Beyond All Dreams
Authors: Elizabeth Camden
© 2015 by Dorothy Mays
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Ebook edition created 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansâfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingâwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-6521-0
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
This is a work of historical reconstruction; the appearances of certain historical figures are therefore inevitable. All other characters, however, are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Cover design by Jennifer Parker
Cover photography by Mike Habermann Photography, LLC
W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.
O
CTOBER
1897
I
'm begging you, please stop looking at naughty pictures in the library.” It was a sentence Anna never thought she would utter, and with a straight face no less. But these boys were on the verge of getting kicked out of the Library of Congress unless she intervened for them.
“They're medical pictures,” Jack Wilkerson said from his position at the library worktable. “Please, Miss O'Brien, we just want to learn.”
Was there anything more frustrating than a rowdy fifteen-year-old boy? The government hired hundreds of orphaned boys to serve as congressional pages at the US Capitol, where they performed odd jobs and ran errands for congressmen but rarely had much supervision. Lately, a group of them had been causing trouble in the library, and they'd just been caught flipping through anatomy books in the hunt for drawings of naked bodies.
Anna had an instinctive urge to protect these fatherless children. After all, she was an orphan herself, and a library could be a wonderful escape from the troubles of the world. She gathered the boys around the single worktable in the map room, which was crammed with atlases, map bins, and floor globes.
“You sounded like a pack of laughing hyenas as you ogled those books,” she said. “I don't need a groveling show of contrition with sackcloth and ashes. A simple apology to the library's director will be fine.”
“What are sackcloth and ashes for?” Jack asked.
“It's a metaphor,” she said pointedly. “Metaphors are something grown-ups use when they can't set troublesome boys on fire.”
Several of the boys giggled. “You're funny, Miss O'Brien.”
“I'm also serious.” She hoped she didn't sound too much like a schoolmarm, but working at the Library of Congress was the greatest privilege of her life. Even after six years, there were times Anna loved to stand in the aisles, awed by the immensity of the books towering above her. It was magical and magnificent. Amazing and inspiring. These books contained the wisdom of the ages, some of them outlasting the countries in which they had first been written. Caring for books and helping others unlock the mysteries inside them was what she'd been put on this earth to do.
She was going to miss this old library when they moved into their grand new building next month. The Library of Congress had been located in the US Capitol since 1810, when it was designed to hold a hundred thousand books. Now the collection had swelled to almost a million volumes, and they'd outgrown their space.
“The rules will be even tighter when we move into our new building,” Anna said. “The light fixtures are plated with real
gold. The floors have mosaics and precious metals in them. You can't hold footraces in the halls or slide down the banisters in the new building. You understand that, don't you?”
Jack smirked as he gave an antique globe a mighty twist to send it spinning. The ancient globe squeaked and wobbled, and Anna lunged to stop its dangerous spinning.
“Jack, you don't have cloven hooves and a pitchfork, do you? Because that would explain so much.”
Honestly, she ought to give up and let Jack be banished for good. His necktie was lopsided, he'd tracked mud in that morning, and his reckless grin was entirely unrepentant. But the sight of that sloppily knotted tie . . . well, it got to her. Learning to knot a necktie was the kind of thing a father would have taught him.
Anna sighed. “Stand up and let me show you how to tie a proper Windsor knot.”
She undid her own tie and tugged it flat to demonstrate the procedure. With her starchy white blouse and dark skirt, Anna tried to look as professional as all the men who worked in the Capitol.
Jack pretended not to care, but he scrutinized every movement as she demonstrated the technique for tying a Windsor knot. The other boys shifted in their seats to get a better view. This might be the most important lesson they learned all day.
A bell rang over the door as a man in a naval uniform entered, his ramrod posture and commanding presence making the map room seem smaller and more crowded.
“Miss Anna O'Brien?” the officer said.
Anna's heart sped up, and she let go of her partially knotted tie. This could only be about one thing. “Yes, sir?”
The officer handed her an envelope, its wax seal bearing the hallmark of the United States Navy.
“You are wanted downstairs in the naval affairs room. Immediately.” He gave a slight bow and left the room, leaving them all a little stunned and amazed.
“I want a uniform like that,” one of the boys said.
“Did you see his shoes? They were polished like mirrors!”
As the boys chattered, Anna wrestled with conflicting emotions. This had to be about the message she'd sent to the navy last week. There was no other reason she'd have come to their attention.
“What does it say?” Jack asked.
Anna popped the seal and scanned the message, a small smile curving her mouth. It was as she'd suspected.
“I found a mistake in an old naval report,” she said softly. “I thought they'd want to know, so I sent them a message about it.”
It was thrilling that the navy had taken her message seriously, for overlooking an error in the historical record was unthinkable for someone like Anna. Ever since becoming a librarian, she'd been feeling the vibrant golden chain that reached back centuries to other librarians, archivists, and historians, all of whom had chosen the same quest: the collection and preservation of the world's knowledge. Was there any more noble pursuit in all of human history? Future generations would depend on the diligence of librarians like her to ensure accuracy in the record of human knowledge. When she spotted that mistake in the old naval report, she knew it needed to be corrected.
“What kind of mistake was it?” one of the boys asked.
“A big one,” she said, but didn't elaborate. It was too personal to discuss in front of a group of rambunctious boys. She wished the navy had sent her a simple thank-you note instead of demanding her presence. Meeting with strangers was always such torture.
“I don't even know where the naval affairs room is,” she confessed as she fumbled to knot her tie again.
“I can show you,” Jack said, springing to attention.
Anna rarely ventured outside the safety of the shabby old map room, where she was cocooned in a world of well-worn books, maps, and atlases. Everything was different downstairs in the main part of the Capitol, where the gilt and marble grandeur was like somewhere royalty gathered, because, well, royalty actually
did
gather thereâalong with senators, diplomats, prime ministers, and presidents. Pint-sized librarians didn't fit in down there, but given the formality of the summons, it didn't look like she had much choice.
She finished knotting her tie and wished she'd taken more care with her appearance that morning. Not that she could have improved it much. All her clothes were simple and plain because she hated anything that might draw attention to herself. Each morning she twisted her long brown hair into a tidy bun atop her head and fastened it with a modest onyx clip, the only piece of jewelry she owned.
She looked at Jack, wishing she had one tenth of the boy's bravado. “Let's go,” she said.
It didn't take Anna long to realize the navy had no intention of thanking her for noticing an error in the fifteen-year-old report.
Oddly, it seemed they wanted her head on a platter.
“You've got a lot of gall,” Lieutenant Gerald Rowland snapped from behind his mahogany desk. The bullnecked man began scolding Anna the moment she arrived.
Required to stand on the carpet before his desk while the seated officer snarled at her, Anna felt like a little brown sparrow quivering before a firing squad. She cleared her throat and tried to defend herself.
“When fifty-six men disappear in the middle of an ocean,
a complete and accurate investigation should be conducted,” she said quietly.
“That investigation was done fifteen years ago.” Lieutenant Rowland banged his fist on the table, making the pens and ink bottles jump. “The USS
Culpeper
sank during a late season hurricane, all hands lost. Case closed.”
Anna was well aware of what had happened to the
Culpeper
. After all, her father had been one of the men who'd disappeared with the ship.
“That's the problem,” she said, trying not to wilt under the blast of the man's glare. “The ship couldn't have sunk where the report claims. I'd like the case reopened so it can be corrected.”
“Copies of that report were sent to the deceased sailors' families, and they were given a three-month period to file questions with the navy. That time is over.”
“I wasn't in a position to ask questions. I was only twelve when the ship disappeared.”
“When the ship
sank
,” Lieutenant Rowland continued, “all the families received the sailor's wages plus six months of salary, just as the law allows. If you're trying to reopen the case to qualify for a pension, you can forget it.”
Anna raised her chin a notch. “As you can see, I am gainfully employed and have no need for an orphan's pension. All I want is to know what happened to my father, and in light of this newly discovered error, I'd like the navy to correct its report.”
“And you think you're smart enough to question the team of experts who wrote that report? What exactly does a map librarian do, anyway? Stack maps in alphabetical order?”
“Something like that.”
Anna knew the nautical features of every bay, inlet, and harbor on the Eastern Seaboard, as well as the depth and navigability for every port from Maine to the Florida Keys. She
could calculate longitude and latitude coordinates in her sleep. After all, she was a cartographer's daughter, and the skill came naturally to her.
Last week, Anna came across a new map from the weather bureau that tracked the historic paths of long-ago hurricanes. Her attention was drawn to the path of the storm that sank the
Culpeper
, and that was when she realized that the details in the navy's report on the
Culpeper
didn't correspond with this new information.
“The problem with the
Culpeper
was that it was crammed with scientists and bookworms instead of real sailors,” Lieutenant Rowland said. “They could have ridden out that storm if there weren't so many useless scientists getting in the way.”
Anna's father had been one of those navy scientists, dedicating years of his life to mapping the floor of the ocean. Using specially designed trawls, dredges, and thermometers, he lowered the equipment to measure the depth of the water and collect vials of sediment from the ocean floor. There had always been tension between warriors like Lieutenant Rowland and science officers like her father, but the navy owed it to the men of the
Culpeper
to ensure the report of their demise was accurate.