Fates and Traitors Read Online Free Page B

side of Baltimore was populated by butchers, shopkeepers, cabinetmakers, schoolteachers, and the like, with theatres, markets, and the waterfront only a short walk away.
    Baltimore had transformed itself in the nearly twenty years since Mary Ann had come to America. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad carried passengers and freight from the heart of the city to and from the farthest reaches of the Western frontier. The city thrummed with the ceaseless rhythms of steam-powered industry—mechanized looms, brickyards, forges, flour mills, sawmills, factories—and soot and smoke blighted the air. The thudding of the printing press of the
Baltimore Sun
kept the children awake at night until they grew accustomed to it, and then it became the steady heartbeat that lulled them to sleep.
    In Baltimore, as in London, as in New York, people of quality admired actors on the stage but disdained to see them socially. Nevertheless, Mary Ann resolved that her children would be accepted in societydespite their father’s occupation and the wild tales of his drunken escapades that would have ruined the reputation of anyone save a man universally acknowledged as a mad genius. As soon as the children were old enough, she enrolled them in school, in dancing lessons, in elocution and etiquette classes, to make proper young ladies and gentlemen of them. Wielding the skills she had perfected over two decades of sewing elaborate stage costumes for Junius, she sewed fashionable attire for herself and the children so they looked as well dressed and respectable as any inhabitant of the grand marble mansions on Lexington Street and Monument Square.
    If any of their neighbors realized that the beautiful English wife of the great tragedian spent several days a week selling fruits and vegetables at street markets to make ends meet, they never mentioned it.
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    I n 1845, five years after the family moved to the city, Junius became so optimistic about his future success that he decided to purchase a home in Baltimore rather than continuing to rent. Although Mary Ann had some misgivings about the expense, she delighted in Junius’s good spirits—and in the house he purchased at 62 North Exeter Street, a two-story brick residence with a wide stone porch at the front entrance and a back garden with a charming gazebo. The first floor boasted a dining room, a spacious front parlor, and a kitchen with a sturdy Franklin stove, while the second floor offered several cozy bedrooms, with an attic above and a cellar below. When Junius indulged Mary Ann’s request to hang lovely green-and-gold wallpaper in the parlor and to purchase stylish, factory-made furniture, she understood it as his apology for the strain and anxiety his near-constant travels and frequent dissipation inflicted upon her.
    She wished her comfortable new surroundings could ease her worries the way Junius intended. A few times she thought she spied a hired carriage parked across the street in front of their home, and she felt a strange prickling on the back of her neck that warned of someone watching her, seething with hostility. She told herself firmly that it was all nonsense, but even on the brightest, sunniest days, she could not rid herself of the sensation that a bleak shadow hung over them all.
    Mercifully, the children seemed unaffected by her dark fancies. Rosalie was, as ever, her silent companion around the house and garden,while young Joseph was quiet and content, and studious Edwin and clever Asia excelled at school. One teacher praised Edwin for his intuitive intelligence and quickly receptive mind, while Asia, who was sharply observant and prone to sulks, demonstrated an impressive talent for writing. Mary Ann knew that John Wilkes was as bright as his elder siblings, but he was a dogged scholar who struggled to wrest knowledge out of books and lectures. Though he was far less nimble in the classroom than Edwin and Asia, and