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Authors: Miriam Grace Monfredo

Tags: #women, #mystery, #history, #civil war, #slaves

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BOOK: Must the Maiden Die
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The door to her room closes. And with a soft
click the latch drops into place. It will not be lifted again
tonight; she knows this from the past.

The girl remains on her knees, listening to
his boots strike each polished oak step as he mounts the stairs.
She hears a door slam shut. From afar comes his raised voice, an
answering voice, his again. The voices continue until another
door, somewhere along the upstairs corridor, closes with a muffled
rattle. His voice that has been growing louder, grows louder still.
Then, as if a heavy weight has dropped, she hears a thump and the
squeal of bedsprings. It could be the springs, or the faint cries,
that sound to her like a small animal being tormented.

She has never once cried when he comes here.
It is later when she cries.

The smell of her own sweat wraps around her
like salt mist from the sea. But the only sea she knows is a
picture in her mind, so sharp-etched it looks like the brown
daguerreotype prints hanging in the corridor: she is running on
warm sand that falls away beneath her and when she looks back over
her shoulder she can see the footprints she is making. But when she
looks again, the sand is smooth and the footprints are gone, as if
she had never been there. Like the moth that wings too close to the
flame, she leaves no trace of her flight.

The moon has been climbing, and a square of
grime-streaked window lets watery light enter. It throws across the
floor a kneeling shadow with arms bent like those of the Virgin in
prayer. The girl looks down at her hands. She cannot remember
finding the knife but she must have, because she is pressing the
handle so hard against her chest she can barely draw breath.

And she knows what it is she must do.

1

 

MONDAY

 

May 27, 1861

 

Let us cast our eyes over the history of man, and we
shall scarcely find a page that is not tarnished by some foul deed
or bloody transaction

—Mary Wollstonecraft, 1794

 

Violence does not always trumpet its coming.
Its advance may be hushed, like the soft creak of the stair where a
predator treads, the click of the bolt before a door opens, the
whish
of the knife while it plunges. Or it may be as silent
as a look of hatred sent across a room.

Then the night conceals what the day will
reveal.

 

***

 

In the predawn hours, foghorns began to
blare, and the morning gave hint of what had passed, breaking with
a chill mist that rose from river and canal to wrap the village in
a tattered shroud. Bells tolled from church steeples draped in
gray. And while foghorns and church bells were frequent enough in
Seneca Falls, they could mute less commonplace sounds that
otherwise might have been heard. When the mist lifted at noon on a
flawless day, skeptical townsfolk crept out of doors, none quite
believing that at last the belated spring had come. Although nearly
none could have known what its coming would bring.

Glynis Tryon was among the disbelieving when
the first shafts of sunlight glanced off the tall, glazed windows
of her library. She decided it must be true, the return of the sun,
when dust motes flurried over her cluttered desk, and the clear
cheer-up
notes of a robin came through the door that her
assistant had opened minutes before. Then she heard a faraway train
whistle. With another glance at the tall pendulum clock standing
against one wall, Glynis rose from her desk and went to the hooks
beside the door to fetch her cloak.

She nodded to several library patrons, and
called, "I'm off to the rail station again, Jonathan, for what I
hope will be the last time."

The only indication that Jonathan Quant had
heard came from a bob of his head. His bespectacled eyes did not
lift from the pages of the book propped before him; a book whose
dustcover displayed a distraught-faced, nubile young woman in the
clutches of a red-caped, mustachioed man whose intentions were
clearly not good. And in the event this illustration might prove
too subtle for readers, the title in crimson letters blared:
A
Lady in Distress.

Glynis sighed in what she knew was futile
frustration with Jonathan's long-standing passion for these popular
melodramas, and went through the door to climb shallow steps to a
wide dirt road. She had not thought to wear a hat that morning,
depending instead on the hood of her cloak, and now she used a hand
to shade her eyes against the unfamiliar sun. Like everyone else
in town, she felt as if she had spent the previous months
entombed.

Seneca Falls had endured the dreariest of
winters, much like a prolonged illness which the afflicted comes to
believe will end only with death. A blizzard in early November had
stripped trees of their dry leaves and buried the last
chrysanthemums. An ice storm in April had doomed the first
daffodils. And the Christmas season, the brightest note in the
darkest month, had been paired with a clarion call from the
Southern states, joined by a drum of hooves from the horsemen of
the Apocalypse. Yet many had not heard or had refused to
listen.

Since then, Fort Sumter had fallen to the
newly formed Confederacy, the city of Baltimore had seen first
blood, and the key border state of Virginia had announced that it
too would leave the Union. These were events sufficient to
discourage even the most sanguine of souls. At least those souls
in western New York, and elsewhere in the North, who paid any
heed.

Glynis, walking up Fall Street, slowed to
watch robins search the warming earth, and when she passed under
the tall elms that lined the road, it seemed she could almost see
their leaves unfurling to cast over the town the heart-lifting,
green haze of spring. On such an afternoon as this, the reality of
civil war seemed remote. But when she had seen Lincoln inaugurated
in March, the city of Washington had bristled with cannon as it
readied itself for siege.

She turned off Fall Street, the road that
ran east and west through the center of town, then started up a
side road that led to the railroad station. Just moments later, she
heard behind her a rapid thud of hooves and moved quickly to the
road's edge, although she could see no good reason why a horse
would be urged to gallop while still within village limits. She
turned as it pounded past her, catching only a glimpse of its
hooded rider obscured by a long, dark cloak.

Despite its pace, the dapple gray horse
appeared to be under control, yet the impression Glynis had from
what little she could see of the rider's blanched face was that it
held fear. The face also struck her as being somehow familiar. But
she had lived in Seneca Falls long enough for nearly everyone in it
to look familiar; everyone but the transients who worked the canal
and the railroad, or those simply passing through town on their
way to somewhere else. Yet, as she watched the retreating horse,
the rider's face nagged at her. Where had she seen it before? Then,
as the hoof beats faded down the road, a train's long whistle
sounded from the east. It was followed by another from the west,
and Glynis put everything else from her mind and walked quickly
toward the rail station.

When she neared the station's cobblestone
drive, she could hear a babble of male voices, and upon reaching
the one-story depot she found twenty or thirty men outfitted in
spanking-new militia uniforms. Sunlight glinted from a forest of
steel gun barrels, many of them on the Springfield-type rifles
manufactured by the Remington Arms Company in the Mohawk Valley of
central New York. The canteens and haversacks slung over shoulders
looked new, as did the scabbards on swords and bayonets. Some of
these men were striding back and forth beside the station house,
holding forth heatedly, while most were speaking quietly among
themselves. A few, saying nothing at all, simply gazed down the
railroad track.

They must be members of New York's 33rd
Regiment, Glynis guessed, made up of companies from Seneca County
who would proceed to Elmira, the central rendezvous point. From
there they would head south to Washington. Lincoln had asked for
75,000 volunteer troops to guard what had become an increasingly
vulnerable capitol. Since New York had been among the earliest
states to respond to the President's call, this company was not the
first to leave Seneca County and, as was daily becoming more
evident, it would not be the last. Some civic-minded group must
have foreseen this, because the station house entrance was draped
with a red, white, and blue bunting, and there were red, white, and
blue flags flying from every possible upright object. Even from the
baggage carts.

Scattered here and there among the men stood
a small number of women. While they were discouraged from coming
to the train station—the premise being that women would bring a
maudlin sentimentality to the occasion—there were always a few who
persisted. These were usually young women, and, as on this day,
they were far from maudlin. Most of them, dressed in pastel-colored
spring frocks and straw bonnets, were light-heartedly cheerful,
waving nosegays from which trailed long blue ribbons.

One of the younger women, Faith Alden,
Glynis recognized because the girl worked in her niece Emma's
dress shop. Faith appeared to view this leave-taking with somewhat
less enthusiasm than the others; her eyes looked red-rimmed and
their lids were swollen. Her hair was tied with glossy white
ribbon, and she carried a bouquet of violets, perhaps given to her
by the subdued-looking young man in uniform standing at her side.
More than once she buried her face in the violets as if to hide
tears.

The few older women there forced wan smiles,
as if they too might be attempting to withhold the unacceptable
signs of grief.

In spite of the sunlit afternoon, Glynis
experienced an oppressive gloom. She could remember well the first
months of the Mexican War and the festive air of those soldiers'
departure. She also remembered the men who did not come back. Like
young Jamie Terhune, married for just one year before he left. His
bride Jenny still kept vigil at the railroad station, sleeping at
night in the baggage room and meeting each incoming train lest she
miss Jamie's return. She was known as Mad Jenny, waiting for a man
who fifteen years before had died in battle on the slopes of the
continental divide. How could that war have been forgotten so
soon?

Most of the men in town, at least most of
the younger ones, believed the "Dixie Rebellion," as they persisted
in calling the secession crisis, was something that would be over
shortly. Just a few weeks of skirmishing before the South came to
its senses, dropped to its knees, and begged a return to the Union.
In the meantime, the volunteers held daily drills, marching and
target shooting with others who came from their home-town militia
companies. Making it still more a community affair was the fact
that even the men's drillmasters and immediate officers were their
friends and neighbors. They had signed up for only ninety days, so
why fret about the future?

Glynis, hurrying past the men, saw this
carnival atmosphere as a celebration of failure. Not something that
she wanted to watch. As she walked to the far side of the station
house, several male voices burst forth with Stephen Foster's "Oh!
Susanna." The singers were immediately joined by others, and yet,
while the song had been so widely popular for so long that almost
everyone knew the words, it was, Glynis thought, a singularly
inappropriate one to be singing now.

Oh! Susanna /Don't you cry for me / For I
come from Alabama / With a banjo on my knee.

While she waited against a backdrop of men's
voices rising and falling with each verse, her earlier impatience,
together with a measure of anxiety, continued to grow. It was the
third time today she had stood there, staring down the empty
tracks. Each time a New York Central train had approached from the
west, she had expected her niece Bronwen Llyr, and each time
Bronwen had not appeared. But she must be on this next train. It
was the last one scheduled until the following morning, and Bronwen
had promised to arrive for her cousin Emma's pre-nuptial party to
be held that evening. Breaking promises had not in the past been
among Bronwen's shortcomings.

At last, and after a series of piercing
whistles, the east-bound, twenty-ton locomotive roared around a
bend, its brakes screeching. Several minutes later brought the
westbound train grinding to a halt. Now facing each other on their
separate tracks, the engines followed by their long tails of
passenger cars looked like two fire-belching dragons about to
engage in mortal combat.

Glynis had moved away as the trains steamed
into the station, spewing sparks like live volcanoes. One of these
days a spark would fly too far and send the entire village up in
flames. Although she had been predicting this for a decade, and
while it had happened in other places, it had yet to happen in
Seneca Falls. Perhaps because someone had the foresight to demand
the station house be built of brick.

When passengers began descending to the
station platforms, Glynis inched forward, hoping they didn't notice
how thoroughly they were being scrutinized. It would not be the
first time that Bronwen, now employed as a United States Treasury
agent, had traveled in disguise. In fact, she had cheerfully
admitted, "It's as good as being invisible. Just consider the
possibilities!"

Glynis considered many as she stood there
studying each arriving passenger with a wary eye and craning her
neck to see past the uniformed men now waiting to board. Although
there could be no reason for her niece to disguise herself here in
Seneca Falls, she might do it just for a lark.

"Miss Tryon?" said a familiar voice beside
her. "Glynis?"

BOOK: Must the Maiden Die
12.87Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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