Rebel falls, p.7
Rebel Falls, page 7
13
The next afternoon, as we entered the dining room at the Cataract House, I saw Mr. Douglas standing, erect and alert, just inside the dining room entrance. He immediately recognized me and nodded in my direction. The years had treated Mr. Douglas kindly. He remained a presence here, the knowing force in this part of the world. The one who had worked closely with Mother in bringing so many escaped souls across the border.
The expanse of long tables with fresh linen, sparkling pitchers, and polished silver was managed by the precise movement of a dozen waiters, all dressed in black jackets and creased pants, white shirts with starched collars and cravats. The wait staff was entirely men, and their skin was as dark as their waiter suits. Rumor had it that many were escaped slaves themselves.
As we stepped farther into the vast room, with its glittering chandeliers, Mr. Douglas nodded toward the table in the corner. John Yates Beall was stationed there and stood as we entered; walking toward us was Bennet Burley.
“I’d like to formally apologize for my actions of last night,” said the taller of the two rebels. “It was unacceptable.”
Wreet smiled as if she didn’t believe a word he was saying.
“I mean it,” Burley said. “It was conduct unbecoming a proper gentleman.”
“Proper gentleman,” Wreet scoffed. “The other one must have put you up to this.”
“Captain Beall doesn’t force me to do anything. While I admire his leadership, I don’t take orders from anyone.”
“How reassuring,” Wreet replied.
“It’s fine,” I told him. “All is forgotten and forgiven.”
With that, Burley nodded in appreciation and led us into the dining room.
John Yates Beall was seated on the far side of the table, where he could see anyone entering or leaving the dining room.
“Ladies,” he said, rising from his chair. “How good of you to join us.”
In comparison to Burley’s sober tone, Beall’s manner carried a lightness, even a sense of play. After we settled in, one of the waiters placed a small kettle of tea in the middle of the table, followed by another waiter who delivered scones, a third with clotted cream, and a fourth carrying a decanter of juice. It was another well-orchestrated presentation at the Cataract House, and Mr. Douglas oversaw it all.
“Thanks for meeting us here,” I said.
“Undoubtedly,” Wreet added, “it would have been more convenient for you on the Canadian side.”
“How kind of you to be concerned about our schedule,” Captain Beall replied. “There’s no need, though. With the proximity to the Suspension Bridge, we manage well enough. And to view this glorious establishment … well, it does take one’s breath away, doesn’t it?”
For a while, we sipped our tea and eyed each other. We did so until Wreet couldn’t stand it any longer. “What brings you here?” she asked. “A Southerner and a Scotsman.”
“A Virginian, actually.” John Yates Beall smiled. “Mrs. Thayer, you were much more accommodating when we visited your shop, ready to part with our hard-earned coin.”
“You’re one of many,” Wreet replied dismissively.
“And maybe that’s the problem with the world today,” Beall continued. “Too easily everyone becomes one of many.”
“And any inherent rights,” I offered, “are lost.”
Beall raised an eyebrow. “Do you believe that’s what’s going on in the world, Miss Chase?”
“I don’t know,” I began, trying to conjure up the rhetoric that Daisy Conley and others like her back in Auburn used. The talk of the Copperheads or Peace Democrats, those who were so tired of the war that they were ready to make any kind of agreement with the South. “All I know is that whatever is taking place can’t continue. If it does, we’ll all go mad. The conflict has gone on too long. It’s torn the country apart.”
Beall raised his teacup, blowing on the hot surface, before setting it back down without taking a sip.
“I agree with you, Miss Chase,” he said. “Anyone can see that the United States is a broken construct. An idea or a theory that doesn’t function any longer. Four years of war have done irreparable damage.”
Beside me, I heard Wreet take a deep breath, eager to debate such points. Yet somehow she held herself in check.
“What do you think of there being two nations, Miss Chase?” Beall asked. “Each allowed to go its own way.”
I turned this over in my mind, unsure of how to play out the string. “I’ll be honest, kind sirs,” I told them. “As I said, I don’t rightly know. I’m not as well versed in such arguments as you appear to be. All I’m certain of is that we can no longer continue like this.”
Here I racked my brain for something more, something more convincing, and I fell back on the phrase Mrs. Kidder had used when we were at the overlook, high above the Falls.
“We can no longer be a world on fire,” I told him.
“A world on fire,” Beall repeated. “Such an appropriate phrase, Miss Chase.”
As we watched, he reached alongside his chair and raised his cane. It was an impressive instrument, made of black lacquered wood, topped with a knob of shining crystal and a gold band.
“I need this to make my way in the world now,” Beall said. “For I’ve learned that a bullet fired under any circumstances can cause as much damage as one fired at Manassas or Fredericksburg.”
He briefly held the cane in one hand before letting it slide back to the floor. “There’s no way I could be with a regular unit in the field anymore,” he said.
“So, what brings you here?” I asked. “To the Falls?”
“I appreciate your directness, Miss Chase.” Beall smiled. “Let’s just say that perhaps I find myself at the Falls, truly one of the wonders of the world, for many of the same reasons that likely brought you here.” Then he turned to Burley and said, “As for me, I’ve decided to follow Mr. Burley’s lead. He has family near Toronto. We’ll soon head that way and ride things out until the world returns to its senses. Isn’t that right, Burl?”
The Scotsman nodded. “As you say, Cap’n. We’ll take in the sights here, then move on.”
14
“Forget about the old lady. I know she gets your goat,” Beall told Burley. “It’s the young one who fights like a banshee. She intrigues me.”
The two of them dared to linger at their table in the Cataract House dining room, with its high ceiling and elongated, sentinel windows, after the women had left. Burley was ready to take the next train back across the Suspension Bridge to the Canadian side. A sixth sense told him that spending too much time on the Union side wasn’t the wisest course of action. Not now.
“Her heart may be with the cause,” Burley agreed. “But why even consider her? It’s another wheel to the cart.”
“Because our cart needs more wheels,” Beall replied. “I have to move on to Detroit soon enough and make sure Maxwell has held up his end: assembled more men, checked the ferry schedules. As we’ve discussed, you’ll be in Sandusky, making sure Cole is in position.”
“But how could she help us?”
“I’m thinking we could place her in Sandusky, with you and Cole,” Beall said. “Even if it’s only for a few days.”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, my dear Burl, you’re as transparent as the curtains in a brothel sometimes. Admit it. You don’t like that she more than held her own in that tussle with you.”
When Burley refused to answer, Captain Beall glanced at the Black waiters, picking up the last of the plates and cutlery, shifting the expansive room over to a dinner schedule. “We need more eyes and ears, like they have in this establishment,” the rebel leader added. “See how they serve the meals in regimental order? All of these heathens have a job to do. And along the way, they’re listening, always listening, to what transpires. It is an amazing operation they have in place here.”
“Many a slave made his final escape from this location,” Burley said, following his gaze. “That’s what the carney operators tell me. More often than not, they say it was the waiters here that helped the darkies get across the river, either via the bridge or even by small craft from one side to the other.”
“I can well imagine,” Beall agreed. “They do appear to be a crafty lot. Much more enterprising than the ones back home.”
Both of them took a moment to consider the wait staff at the Cataract House, reluctantly impressed by how they went about their business. For the soup course, they entered six to eight at time, all in step with the head waiter’s soft bell, and placed the bowls, multiple ladles, and steaming cauldron of the day’s offering in the center of each table. The dining room at the Cataract House stretched out in long tables, almost everything served family style, running the length of the place. As the hotel visitors finished the first course, the soup dishes were cleared away, with the waiters bringing out the main course—usually roast beef, boiled potato, succotash, and an array of greens in ornate china dishes with matching lids. Every matching plate, serving basin, or accessory for the evening’s meal had a white gleaming surface with classic blue highlights along the upper edge.
The waiters moved back and forth from the sides, as precise as any honor guard, always there if something was needed by a patron. Most of the time, though, they hung to the side or moved back into the kitchen to prepare the next round. Through it all, they regularly advanced and retreated in single file as they went about their duties. It was only for the dessert course, the final round of the evening, that they called the slightest attention to themselves as they wheeled carts from the kitchen to the soft trill of their boss man’s order bell. Even on a full belly, those carts were enough to make anyone cast a longing eye, as they were weighed down with cakes and pastries, puddings, and cream confections. Of course, a second set of carts arrived with the coffee and tea, with those small silver spoons rattling ever so slightly as they approached.
“Then why do we come here?” Burley asked. “If there are eyes and ears everywhere?”
“It remains a captivating setting, don’t you think, Burl? Besides, with a break here or here, we can bring the war to this part of the world. So much so that the locals maybe don’t call it Niagara Falls anymore. Perhaps something more fitting of the times.”
“Rebel Falls?” Burley offered.
“Or something even better, my friend,” Beall said. “Between us we could conjure up a more fitting moniker, couldn’t we? Say, Lee’s Falls or the Stonewall Cataract. And we’d built a statue to Robert E. Lee himself right out front, facing those raging waters.”
Once more, Burley found himself astonished by his leader’s audacity. How his grasp of reality sometimes was tenuous at best.
Captain Beall stood up and briefly surveyed the room. For a moment, every waiter stopped what they were doing and glanced at him. Then, like the workings of a fine watch, they went back to their respective duties, seemingly paying him little mind.
“Don’t worry,” Beall told his partner. “We’ll be done with this place soon.”
“And what of Miss Chase?”
Beall pondered this a moment. “Perhaps you’re right,” he replied. “Time is running out. We need to find a way ahead without her.”
15
A floor below the Cataract House’s vast dining room, Wreet and I huddled with Mr. Douglas in the small sitting room of his apartment.
“I’m told they are leaving as soon as the day after tomorrow,” Mr. Douglas said. “My friends at the Clifton say reservations have been made for the train out of Buffalo, heading west.”
“It’s just as Secretary Seward feared,” Wreet said. “They’re expanding their operations.”
“Maybe we could trail them,” I said to Wreet.
“And what happens when they catch sight of any of us, dear one?” Wreet asked. “Whatever lie we come up with won’t play then. They don’t trust you enough, at least not yet, to smooth over any kind of coincidence.”
“Trust?” Mr. Douglas said softly, almost to himself.
The two of us looked on as the head waiter became momentarily lost in thought.
“Trust?” he repeated as he rocked slowly back and forth in his chair. For a while, everything around us grew quiet, and I heard footsteps far down the hall and more on the floor above. The hotel, with its ebb and flow, was changing over from daytime bustle to the eloquence and cadence of the dinner hours.
Soon enough, Mr. Douglas returned to us, blinking his eyes.
“Trust,” he said one last time. “There may still be a way to win Beall over.”
“But how?” I asked, feeling my memories and worries about this world well up inside me again. How could I do any good in a place that held so many ghosts for me?
There was a knock at the door, and Mr. Douglas opened it. In the hall, I saw two familiar faces. Mr. Douglas nodded for me to follow him outside.
“Sissy must have told them,” Wreet whispered.
Realizing I had little choice, I made my way toward the two men. They were both dressed spit and polish in their waiter uniforms, ready for the dinner shift at the Cataract House. The solidly built one smiled and nodded in my direction.
“Aran,” I said as Mr. Douglas headed further down the hall.
Behind Aran, the taller, gangly one studied me with a solemn gaze.
“Cesar,” I said in his direction.
The two of them had escaped bondage years before, during what some called the war before the war.
“Sissy said you were back,” Aran said. “I didn’t believe her, but I see I owe her an apology.”
“Not that you’ll say you’re sorry.” Cesar glanced at his longtime friend.
Aran shrugged in reply.
“You’re helping our Mr. Douglas?” Cesar said.
“Trying to,” I told them. Down the hall, Mr. Douglas was returning, likely from checking the shift change at the dining room, and Aran and Cesar became slightly nervous in their boss’s presence.
“It’s good to have you back, Miss Rory,” Cesar said, in a lower voice.
“Yes,” Aran added. “It brightens the day.”
With that, they turned away, and I went back inside with Wreet. Once we were settled again, Mr. Douglas closed the door. He then took down a thick leather-bound book from high on his shelf. With both hands, he held it out for me.
“This may be a jumble to you,” he told me. “You were young your first summer here. But your mother, our Miss Meredith, was a part of so many of these moments here, Rory. It’s time you realized that.”
I opened the heavy work, not sure where to begin. Yet Mr. Douglas and Wreet stayed silent, watching me flip through a few pages. Every one contained two columns, one narrow and the other much wider, all done in neat cursive script. The left column of each page gave a brief notation of the date for an escape attempt, while the wider one on the right detailed what had happened.
“Miss Rory, your mother was between here and Auburn more times than you can imagine,” Mr. Douglas said. “Often she was with Moses.”
“Moses?”
“Mrs. Tubman,” Wreet answered.
“As you know, the Niagara was often the last river they had to cross, sometimes with the slavers on their heels. Look there,” Mr. Douglas said, his long fingers turning to a few of the entries from the summer and into the fall when I was here with Mother. “See for yourself.”
As I read, the dispatches rolled out, one after another:
August 1, 1857:Nancy Clemens arrived from Memphis in the company of her Masters, Mr. and Mrs. Cox. When they left the hotel the next morning for a carriage ride along the Gorge, Nancy locked her mistress’s trunk and placed the key under the woman’s pillow. Nancy’s plan was to get across the Niagara, but when she came downstairs to the hotel lobby her fears got the best of her. She began to tremble and cry. That’s the state I found her in, and I steered young Nancy into the garden, away from prying eyes. By then JD had been alerted, and he caught up with us as we walked toward Ferry Landing. If Nancy Clemens wanted to cross over to freedom, now was the time. In all likelihood, this would be her only chance. I walked with her down the stairs to the landing, where JD rowed her across. Glorious day, glorious day.
September 3, 1857:Slavers everywhere in the town. It must have been in the air that so many were trying to cross the Niagara to Canada at this time. I talked with several of the worst ones, their pistols showing outside their trousers, knowing they had bribed the Bystanders at the Suspension Bridge to help them with their efforts. I spoke with them like you would to a fierce beast—soft and slow, eyes holding theirs—while several waiters helped take a family of four down to the landing late that afternoon. JD rowed them across as a light rain began to fall.
September 13, 1857:Joe Bailey arrived here with the slavers on his heels. Moses told us that wanted posters for his likeness were posted well above the Mason-Dixon Line. When Bailey arrived at the hotel, the river was too furious to ferry him across by boat. So, I decided we could go by the bridge, in a delivery buggy. With no time to waste, Bailey was put inside a barrel and arranged with other barrels under a large tarp. At first, the Bystanders at the entrance wouldn’t let us pass, but I talked our way past. On the other side, Moses was waiting for them. “Joe, you’re in Queen Victoria’s domain now,” she told Bailey, who had tears running down his face. “You’re a free man.”
I stopped and ran my thumb through more of the pages. The entire volume, perhaps two hundred pages, was filled with such accounts.
“That’s why I cannot help thinking it’s God’s doing,” Mr. Douglas said. “That you’re here to follow in your mother’s footsteps. To help us finish her work, once and for all.”
“I remember the stairs down to the Ferry Landing,” I said, as much as to myself as to Mr. Douglas and Wreet. “Mother took me down them once.”
“Your mother had your build,” Mr. Douglas said. “As nimble as a dancer upon those steps. Of course, the steps down to the river, 290 in total, don’t see much traffic these days. Not with the war on.”
