She found it, opened it with unsteady fingers. There was a brief moment of silence. ‘You never told anyone,’ she said.
‘No business of anyone else’s.’ His face was stubborn. ‘I wrote back an’ I told him, by damn – show your face here, I said, and by Christ I’ll kill you.’
She threw him a single, furious look before she ran from the room, the letter in her hand.
The grim-faced captain sat on his tall horse and looked at the paper for a long time, before passing it, expressionless, to his young second-in-command.
‘It – looks genuine enough?’ the lieutenant ventured.
‘It would be a little difficult, wouldn’t it,’ Mattie asked, crisply, ‘for a Southerner to steal paper with the crest of one of Sherman’s own regiments on? And prescient to the point of clairvoyance, I should have thought, to mail it from Mississippi upwards of two years ago?’
‘Please understand,’ Robert had written, ‘it is because you have brought me up in honour and in truth that I can do nothing but fight for what I truly believe to be right.’
Mattie pushed the words away from her, together with the memory of that staring, dead face.
‘The house will go to Robert now, when his father dies,’ she said, forcing her voice to some small measure of conciliation. ‘The other boys are all dead, lost at Shiloh. Mr Sherwood is a very sickly old man. The loss of his sons, you understand – and the shortages – it’s been very hard.’
The man on the black horse frowned a little, thoughtfully. Billows of smoke rolled by them from the barns, which had already been fired. Old Star and the cow were tethered together behind one of the Union horses. Mattie could hear the yelps and shouts of the soldiers who were busy systematically destroying what was left of the vegetable garden.
Lieutenant Rivers glanced towards the bloodstained carcasses of the dogs. ‘Is there need to fire the house, Sir,’ he asked, quietly, ‘in the circumstances?’
‘There does seem to be some –’ The captain stopped, his blue eyes lifted, looking beyond Mattie.
She heard him behind her, closed her eyes for the space of a heartbeat to battle a frightened fury in which she knew that if she turned and found him within reaching distance, she would kill him in cold blood.
‘An’ might I ask, Sir, just what you an’ this rabble think you’re doin’ on my property?’ Logan was leaning upon a long old rifle that had hung above the fireplace in the library, using it as a crutch. His great head with its shock of white hair was up, the pale eyes burning in a paler, all but translucent face. His southern drawl had never been so strong, yet the words were clear and precise, defying his pain. The scarlet patch of seeping blood upon his shoulder, exposed by the rags of the shirt that Mattie had torn from his body to get at the wound, was bright and garish in the cold morning light as the fresh mark of sin upon a snow-white soul.
Mattie took a long, long breath, and wished him, and his pride, and his stubborn, disastrous courage, stone dead.
Very slowly the captain kneed the big, well-schooled horse forward. His eyes were narrowed. ‘This,’ he asked, dangerously mildly, ‘is your invalid?’
Mattie stood wordless. She saw the young lieutenant’s eyes flicker to her and away.
‘That ain’t no sick man,’ a trooper said, laconically thoughtful, leaning an arm upon the high pommel of his saddle, and turning to spit into the dust, ‘that’s a man with a gunshot wound, or I’m a Dutchman’s aunt.’
‘Well, old man?’ The captain straightened in the saddle, his voice still quiet.
‘An’ what business might it be of yours, Sir?’ Logan Sherwood might have been at ease in his own drawing room correcting an ill-mannered child. Even whilst she raged at the stupidity of it, Mattie could not suppress something that was beyond good sense, beyond even the urgent need for self-preservation; something close to pride.
‘I’ll tell you what business it is of mine, old man.’ The captain kneed the animal closer to the porch, so that his eyes were on a level with Logan’s own. ‘You ever hear tell of Reb vigilantes around here? You ever hear tell of the bunch of murderers who ambushed a troop of our men up by Jonesboro? Or of the Rebel scum who tried to blow the bridge at Covington?’
‘No!’ Mattie had found her tongue. ‘No, Captain, you’re wrong. Mr Sherwood has nothing to do with any such group. He was shot a couple of days ago by an escaping slave –’
The man did not even look at her. His eyes, bright and hard, were still fixed upon Logan’s face. ‘We got orders to hang any outlaw Reb we find,’ he said, his voice hard. ‘You want to tell me now how you got shot, old man?’
Logan Sherwood drew himself up and stood silent.
‘I told you. It was a runaway slave,’ Mattie said. ‘For goodness’ sake, look at him. Does he look capable of riding around the country fighting Yankees?’
‘Yes,’ the man said, flatly and with impervious hostility, ‘he does. Him and his kind – they’re the ones started this business.’ At last he looked at her, and his eyes were malevolent. ‘You got ten minutes, lady.’
‘Ten minutes for what?’
‘To save what you can of personal belongings. Nothing of any value, you understand. All such property is forfeit.’ He pulled a gleaming watch from his pocket. ‘Ten minutes. Then my men go in, and then we fire the place.’ He leaned forward, watching Logan again. ‘And one move, old man – just one move to stop, and I’ll string you from the highest tree we can find. You understand?’
‘You burn Pleasant Hill,’ Logan said, ‘and you burn me with it.’
The man nodded brusquely. ‘It’s your choice, old man.’
Logan turned to go back inside the house.
Mattie sprang to him. ‘No! Logan, please! They’ll do it!’
‘I daresay. Out of my way, Mattie.’
She shook her head.
‘Out of my way, I say!’
‘Logan, please – don’t be so stupid!’ The words were despairing; even so in some strange recess of her mind she registered the disrespect in front of strangers, half expected a rebuke. ‘Get away from the house. Let me save what I can.’
He shook his head obstinately. Behind him she saw that the young lieutenant had dismounted and was coming up the steps towards them. ‘Hold him!’ she snapped, and pushed Logan hard, with both hands. Taken entirely off guard, the old man teetered for a moment, then lost his balance and keeled over backwards. The young Yankee threw himself forward, and he and Logan finished in an awkward heap at the foot of the steps. ‘Keep him out!’ Mattie did not wait for a reply; did not pause to ascertain that no permanent damage had been done. Heart hammering in panic, she turned and ran back into the house.
* * *
They allowed her to bring out the personal mementos she had gathered together to take to Macon, the photographs of the boys that Logan had had in the library, some clothes for both of them. ‘There are some books,’ she said, holding up the small, mud-stained Shelley for him to see. ‘Just a couple. May we keep them?’
The captain shrugged, impatiently. ‘I suppose so.’
Logan sat under guard upon a chair beneath a moss-hung live oak, watching the activity, stone-faced, as his home – his life – was raped by the strangers who might have been the men who had killed his sons. Upright and bloodstained, his white hair wild about his great head, he looked like a fearsome and vengeful prophet from the Old Testament; it was a wonder, Mattie thought wearily, as she joined him with the pathetic bundles she had been allowed to save, that the whole troop were not destroyed by a thunderbolt, or swallowed up by the earth. But they were not. Systematically they looted Pleasant Hill, and then as systematically they fired it. The lovely old house, wooden-clad and tinder dry, went up like a funeral pyre – which indeed it was, since, at the last moment, a trooper had dragged the carcasses of the dead dogs up the steps of the porch and flung them inside, though the bloodstains remained, red on the red earth.
Mattie stood, hands clenched about the back of Logan’s chair,
watching through resolutely silent tears as the flames danced and licked from the windows, which had been flung open to increase the draught. Glass shattered and tinkled. Sparks towered into the air with the column of smoke marking this barbaric act of intolerance and unforgiveness that would breed, for a hundred years, more and more of such. Men had to shout to be heard above the vengeful roar of the conflagration. When the roof collapsed, the blast of heat that swept the clearing might have been the breath of hell itself.
The soldiers left not long afterwards, when it was clear that the house could not be saved, trotting down the drive in orderly column, leaving Logan still in his chair, his smoke-reddened eyes upon the burning ruins of his home, Mattie kneeling beside him, her hand, numbed from the pressure, clamped tightly into his. Before they rode away the young lieutenant, one eye upon his commanding officer, hovered apologetically, trying to catch her eye. She ignored him stonily. There were a couple of troopers too, she noticed, who did not apparently relish this work of destruction quite as some of their comrades did. It made no difference; she hated them none the less. As the sounds of their departure died, and only the hungry crackling of flame, the occasional sound of structural collapse from within the inferno filled the clearing, she hated them all, from the very depths of her heart and soul. And with hatred came despair. She was alone, with an injured old man and nothing but destruction about her. Gently she freed her hand. She did not look at his face, which she knew was riven by tears that she understood would shame him, no matter how needlessly. Instead she rummaged in the bundle she had dropped beside her. Produced a slightly battered-looking, leather-bound volume.
‘Well,’ she said, with a sturdy attempt at bravado that did not quite come off, ’it’s a good job that God-forsaken Yankee didn’t want to know why a respectable woman like me would have wanted to save this.’
Logan turned his head a little, blindly.
‘The Scarlet Letter,’ she read from the spine, ‘by Nathaniel Hawthorne.’
He nodded.
‘Joshua told me,’ she said, hoping – praying – for some reaction, some anger, even; anything.
He turned his face back to the still-burning ruins of the house.
Mattie fiddled with the small metal lock upon the book, opened it to reveal a cavity cut into the pages, the glint and clink of gold. She looked at it bleakly. You couldn’t eat gold.
‘My boys will never forgive me,’ Logan said, ‘for allowing this to happen.’ And then, ‘I would give my soul,’ he added with a deadly rancour that seemed to take the last of his energy, ‘to see those bastards dead in their own blood.’
* * *
The slave cabins had been left standing, having been considered too poor in pickings to be looted. They stood, cold and empty, in their street not far from the smouldering pyre. Mattie found the soundest and most comfortable, brought primitive furnishings from the others and moved herself and the old man in. Logan Sherwood was feverish and exhausted; otherwise, she felt, he might well have insisted upon sleeping in the open before he occupied one of his own slave cabins. The ruins of Pleasant Hill still smoked, the embers were red hot; at least she had no difficulty in kindling a fire in the small fireplace in the single room of the cabin. With the old man sleeping restlessly at last she wandered the devastated and trampled gardens, gathering what she could, though it was precious little – a few potatoes, some carrots and some old, wrinkled apples on the hacked-down apple tree. A couple of chickens wandered disconsolately from the woods, and flittered back, refusing to be caught.
Logan’s fever mounted.
The Infirmary was in ashes; nothing had survived. Mattie brought water from the well and bathed his face and his body. The wound was unhealthily discoloured and looked appallingly inflamed and painful. His temperature was obviously perilously high.
The day wore on; she was so tired she could hardly put one foot in front of the other. Her sore eyes ran and her throat was raw from the smoke. She moved like an automaton, empty, utterly exhausted. She wanted to lie down, to sleep for ever. She wanted to scream. She wanted this not to have happened; could not understand why it had.
Quietly and with care Mattie tended to Logan, doing everything within her power to ease the pain, to make him comfortable, though no amount of stoic courage on the old man’s part could conceal from her the obvious truth that it was not enough.
Determinedly she banished thought, and feeling. One moment at a time. That was the only way to survive nightmare.
The interminable day ended at last; dusk turned to darkness and, cold and hungry, having shared a boiled potato with the feverish Logan, she wrapped herself in a blanket and lay upon the hard wooden pallet she had set beside his.
Outside in the darkness the charred ruins of Pleasant Hill glowed in drifting smoke, whilst the two strong, fire-marked brick chimneys reached still, like accusing fingers, towards the clouded sky; Sherman’s Tombstones. But in those last exhausted and unguarded moments when Mattie at last could no longer prevent herself from giving way to miserable tears, it was not for the wanton and terrible destruction of the graceful old house that she cried, nor was it in sadness for the way of life that had irrevocably gone with it. It was – absurdly she supposed, even through her distress – for Jake; for the poor, harmless, trusting animal whose uncomplicated affection had seen her through so many trials and whom she had been unable to save from slaughter. She lay, chill, lonely and frightened, and ached for his silly, boisterous, undemanding companionship, the soft reassurance of his fur beneath her hand, the roughness of his tongue upon her skin; could see nothing as the hot tears slid down her face but his body, stiff, bloodstained, ugly in death as he never could have been in life, sprawled, a sacrifice to unthinking hatred, upon the red earth.
When at last she dozed off her fitful sleep was full of menace; each time she slipped from consciousness the flames roared, Jake twisted, screaming in the air, and manic images filled her head. Unknown voices babbled and shouted.
And then she woke in a cold, clear panic and knew that what she had heard was no figment of her imagination; there was someone – something – moving outside the hut.
The door had neither bar nor lock. As she watched, by the light of the small oil-wick lamp she had left burning near the sick man, the wooden latch was slowly and carefully lifted.
Almost without thought Mattie flung herself off the narrow pallet and grabbed for the ancient rifle that Logan had used to support himself. ‘Stay where you are,’ she called, shakily, backed against the mud-plastered log wall. ‘I have a gun.’
The door swung open. Had the weapon she held been operative she would have pulled the trigger upon the empty, smoky square of night it revealed.
‘Who’s there?’
‘Miss Mattie? It’s me. Don’t shoot. I’m coming in.’
The wave of relief that engulfed her was so great she almost collapsed where she stood. ‘Joshua? Joshua – is it you?’
A shadow in the darkness, his big frame blocked the doorway for a moment, then he slipped inside, bare feet silent on the packed earth floor, and closed the door behind him.
‘Joshua,’ she said, faintly. ‘Oh – Joshua!’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Mattie,’ he said, in the deep, musical voice she would have recognized anywhere, ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you.’
Mattie had dropped the useless gun and, unthinking, stepped forward and across the tiny room to him before he had stopped speaking. ‘Joshua? It’s really you? Oh, thank God.’ She reached to grasp his warm, strong hands in hers. ‘The soldiers came – they burned the house – and killed –’ she was crying uncontrollably ‘– the dogs – and took everything. Oh Joshua, I’ve been so frightened, and I am so very, very pleased to see you!’
‘I saw from the bluff. Thought I’d better make sure they were really gone before I came down.’
‘You’ve – you’ve been here all the time?’
He nodded.
She bit her tongue, but could not control he
r face.
His grip upon her hands tightened a little. ‘I’d have done you no good at all dancing from a tree, Miss Mattie. The Yankees’d string me up as quick as any Reb would for shooting a white man.’ He turned his head to look down at Logan. ‘And he’d have told them all right. We both know that.’ He bent forward, listening to the other man’s difficult breathing. ‘He’s alive, then?’ His voice was dispassionate.
‘Yes. But bad. I was going to take him into Macon, but the Yankees came – they took Star, burned the wagon. And I’ve nothing to help him – the Yankees burned the Infirmary – Joshua, we’ve nothing to eat –’
‘Wait till morning, Miss Mattie. There are places the Yankees didn’t know where to look.’ He smiled a very little. ‘Places you wouldn’t know where to look. Get back to sleep. I’ll watch the old man.’ Gently he released her hands, put her from him. ‘I’ll wake you if he needs you, I promise. Get some sleep, Miss Mattie. That’s what you need most, I reckon.’
She stood for a moment, her face tense, the catalogue of disasters still singing in her tired brain. Joshua pulled her pallet over by the fire, replaced it by Logan’s bed with a battered wooden chair. ‘You get some sleep, Miss Mattie,’ he repeated, coaxing. ‘I’ll wake you if it’s needed, I promise.’
The thought of a secure, guarded rest was almost overwhelming. She settled herself down on the pallet; the fire warmed her back like a benison. ‘Joshua?’ she began.
Joshua was bent over Logan, his face intent, one hand resting gently upon the sick man’s forehead. Something about the sight faintly worried her.
Joshua straightened the blanket about the old man, laid a quiet hand upon his forehead, turned his head to look at Mattie. ‘Yes, Miss Mattie?’
Mattie, sound asleep, did not hear him.
* * *
She woke knowing what had worried her. She was scrambling to her feet almost before thought.
Logan lay very still, one hand thrown wide. There was no sign of Joshua.
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