Later that day Ulys arrived. Julia heard his boots pounding as he raced up the stairs two at a time and burst into the sickroom. “Does my boy yet live?”
Julia held out her hand to him, smiling, tears in her eyes. “His fever has broken,” she said quietly, beckoning him to the bed. “He’s going to be fine.”
Heaving a sigh of relief, Ulys took her hand and looked down upon his sleeping son. “Thank God,” he said, his voice trembling. “Thank God.”
Fred stirred at the sound of his father’s voice, blinked sleepily, and smiled in recognition before sinking back into sleep.
Ulys had brought with him an expert telegrapher so that he could retain direct command of all his forces and maintain communications with Washington. As Fred steadily improved, Ulys turned the Boggs’s parlor into his headquarters, reading telegrams, sending off dispatches, and studying maps.
“I never thought the Yankee war would be fought from my own house,” Cousin Henry remarked without rancor.
An entire day passed before Ulys noticed a conspicuous absence from the household. “Where’s Jule?” he asked Julia.
“She abandoned me in Louisville,” said Julia, distressed anew by the memory. “Oh, Ulys, she said such unkind things.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, but I’ll forgive her if she’ll only come back. She couldn’t have gone far. I’m sure she made her way to Cincinnati—she knows the city well and they’re known to be tolerant of runaways.” She rested her hand on his forearm. “Ulys, you know so many people in Ohio. If you send word for the authorities to search for her—”
“Absolutely not,” he interrupted. “I forbid any attempt to bring her back. In fact, I’d be only too glad if we could be rid of your other slaves in the same manner.”
“Ulys,” she protested.
“I only wish I had known she was planning to run. I would have given her a fat purse for the journey.”
Inexplicably, Julia suddenly realized that she wished she had thought of that. What would become of Jule—a colored woman, penniless, alone, and on the run? But even as she wondered and worried, a faint hope stirred that perhaps after a day or two, Jule would decide to return home, chastened and wiser—though Julia did not confess those feelings to Ulys.
• • •
When Jule quit Julia outside the train station, she had hastened away as quickly as she dared, balancing speed and discretion. An icy prickling went up her spine as if hundreds of pairs of accusing eyes were upon her, but she dared not turn around. She expected any moment to hear Julia cry out for the constable, to feel strong hands seize her roughly, but nothing followed after her, not even the sound of pursuit.
Blood pounding in her ears, she ducked down a narrow alley and pressed herself so hard against the wall she felt the bricks through her wool dress and shawl. The train whistle had blown, signaling its departure, but was Julia aboard? Had she and Major Dunn remained behind to search for her?
She waited, shivering from cold, thoughts churning. No. Julia would never linger to pursue a runaway slave while her son lay on his deathbed.
Her spirits dipped as she remembered young Fred, but she steeled herself and made her way down to the riverside, her stride purposeful, her gaze lowered deferentially. At the docks, a surreptitious glance told her which steamer was bound for Cincinnati, but to cross the gangplank, she would have to pass between two crew members.
She had no ticket, no papers, no pass, and no other way to board that ship.
As the passengers began to file aboard, she observed a family on the landing, an elderly couple, a young widow swathed in black crepe and heavy veil, and four children who looked to be under eight years of age. The second smallest child dawdled behind the others, a rag doll dangling from her hand. Jule quietly fell into step behind them, and when the little girl approached too closely to the edge of the pier, Jule quickly placed a hand on her shoulder and drew her back. “Careful, Miss Sarah,” she said, mindful of the crewmen’s watchful gaze. “You don’t want to lose your dollbaby in that deep water.”
The little girl gaped up at her, too surprised to wrench herself free or protest that her name was not Sarah. Jule released her and smiled, and as the child scampered ahead to catch up with her family, Jule hurried along behind her, shaking her head and sighing as she had many a time over the antics of the Grant children, for all the world as if she were the four children’s overworked, long-suffering nurse.
The crewmen gave her only the barest of glances as she boarded the steamer. As soon as she was sure they were not watching, she turned and strode briskly away in the opposite direction from the unwitting family.
She had traveled on the river so often with Julia that she knew the best places to avoid other passengers and crew, and when she did cross paths with anyone, she carried herself as if she were on an important errand for her mistress. No one challenged her.
As the hours passed she grew hungry, but although her handkerchief of coins was hidden in a secret pocket in her skirt, she dared not draw attention to herself by purchasing anything to eat. Her stomach was rumbling by the time she disembarked in Cincinnati, so she quickly seized up the flow of passersby and followed other colored folk to a neighborhood northeast of the landing, where she bought a cup of hot cider and a loaf of bread at a market. Cradling the cup in her hands to warm them, she made a quick meal of the bread before asking the vendor to point her in the direction of the Zion Baptist Church.
A prayer service was under way when she arrived, so Jule slipped into the back pew and bowed her head, closing her eyes against tears. The preacher’s voice, while raspier than Gabriel’s, resonated with faith and feeling as his had, flooding her with memories and a renewed sense of loss and absence almost too painful to bear.
Worship ended with a rousing hymn of love and redemption, and Jule opened her eyes to discover that she was the only one not standing, clapping, singing in the spirit. She quickly rose but could not find her voice, and as the service ended and the worshipers fell to embracing one another and laughing and chatting like longtime friends, she felt heat rise in her face, shaken by the sudden fear that she was too conspicuous even here, even among people of her own race.
As the worshipers filed from the church, some gave her kindly, knowing glances, and suddenly she found the minister at her side. He was tall and solidly built, with two straight creases across his brow and a wreath of black-and-silver hair encircling a bald pate. “Are you in need, sister?” he asked in an undertone.
She nodded and gripped her shawl more tightly around her shoulders.
He glanced warily to the tall double doors that flanked the entrance, but then turned his gaze back to her, searching her face, warm and sympathetic. “Come with me,” he said, offering her his arm.
She hesitated only a moment before taking it.
• • •
Word that General Grant was in St. Louis spread quickly, and soon the Boggs residence was besieged by callers and invitations. One morning Julia glanced out the sickroom window and saw a woman, her face hidden beneath a black bonnet, draw her cloak close about her and walk dejectedly away from the house. Curious, she descended from the sickroom and came upon Major Dunn in the foyer. “Who was that caller?” she asked.
“She gave her name as Mrs. Mary Simmons,” he replied. “She wants a pass through the lines, but the general can’t meet with her now.”
“Why, she’s an old acquaintance of mine. Did she ask to speak with me?”
“No, Mrs. Grant.”
“If she calls again, I’d like to see her.”
The major bowed assent.
Fred improved dramatically hour by hour, so much so that Ulys arranged for a nurse to sit with him so that he and Julia could take Henry and Louisa out for a night at the theater. They rode the streetcar downtown to see Richelieu at the St. Louis Theatre, but although they were escorte
d to a private box and Ulys seated himself near the back, he was soon recognized. As the curtain came down on the first act, rapturous cries of “Grant! Grant! Speech!” rang out from the audience.
His cheeks flushing, Ulys reluctantly rose, bowed to a crash of applause, and abruptly sat down. As the applause continued, Julia’s gaze traveled from one beautiful young lady to another, their lovely faces turned to Ulys like spring daisies to the sun. Keeping her smile in place, she leaned closer to him and rested her hand upon his arm, reassured when he took her hand and smiled briefly at her, as he had not to the others.
The next day, when Dr. Pope came to the Boggs residence to examine Fred and declare him entirely cured, Julia escorted him to the foyer, where she sent the servant away with a discreet nod. “Doctor,” she said quietly as she helped him into his coat, “I wondered if I might speak to you on a most delicate subject.”
“Certainly,” he said. “Is anything the matter?”
Julia shook her head, then nodded, then took a deep breath and handed him his scarf. “Many years ago, you spoke to me and my parents about a simple operation you could perform upon my eyes to improve their appearance.”
“Yes, I recall.”
“I was too frightened to consent at the time, but now—well, at the risk of seeming terribly vain—” She broke off and glanced quickly over her shoulder before continuing. “I don’t wish to put myself forward in public, but my husband has become so famous that people recognize and watch me too, and I think it behooves me to look as well as possible. So I think I should like to go through with the surgery as soon as it can be arranged, please.”
“My dear Mrs. Grant,” said Dr. Pope. “It grieves me to tell you this, but it’s too late, much too late. The operation I described could have succeeded only if it had been performed when you were still a child, with the marvelous resilience and recuperative powers of youth. There’s nothing to be done for it now.”
“I see.” Bitterly disappointed, Julia nonetheless managed a smile. “Thank you just the same.”
Promising to call on Fred again the next day, Dr. Pope bade her good-bye, and when he left, he took with him Julia’s last wistful, fleeting hope to reclaim some of her faded beauty.
Later that afternoon, she was taking a slow stroll in the Boggs’s winter-bare garden with Fred on her arm, as thin as a rail but in good spirits, when a servant hurried out to inform her that Mrs. Mary Simmons had returned. After seeing her son back upstairs and comfortably settled in bed, she hastened to the sitting room to receive her visitor. “Welcome, Mrs. Simmons,” she said, offering her a seat in the chair adjacent to her own. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“The general alone can grant my petition.” Mrs. Simmons hesitated before plunging ahead. “I lost my husband at Vicksburg.”
“Oh, dear. I’m so sorry.”
A bit of fire appeared in the widow’s clear blue eyes, illuminating the shadows beneath. “He fought for the Confederacy, against your husband. Does that make a difference?”
Julia reached out and clasped her hand. “Your sorrow is no different, and neither is my sympathy.”
“You’re very kind.” Mrs. Simmons bowed her head in a vain attempt to conceal her tears. “I would like to join my late husband’s family in Georgia, but I can’t cross through the lines without a pass.”
“General Grant can’t see you because his every minute is occupied with the war.” Julia rose and gave her an encouraging smile. “He will see me.”
Julia excused herself and went to Ulys’s office, where she found him at his desk, handing a dispatch to the telegrapher. “Come in, Mrs. Grant,” he greeted her, rising, and the two officers seated in front of his desk quickly stood as well. Julia presented her petition more humbly than she would have were they alone, and as she soon had the pass in hand, she thanked Ulys and hurried upstairs to retrieve a thick roll of Confederate bills a young officer had captured at Vicksburg and had given her as a souvenir. The denominations amounted to about four thousand Confederate dollars, but what that represented in real, United States currency, Julia was unsure.
She found Mrs. Simmons gazing out the sitting room window, wringing her hands. “My dear Mrs. Simmons,” she said, handing her the pass, “you may join your husband’s people in Georgia as soon as you wish. And this”—she placed the roll of Confederate notes in the widow’s hands—“I hope this may be of some use to you.”
Mrs. Simmons’s eyes widened. “I couldn’t possibly accept so much.”
“I insist. They’re of no use to me. Think of the scandal if I tried to spend them!”
It was not until later, when she considered how furtively Mrs. Simmons had tucked the precious pass and the roll of notes into her reticule, that Julia’s conscience troubled her. The Confederate bills were nothing to her but scraps of paper, but had she done something terribly wrong in giving them to Mrs. Simmons to carry into the South?
• • •
The minister and his wife sheltered Jule in their home adjoining the church for several days, until the immediate danger of pursuit subsided. Restless in confinement, Jule assisted her benefactors as much as they allowed, cleaning and helping in the kitchen. She wanted not to take her ease after a lifetime of forced labor but to be useful, to distract herself with activity, to occupy her hands while her mind churned ceaselessly over what to do next.
“We’ll search for advertisements in the papers and keep watch for handbills,” the minister told her. “When we’re sure your owners haven’t sent slave catchers after you, I can find you work and a place to live in the city.”
“I thank you,” said Jule, “but I can’t stay in Cincinnati. My mistress’s husband grew up not far from here and his people live across the river. I might cross paths with them someday, or if not them, someone else who’ll recognize me.”
The minister turned to his wife, and after a long, wordless look that Jule knew conveyed the substance of a much longer conversation, the minister’s wife nodded.
“In that case, we’ll have to find some means to carry you from the city,” the minister said, turning back to Jule. “Have you trained for any occupation?”
“I’ve worked as a ladies’ maid nearly all my life,” she replied. “I dress hair, and I make my own salves and ointments.”
“You’re a nurse, then?” the minister’s wife prompted hopefully. “There’s a great deal of work for nurses these days.”
“No, ma’am. I don’t make medicines, not really. Just treatments for rashes and chapped skin and sore muscles and the like. And pomades for hair.” The minister’s wife looked so disappointed that Jule felt compelled to explain, “I’ve cared for sick folks, of course, and tended babies and children. I’m just no proper nurse. Just like I can cook, but I’m not a cook.”
“I’m sure you’ve done the work of an entire household of servants,” the minister’s wife said.
“I can read,” Jule hastily added, “and write some.”
They brightened considerably. “Excellent, excellent,” the minister said, clasping his hands together and exchanging a smile with his wife.
Later that evening, the minister’s wife came to her bedchamber to report that they had made inquiries among their friends and fellow longtime abolitionists, and they were optimistic that they would soon find a way to deliver her to a safe haven in the North. “In the meantime,” she said, dropping her gaze abashedly and peeling off her gloves, “I wonder if you can help me.”
She extended her hands to Jule, who took them in her own, carefully keeping her expression impassive. The backs of the woman’s slender, copper-hued hands were covered in patches of dull, leathery skin interspersed with blisters, some oozing fluid, others crusted over.
“I’m afraid even a minister’s wife is not immune to the sin of vanity,” Mrs. Shaw said, managing a faint, apologetic laugh. “I should be content to wear the gloves and
endure the blemishes.”
“It’s not vanity to want to ease your pain,” said Jule, studying the woman’s skin. “I bet this hurts close to unbearable. Itches, too.”
The minister’s wife pressed her lips together and nodded.
“How long they been this way?” Jule asked.
“For months, ever since the weather turned colder. The condition returns every autumn and fades with the spring.”
Nodding thoughtfully, Jule released the woman’s hands. “I can mix you up a salve if you can find me what I need,” she said. “Try to keep your hands out of very hot water, and stop drinking cow’s milk and eating eggs for a while. You should eat fish and bone broth every day if you can.”
Mrs. Shaw nodded as Jule listed the ingredients she would need—beeswax, yarrow, rosemary, comfrey leaves, and the rest. Mrs. Shaw went out to the market first thing the next morning, and by late afternoon, Jule had prepared the healing salve. Within a few days, the minister’s wife happily confided that she was already feeling much relief, and a day after that, Reverend Shaw announced that he had devised a plan for Jule’s escape.
“Two parties of trusted friends are traveling to the East soon, and you may have your choice between them as escorts,” he said. “The first is a Quaker family traveling to Philadelphia, and you would travel in the guise as nurse to their three children. If you prefer to settle in Washington City, you could travel as ladies’ maid to a longtime friend of ours, a widow and a native of this city who writes for an abolitionist paper in the capital.”
From the depths of childhood memory, Jule recalled something Julia had said to reassure her that the murderer Major William Harney would never return to Missouri. “Papa says Washington City is about as far from St. Louis as you can go,” she had told Jule. Time had proven Julia wrong in one respect—Harney had returned to Jefferson Barracks, and as a general—but perhaps she was right about the distance separating the two cities.
Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule Page 21
