Findings

by Mary Anna Evans

  Bachelder’s secretary traveled with him in the early years of the war, but Bachelder is known to have lost the man’s services by 1864. I believe that the book does not contain the original letters sent to Viola Bachelder. Rather, the preserved letters were copies made by Bachelder’s secretary and, from 1864 onward, by Bachelder himself.

  Photocopiers did not exist in those days, and carbon paper was not widely used. It was not uncommon for gentlemen’s secretaries to maintain copies of all outgoing correspondence. For these reasons, I propose that this book consists of original letters from Viola and file copies maintained by Bachelder. Perhaps Bachelder had them bound himself in his later years as a form of protection for mementos of great sentimental value.

  Adding weight to this theory is the fact that Bachelder’s letters far outnumber his wife’s. Due to his travel and to the disruptions of war, it is likely that she wrote many letters that did not reach him. If the collected letters are indeed Bachelder’s file copies, then it may be assumed that we possess all of his letters to his wife during the war years, but only a partial record of her correspondence.

  Faye couldn’t wait to get her hands on Bachelder’s letters again. If she and Joe hustled, they could be in Tallahassee in time to get a reasonable amount of work done before the rare book room closed.

  She waved the notes in the captain’s general direction, saying “You’re absolutely brilliant, sir. You should publish this work.”

  “I’m a learned man, but only in my trivial specialty. Nobody in the world cares what I think of the authorship of those letters.”

  “I care,” Faye said, stacking the captain’s notes neatly and replacing them in the file folder. “I care a lot.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ms. Slater cast a baleful eye on Faye and Joe as they signed in to the rare book collection. Her attitude stood in stark contrast to Captain Eubank’s generous and helpful collegiality. Ms. Slater stared down at Faye’s signature, giving no indication that she thought Faye deserved to get her grubby paws on any of the library’s precious documents.

  “Cotton gloves are provided over there,” she said. “Touching materials with bare hands will result in revocation of your library privileges. All work done in this collection must be in pencil. Use of a pen will also result in revocation.”

  Faye found the nagging reminders irritating. She knew the librarian’s canned spiel for what it was: a reminder that, at least in this little corner of the world, Ms. Elizabeth Slater possessed power.

  The rare book room was never crowded. How long had it been since she and Joe were last there? During that last visit, they had listened politely to Ms. Slater recite rules they already knew. Had she already forgotten doing it?

  Faye glanced over the sign-in sheet, looking for her last signature. Only half a page of names had been entered since then. Ms. Slater simply had to remember talking to her. Besides what woman, no matter how repressed, could forget Joe?

  As she swept her eyes across the page, one of them leapt out at her. Wayland Curry. How many people named Wayland could there possibly be in this corner of the world?

  Ms. Slater crisply removed the sign-in list from her hands and closed the binder holding it. Faye somehow doubted that she would hand it back over to a nosy snoop who wanted to pore over the names of the library’s patrons. The sign-in sheet itself was a surprising breach of confidentiality, since it couldn’t be used without the signer getting a good look at every recent patron’s name and address, but Faye had found special collections librarians to be less ticky about privacy and more ticky about protecting the documents. If anybody absconded with a rarity, the names and addresses on that list would be a good starting place in finding the culprit and, more to the point, the goods.

  Ms. Slater led them to her desk and handed over a stack of request forms. “These are required before any document other than reference works may be retrieved.” Her insistence on repeating rules she knew full well that they already knew made Faye want to gnash her teeth.

  She squinted up at the irritating woman. Ms. Slater’s face had well-scrubbed, regular features that would have been attractive if she ever smiled. She had a slender body held upright by a completely straight back. Her starched shirt was as neat as the band that gathered her non-descript brown hair into a ponytail. Did she ever let that hair down?

  Faye wished the woman would just relax. Or have a beer. Twelve ounces of hop juice might take some of the starch out of her. She understood the librarian’s desire to protect the rarities entrusted to her, but really—if rare books couldn’t be read, they might as well be rare bricks.

  What good was an unopened book?

  Faye filled out the request form for Bachelder’s letters, but while she was waiting, Joe spotted it on the returns cart. His time in school had sharpened his library skills considerably. His powers of observation had never needed sharpening.

  By the time Ms. Slater returned, shaking her head and saying, “The book is in use—” Faye was able to smile to smile sweetly and point to Joe who, gloves on, was already arranging his study aids the way he liked them. The Bachelder book had been placed carefully on the table in front of him like a trophy.

  In the meantime, Faye had prowled through the reference materials that were stored in open shelving for easy access. A stack of books rested on the table in front of her—the volume of biographical sketches she’d seen before, a slim volume entitled Confederates in the Reconstruction Years, a history of the Confederate government, a lavishly illustrated edition of Royal Jewels and the People Who Wore Them, and Civil War in the Sunshine State: The Confederacy’s Florida Frontier.

  If fortune smiled, she’d find a photo of Bachelder with a string of emeralds in his hand that matched the emeralds hanging around Marie Antoinette’s neck in an earlier portrait. In her dreams.

  She spread the books across a table, while Joe started reading Bachelder’s letters into his voice recorder. His voice was naturally quiet but clear, and there were no other patrons nearby who might be disturbed. Even Ms. Slater couldn’t complain that he was disrupting her quiet haven.

  Faye found no smoking guns in her reference books—smoking emeralds?—but she gleaned a few useful grains of information. From the book on royal jewels, she learned that the French Revolution, decades before the American Civil War, had scattered the gems of the King and his Queen, Marie Antoinette, and much of the French aristocracy all over Europe. Many of them were never seen again. So the unsubstantiated story told to Bachelder was at least potentially true.

  The book gave no description of a necklace adorned with an emerald with the size and cut of the one she discovered, but she did learn that Marie Antoinette had owned and worn emeralds, which was something of a relief. She would have felt surpassingly foolish if she’d pursued the possibility that she’d found the French queen’s jewels for months on end, only to find out that emeralds weren’t available in Europe at that time or, even worse, that they were considered too common and vulgar for a queen. Or that Marie Antoinette just didn’t like how she looked in green.

  She learned that the Europeans’ discovery of the New World had affected the emerald trade in the same way it had affected so many other things. When Spanish conquistadors had learned about the Colombian emerald mines, they’d promptly seized the mines, enslaved the indigenous people, and shipped home enough emeralds to make them wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice.

  The Old World, accustomed to smaller, heavily flawed emeralds, couldn’t get enough of the large Colombian gems—achingly green, clear as glass, and large enough to suit a sultan. The odds were excellent that the emerald Faye found on her island had begun its life in Colombia. Or under Colombia, to be painfully precise.

  The book chronicling the history of the Confederacy yielded no direct mention of Bachelder, though there was a lengthy section on the beleaguered new country’s request for assistance from England and France, just as he’d described. Bachelder had also mention
ed a diplomatic mission headed by Duncan Kenner, an influential planter from Louisiana, and the history book confirmed that this mission had occurred. It also mentioned Kenner’s failed attempts to convince President Davis to emancipate the Confederacy’s slaves. Their shared interest in emancipation and European political ties explained the sole hit of Magda’s Internet search of Bachelder’s name: a biography of Kenner.

  The pile of subtle confirmations of events described in the book of letters was growing taller. Jedediah Bachelder was shaping up as a reliable witness to the political upheaval around him.

  The history of Confederates during the Reconstruction years mentioned something noteworthy about Jedediah Bachelder in his old age. He was a notable contributor to causes that benefited war victims still suffering long after the last shot was fired. No home for war widows and orphans, north or south, could approach the man without receiving a donation. He died without heir, and his will directed that his estate be liquidated, so that the cash could be given to the Confederate Soldier’s Home at Jefferson Davis’ final home, Beauvoir, in Mississippi.

  Peering over Joe’s shoulder as he worked, she got a quick overview of several Bachelder letters. She was disappointed to see that he didn’t mention the necklace at all throughout 1864.

  But why would he? Viola knew it existed. She knew where it was hidden. If her husband was concerned about his letters being intercepted, he certainly wouldn’t advertise something so sensitive. He’d said as much.

  The letters of this period were noteworthy primarily because of their depressing focus on the realities of life in a dying civilization. When boats are the only means of importing foreign goods, then a country with unusable ports will be slowly strangled. When most personal transportation is horse-powered, then a countryside littered with horse thieves and violent deserters is paralyzed. And when communication must travel by mail or telegraph, then impassable railroads and severed telegraph lines renders a country quadriplegic, unable to tell its hands and legs what they need to know to survive.

  Faye had learned these things in history class, but Bachelder’s first-person accounts made the suffering human and real. She craned her neck over Joe’s shoulder so that she could follow along silently while he read the man’s words aloud.

  There were other, better things she could be doing with her time, but she couldn’t help herself.

  April 18, 1864

  My dearest love, Viola, my wife—

  I should not burden you with my pain but I am heartsick. I see hunger around me everywhere. I would rather feel it myself than see it on a human face, so I share what I have. I no longer care how this war ends. I simply want it to be over. It is time to patch up our young men—those who survive—and find a way to feed our people. Everyone. If it were in my power, no human being would ever again go to bed with an empty stomach.

  We have “Sherman’s neckties” to thank for the recent exacerbation of our longstanding hunger. To render our railroads useless, Sherman himself ordered that the ties be set afire and sections of rail be heated until they bend freely. The rails are then draped in trees and twisted into fanciful shapes. The “necktie” portion of their nickname is apt. I can say this because I have seen them with my own eyes.

  I know that the soldiers who do such things are obeying orders. I know they are human beings with hearts focused on wives and children far away. They want to win the war, so they can go home. I cannot believe that they realize what the destruction of a rail that once carried food is. Every twist of the rail is a host of hungry children.

  I know a lady, a war widow, who forages in the forest for roots and berries to feed her family. When I hear that you are running a hospital in our home, I am prouder than I can say, but I know you cannot possibly have proper medications. I pray that there are old women yet surviving who have knowledge of herbs.

  My mother healed me of a grievously infected wound on my foot when I was just a boy. You have seen the scar. I wish I could tell you what went into the poultices that drew out the poison. Her blood-purifying tinctures would be of great use to you, too, I feel sure. Find yourself an old woman, Viola, and trust her knowledge.

  Before I close, I must ask you something. I wrote you a letter that mentioned my recent visit to my father’s plantation. If you received it, you will know the letter of which I speak. I have received no letter from you confirming its receipt. Please write me quickly as to whether you have the letter. It is best that I not take the risk of sending that particular information again but I will, if need be, because it is critical to our future. Or to yours, if I do not see home again.

  I wait anxiously for your reply.

  Your devoted husband,

  Jedediah

  Reading about Jedediah’s “grievously infected” wound made Faye grateful for over-the-counter antibiotic ointment. She’d been cut with a dirty shovel only the day before, but a tetanus shot and a cheap tube of medicine had turned an injury that would have been life-threatening in 1864 into a minor, forgettable annoyance. Being reminded of her wound reminded her that it was sore. She shifted her weight onto the unaffected cheek.

  The next letter was written on a tissue-thin stationery that looked gray, but it might once have been lavender. Faye reached around Joe to touch the delicate paper, then stopped herself, remembering that she’d taken off her gloves.

  The writing was firm, legible, but gently rounded. It was a woman’s handwriting. This must be one of the few surviving letters from Viola.

  June 30, 1864

  My dear Jedediah,

  Even when your letters are filled with the sorrow that seems to pervade the very air in these grim times, I feel happier and stronger when I read them, and for days thereafter. One letter, in particular, has been entrusted to a faithful friend, as you requested. When peace comes, he and I will take the trip you suggested, then journey home to await your return. You needn’t fear for our future.

  So you see how I treasure your words. Do continue to write them and send them to me, and know that I write as faithfully to you. If weeks pass between my letters, please know that many others have gone astray. I picture the countryside littered with envelopes addressed in my hand and yours. It is a distressing image, but so much more pleasant than looking clear-eyed at the countryside as it actually is—littered with the bodies of boys and horses and watered with their blood.

  I have had no word of my mother in Pennsylvania, nor of your aunt in Ohio. I will believe they are well, until I hear otherwise. The war hasn’t come near their homes—at least, not to my knowledge— but they are both advanced in years. Either might fall ill and die, and we would not know nor be able to help. Well, we can help them through prayer. I sometimes forget to pray. I sometimes believe that I have forgotten how.

  I see that the letter describing my little hospital reached you. I have found that even war does not satisfy the human need for argument. There is dissent around me, even in the matter of tending the sick and dying.

  The mayor visited me last week. (Not Mayor Singleton, who has gone to the Army though he is nearly our age. His replacement is Simon Prine, who you recall was a doddering man with one foot in the grave when you left. He dodders still more now, though I wouldn’t have thought such a thing possible.) It seems that he wanted to inquire delicately into my criteria for accepting patients.

  I answered the door dressed all in black and the mayor’s hand went to his heart. “Jedediah?” he asked.

  I told him that you were hale and healthy, so far as I knew, but that I could bury no more young men without acknowledging their mothers’ loss.

  He asked whether it was true that I had accepted Yankee soldiers into my hospital, and whether Negroes were truly lying in cots in the same room as white soldiers.

  I told him that I had but one room, so all the cots must perforce be in a single chamber. And I asked him how I was to tell an unconscious Confederate soldier from an unconscious Yankee soldier. Many of the men brought to
my door are indeed in that dire condition.

  He tried to say, “By their uniforms,” but he had the good grace to stop there. Everyone knows that uniforms are, and have been, in short supply. Many soldiers would be half-naked, were it not for clothing taken from battlefield corpses. Freezing men cannot afford to discriminate against wearable clothing merely by its color.

  I waited silently, fingering the mourning locket my mother braided for me from my dead father’s hair. The mayor seemed unable to further distress a woman wearing widow’s weeds. There are so many of us these days.

  He took my leave and went away.

  Your recommendation that I find an old woman who is skilled with herbs and tinctures was well-considered. Mrs. Pylant has taught me that teas made from pleurisy root will ease breathing troubles, even sometimes the pneumonia that has carried off so many of my charges. Dandelion tea is a tonic for the digestion, a delicate way of saying that it can treat dysentery, which everybody seems to have, nowadays. A poultice of St. John’s wort soothes muscles made angry by overwork or by bullets. Bathing the patient in willowroot water is far better for fever than a plain water bath. And wild lettuce will soothe an agitated patient, giving the best tonic of all—rest.

  I could do far more with poultices made from onions or potatoes, but it would be the height of foolishness to waste food in such a way.

  I tell you these cures in hopes that they will protect you, should some injury or disease threaten your health. Use these remedies liberally, as they are the only way I can care for you at this distance. I pray they will keep you whole until you are able to redeem your promise to come home to me.

  You see—I have not forgotten how to pray, after all.

  Your tender and affectionate wife,

  Viola