Poofy managed to smuggle a letter through the lines urging Lutie to come to Bedford, New York, where she would care for her. Lutie answered her sister with a long letter. Lutie handed the document to Henley, telling him to get it on the other side of the Potomac. Once he returned to Richmond, Henley sent it by government courier, and it passed through the lines. He often wondered if anyone, zealous in his duty, read it before it reached Poofy’s hands.
What Henley could say to no one was his anguish for never having understood his son. He would awaken in the middle of the night feeling as though he had extricated himself from a black whirlpool. The pain pierced him because he feared his son was a braver man than he was. He failed as a father. He failed as a husband, and now he was failing as a soldier. Sometimes he would wake up to find his pillow wet. One terrible night he crawled out of bed, his knees hitting the cold floor, and he prayed to great God Almighty to forgive him and grant him atonement. He could never make it up to Sumner, but if he felt God’s grace, perhaps he would have the courage to make it up to the other people in his life whom he had ignored or hurt. The sins of omission began to loom as large as the sins of commission, and Henley knew he’d committed both. His only comfort was Geneva. Her love for him was the slender thread upon which dangled his self-respect.
Geneva haunted him day and night. He couldn’t stand to lose her, but he had given her his word that he wouldn’t tell.
“You’re so quiet, Colonel Chatfield. I’m afraid this funeral is distressing to you.” Kate’s low voice brought him back to the present.
“Memories.”
Kate, wisely knowing no conventional sentiment could ease him, said, “I know that we can live with deprivation, with war, but I sometimes wonder can we live with our sorrows?”
Baron Schecter, while he disliked Henley for obvious reasons, was not an unfeeling man. He added, “We must all live with our losses—and under God’s unblinking eye.”
“Right now, Baron,” Henley replied, “I feel as though I am seeing God’s hind parts, not his eye.”
FEBRUARY 2, 1862
A howling ice storm rattled the windows of the Livingston mansion. Bedford, New York, far from the fury of war, could not escape nature.
Wrapped in a fur blanket, Poofy Chalfonte Livingston read her sister’s letter which miraculously had arrived by government courier in this winter tempest.
1 January 1862
My Dearest Sister:
Words fall from my brain like leaves. I am becoming spare; perhaps I have the weariness of winter. Let’s hope I have the austerity and sinew of winter as well.
Thank you for your letter. It was a great consolation to me. Please give my tenderest affections to Daniel for informing you of what happened to Sumner. His expressions of sympathy for myself and Henley only confirm my belief that while our husbands fight on opposing sides of this repulsive war, nothing will ever shatter the bonds of love forged in our family.
Grief so numbs the senses that I am not always sure what I feel. Sometimes I think I can bear that pain, and other times I think it will crush me. I see around me, as you must in Bedford, other women in like anguish. How can I falter? This grief is not mine alone. We each suffer. We all suffer. Alone, I ask myself, is any cause worth the price of one human life? Do you harbor such thoughts?
I think of our brother. I think of my daughter. She’s quite lost her mind. She’s with Nash, and she’s been in the army disguised as a man since the beginning of the war. I’ve kept it from you as she wished, but now I can’t hold it in any longer. Must I surrender my remaining child to the bloody jaws of hell, too?
You used to complain, dear Poofy, that you and Daniel had no children. Rejoice. You will never know the agony of birthing them, raising them, only to see them die before their time.
You asked me do I pray. Yes. But I look at the cross, and I no longer see a symbol of salvation, I see an instrument of torture. I feel I am sailing on a black river to midnight.
And yet, today I looked at Sin-Sin’s sweet face. I saw my friends gathered around me to help me though this time. A few of them secretly worry that like a tree, I’ll die from the top down. I won’t. Don’t worry, Poofy. I will not lose my mind. But I looked at them and realized that through my friends God has loved me. And that ray of hope, of comprehension, begins to work on my soul.
I don’t say that I shall immediately be restored nor that I shan’t continue to ask myself deeply disturbing questions. And grief will pull me like a slumberous undertow. But that radiant moment, lifting me quite out of myself, gives me hope. Perhaps the only way to heal, to find happiness, is to forget one’s self. Perhaps, too, we must even forget all that we know. We know too much; we feel too little. Perhaps we must become children again, and try and see the world as a bright new toy despite our suffering, despite the blood, the cruelty, the betrayals we call history! “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” This may be the only way to God.
I love you, Portia. You have been a good and faithful sister to me, and I long for the day when we can once again be physically reunited. Until then, know that my heart is with you every moment.
Lutie
Poofy put the letter next to her breast and pressed it against her heart. In the back of her mind like God’s whisper was the incantation “Love.”
MARCH 19, 1862
Henley returned for a few days to Albemarle County to reach an agreement with Reddy Neutral Taylor over thirty-five horses Taylor was offering for sale. The lunatics running the army decided that when a cavalryman lost his mount, he would drop out of his company and fall in with a specially designated Company Q. There he stayed until he could purchase another mount as the state had no intention of supplying him with one. Granted, most cavalrymen were from well-to-do families, but yanking a man out of the ranks and sending him on a wild goose chase for a horse was stupid. Henley thought his heart would stop when he heard the news. Then, too, some cavalrymen lacked funds. What were they supposed to do, fall in with the infantry?
General Gorgas, no friend of the scheme, did stand by the notion that individual contractors had a right to sell horses. He thought that encouraging businessmen would get the job done. Henley agreed with him there. Christ, set up another government bureau to do a job, and they’d all die, choked in red tape. These enterprising types were to sell at approved government prices. Reddy Neutral Taylor, presenting himself as a friend of both Henley and the Confederacy, offered thirty-five horses at $150 a head. The nerve of the man galled Henley. After loathsome bargaining, he reduced the price to $100 a head, still highway robbery, but Henley paid the thieving skunk and arranged for the horses to be shipped to Colonel Vickers at camp. Through Kate he learned that Vickers was preparing for a major battle next spring, probably in defense of Richmond. Company Q was anathema to Mars so he collected monies from his men for a pool of horses. For those that could not pay, Vickers made up the difference.
Henley strode into his library, appalled at his dealings with Reddy Neutral Taylor and chilled from the cold weather. Snow clouds scraped the cupola atop Chatfield’s main stable.
“I could scoop the sky out with a spoon today,” Lutie said, as she took a seat next to him by the fire. “Henley, you look so tired. I know having to pass the day with Reddy is unpleasant. He’s swelling up like a slug in beer, that one! Try to put him out of your mind.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “It isn’t just that. We’re losing this war, Lutie. Ever since Sumner passed on, the portents and the events spell doom.”
“It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
“This is dark indeed. I think I knew following President Tyler’s funeral cortège that darkness was enveloping us. And when Captain O. Jennings Wise was carried through the town, people were distraught. I tell you I’ve never seen such an outpouring. You couldn’t get within a block of St. James Church, even in the slush and the snow. People shivered and wept.”
“He was a popular b
oy and a hero.”
“A hero? My God, we asked him to fight off seventy-five hundred Federals at Roanoke Island with one-third that number. He was a lamb led to slaughter! So many lambs.” Henley’s eyes clouded.
“Over so many centuries.”
“What, Lutie?” Henley blinked.
“The human race puts one bloody foot in front of the other and calls it progress.” She furiously knitted, her needles clicking. “History is a vile mess.”
“But this time we’re part of it. I’m part of it! Sometimes I wake up and I think of the Revolutionary War. Was it my father’s nightmare? Was it like this? Could the leaders have been as foul, as degraded, as monumentally stupid as that gaunt idiot in Washington?”
“I expect some were.”
“I knew we were on the way down when we lost Tennessee and Kentucky. Richmond is flooded with refugees. I don’t know where they sleep at night. The Union controls the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, and Judah P. Benjamin tries to weasel out of the blame. To think I once thought there was genius in that man!” Henley, disgusted, slammed his hand on the arm of the chair. “They made the damn fool Secretary of State after he failed as Secretary of War. Fremont in Missouri is warning enough. Fremont’s ravings about emancipation ought to chill us to the bone, and he stole the property of any pro-Southern individual. Confiscation. People are thrown out in the streets in the dead of winter, their personal belongings ripped from them! That’s what’s going to happen to us if we don’t wake up.”
“It’s not going to happen to us.”
“I’d like to know why not?”
“Because I will stand at my bedroom window and fire until every last shell of ammunition is spent, that’s why. And then they can come and kill me, because I don’t think I’ll care anymore. I tell you this, husband, my pacifism died the day Sumner did. I am not going down without one hell of a fight. I owe that much to our son.”
“And our daughter.” Henley’s lips compressed.
“I have moments when I think I’ll dress up and join, too.”
“With your ample bosom I don’t think you’d get far.” He smiled.
Happy to see him smile, Lutie called, “Sin-Sin.”
Sin-Sin appeared in an instant. “Yes.”
“Standing around the corner, Sin-Sin?”
“No, I jes happen to be passin’ by.”
“What a notoriously rotten liar you are. Might you inform Ernie June that Mr. Chatfield and I would appreciate two toasty hot toddies?”
“Might could.” Sin-Sin walked toward the kitchen.
“I miss her,” Henley sighed.
“I know there was a time when I didn’t know Sin-Sin, but it is now so far back in my memory that it’s irretrievable.”
“You know what else worries me?”
“Henley, if you’d rest your mind.”
“It was suspending the writ of habeas corpus. Oh, how Jefferson Davis huffed and puffed like the big bad wolf when Lincoln did it at the beginning of the war. Not us! Not Southerners! We are a civilized people who respect the laws. And then he claps martial law on Norfolk and Portsmouth to boot!”
“Norfolk is very rowdy. It’ll get the drunks off the streets.”
“ ‘Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.’ Ha! Even if we can end this war without losing too much territory, how we can repair the damage to our laws?”
“Henley, I have always thought that men paid entirely too much attention to law instead of to behavior. Take dueling for instance. You could outlaw it tomorrow, but the law isn’t going to stop it.”
“That’s a special case, Lutie. Dueling allows a man to defend his honor without going bankrupt in a court of law.”
Sin-Sin returned. “Hot toddies, jes the way you likes ’em.”
“Thank you, Sin-Sin.” Henley grabbed the cup and quickly put it down because it was hot.
“You can leave us.” Lutie smiled.
“I’s ’fraid I might miss somethin’.”
“Sin-Sin, that’s the point, isn’t it?”
Sin-Sin, grumbling under her breath, retired. Lutie leaned forward. “I hope they don’t know how bad it is.”
“Di-Peachy reads the newspapers and tells them.”
“Henley, how can you say such a thing?”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“The less they know, the better. It’ll confuse them.”
“Lutie, she’s one of them, after all. If you were a servant, wouldn’t you want to know how the war was progressing? If the North wins, the Negro race might be freed.”
“Lincoln is not Fremont. He knows such an action would harden the resolve of the South and turn ordinary citizens into fanatics,” Lutie replied.
“If we win, who is to say that this curse might not be lifted?”
“You and I will never see eye to eye about our special problem.”
“We have to free the slaves, Lutie. I don’t know what they’ll do in Louisiana or Alabama, but here in Virginia we must do it or be in peril for our immortal souls.” His chest heaved.
“Henley, where will they go? What will they do? Who would have them?”
“They can stay right here, but we’ve got to set them free.”
“For God’s sake, Henley, wait until this wretched war is finally over. You can’t leave me here without any authority. What if they leave?”
“You yourself said, ‘Where would they go?’ ”
“Be sensible! How can we pay them? Do we even know what their labor is worth? How can I run this place? Answer me that! Let sleeping dogs lie.”
He ran his big hand through his thick hair. “I am drawing up manumission papers, effective December 25, 1862. I will instruct our servants that if they wish to leave us, to do so immediately and to be quiet about it. There’s no need in arousing the ire of our neighbors at this delicate time nor in raising false hopes in their servants. Those that wish to stay will be paid half the wage that a white man would get for the same labor. Under the circumstances I think that is fair.”
“Under the circumstances,” Lutie replied, “I would say it’s extraordinary. I don’t agree with you, Henley, but I have no way in which to stop you.”
“I must do this thing. I have talked about it since we were married. I must take the bull by the horns, and may God forgive me if I am mistaken and if I expose you to ridicule.”
“I can take the ridicule. It’s poverty I’m not so sure I can take.”
“We aren’t going to be poor.”
“Even if we are, we’ll manage,” Lutie said without enthusiasm. “You know what my mother used to say: ‘Worse things have happened to nicer people.’ ”
“Your mother also said, ‘What if God is a vegetable?’ ”
“Maybe we have to be crazy to be happy on this earth.” Lutie smiled ruefully.
“In the balance, my dear, have you been happy?” Henley swallowed his drink.
“I have enjoyed isolated moments of great happiness, some of them with you.”
“I think that’s all there is, Lutie. Isolated moments.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
APRIL 12, 1862
Picket duty irked Geneva, but she didn’t complain. She, Nash, and Banjo watched the column as it rode in fours, followed by infantry, down the road to Yorktown. The three of them sat where a narrow wooded lane intersected Yorktown Road. Procedure was procedure.
When in hostile territory, a mounted man rode forward a half mile in front of an infantry or a cavalry column. Halfway between him and the column marched an advance guard, usually a squadron composed of two companies followed by the main column. Behind the main column about a quarter of a mile rode a rear guard. Once the rear guard passed, the soldiers on picket or vidette duty rejoined the rear guard. Pickets were always posted at intersecting roads and wooded areas.
Standing around made Geneva restless, but when her turn came up for this, she performed it without much complaint. The surrounding low country was good for
cavalry except where swamps were located. The smell of brackish water assailed her nostrils. How anyone could live in this kind of terrain mystified Geneva. She pitied people who had no green rolling hills or mountains to guard them.
McClellan was reputed to have one hundred thousand men. Geneva knew, as did everyone, that if the Confederates under General Joseph Johnston had thirty thousand men, it was a miracle. The South waited anxiously behind an eight-mile front sparsely populated with redoubts, rifle pits, and whatever else the engineers could throw up. The situation appeared hopeless, although reinforcements trickled in daily. A drop in the bucket was better than no drop at all.
The lowlands, laced with rivers, streams, and swamps, provided interesting territory in which to fight. McClellan, his headquarters less than one mile from the house in which Cornwallis had agreed to surrender to Continental forces, boasted that he’d drag Johnston and Davis to that very same house and reenact the surrender. Meanwhile, he talked instead of moved.
Geneva knew that outnumbered though they were, if they could get enough men to dig in and make life unpleasant for McClellan, Gorgeous George, as he was contemptuously called, might lose the opportunity for his desired historical reenact-ment. She figured that the cavalry would be used like a terrier to nip at the Federals’ heels.
The rear guard passed with the usual compliments concerning the vidette. “That’s right, sit on your butt, cavalry boy, while I get fallin’ arches!”
“Think we’ve seen the last of them?” Nash asked.
“Why don’t we wait a bit, as we’re downwind from the swamps.” Banjo knocked the dust off his cap. “If the Yankees don’t kill you, the smell will.”
“Do you hear something?” Nash was alert.
“More cavalry,” Banjo replied.
“I thought the rest of the cavalry was forward.”
“Maybe we’re getting units outside of Stuart’s brigade,” suggested Geneva. “Why don’t we catch them up?”
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