“Ain’t that the most peculiar thing you ever saw?” Phoebe asked. She stood beside Ted, shading her eyes against the morning sun, watching as Professor Thaddeus Lowe’s observation balloon, the Intrepid, filled with air.
“Hang on to those lines, boys!” the professor shouted. “Don’t let go!”
Phoebe and the other volunteers gripped the guide ropes as two horse-drawn hydrogen generators pumped warm air through the hoses and into the balloon. The giant air-filled bubble swelled into a globe, then lifted up, coming to life before Phoebe’s eyes.
“Do you really think it will fly?” she asked Ted.
“Sure. I heard they’ve been using observation balloons for some time now. They can look right into the Rebels’ camps and even count how many soldiers and cannons they have.”
“Get in, General. Quick,” Professor Lowe shouted, beckoning to General Fitz-John Porter. “It’s ready to go.” The general climbed into a large basket that was fastened to the balloon with ropes. He clung to the sides of the basket for dear life as it began to bounce along the ground, then finally lifted off. The guide ropes tugged against Phoebe’s hands.
“Would you go up in that thing?” she asked Ted as they watched the huge cloth bubble slowly carry the general into the sky.
“Hey, I think it would be fun—as long as I’d still be tied to the ground, like he is. Even after he gets too high for these guide ropes, he’s going to be tethered by that long rope over there. He can’t go far, and they can always pull him back.”
The professor signaled for Phoebe and the others to release their ropes, and the balloon climbed to treetop height, drifting north on the wind.
“Ain’t he afraid the Rebels will shoot at him?” Phoebe asked.
“I guess they’ve tried it a few times already. Good thing they’ve always missed.”
Phoebe tried to imagine what it would be like to soar high in the air like that and look down on the world from above. Her stomach made a little flip at the idea. Even so, she thought she’d like to try it once if she ever got the chance.
The odd contraption continued its slow rise into the sky, the anchoring rope swiftly unraveling like kite string. But when the balloon was about one hundred feet above the ground, the tethering rope suddenly snapped. Phoebe heard a collective gasp. Professor Lowe and all the others watched in horror as General Porter sailed gracefully north toward Richmond, unhindered.
For a long moment, everyone seemed too stunned to speak. Then Ted grabbed Phoebe’s arm and towed her toward Professor Lowe. “Hey, my friend Ike is a first-rate sharpshooter. Want him to shoot that thing down for you?”
“No!” One of the general’s aides blocked their path as if Ted had suggested she shoot at Porter himself, not at the balloon. “We can’t take a chance on him hitting the general.”
“But Ike never misses,” Ted said. “Besides, the Rebels might start shooting first, you know. And they won’t be aiming for the balloon.”
“I fear it’s already too late,” Lowe said, gazing mournfully at the sky. “Surely the general’s out of range by now.”
Phoebe was glad not to be put on the spot. It was one thing to go after a sniper when she was hopping mad, but it was another thing entirely to fire at a balloon with a Union general on board. “Ain’t there any way to steer that thing?” she asked as it grew smaller and smaller against the sky.
“I’m afraid not,” Lowe said. “I only hope the general thinks to pull the valve rope and deflate the balloon.”
As they watched, the globe appeared to sag slightly; it started looking less like a globe every second. Then it gradually sank lower as it sailed into the distance.
“Hey, it looks like it’s coming down,” Ted said, pointing.
“Thank God! General Porter must have opened the valve.” Lowe sank down onto a wooden crate, looking as though he had been punched in the gut. The general’s aide quickly sent a search party to pick up Porter, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
“That’s all for today, boys,” Lowe said. “You volunteers may as well return to your camps.”
The excitement over, Phoebe started back across the field to her tent. “Maybe General Porter was tired of marching through all this mud to get to Richmond,” she told Ted. Their shoes were making squishing sounds in the soggy field. “We’ve been crawling along about as fast as caterpillars for weeks. Maybe he decided he’d fly there, instead.”
“Wish we could all fly to Richmond,” Ted grumbled.
By the time they reached camp, groundwater was already seeping into Phoebe’s shoes, soaking her last pair of dry socks. They arrived in time to hear the news that General McClellan had ordered them to march.
As if the weather took its cue from the general, thick, dark storm clouds began moving in from the west as soon as he gave the marching orders. The morning sun quickly disappeared, the sky lowered, and by the time Phoebe’s regiment was packed and ready to leave, it had begun to rain again.
Phoebe pulled her jacket collar up around her neck to keep out the rain. “If God ain’t on the Rebels’ side, the weather sure is,” she said for the hundredth time. She stepped from the field where they’d camped onto the road that headed north—and sank to her ankles into thick Virginia mud.
“I’ve been drenched for so long,” Ted said, “I forget what it feels like to be dry. My toes are as wrinkled as an old man’s.”
Phoebe’s regiment hadn’t seen combat since that terrible afternoon in Williamsburg, more than three weeks ago. Neither she nor Ted ever mentioned that day again, nor the paralyzing fear they’d both felt that night. But Phoebe knew they were in for another fight, just like it or worse, in the days ahead. They’d heard reports of skirmishes, and some of the men in the forward ranks who had crossed the Chickahominy River said they were close enough to Richmond to hear the church bells ringing. Phoebe found herself wishing for the long, boring days they’d spent back in Washington, before any of them knew what they were in for. At least then, fear hadn’t writhed through her stomach like a snake at the thought of facing that screaming gray line of Rebels again.
As the army continued its slow crawl toward Richmond, the mosquitoes were as thick as fog in the swampy woods. Hundreds of men had already fallen sick with malaria and fevers, and Phoebe worried every day that she would join them. With most of the roads flooded and the surrounding forests too thick with vegetation to pass through, army engineers had to construct miles and miles of corduroy roads to keep the cannons, artillery, and wagon trains of supplies moving. Phoebe and Ted took their turn at road-building— chopping down trees, driving wooden pilings into the sodden ground, attaching a raft of logs to the pilings, then covering the finished roadbed with a layer of mud to smooth it.
The heavy spring rains left every creek, river, and stream flooded well beyond its banks. The Rebels had destroyed all the bridges as they’d withdrawn to Richmond, and the larger, swiftly moving rivers were nearly impossible to ford. Progress halted as work crews labored with engineers to construct new bridges, many of which looked like they just might wash away before everyone was across.
On that wet, dreary afternoon, Phoebe’s regiment came to one such bridge spanning a flooded river. As she waited for her turn to cross, she could see the rickety span swaying beneath hundreds of marching feet. The swirling water was so high it sloshed over the roadbed as it rushed past with a roar, piling debris against the sagging logs.
“Do you think that bridge is going to hold?” Ted asked. “I can’t swim.”
“If you fall into that river, you won’t have to worry about swimming,” she told him. “You’ll be washed away so fast you’ll be back at Fortress Monroe before we even hear you holler for help.”
“Thanks a lot. I feel much better now.”
The sky opened up in a downpour as Phoebe’s turn came. She could feel the river tugging at the slippery logs beneath her feet as she started across. She knew she had to watch her step, but the swaying motion and swirling water gave her a queasy feeling whenever she looked down. She kept her eye on Ted instead, who was marching right in front of her.
When they were about five feet from the opposite shore, Phoebe heard a shout, and suddenly she felt the bridge being jerked out from beneath her like a carpet. She lunged toward the riverbank, propelling Ted with her, both of them straining to grab hold of anything they could reach to keep from being washed away. But her hands found nothing to grasp, and she felt the angry river tugging her down, pulling her underwater.
The shock of the icy water forced all the breath from her lungs, and for a terrible moment she couldn’t think what to do. The river roared in her ears as she sank beneath the surface. The heavy knapsack and rifle she carried were trying to tug her backward, weighing her down, holding her underwater. She kicked and struggled with every ounce of strength she had, fighting against the extra weight and the river’s current, desperate to save herself.
God, help me! she prayed.
At last her head surfaced and she gulped air. She saw hands reaching for her, and she stretched her own out toward them. A moment later, Phoebe felt strong arms grabbing her, pulling her free from the water’s grip, hauling her onto the muddy riverbank. They dragged Ted ashore beside her, coughing muddy water from his lungs. They sat together, shivering in the spring air, watching as others were pulled to safety—and as others not as fortunate washed downstream with the remnants of the bridge.
Someone built a fire. Both survivors and rescuers huddled near it, sipping whiskey-laced coffee, trying to warm themselves and dry out. Phoebe wrung water from her bedding and from the extra clothing in her knapsack with trembling hands. She hoped the others wouldn’t notice the tears in her eyes, or if they did, they would think the smoky fire caused them.
She had nearly died. So had Ted. She wished now that she hadn’t joked about him not being able to swim. He sat huddled beside her, shivering. She wanted to say something, to apologize, but she couldn’t make her stiff, shuddering jaws form words.
When everyone had dried out enough to stop shaking, they shouldered their sodden packs and marched on, through woods that were wet and gloomy and jungle-thick. But Phoebe couldn’t stop thinking about the cold, dark river that had grabbed her and held her in its grasp, trying to swallow her alive. She had cried out to God for help, and He had saved her. She’d never asked God for anything before, but after reading her little Bible all these weeks, she had done it without thinking. God had saved her. She was alive. And so was Ted.
Late in the afternoon, the rain finally stopped. Phoebe’s regiment emerged from the woods and began passing croplands, fenced fields, and the carefully tended grounds of a plantation. When they reached a narrow, tree-lined lane that led to the manor house, Colonel Drake ordered them to leave the main road and proceed toward it, their weapons loaded and ready to fire.
The white two-story home sat on a small rise, shaded by oak and chestnut trees and surrounded by lush, fenced fields and orchards. There was a quiet dignity and stillness about the plantation that made the soldiers hush their voices as they approached, as if they’d come upon a queen seated on her throne.
“If this ain’t the most beautiful farm I ever seen,” Phoebe murmured.
The front door of the plantation house opened, and a middleaged man emerged, unarmed, to stand on the portico between its stately pillars. Phoebe thought that President Lincoln himself, standing on the White House steps, couldn’t look more noble and proud than this man did. He calmly watched as Colonel Drake and his aides approached.
“I’ll thank you to stop right there,” the man said when they were within a few yards. “I am William Fletcher, owner of Hilltop Plantation, and you, sir, are trespassing on private property.”
Colonel Drake halted at the bottom of the steps. “If you’re willing to swear allegiance to the United States of America, Mr. Fletcher, then we’ll leave you and your property alone.”
“I owe allegiance only to God and to the sovereign state of Virginia,” Fletcher replied.
Drake’s men moved swiftly then, taking the plantation owner prisoner and confiscating his house for the officers to use as their headquarters. Phoebe and the rest of her regiment were ordered to spread out and search the grounds for any armed resisters before finding a place to make camp for the night.
Phoebe set off to explore the plantation. She was too intrigued by the serene beauty of Hilltop to feel threatened by any lingering Rebels. She and Ted followed the driveway around to the rear of the house, where there was a carefully swept yard and several outbuildings. In one of them, the kitchen, a dozen slaves sat huddled in their quarters upstairs, too frightened to come out. The soldiers let them be.
Phoebe walked the well-tended grounds, passing a weaving shed and a smokehouse, a grove of pear and apple trees, a fenced vegetable garden. She couldn’t help thinking of her own family’s struggling farm. How many years, how much backbreaking labor had it taken to create a plantation this beautiful, to clear a hundred acres of farmland like this, rid it of weeds, and build such fine fences? She couldn’t even imagine.
Beyond the cultivated areas, the dense, green woodlands began. They reminded her of the forests back home, and she longed to shed her pack, her rifle, and her shoes and go exploring, alone.
She and Ted walked back down to the bottom of the hill where there was a weathered wooden barn, a windowless tobacco shed, a corncrib, and a blacksmith shop. Phoebe knew that any remaining feed in that corncrib would soon be used to fatten Yankee horses. Across the road, in a nearby field, the other members of her regiment were already setting up camp, trampling the newly cultivated wheat underfoot, pulling down fence rails to build campfires. She ran across the road, yelling at her fellow soldiers to stop.
“What’s the problem, Bigelow?” Sergeant Anderson asked when he heard the commotion.
“Please, sir, tell them to show a little respect for this property. It takes years to build fences like these, and if we destroy them all, then the cattle’s going to roam wild, and—”
“Calm down, son. The army gave clear instructions that the men are to take only the top rail.”
She thought about that for a moment, then shook her head. “But every rail is the top one once the rail above it’s taken down. Pretty soon the whole fence will be gone.”
Anderson laughed. “You’re pretty smart to figure that out, Bigelow.”
Phoebe couldn’t bear to watch the destruction. She turned around and walked the other way, following a well-worn road beyond the barn. Ted hurried to catch up with her.
“Hey, come on, Ike. Don’t take it so hard. The owner’s a Confederate. He deserves what he gets for rebelling against his country. Let’s—”
Phoebe and Ted both stopped short when they came upon the twin rows of tumbledown shacks, hidden from the manor house by a clump of trees. She would have thought the ramshackle cabins unfit to live in if she hadn’t seen with her own eyes that they were inhabited by the plantation’s field slaves. A handful of her fellow soldiers, who had arrived first, were trying to coax the frightened souls out of their cabins.
“It’s okay. You can come on out. I don’t know what your master told you about us Yankees, but we aren’t going to hurt you. We’re your friends. We’ve come to set you free.”
Little by little, more than fifty slaves ventured out, cautiously greeting the Yankees, accepting a few treats the soldiers offered as tokens of friendship.
“It true what you saying?” a ragged-looking Negro man asked. “We free now?”
“Yes, you’re considered spoils of war. You belong to the victors— that’s us.”
“You mean we can leave Hilltop?” a woman asked. “And Massa Fletcher can’t come after us and whip us for escaping?”
“Yes, you’re free to leave.”
“Where are they gonna go, Ted?” Phoebe whispered. “You know how many of them we’ve seen already in Washington and working on the docks. How are these folks gonna live? Where will they find food to eat?”
“Any life is better than staying here and being slaves,” Ted replied.
Phoebe peered into one of the empty cabins, and what she saw made her simple cabin back home seem like a palace. The dirt floor was nearly bare of furnishings, flies buzzed around the few scraps of food near the hearth, and the unchinked logs would keep out neither wind nor rain. She didn’t want to believe that people had been forced to live this way.
Once the slaves got over their fear, they began to laugh and cheer, dancing for joy in the littered road as they welcomed their saviors. One old Negro woman with small children clinging to her skirts hobbled around, hugging all the soldiers one by one and saying, “God bless you. God bless you, son.”
She took Ted into her arms for a hug, but when she drew back again and looked up at him, she broke into a wide smile, as if she recognized him. “Why, you’re a quadroon, ain’t you, boy? Or an octoroon?”
“No. Leave me alone.” He pried her hands off and wheeled around, striding back up the road the way they had come.
“What did she call you?” Phoebe asked when she caught up with him. “A cartoon?”
“I don’t know what she was babbling on about.”
Phoebe decided to let it go. She was feeling confused and shaken herself. Now that she had seen the way the slaves lived, she no longer felt sorry for the plantation owner or for the destruction of his beautiful property. It had all been accomplished at the slaves’ expense. And from the looks of it, they had never enjoyed the fruit of all their hard labor.
“I treat my animals back home better than this,” she said aloud. She stopped walking suddenly, pulling Ted to a halt beside her. “You know what? That’s why we’re fighting—it’s for those poor, sorry souls back there. It’s not for General McClellan or all them other bigwigs in Washington. It’s for the slaves. So they don’t have to live like that no more.”
Ted simply nodded, gazing blindly into the distance.
As they set up their pup tent in one of the fields, Ted was quieter than Phoebe had ever seen him. She worried that she’d said something wrong to make him mad at her. They built a campfire from pine branches to finish drying out their clothes and to help keep some of the mosquitoes away, then started fixing their dinner rations. Phoebe waited for Ted to sit beside her and eat, like he always did, but when she looked around there was no sign of him.
He finally returned empty-handed after dark. He never said a word about where he’d gone or why he hadn’t eaten with her, and Phoebe was afraid to ask. If he was mad at her, she might make things worse.
“Hope it don’t rain tomorrow,” she said. “Maybe we can finally get dried out.”
Ted simply nodded and crawled inside their pup tent for the night. She joined him a few minutes later, but she lay awake for a long time, listening to a chorus of frogs celebrating springtime in a pond close by and thinking of home. Ted tossed restlessly beside her.
“You all right?” she finally asked.
He exhaled. “No. There’s something I need to tell you.” He propped himself up on one elbow, facing Phoebe, his voice just above a whisper. “I’ve never told this to a living soul before, but you’re my friend and I want to tell you. Promise you won’t tell anybody else?”
“Sure. I can keep a secret.” She waited, unable to imagine what he might say. The moon was out, and as she lay on her side facing him, she could clearly see his boyish features. His brow was furrowed and his brown eyes looked very dark.
“I have a grandmother who lives here in the South somewhere,” he said. “She’s a slave.”
Phoebe couldn’t stop her mouth from dropping open. “You mean she …she’s…”
“A Negro. Yes.”
Phoebe had no idea what to say. She had always assumed that Ted’s dusky skin was brown from the sun, but she realized suddenly that Ted wasn’t a farm boy. He worked inside his uncle’s factory all day. And even during all those winter months they’d spent inWash- ington City, Ted’s suntan had never faded. He had the full lips that so many of the Negro contrabands had and thick, curly brown hair. Still, she never would have guessed he was part Negro.
“The plantation’s white overseer forced himself on my grandmother,” Ted continued. “She had a baby girl—my mother. Ma is a mulatto. She looks mostly white, though. My grandmother found out about some Quaker folks, abolitionists, who offered to smuggle my mother up north, into Pennsylvania. My ma left when she was five years old, pretending to be their white daughter. She remembers being a slave and living in a place like this. But she grew up as a white woman and married my father.”
“Did your father know that she—?”
“Yeah, he knew. He didn’t care.” Ted rolled onto his back again, staring up at the canvas roof. “What that old slave woman called me today …a quadroon …that’s what I am, Ike. It means I’ve got three white grandparents and one Negro one.”
Phoebe rolled over onto her back, too, still unsure what to say. “Why are you telling me this?” she finally asked.
“I’ve always been too ashamed to let anyone know. Ma warned us never to tell a soul because a lot of people won’t give you the time of day if they know you’re partly Negro. Ma said no matter what, don’t ever let on that you’ve got African blood in you.”
“Makes no difference to me if you’re an African or an Indian or an Irishman.”
“Thanks, Ike,” he said softly. “That means a lot. … You know, my mother used to tell stories about how horrible her life as a slave was, and today I saw the truth for myself. That’s no way to treat people. Did you see that big fancy house? Did you see how those rich white folks were living up there, high on the hog, while those slaves…? That cow barn is nicer than their huts. They shouldn’t be treated like animals!” He paused, exhaling angrily. “That old woman? She could be my grandmother, Ike. I’ll bet I have aunts and uncles and cousins who are forced to live just like this. … Slaves are people! Human beings. We share the same blood.”
Even though she knew the truth, Phoebe still had a hard time thinking of Ted as kin to those poor souls on Slave Row or the raggedy dock workers they’d seen. He was so smart and handsome and well educated. She’d seen the town in Pennsylvania where he lived, and it was worlds away from this place.
And that must have been his grandmother’s dream, she realized—to see her daughter and grandchildren set free from this life, free to live in a mansion like the master’s. But what a hard decision it must have been to give her child away to strangers, knowing she would never see her again. Phoebe wondered what it would be like to be loved so much by someone that they would make such a sacrifice for you. She was quite certain that she would never know.
“Say something, Ike. What are you thinking?” Ted asked.
“Your grandmother must have loved your ma an awful lot to let her go like that, so she could have a better life.”
“I suppose so. I never thought about it that way.” Ted drew a deep breath, then exhaled. “When we win this war, I’m going to find that plantation. I’m going to see if I can find my grandmother and bring her home to live with us.”
“Sounds like a good plan. Do you know where it’s at?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he said in a low, calm voice, “We nearly drowned in that river today. If we had, we would have died for nothing. Now I’m not afraid to go into battle anymore, Ike, or to die if I have to. You were right in what you said this afternoon— I know why I’m in this war now. It’s for slaves like my grandmother. So they can be free. If I have to fight in order to win their freedom …well …I’m not afraid to do that anymore.”
Ted’s words made Phoebe afraid. What if his sympathy for the slaves made him reckless and he started taking stupid chances? He could get himself killed.
“Listen, Ted—”
“Do you remember that outdoor church service we went to back in Washington?” he asked, interrupting. “Do you remember what the chaplain preached about?”
Phoebe had been too nervous to hear a word. The only thing she remembered was talking to the young preacher who’d given her a Bible. “Um …not really,” she said. “That was a while ago.”
“He read a Bible verse that said there’s no difference between slaves and free men, that we are all one in the Lord’s eyes. We ought to be the same in each other’s eyes, too. There should be no such thing as slavery. You’re right—we’re not fighting this war for General McClellan. We’re not giving up our homes and our families to follow him. We’re fighting the Lord’s battles. And if I’m going to give up everything I want in this life, I’m glad it’s for that.”
Phoebe lay awake for a long time, thinking about Ted’s words. The next morning she saw where most of his rations were going. Ted took his food down to Slave Row and shared it with the old woman and the little children she tended. “We’re going to win your freedom,” he promised her. “You’ll see.”
Phoebe left him there and went for a walk in the woods alone, following a well-worn path strewn with pine needles. The lush green forest, fragrant with the scent of mulch and pine and alive with the busy rattle of insects, reminded her of home. She crossed a small creek and came to a pond where frogs and turtles sunned themselves on the grassy banks. Even the trees were the same as home—sassafras, white oak, red cedar.
She followed the path to where it ended in a small clearing in a pine grove. Tree trunks soared above her like pillars; the warm, humid air seemed hushed and reverent. But in the deep stillness that surrounded Phoebe, she suddenly felt as though she wasn’t alone, as though someone were whispering to her in the wind. She sat down on a log and took out her little Bible, turning through the waterwrinkled pages to the story the preacher had marked for her. She had already read it over and over, countless times, memorizing the story of the little man whose name she couldn’t pronounce, the outcast who had climbed a tree to see Jesus. But she read it through once again.
This time, Phoebe remembered how the bridge beneath her feet had suddenly collapsed and how she had sunk beneath the swirling water and had nearly been swept away. Then, when she’d been certain she was lost, she’d cried out to God, and a hand had reached out for her, pulling her to safety.
She read the last line of the outcast’s story again, wishing she understood what it really meant: “For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.”