“Jane, this is sloppy work. Watch your trigger squeeze, girl. An inch isn’t such a big deal at close range, but with a rifle that inch becomes several feet.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, swallowing a yawn.
My only consolation is that Katherine is just as muttonheaded as I am. She drops her sickles during our close-combat class, and Miss Anderson raps her ruler on Katherine’s knuckles when she dozes off during our tea-serving lesson. It ain’t Christian to revel in the misery of others, but I like to make an exception for Katherine.
After our final class of the day I drop off my weapons at the armory and get ready to head to my bed, using my study time to doze before dinner. If I don’t get some sleep, I’m going to pass out in my soup.
I’ve just lain down and started to snooze when someone shakes me awake. “The building better be on fire,” I grumble.
“Miss Preston wants to see us.” Katherine sounds as tired as I feel, and I groan as I climb out of bed and follow her down the hall.
We drag ourselves into the headmistress’s office. All my exhaustion slips away when I see Miss Anderson and the big Indian man from the lecture standing there. Miss Preston is nowhere to be found. I straighten, and the man’s gaze slips over me. Even with the corners of his mouth pulled down in distaste he’s eye-catching. I try to imagine him with feathers in his dark hair and wearing beaded buckskin like in the newspaper serials. I just can’t do it. The clothes he wears, homespun shirt and trousers, suit him.
He doesn’t look much older than me and Katherine, his brown skin unlined. I wonder if he went to the Indian school up in Pennsylvania, and if he did, how it compares to Miss Preston’s. I don’t know much about how the Indian schools work, but I’ve heard they’re less focused on teaching folks how to kill the dead than they are civilizing them, whatever that means. It makes me curious about that impassive man’s life. Did he come here to Baltimore to seek his fortune? Or is he here against his will?
A wracking cough pulls my attention away from my perusal of the Indian man. Miss Anderson wheezes as she coughs, a handkerchief pressed to her lips.
“Miss Anderson, are you well? You don’t sound so good.”
She gives one last cough and shoots me an arsenic-laced glare. “My health is of no concern to you, Jane McKeene.”
“Well, I just hope it ain’t tuberculosis. The nights have been chilly this year, and it wouldn’t take much for a cough to become something more if you’d been out in the cold.”
I can feel Katherine’s glare and the man raises an eyebrow in my direction, but I keep my expression mild. Auntie Aggie used to say I was like as not to poke Satan with a stick just for fun. Guess not much has changed.
Mostly I’m just thinking about Miss Anderson being in cahoots with the mayor and whatever he’s done with Lily and the Spencers, as well as her comment about pickaninnies, and every mean-spirited thing she’s done to me. It takes all the self-restraint I have to keep from launching myself at her and beating her senseless. But I’m saved from doing anything untoward by Miss Preston entering the room. She takes in the tableau before her and frowns. “Is something amiss?”
“No, ma’am,” Katherine says, a smile breaking out over her face, making her look like an angel from a painting. My anger and disgust grows a little more, fed by a mean streak of envy. I grit my teeth and say nothing. Katherine didn’t pick the face she was born with, and it ain’t her fault her perfect smile makes me want to break things. My dark feelings are my own problem, and I aim to keep them that way.
Miss Preston sits heavily in her chair with a sigh. “Well, then, I suppose we should get to the reason as to why we’re here.” She shuffles through a stack of papers on her desk and pulls out a lovely cream-colored vellum envelope. “In recognition of your . . . heroics at the Baltimore University lecture, the mayor’s wife has invited you girls to a formal dinner. A few of her close friends have lost their Attendants lately, and she would like you to augment her household staff in order to guarantee her guests’ safety.”
Katherine gives me a wide-eyed look, but I don’t feel any of the excitement I see on her face. The penny under my blouse has gone cold.
Miss Preston continues. “This is an excellent opportunity to present yourself to the finest ladies in all of Maryland. Miss Anderson and Mr. Redfern here will be taking you to be fitted for Attendants’ wear. At Mayor Carr’s expense, of course. Miss Anderson will also be accompanying you to dinner as your chaperone to ensure that you represent the school with dignity and honor.”
My penny is a snowball at the hollow of my neck, and I ain’t at all encouraged by Miss Preston glossing over the fact that multiple Baltimore Attendants have been killed, presumably within the city limits. All my anger at whatever Miss Anderson and the mayor have done with Lily and the Spencers disappears, replaced by fear.
I’m shaky and out of sorts as I take a deep breath and let it out. “Miss Preston, I’m honored by the invitation, but I’m afraid I must decline.” My words come out too fast, my tongue tripping over syllables. I see my end in this fine invitation, and I ain’t a hog to go happily to the slaughter, no matter how pretty the ax.
Miss Preston opens her mouth to speak and I continue, in an attempt to cover my lack of grace and decorum. “What I mean is, it would be terrible of us to accept such a generous offer without including Miss Duncan. She was instrumental in putting down the restless dead, and I just don’t feel right taking advantage of such an invitation without her.”
“I’m sure our honorable mayor would be happy to include your teacher as well.” Mr. Redfern’s voice is a low rumble, and I barely manage to keep myself from jumping in surprise. I’d forgotten he was even standing there in the corner, as intent as I was on not ending up at the mayor’s dinner.
Miss Preston smiles. “Well, it’s settled then. You girls will be excused from classes tomorrow for your fitting, and next week you will attend dinner at the mayor’s residence.” Miss Preston levels a withering look at me. “Try to conduct yourselves in a matter befitting a Miss Preston’s girl. After all, a contract with a good family is the difference between a future and, well . . .” She trails off, giving us knowing smiles.
“Thank you, Miss Preston! We are doubly blessed, and we will not let you down,” Katherine chirps in answer, all but bouncing as we take our leave.
Behind us, Miss Preston asks Mr. Redfern in a low voice, “Have you or the mayor heard anything further on the Edgars’ disappearance?”
I whirl around, perhaps too quickly considering that I ain’t supposed to know anything about missing families, but I meet Miss Anderson’s eyes. Her smug expression convinces me to keep on walking out of the room and unleashes a barrage of worry that unsettles my stomach.
She’s got the look of a cat that just caught a mouse. No wonder I feel like squeaking.
Momma, I do hope you’ll share news of Rose Hill in your next letter. How is everyone? Did the cabbages and okra do well this year?
Do you still love me?
Do you still regret having me?
Do you miss me half as much as I miss you?
Chapter 11
In Which I Remember Rose Hill and My Momma’s Sworn Enemy
That night, exhausted and preoccupied with the mayor’s untimely invitation, I do the same thing I always do when I’m fretful: I dream of Rose Hill, and of Rachel, the only person I ever knew to hate my momma.
My momma is an unusual woman. She didn’t much like the whole concept of slavery no matter how honorable it was, and there were rumors that she was sore disappointed with her husband, the major, when he left her to fight for the Confederacy. But the strangest thing about Momma, the thing that made some of the neighbors smile tightly and alienated all the rest, is Momma’s rumored penchant for field hands—the stronger, the darker, the better. They said she took them to bed like some kind of plantation Delilah, stealing their strength in order to keep herself young and strong.
It wasn’t true, but that didn’t stop
tongues from wagging. I discovered later that, even before I was born, Momma had a reputation for going out and buying the worst of the worst at the auctions: the runaways; the dullards; the cheapest, lousiest Negroes you could find. It was how she spent her time, buying up as many folks as she could, and rumor was she damn near bankrupted her and the major doing it. If there was a mother and her children on the block, she would buy the whole lot, cutting a deal with the auctioneers before the family ever went up for bidding. Neighbors would joke, “I’m gonna sell you my girl Bella, she ain’t worth a lick,” and the next thing you know Bella would be in the kitchen baking bread. Momma never let the slave patrols on the property, even when they were chasing down a neighbor’s runaway, and the one time the fellas did trespass she had the kennel master set the dogs on them. It was an all-around curious way of doing business, but Momma was rich enough that the neighbors didn’t say much.
Not long after I was born, everyone in the county pretty much suspected Momma had birthed me, the height of scandal in a place like Haller County, Kentucky. During the beginning of the Years of Discord, Momma made it her business to always help a neighbor in need, especially as Rose Hill flourished, so most folks found Momma’s peccadilloes less important than her willingness to ride out with a team and help clear a field of dead.
And if folks could overlook the rumors of a white woman birthing a Negro, well, they could forgive just about anything, couldn’t they?
It was something I didn’t much know about or understand until I was old enough to read, and to learn how to eavesdrop properly. The first time I ever realized that a white woman keeping time with a colored man was cause for scandal, I was six or seven. And the only reason I ever knew of my mother’s transgressions was because of Rachel, who hated my momma more than anyone else in the world.
Rachel was mad that day she got to flapping her gums because Auntie Aggie had set her to peeling potatoes, a task that she thought was beneath her. In Rachel’s mind, every ill that befell her was the work of someone else. In this case, Momma, who had told Auntie Aggie that she wanted a nice mashed potato with dinner.
“You know the missus weren’t no lady afore she married the major, now don’t you? She ain’t nothing but rabble, she ain’t got no class like Missus Hooper, my first mistress, God rest her soul.” Rachel had no love for my momma; all her loyalty was for the major. The major had bought Rachel from a plantation down the way before he went off to the war, and she always liked to say how Momma wasn’t doing things right. Not enough whippings, not enough discipline, too many Negroes forgetting their place. Rachel had a set way as to how things should’ve been on Rose Hill, and in Rachel’s mind Momma was too soft because she didn’t play favorites and she didn’t hand out nearly enough beatings.
One of the other aunties, Auntie Eliza, once told me it was because Rachel was the major’s favorite before he went to war, and she liked the easy life he gave her. Rachel had adjusted to being owned, to being property, and she didn’t like the new situation, where she wasn’t nothing but a house servant with wages, a servant that had to work just as hard as everyone else. Slavery had been illegal since the Great Concession, that famous day President Jefferson Davis and the remaining Confederate states surrendered so that President Lincoln would issue the Writ of Concession, sending General Ulysses Grant and the Union troops on their famous march across the South, burning every shambler and abandoned homestead they found and saving Dixie from utter ruin. Slavery had come to an end thanks to President Lincoln and the undead plague, but there were still folks like Rachel that didn’t quite know what to do with all that freedom.
At the time, I had no idea why Rachel was so angry, but I figured it was like how Momma always made sure I ate dinner with her and how she taught me how to read in the evenings, while the other kids got to go play or help fix the barrier fences that kept out the shamblers. Rachel had been special when the major was around, and now she wasn’t.
But Auntie Aggie said that Rachel couldn’t help the way she was, that she’d had a hard life before she came to Rose Hill, and the only way she knew how to act was a vicious kind of way. “Surviving can make people right mean,” Auntie Aggie told me. “You stay away from that viper. She don’t have nothing but ill will toward you and your momma.”
But I couldn’t avoid Rachel all the time. The kitchens were where I spent most of my day, since Momma didn’t want me out beyond the interior fence, especially after what happened to poor Zeke. So I got to hear more of Rachel’s gossiping than I cared to.
“The missus was nothing but trash, singing for coin, before the major lifted her up to being something. And look at how she repays him, rolling around with field darkies like the whore of Babylon. There’s an order to things,” Rachel said, giving me a hard look where I stood helping Auntie Eliza knead bread. Rachel thought there was a hierarchy that should be followed: field workers, house slaves, mistress, and master. It didn’t matter that we were all free, that Momma made sure to pay everyone a small wage each week for their hard work. The bad old ways were still alive and well in Rachel’s brain, and anything that flaunted that order was a terrible thing.
Like me.
“That’s the reason the dead don’t stay down, you know. The whole world is turned upside down. Darkies are free as white folks, don’t know their place anymore. If they did, maybe things would go back to normal.”
“She uses that word one more time I’m going to throttle her,” Auntie Eliza said, giving Rachel a hard look. Auntie Eliza’s husband worked out in the fields, and no one talked bad about the field workers when she was around.
“You ain’t the only one,” muttered Auntie Betsy, who was plucking a chicken.
No one much liked Rachel, but she didn’t let that stop her from carrying on. “Mark my words, when the major come home, that woman is gonna be in for a rude awakening. That’s all I’m saying. There’s gonna be a reckoning when the major comes back.” She kept peeling potatoes and tapping her foot, as though she’d like nothing more than to run right out the door.
And maybe, if Rachel had left, things wouldn’t have been so bad when the major finally did return, eight years after the end of the War between the States and smack dab in the midst of the Years of Discord, bringing a discord all his own to Rose Hill Plantation.
When I wake in the morning alone in my bedroom at Miss Preston’s, groggy and with memories of the treacherous Rachel scratching at my brain, I’m in an even worse mood.
But more than that, I am certain that nothing good can come of this dinner at the mayor’s house. Why else would I have dreamed of Rachel, the woman that almost got me and my momma killed?
The curriculum at Miss Preston’s stresses loyalty, and I have to say that my dedication to my fellow students is incomparable. Of course, they share my sentiments. I daresay that there is not a thing Miss Preston’s girls won’t do for one another.
Chapter 12
In Which I Become an Unwilling Co-conspirator
The fittings go without incident. I fidget all the way to the dressmaker’s and back, expecting at any moment the driver will pull the iron pony over and Miss Anderson and Mr. Redfern will slaughter us for what we know. But, despite the tension I sensed in Miss Preston’s office, they seem completely unconcerned with both the upcoming dinner party and with me and Katherine. That doesn’t ease my worry, though. They could just be playing the long game, biding their time, waiting to end me and Katherine until after I’ve relaxed my guard.
None of that makes any sense—if they somehow suspected we’d been there at the Spencers’, we’d likely know already—but that’s the way it is with panic. It takes you by the throat and doesn’t much listen to reason.
Days go by, and after turning the events of the previous week over in my head, I can’t decide how I feel about the mystery of Lily and the Spencers. The longer we go without word from them, the more disconcerting the lack of news; but then, the more days pass without any further panic or shambler sightings, the mo
re likely it seems the Spencers simply did leave for another city, whether by choice or by force. It’s an unsettling conundrum, and I don’t like it one bit. It sure would set my mind at ease if Lily were to find a way to tell us what happened.
By the afternoon before the mayor’s dinner party, Katherine’s anxiety seems to have retreated into the background as well, and she is beside herself with excitement. She chatters about it to the other girls, and when they tire of listening to her she finds me and talks my ear off.
“What do you think Mrs. Carr will wear? I wish we could wear a corset, or even a bustle.” She flips the pages in her catalog and settles down next to me in the grass. I’m sitting under the big oak out back, what my momma used to call a hanging tree, the branches spread apart and thick and growing parallel to the ground, a tree perfect for climbing or stringing up a man. When I first got to Miss Preston’s I used to run off and hide in the branches of this tree, climbing as high as I could and hiding amongst the dense boughs. Eventually Miss Anderson discovered my hiding spot. She waited until I finally came down, taking the strap to me so bad that I couldn’t sit for a week. Maybe that’s why there ain’t no love lost between me and the woman. Even my earliest bad memories of the school are tied to her.
Katherine nudges me. “See, they’ve modified it so it collapses and you can sit down. Isn’t that just marvelous? And look at the silhouette.” She thrusts the fashion catalog at me so that I can see the bustle, which juts out of the rear of the woman’s hips and makes her look like a demented wasp.
I push the catalog away. “Where’d you get that?”
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