She looked away, in the direction of the river, where gossamer white mist clung to the wooded bluffs, and she remembered the terror and the pain of the nightmare she had lived at Hunter's Glen, the plantation her father had given her and Stephen Cooper upon their marriage.
"Worse, even, than the beatings," she said, "was his predilection for slave women. He had children by them. Your mother helped one of those poor women escape his clutches, did you know that?"
"Are you referring to Cilia?"
"Yes. Cilla. She was carrying Stephen's child when she escaped. Do you know how she is doing? Is she alive and well?"
Christopher shook his head. "I was five or six years old, I think, when that happened. I don't remember much about Cilla. I do remember Trumbull, though. He was Elm Tree's overseer. My mother told him to take Cilla as far away as possible. I believe they went to New Orleans. But I'm afraid I don't know what became of her. Or the child."
Emily sighed. "When your father killed Stephen he saved my life."
"If you were in fear for your life, why did you stay so long with him."
"I had to. It was expected of me. Your father freed me—woke me from a living nightmare. He was my savior. I had no one else to turn to."
"What about your family?"
"You wouldn't ask if you knew them. Had I run away from my husband it would have been too much of an embarrassment to the family."
"I see." Chrisopher wondered what this was all about. Emily Cooper struck him as a very lonely person. But why was she baring her soul to him in this way? It was true that divorce was not a viable option, no matter how difficult the marital situation. The stigma followed a woman forever.
"I guess you must be wondering why I have come all this way to see you," she said as though she'd read his mind.
"Yes, ma'am. I am."
"The superintendent tells me you are doing very well in your studies. You are at the top of your class. Your father would have been proud of you." She touched his arm. "I loved your father, more than you could ever know. My one regret is that I never gave him a son. But I would like to think that had I been able, he would have turned out just like you, Christopher."
Christopher stepped back. So that was it! She was trying to stake some claim on him. She had stolen his father away from his mother, and now she was trying to take him, too.
"That would have been splendid," he said, with bitter sarcasm. "I'd be illegitimate then, wouldn't I? The bastard son."
She cringed. "I didn't mean . . . "
"I would remind you that my mother loved him, too. Did it matter to you that he had a wife and son who needed him?"
"So you do blame me," she said, her voice now a whisper.
"He wouldn't have left Elm Tree if he didn't have a place to go. You gave him that."
She was silent for a moment. Christopher's anger ebbed as suddenly as it had come, and he felt remorse, because he was certain that she wept silent tears behind the veil.
"I apologize," he said stiffly.
"No, no you are well within your rights to be angry with me."
Her compassion made him feel that much worse. He realized that she had been a convenient target for all the rage that had built to the breaking point inside him.
"On the other hand," he said, "my father would not have had a reason to leave had my mother not blamed him for . . . "
"Yes. The miscarriage. I know. That caused Jonathan tremendous anguish. I wish we could all stop trying to attach blame. Sometimes these things just happen. What's done is done. We all pay for our sins sooner or later, don't we?"
"I guess we do."
"I came to bring you something, Christopher. Something I'm certain your father would want you to have. I've been gravely ill of late, and entirely unable to travel, or I would have brought it to you sooner."
"What is it?"
"I'll let it be a surprise. You'll find it in your room when you return."
"And you won't tell me what it is?"
"I would like it to be a surprise. I believe it will a pleasant one."
A smattering of raindrops began to fall.
"I think we ought to be getting back," he said. "A storm is gathering."
They ascended the stone steps to the rim of the plateau, then walked along the ramparts, and neither of them spoke until they reached Cozzens'. There were few people about—most of the cadets were still in the classrooms.
"I want to apologize again," said Christopher, taking his leave of her at the door of the mess hall-hotel. "I had no right to speak to you that way."
"You've already apologized, Christopher. And you have every right to hate me. But I hope you will try not to."
"I don't."
She squeezed his hand. "I doubt that we shall meet again. Take care."
With that she turned and went inside.
Walking back to the barracks, his shoulders hunched against a cold drizzling rain, and the ground beneath his feet vibrating with the peals of thunder which rolled across a gray and angry sky, Christopher paid no attention to the fact that he was getting soaked. Going over the conversation with Emily Cooper in his mind, he realized he still wasn't sure of her purpose in coming all this way to see him. Just to deliver a gift? No, there was more to it than that. To see him one time before she died? Obviously she was ill. To explain herself? To seek exoneration?
But he did know why she was dressed in black. She was still mourning the death of his father. Even now, a dozen years later. She had loved Jonathan Groves—of this Christopher had no doubt. Loved him unconditionally. No, he did not hate her. He felt sorry for her, and sick to his stomach with remorse for having spoken so cruelly.
Arriving at his quarters, he found a bundle on his bed. Emily Cooper's surprise. Something wrapped in a carriage blanket of green wool with golden tassels.
Nestled inside the blanket was a cutlass.
Christopher recognized the blade immediately, though he had not laid eyes on it in eighteen years. It was his father's Tripolitan cutlass. Jonathan Groves had taken it from a Barbary pirate in combat, and had carried it into every subsequent conflict, including the Battle of the Thames, where Tecumseh had been vanquished, and the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, and the battle against the Seminoles in which, they said, he had died a valiant death, boldly leading his men into battle.
How had Emily Cooper come to possess the cutlass? By what right, he wondered, perturbed, had she claimed and kept it for so long? But his anger was fleeting. Something your father would want you to have. Christopher shook his head. He didn't pick up the cutlass, didn't touch it, but instead stood there, staring at the weapon. Finally he wrapped it again in the carriage blanket and left the bundle on the bed. He sat in a chair by the window and watched the rain fall.
"I don't want the damn thing," he told O'Connor that evening, after supper, as the young Irishman admired the cutlass.
"Why not?" asked O'Connor, perplexed. "This is a famous blade, Christopher. A fine family heirloom, I would think. If this were my father's I should want it to remember him by."
"I remember him well enough," said Christopher. "Every time I look into my mother's face."
"I see," said O'Connor, who could be quite perceptive at times, even though it seemed completely out of character. "Unpleasant memories."
"The past is what I'm trying to escape, not remember."
"You want the impossible, if you ask me."
"There must be a place where a person's past doesn't matter."
O'Connor shrugged. A man who lived for today, he was incapable of giving much thought to the past, or the future.
Christopher spent a restless night. He thought a lot about the cutlass, stored now in the trunk at the foot of his narrow iron bed, regretting that Emily Cooper had brought it to him. The cutlass struck him a symbol of that part of his father's life that he wished fervently had never happened. Jonathan Groves' heroic service in the war against the Barbary pirates was the main reason the people of Madison County, Kentucky, had
sent him to the state legislature and, later, to the Congress of the United States. And it was as a politician that Jonathan had begun to sacrifice his principles on the altar of public opinion, which had led to his duel with Stephen Cooper, which in turn had led to Rebecca Groves' miscarriage, the subsequent separation which had driven Jonathan into a scandalous long-term affair with Emily Cooper, which had resulted in his suffering bouts of severe depression that led him to seek solace, or at least forgetfulness, in the bottle and, finally, the ultimate escape—death—on the field of battle. That was life, a chain reaction of events, one thing leading to another, beyond a person's control. Christopher despised the cutlass and everything it stood for, and gave serious thought to hurling it into the Hudson River.
He was still considering that option the next morning, as he and his roommates prepared their quarters for the first inspection of the day. Glancing up from his labors, Christopher was surprised to see a cadet named Wade Morgan standing in the doorway. Morgan's face was a stern and stony mask—and Christopher's intuition warned him that something somewhere had gone terribly wrong.
"What is it?" he asked.
He didn't know Morgan very well—just well enough to recall that the cadet hailed from Mississippi and was one of Adam Vickers' cronies.
"I have been authorized by Mr. Vickers to make the necessary arrangements," was Morgan's stilted reply.
"Arrangements?" Christopher was bewildered. "Arrangements for what?"
Morgan's eyes glittered like cold steel. "I will assume that this pretense of ignorance on your part does not stem from cowardice."
Christopher glanced at O'Connor and Bryant. The latter appeared as mystified as he, but O'Connor seemed to suddenly grasp the situation. He glowered at Morgan.
"I assure you that Mr. Groves is no coward, sir," he said coldly, "as you may have cause quite soon to discover."
Morgan showed this veiled threat the proper disdain. "Are you, then, to act as his second?"
"If asked, I will be honored to do so."
A cold chill ran up Christopher's spine. "Seconds?"
They all looked at him.
"You mean . . . a duel?"
"Of course," said Morgan.
"Vickers has challenged me to a duel?" asked Christopher, incredulous.
"That is my purpose for coming here. Mr. Vickers has submitted to me the honor of making the necessary arrangements."
"You can go back to Mr. Vickers," said Christopher, seething with sudden anger so ferocious that he trembled in its grasp, "and tell him I will not jeopardize my position here for the likes of him."
"Christopher!" exclaimed O'Connor, aghast. "You can't back down from a challenge!"
"I can, and I do."
"Then perhaps cowardice is the explanation," said Morgan.
"This is absurd," cried Christopher, feeling trapped. "Why does Vickers want to challenge me to a duel?"
Morgan's eyes narrowed as he scanned the faces of the other three cadets. "You haven't heard the news?"
"What news?"
"Mrs. Emily Cooper is dead."
"Dead?" Christopher couldn't believe his ears. "There must be some mistake."
"She took her own life last night, in her room at Cozzens'."
Chapter 5
A few minutes prior to midnight three shadowy figures emerged from the barracks. The night was overcast, black as pitch, and though the rain had stopped an hour earlier, rumblings like distant horse-drawn caissons on the move, and the occasional piercing flash of lightning, threatened more to come.
Accompanied by O'Connor and Bryant, Christopher marched resolutely across the commons toward the riding hall. Unlike his companions, he did not look furtively this way and that. There were sentries posted at the batteries along the parapet, at the south dock, and on the road to the mainland. They were there primarily to prevent cadets from slipping away from the Academy on some illicit assignation. Christopher knew where they were—he had logged countless long hours of guard duty himself, in all kinds of weather—and he doubted any of them would spot him and his two associates as they made the relatively short walk from the barracks to the riding hall. Not that he really cared. His tenure here as a West Point cadet was almost finished anyway.
"Someone's bound to see us," whispered Bryant nervously. "We could at least stay close to the buildings and work our way around."
"No time," snapped O'Connor. "One cannot be late to an affair of honor. Or one's own funeral. Right, Christopher?"
"That's a poor attempt at misplaced humor," scolded Bryant.
"If you don't like this, go back to the room," advised O'Connor.
Christopher was aware of Gil Bryant's dilemma. He felt obliged to come along, as Christopher's friend, even though he considered the business sheer lunacy. And remaining behind would not spare him from the severe punishment which was destined to descend upon all their heads once the deed was done. He was Christopher's roommate—O'Connor's too—and the board of inquiry which would inevitably follow was not likely to believe that he was unaware of the duel which was about to take place.
Assuming Christopher survived, he would most certainly be court-martialed and dishonorably discharged from the Corps of Cadets. As for his two friends, they, too, faced dismissal, although in their case at least there was a slim chance of remaining in the corps.
The sins of the father . . . Indeed, he realized now that there was no escape from the ghosts of the past. Emily Cooper had come to see him and deliver his father's cutlass and then had taken her own life—a vial of poison, arsenic or strychnine or belladonna, no one knew for certain, it seemed, and what did it matter now?
O'Connor was right. There was absolutely no way that Christopher could refuse to accept Vickers' challenge. To do so would be to label himself a coward, and in that case he would have no future in the army anyway. He was doomed, no matter which course he took.
Christopher lengthened his stride. He didn't give much thought to dying, except to the degree that it would give Adam Vickers' satisfaction if he perished, and he couldn't bear the thought of that. So he would do his damnedest to stay alive, and then try to bear the disgrace of his discharge from West Point with as much dignity as he could muster, secure at least in the knowledge that he was a victim of a malevolent fate. Cold comfort. They were right when they claimed that life was a chain reaction of events beyond a person's control. None of this was his doing. The sins of the father. . .
Ahead in the darkness loomed the bulk of the riding hall. O'Connor caught his arm and spun him around.
"Maybe Gil's right," he said in a hoarse whisper. "Maybe this is foolish."
"It's worse than that," opined Bryant mournfully.
"What?" rasped Christopher. "You've had a change of heart, O'Connor? You? Well, if you have, then go on. I release you from your obligation to serve as my second."
"It isn't me that I'm concerned about," said O'Connor, offended. "It's you. Vickers is an expert with the sword. You should have chosen pistols. As the challenged, it was your choice. You are an excellent shot. As good as your grandfather, I wager."
"No. I must use the cutlass."
"Why? You didn't even want the flaming thing yesterday."
"It is fitting that I use the cutlass."
"Fitting? What does that mean? You'll hack each other into bloody pieces."
"I have no intention of killing him."
O'Connor was flabbergasted. "No intention of . . . then you'll die for certain."
"Give me the cutlass and go back to the barracks."
O'Connor refused to relinquish the cutlass, wrapped in the tasseled carriage blanket, which he carried under one arm.
"No," he said grimly. "I'll see this through."
"Then come on. I mustn't be late for my own funeral, remember?"
Christopher turned for the riding hall. O'Connor and Bryan exchanged glances.
"I've never seen him like this," said Bryant, clearly worried. "What's gotten into him?"
O
'Connor shrugged.
The riding hall was a cavernous stone structure with carriage doors at the north and south ends. Rows of large slanted casements ten feet from the ground along the eastern and western walls were designed to flood the interior with natural light. Sand had been dredged up in vast quantities from the river to provide a surface for the hall.
When Christopher stepped inside the hall he was assailed by the pungent aroma of horses. But the place was empty, except for Vickers and Morgan, standing in the center of the hall, a lantern at their feet emitting mustard yellow light, their cloaked figures throwing elongated shadows. As Christopher and his companions approached, Morgan took Vickers' cloak. Vickers stood there, watching Christopher, and the blade of his saber whispered and gleamed in the lantern light as he flicked his wrist, nervous or impatient or both.
"Gentlemen," said Morgan, with arctic formality. "We are ready to proceed. What rules shall apply?"
"None," said O'Connor. "Unless you are willing to accept first blood."
Morgan glanced at Vickers, who gave a curt shake of the head.
"Considering the enormity of the insult to the Vickers name and family honor, that will not suffice," said Morgan.
"Insult?" Christopher laughed, a sharp and derisive sound which darkened Vickers' face. Proper etiquette of the code duello required the principals to remain silent and aloof from the arrangements as made by the seconds, but tonight Christopher was in no mood to give even a moment's consideration to rules. "What insult? You bloody damned fool. If anyone should bear the blame for Emily Cooper's suicide it is you and your family, Vickers. You care so for her honor, yet you scorned her, because what she had done embarrassed you. You're a hypocrite."
"And you, sir, are a scoundrel and a liar!" cried Vickers, the words thick with rage.
Christopher shook his head and turned scornfully away, shedding his cloak and placing the garment in Bryant's keeping. O'Connor unwrapped the cutlass and tossed it to him. Christopher caught it deftly, tested its weight. The blade was heavier than the cavalry saber which he had become accustomed to.
"No rules then," said O'Connor. "We can proceed."
There was one rule, unspoken. Both O'Connor and Morgan were armed with pistols. As seconds, they would be obliged to use their weapons if one of the principals displayed cowardice. Christopher was aware that if he lost his nerve and tried to run Morgan would be within his rights to shoot him down like a dog.
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