The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore

Author:Kate Moore [Moore, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781922586193
Google: 1JQnEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2021-06-21T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 39

If it wasn’t for the intermeddlers, Theophilus Packard thought in November 1863, he could have considered himself quite satisfied. Elizabeth’s return did not appear to have torn the children from him as he may have feared. All were still toeing his line, with Libby, in particular, a “great comfort”1 to him; he seemed to rely on her a lot emotionally.

Perhaps the most pleasant surprise had been Elizabeth’s own behavior. She’d excused herself from family prayers, so there was no conflict there, and in truth she barely spoke to him. Even if her silence came from resentment, he did not much care. Really, the maddest thing she did these days was to keep asking for those Bible class essays she’d written in the spring of 1860. He’d commandeered them long ago but refused to return them. What she might want with them, he could not imagine.

But those intermeddlers… They refused to give up. To his dismay, they were persistently “prejudicing and influencing the public mind”2 against him, refusing to let the matter of Elizabeth’s treatment drop.

Yet there was a development in mid-November that meant he suddenly had to treat Elizabeth very differently indeed. A set of keys went missing. Theophilus was immediately suspicious that Elizabeth had stolen them. The sense of security he’d been lulled into vanished in a flash.

He searched her person, but though he patted her down this way and that and even stripped her clothes from her, they were not hidden there. He searched her room. Her wardrobe. Her trunk. Elizabeth watched him rifling through her things as he “took an inventory of every article.”3 Silently, she gave thanks that all her precious papers were safely stored with Sarah Haslett. God only knew what Theophilus might have done with them had he found them.

But he not only didn’t find her papers; he did not find the keys.

His search widened. “The entire house and premises were most carefully and diligently searched in every corner, nook, and crevice,” Elizabeth observed. “Even the embers of my stove were examined.”4

Still no keys.

The search headed outdoors, where “every stone, leaf and shrub were upturned to find the missing keys—but all to no purpose.”5

Theophilus was frantic. The bunch of keys that were missing were not only for the linen closet but also for the house. He feared what Elizabeth might do with them—and the freedom they afforded her. He could not let the matter stand. He was convinced she’d taken them and wanted to give her no opportunity of using them at all.

So he locked her in her nursery; he pocketed that key. As he’d done in 1860, he got out his hammer and nails and shut up the windows, blocking her in. He made sure the front and back doors were always securely fastened or guarded so she could not escape. He stopped her from joining the family for meals, intercepted her mail, and, crucially, cut her off from all communication with her friends. The intermeddlers had had it all their own way for far too long.

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