Veiled in Smoke

by Jocelyn Green

  Under the Sarah says heading, she wrote: Jasper a Union soldier from the beginning. Died outside Petersburg, summer 1864.

  Beneath Brandon says, she wrote: Jasper a Confederate soldier, prisoner at Camp Douglas, took the oath of allegiance to Union in March 1865, and then fought with the Union. Hiram paid for his portrait.

  “They can’t both be true.” Meg sighed. “The only thing they have in common is that Jasper was a soldier.”

  “And only one column is supported by actual proof.” Nate pointed to Mr. Brandon’s.

  The photographer emerged from the back room, shaking his head. “It wasn’t where I thought it would be. It must not have survived the fire after all.”

  Meg wasn’t surprised. “Thank you for looking, just the same.”

  The parakeet chittering after her, she and Nate left with more questions than when they’d arrived, but at least she could return the photographs to their rightful owners. She had no reason to keep Jasper’s from him anymore.

  “Will you tell your family what you learned?” Nate asked her. “Even though it seems to contradict Sarah’s letter?”

  Meg unfolded the paper showing the columns of information. “You were right, Nate. The only true evidence we have says that Jasper was a Confederate prisoner of war. Father and Sylvie ought to know that. And Jasper shouldn’t live with the burden of keeping it a secret.”

  Maybe now he would take off that mask he wore and be free to be himself.

  Stephen’s hand shook. He pinched the needle all the harder, determined not to let it stop him from repairing the binding on a customer’s copy of Paradise Lost. It was so straightforward, this task. Match the needle’s tip to the holes already scored in the pages, pull the thread through, and repeat. If he couldn’t mend a book, how could he mend what really mattered in his life? If he couldn’t bind the pages to the spine, how could he bind together what was left of his family?

  Sitting back, he touched his chin, still not used to the smooth feel of his shaven skin. He would have let his beard grow back if Sylvie hadn’t told him she liked seeing more of his face. More of him. It was the sort of thing Ruth had said early in their marriage, her gentle reminder he needed to shave.

  Oliver climbed onto Stephen’s lap. He scratched beneath the poor creature’s chin, heart aching afresh at the sight of his singed-off whiskers. Gently, he stroked from the cat’s head to his tail, feeling for his ribs. “I think he’s hungry,” he said.

  “Is that what he’s telling you?” Sylvie said without looking up. She was tying red and green plaid ribbons onto a spruce wreath to hang on the door. “Oliver Twist already had a meal this morning. He doesn’t need more until this afternoon.”

  “Are you sure?” Stephen glanced at the pantry shelf, looking for something to offer him.

  “Trust me.” She lifted Oliver from his lap and, with a kiss between the cat’s ears, deposited him into a little box she’d lined with flannel and set on the floor near the stove. “Don’t let him distract you.”

  But he was already distracted by the effort of not speaking his mind about Fake Jasper. He didn’t have a problem concentrating. His problem was that he was concentrating on the wrong thing. It would be a relief to let it go, but his thoughts seemed locked onto a one-way track with no destination in sight.

  The bell jingled, and Meg and Nate came in, faces almost as pale as the mist that surrounded them. Stephen could see nothing out the windows, so dense was the fog today. It was as if the shanty were wrapped in a shroud. He shuddered at the idea, for he’d had more than one nightmare of being buried alive in a mass pit like the one he’d fed bodies to at Andersonville. He stomped his foot beneath the table, anchoring himself to the present so he wouldn’t slip into the past.

  Meg pulled the door closed and locked it before turning the sign in the window to Closed. Hanging her hat and cloak, she said, “We need to talk.”

  Stephen had a bad feeling about this.

  Nate hung up his frock coat and bowler as well but left his muffler draped over his shoulders as he sat across from Stephen. “Sorry to interrupt.” He nodded at Paradise Lost.

  Stephen moved his project to the end of the table and covered the book and tools with a towel in case Oliver decided to take a stroll across the pages. “What’s this all about?”

  Waiting until Sylvie lowered herself to the bench beside Stephen, Meg took her place by Nate and sighed. “In a word: Jasper. We’ve just come from a visit with the photographer from the Camp Douglas studio.”

  Her voice ricocheted between Stephen’s ears as she laid out two cartes de visite, his and Jasper’s, and explained that they were taken by the same man in the same location. She unfolded a piece of foolscap and smoothed it out, turning it so two columns faced him and Sylvie.

  His heart rate launched sky high. He heard Meg’s voice, then Nate’s, and Sylvie’s higher-pitched surprise, but more than any of that, he heard the alarm inside his head. Layers of sound converged and diverged like a thousand clanging church bells.

  “I knew it.” He licked his dry lips. “I knew something wasn’t right about him. Didn’t I say that? Didn’t I? He’s a Rebel. I’d wager he’s a Rebel spy, even now.”

  “The war is over, Father.” Meg’s tone was far too confident. She didn’t understand.

  “No, it isn’t. Not for me. And probably not for him.” He passed trembling fingers through his hair. It was short. So very short, because they’d shorn his head at the asylum. Scabs on his scalp caught beneath his fingernails. The sensation catapulted him back to Andersonville.

  “He’s not a spy, Father,” Sylvie said with passion simmering just beneath the surface. “He’s not even a Rebel anymore. This is why he never wanted to tell us who he really was. You’re overreacting.”

  No, he wasn’t. The Rebels were here in Chicago. He’d always known it would come to this. It was why he’d patrolled the roof of his building for years.

  “It’s my job to protect you,” he said. He’d left his girls defenseless for those long years of war. He’d never do that again. “I’ll protect you from that Rebel, but you must cooperate with me and do exactly as I say.”

  Tears shone in Sylvie’s brown eyes. “I don’t want to be protected from him. Don’t you see? I care for him!”

  Her words were a blow. He clutched at his heart, then shoved back from the table and marched the length of the room, sixteen feet and back again, his hand slapping his thigh.

  Meg spun around on the bench to face him, a strand of hair curling by her cheek. “Father, if we believe he’s a Confederate veteran, then we also have to believe that he took the oath of allegiance to the United States years ago and fought as a Yankee too. We have to believe that Sarah Davenport was either mistaken or lying when she said he died, which means Jasper is who he says he is. He’s Hiram’s nephew. Hiram knew about his allegiances and loved him anyway. He left his entire fortune to him.”

  She looked so young, so naïve. In his mind’s eye, he saw her wearing a pinafore and braids down her back. She was a child.

  Inhaling deeply and slowly, Stephen attempted to steady his breath. He turned to Nate. “What do you say about all this?”

  The reporter stood to look him straight in the eye. “It’s rather a shock, isn’t it? But it seems like there are still a few pieces missing to this riddle. And sometimes knowing part of the truth can distort the true picture a great deal.”

  “How’s that?” Stephen struggled to remain rooted in one spot as Nate spoke to him. But the fire in his limbs wouldn’t allow it. He broke into a pace again.

  Nate grabbed the two ends of his muffler. “For instance, we knew the Great Fire began with a spark in Catherine O’Leary’s barn. So we blamed her and her cow for starting the fire. Some even said it was deliberate. But the inquiry revealed she was in bed and could not be blamed. Unfortunately, the damage to her reputation and the reputation of Irish immigrants might be beyond repair. People love a scapegoat.”

  “I’m not talking abo
ut an Irish immigrant and a fire,” Stephen growled. Sweat streamed from his temples down the sides of his face, and he mopped it with his cuff. “I’m talking about a Rebel and my daughters.”

  “Jasper is your scapegoat.” Sylvie’s voice was so quiet, Stephen almost missed her words.

  He rounded on her, silently daring her to repeat them.

  “You have to separate what happened to you from Jasper,” Sylvie said. “You never met him before this fall. He never hurt you. And you weren’t among those who hurt him. Make no mistake, Jasper suffered too. In ways you can understand better than the rest of us.”

  His chest was heaving. His pulse in a runaway gallop, he felt like he was about to come out of his skin.

  “It’s a surprise for all of us,” Meg said gently. “But remember what you told us in one of your letters from early in the war? You said that at first, you considered all Southerners Rebels and assumed all of them were bad people. But then you admitted there were good men on the other side of war, even if they did things you didn’t agree with. I think we owe it to Jasper not to assume too much. Let’s judge him not on his past, but on what he does with his present and future. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Stephen wasn’t stupid. If the question had any finer point to it, it would have cut right through him. She was saying that if Stephen didn’t want to be judged on his past—which he didn’t—he ought not judge another man that way either.

  “Take some time with this new information, Mr. Townsend.” Nate pulled his muffler from around his collar. At least Stephen wasn’t the only one who was overly warm. “It will take a while to grow accustomed to it, but I have faith that you will.”

  Faith. Stephen had that too. He firmly believed in a God who loved him, a God who had the power to heal. He had thought that if he prayed hard enough, tried hard enough, he would feel better than this, more in control. But what father, what Union prisoner of war veteran, could take news like this and not be upset?

  He sank into a chair. Lord, help me find my way through this, he started to pray. But when he closed his eyes, he found himself back in Andersonville, trying desperately to scoop rainwater tainted by human waste into a tin cup so he would not die of thirst. A guard stood over him, casting all into shadow. He looked up and saw Jasper’s face.

  Stephen launched to his feet, shaking his head. That wasn’t right. Jasper hadn’t been there. But the fact that he’d seen that image so vividly scared him. For a fraction of a second, he wondered if he ought to have stayed in that institution, but another thought chased it away. He was home to protect his family. He was home for such a time as this. What would his too-trusting daughters do without him?

  For the first time in months, his hand went instinctively to his hip. But his gun wasn’t there. “Where’s my gun?” he half shouted.

  Suddenly Meg was at his side, her hands on his arm, but he shook her off. Nate was on his other side. Someone was crying. Sylvie. “Settle down now, there’s no need for that,” someone said.

  “But where is it? A man ought to have a gun,” Stephen insisted. “How else am I to defend you?”

  Then all at once, he remembered. The fire had destroyed it. That Italian boy tried to sell it to him as a relic. Then the police showed it to him as proof that he’d shot Hiram.

  Stephen had no gun anymore. There was an enemy in camp, he had his daughters to protect, and he had no gun. Panic sliced through his chest.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1871

  It had to be nearly midnight. But as Meg lay on the mattress, she could hear that her father’s breathing still hadn’t fallen into slumber’s deep and rhythmic pattern. He lay awake, as she did, with only Sylvie truly at rest between them.

  Rolling onto her side, Meg’s gaze drifted to the bookshelf. Titles stamped in gold on the spines reflected the orange glow coming from the stove. She spied Wuthering Heights, and her thoughts flew to the woman who wrote it.

  When Emily Brontë fell ill, her entire family knew she was dying but her. Or if she knew it, she denied it. She refused to rest or see a doctor or alter her daily routine in any way. Poor Charlotte and Anne had to watch her waste away until at last she agreed to call a doctor. But it was too late. She died that same day. She hadn’t let her family help her.

  Cold expanded from Meg’s middle. Would this be Stephen’s story too? He was unwell; she saw that now. She’d been naïve to think otherwise. Still he refused her entreaty to see Dr. Gilbert, and she was running out of ideas to help him on her own.

  This was what swirled in her mind as she finally succumbed to a fitful sleep.

  She awoke to chill air blasting her face. A thin wedge of moonlight slanted across the room, snowflakes dancing in its gleam.

  The door was open. Stephen was gone.

  With a start, she scrambled out of bed.

  “What is it?” Sylvie jolted upright, then turned to their father’s empty mattress. “Oh no.”

  Both sisters threw on their cloaks and shoes, grabbed their mufflers, and left the shanty, latching the door behind them.

  The cold took Meg’s breath away as she looked up and down the street. Chimneys from other shanties piped grey smoke into the sky, but there was no sign of her father.

  “Where did he go?” Sylvie asked, her words small puffs of white in the dark.

  “I don’t know,” Meg replied, “but I think I know why. What else can he be doing but patrolling again?” Only this time he lacked the advantage of a three-story roof from which to keep watch.

  With a groan, Sylvie wrapped her muffler tighter around her neck, then pointed to footprints in the snow. They followed them until they disappeared.

  Meg’s heart drummed an alarm on her ribs.

  She’d lost him. Again. He was no better off now than he’d been before the Great Fire. How could she have been so blindly optimistic to think that his coming home would make him well?

  Tears stiffened on her lashes and glazed her cheeks. “I can’t do it,” she whispered to herself, to God, to Sylvie. “I can’t take care of him.” Wherever he was, she prayed God would protect him, guard his mind, and persuade him to come home.

  Her feet carried her forward into the swirling snow. Bending her head to the wind, Sylvie kept pace beside her. They’d been heading toward Court House Square when the footprints disappeared. Meg led Sylvie across the street and made for the tallest building. What had looked like a ruin to her from a distance was the new construction of a work still in progress. Scaffolding made a dark grid beside it.

  “That’s where he would have gone,” she said.

  Sylvie looked up and covered her mouth.

  “Come on.” Meg’s hair whipped about her face and neck as she approached the building. “Father?” she called up. Snow floated down in giant feathery flakes.

  A lone figure appeared in the open window of the unfinished third floor. “Meg? What are you doing here?” His cloak flapped open over his nightclothes.

  “Sylvie’s here too. Come down.You’ll catch your death of cold up there. Let’s go home.”

  They were right back where they’d started. She was calling out to a father beyond her reach.

  “No, no, I can’t come down. I need to keep watch.”

  Sylvie cupped her hands around her mouth. “You don’t.”

  But he’d already marched away. The distance between them was unbearable.

  “If anyone reports his behavior, will it be enough to send him back to the asylum for good?” Sylvie asked, voicing Meg’s own concern. Was he displaying madness or simply an overdeveloped protective instinct?

  “I’m going up.” Meg expected her sister to argue.

  “I’m going with you.”

  Bolstered by Sylvie’s support, Meg pinched her nightdress in her right hand, lifted it above her ankles, and climbed the ladder of the scaffolding. Sylvie waited a few moments before climbing after her.

  The rungs were cold enough that Meg could sense it even through the scar t
issue of her left hand. At last on her father’s level, she stepped onto the floor and felt the wind whistling all around her. Part of the wall was built, with holes for windows not yet set, but there was nothing but open sky above and on three sides of them. She helped Sylvie off the scaffolding.

  They met her father in the middle of the floor.

  “You don’t need to be here. I’ve got this under control,” he told them.

  But he didn’t. And neither did Meg. “This isn’t working,” she whispered, her nose and fingers tingling from the cold. She buttoned his cloak up to his collar.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’m not doing any good up here. If I see something suspicious, what can I do? Holler?” He shook his head. “It won’t do. I need a gun. By heaven, tomorrow I’ll buy one.” The force in his words softened her knees.

  What could he do—what would he do—with a gun? Maybe nothing. For years he’d patrolled the roof of their building, weapon in hand, but had never fired a shot. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t pull the trigger in the future, especially now that he was even more convinced of Rebel spies in Chicago. They’d gotten him out of the asylum once. If he gave the slightest reason to be locked up again—and a menace to the public was reason enough—he’d be there the rest of his days.

  “It’s my right to have one,” he was saying. “The Second Amendment says it’s my right to defend myself and what’s mine.”

  Sylvie steadied herself by gripping the lower edge of a window opening. “I don’t think a gun is the answer.” Ever so slightly, the brick she held moved, grinding on the brick beneath it.

  Her eyes widened, and a shockwave of comprehension arced between her and Meg. In their haste to reach their father, they had climbed an unfinished building of brick construction. After all Nate had said about the mortar crumbling in the cold, after seeing a building topple over, Meg had placed herself and her sister at the top of one, and on a night when the wind blew strong.