The Windflower (8 page)

In October she husked corn with the housemaids. The project lasted a whole week because Aunt April despised as too plebeian the American custom of inviting the neighbors over to a husking bee. For days the fresh garden air was busy with the rustle of dry husks and the snap of cobs cracking and laughter as well, for Henry Cork did his best to claim the traditional kiss from any maiden who came across a red cob, and the housemaids pelted him with smut ears in lively battles.

November brought them chillier days. The itinerant woodchopper came in his coarse boots, carrying his broad ax and his canvas bundle. When he moved on again, there was an artfully balanced stack of wood by the horse barn for their winter fires.

Christmas! Mistletoe and red holly berries, ribbons and wax candles, chains cut from gaily colored paper and hung in swags around the drawing room, and Aunt April at the aging spinet playing "The Boar's Head Carol" and "When Christ Was Born of Mary Free." On Christmas morning Merry and April sat through services in the untreated church in itchy woolen mittens and heavy caps under their best bonnets and then walked home to the delectable meal April had prepared of stuffed roast goose, brussels sprouts with almonds, roast potatoes, apple yule logs, mince pie, and a plum pudding sprigged with holly and glowing blue brandy flames. In the evening they sat by the hearth nibbling on oysters cooked with lemon on toast that her aunt called angels on horseback, and opened and exclaimed happily over their gifts: light imported cologne to Merry from April, a lilac gauze scarf to April from Merry, and to both of them a generous length of pale-green mohair for new drawing-room window curtains from Merry's father, and a three-volume set of
Mysteries of Udolpho
from Sally. And that night as they walked arm in arm to their bedchambers they both agreed that no Christmas together had been happier.

In January Merry sewed the new drawing-room curtains with her aunt and made twelve fine, large cheeses, and in late February, when a traveling showman came to the village with a moose to display, Merry snuck off in Henry Cork's company to see it. For nine pence one purchased a ticket to see the beast and a handbill praising its excellence. The handbill read: "The properties of this fleet and tractable Animal are such as will give pleasure and satisfaction to every beholder." Fleet the Animal proved to be, but tractable it was not. Through some mysterious expedient that Merry suspected was related to Henry Cork's presence near its cage, the moose got loose, bit the showman, and galloped off into the woods, providing a great deal more pleasure and satisfaction to all beholders than its hapless owner had anticipated.

Far away the war raged, and the town children ran under gray skies shooting each other with stick rifles and hiding as scalping parties behind the starkly winter-bared trees. The parson's youngest son stole away to become a drummer for the 56th Virginia Militia, and the
Richmond
Enquirer
was thick with advertisements like the one urging: ' 'Gentlemen wishing uniforms embroidered in a prompt and neat manner will please apply to No. 6 Babcock Alley."

The campaign against British Canada had failed miserably. At the Chateauguay River a sizable chunk of the American Army got lost in a swamp and shot each other up, while the main body fled in wild retreat before a small British force when the British buglers sounded a dramatically overconfident charge. Merry heard through her father that Carl had retired to winter quarters at French Mills with Upham's 21st Infantry, where the food and housing were abysmal and the sanitary conditions of such a nature that a gentleman could not relate them in a polite communication to his daughter.

And from Sally came the tidings that Jason was ill but improving from a Tower musket ball in the hip, taken in a skirmish against braves from Weatherford's Red Sticks near
Fort
Strother
, on the southern frontier. In a flurry of concern Merry sent wool socks to Carl and one of the homemade cheeses to Jason and received back a friendly note from Carl and a very funny letter from Jason about the adventures that had befallen her cheese on its way to him, as deduced from its condition on arrival. They said little of what they must be suffering, and their courage awed and inspired Merry.

March arrived. Sap ran in the maple trees, and it was time for sugaring off. The
Almanack
advised its readers: "Make your own sugar, and send not to the
Indies
for it. Feast not on the toil, pain, and misery of the wretched." With that grim proverb in mind Merry threw herself energetically into the maple sugaring, and after a day spent hefting sap buckets she strolled happily into the hallway with the joyous fragrance of boiling maple syrup following her from the kitchens. Glancing toward the whatnot, she saw the
Richmond
paper. In a mood of innocent contentment she lifted it. The front page story heading jumped out at her from the sober news sheet. In the headline was Rand Morgan and his ship, the
Black Joke.

The
Black Joke,
it seemed, had taken the American merchant ship
Morning Star.
Once aboard, the pirates had "made carnage of the hold, carrying off ruinous quantities of spirituous liquor, drunk as much as they could hold, and wastefully bathed themselves in the Surplus. The Captain's psalm book was villainously used for 'target practice, and the trunk of a
Boston
merchant was invaded and costly clothing cast upon the deck for the guffawing wretches to make peacocks of themselves in. Further, the First Mate's spectacles were taken from him and put upon a pig. A cargo worth forty thousand dollars in gold was seized as well as a goodly amount of medicines. All the meanwhile the fifer from the
Morning Star
was forced to play a hornpipe until he dropped from exhaustion and was carried aboard the pirates' ship to be conscripted into their own crew. Also aboard were three women, and of their use at the hands of the pirates this editor prefers to say nothing."

Merry found Aunt April in the green drawing room, peering down in a dazzled way at a sheet of superfine stationery. Another confusing bill from the mantua-maker, thought Merry. Without looking at the letter she kissed her aunt on the cheek and said, "Good evening, Aunt April."

April looked startled, as though she'd been woken from a catnap, and folded the paper in her hand so hastily that Merry had a fleeting impression of secrecy.

"Merry Patricia! My, but you can come quietly into a room. You look tired, dear. I'll ring up the tea."

The words were said in a flustered, rather disjointed voice that made Merry think that perhaps the bill had been high because of the blockade and her aunt was afraid she"d have to apply to Merry's father for extra funds this quarter. Wondering why her aunt didn't tell her about it, Merry said, "No, thank you, Aunt April. I had a cup of milk in the kitchen on the way in."

"Did you? Well, I'm glad. You look tired to me. All this maple sugar making—I don't think it's been good for you. You've never been very strong."

As long as Merry could remember, her aunt had been saying that to her. She had always accepted it before. Now she asked, "Why do you say that I'm not strong?"

"Why, 1 mean merely that you're not
robust.
One can see looking at you that your bones are delicate, and . . . Merry Patricia, what's going on in that little head of yours? You don't look well to me, not a bit well."

Merry sat down. "It's just that— Aunt April, have you read the evening paper?"

"I've skimmed it, of course, but I haven't delved—oh. Ah, ha. You saw that dreadful story, did you, about the pirates? Why they find it necessary to put things like that in the public press so young people can be exposed to that kind of degraded story is more than I can imagine! No wonder you don't look well. I felt ill myself after reading it. Horrible. Put the whole thing right out of your mind."

But bright in Merry's mind was Morgan, black-eyed, the emerald glowing on his chest, and Cat with the long hair and cruel hands . . . and
Devon
. Had Devon taken one of the women and held her delicately, talking in a gentle, quiet voice as he had with Merry, hypnotizing her with his comforting, and then plundering her defenseless mouth with his lips? It was the kind of thing that an editor might prefer not to mention. Merry watched her aunt go to her lap desk and lock away the stationery sheet. When her aunt had turned back to her, Merry asked her, "Aunt April, why wouldn't the newspaper say what happened to the women?"

She could have sworn her aunt blushed. "I think they said too much as it was! I can't think that your father would want you to read things about pirates and women."

"Why not?" Seven months ago Merry would have hardly been able to frame the question to herself, much less ask it of her aunt. It was an unbearable thing, this being desperate to know. She looked everywhere in the room but at her aunt. "What do pirates do to women?"

As it happened, Aunt April was as embarrassed as Merry. She went to peer miserably out the window, as if she was afraid someone was hiding outside listening, and swallowed with difficulty, as though she had an infected throat. "One would suppose—that is—" Another swallow. "One imagines that the pirates had their way with them."

Before she lost her nerve, Merry asked, "Which way is that?"

"A perfectly normal question for a young lady at your stage in life," said Aunt April with the nervous certainty of one trying to remain calm in the face of all hell breaking loose. She made a great play of arranging the new window curtains, the color running high over her cheekbones.

A wayward and rather poignant thought occurred to Merry. "Don't
you
know either?"

"I was never married, Merry Patricia, and my mother died before she had ever an occasion to tell me. ..."

It came to Merry suddenly where she had learned that meekly apologetic voice that had so amused the pirate. She felt her lips twitch upward into a grin. "But you must have gathered
some
idea."

"Some idea perhaps, but it's hardly anything that I'd care to ..."

A giggle sprang from Merry's grin, and she shook an accusing finger. "If you think I'm to be put off with stalling, Aunt April, then ..."

"Oh, very well. If you
will
hear it. I warn you, though, it's only the merest scrap that I chanced to overhear my mother telling my sister. I daresay this is going to sound quite peculiar but"—April stared fixedly at one of the low shrubs in front of the house—"it seems that a man—climbs on top of a woman—"

Surprise brought Merry to her feet.
"On top of?"

"There! There, you see? I've made a poor job of it." The window curtains crumpled under Aunt April's fretting fingers. "You'd probably have been better off if I'd said nothing! That's all I know. First they like to kiss, and then climb on."

Merry sat down again and concentrated her gaze on the wall covering's vanilla dots. When she could control the quivering of her lips, she said, "It doesn't make sense."

"I quite agree with you, dearest. But how many of the things that men do make sense? Take fox hunting, or prizefights, or making war, for that matter." She added dismally, "Men have drives."

"Do women have them too?"

"I doubt that it could be the same. Can you imagine a group of women turning outlaw, attacking ships, and forcing their will on men? Do you know what I think? A lady would do best to marry a rich man who could afford to keep a mistress and so would have less energy left for his wife."

"Oh, Aunt!" Merry laughed, launching herself from her chair to take her aunt's hands from the curtains and plant a cheerful kiss on each one. "Then from this day forth I will take special care to encourage only my wealthy beaux." Striking a coquettish pose, Merry fluttered her lashes at an invisible gentleman, placed, if he had been there, where he must have been tripping backward over the tea table. "Dear Major Moneybags," she said grandly, sweeping a full court curtsy, "1 shall agree to your obliging proposal on the one condition that you will keep yourself a woman and climb on her more often than you will on me!"

Aunt April smothered a smile. "Such nonsense. We aren't discussing this with the proper gravity, and I don't know what people would think if they were to hear us. Really, sometimes I fear that we get a little batty, living here like this, two women alone." A strange look came over her features. She went to her lap desk and thoughtfully stroked her hand in a wavy pattern across its highly polished surface. "We don't get out enough."

Through the ages women had been making the same kind of statement, but Merry had never, never expected to hear it from her aunt! Aunt April, who hated to travel, who detested American social life. With disbelieving senses Merry heard her aunt ask, "Merry Patricia, would you like to come with me on a trip to
New York
?"

CHAPTER FIVE

For more than two centuries
New York City
had been spreading across the rocky island that had once been nibbled by glaciers and later had served as the fertile hunting grounds of clever Indian trappers, before the Dutch had come, and the British with their guns and liquor and lust for empire. The city that Merry found was tame, dirty, and crowded. Pigs wandered at will, munching on garbage and street dirt which the citizens diligently piled in the alleys to be hauled away twice a week by the Department of Scavengers. Milch cows meandered between neat gabled houses, dining on the bark of the
Lombardy
poplars, planted with well-meaning innocence along the narrow walkways. Within a brisk walk of the carpeted homes of the rich were the Five Points slums, where more than thirteen families might share a single privy. Everything here seemed remarkable to Merry: the vast markets that fed so many, the sobering bulk of the prison, the libraries, the almshouse, the botanical garden. There was not a street you could pass without seeing evidence of the city's awesome complexity, where misery rubbed shoulders with grandeur in no more wonder than the pauper and the banker have when they pass each other on the pavement.

Today
New York
was celebrating Evacuation Day, commemorating that proud memory in the First War of Independence when the British had been forced to take their scrambled leave from the city before General Washington's triumphal entry.

It was
noon
, and Merry's gaze caught the gleam from a church tower as its great bell began to dance. The voices of other bells joined in. From the Presbyterian Church, the Trinity, the Dutch Reformed, French Episcopal, and Baptist came brilliant thunder that laced the cool air between the hard claps of cannon salute.

In front of Merry the parade was retreating down the straight stretch of Broadway. A unit of dragoons had been the last of the military that would pass them. The workers came next, under bright printed banners that snapped in the shifting breeze. The hat makers, the pewterers—and the blacksmith trade with a wonderful float that carried a working anvil and red fire, where three men stood forging an anchor, even as six horses pulled them along.

What a day it was, what a parade! Merry glanced to her side, at Sir Michael Granville, wondering how the tall British man could remain unruffled in the face of a patriotic display that commemorated a humiliating defeat for his own nation. His expression was much as it might have been if he were watching the hunting dance of tribesmen in loin cloths and feathers—as if it were to him a colorful, primitive spectacle full of naive and pretty drama and simple symbolism. He was too well-bred to have said anything to confirm her suspicions, but condescension has its own particular odor, detectable like a yard where goats have been, even if one walks through it with closed eyes and covered ears. She hoped that soon she would be able to look at him without feeling at all intrigued.

It was Sir Michael who had brought Aunt April to
New York
. Aunt April had never shown Merry the letter, but it happened that Sir Michael was a distant cousin to the Dowager Duchess of St. Cyr, one of the few of Aunt April's correspondents who wrote back more often than once a decade. On hearing that Sir Michael had obtained permission to visit the
New World
in the entourage of the British prisoner-of-war exchange agent, the duchess had encouraged him to convey her respects to Aunt April. It was a compliment to the duchess's influence that he had actually done so after his arrival in the
United States
. Merry could imagine the missive he had addressed to her aunt, full of polite cliches and a vaguely expressed desire that they should meet. It must have been an unlovely surprise for Sir Michael to find a letter from Aunt April in his return mail, promising to be in
New York
within the fortnight.

In the face of that it was hard to understand why he had received them with kindness. Instinct, based on no solid evidence, warned her that Sir Michael was not a man who routinely bothered himself with unrewarded kindnesses.

Passing them was a wide float that nested a press, the printers aboard working with quick economical movements to make broadsides. Two youthful apprentices leaned off the back, tossing the fresh inked pages into greedy outstretched hands in the crowd. Sir Michael caught one and handed it to Merry with a smile.

"A souvenir for you, Mistress Merry," he said.

Mistress Merry, quite contrary, how does your garden grow. . . . It had been a favorite tease of the village children. Merry could barely hear it without wincing. She might have told him not to keep calling her that if she hadn't been worried that the pain would be exposed in her voice.

Glancing at the paper, she saw that it was an ode about the Battle of Fort George in last May, between her nation and his. No matter that his purpose here was peaceful. He was still her enemy. It was incredible that they hadn't discussed it, not once, although she'd been in
New York
a week. Aunt April had always been there, fawning and frightened, until this morning, when she had stayed in her rooms, avoiding happily the noisy, shoving crowds. Mostly Aunt April had talked to him about
England
: gossip, much of it, and the rest politics, the arts, fashion, and the latest books. They had talked of
New York
too, which ironically he knew much better than Merry, because he had been here often before the war. He had many friends here, and she met them at dinner at the mansion of the Austrian trade commissioner, where Sir Michael was staying and where he had somehow gotten an invitation for Merry and her aunt to stay as well.

Folding the paper in half, Merry considered Sir Michael's face, where deep half-circle lids lay open over green irises with spokes of silver. His nose was a nice shape, even if the bridge was rather high, and the spare line of his mouth bent stiffly at the corners when he smiled, producing a pair of shallow and not unattractive dimples. Scissored brown hair barely slit with gray curled forward stylishly over his ears. Carl, of course, was going to be furious with Aunt April when he heard about all this.

"What is war," said Carl's sister abruptly, scraping tight the paper's crease between her gloved thumb and forefinger, "if we can stand together like this and watch a parade?"

The green-silver eyes glanced thoughtfully at the crowd around them.
"They
don't seem to mind if we stand here together," he said.

Obviously not. It was the kind of thing she had discovered he was likely to say: a slightly preposterous half gambit that shook her unsteady poise with aggravating efficiency.

Around them on the pavement the many gay, anonymous celebrants moved, swarming and shouting and turning in a crisp sigh of early spring garments, freshly brushed for the day, just-turned white collars on the little boys and flat new ribbons for the girls. Even if the restless crowd could have identified Sir Michael as British, the men and women of
New York
, intelligent patriots that they were, had a far greater hatred for their own Madisonian government, which had declared this costly, tiresome war that was destroying the economy of their city. Damn the British Navy, which had blockaded their port; but damn,
damn
those idiots in Washington who had struck Britannia on her stuffy cheek and brought this clumsy war down upon the hapless American merchants.

"My point stands," said Merry and was grateful it came out sounding less feeble than she knew it was.

Granville lifted his hand, where wide dark knuckles rode from the black, tight-fitting sleeve of his coat. He was, by far, the most elegantly dressed man Merry had ever met, certainly
not
excepting those in her family.

"Do you see that pedestal?" he asked her, pointing into the bowling green before them, to where a wide slab of marble lay beside a marshal, whose job it was to chastise anyone who stepped on the grass here, or harassed the spindly, long-suffering trees. "There was a statue of King George III on it, torn down in 1776 and melted into shot. It might have been one of those pieces that killed my uncle, fighting here a year later. He left four children below the age of seven, one of them blind.'' There was a short silence while she looked away from him. Then he said, "Merry, it goes back and forth. Will it really help if we blame each other?"

Will it really help if we blame each other?
As Merry stood wondering if there was something wrong with his logic or her own, Sir Michael looked down at her, his eyes still in complex, mature calm, and said, "Anyway, we'll have enough time to work it out, won't we, on the way to England?"

It was a ridiculous error. Merry stared up at him with a start. "I'm not going to
England
."

Correcting her with the censureless care one might use with a child who has spoken a faulty lesson, Granville said, "You are. The day after tomorrow on the
Guinevere,
with your aunt. It's all right. You can trust me. Your aunt and I have talked about it, and I understand why she doesn't want it to become known."

And then he smiled at her as though he had not with a single sentence blown the sane structure of her life into slithering fragments.

A few moments had passed, blank and ugly, before Merry could organize her blood-stripped muscles into activity and begin to walk backward from the well-mannered face with its features slowly realigning themselves into compassion and concern.

"Merry? Dear God. What have I said? Can it be—could it really be that you didn't know?"

As he began to come toward her she turned and fled from him, her velvet slippers striking hard on the coarse gravel path, her heart banging in her chest as she wove between grouping families and the dull-green stacks of shrubbery that squatted like trolls under the elms.

For once, her size helped. Quickly he was lost in the tall crowds, and when she came to a break in the line of spectators, she gripped the iron railing that lined the
Battery
and kicked her legs over, one at a time.

The political societies were passing in review, and Merry dove through a herd of Republicans, with their buck's tails dangling forward from their hats. Some laughed drunkenly and tried to reach for her as she passed frantically among them.

When her feet found the neat ocher bricks of the sidewalk, for the first time in her life she lifted her narrow white skirt and ran full out over the busy pavement toward the house five blocks up Pearl Street, where Aunt April would be waiting with, she prayed, a denial of Sir Michael's words.

The house of the Austrian trade commissioner was ruddy brick, tastefully decorated in bluestone with eyelet window curtains in the upper stories that lent the home a friendly and feminine look. It was not the place, surely, where one would hear grim news. Merry nearly collided with a cake vendor as she swung through the white picket gate into the small cobbled front yard, and the sweet odor of hot spiced gingerbread swirled around her as she stopped to lean dizzily against the cistern that caught soft water from the rain roof. Then she climbed the stoop, knocked, and was admitted almost immediately by a pretty Austrian maidservant, who looked curiously at Merry's pale cheeks and glittering eyes.