Ella Wood (Ella Wood, 1) Read online

  Ella Wood

  Ella Wood, book one

  by Michelle Isenhoff

  Ella Wood. Copyright © 2015 by Michelle Isenhoff. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Edited by Amy Nemecek.

  Candle Star Press

  www.michelleisenhoff.com

  Ella Wood

  Introduction

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  Historical Notes

  Ella Wood Novellas

  Also by Michelle Isenhoff

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  About Michelle

  To light a candle is to cast a shadow.

  —Ursula K. Le Guin

  Introduction

  Four years ago I published The Candle Star, a stand-alone title among my collection of Civil War middle grade fiction. The book was well received by a general adult readership, and I began receiving emails asking questions like, “Why didn’t you follow Emily’s storyline?” and “What happens to Emily?”

  Ella Wood is my response.

  Parents of middle graders, please note that I have bumped Ella Wood into the young adult genre. Emily is now sixteen, standing at the edge of war and struggling with questions of morality, purpose, and love. Slavery, dealt with so carefully in my series for young readers, is shown in a much harsher light, and some themes are adult in nature. A “clean” read, Ella Wood is nevertheless intended for an audience of some maturity.

  You need not read The Candle Star to enjoy Ella Wood.

  And now, readers, the continuing story of Emily Preston…

  1

  Ella Wood Plantation

  October 27, 1860

  The sight of blood had a powerful effect on Emily Preston. It was just a trickle of red oozing from a black woman’s finger, but it rocked the very foundation of her upbringing.

  She nudged Chantilly down the dim riding trail. Dawn was her favorite hour, when mist hung low over Ella Wood and cloaked the plantation in a veil of solitude. Moist, earthy breaths billowed up from the bottomlands to condense on the foliage and roll off in lazy droplets. High above the sleeping earth, trees held a solemn vigil until the sun sneaked its gentle, prodding fingers beneath their branches. Emily treasured these quiet moments before the air grew cluttered with the sounds of waking.

  She shivered beneath her riding habit. Autumn had cast a chill over both sides of midnight, though no South Carolina season ever conjured up the frigid temperatures she had experienced in Michigan. She could hardly believe a year and a half had passed since her visit. When she’d grown unmanageable as a child, her parents had sent her away to her mother’s brother in Detroit. She resented the exile initially but came to develop a tremendous respect for Uncle Isaac. And it was in his hotel that Julia Watson had drawn her own blood.

  “You’s so full o’ yo’ own color you can’t trade places wid a black person even in yo’ own imagination,” Julia had bristled when Emily flaunted her ancestry. “But when we’s hurt, we bleed de same color, Miss Emily.” The woman picked up a paring knife, flicking her fingertip with the sharp point. “Look here,” she demanded, shoving the drop of blood before the girl’s eyes. “When we’s hurt, you and I, we both bleed red.”

  The image had seared itself into Emily’s mind, the words plunging like boulders through the smooth surface of her schooling. Eighteen months later, the waves still rocked her.

  A low melody drifted into the meadow. The slaves were beginning their day’s labor. Though the harvest was over, plenty of tasks awaited attention during the off-season. Fences needed mending, outbuildings stood in need of repair, and the earthen dikes and ditches that scored the rice fields required constant maintenance. Their people did the work dutifully. Ella Wood followed a predictable pattern, season by season, with all parts working together like intricate clockwork.

  Emily had always thought the world was designed to work in such a way—strong black bodies to do the labor and sharp white minds to manage the details and ensure provision. Until Julia Watson thrust a bleeding finger under her nose. Until Julia’s son Malachi displayed a mind sharper than her own. Until she was exposed to a thriving Free Black community comprised of individuals with dreams and ambitions as lofty as hers.

  The path grew less wooded and opened into a field toothed with stubble from last season’s corn. The light shone brighter here, unhampered by leaves that still clung to the trees with tenacious fingertips. She could begin to pick out the colors of the hardwoods on the low hill that guarded the estate’s northernmost border—shades of vermillion, raw sienna, and burnt umber that would grow bolder and more vibrant with the strengthening of the sun.

  Ella Wood was so beautiful, so sheltered, it was hard to believe disharmony existed elsewhere in the world. But Emily knew the ideas she’d been exposed to in the North could never coexist with the way of life in the South. Bloodshed in faraway Kansas had proven that compromise no longer purchased peace. Every day she feared an incitement that would escort the rumble of violence into her own backyard.

  “What a world to bring a foal into, eh, Chantilly?” The mare stamped a hoof, chuffing out a geyser of vapor. Emily patted the black neck. “Oh, don’t get excited. You have a few months yet.”

  She turned the mare toward home, startling a deer that grazed in the shadow merging forest with farmland. Eager for her own breakfast, Chantilly broke into a trot. They soon passed the corn barn, followed by the rice barn, the winnowing yard, and the mill. Nearer to home, Emily could make out the quiet clamor of livestock pens and smell the distinctive odors of cattle, sheep, and hogs. A wayward goose fluttered off the road. Then only a cluster of slave cabins still lay between her and the stable yard.

  Emily slowed as they approached the village. The cabins stood like a ring of secrets just within sight of the big house. She had played there often as a child and still recognized most of the faces, but as she’d outdistanced her youth, an invisible curtain seemed to draw itself around the perimeter of the community. Open smiles morphed into polite greetings that lacked the warmth she remembered from childhood. She’d grown into an outsider, the master’s daughter.

  The smell of cook fires lingered in the air, though the only chimneys still smoking belonged to the elderly who cared for the slave children during the workday. Emily adored the little ones. Tolerated and even indulged by her parents, they were free to roam the plantation. For them, age and experience had not yet solidified into caste.

  A pair of dark brown eyes peered from a doorway. “Good morning, Lottie,” Emily called.

  The girl smiled shyly, clutching a brown-skinned doll to her chest. “Mornin’, Miss Emily.” Approximately ten years old, she was bright, with delicate features and an agreeable temperament. Emily’s mother had handpicked her to begin training as a new parlor maid and possibly even her personal maid, since Phoebe was getting along in years.

  “Was Herod able to fix your doll?”

  “He got de arm workin’ again good as new.” Lottie demonstrated by lifting the jointed limb.

  The toy had been given to Emily by Aunt Margaret, h
er father’s elder sister, who often traveled to exotic locations. It had lain in a box for years, until Emily rediscovered it a week ago.

  The child’s smile pleased Emily. “I thought he might if you asked prettily enough. He can fix just about anything.”

  “When he ain’t bein’ ornery.”

  “Big brothers are like that sometimes,” she sympathized. “Will I see you after breakfast?”

  Lottie nodded.

  Emily gave her a little wave and rode on past.

  Zeke, the elderly manumitted slave who chose to remain as butler of Ella Wood, occupied the cabin nearest to the stable. He could have his pick of rooms in the servants’ quarters on the third floor of the big house, but he preferred the small shack. Most days he arrived to work while the sun was still rolling over in bed, but this morning a blur of movement near his porch caught Emily’s eye.

  It wasn’t Zeke at all. A white man, a stranger, darted from the cover of trees behind Zeke’s cabin and hustled toward the stable door, staggering slightly beneath the weight of his burden. Over one shoulder was slung the limp figure of a man.

  Emily reined Chantilly to an abrupt halt.

  The stranger met her eye. Holding the body steady with one hand, he brought a warning finger to his lips then disappeared like a shadow into the barn.

  Emily sat frozen to the spot, eyes as round as marbles. She should yell. She should alert one of the slaves or run to inform her father, but she could only stare wide-eyed at the empty stable door. For in that brief moment of stillness she had recognized the inert man.

  It was her brother.

  ***

  Emily dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands as she watched the evening soften the landscape into shades of lavender and puce. Hers was a corner bedroom, and from the front window she had a lovely view of the manicured lawn rolling down to a dusky line of cypress trees at the river’s edge. The house had been built facing the river, the only means of transportation in those early days. To the right stood the wharf in a swampy estuary that had been widened and deepened to accommodate her father’s schooner. And from the side window she could just glimpse the sandy drive that made a wide sweep around the backyard. She turned away from the view and yelped as a hairpin burned against her scalp.

  “Miss Emily, you hol’ still or yo’ hair be comin’ loose when you dancin’ wid some gen’leman.”

  Emily winced as the maid pushed in another pin. “I think I’d rather take my chances on the dance floor, Lizzie.”

  The colored girl glared at her in the mirror. “What would Marse Preston say if you showed up lookin’ raggedy? You set still now an’ save Lizzie a beatin’.”

  Emily rolled her eyes. Her maid had been given to dramatics even when they were childhood playmates. At Ella Wood, reprimands were never meted out more harshly than their due. “You know I don’t care about this silly ball, Lizzie.”

  “You’s sixteen now, Miss Emily. Time fo’ you to start carin’.”

  Emily sighed in dismay. Her parents were hosting tonight’s party in honor of her birthday. The summer fevers had run their course, so the family returned from Charleston to hold the ball in the country. It would be her debut into society, even if the date did fall into an odd corner of the social calendar.

  “I’ve spied through the banister enough times as a child to know these events are nothing but gossip and matchmaking,” Emily pronounced, “and I have little use for either. I refuse to act the part of a silly, frivolous girl desperate for a husband.” She whirled suddenly to face her maid. “What would you say if I told you I have plans for the future that don’t include marriage?”

  The girl raised an eyebrow. “I’d say you always knowed yo’ own mind, Miss Emily, and never much feared what others thought of it. But you better be on yo’ bes’ behavior tonight or you can bury dose dreams in de backyard.”

  Emily bit her lip. Lizzie was right. If her unconventional plans had any hope of success, she would need to curry her parents’ favor. That meant enduring an endless string of these balls. She plucked a purple mum from a vase on her dresser and began picking the petals off one by one. “Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I’d stayed in the North.”

  “Coulda fooled me, Miss Emily. You poked yo’ nose into every corner o’ dis plantation since you come home. I’d think you was settin’ to inherit instead of Jackson.”

  Emily lifted her chin. “Is it wrong for me to wish to understand my father’s business?” Despite a few misgivings, she was proud of her heritage. Ella Wood had been established along the banks of the Ashley River in 1784 by the first William Samuel Jackson Preston. Originally a sea captain, he had made a fortune privateering during the Revolution. He invested his wealth into rice cultivation soon after the war, taking advantage of the devastation to amass a small kingdom. Within a decade he had turned the swampy acreage of four separate properties into productive land.

  His son, Emily’s grandfather, took a particular interest in botany. He improved the local strain of rice, designed Ella Wood’s formal gardens, and expanded his father’s empire, including the purchase of a Charleston home and an estate on Wadmalaw Island, where he experimented with long staple cotton. Later, after Europe began demanding cotton to fuel their textile industry, Emily’s father expanded production. But rice remained their primary crop, and Ella Wood endured as the jewel of the Preston crown.

  “No, miss. But mos’ white women leave such things to dey menfolk.”

  Emily picked off three more petals. “I told you, I have no intention of marrying.”

  Her explanation was only a partial truth. She’d been astonished by the ideas she encountered in the North, and she wanted to examine for herself the line between truth, exaggeration, and accusation.

  “I don’ know nothin’ ’bout such plans, but I know what I see. It ain’t right, you botherin’ dose people in de slave village all de time. Dey work hard fo’ yo’ daddy. Jus’ let ’em be.”

  Emily’s temper flared. It was her turn to glare into the mirror. “My father owns that village and the people who live there. I can enter whenever I wish.”

  “I don’ know what you lookin’ fo’,” Lizzie grumbled, “but you ain’t gunna find it in a slave cabin.”

  Emily clamped her teeth closed and yanked at the purple flower. She knew exactly what drew her back to the circle of huts again and again. Not loneliness, though the remoteness of the plantation could be isolating. Behind the invisible curtain, she was searching for the intelligence, ingenuity, and skill she had found in Detroit. The unique blend of spirit and confidence she had discovered in Malachi Watson.

  Malachi was the most determined person she had ever met. He alone understood her desire to cling to an unlikely dream—he was studying to become a doctor. The two of them had established a tenuous friendship despite the many differences that existed between them. He had forced her to consider life from a new perspective and tried to convince her that America could be better. Stronger.

  She had not forgotten her promise to Malachi, that when she returned home she would look for little things she might do to bring about change. But she feared the kind of change Malachi sought. It threw her into confusion. If slavery were abolished altogether, the Southern economy would fall. There must be some middle ground between the two extremes. But where?

  The bedroom door burst open. Her brother stood outlined within the frame, rumpled but alive. “Feeling better?” she drawled, tossing the handful of petals and the naked flower stem onto her dressing table.

  He stepped inside. “Does Father know?”

  She understood him perfectly but asked nonetheless, “Does Father know what?”

  He glowered at her, holding out the monogrammed handkerchief she had pressed into his hand that morning. “What did you say to him?”

  “You mean, did I tell him I found you passed out drunk in the stable?” She crossed her arms pertly, savoring his discomfort.

  “Did you?”

  “No, I did not. I’
m no snitch.” A secret that powerful was too good to spill too soon.

  He dropped the handkerchief on her floor and exited as abruptly as he entered. Emily wrinkled her nose at the sour odor he left behind. “He better take a bath if he wants to keep his secret.”

  Lizzie shook her head. “He a troubled man.”

  “Jack? He’s got everything. Wealth, horses, land…freedom,” she said with a twist of bitterness.

  The girl moved to tuck in one last stray strand of Emily’s hair. “Dey’s people in de slave cabins mo’ peaceful dan yo’ brother.”

  Emily considered her maid at length in the mirror. “What about you, Lizzie? Are you happy?”

  The girl glanced up briefly. “Dey’s worse places to live.” It was the kind of vague response Emily received from all their people.

  “I asked if you’re happy.”

  “Happy ’nough.”

  Emily turned around in her chair and sought the girl’s eyes. “Lizzie, are you happy?”

  The maid’s glance came up slowly and held. “Don’t really matter, now, does it?”

  Emily opened her mouth and then closed it, uncertain how to respond.

  The maid turned back to her work. “I s’pose neither of us should be askin’ questions we don’t really want to hear de answers to.”

  Emily sat in silence as the girl finished her task. If given the choice, would Lizzie leave? Were their people as capable as the Free Blacks she had met in Detroit? Was she selfish for wishing things would always remain just as they were?

  She glanced again at the colors spilling across the landscape. But this time she was blind to the fading orange of the horizon, the russets lingering in the Thoroughbred paddock, and the purples deepening between the slave cabins. This time she saw only shadows.

  2

  “You finished, Miss Emily,” Lizzie announced, smoothing her young mistress’s skirt and giving her hair a final pat. “And none too soon. Dey’s a mess o’ carriages outside. Time to make yo’ entrance.”