For Honor and Glory
Heather Graham
Slush Pile Productions
Copyright © 2020 Heather Graham
For Honor and Glory © 2020 by Slush Pile Productions
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For Honor and Glory is a work of fiction. The people and events in For Honor and Glory are entirely fictional. The story is not a reflection of historical or current fact, nor is the story an accurate representation of past or current events. Any resemblance between the characters in this novel and any or all persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
For Honor and Glory
Prologue
General Whitaker
Grant Whitaker loved to come to the graveyard and the little chapel at the edge of the park.
During the week in the midafternoon, it was quiet and lovely and peaceful. The grass was a dazzling green in the fields surrounding the chapel and graveyard, and beautiful old angels and monuments had been erected for over two hundred years here, making it both haunted and enchanting. It was Saturday, and there had been services that morning at the church, but the services were over; the parishioners were gone and even Father Landry had headed home for the day.
Of course, they were on the edge of an old battlefield that had run red with blood, and because he had been a military man all his life, he also liked to contemplate all the events that played out here.
While he liked to think he would have been a Union man himself, he didn’t know what would have been had he lived at the time of the Civil War. The largest issue, of course, was slavery, and any sane man today knew slavery was wrong. As a military man, he was well aware it still existed in parts of the world. But this was America; the country he had served all his life.
In the 1860s, the country hadn’t even been a hundred years old. A man’s first loyalty had been to his state. The concept was one of united states, but it had been difficult, he knew, for the first of the country’s documents to be written, even down to the Declaration of Independence. Thirteen states had to agree! So . . .
He admired many of the Confederate generals who had also fought in the Mexican war, who had been friends with their Union counterparts at West Point. While he had spent his life for America, he had as much sympathy here for the Confederate dead as he did the Union dead.
He’d always felt a sad empathy for Robert E. Lee. It was said Lee had spent an entire night pacing when Lincoln asked him to lead Union troops. Back to states—in the end he felt he could not take up arms against Virginia. His home had been Arlington; Lee’s wife was George Washington’s step-granddaughter. And to refuse Lincoln to side with Virginia, he knew they had to leave Arlington, her inheritance.
He couldn’t begin to imagine having that conversation with one’s wife!
And this graveyard . . .
Grant wasn’t a man prone to whimsy, but it always seemed ghosts of those long gone came like images in the wind.
He particularly liked to sit on a small stone bench by one of the vaults. It belonged to the Aubrey family and Ethan Aubrey was interred here. His father had owned a nearby farm.
Maryland, while remaining with the Union, had been split. And many a man had chosen to fight with their Southern brethren.
Ethan had died in the area and what was extremely sad was even though he had determined he had to fight for the South, his cousin John Haverhill had fought for the North. They had grown up together, discussing the magazine they wanted to create one day. Instead, Ethan had died near his family home.
Ethan’s body had been found by his cousin John, and John made arrangements that the body was returned to Ethan’s father, and thus he lay here.
Sadly, John had not survived Ethan much longer. He had died from injuries received at Gettysburg, but his commanding officer had seen to it that John’s body had made it home, too. He was buried across the graveyard, in the Haverhill family vault.
Grant sat for a minute where he loved to sit, and then he rose looking around. He hadn’t come today to contemplate war, battles, death, or people.
He was on a mission. Tomorrow was Memorial Day. And he meant to do something before Memorial Day. While the world was still plagued by a virus, the USA was opening up again. Tomorrow, people would be honoring those who had fought for the country.
His little great granddaughter had been scared on her last trip to church. She’d heard people whispering outside when the services were over, laughing and saying that it was the best plan ever, using a graveyard filled with the dead as a hiding place—and maybe others would join them there, but only after they’d made their money.
He had come to search the graveyard when he knew others wouldn’t be around. He meant to test the iron gates on the vaults, check the stone lids on the above ground tombs, and search around the monuments. His great granddaughter Sara was eleven; she was a smart girl, and while others might not believe
