The Last Refuge

by Marcia Talley

  Jack’s steely gaze dropped away, back to focusing on his steak. ‘You’re a Johnny-Come-Lately, so you’re probably unaware of the rigorous screening they put us through. Of course the children are on board.’

  ‘When Mom was diagnosed, we were all going to quit,’ Melody cut in. ‘But it was Mom who insisted we stay on. The show was mega important to her.’

  ‘Kat has been homeschooling Melody and Gabriel, but what could be a better educational experience than actually having an opportunity to live in the eighteenth century?’ Jack added.

  From across the table a male voice said, ‘May I butt in?’

  Back in the parlor, I’d been introduced to the voice’s owner, a gangly young man in his mid to late twenties with a fringe of dark hair, but I couldn’t remember at the moment whether he was Alex Mueller, the dancing master, or Michael Rainey, the children’s tutor.

  ‘The children’s education will continue,’ he said, so I figured it was Michael. ‘They’ve converted the Paca House gift shop into a schoolroom. I’ll be teaching Gabe and Melody, of course, plus four other homeschoolers who will be brought in for classes every weekday.’ He snorted softly. ‘I almost said “bussed in.” That would have been a neat trick in 1774.’

  ‘That’s historically accurate,’ Donovan stated airily, just in case I’d been wondering. ‘School teachers were thin on the ground in colonial times. Only the gentry could afford to hire them, so children from neighboring estates would be often be included, and the expense shared.’

  I’d done my homework, too, so this wasn’t news to me. Over the weekend, I’d poured over the material in the orientation packet Jud had given me, The Compleat Housewife, or Accomplished Gentlewoman’s Companion, for example, and The Frugal Housewife, or Complete Woman Cook, a cookbook from 1772 where I learned how to dress a turtle (don’t ask!) and prepare such finger-lickin’ fare as ragout of hog’s head and ears. Particularly helpful was The Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian, a charming and extraordinarily detailed account of Fithian’s year at Nomini Hall, the Robert Carter estate in Virginia, as a ‘plantation tutor’ to seven of the nine Carter children. Although Fithian wasted a good bit of time mooning over his girlfriend back in New Jersey, his impressions of daily life in Virginia are recorded with insight and the kind of detail one might expect of a tourist visiting a foreign country which, to a divinity student from Princeton University in 1774, Virginia almost certainly was.

  Thinking about Fithian being so far away from home prompted me to ask, ‘So, what do you do in real life, Mr Donovan?’

  A corner of his mouth turned up, half smile, half smirk. ‘Ah, I see you’re getting into your role already, Mrs Ives. The head of the household is always referred to as “Mister.”’ He chased a wayward carrot around his plate, stabbed it with a fork. ‘Or, “sir,” depending.’

  While Donovan was busy popping the carrot into his mouth, Michael shot me a look: Asshole.

  I stifled a giggle, narrowly avoiding spewing iced tea out my nose. Playing sister-in-law to such a stuffed shirt and mother to his two sulky children was likely to be a challenge. Didn’t Jud tell me that the cast had been carefully vetted? Of course he did, I realized as I mashed my vegetables together with a fork and applied a generous pat of butter. But if every applicant received high marks under the ‘Plays Well with Others’ column, it wouldn’t make for much of a TV show. ‘Conflict,’ I could almost hear Jud saying. ‘That’s what makes good television.’

  ‘So, sir,’ I continued, ‘what do you do back in McKinney?’

  ‘JD’s Auto Mall,’ he said. ‘I sell cars. And I’m very, very good at it.’

  A used-car salesman as our lord and master. How could we be so lucky?

  SIX

  ‘Having servants is awesome! I ring a bell and they bring me stuff!’

  Gabriel Donovan, son

  On my first day as mistress of Patriot House, I was awakened by a gentle tap on the door.

  ‘Mumppf,’ I managed as I opened my eyes, squinted into the semi-darkness and tried to figure out exactly where I was. I struggled into a half-sitting position and patted around on the bedside table looking for my watch before remembering that I didn’t have a watch. When the cast arrived at Patriot House the previous afternoon we’d gone through a sign-in procedure more thorough than a security checkpoint at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. Watches, jewelry, iPods, iPhones, Droids, even Jack Donovan’s hearing aids … those technical marvels that make twenty-first century life worth living, all had to be surrendered before we were given a tour of the house and shown to our respective rooms.

  Now, as Amy bustled into the room smiling cheerfully and carrying a tea tray, I felt curiously detached from reality. Had it been only two weeks since Jud had showed up on my doorstep like a lost puppy?

  ‘You asked to be awakened at six thirty,’ Amy chirped as she set the tea tray down on a small round table between the two front windows. The skirt of her bright blue dress swished as she stood on tiptoe and threw open the curtains, flooding the room with light.

  ‘Ouch,’ I said, shielding my eyes.

  ‘The staff is awake, madam,’ Amy said. ‘Cook said to say that breakfast will be ready to serve by eight. I’ll go wake the children, then be back to help you dress.’ She lifted a yellow silk dressing gown off a wooden peg near the door and laid it carefully on the foot of the bed, before disappearing into the hall.

  My bedroom was located directly over the library at the front of the main house, its two tall windows overlooking Prince George Street. Carefully avoiding the chamber pot, I climbed out of bed, slipped the dressing gown over my shift and crossed to the windows, knotting my sash as I went. It had been a warm evening, so the windows – decorated with the same red and white French toile as the bed hangings – were still open. I stuck my head out, looked down the street to my right, wishing I could catch sight of Paul leaving the house, walking the few short blocks to his office at the Naval Academy, but it was far too early for that.

  I settled into an upholstered slipper chair and picked up the teapot, carefully pouring the steaming liquid through the silver strainer Amy had balanced over my cup. I was grateful as I sipped that the two cameramen – Derek and Chad – had been assigned to cover the morning ablutions of The Great Patriot himself, Jack Donovan, who slept alone in the master suite directly across the hall.

  Amy returned a short time later, materializing as if by magic through the wall just to the left of my bed. A door-sized portion of the woodwork – wallpaper, wainscoting, chair rail and all – yawned open and I nearly dropped my cup. ‘Yikes!’ I squeaked. ‘You scared the life out of me!’

  Amy laughed. ‘Sorry.’ She carried a tea kettle on a flat, padded pillow, steam drifting lazily out of its spout. ‘That door leads to the service staircase. It’s a shortcut to the first floor, and to the kitchen. I thought you might want to wash up first,’ she added, heading for a washstand I had overlooked the previous evening. Carefully, she poured boiling water into a bowl in the washstand. She added cool water to it from a matching pitcher, tested the water with a fingertip, then draped a flannel cloth over the brim. ‘It’s ready whenever you are.’

  ‘I’d kill for a cup of coffee,’ I told Amy as I dipped the flannel into the warm water, squeezed it out and applied the refreshingly warm cloth to my face. ‘A shower, too, but I realize that’s out of the question.’

  While I washed, Amy set the tea kettle down on the floor near the hidden door, just discernible as a thin crack, now that I knew where it was. She opened a leather trunk at the foot of the bed and pulled out one of my everyday gowns – an apple-green linen that I’d previously seen hanging in the wardrobe trailer with Katherine Donovan’s name on it.

  ‘Will this dress be suitable for today, madam?’

  When I nodded, she draped the gown carefully over the arm of the chair I’d just vacated. Amy handed me a pair of stockings, a fine white silk, and knelt on the floor in front of me, ready to assist, as if I were an inval
id. ‘I think I can manage,’ I said with a smile. ‘Why don’t you find my stays?’

  While Amy dug the stays out of a dresser drawer, I rolled the stockings up over my knees and secured them there with a fat elastic band. ‘Why it took until the nineteen sixties to invent panty hose, I can’t imagine. I’m hoping I don’t get gangrene below the knee in this get-up.’

  Amy watched while I stepped into the under-petticoat. After I’d tied it around my waist, she handed me the stays. I slipped the corset-like device over my head then turned so she could lace me up the back. ‘If you don’t have a maid, or a husband, you’d never get into this contraption,’ I said, regretting my words almost the moment they fell out of my mouth. Husband. Shit. Amy’s husband was dead.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ Amy said, her voice hoarse. She gave my laces a final savage tug before tying them off. ‘It’s not like I haven’t noticed that Drew is dead.’

  I indicated a chair, the mate to the one I’d been sitting on. ‘I’ve upset you. I’m sorry. Here, sit down for a minute.’

  Amy eased her full skirts onto the chair and sat. For a long moment, she simply stared at me. Then she said, ‘It hasn’t been easy.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  She sat quietly for a moment, hands folded, as if weighing how much to tell me. ‘Do you know what a death notification team is, Hannah?’

  ‘I can guess. Sounds awful.’

  ‘It is. An official car pulls up in front of your house and an officer, a chaplain, a medic and a JAG, all in uniform, step out of it.’ She looked up at me through a film of tears. ‘Sounds like a bad joke, doesn’t it? “An officer, a chaplain, a medic and a JAG walked into a bar …”’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘I knew right away, of course. Nobody needed to tell me, but they did anyway, running through their official script, like “Are you Mrs Edward Drew Cornell? Is your husband Lieutenant Commander Edward Drew Cornell? Ma’am, we regret to inform you that your husband …”’ She swiped a tear from her cheek and sighed deeply. ‘According to the Navy, Drew is missing, presumed dead.’

  I reached out and touched her sleeve. ‘Missing? Is it possible he’s still alive?’

  Amy bit her lower lip and shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘When did this happen, Amy?’

  ‘Ten months ago. Remember that helicopter crash in Swosa?’

  My heart did a flip-flop. ‘After Madani Sabir Nazari was assassinated? My God! It was all over the news. Two of the casualties were Naval Academy grads, so we paid particular attention to the coverage. Drew was on that mission, too?’

  She nodded miserably. ‘The Navy’s been trying to recover their bodies for months, but the rebel government in Swosa isn’t cooperating. But what difference does it make? CNN has videos of the crash. The chopper was incinerated. There can’t possibly have been any survivors.’

  Outside in the hallway, a patter of bare feet and the putt-putt-putt of a race car screaming by – Gabriel making anachronistic noises. Amy looked up. ‘Guess I better finish helping you dress. You going to wear hoops?’

  I shrugged. ‘Might as well go the whole hog.’

  Amy helped me tie the figure-eight-shaped hoop Alisha had told me was called a farthingale around my waist, then handed me what looked like an embroidered pouch on a string. ‘What’s this?’ I asked, turning it over in my hands, admiring the handiwork.

  ‘It’s a pocket. You tie it on under your skirt. You can put things in it like coins, keys, lipstick …’ She laughed out loud. ‘Just kidding about the lipstick. You reach into the pocket from slits in the side seams of your dress.’

  ‘What made you decide to apply for Patriot House?’ I asked Amy as she helped me adjust the pocket and slip into my gown.

  ‘Oh, Hannah. It’s been awful. After Drew died, everything seemed to go to hell. I was teaching music in a Catholic elementary school, but the diocese closed the school in a cost-cutting measure, then sold the property.’

  ‘Let me guess …’

  Amy nodded. ‘Pedophile priests. Compensating their victims turned out to be expensive.’

  ‘The price of priestly pederasty spreads far beyond the original victims. I read about some nuns in Los Angeles who were evicted from the convent they’d lived in for more than forty years so that the property could be sold.’

  Amy shook her head. ‘I’m glad Mother Church is finally getting around to compensating victims of its pedophile priests, but the nuns weren’t exactly the guilty parties, were they?’

  ‘Where do you live?’ I asked as Amy knelt to shake the wrinkles out of my gown and arrange it more attractively over the petticoat.

  ‘Virginia Beach. A really nice neighborhood in Lynnhaven,’Amy continued. ‘Or so I thought. Then I started getting harassing phone calls. I can’t prove it, but I think they came from this hate group out in Topeka, Kansas that calls itself a church. “Thank God for dead soldiers” the voice would say. They told me that Drew was killed by an angry God and that whenever God saw fit to send him home in a body bag, they’d happily picket his funeral.’

  I laid a hand on Amy’s shoulder. ‘I think I’m going to be ill.’

  ‘Tell me about it. I reported the calls to the police, of course, but they had other more pressing cases, so I had my phone changed to an unlisted number. When the son of a bitch called that, too, I simply had the landline taken out. Then someone vandalized my car. Two weeks later, my condo was broken into. Totally unrelated, I’m sure, but when my mother found out, she worried – you know mothers – called me three times a day from Nashua, New Hampshire, left messages on my cell, insisted I move back in with her, but … well, if you knew my mother, you’d understand why I preferred to run away to the eighteenth century!’ She paused, head cocked while she concentrated on hooking me into my stomacher. ‘There!’ She took several steps back, examining her work. ‘You look fabulous, but we have to do something about the hair.’

  Over the summer I’d let my usual wash-and-wear, ash-brown curls grow out. By September they’d reached the length where I could, with some effort, scrape them into a short ponytail. Amy sat me at the dressing table, and by some legerdemain, swept my hair up in wings over my ears, using a hairbrush to coax the ends into a mass of mini-sausages at the back of my head. She topped off the do with a soft, lacy mob cap. Examining myself in the mirror, I had to agree with Amy’s assessment: I looked fabulous – for a grandmother of three wearing no makeup.

  ‘Where did you learn to do that?’ I asked.

  Her reflection shrugged. ‘I have a little sister. I used to do it for her. French braids, mostly. Sue married a Mormon and moved out to St George, Utah.’

  ‘Whew!’ I said, patting my curls appreciatively. ‘I was afraid they’d want me to wear a wig.’

  ‘For the ball, yes.’

  ‘You think so?’

  She nodded. ‘For sure. I overheard Jud talking to Derek about setting up a shoot at the wigmakers.’

  ‘As long as it’s not one of those mile-high creations with ribbons, feathers and live birds,’ I said.

  Amy grinned. ‘They come with fleas, too. For lice, you pay extra.’

  ‘Euuuuw!’ I rolled my eyes. ‘Well, let’s hope the producers’ passion for historical accuracy doesn’t stretch that far.’

  For a house with a dozen (or so) residents, it surprised me that only five were at breakfast that morning. Alex Mueller, the dancing master, wouldn’t be joining us until later in the day, I learned, so it was just me at one end of the table and Jack at the other, with Melody and her brother sitting on the side facing the windows opposite Michael Rainey, their tutor. And the cameraman, of course. Derek (or was it Chad?) who was standing as inconspicuously as possible next to the buffet like a black, brooding potted plant, filming us as we ate breakfast.

  When I finally managed to arrange my skirts, underskirts and hoops in such a way that I could actually sit down in my chair, Jack offered a quic
k blessing of the ‘Oh, Lord we just …’ persuasion and I was about to open my mouth to say that we were supposed to be Anglican, thank you very much, saying graces from the Book of Common Prayer circa 1662 such as, Give us grateful hearts, O Father, for all thy mercies, and make us mindful of the needs of others; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen, when French appeared with the scrambled eggs, hominy, fried potatoes and onions – followed by, bless her, cups of rich, dark coffee that brightened my whole day. I hoped Amy and the others were eating just as well down in the kitchen.

  I was helping myself to another spoonful of eggs from a covered bowl when someone began knocking at the front door, the sound of the brass knocker echoing sharply through the house. A few minutes later, a man I hadn’t met before, dressed in a plain dark suit with gold braid, entered the dining room, carrying a silver tray. ‘No reply required, sir,’ the man said, holding the tray out in front of Jack. On the tray sat a piece of parchment-colored paper that from my vantage point, looked to be folded in fourths and sealed with a blob of red wax. Jack scooped up the message and said, ‘Thank you, Jeffrey. You may go.’

  While Jeffrey was busy bowing theatrically and backing out of the room, I said, ‘Mr Donovan, may I ask why I’ve never met that individual?’

  ‘What did you say?’

  I’d forgotten about the missing hearing aids, so I repeated the question, only a little louder.

  ‘He’s my valet.’ Jack picked up his table knife and used it to pry up the seal and unfold the paper.

  While Jack was engrossed in reading his correspondence, I leaned in Michael’s direction and whispered, ‘Why haven’t I seen him before?’

  ‘That’s Jeff Wiley. From Colorado. He was in Williamsburg early on, but came back to Annapolis before the rest of us to help get the house ready. His room is on the third floor of the main house, next to French’s.’ Michael pointed at the ceiling.

  ‘Oh,’ I whispered back. ‘I didn’t recognize him. In the photo they gave me, Jeff had a mustache.’