Souls Aflame (35 page)

It was not long before Lionel brought a door he had removed from inside the barn and Sara came with a kettle of hot water. Julie watched as they lifted her mother, still covered by a sheet, from the bed and placed her cold, stiffening body upon the wooden slab. When Lionel left to see to the grave digging, they removed the sheet and began washing the body.

“I can’t stand them eyes a-starin’,” Sara said suddenly. “Get some coins.”

“Coins?” Julie blinked. Sara nodded, and Julie went to her mother’s jewelry chest, where a little money was always kept. She brought the coins to Sara, then watched as Sara closed the sightless eyes and placed the coins on top to keep them shut.

Sara found the burying dress, a severely styled garment of gray linen, void of ornaments, with a high neck and long cuffed sleeves. Together they struggled to put the clothing on the body, then Julie labored to brush her mother’s hair and fashion it at the nape of her neck in a neatly braided bun.

There was a noise in the hall, then Lionel was calling up to say that Mr. Culpepper had arrived with the coffin. “We’re ready,” Julie said, a lump in her throat. So far she was handling herself well, keeping one thought burning in her mind through all the sorrow that mingled there:
keep moving—it will all be over soon.

Mr. Culpepper entered, a tall, spindly man with a hooked nose and beady eyes. He wrapped long, bony fingers together and spoke in a voice that sounded as though it were echoing in a tomb. “You have prepared the deceased?” he asked.

Julie nodded, then stepped back as he and Lionel carried in the plain wooden coffin and set it on the floor, then gingerly lifted her mother’s body from the washing board and placed her in it.

Sara went to her mistress’s wardrobe and brought back packets of crushed rose petals that had been used to make her lingerie smell sweet. These she placed along the sides of the casket. Mr. Culpepper folded Julie’s mother’s hands across her chest, then motioned to Lionel that he was ready to take her downstairs.

“I told Annie Bell to fix up the parlor,” Sara said as she and Julie followed the procession down the stairs.

They entered the room, and Mr. Culpepper and Lionel took the coffin to the spot beneath the heavily-draped window, where two straight-back chairs waited to hold it. At each end of the coffin, Sara lit candles and placed them so their illumination would cast a peaceful glow on her dead mistress’s face.

Lionel left to return to the grave digging, and Sara went to oversee the goings-on in the kitchen. Julie excused herself to go to her room and change into a proper dress. She was crossing the foyer when the front doors opened, and she found herself staring into Virgil’s sparkling eyes. He had brought the parson, who quickly stepped forward to clasp her hand warmly and offer his sympathies.

Thanking him, Julie said she wanted the service that afternoon. “Of course,” he murmured. “We will send runners to spread the word. Is three o’clock agreeable?”

She looked beyond him, through the long, narrow windows on either side of the doors. The sky was getting light. Soon it would be dawn. “Yes. Three will be fine. The servants have their instructions. Now, if you will excuse me—”

Virgil stepped forward. “Julie, I would like a word with you—”

She turned frosty eyes on him that made him stop in his tracks. “I have nothing to say to you, Virgil. This house is in mourning. Excuse me.”

She was aware of the puzzled glance the parson gave her, but she hurried on her way. Virgil Oates would not touch her again! This she had vowed, and nothing was going to prevent her from keeping her word, even if it meant
dying
.

By mid-morning, the circular drive in front of the mansion house was crowded with buggies and wagons. Grooms wandered about the lawn talking with each other, while their masters remained inside to pay their respects and attend the afternoon funeral services. It was a cold day, and the sky was gray and overcast, with a hint of rain. Julie peered out and wished she had set the time for the service even earlier, for darkness would come sooner than usual with the threatening weather bearing down upon them.

The house smelled of fresh-baked goods and hot vegetables. People had brought food in covered dishes, and the dining room table was laden with it. Sara and the other house servants were kept busy bringing tea and coffee and constantly washing dishes.

The atmosphere in the parlor was somber, and Julie gave Virgil a glance of contempt each time she entered the room. He sat in a chair next to the casket, playing the role of the bereaved husband. Once she nearly gagged when she heard him murmur to a solicitous neighbor, “If it weren’t for Julie, I could not have made it through these weeks. She has been the light of my life. She’s so much like her mother, God rest her soul…”

But the atmosphere in the other rooms was quite different. There the men talked of the war. Some still exulted over the December 13
^th
battle on the heights overlooking Fredericksburg, Virginia, when the Federal General Ambrose E. Burnside had ordered six grand assaults against General Robert E. Lee’s entrenched army. The result was useless slaughter, and some said Burnside had wept over the killing and wounding of ten thousand of his men. Lee had lost less than half that many.

The damned war, Julie swore, as she moved through the crowd. Soon she would be out of all of it. She and Myles would go west and start a new life, and they could turn their backs forever on all this grief and suffering.

Glancing up, she saw Sara motioning to her from the rear hallway. She followed the servant to the little sunroom at the back of the house. As soon as the door closed behind them, Sara asked, “Miz Julie, you sure you gonna want to leave tonight? Lionel’s scared Mistah Virgil gonna be suspectin’ something. He done said we gonna get a beatin’ for what we did last night, after all this is over with, and if’n he thinks we gonna try it again, he might just shoot us…”

“He would be least suspicious tonight of all nights. He thinks I’m too grief-stricken over both Mother and Myles to make any plans to run away so soon. We must leave tonight. We have to get to Wilmington without delay.”

Sara blinked. “Wilmin’ton? What for? I heard they took Mastah Myles to Richmond. You ain’t goin’ there an’ try to see him, is you? Won’t be no need, nohow. Thing fo’ you to do is just run and get as far from that sinful man in there as you can, Miz Julie. Run from the devil hisself, that’s what you do!”

“I’m going to Wilmington to find Captain Arnhardt—”

“Arnhardt?” Sara cried, stunned. “You tol’ me—”

“I know what I told you, but I also know the man, Sara, and I have a feeling that he escaped. He’s not like other men. He’s strong, both in spirit and in body. Oh, you’d never understand. But we are going to Wilmington and somehow, we’ll find him, and he’ll help me.”

“If’n he
is
alive, how do you know he’d help you?” Sara looked at her suspiciously. “You ain’t got time to dig up none o’ that silver and jewelry to pay him with. And he’s after money. Ain’t that why he held you for ransom?”

A warmth moved through Julie’s body. She wondered if that was the real reason. Perhaps at first it had been, but after awhile, when it became obvious no ransom would be paid, he had not been anxious to be rid of her. “Let me worry about that, Sara. Now I must get back to our guests. If Virgil sees us talking this way, he
will
get suspicious.”

She turned to go, but Sara called out to her worriedly. “They is somethin’ else, Miz Julie. Me and Lionel, we afraid. If’n somethin’ happened to you, folks’d say we run away. He’s got a brother, a free man, what works on a farm up in a place called Pennsylvania. Lionel say he knows right where it is. If’n we could go there—”

“Of course, Sara,” Julie said without hesitation. True, she would miss the two Negroes, who had been a part of her life for as long as she could remember, but she acknowledged that they too had a right to pursue happiness. “I’ll sign papers stating that you are free, and you can make your way north. There should be no problem. Lionel is too old to worry about conscription once he crosses the Mason-Dixon Line. And you’re getting on in years. I doubt anyone would try to make a slave of you again.”

Returning to the front of the house, Julie, nodding and saying the appropriate words, graciously accepted condolences from those who had just arrived. All the while, she was wishing time would pass quickly so she could escape.

“We really would have liked to wait longer to bury her,” she heard Virgil saying in that mock mournful tone he had so quickly acquired. “It’s a tragedy, but she wasted away. She was sick for so long, you know. Julie and I discussed it and decided it would be best to put her to rest as quickly as possible.”

Julie glared at him to let him know she could hear his lies.
She
had made the decision to have the funeral as soon as possible, not he—and that was so she could be on her way. Only he did not know that yet, and, she hoped, would not till she was safely gone.

Now and then Julie would glance toward her mother’s coffin, silently offering a prayer of thanksgiving that she had never known what a defiled spawn of Satan she had really married.

“It’s such a shame about Myles,” someone said. The voice came from the parlor, and Julie paused on her way to the kitchen to listen. “After coming all the way back to visit his mother, only to be captured. Did he get to see her before she died?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Virgil answered, his voice oozing pity.

Pharisee! she wanted to scream out at him for everyone to hear and know what he really was.

“Myles is my stepson, you know,” Virgil went on, “but he was wanted by the law, and I couldn’t stand the thought of him being hunted for the rest of his life, perhaps being hung by vigilantes. I did what I felt was best for all concerned and informed the sheriff that I suspected he was lurking about.”

His listener gushed, “Oh, that must have been a very difficult thing for you to do, sir. You are to be commended for having the courage.”

She could see Virgil in her mind’s eye, belly thrown out, head held high, probably with a cigar in one hand and a snifter of brandy in the other.

“Well, I did persuade the sheriff to turn him over to the Confederates. As high as the feelings in town have been against the boy, I knew he’d never make it to trial. Why, he’d be lying in a coffin next to his dear mother here.”

“Possibly. The riffraff of the waterfront can be a surly lot, and I’ve heard they were still after Myles. I wonder what the Confederate authorities will do with him.”

“Well, he did run from the South to fight for the North. Obviously he deserted the Yankee Army. The Confederates will send him to Libby Prison in Richmond, where he’ll likely be for however long the war lasts. The Yankees won’t want him in a prisoner exchange, not if he deserted them.”

“Oh, but Libby Prison, sir,” the man gasped. “They call it the Black Hole. The tales I have heard about that place are atrocious. They say our soldiers despised Major General John Pope for his antagonistic attitudes toward southern civilians, so they’re determined to vent their hatred on prisoners from his army particularly—but every prisoner there suffers. As well they should, being Yankees. Do not misunderstand me…”

Julie listened in horror as the man went on to describe what he had heard about the prison; and with each word, she knew she had to move as fast as she could to get Myles out of that place. He told how the prisoners arrived in cattle cars, packed in tightly and covered in manure by the time they arrived. Then they were marched through the streets, amidst jeers and taunts, on their way to the Tobacco Warehouse Prison. Deserters, idiots, lunatics, thieves, murderers—all were packed in together with barely space to lie down.

He described tales he’d heard of the floor being over an inch deep in greasy slime, and a horrible odor permeating the air from the open privy which was used by all. And the walls, he added, were smeared from the floors on up with the slops and excretions of the hundreds of other prisoners housed up there.

“Well, you can’t expect better for a stinking Yankee.” A third voice joined the conversation. “And with all due respect, sir, the boy’s a traitor to the South!”

Julie could not bear to listen to such drivel any longer. She moved swiftly into the parlor, where the three men looked up at her in surprise. She did not have to ask who had spoken last, for when she recognized Thad Parkland, a deacon in the church who took it upon himself to sit in judgment on everyone, there was no doubt in her mind that he had made such a remark.

“I will ask you to leave this house,” she said tightly, struggling to keep her voice low, her anger in check. “I will not have you speak of my brother in that manner, and I should think you would have some respect for the dead. Go now. This is a day of mourning.”

Several people standing about overheard Julie’s remarks and gasped with surprise. Virgil’s eyes bulged as he cried, aghast, “Julie—what is the meaning of this?”

“If you do not leave,” she continued to glare at Thad Parkland, “I will call a servant and have you thrown out. Now, do you wish to make a scene?”

“You have already made one, Miss Marshal,” Parkland said curtly. Turning to Virgil, he bowed slightly and murmured, “My sympathies, sir.”

Everyone in the parlor followed him to the front door, buzzing among themselves and glancing back nervously at Julie.

Virgil reached out and clutched her arm so tightly that Julie winced with pain. He had turned his back on the crowd, shielding them from the view of the others. “Julie, how could you do such a thing? Thad Parkland is one of the most prominent men in the community—”