Marcia Talley - The Last Refuge

In three long strides, Alex crossed the oriental rug to the harpsichord and began pawing through the sheet music. ‘Here’s something,’ he announced, waving the music in the air like a victory flag. ‘Mozart’s sonata for piano and violin in C major. I think we need a duet, don’t you?’

Piano and violin? Apparently Alex had hidden talents. I led an encouraging round of applause.

Alex handed the music to Amy, and in the time it took her to spread it open on the music rack in front of her, he’d retrieved his violin from the floor under the harpsichord and removed it from its case. ‘An A, please, Miss Cornell?’ After a bit of fussing with the tuning pegs and fiddling with the bow, he waved the bow in a dramatic arc and said, ‘Ready.’

‘Don’t you need to see the score?’ Amy wondered.

Alex clamped the violin under his chin. ‘This one’s in my repertoire.’ He raised his bow, then lowered it again, turning to address Melody. ‘Mozart wrote this piece when he was eight years old. Think about that.’ He raised his bow again, nodded to Amy, and they began to play.

Ten minutes of magic ensued.

As the last note of Alex’s violin faded away, we sat silently, still mesmerized, until Melody broke the spell by leaping to her feet, applauding like a groupie at a Stones concert.

Alex held out his hand, Amy slipped hers into his and allowed him to guide her out from behind the bench. Standing side by side, hands raised aloft, the two musicians bowed deeply. After a moment, Alex raised Amy’s hand to his lips and kissed it. Even in the candlelight, I could see her blush.

Jack, who up to this time had usually sat through family activities like a gargoyle and whose taste in music (I imagined) ran to praise songs like ‘Shout to the Lord,’ surprised me by clapping and chanting, ‘Encore! Encore!’ along with the rest of us.

Alex dropped Amy’s hand. ‘I think it’s time for some audience participation, don’t you, Amy?’

He returned to the harpsichord, shuffled around through the music, coming up with a handful of booklets composed of folded sheets of parchment, sewn through the center fold with red string. One copy contained the score, which Alex handed to Amy. For us, there was no music, only lyrics to songs popular in the 1770s, collected – according to the handwritten title page – by a soldier named Colonel George Bush from Delaware. Alex made a circuit of the room, passing out the booklets, uttering words of encouragement along the way: ‘Come on! Everybody can sing! Yes, even you , Mr Donovan,’ that charmed the socks off everyone.

‘I’ll go first,’ he said, returning to the harpsichord and indicating to Amy which song he would like her to play. Amy played a short introduction, so we could pick up on the tune, then Alex began leading us in a song of flowers and spring and unrequited love of a swain for a country maid named Katharine Ogie. Like good little do-bees, we joined in, but by the time we reached the end of the song: ‘ Clouds of despair surround my love, which are both dark and fogie, Pity my case ye powers above, else I die for Katharine Ogie ,’ we’d dropped out, one by one, totally mesmerized by the sound of Alex’s sweet baritone.

Once again, Melody was on her feet, applauding. ‘Your turn now, Amy!’

‘What shall I sing?’

Alex leaned over Amy’s shoulder and turned to the next page in the booklet, smoothing it down. When it wouldn’t behave, he kept a finger on the corner so it’d stay put.

‘I’m afraid my voice isn’t nearly as fine as yours, Alex,’ Amy said, placing her fingers on the keys, gazing up at him sideways through her lashes.

‘Sure it is. Go on. We’ll sing with you.’

‘I’ll be sight-reading.’ She grinned. ‘So don’t expect much.’

‘Saw you my hero, saw you my hero, saw you my hero, George?’ Amy sang, leaning forward, squinting, to better see the words and music as she played. Alex paced behind her back, conducting his motley chorus with his bow.

‘Hark, from the hills, the woodlands, and dales, (we sang)

The drums and the trumpet alarms.

Ye Gods, I give you charge of gallant hero, George

To return him unhurt to my arms.’

I was just thinking, ooooh , bad choice , when Amy’s head drooped, and her hands flew from the keyboard to her face. She rocked forward, then burst into tears and ran from the room. After a moment of stunned silence, Jack Donovan blustered, ‘What’s the matter with her ?’

Alex bowed, abandoned his violin and rushed out of the room after her.

‘I explained to Mr Donovan why I came unglued while I was playing the harpsichord the other day. The advice he gave me came from the heart, but unfortunately it was all about Jesus.’

Amy Cornell, lady’s maid

A week later, I awoke just as fingers of light began to creep around the edges of the curtains. I propped myself up on my pillows and lay in bed with the coverlet tucked under my chin, listening to rain drum against the roof and gurgle along the gutters. I couldn’t stop thinking about the abrupt ending to what had been an otherwise delightful musicale, and the text message Amy had received in the dressmaker’s garden and wondering who could be so cruel, and why.

A few minutes later, there was a gentle knock on the door hidden in the wall next to my bed, followed almost immediately by Amy, backside and petticoats first, carrying a tea tray. As had become her routine, she set the tray down on the table between the windows, then turned to draw open the curtains. She stood at the window for a few seconds, staring out into the cool, gray day, watching the rain sluice sideways against the antique glass. ‘Good day for ducks,’ she said.

Amy turned, reached into her pocket and pulled out a letter, sealed with a familiar red blob of wax. ‘This came for you a few minutes ago,’ she said, propping the letter up against the sugar bowl on the tray.

‘I’m beginning to dread these letters,’ I confided. ‘If it’s from our Founding Father, as I suspect, I think I’ll need tea first.’

‘Allow me.’ Amy smiled, set the silver strainer over my cup and poured a cup of tea through it. She set the strainer containing the damp leaves aside, added a thin slice of lemon to the cup and brought it over to me where I still lay, like a slug, in bed.

‘Amy, you are a gem,’ I told her, lifting the cup and saucer from her hands and taking a sip. ‘Should you ever need a letter of recommendation as colonial maid of all work, you need only to turn to me.’

‘I’ll remember that.’ It was good to see her laugh. ‘If there’s nothing else you need, I’ll go wake up the children, then.’ She curtseyed and let herself out the way she had come.

The secret door to my room opened left off the service staircase, and a similar door, I had discovered, led off to the right, directly into Melody’s room, the one adjoining mine. That room had once belonged to William Paca’s ten-year-old niece who had come to live in Annapolis as an orphan, and had died there, probably of tuberculosis. I hadn’t told the story to Melody, worried that if she knew the truth – that little Henny Dorsey had literally died in her room – she would have freaked. I’d been in Melody’s room, and I had to admit that being there gave me a creepy feeling, too.

I could hear Melody moving around next door, singing ‘You Make Me Feel’ by Cobra Starship, when Amy returned to help me dress. ‘Did you sleep well?’ I asked as she laced me into my stays.

‘Not very,’ she replied. ‘My windows are tiny, but you know what I see when I look out? The Naval Academy chapel.’