The Secrets of Mary Bowser (43 page)

The same brass candlestick that had been removed from the attic quarters.

I polished the silver so often in my childhood, I could still recall every detail of the ornate candleholders that had graced my mistress’s dressing room, a wedding gift from the weathiest of Old Master Van Lew’s New York aunts. “Where are your Boelen candlesticks?” I asked.

“Sold. Along with the rest of the silver, all my china, and half the furniture from the drawing room. It is for the best, I suppose. Less to keep up, now that we are on our own.”

I recalled Bet kneeling to light the fire hours earlier, carrying the supper tray to me herself. The plain dishes on which the meager fare of boiled turnips and potatoes were served. On the other side of Shockoe Creek, the auction houses along Main and Cary streets put household lots to sale nearly every day, because so many families on Church Hill were reduced to selling off their most treasured heirlooms just to keep from going hungry. I hadn’t realized the Van Lews might be among them.

My former mistress forced her mouth into a tight smile. “At least we haven’t yet had to take in boarders, like half the neighborhood has. It’s their just deserts for rushing us into this war, though I suppose we all suffer its costs.”

I knew the costs she meant were more than financial. The war had become a living hell to the men who fought it and the women who mourned them, North and South. Even more soldiers succumbed to dysentery and cholera than to gunshot wounds or cannon fire. And soldiers weren’t the only ones dying of disease.

We all got to die.
Suddenly I heard the words Mama had used to scold and comfort me after she left this world for the next.
What matters is what comes first. That’s what a child’s for, living long after her mama and papa are gone. And if you don’t start living again, how you gonna do Jesus’s work?

Mama had known plenty about living through suffering. All slaves do. And now white Richmond did, too.

I shivered as though the stench of death that permeated the city had seeped right inside me. What was smallpox but another form of suffering in a world full of pain and misery? What was I but another woman left to make sense of the devastating loss that left no family untouched?

But Mama’s words reminded me that I had something to sustain me that the denizens of Church Hill did not. The hope of better days for my people, if not for my papa.

Bidding Bet’s mother good night, I crossed the hall. I kept a sleepless but certain vigil through the next lonely hours. Before dawn’s earliest streaks even touched the eastern sky, I woke Bet, asking her to do for me what no one else could, so that I might be at the Gray House as usual that morning. It was the second greatest gift she’d yet given me, after my freedom—her promise to sit beside my father just as devoutly as eighteen years earlier she’d sat beside her own.

I came home the following evening well versed in the latest reports of grain shipments to Vicksburg, evidence that the Confederates there were preparing to endure a siege of many months. But I could barely endure telling Wilson what harrowed thoughts I had of Papa.

“You think I did wrong, not taking him out of Richmond to his freedom when I had the chance?” I asked as we sat upon our sofa.

“I don’t imagine there was a right or wrong to it.”

I wanted to believe him. But I’d agitated for the war, had deliberately held back information to prolong it, and never fathomed the toll it might take on Papa. “You can’t understand what it’s like, feeling responsible for my own papa’s death.”

“I understand it better than you know. I never told you how my parents died.”

Never told
were words that signaled something dear for Wilson, given all he held secret of what he saw in his years of Railroad work—and all he held in of the petty hurts and humiliations that piled up for a free man in slavery-loving Virginia. I hated being reminded of any anguish my beloved husband kept from me. “You said it was an accident, when you were just a child.” I’d never gotten him to yield any more detail of their deaths than that, aside from the fact that his grandparents raised him after his parents were gone.

“I was a child, all right. Only seven, but already old enough to fish and love it. One fine Sunday, I begged my father to take me fishing. My sister Lucy was just turned five and wanted to come along, too. So my mother packed a picnic lunch, and we walked up the James, above Mayo’s Bridge. From the Manchester side, you could wade right in until you came to a nice flat rock, big enough to hold a family.” Something shifted in his voice as he uttered that last word. “We were having a fine old time, eating and laughing, my parents clapping with pride whenever I caught a fish, until out of nowhere the waters started to rise. Happened so fast, we noticed the shouting of the other people on the river before we marked the flood itself.”

He rubbed his palms against his trouser legs, like he was trying to hold himself in place. “My father grabbed Lucy, told my mother and me to swim for shore as best we could. Young as I was, somehow I made it across. But the weight of my mother’s skirts pulled her under. I got to the riverbank in time to see a twelve-foot log float hard against my father as he clutched Lucy. It pushed them down the James until they disappeared from view.”

I laid my hands over his, wishing I could comfort the boy who stood alone on that riverbank.

“More than twenty people died in the James that day, a crowd watching in horror from the shore not able to do a damn thing to save them. But only three of the drowned were there because I’d begged and pleaded to go fishing, when the rest of my family would have been content to stay at home.”

“That flood wasn’t your fault,” I said.

Wilson nodded. “Just like the smallpox epidemic isn’t yours.”

“But I knew the risk when Papa was conscripted, and still I chose to stay in Richmond rather than take him away.”

“That’s what it is to be free. Free to make a choice, not knowing all that’s going to happen once the choice is made. That’s the hardest part of it.”

Hard didn’t begin to describe how heavy it weighed on me. “Nearly two years of war and still no end in sight. I feel too tired to go on.”

“All those trips I brought baggage North, I damn sure grew tired of it. But I’d given up something of myself to serve those people, and tired didn’t give me the right to stop.” Wilson settled a soothing kiss on me. “Everyone’s tired of this war, from Mr. Lincoln on down. Hell, I wager even your Bet is tired of carrying on crazy, and I never thought I’d see that day come.”

I smiled despite myself at that last part, just like he knew I would.

But Bet was somber and wan when next we saw her, and I sure wasn’t smiling then. It was just two evenings later, when she came to tell us Papa was gone. The cold fact of it was all she could bring back to me. Colored or white, the infectious corpses of the smallpox dead met the same ignominious end—the incinerator at Howard’s Grove. Fire vanquished the blacksmith at last, leaving me nothing to bury beside his precious Minerva.

Twenty

M
any a slave lived a whole lifetime never knowing her own papa, nor her mama. Sales tore countless others from cherished families, with no way for parent or child to know thereafter how the other fared. I knew my childhood was a rare respite within bondage, me losing my parents only to death, when most slaves, even my own mama and papa, lost theirs long before. But
many
and
countless
and
rare respite
proved scant comfort in the months after Papa died. Whatever deception I put on in the Gray House, I couldn’t deceive myself about how bitter the draught of mourning, how much it burdened. As the yoke of slavery chafed more terrible, I resolved to find a way to do yet more to rout the Confederacy.

“Do you have it?” Aunt Piss was barely inside the library of a February afternoon, before Queen Varina made her demand.

“My dear Mrs. Davis, does a gentleman ever break his word to a lady?” He bowed and handed her a gold-leaf and leather-bound volume. “It came through the blockade just today.”

“You are too kind, Secretary Benjamin.” She signaled me to unlatch the humidor as he set himself in her husband’s rocker. “I declare I have been as lonesome for Jean Valjean and Cosette as I have for my own people in Alabama. To think the Yankees should have the pleasure of Mr. Hugo’s
Les Misérables,
when all we have is—”

“Lee’s miserables,” Aunt Piss finished, his greedy fingers picking a selection of Jeff Davis’s finest cigars while he and his fawning hostess chuckled at his joke about the half-starved troops.

Aunt Piss rocked forward. “But I am afraid I must keep you from your literary diversions a few moments longer, in order to discuss some important business I have for the president.” He reached for the nutcracker and the bowl of pecans. “I have authored a proclamation” (crack) “for a day of prayer and fasting” (crack) “on behalf of the Confederacy” (crack). “Once I have secured your husband’s signature—”

A commotion in the entrance hall cut him off, a voice that struck me as half-familiar shrilling, “I must see Mrs. Davis.”

The library door burst open, pushed in by a white lady whose aging face was red with exertion. “Mrs. Davis, I’m sure you will pardon the intrusion. I believe my cousin, Mrs. Gardner, may have mentioned me to you. My name is Mrs. Whitlock.”

I started in surprise. The intruder hardly resembled the elegant woman I remembered from Bet’s mother’s sewing circle. Faded patches on her green grosgrain dress revealed that the once stylish garment had been made over twice at least. Her features appeared even harder worn than her gown.

Fearing she might mark my presence and recall my connection to the Van Lews, I repaired to the fireplace, kneeling to poke at the coals while Queen Varina admonished her for the unwanted interruption. “I receive visitors every second Thursday, Mrs. Whitman. In the drawing room.”

“Not Whitman. I am a Whitlock,” she said. “And I wish to make a personal request in confidence, not in front of other guests you might receive on Thursday.”

“I am speaking with a visitor of great importance to the president,” Queen Varina answered, but Aunt Piss was already standing to go.

“Mrs. Davis, please allow me to take my leave. It is clear this lady”—he turned and made a bow to Mrs. Whitlock—“must have business more urgent than mine. I shall come see you tomorrow.”

Once he was gone, Queen Varina offered only an impertinent, “Well?” without bothering to invite her visitor to sit.

“I understand a number of ladies have taken posts in the Treasury Department, as clerks in the note signing room. I should like one.”

“Places are very hard to get,” Queen Varina said. “I cannot secure one for just anybody who barges into my home.” She couldn’t secure one at all, really. She had no influence at the government bureaus. But she was too conceited to admit that, and Mrs. Whitlock was too desperate to realize it.

“Surely you will help me. My cousin Mrs. Gardner was a great intimate of yours, when you first arrived in Richmond.”

“I have many intimates. I tell you, there are no places in the Treasury.”

“Well there must be something somewhere. Here in the house, perhaps? You can use a housekeeper, surely?”

A Church Hill matron, begging to take Hortense’s place? Queen Varina scoffed. “You don’t expect the president to take a white lady to labor in his household.”

“What I didn’t expect was that I’d see the day when niggers would be given food and shelter by the very leaders of our people, while widows from the best families in Richmond are left to starve.”

Queen Varina took quick stock of Mrs. Whitlock’s green dress. “What widow goes about in such attire? How am I to know who or what you really are?”

“Do you know how hard it is to find black cloth in Richmond? Last month I sold the summer mourning I’d worn since Major Whitlock was killed at First Manassas, so that my daughter and I might eat for another fortnight. I’d already given the winter mourning put away from when my mother passed some fifteen years ago to my daughter, to make over for herself.” She smiled an ugly, awful smile. “I have lost a husband and son. She has lost a father, a brother, and a betrothed. Don’t you agree her grief outranks even mine?”

“I should think if something were to happen to my own dear husband, my heart would be too broken to go about insulting decent ladies in their own homes.”

“The only hearts left unbroken in Richmond are the many that have stopped beating.” Mrs. Whitlock’s eyes narrowed hard on Queen Varina. “Or those whose blood has always run cold. Good day, Mrs. Davis.”

She stormed out, leaving Queen Varina to settle back on the meridienne with Mr. Hugo’s novel.

Queen Varina departed for Montgomery first thing on Friday, the thirteenth of March, to visit her ailing father. She’d whined and repined ever since her family had to leave Louisiana, as though the Howells were the only refugees in the whole of the Confederacy. It was a relief once she was off, her supercilious lady’s maid Betsy, the ill-disciplined Davis children, and their indolent nursemaid Catherine along with her. After a three-week illness, Jeff Davis was feeling well enough to return to his office at the old Customs House, on the far side of Capitol Square. Which left Hortense, Sophronia, and me plenty of time to scour the empty Gray House.

It wasn’t quite noon when we set to straightening the nursery. “Look like bedlam broke loose in here. Smell even worse,” Hortense said. “Molly, open them windows.”

I pushed against the sash until the swollen wood frame slid a few inches, letting the first fresh air of the season into the room.

“Too cold,” Sophronia said as she righted the doll’s tea set.

But Hortense showed no sympathy. “I’m sure I don’t hear no moaning from no one got fat enough on ’em to keep warm.” She never seemed to notice cold nor heat herself, and she had little patience for those of us who did.

We worked wordless after that, until a sudden rumble sounded outside.

“Yankees?” Sophronia asked.