Somerset

by Leila Meacham

  I see them moving beyond the other’s reach, and I am sad. Distance allowed to grow too long between people can make it impossible to meet again. This I fear for Thomas and Priscilla.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  After their sons left for war, Silas, Henri, and Jeremy expanded their “Men’s Day at Somerset” to include the fourth Saturday of every month rather than limit their meetings to those only in winter. Tomahawk’s death had put an end to the point of the gathering, but by then, fresh meat from the scout’s kills had long ceased to be the motivation for the men to collect around the campfire in front of Silas’s one-room plantation office. After their sons’ departure, the three longtime friends had discussed a change of venue, but nothing had ever come of it. They still hauled food baskets and a keg of beer to be set up under the pecan tree that shaded the hard-packed ground in front of Silas’s cabin.

  For the last four years, talk around the campfire had been grim for the fathers, whose sons had been involved in nearly every battle and border skirmish to repulse invaders since the capture of Galveston in 1861. Captain Burleson’s home guard unit had been engaged in defending internal trade routes, railroads, bridges, telegraph lines, and making sorties into hostile territory with the objective of destroying the same. Thomas and Philippe had almost been captured in Shreveport when they rendezvoused with a resistance group bent on blowing up Union gunboats moored in the Sabine.

  Today’s meeting was the grimmest yet. It was May 1864. A vicious battle newspapers were calling the Red River Campaign had ensued between rebel and federal troops on the banks of the river that formed the border between Texas and Oklahoma. It was another attempt by Union forces to invade Texas, and the boys’ unit was in the black heart of it. One of the Union’s aims was to capture Marshall, a town twenty miles from Howbutker, and destroy its factories that supplied crucial munitions and goods to the Confederacy. Occupation of Marshall would open the door to East Texas and the rest of the state and give the invaders access to its cotton, horses, livestock, and food. They would leave a path of pillage and wreckage in their wake, the destruction setting back the state’s infrastructure and economic development twenty years. The Confederates meant to hold the border at all costs, and once again local residents were hunkering in their houses, weapons ready for defense if the Yankees broke through.

  The three old friends had been reluctant to leave their womenfolk, but their wives had insisted. Invasion would not come for days if it came, and they knew how much their husbands enjoyed and needed the all-male get-togethers to let off steam, talk business, and damn every politician that ever made war and every general that ever sent men into battle.

  The day was too warm for a fire. Petunia had sent the last jar of pickled pigs’ feet, a cold corn custard, a salad of cucumbers and onions, deviled eggs, and wedges of her “Petunia bread,” made from flour ground from oats and pecans. Henri had contributed a canned plum pudding imported from England smuggled past the Union blockade.

  “A feast!” Henri declared, unpacking the basket. “How I wish the boys could share some of this bounty.”

  “Maybe soon,” Silas said. “I don’t see how the war can go on much longer.”

  “By next spring is my guess,” Jeremy said.

  The men could hear the wistfulness in their voices. Hanging over them like the smoke from their cigars was the unspoken terror that the miracle of their sons still being alive after four years of combat could not last.

  Henri and Jeremy heaped their plates. Silas declined, preferring another glass of beer.

  “Aren’t you going to eat something, Silas?” Henri asked.

  “I’m not hungry. I’ll try something later.”

  Silas noticed a look exchanged between his old friends. “All right, what is it?” he demanded. “I sense collusion.”

  Henri said, “You do not look well, mon ami. You’ve lost weight and your ruddy glow is gone.”

  “We’ve all lost our ruddy glow,” Silas said. “What father with a son in the war hasn’t?”

  “We think you need to see a doctor,” Jeremy said.

  “Woodward is a quack, and I’d cause a family rift if I visited his competitor. I feel fine. It’s just that I have…other worries.”

  “I thought the plantation was managing splendidly under the circumstances,” Henri said.

  “It’s not that.”

  Jeremy asked quietly, “What is it then, Silas?”

  Silas drew in a deep breath and held it. Men were not confiders like women. They managed their affairs without the need for advice or guidance from even the closest of friends, dealt with their problems, kept their secrets. If a man needed a listening post, he usually turned to his wife. But sometimes he could not share his concerns with his wife. He needed another man’s ear—a trusted friend’s—and Silas had the benefit of the most trusted in Jeremy and Henri. But he could not unburden the grief eating at his heart like hungry fire ants. What comfort could his friends give him? What advice to correct the problem? Silas did not think he could describe even to Jessica the misery of the guilt he felt in encouraging Thomas to marry Priscilla, and all for the sake of an heir for Somerset. Would the Tolivers ever learn?

  Silas let out his breath. “I—it’s my son and daughter-in-law,” he said. He could divulge that. “They’re not happy.”

  “A pity,” Henri murmured.

  “I’m sorry,” Jeremy said. “What seems to be the trouble?”

  “They’re…not compatible.” Silas took a long swallow of beer to chase the sour taste prevalent in his mouth these days. His stomach felt empty. He had no appetite lately, and he could feel the alcohol soar straight to his head. “I once believed Thomas and Priscilla were a well-matched couple,” he said.

  “Perhaps they’ve not had the opportunity to be a couple, what with the boys darting home for only weeks at a time on and off these past years,” Jeremy offered.

  Silas attempted a grin. “Armand and Jeremy Jr. have been married for less than a year and already their wives are pregnant.”

  “So it’s a grandchild you’re wanting?” Henri said.

  “Yes, but more than that—” Silas stood and jammed his hands into his pockets. Oh, damnation! He must pour out his feelings to someone or burst. He began. “I knew Thomas did not love Priscilla when he married her, but I thought she loved him, and her affection would bridge the gap. Thomas would grow to reciprocate her feelings as…I grew to love his mother. I wanted him to experience the thrill of discovering small, delightful things about the girl he did not know, her mind, her heart, her body, the kinds of things that made me crazy about Jessica when I married her, that I took pride and joy in, that made her become indispensable to my life, but…”

  “But Priscilla is not Jessica,” Jeremy said.

  “No, she most certainly is not.” Silas sat down again, the strength gone from his legs. “There are no sweet surprises or secret desires or hidden passions tucked behind the closed door of Thomas’s wife. In my opinion, Priscilla Woodward is an empty room.”

  “Merciful saints!” Henri said.

  Silas was appalled at himself, feeling a traitor to his son’s wife, his daughter-in-law, a member of the family. He blushed. “Forgive me for talking so frankly of my feelings. I’m ashamed of myself,” he said.

  Henri threw up his hands. “Mon ami, there is nothing to forgive and no reason to feel ashamed. Feelings are neither right nor wrong. They just are.”

  Jeremy cleared his throat. “And you feel responsible for Thomas’s marriage?”

  “I encouraged it.”

  “But it was Thomas’s decision to marry her, Silas, not yours,” Jeremy said.

  “But it was a decision I prompted because of my…obsessive love of the plantation. Thomas, to please me, wanted to leave an heir for Somerset in case…” Silas could not bear to say it. He scraped a hand over his face, feeling it bony, and went on desperately. “I can’t sleep at night for worry that because of me, Thomas is condemned to a loveles
s, perhaps childless marriage. Now that the war is almost over and there’s a good chance he’ll make it home in one piece…” Silas left unsaid the obvious implication that if his son had only waited, he might have met and married a woman he loved. “I am haunted by the wasted sacrifice he made on behalf of Somerset,” he added dully.

  “Again, Thomas’s decision, not yours,” Jeremy said.

  “I concur,” Henri said, turning up his palms in the French manner. “The sins of the fathers…the children do not have to bear them. They can make their own sins.”

  Silas threw them a small smile. “You’re trying to absolve me of my guilt.”

  “No absolution is necessary when no guilt is involved,” Jeremy said.

  “I just want Thomas to be happy. I want that above all else, heir or no.”

  “We know,” Jeremy said, “and if God is listening, He knows it, too. That’s why no curse is involved here. You’re thinking of Thomas, not Somerset.”

  “And we must not give up hope that once the war is over and Thomas and Priscilla are together, time and peace and privacy will solve their problems,” Henri said. He held up his glass, and Silas and Jeremy raised theirs. “My friends, a toast to our boys’ safe return and their future happiness.”

  “Here! Here!” the men chorused, and as Silas drank, he thought he must ask Jeremy to explain his comment. What made him refer to a curse? But his intent was lost in a flush of gratitude for the loyalty and understanding of his friends and the awareness of a recurring fullness beneath his ribs and a pain in his groin.

  Jeremy, as usual, read his mind. “Silas, my boy,” he said, “you need to see a doctor.”

  “I believe I will,” Silas said.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  The war reached Howbutker in September of 1864 and took one of its most beloved native sons. Jessica, Priscilla, and Petunia were in the kitchen preparing cloth packets of corncob ashes as a substitute for soda to distribute to neighbors when Amy, eight years old and a “mother’s helper,” was sent to answer the pull of the front doorbell. Wartime shortages and the Union blockade of supply ships had generated ingenious ideas for replacements of coffee, flour, pepper, sugar, and salt. Residents of Houston Avenue had formed a cooperative exchange. Individuals were assigned specific tasks of preparing large quantities of substitute items to be shared by all. As examples, Bess DuMont had become quite proficient at roasting and grinding acorns and okra seeds to make a fairly decent cup of coffee, and Camellia Warwick had refined the art of making passable flour from potatoes. The women of Houston Avenue made a morning social occasion of the exchange, taking turns entertaining the group in their homes. Jessica was to host the following day.

  “That’s probably Mrs. Davis bringing me an arrangement of her chrysanthemums for the table,” Jessica said.

  “She sure been nicer to you since Mister Silas been proved right on all accounts, and her husband been proved wrong,” Petunia said. “You got to hand it to her. She eat crow without tryin’ to sugar it.”

  “A hollow vindication for Silas, though,” Jessica said. Silas’s predictions had come to pass. The Confederacy had not been able to sustain itself against the military might of the North, and rumors flew that a major invasion was under way to lay waste to the Southland. France and Great Britain did not come to the aid of the Confederacy in exchange for its cotton as expected, and slaves were running away from plantations by the hundreds owing to the drain of their overseers to the war and having no incentive to stay. So far, Somerset’s labor force, but for a few desertions, had remained intact.

  But it was a neighborhood boy from down the street who burst into the kitchen, Amy hurrying after him, alarm written across her young face. The boy whipped off his hat, breathless, his face flushed. “Miss Jessica,” he panted, “the bluecoats have come.”

  Jessica jumped up. “What? Where are they?”

  “In the pasture in back of your house. They’re stealing the horses.”

  “Priscilla, you know where the pistols are. Arm the servants,” Jessica ordered. “Petunia, you stay here with Amy. Leon, do you know how to use a gun?”

  “I sure do. My daddy taught me, just in case.”

  “Priscilla, give him a pistol, too.”

  “What are we going to do?” her daughter-in-law asked, eyes large with fright.

  “I don’t know.”

  Jessica grabbed the flintlock standing at the ready by the door in the larder and headed for the back door. All the men on the street were at their places of work, the children in school. The question flashed through Jessica’s mind why Leon, son of their banker, was home. She heard a cough from what sounded like a deep chest cold and understood why. Only the women were home, most napping this time of day, their servants oblivious to the scene that met her eyes when she stepped onto the high floor of the gazebo and peered toward the pasture.

  A dozen or so men on horseback and wearing Federal army uniforms were twirling ropes in pursuit of Houston Avenue’s carriage horses, let out from their stalls for the day. The horses were resisting capture, successfully dodging the rope nooses tossed at their heads. To her horror, Jessica saw Flight O’ Fancy among them. The Thoroughbred had caught the attention of the officer in charge. She could clearly hear his orders to “Get that horse!”

  She stood helplessly. The soldiers mustn’t get their hands on Nanette’s horse, but what could she do, a lone woman with one flintlock between her and a dozen armed men? She must not risk injury to Leon or expose Priscilla to them. One look at her and no telling what those soldiers might do. She wished for Jeremiah, wise and strong, but he had died two springs ago. Her mind in a lock of indecision, she gasped as she saw Robert Warwick run out to the pasture, pistol in hand. She had forgotten he’d be home, working as he always did in his carpentry shop. He was building a desk for Thomas as a welcome-home gift. Oh, good Lord, no!

  Priscilla, Leon, and the servants had come outside, the collection from Silas’s gun cabinet in their hands.

  “Priscilla, run to the next-door houses and tell the neighbors what’s happening and to arm themselves,” she said. “Tell them to send a runner to alert the house next to theirs and they in turn are to send somebody to alert the neighbor next to them and so on. Hurry now. No time to waste.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Priscilla said, looking relieved at her task.

  The officer in command, a first lieutenant by the parallel bars on his yellow shoulder straps, swung his horse around at Robert’s approach and withdrew his pistol from its holster. Without thinking but with enough presence of mind to leave the flintlock behind, Jessica flew down the steps of the gazebo and through the wrought-iron gate across the service road hollering “No! No!”

  Every man turned to look at her. Flight O’ Fancy, seeing Robert, had stopped running and ambled toward him.

  “Miss Jessica!” Robert said, his voice echoing his surprise when she reached the conclave. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hoping to talk some sense into every mother’s son here. Good afternoon, Lieutenant.”

  The lieutenant recovered the use of his dropped jaw and said, “Madam,” and brought his gloved hand to the brim of his cavalry hat.

  “Robert dear,” Jessica said, “please put your gun on the ground. It will be useless against so many here.”

  Robert at twenty-three had never outgrown the whistle and rattle in his lungs. His bronchial condition had left him looking as if a strong wind could blow him away. He had no more wherewithal to challenge the mounted cavalry unit than a stick against a battering ram.

  “I’d do what she says,” the lieutenant said, his tone and the steel in his eye receptive to no argument. Flight O’ Fancy had reached them, her flanks quivering nervously.

  “You can’t have this horse,” Robert said, lowering his pistol but keeping it by his side.

  “I am going to take her and all these horses here, so drop your weapon and both of you go back where you came from and no harm will come to you.”


  “You are not taking her,” Robert said, his jaw set obstinately. “She’ll be no war horse for the Union army.”

  “She will be when I’m through with her.”

  “No, never. I’d rather see her dead first,” Robert declared and positioned the gun to a spot behind Flight O’ Fancy’s ear and fired.

  Jessica couldn’t believe her eyes. From their stunned stares, neither could the mounted men. It took a moment while the horse thundered sickeningly to the ground and the smoke cleared from Robert’s pistol for them all to realize what had happened.

  “Well, now, you shouldn’t have done that,” the lieutenant said and aimed his firearm at Robert’s head.

  “No, please!” Jessica screamed, but it was too late. The bullet struck Robert in the middle of his forehead and he crumpled to a gangly heap beside the body of the fallen horse. Jessica dropped to her knees beside him and cradled his bleeding head in her lap. He had died instantly, defiance locked in his frozen stare. Jessica looked up at the officer through a glaze of shocked tears. “How could you do such a thing? He was just a boy.”

  “Weren’t we all once?” the lieutenant said. “A man who would shoot a beautiful horse like that for the reason he gave doesn’t deserve to live.”

  “The horse belonged to the girl he loved. She died at fifteen. Robert looked after her mare in memory of her,” Jessica said, eyes overflowing.

  Remorse washed over the lieutenant’s face. He looked away across the green space of the pasture for a moment, then back at Jessica. “War is nothing if not a series of tragic misjudgments, madam. My sincere regret for mine.”

  Jessica heard a commotion behind her and glanced over her shoulder to see the mistresses of Houston Avenue and their servants taking position in a line of billowy hoop skirts and maids’ uniforms stretching almost the length of the service road. They held guns and had been trained how to use them in defense of their homes. Among them were mothers whose sons had been lost or wounded in battles in Texas and all across the Southland. They seemed to be waiting for a signal from her about what they should do.