes twice or three times as long as it does north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
“They are in too much of a hurry,” Susan said, then laughed. “Although sometimes when Big Mim”—she mentioned a rich citizen of their little town, Crozet—“goes on a tear, I rather envy them. I can actually get wistful about Massachusetts.”
“Ha. But think how much we learn every time we step out the door. Anyway, I think they’re hinckty. They should learn to do it our way.”
“Hinckty” meant a snob, the worst kind of snob. So Harry sat there in the glow of having said something awful about someone or someones. But happily, it didn’t sound awful. Even better, the people from the North wouldn’t recognize the word.
“Harry, you’re being ugly.” Susan sounded prim.
“I may be ugly but I’m your best friend and you love me, love me, love me.” She paused. “Don’t you?”
They both laughed, rolling along, happy to be together, happy for the tiniest break from being wives.
Susan returned to the buried. “You know, maybe ten years ago, archaeologists or historians or someone with a shovel found Varus’s lost legions, three legions that left from the camp at Koblenz during the reign of Caesar Augustus, in A.D. 9, and never returned. And they finally found them in Teutoburg Forest. We now know they were ambushed by Germanic tribesmen two thousand years ago.”
“Well, maybe in two thousand years, we’ll know where some of the dead at Aldie are buried.”
They wouldn’t have to wait that long.
5
September 4, 1787
Tuesday
Surveying the hundreds of acres of mature hay, Rachel said, “Waves like water, golden waves. Father will be happy. Our third cutting. Usually we get only two. A bountiful year.”
“So far. We’ve got to cut it, turn it, dry it out, then get it up and into the hay barns. The easier route is to put the hay in hayricks but, Rachel, I don’t care what they say, hayricks don’t shed enough water. Better to take the time, load it on wagons, haul it into the big shed. It will stay dry there. Good hay means happy horses.” She scanned the beautiful fields again. “John is fretting about a storm. I told him so far so good. A thunderstorm can come up in a minute, but I think we’re okay to cut this. We’ve got to do it before it goes to seed.”
“No one will ever accuse your husband of being lazy.”
“Nor yours,” Catherine replied.
They stared at the hay, bending, swaying, the sound of wind sliding through the tall thin blades.
“Charles”—Rachel named her blond husband—“has been buoyant lately. The organ is nearly installed at St. Luke’s. And he received a letter from his brother, who said he expected to receive the funds from Maureen Selisse before month’s end.”
Calling Maureen Selisse Holloway by her newly married name, Holloway, proved difficult to those who had known her late, unlamented husband, Francisco. Maureen, the middle-aged daughter of a now deceased Caribbean banker, was rich, very rich. She stashed money in accounts in the new United States, in the Caribbean where her father hid much of his ill-gotten gains, and also at the Bank of England on Threadneedle Street. Rumor had it she had transferred her funds out of Paris when the King called the Assembly of Notables. But rumors about tremendously wealthy people always fly about.