by John Jakes
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Lieutenant—pack everything. Unlike some of the couriers I’ve dispatched to Washington, you won’t be returning.”
“Sir?”
Pale, Billy stared at his commanding officer. This was crushing news; he would be leaving Brett in a city that might be ravaged by war at any hour. Knowing that, why did the major have a queer half smile on his haggard face? Was Anderson losing his grip?
The major quickly explained. “You are on leave until tomorrow evening, at which time I shall expect you to board a northbound train. Hart has prepared your orders to that effect. You could use the intervening hours to call on your young lady. If you can get a message to her promptly, you might even have sufficient time to marry her. Hart’s willing to deliver such a message if you can write it in the next ten minutes.”
Billy was speechless. He could hardly believe his good fortune, Anderson noticed.
“Don’t look so stunned, Lieutenant. Someone must go. Why not you? I sent Lieutenant Meade home to see his ailing mother in Virginia—this is a much happier set of orders. I do realize I’m treading in the province of your superior, the chief of engineers, but I expect he’ll forgive me when I explain the circumstances.”
Anderson’s gaze grew somber again. “Even with clearance from the governor, you may have trouble getting through the city. That’s why I’m keeping you here till it’s almost dark.”
Billy decided it was time to stop questioning his luck and start capitalizing on it. “Sir, if the schooner could take me to the C.S.C. pier above the Customs House, I could have Cooper Main meet me with a closed carriage. He could drive me to Tradd Street, and Brett and I could slip out of Charleston before daylight.”
“You don’t want to be married at Main’s house?”
“I think it would be safer to travel up to Mont Royal. There’s a railway flag stop not far from the plantation.”
“Well, whatever you decide, getting through the city will be the hard part. I urge you to keep your revolver fully loaded at all times.”
Billy saluted and pivoted, leaving the commandant staring at the candle with melancholy eyes.
At the boat landing, Anderson shook his hand. “You’re an excellent officer, Lieutenant Hazard. With a few more years of experience, you’ll be an outstanding one. Give my regards to your bride.”
“Sir, I will. I can’t thank you enough—”
“Yes, you can. Get that pouch to Scott. I want him to understand the hazards if he should attempt to storm the bar with a few hundred men in longboats.” Anderson’s voice grew husky with strain. “I repeat what I have said before. If this country’s to be plunged into a bloodbath, the responsibility will be Washington’s, not ours.”
He stepped back, fading into darkness. “Please get aboard, sir,” a voice called from the deck of the little schooner. Billy could just glimpse a face above the binnacle light.
He hurried down the steps while the slack sails flapped in the night wind. An ominous sound, somehow.
“Thank the Lord I was home when Anderson’s orderly arrived,” Cooper said as Billy jumped to the C.S.C. pier. “Judith’s waiting in the carriage.”
“Where’s Brett?”
“At the house. She wanted to come along, but Judith urged her to stay and pack. She doesn’t have all that much time to assemble her trousseau—we’ll be on the road well before sunrise. I have already sent a man to Mont Royal. Orry’s to have the rector present tomorrow afternoon at one sharp.”
“When does the train leave?”
“A little over three hours later. Half past four.”
They carried on the conversation as they strode rapidly toward the head of the pier where the carriage was waiting. The fast pace matched Billy’s heartbeat. In spite of his tension, he felt exhilarated, happy for the first time in months.
“Thank you, Gerd,” Cooper said to a stout man who handed him the reins. “I’ll drive, Billy. Stay well back from the window. There’s always a small crowd loitering at the Customs House, and those buttons on your uniform shine like lanterns.”
He was straining to keep his tone light, but Billy could hear an anxious note. Cooper slipped as he mounted the spokes of the front wheel. He grimaced, then completed his climb, saying, “Sometimes not owning slaves is damned inconvenient. You must do everything for yourself. No wonder the institution’s lasted.”
Billy managed a chuckle as he opened the door on the left side. Judith was seated on the right. He greeted her, at the same time touching the leather dispatch case slung over his left shoulder. The catch was still secure.
Cooper hawed and started the carriage. By the light of a lantern on the warehouse gable, Billy saw tears on Judith’s cheek. “What’s the matter?” he exclaimed.
“Nothing, nothing.” She smiled and cried at the same time. “I’m a ninny to carry on so, but I can’t help it. In these times there are so few reasons to be joyful, but this is one.” A sniff, a firm shake of her head. “I do apologize.”
“Don’t. I feel the same way.”
“Look sharp,” Cooper called. “Larger crowd than usual tonight.”
Billy shifted his saber so that he could move more easily. Then he eased his revolver partway out of the holster. Ahead, on the right, men were laughing and talking boisterously. Suddenly one of them shouted, “You, there. Hold up.”
Billy’s stomach knotted as he felt the carriage slow down. Cooper swore an exasperated oath.
The voices of the men grew louder. Billy hitched over to the center of the seat, the darkest part of the carriage. Obliquely through the right-hand window he could glimpse the front of the Customs House, once Federal property.
The carriage swayed to a stop. Judith held her breath. “State your name and business,” said a rough voice.
“My name is Main, I’m a citizen of Charleston, and my business is my own. I’ll thank you to release my horse and stand aside.”
“He looks all right, Sam,” another man said. The first speaker grumbled something. Billy heard movement outside.
Judith clutched his arm. “Get down! They’re coming to look in.”
Just as she whispered, Cooper applied the whip. But the carriage didn’t move. “Let go of the horse,” Cooper demanded. At the same time a coarse face appeared in the right window. The man jumped on the step. The lanterns on the Customs House lit up the carriage interior. The man clung to the window frame, eyes rounding.
“Sojer in here!”
A loud outcry followed. “Is it Doubleday?” Pushing and shoving, others appeared at the window. Billy pulled his revolver.
Simultaneously, someone ordered Cooper to climb down. The reply was the whack of a whip against flesh. An unseen man let out a shriek. Cooper yelled like a teamster and lashed the horse.
The carriage lurched into motion. Meantime the man on the step had levered the door open and was struggling to work himself around it and thus inside. The man’s right hand still gripped the bottom of the open window. Billy leaned across Judith and rapped the man’s knuckles with the gun barrel.
The man’s fingers spasmed, but he held on. Billy shoved his left boot against the door and pushed. The door swung outward. The man dropped from sight.
Upraised fists and glaring eyes went by in a blur. Then Cooper raced the carriage into the darkness beyond the Customs House. He turned right, recklessly fast. Billy was struggling to catch the door and close it. He almost fell out headfirst before he was successful.
A moment later he leaned back and rested his revolver on his leg, gasping for breath.
“You were very quick,” Judith said by way of a compliment.
“Had to be. Didn’t want to miss my own wedding.”
But his smile was forced. His heart was still hammering, and he’d be a long while forgetting the bloodthirsty look of the faces outside the carriage. They told him again how deep and dark the schism had become.
The sight of Brett drove away all his grim thoughts. Left alone in the par
lor—Cooper had quietly shut the doors—the two young people hugged and kissed for five minutes.
He had almost forgotten how fragrant her hair could be, how sweet her mouth tasted, how firm and strong her bosom felt when she pressed against him. Finally, gasping and laughing, they sank to a settee, holding hands.
“I wish we could be married tonight,” she said. “I know I won’t sleep a wink just anticipating tomorrow.”
Reluctantly, he said, “I won’t be coming back to Charleston. Are you certain you’re willing to go north?”
The enormous significance of his question registered on her for the first time. Uncertainty came, then fear. It would be hard to live in the midst of Yankees, away from her family.
But she loved him. Nothing else mattered.
“I’d go anywhere with you,” she said, murmuring against his cheek. “Anywhere.”
Shortly after ten that night, Cooper paid a short visit to the house on East Battery. As Ashton listened to him speak, she maintained her composure only with great effort. After Cooper left, she hurried to the study to relay the news to Huntoon.
He flung down the brief he had been studying. “I really don’t fancy attending the wedding of a damn Yankee.”
“James, she’s my sister. We’re going.”
Before he could argue, she picked up her skirts and rushed out. She stopped in the hall, pressed her palms to her cheeks, and struggled to organize her thoughts. By this time tomorrow, if no one interfered, Billy and her sister would be gone for good. She had only this one chance.
But one was all she needed.
Smiling faintly, she moved on. At the desk where she kept the household accounts, she wrote a note to Forbes, telling him to ride upriver early in the morning. She said he could take a helper if he wished, but it had to be someone trustworthy. He was to wait at Resolute for further word.
She added a few more lines of explanation, closed and waxed the sheet, then ran to the kitchen with the note and a pass.
“Rex, take this to Mr. Forbes LaMotte. Try his room on Gibbes. If he isn’t there, go to the saloon bar of the Mills House. The barman often knows Mr. LaMotte’s whereabouts. Don’t give up, and don’t come back until this is safely in his hands.”
Cowed by the whipping he had received, Rex nodded and kept nodding until she finished her instructions. But as the boy slipped down the stairs to the back door, his eyes shone with a dull rage that expressed his hunger to pay her back.
Cooper’s crowded carriage reached Mont Royal late in the morning. The March sun was mild, the cloudless sky that soft, pure shade of blue that Brett believed to be unique to Carolina. Would she ever see it again?
The children scrambled out the moment the carriage stopped. Cousin Charles ruffled Judah’s hair affectionately, then took Marie-Louise by her waist, lifting her and whirling her around. She clung to his neck, squealing delightedly.
Judith followed Brett out of the carriage. Billy came next, feeling hot and awkward in the new broadcloth suit obtained from a German tailor Cooper had awakened at midnight. Billy was startled to see Charles in full uniform, buttons polished, saber hanging from his sash.
The friends embraced. “Why in the world are you all dressed up?” Billy wanted to know.
Charles grinned. “I’m dressed up in your honor, Bunk. I figured that if one officer asked another to be his best man, the best man should look the part. Truth is, I miss the uniform. The Army, too.”
Orry emerged from the house, his somber appearance enhanced by the long, dark coat he wore. To the noisy group on the piazza he announced, “The Reverend Saxton will be here at half past twelve. I told him to come early. He’s such a toper, I figured he’d want a stiff drink to see him through the ceremony.”
Laughter. Cooper hauled down a small leather trunk in which Billy had packed his revolver, his uniform, and the leather dispatch case. Cooper thumped the trunk on the ground beside Brett’s and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. Brett said to Orry, “How’s Mother?”
“About the same. I explained three times that you were being married. Each time she professed to understand, but I know she didn’t.”
Judah jumped up and down, pointing. “Someone’s coming.”
Sure enough, rolling up the lane between the great trees, a carriage could be seen in a dust cloud. “That’s Ashton,” Brett said—without great enthusiasm, Billy observed.
With a jingle of traces and another billow of dust, the carriage braked behind Cooper’s. From the driver’s seat, Homer regarded the white people impassively, while Rex sprang down to open the door for Ashton and her husband.
Huntoon’s congratulations were clearly perfunctory. Ashton darted from Brett to Billy, hugging each in turn and treating them to blazingly sweet smiles.
“Oh, I’m so happy for you and Brett. I can say that with complete sincerity, being married myself.”
Her eyes flashed like polished gems. Billy couldn’t tell how she really felt, but remembering past intimacies, he reddened as she pressed her cheek to his. Then she puckered her lips and gave him a loud, smacking kiss. Cooper noticed Homer gazing down at his mistress with sullen eyes. He wondered at the reason.
Charles scraped a match on one of the white pillars. It left a mark, to Orry’s visible displeasure. Billy pointed to the long green cigar Charles held between clenched teeth.
“When did you take up my brother’s habit?”
“Since I came home. Have to fill the time somehow. I’d rather be fighting, but I reckon you can’t have everything.”
It was a clumsy attempt at humor, ill timed and inappropriate, both to the occasion and to the background of essentially tragic events in Charleston. The remark was greeted by complete silence. Charles blushed and busied himself with generating smoke from the ten-inch-long Havana.
“Come on, you two,” Ashton trilled. She took Billy’s arm with her right hand, Brett’s with her left. “Aren’t you simply famished? I am. Surely there’s something in the house—” Orry nodded. “Oh, isn’t this an exciting day? Such memorable things are going to happen to both of you!”
And with that she swept them inside.
Charles lingered after the others had gone. He was embarrassed by his gaffe and curious about the high color in Ashton’s face. She seemed genuinely happy about her sister’s marriage. Why, then, did he have a troubling feeling?
A feeling that she was giving a performance.
62
THE HEAT OF THE day bathed Madeline with drowsy warmth. She had just come from the kitchen, where she had seen to the preparation of spiced ham for dinner. The kitchen girls said the weather was fine and rather cool. If that was true, why was she sweltering?
Justin chided her for complaining of being hot. In the last few years heat bothered her as it never had before. She wondered whether some internal change was responsible. But she felt too lazy, too sleepy, to think about the question for very long.
Drifting along Resolute’s downstairs piazza with no particular destination in mind, she tried to recall her husband’s whereabouts. Oh, yes. He had tramped into the fields with his old musketoon for some target practice. Justin took his service with the Ashley Guards very seriously. He predicted with great glee that in a matter of weeks he’d be shooting in earnest.
“—time is it?”
“Almost one. She should be sending another message in an hour or so.”
Three feet away from one of the open windows of the study, Madeline stopped to listen. It took her several seconds to recall the identities of the speakers: Justin’s nephew Forbes and his unpleasant, rail-thin friend Preston Smith. Both had arrived unexpectedly on horseback at mid-morning. Why Forbes had not ridden another ten miles up the Ashley to his father’s plantation he had failed to explain. Madeline received few explanations for anything anymore. She was treated as an object, a fixture. She was usually too spent and indifferent to care.
Now, however, a raw note of urgency in the voices pricked through the dull mental state in wh
ich she seemed to drift perpetually. Forbes had used the word she. Why would a woman be sending him a message at Resolute? To arrange an assignation, perhaps?
She rejected that possibility as soon as she heard him ask, “The pistols ready?”
“Yes.”
“You filled the powder flask?”
“I did. We’ll have to be mighty careful with the powder. Wouldn’t want to pour too much in one of those guns.”
“Damn right.”
Both young men laughed, a cheerless sound, almost brutal. Like a tiny ticking clock, fear began to pulse in Madeline’s mind.
She deliberately blinked several times. This needed her attention. Her full attention. She shifted her weight to her left foot. The boards beneath her creaked.
“Forbes, I heard something.”
“Where?”
“Not sure. Might have been outside.”
“I didn’t hear a thing.”
“You weren’t paying attention.”
“All right, go look if you’re scared,” Forbes said with a sneer. Dizzy, Madeline pressed sweating palms against the white siding. Sunlight through festoons of Spanish moss laid a shifting pattern of shadow on her pale, wasted face.
“Oh, never mind,” Preston grumbled, shamed. “Probably just one of the niggers.”
Madeline almost swooned with relief. She pushed away from the wall. Gathering her skirts as quietly as she could, she hurried toward the end of the piazza—away from the open windows. The conspiratorial voices speaking of messages and loaded guns had succeeded in piercing her lethargy. She must try to stay alert to learn more. It was no easy task. Languorous indifference was lapping at her mind again.
She fought it as she slipped into the house by a side entrance. She must not let down. Something was afoot at Resolute. Something peculiar and—if she could believe what she heard in those voices—something sinister as well.
Charles gave Billy an envelope.
“Train tickets to the—to Washington. I almost said capital. But it’s only your capital now. Old habits break mighty hard.”
Billy tucked the envelope into his pocket. Charles held out a small velvet box. “You’ll need this, too.”