High Hearts

by Rita Mae Brown

  About an hour after sunset, Sumner Chatfield found the First Virginia Cavalry. He picked his way through the rows of tents until he located Mars Vickers. Together they walked to where Geneva, Nash, and Banjo normally made camp. As it was, the three were in the process of cooking stolen chicken.

  Geneva was just going to get some more water when she saw Sumner approaching. She knew she’d better take the bull by the horns or all would be lost.

  She set down her pails and rushed to a bewildered. Sumner. “Brother!” She kissed him on the cheek and hugged him. “Thank God, you’re alive! I’m so happy to see you!”

  Sumner recognized the voice, but he was dumbfounded.

  She stepped away from him. “You’ve surrendered your paunch to the enemy, I see.”

  Sumner automatically looked at his stomach. That voice—his sister’s voice! “What in the hell are you doing here! Does Father know you’re here?”

  “No, and I’ll thank you to shut up about it. Mother knows.”

  “And she let you go?”

  “She didn’t have much choice, did she?”

  “Where’s Nash?”

  “I’m here.” Nash joined the family reunion.

  Geneva impulsively took Mars’s hand. “Major, I lied to you. I’m not Jimmy Chatfield. I’m the baby of the family, so I took my older brother’s name and hoped I could get away with it.”

  “I declare! You beat all.” Sumner smiled broadly. He just got it.

  “What is your name then?” Mars dropped her hand.

  “Lucius. I was named for my paternal grandfather.”

  Sumner, dazzled by his sister’s impertinence and sheer brass, laughed. “I wish he could see you now.” Somewhat recovered, he gazed into his sister’s imploring eyes. “Do you mean to tell me that you fought on Sunday?”

  “Like a tiger, Captain Chatfield.” Mars bragged as if Jimmy, Lucius, were his own. “You can be proud of your baby brother.”

  Sumner put his arm around Geneva’s waist. “You know, in a funny way I’m not surprised.” He turned to Mars. “Thank you, sir, for reuniting me with my brother.”

  “By the way, how old is he?”

  “Eighteen.” Sumner told the truth.

  Mars shook his head. “Oh well, two liars are better than one. I’ll still call you Jimmy.”

  Mars returned to his tent and thought what a curious creature Jimmy was. Something in the boy tugged at the corners of his heart. Mars was reaching that age where a man needs children. Little hope of that unless he found some outside woman. Lacerated by Kate’s presence, he’d begun to fear the whole breed or hate them. He wasn’t sure which. Well, he had a war to fight, and Jimmy Chatfield was hardly of paramount concern. Still, he thought of the boy.

  Finally Sumner had an opportunity to talk to Geneva and Nash alone. “You must be giving Mother heart failure, Geneva. And what about Father? You’ve got to tell him sometime.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying,” Nash agreed.

  “Let me work up my courage. Don’t tell him, Sumner.”

  “The old man probably wouldn’t believe it if I did tell him.”

  Nash, with some delicacy, asked if he could take a walk alone with Sumner.

  Nash opened his mouth and couldn’t stop talking. He finished his tale with, “Can’t you send her home?”

  “She won’t listen to me any more than she’ll listen to you,” Sumner replied sympathetically. He scratched his chin. “She’s bullheaded. And she loves you very much. That’s why she’s here.”

  “It’s not that I don’t cherish her desire to be by my side. I do, I truly do.” Nash breathed in. “But I don’t think of her as my wife quite like I used to.”

  Sumner smiled. “She’s a woman where it counts.” He laughed. “I’d say you’re in a better position than anyone in the camp!”

  “Yes, I’m probably making too much of it.” Nash shrugged.

  “Everyone’s raw right now.”

  Nash appreciated that sentiment. “Something else happened you should know about. Do you remember my man Bumba?”

  “Yes.” Sumner cracked his knuckles.

  “When we initially withdrew from Winchester before Manassas, we thought Patterson would strike. We thought we’d have to fight our way to Beauregard. That night Bumba disappeared.”

  “You mean to say he ran off?”

  “Either he was afraid of a battle—or he knew the Yankees were close as hot breath and he crossed over to their lines. He wasn’t the only one.”

  Sumner scratched his stubble. “You said as much before we enlisted.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t think my man would run away.”

  “Maybe he was a rotten apple, and you never saw it.”

  “Bumba had been with me since childhood; he was no rotten apple. He left without a good-bye, without anything. I trusted that man with my life!”

  “You were lucky your life was never in danger.”

  “How could he do that? He’s not going to be free; maybe, free to starve. No one will take care of him. That’s what I hate about those people up north. They delude our simple folk into believing they’ll give them a better life. They don’t even take care of their own. Why would they take care of our Negroes?”

  “People believe what they want to believe. Don’t take it so hard. If he left, he couldn’t be worth much.”

  “Yes, I’m probably making too much of that, too.”

  Sumner cracked his knuckles again. “Can’t put scrambled eggs back in the shell.”

  JULY 25, 1861

  Lutie and Sin-Sin returned to the big house early that morning, leaving Di-Peachy and Big Muler back in town. Di-Peachy refused to leave Mercer Hackett until his fever broke. Lutie had sent Braxton and Timothy home yesterday.

  Ernie June performed so well that Lutie allowed her to wear the keys for the remainder of the day.

  The deeply disturbing news was that Jennifer Fitzgerald had dug up Greer’s corpse in the middle of the night. One of the servants had stopped her as she was trying to drag it piece by piece into Greer’s room. They had sedated her with an opiate and removed the remains to the Methodist cemetery in town. Being an Episcopalian, Jennifer would never think to look there.

  Lutie caught up on her Bible lessons, but as they were in the book of Job, she hurried through them. The story was too depressing to contemplate. Then she thought she would read “The Prayer of Manasses, King of Judah, When He Was Holden Captive in Babylon.” Manasses beat his breasts bragging on his sins. Lutie had hoped for something edifying, something to further celebrate last glorious Sunday.

  No word yet on a peace settlement. It began to dawn on Lutie that one might not be offered.

  Lutie twirled a curl by her ear. She fiddled with it for a few minutes while Sin-Sin waited, hands folded in her lap. “Sin-Sin, tell Braxton to saddle up old Exeter. I think I’ll ride on the back acres today.”

  As Lutie was not especially fond of riding sidesaddle, even though she was a decent rider, Sin-Sin balked. Also, Sin-Sin was a terrible rider, so she’d be left out. “What you want to be gwine back there for?”

  “Henley has an old hunting cabin up on the ridge. Nobody’s been back there since April. Maybe whoever killed Alafin is back there. Or maybe I just need a little exercise.”

  “Whoever kilt Alafin be somebody we kin see. I knows it.”

  Lutie trudged upstairs to her closet for her boots. “Don’t worry.”

  Sin-Sin dogged her. “Take a gun.”

  “I will. I’ll take Braxton, too.”

  As Lutie and Braxton slowly cantered over the back meadows, leaving the cultivated areas of Chatfield for its wilder lands and its hidden meadows, she felt good. She was glad to be away from the suffering for a moment. She’d begun to think of the train station as the Nekra Gate, the death gate of Constantinople’s hippodrome. During the high days of the Byzantine Empire the chariot racing was so dangerous that contestants died or were drenched in glory and money. The injured and dead were c
arried through one gate only. Anyone who loved a charioteer stood by the gate and waited for the inevitable, his body. Odd how the mind makes associations. Odd that a nondescript railroad station in Charlottesville would forever be associated with the Nekra Gate in her mind.

  The heat baked into her bones. How she loved that heat. Let the others complain. Exeter’s smooth gait and quiet ways reminded her how enjoyable a bracing ride could be. She’d gotten accustomed to thinking of the stable and horses as Henley’s territory. Her father, Christopher Chalfonte, was quite a fine horseman. Probably that’s why she fell in love with Henley. As a young man, Henley was a breathtaking sight on a horse. He reminded her of her father: bold, masterful, easy to talk to. But then a woman finds that husbands rarely act like fathers. She was glad her father, who was born in 1783 and died in 1849, was not alive to see this war. It would have hurt him terribly. Papa would have cried to think the nation which his father, Delos Reynolds Chalfonte, had fought to create would so soon split apart.

  Lutie entertained a vague notion that if the women of the South and the North could have voted, this wouldn’t have happened. She believed in her heart of hearts that women had more sense, even though her own daughter challenged that convenient notion. At least Geneva was alive and well, thank the Lord.

  “Braxton, look!” Lutie pointed to acres of bright green corn. “Did my husband authorize planting these back acres?”

  “No, Miz Lutie. Mr. Henley’s always left this in pasture.”

  The Chatfield estate was four thousand acres. Henley farmed the land closest to the house. The six hundred acres far away had been cleared by his great-grandfather and grandfather for back pasture land. Some of this land boasted apple orchards. The trees needed little attention. Henley pruned them every three years or so.

  “Someone’s farming our land.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Someone who thinks that because my husband is away, this big place will get away from me.”

  “It be vexatious.”

  “We’re going to harvest this crop come fall. And, Braxton, don’t tell a soul that we didn’t plant this ourselves. I’d like to see the face of whoever’s responsible for this when he finds out we’re about to benefit from his seed and his hard labor.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’d like to see that, too.”

  JULY 28, 1861

  The Very Reverend Manlius offered from his pulpit a lengthy thanksgiving scene. Lutie gave thanks when it was over. The Bible was ransacked for examples appropriate to Manassas. Since the Old Testament was one long military interlude, the good pastor suffered an embarrassment of riches.

  After services, Lutie, Rise, Hazel, Miranda, and Lillian visited the Delevan Hotel. Throughout the week each lady called on her assigned place, whether it was the university, the old Stone Tavern, or an individual house. They agreed to meet at the Delevan on Sundays. Each woman moved the seriously wounded to her own estate as the soldiers improved. Dr. Windsor remained in Charlottesville awaiting further orders from his commanding officer. He was happy to see the ladies and even happier that Henley had secured a seat for his wife on tomorrow’s train.

  Mercer Hackett and Anthony Farr-Jones, an Alabama boy who’d lost both his arms, made sufficient improvement to leave the hotel. Colonel Windsor felt a home environment would lift Anthony’s spirits. Di-Peachy’s constant attendance to Mercer’s health encouraged Lutie to take Mercer and Anthony to Chatfield.

  Lutie, delighted that Di-Peachy was rejoining the human race, was quite disturbed because Mercer was white. Fortunately Di-Peachy behaved like a lady, and she knew that men always fell in love with their nurses. Probably nothing would come of it.

  As the men were being carefully loaded into the gleaming phaeton Lutie brought for the occasion, Reddy Neutral Taylor appeared on foot.

  “Mrs. Chatfield, glad I found you.”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Taylor.” She slid the leather through her hands. The team picked up their ears.

  “I’ve come to make good a mistake.”

  “What mistake, Mr. Taylor?”

  “Your boy Peter told me I could use your back acres. So I planted them and now I regret that I didn’t speak to you or to Mr. Chatfield. I am, however, prepared to make good. I could pay you rent on the land, fifty cents an acre.”

  “I’ll consider your offer, but I must discuss it with my husband first.” She tightened the reins slightly and casually touched the long whip on the flanks of the two dapple gray geldings. She missed her high stepping hackney team, now safely boarded in Kentucky. She hoped they’d be back home as soon as the North saw the light. She slid past a perplexed Reddy. “Be home in no time, gentlemen.”

  Mercer sat next to Lutie, his stump stretched out before him. “Not exactly a princely sum, that fellow’s offer.”

  “Not exactly a prince.” Lutie smiled.

  Anthony Farr-Jones swayed this way and that. Without his arms, balance was difficult. He fought back tears. Mercer heaved himself on the other side of the phaeton to sit next to him. When they’d hit a bump, Anthony would lean into Mercer. Lutie drove as smoothly as she could, but the roads were rutted. She decided that the New World wouldn’t truly be civilized until paved roads were built. Of course, this would leave out entire chunks of the Old World, too.

  Lutie instructed Mercer to open the food hamper. Ernie June had packed fried chicken, finger dumplings, fritters, and her specialty, fried okra that was so crispy you could hear it snap across a room. Mercer fed Anthony. Lutie munched on the okra and wondered why Peter would lie to Reddy. She entertained no illusions about Peter’s word. He could as easily lie to Reddy as he could to her, but why would Reddy take the word of a slave? That corn was put down toward the end of April. Reddy Neutral Taylor had plenty of time to come forward to Henley, Lutie, or Sumner. Reddy’s life revolved around profit, but then he was a tradesman, what could she expect? You can’t make a racehorse out of a jackass.

  AUGUST 1, 1861

  The sound of Washington’s church bells floated across the Potomac. Geneva, along with other cavalry, pushed from Centreville up to Mason and Munson Hills across from the northern capital. Wherever the regiment rode, people came out of their farmhouses or their row houses in the town to cheer them on.

  Geneva and Mars, outposts, watched the river from the hilltop.

  “Let’s go on in there, you fox in a henhouse.” Geneva egged Mars.

  He gazed across the water. “Too many hens in that one house. They may be disorganized, but there are a mess of them.”

  “What’s going to happen to the Union general that commanded at Manassas?”

  “McDowell? He’s so far out on a limb he can hear the wood cracking.”

  “Why do we wear gray?” Geneva burst with questions whenever she was alone with her commanding officer.

  Mars shrugged. “Some asshole became overimpressed with the Austrian army, and they wear gray. The people in Richmond want their boys to cut a fine figure.” He laughed. “What else goes on inside that head of yours?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid. I’m a disappointment to my mother. I’m not such a disappointment to my father, but I don’t think he expected much.”

  “You’re not a disappointment to me. You’re the fightingest creature I ever saw.”

  “Thank you, sir. Thanks for taking me with you to scout.” Geneva spoke a little self-consciously.

  “Fun to ride with you. You know, Banjo does right well, too. No form but he can hang on and shoot with both hands. Now if the rest of us could do that and be as accurate as he is, I expect we would become twice as deadly. I have to go to Richmond next week. Want to go with me?”

  Geneva, excited, remembered Nash and became less excited. “I don’t know if I should go, sir.”

  Mars darkened. “Because of Piggy?”

  “It kills him when you call him that.”

  “He’s so thin-skinned he’d bleed in a high wind.”

  “He’s tremendously intelligent, and he—”
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br />   “He doesn’t interest me too much, but I can see he sure interests you.”

  “It’s not what you think, Colonel.” She started to blush.

  “If it’s not what I think, then it’s a goddamned good imitation.”

  “You make me sick! I don’t know how you could think that about Nash.” Realizing she had insulted the colonel of her regiment, she said nothing more.

  “Let me ask you this: Have you ever slept with a woman?”

  Shocked, Geneva stuttered, “N-n-no, and don’t make fun of me.”

  “I’m not. I know you’re young, but you’ve got to learn sometime. I’m taking you with me to Richmond, and I personally am going to see that you become acquainted with the fair sex.” A drop of sarcasm coated his voice.

  “No.”

  Not understanding her refusal, he pressed on. “It’s not so bad, Jimmy. Granted, it takes practice, and women are complicated. I had to get drunk to attempt it, and I don’t remember a minute of the maneuver. You have to start somewhere, Jimmy. For Christ’s sake, no man should be a virgin on his wedding night.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “What’s the matter with you? Hasn’t your father or your brother talked to you?”

  “No!”

  “Calm down. You have to grow up sometime. A man has a responsibility to his future wife to be knowledgeable, and it’s hardly a chore learning! You also have a responsibility to your wife never to let her find out about your, shall we say, experiments and never, ever to let her find out about dalliances.”

  Devastated, Geneva practically whimpered. “Have you, have you ever had dalliances?”

  “A few.”

  “Even after you were married?”

  “Jimmy, boy, you don’t look well. Would you like a drink of something stronger than water?”

  “You betrayed your wife?”

  “She betrayed me first!” Mars flashed. That was one wound he didn’t want uncovered.

  “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

  “And what the hell do you know about it? You haven’t even won your spurs!”