Part Two
There were many things that Virginia loved about Pembroke. She sought out the wise counsel of Reverend Oliver, appreciated the humor of the Howard Family and tried everything in her power to express kindness and gratitude towards her uncle for taking her in. It was a splendid place to call home, full of people who knew and cared for her, but it never replaced Waterford. Home was not far away, just an hour's walk down the road, but it seemed to Virginia to be a distant world, despite the many similarities that both towns shared. Seasons felt different in Waterford. The winter was somehow less brutal, and the summer was somehow fairer. Moonbeams bent closer to the earth in Waterford, illuminating dark corners and making them less formidable. She confided in James, admitting her homesickness to him and him alone. After the war, they would marry, live and die in the same town on the same street where they were born. It was their destiny to do so and he signed each of his letters with that promise.
It was decided several months in advance that Virginia would return home to visit her parents on her sixteenth birthday. This, apart from a highly anticipated visit from James at the end of the summer, was the highlight of her year. He understood her excitement, if only in part. Imagining the world through a woman's eyes, even one who was so dear to him, proved challenging for James. He rode past Waterford frequently and without sparing it a second glance or sentimental thought. Virginia's world was so much smaller than his, limited to where her feet were planted and where she desired to be. The brotherly impulse to boast of his travels and belittle her simplicity was stifled by his love for her. They spent his short visit on the outskirts of Pembroke, further than Virginia dared to travel on any given day.
"Which town is this rose from?" She asked, breathing in the white petals' sweet perfume and sitting down on a patch of grass.
"I snatched that from Mr. Osterman's garden just outside of Hillsboro," James replied, removing his glove and pointing to a fresh bruise on his wrist, "he chased me off with a wooden stick!"
Virginia pulled harshly on his forearm, sending him tumbling to her side. "You're lying!" She laughed and jostled his shoulder the way that a younger brother might do, certainly not the future bride of a well-respected soldier!
"Me? Lie? To you?! Inconceivable!"
"No man would chase off another man with a wooden stick for tampering with a rosebush! My guess is that it was Mrs. Osterman with a broom and not only did she attempt to rap your knuckles before shooing you away with your tail tucked properly between your legs, she spooked your horse and sent you crashing into," she pulled out a white feather and a bit of straw from his dark curls, "a chicken coop. My, my! How debonair you are, Captain Wilkins!"
"Ah! What a shame! You were so close, too," he chest swelled, pridefully, "it was Mrs. Osterman's mother. With a feather duster. And you needn't worry about any chickens, my dear, because it was a goat pen that I fell into!" He watched Virginia laugh and kiss his injury. The truth was, he received it during a nearly fatal encounter on the field when a Continental had disarmed him just the other day. The rose came from the Hardwick's home in Waterford. It was a light lie, a gentle one that protected her from sadness and worry. He covered it, countered it immediately with the truest words that he knew, "I love you." Virginia looked up, her hazel eyes widened and glistened as they met his. James could feel his heart begin to race from the disorienting adrenaline that can only come from such a confession. "I wanted to wait until after the war to tell you this. There are no sweeter words to hear for the first time on one's wedding day. I could not simply write them in one of my letters to you, but in truth, I don't know when the war is going to end. Or if it ever will. I want to believe that I will survive, but every day I am pushed a little bit closer to my breaking point. I need to find my strength and it begins right here, with you. I've heard it said that a heart cannot recover if it is given love and that love is then cut short… Am I being selfish, Virginia?"
"No," she shook her head in protest, softly touching her hands to each corner of his face, "no. You are being brave." She was fifteen, he was twenty-four. Still, their very first kiss was what one might expect from two very young children in a schoolyard. Their hearts were fluttering, their eyes were opened wide, staring innocently across the other's face as their lips touched, merely touched and balanced upon one another like a butterfly on a petal.
"Then why am I so afraid?"
Virginia laughed bashfully, recovering and straightening her smile in a matter of seconds. Of all the friendly faces and caring eyes that Virginia had come to know and rely upon, his was the most familiar. It didn't matter if they were in Pembroke, far across the sea or seated side by side upon some distant star, he was her comfort, he was her home. His hands were rough against her cheek, chapped and worn from his service to King George. Those same hands that held her when she was not even a day old, assisted her in taking her first steps and now wrote her love letters and brought her roses as tokens of his affection, had also delivered swift and sometimes brutal death to her fellow citizens. Indeed, it was a trying season for love to blossom. Impossible, some might say. But she loved those weathered hands and the friendly stars in his eyes that no tear could reach, nor cloud could cover. She loved the silly, boyish side of James that he kept hidden away from the rest of the world. She could see through his façade, his severity and seriousness. Even now, she saw him waiting, pure and simple on the other side of his fear.
"You needn't be afraid of anything," Virginia whispered, levitating on his warm breath, suspended inches from his beautiful face. "There is no force in all of creation that is mightier than love and no other gift, greater or smaller, that I can give to you in exchange for your heart." She was the first to move this time, leaning into his chest with just enough gentle force to guide his back to rest against the smooth ground. He guided her, too, past the backdrop of the tall grasses that glowed amber and gold in the evening light. "I love you, James Wilkins," she gazed lovingly upon him, touching her hand to his cheek and her lips to his brow. Eventually, with some guidance, they found the sweet sanctuary of his mouth. Softly it began, in full consciousness, with the same sense of innocence as before. It was only a kiss and yet, neither James nor Virginia had felt so close to another soul in all their lives. They closed their eyes, removing themselves from the rest of the world and falling deeper into comfort; slipping away into a mutual dream that they would never fully awaken from.
"I'd rather see you stay in Pembroke," he told Virginia when she surfaced, "than return to Waterford where your father is. What if he tries to harm you like last time?"
"Oh, go and spoil everything, why don't you?" She teased. "I've been away from home for far too long. Don't you understand that? Don't you miss Waterford, too? I will only be there for a week. Two at the most, if Father can stay away from the drink for that long. You've said so yourself, I am smart. I'll know when it is time for me to come back here."
"Ginger," James began, watching closely as she lay beside him and pulled a blade of grass from the ground to weave between her fingers, "I know how mundane your life in Pembroke is, but at least you are out of harm's way here. Some of the men who I ride with are heavy drinkers, too, I have seen firsthand how quickly events can escalate from recreational to dire." He saw her playful scowl in his periphery. "There will be no persuading you, will there?"
"One week," she reiterated, "possibly two at the end of December. Nothing will happen, James and if I even find myself the slightest bit wary, I will return to Pembroke without delay. You have my word." He snatched the bit of grass from Virginia's grasp and moved her into his embrace. She fought against him for a moment or two before giving up her playful protest. There was no shelter on earth so safe and sacred as his arms. She made herself at home and seemed to dissolve into his chest and James was glad.
Of every farewell that they had shared up to this point, this one was by far the most trying. They stayed in the same place and the nearer the hours strayed to when James would have to depart, they held on tighter and kissed deeper than before. This wordless mission, to memorize everything from the taste and texture of her lips to the prickle of her eyelashes against his cheek when she held him close, could have carried on well into the morning. Her pale flesh radiated, stealing light from the overhanging stars and envious moon. Her soft hair appeared obsidian, a truer black than the night sky and every strand possessed a prism of colors that danced and twisted with each illumination. He loved her, surely. Every breath that she had ever drawn, every space that she had ever occupied was precious to him, her very existence was sacred. She was his, from the moment that she was born, he was destined to be her guardian, her truest and only love.
"If anything were to happen to you," James said before rising from their refuge in the grass, "what's more—anything that I could prevent, I would surely die."
Virginia wished that he would not speak of such things but held her tongue. It was easy for them to bicker, a natural impulse that they resorted to when there was nothing left to say, nothing left to face but the truth. "Please stay," she pleaded. They faced each other simply, very simply. In their minds they were clinging to one another so forcefully that their spirits were shattering midair. "Let me ride with you a while, at least. I can find my way back."
"Virginia," he shook his head slowly, "it is time."
"I wish to follow you," tears pooled and churned in her eyes, "to every town, every encampment, every battlefield."
James grinned, balancing his forehead against Virginia's, "A battlefield is no place for a rose, my love. Stay here, where you are safe. Give me the incentive to fight and a home to return to," one tender kiss later, he stepped out of their sphere of comfort and into the world, but not without looking back for one final glance, "Every time I look at you, I remember that there is beauty in the world."
With James gone, home beckoned even louder than before. Virginia collected letters from her parents, the Wilkins Family and on several joyous occasions, she received sweet notes from James each one a profound and elongated ode to how deeply he loved her. As the sweltering golden days of summer stepped aside to make way for the fall, she discovered a promising pattern in the notes from Waterford. At the beginning of October, well over two months earlier than she had anticipated such an invitation, Virginia learned that her father's grief for driving his only child away had deepened to the point of renouncement. He had sworn off the drink, repented and, to Virginia's dismay, enlisted. He was a changed man, stable and although Virginia was uncertain of where his newfound loyalty tended and how this might affect her engagement, she met the news with excitement and joy.
James started to receive letters from Waterford several weeks later. Her prayers to return home had been answered, but at the expense of her family's kinship with their neighbors, it seemed. Where his rose was rooted and flourishing did not matter to James and with minimal convincing, he eclipsed her love for Waterford. They would marry after the war, even if they had to elope and leave the Carolinas for good. It was a heavy secret. Sweet, but weighted. Virginia picked away at the surface, trying to understand what caused her father to join the Continentals. What kind of a God would condemn her young heart to be torn between the man she loved and the father she honored? God was who she turned to, prayer swallowed her questions whole and she became that lonely girl once more, praying all day at the back of the chapel until her knees bled.
Training was brutal on her father. This was to be expected. Unlike James who stayed the course, he left camp one night without warning, crawled into a liquor bottle for several hours and returned to Waterford on a crisp autumn morning. The plan, as Virginia understood it, was to take his family and head out to sea without a trace, so that no one would question or know of his desertion. Mrs. Hardwick saw him coming down the road from her bedroom window, dragging his feet behind him and carrying a pistol in his hand. She had seen that look in his eye so many times before and knew what she must do to put Virginia's safety before her own. She locked the front door, opened her window and cried for help from Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins.
"I need you to take Tandy and ride," Mrs. Hardwick told her daughter, "don't bother yourself with her tack, just ride her as far away from here as you can go."
She meant, of course, the family's tawny pony who knew the route to Pembroke without having to be led. As much as Virginia wanted to stay and help both families with the confrontation, she knew that her intrepid mount would not stop once she was on her back. She traveled lightly, bringing only a shawl to wrap herself in and the small black bible wherein she stored each letter and pressed each rose from James. She held tightly to it and prayed throughout the sad, albeit uneventful journey.
Her uncle hadn't changed the guestroom one bit, it remained precisely tailored to Virginia's liking, as though he expected the plans with her family to fall through. Cold and sore from her early morning bareback ride, Virginia stretched out on her lovely, blue quilt and waited. Her mind was still too full, too active to allow her to doze. With the bible and its precious contents pressed to her heart, she invited God to speak with her for a while, but God never came. Silence permeated the space. It was the kind of silence that always made its appearance before the earth began to shake and the walls of comfort surrounding its witnesses crumble into ruins.
"Lord," she whispered again to no avail. "James," this time she garnered a reply. That bold, lyrical voice that she could uncover in any crowd, no matter how vast, grabbed hold of her heart and did not let go. His words were distorted by window glass and the walls of her uncle's home. She caught fragments of what was being said; but could not string them together and make meaning of them. He sounded pained, ridiculed, helplessly fighting against an incoming storm of angry insults from his commander. She wanted to see him, she wanted to help. Pembroke was just as peaceful as ever when she arrived at her uncle's door, but the scene that unfolded before Virginia when she drew back her curtain was drastically different than the sleepy village that he rode through no more than an hour prior.
"Get away from there," Virginia heard her uncle's sharp whisper from behind, "see to your chores like a good girl."
She heard him and planned to obey, but the army of redcoats and mounted cavalry that had descended upon the small town fascinated Virginia. "What are they doing here? Can I at least go outside and speak with James?"
"You will do nothing of the sort!" When his niece turned to leave, openly pained, he reached for her hand. "They are searching the town. For what or whom, I do not know. Keep your head down and try not to interfere. Those dragoons are not forgiving of insubordination."
As far as her chores were concerned, there were plenty of options. Virginia gravitated towards the kitchen, the part of the house that was nearest to where James and the enraged officer stood. She scrubbed quietly and listened, but his voice had long since vanished. When she was certain that her uncle was not nearby, she reached for the fabric window covering beside the table and stole a second glance at the outside world. No James. He seemed to have vanished amongst the orderly swarm of soldiers. They were knocking on doors and escorting the villagers from their homes and to the outside, where the cold morning was warming into early afternoon.
Their knock came in the same fashion. Virginia turned the corner to see who was calling upon them and found herself to be disappointed. If only it had been James who came to their door! He would have given them a better explanation; his gentle presence and kind words would have taken away the pain in her heart from having to abandon Waterford for a second and final time. Above all, if he had known that she was there, perhaps he could have spared the lives of the Hardwicks on that fateful day.
