by John Jakes
The July evening was hot, but Ashton wore everything that fashion dictated for a woman of elegance, beginning with the four tape-covered steel hoops under her skirt; all but the top one had an opening in front, to facilitate walking. A web of vertical tapes held the rig together.
Over this, underskirts, and then her finest silk dress, a deep peach color she offset with little jet spangles on her silk hair net, and with black velvet ribbons tied to each wrist. Fashionable women wore a great amount of jewelry, but her husband’s income confined her to a pair of black onyx teardrops hung from her ear lobes on tiny gold wires. So she had arranged her dark hair and chosen her wardrobe to let simplicity and her own voluptuous good looks be her devices for drawing attention.
“Now pay attention, darling,” she said as they crossed the lobby in search of Parlor 83. “Give me a chance to circulate this evening. You do the same. The more people we meet, the better—and we can meet twice as many if you don’t hang on me constantly.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t,” Huntoon said, with that automatic righteousness that frequently cost him friends and hurt his career. James was six years older than his wife, a pale, paunchy, opinionated man. “Here—down this corridor. I wish you wouldn’t treat me as if I were some witless boy.”
Her heart raced at the sight of the open doors of Parlor 83, where President Davis regularly held these receptions; he had no official residence as yet. Ashton glimpsed gowned women mingling and chatting with gentlemen in uniforms or fine suits. She fixed her smile in place, whispering: “Act like a man and maybe I won’t. If you start trouble now, I’ll just kill you—Mrs. Johnston!”
The woman about to enter the parlor ahead of them turned with a polite though puzzled expression. “Yes?”
“Ashton Huntoon—and may I present my husband, James? James, this is the wife of our distinguished general commanding the Alexandria line. James is in Treasury, Mrs. Johnston.”
“A most important position. Delightful to see you both.” And away she went into the parlor. Ashton was glad they’d exchanged words out here; Joe Johnston ranked the other general on the Alexandria line—the one who captivated everyone—but his wife was not one of Mrs. Davis’s intimates.
“I don’t think she remembered you,” Huntoon whispered.
“Why should she? We’ve never met.”
“My God, you’re forward.” His chuckle conveyed admiration as well as reproof.
Sweetly, she said, “Your backwardness demands it, dear—Oh, Lord, look. They’re both here—Johnston and Bory.” Thus, on a wave of unexpected joy, Ashton swept into the crowd, nodding, murmuring, smiling at strangers whether she knew them or not. On the far side of the packed room, she spied the President and Varina Davis. But they were surrounded.
Memminger greeted the Huntoons. The Dutchman brought Ashton champagne punch and then, responding to her request, introduced her to the officer everyone wanted to meet—the wiry little fellow with sallow skin, melancholy eyes, and an unmistakably Gallic cast to his features. Brigadier General Beauregard bent over her gloved hand and kissed it.
“Your husband has found a treasure, madam. Vous êtes plus belle que le jour! I am honored.”
Her look deprecated the flattery and at the same time acknowledged the truth of it; Carolina women knew coquetry, if nothing else. “The honor’s mine, General. To be presented to our new Napoleon—the first to strike a blow for the Confederacy—I know that will be the high point of my evening.”
Pleased, he replied, “Près de vous, j’ai passé les moments les plus exquis de ma vie.” Then, with a bow, the Creole general slipped away; many more admirers waited.
Huntoon, meantime, anxiously eyed the crowd. He feared someone had overheard Ashton. Was she so stupid that she didn’t know the high point of the evening should be an introduction to President and Mrs. Davis? In such states of terror over small things did James Huntoon pass most of his life.
Huntoon’s study of the crowd soon generated a new emotion—anger. “Nothing but West Point peacocks and foreigners. Oh-oh, that little Jew’s spotted us. This way, Ashton.”
He tugged her elbow. She jerked away and, with a glare and a toss of her head, sent him off to mingle. This left her free to greet the small, plump man approaching with a genial smile and a hand extended.
“Mrs. Huntoon, is it not? Judah Benjamin. I have seen you once or twice at the Treasury building. Your husband works there, I believe.”
“Indeed he does, Mr. Benjamin. I can hardly believe you’d take notice of me, however.”
“It’s no disloyalty to my wife, presently in Paris, to say that the man who has never noticed you is a man who has never seen you.”
“What a pretty speech! But I’ve heard the attorney general is famous for them.”
Benjamin laughed, and she found herself liking him—in part because James didn’t. A good deal of opposition to the President and his policies had already arisen; Davis was especially scored for allegedly favoring foreigners and Jews in his administration. The attorney general, who presided over a nonexistent court system, was both.
Benjamin had been born in St. Croix, though raised in Charleston. For unexplained offenses said to be scandalous, he had been expelled from Yale, which her brother Cooper had attended. A lawyer, he had moved with ease from the United States Senate, where he had represented Louisiana, to the Confederacy. His critics called him a cheap and opportunistic machine politician—among other things.
Benjamin escorted her to the buffet table and gathered little dainties on a plate, which he handed to her. She saw James, in the act of sidling up to the President, throw her a furious look. Delightful.
“An ample repast this evening,” Benjamin commented. “But not first quality. You and your husband must join me some other night and sample my favorite canapé—white bread baked with good Richmond flour and spread with anchovy paste. I serve it with sherry from Jerez. I import it by the cask.”
“How can you possibly get Spanish sherry through this blockade?”
“Oh, there are ways.” Benjamin smiled, an innocent, airy dismissal. “Will you come?”
“Of course,” she lied; James wouldn’t.
He asked for their address. Reluctantly, she gave it. It was clear he recognized the boardinghouse district, but it didn’t seem to diminish his friendliness. He promised to send a card of invitation soon, then glided away to pay court to General and Mrs. Johnston. They stood by themselves, displeased by the fact and by the crowd around Old Bory.
Ashton thought of following Benjamin, but held back when she saw Mrs. Davis approach the attorney general and the Johnstons. She didn’t have nerve enough to join a group that formidable; not yet.
She studied the First Lady. The President’s second wife, Varina, was a handsome woman in her mid-thirties, presently expecting another child. It was said that she was a person without guile, plain-spoken and not hesitant to state opinions on public questions. That was not traditional behavior for a Southern woman. Ashton knew Mrs. Johnston had called her a Western belle behind her back, and not to compliment her. Still, she’d give anything to meet her.
With a delicious start, she saw that she stood a far better chance of meeting Davis himself. James had somehow engaged him in conversation. Ashton started through the maze of scented feminine and braided male shoulders.
She passed near three officers greeting a fourth, a spirited-looking chap with splendid mustaches and curled hair whose pomade was almost as strong as her perfume. “California’s a long way from here, Colonel Pickett,” one of the other officers was saying to him. “We’re glad you made the journey safely. Welcome to Richmond and the side of the just.”
The officer thus addressed noticed Ashton and favored her with a gallant, mildly flirtatious smile. Then he frowned, as if trying to place her. One of Orry’s classmates had been named Pickett. Could this be the same man? Could he have seen a resemblance? She moved on quickly; she had no desire to discuss a brother who had banished her from her child
hood home.
James saw her coming, turned his back. Bastard. He wouldn’t present her; it was her punishment for talking with the little Jew. He’d pay.
She sought a familiar face and finally located one. She forced herself on Mary Chesnut, caught alone and unable to escape. Mrs. Chesnut seemed friendlier tonight, and inclined to gossip.
“Everyone’s crushed that General and Mrs. Lee are absent—and without explanation. A domestic spat, do you suppose? I know they’re a model couple—they say he never curses or loses his temper. But surely even a man of his high moral character occasionally lets down. If he were here, we’d probably have an impromptu West Point reunion. Poor old Bob—flogged by the Yankee press when he resigned and joined our side.”
“Yes, I know.” They said the woman kept a diary and that it was prudent to speak guardedly in her presence.
Smirking, Mrs. Chesnut tapped Ashton’s wrist with her fan. “You’d think that would make him popular with the troops, wouldn’t you?”
“Doesn’t it?”
“Hardly. Privates and corporals from fine families call him the King of Spades because he sent down orders that they must dig and sweat like the commonest field hands.”
Hanging on her words with feigned interest, Ashton had not failed to see a tall, well-set-up gentleman in blue velvet studying her from the punch table. He let his gaze drift down to the peach silk spread tightly between her breasts. Ashton waited till he met her eye again, then turned away. She left Mary Chesnut and drew nearer her husband and the President.
Jefferson Davis looked several years younger than fifty-one; his military bearing and his slim figure helped create the impression, as did his abundant hair. Worn long at the back of his neck, it showed almost no white. Nor did his tuft of chin whiskers.
“But Mr. Huntoon,” he said, “I do insist that a central government must institute certain measures mandated by its existence in a time of war. Conscription, for example.”
They had fallen into an amiable philosophic discussion, Huntoon and the soft-spoken President and a third man, Secretary of State Toombs. Toombs was said to be a malcontent, already spreading disaffection in the administration. He particularly criticized West Point because Davis, class of ’28, placed a great trust in some of its graduates.
“You mean you would enact it into law?” Huntoon challenged. He had strong beliefs and relished the chance to make them known.
“If it became necessary, I would urge that, yes.”
“You’d order men out from the several states, the way that nigger-loving baboon has done?”
Davis managed to sound annoyed when he sighed. “Mr. Lincoln has asked for volunteers, nothing more. We have done the same. On both sides, conscription is at this point purely theoretical.”
“But I submit, sir—with all respect to you and your office—it is a theory that must never be tested. It runs counter to the doctrine of supremacy of the states. If they should be forced to surrender that supremacy to a central power, we’ll have a duplication of the circus in Washington.”
Gray eyes flashed then; and the left one, nearly blind, looked as wrathful as the right. Huntoon had heard gossip about the President’s temper; they worked in the same building, after all. It was said that Davis took any disagreement as a personal attack and behaved accordingly.
“Be that as it may, Mr. Huntoon, my responsibility’s clear. I am charged with making this new nation viable and successful.”
Equally hot, Huntoon said, “How far will you go, then? I’ve heard that certain members of the West Point clique have suggested we enlist the darkies to fight for us. Will you do that?”
Davis laughed at the idea, but Toombs exclaimed, “Never. The day the Confederacy permits a Negro to enter the ranks of its armies—on that day, the Confederacy will be degraded, ruined, and disgraced.”
“I agree,” Huntoon snapped. “Now, as to conscription itself—”
“Theoretical,” Davis repeated sharply. “It is my hope to win recognition of this government without excessive bloodshed. Constitutionally, we were entirely right to do what we did. I will not behave, or prosecute a war, as if we were in the wrong. Nevertheless, a central government must be stronger than its separate parts, or else—”
“No, sir,” Huntoon interrupted. “The states will never tolerate it.”
Davis seemed to pale and blur; then Huntoon realized his metal-rimmed spectacles were steaming.
“If that be so, Mr. Huntoon, the Confederacy won’t last a year. You may have the doctrine of states’ rights, pristine and scrupulously enforced, or you may have a new country. You can’t have both without some accommodation. So take your choice.”
Giddy with anger, Huntoon blurted, “My choice is not to be a party to autocratic thinking, Mr. President. Further—”
“If you will excuse me.” Spots of color showed in the President’s cheeks as he pivoted and left. Toombs followed.
Huntoon fumed. If the President resented disagreement about fundamental principles, the devil with him. The man was very definitely the wrong sort. He gave mere lip service to the ideals of Calhoun and the other great statesmen who had endured the calumnies of the North for a generation and exhausted themselves fighting for man’s right to own what property he pleased. Huntoon was glad he had told Davis—
“You blundering, simple-minded—”
“Ashton!”
“I can’t believe what I overheard. You should have flattered him, and you spouted political cant.”
Scarlet, he seized her wrist, crushing the velvet band under sweaty fingers. “People claim he acts like a dictator. I wanted to confirm that. I did. I expressed my strong convictions about—”
By then she was leaning close, smiling her warmest smile, flooding him with the sweet odor of her breath. “Shit on your strong convictions. Instead of introducing me so I could help you—ease you through a prickly situation—you blathered and argued, and sounded the knell for your already insignificant career.”
She exploded into swift motion, bumping guests and drawing stares as she stormed toward the refreshments, tears in her eyes. Idiot. She clutched a chilled punch cup between her hands; she had removed her gloves because sweat had soaked them. The idiot. He’s wrecked everything.
Anger quickly gave way to a feeling of depression. A fine social opportunity had been ruined; large groups of people were already starting to leave. As she sipped punch, she wanted to sink into the floor and die. She had come to Richmond in search of the power she had always craved, and in a few sentences he had guaranteed he would never get it for her.
Very well—she would find someone else. Someone to help her rise. An intellectual ally, or, better, a man on whom she could use certain skills she knew she possessed. A man more intelligent and tactful than James; more dedicated to success and adept at achieving it—
Thus, in a minute or less, in Parlor 83 of the Spotswood, Ashton made up her mind. Huntoon had never been much of a husband; her secret box of special souvenirs validated that. Henceforth, he’d be a husband in name only. Perhaps he wouldn’t even be that if she could find the proper replacement.
She lifted the empty cup. “Might I have regular champagne?” Gaily smiling again, she handed it to the Negro behind the table. “I can’t abide punch that’s gone flat.”
The tall man in the blue velvet frock coat extinguished his long cigar in a sand urn. Having asked a few questions to be certain about relationships, he strolled through the thinning crowd toward his target—the perspiring, bespectacled oaf who had just had a ferocious argument with his wife. Earlier, the tall man had noticed the wife enter the room, and within his tight fawn trousers his penis had hardened. Few women did that to him so quickly.
The tall man was thirty-five or so, with a muscular frame and delicate hands. He moved gracefully and wore his clothes well; yet a certain coarseness communicated itself, due in part to the presence of childhood pox scars. Smooth, slightly pomaded hair, evenly mixed gray and dark brown, hun
g to his collar in the Davis fashion. He glided up beside Huntoon. Confused and upset, the lawyer stood polishing and polishing his glasses with a damp handkerchief.
“Good evening, Mr. Huntoon.”
The resonant voice startled Huntoon; the man had slipped up behind him. “Good evening. You have the advantage of me—”
“Quite right. You were pointed out to me. Your family’s an old and famous one down in our part of the world, I might say.”
What was the fellow up to, Huntoon wondered. Promoting some investment scheme, perhaps? He was out of luck there—Ashton controlled the only money they had, the forty thousand dollars that had been her marriage dower.
“Are you a South Carolinian, Mr.—?”
“Powell. Lamar Hugh Augustus Powell. Lamar to friends. No, sir, I’m not from your state, but close by. My mother’s people are from Georgia. The family’s heavily into cotton, near Valdosta. My father was English. Took my mother as a bride to Nassau, where I was raised, and he practiced law until he died some years ago.”
“The Bahamas. That explains it.” Huntoon’s attempt to smile and be ingratiating struck Powell as insipid and funny. This sod would present no problem. But where—?
Ah. Without turning, Powell detected a blur of color moving near. “Explains what, sir?”
“Your speech. I thought I heard Charleston in it—yet not quite.” For a moment or two,” Huntoon could think of nothing else to say. In desperation, he exclaimed, “Grand party—”
“I didn’t introduce myself for the purpose of discussing the party.” Stung, Huntoon’s grin grew sickly. “To be candid, I am organizing a small group to finance a confidential venture which could prove incredibly lucrative.”
Huntoon blinked. “You’re talking about an investment—?”
“A maritime investment. This damned blockade creates fantastic opportunities for men with the will and wherewithal to seize them.”
He bent closer.
After all the disheartening turns the evening had taken, Ashton at last found some pleasure in the sight of the attractive stranger speaking with her husband. How lamentable James looked beside him. Was the gentleman as prosperous as appearances suggested? As virile?