by John Jakes
Hampton had refused to attend the secession convention—had even spoken publicly against it—and now he was a hero. He was already in Virginia, with companies of foot, artillery, and cavalry slavishly panting after him while Justin languished at home, cuckolded by his wife and unable to find more than two companies of men—and those ruffians who were always drinking, punching, or stabbing one another or handling their old muskets and squirrel rifles in an unmilitary way.
God, how it depressed him. He sank another half an inch in the water. Then he realized he no longer heard Francis cracking out orders. Instead, the sounds coming up from below were shouts and yelps and unfriendly obscenities. “Damn them.” The oafs were brawling again. Well, let Francis settle it.
He anticipated a quick end to the noise. Instead, the laughter, the encouraging yells grew louder; so did the swearing and the thump of blows. The bedroom door opened. A black youth named Mem—short for Agamemnon—shot his head in.
“Mr. Justin? Your brother say come, please. They’s trouble.”
Furious, Justin heaved himself out of the tub. Dye-tinted water dripped from his nose, fingers, half-melon paunch. “How dare you come in here without waiting for permission!” He hit Mem a hard blow with closed fist.
The boy yelled. His eyes opened wide, and for an instant Justin saw such rage he feared an attack. A new, unhealthy spirit was stirring among slaves in the district now that the black Republican Yankees had begun to prosecute their war to rob decent men of their property. Lately there had been an unexplained sharp rise in nigger funerals; some said the coffins being buried contained firearms for an uprising. Old white fears of black skin blew across the low country like the pestilential breezes of summertime.
“Get out,” Justin shouted at his slave. Whatever brief rebelliousness Mem had felt was gone now. He ran, slamming the door. From the bed, Justin picked up his stomach-cinching corset. Francis shouted his name; he sounded frightened.
Cursing, Justin flung the corset down and tugged on his tight canary trousers. Patches of dampness immediately appeared on thigh, crotch, and rump. He buttoned his fly as he tore down the main stairs, stopping only to yank the old saber from its pegs.
He rushed into the sunshine and found the fight in progress at one end of the ramshackle house. The Ashley Guards, their fine uniforms carelessly soiled, encircled two men wrestling for possession of an ancient Hall breechloader: the Lemke cousins, ill-tempered cretins who ran a prosperous farm nearby.
Wizened Francis hurried to his brother. “Drunk as owls, both of them. Better fetch some of the niggers—these boys are enjoying themselves too much to help us stop it.”
No doubt about that. A couple of the guards sniggered at Justin’s sopping pants and the visible quarter-globe of his paunch above. “Christ, can’t you discipline them?” he whispered to Francis. “Must I always be the one?”
He wasn’t going to be the one this time. Each of the Lemkes had two powerful hands on the contested weapon, and each pulled hard on it. One Lemke rammed his head forward and sank teeth into the other’s shoulder, biting deeply enough to bring blood through the uniform. No, thank you, thought Justin, and walked away; he’d find four or five bucks and make them take the risk.
One Lemke changed the position of his hands while the other forced the barrel down. Men near the muzzle backed clear. The piece went off with a smoky boom.
Justin felt a hard hit that began to burn as he pitched toward the ground. He struck chin-first, screaming in pain and outrage. A great red flower bloomed on the yellow field of his buttocks.
17
AT MONT ROYAL, THE large rice plantation on the west bank of the Ashley River above Charleston, the present head of the Main family faced a decision similar to the one confronting his friend George Hazard.
From boyhood, Orry Main had wanted to be a soldier. He had graduated in the West Point class of ’46 and taken part in some of the hottest action of the Mexican War. At Churubusco, outside Mexico City, he had lost his left arm, partly because of the cowardice and enmity of Elkanah Bent. The injury had forced Orry to abandon his cherished dream of a military career.
Difficult years followed his return to South Carolina. He fell helplessly in love with Justin LaMotte’s wife, and she with him, though honor had restricted their long affair to occasional secret meetings without the physical consummation both of them wanted.
Now, tangled events had brought Madeline under his roof to stay. Whether they’d be able to marry legally was another question. The state’s divorce law was complex, and LaMotte was doing everything possible to prevent Madeline from gaining her freedom. He was doing that despite a circumstance that would have driven most white Southern men to a directly opposite course. Madeline’s mother had been a beautiful New Orleans quadroon. Madeline was one-eighth black, which mattered little to Orry. Though the truth would have been a powerful weapon against Justin, she had lacked the cruelty to use it. But she had certainly imagined the scene of revelation, particularly his reaction, often enough.
In the small office building from which his father and his father’s father had run the plantation, Orry sat at the old, littered desk confronting still another issue: papers he must sign if he were to show his loyalty and support the new Confederate government with part of his earnings. It was a humid afternoon, typical for the low country in July. In peacetime, he and Madeline more than likely would have escaped to a summer residence upcountry, where cooler weather prevailed.
Hazy sunshine splashed the office windows. The air smelled of violets and the perfume of the sweet olive, which he could always bring to mind no matter how far from Mont Royal he traveled. Wishing he didn’t have to wade through the document in hand, he watched an inch-long palmetto bug scurry along a light-burnished sill near his desk, bound from dark to dark. As are we all.
He shook his head, irritated with himself. But the mood refused to pass. Melancholy times brought melancholy feelings.
Conversation, occasional laughter or singing reached him from the nearby kitchen building. He comprehended none of what he heard. His thoughts had turned from the papers to the commission that had been offered to him—staff duty in the Richmond office of Bob Lee, the veteran officer whose loyalty to his native Virginia had forced him to leave the federal army. Lee was presently the special military adviser to Jefferson Davis.
The prospect of desk duty didn’t thrill Orry, though he supposed it was unrealistic to expect a field command. Not entirely so, however; not if Richmond was inclined to follow the example of the enemy. An officer Orry had heard about but never met in Mexico, Phil Kearny, had also lost his left arm there—and he was now a brigadier commanding Union volunteers.
Though his sense of duty was strong, he hesitated to accept the commission for a number of other reasons. Davis was said to be difficult. A brave soldier—a West Point man—he was notorious for wanting to lead troops and, in lieu of that, for maintaining tight control of those who did.
Further, Orry’s sister Ashton and her husband, James Huntoon, were in Richmond, where Huntoon held some government job. When Orry had discovered the malicious part Ashton played in the near-murder of Billy Hazard, he had ordered her and her husband to leave Mont Royal and never return. The thought of being anywhere near them repelled him.
Next, he had no overseer. Younger men he might have hired had all rushed off to serve. An older one with brains and enough physical strength for the job couldn’t be found. He had advertised in the Charleston and Columbia papers and heard from three applicants, all unacceptable.
Most important, his mother was in poor health. And he hated to leave Madeline. That was not merely selfishness. If he were gone, Justin might try to strike at her for the damage she had done to his face and his reputation.
The slaves might pose a threat as well. He hadn’t discussed it with Madeline—he didn’t want to alarm her unnecessarily—but he had begun to detect subtle changes in the demeanor and behavior of some of the bucks. In the past, harsh discipl
ine had seldom been necessary at Mont Royal and never condoned, except once—a cat-hauling ordered by his late father. In the current situation, Cousin Charles’s boyhood friend Cuffey was the most notable offender; he bore watching.
Reluctantly, Orry redirected his attention to the thick, blue-backed document ornamented with seals impressed in wax. If he signed, he would be agreeing to surrender a substantial portion of his rice profits for the year in exchange for government bonds of equal value. This so-called produce loan had been conceived to help finance the war for which Orry, like his friend George, had scant enthusiasm. Orry understood the futility of the South’s military adventure because he understood some simple figures first called to his attention, dourly, by his brother Cooper.
About twenty-two millions lived in the North. There, too, you found most of the old Union’s industrial plants, rail trackage, telegraphic lines, mineral and monetary wealth. The eleven states of the Confederacy had a population of something like nine million; a third of those, slaves, would never be of use to the war effort except in menial ways.
Dubious, not to say dangerous, attitudes about the war prevailed these days. Fools like the LaMotte brothers snickered at the suggestion that the South could be invaded—or, if it were, that the result could be anything but glorious Confederate victory. From aristocrats to yeomen, most Southerners had a proud belief in their own abilities, which led to an unrealistic conviction that one good man from Dixie could whip ten Yankee shopkeepers anywhere, anytime, world without end, Amen.
In very rare moments of chauvinism, Orry shared some of those beliefs. He would match his younger cousin Charles against any other officer. He saw the same courage in Charles’s commander, Wade Hampton. And he found truth—though not the whole of it—in the maxim he had memorized in his young, hopeful years. In war, Bonaparte said, men are nothing; a man is everything.
Even so, to imagine the North had no soldiers to equal those from the South was idiocy. Suicidal. Orry could recall any number of first-rate Yankees from the Academy, including one he had known personally and liked very much. Where was Sam Grant serving now?
No answer to that—and no way to tell which way this strange, unwanted war might go. He forced himself back to the occasionally baffling legalisms of the bond agreement. The sooner he finished work for the day, the sooner he’d see Madeline.
About four, Orry returned from surveying the fields. He wore boots, breeches, and a loose white shirt whose empty left sleeve was held up at the shoulder by a bright pin. At thirty-five, Orry was as slender as he had been at fifteen and carried himself with confidence and grace despite his handicap. His eyes and hair were brown, his face rather long. Madeline said he grew handsomer as he aged, but he doubted that.
He had signed the bond agreement. Having done so, he stopped worrying about repayment. A decision prompted by patriotism oughtn’t to have any conditions on it.
He crossed the head of the half-mile lane leading down to the river road. Mossy live oaks hid it from the light most of the day. He walked around the corner of the great house, which faced a formal garden and the pier on the slow-moving Ashley. Light footfalls sounded on the piazza overhead but stopped as he moved out from beneath it. Above him he saw a small, plump woman in her late sixties gazing contentedly at the cloudless sky.
“Good afternoon, Mother.”
In response to his call, Clarissa Gault Main glanced down and smiled in a polite, puzzled way. “Good afternoon. How are you?”
“Just fine. You?”
The smile broadened, benign. “Oh, splendid—thank you so much. She turned and drifted inside. He shook his head. He had identified himself as her son, but the prompt was wasted; she no longer knew him. Fortunately, the Mont Royal blacks, with one or two exceptions, loved Clarissa. She was unobtrusively supervised and protected by everyone with whom she came in contact.
Where was Madeline? In the garden? As he studied it, he heard her inside. He found her in the parlor examining a cylindrical package nearly five feet long and heavily wrapped. She ran to put her arms around him.
“Careful,” he said and laughed. “I’m dusty and sweaty as a mule.”
“Sweaty, dusty—I love you in any condition.” She planted a long, sweet kiss on his dry mouth. Refreshing as water from a mountain well. She locked her hands behind his neck while they embraced, and he felt the lushness of her full figure against him. Though legal marriage was as yet denied them, they shared the easy physical intimacy of a couple wed a long time and still in love. They slept without night clothes—Madeline’s kind and forthright nature had quickly rid him of sensitivity about the appearance of his stump.
She drew back. “How has the day been?”
“Good. War or no war, these past weeks have been the happiest I’ve ever known.”
She sighed a murmurous agreement, twining her fingers in his as they stood with foreheads touching. Madeline was a full-bosomed woman with lustrous dark eyes and hair and a richly contrasting pale complexion. “Justin has the means to make me a tiny bit happier, I confess.”
“I’m sure we’ll overcome that obstacle.” The truth was, he wasn’t sure, but he never admitted it. Over her shoulder he studied the parcel. “What’s that?”
“I don’t know. It’s addressed to you. It came up from the dock an hour ago.”
“That’s right, the river sloop was due today—”
“Captain Asnip sent a note with the package. He said it arrived on the last vessel into Charleston before the blockade began. I did notice it carries the name of a transshipping firm in Nassau. Do you know what’s in it?”
“I might.”
“You ordered it, then. Let’s unwrap it.”
Unexpected panic banished his smile. What if the sight of the contents upset her? He tucked the package under his right arm. “Later. I’ll show you while we have supper. I want to display it properly.”
“Mystery, mystery.” She laughed as he strode away upstairs.
For the evening, he replaced his bedraggled outfit with a similar but clean one. His dark hair, over which he had poured two pitchers of water before he toweled it, had a soft, loose look. It was dusk as they sat down to dine. Blurry candles, upside-down images of the real ones, glowed in the highly buffed plane of the table. A small black boy amiably stirred the air and whisked flies off with an ostrich fan. Clarissa had eaten in her room, as she usually did, and retired.
“This smells grand,” Orry said, touching a fork to the golden crust of the delicacy cooked in half of a big oyster shell. “Blue crab?”
“Netted in the Atlantic yesterday. I ordered two barrels in ice. They came on the packet boat. So much for gastronomy, Mr. Main. I want to see the package.” It lay on the floor near him, the outer wrapping gone; oiled cloth was visible.
Studiously digging into the freshly picked and baked crab, he teased her with his straight face and low-voiced “Delicious.”
“Orry Main, you’re intolerable! Will you show me if I tell you some news about Justin?”
Sober suddenly, he laid his fork aside. “Good news?”
“Oh, nothing concerning the divorce, I’m afraid. Just something funny and a little sad.” She relayed what she’d heard from one of the kitchen girls who had done an errand to Resolute earlier that day.
“In the rear,” Orry mused. “A direct hit on the seat of the LaMotte family’s prestige, eh?”
She laughed. “Your turn now.” He broke two red wax seals and unwrapped the package. When she saw what the oiled cloth contained, she gasped.
“It’s beautiful. Where is it from?”
“Germany. I ordered it for Charles and hoped it would get through.”
He handed her the scabbarded weapon. With great care, she grasped the leather grip wound with brass wire. She drew out the curved blade; the fan boy’s eyes grew round as he watched the candlelight reflect on the filligreed steel. Orry explained that it was a light cavalry saber, the approved 1856 design: forty-one inches overall.
&nbs
p; Madeline tilted the blade to read the engraved inscription on the obverse: To Charles Main, beloved of his family, 1861. She gave him a long, affectionate look, then examined the other side. “I can’t read this. Is it Cluberg?”
“Clauberg of Solingen. The maker. One of the finest in Europe.”
“There are many tiny engraved flowers and curves—even medallions with the letters C. S. in them.”
“On certain versions of this model, the letters are U.S.,” he said with a dry smile.
Still treating the sword as if it were glass, she returned it to the gilt-banded scabbard of blue iron. Then, avoiding his eyes, she said, “Perhaps you should have ordered one for yourself.”
“In case I accept the commission?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, but that’s a cavalry sword. I couldn’t wear it even if I decided to—”
“Orry,” she interrupted, “you’re evading. You’re evading me and evading a decision.”
“I plead guilty to the latter,” he admitted with an expression swift to come and go but revealing all the same. He was hiding something from her—behavior not typical of him. “I can’t go to Richmond yet. There are too many things standing in the way. Foremost is your situation here.”
“I can look after myself splendidly—as you well know.”
“Now don’t get tart with me. Of course I know it. But there’s also Mother to consider.”
“I can look after her, too.”
“Well, you can’t run this plantation without an overseer. The Mercury printed my advertisement again. Did the packet boat bring any replies?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Then I must keep searching. I’ve got to raise a good crop this year if I’m to contribute anything to the government—which I agreed to do by signing those papers today. I won’t even think of Richmond till I find the right man to take over.”