Wellington Cross (Wellington Cross Series) (6 page)

Once in Chester, we stopped at the sheriff’s office and told him
all about Oakworth burning, and Mr. and Mrs. Washington having apparently died
inside.  The sheriff looked in some records and found that the farm and
surrounding land had been left to a nephew.  He said he would contact the
nephew and let him know what had transpired.  Since there was no livable
house remaining, he thought the nephew may not claim the property, but that that
Cora and her girls would have to leave, at any rate.  I went outside to
the carriage and told Cora what the sheriff had told me. 

We left the sheriff’s office and went to the marketplace to wait
for Mrs. Wellington.  We soon saw a well-worn carriage with a big “W” on
the side heading our way.  It was Clarissa and Zeke.  Zeke pulled up
beside our carriage, and I saw Clarissa in the back.  She glanced at Cora
and the girls.  I got off my carriage and greeted her over by her carriage
just as she was descending.  I explained to her what had happened, with
the house burning down and Mr. and Mrs. Washington being consumed by the
fire.  She offered condolences, and then I told her about Cora and her
girls needing a place to live and asked her if they needed help at her plantation.

“Oh my, yes!” Clarissa exclaimed.  “Of course we could use
some help!  Why, this is a prayer answered.  I lost my house slaves
during the war, save for one, and she’s gone now, too.  They all took off
to join the Freedmen’s Bureau in Newport News.  Cora and the girls could
stay above the kitchen house; there is plenty of room there in the two rooms
upstairs where they can live.  They could be our house servants. 
They can live there for free and have shelter and food, and wages when we can
afford it.  Oh, Madeline, I think this is going to work out just fine.”

I walked back over to our carriage and explained the whole thing
to Cora, who was just tickled pink. 

Mrs. Wellington came over to meet Cora and her girls. 
“It’s so nice to meet you ladies.  I’m so sorry you’ve lost your home, but
I’m grateful to have you come help us out on our plantation.  Madeline, we
will have to have a long talk and do some catching up.  Would you like to
ride in my carriage with me?”

“Um, that’s very considerate of you, but I’ll stay with Cora and
the girls for now, if you don’t mind.  They’ve just lost a dear family
member, and the girls are not as adept at driving as I am.”

“Of course, dear.  We’ll have time to talk later.  So
much has happened since you’ve been gone.  I still don’t know how you have
been close by all this time and we didn’t run into each other sooner. 
Ethan will be so thrilled to see you."  She furrowed her brow a
moment.  “Let’s get going.”  She patted me on the arm and then got
back on her carriage. 

We followed Mrs. Wellington’s carriage out on the dirt road,
heading for Charles City County.  I was still nervous about the whole
thing – meeting a husband and all – but I was glad to be finally getting back
on the road to recovering my past.  I practiced saying the name, “Madeline
Wellington” in my head throughout the drive, getting used to that name and
hoping to remember something about “Madeline Wellington’s” past life. 

I began to wonder, if Jefferson had lied to me about my last
name and about where I’d lived, how many other lies had he told me? 
Perhaps he hadn’t given me that ring at all, since it gave me a vision of
another man.  Maybe it was Ethan Wellington, my supposed husband, who had
given it to me.  I began to get an anxious feeling in the pit of my
stomach, wishing I knew the truth, and hoping I would get all of my memory back
soon. 

Charles
City County, Virginia

Hours later, after crossing a long bridge and stopping once to
give the horses a break and a bit of grass to eat, we followed Clarissa past a
battered wooden sign that read, “Wellington Cross”, down a long winding road
through tall trees.  This was where I had lived…with my husband and his
family.  We came around a final curve and I saw a three-story
Georgian-style brick manor surrounded by oak trees, and a glimpse of a river
beyond the trees.  On top of the roof stood two tall chimneys.  There
were also two smaller brick dependencies, one on each side of the manor. 
The white-trimmed windows were in need of paint, but the manor was still
beautiful. 

As we neared the manor, I was amazed at how strange I felt, and
I knew somehow that I had indeed been here before.  I could feel it.
 It all seemed so familiar…the smell in the air, of the pine and cedar trees,
and the big bushes that framed the house.  My heart grew with
excitement.  I couldn’t wait to meet Ethan.  I wondered what he
looked like, what he was like.  Fear struck me for a moment as I wondered:
 had he been good to me?  Had I loved him?  Had he been the man
I had heard in my memory from the past?

There was a turnabout in front of the manor with a long stretch
of grass.  A white gate stood open in front of the house, attached to
brick columns topped with finials and flanked by boxwoods.  A path of
small white stones and broken shells led to the carriage front door.  The
turnabout had a tangent drive leading to the left of the house, which crossed
in front of one of the dependencies to a coach house.  English ivy grew up
on one wall of the coach house, under the shade of some tall full trees. 
As we approached the coach house, I saw that part of the roof of the structure
was gone, and part of back wall was also gone, as you could see straight
through to the back to glimpse tall sunflowers. 

As we came to a halt just outside the coach house, two dogs came
running up to us.  They were tall slightly shaggy dogs, one of which was
grey and the other was beige.  As we all descended the carriages, the dogs
yapped excitedly and greeted Clarissa with doggy kisses.  Once I touched
the dirt with my worn boots, they rushed over to me and began whining.  I
think they remembered me.  I knelt down and patted them, surprised that I
remembered their names.  The grey one was Jack, and the beige one was
Sally.  I hugged them tightly, calling them by their names, and they
licked my face.

I looked at Clarissa, who had been watching, and we smiled at
each other.  She went inside the nearest dependency, coming back out
shortly with a dark-skinned man.  Clarissa introduced him as Jacob “Jake”
Hulett, a brother to Ezekiel “Zeke”, who had driven her to Bellwood.  They
were both ex-slaves who had stayed on as hired field workers on the
plantation.  Both men were thin; Jake was taller and had a couple of
missing teeth, and Zeke had a scar on his left cheek.  They did field work
but also helped out with other chores on the plantation.  Clarissa
explained that they lived in a surviving dependency, called the “Great
Quarters,” away from the manor house.

The two men unloaded the carriages, including all of Cora’s
belongings, which they carried over to the dependency on the other side of the
manor house.  Clarissa explained that that was where the kitchen and
laundry house was.  She said that the coach house had been burned by the Yankees
and repairs had not yet been completed, so we could just leave our carriages
outside.  She then escorted Cora and her girls over to the kitchen house,
and I followed along to have a look inside. 

We walked past the manor house on the way to the kitchen house
on the other side.  There were English boxwoods on both sides of the
door.  Looking up above one of the eaves of the kitchen and laundry house,
I saw a cannon ball stuck in the bricked wall of the structure.  It must
have gotten lodged in there during the war.  I could imagine hearing the
loud impact in my head as well as screams of terror. 

I followed the others and stepped inside the kitchen and laundry
house.  Straight ahead was a hall with a door that led out towards the
river.  There was a staircase beside that on the right.  The room to
the right was the kitchen with a huge fireplace for cooking with pots and pans
hanging nearby over a long table used for food preparation.  I was
relieved that the kitchen was separate from the house, unlike at
Oakworth.  At least the manor here would not burn down due to a fire in
the kitchen.  The laundry area took up other half of the dependency, where
there was another fireplace, big pots, and a washboard for cleaning.

“Madeline, dear, I’ll show you around the plantation in just a
moment,” Clarissa said to me.  “Oh, just wait until Ethan sees you!” 
Then she turned her attention back to show Cora and the girls upstairs to their
new living quarters.

I went outside, going through the river-front door.  Since
I was left alone for the moment, I decided to spend the time exploring the
grounds of the plantation.  I walked over to other side of the kitchen
house and saw a smaller little brick house, looked inside, and saw a well with
a rope.  Peeking into the well, I saw jugs of milk, so this must be the
milk house.  Over near the well was a butter churn.  There must be a
cow here somewhere, if they were getting milk.

Back outside, I spotted a white gazebo across from the kitchen house,
surrounded by tall magnolia and cedar trees and more English boxwoods. 
The gazebo was an octagonal structure, made of bricks at the bottom, wooden
columns painted white with lattice above that, and a dark roof that came to a
point at the top.  Inside was an ornate cast iron bench facing the
water.  There was a beautiful view of the river from here.  The
afternoon sun glistened on the top of the water.  As I walked inside it,
it was as if I walked into my past.  This was the place where Jefferson
had tried to kiss me.  Even though the memory was unpleasant, I was happy
to remember this place where I had lived in the past.

I decided to walk down and take a closer look at the
river.  The gazebo was in a corner of a long rectangular-shaped expanse of
lawn divided up by various boxwoods, adjacent to the manor house and
dependencies.  The river side of the manor house looked identical to the
carriage side, with a door in the middle, two sets of windows on each side,
a line of windows on the second story, and three dormer
windows jetting out of the roof on the third story.  There was a brick
terrace behind the dependency over near the coach house, with a couple more
benches.  In the middle of the rectangle, in a direct line from the manor
house, there was a path that led down a gently sloping hill towards the
river. 

I started walking down the hill, which was flanked on both sides
by bright pink crepe myrtles, into a series of courtyards on both sides of the main
walk.  Each courtyard was outlined with more boxwoods.  A few yellow
lilies and red roses grew here and there, as well as more crepe myrtles in
pinks, whites, and purples.  The terraces were separated by dirt paths
leading to other areas of the plantation, and brick columns with rounded
finials stood guard at the end of each pathway, covered with English ivy. 
A sundial stood in the center of one of the points where four trails met in the
middle.  I walked down further towards the river and looked to the right
where there was a sloping hill that trailed down to the river, and to the left
was a path that led over to a vegetable garden and the sunflowers I had seen
earlier.  

The main path led all the way to the bottom of the hill where
there was a large grassy flat expanse, a small pond, and more grass that led to
the water, which lapped against the rocky shore.  There were tall poles
sticking out where I suddenly remembered there used to be a dock.  It hit
me all at once that I had indeed been here before.  This was the
playground where I’d played hide-and-seek with my two boy-friends as a
child!  The dock – which must have been destroyed during the war – was
where the blonde boy and I had come to by rowboat to see the dark-haired
boy.  I was at the home of the dark-haired, amber-eyed boy. 
Wellsy.  I wondered what had happened to him.  I couldn’t remember
him as a grown-up.  I hoped he was still alive.

I began to get excited.  It felt so wonderful to finally be
able to remember something, to see something that I’d only dreamt about,
wondering if it was a real place.  I had to wonder no more, at least about
this place.  I felt comforted and joyous.  I frolicked up and down
the “Ladies Winter Garden”, now overgrown except for a few roses and lilies,
feeling like a child again.  After dancing back up the hill a little ways,
I rested on a bench by one of the brick columns on the third courtyard down,
which was shaded by fragrant white crepe myrtle trees.  I breathed in the
moist perfumed air, feeling soft breezes creep up from the river against my
face.  Curious bees buzzed by me on their way to the succulent
blooms.  I dabbed sweat off my face with my handkerchief.

While taking in the peaceful surroundings, I heard shuffling
feet in the dry dirt, crunching on occasional rocks.  Someone was coming
in my direction from the path that led towards the vegetable garden.  I
looked over at the same time that a man came around the corner of a tall
boxwood.  I caught my breath.  There before me was the most handsome
man that I could ever remember laying eyes on.  He was tall and had dark
brown hair which lay softly on his forehead and reached his collar in the
back.  He was wearing a brown hat to shade his eyes from the sun.  He
had thick sideburns, a beard, and a mustache.  He wore a dingy white
long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up, brown trousers with braces, and
brown congress boots.  He looked like he had been working out in the
fields, as he was not wearing a waist coat or jacket, so he was probably a
field hand.