Christmas at Carnton (Carnton 0.5)(60)
Christmas Simmering Spices 3 (4-inch) cinnamon sticks
3 bay leaves
? cup whole cloves
1 lemon, halved
1 orange, halved
1 quart water
Combine all ingredients in teakettle or 2-quart saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer as long as desired. Check often and add more water as needed. Mixture may be cooled and stored in refrigerator for several days and then reheated. Simmering spices have long been used to help lend homes that warm and cozy feeling come the holidays. Just like Tempy’s kitchen!
AN EXCERPT FROM
TO WHISPER HER NAME
PROLOGUE
AUGUST 17, 1863
In the hills surrounding the Union-occupied city of Nashville . . . First Lieutenant Ridley Adam Cooper peered through the stand of bristled pines, his presence cloaked by dusk, his Winchester cocked and ready. Beads of sweat trailed his forehead and the curve of his eye, but he didn’t bother wiping them away. His focus was trained on the Negro hunched over the fire and what he was certain—if his last hour of observation proved true—the slave had hidden just over the ridge.
Best he could tell, the man hadn’t spied him, else he wouldn’t be going about making supper like he was. Beans and pork with biscuits and coffee, if Ridley’s sense of smell proved right. Real coffee. Not that foul-tasting brew the Rebs scalded over an open flame until it was sludge, then drank by the gallons.
Rebs. His brothers, in a way, every last one of them. Two of them the blood kind. And yet, the enemy. He hoped Petey and Alfred were all right, wherever they were.
A northerly breeze marked evening’s descent, but the air’s movement did little to ease the sweltering heat and humidity. Someone raised in the thickness of South Carolina summers should be accustomed to this by now, but the wool of the Federal uniform wore heavy, more so these days than when he’d first enlisted.
Yet he knew he’d done the right thing in choosing the side he had. No matter what others said or did. Or accused him of.
Ridley felt a pang. Not from hunger so much, though he could eat if food was set before him. This pang went much deeper and hurt worse than anything he could remember. God, if you’re listening, if you’re still watching us from where you are . . . I hate this war. Hated what this “brief conflict”—as President Lincoln had called it at the outset—was doing to him and everyone else over two bloody years later.
And especially what it called for him to do tonight. “At any cost,” his commander had said, his instruction leaving no question.
Jaw rigid, Ridley reached into his pocket and pulled out the seashell, the one he’d picked up on his last walk along the beach near home before he’d left to join the 167th Pennsylvania Regiment to fight for the Federal Army. The scallop shell was a tiny thing, hardly bigger than a coin, and the inside fit smoothly against his thumb. With his forefinger, he traced the familiar ridges along the back and glanced skyward where a vast sea of purple slowly ebbed to black.
It was so peaceful, the night canopy, the stars popping out one by one like a million fireflies flitting right in place. Looking up, a man wouldn’t even know a war was being waged.
When his commanding officer had called for a volunteer for the scouting mission, the man hadn’t waited for hands to go up but had looked directly at Ridley, his expression daring argument. Ridley had given none. He’d simply listened to the orders and set out at first light, nearly three days ago now. Ridley knew the commander held nothing personal against him. The man had been supportive in every way.
It was Ridley’s own temper and his “friendly” disagreement with a fellow officer—a loud-mouthed lieutenant from Philadelphia who hated “every one of them good for nothin’, ignorant Southerners”—that had landed him where he was tonight. The fool had all but accused him of spying for the Confederacy. Their commander had quashed the rumor, but the seed of doubt had been sown. And this was the commander’s way of allowing Ridley to earn back his fellow officers’ trust again, which was imperative.
Ridley wiped his brow with the sleeve of his coat, careful not to make a noise. He’d tethered his horse a good ways back and had come in on foot.
He didn’t know the hills surrounding Nashville any better than the rest of his unit, but he did know this kind of terrain, how to hunt and move about in the woods. And how to stay hidden. The woods were so dense in places, the pines grown so thick together, a man could get lost out here if he didn’t know how to tell his way.
They’d gotten wind of Rebels patrolling the outlying areas—rogue sentries who considered themselves the law of the land—and his bet was they were searching for what he’d just found. So far, he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of them. But he could imagine well enough what they’d do to a Union soldier found on his lonesome—especially an officer and “one of their own kind” to boot—so he was eager to get this thing done.
Gripping his Winchester, Ridley stepped from the tree cover, still some thirty feet from the Negro. He closed the distance—twenty-five feet, twenty—the cushion of pine needles muffling his approach. Fifteen, ten . . . But the man just kept puttering away, stirring the coffee, then the beans, then—
Ridley paused mid-step. Either the Negro was deaf . . . or was already wise to his presence. Wagering the latter, Ridley brought his rifle up and scanned his surroundings, looking for anyone hidden in the trees or for a gun barrel conveniently trained at the center of his chest. It was too late to retreat, but withdrawal of any kind had never been in his nature, as that cocksure, pretentious little—he caught himself—lieutenant from Philadelphia had found out well enough.