* * *
In the spring of 1862 the whole of the South was cockahoop with the news of Stonewall Jackson’s exploits in the Shenandoah Valley. At least it took the mind off the rising prices, the facts that the bottom had fallen out of the slave market, gold was selling in the Confederacy at a premium of fifty per cent and there was still no sign that Britain and France were desperate, as had been so confidently predicted, for the cotton that was piled up on wharves and in warehouses all over the blockaded South. Good old Stonewall, running rings round three Union armies, cocking a snook at the best the North could throw at him; with the world’s toughest fighting men at his back he was showing Lincoln a thing or two! The news also went a considerable way to wiping out the memory of the surrender of Forts Henry and Donelson, on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, which had lost western Tennessee and the state of Kentucky for the South. From those engagements another nickname had come; Brigadier-General Ulysses S. Grant’s message to the defenders of Donelson – ‘no terms but an immediate and unconditional surrender can be accepted’ – tied in too well with his initials to be ignored, and ‘Unconditional Surrender’ Grant he had become to a celebrating North. Most of the nicknames his enemies bestowed upon him did not bear repeating.
It was towards the end of that March, with growing signs that the Federal armies were, after this first year of war, being moulded by their leaders into a daunting fighting force that, at last, things came to a head between Robert and his father.
* * *
During the winter another two field hands had fled north. Of even more concern to Logan Sherwood was that a favoured house slave, a young man called Mose, had also attempted escape. Dragged back by the patrollers and their hounds, the boy had been strapped to the barn door and savagely flogged before the assembled hands and then, despite the pleas of his mother, sold off for little more than pennies to a sharecropper in Alabama, stern warning to any that might think of following his example. The awful business set yet more barriers between father and son; quite clearly Logan was convinced that Robert’s stance was putting subversive ideas into his people’s heads, encouraging them to believe that the war would free them. The contest between these two, as too often between those who love deeply but who find themselves divided, was becoming more bitter every day.
On the last day of March, with signs of spring bright and beautiful in the fields and woods of Pleasant Hill, another absconding slave was hauled back in chains to the plantation by a patrol that had caught him an ineffectual ten miles upriver, heading, he had defiantly told them, for the place where Mister Lincoln lived; for Mister Lincoln was the slave’s friend.
‘Friend, boy?’ The brutally casual blow accompanying the words had knocked him from his feet. ‘You ain’t got no friend. Who in the world told you such a story?’ In his hand the patroller held a rope, fashioned into a noose. As he spoke he swung it, thoughtfully. The men around him grinned, and the dogs, which had already tasted blood, lunged, snarling, at the fallen man, to be pulled off at the last minute by their handlers. There was no fun to be had turning the dogs loose; it was all over too quickly.
Terrified, the captive cowered from them. ‘Done heard Mister Robert talkin’ to Joshua,’ he wailed. ‘Done heard him!’
‘Well, you – done – heard – wrong, – boy.’ Each word was accompanied by a precisely placed, vicious kick from a booted foot.
‘Mister Robert?’ one of the men asked of his companions.
‘Sherwood,’ said another, menacingly quiet. ‘Of Pleasant Hill.’
They arrived with their captive and their story in the early afternoon. Logan and Robert, called in from the fields, sat upon their horses in a closed-faced silence and listened. Mattie and Cissy watched from the porch. Mattie was aware of Joshua, standing behind her, still as a carved image. The recaptured slave had not been treated gently. Blood had dried dark upon his dark skin, and glistened still, bright and horrifying, in the woollen thatch of his hair. Bones had been broken, and he could barely stand. He was in a state of terror that took him almost beyond speech. Only the sight of Robert had galvanized him. ‘Mister Robert – Mister Robert, please – doan’ let dem string me up – doan’ let dem hang me –’
Rage glittered in Logan Sherwood’s pale eyes. ‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ he said, courteously, to the slave’s captors who sat their own mounts, hard-eyed and watchful. ‘You may with confidence leave this with me.’
The leader shifted a little in the saddle, his hand moving to the noose that was slung across it. ‘Seems to me, Mister Sherwood – with respect, you understand? – there’s an example to be made here.’
‘Right. And Robert will make it.’ Logan turned his head, looked at his son for the space of half a dozen heartbeats before turning back to the scene before him. The slave – Benj, Mattie remembered he was called – was on his knees, bloodied and terrified, on the hard-packed red earth, hands chained behind him, the rope by which he had been led here still about his neck. About him, carelessly, danced the hooves of his captors’ horses. The hounds snarled, watching him as if he were prey. Her stomach roiled suddenly and she turned away.
‘Squeamish, darlin’?’ Cissy asked, spitefully pleasantly.
Despising herself for allowing herself to be goaded, Mattie gritted her teeth, and turned back.
‘– take him to the barn. Put him up on the door,’ Logan Sherwood was saying, crisply. ‘Sol, sound the bell – get the hands in from the fields. The house servants too. Everyone. In front of the barn, in an hour.’ He reached for the big whip that hung always at his saddle, turned, straight-backed, in the saddle, to hold out the coiled, wicked-looking thing to his son.
Robert sat like stone.
‘You flog him,’ Logan Sherwood said, very clearly, ‘or I hand him back to our friends here.’
‘No, Mister Robert, no!’ It was a scream of pure terror. ‘Doan’ let dem take me! They’ll string me up for sure – they’ll let them houn’s have me!’
Robert flinched. Mattie looked away. Cissy smiled.
‘A whippin’?’ The leader of the patrol shook his head. ‘Now I ain’t real sure that –’
‘A whippin’, Sir, yes.’ Logan had turned back to him, his face grim. ‘This is Pleasant Hill business on Pleasant Hill land. As a general rule it is not my policy to string my people up on the nearest tree, whatever the offence.’ His voice was edged with acid. Mattie saw the other man’s lips tighten. ‘However –’ Logan looked at the upturned faces around him, well aware of the impact of his words ‘– if my son refuses to do his duty then you may take that –’ his eyes flicked in cold contempt to the sobbing man on the ground ‘– and do as you will with it. I think, however, that you may rest assured that a flogging will be administered that no-one on this plantation, slave or otherwise, will ever forget. Robert?’ Still he held the coiled whip, steady in his extended hand.
For a moment it seemed that Robert would refuse.
‘Please, Mister Robert –’ Benj was sobbing uncontrollably ‘– you whup me – please! Doan’ give me back to them.’
Robert took the whip.
Soft-footed, Joshua spun on his heels and went back into the house, the door closing behind him with a sharp click.
‘Well,’ Cissy said, much diverted, ‘there’s a thing.’
* * *
‘If you don’t mind, Mr Sherwood –’ for all her effort, Mattie could not keep her voice as precise as she would have liked ‘– I’d rather not witness the –’ she swallowed ‘– the punishment.’
Logan Sherwood appended his signature unhurriedly to the paper he was studying, looked up. They were in the library. Outside the plantation bell tolled, calling in the hands from the fields.
‘But I’m afraid I do mind, my dear.’ His expression, like his voice, was unruffled. ‘In fact I find myself havin’ to insist. Everyone, I said. And everyone I meant.’
‘But –’
‘No buts, Mattie. Believe me, I would not subject your delicate sensi
bilities to such a test if I did not feel it to be necessary.’
The anger that had been boiling in her ever since the brutal scene of half an hour ago was making her tremble. Within the fullness of her skirts she clenched her fists, willing herself to calm. ‘You aren’t punishing Benj,’ she said, ‘you’re punishing Robert.’
He had picked up his pen. He looked at it for a moment before, with the slightest of patient breaths, setting it down again and looking at her. ‘How very perceptive of you, my dear.’
Mattie flushed to the roots of her hair.
He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. Sarcasm is not my favourite form of wit. I apologize.’
She shook the apology off with a fierce movement of her head. ‘Mr Sherwood – please! – don’t make Robert flog Benj. From the look of him the boy’s crippled for life already. Isn’t that enough? To flog him could kill him.’
He lifted his eyes. For a second so brief she wondered if she had misjudged it, she was taken aback by the naked, savage pain she glimpsed there. Then, ‘Possibly,’ Logan Sherwood said. The word was cold.
‘But how can you force your own son –’
He interrupted her, very sharply, hand lifted. ‘Robert will do his duty. In this if in nothin’ else. It’s a matter of principle –’
‘No principle that I recognize, Mr Sherwood!’ Mattie’s voice was unsteady with anger. The man stood, leaned his hands upon the desk, looking at her levelly, his own face schooled now and all but emotionless. ‘I’m sorry, Mattie,’ he said at last, his voice very cool and very quiet, ‘I hadn’t realized just how much I had overestimated your backbone. Strange, how wrong one can be about people. Very well, perhaps you’re right. If you haven’t the stomach, then by all means you’re excused.’
She glared at him for a long, precarious moment. Then ‘Go to hell, Mr Sherwood,’ she heard herself say, surprisingly quietly but very clearly indeed, before she turned and strode, skirts belling awkwardly about her, to the door.
Behind her the silence was perilous.
She shut the door upon it, furiously, outfacing the panic that she knew might overwhelm her if she actually considered what she had just done.
The house was still; tensely so. No voice lifted, no slave hurried soft-footed about the rooms. Apart from the austere tolling of the bell, there was no sound. Almost without thought, Mattie let her momentum carry her on to the door that led to the only person in the house she could think of who might find some solution to this barbarous situation.
She pulled at the bell rope. Below her she heard the bell ring. Nothing happened. She opened the door. ‘Joshua? Are you there?’
She had never before ventured into Joshua’s realm; she peered into the shadows. Wide stone steps led down to a brick-paved hallway from which opened several doors. Daylight filtered from a tiny window close to the ceiling. ‘Joshua?’
Still nothing. Gingerly she lifted her skirts and stepped carefully down the worn stairs. ‘Joshua!’
The first two doors she tried were locked; the third opened onto a room neat and spare as a monk’s cell, containing bed, cupboard, chair and table and a small shelf full of books. The floor here was brick, too, and the low ceiling was the unpainted wooden boards of the floor above. The curtainless window was set high, and level with the ground outside.
Joshua sat at the table, barefoot and in shirtsleeves and the wide cotton trousers of a field hand, his big hands wrapped around a glass. Beside him stood a half-full bottle of whisky. He did not move as she pushed open the door.
‘Joshua, I’m sorry – I don’t mean to disturb you. I couldn’t think of anyone else –’ The words trailed into the silence. The man had lifted his head and was watching her, waiting. Every taut line of his face was a line drawn in relentless pain and an agony of anger.
Mattie had come too far to back out now. She stepped forward, her hands held urgently towards him. ‘Please, Joshua! No-one’s doing anything – no-one’s even trying to stop this. There surely must be something we can do?’
He turned away from her. Very steadily he poured more whisky into his glass, and without looking at her lifted it to his lips.
‘Joshua! For God’s sake! Don’t you care?’
His sudden movement, arrested as swiftly as it had begun, made her jump. She flinched at what for one unguarded moment she saw in his face. ‘Oh, I’m sorry – I’m sorry! Of course you do – I just can’t bear just to stand by and see this happen – not to try to do something –’ She was close to tears.
He spoke at last. ‘Do somethin’, Miss Mattie?’ he asked. ‘Now what in the world does you suggests this poor foolish nigger ups an’ does?’ The drawl was exaggerated to parody. ‘Go beg the mass’er to be kind, an’ please not to whup poor ole Benj? Ast him ter send away them nasty ole pattyrollers an’ their houn’s?’
‘Stop that! Stop it!’
‘Yes, Ma’am.’ His mouth clamped to a straight and bitter line.
‘Joshua, I’m trying to help – I thought you might think of something –’
‘No, Ma’am.’
‘It’ll kill Robert to flog that boy.’
The dark eyes lifted again, intelligent, pain-filled and distant. Mattie got the feeling that he hardly even saw her. ‘Likely it’ll kill Benj too,’ Joshua said, very softly.
The bell had ceased its ringing. Joshua poured himself another drink.
Mattie watched him helplessly. ‘I just told Logan Sherwood to go to hell,’ she said, not knowing for the life of her why she said it.
For a moment it looked as if he would not even answer. Then, his expression unchanged, ‘’Bout time someone did,’ he said, quietly, and then with the briefest glimmer of a grim smile added, ‘You tell anyone I said that and I’ll be the next one on the barn door.’
‘I won’t tell anyone.’
He looked back down at the bottle, the smile gone. ‘I never thought you would, Miss Mattie. I never for a minute thought you would.’
She stood watching him, wordless. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last, bleakly. ‘I shouldn’t have come. If I’m honest I don’t know why I did. I can’t think what I imagined you could do when the rest of us are helpless.’ She turned from him, walked to the door.
‘Wait. Miss Mattie – wait!’ Joshua’s voice stopped her as she reached the threshold. She did not turn. All she wanted now was to leave. She could not bear the thought of this man seeing her break down and weep like a child. She heard the chairlegs scrape as he pushed the chair back from the table. ‘Wait,’ he said again. His voice suddenly was its normal self, deep, husky and quiet. ‘It isn’t for you to apologize. It’s for me to be thankin’ you – for comin’ down here. For believin’, even for a moment, that I could do somethin’ to help. I appreciate that, Miss Mattie. You’re wrong, but that ain’t your fault. You did it for the best.’
‘For the best and for nothing,’ she said, her back to him still, unable to keep the sound of bitter tears from her voice.
Joshua had moved behind her, silently on bare feet, standing very close. She could feel his warmth, smell the faint smell of whisky on his breath. She bowed her head, buried her face briefly in her spread hands, furiously fighting off the desire to give way to a helpless and useless storm of tears.
‘There, now, Miss Mattie. There, now. No need to take on so. Brave lady like you?’ The touch of his hand was light upon her shoulder. She felt his other hand on her hair, smoothing and stroking with easy, comforting rhythm. ‘One thing in this life to learn, Miss Mattie. Ain’t no use takin’ on about somethin’ you can’t do a damn thing about.’ The musical voice was soothing, gentle. Oddly and disturbingly tender. She stood, still tense and trembling a little. Then for a single, shocking moment, she let herself lean against him, let herself be lulled by that deep, lovely voice, gentled by the stroking hands. She dropped her own hands from her face, lifted her head, turning it into his shoulder, eyes still closed. His hand brushed her cheek, the thumb resting on her lips.
Each pulled away
from the other at the same moment. She backed away from him slowly and carefully, her eyes locked on his. Light gaze and dark held for a moment, as if hypnotized, lucid and fearful. Joshua’s gleaming eyes narrowed. He shook his head, sharply.
Mattie, heart pounding, turned and fled for the stone stairs.
* * *
The punishment did not kill Benj, though it came close. Nor, from any expression he permitted to show, did the savage business openly cause Robert any distress. Mattie, goaded as Logan Sherwood had known she would be, had steeled herself to be part of the silent throng who gathered to watch the whipping. She thought she had never seen anything so demeaningly brutal, and was certain that the sound of Benj’s screams as the lash lifted and fell with intolerable regularity upon his bleeding back would stay with her for ever; though the silence at the end, when the screaming was done and the blows fell dully upon a sagging and all but lifeless body, was worse. Sweat sheened Robert’s face, dripped from his hair, stained the back of his shirt. Benj’s mother and sister keened quietly, their aprons over their heads. It was not until Mattie herself was close to screaming that Logan Sherwood at last lifted a finger to stop the merciless beating. Robert lowered his tired arm. The man lashed to the barn door did not move. Flies buzzed about his raw, striped back.
‘Well, Sir?’ Logan faced the patroller, who sat his horse to the side of the crowd, watching. ‘Are you satisfied?’
The man nodded, grinning. ‘’Bin quicker to hang him. An’ cost a mite less energy,’ he said, and, touching his hat, kneed his horse round and walked him off down the drive.
‘Joshua. The brine.’
Joshua, stripped to the same shirt and trousers he had been wearing when last Mattie had seen him, stepped forward and dowsed the still figure upon the door with two buckets of salted water. She averted her eyes.
Benj made a sound like an injured animal.
‘Take him down. To the Infirmary. Careful, there! You – ’Lilah – go with them. Robert –’ He stopped.
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