Wessingham Awaits (Book 1, Music) (5 page)

BOOK: Wessingham Awaits (Book 1, Music)

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Not long after the reconciliation, Follensbee invited us on the behalf of a “friend,” to perform at a fancy costume ball. The friend in question, I would learn much later, was a financier who had benefited from the reorganization of Richmond Terminal Company into Southern Railway. Here, at his lakeside chateau, were behemoth bronze doors, original French paintings, antique Italian tapestries, and a plethora of diamond-draped wives who, without exception, could “prove” a genealogical connection to a Stuart King, a Huguenot, or one of the “First Families” of Virginia. Here, too, in the ballroom was the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a nearly naked dance troop of Brazilians with drum band, and the band’s primal-erotic beat, which assaulted the walls and inspired hip gesticulations among the inebriated Venetian, Arabian, and Persian princesses.

Brazilian Drums
:

Boom. Cha. Boo-BOOM. Ch-Chaa.

In an adjacent room, as I peeked through a cracked door waiting for our cue in the half-light, I felt Henry take my hand, his breath near the corner of my mouth. Naturally, I turned to him.

Boom. Cha. Boo-BOOM. Ch-Chaa.

“Lizzie,” he said, and nothing more, and placed his lips on mine. His arms came around me, and I inhaled as if I could absorb him. Never before had I felt such pleasure.

It was my first kiss.

Boom. Cha. Boo-BOOM. Ch-Chaa.

It was all I needed to confirm my most private beliefs. As a mute, lonely child, I had expected Henry, waited for him, searched for him, and now, as a girl approaching womanhood, I clung to him, kissed him, thanked God for my good fortune.

“If you’ve been reading the newspapers,” Dr. Talmage announced to the dense, costumed crowd, “you might recall how two young singers stole the hearts of Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland this summer at the White House. The President’s warm reception incited the nation’s interest in a local legend of ours, The Kingdom of Wessingham. The President was reportedly asked if he believed in Wessingham. He said, ‘How can I not, with such beautiful music?’”

The costumed crowd laughed and applauded.

“Elizabeth Bowyer and Henry Godwin are two of my very best music students. The President has resoundingly endorsed them. It is my greatest hope that they might please you as well. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you ‘Lizzie & Henry.’”

All of the lights in the ballroom dimmed except those that focused on us. Hand-in-hand, with the orchestra playing, we started into the crowd, parting it in a wide breadth. Everyone seemed to observe an imaginary line on the floor, daring not to cross it. We then stopped in the center of the ballroom and faced each other. The crowd maintained its distance, even as it surrounded us in a nearly perfect circle. The electrical lights extinguished completely, all except the one above Henry and me. I saw only him, and it was to him I sang.

At the end of the performance, after we had sung a duet of “Wessingham Awaits,” the lights came on, the circle collapsed, and the crowd fell upon us in a manic state of applause and congratulations. At first, I was thrilled, but soon excitement gave way to caution when several costumed characters—a priest, a judge, a jester—came between Henry and me, effectively separating us amid the alcoholically induced cheers and back-patting.

“I love your voice, darling,” said Cleopatra, sloshing her gin-and-tonic on my dress. “Absolutely gorgeous.”

“Watch it, Your Highness,” said a ballerina, blocking my view of Henry entirely, “You’ll stain’er dress!”

Cleopatra lifted my hem, exposing my petticoats. “It’s gin! It can’t stain!”

I snatched the hem from her and flattened my dress only to feel someone fondle my posterior.

“Silk.” Robert E. Lee nodded assuredly. “Even water can ruin it.”

Smiling with unease, I searched for Henry, but there were countless people in between us. Adding to my problems, the orchestra, now playing Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” waxed in volume and tempo, inflaming voices and gestures, creating a pulsing, deafening, almost surreal disorientation. I stretched my neck and found Henry yet farther away—this, right before two of the Three Musketeers fell upon me, too drunk to stand. I fought for balance, and when at last I raised my head through the sour breath and cigar smoke, a Roman gladiator and circus strongman had cornered Henry against the wall. He managed to find my eyes and smiled, only to have it obliterated upon seeing something or someone behind me, beyond me. I turned to discover the cause of such horror, but found nothing so extraordinary beyond the normal decadence.

“Lizzie!”

I returned to find Henry bolting up and over the people in front of him—like a tide against a crag—just as the gladiator grabbed his coat tail and tore him down. The strongman emerged from a bent stupor and walloped Henry in the stomach, doubling him over. The “Hall of the Mountain King” was so hysterical, the crowd so exuberant, that no one heeded my panicked cries, my attempt to claw through them, as the gladiator and strongman dragged Henry, fist clinched, from the ballroom into the hall, out of my sight. I bullied my way over a Viking shieldmaiden and Texas Ranger, through a company of cancan girls, into the hallway, but it was wrecked with a fallen mirror and toppled statue, deserted, the outside door just coming to a close. I ran the length of the hall, careened through the exit, and found the strongman pulling shut a carriage that was already in motion down the drive. I ran after it whilst it turned through the iron gates, nearly colliding with a buggy, then swinging helter-skelter over the road. It steadily gained distance, leaving me there out of breath in the road with my hair up, feet hurting, shoulders bare in the cold night, leaving me there in a wake of confusion as I saw it disappear around a bend, leaving me there in the silence, such dreadful silence, broken then from the direction in which they had gone by a gunshot, then another, then another. Fearing the worst, I ventured in the direction of the gunshots, and was the first to see him contorted in the road, his dinner jacket splayed and pockets inside out; his white shirt and bow tie splattered; his hatless, crownless head dissolving in a veritable spring of expanding darkness. There was no face—no eyes, nose, or mouth—only the fraction of a jaw, a starched collar, a slight belly bulging beneath suspenders. His watch fob, bereft of instrument, reflected the lamplight of an oncoming carriage. It wasn’t Henry, no it wasn’t Henry. But it was unpleasant in its own way. They picked me up, whoever they were, covered my shoulders, brought me back to the party, found my mother and father and served hot cocoa. I did not start screaming until I was on my way home.

ALSO BY OWEN MADDOX:

Wessingham Awaits (Book 2, Poetry)

Wessingham Awaits (Book 3, Chivalry)

Wessingham Awaits (Book 4, Adventure)

Wessingham Awaits (Book 5, Castles)

Wessingham Awaits (Book 6, Magic)

Wessingham Awaits (Book 7, Angels)

Wessingham Awaits (Book 8, War)

Wessingham Awaits (Book 9, Love)

Wessingham Awaits (The Complete Novel)

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