The Seeker (16 page)

He pulled the drawing of Charlotte on her veranda out of the pile, pausing his pacing for a moment to give it consideration. “Why didn’t you draw her face? Nobody cares about a woman’s backside when it’s hidden under all those hoop-de-doops. Looks like an upside-down mushroom.” He peered closer at the sketch. “Can’t even be sure there is a backside under there but the shoulders and neck are quite enticing.” The older man turned back to Adam with a grin that hinted of lechery. “What about it, boy? Can you vouch for her backside?”

“Now, Sam, she was a lady.”

“When did that ever stop you? I hear you’ve left a string of broken hearts from here to California and back.”

“I just draw their pictures, Sam. That’s all.”

The old man laughed and shook the sketch at him. “Then draw their front sides.”

“But I wanted you to see the posture of her pensive longing for peace. Can’t you sense her worry about whether the war is going to tear apart her world?”

“You’re making that up on the spot,” Sam said with another laugh. “That’s why I like you, Adam. You’re quick on your feet. You’re going to have to be to stay out of the fray and bring home the scenes we need. Lincoln’s plan to blockade the Southern ports has got them stirred up if their newspapers are any indication. The gentry down there are equipping regiments. Out of their own pockets. Got to have some deep pockets for that, but what is it they say? Cotton is king. Pockets might empty out if they can’t get around Lincoln’s ships. Rich men’s soldiers won’t get that cotton to the English factories. Their army will turn out to have a thousand arms flailing against the wind with no head. Probably end up shooting each other instead of us Yankees.”

“That sounds good for us.”

“For me. But you’ll have to duck bullets to draw it happening. And no yearning backside pictures.” He flipped his fingers against the picture of Charlotte Vance before he dropped it back on the table. It slid off on the floor, but he didn’t lean down to pick it up. “We want to see the gritty truth. If men are fighting, men are going to be dying. Our readers will want to see it all.”

“I think I’d rather do the yearning for peace ones.” Adam leaned forward and rescued the picture before Sam could step on it.

“Dead men don’t move. They’ll lay right there and let you draw them however you want.” Sam had the grace to let a flash of sorrow cross his face as he slowed his pacing and sighed deeply. “I’m not saying I’m glad for this, but it’s going to happen. We’re going to have to march an army down there into Virginia, take Richmond back, and let those Rebels know they can’t just up and leave the Union whenever they take a notion. The President never once said he was going to take their slaves away even if that’s what he should have said. No place for slavery in this modern-day world. Those old boys down south are jumping to conclusions without the first thought of wanting peace. So it’s history in the making, my boy, and our job is to capture that history and send it out to the people.”

“Yes sir.” Adam wasn’t exactly sure what he was agreeing to, but those were the words Sam expected to hear. And he did want to be there to record history in the making while drawing down pay for it. He stood up to leave. He had learned to sense when Sam was through even if he didn’t always know what Sam was through telling him.

“Best get to it, Adam,” Sam said. When Adam reached down to straighten his sketches and put them back in the portfolio holder, Sam waved him away from the table. “James will pack those up. Some of them might do.”

“Good to hear,” Adam said. He was still holding Charlotte’s veranda picture. He didn’t seem to want to drop it down on top the others and surrender it to Sam’s careless hand.

He had other sketches of her back in his hotel room. He must have drawn her from memory at least a dozen times since he’d left Kentucky to come to the capital. Every time he drew a crowd scene, he put her face there. But this was the very first time he’d captured her likeness. He could almost feel the soft curve of her shoulder under his hand when he looked at it. He turned toward the hotel room door carrying the sketch with him.

Sam stopped him. “Where do you think you’re going with the yearning backside picture?”

Adam turned back toward him. “You said you didn’t like it.”

“Artist ears! Always perked up for criticism in everything a man says.” Sam shook his head. “What I like don’t matter a penny’s worth. It’s what our readers like.”

When Sam reached for the picture, Adam surrendered it reluctantly.

“Who is she?” Sam asked.

“A Kentucky senator’s daughter. There’s no need to print her name.”

“Protecting her, are you?” Sam looked up from the picture at him. “From what? Most young ladies would be thrilled to see their picture in
Harper’s
.”

“Without a name she can represent a hundred Southern belles.”

Sam looked back down at the sketch. “True enough.” Then he was eyeing Adam with a knowing smile. “I think this Southern belle’s charms caught your eye, young Adam.”

Adam smiled back to try to negate the bit of color climbing into his cheeks. “She was very pretty. Red hair and green eyes. Not your usual fainting belle.”

“I knew a redhead once. Quite a woman. Would have married her except she found a man with more money.”

“A mistake I’m sure she rues to this day,” Adam said.

“He invested in railroads, so I doubt it. She was dripping in diamonds last time I saw her, but the red had turned gray. Old gets us all.”

“If a bullet doesn’t get us first,” Adam said, turning toward the door again.

“You stay out of the crossfire, boy. We need pictures, not dead illustrators.”

“I’ll do my best.”

He was almost out the door when Sam called after him. “No bullets are flying yet, so go on back down there and get that staircase. You keep dragging your feet, somebody’s going to beat us to it. I’ll print it right beside the old Shaker cow you drew. Make a good contrast. Heaven knows why, but readers want to know about those crazy Shakers. But do it fast. Armies are gathering and you don’t want to miss the war.”

That’s how everybody in the capital was talking. As if the war might only last a few days, weeks at the most. While men were lining up to volunteer to preserve the Union, nobody thought it was going to take much effort. A show of cannons. A few rounds of ammunition. Adam had sketched some of the new recruits gathering in the Army of the Potomac. Young. Fresh. With no idea of what they were heading toward.

Adam didn’t know either. He’d never been in a war. But he’d read history. His grandfather had insisted that the only way to be ready for the future was to know the past. Plus Adam had talked to Mexican War veterans. Some of them were lining up to volunteer again alongside the fresh-faced kids. The old warriors had a different look. While they weren’t shying away from the conflict, they were going into it with a stoic knowledge that fighting and dying went hand in hand in a war. And this time the face of the enemy wouldn’t be foreign. This time they would be fighting their brothers and cousins and some of the men who had lined up beside them to fight the Mexicans.

That was the story he needed to be finding. Not some winding staircase at a Shaker village in Kentucky. His interest in the Shakers had been shoved aside. They’d be there living their strange beliefs after the conflict ended. Now he needed to be where the armies were massing. Where men were choosing North or South.

Then again it might be good to be back in Kentucky. If ever a state was divided, Kentucky was. Their governor leaned toward Secessionist, but most of the other political leaders waved the Union flag even while they had nothing good to say about President Lincoln. They wanted to ignore the war. Keep trading with the North and living like the South with slaves working their land. Governor Magoffin saw no problem with sitting on the fence. Something it seemed both sides were willing to go along with as long as they could set up their recruiting camps just across the borders to the north and south. The last news report Adam had read said plenty of Kentucky men were walking out of the state in both directions to sign up to fight.

So maybe Kentucky wouldn’t be a bad place to be. There would be scenes aplenty to keep him busy while the armies were gathering. And he could do that ethereal staircase Sam was so determined to show his readers. It was good to keep Sam happy. Or as happy as was possible.

Adam smiled a little. A side trip to Grayson might not be out of the question on his way to the Shaker village. Another stolen kiss before he went off to war. He couldn’t remember a girl so haunting his thoughts, but the senator’s daughter was different. He might consider propping his feet up in front of a fire that she was tending. He hoped that pantywaist from next door had gone to the Shakers so Charlotte would forget the asinine idea of marrying him.

Not that Adam was ready to propose or anything. The word even surfacing in his mind was enough to bring him up short on the street outside the hotel. His sudden stop caused the man walking behind him to bump him a little before he veered to the side to pass him with some angry words. Adam muttered an apology without really hearing what the man said.

What was the matter with him? Charlotte Vance was a mere diversion. That was all. So what if her lips had been sweet? So what if he couldn’t stop drawing her face and seeing her in his dreams? That didn’t mean anything. Nothing except the artist in him admired a perfectly aligned face.

It was the war. That was what had made him consider the unthinkable. A man faced with the prospect of being in front of a bullet with his name on it wanted to leave something behind. Wanted to know someone would grieve his passing. Wanted to leave his seed so that a child might carry his spirit forward. The sound of war drums gave Cupid a whole quiver full of arrows. That’s all it was.

He’d have to rein in his emotions and not get carried away. He hadn’t ever seriously considered proposing to Charlotte Vance or any other girl, no matter how entrancing. Of course it wasn’t just beautiful women who posed a danger when the sabers were rattling. Many men and boys jumped into the recruiting lines to prove their courage.

Adam touched the pocket of his coat where he’d stuck Phoebe’s telegram. Her words were to the point.
Jake dropped out of school. Joining the Potomac Army. Too young. Do something.

So before he could head to Kentucky to draw Sam’s staircase, he’d have to search through the Potomac Army to send Jake home. The boy had always been ready to fight at the slightest provocation. No sense of self-preservation at all. Phoebe was right about this one. Adam did need to do something. And Sam would take the army scenes and sell more newspapers with them than with any staircase.

But first Adam wanted to go back to his room and sketch that picture of Charlotte on her veranda from memory. The same as he’d done the first time. He assured himself it wasn’t because he wanted to keep the picture of Charlotte necessarily. It was the idea of yearning for peace. That was what he wanted to keep.

14

Once Charlotte had put on the Shaker costume, the pretense was easy. It was as if, along with the new clothes, she donned a new identity. The other Charlotte, the real Charlotte, was hovering somewhere in the shadows of her mind waiting for the right moment to step back into her life, while this new Charlotte—Sister Charlotte—was following after Sister Gemma meekly, learning to say yea and nay, to bend her head and watch the path in front of her instead of the sky. At least some of the time.

The new Charlotte was acting a role in a play. One that she had set in motion herself, for she had come voluntarily to this place. But once at Harmony Hill, the next act wasn’t as easy as she’d imagined. No matter how she searched the pathways, furtively peering up from under her cap at each Shaker brother who came near, she saw no sign of Edwin. He was there. She was sure of that, but she could hardly search through the men’s quarters for him. Not with Sister Gemma or Sister Altha constantly by her side to teach her the Shaker way. So as the week passed, the ending began to stretch far in the distance. At the same time, she saw no way to step out of the role and go back to Grayson. For her or for Mellie.

She missed Mellie. Not because of the way she’d helped her dress back at Grayson. It was a welcome novelty not having to be concerned about what she wore or how she looked. She certainly didn’t miss the constricting stays squeezing her waist fashionably small for the party dresses or the hoops that had to be scooted sideways through doors. But she did miss Mellie plaiting her hair at night. Not because she couldn’t weave the plaits herself, but because that was when she and Mellie had talked and laughed.

While the Shakers spoke of being loving sisters, idle chatter among these sisters was frowned upon. Silence allowed one to concentrate on one’s duties. A loose tongue was reason for confession, Sister Altha instructed before she pinned her sharp eyes on Charlotte as if waiting for her to voice that confession. Not because she gossiped but because she couldn’t keep from questioning the why behind the Shakers’ many rules. So Charlotte did ask forgiveness for her curiosity, then could not keep from following it up with another question. “But shouldn’t a person try to make sense of rules?”

“Understanding is not necessary. Obedience is necessary. That is what the Eternal Father asks of us. Obedience.” And then she had looked at Charlotte as though she should make another plea for forgiveness.

Perhaps that was why Sister Altha saw to it that Charlotte and Mellie were separated. To make obedience to the rules come easier for both of them. When Charlotte had asked about Mellie, Sister Altha frowned and said, “Worldly relationships are the cause of much stress and loss of peace. Especially that of husband and wife or slave and master. The Scripture clearly states, ‘Be not ye servants of men.’ For Sister Melana’s spiritual growth and for yours, it is best if you break loose from the sinful ties of the world.”

Charlotte bit back the arguments that sprang to her mouth. While she was playing this role, she had little choice but to do as Sister Altha said. Her pretense of obedience didn’t keep Charlotte from looking for Mellie among the Shakers with the same diligence as she searched for Edwin. Relief swooshed through her when she finally spotted Mellie on a pathway between the buildings on the third day and saw that she no longer looked frightened. Instead Mellie raised her eyebrows high and shrugged her shoulders the barest bit before flashing a smile as if this whole thing with the Shakers was some kind of farce they had planned together as an escapade of sorts. Then without the chance to exchange a forbidden word on the silent walkways, she had rushed off to keep up with her Shaker guide, Sister Cora.