Secret of Richmond Manor Page 5

  He pulled off his hat, and she saw that he was indeed very young, not much older than herself. His face was thin, and he had curly brown hair, which had not been cut recently. She saw, even by the light of the candle, that he appeared flushed.

  “Where’d you come from?” she demanded.

  “Got away from Belle Isle Prison a while back,” he said.

  Leah had heard of Belle Isle. It was a terrible place, according to all the stories. Even the Confederates said it was shameful. Men were made to live outside and practically starve. The guards were overly zealous and shot anyone who even looked as if he might escape.

  She stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do. “What’s your name?” she said kindly.

  “Ezra—Ezra Payne.”

  “You don’t look old enough to be a soldier.”

  He made no reply.

  “You’ve been taking food from our kitchen, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I have.” He made no apology but just stood there.

  Leah saw that his hands were shaking. No, his whole body was shaking.

  “Why,” she took a step closer, “you’ve got fever!” she exclaimed.

  His eyes were sunk back in his head, and he wore only a light shirt, ripped in several places and a pair of tattered trousers.

  “I got captured at Bull Run,” he murmured, his voice very thin and shaky. “I’ve been in Belle Isle for nigh onto a year now. Couldn’t stand it anymore, so I ran away.”

  Leah saw that he was swaying, about to fall. “Here!” she said. “Sit down.” She shoved a chair at him.

  He stared at her for a moment, then sat. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m not strong as a kitten. Never felt this bad before.”

  And Leah had never been so puzzled before. What to do with him? She thought of calling her uncle but instead asked, “You say you’ve been in prison for a whole year?”

  “Yes, ma’am, a whole year, nearly. Lots of times I wished I’d been killed. It’d been a sight easier, I think, than living in that place.”

  He began to tremble violently and pulled his shirt up closer. His teeth were chattering.

  Leah said, “You need to be in bed. Where have you been sleeping?”

  “Out in the loft of the barn.” He tried to grin. “It’s better than what I had at Belle Isle.” He began shaking even more violently and said, “Well, you can go get your menfolks. I know what you got to do.”

  Leah stared at him, hugging her robe closely around her. “It won’t be too good for you to go back to that place, will it?”

  “Don’t matter.”

  Leah was appalled at the hopelessness in his voice. She said sharply, “Yes! It does matter! Are you hungry?”

  “No, ma’am, not much. Just got a chill like—real cold.”

  She stared at the boy. He can’t be over sixteen or seventeen, she thought, and he’s so sick.

  Leah was an impulsive girl. She had been rebuked by her parents more than once for making snap decisions. She also knew she made wrong decisions quite often. But now, staring at the poor miserable boy trembling in the chair, she thought, I can’t let him go back to Belle Isle Prison. He’ll die.

  “Look, I’m going to help you. You don’t need to go back to prison until you get well. Let me get some blankets and some clothes. You’ve got to get warm. You go on back to the barn. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  The boy stared at her in disbelief. “You mean, you’re not gonna turn me in?”

  “Not until you get better. Now go on.”

  Leah turned and left the kitchen. She went to her bedroom, where she picked up two blankets, and then stopped off at a chest on the porch. Some of her uncle’s old clothes were there. She found a coat and a pair of pants and some socks. Putting these under her arm, she took the candle and made her way around the house, careful to be very quiet.

  When she got to the barn, the boy was standing in front of it.

  “Let’s see where you’re sleeping,” she said.

  She followed him inside before remembering she’d put the gun down by the chest. If he had noticed, he made no remark. She trailed him up a rickety flight of stairs to the dim loft, and he motioned to a pile of straw. “Been sleeping on that.”

  Leah said, “There’s a cot in the attic of the house. Tomorrow I’ll get it down and bring it to you after dark. Early in the morning I’ll fix you something to eat and bring it to you.”

  “I’m not—not very hungry, but I sure am cold.”

  Leah handed him the clothes. “Put these on and wrap these blankets around you. I’ve got to go now.”

  Ezra Payne stared at her. He was still trembling like a blade of grass in the wind, and his teeth chattered, but there was gratitude in his voice. “I sure do thank you, ma’am.”

  As she made her way back into the house, Leah was thinking, I guess I’m some kind of a traitor.

  Carefully she closed the back door. She thought once of telling Uncle Silas about the fugitive she was harboring, but, as good as her uncle was, she wasn’t sure. He might decide they had to turn him in.

  Going back into her bedroom, she took off her robe and got into bed. She lay there a long time thinking about Ezra Payne. I’ll have to get up early and fix him something to eat. Maybe I can find some medicine. I wish I were a better nurse!

  Peanuts came and snuggled against her as usual. She held onto him, smoothing his fur, and she whispered, “I’m not really a traitor, Peanuts. He’s so sick, he couldn’t do anybody any harm.”

  6

  Why Are You So Nervous, Leah?

  Jeff found his duties at camp very light. He had become an expert drummer boy and had done good service at the Battle of Seven Days. His commanding officer, General Stonewall Jackson, commended the entire regiment, and he stopped by to meet with Jeff’s father briefly.

  “I remember this young man,” he said with a smile. “Are you coming to any of our revival meetings that we’ll be having this summer?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, General Jackson, I sure will,” Jeff replied eagerly. He was convinced that Stonewall Jackson was the best general in the world. He knew also that if General Jackson was better at anything than soldiering, it was at praying and getting his men converted. “I’ll be there, right up in front, sir.”

  “You got a fine son here, Captain Majors,” Stonewall said.

  The general wore his cap in a peculiar fashion, pulled down almost over his eyes, and the eyes themselves were strange. He was called “Old Blue Light” by most of his troopers. Jeff himself had seen him once during a battle, and indeed his eyes did glow almost as if there were fire behind them. Now, however, they were mild, and he nodded at the two and left.

  “He’s a fine soldier, isn’t he, Pa? Best general in the whole world, I bet.”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised,” Jeff’s father replied. He glanced at the boy and said, “What have you heard from Leah and her uncle?”

  “Well, not much really.”

  “Not much doing around camp. Why don’t you go see her? Maybe bring me back one of those apple pies she makes so well.”

  “You mean it, sir?” Jeff cried, his eyes alight. “Can I really go?”

  “Yes, Private, and don’t forget that pie!” he called loudly as Jeff dashed away.

  Leah was washing the dishes, and Jeff was drying them. They had eaten a tasty lunch, and Jeff reminded her, “Don’t forget, you’ve got to let me have a pie to take back to Pa.” He wiped a plate carefully, held it up, and examined it. “He likes your pies almost as much as I do.” He put the plate on the shelf. “My ma could make good pies. Her best was raisin. She made raisin pies like nobody I ever heard of.”

  Leah saw the expression on Jeff’s face. “You miss her a great deal, don’t you, Jeff?”

  “Sure do. Won’t ever forget her.”

  “I got a letter from my ma yesterday,” Leah said. She was scrubbing a skillet, and a lock of blonde hair fell over her eyes. She pushed it back with a wrist, then said, “You know
what she said?”

  “No, what?”

  “She said that Esther looks exactly like your mother did.”

  Jeff took a glass and dried it slowly. He was very thoughtful for a while. “You know, I guess one way to look at it is, as long as we’ve got Esther we’ve still got Ma, in a way.”

  “I guess that’s right.” Leah looked at him, surprised by the thought. “I never thought of it like that, but that’s right, isn’t it? Some of my ma and pa is in me, and when I grow up and get married and have babies, some of me will be in them. What a nice thing to say, Jeff!”

  Jeff flushed as he always did when she paid him a compliment. He hastily dried the last dish. “Well, that’s all of these. Why don’t we go down and fish for a while?”

  They told Silas their plans, and he agreed to them. So they went out toward the creek and, in doing so, had to pass by the barn.

  Jeff said carelessly, “Not much need for a barn until you get your cow.” He looked at the barn. “What’s in there now?”

  “Oh, nothing!” Leah said quickly. “Come on, Jeff.” She took his arm and pulled him along.

  “Hey! What’s the hurry?” he protested. “Those fish’ll wait until we get there.”

  Leah had suddenly thought what a horrible thing it would have been had Jeff stepped inside and come face-to-face with an enemy soldier. “Oh, I’m just anxious to fish,” she said.

  “Me too, but not as anxious as you.” Jeff looked at her as she tugged him rapidly along. “Well, if we’re gonna run, let’s run. I’ll race you.”

  “Good.” Leah at once started running. Jeff, of course, caught up and easily passed her. He was waiting for her at the small creek when she got there, her cheeks red from the exercise.

  “Well, I beat you at a footrace. Now I’m gonna beat you at catching fish,” he said. “Let me have some of those worms.”

  The fish were small, but they bit at almost anything. Though Leah and Jeff released more than they kept, finally they had enough so that she said, “This will be fine, Jeff. You can stay for supper, can’t you?”

  “Oh, I sure can. If you can put me in a bunk somewhere, I’ll stay the night.”

  Leah was suddenly apprehensive. She’d thought Jeff was going back to camp. I’ve got to get out to take some food to Ezra, she said to herself. But there was nothing to be done about it, so aloud she said, “Well, let’s get the fish cleaned.”

  The rest of the afternoon they cleaned fish, and then Jeff sat on the porch and talked to Silas. Once he said, “You know, Mr. Carter, Leah seems a little bit nervous, don’t you think?”

  Silas bit his lip thoughtfully and raked his fingers through his beard. “Well, she has been kind of tetchy lately. Doesn’t seem to be sleeping good. You don’t think she’s sick, do you?”

  “She doesn’t look sick,” Jeff said. “Matter of fact, she looks better than I’ve ever seen her.”

  Silas Carter smiled at the boy. “She’s a right pretty young woman—and that sister of hers, she is too.” He peered at Jeff. “Your brother—Tom—he still hear from her?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, real often.”

  “I guess they were pretty serious, weren’t they?”

  “Well, Tom wanted to marry her, but then the war came along, and we came South. The Carters—well, they’re not sympathetic to the Confederacy. Of course, you know Sarah and Leah have got a brother in the Union army. I guess she was worried that he might kill Tom or Tom might kill him.”

  “I know. It’s a brother’s war, ain’t it, boy? People that you’d be a good friend to, now you have to shoot at ’em. A shame.”

  The two talked quietly for a while longer, and then Leah came out. “I’ve fixed a place for you in the living room, Jeff,” she said. “You can sleep on the couch.”

  “Be better than that broken-down cot I’ve got at camp.” Jeff grinned. “How about some checkers?”

  “All right.”

  Leah was an excellent checker player. Ordinarily she beat Jeff quite easily, but somehow her mind was elsewhere tonight.

  “Why, I beat you three games out of four! What’s wrong with you, Leah?” he finally asked. “Are you feeling bad? You look kind of flustered.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’m all right,” Leah said.

  She lifted a hand and pushed a strand of hair back off her forehead so nervously that Jeff said, “Why are you so nervous, Leah?”

  “I’m not!” she protested. “I’m not nervous at all.”

  Jeff leaned over and put his elbows on the table and stared at her. “Well, you’re sure giving a good imitation of somebody who’s nervous.”

  Leah forced herself to smile at him. “Let’s play another game.” She managed to beat him thoroughly this time and then said, “I expect we’d better get to bed. I have to get up early in the morning and make that pie for your father.”

  She waited until almost midnight. Then she got up, pulled on her robe and shoes, and carefully opened her door. In the kitchen she took out the pot of beans that was in the warmer of the oven, then gathered up several slices of bread and a big slice of the pie that she had made for Jeff.

  She made her way out of the kitchen, across the moonlit yard, and noticed that Peanuts was coming with her, purring and pushing against her ankles. She pushed him away with her foot, then made for the barn.

  Opening the door, she whispered, “Ezra!”

  “Yes, I’m right here.”

  She stepped inside, leaving the door open. She saw that he had come down the stairs and was standing in the shadows. She handed him the food, saying, “How do you feel?”

  “Feel some better. Fever broke sometime this afternoon. I got all sweaty, but I feel a lot better now.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “I sure am. I could eat anything.”

  “Well, come on and sit down. I can’t stay long.”

  Ezra sat down near the open door and took the cover off the food. “Can’t see too well, but, my, that smells good.” He began to eat ravenously, cramming the food into his mouth and swallowing it as if he were starving. He looked up once and said, “My manners aren’t very good, but I sure am hungry!”

  “That’s a good sign.” Leah smiled at him. “That means you’re getting better.”

  He finished the beans and the bread, licked his fingers, then picked up the piece of pie.

  “I didn’t have time to get a plate or a fork,” she apologized.

  “Pies are made to be et by hand,” Ezra said. He took a bite. “That’s the best pie I ever had in my whole life. You sure are a good cook, Leah.”

  “What part of the country do you come from? You haven’t told me much about yourself, Ezra.”

  “Well—” he chewed thoughtfully on a bite of pie “—never had any folks,” he said simply.

  “Never had any folks! What do you mean?”

  “Well—” he looked embarrassed “—I never knew who my father was—and my ma, she died when I was born.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” Leah said. “I’m so sorry. Who raised you?”

  “I grew up in an orphanage until I was ten, then I got farmed out to a family. They lived on a farm. This was in Michigan, and I stayed there for about a year.”

  “Were they nice to you?”

  “Well, not too nice,” he said. He took another bite of pie. “I guess they mostly needed a boy to help, so they worked me pretty hard.”

  “But you only stayed a year?”

  “Yeah, I run off,” he said. “They caught me, of course, and brought me back. But they were so mad they took me back to the orphanage.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Oh, the next few years I kinda swapped around from one place to another, mostly on farms. Then when the war started, I’d had about all I could take of the last place. Old man Hiller, he was too handy with his strap, so I took off and I enlisted.”

  Leah stared at him. He didn’t look a day over fifteen. He was not large, and his face was very thin. “How old a
re you, Ezra?”

  “Sixteen now.”

  “You mean, the North took fifteen-year-old boys?”

  “Oh, no. I had to fib about that a little.” He smiled at her and ate the last bit of pie. Then he licked his fingers and wiped his hands on his shirt. “You know what we did to keep from lying when we went in the army when we were too young?”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, you had to be eighteen to get in, so I took a sheet of paper and made two pieces of it. On each piece I wrote the figure eighteen, then I put them in my shoes.”

  Leah eyed him. “Why did you do that?”

  Ezra smiled. He had nice brown eyes and was not a bad-looking boy. “When the recruiting sergeant asked me how old I was, I said, “Oh, I’m over eighteen.”

  Leah stared, then giggled, holding her hand over her mouth. “I never heard of anything like that.”

  Ezra nodded. “Lots of us did that. There was some men no more than fourteen, I’d guess. Big for their age, you know.” He sat back and studied her. The moonlight flooded over her hair and gleamed in her eyes. “I liked the army,” he said simply. “Course I wasn’t in long before I got captured, but up until then it was the best I ever had.”

  “I’m sorry you got caught,” she said, “but maybe the Lord did it that way on purpose.”

  Ezra blinked in surprise. “What does that mean?”

  “I mean, if you hadn’t gotten captured, maybe you’d have gotten killed. This last battle, there were thousands of men killed on both sides. Maybe God got you captured so you wouldn’t get killed.”

  “I don’t know anything about that—about God,” Ezra said quietly. “They never told me nothing at any of the places where I was, except at the orphanage, and that was a long time ago.”

  Leah said, “I’m sorry about that. Everybody ought to get to hear about Jesus.” A thought came to her then, and she said, “Would you mind if I would bring you a Bible? You could read it for yourself.”

  Ezra made a small face. “Well, I don’t read too good, but I’ll try if you want me to.” He looked at her, and his face suddenly grew sober. “You’ve been awfully nice to me, Leah. Most Confederates would have had me hauled off right away.”