High Hearts

by Rita Mae Brown

  The reverend belabored the phrase “wake up the mighty men.” He was referring to the gentlemen assembled inside St. Paul’s, over half of them in uniform. Henley rather enjoyed being referred to as a mighty man. The fact that the gray coat of his uniform called attention to his thick silver hair pleased him, too. Thank God I didn’t go bald, he thought, and then offered a prayer to the Almighty whom Henley imagined as a gigantic man with long silver hair and flowing beard to match. One couldn’t have a bald God, after all.

  This deeply spiritual moment was riven to shreds by the alarm sounding from the bell tower in Capitol Square. St. Paul’s, close to the square, shook with the noise. Before the reverend could finish his sentence, the uniformed men stampeded out of the church. Henley, sitting in the front, couldn’t get out that fast. In the few seconds between blasts, the congregation panicked. The main aisle was clogged with terrified adults and screaming children. One ten-year-old boy led his weeping mother by the hand telling her not to worry; no Yankee could kill her because he’d kill the Yankee first.

  Henley finally broke through the crowd and dashed out the front door into the mild, sunny light. He smashed into a woman, and they both tumbled on the ground.

  “I’m so sorry, madam.” Henley scrambled to his feet. He then offered his hand to the woman as she gathered up her luscious, pale pastel skirts. When she took his hand and finally gazed up at him, he wanted to faint. Staring him straight in the face was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life. Her rich blonde hair curled around her shoulders. Her becoming church hat framed her perfectly formed face. Her skin glowed like an unplucked peach. Her features bespoke fine breeding, but it was her eyes that destroyed him. They were bright cobalt blue, not pale blue or ice blue or watery blue but blazing, deep cobalt blue. Only once in his life had Henley ever seen a woman equal to her beauty, but she was a slave, Di-Peachy’s mother.

  “Colonel, I apologize. In the excitement I didn’t look where I was going.” Her low voice soothed him like honey in whiskey.

  “The fault is all mine.” Henley offered his arm to this goddess. “Allow me to escort you to my carriage. I regret that I cannot see you home, madam, but as you can plainly surmise, I am needed elsewhere.”

  “You’re both gracious and generous, Colonel. I have my own carriage, and I’d be obliged if you’d walk me to it.”

  The light pressure of her hand on his arm drove him wild. Here he was, a man twice her age and then some, and he felt like a satyr, a bull, Zeus beholding Leda.

  Four perfectly equipped bay horses calmly stood amid the pandemonium. Henley sucked in his breath. She was not only beautiful, she was rich. Those were the best bred Cleveland Bays in Chesterfield and Henrico counties.

  A man running by bellowed, “It’s the Pawnee! The Feds sent a warship to bombard our city.”

  Henley walked her to her carriage. “If they have the range, they’ll aim for the Tredegar Iron Works. Failing that, I think our Northern foes will settle for sowing misery where they can. Please be careful. Don’t linger by any government buildings.”

  “I’m not afraid of the Yankees, Colonel.” A crooked grin spread across her face. Her teeth were perfect. “I think the Yankees ought to be afraid of me!”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” He lifted her up into the carriage. “Madam, like Helen you could launch a thousand ships.”

  “Or oyster boats!” She laughed.

  He laughed along with her. She was beautiful, but unconcerned about it. He loathed vain women. The fact that he could spend half an hour perfecting his beard did not qualify as vanity. That had to do with looking respectable. “Forgive me for not introducing myself.” The commotion grew steadily worse. “I’m Henley Chatfield from Albemarle County.”

  “The famous horseman! Why, I’ve always wanted to meet you. My husband and I spent years in Europe, and we’d heard of you there. It’s Fate that we should meet, Colonel Chatfield.”

  “The Fates are kind.”

  “Let’s just say the Fates did not give us eyes in the back of our head.” She smiled. “I’m Kate Vickers.”

  “I’m honored.” So this is Kate Vickers, thought Henley. No wonder men fought duels over her.

  “I receive on Thursdays after two. Won’t you please come by? We might even be able to hear ourselves talk.” She gestured at the panic around her. “I’m sure, too, that the other guests would be thrilled to meet Virginia’s most successful horseman in person. I regret, of course, that my husband Mars won’t be there. He’s training a cavalry regiment somewhere in the western counties.”

  Henley didn’t regret Mars Vickers’s absence a bit. “Until Thursday.” He raised his hat as the splendid carriage, driven by a fully dressed coachman, wheeled and turned. Walking with a calm, deliberate pace, so as not to appear frightened, Henley made his way through the mob of well-dressed citizens to the capitol. Men poured into the streets with pistols and shotguns. Many of the town’s finer ladies headed for Chimborazo Heights. If there was going to be a display of fireworks, they fully intended to witness it.

  Once inside the capitol, Henley found other officers. Nobody knew what was going on. At least one man had the sense to order the howitzers down to the riverbank. If the Pawnee came up the river, the artillery was ordered to fire upon it.

  Henley, disgusted by the tangle inside the capitol, worked his way toward the legislative chamber. He picked a desk and sat in it. An ad hoc committee of men without offices filled the room designed by Thomas Jefferson. At first, concern over the projected damage a Federal warship could do dominated their conversation. As time went by and no sickening booms were heard, the men turned their minds to other matters. The Confederacy had a president. Virginia had a governor, a good one. But the army of Virginia had no commander. They’d heard that Governor Letcher had sent word to Robert E. Lee. Colonel Lee on April 18 had been offered command of the United States Army by General Winfield Scott. He declined.

  Henley knew the Lees. He was four years younger than Robert, aged fifty-four. Henley hoped Robert E. Lee would soon take command. Richmond couldn’t afford many more Sundays like this one. It was all the more upsetting in an odd way because the Pawnee never did steam up the James River. It was a false alarm.

  APRIL 22, 1861

  “How long do you reckon?” Geneva asked Banjo.

  “If the weather holds, another day,” Banjo cheerily replied.

  The clouds crowned the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The world was wrapped in cotton candy, fairy floss as Lu tie called it. The two companions had ridden steadily since dawn. At last the weather behaved like a mild April, and the morning temperature was in the low sixties.

  The thought of seeing Nash soon made Geneva’s heart pound. She dreamed of him night and day, but she was careful not to discuss him with Banjo. She had mentioned that she hoped to be reunited with her childhood friend, Nash Hart, and maybe she would even find her brother Sumner.

  Banjo’s presence was a tonic for her. She was spared those thousand and one false courtesies men shower upon women, at least Geneva thought them false. The only time she was happy was on horseback. Then her skill weighed more than her sex, her family name, her family wealth. Geneva never examined why she needed to prove herself physically against all comers. Geneva rarely examined anything. As far as she was concerned, she loved horses and she possessed a gift for them. What else was there to know?

  “See that stump over there?” Banjo pointed. “Hit it.”

  Geneva, grateful for his attention to her marksmanship, pulled out her father’s pistol and fired. The first shot went wide, but the second sank into the rotted trunk with a satisfying thud.

  “Not bad, boy, but you’ll have to keep practicing.” Banjo pulled his own sidearm, and the slender barrel flashed. He had found his target. He dismounted, tied his horse, and walked over to the stump. Banjo rooted around the ground, finding four big pinecones to put on the stump. “Now, Jimmy, you stay off to the left here. Watch what I do, and then you do i
t.” Banjo hopped back in the saddle, headed off about one hundred yards. He turned and cantered back toward the stump, then when forty yards from it, he turned parallel. He pulled his pistol, urged his horse on, and blew every pinecone off the stump without wasting a bullet.

  Geneva applauded.

  “You do it.”

  Dutifully, she retraced his route, turned, and then galloped. She emptied her gun and hit the stump, but not the reset pinecones.

  “Keep your eyes on the target!” Banjo instructed. “Stare so hard at those pinecones that you see each little petal. Do it again.”

  This time she focused on those goddamned pinecones so intently her eyes ached. She hit one, but missed the others.

  Breathing hard, she rode up to him. “I’ll practice every day.”

  “Funny, isn’t it, how we see but we don’t see? If you think about nothin’ on this earth but those pinecones, you see ’em for the first time. You can’t hear nothin’ if you do it right. If I was to fire a shot when you was riding in on them like that, you oughten to hear it. Everything you got has to be directed at those pinecones.”

  “I understand.” She beamed. “And I’m grateful to you for taking time with me.”

  Surprised, he said, “Hell, boy, I’m your man. I got to take care of you. You shoot the Yankee before the Yankee shoots you.”

  They continued in their northwesterly direction.

  “I been thinkin’ about the Bible lesson you read me this morning.”

  “Judges.” Geneva was sick to death of Judges.

  “Seems to me like Samson didn’t have the sense God gave a goose—gander, in this instance, when it came to women.”

  “Guess not.”

  “First he gets himself hot up over the woman of Timnath. His folks and people give her rat week, and then she finagles the answer to a riddle out of him, course she had to ’cause her own people said they’d kill her. Anyway, she gets burnt up in her house. Samson gets het up ass over tit. Then he recovers himself and visits a harlot. Didn’t get far there. Then he finds Delilah. Next thing you know, Samson’s shaved clean as a billiard ball and has his eyes put out. Now I ask you, Jimmy, was he a fool for women or not?”

  “Don’t you figure all men are fools for women?” She slyly winked at Banjo.

  “If they’re lucky!” He tipped back his head and roared. “I had a wife once, and I tell you, Jimmy, the sun rose and set on that woman. When I would call to her, she would always smile at me like an angel. I swear to you on my heart that woman was a blessing on the earth.”

  “What happened?”

  “Died three years past. Like a little colt takin’ colic, she curled up in a ball, and Jimmy, that fast she was gone. I called the doctor, but he couldn’t do nothin’. A good man, warn’t his fault. Before she left, she looked up at me and said, ‘Forgive me.’ ‘For what?’ says I. The woman never uttered a cross word in her life. ‘I left you no children,’ she says. Oh Lordie, Jimmy, I took her sweet hand, I held it, and I cried. I cried ’til I was sick myself. If’n I had me a little girl or even a little boy, I’d have me a bit of Mary left.” Tears ran down his unshaven cheeks.

  “I’m so sorry, Banjo.” Impulsively, she rode next to him and patted his shoulder, a distinctly feminine gesture.

  Banjo nodded his head and reached up to touch her hand. “ ’Preciate your kindness, boy.”

  Geneva withdrew her hand. They rode on in silence for a while after that. If Nash died, she’d kill herself. Love was a terrible thing. She knew she couldn’t live without it and wondered why it hit her so. When she met Nash, he didn’t make a big impression on her. First off, he wasn’t a good rider. Adequate, yes, but nothing special. He was determined to have her, and he paid court. Albemarle County marveled at how he paid court. She didn’t believe he cared about her dowry all that much. The few suitors she’d had before Nash had cared about it a great deal. Soon she noticed how the light glowed on his sandy hair. She admired the cords and muscle in his forearms when he worked outside. He wasn’t a tall man, but he was well built. His voice, so deep it made her backbone tingle, sounded like a melody. Before she knew it, she was as much in love with Nash Hart as he was with her.

  She thought on these things as she rode ever closer to her husband. It never occurred to her that she would find another man attractive.

  APRIL 23, 1861

  From frost the temperature turned dramatically upward. The day wasn’t half over, yet the thermometer climbed into the low eighties. Sin-Sin grumbled. She spent the last three days feeding hard woods—hickory, mulberry, heavy oak, and even some walnut—into her firing barn. The fourth day was critical and here it was hotter than Tophet. The boys dropping in the wood began to lose pace.

  A bright yellow turban on her head, the white handkerchief tied around her neck already soaked, Sin-Sin chewed them out. “You gonna wisht you was somebody else!”

  “Yes, Auntie Sin-Sin.” Timothy moved a trifle faster.

  Arms folded across her bosom, Sin-Sin could have been Scipio Africanus. These troops would obey! She was making an unusually large pot, and she was nervous. The glaze was a difficult color, almost a cerise, and would be mixed with fire streaks. She prayed the pot wouldn’t crack.

  As a young woman, Sin-Sin gathered as much information as she could about pottery, ovens, and glazes. She constructed an underground oven twenty-eight feet long. At the end, a huge mound with a hole in it provided a draw. The project had taken one entire summer.

  She’d been using the oven for thirty-five years. Every year she learned something new about her craft.

  Lutie joined her. “Ernie June chased after Boyd today with a broom.”

  Sin-Sin vastly appreciated this indication of familial disharmony. She paused to bellow at Timothy, “Haul, boy!” He trotted over to the woodpile. “Those chillun like to drive me wild. I never could understand why God made chillun. What’d Boyd do?”

  “She forgot to put the raisins in the raisin bread,” Lutie gossiped.

  “Ha! Mebbe that’ll shut Ernie June’s trap for a spell. I’m worn out from hearin’ what a wonder Boyd is.”

  Lutie fanned herself. “Sin-Sin, if we don’t get out of Judges soon I think I’ll go mad. We’ve been reading that for, weeks. And I count on the New Testament to make me feel better. Today’s lesson was just awful.”

  “That business ’bout people talking from their graves on Judgment Day?” Sin-Sin shook involuntarily. A vision of graves yawning open, spilling out their contents made her sick.

  “No, today’s lesson. That was yesterday’s.”

  “I doan want to be talkin’ to no dead people!”

  “You’ll be dead yourself then.”

  “I still doan want to be talkin’ to no dead people even if I is dead! Then I be wearin’ a white turban!” Sin-Sin emphatically nodded her yellow-turbaned head.

  “Sin-Sin, I don’t think this is an immediate worry.” Lutie fanned Sin-Sin as well as herself. “It was the part about the wells without water and clouds carried with a tempest that bothered me. Peter 2, Sin-Sin.”

  “Our well never runs dry.”

  “They were talking in symbols.”

  “Then why get your bowels blocked over it? It’s not your well!”

  Lutie stomped her foot. “I hate it when you get bullheaded with me!”

  “Youse the one being bullheaded.”

  Lutie stormed off. Sin-Sin stayed at her oven for another ten minutes so as not to look too worried. She then went back up to the big house. Lutie was pacing the long hallway with the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  “Lutie, what’s got into you?”

  “Nothing.” Lutie knew she was being unreasonable.

  Sin-Sin sat down in a pretty wooden chair, painted white. She waited.

  “I told you nothing was the matter with me.”

  Sin-Sin said nothing.

  “Well, I got a letter from Poofy. Daniel left. He equipped an entire regiment, if you can believe that. The wealth of those Livingsto
ns!”

  “I knows you miss your sister, but I doan see as how that gets you wrought up.”

  Lutie paced. She stopped. “Sin-Sin, I have to break a confidence. Oh, I hate to do this!”

  Sin-Sin leaned forward. Lutie rested her hand on Sin-Sin’s shoulder. “Geneva cut her hair and ran off to war disguised as a man to be with Nash.”

  “No!”

  Lutie sat across from her servant. “Didn’t Di-Peachy tell you?”

  “That girl didn’t tell me nothin’. Di-Peachy keeps her word.” Sin-Sin defended her.

  Lutie’s eyebrows raised. “Well, I was just checking. I promised Geneva I wouldn’t tell, but, Sin-Sin, I haven’t heard a word from her! You’re the only person around here with sense. Besides, I can never keep anything from you.”

  Sin-Sin gloated. “Uh-huh. Why she want to do a crazy thing like that?”

  “Says she can’t live without him.”

  “Lord, I ’spect I felt that way over my first man, but I can’t remember it.” She sighed. “Sure not goin’ to feel that way ever again, and I thank the good Lord, too.”

  “I thought she’d be turned back. I thought someone would see through her.”

  “She’s tall and lean. She might could do it.”

  “Sweet Jesus, Sin-Sin, I don’t want her going to war!”

  “You can’t stop her.”

  “Someone will find her out. It has to happen.”

  Sin-Sin folded her hands. “She has a mind of her own. Mebbe she’ll tire of it or him.”

  Lutie tacked. “Do you know what Jennifer Fitzgerald said to me at Geneva’s wedding? I was talking about how people are drawn to one another, and I said, ‘Men fall in love with their eyes; women with their ears.’ And do you know Jennifer said, ‘Not this time.’ I could have shot her dead.”

  “She got a mean tongue in her head.”

  “Well, she and her mean tongue will be here in two days.”