“But there are too many memories here,’’ Mary Warner said.
“I know. But somehow I’m not ready yet,’’ Amélie said. “I’ll stay the winter, then we’ll see.’’
When they had all gone, when the last mourner had departed and the house was empty except for Babette, Amélie lay down on her bed and let the tears come. But her storm of weeping did not relieve her as she thought it might. The weight, if not the horror, of her loss still sat like a black stone on her heart. She tried to shake this feeling of utter desolation but couldn’t.
Time, she had heard, heals. But as the days and weeks went by no healing took place. She ate little, slept badly. She wrote to Thaddeus, a brief letter giving the bare facts, wondering as she painfully composed it whether it would reach him. She wished he were there to comfort her, though she felt no one really could.
News that Fort Henry had surrendered to the Yankees and that the Confederate fleet had been destroyed at Elizabeth City reached her as rumblings from a distant planet. She didn’t care. What had it to do with her, her pain? She would take long walks in the wintry air just to be moving. With no goal, no purpose in mind, she would go up one street and down another, past row houses with their scrubbed white steps, past Lexington Market and its sidewalk hawkers, past St. Mary’s Seminary and its medieval flying buttresses. Down Park Avenue past the new Presbyterian church, past rusticated brownstones with cast-iron gallerys she would walk, wrapped in a fur cape, her eyes watering, her fingertips numb with cold. She would return to the house, not refreshed, but exhausted and depressed. The simplest tasks—brushing her hair, tying her shoes, taking a book she wouldn’t read from a shelf, even getting out of bed in the morning—required a strength and exertion of will she could scarcely summon.
Amélie’s continuing melancholy disturbed Babette. It upset her to see her sister’s white, unsmiling face day after day, irritated her to listen to her heavy sighs, annoyed her to watch her listless movements. Many people lost loved ones, mourned, and then got on with their lives instead of going about in perpetual gloom. Why didn’t Amélie act like a sensible human being? What good did it do to wallow in a bog of grief?
In her selfish way Babette did love Amélie, the only person she really cared for outside herself. But underneath her irritation and her love lay a hidden fear. What if Amélie should remain permanently helpless? Or, worse still, lose her mind?
Amélie had always been strong and resourceful, an older sister Babette could depend upon. She recalled an incident when she was seven. She had tripped on the veranda steps, cutting her knee. Sobbing, she had run to her mother who sat in the parlor dispensing cups of tea from a silver urn to several lady callers. Therese had looked up sternly at Babette’s intrusion, distastefully eyeing the torn dress and the tear-grimed face. Before Babette could speak her mother had coldly sent her from the room with the curt reminder that she wasn’t to be disturbed when she had guests. It was Amélie who had found her huddled and weeping on the staircase, Amélie who had gently led her up the stairs, washed the wound, put sticking plaster on it, and taken her in her arms, comforting her.
This had been only one of many similar incidents; Babette tearful over some hurt or wrong, Amélie ministering to her with love and sympathy. And now Amélie had gone into a decline, had turned weak and listless.
Babette, out of desperation, began to scold and nag at Amélie. ‘'Couldn’t you try to be more cheerful?”
No answer.
“Why do you have to wear that horrible black even when we’re at home alone, just the two of us?”
“I’m in mourning.”
“Oh, fiddle! It’s boring, it’s depressing!”
“I’m sorry.”
Babette, at the end of her wits, screamed, “Don’t you care about me?”
“Of course I do,” was the mechanical reply.
Babette’s dearest friend was Anna Blake. Anna’s parents, who had been politically uncommitted until the mass arrests of Southern sympathizers, were now wholeheartedly in the Confederate camp. In secret, under the cloak of impartiality, they did what they could to help the cause. One afternoon when Babette came for tea, Anna confided that they had hidden four runaway prisoners from Fort McHenry in their cellar.
The rebel prisoners were to leave one by one at night in disguise to a designated spot on the outskirts of the city. There they would be passed from house to house down the peninsula until they reached Rock Point where they would be ferried across the Potomac to Virginia and safety.
“Papa says it’s easier to smuggle one or two than four. But he hates to involve his relatives or friends who have families.”
Babette at once offered their cellar on Cathedral Street.
“No one would suspect us, Anna. Two women, one a bereaved mother. It would be perfect!” .
Helping Confederate soldiers (all of them in Babette’s mind dashing and handsome) escape under cover of night was the sort of cloak and dagger intrigue that appealed to her sense of drama. And in addition it might bring Amélie out of her tedious lethargy.
She went home in high excitement, sat Amélie down, and explained the situation to her.
“I don’t see how—” Amélie began.
“You aren’t going to refuse?” Babette interrupted heatedly. “God’s eyeballs! What’s happened to you? You used to be a firebrand when it came to the cause. Are you going to be like Papa? All words and no action?”
“Babette, I can’t seem to take care of myself, let alone—”
“Oh, fiddle! You enjoy being miserable. You love it! All that self-pity makes me sick. Yes, self-pity.”
Something flickered in Amélie’s eyes. “I never thought—”
“You never thought. You never thought of Thaddeus, your husband, facing Yankee fire, you only thought of yourself. He lost a son too, but do you see him crawling into a shell?”
They had not heard from Thaddeus and did not know if he had ever received the news of Charles’s death. But Babette was too wound up in her tirade to consider such fine points. “How can you look at yourself in the mirror?”
“I—I didn’t realize. ...”
For the first time in weeks Amélie heard Babette and what she heard filled her with shame. Is that how she seemed, self-pitying, indulging her grief?
“Do you think you’re the only woman in the world who has lost her boy?” Babette went relentlessly on. “What about the mothers whose sons died fighting for the South? Do you see them going into a decline?”
“No—”
“Or locking themselves in the house, not eating, not speaking, refusing to act like a human being?”
It was true, every word of it. She was wallowing in personal sorrow, concerned only with her pain, hoarding, nourishing it, sunk in morbidity. She had to stop, pull herself up, become useful again. She would always mourn for little Charles. He had left a wound that would never heal. But she had to go on, as Babette said. There were things to be done, people who needed her.
“Well . . . ?” Babette waited.
“You say they’ve escaped from Fort McHenry?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Very well,” Amélie said. “I’ll make room in the cellar.”
“Hallelujah!”
“We can take two,” Amélie continued. “But it’s to be a secret. No one must know—for their safety as well as ours. No one.”
They came stealthily at night, unescorted, a big, strapping yeoman, Tom Picket, from Charles County, and Avery Booth, a pinch-faced little lobsterman from Crisfield.
Babette, rosy cheeked, her eyes bright with suppressed excitement, would have lingered over the supper she and Amélie brought the two men had not Amélie pulled her away.
“I don’t see why I can’t stay and talk,” Babette protested.
“Because it’s not a good idea. We have to pretend they’re not in the house. Save your flirting for Willie.”
“But he isn’t here!” Babette missed Willie sorely, missed his wet kisses and his h
ands that could inch themselves so lovingly up between her thighs. She missed the way he shouted her name at climax, the way he hugged her afterward, telling her how much he loved her. He had said that she was the best woman he had ever taken to bed, that his ex-mistress, for all her whorish tricks, couldn’t hold a candle to Babette. His Babs. he had called her, his funny, little Babs.
* * *
Two days after the Confederates had been installed in the cellar a pair of Catholic nuns knocked at the door. They introduced themselves as Sister Beatrice and Sister Irene from the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul and asked to speak to the mistress of the house.
Amélie, surprised, a little alarmed, wondering if the sisters were bringing bad news about Thaddeus, took her guests into the parlor.
The taller nun. Sister Beatrice, softly closed the door behind her. “Can anyone overhear us?”
“Not if we speak quietly. My sister is out. There’s just our servant in the kitchen. Won’t you please sit down?”
Sister Irene sat primly on the sofa; Sister Beatrice remained standing. “You needn’t be disturbed,” Sister Beatrice said, apparently sensing Amélie’s disquiet. “I’m not bringing bad news. I come as a friend. It’s about your—ah—visitors."
Amélie understood. “I see.”
“I have a change of clothes for Tom Picket,” Sister Beatrice said. She turned modestly from Amélie and lifted her voluminous black skirts, withdrawing a bundle of clothes.
“He is to get into these,” she said, “and pull the peaked cap well over his eyes. He must leave the house at seven when the streets are at their busiest with pedestrians and carriages going home from business. He is to walk as quickly and purposefully as he can to the corner of Commerce and Quincy where a man will be waiting with a dray loaded with hogs. He must reach the spot promptly by five-thirty. The man with the dray will only wait five minutes, so it is imperative he be on time. Can you convey that message to him?”
“Yes, of course. And Mr. Booth, what of him?”
“He shall have to wait a few days. Our arrangements could only accommodate one man.”
Amélie took the clothes and tucked them under the sofa. “Won't you have a cup of tea?” she asked.
“We can’t stay long. Well, yes, perhaps a cup of tea. How certain are you of your servant?”
“Sadie? She’s the relative of my cousin’s handyman. He’s been in the family for years.”
As Sadie set down the tray of tea and cookies. Sister Beatrice said, “We are toying with the idea of founding an orphanage. Of course we shall have to take up subscriptions. We are wondering if we could count on you, Mrs. Warner.”
“Certainly.” Amélie sensed that the subject of an orphanage had been brought up to explain the nuns’ presence. Sister Beatrice was not sure of Sadie and wanted to give a legitimate excuse for her visit. But Amélie herself had no reason to mistrust the young girl. She was dependable, merry as a cricket as she went about her chores, and not in the least given to curiosity. True Sadie was black, but she seemed oblivious to the war ostensibly being fought to free her less fortunate sisters and brothers. It was a slip of the tongue or an innocent remark by Sadie that Amélie had to guard against and so she kept the prisoners’ presence a secret.
When Sadie left the room Sister Beatrice spoke again. “You realize, of course, there are dangers in your undertaking, Mrs. Warner. Your husband is fighting on the Confederate side, which makes you suspect.”
“Perhaps, but there are so many like me here in Baltimore. And I have kept very quiet, restricting myself to domestic concerns.”
“Which is all to your advantage.” She rose to go, Sister Irene silently following.
At the door Sister Beatrice pressed Amélie’s hand. “Good luck, my dear.”
It was not until later that Amélie wondered why Sister Beatrice should wish her luck instead of invoking God’s protection as any pious Catholic would do.
Tom Picket left that night as arranged. As far as Babette and Amélie knew he made it safely through the city and was well on his way to rejoining the Confederate forces in Virginia.
After his companion left Avery Booth fretted, impatient to be gone, too. Babette, playing her role of conspirator to the hilt, concocted one wild stratagem after another to smuggle him out of the house but Amélie scotched these schemes, pointing out that Avery’s chances for getting very far without arranged assistance were slight.
One afternoon the attorney who represented Mrs. Randall, the owner of the house, called. An officious-looking man wearing a beaver hat and ribboned pince-nez, Mr. Baxter was ushered into the parlor by Sadie. Amélie had seen him only once, when she signed the lease for the house, and had found him chilly, almost hostile.
He had come, he said, on Mrs. Randall’s orders to take an inventory of the furnishings since Mrs. Randall was planning to sell the house in the near future. Amélie was immediately suspicious.
“I’ve received no such communication from Mrs. Randall,’’ she said.
“She conducts all her business through me,” Mr. Baxter replied coldly.
“Then perhaps you have some written request?”
“I had not thought it necessary. My word—”
“I’m sure your word is as good as your bond, Mr. Baxter, but it is my privacy you are invading.”
“Very well, then, I shall bring the letter.”
Amélie was certain he would not return and was subsequently astonished when he showed up the next morning with a note from Mrs. Randall. Since Amélie had never seen her landlady's handwriting she had no way of telling if the note was a forgery. But as soon as Mr. Baxter deposited his hat on the hall table and took out a notebook and asked to see the cellar first she realized the inventory was an excuse. Mr. Baxter had come to search for escaped prisoners. Babette, who was standing at Amélie’s side, must have guessed, too, for a knowing look pressed between them.
“Why, Mr. Baxter, I do declare,” Babette drawled. “Must we plunge right in? Wouldn’t you care to come into the parlor and have a cup of tea?”
“No, thank you. I’m pressed for time. If you will be so kind?”
“Of course,” Amélie replied with a calmness that masked the tripping of her heart. “Babette, would you fetch the keys? They are upstairs in my jewel box.” Amélie, presuming Babette would be able to spirit Avery Booth out of the cellar while she diverted the lawyer, said, “Perhaps you’d rather start in the dining room while we are waiting?”
“No. I would like to do this in an orderly fashion, cellar to attic. It shouldn’t take your sister long. The cellar, if I remember correctly, is through this door and passageway.”
He was ahead of her, striding toward the cellar door. Her heart lurched as he paused before it. The back stairs down which Babette would momentarily be descending were to the left.
“Now that I think of it, the key is not on my ring. Our servant has it,” Amélie lied in desperation, her mind darting this way and that, trying to think of some way to get Mr. Baxter out of the passageway. But she was too late.
“Ah! I believe I hear Miss Townsend coming.” Mr. Baxter stepped to the side.
Babette, her belled skirts swaying, paused midway on the stairs, the keys in her hand, clearly surprised to see them both standing at the foot, looking up.
“Babette ...” Amélie said in a strangled voice.
“Yes,” Babette answered, pale but self-possessed, one white knuckled hand clutching the keys.
Amélie swallowed and, regaining the semblance of composure, asked, “Did you find the keys?” Her voice was deliberately loud in the hope that Avery Booth would hear her.
What he could do with a warning was questionable. The cellar, consisting of a single small room, offered no place to hide. The one other exit, a pair of swinging doors that opened into the garden, had been locked on the inside with a heavy iron padlock that would take a crowbar to break. The noise of that alone would give the little lobsterman away.
There was o
nly one answer Babette could give to Amélie’s question. “I found them.”
Mr. Baxter removed his pince-nez. “Good. Let us proceed then.”
Babette came slowly down the stairs. “Would you light the candle?” she asked her sister. A candle and packet of phosphorus matches were kept on a little table next to the cellar door. Amélie lighted the candle while Babette tried one key after another.
Mr. Baxter, clearly impatient, tapped his pencil on the writing pad. “It’s apparent you don’t use your cellar often,” he said.
“Not very,” Amélie murmured, her breath tight in her lungs.
Babette was spinning out time, but how it would help their prisoner Amélie didn’t know. Mr. Baxter was obviously in the Yankee pay. She couldn’t imagine this meddlesome man prowling about peoples’ homes out of idealistic principles.
“The key doesn’t seem to be here,” Babette said.
“Here, let me try,” Mr. Baxter offered gruffly.
Amélie felt as if she would suffocate. The passage was narrow and Mr. Baxter’s hovering presence made breathing difficult. She wondered if the lawyer had cohorts waiting outside ready to surround the house at his signal. She could already picture Avery Booth captured and both her and her sister taken away as conspirators, arrested, and thrown in jail. The candle in her hand wavered and a blob of hot wax grazed her skin.
“Here,” said Babette, opening the door at last.
They began their descent into the dim, dank room.
Babette leading the way, followed by Amélie holding the candle, and Mr. Baxter bringing up the rear. The wick wavered in a drafty current and Amélie managed to summon enough breath to surreptitiously blow it out. She wasn’t going to make it easy for the Yankee spy.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, turning. “Mr. Baxter, can you bring another match?”
“Well, really!” he grumbled. He left her and went back up the stairs.
Amélie heard Babette hurrying down the last few steps. Who had betrayed them? she wondered. Sadie? Anna Blake turned suddenly traitor? Perhaps Babette had let a word slip. Had she, herself, said something she shouldn’t have? Or was it part of a general search in the houses of citizens who were known Southern sympathizers or who had men in the Confederate army?
Honor's Fury Page 11