Briars
The House of Heirs
by
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As Morgana moved stealthily along the long center hallway downstairs, unintelligible sounds floated down both stairwells and out from the back downstairs bedroom so she hurried past that door. She knew that each of the downstairs guest bedrooms contained a double bed, seating of some kind, and cots used primarily for guests’ children. The rooms opened, conveniently, onto the east verandah making it possible for early arrivals and departures of relatives and other invited overnight guests. Hurrying along the hallway towards the front of the house, she peered into the unoccupied dining room, Mama’s empty parlor, and last of all, Papa’s library. There was certainly no one moving about in any quarter of the house that she could determine. Moreover, the nine Yankees soldiers seemed to have evaporated right into thin air, but the stench of whiskey emanating from Papa’s library was appalling. Morgana tip-toed in, hands on hips, scornful of the presumption of the Northern intruders, in having reduced to ruins the richly decorated sanctuary of her beloved, too recently departed father. It was then that she heard the low moaning sound like the wind whistling down the chimney. It came from the sofa facing the wide granite fireplace with the bearskin rug before it. When a man staggered clumsily to his feet, Morgana stood like a statue just inside the doorway, too shocked to speak. Slowly, the lieutenant turned towards her as he sought to balance himself against the sofa. He managed to bring his bloodshot blue eyes into focus, gazing down on Morgana Heirs’ flawless beauty for the first time ever. "Uh, excuse me, ma’am," he said, taken completely by surprise in seeing her there. "Lieutenant Shane Alexander Moss, ma’am, at your service." "At my service, indeed, sir!" Morgana blurted out, recovering her wits. "What a nerve you Yankees have – coming right into a perfectly respectable family’s home and making an absolute shambles of it. I suppose you also aim to rape all the women and kill all the men –
His union-shirt, disheveled and unbuttoned to the waist, revealed an old crescent shaped scar over his breastbone, which could well have been the price paid for standing too close to an angry or untrained horse. As a courtesy to Morgana, he quickly began fumbling the buttons on the shirt as he spoke. "You’d be the younger Miss Heirs, I presume." "You presume correctly, sir," she answered, defiantly moving to stand directly behind the sofa, looking across it and up into his sun-bronzed face. "Is there some problem, Lieutenant, with me walking through my own house?" "The problem being, Miss Heirs –," He reached for his tunic and, searching behind his back for a sleeve, attempted to pull it on. "– my instructions to your mother regarding yourself, as well as the other ladies, were that you were all to stay in your rooms behind locked doors. For your own safety, I might add." Morgana folded her arms. "Lieutenant, if I am in any danger as you suggest I may be, then it must be from you, alone! It appears your drunken, boisterous and unruly men have completely deserted you! For I swear I have yet to see a living soul that does not belong in this house – save you, and I have walked it from top to bottom and back to front." The moment Morgana finished speaking, she heard Sarah’s pitiful wail from the room upstairs and it was like a skeletal hand clutching at her heart – reminding her – warning her. She suspected Willow must have made just such a fuss that horrible day last summer in the Johnson’s cane field. Lieutenant Shane Alexander Moss chose that moment to drop his tunic, reach across the sofa and catch her wrist, twisting it and flinging her, even as she flailed out at him with her other fist, onto the soft plush brocade of Papa’s couch. "Sir, you are drunk!" Morgana protested, fighting him with every ounce of strength she possessed. "Yes, ma’am, I am that!" he answered, and ever so gently, he wrapped his wet, warm mouth around her tight, hard lips.
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About the Book
At seventeen, Morgana Heirs’ exotic dark beauty, inherited from her handsome father Morgan contrasts with her twenty year old sister Sarah’s blonde prettiness and pale coloring, a token from their red haired mother, Lillian. Morgana’s fiery and outspoken nature, also attributable to her father, conflicts with Sarah’s genteel behavior, admired by all who know them. Having taken control of every aspect of her life beginning at the very hour of her traumatic birth, Morgana defiantly exhibits independence in an era when such behavior is unseemly in a woman of breeding. Spoiled by her father, ‘Gana is an enigma to her stable and generous mother Lillian who, despite herself, leans towards her first daughter affectionately dubbed Sweet Sarah. Unaffected, Morgana entrusts her constant companion, Willow, Mulatto servant girl and daughter of household retainers, Henry and Rachel, with her confidences. Having been born only hours apart, Morgana and Willow share a kinship contradictory to expectations during the era in which they live. Sarah’s betrothed, Jonathan Baker from Greenleaf, next door, along with the Heirs sisters’ older brother Drew are away serving in the Confederate Army. Drew’s dedicated wife, Laura Lee, mother of his twins, lives with his family at Briars. Wil, the younger Heirs brother, a gangling red haired fifteen year old, against his father’s authority and his mother’s fear for his well-being, desperately wishes to join in the battle before the war is over. Patriarch Morgan Heirs’ sudden death, two days before Atlanta’s fall, leaves the household stunned. When victory by Sherman’s Union Army over Confederate General Hood brings about the capture and subsequent burning of Atlanta, the Heirs family is unable to evacuate to a safer locale as they must remain behind, awaiting Drew’s leave from the Confederate Army for Morgan’s burial. Meanwhile, Morgan’s body lies in cold storage in the Heirs’ nearby root cellar cave. With Atlanta in flames, on November 15, 1864, Briars is occupied by a battle seasoned detachment of Sherman’s Army led by young, inexperienced Lieutenant Shane Alexander Moss on his first field command. Entrusted to him in Sherman’s own hand are written orders similar to other burning teams: They must burn every structure within five miles of wherever they are billeted before rendezvousing for Sherman’s March to the Sea. Essentially alone and unprotected in the only occupied house for miles around, the Heirs women experience numbing, gruesome tragedy after occupying Union soldiers turn on their leader. The men never realize that advantage is shifting as the Mistress of Briars, her daughters, an old Negro man, and eager young Wil plot to wage their own private war. Thus begins a life or death contest within Briars’ surrounding evergreen hawthorn hedges.
About the Author
How lucky can one "little ole Southern girl" get to be? Quite frankly, when these events occurred, I couldn’t believe they were actually happening to me! There I was wearing a svelte black evening gown with ostrich feathers, sipping cocktails across the table from Lucille Ball and Gary Morton, her producer husband. Later that same evening, I was sitting with them alongside Jack Donohue, distinguished motion picture and television director and dear friend, watching a Las Vegas MGM Grand Hotel stage show. I’d spent the entire week watching these fabulous people rehearsing and taping a Lucy Special on which my husband, Norm Gray, was Jack’s First Assistant Director. The year was 1974, and the show was about Lucy going to Las Vegas. Dean Martin was her special guest star. On another occasion, imagine the kick I got from giving "The Fonz" his biggest laugh line in a Happy Days television program that my husband was directing called, "The Dance Contest." One cold winter’s day, I remember the fun of watching Robin Williams and Pam Dawber frolicking in eight inches of fresh fallen snow in Boulder, Colorado during the making of the titles for "Mork and Mindy". Another perk came each year during hiatus when the shows were down. Then, Norm and I traveled the islands of the Pacific. We started by visiting Majuro in the Marshall Islands where Norm had served in the USMC during WWII. Inspired by the beauty and tranquillity of the islands, year after year we expanded our explorations, until we had visited Tahiti, Moorea, Bora Bora, American Samoa, Western Samoa, The Kingdom of Tonga, Rarotonga in the Cook Islands and, naturally, Hawaii was always our point of departure. Have I mentioned yet, that my husband made all these events possible by deciding early in our marriage that it would be advantageous to his career if we settled in Los Angeles? It was. He gave thirty-five years of his life to the entertainment industry. Though I’d been writing since I was editor of the West Fulton High School weekly newspaper in Northwest Atlanta many years before, my first real sale was to Happy Days. I was hooked. After that encouraging beginning, I studied writing for two years under Maren Elwood in beautiful Royce Hall at UCLA. My short stories began selling. Many years later, inspired by family genealogy buffs who searched my ancestors and those of my husband, I was bewildered to learn that both our Southern families go back farther than five generations. I learned about ancestors who lived even before the days of the War Between the States (as we Southerners prefer to call the Civil War of 1861-1865). My great-great grandfather, James Alexander White fought in the Confederate Army’s Company A of the 8th Georgia Battalion of Volunteers, and was captured in 1864 and imprisoned in Illinois until the war’s end in 1865. Proud of my Southern heritage, I found the courage to undertake the task of painstakingly researching and faithfully depicting the times and turmoil surrounding a fictional Southern family from 1838 through 1867. Welcome, y’all, to BRIARS, The House of Heirs, my labor of love.