Freedom's Banner

by Freedom's Banner (retail) (epub)

  She laid a not quite steady hand to the old man’s cheek. It was warm; too warm. As she touched him, he moved a little, muttering.

  Her pulse and her heart slowed, and panic died.

  ‘He’s still alive, Miss Mattie.’ The voice from the door was quiet. ‘What else did you expect? I promised I’d wake you if needed.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I know – it was just – you weren’t here – I –’ She stopped in confusion.

  His steady dark eyes looked past her disjointed words and to her uneasy thoughts. ‘It’s just that you went to sleep and left a sick man in charge of the renegade that shot him,’ he said.

  ‘No, I –’

  He did not let her finish. ‘I went to fetch these. They might help.’ He lifted his hand. In it he held fresh herbs, and a small pot of salve. On the table by the window Mattie now noticed several pieces of primitive cooking equipment that had not been there the day before, and a small stack of bags and tins. ‘I found some food, too – no banquet I’m afraid, but better than nothing.’

  ‘Where?’ Mattie had moved to the table. There was flour and corn, ham and butter and biscuits and honey, and fresh eggs. ‘Where did you find this?’

  ‘Where de Mass’er don’t look,’ he said.

  ‘Well de Mass’er’s damn well looking now.’ Logan’s voice was thin, and was interrupted by a bout of painful coughing. ‘Damned murdering… I’ll see you hanged, see if I don’t –’

  Mattie ran to him, pressed him back against the stained straw-filled pillows. ‘Lie still! You’ll kill yourself!’

  Pale, malevolent eyes were fixed upon Joshua. ‘Get it right, girl. If I die he’s the one who’ll swing for it –’

  ‘Logan, calm down and stop it! We need Joshua.’

  ‘Need him? By God I will die, an’ happy to do it, before I’ll depend on this Judas or my life.’

  ‘Life,’ Joshua said gently, ‘consists of many things,’ and pulled from his pocket an almost full bottle of whisky, which he placed with great care upon the small, rickety table next to Logan’s bed.

  Logan turned his head away, but not before they had both seen the flash of pure longing in his face. ‘Poisoned, is it?’

  ‘Hold still, and stop talking nonsense,’ Mattie said, very briskly, cringing before she ever got near the task, ‘I’m going to get rid of this old dressing. Joshua, do you have a knife? Or scissors? I think it’s probably better to cut it away.’ She accepted the small, sharp knife that he handed her, and set herself to the task, trying to ignore the feverishly venomous glow in Logan’s eyes as he watched Joshua over her shoulder. ‘Joshua, could you stir up the fire a little and boil some water? We’re going to need –’ She stopped abruptly as the dressing came away. Appalled, she saw the fiery threads of infection spreading like strong and ghastly roots up the sinewy shoulder and down the arm, smelled the sweet, foul beginnings of corruption in the wound.

  Logan’s eyes, which had closed upon his pain as she had pulled the dressing off, opened and met hers, in them a sudden and surprising clarity. Mattie looked away. His good hand found hers. ‘Don’t fuss, girl,’ he said. ‘What is there now for me but this? Where others have gone in pride before their time, d’you think I’m afraid to follow?’

  She made a great business of collecting together the pieces of bandage. ‘You?’ she asked, caustically. ‘You’re too much of a plague, Logan Sherwood, to die of a scratch like this. You won’t let us all off so easily, I know.’

  * * *

  He took two long, painful days and nights to die. In the end he accepted Joshua’s whisky gratefully, which until then he had stubbornly refused, cradled in his son’s strong arms, drifting in and out of consciousness, fevered and in agony. They took it in turns to watch over him, to ease his pain as best as they could. Towards the end of the first day he rallied, and it looked for a couple of hours as if his indomitable will would triumph over even this. ‘I’ll survive to see you swing,’ he told the impassive Joshua. ‘Treacherous hound. I’ll have your hide. See if I don’t.’ But by nightfall he was delirious again, back in the world where his tall, strong, handsome boys rode with him and he was sovereign in this kingdom of his, fortunate beyond all men, benign and all-powerful. Perhaps, Mattie thought sadly as she watched through the desperate final hours of the second night, when the light of life glowed so low that it could barely be detected, and the face that had been so dauntlessly authoritative fell lax into the defeated lines of approaching death, it was just as well. Logan’s time was gone. His life could only have ended in bitterness and hatred. To live on in a defeated world could only have diminished him.

  He died in the grey dawn three days after Pleasant Hill had burned.

  In drifting rain Joshua dug a grave square in the middle of the red earth clearing in front of the cold, charred remains of the house, with its blackened, foul-smelling ashes and its strong, accusing chimneys. They raised a rough but true cross as tall as a man, so no-one could miss it, with his name upon it and the date of his death. Mattie, thinner than ever, bedraggled, still wearing the clothes she had thrown on that first morning of disaster four days since, said over the grave what words of the funeral service she could remember. A chill breeze blew, and the cold drizzle drifted like the mist of death through the trees and over the quiet, sodden ruins.

  Even the most distant sounds of battle had long since receded. The stillness was bizarre, a parody of peace.

  She stood at last, straight and silent, remembering. Here she had been driven as a new bride in the Pleasant Hill carriage, escorted by those high-tempered, laughing outriders. Here Bram Taylor had screamed his outrage and his challenge to Johnny. From here those three had ridden, plumed and feathered, laughing still, to glory. To death. Here she had said to Logan, ‘Anything’s worth fighting for, Mr Sherwood, if you love it enough.’

  ‘Come away. You’re getting drenched.’ Joshua was beside her, his own jacket offered to cover her shoulders. In these past, fraught forty-eight hours she suddenly realized he had not called her by name once. And knew why.

  Mattie turned to him, under the jacket he held and so, inevitably, within the curve of his arms. He settled the garment over her shoulders, his shirt drenched already and clinging to his body. ‘Come away,’ he said again. And did not take his supporting arm from about her shoulders as they walked back to the hut.

  They built up the fire. Their clothes steamed. It was odd – almost disorientating – not to have Logan to tend to. Half the whisky was left. He ignored her automatic refusal.

  The first mouthful was, she thought, the most abominable thing she had ever tasted. By an enormous effort of will she managed not to choke, though her eyes ran. Politely she applied the mug to her closed lips, pretending to sip, unwilling to reject his obviously well-meant gesture. Joshua put a plate of thick-cut ham and biscuits in front of her. ‘Eat,’ he said, gently, and she felt the soft touch of his fingers upon her hair.

  Mattie nibbled the ham. It was sweet and succulent. And a warmth was spreading through and from her belly that was far from unpleasant. She sniffed at the tin mug she held cupped in both hands. The warm pungency of it cleared her head a little. When she sipped again, the fumes still in her nose and her throat, she was able to savour the smooth liquor as the fire spread again from tongue to throat and then down into her stomach.

  Unselfconsciously he stripped the wet shirt from his back, rubbed his thick, soaked hair.

  She watched him for a moment, then turned her eyes back to the fire. Sipped the whisky. They had hardly exchanged a word since the old man had died.

  Shirtless, Joshua pulled on a jacket, reached for his own mug, drained it. Took the bottle to the light of the fire. Splashed more into her mug. The afternoon was dark.

  What seemed a very long, quiet time later she said, ‘I’m tired, Joshua. So very tired.’

  ‘Sleep,’ he said.

  He drew the pallet with its corn husk mattress close to the fire, piled blankets upon it. Mattie lay down, drowsily, watch
ing the flames and his still strong silhouette against the glow.

  * * *

  She woke slowly, blinking, aware only of comfort and of warmth. Nothing had changed. The freshly made-up fire threw dancing shadows upon ceiling and walls, limned in light the head and shoulders of the man who sat, staring into the flames. ‘Joshua?’ she asked.

  He moved his head, looking towards her. She could not see his face. He watched intently. Then quietly he came to her and, with that grace of movement so characteristic of him, sank to his knees beside her. Firelight gleamed upon his face. She put a hand to his cheek, touching it with one uncertain, questioning finger, tracing the line of it to his mouth. ‘Joshua.’

  Very, very slowly he leaned and kissed her, gently and long. It was a cherishing kiss, a kiss to calm, to expel and expunge the horrors of the past days; she savoured every blessed moment of it. Then she it was who pulled him to her, fiercely, her fingers buried in his hair, she who slid the jacket from his shoulders and spread her hands upon the smooth skin of his back, warm and vibrantly alive to her touch. He was whole. He was life. He loved her with strength and with tenderness, and as if she were the first and only receptacle of his love; and willingly she yielded to him, safe for this fleeting hour from the squalor and terror that stalked the shadows beyond the firelit cabin.

  They slept together on the narrow pallet, limbs entangled, until the new day broke. Then in the silvery light of dawn they coupled again, in joy and even in laughter, outfacing a harsh and alien world, savouring the discovery of love.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The weeks that followed were undoubtedly the strangest, yet in a disorientating and dreamlike way perhaps some of the happiest, that Mattie had ever experienced. It was as if, after the horrors that had come upon them so swiftly, they had been granted a respite, a time of peace and discovery. They lived in total isolation and with the minimum of comfort though, with the few surviving chickens, the small hoard of the slaves’ stolen food that Joshua had unearthed, what they managed to salvage from the ruined land and what game Joshua managed to trap in the woods, they ate quite adequately and there was plenty to burn. And in any case a hardship shared, and shared with strong if fledgling love, was a hardship halved, or simply ignored altogether. They furnished their small home with anything serviceable from the other cabins, finding blankets and more cooking utensils. Joshua whitewashed the cabin walls and Mattie, hating the dark eye of the empty window, contrived a pair of curtains out of a pretty patchwork bedspread. They spent long hours wandering Pleasant Hill’s neglected acres, and came back to the warmth of the small cabin to lie together upon the corn-husk mattress of the wide bed Joshua had constructed, to talk and to make love. Joshua showed her where, in the darkness of that night of violence, he had buried Robert, deep in the quiet woods near the river, and they fashioned for him a cross as they had for his father, with his name and the dates of his birth and death upon it. Joshua knelt, head down, beside the grave and shed silent, difficult and bitter tears.

  ‘It was for him, wasn’t it?’ Mattie asked quietly. ‘It was for Robert that you stayed all these years, when Logan treated you so ill, for him you held Pleasant Hill together, didn’t run with the others, when of all of them you would have made the best future free, and away from this place?’

  ‘Yes. It was for him. My friend and my brother. He swore he would come back. When we were free.’

  ‘Both of you.’

  He glanced up at her, eyes bright with tears, and with awareness of her understanding. ‘Yes. Both of us.’

  ‘What will you – what will we do now?’ It was the first time she had dared to think the question, let alone ask it.

  Joshua shook his head and reached up for her hand. ‘Don’t think of it, Mattie. Not yet. We have today, and that is all we have. We’ll plan when we know there’s a tomorrow to plan for.’

  They were not left entirely undisturbed; Joshua was fishing in the river, with Mattie sitting beside him basking in a spell of soft winter sunshine when, a couple of weeks after the destruction of Pleasant Hill, they heard the slow sound of approaching hooves.

  ‘Down!’ Joshua hissed.

  They crouched in the undergrowth, peered through the trees. Along the winding avenue of evergreen oaks a mule plodded, head down, its rider’s legs swinging. ‘It’s – it’s old Mr Brightwell,’ Mattie hissed into Joshua’s ear. ‘From across the river. The Yankees burned them out, too – I saw the smoke – he must have come to see –’

  ‘Ssh!’

  They moved quietly closer. The old man had reined in and come to a halt in front of the burned-out house. He sat for a very long time, shoulders slumped, looking at it. Then, stiffly, he swung from the mule’s back and walked slowly to Logan’s grave, taking off his battered, wide-brimmed hat and resting a gnarled hand for a moment upon the cross before bowing his head and covering his eyes with his hand. Mattie felt tears prick her own eyes; she remembered the man well, a gentle, quiet soul, happily henpecked by his lively wife and daughters, in that other life that seemed so very long ago.

  He stayed at the grave for perhaps five minutes before, with a last glance towards the grim ruins, he clambered awkwardly back upon the mule and turned its head down the avenue of oaks towards the road. When the last sounds of his passage had died, Joshua and Mattie emerged into the clearing and walked to the grave. ‘It’s hard for them, Joshua, Mattie said at last. ‘However wrong they were, however wronged your people are, it’s hard for them.’

  ‘I know it,’ he said.

  * * *

  They talked for hours, as neither of them had ever talked to anyone before. ‘After you came,’ he said, ‘I knew – thought I knew – that I would never take a woman of my own.’

  She frowned. ‘But – why?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘But – Joshua – you were so distant! You hardly ever even looked at me!’

  ‘What else was there for me?’ He smiled a little, and still the bleak edge of bitterness was there. ‘To see you so unhappy – to sense, as I sensed, that you were drawn to me –’ He shook his head and looked into the firelight. ‘Such things happen. Everyone knows it. The white mistress and the slave. What pride is there in that, Mattie? Would you expect it of me?’

  She was silent; reached a hand to him. Rain drove into the roof and dripped from the eves.

  One day of wind and rain, lying together in front of the fire, he pressed her to tell him every detail she could remember of her life from her very earliest memory to the day their paths had finally crossed. Remembering that day Mattie still blushed. ‘And I thought you were Johnny.’

  Joshua turned to her, leaning above her, kissed her. ‘I know.’ He kissed her again. ‘And now? Do you still think I’m Johnny?’

  ‘No. Oh, no.’ She pushed him back, settled her head against his shoulder. ‘Now. It’s your turn.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Life histories. Your turn.’

  ‘No,’ he said, gently and adamantly. ‘For I have no history, until now. A slave’s past is not history.’

  Mattie turned her head to look at him. ‘You aren’t a slave, Joshua. You’re a man.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Now I am.’

  She read to him from the Shelley, and found to her relief that no ghosts rose to haunt her. She began, crazily, to form an idea in her mind, an idea that she took out and looked at every so often, like a small treasure, hoarded and kept from the eyes of others. One day, tentatively, she mentioned it. ‘Joshua? Would you – would you come to England with me if we could somehow manage it? This awful war can’t go on for ever – for all we know it might be over already! – and surely there must be some way?’ She waited. He said nothing. ‘I told you – I have a house there,’ she said softly, remembering, unaware of the longing in her voice. ‘We could live there – we could marry –’ and laughed, suddenly, bright and uneasy at his silence. ‘There! My cousin Constance always knew I was a forward hussy! And here I am, proposing to a man!’
/>
  But he did not join in her laughter. ‘Wait, Mattie. We must wait. To plan too early would simply be to court disappointment.’

  She turned on him, suddenly and fiercely. ‘You don’t believe we’re going to be able to stay together at all, do you? You think the world will catch up with us – and part us –’

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ he said, drily.

  ‘No! No, it isn’t! Not if we don’t let it be a possibility!’

  He took her shoulders, turned her tearful face to his. ‘You still don’t understand, do you? You still think this war is going to change something. Don’t you know what would happen to me if any white man – Northerner or Southerner – caught me with you? Don’t you know what would happen to you?’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! What do you take me for? I’m not thinking of parading down Macon Main Street with my arm tucked in yours, dearly as I’d love to! Of course it isn’t that simple! But, Joshua, no-one but us knows what happened here! We can say what we like – make something up to suit ourselves! And people will believe me, if they wouldn’t believe you – oh, my love, don’t look like that! If we have to play their game for a little while, what does it matter? In England, no-one would know.’ She knew him well enough by now not to say what was in her mind; that Joshua looked as white as any of his brothers, and so deception would be easy. She had learned so much, at least.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said, the words brooking no argument and no further discussion. ‘It’s still too dangerous. Mattie, Mattie, I keep telling you we can’t – we mustn’t – think about tomorrow. Not yet –’

  It was the closest they came to disagreement during those strangely idyllic days.

  They had no way of knowing of the disasters that those same quiet weeks were dealing to the South. When Mattie, to her amazement, worked out upon the calendar she had designed at the back of one of the salvaged books that Christmas must have arrived, she could not know that the city of Savannah had capitulated in terror the day before, with no shot fired, to the victorious Sherman and his fearsome raiders, who had left in the wake of their march to that lovely city a trail of devastation, death and hatred. Nor could she know that now, his mission accomplished to rend, raze and terrorize the rich and arrogant heartland of Georgia, the red-headed Ohian had turned his narrowed gaze to that cradle of rebellion, South Carolina. If Georgia had suffered, and had deserved to suffer, the Carolinas must be wracked and burned to ashes for their treachery. Grant, still staunchly held at bay by Lee and his starving scarecrow army, was nevertheless throwing a ring of iron about Richmond. Sherman’s march with fire and sword northwards through the Carolinas would bring the two Federal armies together, ensure a final, bloody defeat for the Confederacy, and bring the Secessionist States to their knees, once and for all.