Wellington Cross (Wellington Cross Series)

by Lane, Cheryl

  “Well, you see, I was in an accident a year ago, and I woke up not remembering anything.” I told her how I had been living with the Washington family nearby. “Who did you say that I am?” I asked her.

  “Oh, my dear, how terrible!” She rubbed my shoulder in an endearing gesture. “Well, your name was Madeline Chambers until you married my son, Ethan. Our family name is Wellington. You and Ethan grew up in Charles City County together. Your family owned a plantation up the river from my own. Your parents were Jonathon and Lavina Chambers.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. I was married! And not betrothed to Jefferson, as he had said. She also said Charles City County…not Surry! Another lie Jefferson told me, although this woman did say I had grown up on a plantation. He had at least told the truth about that, just the wrong plantation. It seems he was truthful about my first name being Madeline, but he lied to me about my last name, saying it was Harrison. “Wellington” fit with the “W” on my handkerchief. I started to get excited.

  So, I had been married to this woman’s son, Ethan. I wondered who this Ethan was and what he looked like. Could he be the man in my flash of memory when I held that ring?

  “Won’t you come home with me, Madeline, dear? Maybe seeing Ethan and your home again will help you regain your memory. Ethan was so worried about you. He’ll be so very happy to know you’re still alive. We didn’t know what had happened to you. We’ve missed you so much over the past year.” She smiled sweetly at me. I sensed that Mrs. Wellington genuinely cared for me.

  “I, uh…I suppose I should go back to Mr. and Mrs. Washington and tell them what you’ve told me. It will be difficult for me to leave something familiar and go to a place I don’t remember.”

  “I understand, dear. Take your time. I’ve got a sister living nearby in Bellwood. I’ve been visiting with her, trying to help her through some hard times, like we’re all having. She’s trying to keep her farm, but some of her husband’s family is trying to take the home away from her. She can’t afford the taxes anyway. I came all the way up here with Zeke, one of our hired hands, to take her one of our ex-slaves so she wouldn’t be alone trying to tend to that house and farm. She may end up coming to live with me. I came to town for some supplies she needed and was just about to take them to her. I’ll be leaving for Charles City County tomorrow, so how about if I come back here tomorrow morning and wait for you here. Will you come back? I’ll wait till noon before going back home. If you decide not to come, that’ll be fine, too. Does that sound suitable?”

  I really didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I guessed that coming back in the morning would be enough time to make a decision – one way or the other. I really was ready to get my memory back, and maybe this was the best way to do that. Surely this kind-looking woman was telling me the truth, since some of what she told me I had already heard from Jefferson.

  “That sounds fine,” I said. I got up on the carriage. “Goodbye, Mrs. Wellington,” I said, waving and then Lionel pulled on the horse’s reins.

  “Goodbye, dear,” called Clarissa Wellington. “It was so good to see you again, and I do hope you’ll come home with me where you belong.”

  When Lionel and I got back to Oakworth late in the afternoon, my eyes widened in horror. We saw smoke billowing up through the trees, and as we got closer, we saw that the house was burning up in flames. Frantically, Lionel guided the reluctant horses through the gates and up to the house. He jumped off the carriage, yelling for his mother and sisters, and ran around to the back of the house. I climbed out of the carriage and yelled for the Washingtons. I ran to open the front door, but was pushed back out by a burst of smoke, which made me cough and burned my eyes. I screamed and blinked my eyes. When I could see clearly again, I staggered off the porch and ran around to the back of the house looking for signs of life in the windows. I banged on windows and doors, still coughing from the smoke I had inhaled, until I saw Lionel come out the back door.

  “Miss Madeline! Stay out o’ the house!” He was out of breath and coughed violently as he walked towards me. “I tried to go up…main stairs…to find Washingtons…” he paused to cough. “But…too much…fire.” More coughing. “The back stairs…smoky…I came back out.” He could barely talk and began coughing again and again, leaned forward, and then collapsed on the ground.

  “Lionel? Lionel!” I fell to my knees before him and tried to open his eyes, gently smacking his face, anything to revive him, but it was no use. I felt for a pulse – I don’t even know how I knew to do that – but it was gone. He was dead. He had apparently inhaled too much smoke. I felt terrible that I couldn’t save his life, when he had been the one to save mine.

  I began screaming, “No, no! This can’t be! Lionel, please,” I pleaded. I got up and ran back to the back door, opened it, but again was struck in the face by smoke and a tremendous burst of heat. Flames licked all around the door, chasing me back out. I ran behind the house to the old slave quarters, where Cora and her family lived, but it was empty. I then ran down a long trail through the woods to the creek, where Cora could sometimes be found washing. Sure enough, Cora and the girls were there, washing clothes.

  “Cora!” I yelled, coughing from inhaling some of the smoke and from running. Cora turned towards me, wringing water out of a dress.

  “Miss Madeline? Are you all right?” She looked concerned.

  I pointed over the trees to the smoke rising in the air. “The farm…” I gasped for air. “Lionel…” Her eyes widened in fear. She dropped the dress on the creek bank and started running. The girls and I followed her back through the trees to the farmhouse, over to where her son lay dead.

  “Oh, dear God!” Her hands flew up and covered her mouth. She ran over to the boy, dropped down on her knees and picked up his lifeless body. She hugged him, crying and rocking back and forth, murmuring, “No, no, no…not my boy…not my sweet Li.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, after composing my breathing. “He inhaled too much smoke looking for someone in the house. He was very brave.”

  She nodded her head and continued to hold her son. The girls and I started pumping water from the well into some old buckets and tried to put the fire out, but it was of no use. The fire consumed the house before we could get half of it put out. It had been made of wood, not bricks.

  Exhausted and feeling dirty from the smoke, I went back over to Cora and Lionel, fell onto my knees, and began to sob.

  “It can’t be,” Cora murmured. “Whatever will we do?” she asked the girls. The girls walked over to us and stood behind Cora, holding onto each other and weeping softly. She just started caressing Lionel’s hand and began humming a sad, soulful song, tears falling onto the boy’s cold arm.

  I looked back at the house, in flames. I couldn’t believe the Washingtons were gone. Mrs. Jane had been like a mother to me. She’d helped me so much when I had nothing, no memory at all and no place to go. After more sobbing, realizing I had no place to go once again, I began to think of Clarissa Wellington and all she had told me. She had offered to take me to her home. Now that I had lost the Washingtons and the home that I had here, then going home with Clarissa might be the best solution after all. I did have a place to go, after all.

  I stayed with Cora and her girls in one of the old slave cabins all night, after burying Lionel at the top of the hill at the side of the property. We didn’t dare go back inside the smoke-filled house. I asked Cora what she and the girls were going to do now. Cora said she had no one – her husband having been killed during the war, and her two brothers had moved North at the time of Emancipation. She really didn’t know what to do except to drift again, and look for another plantation or farm that needed help. She asked me what I was going to do. I told them all about meeting Clarissa and that I had planned to meet her in the morning. I asked them to come along with me, see if they needed help. Cora was nervous about the idea, but after I encouraged her, she decided that it wouldn’t hurt to try. I would ask Mrs. Wellington if they neede
d help on their plantation, times being hard as they were, or if a nearby plantation owner needed help. It would make me feel better about following Mrs. Wellington to her home if I had someone I knew with me, if they were allowed to come with us.

  In the morning, we got in the carriage, packing as much supplies as we could find in the remains of the house, a few of Cora’s and the girls’ belongings, and the chickens I had purchased. We left Oakworth, bound for Chester. Tears filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks as I said “goodbye” to the home and family I had grown to love. I was, of course, thankful for my life being spared, and felt comforted to have Cora and the girls with me.

  Once in Chester, we stopped at the sheriff’s office and told him all about Oakworth burning, and Mr. and Mrs. Washington having apparently died inside. The sheriff looked in some records and found that the farm and surrounding land had been left to a nephew. He said he would contact the nephew and let him know what had transpired. Since there was no livable house remaining, he thought the nephew may not claim the property, but that that Cora and her girls would have to leave, at any rate. I went outside to the carriage and told Cora what the sheriff had told me.

  We left the sheriff’s office and went to the marketplace to wait for Mrs. Wellington. We soon saw a well-worn carriage with a big “W” on the side heading our way. It was Clarissa and Zeke. Zeke pulled up beside our carriage, and I saw Clarissa in the back. She glanced at Cora and the girls. I got off my carriage and greeted her over by her carriage just as she was descending. I explained to her what had happened, with the house burning down and Mr. and Mrs. Washington being consumed by the fire. She offered condolences, and then I told her about Cora and her girls needing a place to live and asked her if they needed help at her plantation.

  “Oh my, yes!” Clarissa exclaimed. “Of course we could use some help! Why, this is a prayer answered. I lost my house slaves during the war, save for one, and she’s gone now, too. They all took off to join the Freedmen’s Bureau in Newport News. Cora and the girls could stay above the kitchen house; there is plenty of room there in the two rooms upstairs where they can live. They could be our house servants. They can live there for free and have shelter and food, and wages when we can afford it. Oh, Madeline, I think this is going to work out just fine.”

  I walked back over to our carriage and explained the whole thing to Cora, who was just tickled pink.

  Mrs. Wellington came over to meet Cora and her girls. “It’s so nice to meet you ladies. I’m so sorry you’ve lost your home, but I’m grateful to have you come help us out on our plantation. Madeline, we will have to have a long talk and do some catching up. Would you like to ride in my carriage with me?”

  “Um, that’s very considerate of you, but I’ll stay with Cora and the girls for now, if you don’t mind. They’ve just lost a dear family member, and the girls are not as adept at driving as I am.”

  “Of course, dear. We’ll have time to talk later. So much has happened since you’ve been gone. I still don’t know how you have been close by all this time and we didn’t run into each other sooner. Ethan will be so thrilled to see you." She furrowed her brow a moment. “Let’s get going.” She patted me on the arm and then got back on her carriage.

  We followed Mrs. Wellington’s carriage out on the dirt road, heading for Charles City County. I was still nervous about the whole thing – meeting a husband and all – but I was glad to be finally getting back on the road to recovering my past. I practiced saying the name, “Madeline Wellington” in my head throughout the drive, getting used to that name and hoping to remember something about “Madeline Wellington’s” past life.

  I began to wonder, if Jefferson had lied to me about my last name and about where I’d lived, how many other lies had he told me? Perhaps he hadn’t given me that ring at all, since it gave me a vision of another man. Maybe it was Ethan Wellington, my supposed husband, who had given it to me. I began to get an anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach, wishing I knew the truth, and hoping I would get all of my memory back soon.

  Chapter 5

  Wellington Cross

  Charles City County, Virginia

  Hours later, after crossing a long bridge and stopping once to give the horses a break and a bit of grass to eat, we followed Clarissa past a battered wooden sign that read, “Wellington Cross”, down a long winding road through tall trees. This was where I had lived…with my husband and his family. We came around a final curve and I saw a three-story Georgian-style brick manor surrounded by oak trees, and a glimpse of a river beyond the trees. On top of the roof stood two tall chimneys. There were also two smaller brick dependencies, one on each side of the manor. The white-trimmed windows were in need of paint, but the manor was still beautiful.

  As we neared the manor, I was amazed at how strange I felt, and I knew somehow that I had indeed been here before. I could feel it. It all seemed so familiar…the smell in the air, of the pine and cedar trees, and the big bushes that framed the house. My heart grew with excitement. I couldn’t wait to meet Ethan. I wondered what he looked like, what he was like. Fear struck me for a moment as I wondered: had he been good to me? Had I loved him? Had he been the man I had heard in my memory from the past?

  There was a turnabout in front of the manor with a long stretch of grass. A white gate stood open in front of the house, attached to brick columns topped with finials and flanked by boxwoods. A path of small white stones and broken shells led to the carriage front door. The turnabout had a tangent drive leading to the left of the house, which crossed in front of one of the dependencies to a coach house. English ivy grew up on one wall of the coach house, under the shade of some tall full trees. As we approached the coach house, I saw that part of the roof of the structure was gone, and part of back wall was also gone, as you could see straight through to the back to glimpse tall sunflowers.

  As we came to a halt just outside the coach house, two dogs came running up to us. They were tall slightly shaggy dogs, one of which was grey and the other was beige. As we all descended the carriages, the dogs yapped excitedly and greeted Clarissa with doggy kisses. Once I touched the dirt with my worn boots, they rushed over to me and began whining. I think they remembered me. I knelt down and patted them, surprised that I remembered their names. The grey one was Jack, and the beige one was Sally. I hugged them tightly, calling them by their names, and they licked my face.

  I looked at Clarissa, who had been watching, and we smiled at each other. She went inside the nearest dependency, coming back out shortly with a dark-skinned man. Clarissa introduced him as Jacob “Jake” Hulett, a brother to Ezekiel “Zeke”, who had driven her to Bellwood. They were both ex-slaves who had stayed on as hired field workers on the plantation. Both men were thin; Jake was taller and had a couple of missing teeth, and Zeke had a scar on his left cheek. They did field work but also helped out with other chores on the plantation. Clarissa explained that they lived in a surviving dependency, called the “Great Quarters,” away from the manor house.

  The two men unloaded the carriages, including all of Cora’s belongings, which they carried over to the dependency on the other side of the manor house. Clarissa explained that that was where the kitchen and laundry house was. She said that the coach house had been burned by the Yankees and repairs had not yet been completed, so we could just leave our carriages outside. She then escorted Cora and her girls over to the kitchen house, and I followed along to have a look inside.

  We walked past the manor house on the way to the kitchen house on the other side. There were English boxwoods on both sides of the door. Looking up above one of the eaves of the kitchen and laundry house, I saw a cannon ball stuck in the bricked wall of the structure. It must have gotten lodged in there during the war. I could imagine hearing the loud impact in my head as well as screams of terror.

  I followed the others and stepped inside the kitchen and laundry house. Straight ahead was a hall with a door that led out towards the river. There was a staircase beside th
at on the right. The room to the right was the kitchen with a huge fireplace for cooking with pots and pans hanging nearby over a long table used for food preparation. I was relieved that the kitchen was separate from the house, unlike at Oakworth. At least the manor here would not burn down due to a fire in the kitchen. The laundry area took up other half of the dependency, where there was another fireplace, big pots, and a washboard for cleaning.

  “Madeline, dear, I’ll show you around the plantation in just a moment,” Clarissa said to me. “Oh, just wait until Ethan sees you!” Then she turned her attention back to show Cora and the girls upstairs to their new living quarters.

  I went outside, going through the river-front door. Since I was left alone for the moment, I decided to spend the time exploring the grounds of the plantation. I walked over to other side of the kitchen house and saw a smaller little brick house, looked inside, and saw a well with a rope. Peeking into the well, I saw jugs of milk, so this must be the milk house. Over near the well was a butter churn. There must be a cow here somewhere, if they were getting milk.

  Back outside, I spotted a white gazebo across from the kitchen house, surrounded by tall magnolia and cedar trees and more English boxwoods. The gazebo was an octagonal structure, made of bricks at the bottom, wooden columns painted white with lattice above that, and a dark roof that came to a point at the top. Inside was an ornate cast iron bench facing the water. There was a beautiful view of the river from here. The afternoon sun glistened on the top of the water. As I walked inside it, it was as if I walked into my past. This was the place where Jefferson had tried to kiss me. Even though the memory was unpleasant, I was happy to remember this place where I had lived in the past.

  I decided to walk down and take a closer look at the river. The gazebo was in a corner of a long rectangular-shaped expanse of lawn divided up by various boxwoods, adjacent to the manor house and dependencies. The river side of the manor house looked identical to the carriage side, with a door in the middle, two sets of windows on each side, a line of windows on the second story, and three dormer windows jetting out of the roof on the third story. There was a brick terrace behind the dependency over near the coach house, with a couple more benches. In the middle of the rectangle, in a direct line from the manor house, there was a path that led down a gently sloping hill towards the river.