by John Jakes
“I understand.” He patted her hand. “Nothing to forgive.”
She kept thanking him, tears in her eyes. It was one of the rare occasions when Constance saw George flustered.
Later, in their play before love-making upstairs, she said: “Do you really have papers to send to Washington?”
“I’ll find some.”
She laughed and kissed him and drew him to her breast with great joy.
15
“THIS CARPETBAG’S HEAVIER THAN old Fuss and Feathers.” Billy groaned as he put it down.
“I brought you a lot of little extras I thought you’d need: books, three havelocks I sewed myself, socks, drawers, a new skillet, one of those small sewing kits for soldiers—”
“In the army they’re called housewives.” He plucked off his kepi and with his other hand reached back to close the door.
Both kept their voices low, as if wary of listeners. It was three on a sultry afternoon, and they were alone in a room in a boardinghouse. Though they were married, it struck Brett as deliciously wicked.
Stuffy and slope-ceilinged, the small room had but one inadequate window to admit the noise of the unseen street. At that, Billy had been lucky to find any accommodations at all after receiving her telegraph message.
“I’ve wanted to see you, Brett. See you, love you—” He sounded strange; shy and almost frightened. “I’ve wanted it so much I ache.”
“Oh, I know, my darling. I feel the same. But we’ve never—”
“What?”
Scarlet, she averted her head. He touched her chin.
“What, Brett?”
She didn’t dare meet his eyes. Her face burned. “Before, we’ve always—made love in the dark.”
“I don’t want to wait that long.”
“No, I—don’t either.”
He helped with the clothing, rapidly yet without roughness. One by one the layers were shed and tossed anywhere, and there came in the hot gloom that petrifying moment when nothing was concealed, and she knew he’d be revolted by the sight of her body.
The fear melted as he stretched out his hands. He touched her shoulders and slowly slid his palms down her arms, a caress each found tender and exciting. His loving smile changed subtly to a look close to exaltation. Her smile burst into view, radiant, and her joyous laughter accompanied equally joyous tears. Only moments later, she helped him hurry into her for the reunion that was all the sweeter because it was so swift and urgently needed by both of them.
Captain Farmer had given him an overnight furlough. Late in the afternoon, Billy took Brett on a tour of the area near President’s Park. The number of soldiers on the streets astonished her. They wore navy, they wore gray, and a few wore such gaudy outfits that they resembled the household troops of some Arab prince. She also noticed a great many blacks wandering.
About an hour before sunset, they crossed a foul-smelling canal to an uncompleted park near the fantastical red towers of the Smithsonian Institution. Several dozen fine carriages had brought well-dressed civilians to watch a retreat exercise conducted by a volunteer regiment, the First Rhode Island. Billy pointed out its commanding officer, Colonel Burnside, a man with magnificent side whiskers. The regimental band played, flags flew, and it was all marvelously exciting and unthreatening; the hour at the boardinghouse had left Brett euphoric.
Billy explained that retreats, parades, reviews, and other public displays were very much a part of the military presence in and around the city. “But there will surely be a battle soon. They say Lincoln wants it, and it looks like Davis does, too. He’s got his most popular general commanding the Alexandria line.”
“You mean General Beauregard?”
He took her arm and slipped it around his as they strolled. “Yes. Once upon a time this army thought pretty highly of Old Bory. Now everyone calls him a scared little peacock. He didn’t help matters when he said our side wanted only two things from the South—booty and beauty. Pretty damned insulting.”
Our side. It had become hers by marriage. Whenever that occurred to her, confusion and vague feelings of disloyalty set in. Tonight was no different.
“Does Captain Farmer know when the fighting will start?”
“No. Sometimes I wonder if anyone does—including our senior commanders.”
“You disapprove of them?”
“Most of the professionals are all right. The Academy men. But there are generals who got shoulder straps through political connections. They’re pretty terrible. Arrogant as it sounds, I’m glad I went to West Point and into the engineers. It’s the best branch.”
“Also the first into battle.”
“Sometimes.”
“Scares me to death.”
He wanted to confess it scared him, too, but that would only worry her more.
For Brett, the glitter began to fall off the city as they walked to the hotel chosen for supper. They passed a pair of noncoms idling along, thuggish fellows. She heard one snicker and say all officers were shitasses.
Billy stiffened but didn’t turn or stop. “Don’t pay any attention. If I stepped in every time I heard that kind of remark, I wouldn’t have a minute for my duties. Army discipline’s terrible—but not in Lije Farmer’s company. I’m anxious to have you meet him.”
“When will that be?”
“Tomorrow. I’ll take you out to camp and show you the fortifications we’re building. Plans call for a ring of them, perhaps as many as fifty or sixty, surrounding the city.”
“Do you like your captain?”
“Very much. He’s an extremely religious man. Prays a lot. The officers and noncoms pray right along with him.”
“You? Praying? Billy, have you—?” She didn’t know how to complete the question tactfully.
He made it unnecessary. “No, I’m still the same godless wretch you married. I pray for one reason. You don’t disobey Lije Farmer. In fairness, I must say men with his kind of deep conviction aren’t uncommon in the army.”
Abruptly, he steered her away from the curb where two white men were punching a ragged Negro. Billy ignored that, too.
But she couldn’t. “I see abuse of slaves isn’t confined to the South.”
“He’s probably a freedman. Slave or free, nigras aren’t too popular around here.”
“Then why on earth are you going to war for them?”
“Brett, we’ve argued this before. We’re at war because some crazy men in your home state broke the country in half. Nobody’s mustering to fight for the nigra. Slavery’s wrong; I’m convinced of that. Practically speaking, though, maybe it can’t and shouldn’t be done away with too quickly. The President feels that way, they say. So do most soldiers.”
He felt uneasy attempting to justify his view. He wasn’t shading the truth, however. None but a fierce abolitionist minority in the army believed they’d gone to war to dismantle the peculiar institution. They had mustered to punish the fools and traitors who thought they could dismantle the Union.
Brett’s pensive frown suggested she wanted to argue. He was glad to see the gaslit entrance to Willard’s a few steps ahead.
In the bright, busy lobby, he noticed her still frowning. “Come on, now—no politics and no gloom. You’re only here for two days. I want us to have a good time.”
“Do we have to pay a call on Stanley and his wife?”
“Not unless you put a gun to my head. I’m ashamed to say it, but I haven’t seen them since I reported for duty. I’d sooner face Old Bory’s whole army.”
She laughed; the evening was back on a better track. At the dining-room entrance, he said, “I’m hungry. Are you?”
“Famished. But we oughtn’t to waste a lot of time on supper.”
Glancing at him with a smile he understood, she followed the bowing headwaiter. Billy strode after her, straight-backed, straight-faced, jubilant: “Definitely not.”
In the night, Brett woke, alarmed by a distant ominous rumbling. Billy stirred, sensed something amiss, rolled
over to face her in the dark.
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s that noise?”
“Army wagons.”
“I didn’t hear it before.”
“You just didn’t notice. If this town or this war has one primary sound, it’s the wagons. They go all day and all night. Here—let me curl around you. Maybe it will help you go back to sleep.”
It didn’t. She lay for over an hour listening to the plodding hoofs, creaking axles, grinding wheels—the thunder below the horizon, warning of inevitable storm.
In the morning she felt tired. A large breakfast, including some passable grits, perked her up a little. Billy had hired a fine barouche to drive across the Potomac. They set out under a threatening sky, and there was real thunder occasionally, muttering counterpoint to the wagons she heard quite clearly now.
As they crossed Long Bridge, Billy told her more about Farmer. He was a bachelor, from Indiana, and had graduated from the Military Academy thirty-five years ago. “Just when a tremendous religious revival swept through the place. The captain and a classmate, Leonidas Polk, led the movement in the corps of cadets. Three years after graduation, Farmer resigned to become a Methodist circuit rider. I once asked him where he lived all those years, and he said on top of a horse. His home’s really a little town called Greencastle.”
“I think I’ve heard of Polk, an Episcopal bishop in the South.”
“That’s the man.”
“Why did Farmer rejoin the army? Isn’t he too old?”
“No man’s too old if he has engineering experience. And Old Mose hates slavery.”
“What did you call him?”
“Mose—as in Moses. The captain was put in charge of this volunteer company until the regular engineers return from Florida. The men decided Farmer is a good leader, so they christened him Old Mose. The name suits him. He might have stepped straight from the Old Testament. I still call him Lije—ah, here we are.” He pointed. “That’s one of the magnificent projects for which I’m responsible.”
“Mounds of dirt?”
“Earthworks,” he corrected, amused. “Back there we’re to build a timbered powder magazine.”
“Does this place have a name?”
“Fort Something-or-other. I forget exactly. They’re all Fort Something-or-other.” They drove on.
Alexandria, a small town of brick homes and numerous commercial buildings, seemed nearly as crowded as Washington. Billy showed Brett the Marshall House, where Lincoln’s close friend Colonel Ellsworth had been shot and killed. “It happened the day the army occupied the town. Ellsworth was trying to haul down a rebel flag.”
Beyond Alexandria, they came upon tents, a vast white city of them. Around the perimeter, soldiers drilled in trampled fields. Mounted officers galloped in every direction. Bare-chested men dug trenches and dragged logs with chains. Brett could hardly hear Billy for the cursing and the bugling and the ubiquitous wagons.
She observed several squads drilling. “I’ve never seen such clumsy men. No two are in step.”
“They’re volunteers. Their officers aren’t much better. They stay up all night boning on Hardee’s Tactics so they can teach next morning. Even then they do a poor job.”
“I have no trouble recognizing you as a West Point man,” she teased.
On they went, through the vast changing landscape of mess tents smoking, horse-drawn artillery pieces racing and wheeling, regimental and national flags flapping, drums beating, men singing—it was all new, amazing, and festive, though a little frightening, too, because of what it signified.
They passed an unfinished redoubt and stopped before a tent exactly like the others. Billy led her in and saluted. “Sir? If this is not an inconvenient time, may I have the honor of presenting my wife? Mrs. William Hazard—Captain Farmer.”
The white-haired officer rose from the flimsy table strewn with diagrams of fortifications. “An honor, Mrs. Hazard. An honor and a privilege.”
He took her hand and shook it with slow formality. He had a powerful grip. Billy’s right, she thought, delighted. He could personate one of the prophets on stage.
“I am delighted to make your acquaintance and mightily pleased to have your husband in my command. I hope that happy situation will continue indefinitely,” the captain said. “Ah, but I am remiss. Please do sit down—here, on my stool.” He placed it in front of the desk. “I deeply regret my furnishings are inadequate to the occasion.”
Seated, Brett observed the truth of that statement. The tent contained nothing but a table, a camp bed, and five crates, each bearing the words AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY. On top of one lay a string-tied packet of tracts. In Charleston, she’d often seen similar four-page leaflets. The one in view was titled “Why Do You Curse?”
Farmer saw her take note of it. “I have thus far lacked the time to conduct Sunday school or evening prayer services, but I am prepared. We must build bridges to heaven even as we raise defenses against the ungodly.”
“Sad to say,” Brett told him, “I was born among the ungodly.”
“Yes, I am aware. Be assured, I meant no personal slight. I cannot deceive you, however. It is my conviction that the Almighty detests all those who keep our black brethren in chains.”
His words irked her; they would have irked any South Carolinian. Yet there was a paradox. She found his voice and oratory unexpectedly stirring. Billy looked uneasy, as if thinking, They aren’t my black brethren.
Brett said, “I respect your forthrightness, Captain. I only regret the issue must be resolved by war. Billy and I want to get on with our lives. Start a family. Instead, all I can see ahead is a period of danger.”
Lije Farmer locked his hands behind his lower back. “You are correct, Mrs. Hazard. And we shall confront it because the portion has been passed to us—God’s will be done. However, I am persuaded the war will be brief. We shall emerge the victors. As Scripture tells us, the thoughts of the righteous are right, but the counsels of the wicked are deceit. The wicked are overthrown and are not—but the house of the righteous shall stand.”
Instantly, she was simmering again. Billy saw, and silently pleaded for restraint while Farmer continued.
“The wicked is snared by the transgression of his lips, but the just shall come out of trouble.”
Ready to retort, she didn’t because he took her by surprise, defused the tension by stepping to Billy’s side and dropping a fatherly arm over his shoulders. Farmer’s smile shone.
“If there are perilous days ahead, the Lord God will see this good young man through them. The Lord God is a sun and shield. Even so, I shall look after him, too. When you return to your home, carry my reassurance in your heart. I will do everything I can to see that William rejoins you speedily and unharmed.”
At that moment, Brett forgot issues and fell in love with Lije Farmer.
16
MILES AWAY IN THE South Carolina low country, another man lived with dreams of revenge as vivid as Elkanah Bent’s.
Justin LaMotte, owner of the plantation named Resolute and impoverished scion of one of the state’s oldest families, yearned to punish his wife, Madeline. She had fled to the Main plantation to expose the plot to kill the Yankee who’d married Orry Main’s sister.
But Justin’s grudge went back much further. For years, Madeline had disgraced him with her outspoken nature and disregard of accepted female behavior. Except, he recalled with some satisfaction, she had been submissive, if unexciting, when he exercised his connubial rights. He had curbed her offending activities for a while by secretly administering laudanum in her food. Now she was compounding past disgrace by living openly with her lover. The whole district knew she intended to marry Orry the moment she obtained a divorce. She’d never get one. But that wasn’t enough. Justin spent hours every day concocting schemes to ruin Orry or imagining scenes in which he punished Madeline with knives or fire.
At the moment he lay submerged in tepid water one of his niggers had poured into th
e heavy zinc tub in his bedroom. Spirals of dark brown dye coiled away from dampened hair on the back of his head. The absence of any gray had a curious effect of calling attention to, rather than obscuring, his age; the color of his hair, so clearly artificial, lent him the look of a waxwork, though he was oblivious.
Justin was trying to relieve the tension that had bedeviled him lately. His wife wasn’t the sole cause. There were problems with the Ashley Guards, the regiment he and his brother Francis were attempting to raise by expanding the home defense unit they had organized in the tense months of the Sumter confrontation.
Brown-spotted white silk, folded into layers and tied vertically, hid the left side of Justin’s face. When he had tried to prevent Madeline from leaving Resolute, she had defended herself with an heirloom sword snatched from the wall of the foyer. One stroke of the nicked blade dug a red trench from his left brow through his upper lip to the midpoint of his chin. The scabrous, slow-healing wound hurt emotionally as well as physically. He had reason to hate the bitch.
It was late afternoon; stifling. Shadows of Spanish moss on water oaks outside patterned the bedroom’s mildewed pine-block floor. Below the second-story piazza, his brother shouted drill commands. Fed up with trying to train white trash—all the gentlemen of the district except that one-armed scoundrel Main had mustered with other units—Justin had turned today’s instruction over to Francis and retired.
His brother had spent lavishly to outfit the regiment. On a stand near the tub hung canary-colored trousers and a smart braided chasseur jacket of bright green, styled after the habit-tunique of the French. The outfit was completed by handsome top boots worn outside the trousers; the tops drooped above the knee, in the European manner.
It galled Justin that he and Francis couldn’t find more white men who appreciated the value and distinction of such a uniform or what a rare opportunity it was to be led by LaMottes. That damned Wade Hampton had outfitted his legion as drably as cowherds, and men had stampeded to sign up.
Justin loathed the Columbia planter for other reasons, too. LaMottes had arrived in Carolina years before the first Hampton, yet today the latter name was the more honored one. Justin lived on next to nothing, while Hampton appeared to increase his wealth effortlessly; everyone said he was the richest man in the state.