The Union Quilters (29 page)

“No. No, thank you.” Anneke felt foolish. “I was lost in thought. I forgot.”

“You forgot that you took your children and left your husband?”

“I haven’t left my husband.”

“You haven’t spoken to Hans in weeks except in messages passed through me or Gerda,” Dorothea pointed out. “Rather abrupt and cold messages at that. By most reasonable measures, that’s leaving your husband.”

“I haven’t left him.” Anneke clarified. “We’re having a difference of opinion, but we’ll reconcile eventually. I never intended this separation to be a permanent arrangement.”

“How and when will you reconcile if you never speak to him?”

Anneke frowned. She had no good answer for her friend, so she said nothing. All she wanted was for Hans to come to her and assure her he would protect her and the children, that he would not sacrifice their safety to some amorphous, idealistic principle. If she went home without those reassurances, Hans would interpret her return as an apology, an admission of fault, and an acceptance of his beliefs. Anneke did not accept them; she couldn’t accept what she could not understand. Instead she had hoped he could make one exception in the event his wife and children were endangered. She knew Hans was not the sort of man to jettison his convictions to please someone else, but she had not realized he was so inflexible, nor could she have ever imagined that he placed his commitment to his principles above his duty to his family. With each passing day, Anneke also feared a little more that he did not love her as much as she had believed.

“The longer you wait, the wider the breach will become,” Dorothea said. “Why don’t you come with me the next time I take the boys to visit him? You don’t have to stay if you don’t like what he says, but you should at least prompt the conversation.”

“Hans knows where I am,” said Anneke, resigned. “If he has anything to say to me, he could come to me and say it.”

“But you’re the one who left. It would be quite reasonable for him to interpret that as a sign that you don’t want to speak to him.”

“Then the next time you see him,” Anneke replied, “you may imply I would be willing to hear what he has to say for himself.”

“Imply? Why don’t I simply tell him?”

“Because then he’ll think that I told you to tell him.”

“Which is what you did.”

“I don’t want him to know that. I don’t want him to think he can sail into the room with that—that charming, overconfident grin and say a few words and all will be well.”

“No, indeed. You want him to suffer first.” Dorothea shook the reins, and the horses pulled the wagon the rest of the way up the road to their own barn, although Anneke knew Dorothea wished she could turn the wagon toward Elm Creek Farm instead. Anneke did too, but she would not go crawling humbly back to Hans, not when he was the one who had disappointed her.

In the weeks that followed, Anneke, Dorothea, and Mary collaborated to transform the templates and handwritten notes into printed patterns while Mr. Schultz advertised the program in his paper and enlisted six other editors from Wisconsin to Vermont to do the same. Gerda, who already visited the post office almost daily in hopes of a letter from President Lincoln, collected and organized the subscription requests. By the first week of the New Year they were ready to send out their first issue, the pattern for Faith’s contribution to the Loyal Union Sampler, Charley Stokey’s Star. Just before they went to press, Gerda was inspired to add to the page a brief tribute to Charley Stokey so that all their subscribers would understand the inspiration for the block. Anneke thought Eliza would be comforted to know that quilters across the North would learn about her husband’s courageous sacrifice and remember him as a fallen hero as long as the quilt block endured—which, considering how quilt patterns were passed down from generation to generation, could be a very long time indeed.

Anneke wished she could be certain that although she had begun the patterns at Two Bears Farm, she would finish them safely and happily back at her own home.

 

Without her two dutiful sons, Constance could not imagine how she would have endured Abel’s absence. It was not only the determined, industrious way George and Joseph went about their chores, taking pride in the knowledge that they were the men of the house with their father away. Nor was it only their unspoken resolve to tend the livestock so well that upon his return, Abel would find the farm running as smoothly as the day he had departed. Nor even was it the pride in their voices when she overheard them speculating about what their father and the 6th USCT might be doing at that very moment, or the pride in their words when they wrote school compositions about freedom and liberty. It was all of those things, and Abel’s certainty that the war would end slavery in the United States forever, that enabled Constance to persevere through the long, lonely, apprehensive days without her beloved husband. Upon waking on those bleak winter mornings, her first thought was that this might be the day a messenger would come with the dreaded news that Abel had been killed in battle. Her second thought was that her boys needed her, so instead of pulling the quilt over her head and sinking deeper into melancholy, she would climb out of bed, wash and dress, and face the day.

She could not have managed without her sons, nor without the Union Quilters, especially Dorothea, Gerda, Anneke, and Prudence, who had become a good friend in the time since they had worked together on the Loyal Union Sampler. Prudence’s younger brother was in the 49th, but he was a poor letter writer and the few letters he did send went to his wife in Grangerville. Prudence lived in a small flat above her dressmakerʹs shop and had no horse of her own, so every few weeks, Constance had George drive Prudence to her sister-in-law’s home so she could visit and catch up on the news. To thank them, Prudence had sewn George a fine new suit, pleasing him greatly and delighting Constance, who had been putting off the task of sewing him a new best suit to replace the one he had recently outgrown.

Sometimes, Prudence picked up crumbs of information about her brother from other men’s letters if the writer happened to mention him, but since Abel served in an entirely different regiment from the other men of the Elm Creek Valley, Constance never benefited in this way when the Union Quilters read letters aloud at their meetings. Thankfully, Abel wrote often, and Constance shared his letters with the circle of quilters as proudly as anyone. Some of the women, those she was not close to, seemed only to listen politely without any real interest, and she assumed this was because they knew Constance would not mention any of their beloved soldiers. A few others hung on every word, fascinated to hear that colored soldiers were marching, fighting—and dying for their country, Constance was tempted to remind them—just like white soldiers. Constance had read the editorials in the Eastern newspapers and knew that many white officers had doubted the colored men’s will to fight and had reckoned that they would turn and run the first time a Rebel fired upon them. Even so, she had not expected members of her own sewing circle, women who knew Abel as the hero of Wright’s Pass, to have such low expectations, and it displeased her to see them so pleasantly surprised by news of the 6th’s accomplishments with the Army of the James. Hadn’t colored soldiers bravely advanced over open ground in the face of deadly artillery fire at the Battle of Port Hudson, Louisiana? Hadn’t the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteers fought off a fierce Confederate attack at Honey Springs in Indian Territory after a brutal two-hour engagement? Hadn’t the 54th Massachusetts led the assault on the well-fortified Fort Wagner in South Carolina, sacrificing many brave men on the beach before the rest were able to scale the fort’s parapet, retreating only after fierce hand-to-hand combat and suffering terrible casualties? How many more times would the colored soldiers have to prove their valor before their critics fell silent?

But the women in her sewing circle surprised by the colored soldiers’ courage were not critics, Constance reminded herself while Prudence read her brother’s latest letter to his wife, which she had lent to Prudence to share with the Union Quilters since it mentioned Thomas Nelson and Rufus Barrows. It would be unkind to call them ignorant; perhaps it would be better to say they lacked experience and were not well informed. They knew few colored folks and believed what they read about them, and all their lives they had heard that the colored race was inferior. Even some abolitionists believed that; they just didn’t believe it justified slavery. Their hearts were in the right place, and time and exposure to the truth and a willingness to amend long-held beliefs could eventually lead them to the conclusion that white folks and colored were indeed created equal.

“I have a letter from Abel,” Constance spoke up when Prudence finished reading her brotherʹs.

“Oh, do read it,” said Dorothea. Prudence, Gerda, and a few others nodded eagerly, while the ladies she knew less well assumed expressions of vague interest and patience. They would come around, Constance told herself firmly as she unfolded the page.

“Free prisoners, at Richmond?” gasped Charlotte, white-faced. “Does he mean Libby Prison?”

“He wrote Belle Isle,” said Dorothea, taking her hand. Her face, when she regarded Constance, was full of hope and apprehension. “It is a different prison.”

“It is a deplorable place,” said Gerda darkly. “An island in the James River west of the city with a handful of shacks and tents meant to house thousands. Most of the men have not even a blanket to sleep upon, and they are constantly at the mercy of the sun, wind, and rain.”

“Constance said Richmond; I heard her quite clearly.” Charlotte shot Gerda a fierce glare before turning a pleading look upon Constance. “You did say Richmond, didn’t you?”

“Abel did say the attack was to be upon Richmond,” said Constance carefully, “but I’ve read the letter through and he doesn’t mention Libby Prison. If you let me finish—”

“Richmond has more than one prisoner of war camp,” Gerda explained. “Officers are sent to Libby Prison. Enlisted men remain on Belle Isle.”

Charlotte would not look at Gerda or even acknowledge that she had spoken. “But why would they attempt to free one prison and not another in the same city? Why would they rescue the enlisted men and leave the officers behind?”

“Perhaps Abel will explain,” said Dorothea. “Go on, Constance. Please continue.”

Constance nodded and read on.