The Velvet Shadow

by Angela Elwell Hunt

  Charity hesitated a moment, then set her jaw and took the scissors from Flanna’s hand. “Land sakes, Miss Flanna, you wouldn’t last a day without me,” she answered, rising to her knees as she came around to finish Flanna’s haircut. “And if making us look like boys is the way to get us out of this Yankee town, then I’m going to make us look like the best boys in that whole Yankee army.”

  Flanna exhaled in relief. “That’s the spirit,” she whispered, resting her arms on her crossed knees as Charity finger-combed her hair.

  The first hint of sunrise was touching the eastern sky as Flanna swept up the tangled strands of her coppery hair. She hesitated by the fireplace with the dustpan, tempted to burn the evidence of her trickery, then decided that the stench of burning hair would bring Mrs. Davis out of her bed in terror. Better to wrap the hair in paper and stow it in one of her trunks.

  Charity was already dressed, her purse bulging with Flanna’s hospital wages, earmarked now for buying men’s clothing at the mercantile. The girl paused as the room brightened and made a face as she studied Flanna’s new hairstyle. “I couldn’t do nothing about that white streak in your hair, Miss Flanna.” She crinkled her nose. “I’m afraid anybody who sees it will know it’s you they’re looking at.”

  “That’s why we’re going to always wear a cap, you and I.” Flanna raked a hank of the newly shorn hair from her forehead. “Don’t forget—buy cheap goods; we’ll only need them for a day or two. The army will give us hats and uniforms.”

  “Yes ma’am.” Charity paused by one of the open trunks and ran her hand over the rich sheen of a satin ball gown. “What are you gonna tell Mister Roger? He’s going to think it strange if you just take off without a word of good-bye.”

  “I’m going to write him a letter,” Flanna said, searching through the depths of the wardrobe for a bonnet. She finally found a tattered green one and tied it securely under her chin, grateful that the ruffle at the back hid the fact that most of her hair had vanished. “I’ll write Roger after I go down and tell Mrs. Davis that we’re moving to New York.” She waved Charity toward the door. “It will be all right, just get along. And remember—two shirts, two sets of shoes, two pairs of trousers, two hats.”

  When Charity didn’t move, Flanna lifted a brow. “What’s wrong now?”

  The corners of Charity’s mouth tightened with distress, and she looked at Flanna with shiny eyes. “Miss Flanna, don’t gentlemen wear something under all that?”

  Flanna brought her fingers to her lips, then laughed. She hadn’t thought of it, but she couldn’t very well wear a corset and pantalets under an army uniform. “Yes, of course,” she answered, trying to remember what Wesley had been wearing the time Papa caught him sleepwalking downstairs. “Um, undershirts. And drawers. But it’s so hot, Charity. Try to find cotton instead of wool.” She frowned. “I wonder if the army will give us socks.”

  “They’d better.” Charity turned toward the door. “That’s all the young ladies have been making since the captain told Mrs. Davis he didn’t need no more havelocks.”

  “Better get each of us a pair, just in case. And make sure the shoes are sturdy, in case we have to keep them. I can’t imagine walking to the train station in anything less than sturdy shoes.”

  Charity nodded, then slipped out of the room. The click of the closing door rang like a gunshot in Flanna’s ears. She had set her feet upon a path from which there could be no turning back.

  She drew a deep breath and forbade herself to tremble. The widow Davis was probably just waking up, and Flanna might as well give her the news while she was still in her nightcap and gown. Mrs. Davis would undoubtedly relish the drama of Flanna’s sudden departure, and in weeks to come the story would serve as yet another proof of Flanna’s inherently coarse Rebel manners.

  She resolutely tightened the ribbon that held her bonnet, then moved out of the room toward the widow’s chamber.

  Three hours later, Flanna heard a sharp rap on the door, then Charity entered, her arms loaded with wrapped packages. “I had to go to stores where they don’t know us,” she whispered, dumping her bundles on Flanna’s bed, “but I think I got everything. I sure hope so!”

  Flanna dropped her last textbook into a trunk, then dropped the lid. “Let’s see.” With a rush of rising excitement she hurried to the bed and pulled the twine off one bundle. Inside the wrapping paper were two pairs of butternut trousers and two gray plaid shirts. “Good grief, Charity.” She gave the identical shirts a dubious look. “Did you have to buy the same shirts? We’ll look like twins!”

  Charity’s eyes widened, then her mouth spread in a slow grin. “What’s wrong, Miss Flanna? I always kind of thought we looked sorta like twins, being the same age and all.”

  “Oh, indubitably.” Flanna rolled her eyes. She opened the other packages, then sighed in satisfaction. Charity had remembered everything. There remained only the final packing, the change of clothing, and the exit. Their great escape would have to occur at dinnertime, when all the young ladies would be sequestered in the dining room. She and Charity could slip down the backstairs in their men’s attire, and no one would be the wiser.

  Charity put her hands on her hips and swayed slightly. “What do we do now, Miss Flanna?”

  “We change,” Flanna said, running her hand through her hair. She couldn’t seem to stop fingering it. The short strands barely reached the tips of her ears and felt strangely light on her head, adding to her feeling of recklessness.

  She picked up the canvas cap on the bed and pulled it over her head, adjusting it so the brim rested on her forehead. “Private Franklin O’Connor, reporting for duty, sir!” She snapped a salute toward the mirror.

  “Oh, Miss Flanna,” Charity moaned. “I hope you can do better than that! Your voice is too prissy, and your hands—remind me to cut your nails before we go.”

  Flanna turned her hand and critically regarded her nails. “You’re right, Charity. Together we just might pull this off.”

  By midday, each dress, petticoat, hoop skirt, stocking, and slipper had been packed away in Flanna’s trunks. Flanna and Charity sat silently on their beds, each shifting uncomfortably in the too-large men’s clothing. The seams of the cotton undershirt chafed Flanna’s skin, and the fabric of the shirt seemed suffocatingly heavy.

  Flanna had buttoned her journal into the front of her shirt for two reasons. First, the big, flat book did a fair job of disguising her womanly curves. Second, she was unwilling to travel without it. If something terrible happened on the journey, she wanted her father to understand her reasons for acting as she did. She had wanted to take her medical bag, too, but thought she’d be asking for trouble if someone discovered it. Lowly army privates did not carry scalpels and sutures, nor did they know how to use such things. And so her beloved medical bag had gone into one of the trunks, destined now for New York. Inside each trunk she included a note explaining that she’d be calling for her belongings when the strife was ended.

  She heard the front door open and shut, then voices rose from the downstairs hallway. In a moment Mrs. Davis would ring the dinner bell, a quaint little ritual the widow thought charming. Anyone not seated when the meal began would miss dinner altogether, for frugal Mrs. Davis would not pursue any tenant thoughtless enough to skip a meal.

  “You packed your books?” Charity whispered, her eyes bulging.

  “Of course,” Flanna replied, her mind a hundred miles away. “And the trunks are addressed and ready to go. I told Mrs. Davis she should send them to the depot at her earliest convenience.”

  “And Mister Roger?”

  “The letter is ready to be posted.” Flanna inclined her head toward the desk where Roger’s letter lay on the blotter. Mrs. Davis could not fail to see it.

  The dinner bell echoed from downstairs, and Flanna tensed at the sound. She stood, surveying the room one last time. Two busy years had passed like a dream, and now it was time to go home.

  The muffled sounds from downstairs abru
ptly ceased, and Flanna knew the diners had paused to pray. She looked at Charity. “Ready?”

  “Yes ma’am.” Charity stood, but kept one hand on the bed, as if she couldn’t balance in her clumsy men’s shoes.

  Flanna moved toward the door and waited until the murmur of voices began again. Finally the tinkling sounds of silver and china reached her ears, and she opened the door. “Let’s go.”

  As they passed through the hallway, Flanna pressed her lips together, half-afraid she would burst out in laughter. Wesley, no doubt, would find this terribly funny. His sister, the belle of Charleston, dressed in trousers and man-sized shoes, clumping through her own boardinghouse like a common sneak.

  Flanna hurried toward the back stairway, knowing it would lead her directly to the kitchen and the back door. No one but Mrs. Davis and the cook used this staircase, and the cook ought to be in the dining room, serving the meal. If all went well…

  She turned the corner, then froze. Prissy Hillary Owen stood on the second step in the narrow stairwell, her rosy lips pressed to those of some brave boy in blue. Miss Owen’s fair eyes were closed, and the soldier was past caring who might be approaching from above. Flanna frantically gestured to Charity, hoping the maid would retreat to the safety of their room.

  But Charity must have been watching her feet instead of her mistress. Before Flanna could step back from the threshold, Charity bumped into her, upsetting Flanna from her perch at the top of the stairs. She reached for the banister and caught it, but not before her slick shoes slipped down the polished wooden steps, dragging her body downward amid a tremendous knocking racket. A brilliant pain flashed through her shinbone, and Flanna yelled in dazzled agony.

  Miss Owen screamed and stepped back, and the soldier cursed. Obeying an instinctive reaction honed through years of playing rough-and-tumble games with Wesley and her cousins, Flanna righted herself and lowered her head, barreling on down the staircase as she prayed Charity would have the good sense to follow.

  “Stop! A burglar!” Miss Owen screamed. “Oh, my heavens, shoot them!”

  Flanna hit the back door and yanked it open, then froze as she heard the ominous click of a pistol.

  “Stop right there, both of you!” The soldier’s voice quavered.

  Right behind her, as close as the shirt on her back, Flanna could hear Charity’s frantic breathing. This was all Flanna’s fault, and Charity should not suffer for it. Flanna lifted her hands and slowly turned her head, looking past Charity’s shoulder to see the soldier. The arm holding the pistol quivered in a wide arc, and his breath came hard though his nose with a faint whistling sound. He was just as scared as she was, but he had a lot less at stake.

  She opened her mouth, ripping out a yell designed to shatter the eardrums of a pesky older brother, then dove through the open doorway. She hit the ground hard, rolled over the soft earth where the cook had given up trying to grow vegetables, then scrambled to her feet as a gunshot shattered the stillness and a slice of dirt flew up barely three feet to the right of her feet.

  The fool had actually fired that gun!

  She looked up to see Charity running toward her like a hen dodging the axe. With a burst of hysterical laughter, Flanna joined Charity, and they sprinted together through the back alley.

  This was one dinner Mrs. Davis’s boarders would never forget.

  Eleven

  After congratulating themselves on a most spectacular escape, Flanna and Charity walked to the recruiter’s office at Faneuil Hall. A police officer patrolled the steps there, and they took pains to avoid his notice, even though it seemed unlikely that word of Mrs. Davis’s intrusive vagabonds had reached this part of town.

  “You sure Mrs. Davis won’t know it was us?” Charity asked for the tenth time, keeping a wary eye on the policeman.

  “Hillary Owen was so flustered she won’t know what she saw,” Flanna answered, squatting on the steps. How comfortable it was to sit like a man! She spread her knees apart and rested her arms atop them, just for the sheer pleasure of doing so. “You can bet that Mrs. Davis is still in a faint. By the time she’s roused enough to hear what Hillary has to say, the other girls will be mighty curious about where that soldier came from.” Flanna grinned. “By tonight, no one will even be thinking about us. I imagine Hillary’s father will get a wire informing him that his daughter ought to be married before the regiment ships out to Washington.”

  “You don’t think that soldier will remember us?”

  “Naw.” Flanna dragged out the word and grinned. How wonderful it was to talk like a man! “Do you remember what he looked like?”

  Charity hesitated, then shook her head.

  “See? It all happened too quick.” Flanna stood up and wiped the last traces of dirt from her trousers. “Now we need to enlist. Let’s get it over with.”

  They walked inside the building and paused before an officer at the desk. “Ah, sure, and I’ll be hating to disturb you, sir,” Flanna aped her father’s broad Irish brogue, reasoning it was the best disguise for her voice, “but the lad and I would like to enlist in this fine army.”

  The man scarcely glanced up. “Name?”

  “O’Connor. Franklin O’Connor.”

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-four, sir.”

  “State of residence?”

  Flanna gave Charity a confident smile. “Well, naturally, ’tis Massachusetts.”

  The man scribbled her answers on a pad, then ripped off the top sheet. Looking up, he handed it to her, then frowned. “That colored boy can’t enlist.”

  “Why not?”

  The man tented his fingers. “Coloreds can’t fight. He can go with you as a servant; I hear some of the Maryland men have even taken their slaves to war. But coloreds can’t serve in a Massachusetts regiment.”

  Flanna lifted her chin, not daring to look at Charity. She would never understand Yankees. Why did they want to free the Negroes if they wouldn’t allow them to do anything?

  “Charles is my servant; he’ll remain with me.” Flanna gave the officer a polite smile. “He goes wherever I go.”

  “Right.” The man jerked his head toward a door behind her. “See the doctor, and get your physical. You’ll be serving in Company M.”

  Flanna took the slip of paper and moved toward the doorway the man had indicated. “Just stay quiet and stay with me,” she warned Charity in a low voice.

  “Good thing I bought nice clothes,” Charity grumbled, shuffling behind Flanna in her too-large shoes. “Looks like I’m going to be in ’em awhile.”

  Flanna paused outside the examination room and pointed to a bench where Charity could wait. “Pray that this part goes well,” she whispered, placing her hand on the cold brass doorknob. “If we’re going to be discovered, this might be the place.”

  Charity sat down and crossed her arms, and Flanna hesitated as fear blew down the back of her neck. A memory ruffled through her mind, a history lesson in which she had learned that Columbus’s men had been terrified to the point of mutiny when they reached the point of no return in the midst of the unknown ocean. As they faced the dark knowledge that they no longer had enough food and water to turn back, surely they must have experienced this same feeling of dismay.

  This doorway was her point of no return. She could not go back. They’d think she was a spy for certain if she was discovered with her hair bobbed off and an enlistment slip in her pocket. Exposure now would mean certain arrest and prison, shame, and infamy.

  She could only go forward.

  Heavenly Father, help me now.

  Gathering her courage, Flanna walked into the room. A tall man in a white coat stood with his back to her, and she thrust her recruitment form toward his stout figure. “Franklin O’Connor, reporting for me physical, sir.”

  She thought she would faint when the doctor turned around. Dr. John Gulick stood before her, his eyes alert and bright. Apparently he hadn’t visited the taverns yet today.

  He took the paper, glancing a
t her for only a moment. “Franklin O’Connor,” he said, peering at the page through his spectacles. He squinted back at her. “Irish?”

  “Well, naturally.” Flanna tried to smile. “’Tis a great thing to be Irish.”

  “So half this city thinks,” Gulick muttered. He pulled out a tablet. “Do you suffer from piles or fits, O’Connor?”

  “No sir.”

  “Are you healthy?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Lift your arms out to your sides.”

  A cold sweat prickled under Flanna’s arms, and she felt her heart begin to pound like a triphammer.

  “Don’t be scared, boy.” Gulick’s broad hands moved toward her. “Just stand up straight.”

  Flanna swallowed hard and obeyed. Gulick pressed his fingertips to her collarbones and shoulders, then told her to turn around. As she waited, paralyzed with fear, he thumped her once on the back.

  “You look like a right healthy one,” he said, scratching something on his tablet. He marked her recruitment slip and returned it to her. “Congratulations, son. You’ll make a fine soldier.”

  Flanna stepped out into the hall, dazed and a little shaken that she’d actually pulled it off.

  The long shadows of late afternoon had begun to stretch across the ground as Flanna and Charity walked into the camp at Boston Common. Little had changed since Flanna had last visited Private Fraser, but she saw the place with new eyes, watching every man who approached, wondering how she would fit into this community of men.

  From the color line at the front of the camp a dozen or so standards fluttered in the breeze, along with the regimental colors and Old Glory. The various companies were housed on straight streets branching off the color line. The quarters of noncommissioned officers, company officers, and the regimental commander and his staff stood at the rear of the camp, on three separate streets running parallel to the color line. The baggage trains, partially loaded with supplies, lay behind the commander’s quarters.