Whiskers in the Dark Read online

  “On the seat where you folded up your comforter. You didn’t think they’d stay in the back, did you?”

  “Well, I do have everything fixed up, plus they can look out your back station wagon window, which is big.”

  Susan smiled. “When are you going to figure out that your animals do exactly as they please? No one has ever accused you of being a disciplinarian.”

  “Well—” Harry whistled for the dogs, who were seemingly in conversation by the front door to the stone house.

  The beagle had walked toward them.

  Pirate whispered, “It’s that dog we can see through.”

  Tucker called out, “Who are you?”

  “Ruffy.” The dog came near, then sat down.

  “Do you have a safe place to bunk up?” Tucker was curious.

  “I can go anywhere I want. In the kennels, in the cabins. All of Aldie is mine.”

  “How come I can see through you?” Pirate asked.

  “I live in a different dimension.”

  “I don’t know what that means.” The big puppy was confused.

  “Just accept it, Pirate,” Tucker commanded. “Ruffy, I believe you’re a ghost. Why are you here?”

  “I’m here to stay with my friend,” Ruffy replied.

  “Is your friend dead?” Tucker was blunt.

  “Yes,” came the reply.

  “Come on, you two bums,” Harry hollered.

  Tucker turned her head, then turned it back. “Ruffy, I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay. Will you all be back?”

  “Next weekend, I hope,” Tucker answered.

  “That would be nice.” Then Ruffy walked away, fading with each step.

  Once in the station wagon, doors locked because Pewter knew how to open them, Susan steered down the long driveway. “Look at that sky.”

  “Why is it that spring snowstorms are the worst?” Harry peered out through the passenger-side window. “I think we’ll just make it. Then again, I don’t know. Looks ominous.”

  “Spring snowstorms are the worst because we all want winter to be over. Maybe we let our defenses down.” Susan reached the paved state road.

  They drove in silence along winding roads until they reached Route 50, called the Little River Turnpike at the time of the Battle of Aldie, where Susan turned left, east, then turned right at the circle. She’d hit Route 29 above Warrenton. They drove in companionable silence, the animals now asleep.

  Harry broke the silence. “Don’t know what it is about that mound, but it kind of makes me shiver.”

  “Well, arms and legs are one thing, but I think it’s creepy that no one knows where the bodies are buried. I mean, how could you forget that?”

  “Beats me.” Harry swore she saw a tiny snowflake fall. “Maybe when there are that many wounded in a hospital, you lose track. You’re so busy trying to keep men alive, you don’t fret over where someone has put the dead. I expect all of our battlefields are full of unknown burial spots. I mean, it isn’t like Manassas or Gettysburg, which are shrines. And who really knows where all their dead are there?”

  Susan thought, then replied, “But they had burial details.”

  “Depends on the battle, doesn’t it? First Manassas the Federals ran, leaving behind their dead, their wounded, and their dancing clothes. They thought they’d be dancing in Richmond. Can you imagine just leaving your wounded screaming on the ground? We took them to our hospital tents.”

  “No. Then again, with the exception of those men who had fought in the Mexican-American War, no one had seen wounded, heard the guns, moved forward in clouds of gun smoke, blinded. The smells and the noise alone would be terrifying and there you are, an eighteen-year-old farm boy from Iowa or a kid off a fishing boat in the Chesapeake Bay. Chaos. So I expect it was chaos in the field hospitals, too, and then the wounded were transferred to anyplace that could hold them. All transferred south. The North just ignored them.”

  “You’re the history student. But I swear I feel something at Aldie and it’s concentrated sorrow.”

  Susan nodded. “Yes, being there, I could almost believe in ghosts.” She leaned over to turn up the heat on her side. “Actually, I do believe in ghosts.”

  “For thousands of years people have sworn they’ve seen spirits. I’m not arguing with thousands of years. I’m not saying I want to see one.” Harry saw another snowflake.

  “Me neither. What I’d like to see is sunshine.”

  “Forget that. I have seen two little snowflakes.”

  “Well, Harry, let’s hope they stay little because if the heavens open up, we’ll have a devil of a time getting home. You know Southerners can’t drive in the snow.”

  “Hey, we’re Southerners.” Harry sat up straight.

  “We’re the exception that proves the rule.” Susan smiled. “Like Northerners not knowing how to pass and repass. It’s kind of equal, driving versus talking.”

  “They don’t.” Harry pronounced this as though it was an edict from the Supreme Court.

  Passing and repassing means when you run errands or encounter someone, known or unknown, you bid them hello or good day or whatever. If it’s someone you know, you must ask about their day, their health, their family, all that stuff. They reply, the repass. This is why any errand takes twice or three times as long as it does north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

  “They are in too much of a hurry,” Susan said, then laughed. “Although sometimes when Big Mim”—she mentioned a rich citizen of their little town, Crozet—“goes on a tear, I rather envy them. I can actually get wistful about Massachusetts.”

  “Ha. But think how much we learn every time we step out the door. Anyway, I think they’re hinckty. They should learn to do it our way.”

  “Hinckty” meant a snob, the worst kind of snob. So Harry sat there in the glow of having said something awful about someone or someones. But happily, it didn’t sound awful. Even better, the people from the North wouldn’t recognize the word.

  “Harry, you’re being ugly.” Susan sounded prim.

  “I may be ugly but I’m your best friend and you love me, love me, love me.” She paused. “Don’t you?”

  They both laughed, rolling along, happy to be together, happy for the tiniest break from being wives.

  Susan returned to the buried. “You know, maybe ten years ago, archaeologists or historians or someone with a shovel found Varus’s lost legions, three legions that left from the camp at Koblenz during the reign of Caesar Augustus, in A.D. 9, and never returned. And they finally found them in Teutoburg Forest. We now know they were ambushed by Germanic tribesmen two thousand years ago.”

  “Well, maybe in two thousand years, we’ll know where some of the dead at Aldie are buried.”

  They wouldn’t have to wait that long.

  5

  September 4, 1787

  Tuesday

  “Looks like swaying skirts,” Catherine Schuyler, twenty-two, observed to her sister, Rachel, two years her junior.

  Surveying the hundreds of acres of mature hay, Rachel said, “Waves like water, golden waves. Father will be happy. Our third cutting. Usually we get only two. A bountiful year.”

  “So far. We’ve got to cut it, turn it, dry it out, then get it up and into the hay barns. The easier route is to put the hay in hayricks but, Rachel, I don’t care what they say, hayricks don’t shed enough water. Better to take the time, load it on wagons, haul it into the big shed. It will stay dry there. Good hay means happy horses.” She scanned the beautiful fields again. “John is fretting about a storm. I told him so far so good. A thunderstorm can come up in a minute, but I think we’re okay to cut this. We’ve got to do it before it goes to seed.”

  “No one will ever accuse your husband of being lazy.”

  “Nor yours,” Catherine replied.

 
They stared at the hay, bending, swaying, the sound of wind sliding through the tall thin blades.

  “Charles”—Rachel named her blond husband—“has been buoyant lately. The organ is nearly installed at St. Luke’s. And he received a letter from his brother, who said he expected to receive the funds from Maureen Selisse before month’s end.”

  Calling Maureen Selisse Holloway by her newly married name, Holloway, proved difficult to those who had known her late, unlamented husband, Francisco. Maureen, the middle-aged daughter of a now deceased Caribbean banker, was rich, very rich. She stashed money in accounts in the new United States, in the Caribbean where her father hid much of his ill-gotten gains, and also at the Bank of England on Threadneedle Street. Rumor had it she had transferred her funds out of Paris when the King called the Assembly of Notables. But rumors about tremendously wealthy people always fly about.

  Charles’s older brother, Hugh, was crushed by the debts their father, the Baron West, left when he died. A man of potent charm and good cheer, the late Baron, freed from middle-class skills, spent money. He never made it. Maureen wanted a title for her much younger, divinely handsome husband, Jeffrey Holloway, who had been a cabinetmaker who worked with his father until she snapped him up.

  Maureen wanted a pedigree. No matter that titles didn’t exist in America. They existed everywhere else. The thought of people addressing Jeffrey as “My Lord” when husband and wife traveled pleased her greatly. Now, for a handsome price, the penniless Baron would adopt the handsome cabinetmaker, pleasing everyone.

  “What will Charles do?” Catherine wondered as Rachel’s husband, the younger son, stood to gain nothing from the arrangement he had engineered. But then, younger sons tended to be a burden in England and were farmed out to the Navy, Army, or Church. More enterprising younger sons might take a different route, practice law and, if inclined to study, even take up medicine, but most of these men were unsuited for such labor. The odd duck might become a Don at Oxford, but one thing that was certain was that younger sons would need to scramble. If their older brother, once having the title, chose, he could and often did provide his siblings with some form of allowance. Sisters needed more supervision than brothers and a beautiful sister could restore depleted finances in a heartbeat, literally.

  “Charles will accept that Jeffrey has been adopted. He is free. That’s the word he always uses. Free.”

  “So many rules, the Old World. Well, I guess we have a few of our own.” Catherine smiled. “Father received another letter from Roger Davis. He said only forty-one men are left at the convention in Philadelphia, but it is drawing to a close.”

  “I should be interested. I know you and Father are, but I imagine men with paunches seated in that wicked heat, talking, talking, talking.”

  “Well, yes.” Catherine threw her arm over her sister’s shoulders. “Tell me about the organ.”

  Rachel brightened. “Oh, it’s much larger than I anticipated. When I go there I hear them testing it, all speaking German. Charles knows a bit because of serving with the Hessians. And then there’s the bellows. Who will keep that going? But truly, you and Father must come when we have our first service with music.”

  “You’ve become a believer.”

  “I’ve certainly learned about Martin Luther.” Rachel laughed, then quieted. “I have. I do believe.”

  “You have always been more spiritual than myself. But what I have learned is we can no longer pray for the health of the King and we are no longer Church of England. I go because it’s expected of me and truthfully it’s good for business. I like the ritual but I don’t believe. You believe. Maybe that’s the difference between the Episcopal Church and the Lutheran Church. To me it’s essentially the old religion but changed so Henry VIII could get his way. Somehow that doesn’t seem very Christian, does it?”

  “No, but Catherine, the popes often had more power than the kings. It was inevitable they should become corrupt.”

  “Father said something yesterday when we were working.” Catherine watched the sun dip below the Blue Ridge Mountains, the blue now intense. “He said, ‘Once our form of government is truly settled, and Madison’s separation of church and state—which we have here in Virginia—is part of the nation, I predict, and mark my words, that all these watered-down faiths will pop up. We’ll even have Presbyterians. There will be no end to this.’ So I said, ‘Father, aren’t we watered-down Catholics?’ He waved his hand. ‘That doesn’t count. We were forced out of the Church of Rome.’ ”

  Rachel laughed. “I can just see him. Father is fond of pronouncements.”

  Hoofbeats caught their attention. They turned to view Jeddie Rice, slender, gifted with horses, riding toward them with Ralston. Ralston, sixteen, worked in the stables but lacked Jeddie’s gifts, although he wasn’t bad with horses. Jeddie, nineteen, disdained Ralston. The two were competitive and had completely differing personalities.

  “Miss Catherine. Miss Rachel. Mr. Ewing says don’t forget the Saltonstalls will be arriving today. He says wear your best for dinner.”

  “Thank you, Jeddie. We’ll just wrap ourselves in silk and satin.” Catherine emitted a long sigh.

  Rachel smiled at her sister. “You can wear anything and look ravishing.”

  “Ugh.” Catherine crossed her arms across her perfect bosoms, looking up at the two young slaves and their horses. “Those two will make good farm mounts. If Timmy is smooth, maybe we can train him for Father. Can’t put Mr. Ewing on a blooded horse.”

  A blooded horse was bred using riding horse blood, as opposed to a draft horse blood, mixed with royal blood. The early ones had been imported from England and would become what we know now as Thoroughbreds.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Jeddie agreed, as he and Catherine worked closely together.

  Ralston, puffing out his chest, bragged. “I put Crown Prince through his paces today. Give me enough time and I can make him for Mr. Ewing even though he is blooded.”

  Jeddie’s lip curled. He began to speak, but Catherine headed him off. “Ralston, my father is slowing down a bit. We must look out for him. No blooded horses now or ever. You all go on back and Jeddie, tomorrow at sunrise.”

  The two young men turned the horses, riding back to the large, beautiful stable just visible in the distance.

  “What an ass you are.” Jeddie spat.

  “At least I know what to do with my ass.” Ralston dug at Jeddie, who ignored him.

  The sisters walked back toward their respective houses.

  “The men will talk about banking and the proceedings of the convention in Philadelphia.” Rachel wrinkled her nose. “I dutifully try to look interested.”

  “I am interested but I can’t say anything.” Catherine thrust her hands into the pockets of her work skirt, made of strong, everyday cotton. “Father keeps returning to the law. He says if we don’t respect the new laws, then we’ll fall apart. He fears militias will be called out if people become disobedient. It’s possible. No matter what they’ve come up with in Philadelphia, plenty of people will find fault with it.”

  “I don’t understand it. Charles explains it to me but he contrasts it with Parliament and I don’t understand Parliament either. Do you know a man can be elected or stand for Parliament and he doesn’t even have to live in the place? How can they do that?”

  “Money. Money buys everything in England. I think that’s one of the reasons they made mistakes over here. Many of those officers bought their commissions. Didn’t know a thing.”

  “Charles’s father bought him his commission.”

  Catherine quickly replied, “He had to, but your husband studied. He is a most unusual man, Charles, and as for getting captured at Saratoga, John says Charles and his men fought hard and honorably and were basically left to fend for themselves. The British couldn’t bring up their cannon. Anyway, that’s what my husband says and you know
the two of them are now two peas in a pod.”

  They laughed.

  “Men get over things.”

  “Most do. That’s what I hope about this convention. Father frets over the war debt. He’s not so interested in the other issues, which I guess have had all those delegates in a temper. But Father wants to know how we are going to pay for the war and how a new government can bring the states to heel.”

  “You’re smarter than I am.” Rachel shrugged.

  “No. I work with our father and he’s uncommonly intelligent. He’s taught me a lot about business. I enjoy it. And he’s taught me how to use John and even Charles as a foil, I think that’s the word. Better to say nothing, to be thought a beautiful woman but nothing more. Let men think all husbands are in charge. Father says I will wind up learning more than he ever could. And I do listen. I listen with both ears. I’m more than happy to work behind the scenes.”

  “Yes, I suppose. And what have I been hearing about?” Rachel’s eyes rolled upward. “Bumbee and Mr. Percy. She’s in a huge snit, has left him again and moved back to the weaving room this morning. I went down to sort yarns and fabrics with her.” She paused. “Charles needs more shirts. Not his good ones, but he’s torn most everything else down there working on the church. Anyway, no one knows these things better than Bumbee so I got an earful about her husband, but I know she didn’t tell me everything.”

  “Do you think it will ever end?”

  “No, of course not.” Rachel watched a northern harrier fly over toward a marshy area. “They don’t say much.”

  Catherine looked overhead. “They fly low. I like to watch them. Does this mean Bumbee will be up at the house asking Bettina”—the cook, a woman of power—“to intervene?”

  “No. At least, I hope not,” Rachel replied.

  Bumbee, in charge of all weaving and spinning, organizer of yarns and fabrics, even dyeing some of them, was a forty-odd-year-old slave married to a man who had a wandering eye and a body that wandered with it. He happened to be a good gardener, a man of some skill, but he couldn’t restrain himself when it came to the women, especially the younger women, at Cloverfields or elsewhere. They’d repair their relationship when the other woman tired of Percy. A period of calm would prevail, then Percy would see another woman, often at another estate. Given his skill with arranging plants, colors, knowing what could last the winter, he was often hired out when other plantation owners would ask Ewing for Percy’s help. Then it would start all over again. This last time Bumbee had cracked a pot over his head.