by Nan Ryan
But on the twenty-seventh day of May, 1863, the sundial abruptly stopped.
Mary Ellen, tired from her sleepless night and shaken from the dream she feared was prophetic, stood at the broken sundial late the next afternoon. The hot May sun beat down on her uncovered head, but she felt strangely cold, as if she stood in deep, impenetrable shadow.
Her trembling fingers traced the letters deeply carved on the sundial’s marble face. I read only sunshine… Worriedly, Mary Ellen wondered. Had the sundial stopped because there would be no more sunshine at Longwood?
As Mary Ellen stood at the broken sundial, the damning dispatch arrived at Memphis Union Naval Headquarters. The bulletin concluded:
Lieutenant Theodore Davidson of the gunboat Lexington saw the explosion. A Rebel shore battery hit the Cincinnati in the forward ammunition magazine, and she went down with all hands onboard. No known survivors.
Mary Ellen remained dry-eyed and stoic as the nervous Johnny Briggs stood in Longwood’s spacious drawing room at sunset and gave her the bad news. When he had told her all he knew of the sunk Cincinnati, Mary Ellen thanked him and asked that he please let her know immediately if and when there was any further news.
Then she politely excused herself.
Waving away her protective servants, Mary Ellen slowly ascended the stairs. In the privacy of the master suite, she stood at the foot of the oversize mahogany bed she had shared with Clay, remembering the nights they had made love there. One hand on her stomach, the other gripping the bed’s tall carved footpost, she smiled wistfully, thinking that one of those wonderful nights in this big bed with Clay had started the new life inside her.
Tears filled her dark eyes.
She hadn’t told Clay she was pregnant. At the time, she’d felt sure she was doing the right thing. She hadn’t wanted him distracted and worried about her. But not telling him had been a mistake. Now it was too late. She had let her husband die without ever knowing she was carrying his child.
“Clay, my love, I’m so sorry,” she murmured sadly.
Too exhausted to stand any longer, Mary Ellen, clinging to the solid bedpost, slowly sank to the carpeted floor at the foot of the bed. She laid her weary head against the footboard, sat down flat, and wept uncontrollably.
She was still there when her friend Leah Thompson, summoned by the worried Titus, arrived. Leah hurried straight up the stairs, knocked, and went inside without waiting for a reply.
The older woman rushed across the room, sank to her knees beside the sobbing Mary Ellen, and put comforting arms around her. The two friends stayed there on the floor for a long time, talking, praying, crying together. It was Leah who finally convinced the distraught Mary Ellen that she had to get some rest.
“Won’t you let me help you get undressed and into bed?” she asked gently.
Before Mary Ellen could reply, another knock came on the bedroom door and the white-haired Dr. Cain came in, carrying his black bag and issuing orders.
“You’re going to bed immediately, Mary Ellen Knight,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. “Mrs. Thompson, help me get her up and I’ll check her while you get her a nightgown. Mary Ellen, I’ll give you something to help you sleep, and I mean for you to take it. You must think of your child. If you don’t take care of yourself, you…you…” His lecturing words trailed away, and in a kind, fatherly tone he said, “Child, I heard. I’m so sorry, but you mustn’t give up hope. It’s way too soon to suppose that…that…” He stopped speaking, cleared his throat needlessly, then turned away and rummaged through his black bag.
Dr. Cain gave Mary Ellen a mild sedative, and by the time he and Leah Thompson left the suite, Mary Ellen was sound asleep.
The doctor touched Leah’s arm, stopped her when they were out in the upstairs corridor. “Mrs. Thompson,” he said, speaking in a low, soft voice, “I am worried about Mary Ellen. She’s not as strong as she should be, and now this terrible blow will make matters worse.”
“What are you saying, Dr. Cain? Is Mary Ellen’s unborn child in danger?”
Brow deeply furrowed, he nodded his white head. “Mary Ellen’s in danger as well, I’m afraid. She’s going to have a difficult time delivering the child, and she’s already weak to start with. If she isn’t careful…” He shrugged, shook his head, and exhaled.
“Dear Lord,” murmured Leah, shocked. “I never considered—”
“Emotions affect health as much as anything,” the doctor cut in. “This news about the Captain couldn’t have come at a worse time.”
Leah nodded sadly, then asked, “What can I do, Doctor?”
“Help Mary Ellen’s servants see to it she eats properly and gets plenty of rest. I want her to have as much strength as possible when the time comes.”
“I’ll do everything I can,” Leah said worriedly. “And promise you’ll send for me when she goes into labor.”
“I was counting on you,” said Dr. Cain.
The long days of torture dragged by with no definitive word on Clay. It was rumored that some of the men on the ill-fated gunboat had survived the explosion and were now being held prisoner by the Confederates. But it was not a certainty, and no names of survivors had been supplied.
Mary Ellen went about in a daze of despair, and no one was more concerned than the soft-hearted Titus.
“Now, Miz Mary Ellen, they exchange prisoners every week,” he said time and again. “If them Rebs is holdin’ the Cap’n, they may might jes’ trade him for one of their own any day. I ’spect that’s what’ll happen…yes, I do.”
Leah Thompson also tried to cheer up the grieving Mary Ellen. She was at Longwood almost constantly, pleading with Mary Ellen to eat the nutritious meals Mattie prepared and to take long, restful afternoon naps. But try as she might, Mary Ellen could hardly force herself to eat, and she found it almost impossible to sleep at night, much less in the daytime.
Distraught, Mary Ellen grew drawn and pale, her dark eyes hollow and clouded with grief. Her strength was slowly ebbing away at a time when she most needed it.
The sweltering summer weather didn’t help.
The sticky heat of June descended like a swarm of locusts on the Bluff City. The days were long, sunny, and almost unbearably hot. The nights were still, muggy, and too warm. For a troubled young woman who was nine full months pregnant, the sultry heat was sheer hell.
On the fifth of June—several days past her due date—a letter arrived for Mary. Ensign Briggs delivered the letter to Longwood at sunset. The ensign stood in the foyer as Mary Ellen slowly descended the stairs. She looked so weak and pale, he was reluctant to give her the letter he had tucked inside his uniform pocket. The envelope was stained with drops of blood, and Ensign Briggs had recognized Captain Clay Knight’s distinctive handwriting.
“Mrs. Knight,” Briggs said, greeting her.
“Ensign Briggs,” she acknowledged, her dark eyes questioning. “Have you come to…to…”
Halfway down the stairs, Mary Ellen stopped speaking as a wrenching pain slammed through her body, taking her breath away.
“Mrs. Knight!” shouted Ensign Briggs, and raced up the stairs.
He swept Mary Ellen into his arms and carried her up the stairs, shouting over his shoulder for her servants. As soon as Titus and Mattie were with her, Ensign Briggs told them he’d go for the doctor. He left the room and raced back down the stairs. The letter still in his uniform pocket, the frightened ensign sprinted down the front walk and out the gate, then ran all the way to the Shelby County Hospital.
Dr. Cain was at Longwood within a half hour. Leah Thompson wasn’t far behind.
The two of them were still there eighteen hours later. The doctor’s fears had become a reality. A badly weakened Mary Ellen endured hour after hour of debilitating pain as her long labor continued through the still, sticky hours of the hot June night. The suffering Mary Ellen murmured Clay’s name over and over as she and her baby slipped closer and closer toward death.
Titus and Mattie h
overed just outside the suite, crying and telling each other that Mary Ellen and the baby would be all right. Everything was going to be all right.
Sunrise finally came, but no baby.
As noon approached Mary Ellen’s pain-dulled eyes registered her unspoken distress. She was not afraid for herself, but she was worried about her baby.
“Please, Dr. Cain,” she pleaded, so weak she could hardly speak, “don’t let my baby die. Please, don’t…Oooh!…” Another tearing pain came, and Mary Ellen bit the inside of her bottom lip until it bled.
“Scream if you want to, child,” said the doctor. Then he lied: “You’re doing fine, Mary Ellen. Just fine.”
Leah looked at him from across the bed, where she stood bathing Mary Ellen’s perspiring, ashen face. Leah read the concern in the doctor’s eyes and knew that if Mary Ellen didn’t deliver the child soon, it would be too late for them both.
The torture continued through the hottest part of the day. Shortly after noon, black clouds boiled up in the summer sky. Heat lightning flashed, and booming thunder rattled the windows of the mansion.
A torrential rain began and didn’t let up.
Nor did Mary Ellen’s pain.
But finally, at three o’clock on that hot, rainy sixth of June—a year to the day since Clay’s return to Memphis—the exhausted Mary Ellen gave birth to a perfect, healthy baby boy.
Out in the hallway, Titus and Mattie heard the infant’s cry above the rain and hugged each other. Mattie sent Titus down to the kitchen to brew some hot tea while she went inside and to clean up the newborn.
When the old cook laid the crying infant in his tired mother’s weak arms, Mary Ellen kissed his downy head and said, “Welcome to the world, Clayton Terrell Knight, Junior.”
His tiny fists opening and closing, Clay Junior snagged a lock of his mother’s loose, tangled hair and opened his eyes.
Tears that were a mixture of joy and sadness immediately sprang to Mary Ellen’s dark eyes, and she cooed to the baby, “If only your father could see you.”
As soon as her baby had been fed, Mary Ellen fell into a dreamless sleep of total exhaustion, and the baby, full and slumbering peacefully, was taken from her, placed in the waiting lace-trimmed bassinet beside the bed.
Mother and child slept as the violent afternoon thunderstorm changed to a slow, steady rain.
Mary Ellen awakened later that rainy afternoon.
When she opened her eyes, she saw two Clays. The officer and the infant. Both were asleep. Both were beautiful. Both were hers!
Captain Clay Knight, in black boots, blue uniform trousers, and a white shirt open down his chest, revealing his bandaged ribs, sat sprawled on a chair beside the bed, his dark head resting against the chair’s tall back, his eyes closed in slumber.
Mary Ellen stared at him as though he were an apparition from a long-remembered dream.
Twenty-four-hour-old Clayton Knight, Junior, in the white cotton nightshirt handmade by his loving mother, rested trustingly against his father’s broad chest, his downy head cradled in the crook of Clay’s muscular right arm.
Her happiness now complete, Mary Ellen gazed silently in awed wonder at the sleeping pair.
The elder Clay awakened.
His beautiful silver-gray eyes opened and he smiled at Mary. Then, for a long moment, there was gentle silence between them. Clay moved, and his son awakened. The tiny infant opened his blue eyes and looked up unfocused at his father.
Smiling, Clay Senior looked from his son to his wife and asked, “Are you both just a dream that will vanish if I blink?”
“I was about to ask you that.” Smiling happily now, Mary Ellen lifted her arms to him and said, “Come here and I’ll show you how real we are.”
Clay rose from the chair, carefully handed Mary Ellen the tiny baby boy, then laid his open hand against her pale cheek and said, “Why, sweetheart? Why didn’t you tell me before I left?”
“I didn’t want you worrying about me, about us.”
Clay kissed her tenderly.
Pushing aside his shirt to gently touch his bandaged stomach, she said, “Clay, Clay, I thought you had been killed. I was so worried and…Are you badly hurt, my love?”
“No,” he assured her, making light of it. “A flesh wound. It’s nothing.”
“Then kiss me again, Captain,” Mary Ellen said, her dark eyes shining. “Kiss all the breath out of my body.”
Grinning boyishly, recalling the night he’d said that to her, Clay leaned down and started to comply, but the baby wailed his outrage.
His parents looked at each other, laughed, and turned their full attention on their precious baby son.
Outside, the rain had stopped.
The sun was shining again, bright and hot.
Down on the terraced lawn, the old marble-faced sundial read the sunshine.
And it began to work perfectly once more.
About the Author
Nan Ryan is an award-winning historical romance author. The daughter of a Texas rancher, she began writing in 1981, inspired by a Newsweek article about women who traded corporate careers for the craft of romantic fiction. She found success with her second novel, Kathleen’s Surrender (1983), a story of a Southern belle’s passionate affair with a mysterious gambler. Ryan continued writing romances, publishing novels such as Silken Bondage (1989), The Scandalous Miss Howard (2002), and The Countess Misbehaves (2000). Her husband, Joe Ryan, is a television executive, and his career has taken them all over the country, with each new town providing fodder for Ryan’s stories.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1996 by Nan Ryan
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
978-1-4804-6731-6
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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