An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [20]
Not her. Please, God, I prayed, don't let her want to come with me.
"I'll send for a hack," she said. "Why don't you go and ask your friend Annie to go with you? She offered to keep you company tonight, didn't she? Go and ask her to come back here and wait for the hack."
I looked into her eyes to see if she was scheming. They were bland, innocent. If she offers to make me tea, I won't take it, I decided. Because she'll put something in it again. Likely she'll knock me out this time. But she was putting on her cloak and bonnet to fetch a hack. "All right," I said. I went out the door to cross the backyards to the Surratt house to fetch Annie.
6. The Mole and the Spoon
I WAITED OUTSIDE the back door while Annie got her shawl. She slammed out of the house.
"Booth is making me crazy. I told you he'd make a fuss over the candles in the window, didn't I? I swear, he's a madman. Denouncing the people who are celebrating the war's end. Saying he hopes Washington burns down from all the candles in the windows. I'm so glad Johnny's gone away so Booth can't influence him anymore. Oh, the night is delicious!" She raised her arms to the crescent moon and smattering of stars overhead, and we tramped through the underbrush of the backyards. "Oh, what I would give to be with Alex on a night like this," she said.
"I'm glad you could come."
"I'm glad you asked. No, I'm honored. I think it's a wonderful idea to go to the cemetery. It was so crowded this afternoon."
Maude was back from ordering the hack. It had cost her ten dollars. "You'd think prices would start going down now that the war is over," she complained. "But I was glad to pay it. It'll make me feel better, knowing you'll be safe. It will be here in an hour."
"An hour!" Annie and I both said it at the same time. "But we want to go now!" I told Maude. There was something devious in this, I was sure of it. "What will we do for an hour?"
"You can work on your sewing, for one thing," she suggested. "You said that dress for Mrs. Lincoln had to be finished tonight, didn't you?"
She was right, as usual. She took up her knitting. I ran upstairs and got down Mrs. Lincoln's dress, and Annie took up a needle and helped me finish the hem. The hour went quickly. The hack came, and as we went out the door I was laughing.
"What is it?" Annie asked. "Tell me."
"She didn't offer to make us tea," I said. And I told her how if Maude had offered, I would have known she was up to one of her tricks. "And I wouldn't have gone if she'd made tea, ten dollars or no ten dollars for the hack," I said. "I swear it."
Christ Church looked different at night, looming overhead with its stone architecture. It looked like something from the Brothers Grimm. Eerie candlelight flickered in the windows.
"They're still using part of it as a hospital," I told Annie. "I know your church doesn't do that, but ours does."
"The Protestants live their faith," she said. "We Catholics talk it."
Just then a cart pulled away from the church. We stood watching. The driver waved to us and we waved back.
"Dead soldiers," I told Annie. "They always take them away in the middle of the night, so people can't see. He's taking them to Arlington, the new national cemetery. It's on Robert E. Lee's front lawn, across the Potomac. How would you like to come home from the war and find your front lawn turned into a cemetery?"
"After what Alex told me about Gettysburg, I would think that man's mind is a cemetery," she said.
Annie's astuteness amazed me. I was always learning from her. We went around the corner and in the side gate of the cemetery. What with the candlelight from the church windows and the gas lamps on the street, the cemetery was not dark. Each tombstone stood out, though shadows played about in the slight evening breeze.
Mama had no tombstone yet. But it was light enough to see two people by Mama's grave. They were surrounded by tools, and they were using shaded lanterns.
And they were digging.
I grabbed Annie's arm. "Who could they be?" I whispered.