House of Masques (4 page)

Chapter Four

Another day of unrelenting heat.

Kathleen watched the sun edge over the hills to the east of Beacon and glow pale yellow through the haze on the horizon. The river beside the Albany Post Road flowed sluggishly. No breeze rippled its surface and no cooling air moved from the water to the land. A seagull glided inches above the gray surface of the river, perched on a rotted piling near the shore, and was still.

The dust churned upward by hooves and wheels billowed in the coach's wake, appearing from a distance, Kathleen imagined, like the tail of a comet. Thick, choking dust. Josiah huddled on the driver's seat with a bandana protecting his nose and mouth, his black shirt and trousers soiled and white from the dust.

Kathleen had joined Clarissa inside the coach at Poughkeepsie. Now the older woman dozed and Kathleen shifted uncomfortably in her stiff yellow dress. A dull, throbbing began on the right side of her forehead. She groaned to herself—a headache so early in the day!

Josiah drove directly to the Beacon docks and Kathleen looked from the window to see the ferry to Newburgh pulling away from shore.

“Damn!” Josiah swore. “We'll have at least an hour's delay.” He watered and secured the horses and then knelt at the river's edge and washed his hands and face. Kathleen sat nearby on a flat rock and stared unseeing at the tide and the ferry's backwash lapping on the muddy beach.

What am I doing here?
she wondered.
Why am I embarked on this hopeless journey? If only Michael and I had been at peace with one another when he left home. If only he hadn't enlisted. If Captain Worthington hadn't— Stop.
She didn't want to think of Charles Worthington. She would have to reckon with him all too soon.

First she must gain admittance to the Worthington Estate. She wondered what plan Josiah had in mind. Could Edward Allen help? And what was
his
secret? Kathleen disliked mysteries.
Perhaps I can find the answer
, she thought, despite Josiah's warning. What could Edward Allen be concealing? His parentage? Had he committed a crime? Was he, perhaps, a deserter from the Union Army?

She frowned and folded her arms across her chest. What manner of men were these to whom her life was becoming so inextricably bound? Her day seemed to be going so terribly wrong. The heat surrounded and confined her. The side of her head throbbed. The ferry had left only moments before they arrived. Was she being punished?

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” she murmured.

At long last the ferry returned. Josiah drove the coach aboard and Kathleen and Clarissa walked together to the rail, seeking relief from the heat and the dampness. A whistle shrilled, the ship slid into the channel and the paddlewheels on each side plunged into the waters of the river.

Kathleen held the rail with one hand, a yellow parasol with the other. The trees and houses of Newburgh, straight ahead on the side of a gentle hill, blurred in the waves of heat. She turned and looked downstream and saw, for the first time, the Highlands of the Hudson. Somewhere on those wooded slopes, she knew, was the Worthington Estate.

The trip from Poughkeepsie had been through rolling farmlands and tame domesticated woods, reminding her of Ohio. Here, to the south of Newburgh, the country changed. The mountains dropped precipitously to the water's edge on both sides of the Hudson and forced the river into a narrow channel. Stream-eroded ravines slashed the sides of the mountains, their darkened depths thick with tangled underbrush and vines. A closed-in, shadowed land of caves and glens.

The whistle called them back to the coach. The ferry docked and they drove into the holiday quiet of the town and up the long hill. A drumbeat quickened the pace of the horses, but in a few minutes they had to pull to a stop behind wagons which blocked the street. At the next crossroad Kathleen saw a crowd of men, women, and children with their backs to her. From beyond the cluster of spectators came the martial cadence of “Garry Owen”.

“We might as well watch the parade,” Josiah said, opening the door. “We'll never get to the inn until it's over.” He acted resigned, Kathleen noticed, while the music made her feel alive and excited. Josiah tied the horses to a hitching post and walked between the two women on the wooden sidewalk in the direction of the music. The parade route lay along a thoroughfare as wide as four ordinary streets and named, appropriately, Broadway. By the time they found places on the curb the band had passed beyond them up the hill to their right.

The men along the street removed their hats as two flag-bearers passed holding an American flag with its thirty-seven stars and a white flag on which Kathleen made out the word
REGIMENT
. The local veterans of the Civil War raggedly followed the flags—young men in a motley of uniforms, dark and light blue for the most part, a few flamboyant Zouave outfits. Men and women pointed and called to the marchers, who smiled and waved self-consciously.

A steam pump pulled by a team of four white horses rumbled in front of Kathleen. The volunteer fireman clinging to the sides were, unlike the veterans, serious and sober-faced.

“Here they come!” A boy perched on his father's shoulders pointed down the street.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
The drums pounded the cadence and the U.S. Military Academy band swung into view followed by row after row of cadets marching as one precision-drilled corps. Behind them the clatter of hooves on the stone pavement signaled the approach of the cavalry.

A cadet astride a black stallion led the cavalry troop, a young man tall and resplendent in white trousers and blue-gray jacket aglisten with gold buttons and braid. Diagonal red stripes on his right sleeve and a high plumed hat set him apart from the other horsemen.

The marchers on the street ahead stopped and the cadet on the black horse glanced up and down the row of spectators. His eyes met Kathleen's, and even from a distance she saw his face was fair and open. He guided his horse toward her and loosened the strap around his chin and lifted his hat. His blond hair curled tightly on his head.

He smiled at her and she could not help smiling back. His eyes, she saw, were blue. She blushed.

“Forward…march!” The cadets moved on. The blond horseman held Kathleen's eyes for a moment more before sweeping his hat out to the side in a salute to her. He bowed and pulled his horse back into the line of march.

Kathleen looked covertly at Josiah and found him frowning. Clarissa smiled. A knowing smile, Kathleen thought, feeling resentful yet proud and pleased at the same time.

The parade ended and, in a confusion of high-wheeled bicycles, running boys, and dung sweepers, Josiah and the two women returned to the coach. Fifteen minutes later they stepped down into the courtyard of the Tontine Inn.

A wooden plaque over the door promised
ENTERTAINMENT
and the date—“
1791
—boasted of a long-established hostelry. The smell of cooking drew them through the entryway and past the stale odors of the taproom.

“Two dollars a day each,” Josiah reported as they climbed the stairs to their rooms. “All meals included.” He looked to Kathleen. “Can you be ready for lunch in twenty minutes?”

“In ten,” she replied. While she washed in the basin in her bedroom she discovered, to her surprise and relief, that her headache was gone.

There were only a few customers left in the dining room when they came down. The room was below street level, and Kathleen counted seven steps from the parquet floor to the entrance. A cool room and dim, despite two small windows on either side of the door and candles on the tables.

They helped themselves to rump roast, boiled potatoes, corn, and string beans. Strawberries with cream followed.

“The Worthington Estate?” The landlord repeated Josiah's question. He stood beside their table, coffeepot in hand, a short balding man whose spectacles glinted in the candlelight. “Strange goings on, to my way of thinking. Comings and goings and not just for next weekend's doings. Guards, they have. Nothing like this since the Anti-Rent trouble twenty, thirty years ago.”

“Then Captain Worthington is at the Estate?” Josiah asked.

“He's there, right enough, but not a soul from the village has seen hide nor hair of him. Changed, they say, from what he used to be. Back from the West, he is. I can't tell you much else. Mind my own business, I do, and if others did the same, the world would be a better place.”

Suddenly the front door slammed open. Kathleen gasped. A man with hands on hips stood silhouetted at the top of the steps. All eyes in the room turned toward him. He was dressed in black, wore a brimmed hat and a cape across his shoulders. The glare from the doorway shadowed his bearded face. He paused for a long moment and Kathleen thought she saw him smile.

“Allen! Allen!” Josiah rose and held up his arm and the stranger descended the steps and came to their table. Did he limp slightly? Kathleen could not be sure.

Josiah introduced Clarissa and Kathleen, and Edward Allen nodded and slouched into a chair. “Brandy,” he ordered and the innkeeper moved away. Kathleen examined him. Rough, unexceptional clothes—the cape turned out to be a cloth coat draped about his shoulders. Between his black, wavy hair and black beard his forehead was high and broad. His hazel eyes glanced uneasily at the candle, the table, and the plates displayed high on the wall above their heads. For a moment they looked into Kathleen's eyes and held. She stared, fascinated by the intensity of his gaze.

Edward Allen finished his brandy and called for another. Kathleen experienced a sinking feeling much as she had when, as a young girl, she returned home to find her father with his head resting on crossed arms on the kitchen table muttering to himself. Was this the carefully selected man who was to lead her to Captain Worthington? He was as if at ease as an old servant unexpectedly invited to dine with the family. Was deference the quality Josiah had really been looking for? Could he be comfortable only with subservience?

“Come with me,” Josiah said, placing his arm over the other man's shoulder. “We've work to do.” Kathleen saw that Josiah was a full head taller as the two men climbed the stairs to the street.

Neither appeared again for the rest of the day. Later in the afternoon Kathleen joined Clarissa for a walk along Newburgh's tree-shaded streets to Washington's Headquarters where they found a Fourth of July community picnic spread across the lawn which stretched from the stone house to the river. They strolled toward the center of town, hurrying as they passed alleyways where hogs rooted amid the garbage. On Broadway the two women looked into the windows of the shops.

Clarissa remained gracious and polite, yet avoided talking of Josiah and Gleneden as though she now wanted to cloak the feelings she had exposed on the day of Kathleen's arrival. Only once did she mention their journey to the Worthington Estate.

“I'm now your aunt,” she said.

“My aunt?”

“Yes, Josiah decided I'm to be the widow of your father's brother.”

“My father did have a brother. He was killed in the War.”

“Josiah seemed to know. Or he guessed. His intuition always surprises me, though I should be used to it by now.”

“Did he tell you how he intends to approach Captain Worthington?”

“He said we're supposed to be traveling from near Utica in upstate New York to visit friends in the city. Edward Allen is our coachman. We're quite well-to-do, it seems.”

“I don't like to have to lie,” Kathleen said.

Clarissa raised her eyebrows. “A minor vice like lying bothers you? Have you forgotten why you're going to visit Charles Worthington in the first place?”

Clarissa's sharpness brought the sting of tears to Kathleen's eyes. “You-you-you're right,” she stammered at last.
What must Clarissa think of me?
she wondered.
Will I ever be able to make her understand?
She set her mouth firmly and changed the subject. “How do we get onto the Estate?”

“I don't know. Josiah isn't sure. All he told me was that our entrée depends on Captain Worthington's character, whatever he means by that. But he'll find a way, he always does.” Clarissa half shut her eyes and smiled as though fondly leafing through a memory album. She abruptly shook her head, turned and nodded at a shop window. “Look, what a stunning gown,” she said. They talked no more of the Worthingtons.

Josiah and Edward Allen had eaten and left the inn by the time Kathleen came down to breakfast the next morning. Later a smiling, exuberant Josiah joined the two women at lunch.

“All arranged!” He rubbed his hands together. “Our romantic and dashing Captain Worthington will soon have three guests.”

“Romantic? Dashing?” Kathleen asked.

“He was a few years ago and I assume he still is in spite of his present indisposition. This fête on Sunday may be a sign of a change for the better. It's the first entertaining he's done since coming here last winter.”

“You talked to him?”

“No, no. I considered the direct approach but had to give up the idea.”

“Then you know someone on the Estate.”

Josiah moved his hand back and forth, palm toward her. “No, I don't. Allen and I couldn't get near the place. The Estate is like an armed camp and no one seems to know why. We'll have to outsmart them.
I'll
have to outsmart them.”

“Are you going to tell me how?”

“You'll find out in due course. Best for you not to know too soon.”

Kathleen sighed. First the disappointment of Edward Allen, and now these vague plans.

“You three leave tonight,” Josiah announced.
“
Immediately after supper.”

Good, Kathleen thought At least the waiting was over. The second of her eight days ticked inexorably away.

A church bell was tolling six when Josiah led them to the coach. Clarissa leaned to him and his arms went around her and she held his face with both of her hands and pressed her cheek to his.