The Inn at Hidden Run

by Olivia Newport

  “It does have sort of a cheery sound to it,” Jillian said.

  “People always think of Meriwether Lewis, but I doubt that’s it,” Meri said. “I’d like another spring roll, if no one else wants that last one.”

  “Of course.” Jillian passed it to her. “You know, you have a very interesting family—from a genealogical point of view.”

  “Yeah. As long as you’re not living on the inside of it, I guess you might see it that way.”

  “You’ve had a rough week,” Nolan said. “A rough couple of weeks, getting yourself all the way out here from Tennessee. But we really do want to help.”

  “My dad does mediation work professionally,” Jillian said. “He can help you talk to your parents about how you really feel about medical school.”

  Meri dropped the spring roll onto her plate. “You just don’t get it. There is no talking. There never is.”

  “The offer is open,” Nolan said. “In the meantime, I have an apple caramel pie from Ben’s Bakery.”

  “I didn’t save any room for that,” Meri said. Her interest in the abandoned spring roll had faded as well. “I should get back. I promised Nia I would wipe down the kitchen before I went to bed.”

  “I’ll walk you home.” Nolan caught Jillian’s eye and stood up. “It’s dark.”

  He could have offered to drive her the few blocks to the Inn. The walk, Jillian knew, would give him the chance to take Meri’s emotional pulse even if they didn’t speak for the whole ten minutes it took to escort her.

  While they were gone, she cleared up the leftovers, put dishes in the dishwasher, and went into her office.

  Nolan was back in twenty minutes. “What did we get?”

  “Canfield,” Jillian said. “I knew it as soon as she said it.”

  “A family name that her father and brother prefer not to use?”

  “Eliza will be harder to figure out, because it’s just a common female name. Meriwether is a place—a town or a county or something like that. I’ll have to hunt it down and connect it to the family. But Canfield is the big one.”

  Nolan dropped into a chair across from Jillian’s desk. “I have a feeling I’m about to get a history lesson.”

  “A brief one. It’s a genealogical hazard. During the Civil War, Colonel Herman Canfield led a volunteer infantry regiment in Ohio into the Battle of Shiloh, where he was killed by Confederate fire. He was a known abolitionist, and he left a wife and several children. Martha Canfield was not one to abandon the cause, and she went south to Memphis, where she helped gain medical supplies and food for Union bases. Memphis had fallen to the Union in a battle of just a few hours’ duration early in the war and was not particularly dangerous. After the war, she opened an orphanage for black children. Canfield Asylum.”

  Jillian met her father’s widened eyes, one brow arched. How did he do that?

  “This could be what we’re looking for,” he said.

  “Genealogically speaking, yes. But Dad, we’re talking about the 1870s. Who knows what records were like? The orphanage was closed by 1900. Whether I can tie Meri’s family to it is one question, and what that has to do with this business with all the doctors is another.”

  “But it’s a start. And you have the Meriwether clue.”

  “I do.”

  “I’d say the price of the Chinese food was money well spent.”

  “The family definitely enshrines the past—for generations. But why?”

  “My question,” Nolan said, “is that if Meri can’t tell us why, then how many generations back would we have to go to find someone who could?”

  “Bingo.”

  “In the meantime, Meri is calmer. My read is that she is not going to bolt. Not before Friday, and hopefully not before Tuesday. She even told me that she agreed to go antiquing with Nia tomorrow.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea? The two of them together alone all day?”

  “I think it’s Nia making a good faith effort to repair the relationship, and I’ll have a word with her about it before I turn in to set some boundaries. But we have to stay on this. And we can’t break her trust again.”

  Jillian glanced at the clock. “Okay then. I’ve got work to do.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Memphis, August 29, 1878

  If Eliza put her mind to it, she could learn to drive a wagon. It would make her so much more useful. Ned could teach her. That’s all there was to it. On the way back into town, Eliza would persuade Sister Constance there was time for a driving lesson by presenting a case for how much more she could do during the duration of the epidemic if she were permitted to drive a team of horses. She was a quick learner at everything she undertook. Why should driving be any different?

  The carriage carried precious cargo, not only supplies of food and clothing for the asylum, but children.

  Stunned children still absorbing the reality of their new status as orphans.

  Sister Constance had no choice but to allow the driver to slow the carriage despite the distance that still lay between them and Canfield Asylum. Men lined the road, some with rifles, some with heavy sticks.

  Inside the carriage with the children, Eliza raised a single finger to her lips and met the eyes of every child. The youngest was on her lap. She cradled his head with the most confident comfort she could conjure. He must not squawk. Not now.

  “Gentlemen.” Sister Constance leaned out and met the eyes of the men. “I beg your indulgence to clear the way, please.”

  “You are not passing with those children,” one man said.

  Sister Constance leaned against the door to open it and stepped out of the carriage. “Mr. Morris, isn’t it?”

  “Sister.”

  “Consider the children, please. They’ve lost their parents.”

  “I’m considering the children—my children, and the children of every man here. We’ve had no fever out here in the countryside. Now you want to bring children straight from houses where people have died.

  We won’t have it.”

  “We don’t propose to place them in your homes, Mr. Morris,” Sister Constance said. “These children are healthy, and we’re going directly to the asylum where they can stay that way.”

  “You have no right.”

  “Ah, but we do, and I suspect you know that. The relief committee asked the Sisters of St. Mary’s to take over managing Canfield Asylum to care for orphans whose families have been lost to the epidemic, regardless of race or religious affiliation, and we have accepted this grave responsibility. We have telegraphed to the Mother House for additional help from our own community. More sisters are on the way.”

  A man shouldered his rifle.

  Eliza squeezed the baby in her lap to her chest with one arm and gathered the hands of two tiny children with the other.

  “My good sir!” Sister Constance angled herself between the man and the carriage, her arms open wide. “Will you threaten innocent orphans with a weapon of war in the middle of a public thoroughfare?”

  “We have to protect ourselves.” The growled response was unmoved.

  “Then I suggest you return to your homes where you will continue to be miles away from any infected individuals. Tonight as you hear the bedtime prayers of your own children, teach them to pray for those less fortunate.”

  A child whimpered in the carriage.

  “Look what you’ve done,” Sister Constance said. “Are you so heartless that you cannot think of the good of another man’s child when he is no longer here to speak for her?”

  “If we don’t speak for our own families, then who will?” Mr. Morris moved forward out of the clump of men, shaking his fist. “This is our land out here. We decide what happens on it.”

  “Would you like to take that up with the Board of Health and the Citizens Relief Committee?” Sister Constance said. “How about the City of Memphis? I’m quite sure these various authorities would point out that the road on which you stand does not belong to any of you, and
Canfield Asylum certainly does not. No one is asking you to go to Canfield or to attend to the children there—none of whom is ill in any manner, certainly not with yellow jack.”

  Mr. Morris pointed at the wagon. “You’re starting with half a dozen. How many do you intend to transport?”

  “As many as need be, and we will gladly report the numbers to the relief committee. If you would like to go into town and consult with them, I’m sure they would be happy to speak with you.”

  “We’re not going into that disease-infested town.”

  “Good. I do not advise it.” Sister Constance took her seat in the carriage again, pulled the door shut with a daring thud, and motioned for Ned to take up the reins. Her modulation softened as she surveyed the group of men. “Would you have us refuse to these children the very protection you have obtained for your own? We do not propose to make a hospital of the asylum. If any of the children are taken ill with the fever, they shall be carried immediately to our infirmary at Church Home or the Sisters House.”

  “You turn that wagon around and go back where you came from.”

  “We will not.” Even with an attempt to mollify her vocal approach, Sister Constance’s disposition was unyielding.

  “Children,” Eliza said, “lie down on the floor. Cover your eyes. Right now.”

  They burrowed among the sacks of flour and cornmeal and the baskets of squash and beans Callie had harvested.

  “Are you not willing to trust the sisters?” Eliza called out. “Women who have sacrificed their lives to do God’s work?”

  Silence.

  Then one man cracked. “I am.”

  Others followed. “We are.”

  Eyes forward, Sister Constance urged Ned to proceed. Eliza, however, turned her head with deliberation from side to side, taking in the faces of every man. If there were violence and any harm came to even a hair on the head of one of the children in the carriage, she would be ready with a description of the man or men who inflicted it. For now the police were overwhelmed with keeping order, their own ranks decimated with illness. But the day would come that city officials would once again be operating at full capacity, and she would personally lead a crusade of justice for children. She burned the features into her memory while Sister Constance dared any to further impede their progress.

  At Canfield, Eliza was on familiar ground. She knew the colored couple who cared for the half dozen children who lived there and the arrangement of rooms. Within minutes she could suggest how they might make space for the children from the carriage—and more. For surely there would be many more.

  “The relief committee has promised mattresses,” Sister Constance said. “Dozens. But many of the children will have to double up.”

  “We’ll start with the little ones,” Eliza said. “And siblings who will want to be together anyway. What about bedding?”

  “Promised as well. I’m not sure where they are getting it, but they assure me it will be new and uninfected.”

  They settled the children. The husband who lived at Canfield agreed to feed all the additional mouths to come—with provisions the nuns would supply—and the wife would look after the extra children until Sister Constance could send one of her new nurses from New York to take charge—only a day or so.

  They unloaded supplies.

  They prepared food.

  They sketched out schedules for the sisters coming from the Mother House and volunteers who would be glad to come and serve at Canfield, away from the infectious tendrils of the disease, in a place where it was safe to stand outside and breathe the air.

  The next day another twenty orphans found a temporary home at Canfield.

  Over the next four days Eliza did indeed learn to drive a team pulling a wagon, and a total of fifty orphans traveled the miles from dense Memphis neighborhoods, where they survived the plague that captured their parents, to the building that would be their home for the duration of the epidemic and until some arrangement could be made for determining their future. By then Sister Ruth and Sister Helen from New York had arrived and taken up their posts at Canfield.

  Eliza shuttled between the pantry, where there was never enough to go around and where every day those who came looked thinner and more exhausted and less hopeful, and Canfield, where the older children knew they ought to be grateful to be alive but were destitute and bereft, so gratitude was a far stretch. The littler ones cried themselves to stillness, realizing at last that familiar arms were not coming no matter the pitch of their travails.

  At the end of the fourth day, Eliza closed the pantry and prayed that an early-morning train would bring needed goods before hundreds of people would arrive at the church once again seeking what no one else seemed to have. She pulled the door closed behind her just as Sister Clare, another of the New York nurses, came into the Sisters House and folded in on herself on a bench.

  “Sister Clare! Are you unwell?”

  Sister Clare raised her head and wiped tears off both cheeks with the back of her hand. “We cannot get there fast enough. We try, but there are too many.”

  Eliza sat beside Sister Clare, a hand on her shoulder.

  “We get there only to find that everyone inside the house has died,” Sister Clare said. “The worst cases are the ones where I can lay my hand on a forehead and know only moments earlier I would have found someone alive.”

  Eliza’s chest clenched. “Surely in those cases death would have come anyway.”

  “Yes, but they might not have died alone. They might have died knowing that someone cared. I might at least have offered comfort. I am a nurse, after all.”

  Eliza made circles with her fingertips on Sister Clare’s back. “Thank you so much for coming to Memphis. We love our city, of course, but for people to come to us from other places means a great deal.”

  “We serve a great God together,” Sister Clare said. “When you have that call on your heart, you cannot say no, not for your own convenience, not for any reason. One must keep one’s vows.”

  “We are so grateful. I’m sure Mrs. Bullock has kept some food for you. Shall I get your plate?”

  “Are the others all back?”

  “I believe Sister Hughetta is still out.”

  Sister Clare stood. “Perhaps I will wait for her so she will not have to eat alone.”

  Eliza nodded.

  “You must have missed your dinner by now as well.”

  “Callie has gotten used to my erratic hours,” Eliza said. “She simply plans for me to be late now.”

  “You should not have to walk alone at this hour.”

  “I am not alone,” Eliza said. “The Lord God is with me.” And the streets were not dark. They were lit by barrels burning infected clothing and household goods, heaps of fiery mattresses unfit for anyone ever to rest upon again, patrols laying down another coat of lime.

  Still, she hastened her steps home.

  The house was dark. Callie should have lit the lamps by now, one in the front hall to guide Eliza’s path into the house and one in the dining room where her evening meal would be served no matter what hour she arrived home. Eliza fumbled with a seldom-used key to the front door in the dark and then with matches to light a kerosene lamp on an entry table.

  “Callie!”

  She carried the lamp through the front parlor, through the dining room, into the kitchen, and into the narrow maid’s room Callie had occupied the last couple of weeks, panicked with every step that Callie had succumbed to fever and was suffering alone.

  But the house was empty, and there was no sign of an evening meal in progress. Eliza lit another lamp—her mother would be aghast that she was not lighting the gas lamps on the walls, but Eliza found the kerosene lamps faster in this moment—and looked for clues for what might have happened to Callie.

  There on the dining room table was a torn scrap of paper with four words scribbled on it. Sister sick. Gone there.

  Eliza laid the note back on the table. In all the conversations she and
Callie had about her family, she’d learned how miraculous it was that Callie and her sister had found each other again following the war after being sold apart when they weren’t much older than her sister’s girls were now. She learned her sister had married a good man. She learned that the little boy had been a surprise when her sister had thought the hope of another child was long past. She knew Callie lived with her sister’s family. What Eliza didn’t know was the street where the family lived. She only knew the general part of town where many of the former slave families lived if they chose not to take live-in employment.

  “Oh Callie,” she said to the empty house.

  Eliza left her lamp on the table and went to the front porch. Though her neighborhood was sparsely populated now, it was not exempt from the nightly ritual of fires to extinguish the fever from the streets of Memphis. Lucent flashes of orange and yellow discharged against blackness and spiraled into smoke the desperate hope that this effort would move the city closer to the end of the siege. Somewhere a cannon fired ammunition against the enemy of disease.

  She was on her own now.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  She’s gone. Jillian, she’s gone!”

  Jillian was operating on insufficient sleep for the third night in a row and was only halfway through her first cup of coffee in a pale yellow mug that held an inadequate quantity and featured a thin handle useless for anything more than adornment, making it destined for the collection of nonrepeaters before she filled it a second time.

  “Who’s gone?” she said into the phone.

  “Meri, of course,” Nia said. “Who else would I be calling about?”

  Jillian rubbed one eye. A sick friend listed on the prayer chain at church? Nia’s elderly mother-in-law? Carlotta’s infirm mother?

  “Where did she go?”

  “Wake up, Jillian,” Nia snapped. “I am not kidding around. “I can’t find Meri, and this time she took her car.”

  Jillian gulped coffee before setting down the mug. “But my dad said she seemed fine when he walked her home last time. He was going to talk to you last night.”