The Mirk and Midnight Hour (12 page)

Seeley fired his stick especially loudly at a scolding squirrel.

“I don’t know why you boys are all so fond of guns,” I said. “Guns and loud, bangy things like firecrackers. Honestly.”

Seeley looked earnest. “If I had a rifle, I would only shoot what we need for food. We would have possum and squirrel for supper every night.”

“You make my mouth water. In some places where our poor soldiers haven’t much to eat, they’re devouring rats. They say fat ones taste like squirrel.”

“And we would have rats too,” he assured me. “Anytime you wanted them. Last year before—last year I asked Father if I might have a gun for Christmas, and he said he had one all picked out. But then afterward—nobody remembered that. Aunt Lovy gave me a hobbyhorse. She thought it would make me like horses better. It didn’t,” he finished with disgust.

Poor little boy. His parents had both succumbed to diphtheria the previous spring and had died within two weeks of each other.

“Now”—I indicated the little dell, creamy with clover—“can you find the entrance to our hiding place?”

Seeley meticulously inspected tree trunks, as if he expected concealed doors to pop open on springs, and poked beneath brambles and bushes.

“Do you give up?” I asked.

“No,” he said—then, “Aha!” The ground beneath him had yielded a bit.

Michael had made a trapdoor and covered it with dirt and a mat of tangled creepers, undetectable unless someone was looking for it and stepped right on top. I showed Seeley the handle. He lifted it
with some trouble but, refusing all help, revealed the black, gaping hole beneath.

We descended the ramp, which Michael had made sturdy enough to support our stock. I warned Seeley that there was always an inch of water seeped into the floor below.

An odor of damp earth and fungus hit us. Inside, in the murky light, we could just make out the shelf, which held a stub of candle and my family’s few pieces of silver, wrapped in burlap sacking.

“At the first sign of Yankees,” I said, “we’ll stash anything here they might be interested in. So, would Heath Blackstock approve?”

“It’s a good hideout,” Seeley said.

On the way back to the house I showed him the big magnolia tree with branches spaced so perfectly it was almost like climbing up stairs. It was the same one Laney and I had often played house beneath. “I still go up there to read sometimes, just so I can suddenly look at myself and think,
What an unlikely place I’m at
. And so no one will ever suspect in a million years where I happen to be.”

Seeley scaled the branches. When he came down, I taught him how to suck honeysuckle nectar and fight off the attack geese in the kitchen yard.

It was a splendid afternoon, and at suppertime Seeley seemed more relaxed because of it. He still twitched some, but he spoke more easily, and didn’t put on the sulky face he had previously worn with the others. He told about his adventures that day. “Violet likes to read books up high in the magnolia tree,” he announced.

Sunny rolled her eyes. “Really, Vi-let?”

I smiled brightly back at her. “I do. When the wind blows, it’s like being in a green ocean.”

“Whimsical …,” Dorian murmured, so softly that only I heard.

“Tomorrow I’m going to stay up there all day,” Seeley said. “I’ll take one of Rush’s books that has pictures of the Huns riding around with heads tied to their saddles.”

Sunny made a face. “Horrid child,” she said. “Look at how he relishes that sort of nasty thing.”

Seeley laughed out loud at being called a horrid child.

“Just be careful when you’re climbing, Squid,” I said.

“I know, I know,” Seeley said. “Why do you call me Squid?”

“Because I like that word and I like you, so the two of you just sort of go together.”

“My mother always called me Seal.” The smile faded from my little cousin’s face.

“Tomorrow,” I announced, changing the subject, “I’m going to help at the courthouse hospital.”

“Why must you go to that foul place?” Sunny asked. “They’ve got other folks to nurse those fellows now—all the snotty women from Mobile who think they’re so vital to the Cause.”

“I want to see the patients once more before they leave.”

“Who are these Mobile women?” Miss Elsa asked idly.

“And what makes you think the patients are leaving soon?” Sunny demanded.

I tried to answer them both. “They’re volunteers with the Army of Tennessee’s hospital division. That’s why I haven’t gone much lately, since they don’t really need me. But Michael told me that this week all the patients are to be moved by rail to Corinth. They think there might be a battle near Okolona soon, and that’s too close for comfort.”

“Ha,” Dorian scoffed. “There’ll be no such thing.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I have my connections. Y’all may rest easy. The boom of cannon shall not rouse us from our beds anytime soon.” My cousin had a talent for imparting confidence; somehow we believed him. “By the way,” he added, “if any of you like books, I’ve a new French novel for you.
Les Misérables
. Just finished it. Everyone’s wild over it. Not for you, though, Seeley-the-squid. Stick to your innocent schoolboy reading about heads banging along on saddles.”

After supper that evening we gathered in the sitting room. Dorian was gentle with Miss Elsa, seating her in the soft lamplight and fetching her needlework. For the masculine attention she rewarded him with smiles. He then set himself to teach Seeley how to use the bandalore, and before long Seeley relaxed further and could even do a few tricks, while Goblin batted at the spool with her black paw.

“You know, of course,” Sunny said, tugging at a knot in her embroidery, “the child will drive us all daft with that thing before he’s through.”

“A boy needs a bandalore,” Dorian said comfortably.

“Thank you for helping him,” I whispered to my older cousin, so Seeley couldn’t hear.

“See? I’m following your advice,” Dorian whispered back as he squatted beside my chair.

“And it’s working. He’s much more at ease with you now.”

“Anything to make you look at me approvingly, coz,” Dorian said, peeking up mischievously.

I rolled my eyes and looked down at the sock I was knitting
furiously to hide my blushes. As he kept watching me, I felt a silly, nervous grin stretch my lips.

“When you smile so mysteriously,” Dorian said, “it makes me wonder what plots you’re hatching.”

“None at all. I was wondering if this sock needs one more row before I cast off. All very boring.” I started on another row. “And you should be kind to people for their own sake, and not for anyone else’s approval,” I added severely.

“I’ll try,” Dorian said, “if that will make you approve of me.”

I snorted, and Sunny, who had been eyeing us vigilantly, immediately came to stand between us.

“Dorian, would you help me with my necklace?” she asked. “The catch is stuck.” She smiled a little secret smile as she held up her curls above her long neck. He stood close behind, working on the clasp.

Once he got it unhooked, Dorian settled himself to entertain, relating slightly scandalous and self-deprecatory stories of his recent dealings with high society in the Confederate capital of Richmond. With his bright hair and bronze skin, he glowed like one of the lamps. Miss Elsa quit feebly jabbing at her canvas and listened, entranced. From time to time she even commented on places she had also visited.

“Have you actually seen President Jefferson Davis?” Sunny asked.

“I have,” Dorian said. “And had a lengthy conversation with him. I could tell he was most impressed by me. I was crossing the road and Jeff Davis’s coach nearly ran me down. The great man himself poked his head out the window and said, ‘Watch yourself, young man. We can’t afford to lose Southern blood in such a way.’ Our president looked and sounded every bit the gentleman. A
momentous meeting. I wouldn’t have minded being nearly run over by the president’s coach at all except that I got grease on my new sack coat and King had the devil of a time—oh, sorry for cursing, Miss Elsa—getting it out. Now that I think of it, maybe I should have left it stained as a conversation piece. My presidential grease spot.”

Miss Elsa and Sunny shook with laughter and lavished him with admiring glances. My stepmother tapped him with her fan and fluttered her eyelashes. For a moment I saw a girlish Elsa, one who had been a sought-after belle. Dorian was certainly very different from the young men we knew around Chicataw, who only seemed to care for fighting, hunting, and chewing tobacco. Dorian was so polished—and he read books!

“Meanwhile,” Sunny said, shaking her head, “the North has a rail-splitter for a leader. So hard to understand those people.”

It was late when I finally deposited Seeley, Goblin, and Seeley’s cup of honey milk in bed. The cows would be anxious. I lit my lantern with an ember from the kitchen fire and headed out into the night.

I jumped a little when Dorian emerged from the darkness and swung into step beside me in my circle of light.

“ ‘Where are you going, my pretty maid?’ ” he said, quoting the old nursery rhyme.

Without looking at him, I smiled. “ ‘I’m going a-milking, sir.’ ”

“ ‘May I go with you, my pretty maid?’ ”

“ ‘You’re kindly welcome, sir,’ ” I said.

“Do you ever wonder why milkmaids are always so pretty?” Dorian asked.

I unbarred the great barn door. “Obviously it’s so men will ask to go with them and rhymes can be written about them.”

“Seriously, may I help you with your chores?”

“If you like,” I said, but wished he wouldn’t. Besides the fact that his flirting made me uncomfortable, I preferred to be alone in the barn for the evening milking. It felt sheltered and intimate, with the soft sounds and warmth of the animals, the glow of the lantern, and the smell of hay. Another person spoiled it.

Inside the doorway the pail hung on a nail just a little too high. As I stretched for it, Dorian stood close and reached over my head to lift it down. “Let me do that.”

I turned around to find myself trapped in his arms. “My pretty maid,” he said softly, gazing down into my eyes. His were
so
blue. “I wonder … shall I make you fall in love with me?”

“What makes you think you could?” I said into his chest, and tried to duck under his elbow.

He lowered his arms and closed them tighter. “Oh, I’m not sure at all; that’s what would make it intriguing. When I see you smiling so mysteriously—”

“Yes, you said that before,” I cut him off. His tone was too practiced. Too smooth. “To lots of girls, I bet. Does it usually do the trick?” I glanced up to see how annoyed he was by my words.

At first he appeared taken aback, then delighted. He slapped his hand on his thigh and laughed. “You’d be surprised how well it usually works.”

“Now,” I said, “stop being silly and let me get on with my chores. Sunny’s the one to work your charm on.”

“Oh, Sunny …” He dismissed my beautiful stepsister with the flick of a hand. “Too easy by half.” With one finger he brushed back a strand of my hair that had escaped its pins. “Well, then, if you
don’t want to be kissing cousins, why did you give me that come-to-me look?”

“I—did—not—give you a look!” I shoved against him, not hard, but the post he was standing next to shook and some objects that were stored in the rafters banged down on us and clattered to the floor.

Holding his head where a tin pail had hit, Dorian made a face and reached up to pick away the cobweb that now draped him. “You all right? That was quite the booby trap.”

I began laughing so hard I could barely speak. “Sorry. The look on your—what a surprise! It’s all junk Pa put up there to fix later on. Naturally he never did anything about it.”

Dorian chuckled as he bent to poke through things. “Huh. This is actually a pretty good saddle to be stuck away forgotten. And this old rifle.”

“It’s broken. And there was something wrong with the saddle too. Lopsided or something. The pail has a leak. Pa can’t throw junk away.”

Dorian replaced everything. “So—you think I’d better concentrate on Sunny?”

“I do.”

He nodded slowly and left me, as I had wished to be, alone with my milking. Now, contrarily, I felt lonely. I leaned my head against Lily’s warm brown side and watched the milk spurt foaming into the pail.

Amenze had said I would have a sweetheart soon. Except for Dorian and the patients in the courthouse hospital, there were no young men left for miles around.

“Please.” The young man—the boy—caught at my skirt.

“Here you go.” I removed a hunk of bread from my basket and held it out. I did not remember this fellow from the earlier times I had been at the hospital, probably because the patients had been more numerous before.

He ever so slightly shook his head on the pillow. “No, miss, I’m not hungry. I only wanted to talk some. They’re cutting off my arm today.” Two red spots of fever glowed on his hollow cheeks.

“Oh, dear.” I tried to control the dismay in my expression as I settled myself on a barrel beside his cot. “What a shame to have gone so long and have it taken off now.”

His mouth twisted. “The rumor is that the Yanks poisoned their musket balls. That’s why we seem to be getting better for a while and then our wounds fester. The thing is … I know I’ll die because everyone who’s had limbs removed in this hospital has died.”