Amelia's Gold (eBook)

Chapter One

Savannah, December 1863

Early on a Sunday afternoon, Amelia Sarah Beach, twenty-four, sat stiffly in her family’s upstairs drawing room massaging her fingers while gazing down warily at the square pianoforte, said to have once belonged to Johann Christian Bach. Ordinarily the drawing room was the busiest in the great house. It lay between Amelia’s and sister Lucy’s bedrooms and was once their indoor playhouse. Now it had become a female social center, as one could tell by the surroundings: two dressmaker’s busts, a Wheeler & Wilson sewing machine, a letter-writing table, a fireplace to read and warm by, an ornate dollhouse the sisters couldn’t bring themselves to evict, and a golden harp that both had given up because its strings bruised their delicate fingers.

Amelia stared out of the large lace-curtained window at Madison Square across the street. Soon a parade of fresh army recruits would halt in the public garden for a last round of marshal music and speeches about honor and glory. Then several of Savannah’s finest families would cross the street, pass through the iron gate and into the Beach’s reception hall to sip tea and punch at the first “social” of the Christmas season and breathe in the reassurance that wartime Savannah was still unscathed in at least one gracious home.

Later, a few of the families with the most promising, eligible male progeny would proceed inside to dinner, followed by parlor games and the Chopin polonaise Amelia had been ordered by her mother to “practice until perfect.”

Downstairs was a noisy clatter of plates being placed on tables as Mrs. Beach clucked over her household maids. But today all was quiet in the upstairs drawing room save for the gold filigree mantle clock that ticked like a metronome and pinged punctiliously every half hour. Amelia stared out again at Madison Square, took a deep breath, and soon launched into the brisk, raucous I’m a Good Ol’ Rebel. She had begun thumping the even louder Dixie’s Land when the door flung open. “Is that what you’re going to play tonight?” shouted seventeen-year-old Lucy, leaving the door wide open as if to hasten the noise to their mother’s ears a floor below. “You’re not going to catch any soldier boy tonight if you play in the cracks,” she chided.

“Good. If that’s what it takes to drive them off, that’s what I’ll do,” Amelia shouted back without stopping.

“Well, at least think of me,” said Lucy. “Both Jeremy Sloan and Marvin Branch are coming. When I made socks for them, I made red ones for Jeremy and blue ones for Marvin. Now I hear they’re arguing over which color means which one I fancy more. But then I sewed on brass buttons for both of them. I saw you sewing brass buttons on a uniform. Who for?”

Amelia stopped playing and faced her sister with a glower. “Freddy Farnsworth.”

Lucy shook with the giggles. With her perfect golden ringlets, she was as pretty as a wedding cake statuette, but to her older sister she was still a witless, selfish child.

“Yes, fat Freddy Farnsworth,” said Amelia with mock sweetness. “Because Mother asked me to. In fact, she wouldn’t stop asking until I did it.”

“Well,” said Lucy, tilting her head and assuming an ingratiating pose. “I mean you really can’t be all that choosy, can you? Just about all the eligible men have gone off to war. It might be a year or two before they return and you might be, what, twenty-five or twenty-six? Well, I suppose you’ll always be invited to play the piano at parties.”

Rather than murder Lucy, Amelia changed the subject. “Do you really think there are any good ones in this batch? All the red-blooded men enlisted two years ago along with your brother Joseph. These are what’s left – conscripts. Including Freddy the Flatulent.”

Amelia enjoyed making Lucy draw a hand to her mouth – better when it held a fluttering fan. “Yes, Flatulent Freddy Fartsworth, I call him. He gets real nervous in my presence and when he does he breaks wind like lightning on a tin roof. I can only imagine the noise if he faced a picket line of Yankee rifles. Probably blow up his own regiment!”

“All right. What’s this? All bickering and no music!” Sarah Chesney Beach stood in the doorway, plump, out of breath and florid-faced from climbing the steep stairway. “Now Lucy you get down there and help with the place settings. Amelia, all I’ve asked is that you pretty up and play us some nice music. Is that too much?”

“No, Mother. As long as I’m not playing it for Freddy Farnsworth.”

“I don’t see why you can’t encourage him a bit. After all, he’s going off to war to defend our homeland.”

“Mother, the last time he thought I encouraged him, I think he tried to seduce me.”

Amelia meant only to enjoy her mother’s shock, but Sarah Beach turned the tables. “Oh really?” she exclaimed. “Well, perhaps you could allow him to succeed the next time. The Farnsworths own most of the railroad, you know.”

With that she was off again, shutting the door with more fortissimo than befitted a society matron of Savannah.

Amelia expressed her feelings with a wild, boisterous polonaise that would have made Chopin’s ears hurt. Soon she knew that she was putting off the inevitable ordeal and went to face it in the dressing room she shared with her sister. Inside, the petite Lucy stood before a long mirror while Mandy tugged on a corset covering the chemise undergarment that extended from her knees to her elbows. Rotund Mandy had been their common “upstairs girl” since childhood and part of their mother’s as well.

“Child, you don’t need a corset,” scoffed Amelia.

“That’s what I tol’ her,” said Mandy. “Why, you skinny as a lamp post already.”

“You don’t like corsets because you’re afraid your eyes’ll pop out,” Lucy volleyed at her sister.

Amelia: “Did you ever hear of heat? I’d sweat to death with all those people and candles around the piano.”

“Mama says women don’t sweat,” Lucy shot back. “Men sweat. Women glow. Leastways, I don’t do either. Besides, you need a corset. I’ll wager I could pinch enough fold in your waist to hide a clothespin.”

Amelia jabbed back. “I’m going to wear a full dress with nothing on underneath. Then when I need to let hot air out I’ll just pull my dress up over my head. All these layers are just Yankee fashion for women up where they probably have snow on the ground.”

Lucy tossed her head so that her corkscrew curls swished back and forth. “You wear a full gown and you’ll be just like Mama,” she lectured. “Well, a few of us are proud that we don’t have to hide our fat.” The word fat came out like sizzle on a hot griddle.

“Yes, Blessed,” Amelia replied in a syrupy voice. Her coup de grace was a code word sure to be understood only by Lucy. A few years back she had asked her parents why Lucy had arrived in the world nearly seven years after her older sister and ten after brother Joseph. “Why, child,” her mother had said, “one day the stork just delivered us a blessed surprise.” Later, when Lucy had become old enough to be annoying, Amelia could provoke tears by calling her “Storky.” When the mother put her foot down on that name, Amelia switched to “Blessed,” which could produce equal damage with effortless innocence.

This time Lucy simply made silent grotesque faces at her sister as Mandy finished her layering: starched petticoats stuffed with tucks and cording, a gown with broad shoulders and low-cut neckline exposing part of whatever the corset cups could push up. The gown came with the latest fashion: the gigot sleeve, which billowed wide and gathered again at the wrist. With all these components patted down in place, Mandy buckled a broad leather band around Lucy’s midriff to accent her tiny waist. The piece d’resistance was a jeweled ferronnièr that Mandy fastened around her long neck.

Amelia saw another opening. “With those sleeves, you’re going to knock over a whole tray of glasses,” she observed.

“You’re not lady enough to wear them.”

“You don’t have to play piano tonight. I couldn’t find the keys with all that material hanging down.”

Lucy, having been topped out, took a last admiring look in the petticoat sideboard – a mirror placed near the ground to make sure that a lady’s ankles were properly covered – then tripped off in search of her mother’s approval. Amelia, weary of the childish banter, scolded herself for not behaving more like a big sister. Then she pinched her midriff when Mandy wasn’t looking and concluded that Lucy would have lost the clothespin wager. She also concluded that she didn’t need a corset with cups because she had plenty on top to push in any direction she wished.

“Mandy,” she said, “bring me my old green velvet gown.” It had puffy shoulders but plunged straight downward with no petticoats to billow it. Well, I’m out of style, I suppose, but then...