He and Mollie stood in the doorway while their friends filed past. As far as he could remember, he’d never shaken so many men’s hands, hugged so many women, in so short a time. “A beautiful wedding, just beautiful,” Barbara Bissett said, squeezing him against her ample bosom. Then she started crying again.
Dempsey Eure came up, his wife Lucy beside him. He slapped Caudell’s back, planted a loud smack of a kiss on MoIlie’s cheek. “Now all you two have to do is wait till the sun goes down,” he said, adding mischievously, “Fool thing to do, too, if you ask me, gettin’ married near the longest day—and the shortest night—of the year.”
The men who heard him guffawed; the women tittered and pretended they had no idea what he was talking about. Mollie said, “You’re terrible, Dempsey.”
“Oh, I’m not quite as bad as all that,” he answered, grinning.
Just for a moment, some of Nate’s joy leaked away. Dempsey had shared a winter cabin with him during the war. He’d also gone over to Mollie’s cabin then, a few times or more than a few. Was he reminding her of it now? She might have had a point when she said this wouldn’t be easy.
But there by Dempsey stood Lucy Eure, blonde and slim and pretty in a birdlike way. She had one hand on the top of their son’s head; a sleeping baby filled her other arm. By the proud way Dempsey smiled at them, he was happy enough right where he was. Caudell decided he worried too much. If he read things into every chance remark, he and Mollie would have trouble.
Raeford Liles said,” All them letters you got from this lady here, Nate, and all them times you told me you weren’t sweethearts, I reckoned the two of you would join up sooner or later.” He cackled.
“You were right, sure enough,” Caudell admitted, determined now not to be teased. He put an arm around Mollie. “I’m glad you were.”
Two big elms shaded the street in front of the church. The guests stood in small groups there. “Don’t anybody leave quite yet,” Henry Pleasants said loudly. “You may just possibly have noticed some trestle tables there. Hattie, who cooks for me and my farmhands, has set up a little spread for you all.”
“You still talk like a Yankee, Henry,” Caudell said. “You’re supposed to say that as one word.”
“They weren’t goin’ away anyhow,” Mollie put in. “Seems more like they was tryin’ to keep from chargin’ them tables.”
“Hattie will hold them at bay, “,Pleasants said. Sure enough, the big black woman lashed out with a serving spoon at a man who got too close to a platter of roasted chicken. He hastily drew back.
Hattie used the spoon to beckon to Caudell and Mollie. “De new husband and wife, dey eats first,” she proclaimed, as if daring someone to argue with her. Nobody did. Caudell hurried over, grabbed a plate and fork, and foraged among chicken and ham and turkey, corn bread and sweet potato biscuits and beans cooked with salt pork. Carolina fruitcake, peanut brittle, ‘and peaches candied in honey also looked tempting, but the plate had only so much room.
Another trip; he told himself, attacking the ham. His ‘eyebrows leaped up as he tried to figure out what all Hattie had done with it. He tasted brown sugar, mustard, and cloves, molasses, honey, and something that had him puzzled until he finally identified it as the liquor from brandied crabapples. He was sure there were more flavors than he was noticing, too. He took another bite, and another. Pretty soon the ham was gone, but some of the mystery remained.
“Here you go.” Henry Pleasants pressed a glass of whiskey into his hand.
“Thank you, Henry.” Caudell paused, then repeated himself in a different tone of voice: “Thank you, Henry—for everything.”
“Me? What’s there to thank me for?” Pleasants waved the idea away. “Hadn’t been for you, I’d’ve just gone back to the life I went into the army to escape. I dreaded having to do that when the war was over, and thanks to you, I had no need.”
He would have said more—he’d had a glass of whiskey or two himself, while Caudell was eating—but Wren Tisdale came over to him and asked, “How much do you want for that nigger wench, Pleasants? I’ll give you top dollar, by God—the business her cooking will bring into the Liberty Bell ought to make her worth my while pretty quick.”
“She’s not for sale, sir,” Pleasants said. “She—”
“Will you hire her out to me, then? How much would you want for two weeks of her time out of the month?”
“If you’d let me finish, I’d have told you she’s not for sale because she’s free,” Pleasants said. “If you want her to cook at the Liberty Bell, you’ll have to worry about making it worth her while.”
The saloonkeeper’s pinched, sallow features darkened with anger. “I ain’t no Yankee—I don’t hold with free niggers.” He stalked off.
“That’s peculiar,” Caudell said, watching him go. “Hattie’s cooking isn’t going to change just because she’s free.”
“True enough, but if he took her on as a free woman, he’d have to treat her that way.” Pleasants lowered his voice. “A lot of you Southerners have trouble with that.”
Caudell pointed to the three stars on the collar of his friend’s gray jacket. “You’re a Southerner yourself now, Henry, like it or not, even if you can’t say ‘y’all,’ and come to that, the blacks in the U.S.A. aren’t having an easy time of it, either, if you can believe the papers.”
“That’s so.” Pleasants sighed. “If Lee’s bill ever gets out of the Senate, it will put this country on the right track, at any rate;”
“I can’t see why they’re taking so long over it,” Caudell answered. “Even Bedford Forrest said he wouldn’t have voted for himself if he’d known the truth about the Rivington men.”
“After politicians listen to their own speeches for a while, they start forgetting what they know, if you ask me.” Pleasants tapped Nate’s glass with a forefinger. “Can I fill you up again?”
Caudell pointed to a punch bowl. “Why don’t you get me some syllabub instead? It should go nicely with the fruitcake.” And sure enough, the sweetened mixture of Madeira, sherry, lemon juice, and cream, all spicy with mace and cinnamon, perfectly complemented the candied orange peel, cherries, raisins, figs, and pecans in the cake. When he was through at last, Caudell said, “You can just roll me back home, Henry. I’m too full to walk.”
“Or for anything else?” Pleasants asked with a proper best man’s leer.
Caudell glanced over at Mollie. Her smile brought one to his own lips. “You needn’t worry about that,” he said firmly.
When the trestle tables were as bare of food as if an invading army had swept over them, and shadows lengthened toward evening, Raeford Liles drove the newlyweds to the widow Bissett’s in his buggy. Everyone pelted them with rice as they climbed up onto the seat. “You have some in your beard,” Mollie said.
“I don’t care,” Caudell answered, but he brushed at himself anyhow. Half a dozen grains cascaded down onto the front of his jacket. The buggy started to roll. More rice flew.
The house was quiet and empty when Liles pulled up in front of it; all the Bissetts were going out to sleep at Payton Bissett’s farm, to give Caudell and Mollie one private night. Reining in, the storekeeper said, “You got to pay me my fare now.” Before Caudell had a chance to get angry, he explained, “I’m going to kiss the bride.” He leaned over and pecked Mollie’s cheek.
Caudell slid down from the buggy, held out his arms to help Mollie. “Like I told you back at the church, Mr. Liles, I’m glad you were right and I was wrong.”
“Heh, heh.” The storekeeper’s grin showed his few remaining teeth. “Reckon I don’t need to wish you a good evenin’, now do I?” He flicked the reins, clucked to his horse. The buggy turned in the middle of the street, headed back toward Liles’s rooms over the general store.
“Why don’t you come with me, Mrs. Caudell?” Nate said.
He hadn’t called her that before. Her eyes slowly widened.
“That’s sure enough who I am now, ain’t it?” she said, perh
aps half to herself. “Mr. Caudell, it’d be purely a pleasure.” They walked to the doorway arm in arm.
He carried her over the threshold twice, at the front door and again at the doorway to his upstairs room. The second time, he didn’t put her down right away, but walked over to the bed and gently laid her upon it. Then he went back and closed the door behind them. As he began to untie his cravat, he said, “One day before long, we’ll have to find another place to live. This room isn’t going to be big enough for the both of us.”
She was sitting up, reaching around to the back of her neck to undo the fastenings of her wedding gown. She interrupted herself to nod. Then she smiled that glowing smile of hers. “Reckon you’re right, Nate. But it’s big enough for tonight, don’t you think?”
He hurried to her. “I’m sure of it.” He had no idea whether they would live happily ever after. He’d start worrying about that tomorrow. Tonight, he did not care.
Robert E. Lee angrily jerked his head to one side, as if he were snapping at his own ear. “Twenty-four men,” he growled. “Twenty-four men holding our country’s future in their pocket—and they will not let it out.”
“Our Senate, like that of the United States upon which it was modeled, is leisurely in debate,” Charles Marshall said.
“Leisurely?” Lee rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling of his office, and toward the heavens that ceiling hid. “Mr. Marshall, I have been raised from childhood with the firm conviction that the republican form of government is the finest ever devised, but the dilatory tactics I have seen in connection with this bill tempt me to doubt my faith therein. Had the Army of Northern Virginia campaigned in the manner in which the Senate debates, AK-47s would not have sufficed to gain our independence.”
“Had the Army of Northern Virginia campaigned in the manner in which the Senate debates, it would have been McClellan’s Army of the Potomac instead,” Marshall said.
Caught by surprise, Lee let out a short bark of laughter. “I will not say you are wrong, sir, but that is no way for a proper army—or a proper government—to conduct its business.”
“The vote must surely come in the next few days, Mr. President,” Marshall said.
“Must it? So people have been claiming for weeks now, yet still the debate goes on, and on, and on.” Lee’s open hand came down with a thump on a pile of the day’s Richmond newspapers. “And still this—this twaddle continues to be printed.”
Charles Marshall raised a sympathetic eyebrow. “It is pretty dreadful, isn’t it?”
“Dreadful? I wish I were a fine profane swearer like General Forrest, so I might more appropriately express my feelings.”
Lee whacked the pile of papers again. Every sort of argument the South had devised over the years to justify slavery was coming out anew in the course of the Senate debate—and in the newspapers. Arguments taken from the Politics of Aristotle lay cheek by jowl with those borrowed from the Book of Genesis and its condemnation of the children of Ham. Tucked in alongside both were modern, allegedly scientific claims that aligned blacks with the great apes and purported to prove them inferior to whites.
In the papers, the counterarguments adduced by supporters of Lee’s legislation seemed feeble by comparison. Those senators had to be circumspect, to keep from sounding like homegrown abolition fanatics. Much of their public argument was based on the evidence of the past few years, evidence that showed the Negro in a light different from that in which he had been viewed before. Could helpless Sambo, they said, have made first a soldier and then a rebel so dangerous that de facto emancipation already existed over broad areas of the Confederacy? The answer, they maintained, was obviously no.
But their foes turned that answer against them. If the Negro could make a soldier and a dangerous rebel, why, then, all the better reason to grant him no concessions; indeed, to tighten control on him harder than ever.
The real trouble was, half the arguments in favor of Lee’s bill could not be stated publicly. Its backers could rail at the Rivington men, could point out how they had murdered to try to force the Southern government away from any step toward emancipation and had revolted when the murders failed to achieve their purpose. That was fine, as far as it went.
It did not go far enough, though. Lee did not want the lesson of future history paraded through the newspapers for Northerners and Englishmen to read. Those secrets were an ace in the hole against the ambitions of nations larger and more powerful than the Confederate States.
If they did not stay secret…Late reports from the war in the Canadas said that some U.S. forces were beginning to carry repeating rifles patterned after the AK-47. That worried Lee. One day before too long, the United States might try a war of revenge against the Confederacy. If they did, he wanted things like buried torpedoes and endless repeaters to stay dark and quiet, the better to surprise the invaders. Trumpeting the knowledge from out of time would only make that harder. In public, then, his supporters had to watch what they said.
He sighed. “When the Second American Revolution began, our bold Southern men said they could beat the North with one hand tied behind their backs. We found out it was not so soon enough. Now I wonder if we can pass this bill while using only one hand.” He explained what he meant to Charles Marshall.
His aide thoughtfully pursed his lips. “If the only way to rally popular support for the legislation would be to allow everything to come out, are you willing to do that?”
“Now there’s a pretty problem!” Lee exclaimed. “I confess I had not thought of it in quite those terms. Which weighs for more, a nation’s safety or justice for its inhabitants?” He considered the question for three or four minutes before continuing, “I believe, sir, the answer must be no. Once a secret is gone, it is gone forever and cannot be restored. But even if my bill fails of passage in this session of Congress, it may be introduced again in future sessions, and one day will surely be approved. How say you?”
“Mr. President, your views generally strike me as sensible, and this instance is no exception. You remind me that you are fighting a war here, not merely a single battle.”
“Well put,” Lee said. “When caught up in the excitement of a single battle, it is important to bear in mind the campaign of which it forms a part.”
“True enough, sir,” Marshall said, “although I had not envisioned your Presidential term as analogous to a military campaign.” He ventured a chuckle. “I suppose that if I spoke with Jefferson Davis, he would say he had spent a good part of his time in office campaigning against our Congress.”
“I do hope to avoid some of the difficulties he had. He was and is a most able man, but also one who sees disagreement as an affront, if not a betrayal. I do not think he himself would disagree with my assessment. I still have hope, at least, that a more conciliatory approach will yield better results.”
“And if not?” Marshall asked.
“If not, I shall bellow and froth at the reprobates until steam starts from my ears as if from a locomotive engine’s safety valve.” Lee caught his aide staring. “I see you do not believe me. Too bad—if I cannot fool you, how am I to deceive the Congress?”
Still shaking his head, Charles Marshall walked out of the office. Lee settled in to his daily paperwork. He had never cared for it, and the Presidency brought far more of it his way than he’d had to deal with even as general. But regardless of whether he cared for it, it was part of his duty, and so he conscientiously undertook it.
A report from the Virginia Military Institute caught his eye. Hendrik Nieuwoudt, one of the Rivington men ordered there, had been found hanged in his room, apparently a suicide. He’d left a note on his bed: “I can’t stand being watched anymore.”
Lee’s mouth tightened. Constant surveillance was the price those AWB men who had been released paid, and would continue to pay, for being suffered to live. That phrase, with its Biblical overtones, echoed in his mind. He’d thought of the Rivington men as captive genies before. Witches, though, made as good a
description for them: they had curious powers and they were dangerous. Benny Lang and most of the others appeared to understand and accept that. But Nieuwoudt was the second of their number to kill himself.
Lee had a horror of suicide; to him it seemed the ultimate abandonment of responsibility. Yet the Rivington men were already abandoned like no others in all the world, cast adrift even from their proper time. What had they to live for? He wished he could make their lot easier, but would not put his nation in he’s way for their sake. If that made him partly to blame for their deaths, he would accept the burden. An officer had to learn to do that, else he would never be able to give an order that brought his men within range of the enemy’s shot and shell. And now he was not merely general, but commander in chief.
Reminding himself of that brought his thoughts back to the Senate. How easy it would be if he could simply order the men of the upper house to approve his legislation! But he could not; the Constitution did not permit it. They would make up their own minds in their own good time…and quite probably drive him mad in the process.
Commotion on the grounds of the Presidential mansion. Lee looked up from a letter he was writing to the British minister. Running feet, a sentry’s cry of, “Halt! Y’all halt right now, do you hear me?” After the Richmond Massacre, sentries took their duties more seriously than they had in times past.
Several voices shouted back at the sentry. That garbled any single reply, but one word was repeated often enough to come through clearly. “Vote! The vote!” Lee jumped to his feet and hurried out, the letter forgotten. He’d hoped the vote might finally come today, but past delays had forced caution on him.
Guards stood before the front steps with extended bayonets, holding a squad of reporters out of the residence. The reporters’ yells redoubled when Lee appeared in the doorway. “Fourteen to ten,” one of them bawled above the general din. “Fourteen to ten, President Lee! What do you have to say about that?”
“Fourteen to ten which way, Mr. Helper?” Lee asked, doing his best to hold anxiety from his voice. “You must be aware your response to that question will have some small bearing on the comments I make.”
The Guns of the South Page 69