Cheryl Reavis (14 page)

But even without their tacit disapproval, there was still the ongoing problem of remembering. It took no effort at all on Thomas’s part to relive that night. He could be anywhere, doing anything—asleep or awake, it didn’t matter—and he was suddenly
there,
rolling in Abiah’s arms, feeling her, tasting her, needing her. Unfortunately, it took no effort for him to remember the way she had looked at him after Mrs. Post’s announcement, either.

In his lowest moments, he berated himself for not having defied the judge and ignored Abiah’s wishes and followed after her until he could make her understand, regardless of the uproar it would have caused. His life was a damn, god-awful mess, and that was all there was to it.

Someone coughed discreetly behind him.

“What?” Thomas said.

“They’re clearing out the hospitals, Cap,” La Broie answered.

Thomas glanced at him. For the last few days there had been a great stir as the farriers got all the supply wagon and artillery horses reshod, and an exorbitant amount of ammunition and eight days’ provisions had been issued. And now the walking wounded had saddenly
been declared well again. It couldn’t be more official. The war was about to reopen.

He looked out across the Virginia countryside. All along the edge of the woods, the dogwood and redbud trees were blooming. Once the hallowed harbingers of spring, they were now merely indicators that it was time to go forth and try to kill Johnny Miller and his kind. Thomas wanted to see his wife, damn it! He didn’t want to go into battle with all this unfinished business hanging over him.

He realized that La Broie was still standing there. “What?” he asked.

“I seen Gertie, sir. She got back here without too much trouble.”

“And?”

“And I gave her the message from Miss Abiah—about her going and staying at the Calder house if she needed to, if she can get across the river, of course. They ain’t letting no civilians into Fredericksburg.”

“And?” Thomas said again.

“And she bawled, Cap. She weren’t expecting that. She wanted to know did I think Miss Abiah meant it. I said I don’t reckon Miss Abiah goes around saying things she don’t mean. Am I right about that, Cap?”

“Yes,” Thomas said. Unlike the Elizabeths of this world, Abiah Calder Harrigan did
not
say things she didn’t mean.

“I drew Gertie a map so’s she could find it if she had to. She says if she hears anything from Miss Abiah, she’ll try to send word to you.”

Thomas nodded. It wasn’t much, but it was something to hang on to.

There was a commotion suddenly at the far end of camp—riders coming in with dispatches for the senior commanding officers, the actual orders for what every soldier here already knew. The Army of the Potomac would be on the move before the sun was overhead.

“What do you hear, La Broie?” he suddenly asked. “What are they saying about Hooker?”

“Well, sir, you seen them mongrel dogs that go chasing wagons up and down the streets all the time. Joe Hooker has chased his damn wagon all the way to Washington and now he’s done caught it, horses, driver and all—but he don’t know what the hell he’s going to do with it.”

Thomas smiled slightly at the analogy. It fit the hard-drinking and feisty little general perfectly.

“Do you have any family, La Broie?” Thomas asked.

“No, sir. Just the army, sir. And Gertie. I reckon she’ll be sorry if they kill me.”

Thomas stood there, unmindful of the escalating activity around him. He ignored the drummers beating out the frantic cadence for the call to arms, and lit a cigar. La Broie was fortunate to have his conviction that Gertie would mind if he died. He, on the other hand, didn’t know if he could say the same for Abiah or not.

“Rider coming, sir,” La Broie said.

“Captain Harrigan!” the man called well before he got to them, and La Broie waved him over.

“Message for you, sir,” he said, leaning down from the saddle. “Lieutenant Noah said to bring it straight to your hand.”

Thomas took the sheet of blue paper, returning the man’s salute. It was entirely the wrong color to be anything official.

“I reckon that’s from Gertie,” La Broie said, and Thomas glanced at him. “I give her some blue pages like that.”

Thomas unfolded it and read the terse and somewhat obscure message: “Mrs. Post says she is in New Burn.”

“New Bern?” he said out loud. “What the hell is Abby doing in New Bern?”

He walked away a few steps, then reread the note Gertie had sent. And swore. Of course, New Bern. He had seen the letter addressed to someone there. And of course, the ubiquitous Mrs. Post would be the one person hereabouts likely to know all about it.

“New Bern is occupied, for heaven’s sake! You know what soldiers with nothing to do are like!”

“I do, indeed, sir,” La Broie said helpfully, to keep Thomas from looking like a fool for talking to himself, if nothing else.

“She might as well be back at the Calder farm as New Bern.+…What?” he asked La Broie pointedly, because the sergeant was most definitely
not
“minding his face.”

“Nothing, sir,” La Broie assured him. “Of course, ‘Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater’ does come to mind.”

M
iss Gwen wanted to know about everything—from the time word came that Guire had been wounded at Malvern Hill to Abiah’s attempted arrest in front of the New Bern Methodist Church.

“I want to know
all,
” she said, bringing Abiah a cup of hot tea. “So don’t leave anything out. My dogs and I live a dull life these days, if you don’t count the Yankees shooting up the place and then bringing their silly wives down here to take over everything—I can hardly even recognize the church service anymore!
You
are the only thing of interest I’ve had come my way in I don’t even want to say how long. Besides that, I don’t like guessing where I am in this play.

“All the world’s a stage, my girl—Shakespeare said that. Now clearly I’ve got a part in this production and I want to know exactly what it is. So start at the beginning…no, wait. First, I have to let those traitorous dogs in before they break down the door. I ought to let them suffer, befriending Yankee soldiers the way they’ve done.”

And so Abiah told her—or tried to. It was taking her a long time to do it, because Miss Gwen was forever asking her to elaborate on some fine point. She clearly didn’t want to hear the sad tale all at once. She preferred it piecemeal. It was as if the old lady enjoyed pondering over it revelation by revelation.

“Tell me again what Thomas looks like,” she said once.

“He’s tall,” Abiah answered after some resistance. “His hair is dark and his eyes…”

“Like yours—yes, I remember now. I remember seeing the two of you with your heads together over a book. You were like two halves of a matching pair.”

Were we?
Abiah thought, feeling the sudden urge to cry. If she wasn’t very careful, she would lose herself in the remembering.

It became an almost daily ritual for them to sit down together after they had finished the household chores. They would drink their tea in Miss Gwen’s small parlor, and Abiah would relate yet another episode of her recent and painful history. She supposed that the two of them must be the very picture of genteel domesticity, seated in front of the fire every evening with the dogs sleeping at their feet—if one discounted the Yankee soldiers who were forever coming in and out of the house.

Miss Gwen had boarders, whether she wanted them or not—officers from the Forty-fourth Massachusetts. Her large two-story house was not far from their brigade headquarters, and at the time of the Union army’s unwelcome arrival last March, Miss Gwen had been
the only person living in it. The fact that she vigorously protected what the looters had left of her home and her belongings by trying to drive the occupation soldiers away from her door with a riding crop apparently made them decide that this location suited them perfectly. They paid her nothing for “renting” most of the second floor, but they did offer her a few luxuries like coffee, tea or cocoa from time to time. And they had enough sense not to try to give anything to her outright lest they had to deal with that riding crop again. Instead, they left the various items around the house for her to “find.”

“Look at this,” she’d say, loudly enough for them to hear. “Look what some careless Yankee scalawag left unattended on the fence post! Too bad! Finders keepers!”

It was a game Abiah thought Miss Gwen and the soldiers both enjoyed, and it was no wonder the officer at the church had known immediately who Miss Gwendolyn Pembroke was and that he should send for her.

At first the boarders made some effort to engage Abiah in conversation, she thought because they had apparently found out what she had had to reveal to their commanding general to keep from being arrested—that her husband was also in a Massachusetts regiment. Now, in lieu of conversation, they eyed her curiously—sometimes appreciatively—whenever she encountered any of them on the stairs or in the front hallway. But they no longer took the liberty of trying to speak to her, and she was glad of that.

Their presence was extremely difficult for her, not just because they were the enemy, but because some of them had Thomas’s same Boston accent. She didn’t know how many times she’d looked up at the sound of one of their voices, half expecting him to be there, no matter how much she knew it to be an impossibility.

Abiah had been in New Bern nearly two months before Miss Gwen pressed her to explain the details of her marriage to Thomas Harrigan. As always, the old lady listened carefully, but for once she didn’t ask for any more than Abiah was willing to tell.

“Well, your mother saw that alliance coming—if not the circumstance, then the possibility,” Miss Gwen said at one point, and Abiah looked at her in surprise.

“She couldn’t have—”

“Could and did,” Miss Gwen said. “I know that for a fact, because I’m the one who pointed out your interest in young Mr. Harrigan.”

Abiah’s surprise progressed to absolute incredulity.

“It stuck out all over you, my girl. It wasn’t that you were all silly and moonstruck over him. It was that you worked so hard to show everybody you weren’t. Especially him. Now am I right or not?”

Abiah sighed instead of answering.

“So what reason have you given yourself for leaving this very precipitous marriage?” Miss Gwen asked bluntly.

“I didn’t have to give myself a reason,” Abiah said.

“You didn’t have to come here, either. You could have stayed with his mother in Maryland.”

“I’ve told you her situation.”

“Yes, but you haven’t quite told me yours. And
her
situation didn’t keep her from having you brought to her when you were so ill and alone there in Falmouth. She’s got more of a hand on the reins than she wants people to think—or the judge to think, either. But never mind. Whatever the reason, you obviously found it intolerable. I surmise that because you’ve made no attempt to send Thomas word of your whereabouts—or the other thing.”

“What other thing?”

“He’s in harm’s way, Abby. You’ve heard all the war news even if the Yankees won’t let the truth be posted on the signboard in front of Mr. Beers’s bookshop. The Union army got whipped again at Chancellorsville. More than likely Thomas was there. Assuming that he survived, shouldn’t you tell him he has left you with child?”

Abiah looked at her, speechless. Even she had only just come to suspect—admit—that she was carrying.

“You needn’t look so astounded, Abby. It’s very simple. You had an embarrassingly hearty appetite for breakfast when you first arrived here. It is now suddenly gone and the smell of cooking turnips sends you bolting from the room. I was with your mother when she first discovered she was going to have Guire,” Miss Gwen said. “You are like her. Morning sickness and food aversions
very
early on. And you should tell your husband.”

“I don’t think he’ll care,” she said quietly.

“Nonsense! He’s a decent man or he wouldn’t have gone to such trouble to save your life. And he certainly didn’t have to marry you.”

“He thought I was going to die, Miss Gwen.”

“So what if he did? What reasonable person wouldn’t, given the state you were in? It doesn’t matter what he was thinking
then,
silly girl. It’s what he’s thinking
now
that matters. I believe it would give him comfort to know that whatever happens, something of him—and you—will live on.”

“You don’t understand—”

“I understand regret. It is a bitter pill, let me tell you. And if you don’t tell him, and he gets himself killed like Guire, you will regret it for the rest of your life.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Abiah said, getting up and unsettling the beagle that had been sleeping soundly on her feet. He gave her a reproachful look and rolled over onto his back.

“Neither do I,” Miss Gwen said. “I have made my feelings on the matter very plain. I have given you the benefit of my wisdom and my experience, but I’m
not
one to harp—no matter how much harping may be indicated. I would say that you know best, but I don’t happen to think you do. I think your feelings are hurt—for whatever reason—and that’s all you can think about.
Your
hurt feelings. I don’t believe in condemning a person out of hand—the way you seem to have done with the man you willingly married. I believe in telling people the facts, thereby giving them
at least the chance to behave honorably. And if they don’t, then you have all the proof you need that they are not worth your time and consideration. Do you see what I mean?”

“I see that you’re harping,” Abiah said, and Miss Gwen laughed.

“Why, Abiah, you’re not nearly so dense as you sometimes seem,” she said with the tartness Abiah had come to appreciate regardless of how hard she tried now to be offended.

“If you don’t want anything to do with him, then you should at least tell his people in Maryland where you are.”

“I expect they know where I am,” Abiah said. What they wouldn’t know was who had financed her trip.

“But they don’t know
how
you are. Given your recent illness, I should think they would wonder—or are they as indifferent as you think Thomas is?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, even if they are, you were brought up to know how to behave. Whatever happened between you and her son, Mrs. Harrigan took you in when it counted, and that is likely the reason you’re still in this world today. You might at least want to find some gratitude for that, my girl, minuscule though it may be. Now. I think I’ll go annoy my boarders.”

Abiah sat for a while after Miss Gwen had left. Of course Thomas had the right to know that she was carrying his child, but she just couldn’t bring herself to tell him. First her illness, and now a baby. It would
surely seem like just another trap to him. He wanted to be with Elizabeth—Abiah had the letter to prove it. And regardless of how well she had been brought up, she wouldn’t write to Clarissa Harrigan. It was true that the woman had been kind to her. It was true Abiah had left without even a word of thanks or farewell. It had hurt too much to behave well then—or now. And given the situation surrounding Abiah’s departure, the last thing Clarissa Harrigan would expect from her was a bread-and-butter note.

The only thing Abiah could do was try to stay busy. She couldn’t very well volunteer to knit socks for the Sanitary Commission. Instead, she worked hard to fill every day with a relentless round of household activities so that she wouldn’t think about Thomas. She wasn’t afraid to go out now. She went to the post office for Miss Gwen and to the dry goods shop. She even sang sometimes in the same church choir she’d disrupted the day she’d arrived in New Bern. She had no idea whether Miss Gwen’s friends knew that Thomas was in the Union army or not. She suspected that Miss Gwen had advised them all that
he
was not an appropriate topic of conversation.

One afternoon during the first week in June, Miss Gwen met her at the door when she returned home from doing their meager shopping at the dry goods store.

“You’ve got a visitor, my girl,” she whispered. “A doctor—”

“Miss Gwen, you didn’t tell anyone about my…condition,” Abiah said in alarm.

“No, of course not. This man came from Maryland—on behalf of the mother-in-law you think is so disinterested.”

“I don’t want to see him.”

“That is too bad. He’s in the parlor and he saw you coming up the walk. Surely, you don’t expect
me
to hand deliver your rudeness.”

Abiah gave a sharp sigh. “Miss Gwen,
you
used a riding crop on his kind. I hardly think you’re one to worry about rudeness.”

“And I can still find that riding crop if I have to,” Miss Gwen said pointedly. “Were you not listening when I made my speech about regrets?”

“I was listening.”

“Then go and see what the man wants!”

Abiah went, mentally dragging her feet if not literally doing so. Dr. Nethen was standing in the small parlor, clearly more anxious than she had ever seen him.

“Abiah,” he said without prelude. “I have come with some news—my God, you look well!”

“Please,” Abiah said, ignoring the remark. “What is it?”

“Thomas was wounded at Chancellorsville—”

She gasped, because she hadn’t expected that announcement at all. She’d expected to hear that the marriage had ended, not that Thomas had been hurt. When Guire had been killed, she’d been overwhelmed by a sudden, inexplicable feeling of dread. She loved Thomas more than life itself, and incredibly, this time, she had sensed nothing at all.

“We’re assured it isn’t serious,” Dr. Nethen said. “But Clarissa was very anxious that you should know. She was also anxious to know how
you
are. So here I am. On a little intelligence-gathering excursion with the very accommodating Captain Appleby.”

He smiled. Abiah didn’t.

“You’ve seen Thomas?” she asked. “After Malvern Hill they sent word to us that my brother was all right—but it wasn’t the truth.”

“No, I haven’t seen him. But he is not in a hospital and he hasn’t been sent home. I would say that in this instance we can trust the reports we were given—particularly since it was Gertie who gave them.”

“Gertie?”

“You trust her, don’t you?”

“I…yes. If she says she saw him, talked to him.”

“She sent word that she did. She thought we might know how to reach you.”

Abiah took a deep breath to try to stay ahead of the whirlwind of emotions Dr. Nethen’s announcement had just unleashed. “Who told you I was here?” she asked abruptly.

“Appleby, of course. Clarissa was so distressed after you left, he could not keep your confidence.”

Abiah looked at her visitor, wondering what kind of crimp that put in Elizabeth’s plans. Abiah never for a moment thought that the lovely Miss Channing would herself inform anyone of her whereabouts.

“Mrs. Harrigan was good to me,” Abiah said. “It wasn’t my intention to ever cause her any difficulty. I am sorry for that.”

“The difficulty wasn’t your doing, Abiah.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“Of course not. And Clarissa has weathered scandal before. It hasn’t been nearly as upsetting for her as for Elizabeth Channing. That young woman actually thought she could behave the way she has and still be received in polite society. I dare say it has been quite a shock for her not only to have been disinvited to every major social event for the rest of the year, but to find herself in a situation that her father cannot fix.”