Cheryl Reavis (13 page)

“It is, indeed, my wish. I suggest you take your leave, Thomas—
now,
” the judge said. “Unless we’re to add trespass
and
military desertion to your sins.”

Thomas stared after Abiah. She never once looked back.

“I said take your leave!” the judge said. “By God, you are your father’s son! Is my house to be filled with the women you Harrigans have ruined?”

Thomas clenched his fists. It was all he could do not to lay hands on the old man. Finally, he turned to go, meeting his mother’s eyes as he did so.

But there was nothing he could say to her. There was nothing he wanted to say to anyone—except Abiah.

He took the letter pouch from the clearly distressed woman still holding it. He took a sack of food from Bonnie. And he took his time, calling on the self-control he’d learned as the judge’s grandson and later polished as a captain of infantry who had lived through his baptism of fire. At Fredericksburg, he had lain all night among the frozen bodies of his dead comrades, pinned down by Burnside’s stupidity and the murderous rifle and cannon fire from Marye’s Heights. He could damn well manage this. He walked carefully toward the front door, sidestepping people as he went, looking them all in the eye. For once, Mrs. Post had absolutely nothing to say. Elizabeth was no longer in the foyer.

“Thomas…” his mother said, following along with him.

“I can’t apologize for something I have not done, Mother. But I do apologize for the distress this situation has caused you. Tell Abiah I will write to her,” he said. “I
can
explain.”

“Thomas…” his mother said again, shaking her head sadly.

Jack was still standing by the door, and he handed over the horse’s reins. Thomas mounted swiftly and rode away.

Abiah stood at the upstairs window at the end of the hallway, watching as Thomas galloped down the gravel drive and disappeared into the line of trees along the road. She felt completely numb. She could hear voices on the stairs, and knew that someone approached, but she didn’t turn around.

“Mrs. Harrigan,” Captain Appleby said behind her. “Forgive my intrusion. I…came for your letter. I said I would deliver it to New Bern. I’m sailing in a matter of hours. Do you still want me to take it?”

Abiah looked at him, thinking that here, at least, was a man of his word. But the urgency in his voice told her that he had expected to find her in hysterics—and still might if he didn’t earnestly pretend that nothing was amiss and state his business quickly so he could go.

“Mrs. Harrigan,” he said when she made no response. “Do you want me to take the letter?”

“No,” she said quietly. “I want you to take
me.
”

N
o tears,
Abiah kept thinking. She held on to the self-admonishment as if it had come directly from heaven itself. There were times when, all alone in the ship’s dark cabin, she had been too frightened to cry. Though the voyage was short, the sea had been rough along the Outer Banks, and the North Carolina shoreline was notoriously treacherous. But Captain Appleby proved to be an able seaman. He sailed the little Baltimore clipper exactly where it needed to go, and Abiah was only just now letting herself consider the reality of her situation.

She had no money. She had nothing but the clothing on her back and the debt she owed for her passage. And there was the distinct possibility that she could find herself pregnant. But no matter how ill-conceived and precipitous this journey had been, she would always be grateful to Captain Appleby for not trying to talk her out of it. It was rare, she thought, for a man to understand a woman’s desperation so acutely. Or perhaps he only understood what living humbled under
the judge’s roof would entail—because of the regard she thought he had for Clarissa Harrigan. At first, Abiah tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter what these Maryland people thought. They were all supporters of the Union cause, and therefore her enemy—as Thomas himself was.

But it did matter. She loved Thomas Harrigan, and her love for him had become her shame. One way or another, she had to get away, and it had seemed easier to sail to New Bern than to get across the Rappahannock.

She had no idea what Miss Gwen would think or do about her unannounced arrival, or the fact that Abiah’s first act would be to ask her for money to pay for her passage. Perhaps the woman wasn’t even in New Bern anymore. Perhaps she’d gone inland to escape the Yankee army. Perhaps she, too, had died, and Abiah truly was the only member of the family left.

She sat in her cabin, waiting for someone to come and tell her when she could go ashore. She was not so tired from the journey as from the events preceding it. She hadn’t regained her stamina yet, and she hadn’t slept at all the night before the voyage. She had lain in homas Harrigan’s arms instead, with no thought of anything so mundane as sleep.

She gave a quiet sigh. The truly shameless part was that she had no regrets about
that.
None, regardless of the obvious consequences. She loved Thomas, and in her ignorance of events to come, she had briefly thought he loved her, too.
You have my heart,
he had told her.

She knew Thomas well. He was never one for pretty speeches, and she had believed his simple declaration meant all, when, in truth, it meant nothing.

She realized now that she should have given him the letter he had written to Elizabeth. Instead of pretending that it didn’t exist, she should have put it into his hand and asked him to explain it to her. The outcome of doing so couldn’t have been any worse than this. Destitute
and
facing a possible pregnancy, she was well on her way to total ruination—and if she wasn’t very careful, she would cry about it after all.

Someone knocked quietly on the cabin door and she moved to open it, holding on to the wall in order to stay on her feet. She could still feel the motion of the ship beneath her, regardless of the fact that it was now anchored and reasonably still. She had had no problem with seasickness. Her problem was walking.

She had to fumble a moment to get the door open. A member of the crew stood in the passageway, a noticeably older man she thought must be some kind of personal aide to Captain Appleby. Behind his spectacles, his eyes had the carefully cultivated indifference of a servant, and he was far too advanced in age to be swabbing the decks and climbing the rigging.

“If you please, ma’am,” he said.

Abiah looked at him, a little unsettled by the term “ma’am.” It was correct that he should use it—she was a married woman—but she could feel tears very close to the surface.

“The captain inquires if you’re ready to go ashore.”

She nodded, not trusting her voice. She needed to
make no preparations for her departure. She had brought nothing but herself—and, she was ashamed to admit, the infamous letter. She supposed it would be the salt she would rub into her open wounds from now on—a kind of glorified symbol of her own stupidity. She wasn’t ashamed of her unabashed participation in her wedding night. No, indeed. She was ashamed that she could have gone into the marriage with her eyes wide-open and still have been fooled so completely. She would never ask herself again why women seemed to keep finding themselves in such bad situations. Women—herself included—clearly were masters at self-delusion.

“Could you tell me,” she said, as she stepped out of the cabin, “what amount I owe for passage from St. Michaels?”

“I believe that has already been paid, ma’am,” he said.

“Paid? By whom?”

“By a woman who was sympathetic to your…difficulty and wanted to give you aid, ma’am. I don’t know her name.”

“What did she look like? Did you see her?”

“I only saw her briefly when she spoke to the captain. A young lass, she was—a little older than you, maybe, but still a lass. I have seen her from time to time at the Winthrop house when the captain visited.”

“Was she a guest or a servant?” Abiah asked, thinking that Gertie was the only person she knew with money who might do such a thing—if she’d forgiven their quarrel in the Winthrop driveway.

“Oh, a guest, ma’am. Quite beautiful she was, too. Golden hair. You wouldn’t think a mere lass such as she would be having money so conveniently at hand like that—but then the rich ain’t like the rest of us, I’m told.”

Abiah faltered.

Not Gertie—Elizabeth.
She owed her flawless and timely escape to Elizabeth Channing. She wanted to laugh—would have laughed, if she hadn’t felt so incredibly foolish. Captain Appleby must have come to see her with Elizabeth’s money already in his pocket. Perhaps it had been an outright bribe to get Abiah away from the Winthrop house and out of Thomas’s reach. Or perhaps Elizabeth had presented her request as a sincere desire to help. And poor naive and unsuspecting soul that she was, Abiah had made it so easy for them both.

“Mind how you go, ma’am,” the old man said, looking back at her.

She took a deep breath and followed after him. From now on, she would indeed mind how she went. It was her choice whether or not she wanted to play the helpless victim—Gertie had been right about that—and no one would know she had worth if she herself didn’t behave as if she did. She had been very ignorant in this situation, and there were many things she still didn’t understand. But she was a quick study, and as far as she was concerned, paying her passage to New Bern was the very least Elizabeth Channing could do.

Aabiah made her way carefully up on deck. There
was a stiff breeze coming off the water, and she didn’t see Captain Appleby anywhere around. Apparently, his fee hadn’t included token farewells.

“Do you need an escort, ma’am?” the old man asked her, and if he recognized that she expected to see the captain again, it didn’t show.

“No,” she lied. “It’s very near here. Will you tell Captain Appleby that I thank him for his kindness. No, on second thought, perhaps not. It isn’t a kindness at all, is it, if it’s been bought.”

The old man made no comment, but he did accompany her to the gangplank. “You be careful, ma’am,” he said when she was about to disembark. “There’s rough men on these docks and there’s the soldiers about, too.”

She nodded, then walked unsteadily down the gangplank, still feeling as if she couldn’t quite keep her balance. She could immediately smell the fish and wet wood scents of the wharf. The place was noisy and crowded with people—men mostly, hastily unloading the supply ships. There were indeed soldiers standing around, apparently with nothing to do, and a few women plying their wares, which ranged from fried apple pies to themselves. Abiah thought briefly of Gertie as she passed them. At this point, she supposed that she herself was more in danger of having to take up harlotry than Gertie was.

“Pie, miss?” one of the women asked.

Abiah shook her head. She had no money for pie, or anything else. She could smell food cooking somewhere—fried
onions and meat—and her stomach rumbled with hunger.

She kept walking. The afternoon was warm and sunny. Spring was much further along here than in Maryland. The town seemed quiet enough, but she immediately recognized the apparent peacefulness as the uneasy kind that came from having one’s conquerors underfoot.

Now that she was here, she had no real plan other than to simply ask someone for directions to Miss Gwendolyn Pembroke’s house. Thus far, as Abiah walked along the street leading away from the docks, there were no establishments she felt brave enough to enter. There were no signs to identify exactly what they were. Men loitered in the doorways, staring. As she passed one open door, she could hear someone playing a piano inside—very badly.

She turned the corner. She could see a church now, and residences with picket or iron or latticework fences, but no stores.

One of the brick, two-story houses on her right appeared to have been taken over by the occupation army. Three soldiers had apparently come out of an open upstairs window and were now sitting in a row on the flat roof of the porch. One of them called to her, while the other two laughed. Abiah put her head down and walked on.

The next house had a large sign nailed to the frontporch column: Sanitary Commission. She knew from her stay in Maryland that the organization was supposed to look after the health and spiritual needs of
the Union soldiers, and she took its presence as an indication that the people of New Bern were considered to be firmly under control.

She neared a large church, and she could hear singing coming from inside—the kind of tightly harmonized renditions her mother had loved. This particular hymn, “North Port,” was being beautifully done. She stood there, arms folded over her breasts, listening to the sweet a cappella female voices soar and then begin to intertwine with the deeper male ones, part by part and layer by layer, until the very air reverberated with the pure and joyous sounds.

The things she’d kept at bay so long suddenly threatened to overwhelm her. Her mind flooded with images of Thomas, and her mother and Guire. Dear God, how she wanted to go home! Maybe she could stand this, now, if she were back at the Calder house.

But even as the thought came to her, she knew that nothing would be the same there. Her mother was gone. Guire was gone. The house would be empty or looted and destroyed. The very essence of what “home” had meant to her was forever lost. And she understood suddenly, as she hadn’t before, that she would never see Thomas again—

“Hey!” somebody yelled behind her. “Come here!”

She looked over her shoulder. The soldiers on the porch roof had seen fit to come down. One walked directly toward her on the sidewalk. The other two were cutting across the church cemetery.

“Hey!” the first soldier yelled again. “You!”

Afraid suddenly, Abiah didn’t hesitate. She picked up her skirts and headed for the open church doors, walking faster and faster and then running because the two in the cemetery were going to cut her off. She made it all the way into the foyer before one of them grabbed her by the arm. She whirled around and struck him on the ear with her fist, wrenching free, leaving her shawl in his hand. She ran into the church, bursting in among the singers. The music abruptly stopped; several of the women screamed.

“Come here, damn you!” the soldier who had accosted her yelled into the sanctuary.

She kept going, looking back over her shoulder until she tripped and pitched headlong into the group. Hymnals dropped; hands reached out to save her from falling.

“Sergeant!” one of the singers—a Yankee officer—yelled. “What the devil are you doing? Pardon me, ladies,” he hastily added.

“I’m following orders, sir! This—
woman
—won’t stay down on the wharf where she belongs! We seen her come walking up from there all by herself as bold as you please. The general says he don’t want them on the streets no more—”

“No—” Abiah said in a rush. “Please, I just…arrived on the
Anne Grey
—the captain can vouch for me. I’m looking for Miss Gwendolyn Pembroke…” She swayed on her feet.

“Here, sit,” the officer said, taking her by her forearms and putting her in a pew. “Somebody go fetch Miss Gwen. I do believe she’s got company.”

* * *

It took Thomas a long time to write the letter. He understood perfectly that he needed to tell Abiah exactly what had happened at the Falmouth hotel; he just didn’t know how to explain it without sounding like a weak and mindless fool. He couldn’t in good conscience blame everything on Elizabeth and her machinations, and the only real excuse he could make was no excuse at all.

He
loved
Abiah. He wasn’t sure when or how it had happened, exactly—perhaps it had always been there. He loved her, but he certainly hadn’t behaved as if he did. He apparently would have taken advantage of Elizabeth’s availability and willingness in that hotel room. That was the heart of it. In the end, he could only state the facts and take his chances. Once he’d put it all down in the letter and had let the mail carrier have it, there was nothing he could do but wait for Abiah to answer him.

And the waiting was agony, partly because he wasn’t getting any mail from anyone else, either. He had no way of knowing how Abiah was. His mother would surely have told him, but he supposed that the judge must have declared him persona non grata and forbidden her to write to him. Sometimes he had visions of Elizabeth intercepting his letter to Abiah as she had likely done with the others—and Abiah never knowing the truth.

In desperation, he tried to put the entire business out of his mind and attend to his soldiering, which was no easy task, given the reproachful looks he got from La Broie
and
Bender. He could understand
Bender’s disappointment. He was only a boy, and he had picked himself the wrong damn hero. La Broie’s judgment was something else again. The sergeant was a man of the world, and for Thomas to have behaved in such a way as to shock that old soldier was very unsettling indeed.