Somehow, I survive the week leading up to the Day of Departure.
Somehow, my muse remains quiet and concealed.
Thank heaven! I’m packing—preparing at last. My time in Moldavia is almost time past!
By the eve of the grand exodus, a Saturday, mid-February, I’ve crammed my trunk full of clothing, taken one last stroll beside the whispering waters of the James, and bidden adieu to most everyone in Richmond whom I care about—except for my beloved Elmira.
My darling and I meet an hour before sundown in a tract of land we call the “Enchanted Garden,” an Eden of linden trees and winter-slumbering vines of roses, jasmine, and myrtle, tucked behind brick garden walls. Pa’s partner, Mr. Charles Ellis, created the grounds to test seed samples sent to Ellis & Allan, but everyone in Richmond knows that if young lovers crave privacy, they only need to meet among the lindens.
Elmira takes both my hands in hers and gazes at me with wide, watery eyes. “I cannot believe you’re leaving tomorrow, Eddy. February used to seem so far away.”
“I know.” I kiss the back of her gloved right hand. “Thank you for meeting me here.”
“I wish we could have been together every day of this week.”
“Before I go, I want to do something properly for you.”
Her cheeks pinken. She knows what I’m about to do, and yet she kindly feigns surprise by asking, “What is it?”
My heart rate triples, and I thrill with the same sense of terror and elation as when I stood on Ludlam’s Wharf at the age of fifteen and prepared for my swim on the James. I hold my breath and take a leap by bending down on one knee, the ground wet enough to dampen my pantaloons, but I don’t care a fig about the cold.
A nervous laugh passes through Elmira’s lips, and she tightens her grip on my hands.
“Miss Sarah Elmira Royster . . .” I peer up into her deep blue eyes. “I do not mind if our engagement needs to be made in secrecy. I love you as no man ever loved a woman, and when I finish my education at the University of Virginia, nothing would make me happier than returning home to the wittiest, the prettiest, and the most loving of brides that anyone could ever wish for. Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
She smiles in that bedazzling way of hers that sparks a mischievous glimmer in her eyes and draws dimples to her cheeks.
After a lengthy and weighty exhalation, however, her eyes sober; her smile wilts.
My heart stops.
“It would, indeed, need to be a secret engagement, Eddy.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry, my love, but my parents can never learn anything about this until we’re older. They would say I’m too young and forbid me to see you or write to you ever again.”
“And my father . . .”
My jaw tightens, for I’m aware of Mr. Royster’s opinion of me.
“I don’t believe,” says Elmira, unpeeling the delicate outer layer of my heart with each syllable she speaks, “that he would ever consent to me marrying a poet.”
I lower my face, my shoulders heaving, and, without even trying, I concoct anagrams that corrupt the name of her father, James Royster.
Mayor Jesters
Arrests Me Joy
Mrs. Joy Eaters
Meet Roy Ass Jr.
“Please stand up, Eddy.” Elmira gives a soft tug of my hands. “Your knee will get sore down there on the freezing ground, and I want to speak to your beautiful eyes, not the top of your head.”
I do as she asks, and she steps close to me, brushing a hand through my hair, above my left ear, sending tingles down that side of my neck. The floral tones of her perfume bring the garden into full bloom, even though the vines have yet to start budding.
“I’ll betroth myself in secret to you, Edgar,” she says, “as long as you promise to write me from Charlottesville and assure me of your love when we’re apart.”
I wrap my arms around her. “I promise to write you every day.”
She snickers. “You won’t have time for your studies if you’re writing me every day. And I won’t have time for mine if I’m always reading your letters, which I know will be the length of novels.”
“I’ll write you every week, then,” I say, entranced by the nearness of her mouth, her breath, her ethereal irises.
“I’d be happy with every week. I’ll send you a reply just as often.”
“Is this a ‘yes,’ then? Will you marry me?”
“Yes.” She kisses my lips. “I will wait for you while you’re gone, my sweet, romantic dreamer. I shall marry you, and one day”—another kiss, one that sends my brain into amorous intoxication—“we’ll live together in a kingdom by the sea.”
I grin like a drunken fool during supper, my head tipsy from the way Elmira’s fragrance lingers in my clothing. The lamps of Moldavia burn more brightly than ever before; every rose and lily embroidered in the tablecloth grows more vivid in color. The mutton tastes divine.
“You look positively jubilant, Edgar,” says Aunt Nancy from across the table, her tight sausage curls wobbling against her cheeks as she slices her own wedge of meat. “You must be eager to depart for the university tomorrow morning.”
Ma cups her hands over her face and bursts into tears.
Pa frowns.
Aunt Nancy reaches out to her sister and says, “Oh, Fanny, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
My secret proves tortuous. I long to tell Ma, I know you’re weeping over the pain of losing a son tomorrow, but I’ve just ensured that you’ll one day gain a beautiful daughter!
“Take care to contain your exhilaration in front of Ma, Edgar,” says Pa, which inspires Ma to cry all the more.
At night I sit on my bed and unlock my wooden writing box to ensure I’ve packed enough paper, sealing wax, quills, ink, charcoal crayons, and other necessities. My penknife seems to have gone missing, but after some lifting and shuffling, I locate it beneath the stack of paper.
Ma coughs in her bedroom.
I close my box and listen to her muffled sputters and hacks.
She sounds worse. So dreadfully worse.
With a candle in hand, I navigate my way through the throats of the night-shrouded corridors. One of the servants has already extinguished the oil lamps, and each time Ma coughs, the shadows of the walls contract around me.
I rap upon her door. “Ma?”
She waits a moment before calling out, “Come in, Eddy.”
I open her door and find her propped up by pillows in her canopied bed, drowning in the sea of her burgundy bedcover. Her face looks as small as a child’s in the middle of all the ruffles of her white nightcap. The herbal oils and rose water she uses to soothe her coughs saturate the air.
“Come, sit down.” She scoots over and pats the mattress beside her.
I close the door behind me and go to her right side, trying not to flinch when she coughs yet again. The flame in the crystal lamp next to her bed wriggles at my approach. I set my candlestick beside it.
“Sit down,” she says from behind a handkerchief she’s pressed to her mouth.
I obey her wishes and sink into the downy depths of her bed.
“Eddy . . .” She wraps a hand around mine, her fingers shockingly cold, but I endure the chill without pulling away.
Her voice drops to a feather of a whisper. “Even though it’s hard for me to let you go, I know the university will allow you to find success in this world.”
I sigh through my nose. “Pa tells me quite the opposite.”
“I know what Pa says.”
“He called me a disappointment.” I glance toward the closed door. “I still worry he won’t take me to Charlottesville tomorrow.”
“He will take you. I’ll make sure of it. And he is not disappointed in you. He simply does not know how to raise a boy with your vast intellect and passion. You baffle and perplex him, which heightens into frustration and anger.”
“Oh, I know all about his frustration and anger.”
Ma scoots closer. “I will be proud of you no matter what you choose to do with your life, my darling. Don’t ever be ashamed or afraid to follow your muse.”
I contemplate what Ma’s reaction might be if she were to meet my muse face-to-face.
“Would you still be proud of me”—I look her in the eye—“if I were to write of darker topics?”
Her forehead puckers. “What darker topics do you mean?”
The tremor in her voice answers my question.
“Never mind.” I give a small shake of my head. “I don’t want you to fret about me.”
“Why would I fret about you because of something you wrote?”
“Please forget what I just said. There’s no need to worry.” I wrap my free hand around our clasped fists. “I’m going to make you so proud at the university, Ma.”
She relaxes against her pillows. “I don’t doubt that you will.”
I smile, and we slide into a silence weighted with sorrow, our hands piled together, the hearth fire crackling. Ma’s lungs wheeze with a high-pitched whistle like the wind in the chimney.
The church bells of Richmond, in unison with the clock down the hall, chime the nine o’clock hour in a chorus of clanging—in a chorus that sings of time rushing forward.
A hound howls in the distance.
I can tell by Ma’s watchful gaze that she’s transcribing every feature of my face onto the canvas of her memory.
I can’t bear to look at her, for I see yet another dying woman.
“I’m going to miss you,” I say.
“I’ll miss you, too, my love.” She pulls me against her and entraps my face in her cap’s splay of ruffles, but I do not mind, for she clasps her arms around me with the same strength of affection that she always used to soothe me whenever nightmares crowded my brain.
“I’m forever thankful for the day you came into my life, Eddy,” she says, “with your big gray eyes, your beautiful brown curls, and your clever manner of speaking. Before that moment, I never truly understood what it meant to love another person. I don’t know what I would have done without—”
She erupts into sobs that stop her from forming another word, and the sobs build up to another round of coughing—the most violent fit I’ve heard from her yet.
I fetch her a glass of water, tuck her blankets around her legs, and pump air into the fire with the bellows in a mad attempt to rouse the flames and warm away the chill clinging to her chamber.
Ma wipes her eyes and thanks me, but I must leave her, for now I’m crying, too. Her lips have turned so pale and waxen; her cheeks look as sunken as a corpse’s. Her lungs won’t stop that hideous whistling and wheezing.
I retreat to my bedroom, my candle’s flame whooshing next to my ear, light streaking across the green walls.
“Edgar,” calls out Pa from behind me.
I stop and pivot toward him on my right heel.
His massive figure fills up his entire doorway. He’s just standing there, winding a silver cravat around his neck, squinting at me through the dim corridor, no doubt noticing my bloodshot eyes and tearstained cheeks.
I will not allow him to emasculate me tonight.
“I bet you blubbered like a bairn when your ma lay dying in Scotland, you bloody bastard,” I say in a low growl.
Well, no, I don’t actually say those words aloud. I will if I need to, but for now I simply stare at him with unblinking eyes, my candle sighing in my hand.
“Please remember the frailty of Ma’s health when you write to her from college.” Pa ties the cravat in a knot at his throat. “Do not distress her with requests for money or tales of your troubles and homesickness. I know how dramatic you are when you pen your letters . . .”
“I do not intend to distress her, Pa.”
“Address such concerns to me alone.”
“Yes, sir.”
He swivels back toward his chamber.
“Why are you dressing like you’re about to leave the house,” I ask, “when we’re departing early tomorrow morning?”
He pauses, standing halfway inside his bedroom. All I see of him are the back of his green coat and his head of coarse curls.
“My activities are of no concern to you, Edgar,” he says. “Go to bed.”
I sigh and continue onward to my bedroom.
Behind his closed door, Pa likely proceeds to comb his hair and trim his side-whiskers for another visit to Elizabeth Wills. I wonder, with a queasy rolling of my stomach, if tonight he and the widow Wills will celebrate ridding themselves of me. I wonder if they’ll snicker together in her bed and say, Good riddance to that troublesome little piece of tripe! Meanwhile, Ma lies in her bedroom, struggling to breathe, and I curl beneath my blankets, listening to the clocks counting down the hours of the night, as I bid a silent farewell to all the women I’m leaving behind, both aboveground and below.
As for my muse, I wish the James River would swallow her up this dark hour, as cruel as that may sound. I long to arrive in Charlottesville as a regular student with reasonable ambitions—an eager young scholar with talents that please and inspire, not horrify and sicken—a liberated soul who’ll soon never need depend on John Allan again.