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Chapter Three

Who is talking?

Max turned his head slightly. At first he thought the lowered voices were coming through the window on the upstairs porch. With some effort, he turned over in the bed, realizing immediately that the conversation originated from the other side of the house.

His hands were still wrapped in spite of his restless sleep and still hurt like hell. He flexed them gingerly and immediately regretted it. Even so, the swelling seemed less, and that was something.

He lay there looking around the room. It was sparsely furnished. A four-poster bed, a dresser, a washstand, a chair and small table, somewhat tattered lace curtains, recently washed. No draperies. No rugs. No framed pictures. The wallpaper had seen better days—some kind of stylized flowers in a vase surrounded by a wreath in a pattern that repeated every few inches. A spotty mirror hung from a braided gold cord over the mantel. It tilted downward enough that he could see a dim reflection of himself lying in bed. It was not his first encounter with a well-placed mirror in a bedchamber. The high-class bordellos he’d frequented before the war were full of them. It was a shame this one would go to waste.

“Perkins!” he yelled suddenly, simply to measure his new orderly’s efficiency. He had no idea if the man were anywhere close by or not.

“Sir!” Perkins said immediately on the other side of the closed bedchamber door.

“Coffee,” Max said. “Now.”

“Yes, Sir!”

Max sat up on the edge of the bed with some difficulty, then unwrapped his hands and flexed his fingers again.

Not too bad, Miss Markham, he thought.

He stood and walked unsteadily to the window that opened on the back side of the house. He had initially been too distracted by the pain in his hands to register that everything else hurt, as well. It had been a long time since he’d participated in the kind of physical exertion necessary to put out a fire. Clearly, the days when he could subject his body to any and every kind of strain and misbehavior and not feel any aftereffects were long gone.

He moved the lace curtain aside and looked down into the backyard. The sun was up. The birds were singing, and there was a fine, cool breeze coming in through the window. Maria Markham stood on the dewy grass below and, unless the man with her lived here, she was exhibiting a flagrant disregard for the new curfew.

Max moved slightly to try to hear what they were saying, but he could only catch certain words. From the look of things, however, the conversation was not going well. Whatever verbal bouquets the man was handing out, Maria Markham was not accepting.

“—how could she be better…they need you. Why can’t you see what this is?”

The man reached out to touch her arm, and she stepped away from him.

“You break her heart,” she said. Max heard and understood that quite distinctly.

“I can’t help the way things are—” the man replied.

“Yes, you can!” Maria said, forgetting to lower her voice in her agitation. “Who can but you?”

But then she suddenly relented. “—I will,” she said. “They are always welcome—”

Max looked around at a faint knock on the door.

“In,” he said, and Perkins came in with the coffee.

“Who is that with Miss Markham?” Max asked, nodding toward the window. Even from this distance and without much to go on, he didn’t like Maria Markham’s early morning visitor. It was enough that he was breaking the curfew.

Perkins carefully handed over the tin cup of hot coffee and peered out the window to see.

“You want me to detain him, Sir?”

“No, I want you to tell me who he is.”

“That would be…Phelan Canfield, Sir. Ex-Reb artilleryman. Brother to Miss Markham’s late fiancé and well on his way to becoming the town drunk. He’s married to a friend of Miss Markham’s—Suzanne, her name is. I hear that both the Canfield boys admired Miss Markham, though. Some folks here think maybe Phelan would have turned out better if he’d married her instead of letting his brother have her—on account of she would have made something out of him. Besides that, her brothers—if they had lived—would have half killed him for the kind of misbehavior he’s been showing. Good men, her brothers, or so folks say. But you never know about these things that might have been, do you, Sir?

“Anyway, Canfield and this here Suzanne has got two children—little boys. One’s five—his daddy got to come home on horse leave one winter and that’s where he come from. The other one’s about two or so. Suzanne—now, she ain’t well enough to look after them or keep up her wifely duties, if you know what I mean, Sir. Most of the time Canfield ain’t sober—or he’s disappeared someplace and nobody knows where he got to. It’s usually jail for being drunk and disorderly or one of the whorehouses down by the railroad tracks. He ain’t got enough money to gamble or partake—but I reckon some of the girls take pity on him, him being a Reb war hero and all that.”

Max stared at his orderly. “How the hell do you know all this?”

“People talk, Sir. Alls I do is pay attention when they do it. Most of the folks here work so hard at ignoring us, I reckon they really do forget we’re around. But I ain’t deaf. You can hear all kinds of things at the bakery—it’s on the ground floor down at the hotel—Mansion House. And Miss Markham—she’s come down to the jail a time or two looking for the son of a bitch and thinking he’s been on another one of his binges and got hisself locked up. She takes care of them little boys right much and Suzanne, too. Them boys are a handful—you remember, I did mention, Sir, that this might not be the most restful place for you here.”

Max declined to comment. He held the cup precariously with both hands, savoring the warmth against his painful fingers, and sipped his coffee. After a moment he moved to the window and looked out again—at approximately the same instant Maria Markham glanced up and saw him. She immediately sent Phelan Canfield on his way and went into the house.

“Any chance of getting breakfast, Perkins?” Max asked.

“I believe it’s in the making, Sir.”

“You ‘believe’?”

“Well, Sir, I did get myself run out of the kitchen pretty quick—so I can’t be exactly sure.”

“What the hell did you do?”

“Showed up, Sir,” Perkins said. “That’s about all it took.”

“Perkins, the Markham woman is only this high,” Max said, holding up an aching hand in a fair estimation of her tallness.

“Yes, Sir, but she had this here broom and even if she didn’t use it, she was about to cry—so I just thought I’d let her win this one. And as long as I was shoved out yonder in the backyard, I got me a campfire going to make the coffee. And I seen to your mount—checked the hooves and got the farrier up here. So that’s been done. I got the wash pot filled with water and a good fire under it, while I was at it. It ought to be hot enough about now. Would you be needing it for a shave and the like, Sir?”

“I would,” Max said. “Tell Miss Markham I said to hold breakfast until I’m ready.”

Perkins made a small sound. Just enough of one to let Max know his orderly wasn’t altogether looking forward to another encounter with the daughter of the house.

“Tell her just like that, Sir?” he asked.

“Exactly like that, Perkins.”

A “shave and the like” didn’t take nearly as long as it might have. Perkins had already set up a place in a small connecting room—in what Max guessed had once been a nursery—Maria Markham’s perhaps. The orderly had the tin tub more than half filled. All that remained was carrying the hot water upstairs from the wash pot in the backyard. The biggest delay was caused by finding a wearable tunic. The one he had arrived in had numerous holes burned in it from the sparks at the fire.

Still, the wait would likely not sit well with Maria. It was yet another “inconvenience” he didn’t mind perpetrating—or so he thought until he came downstairs. She had gone to a great deal of trouble from the smell of things—fresh bread, cooked apples, fried meat of some kind—bacon or ham—and coffee.

Mr. Markham greeted him in the hall, a stately-looking man in a threadbare frock coat, if somewhat frail. Maria Markham must have taken after her mother. Max could see no family resemblance.

“Good morning, Colonel! And a fine morning it is. This way, if you please,” the old man said, leading him into the dining room. “I trust you slept well?”

“Quite well,” Max said, the lie coming easily. He had had months of practice when he was still recuperating at home after his imprisonment. Both his mother and his sister, Kate, had asked him that every morning, and every morning he had lied. The truth was that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a restful sleep. Or even a long one. It seemed to be the way of things. He wasn’t the only war veteran to suffer from it—particularly among the ones who had survived a prison. There was no cure, as far as he knew, save laudanum or brandy, not even an accommodating woman helped. He no longer worried about it.

“I see you’ve sustained an injury,” Markham said.

“A minor one. I am much improved this morning—thanks to your daughter. She very kindly bound my hands last night to keep the swelling to a minimum.”

The old man laughed. “My daughter? Ah, well now, that is a surprise.”

Max had the distinct impression that the surprise came not from Maria Markham’s handiness at binding wounds but from her willingness to do so for the likes of a Yankee colonel.

The dining room was as sparsely furnished as the rest of the house. The table should have had six chairs, but there were only three and three places set. The china and the silverware were clearly of good quality. The only problem was that hardly anything matched.

“If you would sit here, Colonel,” the old man said, offering him his place at the head of the table.

“I would prefer the side, Mr. Markham, if you don’t mind. I tend to linger to read and work after I eat, and I like room to spread out. I have no wish to usurp your place.”

“As you wish, Sir,” Markham said. “Maria Rose!”

She came eventually, carrying a tray heavily laden with serving bowls. They were as mismatched as the rest of the dinnerware, and apparently she was foregoing the use of the sideboard and putting everything directly on the table, because there was no one but her to serve.

Max picked up a crisply starched but much-darned napkin and tried not to smile. He understood the not-so-subtle message she was sending him perfectly, as he was meant to do. The Markhams—like the rest of the people here—had suffered for their cause and, vanquished or not, they were proud of it.

He noted, too, that the resolute Miss Markham didn’t wear her severe mourning attire at home—or at least, not precisely. She did have on a kind of black skirt, but she’d put a white blouse with it and then covered over the entire ensemble with a coarse linen pinafore of a faded violet color. It made her look young and vulnerable in a way that was not entirely unbecoming.

“Have you seen my orderly, Miss Markham?” he asked as she set a large compote of a thin, brownish liquid and a bowl of rice in front of her father.

“He is sitting on the back steps—eating.”

“I believe I mentioned that he was to assist you with the meals.”

“And I believe I mentioned that his assistance was not required,” she countered, still unloading bowls.

Her father looked from one of them to the other. “Maria—”

“I must bring the coffee, Father,” she said, disappearing through the doorway. She came back almost immediately with the coffeepot and proceeded to pour.

That done, she left the room again, and Max expected her not to return. She did, however, with a bread basket full of hot biscuits, which she placed near his elbow. Then, she sat in the only seat available—across from him.

“May I take the liberty of saying grace?” he asked just to see the expression on her face.

“Indeed, Colonel,” her father answered quickly, Max thought to head any remarks his daughter might feel compelled to make.

Max made his prayer of thanks concise and eloquent, one that would have done his clergyman great-uncle proud—if he did say so himself. Rather than bowing his head, Max kept his eyes on Maria the entire time. She looked up at him before the prayer ended—as he knew she would.

He left it to her to begin passing the bowls, and he managed to serve himself in spite of the pain in his hands.

“Tell me, Colonel Woodard,” Mr. Markham said. “Have you learned yet to appreciate our fine Southern cuisine?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t often had the occasion to try it,” he answered, still watching Maria. His experience with “Southern cuisine” had been the daily ration at the prison—moldy cornbread that was mostly ground-up cobs, and a cup of watery rice soup. On very special occasions, he had fought off other men for the privilege of eating hog entrails that had been dumped over the wall to the men in the stockade in the same way one might feed a pack of animals. And he had been grateful for the opportunity. His ration, pitiful as it was, had been the only thing he had to barter. He’d prolonged his hunger more than one time in order to purchase his desperate notion of what constituted a luxury—once a single, bloodstained page from David Copperfield.

He still had it.

But he would have to agree that Maria Markham had set an excellent table, regardless of the hodgepodge of china and utensils. She was a fine cook, but she made little attempt to eat what she had taken onto her plate. She kept halfheartedly pushing her food around with her fork and finally drank a small sip of water from her glass.

Max let Mr. Markham carry the conversation—the weather, street repairs, the impeachment woes of President Andrew Johnson. The most likely topic of conversation—the fire and the subsequent curfew—went conspicuously unremarked upon. After a time he realized that the old man was indeed not well. The effort it took for him to speak left him winded, and clearly worried his daughter. At one point he lost his breath altogether.

“Father—” Maria said in alarm.

“I am…quite…all right, Maria Rose. Don’t…fuss over me,” he insisted, and he continued with the meal if not the conversation.

Maria Markham had said when Max first arrived that she obeyed her father’s wishes. And so she did—but it was all she could do to manage it. They ate for a time in silence.

“May I ask you a question, Miss Markham?” Max said, because he thought she was about to get up and leave.

She looked up at him, her expression startled, as if she had forgotten he was there and, now reminded, had no idea what uncouth subject he might broach, regardless of her father’s presence. She also looked very pale.

“I was wondering if you are acquainted with the Howes,” he said anyway. “Major John Howe and his wife.”

“I…know them by sight,” she answered.

“I thought Mrs. Howe was a Salisburian.”

“She is—but we did not move in the same circles growing up. And especially not now,” she added.

He chose to ignore the remark. “Do the Howes live nearby?”

“The…the Howes—” She abruptly stopped. “You must excuse me, Father. I have things I must see to—”

She got up from her chair and hurriedly left the table, disappearing through the doorway into the kitchen.

Max looked at her father, but the old man clearly felt no need to explain her behavior—possibly because he couldn’t. Perkins suddenly appeared in the dining-room doorway, looking as if he didn’t quite know how he’d gotten there.

“Did you speak to Miss Markham just now?” Max asked him, because he thought it the only explanation for the man’s perplexed look.

“Yes, Sir. Very briefly. I believe the colonel needs coffee?”

The colonel didn’t, but Perkins picked up the coffeepot and poured as much as he could into the already full cup anyway.

“Anything else, Sir?” he asked.

“Stay handy,” Max said. “When Mr. Markham is done, you can clear the table. Then you can bring me my leather case. I have reading I need to do.”

Mr. Markham cleared his throat. “My daughter is sometimes very…high-strung. The war was hard on the women here.”

“The war was hard on the women everywhere,” Max said, thinking of the unmarked burial trenches and the women who perhaps still waited to hear what had become of their men.

He took a small breath and tried to let go of the animosity that threatened to overwhelm him. The war was over.

Over.

He had managed to get past the bitterness he harbored after John Howe made his solo escape from the prison. If he could put that behind him, surely he could let go of the rancor he felt for the people in this town who had, perhaps unknowingly, tolerated the mistreatment of Union prisoners.

When the old man had taken his leave and Perkins had gone to fetch the leather case, Max kept watching the door that led to the kitchen.

But there was no sign of Maria Markham.