CHAPTER 1

Vicksburg, Mississippi

Thursday, May 21, 1863

Dearest Brother Willie,

We went to the cave for the first time today—Mama, Nat, and I. And I hate it! I prefer to risk injury from the hissing, screaming shells in my house than to scurry underground like a scared rabbit. Papa is at the hospital, attending the sick and wounded. We see him so seldom these days. Sometimes I wish he were not a doctor. Then he could stay home with us, where he belongs.

I hate what this war has done to our family. You and Joseph are far away, in Virginia. I miss you all terribly. Mama worries about you. She worries about Papa. She scarcely lets me out of her sight. Most of my friends have left Vicksburg for safer places. The ones remaining are living in caves or basements. I’m supposed to watch Nat. Mama fears he will run away to find you. I know he shan’t do such a thing. Every time a shell falls, he hides. The war confuses gentle Nat. He does not comprehend why men kill each other. Neither do I.

We heard the Yankees have taken Jackson. Our army fell back to the Big Black River and then retreated to Vicksburg. Their return was a sad sight. Wagons, cannon, and ambulances clattered down the streets. Ragged and weary soldiers, some with arms in slings, some leaning on crutches, others carrying the wounded, stumbled alongside them. We gave the men what food and water we could spare, which was very little. Many blamed General Pemberton for our defeat. Others said the fault was not his. Jefferson Davis must have confidence in him, or he would not have put John Pemberton in charge of defending Vicksburg, would he? I have met General Pemberton and think he has courage.

Vicksburg has been under siege now since the eighteenth of May. Gunboats on the Mississippi bombard us from the west. Parrott shells rain down from the hills to the east. We are caught in the middle. Nowhere is safe, not even the caves, like Mama says. You’d think General Grant would know better. He has tried to conquer our city before, without success. No matter. Our soldiers will send those Yankees scuttling, their tails tucked between their legs like scared dogs.

Mama and some of the women made bandages for the wounded last night. Oh! I must tell you what happened this morning. I was asleep in my bed when a shell burst through the roof and tore a hole in the wall above me. The house rocked like a baby’s cradle, until I thought it would fall down around my ears. Nat and Mama rushed in to see if I was injured. Nat, being Nat, dug the shell out to add to his collection. He has quite a few. Why he wants them heaven only knows.

When Mama saw my [[injured]] room, she panicked and skedaddled us to the cave. We’ve been here ever since, and it’s near evening. I had no time to get my guitar or my books. My piano surely will be ruined. These Yankees! Have they no manners? Would they wish us to destroy their homes? I think not.

Nat tugs at my arm. He has something to show me, so I’ll close. Tell Joseph I shall write him later. If I were a boy, I’d fight the Yankees with you. Does a girl love her home and family any less than her brothers do? Does she not have pride, honor? It angers me that girls are not allowed to defend what is theirs.

Mama would faint away if she heard me talking this way. I’m supposed to be a lady she reminds me every day.

“Why?” I ask her.

“Because you are,” she says. A truly puzzling answer.

My love and prayers go with you.

Always, Lizzie

I turned to Nat, crouched beside me without the mouth of the cave, his chin on his knees. “What is it, Nat?”

He placed a small piece of wood in my hands. “I made this for you, Lizzie,” he said in his slow, easy way.

“My piano,” I said, surprised at the perfect details of his miniature carving, though I really shouldn’t be. Nat is good with his hands. He can turn even a boring scrap of wood into a thing of beauty. “It’s exquisite.”

He held out another carving, a boat, like the gunboats on the Mississippi, save his had sails. “Someday I’m going to build a whole fleet and sail around the world,” he said.

I believed he would. Nat is shy and a dreamer, and others think he is slow and not quite right in the head. In fact, he is the smartest in our family. Even though he’s only twelve, two years younger than I am, he’s half a head taller. He will be a big man, like our father. I ruffled Nat’s hair, the color of the fields when the grain turns golden, the same as Papa’s and Joseph’s. Willie and I resemble Mama, our eyes the green of the forest, our hair as brown as the soil.

“Captain Nathan Stamford,” I said. “Very impressive.”

A sudden rushing sound filled the air, and Nat cringed against me, his hands over his ears. “Here comes another one,” he said softly.

A woman and her two children darted to a nearby cave. All up and down the bluffs, men, women, and little ones ducked for cover. A shell exploded, sending a flame of fire to earth directly in front of us. The noise threatened to burst my eardrums. The ground trembled as shell fragments scattered.

Nat pressed closer. “Will it ever stop?”

I put an arm around him. “Yes,” I said, but I wasn’t sure.

Another shell screamed past, and Mama rushed from the cave. “Elizabeth! Nathan! Have I raised children without sense enough to come in out of the storm? Inside! Hurry!”

Nat leapt to his feet and immediately vanished within that hideous animal den, but I did not fancy spending the night in a hole in the ground. I lingered and, forgive my disrespectful tongue, found myself saying, “It’s not a storm, Mama. It’s the Yankees.”

Mama had this way of twisting her mouth just so, the way she did now, a warning that she was losing patience. “Must you argue with everything I say, Elizabeth?”

“I’m not arguing. It’s the truth.”

She tucked a wisp of my hair behind my ear. “This is difficult for all of us, honey,” she said. “Come inside. We must talk.”

I gave the deepening blue sky a last look and trailed after her. Halfway inside I halted, my hands clenched at my sides. I could not stay in this coffin to be buried alive. I spun around.

“Elizabeth!”

I turned back. “Yes, Mama?”

“Please, sit down. You too, Nathan.”

She eased into the rocking chair Papa had brought, along with a small table and mattresses, soon after he had hired the cave dug in the hillside behind our house. Cave digging had become quite a profitable business in Vicksburg lately. Papa paid fifty dollars for ours. Imagine that much money for a hole in the ground, another senseless part of this war. Since there were no other chairs, Nat and I dropped to the floor at Mama’s feet. She flicked open her lace fan, moved it slowly, back and forth, and rocked for a moment, collecting her thoughts.

Finally she said, “I know not whether I shall ever become accustomed to the cannon, the mortars, and the changes the Federals have brought to our lives. I’m inadequate at making decisions. How I wish your father were here to offer his advice, but he isn’t. So …”

The rocking chair stopped. Mama straightened my shawl about my shoulders. “This morning frightened me, Elizabeth. If that shell had fallen inches lower …” She shook her head, took a shuddery breath. “I shan’t think about that. You were spared this time, honey, but your narrow escape made me realize our home is an easy target for the Federals. So I’ve decided we’ll live here, until our army drives them from Vicksburg.”

Live in the cave? What a horrid thought. “But Mama—”

Her mouth twisted for the second time. “I have some mending to do now,” she said. “You are to stay inside the cave, Nathan, Elizabeth. Understand?”

“Yes, Mother,” Nat said.

I said nothing.

Mama looked at me. “Elizabeth?” 

She knew my sometimes-rebellious nature well.

“I understand,” I mumbled. But I never said I would.

Apparently satisfied, Mama lit a candle and went behind the blanket hanging from the ceiling, separating her bedroom from the living area, leaving Nat and me alone.

She was asking the impossible. Already, the walls were closing in around me. The cave was darker than a tomb. The only light, since Mama had taken the candle, came from the flash of shells, the moon, and the stars. My mattress was in one corner, but I’d get little rest there. A more miserable place to live in I could not imagine. I glared at Nat, accusing him, which wasn’t fair. Very little was, these days. For instance, Nat stayed up half the night, spending hours studying the stars, so Mama had not objected when he laid a blanket to sleep on at the cave’s entrance, and I was stuck in a dreary corner.

“I can’t do this, Nat,” I said. “I can’t.”

“You can do whatever you have to, Lizzie. Even get along with the spiders.”

“Spiders!”

I could not decide whether to laugh or cry. Here I was, suffocating in the dark, and we had bugs, too. I dared not move, but other things wiggled on the floor. I saw them. “Nat!” I screamed and stomped at a monstrous brown bug.

He bent down and plucked up the bug. “Congratulations, Lizzie. You smashed a pebble.”

I slapped his shoulder. “You are not amusing.” I picked up my skirts. “I will not share my bed with … wild things. I’ll sleep under the stars.”

“You heard Mother. We’re to stay in the cave.”

“You’re outside.”

“I’m guarding the entrance.”

“What against? Bugs?”

Nat frowned. “You are upset, aren’t you, Lizzie? Don’t be. Most insects and spiders are harmless.”

“You say.”

“If it makes you feel better, I’ll search your mattress.” On his hands and knees Nat examined every inch. Then he declared my bed bug free.

I pointed to what appeared to be a large hairy spider. “What is that?”

“Tree roots.”

“Those look like eyes to me.”

“Listen, Lizzie, leave the spiders and insects alone, and they’ll leave you alone.”

“Do they know that?”

His frown switched to a sweet smile. “They do. I told them. But on the chance you feel anything crawling on you during the night, holler. I’ll come running.”

Holler? What good would that do? Resigned to my fate, at least for the present, I lay down and stared at the shadows from the fiery shells, playing across the ceiling of dirt. How I longed for my four-poster bed, with its canopy top, and for my walls, with the blue flowered wallpaper. In spite of Nat’s assurance that no spiders occupied my bed, my arms itched with imaginary crawling things. I scratched. And thought. And planned.

For I intended to join the Confederate Army, like my brothers, Willie and Joseph.