My hand roves among his few shabby items his identification papers and long underwear and folded neckerchiefs, a print of himself in his uniform, all brash and swagger, and a penknife that I’m quite sure belonged to Uncle Henry, before it was acquired by one of his sons. I slip both the photograph and knife into my cloak pocket with a twinge of guilt, for poor Nate has so few worldly treasures. My fingers spider around in the dark drawer for any other missed particulars, and I pull out an onionskin envelope, marked only with the letter
It is as if Will couldn’t quite commit to addressing it. Seeing it, however, I know what it means to feel one’s blood freeze.
With everything tucked safely in my possession, I turn. “Thank you for this.”
Nate looks uneasy. “You won’t tell Sue? Or ole Wigs for he’d chuck me out of his pub in a heartbeat and leave me for wolves if he learnt it.”
“I won’t tell…” Though I don’t understand what I am promising.
“’Twas a different world, Sumter was. You’d have to live through it.”
My fingers rub the crinkled paper. “What where is Sumter?”
“Camp Sumter; it’s in Georgia. It’s where we got sent after they took us,” Nate explains, impatient when I still don’t understand. “The Succesh prison, of course. You must have known that much.”
“Oh…yes.” My hand crushes the envelope tighter. Will’s last letter has confused me. He was killed in battle, not captured.
“They’ve been good to me here, Sue and her ole Wigs. And I’m not here for long. For it’s crawling up on me, see ” Nate swipes back the blankets and begins undoing the binding around what’s left of one of his legs.
“Please, don’t ”
But he won’t stop, and what he reveals to me is the stuff of nightmares, far worse than Quinn’s bludgeoned eye.
The flesh of Nate’s legs is rotten. Even by flickering candlelight I see that his skin, mottled and sticky with pus, is also rancid with infection.
It is revolting, and horrifying, and almost too sad to bear. I cup a hand to my nose and mouth to stop myself from gagging. “Where is the doctor to tend to this? No matter, I will send ours.”
“They brought one, Norris. He’s a dentist, so he should know when parts are rotted. He said it’s rotted too deep, but that weren’t news to me.” And yet the sight of his own leg seems to have panicked Nate. He hides his knees with the blanket, his fingers spreading and smoothing the fabric as if to erase the vision. “Stay a spell, Fran. Tell me about the good days. How it used to be between us. Please, dear? I want a pretty memory in my head.”
Shaking my head, I back away from him, toward the door. “I’ll come and visit again, just as soon as I can, with our own doctor. And I’ll bring you some books, too. They’d be good company for you.”
“Don’t want ’em. Can’t read ’em. Fran, stay awhile. Smoke a pipe with me. I’ve got a whole raft of Durham tobacco under my mattress. Please, Fran?”
No, no, no. I shake my head, I can’t bear to hear anymore. Tomorrow I’ll send someone with a crock of soup and blankets, and a note for Doctor Perkins. But I can’t stay here a moment longer.
Nate continues to entreat me. “Please, Frances, darling? Won’t you please?”
“I’m so sorry… so sorry.” Head tucked, I hurry from the room and close the door. Nate’s voice follows me down the stairs and echoes in my ears, even after I’ve escaped the tavern, and Wigs’s gimlet stare, and have headed back out into the night.
14.
Coming home I’m nearly found out. Luckily the noise is thunderous, and I scamper behind a tree as the carriage clatters past and turns up into our drive.
Uncle Henry, who had been away on business in Scarsdale, must have decided not to stay the night. Now everyone will be waked, and my absence surely will be discovered.
As I approach the house, I see the hired man in his work clothes. I know he’d returned from the tavern only moments before I’d heard his whistle up ahead of me on the road, and I’d walked well behind him, out of sight. I creep up along the edge of the lawn, darting from tree to tree. One of the boys is unstrapping Uncle Henry’s valise from the back, and Mrs. Sullivan is stationed at the door, quiet as a post. Her folded hands waiting to see if Uncle wants her to cook him a late supper before he goes to bed.
Such unrelenting drudgery, the lives of the servants.
Aunt Clara is nowhere in sight. For this, I breathe a calming sigh as I slip around the side of the house in order to enter through the back. If Aunt were awake she’d expect everyone to rouse and tend to her. Which would have made it quite impossible for me to sneak into the house and then pretend I’d been here all night.
Through the pantry, silent at the boot jack, I steal in stockinged feet up the back stairs, where I overhear Uncle Henry in the foyer requesting a sausage pie and brandy in the library. But I am battened down safe in my attic room before he has taken the second flight of stairs.
At last. My heart is knocking in my chest. I build up the fire from its embers and unfold Will’s letter, which I read on my hands and knees by the scant heat.
Even before I begin, I can see that it’s been written under hardship and duress. Will’s letters tremble and slant backward confusedly. What’s more, the paper is water damaged, the last passages a wash of ink.
When I am finished, I close my eyes, which burn with the effort of reading this final, agonized missive from the grave. Wherever Will’s body is buried, too much of my heart is there, too.
“It doesn’t matter, William,” I whisper. “None of it matters anymore. For I will always love you, no matter what this war forced you to become. Always and ever, dear heart.”
For what else could I say? What else could I ever possibly say about a senseless death and a war that I do not understand?
15.
My dreams are bursts and jolts. I see the bloody steel blade of a bayonet. I hear the drum beat to the sound of soldier’s boots and feel cold earth, cold hands, a chain, choking me.
I awake into a glare of morning and the sound of a voice.
“Saints above, Miss, what’s done you in drink a bottle of your uncle’s spirits last night?”
I sit up, wheezing for breath, my fingers stroking my neck, reassuring myself that it’s not broken as my bleary eyes find Mavis staring down on me.
“You think I’m drunk?” I ask faintly, as the horrible dream ebbs away.
Her grin is teasing. “How else could you sleep through breakfast and all this arguing?”
Sunshine streams through my window. It’s rare for me to oversleep, particularly now, on this lumpy horsehair mattress. “Arguing about what?” But I hear it. My bedroom door is ajar, and the voices below are angry. Quinn and Aunt Clara. When I stand, my sore muscles resist. “What about?” I repeat.
“Everything!” Mavis enthuses. “It’s been more delicious than toffee cake. Oh, has Mister Quinn been giving her an earful. It started as something to do with the dressmaker’s bill. Old Mister Pritchett will never raise his voice about Missus Pritchett’s wastefulness, but it seems Mister Quinn’s taken her to task.”
