The Velvet Shadow (5 page)

The old woman closed her eyes and shook her head slightly. “I suppose it’s his mother that’s preventing him from proposing. She cannot approve the match.”

Flanna had taken a forward step, but at Mrs. Davis’s last comment she halted, shocked by the woman’s bluntness. “Why would she not approve the match?” Though she knew from firsthand experience that Mrs. Haynes did not approve of slavery, she
did
approve of Flanna’s plans for a career in medicine. And despite Flanna’s conviction that tonight’s dinner had not gone entirely well, she had not yet met a person she could not charm—if given enough time.

Mrs. Davis let out a three-noted cackle. “A proud son of Massachusetts marrying a Charleston girl? It could never happen. Not anymore. Why, at this very moment the name of South Carolina is as reviled as the devil’s.” The smile she wore was no smile at all, just a wrinkle with yellow teeth in the midst of it. “In a month you’ll be fortunate if you’re received in a single parlor in Boston.”

Flanna stared at her landlady in total incredulity. “Why ever not?”

“Have you not heard?” Mrs. Davis’s skinny frame fairly vibrated with eagerness. “No, I suppose you haven’t. South Carolina seceded from the Union four days ago! It was in the evening paper. Did no one tell you?”

Shock tore through Flanna, numbing her toes and tingling her fingers. Unable to respond, she looked back at Charity, then shook her head as confused thoughts whirled in her brain. It couldn’t be true! Oh, Wesley had written about a group of politicians who had threatened to secede if Lincoln won the presidential election, but she had never dreamed they’d actually proceed with their plan.

Aghast, Flanna glanced about the room until her eyes fell on a folded newspaper. “May I?”

“Of course, you certainly should take it.” Mrs. Davis’s age-spotted hand quivered as she lifted it in permission. “Read what your countrymen have done. And know that if trouble arises between you and Roger Haynes, the fault can be assigned to those hotheaded slaveholders in South Carolina!”

With the older woman’s tirade ringing in her ears, Flanna scooped up the newspaper and tucked it under her arm as she fled for the safety of the stairs.

Flanna thought her heart must have stopped when Mrs. Davis told her that South Carolina had seceded, for it now began pounding much faster than usual, as though to make up for a few lost beats. By the time she and Charity reached her room it was knocking in her chest like a swampland woodpecker.

Her dark eyes wide with alarm, Charity laid the mantle on her bed and searched Flanna’s face. “Miss Flanna, what’s wrong with South Carolina?”

“I’m not sure,” Flanna whispered, half-stumbling to her own bed. She fell on the creaking mattress, mindless of her dress and the medical books strewn there. With trembling fingers, she shook open the newspaper and read the screaming headline: “South Carolina Secedes!”

“It can’t be.”

“What can’t be?” Charity had a round, cheerful face whose natural expression was a smile, but that face was blank now, all traces of humor wiped away.

“South Carolina,” Flanna murmured, thinking of her father, her brother, her aunt, and her cousins. “My state—
our
state—has seceded from the Union.”

“Seceded?” Charity knelt at Flanna’s feet to unlace her walking boots, but she paused and looked up. “Miss Flanna, I don’t understand.”

“Pulled away, withdrawn,” Flanna whispered, reading the article. “South Carolina and Charleston are no longer a part of the United States.”

Charity responded with a strange gasping sound, but Flanna scarcely heard her, so intent was she upon her reading. According to the newspaper article, calls for secession had been circulating ever since the news of Lincoln’s election reached Charleston on November seventh. The foreman of the grand jury in the federal court, Robert Gourdin, refused to conduct any further business “as the North, through the ballot box has swept away the last hope for the permanence of the Federal government of these sovereign States.” Within days other officials resigned, including Judge Andrew G. Magrath, the United States District Attorney, and the collector of the port.

“Great heavens,” Flanna whispered, only half-feeling Charity’s tug on her boots, “they are quite serious! I never believed it would come to this!”

Secessionist leaders, she read, were comparing themselves to the early American revolutionaries. Palmetto and Lone Star flags, the beloved emblems of South Carolina, were sprouting like wildflowers throughout the state. Many gentlemen of Charleston had decorated their lapels with cockades—gold badges with the palmetto tree, a lone star, and a coiled rattlesnake superimposed on a blue silk ribbon.

“What are they going to do?” Charity’s brown eyes were wide and slightly wet when Flanna looked down at her. “Does the paper say?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Flanna answered, a wave of apprehension sweeping through her. South Carolina
couldn’t
be an independent country. On a surge of memory, Roger’s words came back to her:
“We are one country, Flanna, one sacred Union.”

What were these secessionists thinking? And why had they done this crazy thing right
now
, right before Christmas, right before her exams? What if the examining board looked at her file and saw that she was from South Carolina? What if Mrs. Davis warmed to the idea of tossing the secessionist student out of the boardinghouse? Flanna’s dreams would vanish like a pebble in a dark pond, dropping out of sight forever.

“Does the paper tell you anything about the home folks?” Charity’s fingers struggled clumsily with the bootlaces, and Flanna suddenly
realized the girl was worried about her parents. They were among the three thousand free Negroes in Charleston, many of whom held slaves themselves. Ever since Flanna could remember, an uneasy peace had existed between Charleston’s white elite, the free browns (so-named because many of them were mulatto), and the city’s white working class. If the city was in turmoil over slavery and secession, this might be a dangerous time to be black in the South—slave or free.

“Leave my shoes. Let me read.” Flanna scanned the page again. “This article says that the city of Charleston was united in its calls for secession…and that on December seventeenth more than 160 delegates from South Carolina met in Columbia to decide whether or not the state would secede. Charleston sent 23 representatives, but an outbreak of smallpox sent the convention back to Charleston. There, in St. Andrew’s Hall, the delegates unanimously adopted the Ordinance of Secession from the Union. That night they signed it at Institute Hall.”

“The colored folks…did they sign it too?”

“I don’t know, Charity.” Flanna read on. “Well—here’s something. Eighty-two brown aristocrats sent a message to the mayor of Charleston that read, ‘We are by birth citizens of South Carolina; in our veins is the blood of the white race, in some half, in others much more; our attachments are with you.’”

Charity’s dark eyes filled with disbelief. She sank back, resting her weight on her heels, and Flanna hoped the information would satisfy her curiosity for a while.

She read further, of church bells ringing as the news spread through the city, of Union flags thrown to the breeze, of artillery salutes thundering in the night. The reporter also mentioned that Charleston officials, fearful of a slave uprising, sent nightly patrols through the city to quell any sign of black unrest.

“Oh, Charity.” Flanna clutched the newspaper and its dread news to her chest. “What are we going to do? This is terrible news, just terrible.”

“We could go home.” Charity lifted one brow in mute supplication. “We don’t belong up here, Miss Flanna.”

Flanna lowered the paper to her lap, her mind spinning with bewilderment. Her father hadn’t had time to write of this incredible news, but he would, she was certain. Would he demand that she come home immediately?
Should
she go home? She was so close to finishing her degree, but what would her father’s friends think of a man who allowed his daughter to live among and consort with Yankees? A cold knot formed in her stomach as she realized that she was now in a foreign country, a place no longer affiliated with home.

We are one country, Flanna, one sacred Union.

Not anymore.

Flanna pressed her fingers to her temple as another thought hit her.
Roger!
If Papa were caught up in this wave of secession hysteria, he’d no sooner correspond with a Yankee Republican than he would with Abe Lincoln himself. He would never approve of Flanna’s engagement. Indeed, he might even reply to Roger’s initial letter with a surly response, destroying any chance of what might have been a suitable match.

And finishing her degree elsewhere was not an option. There was only one medical school for women in the South—Graefenberg Medical Institute in Dadeville, Alabama—but her father had not been impressed with that school’s facility. In Boston Flanna had enjoyed access to a vast array of resources: a real skeleton, lab equipment, and an entire room of normal and pathological specimens in glass beakers. Graefenberg did not even have a decent medical library.

Dear God, what should I do?

Flanna’s gaze fell on her anatomy textbook. She had nearly memorized the entire text, and in just four weeks she’d be tested on the material. That anatomy examination was the last hurdle, all that stood between her and a bona fide medical degree. If they went home now, all her hard work would count for nothing. Surely God would not want her to toss away two years of an expensive and hard-won education.

“We can stay a few more weeks,” she whispered, running her hand over a map of the human body’s arterial system. “Let’s wait until all this excitement dies down. Besides, Papa wouldn’t want us traveling while things are so…undecided.” She drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. “Surely this will pass, Charity. It has to.”

The maid’s face fell in disappointment, but the touch of the textbook calmed Flanna’s pounding pulse. Apparently South Carolina had worked itself into a dither while she lost herself in her studies. If she immersed herself in her studies again, perhaps God would lead South Carolina to straighten itself out. What good would worry do? Her father had sent her to Boston to earn a medical degree, and she could not let him down. He needed her at home, but he needed her as a doctor.

With that decision made, Flanna’s mind shifted to practical matters. Until this secession business had been settled, her father must not know about Roger Haynes and his intentions. News of that development could wait. If it took the better part of a year for the dust to settle, so much the better. She would have earned her degree and begun to fulfill her promise to her father. Roger seemed to have enough ambitions to keep him busy, and if in the interim he found some nice Massachusetts girl who’d make him a better wife, that would be fine. She’d miss his wit and his charm, but if God closed one door, he was certain to open another.

“Charity, bring me pen and paper, please.” Flanna tossed the newspaper to the floor and resolutely pushed South Carolina from her mind. She had to write her father and assure him she was well, and tomorrow she’d have to tell Roger to postpone his letter indefinitely.

Until South Carolina came to its senses, matrimony would just have to wait.

M
eagan, the Hayneses’ Irish maid, sat at the shiny new piano and began to play “I Dream of Jeanie with the light Brown Hair” for the third time. Sipping her tea, Flanna caught Roger’s eye over the rim of her cup. He was seated on the sofa by his mother, his head propped on his hand, his eyes dull with displeasure.

He hadn’t handled the news well. When Flanna told him that an engagement could not possibly be arranged until after the storm of secession had ceased, he’d been clearheaded enough to see the wisdom in her words, and politician enough to protest. His howls had filled the carriage as they rolled through the Beacon Hill district, and Flanna rolled her eyes, knowing that Charity, safely seated on the dickey, had to be giggling at his ridiculous display of disappointment.