Authors: Mary Mackey

The Widow's War (8 page)

BOOK: The Widow's War

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“Dearest William,” she whispers, “I will never stop loving you, but somehow I must find the strength to go on without you. If you can hear me, my love, give me that strength.”

As the paper turns to ashes and the flames die down, she feels a sense of release. She won’t forget William, but she vows that from this moment on she will never again allow herself to be frozen in the past.

The next day she begins to check Deacon’s references. Everyone speaks well of him: his banker, his business associates, even Mrs. Wiggins, the wife of the military attaché to the American Diplomatic Mission, who knew Deacon in Washington.

“A wonderful man,” Mrs. Wiggins says. “I’d trust him with my life, Miss Vinton.” Her eyes wander to Carrie’s midsection, which is hidden under layers of petticoats. “Such a warm day,” she observes with a bright smile, “and yet you dress so stylishly.”

Five days later, Deacon makes a fourth proposal of marriage. This time Carrie tells him the truth: That she esteems him, feels friendly affection for him, and finds him attractive, but does not love him and is not sure she ever will. If he’s content with this, she’s willing to become his wife; if not they should stop seeing one another.

Deacon does not hesitate. Seizing her hands, he covers them with kisses. “Carrie, dearest Carrie,” he says, “I can imagine no happiness greater than becoming your husband. I love you more than words can express, beyond everything I value, beyond all riches, beyond life and health and beauty and honor itself, so much so that I can hardly breathe or speak.”

Carrie is touched by his words. When he leans forward to kiss her, she is even moved to tears. For a few seconds she feels the warm pressure of his lips on hers, then she feels dampness on his cheek and realizes he is crying, too. It’s a touching scene, one she remembers for the rest of her life, but there is more to it than she suspects.

Months later, she discovers Deacon cobbled together a few of Goneril’s lines from
King Lear
, twisted them to serve his purpose, and presented them to her that afternoon as if they were sweets on a tray, and she wonders how long he spent selecting them, and if he ever saw the irony of using the speech of a liar as he reeled her in ever so sweetly inch by inch.

Safado!
she writes in her journal on the day she understands what a fool she’s been. It is a fine Portuguese word for which there is no English equivalent.
Con man, Don Juan, liar, libertine, gigolo, philanderer, womanizer, rake, cad
: all fall short.

PART 2

Betrayals

Carrie

The Kansas Territory, September 1856

T
he night is passing swiftly and dawn is almost upon us. Already the east is tinged with red and choked with huge thunderheads that are turning purple and gold. The violence of the sunrise makes me think of blood and slaughter. I am not a violent person by nature, but I will fight Henry Clark and his band of border ruffians with every ounce of strength, cunning, and courage God gives me.

I have no military training. I am only leading the men into Missouri because I know the way to Beau Rivage. My father taught me to track anything that doesn’t fly, and even though my skills were honed in the jungles of Brazil, I can easily see the signs of men passing over the prairie. The long grasses bend and break, campfires leave indelible traces, horses rub themselves against trees more gently than buffalo, and there are fewer trees to inspect. As for foot and hoofprints: in the Amazon it rains constantly, but here the land can go for days without being thoroughly soaked. When rain does come, the result is a muddy gumbo that catches prints and dries like unfired pottery, so reading a trail isn’t much harder than reading a book of nursery rhymes.

It takes skill for a band of men on horseback to leave no trace, and Henry Clark and his band of border ruffians not only know nothing about hiding their tracks, they have no interest in doing so. After they massacred my friends and took those I love best captive, they rode toward the Missouri border drunk on arrogance and cheap whiskey. I tracked them to Beau Rivage like an invisible ghost and killed three before they reached the river.

Yet although I spread terror through their ranks, there were too many for one woman to defeat, so I had to return to Kansas for reinforcements. Clark’s Raiders are afraid of me now, but they still have their hostages. My greatest worry is that they will kill me, take the prisoners to a slave market, and sell them South. If they do, Ni has sworn to follow them to hell and back if necessary.

Ni is a better scout than I will ever be. His slave name was Toby, but after he escaped from his master, he went to live with the Kaw Indians, whose name, he tells me means People of the South Wind. The Kaw treated him well, and before they were driven off their lands onto the reservation, they sent him on a vision quest. Now he calls himself Ni, which means water in Kaw.

Like me, he has a special reason for risking his life: His wife, Jane, and his two little daughters are Clark’s prisoners. I say “wife” even though slaves are not legally permitted to marry. Jane is more Ni’s wife than I was ever Deacon’s even though I was fool enough to marry Deacon in church in a white dress, surrounded by flowers and witnesses.

The courage of Ni and his companions humbles me. Even if I am captured, the slavers probably will not hang me, although the penalty for helping slaves escape is death. It would cause too great a scandal to execute a white woman, particularly the daughter-in-law of Senator Bennett Presgrove. So provided no one can prove I killed three of Clark’s men, I have a chance to survive. But the men who ride with me can expect nothing but execution or re-enslavement. At best they will be sold back into bondage, and they have all sworn to die rather than become slaves again.

They are fifteen in number, all ages, some nearly as white as their masters, some dark as Africans. Two, Andrew and Charles, are actually African-born “saltwater slaves,” smuggled into South Carolina twelve years ago, although the United States government has outlawed the importation of slaves since 1808.

John Brown secretly trained them to ride and shoot, and he trained them well. They were going to be the cavalry of his secret army, and he planned to have them lead the slave insurrection that he believes will ignite a second American Revolution. If they make it back from Beau Rivage alive, they may indeed help end slavery in the United States, but in the next few days their aim and mine is to end it on a much smaller scale.

The oldest of my companions is forty-two; the youngest not more than fifteen. The fifteen-year-old’s name is Spartacus, by which you may deduce he was not named by his master. My friend Elizabeth Newberry named all three of her sons after the leaders of great slave rebellions: Prosser, Toussaint, and Spartacus. Nine days ago, Clark killed Prosser and Toussaint, so although I have pleaded with Spartacus not to ride with us, arguing that he is not old enough, he tells me defiantly that he is not too young to die if it means evening up the score.

Spartacus and the others are armed with Beecher’s Bibles, those fine rifled muskets that New England minister Henry Beecher supplies to anti-slavery immigrants heading to Kansas. I doubt Reverend Beecher ever imagined his guns would fall into the hands of a guerilla band composed of escaped slaves, but having met him personally, I believe he would approve. None of us have uniforms, because the federal government has not yet recognized it is involved in a war with the slaveholding South. We wear what we can. I have put on one of my lover’s old flannel shirts and a pair of his trousers, Ni wears buckskin leggings, the others wear the clothes they were wearing when they escaped from their masters or clothes that have been given to them since. One is dressed in an old jacket of John Brown’s, out at the elbows but still serviceable.

Before we set out, I want to list the men by name because if any fall in the coming battle, I am determined to build a memorial to them in Lawrence, just as we have built memorials to honor the soldiers who fell in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War.

They are: Abel, Andrew, Bilander, Caesar, Cush, Charles, Ebenezer, Ishmael, Jack, Jordan, Marcellus, Ni, Peet, Samuel, and Spartacus. Only Spartacus has a last name because, unlike the others, he was born free. The rest have no desire to adopt the names of their former masters, although several are considering taking the name “Brown” in honor of the man who trained them in the art of warfare.

I suspect that we are all afraid of what may happen once we cross into Missouri—I know I am—but we don’t discuss our fears. We have food, shoes, horses, and guns. We have a righteous cause and the will to succeed. We have each other.

Chapter Eight

Rio de Janeiro, March 1854

A
s
The Frances Scott
sails out of Guanabara Bay, Carrie stands at the stern and inhales for the last time the familiar, earthy scent of wet jungles, perfumed flowers, and wood smoke. She sees the jagged heights of the coastal mountains, their slopes covered with coffee plantations, and the city, which has taken the drunken heaving of the shoreline and marshaled it into a bank of low white houses, factories, warehouses, and church spires. By the docks, hundreds of tall-masted ships rock in unison as slow swells move under them and speed on to crash against beaches the color of unrefined sugar.

Carrie watches until she can no longer make out the faces of the friends who came down to the docks to see her off. Then she turns and walks toward the bow of the ship. For the first time in many days she finds herself alone. Deacon is down in their cabin tending to the luggage, her fellow passengers are nowhere in sight, and the crew is too busy to pay attention to her.

She stands in the bow until the ship has sailed out of the bay into the open sea. When she walks back to the stern for one more look at Rio, all she can see is a low, dark smear on the horizon. She is just preparing to go below and join Deacon when something moves inside her. Clapping her hand over her belly, she feels a light tapping sensation like the soft beating of butterfly wings. For a moment she stands there puzzled. Then, suddenly, she understands.

“Hello, my darling,” she whispers to her unborn child, and all at once, she feels a rush of joy and grief so tangled together that she doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Chapter Nine

T
he sun sinks into a bank of clouds, night descends on the ocean, and everywhere Carrie looks, water and sky meet in seamless blackness. Propping the porthole open so the sea breezes can enter the cabin, she goes back to the table and sits down. To her left, a small glass inkwell dances on brass gimbals. To her right lies a pile of blank paper weighted down by an opalescent, spiraled shell.

Picking up the shell, she examines it. It’s as intricate as the cross section of seed pod. Where did it come from? Not from Brazil. Perhaps it washed up on a beach on the other side of the world. If she holds it to her ear, will she hear the ocean roar? She puts the shell to her ear and is rewarded with a pulsing sound, but the sound of the real ocean is much louder.

Putting the shell aside, she picks up the flowered shawl William intended as a wedding present and throws it around her shoulders. The touch of the silk against her skin makes her sad. Perhaps she should put the shawl away, yet every time she wears it, she feels as if William is holding her. Will she remember him less often and be happier if she gives up the only gift he left her besides their baby? Running the hem of the shawl between her fingers, she decides the price of happiness is too high.

There are three pens in the penholder. The nib of the first one she selects is so badly splayed it must have been used to tighten screws, but the next is brand-new. Taking a sheet of paper from the top of the pile, she dips the tip of the pen into the inkwell, and begins to write the first of eight letters:

March 17, 1854

Dearest Mama,

I am writing to you because I need someone to confide in, and there is no one on this ship I can trust not to judge me. I lack the talent so many women have of working by indirection. I have always been too plainspoken for my own good. You and Papa always taught me to say what was on my mind and damn the consequences, but as I grow older I find this is a trait more suitable for a man than a woman.

I am also writing to you because I was told to. There, you see: I am being blunt again, but I know you will not mind. You always were a woman of strong opinions. When you and Papa argued it was as equals, face-to-face with no words minced and nothing hidden between you.

Before I left Rio, I went to a fortune-teller who threw those polished cowry shells the slaves call buzios, the ones they believe the gods use to send messages to human beings. I think the fortune-tellers read the messages by counting how many shells land right side up and how many fall upside down, but I’m not entirely sure. In any event, I know getting my fortune told was not a logical thing to do. The woman I went to claimed to be a priestess, but she was not nearly as skilled or wise as Mae Seja, and you never believed Mae Seja could see any farther than the end of her own nose. Still, I longed to know if my baby would be born well and healthy, and if it would be a boy or a girl.

At first the fortune-teller refused to tell me what she saw. Instead she looked frightened, which alarmed me. When I ordered her to reveal what the buzios were saying, she told me I would give birth to a girl “more angelic, strange, and beautiful” than any child I had ever seen. I objected to the word strange and demanded to know what she meant, but she refused to say another word beyond repeating “If you want to know anything else, Senhora, ask your mother.”

I called her a fake, told her my mother had been dead for fifteen years, paid her, and ordered her to go away since it was clear she did not know any more about the future than I did. But since then, I have had a change of heart. Recently, I realized I have never stopped talking to you although you have been dead since I was a child. I dream of you often, and although you can no longer reply, this one-sided conversation, which never stops, comforts me.

Do the dead know what happens to the living? Were you present at my wedding? Did you slip into the church unseen and watch me marry a man I do not love for the sake of my unborn child?

Yesterday, I left Rio to return to the States, and yesterday I felt my child move in my womb for the first time. Will she really be “angelic, strange, and beautiful?” Can you see her, or was the fortune-teller only pretending to read a message in the shells? Perhaps my baby is a boy. If so, I hope he will look like William. If the souls of unborn children and the souls of the dead are in the same place, please speak to my little boy and tell him that his mother already loves him.

As you may have deduced by now, I am not entirely happy in my marriage. No surprise there; I didn’t expect to be. But I think if I were a person more capable of forgetting the past, I would at least be content as Deacon’s wife. The problem, as you may have guessed, is William. I still love him. What am I to do with this love? Transfer it to my baby? I doubt that will work. I can love my child without ceasing to love its father. Transfer it to Deacon? I don’t think that is possible.

You see, Mama, I misspoke a moment ago. I am not simply in love with William; I am obsessed with him. I think of him from the time I wake up until the moment I fall asleep, and at night he fills my dreams. I think if I described these dreams to you, you would not condemn me, but I am not sure how to put them into words. They are very physical. William and I do not simply talk to each other. We do a great deal more. I believe most women would be horrified to have such dreams. Those pious girls I went to school with would hurry to confession, but here, too, I am different from other women. I welcome passion. I long for William’s embraces. Each morning I am sorry to wake up and discover they are not real.

Yet oddly enough, although I can write to you, I cannot write to him. I have no idea why, but when I sit down to put pen to paper, I circle the blank page like a moth circling a candle flame and produce nothing but blots and tears.

I am not sure how I will post this letter. Perhaps I will drop it in the sea or burn it, but in any event, I will keep writing. The baby inside me grows larger every day, and I am frightened. I am not used to experiencing fear. I have always been confident that I could take care of myself no matter what happened. But so much can take place between now and the time we reach the States, and the only other women on board are the Misses Turner, two spinster sisters who presumably know nothing about childbirth, and Mrs. Wiggins, wife of the military attaché to the American Diplomatic Mission in Rio.

Nettie, as she has urged me to call her, is very pretty and well turned out in the latest fashions, all of which seem to be designed to make a woman look like a church bell. As we sail north toward the equator, it will grow hotter with each passing day, but I am willing to bet she will never abandon her lace gloves, long sleeves, and multiple petticoats. Nor will she take off her much-beribboned bonnet, a sturdy piece of millinery which would keep her head at a tropical temperature even if she were visiting Antarctica.

To give you an idea of her devotion to the latest styles, she has confided that she is going back to the States to have her seamstress run up a series of ball dresses for her. Why a woman would undertake a four-month round-trip voyage for a few silk and taffeta dresses that could just as easily be made in Rio is a mystery I am not capable of comprehending.

In other words, although Nettie is friendly, she is as impractical as those travelers who used to come up the Amazon with bathtubs, bottles of scent, and pianos. I like her, but I do not believe I can rely on her in a crisis. However, she is a good conversationalist and bright enough if you can steer her away from the topic of crepe de chine. She knew Deacon when he moved in Washington society and has nothing but good things to say about him. Also, she is perpetually cheerful. At the moment, I hold my tongue, keep my thoughts about William to myself, and drink in Nettie’s good nature like a woman dying of thirst in a lifeboat. I am grateful for her friendship, but I would give the next two months of her for ten minutes with you.

Love,

Carrie

March 21, 1854

Dearest Mama,

Mrs. Wiggins and the Misses Turner have taken to their cabins with
mal de mer
. I remain well: “healthy as a well-fed brood mare,” as Grandfather liked to say. The nausea of the early weeks has passed and my skin glows. Of course, my belly resembles a melon and my ankles don’t bear examination, but on the whole I would say I am prettier than I have ever been, for all the good it does me.

I know I should be happy to be in such good health, but I am too preoccupied to enjoy my strolls on deck or the
cafezinho
the cook prepares for me each morning. Something has happened. I want to tell you about it, but it is considerably more serious than dreams of illicit passion, and I find myself reluctant to commit it to writing.

I don’t know why I hesitate. When I was a child I could talk to you about anything. Even though you have been gone for many years, I remember you so perfectly that if I close my eyes I can imagine you are here with me.

Remember how you used to let me sit next to you at night and comb out your hair before you went to bed? You had the most beautiful hair: light brown and soft as a baby’s. It fell all the way to your waist. I knew at the time that you were proud of it, but now I realize how much Papa must have loved it. You were quite simply the most beautiful woman I have ever known and the kindest. I am told it is common for mothers and daughters to disagree and grow cold toward one another as the daughter enters womanhood and the mother moves into old age, but that never happened to us. Perhaps one of the few blessings of losing you when I was so young is that I can never remember anything flowing between us but love.

You always did what was best for me, Mama, even when it was not best for you. For six years you lived with Grandfather and Grandmother Hampton, enduring Grandmother’s complaining and Grandfather’s endless sermons so I could grow up safe and healthy in America, so I know you understand why I married Deacon. Like you, I am leaving a place I love for the sake of my unborn baby; but unlike me, you were married to a man you adored. You were certainly married to a man you knew; but, Mama, I am beginning to think I do not know Deacon as well as I thought I did when I accepted his proposal of marriage, or perhaps it is myself I do not know.

When Deacon proposed, he claimed he loved me, and I was convinced he did; but—and I find this peculiar—since the day after we wed, I cannot feel his love, particularly when he and I are in bed together. I can tell he desires me—he leaves me in no doubt about that—but I cannot feel what I always felt when I was with William: security, a deep trust that he will never hurt me, a sense that his arms are a refuge against the troubles of the world. Mama, I am confused and for once I hardly know how to continue. Still, let me try.

I told Deacon when I accepted his proposal that, although I liked him and found him attractive, I did not love him in return, but despite this, our wedding night was more than I hoped for. Deacon was kind, considerate, attentive, and remarkably skilled as a lover. He did not once make me feel that he was disappointed that I had not come to him a virgin. Before we began, he assured me that, if I did not want marital relations with him so soon, he would not press them on me; but I was having none of that and told him so. I had not married him to live in celibacy for the rest of my life, so with some misgivings and an ache in my heart for that other wedding night that should have taken place but never did, I invited him to come into bed with me.

I was awkward at first, preoccupied with my pregnancy and worried we might do something that would hurt the baby, but he was patient, and we consummated our marriage with mutual pleasure and, I thought at the time, mutual affection. During the act—and this is crucial—I did not think of William. I believed I had put the past behind me. But of course, as you already know, that has not proven to be the case.

The very next day, things began to change between Deacon and me. At first, I hardly noticed, but gradually it has become clear that something is gravely wrong. A few nights ago, shortly after I had settled down to sleep, he came into my bunk, took me in his arms, and kissed me. To my shame, I responded eagerly to his kisses. I will tell you more about why I felt shame in a moment. For now, let me simply say that this was the first time I had been really passionate with him, and yet at the same time I could not shake the feeling he was making love to me merely to entertain himself. Perhaps this was untrue; perhaps I imagined it, but the worst part was that even as I doubted him, I said nothing.

Mama, I have discovered a strange thing: even when my heart does not respond, my body does. During the day, I find myself longing for the sexual act, and I think Deacon knows this. I tell myself that he is my husband and that naturally I should welcome his embraces since they present the possibility of having more children, but I have a terrible confession to make: I welcome them for another reason, and this is the source of my shame.

When Deacon makes love to me, I close my eyes and imagine he is William. I fear this is adultery, but I cannot stop doing it. So you see, the lack of real intimacy between us is very likely my fault, not his.

Deacon does not suspect that every time he touches me, I pretend he is another man, and I think that if you were here, you would advise me not to tell him.

I will post this letter by burning it. Deacon must never see it. He may love me as much as he said he did when he proposed to me or he may not, but in any case he must never suspect that I betray him nightly.

I will write again soon.

Love,

Carrie

March 23, 1854

Dearest Mama,

I have struggled with my passions and lost. I still think of William when my husband takes me in his arms, but I have gone beyond shame. Deacon’s caresses have become my way of forgetting my grief over William’s death—only I do not forget. I get drunk on passion and dreams and drift away to happier times that I do not dare mention to anyone but you.

I am using Deacon, and I think he is using me. I suspect neither of us really loves the other. What kind of marriage is this? I hardly know who I am. I feel as if I am sleepwalking through my life, living in a trance as the baby grows larger in my womb. When Nettie Wiggins speaks to me, sometimes I do not hear her, and when Miss Turner or her sister ask me a question, often I do not reply. All the while, for no reason I can name, I have a terrible, irrational presentiment that a disaster I am powerless to stop is rushing toward me. I hear such fears are common on long sea voyages, but I suspect the source of my own anxiety is guilt. I am deceiving my husband with a dead man. There, I have said it as bluntly as possible. William is dead. I repeat this truth to myself a dozen times a day but I still can’t make myself believe it.

The fortune-teller I consulted in Rio gave me her bag of
buzios
. This morning when Deacon was taking a walk on deck, I threw them and tried to see into the future, but if prophecy exists I have no talent for it. I saw exactly what I expected to see: sixteen polished cowry shells, ten turned right side up, six turned upside down. Still, you can deduce from this how unsettled I am becoming.

I am told that on our journey north we may expect to sight the vast sweep of muddy water that surges out to sea from the mouth of the Amazon. When we do, our ship is scheduled to turn west and put into port at Belém for three days to take on supplies. As we approach that city, I am overcome with memories. Do you recall the year you, Papa, and I lived far up the Amazon on a smaller river called the Rio Branco? I remember Papa sent his orchids down to Belém by dugout canoe and our mail—what little we got—came up to us the same way.

If you were still living there, I would go ashore and find someone to take this letter to you. But the jungle grows so fast that by now every trace of our camp has long been obliterated, so instead I will burn this letter as I have burned all the others and imagine you have received it.

Love,

Carrie

BOOK: The Widow's War

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