Ella Wood

by Michelle Isenhoff

  “Will you write to me?”

  “I promise.” She squeezed him in a tight embrace and kissed his cheek. “Be careful, Jovie.”

  She left him in the grape arbor and didn’t look back, choosing to remember him with loosened collar standing beneath the tangled growth.

  Halfway home, she could endure the mystery of the letter no longer and paused to rip it from the envelope. A stack of pamphlets poured into her hands with titles like “American Slavery As It Is” and “An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States.” Emily recognized the one that had fallen in the mud in Widow Harris’s yard. She fumbled for Uncle Isaac’s letter.

  Dear Emily,

  Here is the literature you requested. It took me several weeks to locate some of them as they were published more than twenty years ago. Even so, the works of the Grimké sisters are still considered gospel in abolitionist circles. I have sent you their complete list of titles. You will find they don’t mince words.

  Reading between the lines of your letter, I gather that you have arrived at the same dilemma I experienced at your age. I would advise you to carefully consider the words of these two ladies. Their logic is sound and their understanding of Scripture impeccable and unbiased. I would also recommend that you search out your great-uncle, Timothy Blaine, the same man who had such a profound effect on my adolescence. He is still living on a pleasant little farm near Philadelphia.

  Emily read the last two lines again. She had a great-uncle she’d never met? Her mother had never even mentioned him.

  The rest of Uncle Isaac’s letter covered more mundane subjects. She slipped it back into the envelope to savor later, added the pamphlets, and clutched the package to her chest. She could imagine the kind of punishment that awaited if her father discovered it. Slipping the envelope under the band of her skirt, she covered it with her shirtwaist and held a hand over it for good measure.

  She sneaked up the stairway and deposited her contraband behind a section of baseboard just below her window that had warped in the rain long ago. The pamphlets tucked nicely under the crumbling plaster, and the long curtain hid the loose edge of the board. She had just finished concealing them when Lizzie entered with a fresh pitcher of water.

  “Thank you, Lizzie,” she said. “I need to find Jack. Do you know if he’s still holed up with my parents?”

  “Yo’ mama went to her room, but Jack and Marse Preston still talkin’.” Lizzie set the pitcher inside the basin, rattling it against the porcelain edge.

  Emily observed her more closely. “Lizzie, are you ill?” She noted her thin, drawn appearance and the tremor in her hand. “It’s much too early for the summer sickness.”

  “It’s nothin’, miss. I’m jus’ a little peaked.”

  “Then I insist you take an hour and rest. You’re no good to anyone if you collapse.”

  “I’m fine, miss. Truly.” She cut her eyes to the floor. “But if you don’ be needin’ me for a time, could I go tend Ketch? Josephine got to leave him to make dinner.”

  “Ketch?” Emily frowned. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He done sneaked off las’ night to see his son widout a pass. Mistah Turnbull foun’ out and gib him de whip when he get back.”

  Emily stiffened. So the overseer did occasionally make use of his bullwhip. Her jaw clenched. “Yes, Lizzie, go tend him.” She should have thought to have her eat something first, but when she went out to tell her, Lizzie had already left the hallway.

  She descended the stairs, intent on visiting Ketch for herself, but first she needed to find Jack. Emily passed her nurse on the stairs. “Deena, would you see to it that Lizzie takes some nourishment before she goes outside? She looks out of sorts. We can’t have her falling ill and spreading an epidemic through the house.”

  The old woman uttered a throaty chuckle. “What Lizzie got ain’t catchin’, chil’.”

  Emily turned to face her. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean dat girl ain’t sick. She gunna have a baby.”

  Emily missed a step and slid onto her backside, wide hoops billowing up and over her head like ocean waves. She fought for breath. “A baby? She can’t have a baby!”

  “She can and she will. Women been havin’ babies a long time.”

  “But… Oh, it’s too awful to think about!” For months, Lizzie would have to carry a reminder of the violence of that night.

  “Ain’t nothin’ wrong wid havin’ babies, Miss Emily. Mos’wise dey come out all right. De problem was de puttin’ it in, and ain’t nothin’ gunna change dat now.”

  Deena gave her a hand up. “Gib Lizzie some time. She’ll hab dis baby mos’ natural.”

  The logic was just like Deena, straightforward and practical. It was the way she had learned to live her life, but Emily had no practice at processing emotion so quickly or so philosophically. Jack’s passage through the hallway below gave her an opportunity to shift her thoughts. She flew down the stairs. “Jack, wait!”

  He smirked. “I’d share my news, but I’m one hundred percent certain you pressed your ear to the door.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you,” she told him. “Especially when…” She let the thought die.

  “You mean now that I’m on my way to target practice as the target?” It was a sly jab at her weak and foolish views. She didn’t take the bait.

  “I just want to know if Thad volunteered too.”

  “Thad?” He scowled. “No, he wouldn’t sign up with a Carolina regiment.”

  His condescension caught her off guard. “Would you sign up in Georgia?” she asked in Thad’s defense.

  “If I had lived there for a year and my two best mates joined up, yes, I think I would.”

  “You would not. You’ve too much loyalty to your own state.”

  “It’s a common cause. In a matter of weeks we swear in under the Confederacy anyway.”

  She reminded herself that now was not the time to stir up more bad feelings. “Is he going to volunteer in Georgia?”

  Jack shrugged and pushed past her. “He seemed to have more interest in his dinner engagement than he had in his honor.”

  Emily let him go. There was no reasoning with Jack at times like this. Even so, she went out the door with a lighter step. Thad would make one less person she had to worry about.

  Lewis and Josephine’s cabin sat in a beam of sunshine that directed itself between two live oaks. Was Ketch inside, or had he been placed in the hut he shared with Zeke? She wasn’t sure what to expect when she found him. She’d seen the horribly scarred backs of slaves who came to Ella Wood, but she’d never actually been exposed to brutality beyond an occasional lashing.

  She approached the sunlit cabin with a mixture of curiosity and dread and knew she’d chosen correctly when she overheard Josephine tell Lizzie, “Keep de cloths wet and de flies off. I a’ready washed it out wid saltwater. If de poultice fend off de fever, ain’t no need to call for de conjurer.”

  “What should I do if he wakes?”

  “Nothin’ you can do. Jus’ let ’em heal.”

  Emily stepped quietly into the room. She hadn’t been inside since the evening Lizzie had been abused. Her eyes immediately went to Ketch’s still figure sprawled stomach down on the same bunk Lizzie had occupied. His back was covered with a length of cloth spread liberally with boiled herbs.

  Josephine rested a hand on Lizzie’s shoulder. “He’ll be fine, chil’.” It was an intimate gesture, like a mother comforting a daughter. Josephine turned for the door, startling noticeably when she caught sight of Emily, then pushed past without a word.

  Lizzie hadn’t seen her yet. Emily observed from the doorway as, with infinite tenderness, the young woman cooled Ketch’s forehead and wiped the reddish fluid dripping from under his bandages. When Lizzie laid a gentle hand on the man’s head, Emily realized she had discovered another of her maid’s secrets.

  “How is he?” she asked.

  Lizzie jerked her hand away. “Sleepin’, mercifully.
”

  “Did Deena get you something to eat?”

  “I had some bread.”

  “She told me about the baby.”

  Lizzie scowled, concentrating on her ministrations without looking up. “She shouldn’t have. She said she wouldn’t.”

  “Just how long did you think you could keep it a secret?” She stepped into the room and pulled Lewis’s crude stool up next to the bed. “Is the child his?” she asked, gesturing to Ketch. She suddenly hoped the baby meant something far different.

  Lizzie caught another drip and shook her head. “I never spoke a word to him.”

  “Then it’s time you had a decent conversation. I’ll make sure you have plenty of free time during his convalescence.”

  Lizzie smiled slightly.

  “Herod hasn’t sent you any more flowers, has he?”

  “No. Now he all silence and dark looks. Leastwise I don’ see him much.”

  “Well, maybe if you and Ketch—” She paused, the words shoved off her tongue by a horrible thought. “How did Mr. Turnbull find out Ketch was missing?”

  “I don’ know. Maybe he checked his cabin.”

  “Does he do that?”

  Lizzie shook her head. “He generally stay out of de slave quarters.”

  “Would Ketch’s actions have warranted it? What caused him to lose his pass?”

  “Lewis say he act disrespectful in de field. He say Ketch need a warnin’ ’fore he do somethin’ worse. He recommended a weekend widout leave.”

  Disrespect to a driver wouldn’t cause Turnbull to check up on him. “If Ketch finished his work on Saturday, and he wasn’t due in the fields till Monday morning, how would the overseer know he was gone?”

  “Lewis didn’t even know. Ketch walked all night. He left after dark and got home at first light. But Turnbull was waitin’ for him.”

  Emily met Lizzie’s eyes. There was only one answer. Somebody had ratted him out. “You don’t think…?”

  From the narrow expression on her maid’s face, she had pinpointed the same suspect. “Oh, yes I do.”

  But there was no way to prove it. “Let me see his wounds.”

  Lizzie carefully lifted the poultice. Emily gagged and covered her mouth with one hand. Ketch’s back lay in tatters, with ribbons of flesh peeling away with the cloth. The entire surface was one oozing sore. She had to close her eyes.

  How could her father tolerate such savagery? And for such a menial crime? She hadn’t thought him capable of it. Obviously she’d been naïve.

  At dinner that evening Emily could barely look at her father. He and Jack had started right in on recent politics, oblivious to mother and daughter who both pushed more food around their plates than they took into their mouths. They thoroughly discussed Mr. Lincoln’s call for a blockade of the harbor and made plans to send the schooner out to stock up on necessary items, even though both claimed the Union’s attempt would be entirely ineffective.

  William finally noticed his daughter’s silence. “What’s wrong, Emily?”

  She lifted her eyes. “I visited Ketch today.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart. You were not meant to see that.”

  “No, apparently you’ve managed to hide a great deal from me. But I’m certain the pain would have remained the same had I viewed the injury or not.”

  “He knew the consequences. The punishment was justly applied.”

  “For coming home?”

  “For leaving without permission.”

  “Oh, of course.” She met his eyes. “What other punishments have you authorized lately? Branding? Thumbscrews? Mutilation? Murder?”

  William’s eyes grew stormy. “That is enough, young lady.”

  “What will you do, beat me too? How can you sit in your office and tell me about your Christian duty when you condone this savagery right in your backyard?” She chuffed humorlessly. “You wrote the laws to keep this legal. You’re willing”—she looked at Jack—“you’re both willing to fight and die for this.”

  Jack regarded her with rapt attention, the ghost of amusement on his lip, but William slammed a hand on the tabletop. “You are one ignorant child condemning a system set in place by far wiser minds than yours. It has created all this,” he said, waving his hand. “All the privilege you take for granted. You’re trying to make some kind of devil out of me, but it’s you against a million.”

  And it was those million he wanted to appease, she realized. “You’re afraid. All this holier than thou justification, it’s just a poor attempt to make yourself feel better. You’re too scared to stand apart. You’re terrified of waking to find a skull and crossbones in your own front yard.”

  William rose from his chair with a roar of fury. “Go to your room this instant!”

  She flung the chair over backwards as she rose. “Gladly. I refuse to eat with cowards.”

  21

  William had been Emily’s greatest hero, and when he fell from the pedestal she’d placed him on, it cut like a betrayal. Cold distance typified their new relationship, and with Jack no longer returning home for weekends, only Marie was left to mediate between them. After the Executive Council broke up with the strengthening of the Confederate union, William was called to some position or another within the governor’s staff. Emily didn’t ask. She was just glad it required so much of his time.

  Letters began arriving from Jovie—pages filled with the details of soldiering. Alongside passages describing the heat and the long, lonely hours of picket duty, he poked fun at the tasteless food and inexperienced officers and included snippets of humor found where only Jovie would think to look for them. He wrote in a warm, personal style, so vivid that if she closed her eyes, she thought she might reach our her hand and touch the flapping canvas of his tent, see the apricot glow of a thousand campfires in the twilight, or hear the raucous boasts of his compatriots as they lounged beside them at the close of the day. Emily wanted to do all she could to encourage him, so she responded in kind, though her stories of home sounded shallow and uninteresting next to his.

  Thad came back one afternoon in early June, not many weeks after Jack and Jovie shipped out for Virginia. With Jack gone, he made no pretense that he was there for any other reason but to see her, and she didn’t send him away. She needed the vitality he always brought with him.

  Tea in the parlor proved incredibly stilted. As Marie practiced a soulful melody on the piano in the next room, their words brushed up against mundane topics that neither of them really cared to discuss and lacked the full-bodied conversation that had come so easy in less formal settings. Emily was struggling to rein in a thousand wiggles when Marie peeked in the room. “Why don’t the two of you just go outside? Every time I pause in my playing, I’d like to fall over with boredom from the lack of conversation in this room.”

  Thad let out an audible sigh of relief and Emily giggled, her nervousness instantly stilled.

  “Bring me a bouquet for the dinner table,” Marie suggested.

  Thad made no objection as Emily led him out the back door and into the sunshine. “That is why I usually camp out in the stable during calling hours,” she admitted as she lifted her face to the warm rays. “I can make a fast getaway before the gentleman is ever announced.”

  “I won’t criticize your methods.” He grinned, twining his fingers in hers. “Especially when they cripple my competition.”

  She didn’t pull her hand away. “Come on,” she urged. “Let’s pick wildflowers for my mother. We’ll collect some in every color.”

  It was a perfect afternoon. They stalked the edge of the thoroughbred pasture where sun-loving Indian blanket, daisies, and asters abounded along the fence rails. Emily amassed quite an armful before they even reached the woods and handed it off to Thad to carry. He tagged along good-naturedly, stuffing each new addition into alignment.

  “May I ask why you want to scour the fields for blossoms when Ella Wood has one of the finest gardens in the state?”

  “It’s the ch
allenge,” she lilted. “The thrill of discovery. Don’t you enjoy a good treasure hunt?”

  He smiled at her softly. “There’s only one treasure I want to pursue.”

  She felt pleasure rising in her cheeks and stooped to pick a handful of chicory. “When I was little, Deena used to plant objects around the house then name a whole list for me to search out. It kept me busy for hours.” She rose thoughtfully. “It’s not just the hunt, though. I prefer the freedom of the open fields. Sometimes the garden feels very confining.”

  “Ever independently minded, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose I am.” She added the chicory to the bouquet. “Thad, can I ask why you didn’t enlist with Jack and Jovie?”

  “Are you wondering why you don’t have a dashing officer’s arm to hang on?” he teased.

  “You know that’s not it.”

  “If I provided you with a such an arm, would it aid my personal treasure hunt?”

  “Not at all.” But weren’t they roaming the acres of Ella Wood together when all other callers sent her fleeing on horseback? “I’m just curious why you didn’t give in to the fever like everyone else.”

  He shrugged. “I’m not one to pledge my life lightly. Too much of an opportunist, I suppose. And getting myself killed is not an opportunity I’d like to explore.”

  “Some might call you unpatriotic.”

  “And this coming from someone so adamant against Secession?”

  She laughed. “I was thinking of my brother. I’m glad you didn’t enlist.” She rested a moment beneath the overhanging branches of a live oak tree. “So, now that school has ended, will you stay in Charleston for the summer?”

  He shook his head, propping a booted foot on a fallen branch. “I haven’t seen my mother since last summer, and I have a few ideas I’d like to discuss with my father.”

  “What kind of ideas?”

  “Business. Much too ugly a subject for someone as beautiful as you.” He tapped her nose with a clover blossom. “But I’ll be back. Will you be moving to town for the hot months?”