Sounds of astonishment went around the group.
“Is it really one of the seven?” asked Cherity. “It actually came… from the king of England!”
Chigua nodded solemnly. “This ring once belonged to our great peace chief of the white feather Attacullaculla. It came to me through my great-grandmother, the Ghigua, Nanye’hi Ward, for whom I was named.”
“Where are the other six?” asked Cherity.
“I do not know. I was only nine when my half sister and I were kidnapped by Seminoles. How I kept them from finding it is a miracle. But I managed to hide it until I met Sydney, and then he kept it for me all the years we were slaves. Somehow we were able to preserve it.”
“So you are related to Cherokee royalty… to a Cherokee king!” said Carolyn excitedly.
Chigua smiled a little sadly. “Well, to a chief,” she said. “But what does it mean to be related to the leader of a conquered and displaced people? Even our proud heritage cannot remove the pain from the heart of the Cherokee—the pain of being taken from our homeland. One of my early memories is of my grandfather, when I was but a child as we prepared to set off to Oklahoma, telling me the history of our people. He knew the legend of the rings too. But he said the days of peace and prosperity would never return to our people. His words saddened my heart even then.”
“What was the legend of the rings?” asked Cherity.
“When my mother’s sister gave me this ring,” said Chigua, looking at the gold band on her finger, “she told me what her mother had said to her, words passed down from the Ghigua. She said, ‘When you wear this ring, beloved daughter, you are wearing a symbol of the unity and peace and trust that once existed between our pale-skinned brothers and the Ancient People. It is a sacred trust given to you, as the Great Chief Attacullaculla once gave it to the Beloved Woman, Nanye’hi.’I think my aunt hoped our people might find peace in the Oklahoma Territory.”
“What about your other relatives?” asked Cherity.
Chigua shook her head.
“I know nothing of what happened to them. A few of my aunts and uncles married whites and did not have to leave North Carolina. But my grandfather was a full-blooded Cherokee and proud of it. He had practically raised me and my half sister and I adored him. He was the one who told me to guard this ring with my life, for I came from the royal line of Chief Attacullaculla and Nanye’hi Ward, the Beloved Woman of the Cherokee. During all those weeks and months before the soldiers herded us away from North Carolina, the men and women of our tribe hid the Cherokee gold in the caves of North Carolina. And then the time came and we were rounded up and taken away.”
“That is such a remarkable and at the same time terrible story!” said Carolyn. “How can people be so cruel to their fellow man?”
“It was always my feeling that our Mr. Brown was one of those who left North Carolina before the worst of the trouble came upon the Cherokee,” said Richmond. “But I was away when he left.”
“I wish I could have met him,” said Chigua. “Surely he could tell me much about our people that I never knew.”
“I am amazed and honored to discover that we have a Cherokee daughter of chiefs with us!” said Richmond. “Now it is clear why you wanted to restore this painting of Mr. Brown’s.”
“It is my own history,” nodded Chigua. “I did not know it at first, though I felt that something special must be here.”
In the following days, Chigua continued to pore over the old skin painting, studying its every detail and experimenting with paints of white and black and red—made from certain berries and bits of crushed bark and leaves soaked in water—to get just the right shades with which to touch up the most badly faded portions of the images on the leather.
At length a day came when Carolyn and Cynthia and Cherity heard a shriek from Chigua’s workroom. They dropped what they were doing and ran to her. They found Chigua standing staring at the painting with excitement.
“I’ve finally managed to translate the writing!” she exclaimed.
“What does it say?” asked Cherity, staring down at the table where the skin lay spread out before them.
“Look at these words on top,” said Chigua. “They say, ‘Seven rings for seven chiefs—the chiefs of the Cherokee—they of the white feather and he of the red feather, the white chiefs of peace, the red chief of war.’ And these,” Chigua went on, pointing below them, “I believe these seven figures that look like trees decorated with feathers represent the seven chiefs. See, six are standing painted in white, and the one red tree is fallen and lying sideways, showing the folly of war. And then below them are the rings.”
“But there are only six,” said Cherity.
Chigua nodded. “I do not know why that is so… unless one of them was lost.”
The three women were silent.
“And what is that?” asked Cherity pointing to two small triangular diagrams of lines and dots on the bottom at both corners of the skin.
“That I am not sure of,” answered Chigua. “It looks to me like some symbols I faintly remember seeing my grandfather make before we left North Carolina. He was out many nights with others of our men, taking the tribe’s gold to hiding places in the mountains. They marked the locations, I think, with symbols and markings similar to these, though I have no idea what they mean.”
As Cherity listened, her brain was spinning. She had seen a symbol just like these before!
Nine
As different as he now was from his onetime childhood friend, Denton Beaumont’s thoughts had recently been moving in channels remarkably similar to those of Richmond Davidson. Like his neighbor, he too had been receiving disturbing reports from his overseer Leon Riggs that the work of the plantation was falling behind. And without his son Wyatt at home to help keep both Riggs and the slaves in line, his options were severely limited.
Abraham Lincoln and his talk of freedom had poisoned the minds of slaves everywhere. Every month Riggs reported another one or two escaped and gone. Even the presence of the behemoth Elias Slade could not stop them. He no longer had the manpower to chase them down as he once did. And Riggs and Slade could not alone plant and harvest all their fields. If many more slaves left, Denton Beaumont could find himself in desperate financial straits.
But what could he do from the city of Richmond? Here in the Confederate capital he sometimes felt powerless. The distance home was not so very great, though further than it had been from Washington. But his responsibilities in the new Congress demanded his presence. Or at least so he tried to convince himself. The fact was, until this war was over they weren’t really doing much of anything. He would not say that to Jeff Davis’s face, of course. They all pretended to be running a new country, the Confederate States of America. But it was the generals who were really in charge. Without the army there was no country. Unless Lee and Beauregard and the others defeated McClellan and Grant and the rest of Lincoln’s brood, there would be no more Confederate States of America and he would never serve in politics again. And if they were defeated, it would mean an end to slavery and the Southern way of life… and probably an end to Oakbriar as well.
Beaumont sighed and sipped at the glass of Scotch in his hand. For the first time a few shadows of doubt began to cross his mind that perhaps he had bet on the wrong horse, and that perhaps the Confederate experiment was not destined for the rosy future they had all anticipated.
He needed to get out of the city. He had chided his wife for wanting to return to Oakbriar three weeks ago. Maybe she had been right after all.
When Denton Beaumont stepped off the train onto the platform of the Dove’s Landing station and glanced around, he felt none of the triumphant sense of the return of the conquering hero that he once had. People were coming and going. Most took no notice of him. A few nods and greetings followed him out to the street, but he did not recognize half the people milling about the station.
The town was changing. Troops from both sides had come through the area. All the fi
ghting in northern and central Virginia had taken its toll. There were also a few soldiers about, some wounded and returning home to recuperate, others taking trains to join their units. But he knew none of them. The buildings and boardwalks and fences and watering troughs and hitching rails of Dove’s Landing looked old and tired and run-down. Here and there he saw a broken window. More than one storefront was newly vacant.
He looked about, saw Jarvis—more white-haired than the last time he had been here—standing beside a waiting carriage. Beaumont strode toward him.
“Good day to you, Massa Bowmont,” said the black man.
“And to you, Jarvis,” nodded Beaumont. He climbed up and sat down on the seat with a sigh. “Get me home.”
As the carriage bearing the owner of the once proud plantation clattered toward the great house of Oakbriar, its occupant gazed about with none of the feeling of exhilaration he once would have felt at such a moment. Instead a feeling of uncharacteristic depression came upon him. He saw no evidence of activity and life. All was too still, too quiet.
As he entered the house a few minutes later, the feeling of desolation grew. Wyatt was gone, Cameron was gone, Veronica was gone. The house seemed empty.
“Oh, Denton, you’re back!” came the high-pitched voice of his wife from somewhere, followed a moment later by the breezy sound of her dress sweeping into the room.
Inwardly Beaumont sighed, gave Lady Daphne a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, then went in search of Leon Riggs.
“I don’t know, Mr. Beaumont,” Leon Riggs said as the two men wheeled their mounts around and cantered westward from the stables toward the field where his crew was at work, “they was always a lazy lot, but it seems these days I can’t get nothing out of them. They take their whippings in silence, but don’t work no faster with their backs bleeding than without it.”
“You told me there have been several escapes… Any more in the last month?”
“Nope—me and Slade’s been watching them real close.”
“What about McCann? He was always the best tracker we had. Why didn’t you send him and the dogs after the runaways?”
“We did, Mr. Beaumont. But the other darkies, they’d mess up the dogs’ noses by sticking their own shirts in their face and after a while the dogs is just running around in circles.”
“Then send McCann and the hounds after them by himself.”
“He done quit, Mr. Beaumont.”
“What! Where’s he gone?”
“Over to the McClellan place, Mr. Beaumont. Mr. McClellan offered him more money.”
Beaumont cursed under his breath.
“Well, no matter,” said Beaumont, his hand fingering the leather whip at his side. “I’ll put a stop to this laziness and these escapes once and for all.”
“Whipping them don’t do no good no more,” said Riggs. “They just look at you and smile.”
“They won’t smile when they see me with the whip in my hand!” growled Beaumont, his annoyance with his overseer mounting by the minute.
“I tell you, Mr. Beaumont, things is changed. That’s why I let up with the whip. Seemed like after every whipping, the next day another one was missing and they was all silent as statues—wouldn’t say a word. The more I cracked down, the more escapes there was. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You’re too soft, Riggs. I’ve always told you—darkies understand nothing but the whip.”
“Things has changed, Mr. Beaumont,” repeated Riggs. “It just ain’t like it used to be.”
They rode on in silence until they came to a ten-acre field, half ploughed, where some twenty-five male slaves were working, though not fast enough to please their owner. They reined in from fifty yards away and Denton Beaumont surveyed the scene before him. The giant Elias Slade, his one free paid Negro, stood leaning on a shovel. Several groups of blacks scattered about the field wrestled haphazardly with horses, ploughs, and reins to upturn the dirt and cut furrows from one side to the other.
“How long have you been at it here?” asked Beaumont.
“Four days, Mr. Beaumont,” answered Riggs.
“Four days!” exploded Beaumont. “We used to plough this ten acres in three… And look at them—they aren’t even halfway through!”
He dug his heels into his mount and galloped ahead of Riggs. By the time the workers glanced up at his approach, the whip in his hand was already raised above his head.
And he was anxious to use it.
When Sydney LeFleure, returning from another delivery of passengers to the neighboring station of their journey, encountered the lone black man wandering apparently aimlessly along the dirt wagon track east of Greenwood, he took him for yet one more fugitive runaway from somewhere in the South. He reined in and climbed down as the man staggered in front of his team, then fell to the ground.
Sydney hurried to him. The man lay on his stomach and the moment Sydney reached him he knew him to be no ordinary runaway. The back of his shirt was shredded and torn and caked with dried blood. Sydney knew the signs of the whip well enough. His back bore the scars from many such whippings during his own years of exile. But there was one difference between his and this man’s scars. One look was enough to see that these wounds were fresh.
Sydney stooped down and rolled him onto his side, then eased his arms under his shoulders and knees and picked him up in his arms, carried him unconscious to the wagon, then jumped back onto the seat and urged the two horses home with as much speed as he dared.
Ten
The next time Cecil Hirsch saw Veronica, the meeting was obviously no accident. He knew it, and she knew it. By then Hirsch was well acquainted with the house where she and her husband lived, with their movements and activities, and knew more about Richard Fitzpatrick’s new governmental responsibilities than Veronica did. He also knew that Fitzpatrick had just left for New York, would be gone several days, that Veronica had begged to go with him, and that she was more than a little put out that he had declined to allow it. The setup, in Cecil Hirsch’s opinion, could not have suited his purposes better.
The day after Fitzpatrick’s departure, at about the time it was Veronica’s custom to go into the city or to meet one or another of the wives whose acquaintance she had recently made, Cecil Hirsch rode up in front of the Fitzpatrick home in a handsomely appointed carriage. There he reined in to wait at the side of the street until the lady of the house should make her appearance. The smile of pleasurable surprise that came over her face when she saw him was all the confirmation he needed that his timing had been perfect.
“Cecil… what in the world are you doing here?” said Veronica, walking out to the street.
“Merely passing by,” he returned with a smile of feigned innocence.
“Passing by!” she laughed. “Now I know you are lying to me.”
“You are right. The truth, then… I came to offer you the services of my humble carriage. I hoped my stimulating company might be more interesting than a ride into the city beside your own dull fellow. You told me last time we met that you were bored, and I told you that I would do what I could to help remedy that situation. So here I am—offering you a ride guaranteed to put interest back into your life!”
He jumped to the ground, gestured to the waiting carriage, then offered his hand.
Veronica smiled, as if in hopeless resignation, though inwardly she could not have been more pleased once again to be in the position of having a man, to all appearances, trying to win her over, then slowly nodded her consent.
Cecil helped her onto the leather padded seat. He climbed up beside her, swatted the horse’s back with the reins, and they bounded into motion.
“I had the feeling I would probably see you again,” said Veronica.
Hirsch could not help smiling. From the day he had first laid eyes on Veronica Beaumont he had known that they were kindred souls who thought alike. They still were.
“Are you disappointed?” he asked.
Veronica smiled a mome
nt before answering. “No, not disappointed or I wouldn’t have come with you. Let’s just say I am wary, asking myself what you are up to.”
Hirsch roared with laughter.
“I am up to nothing,” he said, still chuckling through the lie, “I just wanted the chance to see an old friend and have a good time in the city for a day. True, I thought it best, for your sake—call it propriety—that we renew our acquaintance when you were, shall we say, alone. I merely thought you might enjoy some shopping, perhaps lunch at Garabaldi’s.”
“Garabaldi’s—I have never eaten there. I hear it is quite exclusive. Will we be able to get in?”
“I am a friend of the manager’s. We will get in, I assure you. But before that, I want to take you to Madame Rochelle’s—”
“The Paris dressmaker!”
“You know of her.”
“Who doesn’t! But on Richard’s salary, I could never even think of being able to afford anything of hers.”
“I resolved when we met a few weeks ago that I would do what I could to alleviate what you described as the boredom of your life. A new dress by Madame Rochelle seems the perfect place to begin. You will be the talk of the capital!”
“Oh, Cecil! I cannot even imagine it! But how can you afford it?”
“The war has been good to me. Just set your mind at ease and know that I can afford it.”
“I can’t believe you would do that for me!” said Veronica excitedly. “Just imagine—a Madame Rochelle original! But what will I tell Richard?”
“Whatever you like. Tell him the truth, that you ran into me again and that I bought you a dress as a wedding gift.”
“Oh, yes… yes, of course… that’s perfect—a wedding gift. He would believe that. And why not… you and I are, just like you said, old friends.”
“Of course,” smiled Hirsch. “There is nothing untoward in it at all.”
By the time Cecil and Veronica sat down in a booth at Garabaldi’s three hours later, the fittings completed for what would easily be the most expensive dress she had ever owned, Veronica was positively exuberant with pleasure such as she had not felt for a long time. She was not meant to be a sit-at-home wife. She needed to be out where things were going on, and with herself in the middle of them. And with a dress, two hats, and three new pairs of gloves to be delivered to her doorstep by the most renowned dressmaker south of New York City, she had begun to feel like her old self again.
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