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He Chose His Sister-in-law, Now He Begs for My love
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00:00:00In 1861, all of Charleston, from the Battery Wharfs to the Ashley Plantations, knew the legend of my husband, Major
00:00:07Reed Ashford, the second son of the South's largest planter.
00:00:10They said, he was a man undone by his wife. For me, he would forfeit the world.
00:00:14When a planter's son humiliated me at a ball, Ryad disarmed him in a dawn duel, standing unflinningly before loaded
00:00:22barrels to defend my honor.
00:00:25When outlaws ambushed my carriage, Ryad braved deadly swamps alone, returning blood splared at dawn, to banish my fear of
00:00:33the dark.
00:00:38Forced into marriage to clear debts, Ryad bought my freedom with half his lands, then rode through a raging storm
00:00:45to snatch me from the altar.
00:00:49I believed I'd be happy forever, until his brother's bewidowed wife wanted to have a baby with him.
00:00:56Three years into our marriage, Rethi's elder brother Theodore Ashford lay wasting away.
00:01:02And an old Gungle root woman from the Sea Islands told the true mister of the house, Madam Ashford,
00:01:06that only a child born of the family's bloodline through the brother's wife could call him back from the grave.
00:01:11But the brother's wife?
00:01:14Camellia could not bear that child by a dying man.
00:01:17She would have to bear it by right.
00:01:19The matriarch's grip tightened on her othony cane.
00:01:23Send for my second son.
00:01:25A maid ran.
00:01:26The parlor doors closed, closed upon a council of women.
00:01:30In the upstairs sitting room, I laid down my embroidery hoop.
00:01:33The needle had pricked my thumb, and a single bead of blood was rising on the skin.
00:01:38I watched it gather, fall, and stain the white linen of Rhee's monogrammed handkerchief,
00:01:44the one I had been mending for him all wintered her.
00:01:46The maid came rushing upstairs, breathless, one hand clutching the bairnister,
00:01:50as if she might collapse where she stood.
00:01:53Mrs. Eleanor, Madam Ashford has made her decision.
00:01:56She means for Mrs. Camille to bear the family heir by Mr. Raid.
00:02:00The room fell into a dead, suffocating silence.
00:02:03On my lap, the fresh bead of blood finally sank deep into the fabric,
00:02:07completely drowning Rhee's monogrammed initials in crimson.
00:02:11Camille? My sister-in-law?
00:02:14How could they be sending her to my husband's bed?
00:02:19Reed went from the parlor to the family chapel without removing his greatcoat.
00:02:23He laid his revolver at his own breastbone.
00:02:26As God is my witness, I would sooner die than betray Eleanor.
00:02:29The chaplain wept. The servants wept.
00:02:33Madam Ashford did not weep.
00:02:34She had me brought down to the courtyard in nothing but my morning dress, barefoot,
00:02:38and made to stand upon the ice-stiffened gravel.
00:02:40Until my son can saunter his brother's line, he will not move from this place.
00:02:44The first hour, my mind was clear.
00:02:46By the second, the cold had moved into my bones.
00:02:49By the fourth, the frost had split the soles of my feet,
00:02:52and thin red ravens crept across the gravel beneath me.
00:02:54I stood three days, no bread, no water.
00:02:57The January rain came down once and then turned to sleep and froze upon my shoulders.
00:03:01Madam Ashford set a chair beneath the Pianso Colonnade and fought, and watched, and waited.
00:03:05A hundred yards away, in the family chapel,
00:03:07Reed had been locked in without food or water or a fire,
00:03:11forbidden to leave until he consented.
00:03:13His mother visited him each morning with the codicil papers in her hand.
00:03:17He bore the cold and the hunger in silence.
00:03:32He came across the flagstones with a slow, deliberate step,
00:03:35of a man not certain his legs would carry him to where he needed to go.
00:03:37The servants drew back from him as from something holy or contagionous.
00:03:40He stopped before me and knelt on the gravel at my feet.
00:03:43In his right hand was the service revolver.
00:03:45He held it out to me, but first.
00:03:47I have submitted to Mother's arrangement.
00:03:49If you despise me for it, end my life now.
00:03:51Shoot me dead!
00:03:52My lips were too cracked to part.
00:03:54I love you to madness, Eleanor.
00:03:56I cannot bear to see you broken and punished again because of me!
00:03:59The cold iron of the pistol bit into my palm, and the tears finally broke.
00:04:03But I would endure a thousand more lashes, Reed,
00:04:05before I ever watch you beget a child upon our sister-in-law!
00:04:07He squeezed my hand.
00:04:09The hammer fell.
00:04:10Blood flowered through the linen of his shirt.
00:04:12I screamed without sound.
00:04:14He staggered, white as bone, and let me gather him into my arms.
00:04:17I wept.
00:04:18I did not know how long.
00:04:20I kissed his face.
00:04:21Master Reed!
00:04:22Fetch cloth and paragol!
00:04:23I begged the maids for clean cloth, for paragliment, for a surgeon.
00:04:27I swear this on the wound itself.
00:04:29I will lie with her once, for the child, and never look at her again.
00:04:32She is a stage actress from the New Orleans halls.
00:04:35A creature dredged up from the gas-lit gutters,
00:04:37whose virtue he was sold to the highest bidder long before she ever set foot in this house.
00:04:40She is nothing to me.
00:04:42He kissed my forehead,
00:04:44and walked, with the wound still wet,
00:04:46across the courtyard to Camille Ashford's wing.
00:04:49The household by sundown had a new story to whisper.
00:04:52Compared to Eleanor, Reed seemed to favor Camille more.
00:04:55You smell of her tears, right?
00:04:57But tonight you are mine.
00:04:58Then let me forget her.
00:04:59Touch me.
00:05:00Make me believe you are the only one.
00:05:03The maid who carried up the linen said the bedchamber smelled like a hot room.
00:05:06I lay alone in our bed with the deed of separation.
00:05:08I had so readily demanded some hours before.
00:05:11I wept until the ink ran.
00:05:13Sometime past midnight I rose,
00:05:15lit a candle in the sylvine chamber stack my mother had given me on my wedding day.
00:05:18The papers, still wet, I carried pressed against my breast.
00:05:21I stopped at the carved oak door of Camille's sitting room.
00:05:24The corridor behind me was empty of servants.
00:05:27Even the night maid had been dismissed.
00:05:29I raised my hand to knock,
00:05:31and heard, through the door, Camille's laugh.
00:05:33What she said next dragged me straight into hell.
00:05:38You are such a bad boy.
00:05:40Staging a whole shooting with a sack of bullock's blood in front of your own wife,
00:05:44making her weep over your corpse,
00:05:45and then you came straight here to me.
00:05:47She is sentimental.
00:05:49She believes what lives, whatever she has shown.
00:05:51All the obstacles have been cleared away.
00:05:53All theater.
00:05:54Mother and I arranged it months ago.
00:05:56The gongo woman was paid in gold the night before.
00:05:59The prophecy was written for her to recite.
00:06:01The cold, the chapel, the wound, every thread of it sown for you.
00:06:05A whole year of slipping into your rooms by the backstair.
00:06:09And now I am to be the lady of a wing.
00:06:11I would marry you twice over for it.
00:06:14Take what you want and ask for nothing more.
00:06:16Most of all, Eleanor is never to know.
00:06:18If she so much has suspected the truth, I will shoot you dead where you stand.
00:06:22The candle in my hand trembled.
00:06:24The light walked along the carved oak panels and the gild of the picture frames and would not be still.
00:06:30Wright, who for my sake has been sleeping with Kamel for a whole year?
00:06:33Was every single bit of it just a lie?
00:06:35I took three steps backward, away from the door.
00:06:38On the fourth step, the floor was no longer there.
00:06:40I fell on the fourth step, hit the polished heart pine boards on my ruined feet and crumpled.
00:06:44The candlestick rolled away from me.
00:06:46The flame goodled, caught upon my sleeve, smothered against the wool of my dress as I crumpled.
00:06:50I drifted for three days between sleeping and waking, unable to close the distance.
00:06:54In that place, Camille knelt beside the bed and held Madam Ashford's hand.
00:06:57I heard them as a swimmer hears voices above the water.
00:06:59She is with child, Mother Ashford.
00:07:01The root woman was certain.
00:07:03Only the child I bear can save Theodore.
00:07:06If Eleanor's child is born first, the cure is broken.
00:07:09My poor Theodore will die.
00:07:12Madam Ashford's cane struck the floor.
00:07:14Send her to a physician.
00:07:17I will not allow the child in her womb to affect my Theodore's destiny.
00:07:22Mother, stop!
00:07:24Those doctors are men.
00:07:26I will not have a man's hands upon her body.
00:07:27Not for any reason.
00:07:29A simple drape is enough to rid her of the child.
00:07:31I will give it to her myself.
00:07:38He came to the bedside.
00:07:40I felt his weight upon the mattress, the familiar dip of it.
00:07:43He lifted my head with a tenderness I remembered from a thousand mornings,
00:07:46and held a small porcelain cup to my lips.
00:07:49I fought with everything in me to open my eyes,
00:07:51to scream, to beg him to spare my child,
00:07:53only to find, with a kerching despair, that it was all in vain.
00:07:58The taste was bitter.
00:08:00Cloves.
00:08:01Penny hairy.
00:08:02The faint, hateful sweetness of Paragassic to mask the rest.
00:08:05My body knew the compound before my mind could name it.
00:08:08My fingers tried to close around his wrist.
00:08:10They were too weak.
00:08:12I felt the warmth of the drug spread out from my stomach into the cold parts of me.
00:08:15I felt the small, intricate thing inside me go quiet, then go still, then go away.
00:08:19Sleep now, Eleanor.
00:08:20Pretend this child never came.
00:08:23He laid my head back upon the pillow.
00:08:25He smoothed my hair.
00:08:26When I woke fully three mornings later, the chamber was empty.
00:08:29Brooke sat weeping at the foot of the bed.
00:08:31Great, the maid said.
00:08:32Had taken Madame Bowman down to New Orleans on the noon train to celebrate the coming air,
00:08:35and to consult a city physician about Camille's own condition.
00:08:38I looked at the wash base.
00:08:39I washed my face in the cold basin.
00:08:42I dressed in black.
00:08:43I tied my hair back with a strip of morning croup.
00:08:46Then I walked the length of the corridor to Madame Ashford's morning room,
00:08:49and asked with great courtesy for the deed of separation.
00:08:53I am more than willing to step aside for Camille and Wreath.
00:08:57I beg you, Madame, help me and make him sign the deed of separation.
00:09:02There is a steamer bound for Europe next month.
00:09:05You will take it, and you will never set foot before my son again as long as you breathe,
00:09:09to ensure there are no complications.
00:09:12Brack is to know absolutely nothing of this before you sail.
00:09:16You have my deepest gratitude, Madame, for finally granting my request.
00:09:23Read and Camille returned at dusk a fortnight later.
00:09:25The carriage rolled through the great gates of Ashford Manor in the failing light,
00:09:28and the household lined up along the Live Oak Drive as for any homecoming.
00:09:32Camille descended first, gloved and radiant.
00:09:34Read followed.
00:09:35At her throat beneath the high lace collar was a livid mark she had not been able to powder away.
00:09:39The fortnight in New Orleans had left its mark on them both.
00:09:42Late suppers, late mornings, the langui of those city rooms still clinging to their clothes.
00:09:50I stood waiting beneath the colonid piazza in my morning gown,
00:09:54Spanish moss stirring in the live oaks above me.
00:09:57The servants watched without seeming to.
00:09:59Read crossed the gravel and would have taken my hands.
00:10:02I did not give them.
00:10:03He pretended not to notice and produced instead, from the inner pocket of his great coat,
00:10:08a small dark glass bottle.
00:10:09A European tonic.
00:10:11Every fashionable lady in New Orleans is taking it.
00:10:13It restores the constitution after illness.
00:10:16Drink it for me.
00:10:17I accepted the bottle.
00:10:19The glass was warm from his body.
00:10:22I uncarked it.
00:10:24The smell rose.
00:10:25Wine and something darker beneath the wine.
00:10:27My Paris training spoke before my tongue could.
00:10:30Herba.
00:10:30Sustained doses of Herba of Rye.
00:10:32Masked in chlora and honeysuckle.
00:10:34A woman fed this compound through a winter would bleed quietly for the rest of her life.
00:10:39Not killed.
00:10:39Made permanently, invisibly ill.
00:10:42Made unfit to be touched by any man.
00:10:44Made nothing.
00:10:45Camille came up the steps in a hand at Reed's elbow.
00:10:47All the finest ladies in New Orleans are taking it, dear.
00:10:50Finish every drop.
00:10:51Do not be ungrateful.
00:10:53Not killed.
00:10:54Made permanently, invisibly ill.
00:10:56Right.
00:10:56This medicine.
00:10:57Must I drink it?
00:10:58He had already slaughtered my child with his own hands,
00:11:01severing every shred of love I once held for him.
00:11:04Was he truly intent on driving me into an early grave now?
00:11:07I looked at my husband.
00:11:08He met my gaze without lowering his own.
00:11:11There was a flicker behind his eyes.
00:11:14A thing he did not allow to surface.
00:11:16I raised the bottle.
00:11:17I drank it.
00:11:19I drank every drop.
00:11:20Slowly.
00:11:21While they watched me.
00:11:22While the cold January wind moved the dead Magnalia leaves across the Piansa boards.
00:11:26I lowered the empty bottle and set it on the Piazza rail between us.
00:11:30I know what this is.
00:11:32And I know what it does.
00:11:34We are done.
00:11:35Ride.
00:11:39Before I blacked out, I vaguely saw Reed panic.
00:11:43What do you mean, done?
00:11:46Before the darkness swallowed me whole,
00:11:48I learned the horrific truth from their whispers.
00:11:53They had traveled to New Orleans to consult a voodoo queen.
00:11:56The witch told them that if they used my bed, this our marriage bed, for seven secutive nights,
00:12:02the soul of my slaughtered child would be summoned back, reborn into Camille's womb.
00:12:07They took my room.
00:12:09They desecrated my bed.
00:12:12You are a cruel man, right?
00:12:14That tincture, taken for weeks, will ensure she bleeds dry from the inside out.
00:12:19Her body will wither,
00:12:20and no man will ever be able to lay a finger on her again.
00:12:24Poor, wretched Eleanor.
00:12:27Eleanor belongs to me.
00:12:29Even if I never touch her again,
00:12:31I would rather see her rot than let another man possess her.
00:12:35In my half-conscious state,
00:12:38hatred burned so hot
00:12:40that blood seeped from the cracked corner of my mouth.
00:12:45The next morning,
00:12:47not long after Reed and Camille departed,
00:12:49I woke.
00:12:50From my bed,
00:12:51I heard the maids quarreling in the courtyard below my window.
00:12:53She gave up her husband easy enough?
00:12:55Now she wants the south wing on top of that?
00:12:57Some women cannot bear to be parted from a comfort.
00:12:59You watch your filthy tongue.
00:13:01My mistress has bled in this house every day since she crossed its threshold.
00:13:05She has paid for every stone of this place.
00:13:08The voices rose.
00:13:10There was a slap, a scream.
00:13:12Brooke, when she came up the stairs ten minutes later,
00:13:14had a red wheel across her cheek and a furious set to her mouth.
00:13:17She knelt at the foot of my bed.
00:13:19Miss Eleanor, I am going to the Elder Master.
00:13:21Mr. Theodore was always kind to you.
00:13:23He will hear me.
00:13:24Brooke, no!
00:13:25You are a free woman,
00:13:26but free papers do not stop a hand that means to fall.
00:13:28Brooke had her freedom papers.
00:13:29My mother had filed them with the city register the year Brooke turned twelve.
00:13:33It would not matter in this house.
00:13:34But Brooke was already gone.
00:13:36What happened by the lily pond I learned in pieces from the running of feet and the shrieking of women.
00:13:40Theodore was killed in the lake.
00:13:43Brooke had found Theodore in his bath chair on the south's Vienna,
00:13:47taking the weak winter sun between the palmetto and the camellia head.
00:13:50She had knelt and began to speak.
00:13:53Camille had come down the terrace steps.
00:13:56Words had passed.
00:13:58Brooke had risen.
00:13:59Camille had pushed.
00:14:01Brooke had caught at Theodore's chair to keep her balance,
00:14:03and the chair had tilted,
00:14:05and the dying man had gone into the cold green water.
00:14:08They pulled him out.
00:14:10He was breathing, barely.
00:14:13He had not spoken.
00:14:15The estate manager came to my door with two armed grooms' behind him.
00:14:19Madam, your maid is in irons.
00:14:20You are summoned to the great hall.
00:14:24I rose.
00:14:25I bound up my hair.
00:14:30I walked the long corridor without permitting myself to limp.
00:14:35I entered the great hall.
00:14:37The doorway was thick with physicians.
00:14:41Madam Ashford sat in the high chair before the hearth, her cane across her knees.
00:14:45Camille stood weeping against Rybe's shoulder,
00:14:47and his arm was around her waist as a husband's arm is around a wife.
00:14:50He stood with his arm around Camille and did not move.
00:14:53Madam Ashford lifted her cane and pointed.
00:14:56Seize the harlot from Charleston.
00:15:00She has tried to murder my eldest son.
00:15:04Two enormous housewomen seized my arms and forced me down.
00:15:08My ruined feet struck the marble.
00:15:10The skin Madam Ashford herself had split open three weeks before opened again through the wool of my stockings,
00:15:15and warm red blood ran across the white stone in two long ribbons.
00:15:21Reed moved at last.
00:15:23He crossed the hall in three strides and kicked the women aside.
00:15:27Get the hell away from her!
00:15:29No one, there's no, not a single soul, lays a fender on her!
00:15:34He bent and lifted me in his arms.
00:15:36For one suspended moment, my cheek was against the rough wool of his coat, and I could feel his heart
00:15:41fammering.
00:15:42Then Camille made a small herded sound behind him.
00:15:45Wright set me down upon a bench.
00:15:46He turned.
00:15:47He went to Camille and gathered her against him.
00:15:49Eleanor, you must apologize to my sister-in-law.
00:15:52The matter of the maid will be investigated afterwards.
00:15:54First, the apology.
00:15:55I pressed my bleeding wom flat upon the bench to steady myself.
00:15:59Brooke is a child.
00:16:00She has not the wickedness in her to push a dying man into water.
00:16:03Investigate first.
00:16:05Then I will speak whatever words are owed.
00:16:07Reed's jaw tightened.
00:16:08The apology first.
00:16:09No.
00:16:10A long silence.
00:16:12Madam Ashford's cane tapped the marble once.
00:16:14Then you will be confined to the penitence chamber until you find your tongue.
00:16:17The penitence chamber was where the household sent disobedient servants to be broken.
00:16:20It had a stone floor.
00:16:22No fire.
00:16:22One window so high a tall man could not reach it.
00:16:24I bent and unfastened my shoes.
00:16:26I stepped out of them.
00:16:26I pushed to my feet and walked across the great hall of Ashford Manor in my bare bleeding feet.
00:16:30Past my husband.
00:16:31Past the women.
00:16:32Past the doctors.
00:16:33Out the side door and across the snowy yard toward the brick outbuildings beyond the kitchen
00:16:36house.
00:16:37I left a line of small red prints behind me in the white.
00:16:40I walked the whole way to the penitence chamber on my own.
00:16:43The smell of pine smoke from the kitchen house followed me across the yard.
00:16:47And somewhere in a wall a mouse scratched and I let those small things mark the distance.
00:16:50The bolt slid shut behind me.
00:16:52An hour later it slid open again.
00:16:53Camille stood in the doorway in fresh silk and silver fox with my river pearl strand around
00:16:57her throat.
00:16:58You are finally at my mercy, Eleanor.
00:17:00Just watch how I break you.
00:17:05And from the New Orleans papers who would not stop printing.
00:17:13I set it down here as it was told to me, for it was set in motion by my own
00:17:18hand.
00:17:18Every magnolia along the drive was wound with white silk.
00:17:22A small chamber orchestra hired up from Vanipunen the Priod began the noon, at noon.
00:17:29Half the planter families between Savannah and Wellington had come, to see the rare thing.
00:17:36A second son taking up his dying brother's wife to continue a sacred southern line.
00:17:44Camille descended the great staircase, in the white lace I had stitched, and the ball whom
00:17:51drew in its breath as one body.
00:17:53A tenor Camille had retained from New Orleans began the song.
00:17:56Eleanor she had commissioned.
00:17:58Averse, Eleanor for her hardships.
00:18:00Averse for Reet's devotion.
00:18:01Averse for the blessed child that would save Theodore Ashward from the grave.
00:18:05The Charleston ladies dabbed their eyes.
00:18:07Camille slipped her arm through Reet's, and tugged him toward the corridor.
00:18:16My stays are too tight.
00:18:19Help me, just for a moment.
00:18:22In her wing she pressed him against the silk wall, and reached for his belt.
00:18:27Reet's gaze fell upon the gown.
00:18:30White, against her shoulders.
00:18:32White, the cut of the collar.
00:18:34White, the long trail across the park.
00:18:37A wedding dress.
00:18:38Almost his wedding dress.
00:18:40Almost the dress I had worn three Aprils ago, when he had stood before God and the general,
00:18:45and swore that Rune no other woman would ever pass through the gate of his life.
00:18:50Something cold turned in his stomach.
00:18:53A footman pounded on the door.
00:18:54Master Reet!
00:18:55Madam Eleanor is gone from the cottage!
00:18:57The watchgutty was sent away by her own order!
00:18:59And there is a box, sir!
00:19:01A locked box from Madam Eleanor!
00:19:03The guests have broken it open!
00:19:04Camille's hand froze upon his belt.
00:19:06Raet took the corridor at a run.
00:19:08The ballroom had gone quiet in a way ballrooms never go quiet.
00:19:10A circle had formed around the long supper table.
00:19:12The lid of the dispatch box lay flung back.
00:19:14Across the white damash, fanned out like a winning hand of cards, lay a packet of letters
00:19:18in a woman's careless hand.
00:19:19A stack of jeweler's receipts paid by men who were not reading.
00:19:22And a sheath of pages torn from hotel registers, names signed in unsteady ink that were not
00:19:27her own.
00:19:28Reginald Thornton, whose father sat now on the Confederate War Department, picked up one
00:19:31of the letters between two gloved fingers and read it aloud toward the lamps.
00:19:35My dearest Camille.
00:19:38The letter the Lutzen read was addressed to Camille Beaumont, care of the St. Charles Hotel, New
00:19:43Orleans, signed by a man with a famous name in the Mississippi cotton trade.
00:19:48It described, in unfortunate detail,
00:19:51Eleanor what he intended to do to her the following Tuesday, and what he hoped she would do to
00:19:55him in return.
00:19:56Wright took the letter without speaking.
00:19:59He turned to the next, and the next, and the next.
00:20:04There were perhaps forty of them.
00:20:06Different men.
00:20:07Different rooms.
00:20:08The most recent dated to the previous month.
00:20:10There were hotel registers.
00:20:12Mobile.
00:20:13Memphis.
00:20:13New Orleans.
00:20:14Signed in names that were not hers.
00:20:16There were receipts from jewelers for pieces.
00:20:18Had never shown him.
00:20:20Wright drew his sidearm, walking back through the corridor.
00:20:24He kicked open the door of her wing.
00:20:28He pressed the muzzle of the revolver to her forehead.
00:20:31You swore to me I was the first.
00:20:34You won at Prisadere.
00:20:36They forced me.
00:20:37They forced me, Wright.
00:20:39They forced you to sign your hotel register?
00:20:42They forced you to take the bracelets?
00:20:46I was a stage actress.
00:20:48You knew what I was.
00:20:50You knew you took me anyway!
00:20:53He fired past her ear.
00:20:55The bullet tore through the lope and buried in the bedpost.
00:21:00Her gay Camille screamed and clapped her hand to the side of her head.
00:21:04Blood ran between her fingers and down the white lace bodice.
00:21:07When I have found my wife, I will come back here and settle what is owed.
00:21:11Your Eleanor does not want you!
00:21:13She said you were soiled!
00:21:15She said you made her sick!
00:21:16She said it to me herself!
00:21:18Ray fired into the wall behind her and walked out.
00:21:21Madam Ashford stood at the head of the stairs with a folded paper.
00:21:25She is gone.
00:21:27She sailed on the morning package out of Charleston Harbor, bound for Havana.
00:21:32She begged me, on her ruined knees, to obtain your signature on this.
00:21:38Three weeks ago you signed it, Wright.
00:21:41You signed without reading.
00:21:42I knew you would.
00:21:45The deed of separation.
00:21:47His own hand at the bottom of it.
00:21:51The notary's red wax.
00:21:54The witness's marks.
00:21:56He did not strike his mother.
00:21:58He did not speak.
00:22:00He walked down the great staircase, past the silent guests.
00:22:03He walked through the foyer, where the chandelier still blazed.
00:22:06He walked between the lines of stunned house servants.
00:22:09And out into the gravel drive, where the carriages waited.
00:22:12He did not stop at his horse.
00:22:14He did not stop at the gate.
00:22:17He walked out of Ashford Manor.
00:22:19And the gate stayed open behind him.
00:22:24Three days.
00:22:26Each afternoon I stood for an hour.
00:22:29At the upper window, just inside the heavy drape.
00:22:33Watching the roof lines opposite.
00:22:36I marked the alley between two chimneys.
00:22:40I marked the wash on a balcony four houses down, where a Creole woman beat her sheets at half-past
00:22:45three each day.
00:22:47I marked the shadow of a tall iron lamp standard, whose curve I could use to navigate by, once I
00:22:53was below.
00:22:55I memorized the back stair from the kitchen to the slop yard.
00:23:00I counted the men.
00:23:06I timed the changing of the watch.
00:23:10Reed kept his word with effort.
00:23:11He did not touch me.
00:23:13He did not lift his voice.
00:23:14He bowed to me in passing.
00:23:16He sent up small offerings, a posy of hot tart violets, a string of New Orleans candies and wax paper,
00:23:22a French novel he had not himself read.
00:23:24I accepted them with the courtesy of a woman receiving condolence cards from a distant relation.
00:23:30He watched me with the desperation of a man who has begun to suspect his own house is on fire.
00:23:36Eleanor!
00:23:39On the third afternoon, he came up the back stair on stockinged feet.
00:23:43What are you looking at, Eleanor?
00:23:45I did not turn from the drape.
00:23:47Children.
00:23:47A boy and a girl.
00:23:49On the corner.
00:23:49They have set off three paper firecrackers since noon.
00:23:52I find I like the sound.
00:23:53It is almost spring.
00:23:54A pause.
00:23:56Well, perhaps you mistake gunfire for firecrackers.
00:23:58The war is closer than the ladies' papers say.
00:24:00Tell me, Eleanor.
00:24:01Did you mean firecrackers or did you mean a signal?
00:24:03I turned at last.
00:24:05A signal to whom, Rary?
00:24:08To Owen Hartfield.
00:24:09The name in his mouth.
00:24:11Spoken plain.
00:24:12He had known it for days then.
00:24:15His informants reached further than I had supposed.
00:24:19He crossed the room in two strides and took me by the throat and bore me back against the
00:24:24cold plain.
00:24:25Tell me you were not alone with him on that packet.
00:24:28Tell me he did not touch you.
00:24:31The pressure of his thumbs was steady, almost considered.
00:24:34My vision went red at the edges.
00:24:37I had no breath to deny anything with.
00:24:41I stopped fighting.
00:24:43I closed my eyes.
00:24:45If you hate me this much, kill me.
00:24:48I would rather die in this room than be carried back to Ashford Manor alive.
00:24:53His grip slackened.
00:25:03I slid down the wall to my knees.
00:25:07Eleanor.
00:25:08God forgive me.
00:25:10I lifted my face to his.
00:25:12Take me back to Charleston, Rary.
00:25:14I am too weary to fight you anymore.
00:25:18Take me home.
00:25:20He went very still.
00:25:22Then he lit up the way a boy lights up.
00:25:25You mean that?
00:25:27Eleanor, you mean it?
00:25:29I let my hand find his sleeve, briefly, as one bestows a final beniction.
00:25:34I am tired of being afraid of you.
00:25:37I am tired of being awake in this house.
00:25:40Take me back.
00:25:42Let me sit in the orinarium again.
00:25:44Let me see the magnolians bloom.
00:25:46He kissed the marks his own thumbs had made upon my throat.
00:25:49He kissed my hands.
00:25:51He apologized for things he did not yet have the vocabulary to apologize for.
00:25:55And I let him.
00:25:56Because his speech was buying me hours.
00:25:58We can leave by morning.
00:26:00I will send the trunks ahead by rail.
00:26:04I will ride before the carriage myself.
00:26:07No one will come within a hundred yards of you the whole road home.
00:26:10Right.
00:26:14I will try.
00:26:16There is one matter.
00:26:19Owen Hartfield is in this city.
00:26:23He sent a card to the front door yesterday.
00:26:26The footman returned it.
00:26:29He will try again.
00:26:33If we leave tomorrow with him still in New Orleans.
00:26:38I will spend the rest of my marriage.
00:26:41Waiting for the day you ride out to settle it.
00:26:45I cannot live that way.
00:26:50His jaw set.
00:26:52The color came back into his face all at once.
00:26:55Where is he?
00:26:59My maid heard from the laundress.
00:27:03That he keeps rooms above a drugger's shop on Chartay Street.
00:27:08I do not know the number.
00:27:16The Drug Fist.
00:27:23The Drug Fist is a Mr. Devereux.
00:27:25I had invented the name.
00:27:27I had invented the street.
00:27:28I knew only that he would believe me.
00:27:29Because I had spoken the lie with the small reluctant catch of a woman betraying a man for the sake
00:27:33of a husband she had at last decided to keep.
00:27:36Reed drew up to his full height.
00:27:37The boy was gone from his face.
00:27:39The officer had returned.
00:27:41Stay in this room.
00:27:42Bolt the door behind me.
00:27:43I will be back before dark.
00:27:45He kissed the inside of my wrist.
00:27:48Chastedly as a knight might.
00:27:49And went down the stair calling for his horse and his men.
00:27:53The townhouse emptied like a glass tipped over.
00:27:55I stood at the window until the last hoofbeat had turned the corner of Royal Street.
00:27:59Then I pulled on my traveling coat.
00:28:01Picked up the small bundle I had been for three days and went down the back stair to the slop
00:28:04yard.
00:28:04The kitchen boy looked up.
00:28:06I pressed a silver dollar into his hand and stepped past him into the alley.
00:28:09The fog had not lifted all day.
00:28:11I kept to the lee of the buildings.
00:28:14I counted intersections by the tall iron lamp standards.
00:28:17I doubled twice and doubled again.
00:28:19A street that smelled of fish gave on to a street that smelled of horses gave on to a street
00:28:23that smelled of nothing but fog and old brick.
00:28:25Once I heard a clatter of hoofs at the head of a lane and pressed myself into a doorway with
00:28:30my hands flat against the brick.
00:28:32The riders went past at a gallop.
00:28:35Not Ray.
00:28:36Not yet.
00:28:41I knew I should be praying.
00:28:44I found I was counting instead.
00:28:47Counting the paces, counting the corners.
00:28:51Counting the seconds between my own breaths to keep them steady.
00:28:56The French Quarter folded around me, like a maze drawn by a child.
00:29:02Galleries leaned out overhead.
00:29:05Worned iron cast complicated shadows.
00:29:08A drunk corail sang somewhere a half block away.
00:29:11A song trailing off into laughter and beginning again.
00:29:14I turned a corner and did not know the corner.
00:29:17I turned another and did not know that one either.
00:29:20The lamp standard I had been navigating by was gone.
00:29:24The wash on the balcony was gone.
00:29:26I could no longer hear hooves in any direction.
00:29:29I had escaped the townhouse.
00:29:32I was now entirely lost.
00:29:36A small panic began at the base of my throat and worked upward.
00:29:44I made myself stop at the next intersection.
00:29:49I set one gloved hand against the wall.
00:29:54I breathed three breaths.
00:29:56Behind me, in the close-walled alley I had just come out of, came a sound.
00:30:01Something between a cough and a long exhalation.
00:30:04Not the sound of a pursuer.
00:30:07Pursuers do not announce themselves with their lungs.
00:30:09I turned slowly.
00:30:11Owen Hartheel stood twelve feet behind me, one shoulder braced against the brick.
00:30:14His left arm hung at an angle.
00:30:16A bandage of his own neck cough had been wrapped around the upper sleeve.
00:30:18And blood had soaked it from black to red and from red to black again.
00:30:20His face was the color of unquaged linen at me.
00:30:22His mouth moved.
00:30:23He tried for a smile and reached only the first part of one.
00:30:25I have found you at last.
00:30:29I went to him without thought.
00:30:31My hands were on the bandage.
00:30:35Before I remembered I'd been afraid of strangers in alleys for a week.
00:30:57He took my elbow with his good hand and guided me, walking unsteadily, deeper into the warren.
00:31:05He knew the lanes.
00:31:07He had grown up in these lanes.
00:31:10At each turn he chose the narrower of the two.
00:31:13You came after me.
00:31:15I made inquiries when they two took you from the packet.
00:31:18I learned what kind of man, your kind of man, your husband had become.
00:31:22I judged you would want assistance.
00:31:24I did not ask leave to investigate your private affairs.
00:31:28If that offends you, you may reproach me when we are out of the city.
00:31:35I am not offended.
00:31:37Then save your breath for the walking.
00:31:43A mile out past the last of the lamplit streets, where the brick gave way to weeds and a few
00:31:49burnt cottages stood derelict on the river road.
00:31:51He stopped at a doorless cabin and let himself fall against its inner wall.
00:31:58The cabin was bare.
00:32:00A rotted pallet, a cold hearth.
00:32:03A tin cup.
00:32:04A smell of mice.
00:32:07I lit a small fire with the flint Owen carried in his coat.
00:32:11I unwrapped the bandage.
00:32:14The pistol bell had passed clean through the meat of the upper arm.
00:32:18The bleeding had slowed because the man had run out of blood to give.
00:32:23He was beginning to shake with fever.
00:32:28I cleaned the wound with the water in the tin cup and the spirits in his flask.
00:32:34I rebound it with strips torn from the lining of my petticoat.
00:32:39Owen endured the work without sound, watching the fire.
00:32:43Outside, somewhere far off across the river, a barge horn lowed twice and was answered.
00:32:48The cold came down hard with the dark.
00:32:50I gave him my traveling coat.
00:32:51He refused it.
00:32:53I told him not to be foolish.
00:32:54He accepted.
00:32:55I sat against the wall beside him, the coat spread across us both.
00:32:58His temperature came through the thin lawn of my dress like the heat from a stove.
00:33:02My own body, half starved and frozen for three days, drank it greatly.
00:33:07I had not been so close to another body since the night rake had stood up from my bed and
00:33:11dressed in front of me while Camille watched.
00:33:16I braced for the old nausea.
00:33:18None came.
00:33:19The man beside me was running a clean fever.
00:33:22The kind of fever the body uses to keep itself alive.
00:33:26And his shoulder was steady.
00:33:31I did not mean to sleep.
00:33:33I slept.
00:33:35It was the first true sleep I had known since the cold gravel of the Ashford courtyard.
00:33:41I slept without dreaming.
00:33:44I came up out of it slowly, into thin gray light at the doorless threshold.
00:33:49The coat was tucked under my chin.
00:33:51The shoulder I had slept against was gone.
00:33:54I sat up.
00:33:55The fire was a circle of cold ash.
00:33:57The cabin was empty, though.
00:33:59He had thought better of it, in the end.
00:34:01He had perhaps left for a town with proper physicians, and that was sensible, and I had
00:34:06no right whatever to feel the small private drop in my chest.
00:34:09I had been alone before.
00:34:10I would be alone again.
00:34:12I had my coat.
00:34:13I had my purse, sewn into the hem.
00:34:16I had the deed of separation buttoned at my breast.
00:34:18I stood.
00:34:19I straightened my hair.
00:34:21I walked to the cold fire and addressed it the way a woman addresses a grave.
00:34:25Owen Hartfield.
00:34:26Goodbye.
00:34:27I turned to go.
00:34:29He was standing in the doorway with a hair across his good arm.
00:34:33He had cleaned it already at some pond I could not see, and his shirt sleeves were red to the
00:34:38elbows, and his face under the fever clutch was breaking into something embarrassed and pleased.
00:34:45I woke hungry.
00:34:46There was a snare at the edge of the cane break.
00:34:51I did not wish to wake you.
00:34:57I thought...
00:34:58I know what you thought.
00:34:59A small silence.
00:35:01He looked away first.
00:35:03I wanted to be quick about it.
00:35:04I knew you would have woken thinking the worst, and I would have deserved it for leaving without
00:35:07a word.
00:35:08What he did not say, I knew because I have been watching over you since before you could lift
00:35:13your head from a pillow.
00:35:14He crouched at the hearth and laid the hair on a flat stone.
00:35:17He looked entirely competent at the work.
00:35:19His good hand made up for the other.
00:35:21I went out to the well behind the cabin and brought water.
00:35:24We built up the fire.
00:35:25He spitted the loins on a stripped sapling.
00:35:29He set the bones to boil in a chipped earthen pot he found in the kitchen corner with a colony
00:35:34of wood lights in it.
00:35:36Half an hour later, we were eating roasted hair with our fingers, and drinking the broth
00:35:40from the same tin cup passed between us.
00:35:44Mobile.
00:35:45You should not stay in Louisiana.
00:35:46The Hartwells keep rooms in Mobile and a few discreet friends.
00:35:48We can be there in three days by the coast road.
00:35:50We.
00:35:51If you'll accept the company.
00:35:52Down the cup.
00:35:52I looked at him over the small fire.
00:35:54I will accept the company.
00:35:55His face changed in a way I could not name and did not wish to study yet.
00:35:58Then we should be moving before...
00:36:03We traveled the coast road in a hired buckford, with two of Owen's men riding ahead and two
00:36:07behind, all of them in dark, unmarked coats.
00:36:10The road scurred the swamps, where the live oaks dropped their long beards of mosh, and
00:36:15the eaglins stood like white stitchwork in the green.
00:36:20By the second night, we had crossed into Mississippi.
00:36:23By the fourth, we were in Mambil, taking rooms above a respectable boarding house off
00:36:28Government Street, with the gulf wind smelling of salt at the windows.
00:36:33New Year's Eve found us at a small private table in the front parlor of the house, a steaming
00:36:37earthen pot of chicken and red pepper between us, a jambalaya the land 80 had made up special.
00:36:42Owen's color had come back.
00:36:43His arm was in a clean sling.
00:36:46This is the best New Year's supper I can remember.
00:36:48He spoke of his family then, slowly, without bitterness.
00:36:53His mother, the first wife.
00:36:56His father, who had taken a stage actress as his mistress, and then, after his wife's
00:37:01death, raised the mother of his second household.
00:37:05Owen had been the unwanted son who would not stop being clever.
00:37:09However, Paris had been a place to study, and also a place to be out of the house.
00:37:15Every Christmas, every New Year, I have thought, what would it be if my mother were still living?
00:37:22My mother died when I was three.
00:37:25I do not remember her face.
00:37:28But I think a mother wishes her child to be happy.
00:37:34If she could see you now, she would be glad of you.
00:37:38He set down his spoon.
00:37:40Your mother said exactly that to me once.
00:37:47I looked up.
00:37:49The room rearranged itself by a small degree.
00:37:52Our families did business together, before you were born.
00:37:55My mother kept the apathyry trade in New Orleans, and yours kept the physician's compound in Charleston.
00:38:01We were one of her largest accounts.
00:38:04When you were a few weeks old, my mother brought me to Charleston to visit your house.
00:38:08I could not speak.
00:38:11Owen reached into the frest of his coat with his good hand, and brought out a small object on a
00:38:16fine gold chain.
00:38:18A cameo.
00:38:20Pale shell, on a coral ground, set in a worked gold frame.
00:38:25The size of a thumbprint.
00:38:27The clasp was a child's clasp.
00:38:30He laid it in my palm.
00:38:35I gave you this when you were one month old.
00:38:39I put it around your neck myself.
00:38:41I asked my mother whether I might have a little sister, and she said you were not mine to have,
00:38:47but that I might still wish good things upon you.
00:38:50I wished them.
00:38:53I have been wishing them for you ever since.
00:38:59I closed my hand around the cameo.
00:39:01The metal was warmer than metal should have been.
00:39:04I could not look at him.
00:39:08I have a jade locket from my infancy.
00:39:10My father said an old friend of my mother's gave it to me.
00:39:14He never named the friend.
00:39:15I have kept it in a bank vault in Charleston for nine years.
00:39:19It was meant for you.
00:39:21So is this.
00:39:25Outside, the bells of the Catholic Church began the midnight preel.
00:39:28Across the harbor, somewhere out on the water, a steam whistle answered.
00:39:35The new year was coming in over Mobile Bay with the smell of brine and tar and orange peel.
00:39:44Word had reached us that afternoon by a Hartwell courier.
00:39:48Ryde Ashford had threatened the family.
00:39:52He had said publicly in a New Orleans drawing room that he would put a ball into Owen Hartwell on
00:39:59site.
00:40:00The Hartwells of Mobile and the Hartwells of New Orleans
00:40:05had received the threat with the calm of merchants who had outlasted three generations of louder men.
00:40:14Owen, at the table, was unconcerned.
00:40:18He has made enemies in too many of the military families.
00:40:24His grandfather will not protect him much longer.
00:40:28The old general is a careful officer, and Ryde has stopped, being careful.
00:40:33The Hartwells are not afraid of the Ashfields.
00:40:37He looked at me directly across the lamp.
00:40:41With me here, Eleanor, whatever meth he employs, I will not allow him to take you.
00:40:50My heartbeat was loud in my own ears.
00:40:54I did not trust my voice.
00:40:56I looked instead at the cameo in my palm, a pounding at the front door of the house.
00:41:01The landlady's voice raised in startled protest.
00:41:04A boy's voice, young, breathless urgent, overcoming her.
00:41:06Owen rose.
00:41:07I rose with him.
00:41:08The boy was a telegraph runner from the Confederate command office.
00:41:11He had pelted three blocks in the dark with the wire still warm in his ca-
00:41:14Mr. Hartwells, sir, word from up the river.
00:41:17The Yankees have moved on the Vicksburg line.
00:41:20Heavy engagement at Champions Hill.
00:41:22Field insurgents are wanted by every hospital between here and Jackson.
00:41:27The mobile draft leaves on the morning train.
00:41:29Owen took the telegram.
00:41:31He read it once.
00:41:32He folded it in half with his good hand.
00:41:35He looked across the table at me.
00:41:37The war they had been speaking of as a thing happening elsewhere
00:41:40had crossed the room and laid its hand upon the cloth between us.
00:41:44I closed my fingers around the cameo until the gold edge bit my palm.
00:41:55Outside, the church bells had not finished ringing in the new year.
00:41:59Mobile's depot platform was crowded with men in fresh gray.
00:42:02Mothers pressed handkerchiefs into the hands of sons who had not yet learned no one to use them.
00:42:06Owen wore the dark coat of a contract surgeon.
00:42:08His medical satchel slung at his hip.
00:42:09His sling at last discarded.
00:42:10The arms still pained him in damp weather.
00:42:12He had not mentioned it.
00:42:12I walked beside him with my blencon from his carriage.
00:42:15Atlanta first.
00:42:16The Hartwells in Decorder will receive you.
00:42:19Stay above Pechtum Street.
00:42:20Do not write me where you can be traced.
00:42:23I have heard you the first three times.
00:42:30I will write to the Decor address.
00:42:33If a letter arrives that does not sound like me, burn it.
00:42:37He has copied my hand before.
00:42:41I will burn it.
00:42:44The conductor walked the line of cars with his bell.
00:42:47A boy ahead of us in a corporal's stripes wept openly into his sweetheart's bonnet, and no one looked.
00:42:52Owen turned me toward him by the elbows.
00:42:54You will be safer in Atlanta than anywhere I could put you.
00:42:56The Hartwells of Decorate are very quiet people.
00:42:58They will treat you as a daughter.
00:43:00You said once you would stay with me wherever I went.
00:43:03I said that.
00:43:04And I meant it.
00:43:05I am sorry.
00:43:05Do not be sorry.
00:43:06Be careful.
00:43:06Be careful in a way you have not been before.
00:43:08Eat.
00:43:09Sleep when you are given the chance to sleep.
00:43:11Don't stand where the powder wagons are hitched.
00:43:13Don't ride into anything you can't ride out.
00:43:15Mrs. Hartwell.
00:43:18I lifted my face.
00:43:20He kissed me on the forehead in plain view of the platform and did not flush.
00:43:27Around us the band changed hymns.
00:43:31I boarded.
00:43:32He walked the length-length of the car as it began to move, then jobbed a few paces, then stopped.
00:43:38His good hand raised to his hat.
00:43:42I pressed my palm to the glass.
00:43:46The platform shrunk.
00:43:47The gulf wind took him.
00:43:50The country between us widened until I could not see his coat in the crowd.
00:43:56Then I sat.
00:43:58Down very straight.
00:44:00And put hands in my lap.
00:44:06A year of war taught me the names of bones I had only read in Paris.
00:44:12I completed my additional training under a decatur surgeon.
00:44:16A quayer who took female students because the men had gone north or south.
00:44:21I earned my own bag of instruments.
00:44:24I earned the right to be called by my surname in a corridor.
00:44:30When the call came for volunteer surgeons at Vicksburg, I put my name on the list.
00:44:37The Quaker did not try to dissuade me.
00:44:48He shook my hand instead.
00:44:52The field hospital at Vicksburg was a converted brick warehouse three blocks from the Mississippi.
00:44:57The wards had been set up, Elinor, between rows of cotton bales.
00:45:02The smell of calanfeme and rot could not be covered by anything.
00:45:07I had been at my post nine hours.
00:45:12When I act three, I came down the corridor with a tray of clean linen and saw a man at
00:45:18the far end speaking with a colleague.
00:45:22His left arm hung at his side.
00:45:25Blood had soaked through the makeshift bandage and was falling, drop by patient drop, onto the boards.
00:45:38I knew the line of the shoulders before I knew the face.
00:45:50Dr. Hartworth, he turned.
00:45:55He went still for an instant, longer than a man should.
00:46:04He tried to draw the arm behind him.
00:46:07I walked the length of the corridor, without slowing.
00:46:18I set down the tray.
00:46:20I lifted the arm.
00:46:22The flesh of his upper hand had been opened, not by a bullet, but by a blade.
00:46:27The cut was three millimeters from the tendon.
00:46:30White bone showed at the bed of it.
00:46:33Whoever had drawn the knife had known exactly where to draw.
00:46:37The colleague at Owen's elbow cleared his throat.
00:46:39The wound was given him this morning, ma'am, by a Confederate officer named Ashford.
00:46:43The siege has not yet closed in.
00:46:45He came through the lines in civilian clothes and walked out the same way.
00:46:49Dr. Hartworth will not let me write the report.
00:46:52Sit down, doctor.
00:46:53I threaded the suture needle.
00:46:55My hands were entirely still.
00:46:57Behind me, on the cotton buns, a private moaned for his mother.
00:47:01Outside, a battery somewhere south of the river opened, and the windows rattled gently in their frames.
00:47:07I closed the wound with thirty-one stitches, each placed as if for an examination.
00:47:12I washed the hand.
00:47:13I splinted the fingers so the tendon could rest.
00:47:16I bound the dressing in clean linen and tied it with the small, even knot I had taught myself in
00:47:21Paris.
00:47:22Owen watched me the whole time.
00:47:24He did not speak until I had set the last pin.
00:47:27You should not be here.
00:47:31That is curious.
00:47:33I was thinking the same of you.
00:47:37He has men in this city.
00:47:38The siege has not yet closed.
00:47:40He walked into the hospital in civilian clothes this morning.
00:47:42He found me at the druggist on Cherry Street.
00:47:45He drew a bowie knife across my hand.
00:47:47Because he could not bring himself to put a ball into me in the open street.
00:47:50I think he meant to leave me a crypt.
00:47:52I cut the thread.
00:47:54You should go upriver.
00:47:55Memphis.
00:47:56Kaido.
00:47:56Anywhere he cannot follow.
00:47:57I cannot leave.
00:47:58The hospital is short three surgeons.
00:48:00I will not desert it!
00:48:01As for you, Eleanor, get on the next northbound train.
00:48:05I will see you to the platform myself.
00:48:10I rinsed my hands in the basin.
00:48:12The water clouded pink.
00:48:18No.
00:48:21Eleanor.
00:48:22I am staying.
00:48:24I am staying to look after you.
00:48:27And I am going to finish the conversation I should have finished in his mother's parlor three years ago.
00:48:33It has gone on long enough.
00:48:35I dried my hands on the towel at my belt.
00:48:38I will send him a note tonight.
00:48:40I will invite him to dinner.
00:48:42He will come.
00:48:46He has not yet learned how to refuse me anything I phrase as an invitation.
00:48:51Owen sat very still on the cot.
00:48:55His bandaged hand rested in his lap.
00:48:58Like something he no longer recognized.
00:49:02Eleanor.
00:49:03He will not let you walk out of that room.
00:49:05He will.
00:49:07Because I will be the one who decides.
00:49:11When the door opens.
00:49:15I picked up the tray.
00:49:17And went to wash the instruments.
00:49:20The restaurant stood on a quieter street in town.
00:49:23Well behind the confederate lines and outside the reach of the federal guns.
00:49:27The siege had not yet closed its fist.
00:49:30Officers in gray still took supper there in the evenings without inquiry.
00:49:33I chose a table near the window.
00:49:36Reed arrived in clean gray, hat in hand.
00:49:40A year apart and he had thinned.
00:49:43The boy light in his face had gone.
00:49:45What remained was harder and in a certain light handsomer for it the way a worn coin reads more clearly.
00:49:51He stopped six feet short of the table.
00:49:53Eleanor.
00:49:54Sit down, Reed.
00:49:58He sat.
00:49:59He could not stop his eyes from moving across my face.
00:50:02I have sent Camille away.
00:50:05After Theodore died, I had the child taken from her.
00:50:09And I had her sent to a house in New Orleans I will not name in your hearing.
00:50:12My mother is at the General's.
00:50:14I set down my knife.
00:50:15I rose.
00:50:16I set my hands at the hem of my dress and lifted it slowly, a single inch at a time,
00:50:20to the knee.
00:50:20The scars stood pale against the candlelit linen.
00:50:22Two long ridges and a constellation of smaller ones the color of old ivory.
00:50:26The skin around them still rough where the cold and the gravel had taken me down to the joint.
00:50:29I let him look.
00:50:30I let the table near us look.
00:50:32I let the moment sit.
00:50:33Every time it rains, the bone aches inside the joint.
00:50:36A Paris physician who examined me last spring believes that one day I will not walk.
00:50:39You did not send for a doctor.
00:50:41You did not ask whether I was in pain.
00:50:42While I stood in your courtyard, you were in her bed.
00:50:44I lowered the hem.
00:50:45That is what your love cost.
00:50:47Now tell me again what it is worth.
00:50:49Reed opened his mouth.
00:50:52No sound came.
00:50:54Reed found his voice at last, and it was not the voice I had expected.
00:50:59It was the voice of a man who had rehearsed a speech in the saddle for a hundred miles.
00:51:05I am flesh and blood, Eleanor.
00:51:09No man is faultless.
00:51:11Why must you weigh a single error against every year I gave you?
00:51:17I laughed, not cruelly, only with the small, helpless astonishment of a woman who has finally been told the size
00:51:22of the room she stood in.
00:51:23A single error.
00:51:25You have pursued Owen Hartwell across two states for a year.
00:51:29You opened his hand this morning with a knife.
00:51:32You have ridden with a woman in your column the whole of that year, and I have heard her name
00:51:36from three different mouths.
00:51:37We are no longer married, Ryad.
00:51:40I signed the deed of separation in your mother's hand the morning I left Charleston.
00:51:44The Alabama legislature dissolved what was left of the bond by special act in the spring.
00:51:48I owe you nothing further.
00:51:50I am permitted to find another life.
00:51:52You apparently are held to no standard of any kind.
00:51:55I see it last.
00:51:56I stepped back from the table.
00:51:58Raid caught my wrist.
00:52:00I looked at his hand on my arm, the way a person looks at something she intends to remove from
00:52:06her clothing.
00:52:07He let go.
00:52:08I came with one small hope left in me.
00:52:11I should have known better.
00:52:13I will not see you again.
00:52:16I turned for the door.
00:52:18I am a man with blood in his veins.
00:52:21If you mean to make me a stranger.
00:52:23Eleanor, I will not stay civil.
00:52:25Do you hear me?
00:52:26I will not stay civil.
00:52:29I did not turn.
00:52:30I crossed the dining room.
00:52:32I passed the rack of officers' hats.
00:52:35I pushed open the door into the cold November street and walked out without looking back.
00:52:42Behind me, glass broke.
00:52:44A heavy table went over.
00:52:47Voices rose.
00:52:49Someone called for the proprietor.
00:52:51A chair struck a wall.
00:52:54I did not stop.
00:52:57I walked the four blocks to the hospital with my hands tucked into my sleeves to keep them from shaking.
00:53:04The cold air burned my throat clean.
00:53:06A barge horn lowed on the river.
00:53:09Above the chimneys, the sky was the color of beaten tin, and the first stars were coming up clear and
00:53:14small over the bluffs.
00:53:16I came up the hospital stair and stopped at the head of the corridor.
00:53:19Owen stood with his back to me in the lamplight, his banded hand held against his coat.
00:53:22A young woman in the gray apron of a Sisters of Mercy volunteer faced him, color high in her cheeks,
00:53:26speaking too quickly.
00:53:26Dr. Adelaine Pierce, the Atlanta girl.
00:53:28Two weeks at the post and already a tongue too quick for her boots.
00:53:32I did not know what rose in my chest then.
00:53:35It was sharper than anything Wright had drawn from me in a year.
00:53:44I lowered my head and made to pass them.
00:53:46Owen's good hand closed around my wrist as I went by.
00:53:49Eleanor, my hand has been paining me.
00:53:52Would you press a fresh shirt for me before I go on rounds?
00:53:55Dr. Pierce blinked.
00:53:58Dr. Hartwell, forgive me, you have someone?
00:54:01We have known each other since she was a month old, Dr. Pierce.
00:54:04Our mothers arranged the matter when she was still in her cradle.
00:54:07I have been the slow party.
00:54:09He did not let go of my wrist.
00:54:10The young doctor's color went from rose to scarlet.
00:54:13She murmured an apology and excused herself down the corridor.
00:54:17Owen and I stood alone in the lamplight.
00:54:19He had not yet released my wrist.
00:54:21I did not lift my eyes.
00:54:22Let me return the camion to you.
00:54:24No.
00:54:26I am a freed woman, Owen.
00:54:28The Alabama legislature dissolved the marriage by special act in the spring.
00:54:31I have the decree sealed and recorded folded in my trunk.
00:54:34I did not give Rhee the courtesy of telling him.
00:54:36I am a year older than I was on the road.
00:54:39I have just walked out of a restaurant where a man overturned a table for me.
00:54:42I have nothing to offer you that a younger woman would not offer better.
00:54:45Eleanor, would you consider marrying me?
00:54:47I was very quiet for a long moment.
00:54:50The lamp at the end of the corridor hissed.
00:54:53I lifted my chin.
00:54:56Is the courthouse still open at this hour?
00:54:58The clerk owes me a favor.
00:55:00He will open it.
00:55:02Then bring two witnesses.
00:55:03I will fetch my coat.
00:55:05I walked past him toward the women's ward.
00:55:08Halfway down the corridor, I set my hand against the wall as if to steady a chair and stood
00:55:13there a moment, my shoulders shaking with something that was not yet tears.
00:55:17We were married within the hour, at the back office of the Vicksburg courthouse, by lamplight,
00:55:20with two orderies from the hospital standing as witnesses.
00:55:22The clerk inscribed the certificate with a steel pen.
00:55:25Owen wrote his name first.
00:55:26I wrote mine below in the small precise hand my father had taught me at six.
00:55:29The ink was still wet when Owen folded the paper into the breast of his coat.
00:55:33On the walk back, Owen stopped at the drug mints and bought a paper sack of peppermints.
00:55:38He gave one to every patient, Eleanor, in the ward.
00:55:41He gave one to the orderly who had stood as witness.
00:55:45He gave one to the boy at the gate.
00:55:48We were married this afternoon.
00:55:50You may toast us at supper.
00:55:53A surgeon from Memphis clapped him on the shoulder.
00:55:56A week in town and you have taken Atlanta's best lady doctor.
00:56:00You should run for office, Heartlet.
00:56:02I have known her since before she could hold up her head.
00:56:06I am the one who was slow.
00:56:08That night, we took a single room above a quiet boarding house off Washington Street.
00:56:14Owen had cooked supper himself in the landlady's kitchen.
00:56:18A poached chicken and cream.
00:56:20A small dish of stewed apples.
00:56:22A half bottle of clallart a Hartwild cousin had run through the blockade six months earlier.
00:56:28The cameo lay at the hollow of my throat.
00:56:31Where it had always belonged.
00:56:34You are beautiful tonight, Mrs. Hartwild.
00:56:38My color had not left my face since the courthouse.
00:56:42I did not look up from my glass.
00:56:46Stop saying that or I will not be able to eat.
00:56:49Then I will say it after supper.
00:56:53He did.
00:56:54He said other things, too, that were not for the page.
00:56:58The lamp burnt low.
00:57:01The cameo grew warm against my skin.
00:57:03Then, outside, the autumn cold settled deep into the brick of the chimney.
00:57:08And somewhere upriver a steam whistle answered another.
00:57:12I slept without dreams.
00:57:16At first light, boots on the stair below.
00:57:20A heavy stride.
00:57:22A stride I knew.
00:57:24Owen was already sitting up, reaching for his coat.
00:57:28Downstairs, the front window broke.
00:57:31The shot came through the parlor window and lodged in the cornice above the bed.
00:57:36Owen pulled me down with his good arm and held me against the headboard.
00:57:40Glass dusted the rug.
00:57:42Ride's voice came up from the street, horsky and not entirely sober.
00:57:46Hartwell!
00:57:47Come down!
00:57:49Come down or I'll fire the building!
00:57:59I pushed out of Owen's arms and went to the window.
00:58:02He reached for me.
00:58:04I stepped out of his hand.
00:58:06Below in the early street,
00:58:08Rabe stood with a dueling pistol in each hand and three men behind him on horseback.
00:58:12His hat was off.
00:58:13His hair was wet.
00:58:15Whom I marry is no concern of yours, Reed.
00:58:19Put down the pistols and go home.
00:58:21They told me you married him last night!
00:58:25Tell me they lied!
00:58:26If I were you, Ashford,
00:58:29a man who treated her as you treated her,
00:58:32I could not show my face to her again.
00:58:36And yet here you are at her window in the open street in front of witnesses.
00:58:40Holster your pistols.
00:58:43You are embarrassing your grandfather.
00:58:46Reed fired.
00:58:48The ball grazed the curtain at Owen's temple and buried itself in the wardrobe behind us.
00:58:53The sound rang the small room like a bell.
00:58:56I did not move.
00:58:57My shoulder blades were against Owen's chest.
00:58:59My chin was lifted.
00:59:00My face was turned toward the muzzle of the pistol below.
00:59:03Reed!
00:59:04Listen!
00:59:05I spoke quietly, but the street heard me.
00:59:07Hurt my husband and I will not forgive it.
00:59:09Kill him and I will follow him.
00:59:12There will be no Ashford widow waiting for you in Charleston.
00:59:16There will be no woman of yours in any house.
00:59:20There will be a grave next to his,
00:59:22and you may carry the memory the rest of your life.
00:59:26Rialt lowered the pistol an inch.
00:59:28His mouth worked.
00:59:30Then I will lay you both in the Ashford plot.
00:59:33We will haunt each other to the end of the world.
00:59:37He fired the second round into the wall beside the window and turned his horse.
00:59:41The hoofbeats faded down Washington Street.
00:59:43Somewhere a dog began to bark and was silenced by a thrown boot.
00:59:46My knees gave.
00:59:47Owen caught me under the arms and carried me to the bed.
00:59:50He set me against the pillow and pulled the quilt over my shoulders and held my face between his hands.
00:59:54He is noise.
00:59:55He has always been noise.
00:59:56While I am breathing, he will not touch you.
00:59:58I pressed my forehead to his shoulder.
01:00:00His coat smelled of chloroform and cold smoke.
01:00:03Owen, let us go somewhere he cannot find us.
01:00:06Mexico, the Sandwich Islands, anywhere.
01:00:09Not yet.
01:00:10Not while the war needs us.
01:00:11A private grievance is not worth the leaving of a post.
01:00:16I did not answer.
01:00:18That evening, courier knocked at the door with a folded dispatch.
01:00:22Heavy engagement along the Yazak.
01:00:25Three field hospitals shelled.
01:00:27The senior surgeon at Snyder's Bluff was dead of fever.
01:00:30Owen's orders were waiting in the major's tent at first light.
01:00:34He packed his case by lamplight.
01:00:38I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him fold each clean shirt into the leather satzel.
01:00:44He set the Camus matching gold chain.
01:00:47A thinner one he had bought that morning at the Drugritur's.
01:00:50Around my neck.
01:00:51For him to carry away in memory.
01:00:55I will write every week.
01:00:58If the post is cut.
01:01:00I will write every week anyway.
01:01:02And send it when I can.
01:01:05I know.
01:01:13Eleanor.
01:01:14I have been wishing good things upon you for thirty years.
01:01:17I am not going to stop because there is a battle in the way.
01:01:20I rose to walk him to the door.
01:01:22At the threshold, he turned.
01:01:23Set down the saddle.
01:01:24Took my face in his hands once more and kissed me without haste.
01:01:30He picked up the satchel.
01:01:36He went down the stair.
01:01:38I stood at the broken window and watched him cross the lamplight street towards the depot.
01:01:42I wanted to call out to tell him to wait.
01:01:46But I knew I couldn't.
01:01:51He raised his good hand once without turning.
01:01:54Then the corner took him.
01:01:56His footsteps fading like a memory.
01:02:01I would not see him for a great while.
01:02:04Behind me, in the bed, the impression of his head was still on the pillow.
01:02:11Letters came once a fortnight.
01:02:13Then once a month.
01:02:16Then a season passed in silence.
01:02:25I moved with my unit when the field hospital was shelled.
01:02:39I moved again when the next post was overrun.
01:02:44I moved again.
01:02:48I slept in convent cellars and in farmhouse parlors.
01:02:56And once for three nights in the bed of a hay wagon.
01:03:03I set broken femurs by lamp made from a saucer of grease.
01:03:14I closed wounds I could not have closed in Paris.
01:03:19And lost men I could have saved there.
01:03:23I kept his thinner chain at my throat and the cameo beside it.
01:03:27And I kept my face turned toward the work.
01:03:35Word reached the hospital in the spring of the second year.
01:03:39Colonel Reet Ashfield of the cavalry killed in a skirmish 30 miles south of Vicksburg.
01:03:45The body had not been recovered.
01:03:48The horses had come back without him.
01:03:50I sat with the dispatch a long time.
01:03:53I felt no joy in it.
01:03:54And no grief.
01:03:55Only a distant, uncomplicated quiet.
01:03:58That he might in another life have been someone else.
01:04:02And that he had not been.
01:04:08I folded the paper into my case.
01:04:10And went back to the wards.
01:04:16The letters from Owen stopped entirely that summer.
01:04:20Six months.
01:04:21Then nine.
01:04:22On a clear morning in autumn,
01:04:23a Union liaisal officer was shown into the small canvas room I used as an office.
01:04:28He removed his hat.
01:04:29He sat down across from me without being asked.
01:04:32Mrs. Hartweid.
01:04:33Dr. Hartweid was carrying disaches three weeks ago
01:04:35when a powder magazine exploded during the siege at Petersburg.
01:04:38A beam struck him at the temple he has been unconscious since.
01:04:40I set down my pen.
01:04:42His family in New Orleans moved him to a private sanitary in Paris.
01:04:45He left written instructions that you were not to be informed.
01:04:48The Paris physicians have given him six months.
01:04:49Six months are now five.
01:04:50His aunt has sent for you.
01:04:52She believes you should see him before treatment is withdrawn.
01:04:53I rose.
01:04:54I walked to the canvas wall.
01:04:56I set my hand against it.
01:04:57As a woman sets her hand against a beam to see if the house is sound.
01:05:01When is the next package?
01:05:03The sanatorium stood on a quiet street in Passy.
01:05:06Behind a garden wall the color of old chalk.
01:05:09Its garden was bare of leaves.
01:05:12Its windows were curtained in white.
01:05:15Aunt Hartweid met me at the door.
01:05:17She was a tall woman in morning gray.
01:05:20With Owen's mouth.
01:05:21He has not stirred in six months.
01:05:24The physicians wish to withdraw the apparatus tomorrow at nine.
01:05:28I thought you should see him first.
01:05:31I thought he deserved the chance to hear your voice before the end.
01:05:35I climbed the carpet stair.
01:05:38He lay very thin in the high bed.
01:05:41His hair had been cropped close.
01:05:44A nursing sister sat beside him with a small spoon and a cup of cool broth.
01:05:49His lips had been kept moist with a folded cloth.
01:05:53His good hand lay open on the coverlet, the one I had stitched, the scar still pink across the back.
01:05:58I sat down.
01:06:01I took his hand.
01:06:05It was warmer than I had braced myself for.
01:06:08For five nights I spoke to him.
01:06:10About the wards.
01:06:11About Reed's death I had not told him of in any letter.
01:06:14About the camion.
01:06:15About the bone in my knee that had begun to ache again in the Paris damp.
01:06:18About a daughter we had not yet had whom I had already begun in my own mind to name.
01:06:23I told him I was furious with him for hiding the wound.
01:06:26I told him he had broken his word.
01:06:28I sat with his hand in mine for a long time, neither speaking nor weeping, only listening to his breath.
01:06:34Then I told him I loved him and that I would not say it again if he did not wake
01:06:37to hear it.
01:06:38The sixth night Aunt Hartweald came in with her hat in her hand.
01:06:42The physician comes at nine.
01:06:45The flight home is the day after.
01:06:47I have arranged a place beside his mother.
01:06:50I understand.
01:06:52I leaned down and kissed his cool, still mouth.
01:06:56Owen.
01:06:57I forgive you.
01:06:59I am taking back my anger.
01:07:01I will not be your widow.
01:07:03I have years left.
01:07:05I intend to use them.
01:07:06I straightened.
01:07:08I pushed back the chair.
01:07:11I reached for my coat across the foot of the bed.
01:07:14I saw his eyelashes move.
01:07:17I froze with my coat half across my arm.
01:07:19Certain I had imagined it.
01:07:21His eyelids moved again.
01:07:23His eyelids opened, slowly, with enormous effort.
01:07:27And his eyes found my face at once.
01:07:30I broke.
01:07:30I had not broken in three years.
01:07:33And I broke now, loudly, without dignity.
01:07:36My hands at my mouth and the coat falling to the floor.
01:07:39I called for the nurse.
01:07:41I called for the nurse.
01:07:42I called for Aunt Hartwell.
01:07:42I called Owen's name in pieces.
01:07:45His mouth moved.
01:07:46He could not form a sentence.
01:07:49He said my name, slowly, in three breaths.
01:07:53Don't cry.
01:07:55Eleanor, laughing through tears.
01:07:57You do not get to tell me anything.
01:07:59You almost died.
01:08:00In the doorway, Aunt Hartwith stood with her hat in her hand.
01:08:06After a long moment, she allowed herself, very slowly, to smile.
01:08:13Ten years passed in Paris and London, a small clinic in Geneva.
01:08:19Owen recovered slowly.
01:08:21Our daughter was born on a morning in May, and we named her Hope.
01:08:26The war ended at last in the spring of Hope's tenth year.
01:08:33And we came home.
01:08:43Washington, twenty years on.
01:08:46The morning of my retirement was cold and clean.
01:08:49Owen drove up to the institute steps in a hired carriage.
01:08:52His hair had gone entirely white.
01:08:54So had mine.
01:08:55He carried a small bunch of white roses wrapped in brown paper.
01:08:58Owen stepped down and offered his arm.
01:09:01I came out between the columns with my satchel over my shoulder,
01:09:04the same satchel I had carried out of Charleston Harbor on a steamer fifty years ago.
01:09:08The cameo he had back of his right hand,
01:09:10where I had stitched him at Vicksburg, was thirty years old in silver.
01:09:14Congratulations, Mrs. Hartwear.
01:09:15Welcome to the country of the retired.
01:09:17I took the roses.
01:09:19I held them against my coat.
01:09:21I looked at him a moment,
01:09:22as if deciding what to do with the news I had been carrying all morning.
01:09:26Did the assistant not tell you?
01:09:27I have been reappointed.
01:09:29Owen removed his spectacles.
01:09:30He polished them on his handkerchief with great care.
01:09:32He put them back on.
01:09:33He looked at me,
01:09:33and the corner of his mouth lifted in the small private way
01:09:35it had lifted at me every morning for forty years.
01:09:37Then congratulations, Mrs. Hartweather.
01:09:39We continue.
01:09:40We continue.
01:09:41I have been reappointed as well.
01:09:42Tuesday.
01:09:43Of course you have.
01:09:44He pushed open the carriage door.
01:09:47I climbed in.
01:09:49He set the roses across my lap,
01:09:52and climbed in after me.
01:09:55The horse started forward over the cold cobbles.
01:09:58The institute steps slid past the window,
01:10:01and beyond them the capitol dome stood pale against an autumn sky.
01:10:05He reached across the seat and took my hand.
01:10:08The morning sun came through the carriage glass and lit us both.
01:10:11White-haired, bone-tired, still here.
01:10:14On the first weekend after our new clinic was established in Washington,
01:10:18the sky finally cleared.
01:10:20Our daughter, Hope, sent a long letter from medical school.
01:10:24Owen sat by the fireplace,
01:10:26wearing his gold-rimmed spectacles,
01:10:27reading it to me word by word.
01:10:29Whenever he reached an exciting part,
01:10:32the faded scar on his right hand,
01:10:35which I had stitched with my own hands in Vicksburg,
01:10:38would trace a faint arc in the air,
01:10:42with his gestures.
01:10:44Those nightmares that had once snapped my dignity,
01:10:47inch by inch and ruthlessly crushed my unborn child,
01:10:51had finally faded into nothing more than
01:10:53a separation agreement locked at the bottom of a trunk.
01:10:59In the afternoon,
01:11:01an elderly woman from Virginia
01:11:03brought her grandson,
01:11:05who had a fractured finger,
01:11:07into Flinic.
01:11:09I retrieved splints from the old medical bag
01:11:12that had accompanied me for 50 years.
01:11:16As I gently held the boy's tender fingers,
01:11:20Owen naturally handed me a finely shaved wooden splint.
01:11:23The moment he leaned in,
01:11:26his shoulder was as steady and reassuring
01:11:28as it always had been.
01:11:32Fate had once forced me to stand barefoot
01:11:35on freezing gravel,
01:11:37bleeding until I grew numb.
01:11:39But now,
01:11:40these hands no longer needed
01:11:42to grip cold revolvers.
01:11:45Instead,
01:11:46under the warm afternoon sun,
01:11:48they gently smoothed away a child's pain.
01:11:51Before leaving,
01:11:52the old woman left two freshly picked oranges on the table.
01:11:55The crisp fragrance
01:11:57instantly filled the small clinic,
01:11:59smelling remarkably like the orange conservatory
01:12:01back at the Ashford Plantation,
01:12:02a place that could never be returned to.
01:12:12Looking at the oranges,
01:12:14I suddenly let out a soft laugh
01:12:16with no bitterness left in my heart.
01:12:21What are you laughing at,
01:12:22Mrs. Hartwell?
01:12:24I am laughing at the two of us,
01:12:26a pair of old folks
01:12:27who are supposed to be retired.
01:12:30Tonight,
01:12:31I think I would like to use these two oranges
01:12:33to brew a hot pot of tea with cinnamon.
01:12:37Owen bowed slightly to me
01:12:38like a devout gentleman.
01:12:41It would be my honor, Eleanor.
01:12:45As long as it is your prescription,
01:12:47I have never intended to refuse it in my entire life.
01:12:51The twilight of Washington began to fall,
01:12:54and the first batch of lonely yet brilliant stars
01:12:57rose in the clean night sky.
01:12:59We stood side by side
01:13:00beneath the sign of our new clinic,
01:13:03watching the city lights flicker on one by one.
01:13:06This road had been long and slow,
01:13:08filled with hardships and blood.
01:13:10But at the end of this world,
01:13:12our tomorrow still waited for us,
01:13:14on the sun-dank streets ahead,
01:13:16waiting for us to finish walking it hand in hand.
01:13:19To be continued...
01:13:21To be continued...
01:13:23To be continued...
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