Lynda Trent - The Fire Within

She went back into the bedroom and caught the wrist of his good arm.

“What are you doing?” he asked suspiciously.

“You’re moving. I’m not sharing my bed with you anymore.” She pulled him up and helped him swing his feet over the side. “Wrap the quilt around you,” she said as she drew his good arm over her shoulders. “Stand up.”

Caleb did as she told him, though she knew he must have questions. He was as heavy as she remembered, but he at least tried to hop on his good leg. It was no easy job getting him into the back room, but at last he was leaning against the makeshift bed. “This is your room.”

“Why?”

“Because I can lock this door.” She helped him sit on the bed and was glad to see that it remained in place. She looked up at his face and saw he was sweating from the pain but he hadn’t cried out. “I’ll soon have you some stew to eat.”

As she was about to leave, he caught her wrist. “You should have given me to the soldiers.”

She looked into his eyes. In the dimness of the room they were almost as black as his hair. He seemed so male and so large when she had to look up to see his face. “Lie down,” she said as she hastily moved away.

As she scooped stew into her gourd dipper, she reflected that he was right. It might have been better to let the soldiers find him. She was almost afraid of what she was already thinking about him and feeling for him, and he had only been there a few days. How would he affect her by the time he had been there long enough to heal?

Chapter Four

Megan was peeling potatoes when she heard the bell being rung at her parents’ place. She dropped the potato into cold water so it wouldn’t turn dark and dried her hands on her apron. A small frown creased her forehead. Why would someone be ringing the bell?

“What’s that sound?” Caleb called out.

“It’s the alarm bell. Something is wrong.” She untied her apron and hung it on its peg. “I have to go. They wouldn’t risk letting strangers know the settlement is there unless they were calling everyone together for a reason.”

She left the cabin and hurried down the road into the Hollow. As she neared, she could see others converging on her parents’ cabin. They all seemed as mystified as she was. Had there been an attack by the Union army? If that was the emergency, why ring the bell in such a way as to bring the women as well as the men? The settlement had long ago worked out a system of ringing the bell in a certain pattern to call only the men.

Megan hurried up the steps and through the crowd into the cabin. The Brennans were seated at the table with her parents. When she came in, they all looked at her.

For a moment she thought they had somehow found out about her prisoner and were gathering to kill him and call her to task. She stopped and stared back at them. “What is it?” she asked.

Samuel held out a sheet of paper. It was torn and badly smudged but she recognized Seth’s almost illegible handwriting. She took the letter and sat in the closest chair.

Conditions are real bad here. Folks are dying right and left of me. Mostly it’s prison fever, but lately some have come down with the measles. It might not be much of nothing for a child, but in a grown-up, it’s a killer.

The guards here are no better than animals. Men get beaten regularly and they leave us to lie in rags. When it rains, which it does more than I thought possible, water stays on the floor, seems like forever. We have to lie in it or stand. It’s real cold, too. No fires here to speak of because there’s no way to get wood. I don’t rightly know what’s going to happen when we get the first freeze.

I sure wish I was home. Signing up was the worst thing I ever done. When I get back to the Hollow, I’m not ever going to leave. Tell Ma I said hello and that I’ll be home as soon as they let me go.

Megan looked up and met Sarah Ann’s eyes. Seth’s mother was crying softly and his father stood behind her, a scowl on his face. “My boy’s in the cold and wet,” Sarah Ann said in a broken voice. “They’s treating him worse than we would an animal.”

“Yankees aren’t as good as animals,” her husband growled. “That’s a fact everybody knows.”

“Maybe we could send him some warm clothes and firewood,” Megan suggested. She was feeling sick from picturing the conditions Seth was living in. Why had Seth sent such a letter, when he must know there was nothing they could do but worry about him? Didn’t he care what a letter like this would do to people who loved him?

“Use your head, girl,” Aaron Brennan snapped. “Do you reckon the jailers would just hand them over to him? Even if he got them, somebody else would likely take them away from him. Seth may be scrappy, but he’s not real big.”

“I know. I just don’t know what else to suggest.” Megan folded the letter and slowly handed it to Sarah Ann. Had anyone else noticed that Seth hadn’t mentioned her at all? She felt angry with herself for noticing, but shouldn’t he have? He had remembered to send a message to his mother. How much more trouble would it have been for him to include her own name as well?

Sarah Ann unfolded the letter and stared down at it. She couldn’t read, but it was a link with her son.

Benjamin Grady, the preacher for the settlement, stepped forward. “We’ll pray for him. That’s the most we can do.”

There was a shuffling noise as everyone went to their knees. Megan could hear the people on the porch doing the same. The crowd was unnaturally quiet aside from the occasional cough.

“Lord, our boy Seth Brennan is in the enemy’s hands. We ask that you look out for him and protect him in Pharaoh’s land. Seth is the apple of his ma and pa’s eye and we all want him back. His bride-to-be can’t rest for wanting to see him.”

Megan glanced up but the preacher wasn’t looking at her. She hastily closed her eyes again as the prayer droned on. Is that how everyone saw her? Yearning to see Seth? It bothered her that she hadn’t spent more time in miserable loneliness and aching for his return, now that she heard Brother Grady put it like that. Was she unnatural for not missing him more? Although she would never have admitted it, she spent more time worrying about Patrick than Seth.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love Seth. She had never loved anyone but him. But they had known each other all their lives and she had always taken him for granted, even when he went off to war. It occurred to her that this could mean that she didn’t really love him at all, but she put the thought aside. This was no time for traitorous thoughts like that. Of course she loved Seth. Even if she didn’t, she didn’t want him mistreated.

Brother Grady was known for his long-winded prayers. When he prayed over a matter, he kept after it until he was certain he had God’s attention. Megan’s knees were numb by the time he said, “Amen.” She heard sighs of relief as everyone got to their feet. Aaron had to help Sarah Ann haul her bulk back into the chair, where she sat rubbing her knees and staring at the letter.

Questions broke out all over the room about Seth and what was going to happen to him. Megan listened in silence. The questions were directed at the men, not her. Again she noticed she was on the outside, looking into Seth’s life. Aside from mention in Brother Grady’s prayer, no one seemed to connect her with Seth, even though they were promised to each other. She told herself it was only because almost every family in the settlement was related to the Brennans in some way and they were all naturally worried about their kin. All the same, she felt excluded.

In the cabin Caleb was struggling to get out of bed. He had no idea what emergency had called the settlement together, but there was a chance that Union troops were in the area. He managed to swing his legs over the side and stand. For a moment he waited, giving the pain time to subside. Then he reached for his neatly folded clothes, which Megan had left on a nearby chair. Once he was dressed he felt better. Caleb wasn’t a prude, but there was something intimidating about being naked in a strange house.