CHAPTER TWO
“ The shakes finally stop once I realize the drunken, understaffed doctor is only going to look at my bare hands and feet and check I have enough teeth to rip open powder cartridges. The humiliating discovery of my sex and subsequent banishment never happens.
“ I cut my hair, donned trousers, shirt, shoes, and socks, and walked to the coast, to Marshfield, Massachusetts, where I read in the newspaper there was a recruiting station. Some of the way I rode in farmers’ carts.
It is far enough from home where no one will recognize me.
The idea of returning to Mayfield feels a little like death.
“ I never carry a parasol to shade my delicate female skin on sunny days like my maternal Brahmin cousins. Nor a fan to flirt with. I wear trousers on camping trips, know which part of a gun is the business end, and gut trout and turkey in the field. I set rabbit traps and thread needles to fix a hem or a bloody knee. My father’s mother taught me to bake and cook.
I spent more time with my beloved male cousins than the few females who visited the commune.
Tromping through the fields and hiking the old Abenaki paths, observing the boys’ mannerisms, and aping them to make them laugh. Leo is what the boys called me then—
“ But never again. None of them returned.
“ The train in the station appears ready to launch itself at any moment down the tracks in a cloud of steam and glowing embers. It’s All Saints Day, a true Indian summer, for the first killing frost has come and gone.
I try not to scratch under the wool jacket or loosen my collar like the others hanging about.
The men and boys here know each other from the fishing towns and farms around the Marshfield recruiting station.
The boy beside me trembles but stands steady.
Jared is our drummer boy, and he and Luke the fifer are in my charge until the Drum Major can re-join the regiment.
I give my age as eighteen, though I am almost seventeen.
These boys are younger than this, maybe thirteen or fourteen, but game as hell.
“ We take in the sea of blue filling the train platform, family surrounding them. I wonder if I can be the only woman amongst them.
“ I am of average height, lean, and broad enough in the shoulders, narrow in the hips. My uniform is too large and hides my bound bosom, smallish though it is. I pull off my kepi and rake my fingers through my short, sweaty hair. A secret pleasure. I’d nearly forgotten my tears when, hacked with a knife, the foot-long plaits fell to the floor.
As far as I know, no one sees me otherwise than Private Leo Harrison.
“ We all seem to pretend something as we board the train—grit, masculinity, lack of fear.
“ The windows are open and men and boys are talking through them to their families and sweethearts on the platform. The air fills with their pleas to stay safe, for God to bring us home again, to write, to remember, to come back. Jared is holding the hand of an elderly woman, telling her he’ll be sending money home soon.
She passes him a small packet, and he promises to write when he can.
Luke hangs out the window where a similar scene plays out with a young couple surrounded by small children.
“ The conductor shouts the final warning.
People fall away from the train with reluctance, waving their handkerchiefs and weeping as the train moves out of the station.
The car falls silent for three heartbeats—I can almost hear the crack of dawning realization as it falls upon us: This is it.
We are going to the war. A cheer breaks out.
Luke and Jared play “Dixie” and the whole car joins in singing.
“ I like life pretty much right now, riding high on this new adventure. Of course, the higher I go, the more likely to fall, to die, but I love my freedom, camp life, army life, and realizing the dream of fulfilling the dictates of my conscience. ”
Daphne stopped reading and glanced away from the pages. After a moment, she set them down on the table at her elbow, her reading glasses folded on top.
Too eager to wait for her to speak, Leona asked, “Is it boring? Too much narrative? Should I start with a battle?”
Daphne shook her head. “I am enjoying your story. It’s quite a good beginning. I feel as if I am standing right beside you.” She sighed. “Those poor children, your musicians. What happened to them?”
Leona, struck to the heart, mutely shook her head.
Daphne put up a hand. “You’re right. Don’t tell me. They live on in the Ned and Zed stories. It’s very hard, but I am committed, my dear. I will help you. It’s important work.”
Leona sat back in her chair. How would they get around not talking about the aspects of the story, with her feelings about it trapped in her body?
“But I also wondered what your parents would have thought of you in the thick of this terrible war.” She tutted, glancing at the wall where portraits of her sons hung, draped in black. “Why must the good people die so young?”
Leona knew Daphne didn’t really expect an answer.
“You are just like your parents, the very best of them.” Daphne smiled, then heaved another gusty sigh of regret. “I adored them both, you know. Your mother had such wit and beauty. Smart as a whip, too. You remind me of your father, intelligent and serious. As they say, still waters run deep.”
She supposed Daphne said the last bit to compensate for her lack of resemblance to her mother, whom she couldn’t believe would have ever passed as a man or boy.
Leona took after her father, square-jawed with a high forehead and curly brown hair.
She had her mother’s eyes, though, as blue as the deep sea. So, Jack had said.
For a moment, he stood before her, wheat and whiskey curls damp with sweat, his own blue eyes intently gazing across a mist-shrouded field, kepi askew, a streak of blood on his cheek. She mentally shook herself into the present as Daphne continued.
“I remember when your parents first met at a winter ball in Boston, the Cabots were hosting. Now, oh, was it the Cabots?” Daphne tapped a finger against her lips. “Perhaps not winter at all. A midsummer party? Give me a minute, my dear, and I’ll remember.”
“Of course,” Leona murmured, stricken by the change in her friend.
Confusion hovered in Daphne’s eyes as she searched for the memory she’d just touched.
Leona knew she had a lot of life to sort through.
She’d danced in the ballrooms of the ton in three countries, ridden high in an aerial balloon, survived a tornado, an earthquake, and the sinking of the passenger ship that took the life of her husband.
Then the war had taken her sons, Frederick and Albert.
Damn me for bringing this memoir to her. It’s too much.
“No matter.” Daphne tugged an embroidered handkerchief out of her sleeve.
Melancholy filled the Lavender Room as she dabbed at her eyes.
Leona, not unaffected, tried to clear her throat.
She had so few memories of her parents. Around the time of her ninth birthday, a stranger arrived with the pouring rain at the Boston house in the middle of the night.
Starving and exhausted from his travels, he hammered at the door until the entire house awakened.
Her grandparents feared at first the slave hunters had arrived to take back the family of four hiding in the cellar.
Since Leona’s parents had saved the lives of the stranger’s children, he’d sworn to deliver the terrible news to the family on the other side of the world.
He’d sailed from India to tell her grandparents their son and his wife had died of cholera.
Leona had cried out at the same time her grandparents did.
They collapsed against each other like falling trees but somehow remained upright.
She was, of course, too young to understand the depth of pain the loss of a child would bring.
But she understood it now and suffered the bayonet of grief again.
“I believe it’s time for sherry, not tears,” Daphne said with a muffled attempt to laugh at herself. She wiped at her streaming eyes. From the table beside her, she picked up a small bell and rang it. The butler appeared and a moment later, Audrey.
“Sherry, please,” Daphne said.
Timothy nodded, but Audrey moved quickly to the drinks sideboard, so he turned away and left. When she removed the brown bottle from deep within her pocket and set it beside the glasses, Leona jumped to her feet and crossed the room in a flash to stand at Audrey’s side.
“What are you doing? It’s far too early in the day if she only needs it for sleep.”
“You’ve upset her,” Audrey replied in an angry whisper.
“We were only talking,” Leona said, taken aback by her vehemence. “She knew my parents.”
“Then you must stop and read something pleasant to her and take her mind off the dead.” Her hand shook as she poured the sherry from the decanter. She pulled the stopper from the vial of laudanum.
The bitter smell evoked a powerful desire in Leona but an equally powerful disgust. Before Audrey could measure out the drops, Leona clutched her by the elbow and squeezed. Audrey turned, pain and anger flashing in her narrowed eyes.
“No laudanum,” Leona whispered. “I will change the subject as you ask but leave the laudanum in the bottle. Since when do you give her a dose before luncheon?”
Audrey yanked her arm from Leona’s grip. “Since two weeks ago. You did not come last week so I could not inform you of the change Doctor made. She has more pain, more confusion. In the evenings she grows quite agitated and is difficult to handle.”
Leona could not imagine the scenario the woman attested to, making her all the angrier. “I suppose it’s easier to manage her with laudanum than it is to listen to her,” she snapped. “How much are you giving her?”
Audrey sneered. “I understand you have a fondness for the stuff yourself, Mrs. Gladney. I am trained to care for her.” She stoppered the bottle and put back in her pocket. “You can take it up with Doctor the next time he comes. Perhaps he will write you a scrip if you ask.”
Audrey handed Leona a full glass and turned away to bring one to Daphne before she left the room. Stung by her words, Leona gulped down the small glass of sherry and poured herself another, wishing the decanter held whiskey.
Leona returned to her seat by the fire.
“What are you arguing with Audrey about?” Daphne asked.
Unwilling to bring it up, but feeling she must, Leona said, “She was going to add laudanum to your sherry. I pointed out it was too early in the day. You know she does not tolerate my interference.”
“She means well, but I concur. It is too early in the day. Though it helps me sleep better at night.” She set the back into the folder and tied the ribbon. “I will look at this later. We’ll carry on reading dear Mr. Whitman for now.”
The rest of the afternoon passed in a comfortable haze of sherry and savoring the Brooklyn poet’s lines.
***
L EONA WALKED BACK TO Cranberry Street. Puffs of silver-bellied clouds occupied the sky.
The few late fall leaves clinging to the trees had taken on deeper hues—copper and brass, bronze and wine red.
Winter’s promise followed her home. Dread, too, dragged at her heels like a messenger she refused to heed.
Unable to shake the feeling an ambush awaited her, her heart beat heavy in her chest. She clutched her reticule close, her gaze on the widening cracks of blue in the sky, finding comfort in the derringer’s heft tucked inside.