Honor's Fury

by Fiona Harrowe

  Amélie had difficulty in persuading her father to leave the scene. He wanted to have the servants dig under the smouldering rubble for Chris Bishop’s corpse.

  “But they can’t!” she pleaded with him. “They’ll only burn themselves. And it won’t bring poor Mr. Bishop back to us.”

  Amélie, with the help of August, got Garvin up to the house. Once inside she sat her father down in the dining room, splashed some whisky into a glass, and handed it to him. But instead of drinking he just held the glass and stared at it in numb shock. With his fatigued, soot-blackened face, his singed eyebrows, and his gray-streaked hair a wild nimbus about his head, Garvin looked frightening, an old man bereft of his wits.

  “Drink up, Papa,” Babette urged from the sideboard, pouring herself a glass of whisky and hurriedly downing it as she heard her mother’s step outside the door.

  “Garvin!” Therese exclaimed. “Are you hurt?”

  He gave her a doleful look but did not answer.

  “Mr. Bishop’s dead,” Amélie said. “He tried to save his house from the fire—it was dreadful.”

  “Mr. Bishop. My, how tragic! Poor man.” She set her lips in a thin line. “This is all Thomas Winslow’s work. He carried out his threat.”

  “But, Mama,” Amélie protested, “we have no proof.”

  Garvin’s hand trembled as he lifted the glass. “It’s gone, all gone, the tobacco, the cotton, the corn. And Chris. That’s the worst of it. Chris is gone.”

  “But, Papa, we still have the main house, the horses, the servants,” Amélie argued.

  But Garvin could only repeat, “Gone, all gone.” The next morning he got up early and rode over his plantation, not so much to assess the damage as to confirm that what had happened had not been a nightmare. He had emerged from his numb daze to pain and guilt.

  “It’s my fault, all my fault,” he mourned at the breakfast table. “Letting Chris go up that ladder. As if that blasted house meant anything to me.”

  “Now, now,” Therese said, a little impatiently. “He didn’t have to go. No one forced him.”

  They were still at the table when August arrived. He came in, sober faced, carrying his hat. A place was made for him.

  “Terrible, just terrible,” he said as he sat down. “Unspeakable. It could have happened to any of us, of course.”

  “I don’t care so much about the crops,” Garvin said. “But Chris Bishop . . .”

  For one awful moment Amélie thought her father was going to cry. Men never cried. They could be angry, savage, sad, hurt, but they did not cry. She had never seen a grown man weep and the thought of it repelled her.

  To her relief, her father got himself under control and went on. “We aren't safe here, August. I do thank God the main house was untouched and my girls and my wife unharmed, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be put to the torch tomorrow.”

  “It’s the chance we take in wartime, Garvin.”

  “Yes.” He grew thoughtful. “I could take the chance for myself—though to be honest, it would be hard—but I don’t think it’s fair to expose Therese and the girls to such possible danger.”

  “What will you do?” August asked.

  Garvin ran his finger under his collar. “I’ve been thinking of Waxwing.”

  Babette’s coffee cup clattered in the saucer. “Waxwing? You can’t mean it!” she wailed. “You can’t mean we’ll have to go to that dreary island.”

  “I do mean it. And the more I consider it, the more I’m convinced. It’s out of harm’s way.”

  August withdrew a large handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. “You intend to sit the war out there?”

  “I don’t think the war will last long. It’s sure to be settled in a month or two. Once the North sees our resolve they’ll crumble.”

  “But your fields, the Negroes . . . !” Warner protested.

  “It’s too late to put in another crop, August. And as far as the Negroes—I’ve never been quite comfortable with the situation. Not that I’m siding with Winslow— never that. But I—I’ve lost my trust. They’re two hundred out there to my one in here. Don’t forget Nat Turner and how he led his people, August. If the slaves could rebel in 1831, they can do it again. So I’ll set my slaves free. They can stay here, if they wish, raise their own food. They’d be better off here than going up to Baltimore and getting into mischief.”

  Therese was aghast. “Do you realize how many thousands of dollars those blacks represent?”

  “But what good are they to me now? At least I won’t have to feed them.”

  “Sell them off.”

  “To whom? Where? Camden Station? Wild horses couldn’t drag me back to Baltimore. No, Therese, we’ll just cut our losses and take refuge in Waxwing.”

  He’s frightened, Amélie thought, he wants to run. She fought a rising scorn for him, her own father, but she couldn’t help it. Here was August, the perennial hypochondriac, a man one would expect to turn tail and flee it the first sign of danger, yet he gave no sign of panic. But her father had taken fright. Amélie’s disappointment was great. She had loved him for his forthrightness, for what she thought was courage, and now because of a mishap, terrible though it was, he had gone to pieces, disintegrated into a weak and spineless creature.

  “Papa, you can't go,” Amélie protested. “You could do so much good at Arbormalle. Grow things for the Confederate army, for instance. We could clear the fields, put in hay for the cavalry horses, raise hogs and chickens for the commissary.”

  “And have the Yankees confiscate it all?”

  But he was only making excuses. He didn’t want to stay. He was afraid. Looking at him, at the white face and the eyes that suddenly refused to meet hers, Amélie felt anger and disgust.

  “It was all talk, wasn’t it?” she exploded. “Pure bombast, those rousing speeches about standing up to the Yankees, showing them our mettle. A coward’s—”

  “Amélie!” her mother interjected, shocked.

  But once started Amélie could not stop. “It’s all right for my husband to go off to war, perhaps be killed. But you’re defeated by a fire that burned a couple of fields. Well, go on then, run off, run like a scared rabbit—”

  “Amélie!” her father shouted. “I won’t have you talking to me in that fashion. Do you understand?”

  Amélie paused, trembling, biting her lip. She had gone too far, perhaps, but oh, it was terrible to have her father betray her in this fashion. It was as if he had worn a mask all his life and suddenly had revealed his true face.

  “I'm not going!” she cried, stubbornness forming a hard knot in the pit of her stomach.

  “You will go,” her father railed. “I command you to go!”

  “I don’t have to do your bidding anymore, Papa. I’m married. I have a husband to obey now, not you. I’m not going!”

  When tempers cooled they both apologized to each other, but the rupture was not healed. Amélie felt she could never forgive her father for deserting the cause at the first sign of what he firmly believed was Unionist hostility. And because she had loved him with complete trust, her disillusionment was all the more bitter.

  Chapter

  ❖ 7 ❖

  Garvin immediately set about winding up his affair sat Arbormalle. Amélie, still set in her refusal to accompany him, planned to stay with her in-laws. Babette, taking a cue from her sister, refused point-blank to bury herself on an island where no one ever came. There were arguments, raised voices, sulks, and tears, and in the end, as was usual, Babette got her way. She, too, would go to the Warners.

  What Therese thought or how she felt no one knew. Once the decision had been made, Therese, behaving in the true Southern tradition, went along with her husband as a matter of course. She closed up the house and bade good-bye to her daughters with her customary self-possession, instructing them not to abuse the Warners’ hospitality.

  About a week after the Townsends had departed Dr. Colter came to call at Bancroft. "I've enlisted,
” he announced. "I've volunteered my services to the Confederate’s First Regiment Cavalry, which will be forming in Williamsport.”

  “Aren’t you a little too old for military duty?” August asked.

  “Not in the least. Doctors of any age are needed and I feel I can perform a useful function even at fifty-five.” Since the nearest physician would now be over forty miles distant, Dr. Colter, aware that Amélie had relatives in Baltimore, suggested she go there. “I have a friend in the city, a fine medical man whom I would recommend highly.”

  “But Baltimore is in the hands of the Yankees,” Amélie protested. Maryland had never been able to muster the votes to secede.

  “To all appearances, yes,” Dr. Colter replied. “It’s true the Federals have taken over. But it’s not all that bleak. I am given to understand that Baltimore still holds a fair contingent of Southern sympathizers, including, I might add, my friend Dr. Tanner.”

  “But doesn’t the presence of such widely opposing factions make for a dangerous situation?” Mary Warner, a pretty woman with large brown eyes, asked anxiously.

  “Not necessarily. The United States government has the city thoroughly in hand,” the doctor explained. “As a matter of fact I think it would be a far safer place than the countryside, where raiders and arsonists are on the loose.”

  After Dr. Colter left the Warners and the girls debated among themselves. Babette was all for going; to her the city meant people and excitement. August said the war would be over soon, no matter that the Yankees were getting a stranglehold on Baltimore. The heavy, crucial fighting would be in Virginia, he reasoned. There was talk of a big battle shaping up at Manassas.

  Amélie, concerned for her unborn child, decided that perhaps it would be better to be near a doctor. Instinct told her that she was not carrying the baby well and that she might need expert medical care when her time came. A letter from Thaddeus in which he urged her to take care of herself not only for his sake but for their son’s as well put the final endorsement on her decision.

  * * *

  The Harpers once more made the sisters welcome, although Ella was not at all eager to see Babette again. To her credit, however, she made a valiant effort to treat both girls evenhandedly, but her preference for Amélie showed in small matters, little courtesies that were not lost on Babette. “But I don’t feel slighted in the least,” Babette told Amélie.

  It was Ella’s watchful eye she minded.

  “She treats me as though I were an old married woman whose husband is away,” she complained. “She disapproves of my clothes, my bonnets, the way I fix my hair. I daren’t even talk to the grocery boy for fear she is leaning over my shoulder wanting to know what I’m saying. I can’t go out alone and I can’t go to dances or parties unless I sit on the sidelines. It’s worse than Arbormalle or Waxwing could ever be.”

  “You wanted to come,” Amélie pointed out. “And before that you couldn’t wait to get engaged to Willie.”

  “I wanted to marry him.”

  “That would have made you a wife, wouldn’t it? And then you’d be even more restricted in your activities.”

  “Oh, piffle!”

  Contrary to Dr. Colter’s assessment of a calm situation in Baltimore, the city simmered with an undercurrent of violence. The good doctor, receiving his information secondhand, had assumed that the Federalists would impose a strict regime of law and order, that the hooligans and mobs would be eliminated, and that ordinary citizens no matter what their politics would be free to go about their business in peace.

  But Baltimore was too close to Washington for comfort and the Unionists were more interested in suppressing Confederate sympathy than in controlling ruffians. They wanted a city and state that would provide a bulwark against attack from its eastern flank and they began to act like an occupying army. When members of the outlawed Know Nothing party broke into shops that belonged to men suspected of being Southern loyalists and looted and burned them, the police looked the other way. Gradually, insidiously, Union fortifications went up, not only on Federal Hill, but all around the city, their guns trained on citizens, their ominous shadows a daily presence in their lives. Union troops were quartered in tents or barracks that were raised on Lafayette Square and in Carroll and Druid Hill parks. Several downtown hotels, the Barnum among them, were given over to officers of the military. Bluecoats were everywhere—on the streets, at the markets, sitting in the boxes at Kunkle’s Ethiopian Opera House, and in the cafés along Charles Street.

  Amélie fretted and fumed at the state of affairs. She could have gone back to the Warners but she remained. She had met Dr. Tanner, a large man with incongruously delicate hands, and he had immediately given her a tonic that had alleviated her bouts of nausea. His hearty confidence impressed and comforted her. “You’re going to have no trouble at all,” he said. “Forget the old wives’ tales.” His cheerfulness made Baltimore bearable.

  In late September the Harpers received a letter from Willie with another one enclosed for Babette. He was in Virginia, he wrote. His company had engaged in skirmishes along the Potomac River, notably at Lewinsville. “Nothing major, but I got a taste of Yankee fire.” He spoke of Colonel Stuart, their commander: “Everything a military man should be. We call him the eyes and ears of the army.”

  Babette refused to share her letter with the Harpers as they had done with theirs. She said it was too personal. But she did read it to Amélie who was outraged at its bold, suggestive tone.

  “Why can’t he say he misses my soft white bosom when he does?” Babette wanted to know.

  “A gentleman doesn’t put that sort of thing in writing,” Amélie said.

  “Well, this one does,” Babette countered defiantly. “And I like it.”

  * * *

  October brought crisp fall weather, the maples along Madison Street turning a brilliant red. Amélie’s condition was now so advanced she could not leave the house, since it was considered indecent for a lady who “showed” to be seen in public. Only lower-class women went about their business as usual with their blown-up bellies unashamedly protruding. But being a lady carried a penalty. Amélie, restless, worried because she hadn’t heard from Thaddeus in several months, felt the walls closing in on her. Her morning walks in the back garden from stoop to wooden fence were like the pacings of a prisoner in a cell. A few tired asters still bloomed in that confined space but an early frost had killed off the other flowers as well as the grass, leaving brown, matted patches underfoot. A broken rabbit hutch leaned against one wall, its trap door agape, forlorn and derelict. Next to it lumber had been thrown carelessly under a hydrangea bush. It was dismal. The main house, once elegant with its high, painted ceilings, had become dismal as well. The dark woodwork was oppressive and the ticking of its many clocks maddening.

  Amélie had ceased to think about the child inside her, aware of it now only as a burden from which she wanted to be free. She wanted her slender waist back, wanted freedom of movement. For the first time she envied Babette, who had found three or four young women with whom she was allowed to visit regularly, calling on them for tea or an afternoon of idle chatter.

  Finally in desperation Amélie asked John Harper if she might accompany him in the buggy when he had some brief errand to perform. Ella did not fancy such excursions, but when Amélie promised to keep herself covered with a lap robe and not to venture from the buggy, the older woman reluctantly conceded.

  It was on such a ride that Amélie saw Damon Fowler again.

  The day was dreary, overcast with dirty, leaden skies that promised rain. She was sitting in the buggy waiting for John Harper to return from the post office when Damon walked past. Before she could turn away he recognized her.

  He was in uniform, the hated Yankee blue, his dark tunic buttoned to his chin, his strong legs encased in polished black boots.

  “Mrs. Warner!” he exclaimed, coming up to the buggy, removing his felt hat.

  “How do you do, Mr. Fowler?” she said in a chill,
formal voice while her body went hot with embarrassment under the lap robe.

  His face, exposed to the sun, had turned even darker and he had grown a small, black mustache. He looked more powerful, more handsomely male, than she had remembered.

  “So you remained in Baltimore,” he said.

  She didn’t enlighten him.

  “You are looking very well,” he went on, cocking his head a little. “Putting on a little weight, but not unbecomingly.”

  The red rushed to Amélie’s cheeks. He couldn’t know, he must never know. But her scarlet face had given her away.

  “Expecting?” he asked, a hint of mockery in his eyes.

  “How dare you!”

  “I realize it’s rude of me to mention such a delicate matter, but”—his eyes went over the lap robe—“I was merely inquiring out of politeness.”

  “Out of curiosity!” she snapped. “Well, if you must know, I am expecting Mr. Warner’s child. My husband and I both hope it’s a boy.”

  “Congratulations. And when, may I ask, is this happy event to take place?”

  “It’s no concern of yours!”

  He said nothing but looked at her, a long, steady gaze that deepened her color. She knew just what he was thinking. She could see him recalling the room at the Barnum, a man and a woman, both naked, both in the throes of passion, heaving and thrashing among tumbled pillows and twisted sheets.

  ‘‘It’s not yours,” she said in a burst of exasperated frankness. “Thank God, it’s not yours. I was in the family way . . . then.”

  “I see,” Damon said quietly. “Then perhaps it’s for the best you did not run off with me.”

  “As if I ever would! How conceited of you to think for a moment . . . !” She swallowed, trying to regain her composure. “Please go. I have no wish to continue this conversation. Good-bye.”

  Amélie wasn’t worried that friends might see her talking to a Yankee soldier. She was only aware of Damon’s disturbing presence and her fervent wish to have him leave her in peace. Now, of all times, when she felt burdened and clumsy, this meeting was doubly painful. It was almost as if he had arranged it out of spite. Damn him for stirring up emotions she thought she had conquered. He did not move.