In This House of Music
by Jeffrey Greene
On August 8, 1862, the night before the Battle of Cedar Mountain, Virginia, which resulted in heavy losses on both sides and an early defeat for the Union Army, Private Eustace Monaghan, attached to one of the two infantry regiments under the command of Brigadier General George S. Greene, who was guarding the rear of the Federal position, relieved his counterpart on sentry duty at 1:00 a.m.
It was a warm, still, humid night and, not long after he took his place on the ridge overlooking the camp, a dense fog settled in, obscuring all but the nearest trees from view. The green recruit’s unease mounted as visibility decreased, and the incidental movements of another sentry some hundred feet to his right kept him in a jumpy state of strained alertness.
Even in his tiny experience of war, he knew that a night attack, especially under these conditions, was unlikely, yet every rustle and crack in the underbrush, every owl and insect, even the muted clanking of his cloth-bound canteen against the rifle stock, fueled his dire imaginings.
But the night passed without incident and, at first light, he drew out his late father’s pocket watch and was surprised to discover that his relief was overdue.
The fog, which had thickened alarmingly in his four hours of standing guard, had by now left him disoriented. He knew only that the camp was a hundred yards downhill from where he stood, and that there were several ways off this ridge, but only one was the true path. Still, it was after five a.m., and the regiment should have been awake and bustling by now.
It occurred to him that the fog was swallowing sound along with sight, and the man slated to relieve him would be as blind and deaf as himself. He dared not leave his post, but why were there no voices to be heard, no snorting of horses, no banging of mess kits and cookware, all the comforting sounds of a hundred men grumbling their way into the day’s business?
The visibility by now was three or four feet at most, and the clingy mist, smelling of leaf mulch, woodsmoke and fungal rot, felt greasy on the skin. Should he call out to someone? Or risk walking toward what he could only guess was the general direction of the camp?
For several minutes he remained at his post, fearing both punishment and the humiliation of getting lost, listening intently for a familiar sound. But the first sound he heard was the last he would have expected, at least in this place: a woman singing in the near distance.
He listened, struck by the singer’s pure, effortless, crystalline tone and the haunting quality of her song. She could only be a resident of one of the small farms hereabouts, almost certainly a rebel sympathizer, and yet her singing enchanted him. It was a human sound, after all, the first he’d heard in many hours.
Something must have happened, maybe a hurried order to break camp as quietly as possible and go on the march. But surely he’d have heard their preparations, and they wouldn’t have left the sentries behind. He called out to the other soldier standing guard somewhere nearby, softly at first, and finally shouting, but there was no answer. Apparently he’d been forgotten. This decided him; he must catch up with his unit before the next roll call, or be damned for a deserter.
Making his best guess, he started down the mountain, picking his way carefully through poison-ivied thickets criss-crossed with tough, thorny vines, trying to maintain a right angle from the line of the ridge. His plan seemed sound: if he went more than a hundred paces without finding any signs of the camp, he would retrace his path straight back to the ridge and head in the other direction.
But the fog worsened as he descended, impeding his progress with its fleshy, foul-smelling density, and long before he had counted even a hundred paces he knew he’d chosen the wrong direction. The descent was proving steeper and brushier than the ascent from the camp to the ridge had been, so he knew he must be heading down into the valley. Going uphill would take him back to the ridge, but which way uphill? The fog had utterly confounded his simple geometry. Barely quelling panic, he tried to sense which direction he should take, as an animal might, but the damnable fog, enclosing him on all sides, mocked his efforts.
Daylight came as a gradual yellowing of the mist. Rumors had flown through the regiment all the previous afternoon and evening that an attack on the Confederates was imminent, probably this morning, and yet here he was, criminally separated from his unit, lost in the brambles when he should be preparing for battle. Raw youth was no excuse. Even if he found his way back to the regiment, he would probably be arrested on sight, his protestations disregarded, a firing squad inevitable.
He crouched down in the thicket, runnels of grimy sweat stinging his eyes, all but paralyzed by the shame of his predicament, afraid to move, afraid not to move, the fog less like an enemy now than a protector, justifying and encouraging his latent cowardice.
He wondered if it was possible for a twenty-year old in perfect health to simply die from the sheer impossibility of his position. He almost hoped it was; a quick death would solve everything. Through no fault of his own, he had lost his honorable place in the army and in the good graces of his family, who had so proudly seen him off to war in defense of his country. The only place left to him, perhaps in all the world, was here, crouched like an animal in this blind, pestilent thicket, with nothing left for him to do but await the soldiers dispatched to arrest him, which would doubtless occur as soon as the fog lifted.
Then something happened, which in his near despair felt like a reprieve: he heard the woman singing again, and much closer now, possibly mere yards away, which meant that her farm, cabin, whatever it happened to be, was a most attainable goal. The sheer beauty of her voice tugged at him, invited him... why, it almost pleaded with him to seek the help he so desperately needed, allow himself to trust what his heart told him, that no one with a voice like that could be an enemy.
But did he have any right to seek or expect help, even simple directions, from people who considered him an invader? It was rather his duty to avoid them, and theirs to hinder and confuse him. Yet even as he reasoned with himself, that gorgeous voice, singing its sad, beguiling song, went on giving the lie to his doubts.
In the end, his cramping legs decided him: gripping his rifle, he rose, lowered his head and bulled his way through the thicket, using the fixed bayonet to slice through the harassing vines. With shocking suddenness he emerged from the bush onto a narrow, rocky parapet and, in the same moment, realized that he had fully committed his next step to empty air.
The low, granite cliff was especially treacherous, lying in wait for him at the exact point where the thicket ended, and there was nothing but fog to clutch at. His rifle flew out of his hands as he fell some fifteen feet, bounced on hard-packed, pebbly dirt and rolled, his downward momentum finally arrested by the sturdy trunk of a young white oak, which prevented further battering to his now-unconscious body but cleanly broke two ribs at the point of contact.
* * *
It hurt to breathe, to move, to exist, since his name happened to be Eustace Monaghan, late of the 3rd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, Union Army of Virginia, late of honor and respect and a place in the world, now an injured, unarmed, accidental deserter, and whether in friendly or hostile hands, he didn’t know.
Yet he wasn’t unhappy, because instead of lying broken and dying alone at the base of a cliff on Cedar Mountain, he was undressed, washed and bandaged in a clean bed in this white, airy, high-ceilinged room, apparently being cared for by the singing woman who must have heard the cry torn from him by the shock of falling, then found and brought him here, wherever this was, and who was even now singing somewhere behind him, where he could not turn his head and look (it hurt too much to try), the same wordless, achingly beautiful song he’d first heard in the fog.
He wished only to lie here and listen, reveling in her gift. Even to speak seemed disrespectful, and he waited until the song had ended before whispering, “Thank you, whoever you are.”
“A friend,” said a voice as low and musical as her song, a gentle hand laid for a moment on his forehead. “You must rest. Heal.”
“If I do...” he said, his voice so hoarse and clotted that he hardly recognized it.
“You will.”
“It’s because of you.”
“We heard your cry.”
“We?”
“My sister and I. This is our home.”
“God bless you.”
“The blessing is ours. Our prayers answered.”
“You prayed? For what?”
“The chance to be of use.”
“Got lost in the fog. Separated from my unit. Terrible fog.”
“The fog brought you to us. It brings others, from time to time.”
“Your singing guided me.”
“I’m glad. But now you need sleep.”
“My ribs are broken.”
“Your right wrist also. Ankle badly sprained. Hard blow to the head. Much bruising. But all will be well. Sleep.”
“You have medical knowledge?” he asked, feeling sleepy, having the oddest impression that the woman was subtly, almost without his realizing it, singing every word she’d spoken to him. How strange, he thought, unable to keep his eyes open, already half-dreaming, as if her native tongue were music, and nothing was ever merely spoken here. Well, he could sing, too, a little, not nearly as well as she, but...
When he awoke, it was night. He heard what sounded like a stream just outside the window, a freshening gurgle that made him thirsty. Though it hurt to do so, he lifted his head and looked about the room. It was larger than a cabin, more like a modestly prosperous farmhouse, the white-painted walls and ceiling of sturdy, planed oak.
Next to a large shelf of leather-bound books was a dim portrait of a brooding, round-shouldered man in late middle age, his heavy face half-masked by a graying beard. The air seemed cooler here, probably due to the creek nearby, and he guessed by the sound of wind in the trees that the house nestled in deep shade.
The sisters were nowhere to be seen. In one corner was an upright piano with an open book of music on the rack, and atop the piano a fiddle and bow rested. Even in the absence of his hosts, the overall effect of this rather spacious room was one of open-hearted welcome, an islet of peace in this terrible war.
He wondered how long it would be before one or both of the armies barged in here and began requisitioning supplies, a thought as frightening as it was desolating. He would either be taken prisoner by the rebels or tried as a deserter by his commanders, one eventuality as bad as the other, and since he was in no condition to leave here under his own power, he could only wait for the blow to fall. These good sisters would have no choice but to surrender him to the rough hands of military justice, whether gauntleted in gray or blue. He tried to will himself into a serene acceptance of his fate, to bask in this idyll as long as it lasted.
He drifted through various and troubling dreams, and not once since his first spoken encounter had he seen the sisters. And yet somehow his needs were being met. If he fell asleep while hungry or thirsty, he was satiated when he woke up, and without the urgency in his bladder he’d felt in the night. How they could feed and water him while he was sleeping he had no idea, but he was becoming more and more curious, as the days passed, his bones knitted and his strength began to return, why he hadn’t formally met his hosts.
He could hear them well enough, singing wordless, almost conversational duets in different rooms. The sister he hadn’t yet spoken to possessed a rich contralto that blended in stunningly perfect harmony with “his” sister’s mezzo soprano. Never before had he encountered such effortlessly musical people. It was much more than a shared passion; it was food and drink to them, the air they breathed. Sometimes he tried to hum along, and they would laugh with genuine delight, and even their laughter was music.
* * *
And then came the day he was able to sit up and take his first good look around, and all at once they were simply there, standing hand in hand at the far end of a hallway lined with mirrors and family portraits. He stared at them, and they at him, for a long time, drinking in the sight, and he was delighted to find their faces as pleasing as their voices. They were rather tall, the obviously older sister perhaps an inch taller, and dressed in nearly identical frocks, very plain and simple, one gray, the other black, and both wore black buttoned shoes. Each wore her sleek brown hair in a bun. They were older than he by some years but not yet middle-aged, their beauty fully ripened, charming him, as they slowly approached, with their kind and lovely smiles.
“My name is Eustace Monaghan,” he said.
“Helen is my name,” said the younger.
“And Clio is mine,” said the taller.
“I’m honored. And your surname, if I may ask?”
“Varner.”
He bowed his head in acknowledgment. “Please forgive my not standing up. I’ve been waiting to meet you, ever since you took me into your home and cared for me. I’m very grateful. There are those who would have turned me in.”
“We saw only a man in need,” said Helen.
“I’m in your debt.”
“You’re welcome to stay here until you feel well enough to leave,” Clio said, and he recognized hers as the deeper singing voice.
“Thank you. If I could sing my gratitude, I would. In this house of music, it would be more fitting. But my voice is such a paltry thing beside yours, Clio, and yours, Helen.”
They nodded and smiled and passed in stately fashion the mirrors and portraits lining the walls, and when they were no more than half the distance to his bed, a shadow seemed to drop from the ceiling and pass across their faces. He noted it with alarm, even as pain from multiple quadrants shot through his body.
Something was happening to the sisters. Theirs was a suffering trudge now, their faces marked by signs of a dreadful ordeal that each step made more manifest. A brain-revealing wound, extending from forehead to crown, inflicted by an ax or a mattock, had opened in Clio’s hair, oozing blood over her battered face and blackened eyes. Helen’s radiant smile now unveiled a bloody hole of toothless gums, and Eustace cried out, almost seeing the rifle butt’s brutal descent. Their hair, matted with dirt and mud, hung over their shattered faces, their tidy dresses were filthy rags, and gaping tears showed manhandled breasts, bruised thighs and stepped-on bellies.
And he, too, was changing as rapidly for the worse: his injuries not healed at all, or even treated, screaming agony in many voices that bowed him off of his pleasant seat and down, down to the floor, which was no longer varnished pine but rocks, dirt and pallid weeds, stuntedly growing amidst the charred timbers of a razed house.
He lay on his back, moaning involuntarily, his uniform torn and blood-stained, cap and rifle long gone, having somehow managed to drag himself into this poor shelter from the place of his fall. And over him, in the fly-swarmed dimness, stood the Varner sisters, their gentle, innately kind smiles, in the appalling ruins of their faces, a ghastly, unanswerable rebuke to any and all uniformed freebooters that the fog delivered into their care.
Copyright © 2022 by Jeffrey Greene
