Читать книгу Legacy of Secrets - Sara Mitchell - Страница 9

Richmond, Virginia

September 1862

On a humid, chilly evening in late September, the boy finally reached his goal. His journey had lasted three terrifying nights and four equally terrifying days; except for the first night, when he’d stowed away on a northbound freight train, he was forced to evade swarms of soldiers, rebel and bluecoats alike. They roamed the countryside and main roads like the biblical plague of locusts his grandmother talked about, the ones inflicted upon the Egyptians.

For two of those nights the boy hid shivering in fear under cover of a forest, in a thicket of wild rhododendron, his nose filled with the ripe odors of leaves and wet earth while a hundred yards away the awful sounds of bloodcurdling battle rent the air. The thought of killing a human being twisted his insides. When he could no longer bear the cold and fear and uncertainty, he clapped his hands over his ears, choking on tears wept in desperate silence.

Swallowing hard against the memory, he focused on his present surroundings—a narrow alley on a busy street. Tall brick buildings engulfed him instead of trees; a cluster of wooden crates shielded him instead of bushes. Instead of the noise of battle, the sounds of a city filled his ears. Buggies and wagons rattled past in the street. Crowds of people choked the walkways. As the moments passed, gradually he crept onto the sidewalk and huddled in the shadow of the doorway to some kind of store. Directly across the street, a fancy hotel rose in lofty grandeur between two nondescript brick buildings. Inside that hotel, the man he had traveled over a hundred miles to see dined with his family, oblivious to the existence of the scrawny thirteen-year-old boy who was his nephew.

Time passed while he tried to decide what to do. He could feel his heartbeat clear up inside his ears. Dusk settled in, and he watched the lamplighter’s progress along the street, lighting up the tall streetlights. Several times shiny carriages stopped in front of the hotel, collected and discharged men in top hats and expensive-looking suits, along with women in their hooped skirts wide enough for a flock of chickens to hide under. A colored man clad in a hideous purple uniform guarded the hotel entrance, nodding to arriving guests as he held open the door.

Several passersby glanced askance at the boy, and one frowning man in a greatcoat actually stopped, asked him what he was about, loitering on the walk.

“I’m waiting for my uncle.”

“And where might your uncle be, boy, that he left you here on the street after dark?”

Sweat gathered on his palms and at the small of his back. “Oh, he’ll be out in a few moments. He had to leave a message for someone in the hotel.”

“Hmm. Well—” his voice turned brisk “—that’s all right, then, I expect. How old are you, son?”

He stood straight, keeping his gaze open and earnest upon the gentleman. “Thirteen. You don’t need to worry about me, sir. I’m perfectly fine.” The cultured drawl of his proud North Carolina grandmother rolled easily off his lips, and he watched smugly as the lingering suspicion faded from the man’s face.

“Very well.” He touched two fingers to his top hat. “But you be careful, son. There’s a war going on, and it’s drawing closer to Richmond every day. I’d hate to see you conscripted into the army, though you’ve one foot in adulthood.” Some emotion flickered in his eyes. “War’s horrific enough for grown men. Don’t believe anyone who claims otherwise, or fills your head with stories of the glory of battle. You tell your uncle to take better care of you, in the future.”

“Yessir.”

The man patted his shoulder, then walked on.

The longing boiled up, fast and ferocious, as it always did. He watched the stranger stride down the street, wishing so fiercely it made his teeth hurt that he had a father who cared whether or not he loitered alone on a city street. Who tried to shield him from the brutality of war. Before the fear could take hold again, he darted across the street and ducked inside the hotel while the doorman was busy handing some ladies down out of a dark green brougham.

The lobby was a maze of gleaming oak columns and red-cushioned chairs scattered between huge urns of potted plants. Mindful that his clothes were rumpled and dirt stained, he slipped from urn to urn, behind columns, making his way toward the dining room. The scullery maid at his uncle’s imposing town house on Grace Avenue had been easily persuaded to provide directions to the hotel; ever since he’d been a toddler he’d perfected the art of pleasing females.

Heart thumping, as a large grandfather clock dolefully bonged nine times, he slipped inside the dining room—and saw them. Even when seated, his uncle was a commanding presence in his swallow-tail coat and blinding-white shirt, where a diamond stickpin winked with every motion he made. Next to him sat a pretty plump woman dressed in a deep red gown. Jet earrings and necklace decorated her ears and throat. That would be his aunt, and the two little boys dandified up in revolting little suits his cousins.

Everybody was smiling and talking, including the boys. He watched, still and silent as one of the wooden columns, while his uncle leaned over to hear something his wife was saying, a tender expression on his face the boy had never witnessed on another man’s countenance, not in his entire thirteen years.

The longing intensified until it was a monster, biting into him in chunks of indescribable jealousy and pain.

Suddenly one of the sons, the one barely a toddler, knocked over a glass. His older brother laughed.

Across the room, the boy tensed, not breathing, while he waited for the father to reprimand his son, to perhaps even backhand him. Waited for the mother to deliver a shrill scolding, to lecture the hapless child on proper deportment.

Instead, the father calmly signaled for the waiter, righted the glass himself. Then he ruffled his son’s hair, the expression of indulgence on his face visible all the way across the room.

Something snapped inside the boy.

That little boy should be him. He should have been part of a well-to-do family who dined in fancy hotels. His mother should be dressed in fancy lace and velvet, seated next to her husband. His father. His home should be the immense stone town house with the neatly manicured yard.

For years his mother and grandmother had filled his head with stories and promises of a grand Mission that someday he would undertake, to right a Grievous Wrong. Now, unnoticed and invisible to the family that should have been his, he made a vow of his own.