Soul

‘Madam, you be after something?’

‘No, I just came to visit the horses. It’s always been a refuge to me, the stables.’

She smiled to reassure them, but Aloysius, disconcerted by the impropriety of the moment, was staring at the floor, his large hands pawing the paper apprehensively. He indicated the youth next to him.

‘This is Samuel, he’s the coachman over at the embassy.’

A smile broke like a white streak across the other man’s face. Lavinia saw he had one front tooth missing.

‘Ma’am, at your service. Begging your pardon, but the master’s visiting number forty and so while I’m waiting I’ve put the footman in charge of the coach and taken the opportunity to visit my friend Aloysius—with my master’s permission, ma’am, I swear.’ Samuel tipped his cap.

Lavinia had only ever seen one black man before and she tried to conceal her wonder. He was a well-made youth, with large slightly bulbous brown eyes, a nose that looked as if it might have seen a few fights, and a mass of tight oiled curls framing his round face.

‘Which embassy?’ Lavinia settled herself on a work bench. ‘And please, sit again and enjoy your tobacco and ale. I had not intended to disturb you.’

Samuel waited until Aloysius nodded permission and then the two of them settled awkwardly back down. As the Irishman snubbed out a smoking piece of straw that had been ignited by the embers of his hidden clay pipe, Samuel took off his cap and polished the insignia.

‘The embassy of the Confederate States of America, ma’am. I belong to Mr Dudley Hunt; he’s the ambassador and I am his coachman,’ he said proudly.

‘Samuel does himself a disservice,’ Aloysius interrupted. ‘He’s the best horseman I know. This laddie can calm the jumpiest stallion, and guide a panicked team through a flood as if it were a meadow, madam.’

‘Mr Hunt is lucky to have you in his employment.’

‘Ma’am, I’m not employed. Mr Dudley Hunt owns me, and my papa and the rest of us. That’s the way it is in the South.’

‘And that’s why there is a war on, Mr Samuel.’

‘So they say, ma’am, so they say.’ Samuel, anxious about the introduction of political matters, looked from Lavinia to Aloysius.

‘Samuel has brought me a letter from America,’ Aloysius interjected, thinking it would be wise to change the topic of conversation.

Samuel held up the envelope, the address stained and faded on the front. ‘There was a Union postal cart captured by the Confederate forces, and they finds this letter and sends it to Mr Dudley Hunt Esquire, who throws it out. But I knows the word “coachman” and the word “Mayfair”, so I finds Aloysius myself and now I have myself an Irishman as a true friend, now ain’t I a huckleberry above a persimmon?’

Aloysius put his hand up to silence the coachman.

‘I believe the letter is from my brother, madam.’

‘And what is his news?’

A slow flush inched its way from under Aloysius’s woollen collar and up to his large ears. ‘I

can’t properly say. Being the fifth child I wasn’t sent to school as such. But Seamus, he was the fortunate one. Fortunate to have left and fortunate to have got to America alive.’

‘You cannot read?’

Now the coachman’s face was scarlet. He looked down at his riding boots. Lavinia stretched out her hand and Aloysius handed the letter to her over the gate. As he did, she noticed that the tips of two fingers were missing and his hands were scarred.

She examined the parchment under the light of the lantern Aloysius had placed on the wooden doorpost. The handwriting was laboured and the spelling dreadful. It appeared Seamus had received little more of an education than his brother.

‘It is dated the seventeenth of February and begins, My dear brother Aloysius—’

‘Well, even I knew that much,’ Aloysius grumbled, determined to win back some dignity. Ignoring him, and Samuel’s sudden grin, Lavinia continued.

‘I hope this letter finds you in good health and in good employment. Brother, I write to tell you that I am now a soldier with President Lincoln’s Union Army. We are a worthy bunch of Irishmen with the 69th New York State militia regiment. I have volunteered and they have given me my own horse, saddle and supplies. It will be food and a roof over my head, and I am hoping we will be fighting in Virginia by the spring. I will try and write you during the campaign, and I have chosen you as next of kin should I perish. Yours in good grace, your brother Seamus.’

In the ensuing silence, Samuel let out a long slow whistle and slapped his thigh. ‘Goddamn! I am all chawed up. If I could, I would be fighting with him my own sweet self! The Good Lord knows I would!’

Forgetting himself, Aloysius reached across and took the letter from Lavinia, then stared blindly at the page as if the face of his brother were printed there.