Beauty From Ashes (4 page)

Your still devoted friend,

Fanny Kemble Butler”

After a long silence during which a cardinal made its ticking sound from the branches of the nearest oak at the foot of their cottage path, Anne said, “Don’t comment, Pete. Don’t say one word about what Fanny Butler wrote. Just open

Aunt Frances’s letter and read, please.”

“I didn’t plan to say a word,” Pete muttered, breaking the seal. “Aunt Frances dated hers four days ago and this is all she wrote.”

“My Dearest Anne,

I have just heard some Darien gossip, which prompts this brief letter. I’m sure you have visited Anna Matilda King many times since the financial devastation which befell her adored husband nearly three years ago now, but when excellent traits of character such as she shows in the midst of her trouble become reason for gossip, I felt the urge to beg you to visit Anna Matilda again soon in case you are still in a dark state of mind. Anna Matilda has also known sorrow—deep sorrow at the loss of both parents within months and then her adored son William. Everything was lost to Mr. King but Retreat Plantation, which was left to her, so I know she is on St. Simons to stay. I feel so certain that Anna Matilda can help you, beloved friend.”

“That’s all she wrote, Mama, 39 except to send her love by name to us all.”

“Thank you, Pete. There’s still Cousin Willy’s letter. Read it, please.”

“Does he know Grandmama Couper died, too?” Pete asked.

“I wrote to him while he was still in China. Maybe he got my letter. Maybe not. Read, just read.”

“Cousin Willy wrote from Caerlaverock Castle in Scotland. It’s dated the first of last month.”

“Beloved Anne,

Your last letter sent to me at my Peking address in China reached me the day before my ship sailed. My excuse for the long silence since is due to my own grief at the news that my dear cousin Rebecca Couper has died, too. I must admit that my own sorrow at the steadily forthcoming news of your loved ones leaving you one after another has almost overcome me. How, dearest Anne, do you manage to keep living through your days? Your nights? I have never said this to you, but it is true and from the depths of my heart: Should you need anything,

just anything, which my means might provide, you have only to let me know. Should you, because your father had to close Cannon’s Point except for occasional visits to the Island, find yourself in need of anything money can buy, you have only to inform me. With all my helpless heart, I wish I could write more—anything to lift your blessed spirits. I cannot, but as long as I live on this earth, you need only to turn to me.

Your devoted Willy, Lord of Herries”

“What a strange letter. Does it strike you as strange, Pete?”

“Am I allowed to comment now?” Pete was grinning.

With her first real smile of the day, Anne reached for her daughter’s hand. “Your sense of humor gets more like your father’s every minute, and I’m praying right now that it will be still more like his so that you can go on saving me the way he always did.” She pressed a kiss into the palm of Pete’s hand. “Now, comment, please. Comment to your heart’s content.”

“Are you going to visit your old friend Anna Matilda King after Sunday dinner tomorrow?”

“That’s a question, not a comment.”

“My comment is that I think Aunt 41 Frances Anne had a rip-roaring idea. I’ll go with you if you like, but I know it will break Big Boy’s heart if he can’t ride with you the way he always has when you visit at Retreat.”

“Yes, I’m going to visit Anna Matilda tomorrow and yes, Big Boy will take me. But Pete, don’t you have any comment about Cousin Willy’s generous offer?”

“Only that it’s exactly like him and that he should know our cottage is falling down around us.”

“Shame on you!”

“Shame on me? It isn’t my fault that the corner of the porch plus the railing is collapsing. I think it would make Cousin Willy happy if you told him we do need some money to have the house repaired. John Couper’s too much like Papa to be much of a carpenter and Uncle James Hamilton’s using all of Grandpapa’s carpenters over at Hopeton right now. There’s no one left at Cannon’s Point who knows how to fix porches, and everybody’s too much in debt to hire carpenters.”

“Listen to me, young lady.” Hoping to make her

smile again, Anne knew, Pete leaned toward her and cupped a hand around her ear. To show her gratitude for Pete’s playful efforts, Anne tried to smile. “All right, I’m convinced you’re listening. And this is what you must remember. You and John Couper and Fanny and Selina and I will make it on our own, somehow. We’ll start today to pray for help with our porch.”

“And the railing. Don’t forget the railing.”

“And the railing. But I’d have to be in far worse straits than we are now before I’d ever, ever take advantage of Willy Maxwell’s great heart. Is that clear?”

“Yep. Clear as mud.”

“Young ladies of almost twenty do not say `yep.`”

“Sometimes this one does.”

“I know. And you must know you’re perfectly welcome to go with me tomorrow to Retreat. Big Boy can take us both.”

The half-devilish, teasing smile vanished from Pete’s face. “I know I’m welcome. But do you remember when I said before that I’m never going to get married? Well, the main reason I said it, so far as I know, is that I still love

William Page King better than any 43 grown man who will ever draw breath. I know his sister Hannah is happy as a clam married to Uncle William Audley Couper now. I also know Reverend Bartow was awfully happy with Aunt Belle—like you and Papa. Like Aunt Frances Anne and Uncle William Fraser. I’d go anywhere if you really needed me, Mama, except to Retreat when I really don’t have to. I still miss William too much.”

Anne stared at her. “As long as we’ve been mother and daughter, you’ve never stopped knocking the wind out of me! You—you were just a child when William died. I’ll never forget the day you and I rode from Hamilton to Retreat together, but Pete, you weren’t quite eight then.”

Pete was half grinning now. “What difference does that make? Eve would say, `Where is it written down in law that a woman has to be any special age?`”

“Nowhere. It isn’t written down anywhere, darling.” With a deliberate smile, she added, “Pete, we’re becoming friends, I think, don’t you?”

“Yep. In fact, I feel pretty sure

we are. I feel so sure that I’m going to find June and tell him that in a week or so after you visit Miss Anna Matilda, you and I—the other children if you like—and Eve will need him to scrounge up a crew of oarsmen so he can take us all over to Hopeton for a few days.” Pete smiled. “I’m commenting, I know, but they’re worthy comments. Aunt Frances is usually right about things, and if a visit with Miss Anna Matilda helps you the way she thinks it will, I believe you’ll be able to help Grandpapa Couper.”

“Don’t push me.”

“I’m not pushing. I’m encouraging. Mama, I can honestly see us starting to rock right along living our lives again someday—not exactly in the same old carefree way but maybe almost the same.”

Anne looked down at the weathered boards of the dock John had helped build with his own dear hands. And then she smiled up at her daughter. “Look,” she said, pointing with the toe of her slipper at an old, rusty, bent nail. “Papa must have driven that one. It’s pretty crooked.”

When Anne said nothing further, Pete 45 peered at her. “Are you really smiling, Mama?”

“Yes, darling. I am. But repeat what you said just before I happened to look down at Papa’s handiwork.”

“I think I said I can see us living our lives again someday if not in the same old way, then in a new, good way we’ll all find together. A way we can all manage.”

“Oh, Pete, remind me of that over and over until I can believe it too, please?”

March 7, 1849-April 5, 1849

Papa Couper’s old but well-preserved plantation boat, the Lady Love, moved with a steady, rocking motion out into Buttermilk Sound en route to the South Branch of the Altamaha River, where James Hamilton Couper’s Hopeton mansion stood on its rise of land beside a broad canal. At home early this morning, in her diary Anne had written the date, March 7, 1849, then scribbled that she and Eve and the girls were leaving for the mainland to celebrate her father’s ninetieth birthday two days later. By coincidence, Papa and Anne’s little niece, Rebecca Isabella, shared the same birth date, March 9, and Anne knew the child would feel extra special. There had been little time to write more than that she felt almost excited to be going to Hopeton again. “Papa, in spite of how much he misses Cannon’s Point, is cheerful and we’ve been so blessed to have had him with us all this time. How can I not be excited? If only I

knew that my wonderful son, John 47 Couper, could leave his new position in Savannah long enough to join us for Papa’s Big Day, I’d be beside myself with joy. He’s just begun work as a clerk, though, with the firm of McCleskey and Norton, so I know hoping is false, but how I miss that boy! I even miss his father more than ever without John Couper nearby.”

During the four years just past, a few difficult things had become possible without her adored husband, and Pete, twenty-three, had seen to it that Anne counted now and then the ways in which she was learning how to live life without him. For example, she could again bear to play her pianoforte, to listen while Fanny played, as long as no one ever played the song she and John had shared almost from the first moment of their love. Thanks to Pete, not one of the children ever sang, whistled, or even hummed “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.” The song was never mentioned, although Papa had hinted once that hearing it might bring her some relief from the stress of avoiding the inevitable first pain. “So many love the tune, Anne,” Papa had said, “it’s just not possible to go through your entire life without hearing it somewhere—

somehow.”

But her daughter Pete knew, as did young John Couper and Eve, that it was still too soon. She disliked being treated like a child by her servant and her own offspring, but even after ten endless years without John, she saw no hope that she could ever bear to hear their song again.

A soft, spring breeze off the water brushed her face. She exchanged an easy smile with Eve, seated as usual on the boat seat beside her, watchful of her every change of expression. “You be safe wif the songs the people sings, Miss Anne,” Eve often assured her. “Dey don’ even know any white music.” Eve understood. For all the years of both their lives, Eve had proved her friendship for her mistress, and somehow Anne felt sure that even her own mother, wise now with the wisdom of heaven, finally accepted the irrevocable fact of that friendship. The subject of whether Mama would approve seldom came up anymore, but when it did, Eve always laughed a little, no longer seeming to mind at all. Oh, Eve could still be overly attentive. She bossed Anne too much, but Anne felt no more uneasiness that Mama would think she allowed Eve

too many liberties, gave her too much 49 freedom of choice, unwisely permitted her to believe that she and Anne were friends. Well, they were. They had always been. During recent years as grief piled upon grief, both women seemed convinced that Rebecca Couper, in heaven now, saw things more clearly, more as they had always been. “She see more’n my little bit darker skin now,” Eve would say with a sly grin.

Deep in thought, Anne had only half listened to the steady slap of water against the cypress sides of the dugout, the rhythm of the water an accompaniment to the familiar cadence of her oarsmen’s rowing songs. Six of Anne’s people from Lawrence, her beloved but now dilapidated plantation adjoining Papa’s old home, Cannon’s Point, were pulling the heavy oars of the Lady Love, which Papa had left behind for her use. After Mama’s death, nearly four years ago during a visit to Hopeton, the aging, heartbroken laird of Cannon’s Point had been forced to make his home permanently with his son James Hamilton and his large family on the mainland. Rowing the heavy, brass-trimmed boat were Big Boy, young Cuffy, Rollie, Tiber,

Peter, and George. None had been trained as oarsmen, but under June’s steady steering, they all did fine. Tiber, Peter, Rollie, and George were the first men John bought at the Savannah slave market. It had been such a disturbing ordeal for him that Anne knew he didn’t forget it until his dying day years later. Her slave-owning father was not in favor of the South’s system, but Anne had never known anyone who loathed it as did John—except her friend Fanny Kemble Butler.

John. How many times during the course of every day his name moved through her mind. For months she had avoided speaking that name, but she could do it more freely now. Not only because John had been gone nearly ten years, but because her sensitive, dependable son, John Couper, had helped so much by urging her to talk to him about his father. The boy, six and a half when John left them, had even then been her stay. She depended on him far more now. His every letter from Savannah seemed so happy and proud because he could earn money to send her, and heaven knew they needed it. But except for his father, she had never missed anyone as she missed young John Couper—every hour of every day.

Somehow Anne felt deep in her 51 bones that only Eve truly knew how much she depended on John Couper. Pete and Fanny and Selina adored their only brother, too, and not once did any of them show a single sign of jealousy because their mother leaned so hard on him. Papa knew also and genuinely rejoiced for her that she had such a son to watch over her into old age. But no one seemed to understand as did her half-white servant, Eve, and Anne counted on that in an odd way even she was relieved not to have to explain or even fully understand.

Eve had been there right beside her through the terrifying agony of John’s final illness. She was beside her today as they all headed through the bright spring sunlight toward what would surely be a joyous event once the Lady Love entered the quarter-mile canal that would take them from the wide Altamaha to James Hamilton’s large, well-built dock. Eve would be right beside her in joy as she had been in grief.

“They be singin’ your favorite song, Miss Anne,” Eve said, a disarming smile lighting her face as she tapped her long, graceful fingers to the rhythm. “They be singin’ `Five Fingers in