Freedom's Banner

by Freedom's Banner (retail) (epub)

  It was empty and clean, and perfectly tidy.

  She stood tiredly, frowning at the straightened furniture, the closed doors, the clean, polished floor. No sign of violence remained; and Robert’s body was gone.

  ‘Joshua?’ she asked, then called louder, into the still house, ‘Joshua?’

  Outside the closed doors Jake barked excitedly.

  She opened the front door. The winter darkness was still lit by the menacing glow over burning Atlanta. ‘Joshua! Joshua!’ She thought she might tear the skin from her throat.

  Jake bounded to her, panting.

  ‘Jake? Where is he? Where’s Joshua? Find him!’

  The dog wagged his great friendly tail and grinned his doggy grin, nudging her hand for a stick.

  ‘Find Joshua!’

  He had no idea what she was talking about, but he was ready for anything. He sat down, watching her expectantly.

  Mattie ran down the steps, her robe billowing about her, and into the centre of the wide, packed-earth clearing in front of the house. ‘Joshua! Joshua – please!’

  Jake, at last catching scent of her distress, whined a little.

  She turned and stumbled back towards the house, the sobs she had until now restrained choking in her throat. At the foot of the steps she could go no further. She sank down, buried her face in her hands, weakly letting the tiredness and the terror overwhelm her. Like a child she sobbed and, like a child, between the sobs, she begged for help; and it was Joshua’s name she called, over and over, Joshua with whom she pleaded.

  But Joshua too, it seemed, was gone.

  Chapter Twelve

  In a smoky winter dawn, Mattie woke on the floor beside the couch upon which a grey-faced Logan Sherwood lay breathing slowly and heavily, blood dark upon the bandages about his shoulder. She felt half dead herself. Eyes and head were heavy with tears and exhaustion, her neck was stiff and her right arm was painfully cramped where she had pillowed her aching head upon it.

  The house was very quiet about her; the quietest she had ever known it. It was cold, and, worse, a frightening and unnatural air of emptiness, of desertion hung about it. She struggled to her feet, shivering, wincing at every movement.

  Logan moved slightly, and groaned, uneasy in sleep. Mattie stood looking down at him. A moment at a time, she told herself, grimly, that’s the only way I’m going to get through this. A moment at a time. So; dress first. Then tend the old man. Then find some breakfast. Afterwards, we’ll see.

  She attended to the tasks, dressed in an old woollen riding skirt and jacket as being the toughest and warmest clothes her wardrobe could provide, changed the stained and sticky bandage, packing the wound with clean lint and tying it tightly in place with torn sheets. Logan Sherwood was awake, pale eyes watching her calmly as she handled the wound with inexpert hands.

  ‘So,’ he said, as she stood at last, her hands full of soiled bandages. ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘Gone,’ Mattie said, briefly. Her head was thumping like a steam engine.

  ‘What about that murderous nigger? He gone too?’

  ‘Joshua? Yes, it seems so.’ She bent to pick up a fallen bandage. Turned unfriendly eyes upon him. ‘And talking about murder –’

  ‘The boy’s dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He grunted. ‘Good.’ His eyes did not flinch from hers.

  She stuffed the bandages into the linen bag she carried. ‘You’re a vile old man. It’s a pity Joshua didn’t shoot straighter.’ She turned to the door.

  His voice rasped, painfully. ‘You may well be right, girl. Where you goin’ now?’

  ‘To get breakfast. And to get you another blanket. Though why I don’t let you freeze to death is beyond me.’

  In the kitchen she found the remnants of yesterday’s none-too-lavish meal, and some stale but eatable bread. Stirred up the fire and boiled water for tea. At least it was warm in the kitchen. She tried not to think of Robert; tried even harder not to think of his warnings, of a troop of dark-coated soldiers riding up the long avenue of live oaks.

  In the stall that Joshua had built beside the kitchen for the household’s last precious cow, the animal was bellowing mournfully. ‘Oh, God,’ she said conversationally to the kettle, ‘I can’t.’

  By mid-morning she had to; the cow’s udders were bursting with milk, and the animal was restive with the pain of it. The operation ended, of course, in exasperation and tears and with little satisfaction for either party. Most of what little milk she did extract was wasted when an irritable hoof caught the bucket and flung it against the wall. Doggedly she tried again, and was surprised when, for a moment at least, she acquired something of a knack and achieved several juicy squirts that relieved her almost as much as it did the cow.

  With what little he ate at the midday meal, Mattie produced a very large glass of whisky for Logan. ‘It’ll take more than that to put me to sleep,’ he said nastily.

  ‘We’ve got more,’ she said. ‘And if that fails I’ll hit you with the bottle,’ and pondered in some surprise upon this habit she seemed to have acquired of speaking in sentences of few words and less generosity.

  In the afternoon, with Logan Sherwood uneasily asleep, needing to think she walked with Jake a little way into the woods that stretched towards the river. Somewhere here, she thought, Robert must be buried – for surely, that must be what Joshua had done before he had left? The thought brought back the ache she had been trying to deny; the ache for companionship, for order, for strength. The ache, she suddenly realized, for Joshua. She stopped, listening. ‘Joshua?’ she called, hoping, she knew, against all reasonable hope. ‘Joshua!’

  The air was acrid still with the smell of burning. Ash had settled, a grey dust of mourning. Mattie climbed a small rise and looked westward. In the distance, against the grey cloudlike pall of smoke that hung above the burned city, and undeniably closer, a single smudged column rose into the still air.

  * * *

  That night she dragged a mattress into the library to lie beside Logan Sherwood. Drugged by alcohol, he slept. The wound, thank God, seemed so far clean and clear of infection. She lay, staring wide-eyed into the darkness, trying to organize her thoughts.

  In a day, perhaps two, with luck, the old man would be well enough to move without too much danger. They should leave Pleasant Hill and go into Macon, to the Morrisons, where someone else could take care of the wounded man, and where, if Sherman’s men did come, they would have at least some protection – the thought was such a relief that she realized for the first time, uneasily, just how frightened she was. It had, she knew, been an act of charity on Shake’s part not to take old Star with him when he went.

  Mattie could not get used to the unsettling stillness of the house, the silence outside. Even Jake, brought in to the room together with Logan’s own dogs for companionship and protection, had insisted on lying close against her, his length almost the same as hers as he stretched, twitching, in sleep.

  She shut her eyes, and saw etched against her lids every vivid detail of Robert’s dead face, staring.

  She opened them again.

  Logan snored on.

  Somewhere, far in the distance, there was a sound that might have been gunfire.

  It was not an easy night.

  * * *

  Mattie spent most of next day caring for the old man and preparing in absurdly meticulous detail for the journey to Macon. She tried to ignore Logan’s increasing restlessness, the bright colour in his cheeks, the slight puffiness of the wound. Just twenty-four hours, she prayed as she went about the house, just give me twenty-four hours. Then we’ll be safe. She gathered and packed carefully the most precious of their depleted stores – one could not in these days simply wish oneself upon a household without some payment in kind – and she planned to take the cow, tied behind the wagon. Mrs Morrison at least would be pleased to see her. The chickens would have to be left; perhaps someone could come out to pick them up later. She collected some of her own small
treasures and tried to elicit, unsuccessfully, from Logan what was most precious to him in the house.

  ‘We’re not leavin’, girl, an’ that’s flat. So it’s immaterial.’

  She was too fraught for good manners. ‘We’re going. One way or another. You can leave things or you can take them, it’s up to you.’

  ‘You’ll carry me out feet first!’

  Mattie bent over him. ‘Yes. And if necessary I will! And it’s time you came to realize that there isn’t a single thing you can do about it!’, and left, consoling herself with the furious thought that if she were a bad nurse Logan Sherwood was a far worse patient.

  She did not, that day, call for Joshua. What was the point? she asked herself, desolately. If he had any sense he’d be at least thirty miles away by now, and probably safely with the Yankee army.

  She did watch in a trepidation she could neither quell nor deny the drifting spirals of smoke that, slowly but surely, seemed to be encircling them. Ash drifted on the breeze like a shadowy and menacing snowfall.

  That night, surprisingly, the mattress upon the floor was as welcome and as comfortable as a feather bed when she threw herself, fully clothed and exhausted, upon it. Her last thought before she drifted into a sleep as deep as death was that tomorrow, before they left, she would find some hiding place in the woods for the valuables in the house – just in case.

  The thought came too late, much too late. For, very early the next morning, the Yankees came.

  * * *

  The dogs heard them first, and set up a clamour that would have wakened the dead. Mattie started, heart pounding to choke her.

  ‘What is it?’ Logan asked from the couch.

  Groggily she scrambled from her makeshift bed, ran her hand through her straggling hair. ‘I don’t know.’ She was pulling on her jacket with shaking hands.

  Growling like one of his own dogs, Logan tried to push himself into a sitting position.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ How many times, she wondered, had she taken the Lord’s name in vain in the past few days? ‘Lie down! Do you want to kill yourself?’

  ‘Damn’ nigger’s done that for me.’ Still he struggled.

  She pushed him back. ‘I’ll do it for both of us if you don’t behave yourself.’ The words were furious. She was utterly terrified. She ran to the door, ran back, pulled her boots on. ‘Stay there,’ she said. ‘Don’t dare move.’

  When Mattie opened the door the dogs shot out as fast as their four legs could carry them, barking like the hounds of hell.

  She closed the door behind her, stood for a moment in the dark hall, trying to control her shivering limbs and uncertain stomach. She could hear it now: the jingle of harness, the trample of hooves, the sharp and musical calling of orders.

  And then, above it all, the clear sound of two shots.

  She flew onto the porch. Stopped, clinging to the rail, aghast, looking at the scene below her.

  Dark uniforms, dust-covered from the red Georgian roads. Sleek and well-groomed horses.

  An officer, middle-aged, dark and tired-faced, sitting his mount with ease and not a little arrogance, one hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword.

  Logan’s two dogs lying dead in their own blood upon the ground, and the smoking muzzle of the gun that had killed them lifted towards the maniacally barking, totally harmless Jake.

  ‘No!’ Mattie almost tore her throat out with the scream.

  Very precisely the trooper took aim at the dancing dog and fired. Horribly, after the bullet took him the animal leapt once more, twisting, into the air before the body landed, paws still scrabbling at the red earth.

  Silence fell.

  Mattie walked steadily down the steps and over to the dying dog, her eyes only upon Jake, utterly ignoring the circle of faces above her.

  ‘Slave-hound,’ somebody muttered. ‘Sure as hell. Seen its teeth?’

  Mattie dropped to her knees beside the dog. Felt the life drain from him as she laid a hand upon the bloody golden fur and, seeing the dreadful wound, was thankful. The towering, venomous rage that filled her drove out any fear – outweighed, for the moment, even her grief. She stayed for a second or two sitting back upon her heels, head bowed, hand gentle upon Jake’s still body, controlling her anger, hoarding it in place of calm strength. When she stood, though her face was wet with tears, her voice was collected and ice-cold. ‘So,’ she said, chin lifted, making no attempt to disguise the blistering anger in her eyes as she looked at the mounted officer, ‘having bravely murdered three harmless pets, what next? Will you murder me? There are, what –’ she flicked a scornful glance around. One or two of the men avoided her eyes ‘– a dozen of you? The odds are about right, I’d say, wouldn’t you?’

  He was not abashed. ‘Who’s in the house?’

  ‘One old, sick man. Oh, and a couple of cats. Shall I bring them out for you so that you can use them for target practice too?’

  His eyes still on her, the man turned his head a little. ‘Bartlett. Prescott. Brown. And you, Spender, search the outhouses. You know what to do.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’ The men swung from their horses.

  ‘Martin, Burroughs and Stevens, take a look around the back – and you two –’ he pointed ‘– get down to the wharf and fire that cotton.’

  Mattie stood, her dead dog at her feet. The officer’s eyes flickered down to the body and back to her face. ‘We have orders to exterminate any hound that’s been used to hunt down slaves.’

  ‘And you automatically assume that anything on four legs that barks has been used for such a purpose?’ Still the bitter, liberating rage burned, clear and steady in her brain. ‘Is your cruelty and blind stupidity wilful, Sir, or does it come naturally?’

  ‘Abuse will get you nowhere.’

  ‘And an appeal to your better nature would?’ The words were bleakly mocking. Her voice shook.

  ‘Ma’am, please.’ A young man swung from his horse and stepped towards her, snatching his hat from his head as he did so. ‘We were not to know –’

  ‘You didn’t wait to find out.’ She turned and strode, straight-backed, towards the house.

  He walked beside her. When he spoke his voice was low. ‘Please. It would be best if you co-operated.’ He hesitated as she flicked him with a withering glance, then added with obstinate perseverance, ‘Is there really an invalid in the house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And no-one else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The menfolk –’ he paused again ‘– they’re with the Rebel army?’

  They had reached the bottom of the steps. Mattie stopped and turned to face him. He was small and slight, her face was almost on a level with his. ‘The menfolk, Sir, are dead. At Shiloh. All of them. Except –’ suddenly the smallest flicker of something kindled in her mind ‘– except for the one who is fighting in the Union army,’ she said levelly. ‘I’m sure he’ll be interested to hear about this.’

  ‘You have someone fighting for the Union? Your husband?’

  ‘My brother-in-law. Sherwood. Robert Sherwood. He’s with your army, I believe. It’s his father who’s sick in the house.’

  ‘Lieutenant Rivers? Over here, please.’ It was the other officer. His voice was impatient.

  ‘Coming, Captain.’ The young man lowered his voice again, speaking very rapidly. ‘Ma’am, listen – we’re under orders to burn Rebel homes, destroy crops and stores – but you just might be able to save the house, if you really do have an invalid in there and you can prove that one of the sons really is in the Union army.’

  From the direction of the barn came the sound of shouting, laughter, and the frantic squawking of chickens. Two troopers appeared, carrying in each hand a couple of hens, held by their legs. The birds flapped and screeched indignantly. Casually they were tossed to a couple of mounted men, and as casually those men wrung their necks and tied the birds to their saddles.

  Desperately now Mattie needed time to think. ‘May I go and see to the old ma
n? He should be told what’s going on.’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  She ran up the steps and into the house.

  Logan had manoeuvred himself half-off the couch, his feet on the floor. His grey face ran with sweat. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘The Yankees are here. They’ve killed the dogs. They’re stealing everything they can lay a hand on – be still!’ Logan, with a surge of furious energy, had all but pulled himself to his feet. ‘Listen for once! There’s one, just one, who seems half-way decent. Logan, is there any way – any way at all – that we can prove that Robert served – is still serving – in the Union army?’

  The old man’s mouth clamped to an iron line.

  Mattie banged the palms of her hands together in frustration. ‘I can’t think of anything! Not anything!’

  ‘Why should you want to?’

  ‘The young lieutenant seemed to think it might help – might even prevent them from firing the house.’ The energy of anger that had propelled her through the last ten awful minutes suddenly drained from her. To her horror she felt the rise of helpless, frightened tears. Logan watched as she turned from him, battling them, hunching her shoulders against him, fighting for control of herself. ‘They killed Jake,’ she said, ‘Oh, Logan, they killed my poor, silly Jake!’

  ‘There’s a letter,’ Logan said, roughly. ‘In the bureau.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In the bureau. A letter.’

  Mattie turned to look at him, startled from her tears. He gestured impatiently. Galvanized, she flew to the bureau. ‘The key – Logan, where’s the key?’

  ‘Over there. On the shelf.’

  She ran to fetch it, fumbled with the lock, threw open the bureau. ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘A letter. In the damn pigeonhole at the top.’