Wilderness Run (16 page)

“Isabel is a woman's name,” reflected Louis. “Bel is like the name of a pretty little girl.”

Bel frowned and picked up the white sleeve she had left in the chair earlier that day. Every morning, she made progress on a shirt cut from a pattern her aunt Pattie had commandeered from the Sanitary Commission. Bel was in competition with her friend Mary Ruth Cross to see who could finish one first. Mary Ruth had a brother in the war, about whom she talked constantly, her almost-white eyebrows arching up as she listed his many accomplishments. Laurence had yet to win any commendations for bravery, and Bel rather hoped he would hurry up and get some, just so Mary Ruth wouldn't shake her blond head in sympathy at the lesser courage of others.

“I'm making a shirt for my cousin Laurence. He's in the Army of the Potomac,” Bel announced.

“Il est dans la guerre?”

“Yes.”

“Oui.”

“Oh, sorry.
Oui.
” Bel did not look up from her stitching. The needle was cool and slippery against her thumb, and suddenly the row of thread seemed to be straightening. The tutor waited in silence.

“Mademoiselle.” Louis finally thrust his face into her peripheral vision. He smelled like tobacco and lemons. “I will answer any question you ask as long as you ask me in French.”

The temptation was too great, and Bel laid down her stitching to meet his brown eyes.
“Est-ce que—”
she began, and then faltered. “I don't know how to say it.”

“What do you want to ask?”

“Why aren't you fighting, too?” She was thinking of Laurence's twin sisters; Lucia and Anne were both marrying men who had decided to profit from the rebellion rather than enlist. She couldn't stand either of the copperhead fiancés, because she had heard them poking fun at the stiff, patriotic letters Laurence sent to his mother and father. She knew that beneath his brave lines her cousin must be burying a separate, more painful truth about the war.

“Fighting for what?” Louis opened one of his books.

“Fighting to end slavery,” Bel said, her cheeks hot.

“My country does not have slavery,” he answered, scanning a page. “I don't need to fight.”

“You don't live in Canada. You live here.”

“For a time.” He shrugged.

“I would if I could. I would die for it.”

“That's because you have never been close to death, I think,” he said to the text in front of him.

“I've never been in love, either, and I would die for that, too,” she said, half-frightened by her own words.

Louis raised his head from his book. This time, Bel stared back, defiant, clutching the white sleeve in her lap. The light in the library faded as a cloud crossed the sun. Nodding and biting his lip, her tutor closed the book with a soft thump, and in that moment Bel felt something inexplicable pass between them, like an unseen wind parting the summer leaves.

Just then, Faustina rustled past the threshold with an armload of hemlock. “How is the lesson going?” she asked. A few needles fell soundlessly to the floor.

“Très bien, Mama,”
Bel said, avoiding the tutor's eyes.

“Louis, you know as one of the few single young men left in Allenton, you are a necessity to the festivities this evening. The girls will mob you the minute you walk in.” In the company of strangers, Faustina was all graciousness, reserving her ire for her household.

“I am honored, madame,” Louis bowed his head. Bel looked out the window, to see the sun reappear above the maple branches.

“Wonderful. We'll see you at eight o'clock, then,” Faustina said. Her armload began to slide and she scurried off, clutching it to her chest. “Mary!” she called, her tone of indignation returning.

Louis resumed flipping through one of his books and opened to a page, smoothing it with his palm before sending it across the table to Bel. “Please read,” he commanded.

“You never really answered my question,” she said, taking the book.

“You never asked me in French,” he countered.
“Lisez ce passage, s'il vous plaît.”

Chapter Nineteen

“Oh no, every year I refuse to put my name in,” said Faustina, declining her sister-in-law's offer with a wave of her hand. “Daniel and I are our guest's servants and we couldn't possibly claim the throne.”

Daniel compressed his lips in agreement as Pattie Lindsey moved on, shaking the hat of names. Although his black suit and trimmed silver beard easily made him the most elegant man in the room, Daniel didn't like parties and wore the air of a man burdened by his own success.

“Let it be known that I gave you a chance,” Aunt Pattie said over her shoulder, already smiling at the next victim with practiced cheer.

Faustina was wisely making use of her sister-in-law's managerial enthusiasm by putting her in charge of the name-drawing for king and queen of the evening. After her only son had enlisted in the Second Vermont, Aunt Pattie had finally found her calling as an organizer in the women-run Sanitary Commission. If Mrs. M. J. Pomeroy, the matron leading the Allenton chapter, was the general, Aunt Pattie was her faithful colonel, carrying out all commands with an alacrity for which others could not help commending her, although their praise often sounded like complaint.

She was always bustling somewhere with her fist in a ball of lint for bandages or whisking through a mess of lists she had made with Mrs. M. J. of all the things that needed to be manufactured, counted, and shipped to keep her brave boys safe and well fed. Since the war began, Aunt Pattie had gained an enormous amount of weight, as if her own necessity to “our boys” had swelled her past her previous shape and into one of greater consequence. Tonight, she coursed through the waltzing couples like the ironsides the Union had built to destroy the
Merrimack,
thick and unstoppable, her gray-blond hair shining.

From Bel's vantage point at the top of the staircase, Allenton offered an even sadder showing at the party than it had the year before. The lack of young men gave the dance floor a spiritless air, although many young girls obligingly waltzed with each other to fill out the numbers. Bel had already refused to dance with Mary Ruth Cross and Hannah Fithian, both of whom were fascinated with boys and hoping to practice their skills in preparation for the war's end. The partnerless young wives and fiancées faked a desperate sort of merriment, while their elders sat around the rim with fans raised, nodding as if they expected the world to fall apart just this way and there was nothing to do but to enjoy complaining about it.

Bel's bird's-eye view allowed her to see the real circulation of the party: Lucia and Anne with their copperhead beaus, Aunt Pattie raising the hat of names that would determine who would be king and queen of the evening, her mother leaving Daniel's side to check on the kitchen. Soon after, Uncle George extracted himself from a conversation with the minister to follow Faustina, and Louis Pacquette arrived, his eyes blinking rapidly, as if he had just walked into the sunlight. Momentarily distracted by the tutor's entrance, Bel forgot to monitor her mother and uncle. She suspected them of sneaking off to talk about Laurence. Everyone was worried about him being moved from the hospital.

Just as Faustina had predicted, Louis's name was entered into the hat and he was signed up for several reels before the butler even took his coat. Dragged onto the dance floor by Mary Ruth in the next instant, Louis looked both pleased and terrified. Bel thumped down the stairs and drifted to the kitchen, ignoring the gaze of the tutor, who followed her with his eyes as soon as he spotted her. Still, she straightened her spine and was inwardly glad for the first time that her mother had insisted she wear a blue silk that matched her complexion perfectly.

As Bel entered the dining room, she saw two figures silhouetted behind the Oriental screen, her father's Christmas gift to her mother. She ducked into another of her favored hiding places, a nook in back of the piano. The space was almost too small for her now and her spine scraped the wall. Although she knew her elders would be scandalized if they caught her eavesdropping, to watch the private conversation play across the exotic screen was far more interesting than waltzing with Hannah Fithian.

In the past year, Faustina had acquired an obsession with the Orient: She devoured books about Arab empires and Chinese dynasties, and lectured Bel one day on silk making, telling her daughter about the rooms of tiny caterpillars that would spin a thread so fine, it felt like water in your hands. The screen had come from a Chinese junk docked in New York, where Daniel had bargained for it, from sunup to sundown, he said. He'd brought it home on Christmas Eve and triumphantly unfolded it for his wife. While Faustina gave a sharp cry of delight and exchanged modest kisses with her husband, Bel studied the gift. It was decorated with sprays of pink flowers, a village of small thatched huts, and a distant, fantastic mountain range that curled up in green spirals, as if it were made of taffy instead of earth. A dragon lounged in one panel, breathing fire. Bel longed for it. She had never seen anything so beautiful and strange, and she sulked a little over her own gift, an ornate jade teapot with a frog for a handle. She didn't even drink tea.

Mary, on the other hand, viewed the screen with utter and unfounded superstition, calling it “a pagan abomination.” She had howled with dismay when Faustina insisted on placing the canvas in the evergreen-bedecked dining room for Twelfth Night. But there it stayed on its bamboo legs, smelling faintly of ginger. The two people on the other side of it now seemed unaware that their shadows drew over the curling mountain range an exaggerated dance of their low conversation. Bel recognized her uncle from his jutting stomach and the way his hands jabbed the air when he talked. The woman was her mother.

Although she was unable to hear a word they were saying, Bel watched, transfixed by the sword of his raised arm, her mother's arched neck. They were fighting about something, and then her uncle reached for her mother's elbow, cradling it briefly in his palm. Her mother backed away and a stretch of white canvas made a channel between their shadows. He was pleading now, both arms out in a peacemaking gesture, and she was refusing, her head flicking back and forth.

After another moment, Faustina burst out from behind the screen and marched quickly toward the kitchen. Her eyes looked swollen. Cramped and dusty, Bel saw her uncle emerge and stride into the ballroom, smoothing his waistcoat with his right hand. He threw his head back before he entered the light, and Bel hated him in that instant for upsetting her mother, whatever he had said. She pushed out the other side of the hole behind the piano, only to find her exit blocked by a pair of legs.

“Move,” she hissed, and batted one of the calves, suspecting Ernest Pomeroy, a tubby thirty-year-old bachelor who often hid in the dining room at parties to consume whole plates of sweets.

“Excuse me?” came the polite voice of the tutor. His dark hair caught the candlelight as he bent down to investigate.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, brushing dust from her dress.

“I could ask the same of you,” Louis retorted. He offered her his hand and she took it, straightening up to stand beside him.

“Did you hear any of that?”

“Any of what?”

“What they were saying.”

“I don't know whom you're talking about,” he said honestly. “I just came in. I was trying get away from all those girls.” He gave a tragic shrug.

Bel laughed in spite of herself. “I know a good place to hide,” she said, suddenly daring. The blue silk and all the starched petticoats beneath felt like a cloud around her legs.

“You are not waiting to be queen?” Louis picked at invisible lint on his coat. It was too short in the sleeves and the bones of his wrists protruded from the cuffs.

“I never put my name in. My mother says I have to wait until I'm sixteen.” Bel felt stupid for admitting it.

“And when is that?” Louis said without looking at her.

“In a few months.” She shrugged to show him she didn't care. Mary bustled past with a tray of oysters, managing to simper in Louis's direction.

“Anyway, meet me outside the front door in five minutes,” Bel commanded suddenly, irritated by the maid. “I'll go around another way.”

“Outside? Can't we hide in a warm place?” He regarded the dim dining room.

“It's the only place that's safe from dancing girls.” Bel nodded to Mary Ruth Cross, who was fast approaching, her yellow hair yanked up in a tight crown.

“Five minutes, then.” Louis grimaced and stalked deliberately past Mary Ruth on his way to the cloakroom. The girl paused after he passed and addressed Bel. Her white-blond eyebrows arched to a new zenith.

“If I get to be queen, I'm going to make him waltz with me the rest of the night. He's a divine dancer,” she oozed.

Nodding, Bel watched as her mother returned to the ballroom. Not a hair was out of place and her green eyes were large and serene. Bel turned back to the screen. She saw feathers sometimes on the dark, inky body of the dragon, and sometimes fur. It had no wings, but still she believed it must be able to fly, for how could a creature have the power to destroy if it could not save itself, too? After his wide nostrils breathed fire down on the village, she imagined that the dragon would just rise up and fly over the mountain range, to live on the untouched other side.

Chapter Twenty

Bel's candle threw a yellow glare on the dusty glass of the coaches, making her reflection flare across the panes, Louis a tall gray shadow behind her. The interior of the barn was bitter cold, the air so still, they instinctively blinked and rustled their feet to imbue it with movement.

“We hid a runaway slave up there,” Bel said, pointing to the ladder that led to the hayloft. Her breath clouded around her finger.