The Walker in Shadows

by Barbara Michaels

  The library occupied the whole of the third floor. No doubt the room had once been a ballroom; it had long windows along one wall and a hardwood floor that was still beautiful despite its scuffed surface. Bookshelves covered the wall opposite the windows; there were rows of filing cabinets on the short walls, and a heaped desk in one corner. Three long library tables took up part of the floor space. One held a card index and a microfilm reader. Pat drew her finger along the nearest shelf and saw a miniature dust pile build before it.

  "You don't know what this place looked like before Jay arrived," Mark said, as she made a fastidious face. "He's done a helluva lot."

  "There is still a great deal to be done," Pat retorted.

  "If people like you would donate some time, and people like our neighbors would donate some money, it might get done. Do you know how much Jay makes a year?"

  "Stop arguing with your mother," Josef said. "Weren't you the lad who said we had a lot to do?"

  Giving him a sour look, Mark jerked open one of the filing cabinets.

  "The local newspaper," he said, taking out a roll of microfilm. "We'll start with 1858. Here, Kath, look for any mention of the Turnbulls or the Bateses, and let me know when you're ready for the next roll."

  He turned to Josef.

  "Tax records," he said curtly, indicating a nearby shelf. "Census reports, other legal garbage. That's your specialty, Mr. Friedrichs."

  "How about me?" Pat asked, as Josef, without comment, began scanning the dusty volumes Mark had pointed out.

  "You get the dirty job," Mark said, his frown relaxing. "The books have been catalogued, but only roughly, and they aren't well arranged. Read the shelves. Look for anything that might apply to our families. I don't think I could have missed a genealogy or a family history, but the Turnbulls might be mentioned in any of the contemporary memoirs. Don't waste time on modern histories," he added, as Pat approached the nearest shelf. "I've read most of them,"

  He opened a file drawer. Pat saw that it was filled with folders all jammed with papers and apparently unlabeled.

  "What is that?" she asked.

  "Miscellaneous," Mark replied, with a wry smile. "I told you we'd leave no stone unturned. Get to it, lady."

  For half an hour there was silence as all four worked steadily. Out of the corner of her eye Pat saw that both Kathy and Josef paused from time to time to take notes. So far she hadn't found anything worth noting down. As Mark had said, hers was the dirty job, and not only because of the vagueness of her assignment; her hands were dark gray by the time she had worked her way through the top shelves of the first section. Abandoning all hope of staying clean, she sat down on the floor and began on the lower shelves.

  Almost immediately she came upon a group of books that promised more than the zero she had scored so far. They were memoirs and collected letters. In style and in appearance they reminded her of the book by Mary Jane Turnbull, and she marveled at the prolific literary habits of the ladies of the nineteenth century. However, it was not surprising that they should have written so much; the dramatic events that let to secession and its bloody aftermath must have prompted many a young girl to start a diary. And they had time, lots of it. Perhaps not the hard-working mistresses of large plantations, glamorized by writers like Margaret Mitchell, but well-to-do women of the urban upper classes had few demands on their leisure and plenty of slaves and servants.

  The memoirs gave her less than she had hoped. Few were from the area that interested her. And, she realized, even if one of the authors had been acquainted with the Turnbulls, she would have to go through the books page by page to find such references.

  Then she came upon a volume entitled My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition Rule in Washington, and her interest revived. Obviously the author had been Southern in sympathy, and she had lived in the capital, not all that far from Poolesville.

  After the first few pages Pat forgot that she was supposed to be looking for the Turnbulls, and became involved in the fantastic narrative. Mrs. Greenhow had not only been a Confederate sympathizer in a hostile city, she had been one of the most skilled and effective spies of the time. She had sent coded messages to General Beauregard, across the river in Virginia, telling him of Northern military plans, and she had finally been arrested by Allan Pinkerton, the famous detective, when her plots were uncovered. Sentenced at first to house arrest, she was able to elude her guards long enough to sneak into the library and destroy damaging papers. Later she was moved to the grim confines of the Old Capital Prison. No place for a lady, Pat thought, fascinated; but then spying was no game for a lady either, or so she would have thought.

  She was deeply absorbed in the troubles of Mrs. Greenhow when the door opened and Jay entered.

  "History buffs," he announced, with a contemptuous wave of the hand in the general direction of the lower regions, whence, one was to assume, the tourists had departed. "How are you doing? Need any help?"

  He might have meant the offer for all of them, but he came straight to Pat and prepared to join her on the floor.

  "I'm going to stand up," she told him. "My joints are stiffening. I should have known better than to sit cross-legged, at my age."

  Jay took her hand and hoisted her up with such energy that her feet missed the floor altogether. He put one long arm around her waist and kept her from falling.

  "There you go," he said genially. "What are you reading? Oh, Mrs. Greenhow. You shouldn't sit on that dirty floor. Take the book home if you want."

  "But I thought books weren't supposed to go-"

  "Oh, hell, rules don't apply to my friends." Jay gave her a friendly squeeze.

  "Found something?" a voice inquired. Josef had come up behind them, unheard until then. Jay removed his arm, looking faintly embarrassed, and Josef scowled at him.

  "We really must go," Pat said. "We don't want Jay to work overtime, not at his salary."

  Jay hastened to assure them that he was willing to stick around. Josef insisted that they wouldn't hear of troubling him. After a further exchange of courtesies they took their departure. As they went along the brick walk, Josef's hand possessive on her arm, Pat glanced back. A pensive figure leaned against the door, staring after them.

  "I should have asked him over for a drink," Pat said.

  Josef muttered something, in which Pat thought she caught the word "hairy," affixed to a pejorative noun. She did not ask him to repeat the comment.

  They were using Josef's car, a dark-blue Mercedes which managed to look ostentatious in spite of its modest lines and subdued color. Mark put his hand on the hood, as gently as if he touched living flesh.

  "Nice car," he said.

  "Want to drive?"

  "You mean it?" Mark gaped at him.

  "Go one mile over the speed limit and I'll break both your legs," Josef said, handing him the keys.

  He helped Pat into the back seat and got in beside her, letting the younger generation take the front. Pat was absurdly touched by the gesture. She knew how much it meant, to the giver and to the recipient of the favor. Men were so odd about their cars, especially cars like this one. Josef had taken her words to heart after all. He was really trying.

  So was Mark; he drove as if his cargo included loose eggs and fragile old ladies. His fascination with the car kept him silent during the short drive back to the house. Josef, tense as a bowstring and trying not to show it as he watched Mark's every move, was in no mood for idle conversation either.

  The weather was the sort Washingtonians brag about but seldom see: dry and clear, a perfect 74 degrees, with big white clouds moving lazily across an inverted azure bowl of sky. The plant-eating insects such as the Japanese beetles had not yet appeared, so the shining green leaves of the roses and azaleas were shapely and unmarred.

  "Let's sit on the patio," Pat suggested. "It's too nice to go inside."

  She had to repeat the remark before Mark heard her. He ran his hands lovingly over the steering wheel in a final caress, and t
ore himself away.

  The redwood patio furniture needed a coat of paint, and the vinyl pads, bright yellow and orange plaid, weren't too clean, but none of them cared. Mark dragged a table close to hand and threw down a heap of notebook paper.

  "I'll go first," he announced. "It won't take long; I got a big fat zip. Kathy?"

  Kathy's once-fresh print dress was crumpled and dusty. Gray smudges added piquancy to an otherwise almost too perfect face.

  "Well," she began, modestly fingering her notes, "I didn't find much. I only got up to 1860. The editor of the paper was a Southern sympathizer, no question about that. His editorials on John Brown and the Harpers Ferry raid were-well, the way he gloated over Brown's execution was really awful."

  "That raid hit Marylanders hard," Mark said. "Remember how close it was. Harpers Ferry is right up there in the corner where Maryland and Virginia meet what is now West Virginia. It was still part of Virginia then."

  "But I didn't realize how many people in Maryland really believed in slavery," Kathy said. "Do you know how many voted for Lincoln? Less than three thousand! He got fewer votes than any other candidate. Brecken-ridge, a Southern Democrat, got more than forty-two thousand votes."

  "The western part of the state was more sympathetic to the Union than the Tidewater area, with its big plantations," Josef said. "But I don't think there is much doubt that Maryland would have seceded if she had been given free choice. The Union could not allow that. All the rail lines and roads, even the waterways connecting the capital with the North passed through the state."

  "What about the Turnbulls and the Bateses?" Pat demanded. "Were there any stories about them?"

  "The Turnbulls were mentioned often," Kathy answered. "They must have been social leaders, or something. They kept having parties. Peter's sixteenth birthday was a big event, it rated a whole column in the paper-dancing in the garden by moonlight, magnolias in bloom, and all that. There were about fifty guests."

  "Including the Bateses?" Pat persisted. She was beginning to take a proprietary interest in them.

  "They were what you might call conspicuous by their absence. Can you imagine not inviting close kin living right next door? The war didn't actually start till 1861, when Fort Sumter was attacked. But South Carolina seceded in December of 1860, and I guess things were pretty tense even before that. Mr. Bates-"

  "If nothing else comes out of this, you'll be well grounded in one period of American history," Josef said, smiling at his daughter. She looked unusually pretty in spite of her dishevelment. Her blue eyes shone like the best aquamarines.

  "It's more interesting when you know the people," Kathy said naively. "Anyhow, Mr. Bates was really unpopular. There was a nasty editorial about him in 1859. It didn't mention him by name, but it hinted pretty strongly. All about abolitionists in our midst, undermining the law by stealing other peoples' property… Property! They were talking about slaves-human beings. How could anybody-"

  "Slavery has only been illegal in this country for a little over a century," Josef said. "We were one of the last of the so-called civilized nations to outlaw it, but it had been accepted all over the world for thousands of years."

  "That's right," Mark said. "The Greeks had slaves, didn't they? And medieval serfdom was essentially the same thing; a serf could be bought and sold, like an animal."

  "So maybe we are making some progress, after all," Josef said.

  "Not fast enough," Mark said. But he smiled as he spoke, and for a moment Pat saw a spark of understanding pass between the two men, a look that augured well for the future.

  "I'd like to read more of the newspapers." Kathy said. "It was interesting."

  "Interesting, but probably a waste of time," Josef said. "You haven't told us anything we hadn't already learned or surmised, Kathy."

  "How about you, Mr. Friedrichs?" Mark asked.

  "Very little. I got the impression that Turnbull was living beyond his means. All those parties… He sold land six times between 1850 and 1860. I don't know how much he started out with, but he couldn't have had much property left by the time he marched gallantly out to war, leaving his wife to manage as best she could while he was fighting for the Cause. He did leave her fifty slaves-one of the largest numbers recorded for the county."

  "What about the Bateses?" Pat asked.

  "They owned no slaves," Josef answered. "The census reports for 1860 show a household of two men, two women, and twelve household servants of the colored race-freedmen all."

  The sun had sunk below the trees, and the evening breeze felt cool.

  "I saw you were reading Mrs. Greenhow's book, Mom," Mark said. "Truth is stranger than fiction, right?"

  "Well-bred lady spies, complete with hoop skirts and smelling salts, do sound like bad fiction," Pat agreed. "But some of the so-called historical romances I've read lately have had even more unbelievable plots."

  "And even more sex," Mark said, grinning. "I can't believe Mrs. Greenhow ever writhed in the arms of her lover as his hands moved softly over-"

  "Did you read that trashy book?" Pat demanded in outraged tones.

  "Slave of Passion," Mark said. He rolled his eyes. "You shouldn't leave stuff like that lying around, my dear."

  "Shame on you, Mrs. Robbins, contaminating an innocent mind like Mark's," Kathy added.

  It was her first contribution to the silly little exchanges Pat shared with her son, and her tentative smile showed that she wasn't quite sure how it would be taken. Feeling that she had been given some insight into the girl's relationship with her mother, Pat exaggerated her reaction.

  "Innocent, she says. You should see the books he hides under his mattress."

  Kathy giggled appreciatively. Her father muttered, as if to himself, "In my day it was Esquire. My mother found a copy in one of my drawers, open to the centerfold…"

  "Well, back in those days people were uptight about sex," Mark said tolerantly. "I mean, you hadn't really advanced much since the Civil War period."

  "I wouldn't say that," Josef objected. "Some of Petty's centerfolds were-"

  Foreseeing another digression, Pat interrupted.

  "Let's get back to Mrs. Greenhow. And no more writhings, please. I didn't finish the book, but the Turnbulls weren't mentioned in the part I read."

  With his brows drawn together in the scowl that gave him such an uncanny resemblance to his father, Mark picked up a pencil and began doodling on the paper in front of him.

  "It's so damned frustrating," he muttered. "All this blank paper, and nothing to put on it."

  "Mrs. Greenhow was only one of many," Josef said, ignoring this outburst of petulance. "There was a regular espionage network in and around Washington during the war. With the enemy just across the river, it was easy to pass on news of troop dispositions and strategy; a man could paddle his boat across on a dark night-"

  "Women did it too," Pat said, resenting the implicit chauvinism in Josef's speech. "One of Mrs. Greenhow's messengers was a girl, Betty Duvall. She drove a cart straight across Chain Bridge to Fairfax Courthouse, where the Confederates were, carrying the message in her hair. Nobody thought of challenging a simple little country girl."

  "That's right," Kathy said. "I was reading a book at the library the other day, written by a woman who was ten years old at the time of the war. She lived in a town on the main road to Richmond, and she remembered a lot of Marylanders passing through on their way south. One of them was a sweet little old lady from Baltimore -I think her name was Alexander-whose son was in prison at Fort McHenry. She went to Richmond to get him a commission in the Confederate army so he would be considered a prisoner of war instead of an enemy agent. I mean, they hanged spies."

  Pat shivered. Long blue shadows lay across the table. Mark, his eyes lowered, continued to doodle. Kathy glanced at him uneasily and went on, as if hoping to rouse him from his fit of the sulks.

  "She got the commission, too. She carried it back in the lining of her bonnet, can you imagine? But her son escaped. H
e jumped off the parapet of the fort and broke his leg, and managed to crawl to a nearby house, where the people helped him. They smuggled him to another Southern sympathizer, who passed him on, and so forth. It just shows you how many people in Maryland really believed in-"

  "Mark," Pat said suddenly. Her son's eyes were now fixed vacantly on the lilac bushes; but his hand continued to move.

  "What the devil…" Josef began.

  The chill that ran through Pat had nothing to do with the temperature of the evening air. Mark's face no longer resembled his father's. The features were Mark's, but they did not look like his; an alien, unfamiliar expression overlay them like a thin mask. And his hand continued to move.

  "Mark!" Pat leaned across the table and caught that horribly moving arm.

  Mark let out a yell. It was as if her touch had been a knife that slashed his arm to the bone.

  "Damn it! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  His tone was offensive, and so was his dark frown; but Pat didn't mind, because both the voice and the frown were Mark's. The alien cast had left his features. He was nursing his right hand against his body, as if it pained him.

  "What's wrong with your hand?" she asked.

  "It hurts. You didn't have to hit me."

  "I didn't. I barely touched you. What happened?"

  "Nothing happened. We were talking about your lady spy, Mrs. Greenhow, and then you leaned over and-"

  "You lost about ninety seconds of time," Josef said. "Let me see that paper, Mark."

  "I was just doodling," Mark began. He glanced at the paper. His eyes dilated until they looked black.

  Josef picked up the sheet of paper and glanced at it. Without comment, he handed it to Pat.

  The top of the page was covered with Mark's scribbling. A psychiatrist would not have found it particularly interesting, for the symbols were overt expressions of Mark's feelings-question marks, spirals that went on and on without resolution. Then, abruptly, halfway down the sheet of paper, the penciled tracings became words.