Madame Presidentess

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR

NOVEMBER 1853

CINCINNATI, OHIO

My dreams of wedded bliss were shattered after only three days of marriage. I woke on the fourth day not to the pleasant warmth of my husband sleeping next to me but to an empty bed and a cold, abandoned room.

Lighting the fire and chewing my lower lip, I tried to shake off sleep and recall the events of the previous night. We’d had dinner downstairs in the boardinghouse where we let our room, then we’d retired to bed. We made love and slept, same as the last two nights. But where was Canning? Perhaps he’d gone out to seek a more permanent place for us to live or to follow up on a business lead. That would only have been sensible. As much as I wanted it to, our honeymoon couldn’t last forever.

But as day faded to night and my husband failed to return, worry ate at my heart in earnest. What if something had happened to him? He could have fallen ill or been set upon by robbers. Any number of atrocities could have befallen him.

Pulling my fur-lined cloak over my shoulders, I headed out, intent on finding my husband. As I passed through the lower rooms, the proprietor, Mrs. Abrams, inquired about my destination.

“My husband has not yet returned. He didn’t tell you where he was headed this morning, did he?”

Mrs. Abrams pursed her lips. “No, but you’d best start at the tavern two blocks over. In my experience, nearly all missing husbands can be found at the bottom of a mug of ale.” She tsked disapprovingly.

I had a hard time believing Canning to be of that sort, but it was a place to start. If nothing else, it was a gathering place for people who may have seen him and could give me further direction.

At the threshold of the tavern, I paused. No woman with any self-respect would enter such a place unescorted, especially after dark. I would be taken for a w***e. But I had to risk it. Pushing open the door, I ignored the sudden silence and the stares of the patrons. I marched straight up to the bar and asked its tender if he’d seen my husband.

“Ma’am, with all due respect, if I could recall every wayward man who passed through these doors, I’d have a far better lot in life than tending this shithole.” He gave me a piercing look that said he’d be no help. “Now, either order something or leave.”

I huffed, affronted by his brusqueness. Turning to leave, I briefly entertained the notion of yelling my inquiry to the entire room, but that would only have brought undue attention my way. As I stomped to the door with no clear plan of what I was going to do next, a hand seized my wrist, stopping me.

I was about to retort that I was not for sale and the man should keep his hands to himself when I realized the person who had stopped me was not a man but a woman.

“You lookin’ for a doctor, right? Dark hair, about this tall?” She held up a hand above our heads.

“Yes, my husband, Canning Woodhull. Have you seen him?”

She snorted. “Yeah, I seen him. But I daresay the ladies down at Miss Evelyn’s are seeing a lot more of him.” Seeing my confusion, she added, “It’s a brothel. He left with one of my sisters.”

Surely she must have been mistaken. My dear, sweet Canning would never have been caught with the likes of a prostitute, especially not now. He had a young, nubile wife who was discovering she liked her marital duties very much. He had no need for such a place.

“I’m sorry. You must be thinking of someone else—”

The short brunette shook her head. “No, I remember him. Unusual name for one. And handsome.” She fanned herself with her hand. “He was bragging on being newly married to a young wife. I assume that is you.”

“I suppose, yes, it could have been him, but why—”

“Not our job to ask why, missy, just to do as the dollars please.” She hooked her arm in mine. “Come on. I’ll take you there. If nothin’ else, you’ll be relieved that I was wrong.”

She didn’t give me a chance to respond but pulled me out into the night and through a series of winding alleyways I never could have navigated on my own. All of my fears about large cities came back to me, but she didn’t seem to share them, taking sharp turns and negotiating narrow passages as though she had been born to them. Now that I thought about it, she may have been.

We reached a dark lane halfway across the city, where trash and muck overpowered even the wood and coal smoke pouring from chimneys up and down the street. One house was ablaze with light, music and laughter spilling out into the otherwise quiet darkness. My companion walked right in, not pausing to knock or ring a bell.

“Hey there, Miss Lana,” called a lithe blonde, her face painted with layers of rouge and eye coloring. “Brought us a new recruit? She’s a pretty one—in a mannish sort of way.”

Lana shook her head. “No. This one is looking for her husband.”

The blonde’s face lit up. “Oh, can I come? It’s so much fun when the wife gets involved.” She giggled. “He’s not the graying senator, is he?”

“Nope. A young, good-looking doctor. Probably came in with my sister.”

“Oh yes, Jeannie’s upstairs. They have quite a party going on.”

Without so much as a glance in my direction, Lana led us up the stairs. She opened the door on a scene that I couldn’t have conjured in my worst nightmares. Canning lay on the bed, shirtless, drinking from a bottle of wine, surrounded by four women in varying stages of undress. One had her mouth pressed to the open slit in his pants while two kissed and fondled one another under his rapt gaze. The fourth writhed on her knees as he stroked between her legs.

I swallowed hard, fighting the urge to vomit. This was a scene of wantonness I could not have imagined taking place even in the bowels of hell, but yet there it was, with my husband, my vowed love, at its very center. Stamping down all feelings but outrage, I focused on channeling my anger to help me through this horrid situation. The other emotions could wait.

“Canning Woodhull!” I yelled, and his eyes snapped to me. They were dull and unfocused, so I knew he was drunk. Good, that would make him all the easier to drag back home. I pushed through the naked women, shoving them aside so I could take the bottle out of Canning’s hand; I certainly was not going to touch his other one. “Three days married and you already defile our vows. Did I displease you so greatly?”

I pulled Canning to his feet. He blinked, grinned at me, and put an arm around my shoulders.

“’Ave you met my new friends?” he slurred. “Oh, I’m ‘fraid I can’t remember their names.” He giggled.

I rolled my eyes. No sense in berating him when he wouldn’t even remember it. I had to get him home so he could sleep it off.

Ignoring my husband, I turned to Lana. “Is there a carriage we could take back home? I’m afraid I can’t find my way, and he will be no help.”

“You can get anything here for the right price,” she said, bored now that the drama had fizzled out.

I threw a wad of bills and a few coins at her. “Surely this should cover it and any expenses he incurred.” On impulse, as we passed through the entry hall, I grabbed a vase, tossed the flowers aside, and dumped the water on Canning’s head. “Time to sober up, Doc.”

I’d spent too many nights pulling my father out of his cups to put up with the same from my husband. Besides a grunt of indignation, Canning gave no reaction. It was only once we were inside the cab and Canning’s eyes cleared and hardened that I realized what a mistake it was to have shocked him from his stupor. For several long moments, he stared at me quietly, rage and humiliation stoking a fire behind his eyes. The anticipation was more unnerving than if he had yelled. Finally, he fisted a hand in my hair and yanked me toward him so that his lips were next to my ear.

“You had no right, Victoria, no right to interrupt my business.” His voice was a throaty growl, low and sinister and cold as ice. “I may be your husband, but what I do is my own affair. You have humiliated and disrespected me, and for that, you must be punished. I will not have my wife going about seeking to bend me to her will.” Before I realized what was happening, he was rooting beneath my skirts.

I batted his hand away. “Canning, what do you—”

His fist silenced me, making my ears ring and birthing stars in my field of vision.

He pinned me to the carriage seat. “You will be silent and submit to me as a woman should. The least you can do for the trouble you have caused is finish what the whores started.”

It was then I noticed the bulge in his pants and realized he intended to take me then and there. I pushed against him, seeking to at least delay the inevitable until we were in a more private setting. “Don’t you think we should wait until we get back to the house?”

He growled. “I said shut your mouth.”

He smothered any additional objections with his lips. He was a far cry from the gentle lover I had known before. These kisses were demanding, feral, raping my mouth with tongue and teeth. His hands dug bruises into my breasts. When I tried again to push him away, he pinioned my arms behind me, making me cry out in pain as they twisted at unnatural angles. Finally, he plunged inside me, thrust his hips half a dozen times, grunted, and collapsed on top of me.

By the time the carriage pulled up in front of the boardinghouse, Canning had set his clothing to rights, finger-combed his hair, and straightened my skirts. The driver and those we passed on the way to our rooms would never know anything had been amiss. But I knew. In the course of a single day, my whole world had changed. The tears would come later, in the dark hours when I could think and begin to feel the ramifications of all that had occurred this night.

But for now, as I washed and took my place in bed beside my unfaithful husband, one thought chased itself around my mind—my husband was no better than my father. I had escaped the fisherman’s hook only to be impaled by his trident.

While some women in my situation would have wept and carried on in hysterics, I had never taken to emotional overreaction. I tried to see my situation reasonably, soberly, as the weeks passed. From the stories I’d heard in the parlor in Mt. Gilead, I knew that as bleak as my situation seemed, others had it far worse. Yes, my husband was a drunkard, but I couldn’t keep every bottle from his hand any more than I could control where or with whom he spent his nights.

Like my mother before me, all I could do was pray. And pray I did. While Canning was out building his medical practice, I spent my days on my knees, begging God to bring back the charming man who had courted me, to cast out the abusive devil who possessed him since that night at Miss Evelyn’s. When I wasn’t praying, I was holding séances, speaking with my dead baby sisters and my childhood caretaker, Rachel, desperate for any bit of advice they could impart.

When I returned to Mt. Gilead for a short visit with my family, I was loathe to tell Ma I had fallen into the same trap as her, but I could find no real way to hide it. She didn’t laugh or yell as I’d expected. Rather, in a rare moment of compassion, she twined her fingers in mine and brought them to her lips.

“You’re his wife now, an’ no matter what he does, you belong ta him. But as the Good Book says, ‘This too shall pass.’ I didn’t name you for a queen for you ta live like this. I may not know what, but you were meant for more.”

Her words lightened my spirit, and I returned home hopeful, with a heart full of joy. I had discovered something else while I was away—I was pregnant. Surely a babe would calm my husband’s temper—or at least buy me time. Canning might have been a lot of things, but there was no way he’d hit me and endanger our child.

Our room was empty, though a mess, when I returned. Canning’s clothing was scattered all over the floor as though while I was away, he hadn’t bothered to do more than simply drop it wherever he liked. The laundress would be by later to pick up our washing, so I grabbed a basket and filled it, first with my travel-stained clothes then with Canning’s discards. I shook my head as I walked the room, picking up trousers and shirts, ties and underclothes, some of which were clearly female and most decidedly not mine. I forced myself to take deep breaths and ignore the implications, though I couldn’t resist tossing her clothes into the fire rather than the basket.

Picking up a jacket, I paused. Something was sticking out of an inner breast pocket. Curious, I removed it—paper of some sort—and dropped the jacket in the basket of dirty clothes. I approached the window and turned the page over in the light. It was an envelope addressed to my husband with a letter inside. It was written on fine cream stationery in a looping, feminine hand. I knew I would have nothing but grief for reading it, but I couldn’t stop myself.

Dr. Canning Woodhull,

Though you have treated me worse than a gutter w***e, as a Christian woman, I feel I owe you the respect of informing you that your son was born this day in Terre Haute, Indiana. He is healthy and well but will not bear your name. He will never know his father, of that I will make certain. Any man who can send his pregnant lover to a backward country town on the day of his wedding to another woman does not deserve to be called a father.

I would offer my felicitations on your nuptials, but all my heart can muster is pity for the poor girl foolish enough to have been charmed by your lies. Tell me, did you marry that child because she too was en famille? You never could control your lust, and I doubt God has wrought a miracle and made you faithful in the last several weeks.

I wish you to know also that I have uncovered all of your lies. I have had plenty of time during my confinement to investigate your claims of connections and success. That successful medical practice of yours has no basis in fact. The closest you came to a medical education is having an uncle who is a trained doctor. Did you tell that wife of yours the same cockamamie story about your family? You are no son of a judge—a son of a b***h, certainly—but your father was only a small-town justice of the peace. Hardly the same thing. And this uncle of yours? The mayor of New York is indeed a Caleb Woodhull, but I took the liberty of writing to him, and do you know what he said? Not only does he not have a relation by your name, he has never met you. How odd.

What would your little wife think if she truly knew the man she married? And what would happen to your practice if you patients knew you were no better than a slightly educated charlatan? I will tell everyone the truth. In fact, I have taken measures to be sure the press in half a dozen major cities have copies of my proof. Do not ever approach me or my son. And be certain of one thing – I will ruin you.

Your wife has my everlasting sympathy and daily prayers. But you, my former love, can rot in hell.

The letter wasn’t signed. But it didn’t need to be. This woman had revealed enough of herself to ruin the last ounce of hope in my heart. The letter fluttered to the floor as I slid down beside it, clinging to the basket of soiled clothing. Her accusations swirled in my head. Canning had had a lover the whole time he was courting me. He’d sent her away so he could marry me even though she was pregnant. He had a son he would never know. He wasn’t the educated, well-connected man I thought I’d married but a fraud frighteningly similar to my father, whose shadow I’d thought I had escaped.

I buried my head in my hands and wept. There was nothing else I could do. Would that I had known this before I’d wed him—or at least before I had became pregnant—then I could have at least considered filing for divorce. But now, what choice did I have? I could not support myself, much less a child as well, on my own. If I left, I’d have to go back to Ma and Pa in shame and endure their wrath—no doubt they would find a way to make this my fault. I couldn’t let my child be raised the same way I had been. At least with Canning, I’d have some say in how he or she grew up; back in Mt. Gilead, Ma and Pa would wield the power. No, I’d made my bed, as they say, and lain down with a dog, so now I had to endure the flea bites even if the dog wasn’t the breed I’d expected.

A heavy knock on the door stirred me from my thoughts and had me leaping to my feet.

“Constable, Mrs. Woodhull. Open up, if ye please.”

I flung open the door to find two uniformed policemen supporting an incoherent Canning under each arm.

“This man your husband?” one asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“We found him wandering the streets, barely able to walk. Couldn’t tell us his name or where he was from. We’ve had him in a cell for the last ten hours or so. Lucky for us one of Miss Kitty’s girls recognized him. Said he’d been kicked out of her place the night before.”

They gave Canning a shove toward me. He stumbled then leaned on me limply as if we were engaged in some macabre dance.

“He’s your problem now. Do us a favor and keep tighter control over him, or we’ll have to press charges, you hear?”

They spoke as though I had any control over him. “Yes, sirs. Thank you for returning him to me safely.”

Canning muttered and giggled to himself while I undressed him. He stank of alcohol, sweat, vomit, and the strong perfume of the whorehouse, so I bathed him like a babe, hoping the cold water would sober him into some condition resembling sense, while he faded in and out of consciousness.

Placing the chamber pot next to the bed in case his stomach roiled, I tucked him into bed. His eyes opened briefly, lighting on the letter that still lay discarded on the floor.

“You know, then?” he slurred. Without waiting for me to respond, he went on. “Talked to some o’ the boys at tha press club. They know too. It’s going to come out. We have to leave town.”

Though I didn’t disagree with him, now was not the time to try to reason with him. I stroked his forehead. “Sleep now, Canning. We can discuss this in the morning.”

Inwardly, I raged. Damn him, damn the bottle, and damn the laws that kept me tied to this man. I could have proved adultery easily enough, but even a divorce would have done me no good. There had to be a way around the rules of society that bound innocent women to good-for-nothing men—me, all the women I had known in Mt. Gilead, and the thousands in the city around me. Somehow, someday, I would find a way. But that was another day’s quest. Now I had to make sure my husband didn’t drink himself to death and that we escaped before the press could prove Canning was worthless.