The Rebel Wife Read online

  “Eli stole from the Freedman’s Bank?”

  “Well, perhaps I spoke too soon. You know Eli headed up the Freedmen’s Bureau, and he was the president of the branch bank that was chartered here. When the Freedman’s Bank collapsed last year, the assets and specie were suspended. Mr. Stephens suggested that Eli was able at critical moments to come up with payments to him in specie. We assume they came from the Freedman’s Bank. It is unpleasant.”

  A shiver runs over me. “The mill at Three Forks?”

  “The mill at Three Forks. A cotton mill.”

  I know the area, hidden out in the woods, almost. I used to ride there with Buck.

  Judge shifts in his chair, irritated. “It was a venture started a few years ago. He had partners in the mill, which is why he could not use it as a pledge at the bank. He did inquire with Stephens about that. It’s been running profitably, and I’m confident it will produce dividends for you.”

  “That’s all that’s left? A cotton mill?”

  “Not all. We have to figure this out, and then we will know where things stand for you. I feel obliged to say, if we find more, there is a chance you and Henry could have much less.”

  “I can’t go away, then. I can’t go anywhere.” Judge looks away from me. “There are so many bills already, Judge. Is there enough to go to Monte Sano, at least?” It seems pathetic that I should find myself begging Judge for money. It can’t all have vanished. There must be money somewhere.

  He smiles at me as warmth creeps back into his face. “I am sure we can find a way to get you up to Monte Sano.” He takes his hand from the papers and reaches out to me, patting my hand on the desk. The papers are ragged at the edges from clipped coupons, others scrawled spidery with black ink like hieroglyphs.

  He rises from his chair and places the papers back in the leather case. “I will come back to you as I know more. I wanted to acquaint you with what I knew at this point.”

  “Thank you, Judge. I’m sorry, I just can’t believe this.”

  He watches me with discomfort. “It will all work out. I will see what we can do to get you up to Monte Sano.”

  “How soon can I get the money? And the will. Did you remember the will?”

  He frowns as if he’s drunk sour milk. “I’ll let you know about the money as soon as I can. And the will. Does that satisfy you for now, Augusta?”

  “Thank you.” He is leaving. There are too many questions for him to leave. “It’s just that Bama Buchanan said the yellow fever has started.”

  He looks back and shakes his head. “It won’t be too long.”

  He leaves me with a curt nod. Through Eli’s three walls of windows, I watch him stalk down the garden path and up the lane.

  Even with the windows and doors open, the office is as hot as the kitchen. The heat is thick and wet. The sun streams through the glass panes, searing the floor. I don’t want it to touch the black of my dress. I feel like I will combust. Judge is unfair. I can’t believe what he says. He didn’t like Eli, Simon is right about that. With Eli gone, Judge says what he wants with no one to stop him.

  Pa never liked Judge. Seventeen years after Pa is dead, Judge still hates Pa. What a fantasy about Pa using trickery. I don’t know where the enmity started, long before I was born. Mama talked like Judge had courted her at one time. She hinted that Judge’s father disapproved of a match between them, they were so close in blood. Mama seemed to have considered it a possibility—even after Pa’s death, she hinted that she would be open to a proposal of marriage. Maybe that’s why Mama didn’t want me to marry Buck.

  Pa was a peaceful man. A man of thought and word. Judge was always a man of action. I imagine he was like Buck when he was young. That confidence, a certain dash. A hotheaded cavalier. Pa was never hotheaded. He was a gentle man. Firm when he needed to be, tough when he was in his cups. But when he was not drinking, he was a just and honorable man. If nothing else, they are both men of honor.

  I was young, but I remember the election of 1856, when Pa and Judge ran against each other. Just one seat from Albion in the Alabama statehouse, and they both wanted it. And then to have them lose the election to an old tinkerer. He came from the mountains and spoke in silly parables that made the farmers laugh. Mama would take me to listen to Pa’s speeches. Cicero drove the open-topped Victoria, and we followed Pa around the county. We would sit at a distance, watching young men chase after a greased pig or grasp for the slippery neck of a goose hung by its feet high in a tree. Pa would pay for a whole ox to be roasted on a spit and great black kettles of stew. And, of course, whiskey. The crowds could get wild from whiskey and opinion.

  Fights were common. The feel of the frontier was never really lost in the county, until the war finally killed its spirit. Pa would mount a block, sometimes half tipsy from the slugs of whiskey forced on him by the county men—the small farmers, the blacksmiths and other mechanics on whom he depended for his election. With the raucous crowd around him, sometimes so noisy that we could barely hear a word, he would talk about the value of the Union and our place in it.

  Once a ruffian booed and called Pa a Yankee lover. Hecklers were frequent, and Pa always swore that Judge paid them. A knife fight broke out near our carriage once. The men, both drunk, began to scuffle, and a crowd opened into a circle for them, cheering them on with whistles and obscenities. The two men nearly cut each other to ribbons. One had an eye gouged out. Pa was furious at Cicero for bringing us too close to the crowd. He beat him horribly that night, his voice slurred from the whiskey. Mama was terror-stricken when he came back to the house. He smashed a mirror in the parlor. He threw a porcelain vase of cherubs and rosebuds straight at it. We all hid in our beds, terrified he would come up the stairs. The whiskey always made him rage. He could have a terrible temper. But he was a good man.

  Pa and Judge never spoke after all that. They were barely civil before then, and the election put the final nail in that coffin. Judge won the seat in 1858. The mood had shifted. Perhaps he had found better ways to win, too. Defeat is unacceptable to someone who believes the world will end if he doesn’t win. Judge’s worst fears must have come true by war’s end. His world really had ended.

  A shadow moves across me. Simon is standing at the door. His face is expressionless. How does he find it so easy to conceal his emotions? That is the face I should wear.

  “Hello, Simon.”

  “Ma’am.” He stands immobile, watching me.

  “What do you need?”

  “I saw Mr. Heppert leave. I was wondering how the interview went.”

  “It was very informative. Judge said Eli stole from the Freedman’s Bank.”

  Simon steps into the room without a word. He is unimpressed by this latest revelation. He walks behind me to the far side of Eli’s desk.

  “If I were to need money, Simon, where might I get it?”

  His mouth is slack. He looks puzzled. “Can Mr. Heppert help you?”

  “Yes, of course, he will. Can you help me, too?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am.”

  “You are looking for the package, aren’t you? The package you say contains money.”

  He looks at the floor and doesn’t answer.

  “You are looking for it. Why won’t you tell me the truth?”

  Simon’s frown deepens. The sun floods in around us, casting bright shafts against his legs.

  “I want to trust you,” he says. “I know Eli wanted to trust you, too. But by telling you, I am putting myself at risk.”

  His eyes question me. His voice is grave, as it always is. He has never been one to grovel or to speak with his hat in his hands.

  “What are you saying to me, Simon? What kind of risk?”

  He sighs and offers Eli’s chair to me with his hand. I push myself up from my seat and move behind the desk. Judge was sitting here only minutes ago. Simon takes the chair I have abandoned. He rubs his chin, looking at the floor. He eyes me, then looks at the floor again and begins to speak. “I worked f
or Mr. Eli for many years. From the time I was fourteen. Mr. Eli had a great deal of trust in me. He would often have me go on trips to Montgomery. He trusted me to deliver certain things for him. He had many friends there, and he enjoyed doing favors for them.” He pauses, his eyes looking steadily into mine.

  “Favors,” I say, raising my eyebrows.

  “Monetary favors, ma’am,” he says, and his eyes do not waver. He is so cryptic. “Before Mr. Eli’s passing, I was intended to make a trip to Montgomery for him. I was meant to leave the day he fell sick. He never had the time to give me the package I was to deliver or my instructions.”

  “Yes?” My arms feel weak and my stomach turns.

  “I believe—I am certain, ma’am—that Mr. Eli had prepared the package for me but he was not able to give it to me.”

  I lower my voice to a whisper. “How much money was there in the package?”

  “I think about five thousand dollars,” he whispers.

  He has lost his mind. It can’t be possible.

  “Depending,” he adds, nodding.

  “My God, Simon,” I say, trying to keep my voice low. “He would send that much money with you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It is a great deal of money.”

  “In greenbacks? Or gold?”

  “Sometimes one or the other. Sometimes in notes of exchange.”

  “You have not found it.”

  We are both of us perfectly still, watching each other. The cicadas chant outside. The air is hot.

  “I have searched everywhere I can. The rooms down here, the office, the saddlebags he usually used, but I have not found it. There’s a compartment behind a drawer in that desk. There are several false books on the shelves behind you. There is a loose floorboard against the wall behind me. They’re all empty. All the drawers in that desk. All the books. The cabinets. Every inch of this room has been searched. I would have searched Mr. Eli’s room, but you have kept the key and locked the door.”

  The walls are painted bright white. The shelves are lined with books end to end. Everything is neat and orderly. What would Judge say about all of this?

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  Eli’s wide desk sits between the two of us. The corners of Simon’s mouth curve in a vague smile. “I wondered, to be honest, if you were aware of it already. I can see by your face that is not the case.”

  It is not funny. Simon should have nothing to smile about.

  His mouth twists into a frown. His shoulders make a light shrug.

  “I believe you have a need,” he continues. “I know the bills are not being paid, and perhaps you would prefer to have the money yourself rather than rely on Mr. Heppert. It is Mr. Branson’s money, after all.”

  “I should go directly to Mr. Heppert and tell him.”

  Simon nods again, and that curl of pale smile returns. “That is the risk I am running, ma’am. How much of the money do you think you’ll see if you do that?”

  “Why would you say that?” What gall he has to speak of my blood kin that way.

  “Because I have been in Albion many years, and I know Mr. Heppert.”

  “Does he know you?”

  “Most certainly.”

  “How?”

  “Albion is a small town.”

  His evasions are insulting. How can I trust him, in any case?

  “It is a week since Eli died,” I say. “How can you be sure this money exists—or ever existed at all?”

  “I am sure it exists. Where is a very different question.” He comes around behind the desk toward me. I shrink back. It is a reaction, instinctive. I am embarrassed by my fear. That I should shrink before someone I have known for ten years. And a servant.

  Simon ignores me and opens a desk drawer. He pushes a trigger at the back of the drawer, and the bottom springs up. From underneath the false bottom, he pulls out a long, thin ledger and drops it on the desk in front of me. It falls with the sound of a slap.

  “Mr. Eli kept this ledger here,” Simon says. “I hid it the day he fell sick. He was not yet dead, but I knew that he would want this hidden. Disposed of.”

  The ledger is worn at the edges and turned toward me. Simon opens it, flipping through pages filled with numbers, long rows of numbers with cryptic figures that look like Greek characters heading each row. Simon stops at the last page that bears writing. He points at different numbers on the page as he explains. His finger is dark like ebony but white underneath the nail. The pale skin turns pink from the pressure he applies to the page.

  “This is the day before Mr. Eli became ill,” he says. His finger travels across the page to other numbers and the Greek headings beside them. “This is the cotton he bought for the mill. This is the price he paid and this is the price he recorded in the books at the mill for Mr. Hunslow to see. The difference he took and kept hidden.”

  “What is this?”

  “It is a record book. Mr. Eli was very careful. He kept track of everything in his ledger.” Simon’s finger moves along a row. “These are debits to the cash he took from the mill. They are the payments he made to his friends in Montgomery and in Washington. Among them Senator Spencer. He even had friends here in Albion to whom he made these... loans. To make sure things ran smoothly for him.”

  Simon’s finger rests on the page. His eyes are on me.

  “Payments to his friends? Why on earth would Eli need to bribe people?”

  Simon takes a deep breath, resting his hand flat on the desk. Perhaps I am boring him with my questions.

  “Eli had many business interests. And state politics have been turbulent. More recently than before. He was an influential man in the Republican Party, but he needed friends who were Democrats and Conservatives to protect his interests. To help pass laws that would help his interests.

  “And since the panic, he was struggling. It wasn’t just the money, although that was a worry for him. He saw the Republicans failing—because of the violence that kept the colored people away from the polling stations. The men up in Washington didn’t care anymore about colored men being strung up or harassed. In the last election, many Republicans were voted out of office. He had to make many friends. With the new state constitution men are talking about, he needed the men in Montgomery, whoever they were, to help him. When the Union League burned, everything became harder. He couldn’t start over again. Not like he had before. He had you and Henry, and he couldn’t walk away from you. He knew you couldn’t start over like he could.”

  I slump against the chair. Eli’s chair. He was tall and ungainly. Quiet. Taciturn. Sometimes jovial. He used to play with Henry, sitting on the floor with his blocks or his toy soldiers. Simon says one thing and Judge another, but they sound the same to me. Who was Eli? What was he doing all these years?

  “Has Eli really lost everything?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. But if your cousin Heppert tells you he has, I would think twice before you believe it.” His face is calm. He nods at the page. His finger travels down a column of entries and reaches a final one. It shows a debit of five thousand dollars.

  “This is the money. The last entry. It could be more than this. I don’t know if it’s greenbacks, bonds, or coin, but I know it is somewhere. There are elections coming, ma’am, to draft a new state constitution. Eli would need a lot of friends in that convention. He would never put down the names of the recipients. Not in here. But he would include the list of recipients with the money. Before my trip, he would give me the bundle wrapped in brown paper. If I was to set out before dawn the next day—and that is what I was to have done the day he passed—he would give it to me the night before. I would have to memorize that list and recite it back to him before I left. Then he would destroy it. That is why I am convinced the letter and the money are in the house. He was going to give them to me that evening. But he fell sick. I could see in his eyes he wanted to tell me something. I stayed by him as long as I could. He never regained control of himself to say it. Did he not say anything to
you, ma’am?”

  “No. He tried. I thought he was trying to say something.” I look up at Simon again. He comes here, telling me a fantastical story about money and that my kinsman, my protector, is not to be trusted. “So the money and the list of men Eli was going to bribe is somewhere in this house?”

  “Very likely, ma’am.” Simon folds the ledger and puts it back in the drawer. “And if Mr. Heppert is aware of it, and Mr. Heppert is a very knowledgeable man, then you can believe he will do everything he can to find it. That list of names would be worth even more to him than the money. You understand how important it is that no one finds this ledger?” He locks the drawer, lays the key in front of me, and walks back to his chair.

  “Yes, I do.” I take the key, a tiny piece of metal, and put it in my pocket.

  “I hope I can trust you,” Simon says. Why is he such a sphinx?

  “What do you want in return for your trust? Do you expect me to dig up the garden looking for this package?”

  Simon smiles. “No, ma’am. I would appreciate your discretion. The door to Eli’s room is locked, and you have the only key. Besides, I wouldn’t look in the rooms upstairs without your permission.”

  “I will unlock the door, and you have my permission. What else do you want? You are not looking for the money out of Christian charity, are you?”

  His face is blank. Completely inscrutable. “I would appreciate whatever you think is appropriate, ma’am. And the bequests that Eli promised to all of us.” He speaks formally, like a servant.

  “How much, Simon?”

  “Half,” he says coolly.

  Half. A lot of money. A lot of my money. If it even exists. “And you give up Eli’s bequest. That’s still a small fortune for you.”

  “Very good, ma’am,” he says with a knowing smile. “If Emma or Rachel questions you about why I have invaded their territory, I would appreciate you telling them it is simply to clean up Mr. Eli’s things. Whatever can be done to avoid suspicion would be best. I would hate for them to talk to the neighbors and find that stories about a search of the house are circulating through town. It would be unfortunate if that made it to anyone else’s ears.”