An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [45]
When I got home I would storm into Uncle Valentine's office and find that paper.
But nobody was home. It makes no sense to storm if nobody is there to see it. So I went quietly to the office. The paper was where I expected to find it, under the paperweight statue of Hippocrates. I looked at the date.
It was April 12, in the year of our Lord 1865. The day before my mother's funeral.
I sank down in Uncle Valentine's chair. My head was spinning. Had he set up that scene in the graveyard, then, to make me think he was against grave robbing, because he already knew I was coming to live with him?
Was Myra right?
Why had he allowed me to go home to an empty house, thinking I would be living with the Surratts? Why? Why, if he had the paper already? Worse yet, how had he known I'd be there in the cemetery that night? Then I groaned, realizing how. Maude. When I'd told her I was going, she'd stopped me, suggested I go with Annie, gotten a hack. It took an hour for the hack to come. She'd sent word to Uncle Valentine.
Oh, I was so confused! Well, I would just end the confusion, that was all. I would confront him with the matter. As soon as he came in the door.
And then I heard talking outside the windows. I looked out.
It was Uncle Valentine coming up the walk. With Annie! What was he doing with Annie? I ran through the center hall and flung the front door open. "Annie!"
"Emily!" She ran to me.
I almost killed myself going down the steps. We embraced, right in the front yard.
In the center hall we appraised each other. "What happened? I came by your house! I saw them take you away! Oh, Annie, are you all right?"
"I'm fine," she said. But she looked wan. There were dark circles under her eyes. "They still have Mama. They let me go after a day of questioning. Oh, Emily, it was terrible! They came and searched the house again. They said that yesterday they arrested Samuel Arnold and he made a clean breast of everything. He said he was in on a conspiracy to kidnap the president. And that Booth, O'Laughlin, Atzerodt, Herold, Powell, and my brother Johnny were involved in it."
"Oh, how could he?"
"And they keep questioning Mama. They have her in Carroll Prison. And we need a lawyer. And don't have one."
"I told you I'd take care of that, Annie," Uncle Valentine said.
I had forgotten him. We'd wandered into the front parlor and sat down. I looked up now to see him standing there in the middle of the room.
"Oh, I couldn't, Dr. Bransby. I couldn't allow it," Annie protested.
"You can and you shall," he told her. "I loved President Lincoln, Annie. And this tragedy is of the utmost proportions for all of us. But I do not think it right that someone accused of taking part in it should not have proper legal counsel. That is after all what Lincoln himself would say. He was, first and foremost, a lawyer, remember."
Annie nodded yes. "I met your uncle on the way here," she told me. "We started talking. And I'm afraid I blurted it all out. Your uncle is so good, Emily. You are so lucky to have him."
What could I say to that? "Annie, I've got Puss-in-Boots." That's what I said.
"Oh, I'm so glad! I thought she'd run off! Can you keep her for now? I just don't know what's going to happen."
I said I would. She and Uncle Valentine drew chairs up close to each other and were soon deep in conversation. I went to make tea.
I dreamed about my father that night. He was going off to war, wearing his wonderful blue coat with the double row of brass buttons and the cape collar lined with red. He wore his brace of pistols and his saber. Manfred, his horse, neighed in impatience as Daddy gave last-minute orders to Elihu, his hired manager. Daddy's hunting dogs lay around his feet.
I awoke from the dream with a start, as if someone had put a hand on my shoulder.
Someone had. Addie. "You wanna come see?" she said.
I shook the dream off. I was thinking of Daddy's dogs. The day after Daddy left, Mama had had them sold off. I never knew it until I came home from school and found them gone.
"See what, Addie?"
"You jus'