by John Jakes
Some passengers had come out to the platform of the last coach. As the coach went by, Charles heard an obscenity. Something flew past his face. He looked down to find a gob of spittle on the front of his uniform. “Shit,” he said.
He didn’t stay angry for long. His smile came back, and from the shadows at trackside he called out mockingly to whoever had spat on his Federal uniform.
“Done like a true Southerner.”
Rubbing his eyes, he trudged across the track toward the carriage. The train disappeared down a natural tunnel in the pines. He felt its last vibrations as he stepped off the rail.
He wished he could drink himself insensible. But he was summoned back to the red field, and to Mont Royal, by unfinished business.
65
“I know moon-rise,
I know star-rise,
Lay this body down—”
THE WORDS OF THE old Gullah hymn came clearly through the windows of the dark library. The slaves were singing for Homer, whom Charles had brought back in the carriage. He had left Forbes for the cormorants to pick. Compassion had its limits.
“That’s how it happened, nearly as I can piece it together,” Charles was saying. “They meant to murder Billy.”
He put his cigar back in his mouth and stretched his long legs in front of his chair. Orry lingered in the corner, his shadow falling on the old uniform. “Couple your account with what Madeline told us, and it becomes conclusive. God above, Charles, I had no idea they hated him that much.”
“Brett said almost the same thing before she left. Jealousy played a big part, I reckon. How is Madeline?”
“She was fine when I spoke to her an hour ago. I trust she went back to sleep.”
“LaMotte is probably searching for her.”
Orry nodded. “That’s something else I must attend to this evening. But first things first.” He sounded stern. “Have you seen Ashton since you returned?”
“Saw her right as I drove up. She wanted to take charge of Homer’s remains. I said no and she disappeared.”
Orry strode to the candle-lit foyer. Cuffey jumped up from the stool where he had been dozing. “Find Mrs. Huntoon and her husband,” Orry said. “Tell them I want them in the library. At once.”
Cuffey hurried away. Charles turned so that he could observe his cousin. By the glow of the foyer candles, he saw the set look of Orry’s expression.
“Help me light some lamps, Charles. When I tell them, I want to see their miserable faces.”
Ashton’s color was high as she entered the room. She was instantly on the attack.
“I resent being ordered about like a common servant. If you think I’ll dignify the accusations of niggers and troublemaking wastrels”—Charles laughed—“by responding to them, you’re badly mistaken.”
Orry’s hostility was conveyed in an icy-calm tone. “No one plans to accuse you of anything. There’s no need. The facts speak eloquently.”
Huntoon had been hovering behind his wife. Now he moved to the left. The flames of the lamps reflected on the circles of his spectacles. “See here—”
“Save your oratory for Montgomery,” Orry interrupted. “I have one or two things to say, and I prefer to get them said as quickly as possible. The first matter concerns your slave, Homer. Did he—does he have a family?”
Ashton answered. “James bought Homer from a gentleman in Savannah. I believe he had a wife and children there.”
“From which you separated him without a thought. Christ Almighty. It’s no wonder the Yankees despise us.”
Again she went on the offensive with a mixture of bluster and arrogance. “Orry, whatever is wrong with you? I refuse to be subjected to this kind of treatment.”
Huntoon’s outrage matched hers. “She speaks for both of us. We’re leaving.”
Orry nodded. “Indeed you are.”
“We’ll take Homer’s body back to Charleston.”
“No. He’ll stay here with our people. I’ll try to locate his family.”
Huntoon pulled off his glasses, puffed out his chest, and stepped in front of his wife. “I insist. The nigger may be dead, but he’s still my property.”
Orry looked at him steadily. “He stays here. You aren’t fit to touch him.”
Huntoon lowered his head and rushed his brother-in-law. He tried to hit Orry’s jaw with his right fist. Orry stepped back, reached across and batted Huntoon’s forearm aside, as if he were driving off an insect.
Huntoon stumbled, gasped, and fell sideways, managing to catch himself on both hands and one knee. His spectacles were still in his left hand as it struck the floor. There was a crunch. When Huntoon staggered up, pieces of glass fell from the bent wire ovals. He was livid.
Orry ignored him, turning to Ashton. “Today you divorced yourself from this family. From Brett, Charles—all of us. Once you and James leave this plantation, never come back.”
“Gladly!” she screamed.
Huntoon protested. “Ashton, he hasn’t the right—”
“Shut your mouth and come on!” She gave his arm a yank and swept to the doors, fighting to control herself. From the entrance she looked back. Orry hardly recognized her as his sister, so thick and foul was the hatred clotting her eyes.
“You just remember this,” she whispered. “James will soon have an important post with the new government. The government will be keeping its eye on people who make disloyal utterances, like the one you made about Yankees despising us. The government will punish traitors.”
She marched into the foyer. Huntoon trotted after her like an obedient pet. As he disappeared, a last fragment of glass fell from his spectacles and struck the floor with a tinkling sound.
“My God,” Orry said with sadness and disgust. “I don’t know what’s happened to her.”
Charles struck a match on the sole of his boot and relit his cigar. “I do. The same thing’s happened to a lot of people I’ve run into since I came home. One taste of power and all their common sense flies out the window.”
Shaking his head, Orry sat at his desk to collect himself. Charles announced his intention to stroll down to the river landing.
Orry pulled a sheet of writing paper from a drawer. “Before you go, would you ask Cuffey to step in? I should send a note over to Resolute.”
“All right. I’d like to put some of our people on watch. When Francis LaMotte learns what Billy did to his son, we may have visitors. Do you object to some of the nigras carrying muskets for a few days?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll see to it.” A smoke trail floated behind him as he left.
Orry stared at the blank paper. Even a year ago he would have considered a permanent falling out with his own sister unthinkable. What had just happened was new evidence of how far down a dark road the family had traveled.
When he was honest with himself, he would admit he had never liked Ashton much. He also recognized that she possessed a certain ruthless strength that better suited a man. Thus he did not casually dismiss her threats. God only knew what devious plots she and her husband would concoct in Montgomery.
His speculations soon induced anger, an anger directed against the Huntoons, the LaMottes, and all the other reckless men who had plunged the South into turmoil and crisis. Some of that anger poured into his quick, slashing pen strokes.
In five minutes he was done writing. He dispatched Cuffey on muleback with the note and a pass. The slave rode off through a light rain that had started to fall. When Cuffey was out of sight, Orry stepped inside from the damp darkness.
He caught his breath. Lit by windblown lights at the head of the staircase, Madeline gazed down at him.
Justin held tight to both arms of the chair as he put his left foot into the boot. The slave crouching over his leg with the boot hooks was justifiably nervous. All evening the master of Resolute had been drinking, shouting, and generally keeping the house in an uproar as he awaited the arrival of his brother.
A long gauze pad was wrap
ped around Justin’s head. It covered his ears and the top of his skull and was tied underneath his chin. The gauze concealed the sutures put in by Dr. Sapp. Whiskey helped dull the pain, which the doctor had assured him would pass in a day or two. But he’d carry a scar, perhaps a bad one, the rest of his life.
He heard horses in the drive. He screwed up his face for one last effort, grunted, and got his foot all the way into the boot, though he knocked the slave on his rear doing it. With no apology, Justin stomped to the foyer.
The fanlight glowed with the light of pine torches held by the riders. As the door crashed open, the torches began to smoke. Francis strode in. Justin could see the rain slanting down more heavily behind his brother.
“Took me a little while to pick out three niggers I could trust with muskets, but we’re here.”
“Good,” Justin said. “We’ll bring that slut back before daybreak.”
Francis dabbed his wet face with a handkerchief. “I didn’t think she meant that much to you.”
“She doesn’t. But my honor does. My reputation—what the devil’s that?”
Both ran outside as Cuffey’s mule came clopping up the drive into the circle of smoky light. The slave wore his pass on a string around his neck; the downpour made the ink run down the sheet in little blue waterfalls. Cuffey dismounted and respectfully pulled off his hand-me-down beaver hat. He produced a piece of writing paper that was folded and closed with a letter seal.
“This for you, Mist’ LaMotte.”
Justin snatched it. Cuffey suspected the message would not produce a pleasant response, so he scurried back to his mule, mounted, and rapidly rode away.
“The son of a bitch,” Justin whispered. He was unable to read past the first couple of lines. His face turned the color of a ripe plum. “The insufferable, presumptuous son of a bitch.”
He saw Francis’s blacks watching, whirled, and stalked back inside to hide his consternation. His brother followed. He plucked the note from Justin’s hand, carried it over to a lamp on the wall where the pegs had not long ago held a sword. Francis read the brief note to the end, then shook his head. “Why would Main give your wife sanctuary?”
“Are you a complete idiot, Francis? The bastard hates me! He always has. He’d like nothing better than to see me humiliated in front of the whole neighborhood.”
“He says that if you set foot on his property, he’ll shoot you.” Francis folded the note. “Do you believe him?”
“No.”
“I do.” Anxiously, Francis continued, “Let her go. No woman’s worth your life. Women are like interchangeable parts of a gin. You can get the same service from one that you get from any other.”
The coarse sophism had great appeal. True enough, Justin wanted to inflict harsh revenge on Madeline for slashing him, on Orry for this latest insult. Yet he hated to traipse around the countryside and further advertise his loss. More important, he really didn’t care to face a gun with Orry behind it.
Relieved, Francis saw that he might be able to talk his brother out of a vendetta. He laughed and clapped Justin’s shoulder.
“Look here. If repaying her means so much—”
“I want to repay both of them.”
“All right, both. I’ll ask Forbes to think of a way. I assume Forbes is here—”
“No.”
“He hasn’t come back?”
“Not yet.”
“That’s peculiar.”
“Oh, I suspect he and Preston went off to celebrate.”
The explanation satisfied Francis. “I wouldn’t mind a nip myself.”
Justin was pouring two whiskeys when the slaves waiting in the rain raised a commotion. The brothers rushed outside to see Preston Smith arriving. He was wild-eyed and as mud-spattered as his horse. He jumped down and staggered to Francis.
“I ran all the way to your plantation. They told me you were here.”
“Preston, what’s the trouble?”
“That Yankee soldier killed Forbes.”
Little Francis LaMotte seemed to wither and shrink even more. Preston glossed some of the details, but he couldn’t distort the story too much, not and make it comprehensible. It was evident that Forbes and Preston had botched their plan for revenge and that Forbes had earned what he got.
Strangely, Francis could find little anger within himself. He felt tired, old, beaten. Later he might want Charles Main’s head, but at the moment he experienced only a grieved lethargy.
“Francis?” Justin touched his sleeve. “I’ll go with you to Mont Royal.” He hated the thought.
Dry-eyed and stooped, Francis shook his head. “I must go home. I have to tell his mother.”
He mounted and, with his slaves in single file behind him, slowly rode away in the rain.
“Should you be up?” Orry asked from the foot of the staircase.
“I feel fine,” Madeline said. “Better than I have in a long, long time.”
He believed her. Although she was exceedingly pale, her eyes were clearer than they were when he had spoken to her earlier. He waited as she came down the stairs, pushing at her unbound hair with an embarrassed expression.
“I must look frightful.”
“You look splendid.”
“My dress is a ruin—”
“Madeline, it doesn’t matter. It only matters that you’re here.”
He longed to put his arm around her, hold her close, and kiss her. He ached for that. Images of their meetings at Salvation Chapel swept through his mind. He remembered the struggle to contain or deny his feelings. All at once he was in the midst of that struggle again.
“I’d like to walk outside,” she said.
“It’s raining.”
“Yes, I heard it when I woke. But the air’s so sweet and invigorating. I’ve been tired for months—constantly.”
And inexplicably withdrawn, unapproachable, Orry added to himself. Another thought occurred to him. “Have you been taking any medicine?”
“What?”
“Medicine. Certain kinds might make you feel worn out most of the time. Lonzo Sapp is Justin’s physician, isn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
“Has he prescribed anything?”
“A celery tonic, but that was—oh, months and months ago. So far back, I hardly remember, though I do recall I only took it for a few weeks.”
“And there’s been nothing else since?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better, whatever the reason. It’s been a grim day, a grim time, but it’s over.”
When he had spoken with her upstairs, he had briefly described the events involving Billy and Charles. She had expressed dismay over Forbes’s behavior but little surprise. Orry had yet to tell her he had banished Ashton and her husband. As for the letter to Justin, he’d keep that to himself, at least until he learned whether it was effective.
Medicine. The word set off a new and startling sequence in Madeline’s mind. She tried to recall all the occasions when her food had seemed to have an odd taste. It had happened many, many times. But never once had she been clever enough or devious enough to guess that her husband might be responsible. Could some drug have been introduced to pacify her? That Justin would do such a thing was likewise a startling idea, but not an unthinkable one. She would never have proof, she supposed. Still, such a scheme on his part would certainly explain her months of lethargy and indifference.
“Madeline?”
His soft, anxious voice interrupted her reflection. She turned to him.
“You had a fearful look on your face. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking about Justin. What do you suppose he’ll do about my leaving?”
“I trust he’ll do nothing.”
She crossed the foyer. “I’m never going back.”
He followed, opened the door for her. “That makes me very happy.” He released the knob and faced her. Longing put a catch in his voice. “I’d be happier still if
you’d stay with me.”
She stood gazing at the rain, her arms folded across her breasts and her hands clasping her forearms. “I love you for saying that, my darling. But are you quite certain you’d be willing to risk the scandal?”
Standing behind her, he laughed. “What’s a bit of scandal in a world losing its mind?” His right hand closed on her shoulder. “I’d risk the pit of hell for you, Madeline. Don’t you know that?”
She pressed her left hand over his. “Gossip about adultery isn’t what I’m talking about.”
“What, then?”
She turned, drew a long breath. “Something no one knows, except perhaps a few people in New Orleans who are very old now.”
She gazed at his bleak, tired face. In view of all that had happened today, she could no longer conceal it.
“My great-grandmother came from Africa to New Orleans on a slave ship. I’m one-eighth Negro. You know very well what that means in this part of the world.” She showed him the back of her white, veined hand. “In the eyes of most people, my skin might as well be black as a lump of coal.”
The revelation left him thunderstruck for a moment. And yet, compared to the other shocks of the day, this had no power to affect him. Brushing his palm over her cheek, he said in a gentle voice:
“Is that all there is to tell?”
“Not quite. My mother’s origins meant she was unfit to associate with white men except in one capacity. Unable to better herself except in one way. She was a prostitute. My father found her in a house in New Orleans, but he loved her enough to take her out of there and marry her—despite what he knew about her.”
“I love you the same way, Madeline.”
“I wouldn’t want you to feel you had to say—”
“The same way,” he repeated, bending to her mouth.
Her first kiss was shy. After so many months apart, they were very nearly strangers; tired strangers, at that. But he soon felt the emotional tides rising, the tides so long dammed.
She leaned back, her hands locking behind his neck. Rain blew in from the darkness to spatter her forehead and glitter in his beard. “Of course”—hope was shining in her eyes now—“there’s little chance of the secret’s ever coming to light. Those few who know are very old and far away.”