But Nate’s expression has changed so completely that I stop.
“Jennie Pritchett?” His freckles seem to stand out in his pale face. A reverse constellation.
“Oh, yes. Yes!” I am alert at once. “I mean, no. Pritchett’s my uncle.”
“Aw, it’s impossible. You think I’m a fool?” Nate waves me off. “Look at you, you ain’t his cousin. You’re not but a servant girl. My boy Pritchett wouldn’t’ve got hitched to some chit. Got to wake up earlier to put me on.”
By now I’ve yanked off Mavis’s bonnet and am pulling at the pins that hold up my hastily dressed hair. My proof is irrefutable, I know Will loved my curls and would have described them to anyone, if he’d ever spoken of me.
As my hair tumbles loose, Nate allows himself a glance. And then a slow, sly smile. “He said you had hair like a storm. Not the beauty I pitchered, but all right, so be it…you must be Pritchett’s Jennie. Reckon you’ve come down in the world in your servant’s clothes, eh?” And quick as a mousetrap, his fingers swipe for a lock of my hair, which he pulls hard and then releases with a bullying laugh that hints at the young man he once was.
Automatically, I back out of his range, though the young soldier seems hungry for contact. And I do pity him. How couldn’t I? To be alone for hours in this room, prisoner of a wrecked body, would be a hell on earth.
Nate knows he has scared me. He softens. “You being here, however you found me, and him not here.” He clears his throat. “That means he’s dead, then, huh?”
I can hardly bear to confirm it. “Yes.”
He reaches for his pipe and relights it. Accepting this fresh grievance blank-faced, though I sense the news wounds him into silence. I wait.
“’Fore I planned my escape,” Nate says, finally, “he gave me a letter. Says if I got out alive, I was to get it to you.”
My heart thrums. “A letter.”
“Yup. And as you can see, I got out, only to get shot down not two days later, mistook for a Grayback so they said. Shattered both my legs. I was left without hope. When the Union boys found me, they sawed ’em off at once with hardly enough chloroform to take me out. But I held on to that letter. I din’t go back on my word. Blast it, I even paid a fellow to find you. The crook cabbaged my dime and told me nobody lived there by the name Jennie Pritchett. I know firsthand how a fellow can invent a girl from scratch and make her come alive. So then I guessed that you were a hoax, too. Same as Fran. Made me laugh. Pritchett spoke of you so convincing.”
“I don’t understand. It’d be easy to find Pritchett House. Everyone knows it.”
“Huh, it was that that stuck-up brother sent him away, and without any explanation. For he found his way home, din’t he? Snot-nosed bastard; he was sweet on you, too. Brother against brother. A damn disloyalty, if y’ask me.” Nate’s sudden burst of anger is unnerving it’s apparent that he’s no friend to Quinn. “Top drawer. I know it’s itching ya.” He points to the battered dresser, thick with paint, wedged in the corner.
In that smile of his I see another flash of this more brutal and dangerous Nate. Sweat breaks out on my forehead.
“Thank you for trying to find me,” I manage to say. “I owe you a favor, and I can start by helping you right now if you want to get home to Pittsfield. I’ve got a bit of savings, some jewelry that I could sell ” Aunt Clara’s brooch, for one. Brazenly pinned to a page of my book.
His hand severs the air. “Like I said, I’m never going back. Not in this life. War was my best way out, and I intend to stay out. I slipped that noose once; that’s better’n others fared. As for Sumter, welp, call it our nature or our destiny. We picked the adventure knowing there’d be no end but a bloody one. Got more good luck than I deserved when Sue took pity. An eyeful of your curls is the sugar icing on my cake.” Again, Nate grasps for my hair, fingers quick as a monkey, but I am quicker as I dart to the bureau.
My hand roves among his few shabby items his identification papers and long underwear and folded neckerchiefs, a print of himself in his uniform, all brash and swagger, and a penknife that I’m quite sure belonged to Uncle Henry, before it was acquired by one of his sons. I slip both the photograph and knife into my cloak pocket with a twinge of guilt, for poor Nate has so few worldly treasures. My fingers spider around in the dark drawer for any other missed particulars, and I pull out an onionskin envelope, marked only with the letter J.
It is as if Will couldn’t quite commit to addressing it. Seeing it, however, I know what it means to feel one’s blood freeze.
With everything tucked safely in my possession, I turn. “Thank you for this.”
Nate looks uneasy. “You won’t tell Sue? Or ole Wigs for he’d chuck me out of his pub in a heartbeat and leave me for wolves if he learnt it.”
“I won’t tell…” Though I don’t understand what I am promising.
“’Twas a different world, Sumter was. You’d have to live through it.”
My fingers rub the crinkled paper. “What where is Sumter?”
“Camp Sumter; it’s in Georgia. It’s where we got sent after they took us,” Nate explains, impatient when I still don’t understand. “The Succesh prison, of course. You must have known that much.”
“Oh…yes.” My hand crushes the envelope tighter. Will’s last letter has confused me. He was killed in battle, not captured.
“They’ve been good to me here, Sue and her ole Wigs. And I’m not here for long. For it’s crawling up on me, see ” Nate swipes back the blankets and begins undoing the binding around what’s left of one of his legs.
“Please, don’t ”
But he won’t stop, and what he reveals to me is the stuff of nightmares, far worse than Quinn’s bludgeoned eye.
The flesh of Nate’s legs is rotten. Even by flickering candlelight I see that his skin, mottled and sticky with pus, is also rancid with infection.
It is revolting, and horrifying, and almost too sad to bear. I cup a hand to my nose and mouth to stop myself from gagging. “Where is the doctor to tend to this? No matter, I will send ours.”
“They brought one, Norris. He’s a dentist, so he should know when parts are rotted. He said it’s rotted too deep, but that weren’t news to me.” And yet the sight of his own leg seems to have panicked Nate. He hides his knees with the blanket, his fingers spreading and smoothing the fabric as if to erase the vision. “Stay a spell, Fran. Tell me about the good days. How it used to be between us. Please, dear? I want a pretty memory in my head.”