A Tyranny of Petticoats

by Jessica Spotswood

  “Where are you going?” she says, baffled.

  “Away from this place. Away from Grandmama. Do you wish to keep living under her thumb?”

  Sophie steps back. “We . . . we mustn’t be rash. This is our home.”

  It isn’t mine anymore, I think. It hasn’t been since Mother died.

  “It’s Grandmama’s home,” I say.

  “Not only hers. It’s ours too.” She gives me her best hostess’s smile. “Come, let me fetch you a glass of wine and a piece of cake. We’ll all feel better in an hour.” She tries to lead me down the stairs, but I shake my head sadly. It’s clear that she has made her choice.

  I kiss her cheek and whisper into her ear: “Marry William. Make a new life with him, away from the city.”

  That’s all I can wish for her now: a new home. A new future without Grandmama.

  I wrench myself free from her and race toward the carriage house, where I saddle a gray mare and guide her into the street. I should urge her into a gallop, but I glance back toward our brownstone — the homestead of my family for so many years. Only a minute ago I was one of the mistresses there and one of the most eligible young women in our fair capital. But now here I am, with a few bills in my pocket and a workhorse to my name.

  Fear thrums through me. For a moment I wonder if I should run back into the house and beg Grandmama for forgiveness. She’d likely make me grovel, but she wouldn’t turn me away. I’d have a bed to sleep on, fine food to fill my belly, new ball gowns . . . and it would all be a farce. A traitor’s sham. I shake my head and tap my heels against my horse’s sides. I can’t turn back.

  I won’t turn back.

  The mare trots forth, and I don’t know where to lead her. I could return to Westacre, but I’ve no money for tuition and I’m too young to be taken on as a teacher. I suppose I could seek out Father, but he’d likely send me back to Washington. Besides, we’ve become strangers these past three years. A thought strikes me then. It’s preposterous, not to mention dangerous, and I almost brush it away.

  But it’s the only place left for me.

  I urge my mare down the street. I’ll use what little money I have to spend the night at an inn, and come the morning I’ll head toward Sharpsburg — and my uncle. I’ll tell him about the Red Raven and the role my grandmother has played in this war. Whether he sends her to prison or not, that shall be his concern and not mine any longer.

  I don’t know what lies in front of me. I have little to offer Uncle Ambrose aside from a half-finished education and a soon-to-be sullied surname. Yet I know one thing: whatever path I choose, I shall make my mother proud. I hold tight to this thought.

  I pin a brave smile to my lips and bring my mare to a canter. The pounding of her hooves matches the thud of my heart, and I breathe in the crisp air that carries the scent of a new day ahead. A new start.

  “Head north, girl,” I whisper into the wind. “We’re going home.”

  I’m a native of the Washington, D.C., area, and as a kid I was fascinated by the rich history of my little corner of the world. I was especially intrigued by the Civil War and how D.C. played a big part in it, and how the city was mere miles from the South. It seemed as if the Confederates could’ve swum across the Potomac at any moment and claimed the city for themselves. So when Jessica Spotswood kindly invited me to contribute a short story to this anthology, I knew that I wanted to set my story during the Civil War and use Washington, D.C., as a backdrop. That’s how the idea of “The Red Raven Ball” was born.

  As I started my research, I became fascinated by the lives of Civil War spies, specifically the hundreds who were female. These women came from all variety of backgrounds, from freed slaves to poor actresses to Washington socialites. One of these socialites, a widowed secessionist named Rose O’Neal Greenhow, used her connections to gather information on the Union military for the Confederates. Mrs. Greenhow was the inspiration for the character of Grandmama.

  Although most of the characters in this story are fictional, the atheist Robert Ingersoll was real (and an ancestor of my husband’s). Ingersoll was a famed orator and politician — the Washington Post once dubbed him “the most famous American you never heard of”— but he was best known for his disdain of organized religion, which was a shocking proposition to nineteenth-century Americans and earned him the nickname “the Great Agnostic.”

  I HAD DONE EVERYTHING RIGHT. IT brought me no comfort to know that now, but I had done everything right. It helped, of course, that I’d been born into the right family. My papa had invested heavily in the rail system before the trains connected east and west, and before that, his papa had invested in the War, and before that, his papa had invested in ships crossing the Atlantic. But it was more than just being born into the right family. I had cultivated the right friends, gone to the right parties, flirted with the right men.

  Well, I thought I’d flirted with the right men.

  And when one of the so-called right men had proven to be anything but right, well. Everything changed.

  At breakfast the morning after, my father had been waiting for me. All I had wanted to do was pretend that nothing had happened, nothing at all, but Papa had stood in front of the door, not even allowing me into the dining room and the comfort of a warm breakfast made by our cook, Maggie.

  “You were seen,” he had hissed at me.

  I hadn’t even had the courage to speak. Again.

  “You were seen with that man. Everyone knows you let him have you.”

  Let.

  “You could have done better, Helen. You could have married a Rockefeller, or a Vanderbilt at least. This one’ll do. But you could have done better.”

  And then he had left, yelling for Maggie to bring coffee to his office. That had been my one chance to talk to my father about that night, but it wouldn’t have mattered even if I had found the courage to speak. He’d already decided what he would believe, and nothing anyone could say or do would have changed his mind.

  Just like nothing I could ever say or do would change that night.

  Richard said I hadn’t been pure to start with. He said I had led him on.

  He said I had wanted it.

  That morning, Maggie had made soft-boiled eggs and toast with fresh cream butter. She had presented the eggs to me in the little porcelain cups Mama had had imported from Japan when she married Papa, the ones with wispy blue lines along the rims. I’d cracked the top of the egg with that ridiculously tiny silver spoon in that ridiculously pretty little cup, peeling off the top of the shell and exposing the gooey insides. And there was something about it all — the broken egg exposed and the bleeding yolk inside its shell in the perfect little cup — it was in that moment that I realized just how much of my life I’d lost.

  I haven’t had eggs since that day.

  After . . . after what he did to me — Richard had said I’d be forced to be his, or be every man’s.

  And maybe if I didn’t have all my fancy education, that’d be true.

  Instead, I’m going to run.

  So while Papa and that man negotiate a dowry that suits both of them, I make my own plans.

  I turn to the newspaper first and find a handful of personal advertisements seeking a bride. Each advertisement requests females to write letters so that the man can select a suitable companion for life. She would have paid passage out west, a guaranteed husband, and a promised life of security.

  But I am done with men owning me.

  Near those advertisements, I spot a small clip sponsored by the National Board of Education for the Populace. I memorize the address of the office and go there on my own under the pretext of hat shopping the next day.

  The man in charge of the office is dour and is unhappy that I have no proof of the kind of education I’d need to be a teacher — no certification or proper training. I’m able to give enough evidence that I’m adequately intelligent for the job, though.

  “I did get a request,” he says finally, after quizzing me skepti
cally. “It’s a rough school, just starting, and I doubt they’d be picky about certification. They had one teacher for a few months, but the area gets cold, and he left at the first hint of winter. It’s in the territory of Wyoming. A subscription school. We don’t usually deal with those, but they sent a request.”

  I have no idea what a subscription school is, but I nod my head eagerly.

  “Look, you look like a nice girl,” the stodgy old man says, peering down his glasses. “If you got yourself in a bit of trouble . . .” His gaze moves down my body.

  “Please tell me more about this Wyoming school,” I say coldly.

  “They’ll pay for your passage on the Union Pacific, and you’ll have a room and board, taken directly out of your fees by the families setting up the school,” the man tells me. “But it’s dangerous out there for a woman of genteel nature.”

  “That will be fine.” I stand, holding my hand out for the card with information on it. “I’ll go there.”

  The program arranges the details. I am to take a train from Chicago to Cheyenne, and then a coach. My students will be aged seven to sixteen, as the new law stipulates their education. I am only nineteen myself; the idea of teaching people just three years my junior is rather intimidating.

  The idea of leaving home with nothing but some books and clothes is rather intimidating too.

  But then at supper the night after I receive my Union Pacific ticket, Richard touches my knee under the table. I startle and move away, but when I look across the table, I see my father frown, just a bit, and shake his head subtly.

  I can’t leave soon enough.

  I try, one last time.

  Papa sits in his office, the rich smell of cigar smoke wrapping around the books lined up neatly on the shelves.

  “Don’t make me do this,” I say from the doorway.

  “What? Helen, don’t mumble, come in.” Papa leans back in his chair, puffing.

  “Don’t make me marry him,” I say, louder. “It’s not right.”

  Papa lowers the cigar slowly, letting it drop ash over the side of the desk. “You didn’t give yourself many choices.”

  “This is a choice,” I say. “Not marrying him is a choice. I don’t care about scandal; with my dowry, I doubt any man will care in a year or so. Don’t make me do this.”

  Papa starts to speak, but I cut him off.

  “You raised me for better. You know I deserve better.”

  “Richard’s a decent enough man.”

  “He’s rich,” I say, “but he’s not decent.”

  Papa shrugs and picks his cigar back up.

  “Mama wouldn’t make me marry him,” I say.

  The end of the cigar glows red, the smoke obscuring Papa’s face.

  “Dead women have no voice,” he growls.

  I gasp, shocked that he would dismiss Mama so easily.

  Papa leans over his desk. “Listen, Helen, you’re old enough and God knows you’re experienced enough to know the truth, and the truth is, it doesn’t matter who you marry, as long as your position is secure. People go. Money stays. It’s the only thing that does.”

  Without another word, I let the door close softly behind me. There is no going back now, that much I know for sure.

  I never knew how easy it is to escape if you don’t mind leaving nearly everything behind.

  The only thing of value I take with me out west is in my head. I pack a trunk with clothes and books and a bit of money, and I pay Maggie with love and some of the cash I’ve hidden to ship the trunk out to Cheyenne, and then to the general store of the little town where I’ve procured a position. Maggie is reluctant to help me. She calls Richard my “dashing gentleman” in her soft Irish accent, and she feels our quick engagement is romantic, and I cannot find the words to tell her it was anything but. Her nose has always been in the gothics, ever since I taught her to read, and she hasn’t plucked the stars from her eyes ever since Richard smiled at her when she served him at dinner.

  Regardless, she sneaks the trunk out for me the day before I leave, so as I adjust my hat and take a deep breath, the only thing I walk out the door with is my reticule, filled with innocuous things, and my brain, with the education I hope will save me clattering around.

  Knowledge is my only real value. My papa ensured that I was taught well. Education was what helped his great-great-grandfather rise to the top of society so many years ago; education meant that the family hasn’t failed in the harsh years since. The things that separate us from the grime-covered workers in the factories are education and knowing that education makes us better. My papa never intended me to take over the family accounts after his death, but he also hadn’t intended me to be a simpering wife with no thoughts of my own, despite his attitude about Richard. And while my papa is wrong about many things, he was right about the fact that when I have nothing else, I have my education.

  But I also have my memories.

  And my regrets.

  I clutch the ticket in my hand at the station. The thin paper seems flimsy and weak, nothing at all what freedom should feel like. This ticket, it says underneath the emblazoned UNION PACIFIC logo, entitles the holder to one second-class passage from CHICAGO to station canceled. A little mark by CHEYENNE is the only assurance I have that I’m actually going somewhere . . . away.

  The train pulls into the station, all billowing steam, and activity swirls around me.

  And that is it. Just a piece of paper and a train and a promise of a job in the West, and a new life is within my grasp.

  I step into the train with trepidation, my hand clutching the porter’s as he helps me up. Wooden benches line the train car, but it’s thankfully not as crowded as it might have been. A family of eight takes up two benches in the front; a group of men sits in the middle. An old man in a worn but neatly pressed suit sits primly near the back, and there are several empty benches before him.

  “May I?” I ask, indicating the seat by the old man. He nods genially. Best to sit with someone who looks safe than to sit by myself and run the risk of someone less safe down the line.

  “By yourself?” the old man asks.

  He’s just making conversation, I think. I smile despite the lump rising in my throat and say, “Meeting someone soon.”

  My eyes go to the window, half-expecting someone — my father, Richard, Maggie — to be raising a fuss, trying to stop me.

  But I’m alone.

  I don’t breathe again until the train chugs to life, pulling me farther and farther away from this life I no longer want.

  The rhythm of the train lulls me to sleep, and in my dreams, I’m wearing the glittering gown I wore that night to the opera, almost as sparkling as the bubbles of the champagne I drank with abandon. The world was my oyster.

  And in my dream, Richard is like he was before. Dashingly handsome, with a smile that could melt the knees right out from under you. The perfect gentleman. When I leaned in to whisper conspiratorially about the opera to him, I felt . . . exhilarated. He had an edge to his shine, but he felt safe too. Someone I could confide in, someone who would smile when I touched his elbow or tapped him with my fan.

  And then I woke up.

  The train is hot and stuffy and unbearable. It’s already well into autumn, but despite the cooler temperatures outside, my dress sticks to my skin, and my hair clings to the back of my neck.

  The coach that picks me up in Cheyenne is miserably cold but equally stuffy. The man sharing the coach with me makes a point of telling me that Cheyenne just got its first public schoolhouse last year. We don’t pass the building, but I suspect it is far nicer than anything I’m heading to.

  But this life will be better than what I’m leaving behind. The farther we go, the farther I am from Richard. I promise myself that the school will be a haven, an ivory tower I can live in with books and students and no Richard.

  It’s a hovel.

  Well, more accurately, it’s a small house attached by one wall to the local Episcopalian church.
Mr. William M. Jeffers greets me at the coach stop, and we walk together the half mile to the church at the end of the main street. The church is long and narrow, made of logs; the shack attached to it is made of planks, with cracks big enough to show daylight through.

  I step inside the “schoolhouse” tentatively. There are a few split-pole benches, a rough table that’s clearly meant to be my desk, and a writing board hung on pegs on a wall. The only heat comes from the stove at the back of the room — or it would, if it were lit.

  “You’re awful young to be out here alone,” Mr. Jeffers says as I stand in the center of the one-room schoolhouse, turning slowly to inspect everything.

  “I thank you for the compliment,” I say coolly. “I’m quite the spinster, though.” I’ve pulled my hair back into a severe bun, so tight it hurts my head, and I’m wearing my most dour dress.

  “See that you stay that way,” Mr. Jeffers says in a fatherly tone.

  I nod. Only single women are allowed to be schoolmarms. But I have no intention of marrying.

  “The Cookes gave a steer to pay for this,” Mr. Jeffers tells me proudly, sweeping his arm to indicate the building. “We’ve got a collection going for improvements, to make this a real schoolhouse. The Cookes got ten young’uns for your class; they’re the ones what pushed for a school here, that and the new law. You’ll probably get about ten more. Some’ll pay in goods. Mr. McHenry will give you a fair price for things at the store if you don’t have no need for them.”

  My classroom was paid for by a cow.

  And it looks like it.

  Greased paper covers the only window, letting mottled light inside. “We got glass comin’ in. Mr. McHenry ordered it himself,” Mr. Jeffers says quickly when he sees where I’m looking. “You’re from Chicago, ain’t ya?” he adds. “I mean, I know the train came from there, but you’re from the city proper. You talk like it.”

  I nod.

  “Wyoming’s a bit different from Chicago.”

  I don’t bother responding; that much is obvious.

  “It’s a good school, Miss Davies.” Mr. Jeffers, for the first time, sounds defensive, almost angry. I try to see myself through his eyes. My dress may be plain, but it’s still fine. And while I’ve tried not to show it, there must be something in my face that betrays my emotion.