by John Jakes
A great many of the city’s leading politicians and businessmen, Catholic and Protestant, attended the funeral. They brought their white wives, and when Madeline noticed that, she appreciated the skill with which her father had carried off the deception. The last vestiges of ill feeling left her; she mourned and blessed him at the same time.
Lying in the dark, Madeline wondered how she could have brought herself to say yes to Orry’s whispered plea for a secret rendezvous. Her conscience was already torturing her about that, and yet she knew she would go through with this one meeting if she could. Her willingness was a natural reaction to Justin’s cruelty, but it was also a clear violation of the code of behavior she had practiced all her life. Even given Justin’s character, how could that happen? Many women endured similar mistreatment, or worse, till the day they died. What made the difference in her case?
The answer lay in something that could not be fully reduced to logical explanation. Something in the young cadet’s eyes, in his courtly bearing and his shy demeanor, called out to her, spoke to her on a deep and primitive level. That was true despite her fear that, because of his age, he could not possibly be what he seemed.
She laid the back of one hand against her cheek and uttered a small, sad sound. Her life, so carefully and conscientiously put in order by her late father, was growing hopelessly tangled. She was thankful Nicholas Fabray didn’t know.
She imagined Orry’s face. He was young. That was a dire risk, and it was just one of several she intended to accept. Another was the risk she’d take when she left Resolute for the rendezvous. Keeping her hand where it was, she closed her eyes and concentrated on a plan to avert suspicion when she rode away tomorrow. She was still lying in that position when she fell asleep and dreamed of Orry kissing her.
Like Madeline, the slave girl Semiramis was unable to fall asleep easily that night. Jones was going to do something terrible to her brother. Quirt him, most likely. Priam had caused a big fuss at the picnic. After it happened, the Mont Royal slaves talked of nothing else for the rest of the day.
Most of the slaves thought her brother was going to get what he deserved. They said mean things about him because they were jealous of his courage. He was always whispering about the North, about fleeing to freedom. The others called him a boaster. Said he’d never do it, just because they knew he might, and they wouldn’t. Of course, he’d never go if his temper got him killed first.
Semiramis wanted to sleep, to forget the beating Priam was going to get. She turned one way, then the other on her thin, sour-smelling pallet of ticking. She couldn’t lie still; she was too tense.
Flickering light showed around the edge of the closed door. Torches had been lit in the barnyard behind old Jones’s house. The punishment would begin soon. The torches told her, and so did the stillness of the night. Up and down the slave street, no one laughed or spoke.
A furtive knock startled her. She bolted upright.
“Who’s that?”
A shadow blotted some of the flickering light. “Cuffey.”
“Oh, Lord, no,” she called. “Not this evening, boy.” She had started pleasuring herself with Cuffey several months ago, although he was quite young; too young, some of the jealous old women said. But they had never seen him without trousers, nor did they know what he could do with his remarkable—
Before she could finish the thought, the boy was inside and kneeling by the pallet.
“I din’ come for that. I came ’bout Priam.”
“Jones going to whip him.”
“Uh-uh. Worse. Jones brought the old mouser down from the great house. They going to cat-haul him.”
Stunned silence. Then Semiramis said, “Oh, Jesus, sweet Jesus. It’ll kill him.” She clutched her stomach.
Her brother had angered Mr. Tillet worse than she had imagined. How Priam must have strutted and fought! She hadn’t seen it, only heard about it; she had been working elsewhere at the time. Now she wanted to run to the great house to plead for mercy.
Cuffey dissuaded her. He stayed with her, murmuring empty comforts as they waited for the sound of the first scream.
Torches planted in the ground lit the barnyard brilliantly. Priam lay spread-eagled on his stomach.
Jones had assembled an audience of twenty male slaves because, done properly, this night’s work could benefit the plantation for years. It could leave a powerful and lasting impression on any other niggers who might be feeling rebellious. The impression would come not only from Priam’s suffering but from his humiliation beforehand. He had been forced to disrobe, kneel, and bow his head while ropes were tied to his ankles and wrists. These ropes, pegged into the sandy soil, kept his limbs extended.
Animal and bird cries rose in the darkness beyond the barnyard. The slave cabins were abnormally quiet. Good, Jones thought. Many others were watching or listening. The lesson would not be lost on them, and the reports of the witnesses would reinforce it.
A big buck named Harmony held a burlap sack at arm’s length. The sack jumped and writhed with a life of its own. Jones regarded the sack pleasurably as he took his time donning thickly padded gauntlets. Before this, he had had no occasion to use the gauntlets at Mont Royal, but he had kept them in his trunk, just in case. He was both surprised and delighted that Tillet Main, whom he secretly scorned, was actually able to order a cat-hauling.
Jones strutted past Priam’s head to give him a good look at the gauntlets. He then repositioned all three buckets of heavily salted water he planned to dash on Priam’s wounds. The buckets of brine were a little touch Jones had added on his own.
He gestured to the burlap sack, then extended his right hand above it.
“All right, Harmony—now.”
The nervous slave opened the top of the sack. Jones plunged his gloved hand down. By feel alone he caught and pinioned the tomcat’s rear legs. He lifted the furious, squalling animal into the light.
The slaves gulped and stepped back. Jones kept his head half averted, fearing one of the slashing front claws might nick an eye. At last he got a firm two-handed grip on the tom’s rear legs.
Breathing hard from excitement, Jones stepped up to Priam’s right side, planting one boot next to the slave’s hip and the other by his ribs. He fought the tomcat every inch of the way, but the result would be worth the risk. He swung the writhing cat by its back legs, almost the way a gentleman swung a club in the old game of golf. The fore claws struck between Priam’s shoulders, cutting and tearing all the way to the base of the spine before Jones jerked the cat up again. He smiled at the blood-daubed paws.
Priam hadn’t cried out. But he had nearly bitten through his lower lip, Jones observed. Almost affably, he said, “We’re not finished. Not by any means.”
George lay sleepless in the guest bedroom on the second floor. He had taken off everything except his cotton underdrawers, but he was still sweltering. His stomach ached. His head hurt.
It hadn’t been a pleasant day. The trouble caused by that slave, Priam, had upset and embarrassed Orry. He had become self-conscious with George, speaking only when necessary. The incident had affected George, too. For the first time since his arrival he had been driven to ponder everything he had seen. He thought especially hard about the slaves, and what he read on their faces and in their eyes.
He hated to think ill of people who had treated him so graciously. He hated to think ill of his best friend. But what he had encountered at Mont Royal—well, there was no way to avoid the conclusion. It was deeply disturbing. At last he understood comments at home, especially Virgilia’s.
“Oh, my God,” he said suddenly, shooting up in bed and twisting toward the windows that opened on the piazza. Far off in the night, someone was screaming.
He was sure it was the slave receiving his punishment. The outcries continued intermittently for about five minutes. When they stopped, he lay staring at the ceiling. He doubted that he could go to sleep the rest of the night. He knew the sound of the screaming would stay with
him forever.
The screams sent Cooper hurtling downstairs, the hem of his sweaty nightshirt flying around his legs. For weeks he had been feeling that a crisis was brewing in his life, that the status quo had become intolerable. But it needed some major incident to propel him to action.
Tonight he had it. The slaves lived three-quarters of a mile from the great house. When screams carried that far, it said a lot. Too much. He stormed into the library without knocking. “What in hell are they doing to Priam?”
Tillet looked at his son through a. choking cloud of pipe smoke. Sweat glistened on his bald head. All the windows were closed. To shut out unpleasant noises?
“I ordered him cat-hauled.”
Cooper’s face hardened. “My God. That’s barbaric.”
Tillet leaped up. “I’m not interested in your pious pronouncements.”
“What about your own?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The other evening, very smugly, you told Orry’s friend that there are no scarred backs at Mont Royal. Would you care to explain Priam’s?”
“I don’t need to explain it, you sarcastic whelp. Priam is my property, to do with as I please.”
The men stood eye to eye. Cooper was suddenly overwhelmed with a sick sensation.
“He’s a man. You call him property. This state and the whole damn South will fall to ruin because of that inhuman idea.”
“I’ve heard this lecture before.” Tillet waved his pipe. The bowl left a smoke tracery in the stifling air. He turned his back on his son. “Be so good as to leave me alone.”
Cooper slammed the door on his way out.
Breakfast next morning was a dismal affair. George asked Orry about Priam’s condition. Orry seemed to resent the question and curtly told his friend that the slave was resting in the sick house. A few minutes later Orry said he’d be gone during the late morning and early afternoon. He offered no explanation, nor any apology for leaving his guest alone, and he acted nervous all at once. George wondered why.
Clarissa arrived, striving unsuccessfully to be cheerful. She had obviously slept badly. She picked at her meal in silence, and she looked almost grateful when she had to rush off to mediate a screeching match between Orry’s sisters.
Cooper appeared. His hair was uncombed. His shirttail hung out of the waist of his rumpled trousers. He fell into the chair next to George, ignored his food, and several times muttered something in a thick voice. Only once did George make sense of what he heard:
“Can’t stay here. Can’t stay and help run a place like this. The whole system’s not only criminal, it’s stupid. Stupid and doomed.”
Soon Cooper lurched from the room. Orry raised an eyebrow. “I wonder what the devil’s wrong with him?”
It sounded like a rhetorical question, but George answered it. “I smelled wine. I hate to say it about your brother, Stick, but I think he’s drunk.”
On a direct line, the distance from Mont Royal to Salvation Chapel was no more than two miles. But the tiny, burned-out church was well hidden in the woods and could be reached only by following winding roads through forest and marsh. The ride took almost an hour. As each succeeding road grew narrower and more overgrown, Orry became increasingly sure that Madeline wouldn’t be waiting for him. She had probably found his hurriedly whispered directions too vague or, more likely, the trip too difficult for a woman traveling alone.
Salvation Chapel had closed its doors five years ago. When its pastor, a Methodist shouter, fell over dead during a particularly bombastic sermon, another could not be found to replace him. The congregation had never been large anyway: a few marginal rice planters and their families, and some black freedmen who were permitted to worship in the gallery.
The whites drifted away. The Negroes stayed. Soon the church acquired a reputation as a center of illegal assembly, a place where black people were suspected of gathering to discuss forbidden subjects. General emancipation. Rebellion. One night the church was mysteriously burned. The LaMotte brothers were rumored to have had a hand in it. The freedmen never came back. The vegetation closed in.
It was a splendid spot for a secret meeting, surrounded as it was on three sides by woodland. The fourth side afforded a breathtaking view across several miles of marsh. As Orry rode the last quarter of a mile, his emotions were in turmoil. He wasn’t overly afraid of Justin LaMotte, but he did fear that he had exposed Madeline to undue risk. He reminded himself that she probably wouldn’t be there anyway. But if she were, what did he want her to do? Commit adultery? Much as a part of him shamefully admitted that, his conscience—his concern for Madeline’s welfare—told him it was impossible.
These feelings mingled with others churned up by the trouble at Mont Royal. Orry was ashamed to have George see a sample of the cruelty that drove Northerners to condemn the South. Orry’s embarrassment made him defensive and even illogically angry with his friend. Thus he was in a state of nerves when he pushed away the last overhanging branches and walked his horse toward Salvation Chapel. The remains of blackened beams and siding had long ago fallen into the wreckage of a tabby foundation. The ruin, and the marsh beyond, lay silent, empty. His face fell.
A horse whickered. Underbrush stirred. Madeline appeared at the edge of the marsh to his left. Screened from him by some trees, she had been gazing at the sunlit vista of reeds and glittering water.
He jumped down, tied his mount, and ran to her. How lovely she looked in her smart riding habit. He grasped her shoulders, leaned forward, then pulled back suddenly, red-faced.
“I didn’t even think to ask whether it was dangerous for you to come.”
She smiled, shrugged in a self-conscious way. “Not particularly. Not today, at least. I never attract much notice when I go to see the patients in our sick house. That’s what a woman is expected to do. I told my house servants that after the visit I wanted to ride by myself for a while. They understand. They know Justin can be insufferable. Besides, he’s in Charleston with Francis till tomorrow night. I can’t stay here indefinitely, though.”
He reached out to clasp her hand. Her smile disappeared; she seemed tense. “I’m very glad you’re here,” he told her. “Would you think badly of me if I said”—he swallowed—“said that I wanted to kiss you?”
A look of panic flashed over her face, but it was suppressed so swiftly he wondered if he had imagined it. Hastily, he added:
“If the thought upsets you, I withdraw the question.”
Her eyes warmed and her mouth softened. The corners lifted in a sweet smile. “You can’t; it’s too late. Besides”—she returned the pressure of his fingers—”I want you to kiss me. I’m just a little afraid, that’s all.”
With clumsy hunger he pulled her into his arms. Her mouth was soft and cool. He had never felt a woman’s tongue as he felt hers when her lips opened. He was ashamed of his stiffness, but she pressed tightly to him, not seeming to mind.
There was no banter now, just a long, intense moment in which their clinging, their sweet, frantic kissing of eyes and cheeks and earlobes, revealed their emotions, their longings. He had to say it aloud.
“Madeline, I love you. I have from the first.”
She laughed with tears in her eyes. Touched his face. Her words came in a torrent:
“Oh, my sweet Orry. My cavalier. I love you too; don’t you know that? Like you, I realized it the day we met, and I’ve tried to deny it ever since.” She began covering his face and mouth with kisses again.
Naturally, and without thought, his hand came up to her breast. She shuddered and pressed closer. Then she drew away. She knew, and so did he, what the consequences might be if they let their emotions overwhelm them.
They sat on the tabby foundation, watching white egrets rise from the marsh in beautiful, lifting curves. He put his arm around her. She rested against his side. They sat very still, figures in a domestic portrait.
“Did your husband—” He cleared his throat. “Did he retaliate in any way
when you got home?”
“Oh, no. That little humiliation at Mont Royal was quite enough.”
Orry scowled. “Will you tell me if he ever hurts you physically?”
“He never goes that far. His cruelty’s more subtle. And much more devastating. Justin knows countless ways to wound the spirit, I’ve discovered. He knows how to rob a person of any sense of worth with just a laugh or a look. I don’t think the men of this state should fear a rebellion by their slaves. They should fear one by their wives.”
He laughed, then touched the sleeve of her riding habit. “He certainly doesn’t stint with worldly goods. How much did this cost?”
“Too much. You’re right, he isn’t stingy with anything except consideration for the feelings of others. Whatever he thinks I need, he buys. He’ll permit me to do anything I want so long as I never forget I’m a LaMotte. And a woman.”
“Things would be different if you were married to me. I wish you were.”
“Oh, I do too. So much.”
“I shouldn’t have asked you to meet me like this, but”—he looked at her, trying not to show his pain—“I had to tell you once how I felt.”
“Yes.” Her palm pressed lightly against his cheek. “So did I.” He kissed her long and passionately.
When they were resting again, a new, embittered note came into her voice. “Justin’s beginning to think I’m a failure as a woman.”
“Why?”
“I’ve borne him no children.”
“Is it because—that is—” He stopped, blushing.
“It isn’t through any lack of effort on his part,” she said, coloring a little herself. “He’s very—vigorous in his attempts at fatherhood.”
Orry’s stomach felt as if someone had run a knife through it. He sat motionless. The pain eased, but slowly. Madeline went on, “I dare to be so frank because I’ve no one with whom I can share these things. The truth is”—she faced him, grave—“I’m convinced it’s Justin’s fault that I haven’t gotten pregnant. I understand his first wife was bar—childless too.”