CRANEY / The Cotillion Brigade / Excerpt #4 / 800 words
LaGrange, Georgia
April 1862
“Nannie, are you not feeling well?” asked Mary.
While the other women practiced their target shooting in Harris grove, Nancy sat several yards away on a log, rereading a letter from Brown. She wiped a tear and coughed back the swell of emotion.
“You’ve not shot yet. You’re always the first on the range.”
“What use is it?”
Mary leaned her musket against a tree and sat. “What has he written now?”
Nancy showed her the letter. “They transferred him from the Fourth to serve as commissary officer for cousin Alfred’s brigade.”
“A promotion! That is grand!”
“Brown is crestfallen. He will no longer fight aside Miles and Joe. Worse, he will now have to forage for onions and potatoes to feed others who win glory on the battlefield. All because he knows how to sign a requisition contract. It’s not fair.”
Mary took Nancy’s hands and pressed them to her bosom. “Brown will be the most popular man in the army. Come suppertime, they will bow and sing songs in his honor for having gathered such a feast.”
Nancy hesitated before revealing the more troublesome news. “Word of our militia has spread around the regiments in Virginia. The men tease Brown to no end that his wife outranks him. They are so cruel! They say I’ve shot a bull while he hasn’t even seen a Yankee.”
“I’m sure Brown takes it in stride.”
Nancy hung her head. “We’ve become a laughingstock. Even here in town, they cheer us to our faces, but I hear their snickers.”
“You must chase this darkness of the spirit. We all suffer it.”
Nancy looked toward Broad Street and the row of boxwoods in front of Mary’s columned home. Pack Beall planted them in December to celebrate the first Christmas for the Nancy Harts. Mary had begged her not to venture out that wet and chilly day, but Pack, the senior member of their troop, was visited with a premonition of death, and she resolved to leave something behind to grow in her memory. Pneumonia crept into her lungs that very night, and she passed three days later, their first casualty. On the day of her burial, the Nancies walked aside the hearse as the honor guard.
After Pack’s death, the joy faded from those early days when the Nancies rejoiced over the design of their uniforms and planned grand parades. Their hopes for a swift end to the war had been dashed, replaced by daily reports of deaths and bloody battles. After suffering devastating losses, the Confederate government passed a conscription act and took even more men from LaGrange for the armies. New Orleans remained under siege, and two weeks ago, near Corinth, Mississippi, at a wilderness church called Shiloh on the Tennessee River, 23,000 men were wounded or killed on both sides, including the gallant commander of their Western army, Albert Sidney Johnston. In Virginia, the Federals, led by a blowhard named McClellan, landed at Yorktown and now threatened to capture Richmond. The Fourth Georgia and the Army of Northern Virginia were the last obstacles in McClellan’s path. If Brown or her brothers fell in battle, they might end up in unmarked graves, never to see Troup County again.
Mary embraced her. “Darling, the others look to you for strength.”
Nancy watched Leila toe the twine marking the firing line and shoot at the scarecrow in the field below. Her musket ball didn’t land within ten feet. Nancy shook her head, despondent over their progress. “We’ve been coming out here twice a week for nearly a year. Caroline hits a beehive and sends us home with stings. Two window panes cracked. And the brush fire we ignited last September almost burned Henry Bottom’s barn to the blocks.”
“Yes, but—”
“Mary, it’s my fault.” Nancy turned to whisper her disappointment. “I raised their hopes, but I have offered them no means to improve.”
“You are too hard on yourself.”
She dropped her head into her hands. “What are we doing? Wasting time. With Peter gone, you have your hands full running his business. I must maintain Brown’s legal correspondence. Caroline feeds half the town.”
Mary tried to instill her with resolve. “You cannot abandon hope now. I doubted you from the start, I admit, but you’ve given those of us left here a reason to pull together.” She pointed to the women on the firing line. “This is not a burden for them. They live for these shooting practices. It provides them a respite and instills them with a sense of control and purpose. The college has closed, and the younger girls need our guidance. You cannot take this from them. Not when morale is so low.”
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Lang had already hoisted Brigitte onto the tremendous pyre and was busy giving the instructions to the extras at the foot of it simultaneously tying the actress’s hands together with his own leather belt.
“Fritz, what are you doing?” Margot shouted at him. They were long past the ceremonious Herr Regisseur/Gräfin nonsense and were long saying du to each other – familiarity, initiated by Lang himself, which still amazed the crew members. Hardly anyone, besides Lang’s wife, could afford it on the despot’s set.
“Just let her hold the ties in her hands. Don’t actually tie her up!”
Lang ignored her remark and instead secured the belt even tighter, ensuring that it was holding its hostage firmly in place.
“What I’m doing, my dear Margot,” he drawled, his voice amplified by the echo of a tremendous set even without his using his megaphone, “is creating authenticity. Look at her face. Now, she looks scared.”
“Of course, she does! You tied her to a stake and are planning to set the pyre on fire!”
“Just the very bottom of it,” Lang countered at once and turned to the members of the on-set fire department. “Do we have the hoses ready?”
“Fritz, drop it.” Margot liked the idea less and less. “It’s not safe.”
“It’s authentic, that’s what’s important.”
“Thea!” Getting desperate, Margot turned to Lang’s wife. “Tell him to quit it! Pommer would have never approved of it if he were here!”
“But he’s not, so I’ll do as I please!” Lang raised his voice, growing irritated.
Thea von Harbou conveniently hid behind her secretary, to whom she was dictating a piece of reportage from the set – for publicity purposes. The following day, Margot would bring the notes to the Tageblatt along with her own photos of the set. The novelist’s face was quite telling – contradicting her despotic husband was utterly beyond her desire.
Lang’s megaphone was once again aimed at the two cinematographers.
“Freund, Margot, are you ready?”
“Ready,” Margot replied, though with great reluctance.
Freund just waved his hand in the air.
Lang’s familiar shout rang out. “Silence on the set! All ready? Light it up!
And… action!”
The cameras buzzed. Inside Margot’s chest, each turn of the crank echoed the beating of her own heart – faster, much faster than usual. The previously- languid, exhausted crowd of extras hurled itself forward, bellowing and pointing fingers at the tied-up robot-Maria. Margot watched her carefully through the lens and inwardly applauded Brigitte’s professionalism. Despite the fire that was taking on much faster than anticipated, she kept laughing carelessly in the faces of the wild crowd, as though she was indeed made of steel and not mortal flesh. Her heavily made-up eyes were smarting with smoke and still, she laughed and twisted her neck sharply from one side to another – a machine, not a human, who cared not that the hem of her dress was already burning. The dress!
“Fritz!” Margot shouted. “Brigitte’s dress!”
Ellie Midwood is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning historical fiction author. She owes her interest in the history of the Second World War to her grandfather, Junior Sergeant in the 2nd Guards Tank Army of the First Belorussian Front, who began telling her about his experiences on the frontline when she was a young girl. Growing up, her interest in history only deepened and transformed from reading about the war to writing about it. After obtaining her BA in Linguistics, Ellie decided to make writing her full-time career and began working on her first full-length historical novel, "The Girl from Berlin." Ellie is continuously enriching her library with new research material and feeds her passion for WWII and Holocaust history by collecting rare memorabilia and documents. In her free time, Ellie is a health-obsessed yoga enthusiast, neat freak, adventurer, Nazi Germany history expert, polyglot, philosopher, a proud Jew, and a doggie mama. Ellie lives in New York with her fiancé and their Chihuahua named Shark Bait. For more information on Ellie and her novels, please visit her website. You can also find her on Facebook, Amazon, and Goodreads.
The moneylender’s announcement seemed to double the people, noises, and odors. In an instant the dock became my whole world. Anyone could buy me. The old man striking one coin against the other and holding it to his ears. The man and woman who pointed to our little group and shook their heads. The young husband in need of a kitchen slave. Anyone.
“Come.” The moneylender jerked the rope tethered at our ankles.
We shuffled behind him.
It was then that I noticed the difference between the straggly gray hair hanging from the moneylender’s chin and his too-thick queue black as a moonless night. Only the vainest of men wore a false queue.
The moneylender stopped, held a hand to his brow, and stared into the harbor.
I followed his gaze and my pulse quickened. So many boats! Small crude sampans, ornate long dragons, boats with one, two, and three masts—some so tall they touched the sky. Boats for fishing. Sampans for carrying cargo. Floating islands of boats, boats, boats.
We waited in the sun while the muttering moneylender tapped his foot. My body had just begun to sway with fatigue when a pale middle-aged woman approached and snapped me to attention.
She was rich; her skin powdered white, her lips dabbed with red, her arched eyebrows plucked thin. Atop a gauzy dress, she wore a red robe embroidered with peonies and birds. Behind her, a young girl held a purple tasseled umbrella over her head.
“What do you have for me, uncle?” The rich woman’s haughty tone sounded nothing like the humble quiet voices of Mama and the other women in my village.
“Healthy strong boys and girls.” The moneylender pointed to Mei. “This one has bound feet—poorly bound feet—but since she’ll spend most of her time on her back it won’t matter.” He let loose a throaty laugh, dislodged thick yellow phlegm, which he spit on the ground.
The woman’s pale hand grabbed Mei’s face, and her long, pointed nails dug into Mei’s cheeks. The woman clicked her tongue as she turned Mei’s head this way and that. “Open your mouth. Ugh, crooked teeth,” she said the moment Mei opened wide. “Ugly skin.” She patted Mei’s breast. “Plum-sized.” She pinched Mei’s ear. “Are you a virgin?”
Mei’s lips quivered. “I’m only fourteen years.” The woman smacked her cheek. “I didn’t ask your age.” She scowled at the moneylender. “Is she deaf or stupid?”
“I’m a virgin,” Mei whimpered, tears welling in her eyes.
The woman shifted her attention to me, her eyes moving downward. “Hideous feet!”
I shrunk back, curled my toes.
The woman gripped my chin, examined my face. “Open.” She nodded approvingly as she inspected my teeth. “This one is ugly. Good for nothing but a serving girl. No man will want such an ugly beast, but since her feet are big she’ll make a sure-footed slave. I’ll buy this one and the one with bound feet.”
The moneylender and the woman haggled over the price. Mei’s was double mine.
“Don’t be afraid,” I whispered to Mei as the moneylender untied the rope around our ankles.
The woman slapped my cheek. “That’s for your insolence. Slaves must be silent.” She next struck Mei with an open hand. “That’s for the bad fortune of having a talkative friend.” She pulled a red ribbon from her sleeve, wrapped it around our wrists, connecting us together like a double gift.
“I am Madam Xu,” she said as we followed her across the quay. “If you’re dutiful and not worthless your life will be agreeable enough. If you displease me or show a surly face, I’ll throw you into the sea where if you’re lucky you’ll be eaten by a big fish before you drown.”
Madam Xu stopped before a brightly painted sampan covered by a curved rattan canopy strung with red tassels. A girl holding an oar waited at the rear.
Madam Xu stepped into the sampan and sat on a carved chair with the air of an empress. “Get in. Be quick about it.”
The girl holding the umbrella pushed us forward. Despite the gentle rock and heave of the sampan, I boarded it without stumbling, my bare feet wide and steady. But Mei, with her tiny bound feet, lost her balance. She tumbled into me and, since we were tied together, I fell down with her.
“You must learn to walk on a boat. Clumsy girls make no money.” Madam Xu pointed to the floor. “Sit.” She uncoiled Mei’s braid and spread it over her shoulders. “Coarse like straw. My girls will show you how to make it feel like the finest silk.”
The umbrella-holding slave picked up an oar and together the two girls rowed us into the floating mass of red, green, blue, and orange. Each brightly painted boat was crowded with possessions. Some were little more than crude barges stacked with bamboo cages and old crates. Others had baskets hanging down the sides. Their rattan roofs went from end to end.
As we glided through the floating throng, we passed two women balanced on a ledge, their posture as natural as though standing on a street corner. On the other side, three naked brown-as-dung children leapt from their boat, splashing and playing. More life was squeezed into this bobbing water town than my village.
“Do you sing?” Madam Xu directed her question at Mei.
Mei nodded.
Madam Xu’s face puckered with skepticism. “Do you play an instrument?”
“The lute,” Mei said with more enthusiasm than I had ever heard.
Madam Xu smiled and nodded. “Did your mother teach you to dance?”
“Mother died when I was young.” Mei’s face clouded as she stared down at her hands. “My amah taught me only a few.”
“Feet too big to be silver lotus and not quite accomplished.” Madam Xu sighed. “Why did your father sell you?”
Mei’s face colored with shame. “To buy more opium.”
“It’s ruined many men.” Madam Xu picked up a wide fan, whacked it over my head, and then dropped it into my lap. “I’m hot.”
I fanned with a steady rhythm until our sampan veered into a narrow waterway. The smell! I cringed. I was used to the sweet perfume of blossoming oranges trees, not the stench of brine, fish, and sweat. My perfect fanning faltered. I would have pinched closed my nose, but I dare not risk offending Madam Xu.
Mei, however, clapped her hand over her nose.
Madam Xu swatted Mei’s hand away. “That’s the smell of money, stupid girl.”
Money!? It was the smell of Water People, wicked worthless sea gypsies forbidden to live with good people on the land. Mama said they had webbed toes and breathed underwater.
I stole a look at Madam Xu’s feet, but they were hidden beneath her dress. Madam Xu looked nothing like a Water Person. Nothing like the dark-skinned skinny men who wore only short wide pants. And nothing like the tired-faced women in their loose plain tops, not a stitch of embroidery or button to be found.
Madam Xu was definitely not a Water Person. Those bad people wore dŏulì on their heads. Or leaf hats. A few men had turbans. Everyone was barefoot. But I did not see a webbed foot among them. Amid the splashes and clatter, I caught snatches of their conversations, a coarse, vulgar dialect with many unfamiliar words.
Madam Xu pointed. “Your new home.”
Mei grabbed my hand and squeezed tight while my mouth hung open in disbelief.
