A row of hansom cabs was waiting on the street outside the depot to collect passengers. The gas streetlights were ghostly orbs, will-o’-the-wisps, hovering in the mist. A cabbie, a thin man with a scrub of peppered beard across his face, dressed in a threadbare coat, hopped from his spring seat at the rear of the cab, removing his battered derby as he approached her.
“Could you take me out to Folly Beach, if you please?” Maude asked.
“Of course, miss,” the cabbie replied, opening the wooden doors to the cab’s interior. “Trip will take a bit, Miss,” he added as he took Maude’s gloved hand and helped her up the two small metal steps into the cab. “I trust that won’t be too much of an inconvenience on your constitution.”
“No,” Maude said, “that will be fine.” She paused before entering the cab, looking over her shoulder. She was being watched.
“Miss?” the cabbie asked.
The sensation was vague and as elusive as the fog. “It’s nothing,” she said to the driver.
Maude entered the cab, and the cabbie closed the doors. In a moment, the cab lurched, and they were underway. The cab headed west on Line and then turned left onto King Street.
Maude looked out the cab’s window as they headed south into the heart of Charleston, passing row upon row of fine homes, many under construction. This part of town was well-to-do neighborhoods for the numerous families that were coming to Charleston to make their fortunes in some form of commerce or trade. It had been the same when she’d lived here—in fact, Arthur had bought them a beautiful home in the Radcliffes shortly after they were married. There were far more homes now than she recalled when she, Constance and Arthur had left Charleston almost a decade ago.
It had been a terrible day when they were forced to leave that house on Warren Street near the pond. Constance had been three? Four? And had cried as the bank’s men carried out the contents of their home into the street, while Arthur stood mute, red-faced, shaking with anger and humiliation. Arthur looked to Maude, holding their sobbing daughter. The look on his face was one of accusation. In that moment, he had hated both of them for being a burden he could not cleanly and quickly detach himself of. That was the moment she knew she had made a terrible mistake.
As much as Maude tried to bury most of the memories of her marriage to Arthur Stapleton, they would occasionally bubble to the surface. She found most of them to be a bewildering mixture of sublime joy, soul-cutting pain and always, half-measured regret. For all of Arthur’s faults, his abuses and his carelessness, Maude couldn’t fully dismiss her marriage to him as a disaster because she had gained Constance from the union, and Constance had brought so much to her life.
The cab was turning right onto Spring Street, toward the ferry, when Maude’s hearing caught an echo of clopping hooves behind them. She had been distracted, but her mind had still been tracking the sounds without her even being aware of it since leaving the train depot. She waited for a few blocks to confirm the distance and speed of their pursuer. Maude knocked on the roof of the cab.
“Miss?” the driver called out.
“If you please, speed up and then double back to this spot in about ten minutes,” she said as she opened the wooden doors of the cab. The driver looked confused. His confusion changed to horror as Maude dropped from the moving cab into the darkness and the fog. Maude rolled and felt several of her garments rip as they were strained in ways they had never been designed to endure. She ended her tumble in the treeline at the corner of Perey and Spring Street, beside the large Methodist church. Her driver cursed but did as he was told, accelerating the hansom into the next block.
Maude was up and moving as quickly as her clothing would allow. With a flick of her wrist, the small derringer was in her hand from its concealed sleeve holster. There was a row of private carriages and a few cabs parked along the street before the church. Inside Maude heard voices raised in hymn—“O Holy Night.” She moved between the carriages as if she were made out of the fog. The drivers and cabbies waiting for their patrons never saw her, never heard her. The hansom following her cab clattered by, the driver spurring the horse on as his quarry raced from view. Maude waited, measured her breath, and jumped as the cab raced by. She landed behind the driver, who was standing in his seat. She pressed a cluster of nerves in his neck, and he slumped. Maude gently guided the unconscious cabbie down into his spring saddle and tugged on the reins to slow the horse. The cab stopped about halfway up the following block. The doors to the cab crashed open as it rolled to a stop. “What the infernal blazes are you doing, man? She’s getting away!” Alter Cline shouted as he popped up from behind the doors. The reporter found himself staring into the barrel of Maude’s gun.
“Yes,” Maude said, “she is.”
“Miss. Stapleton,” Cline said, “I assure you, I mean you no ill intent, I merely wanted to—”
“How did you find me again, Mr. Cline?” Maude asked, the gun not wavering. “I was certain I eluded you.”
“You did,” Alter said. “Quite completely. Your skills at the art of camouflage border on the preternatural, to be sure. I have, however, made a career of seeking out people who do not wish to be found. If you can’t locate your quarry, then you look at those things they cannot fully control or hide, like their methods of egress from the environment.”
“The cabs,” Maude said, smiling a bit in spite of herself. “You watched the cabs.”
“When I saw a cab departing that I had not noticed a fare entering, I assumed it contained you. I was correct,” he said, pointing at the derringer, “obviously.”
“You have to stop this, Mr. Cline,” Maude said, “before you get hurt.”
“Do you intend to murder me to keep your secrets, madame?” Cline asked. “If so, I assure you I have preparations in place. My editor in New York will shortly be in receipt of correspondence that details your exploits on the train, as well as what I do know of your identity—Maude Stapleton, formerly of Charleston, but having resided in the frontier mining town of Golgotha, Nevada, for the last decade. You are the daughter and only child of Martin Anderton, the shipping magnate and captain of commerce, and the late Claire Cormac-Anderton, governess and leader in the women’s suffrage movement. You have one child, a daughter named Constance, and were widowed almost two years ago when your husband was murdered in Golgotha. You also possess extraordinary abilities of an as-yet-unknown origin.”
The gun seemed to disappear into thin air with a flick of Maude’s wrist. “You know all that about me after just a few days?” Maude said. Alter smiled.
“And you like your coffee black and your tea with honey. If anything untoward happens to me, madame, I assure you all of my lurid assumptions and conjectures, along with your identity, will find their way to print. Neither of us wants that. I much prefer the truth.”
“The truth is you have sent no such correspondence. You’re an excellent bluffer, Mr. Cline. Remind me not to play cards with you,” Maude said, climbing down from the driver’s seat. Her own cab was rapidly approaching from the other direction.
“Supper,” Cline said.
“Pardon me?” Maude said. Her cabbie pulled the horse to a stop opposite Cline’s cab on the street.
“Supper,” Alter repeated. “Please allow me the pleasure of your company at supper. We can discuss all this further. I want to hear your story of how you came to possess these miraculous talents, and I give you my word nothing will go into print unless you allow it.”
Maude narrowed her eyes and cocked her head. “You … you do realize I just had you at gunpoint a moment ago?”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re asking me to … supper.”
“Yes,” Cline said. “I’ll be staying at the Mills House downtown. You can contact me there.”
Cline climbed down from his coach and offered his hand to Maude, assisting her, as she climbed back into her own cab.
“You are the second strangest man I’ve ever met,” Maude said.
�
�I’d hate to meet the strangest,” Cline said.
“Yes,” Maude said, “you would. No more following. I’ll be in touch. Good evening, Mr. Cline.” She nodded to the driver and then closed the cab’s double doors. The cab rolled away.
* * *
The trip across the river by ferry was uneventful. The roads out to Folly Beach were rougher, and the cab bumped along, but Maude didn’t even notice the jostling. She could hear the waves, smell the sea. She felt her anticipation grow; she was almost home. They had passed several estates and plantations, but for the last twenty minutes, the trip had been through wilderness. The fog rolled in over the dunes, and Maude could almost picture it drifting across the ocean.
Maude had been nine when she had first traveled this road, when her father’s work took him out of town and he informed her she was to be staying with her great-great-great-great maternal grandmother.
“How many ‘greats’ is that, Father?”
Martin Anderton had laughed. “Apparently, she’s older than Moses,” her father remarked. “I’ll fetch you as soon as I return, Maude; it won’t be so bad, dear.”
The coach banged along the rutted road, bringing Maude back to the here and now. They cornered a hill, and through a line of palmetto trees, she got her first glimpse of the estate in over a decade wreathed in fog and shimmering in the moonlight off the ocean. It was called Grande Folly, it had belonged to Gran, and she had left it to Maude. As a child, arriving that first time, Grande Folly looked to Maude like a magic castle. In some ways it was.
The road smoothed as they passed the gateposts, from ruts to cobblestones. Bald cypress trees tangled in Spanish moss lined the drive. Maude could see the lights were on in the manor house; Christmas candles flickered in every window. The cab slowed and stopped before the large stairs to the porch that ringed the house.
“Here you are, miss,” the driver said, opening the cab’s door for her, and offering a hand to help her down. Maude stepped down, not entirely in the present. Over thirty years ago, she had stood here, deposited by her father’s employee—Martin was far too busy to ride out with Maude. She had looked up at the front doors and seen them swing open, just as they were now. A black man in shirtsleeves and a vest, handsome and clean shaven, had smiled at her and knelt on one knee to meet her gaze with wise, kind eyes.
“Hello Miss Anderton,” he had said, “my name is Isaiah. Welcome to Grande Folly…”
“Miss Maude?” It was the same voice, the same man standing at the open doors, only he was in his sixties now. However, the eyes were as full of kindness as they had been all those years ago when he had put a frightened girl at ease.
Maude rushed up the stairs and hugged Isaiah tightly. He laughed and hugged her back. “Welcome home, little girl,” Isaiah Gaines said. “You have been away far too long.”
Maude paid and dismissed the cabbie. She insisted on carrying her own bag up the stairs, across the porch and into the grand foyer. The house didn’t smell exactly the same as it had when she had been a child. There was the smell of well-cared-for age, wood oil, but the hint of peppermint and sweet pipe tobacco were gone from the air. It occurred to Maude that she had always associated those scents with Gran without ever realizing it until now.
“I’m sorry for the timing of my arrival,” Maude said to Isaiah as she looked around the room and absently touched old, familiar things, all exactly where they should be. “I hope I didn’t disrupt any family plans for the holiday.”
“Not at all,” he said. “Winnie and Thomas arrived earlier this week. Ella, earlier today. We were sitting down to a bit of dinner in the kitchen.”
“I’m so sorry to have disturbed that,” Maude said to Isaiah. “Please get back to your meal. I know my way around.” He silenced her with a simple gesture.
“It’s the first time all the children have been able to make it home since their mother passed,” Isaiah said. “You arriving now is perfect, Maude. Now, all the children are here. Please, join us.”
* * *
Maude had often eaten in the kitchen during her college days. She had to disguise herself as a man to attend the College of Charleston. Her father thought she was off at an exclusive ladies’ finishing school that Gran was paying for. Maude would come home from classes to her usual brutal training regimen under Gran’s hawkish regard, and then sometime well after dark, she’d stagger into the kitchen to eat. Gran often joined her; Isaiah and his wife, Winnie, were always there, with enough food to feed a starving army. They would sit at the old wooden table and she would tell them about her professors and all the wondrous new books and ideas she was being exposed to. They would talk, argue, laugh. When Maude thought of family, of home, and the secure feeling those words were supposed to engender inside you, she always thought of that old kitchen table at Grande Folly.
Winnie, Isaiah’s oldest, named for her mother, was the closest to Maude’s age. She was married and lived in Charleston. She had brought her husband, a local crabber, and their children to dinner as well. Their older children helped corral the younger ones. Isaiah, the beaming grandfather, had one of Winnie’s kids on each knee, bouncing them.
Thomas, Isaiah’s only son, was attending Howard University and talked a great deal of his desire to go on to medical school.
“If they won’t take me here, I’ll go overseas,” Thomas said. “There are schools in Europe and Britain that accept Negro students. I’ll find one.”
“Maybe you could find you a nice girl while you’re looking, ‘doctor,’” Thomas’s sister Ella said. Everyone but Thomas laughed. “Physician, heal thyself!”
Ella was a few years younger than Thomas and had done well for herself in New Orleans, acting as a tutor at the McDonogh School and choir director for St. Augustine’s Church.
“A good woman would straighten you out, Tommy,” Winnie said, jabbing a fork in her brother’s direction, “a few children … I’m sure Father would like someone to carry on the family name.”
“Don’t get me mixed up in all this,” Isaiah said.
“There will be time enough for all that nonsense once I’ve completed medical school,” Thomas said. “Right, Maude? Tell them. You’ve got a family and you own your own business back in Golgotha.”
Maude glanced across the table to Isaiah, who was lifting one of his giggling grandbabies into the air. She arched an eyebrow.
“Family can be … wonderful,” Maude said, gesturing to the playing, laughing, boisterous children, to everyone around the table. “I wouldn’t trade having Constance for anything in this world, but there are things I want to accomplish for myself, just for me. If you have a dream, Thomas, you chase it, don’t you dare let it escape. The family that matters, you’ll find them on your way, and they’ll help you get there. You’ll be a great doctor, Thomas, and you have a wonderful family already around this table.”
Thomas nodded. “So do you,” he said to Maude.
Isaiah rested his grandson on his knee and hefted his glass to the assembled table. “To family, real family,” he said, “here and far away. Never forgotten.”
Everyone raised their glasses. “To family,” they all said.
* * *
Later in the evening, the children were all finally wound down and asleep in the guest rooms, excited for the Christmas dawn. Isaiah’s children, one by one, bid their leave of Maude and their father in front of the roaring fireplace in the manor’s parlor.
“You met a fellow in that one-horse town in Nevada,” Isaiah said when they were finally alone. “Written all over your face, young lady.”
Maude laughed.
“Yes,” she said, “I suppose it is. So much for self-discipline. You’d like him, I think. Gran would have loved him.”
“He have a name?” Isaiah asked.
“Actually, no,” Maude said. “He calls himself Mutt.” Isaiah frowned.
“Shabby name,” he said. “Sounds like trouble.”
“He is,” Maude said, “but he is one of the most nobl
e souls I’ve ever met.”
Isaiah sighed, “He best be if he intends to court you, young lady. You love him?”
“Yes, desperately,” Maude said. “It’s terrifying.”
“That’s the best kind,” Isaiah said, sipping his brandy.
They were silent for a time. The fire filled the silence with snapping and popping.
“Why didn’t you go tonight to fetch Constance from your father?” Isaiah finally asked.
“I wanted to,” Maude said. “I wanted to get her back from him right now. But in the eyes of the law, I’d be a criminal.”
“We both know what Lady Anne would have said about that,” Isaiah said. Maude chuckled.
“‘To hell with man’s laws,’” Maude said. “Spoken like a true pirate.”
“All the men and women who worked and lived here at Grande Folly, my father and his father before him, were all free men,” Isaiah said. “They worked hard, got a good wage for that work and a share of the profits from their labor. Most of them came from the slave coast, like my granddad, no family left there, their whole lives stolen away. Lady Anne had freed them. She hated having to hide that for so long, but in these parts, if they had known we were free, they would have burnt the whole place to the ground and hung all of us if they could. Lady Anne could whip any man you care to name, but some ugly things are bigger than men and you can’t lick them in a fair fight.
“She hated that it was a crime to teach us children to read and write; she did it anyway. There are plenty of laws that need to be thrown on that fire there, Maude. It would take the law here a long time to find you out on the frontier.” Maude shook her head.
“The frontier is shrinking, ending, with that railroad,” she said. “One day, the frontier will be like,” she gestured about the elegant room, “all this.”
The Queen of Swords Page 5