by John Jakes
Stop, Constance thought, standing still in front of the closed kitchen door. Control. Compassion. Try. She smoothed two stray wisps of hair into place, steadied her breathing, prayed silently, then crossed herself and opened the door.
The kitchen, where the daily bread was baking and a pink loin of pork lay half trimmed on the block, was empty except for the visitor. Through a back window Constance glimpsed William shooting at a target bale with his bow and arrows.
The bread fragrance, the loin and cleaver, the hanging utensils and polished pots, all the homely furniture of family sustenance seemed desecrated by the creature standing near the door with a carpetbag so dirty its pattern could not be seen. Virgilia’s dress was nearly as filthy. The shawl around her shoulders had holes in it. How dare you, Constance thought, momentarily out of control again.
Virgilia Hazard, thirty-seven, had a squarish face lightly marred by a few pox scars left from childhood. Buxom in the past, she was thin now, almost emaciated. Her skin had a yellow pallor, and her eyes were dumb lumps in the center of dark, sunken sockets. She smelled of sweat and other abominable things. Constance was glad Brett was down in Lehigh Station with cook, shopping. She might have torn Virgilia to pieces. Constance felt like it.
“What are you doing here?”
“May I wait for George? I must see him.”
How small her voice sounded. It had lost the perpetual arrogance Constance remembered with such distaste. She began to see the hurt in Virgilia’s eyes. Joy ignited like a flame inside her, burning till shame and her own better nature put it out.
“Your brother has gone to Washington to work for the government.”
“Oh.” She squeezed her eyes shut a moment.
“How is it possible that you’re here, Virgilia?”
Virgilia tilted her head forward to acknowledge the accusation in the question and the anger Constance couldn’t keep out of her voice. “May I sit down on that stool? I really am not feeling well.”
“Yes, all right, go ahead,” Constance said after hesitating. Without thinking, she moved to the great wood block and put her hand on the cleaver. Virgilia sank to the stool with the slowness of a person much older. With a shock, Constance saw what she was touching and pulled her hand back. Outside, William whooped and ran to the target to pull three arrows from the bull’s-eye.
Constance pointed at the carpetbag. “Is that the one you took in April? The one you filled with my best silver pieces? You disgraced this family in nearly every conceivable way and then you found one more. You stole.”
Virgilia folded her hands in her lap. How much weight had she lost? Forty pounds? Fifty? “I had to live,” she said.
“That may be a reason. It isn’t a justification. Where have you been since you left?”
“Places I’d be ashamed to tell you about.”
“Yet you presume to come back here—”
Glinting tears appeared in Virgilia’s eyes. Impossible, Constance thought. She never cried for anyone but her black lover.
“I’m sick,” Virgilia whispered. “I’m hot and so dizzy I can barely stand. Coming up the hill from the depot I thought I’d faint.” She swallowed, then gave the ultimate explanation. “I have no place else to go.”
“Won’t your fine abolitionist friends take you in?”
The disfiguring sneer came unconsciously, and in its wake, more shame. You must stop. This time the warning served. There was no humanity in venting such feelings and nothing to be gained. Virgilia was a beaten creature.
Answering at last, she said, “No. Not any longer.”
“What do you want here?”
“A place to stay. Time to rest. Recover. I was going to beg George—”
“I told you, he’s taken an army commission in Washington.”
“Then I’ll beg you, if that’s what you want, Constance.”
“Be quiet!” Constance spun and covered her eyes. She was stern but composed when she again faced Virgilia after a minute. “You can stay only a short time.”
“All right.”
“A few months at most.”
“All right. Thank you.”
“And George mustn’t know. Did William see you arrive?”
“I don’t think so. I was careful, and he was busy with his archery—”
“I’m leaving to join George tomorrow and taking the children. They mustn’t see you. So you’ll stay in one of the servants’ rooms until we go. That way, I’ll be the only person required to lie.”
Virgilia shuddered; it was cuttingly said. Try as she would, Constance couldn’t dam everything inside. She added, “If George were to discover you’re here, I know he’d order you out again.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Brett is staying here, too. While Billy’s in the army.”
“I remember. I’m glad Billy’s fighting. I’m glad George is doing his part, too. The South must be utterly—”
Constance snatched the cleaver and slammed the flat of it on the block. “Virgilia, if you utter so much as one word of that ideological garbage you’ve heaped on us for years, I will turn you out myself, instantly. Others may have a moral right to speak against slavery and slaveowners, but you don’t. You aren’t fit to sit in judgment of a single human soul.”
“I’m sorry. I spoke without thinking. I’m sorry. I won’t—”
“That’s right, you won’t. I’ll have trouble enough persuading Brett to let you stay at Belvedere while I’m gone and she’s in charge. If she weren’t a decent person, I’d have no chance of doing it. But you mustn’t question my terms—”
“No.”
She struck the block with her palm. “You must accept every one.”
“Yes.”
“—or you’ll go out the same way you came. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes. Yes.” Virgilia bowed her head, and the word blurred as she repeated it. “Yes.”
Constance covered her eyes again, still confused, still wrathful. Virgilia’s shoulders started to shake. She cried, almost without sound at first, then more loudly. It was a kind of whimpering; animal. Constance, too, felt dizzy as she hurried to the back door and made certain it was shut tightly so her son wouldn’t hear.
29
“I REQUIRE AND CHARGE you both, as ye will answer at the day of judgment—”
Other voices suddenly rose to compete with that of the Reverend Mr. Saxton, rector of the Episcopal parish. Standing beside Madeline in the finest, and hottest, suit he owned, Orry looked swiftly toward the open windows.
Madeline wore a simple but elegant summer dress of white lawn. The slaves had been given a free day and invited to listen to the ceremony from the piazza. About forty bucks and wenches had gathered in the sunshine. The house men and women, being, and expecting to be treated as, members of a higher caste, were permitted in the parlor, though only one person was seated there now: Clarissa.
“—that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony—”
The quarrel outside grew noisier. Two men, with others commenting. Someone yelled.
“—ye do now confess it. For be ye well assured—”
The rector faltered, lost his place in the prayer book, coughed twice, exhaling a whiff of the sherry taken beforehand in company with the nervous bride and groom. Before bringing Madeline to the parlor, Orry had jokingly said that Francis LaMotte might show up to object to their marrying so soon after Justin’s funeral.
“Be ye well assured—” the Reverend Mr. Saxton resumed as the volume of the shouting increased. A man started to curse. Orry recognized the voice. His face dark red, he bent toward the rector.
“Excuse me for a moment.”
His mother gave him a bright smile as he strode past and out into the hot sunshine. A semicircle of blacks faced the combatants in the drive. Orry heard Andy.
“Leave him be, Cuffey. He did nothing to—”
“Hands off me, nigger. He pushed me.”
> “Was you that pushed me,” a weaker voice replied, a slave named Percival.
Unnoticed behind the spectators, Orry shouted: “Stop it.”
A pigtailed girl screamed and jumped. The crowd shifted back, and he saw Cuffey, ragged and sullen, standing astraddle Percival’s legs. The frail slave had fallen or been pushed to a sitting position against the wheel of a cart. In the cart, beneath a tarpaulin, were eight pairs of candlesticks and two sets of hearth irons, all brass; Orry was sending them to a Columbia foundry in answer to the Confederacy’s appeal for metal.
Andy stood a yard behind Cuffey. He wore clean clothes, as did all the others. It was a special day at Mont Royal. Orry strode straight to Cuffey.
“This is my wedding day, and I don’t take kindly to an interruption. What happened here?”
“It’s this nigger’s fault,” Percival declared, indicating Cuffey. Andy gave him a hand up. “He came struttin’ in after the preacher had already started and the rest of us was listenin’. He got here late, but he wanted to see better so he pushed and shoved me.
Cuffey was caught, which made him all the madder. Hate shone before he averted his eyes, trying to soften or prevent punishment by mumbling, “I din’t push him. Haven’t been feelin’ good—kind of dizzy, like. I just stumbled an’ knocked him down. Haven’t been feelin’ good,” he repeated in a lame way.
Over derisive groans from some of the others, Percival said, “He’s been feelin’ snake-mean, like every other day. Nothin’ else wrong with him.” As protocol demanded, Orry glanced at his head driver for a verdict.
“Percival’s telling it right,” Andy said.
“Cuffey, look at me.” When he did, Orry continued. “Two tasks each day for a week. A task and a half every day for a week after that. See that he does them, Andy.”
“I will, Mr. Orry.”
Cuffey fumed but didn’t dare speak. Orry wheeled and stomped back to the house.
Soon after, he and Madeline joined right hands while the rector said, “That ye may so live together in this life that in the world to come ye may have life everlasting. Amen.”
In their bedroom that night, Madeline reached through the dark to find him. “My goodness, you’d think the bridegroom had never been with the bride before.”
“Not as a husband he hasn’t,” Orry said, sitting beside her; his hair-matted thigh touched the smoothness of hers. A bright, cloudless night filled the room with light that spilled softly over them while they sat kissing and touching. The tips of her breasts were as dark as her hair and eyes; the rest of her was marble.
She laid both arms over his shoulders and clasped her hands. Kissed him. “Lord, but I do love you.”
“I love you, Mrs. Main.”
“It is real, isn’t it? I never thought it would be—” She laughed low. “Mrs. Main. How grand it sounds.”
Another long, ardent kiss, his hand on her breast.
“I’m sorry that muss happened during the ceremony. I ought to sell Cuffey. I don’t want him causing trouble when I go to Richmond.”
“Mr. Meek will be here to handle him then.”
“Hope so.” No reply had arrived from North Carolina as yet. “I trust Meek won’t live up to his name. Cuffey needs a strong hand.”
Madeline caressed his cheek. “As soon as you’re settled in Virginia, I’ll join you. Till then, everything will be fine here. Andy’s a good, trustworthy man.”
“I know, but—”
“Darling, don’t worry so.” Saying that, she turned herself. The bed creaked as she brought the white of belly and breast into the pale glow from outdoors. They lay back gently; she touched him with her hip. Mouth against his face, she murmured, “Not tonight. A husband must attend to certain duties, you know.”
Drowsing afterward, both woke to a wild, raw sound out in the night.
“Dear God, what’s that?” She started up, bracing her hands on the sheet.
The cry came again, then went echoing away. They heard birds roused in the night thickets. Downstairs a house woman called an anxious question. The sound wasn’t repeated.
Madeline shuddered. “It sounded like some wild animal.”
“It’s a panther cry. That is, an imitation of one. Now and again the nigras will use it to frighten white people.”
“There’s no one here who would want to do such a—”
She stopped and pressed against his back, shivering again.
30
A MOMENTOUS EXCITEMENT FILLED Washington that night. The city resounded with the grind and rumble of wagons moving, the thuds and flinty ring of horsemen galloping, the shouted songs of regiments marching to the Virginia bridges. It was Monday, the fifteenth of July.
George had spent the day trying to get a hundred personal details in order—it seemed that many, anyway—in preparation for the arrival of Constance and the children. At half past nine, he entered Willard’s main dining room. His brother waved from a table near the center.
George felt stiff and ridiculous carrying the French chapeau, with its clutter of devices, authorized for general staff officers: gold strap, extra braid, brass eagle, black cockade. He had purchased the cheapest regulation sword available, a tinny weapon good only for show. That was all right; he would wear it as seldom as possible. The damned hat, too.
It seemed queer to be back in uniform, queerer still to be greeting his own brother in a hotel in wartime. George had sent a message over to Alexandria suggesting supper, and it had gotten through.
“God preserve us—what elegance!” Billy said as George sat down. “And I see you outrank me, Captain.”
“Let’s have none of that or I’ll put you on report,” George growled good-naturedly. He found it hard to arrange himself and the sword on the chair without embarrassing contortions. “I’ll probably be a major in the next month or so. Everyone in the department is due to move up one or two grades.”
“How do you like Ordnance so far?”
“I don’t.”
“Then why on earth—?”
“We must all occasionally do things we don’t like. I think I can be useful to the department. I wouldn’t be there otherwise.” He lit one of his cigars, which induced a coughing spasm in the hovering waiter. George barked selections from the menu, inwardly amused when he realized he sounded like a West Point upper classman hectoring a plebe. He had never cared for soldiering, but it came easily. The waiter’s pencil flew.
“I’ll have the veal chops too,” Billy said. The waiter left, and the brothers sipped their whiskeys. “You know, George, maybe you won’t have a chance to do anything in the department. One sweep to Richmond and it could be all over. McDowell’s moving tonight.”
Nodding, George said, “You’d have to be dumb and blind not to notice. I had advance warning from Stanley. We had dinner this noon.”
Billy looked guilty. “Should we have invited him tonight?”
“Yes, but I’m glad we didn’t. Besides, Isabel probably wouldn’t let him out.”
“Your note said Constance will arrive in the morning. Do you have rooms?”
“Right here. A suite. Expensive as hell, but I couldn’t get anything else.”
“Willard’s is packed. How did you manage it?”
“Cameron managed it somehow. I gather the secretary can rig or arrange anything.” He puffed the cigar. “Are you as fit as you look?”
“Yes, I’m doing well—except for missing Brett a lot. I have a splendid commanding officer. Much more religious than I am, but a fine engineer.”
“On speaking terms with God, is he? Got to keep track of fellows like that. We may need all available help. I watched some volunteers drilling on the mall this afternoon.”
“Bad?”
“Incredibly.”
“How many men is McDowell marching into Virginia?”
“I heard thirty thousand.” Another puff. “I’m sure the correct figure will be in print tomorrow. We can write Old Bory for confirmation. I’m told he gets the lo
cal papers delivered by courier every day.”
Billy laughed, amazed. “I’ve never been in a war, the way you have. But I never imagined it would be carried on this way.”
“Don’t fool yourself. This isn’t war, it’s—well, who knows what to call it? A carnival. A convocation of zealous amateurs led by a lot of politicians everybody trusts and a few professionals they don’t. Maybe it’s an exhibit fit for Barnum’s Museum—it’s that bizarre.” The waiter brought steaming bowls of fat oysters in a milky broth.
“Tell you one thing,” George continued as he put his cigar aside and spooned up stew. “To speed the end of the war, I’d certainly arm all the blacks pouring in from the South.”
“You’d arm the contrabands?”
George was put off by Billy’s disapproving expression. He shrugged. “Why not? I suspect they’d fight harder than some of the white gentlemen I’ve seen skylarking around town.”
“But they aren’t citizens. The Dred Scott case said so.”
“True—if you believe the decision was right. I don’t.” He leaned over the table. “Billy, secession is the powder that blew up to start this war, but the fuse was slavery. It’s the moral heart of all this trouble. Shouldn’t black men be allowed to fight for their own cause?”
“Maybe. I mean, you may be right politically, but I know the army. There’d be violent reactions if you introduced Negro troops. The change would be too drastic.”
“You’re saying white soldiers would have no faith in colored ones?”
“No, they wouldn’t.”
“Including you?”
Concealing his embarrassment behind a faint defiance, Billy answered, “Yes. I may be wrong, but that’s how I feel.”
“Then perhaps we’d better change the subject.”
They did, and the rest of the meal proved pleasant. Afterward they walked out to the avenue in time to watch a regiment of foot ramble by, bayoneted muskets pointing every which direction. The drummers might as well have tapped their cadence on the moon.