Wellington Cross (Wellington Cross Series) (2 page)

“Now, now.  You just rest.  You’ve had a hard
time.”  She took the wet cloth from my forehead and dipped it back into
the water again.  She urged me to lie back down and rest and placed the
cloth on my brow again.  “Don’t worry, child.  I’m sure you’ll get
your memory back in no time.  No time at all.  In the meantime, you
need to rest so your body and mind can heal.”

A fortnight later, I still didn’t remember anything, nor did I
remember what was so important I felt I was supposed to do.  I was able to
walk around, my legs having only been bruised and not broken, thankfully. 
A country doctor came to check me out the week prior.  My pounding
headaches were lessening every day.  We didn’t know how old I was, but the
doctor assumed my age to be around 20.  He had offered a more private
examination to determine whether or not I had been married or had borne any
children, but I refused that, for now.  It didn’t seem reasonable that if
I’d been married or had a child, I would not remember them.  Therefore, I
must not have.

Mrs. Jane gave me the name Melinda Woods, which fit with the
“MW” on the embroidered handkerchief.  She named me Melinda because Mrs.
Jane had always liked that name, had always wanted a daughter after having two
sons.  She named my last name Woods because I had been found near the
woods.  She had offered her own last name of Washington, but I respectfully
declined for the time-being, hoping I would remember soon what “MW” really
stood for. 

Mrs. Jane took me into the town of Chester where a man from the
marketplace sketched my face on a piece of parchment paper.  He nailed the
sketch up on a post, in case anyone might know my identity, and wrote the
address to Oakworth below the sketch.  We also went by the Richmond and
Petersburg Railroad stations in Richmond, Chester, and Pocahontas to put up
notices there, as well as in the town of City Point where we put a sketch of me
at the marketplace, and finally down in Colonial Heights, near
Petersburg. 

Summer passed into fall, with no word from anyone who knew me or
where I came from.  My memory was no better.  I was starting to
wonder if I would ever remember.  I filled my time by working out in the
fields with the Washingtons and Cora’s family – two girls, Hetty and Lidia, and
her son, Lionel, who was the 15-year-old boy who found me.  Cora’s husband
Eli had been killed by a runaway Confederate soldier who came by the plantation
in Edenton, North Carolina early in the war, looking for shelter.  He’d
had no sympathy or care for slaves, and hung Eli one night in a drunken stupor,
after getting into some vodka from the cellar.  Cora and her children were
not treated too kindly there after Eli was killed.  More labor was piled
on top of them.  Cora was expected to work out in the fields and also to
keep the house and cook the meals.  Her heart nearly failed her from all
the exertion, and she lost a lot of weight.  And so after Emancipation,
they snuck out one night and stumbled upon Oakworth.

It was hard work trying to rebuild the farm, but we did what we
had to in order to survive.  Every now and then, I would travel into the
town of Chester with bags of wheat to sell in the marketplace, accompanied by
one of Cora’s children.  I had apparently learned to drive a carriage in
my past, and so I taught the children how to drive, as well.  On those
trips, I looked at the homes along the way, hoping to see something familiar
but instead noticing how many of the homes had been heavily damaged from the
war.  Some had been burned, barely left standing, hollowed inside with
nothing but bricks left.  Others not made of bricks were just a pile of
rubble, looking like a cyclone had hit them, with only brick fireplaces
standing.  Many farmers and big plantation owners couldn’t afford to stay
in their homes, made nothing out of the worn-out land, and were forced to
leave.  Some of the richest plantation owners were forced to live in poverty.

On a cool October morning, I was in the marketplace at City
Point, trading wheat for some sugar, coffee and other needed items, accompanied
by Lionel.  As we were walking back to the Washingtons’ carriage and
packing up our merchandise, I was startled by a man’s voice.  “Madeline?”

I turned around to see an attractive man with blonde hair that
hung in soft layers to his shoulders and big blue eyes.  He was wearing a
brown suit and bowtie with a brown stovepipe hat on his head, which he took off
and held in his hands.  I wondered who he was and if he knew me. 

“It
is
you,” he said.

“Excuse me?  Do you know who I am?” I asked him. 

“Of course I know who you are.  Don’t you remember me?” he
asked.  His smile revealed yellow teeth, stained probably from either
coffee or tobacco, or both.  His smile turned to a confused frown.

“No, I’m afraid not.”  I explained that I had lost my
memory. 

“You lost your memory?”  He still wore a frown, but then a
big smile came over his face.  He touched my arm with his hand, causing me
to jerk back.  I didn’t care if he knew me or not, he wasn’t going to lay
a hand on me just yet.

“Darlin’ it’s me, Jefferson.  Your betrothed.”

I felt dizzy. 
My betrothed?
  I wrinkled my
forehead and squinted my eyes, trying to remember him but couldn’t. 
“Betrothed?” I asked.  “As in, to be married?”

“Yes, to be married.”  He continued to smile and reached
for my hand, which I hesitantly allowed him to kiss.

I asked Lionel to wait for me in the carriage, and handed him my
last package.  Looking back at Jefferson, I studied him.  I couldn’t
remember him for anything.  Nothing seemed familiar about him.  I
couldn’t have picked him out of a crowd if I had to.  I certainly didn’t
remember him being my betrothed.  “I apologize, but I just don’t seem to
remember you.”

“Here, let me prove it to you,” he said.  He searched his
pockets and finally pulled out a small object out of an inside pocket of his
jacket.  As I walked closer to him, I saw that it was a ring made of gold
and silver in a Celtic knot design with a small emerald in the center.

“It’s beautiful,” I whispered reverently.  It looked very
familiar.  I took it and placed it on my left fourth finger where ladies
wore their wedding ring, and held my arm out, looking at it on my hand. 
As I looked at it, a flash of a memory came to me.  I was standing on a
hill overlooking a large body of water.  I heard a male voice whisper my
name, “Madeline”.  It sounded like honey to my ears.  A voice so
familiar.  I suddenly had a longing for whoever he was…a deep
longing.  I wished I could’ve seen his face.

“Do you remember the ring, Madeline?”  Jefferson said my
name, but it was a much different voice than the one I had just heard in my
memory.  I looked up at him.  He was not the person in my memory, not
the person I had just longed for. 

“Where’ve you been?” he asked.  “I had no idea what had
happened to you, darlin’,” he said. 

I looked back down at my hand again, at the ring.  If this
ring was familiar to me and gave me my first memory of my past, then it must be
mine.  But this man in front of me was not the man in my vision that I had
great affection for.  The man in my memory was someone special to
me.  Had I been in love with him?  If so, why would this man have my
ring and say I was betrothed to him?  Perhaps he was telling the truth,
and we were betrothed, but yet the man I longed for, I was not allowed to marry
for some reason.  Perhaps the family didn’t approve.  I was confused.

“I’ve been staying with a family in Chester,” I said absently,
still looking at the ring.  Finally, I took the ring off and handed it
back to Jefferson.  “I’m sorry, I still don’t remember you,” I said. 

“But this is your ring.  It belonged to my mother. 
You disappeared right before we were to be married, and I gave it to you at our
engagement party.  You don’t remember?”

I looked at the ring in his hand, frowning.  “No, but the
ring does look familiar to me,” I said.  I didn’t want to mention the
memory it gave me; he probably wouldn’t appreciate that.  “But I don’t
feel comfortable enough to wear it just yet.  You keep it for now.” 

Yet even as I said those words, something nagged at me that I
should hold onto the ring, if for no other reason than to try and bring back the
memory of the other man.  Even if that was the wrong thing to wish for.

He started to put the ring back in his pocket, but I stopped
him.  “Wait.”  He slowly smiled at me.  “It is familiar to me,
so perhaps I should hold onto it for a while without wearing it.  Maybe it
will help me remember you.  Would that be suitable?”

“Yes, of course,” he agreed.  He handed the ring back to
me.

“So, my name is Madeline?” I asked, coaxing him to give me more
information about myself.  “Madeline” did fit with the “M” on the
handkerchief I had.

“Yes.  Madeline…”  He paused for a moment. 
“Harrison.  Madeline Harrison,” he said.  

Harrison didn’t fit with the “W” on the handkerchief.  I
wondered about his hesitation.  Did he really know me, or was he a thief
who had stolen this ring?  Yet, if that were true, why would he be so
eager to give it to me now?  He couldn’t possibly think I was from a
wealthy family since I had no memory of my life.  Unless he knew I was
from a wealthy family and planned to get money from them.  I was
confused.  Perhaps the handkerchief had been a pre-wedding gift.

“And your name is Jefferson?  What is your last name? 
I don’t remember you saying.”

“Banks.  Jefferson Banks.”   

Banks didn’t fit with the “W” on my handkerchief either. 
Perhaps the handkerchief wasn’t even mine.  Maybe it belonged to my
mother.  I had thought that finding someone who knew me would give me
great joy and help me discover who I really was, but this man was only
confusing me even more, bringing more questions.

“Where am I from?  Where’s my family?” I asked him.

“Your parents died during the War for Southern
Independence.  You had been staying with your brother before we married.”

“And where does my brother live?”

“Down the river in Surry.”

Surry.  That did not ring a bell with me, but he did
mention a river.  Perhaps that was the body of water from my
remembrance.  I suspected that much might be true, and I had a little
hope.

“Do you also live in Surry?”

“No, ma’am.  I live right here in City Point.  You
might remember that we met after the war was over, and your brother introduced
you to me, as I had joined him on my way back home to City Point,” he
said.  He was smiling, seemingly pleased with what he was saying, or
perhaps he was just happy to see me.  I still didn’t know whether I should
trust him or not.  Since I had no memory of him or our betrothal, I didn’t
know what to think.

“Well, like I said before, I have been residing with a family in
Chester.  I’m just on my way back there now, as a matter of fact. 
You should come down and visit me real soon, Mr. Banks.” 

“Please, call me Jefferson,” he said, smiling. 

I wondered at his name again.  Jefferson Banks.  I
tried to remember that name.  I looked at his face and continued thinking
about his name.  I looked at his bright blue eyes, his long nose, and his
trim beard that went all the way around his chin from ear to ear.  No, I
didn’t remember him.  I wished that the man from my vision had found me,
instead of this man.  He seemed nice enough, but it was the other man I
now longed to find.  Even if the other man wasn’t my betrothed, he had
been someone I cared about deeply, I sensed.  He was someone who meant
enough to me that I remembered him.  Finally, a memory.  I felt a sudden
emptiness that had not been there before, because now I knew there was someone
I cared about and who cared for me, and I wondered what had happened to
him.  Had he been looking for me?  Was he even alive?  Perhaps
he had died in the same accident that caused me to lose my memory.  Or he
could have died in the war.  Then I’d never find him. My mind was going
crazy with the possibilities. 

Perhaps he was in Surry, like my brother.

“Perhaps you could take me to visit my brother in Surry, Mr.
Banks.”  I didn’t feel I knew him well enough to address him by his first
name, despite his request to do so.  “Does he live on the river?”

“Oh, I don’t think that would be possible now.”  He
frowned, looking down at his boots.  “You see, he…well, he took ill and
died himself.  I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this.”

“Oh, no.”  I was deeply disturbed by this.  Even
though I couldn’t remember having a brother, it was still sad to think
about.  “So I have no family left?  What about the home?  Who
inherited it?”

“That would be a cousin – a male cousin, you see.  You
would not have inherited the plantation, being a woman.”

“Plantation?”  I lived on a plantation?

“Oh, yes, a huge plantation.  Your cousin talked about
selling some of the land, though.  Tough times, these are.  I also
own a plantation, which was heavily damaged during the war.  I’ve been
working hard to get it put back together so you would have a nice home once we
were married.  I had lost hope once you went missing, but now that I’ve
found you, we can be married.  The house is almost ready.”  He
twirled his hat around in his hands.