The Fiddler's Gun
Page 31
Directly behind the chapel sat the actual orphan house. Much like the dining hall, it was of log construction and had a fireplace at either end to chase off the assault of a chilly night. The lower, boy’s floor was only accessible from the north end and the upper, girl’s area, only from a stair at the south. Ten straw beds marched down the length of each floor, five to a side, and nearly every inch of the lower interior was carved and whittled at by boys with too much energy to sleep.
There was a stable for the wagon and horses, a chicken coop, and of course the headmistress’s chambers. And the whole of the compound was guarded well by a high surrounding fence that obscured the view to all but the empty bell tower.
When Hilde and Carmaline Baab crossed from Germany in 1748 they brought with them dreams of starting over and raising their children in Protestant fashion without the menace of the Pope lingering at the back door like a wolf. But the Georgia wild claimed the Baab men in the first winter and made widows of them both. So the Baab sisters took charge of the orphan house. The first orphans in their care were Salzburger Germans, but the good graces of sister Carmaline didn’t let her turn down a child. Soon there were children at the Castle from backgrounds as different as the whole of Europe and the colonies.
Each day after breakfast, the Sisters herded the children into the chapel for morning prayers. Aside from prayers, this service consisted of Sister Carmaline terrifying children—which is to say, singing. She’d pitch a tidy devotion to the captive congregation and then the tone of her voice would take on a subtle change, hinting to the orphans that she was about to break into song. Every child in the room bristled and squirmed when they caught wind of it, darting their eyes about like trapped animals, desperate for a means of escape. Then she’d open her mouth and confirm all fears.
“This morning I’d like to sing you a song, one the Lord has blessed me with.”
A sharp intake of breath would split the air as the room full of children braced themselves for the coming onslaught. Fists would clench, shoulders stiffen, and faces quiver, some on the verge of tears. Then it would happen. The first notes would break on the fold like a wave—a wave that smothers you and drags you straight to the bottom of the sea. To Sister Carmaline all the quivering and quaking in the pews looked suspiciously like the manifest of the Holy Ghost, so she’d praise God for it and sing all the more.
In the aftermath of the song, she’d ask her congregation to bow their heads in prayer. It really didn’t matter what Sister Carmaline prayed about because no one ever heard it. Every soul in the chapel was too busy thanking God that the singing was over and begging Lord to spare them an encore. Quite possibly, Sister Carmaline’s singing saved more souls than her sermons ever did. Her singing, you see, brought many a young man and woman close to the Lord much as soldiers on the battlefield often find salvation in the face of their own mortality.
On a few dreadful occasions, Sister Carmaline felt especially blessed and passed that on to those in attendance in the form of a second song to dismiss the children to their daily chores. On at least one occasion, this caused nine-year-old Delly Martin to faint cold.
After the retreating from Carmaline’s singing, it was time for chores, and while normally dreaded by children, chores seemed almost an escape for the orphans at the Castle. They’d come fleeing out of the chapel like scared goats and head straight for the nearest broom or water bucket or feed pen, throwing themselves at their work as if trying madly to erase some terrifying vision from their minds. Chores, however, were the domain of Sister Hilde, and hers was another form of combat all together.
Now Hilde wasn’t all monster and no mouse. She managed to be positively pleasant during school studies. There was something in the act of teaching that seemed to calm the beast inside her. She’d talk passionately for hours about history, grammar, and mathematics and seemed to grow larger with the imparting of information, as if she could somehow straighten her crooked body simply by the filling of young minds. But no child lived long with out learning that pleasant in class in no way implied pleasant during chores.
The raising of orphans is a business of controlling the chaos that a storm of children tends to muster, and if the Castle was often the site of storms, then the dining hall was certainly the eye, and Brother Bartimaeus its keeper. He didn’t so much cook as work magic on food. A squawking chicken would disappear from the coop into the back of the dining hall and a few hours later that chicken would be miraculously transformed into the smell of home. Hints of rosemary and onion would come wafting out of the hall and find their way into every last nostril in the Castle. Yes, Brother Bartimaeus was a master of the cook pot, and when the place fell under his spell all sins were forgiven for a time. Argument would end, enemies would truce, and enmity turned to amnesty all for the love and savor of supper.
Such was the state of the world into which Phinea Button found herself fallen as a babe, and such was the place that raised her up to the woman she became, whether for good or ill. And from that same did she sail away, years later, her heart all torn and somewhat twisted by the great deep sea ahead and the ruin and flames behind.