Crescent City

by Belva Plain

  “They’ve burned our house to the ground!” These were the old man’s first words as, almost toppling, he was helped down from the carriage.

  Pelagie wore a black alpaca mourning dress, grimy and stained with sweat.

  “You didn’t know .… Our letters never reached you .… Yes, my Alexandre’s gone! They killed him at Yazoo Pass.”

  Emma shrieked and clasped her daughter.

  “Thank God my Felicité is married in San Francisco, that one’s safe at least.”

  Pelagie was more visibly distraught than she had been at the time of Sylvain’s death. “Now I have to worry about Lambert and Louis: Where are they? I don’t know. Off fighting somewhere … dead, too, maybe. And these two young ones safe at home with me. I thought—this boy, child of my heart, who never knew his father, and now his home is gone .…”

  Miriam led her upstairs to a bedroom, and knowing how fastidious she was, at once called Fanny to bring hot water.

  “And a cold drink, too, please, Fanny. Water, if there’s nothing else. Now tell me, tell me, talk it out,” she urged Pelagie.

  Pelagie lay back on the lit de repos and took a long breath.

  “To be under a roof again! You can’t imagine. Well, after Vicksburg fell—we had friends there, you know, and they fled to us, one of them even brought her piano with her, it was all she could save. Well, then, the Federal gunboats went down the river firing at the houses along the bank, but we were fortunate—they didn’t come as far as Plaisance. So we thought we were going to escape. But last week, last week they came! The shells landed on the roof! It caught fire! Oh, it was horrible! The wind seemed to be pulling the flames up toward the sky with all its force, they must have been visible for miles, like a volcano, the way they said Vicksburg looked when it blew up.” Pelagie put her bands over her face. “And the most awful thing. When the gunboats came to destroy us, our field hands went running down to the levee. They had their hoes in their hands, they were waving and singing. I sometimes think it’s just as well Sylvain didn’t live to see all this. He loved that place, it was his home, he was born there.”

  Pelagie gave a queer, sad laugh. “That very morning my father-in-law had made out a new will. He was discussing with me who in the family might want this slave or that one. And he actually went about telling each of them who was to inherit him! And to think that very afternoon it all came to an end.”

  Certainly she has no love for that old tyrant, Miriam said to herself. But he had been a symbol of a stable world. Now, after this blatant failure of his judgment and his perception of things, who was Pelagie to rely upon? For she had to have a man to rely upon.

  “No home, no home,” Pelagie lamented.

  “You have a home here. Somehow, someday, I don’t know how or when, we’ll all get back to normal. We will.” And Miriam gave banal comfort, all there was to give.

  At the same time she was worrying: What are we to do with all these people? We have almost nothing for ourselves. Not enough seed for the planting, no repairs for the broken-down machinery. The slaves are unwilling to work. Why should they? The handwriting is on the wall. Actually, it’s astonishing that as many of them are willing to work as much as they do. Maybe they think their masters will yet win the war?

  “Oh, who could have believed it?” Pelagie wailed now.

  “I could have,” Miriam might have answered, but did not.

  There were no more tallow candles, so that they sat around the table that night in the choking smoke of the terrabene lamp. Its sharp turpentine smell tinctured the dusk and clung to the food. Meals were growing visibly more meager every day. Only half hearing the flow of talk—for words, endless words, she understood, gave release to their fears—Miriam took stock of what was on the platters and calculated.

  No more flour; the price was one thousand dollars a barrel, if you could find any. Tea cost fifty dollars a pound; Fanny had taught her how to make it out of blackberry leaves. There was no more coffee, but one could make a miserable substitute out of peanuts or potatoes. They would have to tend the vegetables more carefully. If only the shortage of meat did no harm to the growing boy and girl! Some said one could be perfectly healthy on a diet of vegetables. Of course, there were eggs.

  Eugene is almost fifteen. How soon will they take him for the army? Pelagie is worried that there’ll be no men left for the girls to marry. Marriage! That’s the last and the least of my worries.

  What had she been thinking just now? Vegetables, yes. Tomorrow she must get up even earlier than usual, take the little mare, and ride over the whole place. It had been easier for her to learn than one would expect of a city girl. Now Miriam’s mind swept from the fields and kitchen to the upstairs, where there were not enough blankets and no more sheets for these new arrivals. Cotton cloth was fifteen dollars a yard—again, if one could get any. Out here in the country, how could one? There were no pins or needles. Well, Fanny had showed her how to use thorns instead. But you couldn’t sew without thread, which cost five dollars a spool, and the Confederate dollar was now worth ten cents.

  A small horde of gold coins remained, sewn into the lining of the dress which had been made out of André’s yellow silk. It was the only presentable dress she had. She would have to hold on to them, the dress and the coins. God only knew what emergency might require either one.

  Old Lambert Labouisse was making a declaration; his most simple remarks were declarations.

  “Yes, I threw the entire gold dinner service into the Mississippi, rather than let the Federals have it. Service for twenty-four, and many a distinguished occasion it graced! Well, it’s had a respectable death, anyway.”

  You old fool,. Miriam thought. I wish I knew how and where to fish it out.

  Since Eugene’s death, Ferdinand had made only a halfhearted effort to keep the war map current. Still, he remarked now in a discouraged voice, “Yes, the loss of Vicksburg was the final blow, losing our bridge over into Texas and Mexico. Now only a trickle of goods can get in or out of here.”

  And how will André get back? God only knows. It’s all so dark; the clouds fold over us and one can’t see a day ahead. How will it be for him and me, if and when he does get back?

  “Just thirty thousand men would have kept Vicksburg for us,” said old Labouisse. “We have that many deserters, that many and more, damn their souls, all of them.”

  Eulalie made one of her rare comments. “What could one have expected? Pemberton is a Yankee, after all. He shouldn’t have been trusted.”

  Her pale eyes had angry pink sore-looking rims. The fierce Virginia warrior, Miriam thought again, remembering her promise of silence. She could imagine the truth coming out, the careful tiny drippings of sly innuendo, stains spreading through the fabric of her children’s trust in their mother.

  They had endured enough and too much. Even as she herself carried in her mind that indelible scene of her mother’s death, a scene which had only been described to her, so would they bear forever the picture of their father dying on the ground with his hands held in theirs. They spoke of it seldom now, for what was there to be said? But between his eyes Eugene had two vertical grooves which had not been there before. And Angelique, prone since early childhood to vivid dreams and nightmares, cried out in her sleep, so that Miriam had often to go in and quiet her. Yes, they had borne enough. If Eulalie were to add more …

  Then, no, she decided, Eulalie will not talk. She knows I would put her out. I can’t think where I’d send her, but I’d send her somewhere out of this house, and she knows I would.

  “The trouble is,” Eulalie said now, “everyone, all of you people, have lost hope. I have not lost hope.” And she looked around the table, asking to be challenged, but no one challenged her. So she continued, “We, with our good old blood, have it in our power to do much better than we’ve done yet. Look at the northern ranks! Full of nothing but Germans and Irish and heaven knows what else! And that ape Lincoln at the head with his emancipation!”

  �
��I wish emancipation could be applied here.”

  This remark came from the foot of the table where Eugene sat. Every head turned to him in astonishment. His face had gone scarlet, as if the sound of his own words falling so unexpectedly into the room, now grown so still, had terrified even him. His startled eyes appealed now to his mother for help.

  Miriam was stunned. How and when had the boy got such an idea? She had been so careful to skirt the deadly subject! Nevertheless, the little thrill, whose cause was part alarm and part a kind of joyful pride, sparked in her chest.

  “It’s all right, Eugene. You may speak,” she said softly. “Go on.”

  “Well, I was thinking, I’ve been thinking about what I’ve seen since we came here to stay and—and,” he stumbled, “it seems to me we’d be better off with a few skilled men working for wages than we are with all these poor, helpless folks to feed and care for.”

  Lambert Labouisse appeared about to erupt and Ferdinand hastened to explain.

  “My grandson is only speaking practically, as a matter of economy, given the present conditions.”

  “Perhaps he isn’t,” Miriam said. Something within her rose in quick resentment of having to placate Mr. Lambert Labouisse. “Go on, Eugene.”

  The boy’s voice grew stronger. “Well, wouldn’t this whole country be better off if all these huge places were cut up into smaller farms? If the owners could work their own places, I mean. It would be more healthy. More prosperous, too, I think. There’s so much waste in the slave system. And it’s not really fair, either, to have so much land in so few hands. What good do two thousand acres of unused land do for anybody?”

  Mr. Labouisse actually rapped his spoon on the table. “I have spent my life, and my father spent his before me, increasing our holdings for the benefit of generations to come! We have paid and paid to keep our lands intact! Talk like your son’s is more than I can hear with any equanimity, ma’am! I’m sorry to say it, but I must!”

  “I don’t understand.” Ferdinand was flustered. “It’s very troubling to me, I assure you. Where could Eugene have got such thoughts, Miriam?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know, Papa. But he is certainly entitled to his thoughts.” And she gave Eugene a smile.

  “He got them from his uncle, I suspect,” Eulalie snapped.

  “From my brother?” Miriam retorted. “He’s had a lot of contact with my brother these past years, hasn’t her?”

  Then surprisingly, and before Eulalie could fuel the fire any more, Pelagie spoke. “Do you know, Father, when Louis was home on leave the last time, he said much the same thing?” She hesitated. “He’s of the opinion that these large holdings must go and the suave system along with them.”

  The old man stared. “My grandson said that? My grandson?”

  “Well, you have to admit,” Pelagie faltered, “it is a costly system. The money that our children could inherit goes for the upkeep of all these slaves, their clothing, and … then with so much of the land being idle, as Eugene said …”

  “Eugene! Idiocy!” The old man was furious; spittle shot from his mouth. “Claptrap! Wicked, stupid claptrap! Never produced ten cents’ worth of anything in their lives, not dry behind the ears yet, and already giving away their birthright, the fools. Ought to take the whip to the lot of them!”

  Rosa glanced nervously at Miriam. The glance said, What on earth can have happened to Pelagie?

  To that Miriam could have answered, “Only that she, even she, has at last been jolted into reality.”

  27

  Between the Rapidan River on the north and the wide, cleared fields of Spottsylvania on the south lay a wilderness some twelve to twenty miles long and six miles deep of sluggish, silent swamp and gloomy forest, a thick maze of vine and thorn and waist-high underbrush.

  Now in the lovely blue days of early May the white-topped wagons rumbled over the turnpike and the Orange Plank Road, heading toward confrontation with Grant’s Army of the Potomac.

  Gabriel’s body and the tawny body of his mare Polaris had, after more than three years of war, merged almost into one. Without directive or pressure the horse kept place in line, leaving the rider absorbed in his somber reflections.

  Last year they had met Grant at Chancellorsville, where Lee had won. This year, passing the site of that victory, they had come upon its aftermath of silent, burnt-out ruins, rotting and mouldering in weedy fields. There’d been a farmer alongside a road; I never owned a slave. With my own hands I cleared these fields, built this house; the Federals took it all, the hogs, the chickens, the cow for the children’s milk, a lifetime’s work What could states rights mean to him?

  So I plod, so we go stumbling together, wading rivers, enduring in a weariness beyond belief, with no way of knowing where it will end.

  He had a sense of fearful foreboding. It is the spring, he thought, it is the dogwood lying flat on the air like starched lace, white and pink; it is the wet gloss on the leaves, the south wind and the sun’s warm touch on the horse’s living neck; it is—it is knowing that I may never see all this again.

  He straightened up. Enough! It’s spineless and does you no good.

  Yet all around him the others, officers and men, were quiet, too. His lieutenant, riding slightly behind him, had not spoken for an hour. The occasional snort of a horse was startling.

  On either side the woods grew thicker, narrowing the road, throwing a gloom across the advancing day. Heat struck, heavy and stifling; it glossed Polaris’s neck and stung the sweat under Gabriel’s gray coat.

  Far ahead the line could be seen turning off the road. He did not need to take the map from his pocket; he had memorized it; he knew where they were going and where they expected to take Grant by surprise. So he would rest his mind by trying to think of what lay in his past, rather than of what might he ahead today.

  It was so long since he had been home! And he wondered what was left of his city. They had taken Rosa’s house, that he knew. Perhaps someone would be good enough to protect the precious treasure of his law books, a collection inherited from Henry and most carefully enlarged by himself. Such a pleasant room, the little square library with its comfortable chair and footstool! The windows, opened to the courtyard, took in the pungent smell of wet stone after rain, and the lazy sound of dripping from the banana leaves. Under the window there was always a leftover puddle where the pavement sagged; there sat the most minute green frog, bright as an emerald, a crown jewel.

  So long since he had seen home! Or Miriam … Months after the fact, the news of Eugene’s death had reached him, but Rosa never wrote about Miriam, wanting to spare him, he understood, and supposing herself to be tactful.

  And he recalled, with a kind of half-sad humor, his sister’s efforts, also meant to be tactful, to arouse his interest in one “eligible” young woman after the other. Her definition of “eligible” was young, good-natured, reasonably pretty, and, most important, of fine family background. Dear Rosa! The question of his loving the girl never entered her mind. Oh, there had been some—he remembered one, very charming, very willing, with burnished copper hair—he could very likely have gone farther with her, if it had not been for Miriam. Always the image of Miriam came between him and any other.

  The hurt inside him was something he could almost touch, like a burn or a cut. The anger—not toward her; no, never toward her, but toward that man Perrin—was like fire. He tried to quench it, but it always flared back. Now that she was widowed and free, he supposed they would be married; Perrin already had a wife, to be sure, but a man like him would find some way, Gabriel thought scornfully. That man, that man—if he were here I’d run my bayonet through him, he thought, and I’ve never used my bayonet, not in spite of all the carnage, and I’ve been in the thick of it. But I’ve never had to use it, thank God. A bullet is bad enough, but to feel the weapon in your moving hands slicing through another man’s flesh!

  Polaris, following the line, stepped cautiously into the ditch that bordered the road
and clambered up again, entering now a place where she must plow knee deep through troughs of many years’ fallen leaves, struggling through prickers and stickers, catching herself in a jumble of saplings and vines. They had been in places like this before. No, not like this, Gabriel thought, as they picked their way more deeply into a darkness that must be like the bottom of the sea. Tall pines met overhead. A ravine, so steep and sudden that an inexpert rider would pitch over the horse’s head, cut across the way. They struggled on. How can a battle be fought in here where you can’t see either enemy or friend? he wondered.

  The call to halt was passed up the line. A good thing, too, for it was almost noon, and they had been going since dawn. The heat was now so overpowering that if the going weren’t so precarious, one might almost fall asleep in the saddle.

  Men crowded into the clearing where the halt had been called. There, in a circle of patchy sunlight, hung the dogwood again, a jubilant, exquisite white in an ominous gloom. And Gabriel felt again that irregular palpitation they called “soldier’s heart,” blaming it on strain or heat. But it was more than just those: it was fear.

  “Conference up ahead,” someone reported.

  “Scout says Union forces are approaching.”

  “—said Grant’s sitting on a stump, wearing dress uniform and a sword.”

  Nervous laughter. The body is afraid to go ahead, but the spirit, fearing cowardice, is afraid that the body might really turn about and flee, to the spirit’s everlasting shame.

  Polaris stamped, curving her head as far back as she could, as if to communicate with Gabriel. She had the haughty, delicate nose of an aristocrat, but her intelligent eyes were soft and mild. She knows me well, thought Gabriel. We have been together a long time.