by Ann Moore
“Abigail!” Grace shook the woman on the ground. “Stop it now! Stop!”
“Get off me,” Abigail hissed, then began laughing hysterically.
With his good hand, Wakefield slapped his sister across the face—once, twice, three times, until the laughter stopped abruptly and she turned her head away from him.
“Get off,” Abigail muttered, wearily now, all fight suddenly drained from her body.
Grace looked at the doctor, who nodded, and together they helped the demented woman up, each taking her firmly under one arm. Abigail’s nightdress was completely wet, and her hair—newly chopped off in jagged clumps—was plastered against her muddy, battered face. Mud streaked her arms and legs and was splattered up her gown. She slumped in their grip, but her emaciated body was as light as a child’s, and Grace would have been surprised if no bones were broken, so fragile did she seem now.
“Let’s take her straight up to her room.” Wakefield pushed open the door and guided them through the dark kitchen, down the great hall, and up the staircase.
“Should I get Missus Hopkins?” Grace whispered, as they sat Abigail down in a chair in her room.
“No. Stay here.” Wakefield slipped out the door but was back again in a moment with candles, a lantern, and matches. “Hold her there, don’t let her fall off,” he ordered as he got light going in the room.
“She needs out of these wet things.” Abigail had begun to shiver in earnest. “Shall I do it?”
“I don’t want to leave you alone, in case she …” Wakefield stared helplessly at this ghost of a woman, his eyes on the shorn mess upon her head.
“Just turn around, then. You’re a doctor, after all. Hand me a dry gown out of the bottom drawer there.”
Now it was Wakefield’s turn to do as he was told. He handed her the gown, then turned around and listened as, with quiet efficiency, Grace stripped off the wet clothes and replaced them with dry. She gently toweled Abigail’s assaulted head, noting the ugly nicks in the scalp, the places blood had matted the hair in clumps.
“Help me get her on the bed,” Grace directed, and Wakefield came immediately to her assistance.
He lifted his sister easily, then laid her upon the sheets, stepping back while Grace pulled a blanket up over her shoulders. Abigail lay perfectly still, eyes wide and staring at the ceiling, lips moving in silent plea or prayer or curse—Grace did not know which.
The doctor left the room and returned immediately with his kit bag, which he placed on the chair and opened. He withdrew another blue bottle, opened it, poured out a spoonful, and mixed it in a glass of water. Arm around Abigail’s shoulders, he attempted to lift her enough to drink.
“Here, dearest.” Wakefield put the rim of the glass to her lips. “Drink this now, and sleep.”
Abigail’s eyes closed as the liquid slid down her throat and her body went limp. Wakefield sat, glass in hand, and then he began to weep.
“Doctor.” Grace quietly closed the bedroom door. “’Tis over now. She’ll rest easy and be herself come morning.”
Wiping his hand wearily over his face, Wakefield sighed. “I’m afraid she’ll never be herself again, Missus Donnelly. Not ever again.”
Grace sat down in the chair. “Is it all over the piano, then? I’m so sorry, Doctor. I never thought it’d turn out as it did.”
Wakefield shook his head. “It’s my fault.” He set the glass on the table. “I should’ve known she wouldn’t want anything that brought her out of her misery, anything that might give her the slightest pleasure again.”
“But why?” Grace beseeched. “Is it the broken engagement, then? Was she unfaithful and is paying for it now?”
The doctor looked at her for a long time, through her, back to another time and place, and Grace waited quietly for his reply.
“She was not unfaithful, Missus Donnelly,” he said, and then his eyes cleared and he saw her. “Abigail was … assaulted. By a Negro man we all knew well, of whom we were all so very fond.”
The picture suddenly became clear to Grace—Wakefield’s hardness toward the plight of slaves, Abigail’s pain at having been betrayed not only by the man who assaulted her, but then by the one to whom she was affianced, and worse still by her own family.
“I think I understand.”
“I don’t know if you can.” Wakefield looked down at his hands. “It was my father who came upon the terrible act. Abigail was hysterical, of course, so they put her to bed while they dealt with Tom. That was the man’s name—Thomas Eden. We were boys together, he and I. His mother was a slave on our plantation, and when she died, my father allowed Tom’s father—a freeman—to buy his son out.” The doctor’s eyes were pinched with distress. “They beat Tom to within an inch of his life. And then they hung him. In the middle of the night. In front of Abigail. That was my father’s idea, and the judge’s—they wanted her to know they’d extracted full price for the crime committed upon her.”
Grace put her hand to her heart.
Wakefield looked at his sister. “I think it was the hanging that began to unhinge her—she’d never witnessed anything like that in her life. She functioned normally for a while, they told me, but by the time I returned from New York, she had only two states of being—comatose or hysterical.” Now he turned his eyes to Grace. “By this time, they all realized she was with child, you see, and they kept her locked in rooms at the top of the house. My father insisted I use my medical knowledge to end this shameful state of affairs before further damage was done to the family name. It was not a real child, after all, he told me,” Wakefield said bitterly, “but a mongrel, born of forced union between two breeds never meant to mate. It would be a humane act on my part, for the benefit of my sister, who shouldn’t have to suffer further pain and humiliation.” He hung his head over folded hands. “She begged me not to do it. She was terrified, afraid of dying.”
Grace thought of the skin that hung around Abigail’s belly, the marks she now knew were from the stretching. “Did you end it?” she asked.
“Do you think me so low as that, Missus Donnelly?”
“No, sir.” Grace shook her head. “But people do desperate things in desperate times.”
“I told my father she was too near her time and that it might kill her. My father adored my sister—as far as he was concerned, the sun rose and set on her and she could do no wrong. And yet …” Wakefield hesitated. “And yet, his heart had hardened against her and I could see in his eyes that her death would be a relief compared to the shame he’d feel every time he looked at her for the rest of his life.”
“I don’t understand,” Grace professed. “How could he turn his back on his own child?”
“You’ve never lived in the South, Missus Donnelly. We are a society woven together with the strands of a thousand intricate codes. To break even one threatens the entire fabric of our existence.”
“But what code did she break?”
“She allowed herself to be raped by a Negro!” he declared. “Worse, she lived. A gentlewoman would have had the courtesy to die from heart failure the moment her dress was ripped from her body, rather than force her family and friends to acknowledge her shame on a daily basis. Such a woman, sullied and besmirched, can hardly be expected to pour out tea at church receptions or go dancing in public.”
It took Grace a minute to wrap her mind around such a thing. “What about the baby, then? Was your sister delivered of it?”
Wakefield gave a terse nod. “They sent Abigail and an old midwife up the coast to stay with our grandmother—our Irish grandmother,” he added ruefully. “I took them myself. It was a difficult trip, and Abigail gave birth shortly after. I’d returned home by that time, but Grandmother reported that the baby was, mercifully, born dead. The midwife had her orders, I’m sure, but none of us wanted to be party to the murder of an innocent.”
“No, of course you wouldn’t,” Grace acknowledged gently.
“It was Grandmother who suggested I take Abigail wes
t. She felt it was the only chance Abigail had for marriage and a decent family life. My father certainly didn’t want her back—wouldn’t hear of it, if truth be told—so arrangements were made.” He looked up at Grace. “I’ve done the best I can, Missus Donnelly, but I fear Abigail will never recover, and I blame Thomas Eden mightily for that. I hope that man is burning in Hell for what he’s done to her, for the lives he’s destroyed. I will never forgive him.”
Grace sighed deeply, her heart aching for the tragedy of it all. “’Tis a terrible thing all round,” she said at last.
“Perhaps your understanding of the Negro is more broad than it was before,” Wakefield suggested.
“I’ve never thought a man good nor wicked based upon the color of his skin or the country of his birth,” she told him. “Not all those caught up in slavery are good and decent people—some are evil, just as there are white men born evil, and Irishmen born evil, Italians and Germans born evil, Chinese—” She stopped. “The man who hurt your sister was an evil man. To excuse him because of his color would be an insult to good and decent people everywhere, of color or no, so I won’t do that.”
He nodded, his eyes red and awash with tears.
“You should go to bed now, Doctor. I’ll stay with her tonight, if you like. I don’t think I could sleep anyway.”
Wakefield hesitated only a moment, and then he stood up wearily. “I’m grateful to you, Missus Donnelly. Thank you. For everything.”
The doctor’s words echoed her own to Peter earlier in the evening, and she looked down reflexively at the ring on her finger, Wakefield’s eyes following hers.
“Ah,” he said then. “I see congratulations are in order. I’m sorry your happy day has ended like this.”
“You’re sorry over too many things, Doctor,” Grace chided. “Don’t add this to the list.”
“You’ll be leaving us soon, I suppose.”
“No, sir. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me for a while yet, if that’s all right. The captain is still getting over his illness, and I’m afraid Jack’s not about to leave his new puppy anytime soon.” She offered him a small smile.
Wakefield looked relieved. “I’m glad I gave it to him, then. Glad you’ll be with us at least into the New Year.” He picked up his bag and walked quietly to the door, then turned. “Missus Donnelly, I don’t have to tell you that what we talked about tonight is private. I’m not sure how much even Missus Hopkins knows, but I would beg your discretion.”
“Of course, sir,” Grace assured him at once. “I’ll not say a word to anyone a’tall, not even the captain. ’Tis your own concern, as you say.”
“Thank you. Good night, then, Missus Donnelly, and …” He shook his head apologetically. “And Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas to you, as well, sir. Go to bed now, and I’ll send a restorative breakfast up to you come morning.”
Wakefield picked up his bag, then slipped out, closing the door behind him, leaving the two women alone. Grace bent over Abigail now with motherly concern, noting the pale skin and shallow breathing, the twitching blue-veined eyelids and the spasms at the corners of her mouth, as if her dreams were haunted.
Poor woman, Grace thought, crossing the room and pulling open the curtains; it would be dawn soon, and the start of a new day. Across the city that never fully slept, even on Christmas night, was a man who lay dreaming of her, Grace hoped. She lifted her hand and looked at the ring in the moonlight; it was beautiful, a beautiful gesture and a beautiful gift, the promise of a beautiful life, something that had eluded the sad creature behind her.
Grace remembered the shame she’d felt at the hands of a husband who’d taken her cruelly and knew that other women were just as helpless in their own marriages, but somehow the fact of marriage acted as a shield—others bore no witness to their shame, but neither could their plight be relieved. Grace had known unmarried women who’d suffered rape in Ireland, in New York, in Boston, and in Kansas. Some had been forced to wed the very men who’d assaulted them; others were sent away from their families as if they themselves had committed an unpardonable crime. If these women bore children by such an act, they bore them in profound shame only to raise them in shame, or give them up, or have them taken from them.
Why was it, Grace asked herself, looking down upon the city, why was it that women suffered the price of a crime committed upon them, a crime they could do nothing to stop? Why was sympathy given up by the bucketful for victims of accident, robbery, beatings, even murder, but not for those of rape? Rape was a sin like any other sin, and yet somehow women were thought complicit. Grace shook her head. It must be that rape could not be seen for what it truly was—not an act of sexual depravity, but an act of violence, the same as beating or torture. In fact, torture was the true name of rape, because its torment lasted far longer than it took the body to heal; it was, perhaps, the worst of all crimes man could commit, for it robbed the soul of joy and innocence, of trust, of the ability to love freely without fear clinging to hope’s hem.
Grace let the curtain fall and went back to Abigail. That, then, was what had happened to this woman, she realized. She had been sinned against and made to feel as if she deserved that sin; and deserving of sin, she had set in motion an act that caused the death of a man she had once known and trusted. These were wounds that no doctor could ever repair; they were deep and everlasting, and Grace knew of only one way to bring about their healing. She sank to her knees beside Abigail’s bed, took the woman’s cold, frail hand in her own, and began to pray.
Twenty-four
The New York that Morgan McDonagh rode into, the winter of 1853, was unlike any place he’d ever seen in his entire life, and he quickly determined that purchasing a map would have to be his first order of business if he was ever to find his wife among the half million citizens that swarmed these streets. Broadway, Dutch Hill, Corlears Hook, Kleindeutschland, Bancker Street, the Hudson River waterfront—people rattled off names as if he were a tourist, looking to see the sights. But when he asked about the Irish—where he might find them, where they all lived—he met with scornful sneers or warnings to stay out of the Points, especially at night.
The sheer number of people astonished him, the press of humanity, their bark and bite. Even though piles of slush lay pushed up against the curbs, people were everywhere, in all manner of dress and attitude, from fancy prancers to guards with billy clubs, while in the street ran all manner of vehicles, from lowly rag carts and single horsemen to elegant carriages and the long omnibuses that stopped at seemingly irregular intervals.
Morgan himself attracted more than a few curious stares, but not as many as he’d thought he might, dressed as he was in Indian leather stockings and breeches, fur-lined boots, fringed leather tunic, and fur cap, his hair braided down his back and a full dark beard hiding his face. He was lean and hard from the grueling hike down through the wilderness, through New England, where he’d traded furs for a good horse, and into Boston, where he’d left his now close friend, Père Leon. Despite the priest’s urging to stay with him at the Brotherhood Mission house and have a bath, a shave, a change of clothing, Morgan had not even considered it. He’d stayed one night, then departed, though he did admit that the sound of Irish voices in the streets had pulled at his heart.
Père Leon had taken up a meager collection for him in the mission so that he might stay in lodgings on the way to New York instead of sleeping in the snow or questionable taverns, and Morgan was grateful. Somehow it had not seemed this cold coming down from Canada, but perhaps it was because they’d been moving all the time, then digging in at night to sleep in their small tent. Here, a cold wind blew in from the sea and the dampness chilled him right through the warmth of his clothing. And he was tired. He knew he was tired. There were times when he’d fallen asleep on horseback, lulled by the regular clip-clop of the hooves, awakened only by the sense of falling off as his grip loosened. He would rest when he found her, he promised himself. He would lie down with her i
n his arms and sleep for a year, getting up only for food and drink. He didn’t think about Sean or Mary Kate or work or money or any of that—only sleep, only lying down with his wife in his arms and sleeping the deepest sleep of his life. But first he had to find her. He looked around, then rode across the street to where a short, side-whiskered man stood hawking guidebooks.
“Maps in there?” Morgan asked from atop the horse.
The man eyed him from top to bottom, taking in the buckskins, the fur, the boots. “Say, mister—what kind of fella are you?”
“Kind wants a map,” Morgan replied. “How much?”
“Two dollars fifty.”
Morgan pulled back his robe so that the gleaming knife at his side was visible.
“But for you—one dollar even.”
Morgan pulled a coin out of his money pouch, checking it carefully before flipping it to the hawker, who then handed up a book.
“Whatcha looking for, mister?” the man asked as Morgan flipped through the pages.
“Man called O’Malley. Sean O’Malley. Heard of him, have you?”
“Shoot, mister, every other Irishman’s called O’Malley. Anyhow, that book don’t list people’s names.” He took a step closer, holding up another copy. “It names your eating establishments, your theaters, Ethiopian Opera Houses, your churches and grand cathedrals; it’s got your saloons, your concert halls, dance halls—why, it’s got pret’near all the sights a b’hoy or g’hal could want to see in the best city in the world!”
“Saloons,” Morgan repeated, shifting his weight on the horse. “Know one owned by Mighty Dugan Ogue?”
“The boxer?” He scratched his chin, thinking. “Sure I do, sure I do. But, mister, that place burned down the summer we had all them fires. Summer of forty-nine, it was, right before the cholera. Killed a bunch of people, but maybe not Ogue himself. Leastwise, I don’t recall his funeral and you know there would’ve been a big one. Hey, mister, you all right?”
