Jenny's Passion

by Diane Wylie

  Jenny nodded to Kizzie again. It was then that Phillip saw the man’s back was covered with horrible, raw slashes. It was shocking! He had known that some plantation owners whipped their slaves, something he never approved of doing, but who would do that to a white man and why?

  He had watched the proceedings inside the cabin with a strange fascination. Using a pair of black iron kitchen tongs, Kizzie had fished in the pot and pulled out a strip of linen, dripping and steaming with a milky liquid. With quick, deft movements she had spread the strips one by one across the man’s back.

  It must have been painful because the man’s arm muscles bunched as he gripped the bed tightly, his body jerking slightly with each new assault. His daughter had put her hands over his white knuckles and held them tightly. When it was over, she had tenderly wiped the man’s perspiring face with a cloth and leaned over to kiss his cheek. Slowly the man’s hand had risen to gently touch his daughter’s cheek and brush away a tear.

  Phillip had backed away from the window feeling sick. He did have every intention of driving the soldier away at gunpoint or turning him over to the Confederate army. After witnessing that scene, he had no heart to do either one. He couldn’t hurt Jenny that way. Perhaps the man would die despite Kizzie’s efforts. It was possible. A slave had been whipped so badly in the next town over that the poor wretch had died in less than a week. Phillip decided right then, as he walked back to the house, that he would not interfere; he would let God decide the man’s fate. Perhaps he would be allowed to keep his daughter’s affection that way…it was obvious that she loved the soldier.

  Phillip recognized the look of love on a woman’s face. He had seen it on his own wives’ faces. Both of his wives had shown their love for him, which he had returned wholeheartedly. But that love was now a part of his past. Sadness gripped his heart. He surely missed loving and being cared for that way…

  Now, as he stared sightlessly at the place where Jenny had disappeared from view, he remembered the wrenching fear that he would lose her each time he heard her creep down the stairs for her late night visits to the slave quarters. But he had not been able bring himself to lend aid to an enemy soldier…no…it had been best to leave it alone. And so he had waited.

  * * *

  Jenny removed the little carved dog from her skirt pocket, running her fingers over it tenderly. It made her think of David, something she did too often for her own good. He was gone now, perhaps forever. With a strangled sob, she turned to the flesh and blood canine sitting beside her and buried her face in the scruff of his neck.

  “Why did I do it, Rommie? Why did I tell him that I never wanted to see him again? I missed him the very second he turned away to leave!”

  She wiped fiercely at the tears gathering in her eyes, refusing to give in to the torment in her heart. Straightening up, she leaned against the wall of the window seat, looking out at the line of trees towering at the edge of the empty, fallow field.

  “I keep expecting to see Napoleon come trotting out, bringing David back to me. But that won’t happen, will it? I ruined everything didn’t I, Rommie?”

  She sighed and rubbed her eyes. It was late in February now, and the wind howled eerily, making her shiver. Ben, Nate, and Madeline would be gathering in the library soon for their lessons. Jenny hoped that Jebediah had the fire blazing on the hearth already…she just couldn’t seem to get warm lately. Laying her palm against the window glass, she watched the condensation gather itself into tiny droplets around her fingers, thinking once more about David Reynolds.

  Proudly, she had stood up for her country in the face of his proclamation that the North would prevail. What possible good had it done for either one of them? The outcome of the war would not change because she had denied her love and sent him away…only the outcome of her life had changed, and now she would forever pay the price.

  Finally forcing herself to move, she found a woolen shawl, wrapped it around her shoulders, and headed downstairs to the library with the dog on her heels.

  An hour later, Romulus suddenly leapt to his feet growling. Jenny and the children were gathered around the globe studying geography. Everyone froze and looked at the dog. He hesitated for just a second with his hackles raised then he was out the door in a flash of brown. Somewhere in the house, male voices shouted angrily, and Romulus barked, adding to the commotion.

  “Stay here, children. Nate, you look after these two while I see what is going on,” she commanded.

  “Yes’m, Miz Jenny,” Nate responded with a nod.

  “But I want to come,” Ben complained, as the voices grew louder.

  “No, sweetie, stay here with Madeline and Nate. Papa will be angry if you poke your nose in where it doesn’t belong. Someone will come and get you when it is safe to come out.”

  Her voice was calm, but her pulse was racing wildly. What was happening out there? There was a crash, and the sound of something breaking then a shot rang out. She threw a look at Nate. He had already pulled Madeline and Ben close to his lanky, adolescent frame.

  “Protect them, Nate! Go! Out the back door! Hide!”

  Running out of the room, she closed the door behind her. In the foyer and on the front porch, bedlam ensued. A blue-coated soldier lay on the floor in a pool of blood only a few yards away from the library door. His eyes were wide and sightless. Jenny nearly screamed aloud at the sight of his dark hair as she rushed down the hall, but he was a stranger. Wildly she searched for her father amongst the melee of shouting men. Shards of broken pottery from a vase crunched under their hard booted feet.

  “Papa!”

  She spotted him, backed up against the table in the hall. His pistol was trained on two soldiers who had their own rifles pointed at his chest. Through the open door, beyond the crowd, she could see Isaac fighting like a captured bear against three more bluecoats. His roar of anger rattled the windows.

  “Massa Phillip—” Isaac screamed, but a series of thuds cut him short as blows hit their mark.

  “Jenny!” Her father had seen her. “Run, Jenny!”

  She didn’t run. Instead she quickly bent down and grabbed the dead soldier’s gun. Her fingers slid through his still-warm blood, puddled around the weapon at her feet. Then a strange sense of calm came over her. Straightening, she trained the gun on two Yankees.

  “Drop your guns, or I’ll shoot,” she ordered. Somehow she managed to make her voice commanding and cold. “Papa, you take the little one, and I’ll shoot the hairy one.”

  “Hold on, lady! Don’t shoot! We didn’t hurt him none!” The soldier with the full, long beard put his black furred hands in the air. His eyes showed white all around, and he bent to put the rifle down on the floor slowly. The smaller, overweight soldier followed suit with shaking hands.

  “He shot Private Donovan over there.” The man gestured to his fallen comrade. “We had to stop him.”

  “Papa, why? What do they want?” The sounds of fighting outside the open door had ominously stopped, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off these two soldiers to see how Isaac was doing.

  “They are hurting Isaac, and they want to steal our horses, Jennifer!” Papa seemed on the edge of hysteria. “I refuse to let them take my horses or hurt my slaves!” he shouted with rising anger.

  “We are here to acquire horses for the United States army, Ma’am,” the chubby soldier declared. “We do not want to hurt your slaves. Please be assured we intend to pay you for the horses.” Pale and sweating, he was looking at the gun Jenny held unwaveringly pointed at his middle. “Your father got upset over this and shot our friend.”

  She was horrified. It was not like him to lose control and kill someone. Looking at her father she noticed, for the first time, the lines of strain around his mouth and the dark circles under his eyes. Something wasn’t right.

  “Papa, is this true?”

  He swung the pistol wildly toward the men gathered in a circle around him. “These Yankees cannot just take whatever they want! I’ll not prov
ide one single horse to help them defeat us!” The gun in his hand shook as he spoke.

  “Excuse me, sir,” a deep voice interrupted from the doorway. Another Yankee stepped in from the porch. He was a tall, thin man with captain’s bars on his slightly stooped shoulders, thick graying blond hair, and a large gun in his hand pointed directly at Phillip.

  “I’m Captain Sharp from the Fifty-Forth Massachusetts, sir. I’m going to ask you and the lady to please lay down your arms so we can deal with this situation without further bloodshed.”

  He stepped aside to reveal the scene outside on the lawn. Jenny could see Isaac being held by a soldier on each massive arm and four more men pointing rifles at his heart. The big slave was panting hard. A trickle of blood ran down his thick neck from a split, swollen lip. Isaac was glaring angrily at the men around him, but he remained quiet. Behind him were at least twenty more Yankees on horseback with rifles in their hands.

  Jenny knew it was time to give in. She didn’t want to lose her father or Isaac by taking this any further. Slowly she lowered the gun, turned the handle to the officer, and offered it to him. With a nod, he accepted the weapon and turned to her father expectantly. But the owner of the plantation hesitated, swinging his gun in the captain’s direction. The action was answered with the sound of guns being cocked all around them.

  “Papa! Give him your gun! Please!” she pleaded. “Don’t make this worse!”

  Captain Sharp moved a step closer with his hand still outstretched for the weapon. If her father were to fire now, the officer would be gut-shot at point-blank range. Every man in the room tensed, waiting to see what would happen.

  “Please hand it over, sir,” the captain asked, as calmly as if he were speaking of the weather.

  Jenny saw the anger and mutiny on her father’s face and stepped in front of the gun muzzle. Now he would have to shoot her if he pulled the trigger.

  His shoulders suddenly slumped in defeat, and his face fell. It was as though he instantly aged ten years. Slowly he replaced the safety and put the gun in the Union officer’s hand.

  Chapter Fifteen

  He was surrounded by two hundred Union cavalrymen, making him just one of the many men who rode on the hard-packed dirt road out of winter quarters on the way to report to the notoriously flamboyant Brevet Major General Kilpatrick. Soon the contingent would be an anonymous part of a force five thousand strong that would be riding on Richmond.

  Almost two months had passed since David left Pleasant Run Manor on that cold night in late December. His body was hale and hearty once again, but his mind was less so. Before meeting Jennifer Winston and losing Jack Montgomery, he was one hundred percent committed to this war. He had thought of little else night and day. Battle tactics, maneuvering, weapons, his men, it all had filled his thoughts to the exclusion of everything else. Now he could no longer claim this. Jack and Jenny crept into his mind many times each day and night, no matter whether he was eating supper, putting Napoleon through his battle training, drilling his men, or sleeping.

  The two of them visited his daydreams and his night dreams, both separately and together. He wondered sometimes why they both haunted him so much. Each had left a hole in his heart, a space that he hadn’t been prepared to have empty. It left him feeling hollow and unsettled.

  Winter camp had been hard to handle without Jack’s cheerful companionship. It was the first time they had been separated for any extended length of time since they met that first day of college years ago…and now his absence was a large, permanent, daily ache.

  Writing a letter to Jack’s wife, Lila, telling her what happened had nearly destroyed him. For three days he had avoided the men in his company while he drank himself into oblivion. He was finally able to come back to his senses and go back to his command, but it had been one of the hardest spells of his life.

  Napoleon, well used to these long marches, settled into a rhythm following the swishing tail of the horse in front. David’s mind wandered away from the clanking noise of battle gear and the conversations of dusty, smelly men around him. Jenny. What was she doing right now?

  It was about mid-afternoon. Perhaps she was giving little Ben, Madeline, and Nate their lessons. He pictured her lovely face as she concentrated on the children. Did she ever think of him now without anger? Just thinking of her, even in such an innocuous way, instantly made his body remember her in a more sensual way. The saddle became uncomfortable. He shifted around and raised himself slightly in the stirrups. Napoleon’s ears flicked, and he nickered softly in question.

  Suddenly there was a great commotion in the front portion of the column of cavalrymen riding three abreast down the wide dirt road. Word was passed back.

  “We’ve joined up with Hall’s Brigade! We’re destroying the railroad at Beaver Dam Station!”

  The cavalrymen surged forward, riding hard toward their goal—destruction of the Virginia Central Railroad in order to cut off supplies going to and from the capital of the Confederacy. Soon he would be part of the strangulation of the South that he had told Jenny about. It would be true—he would take part in the ruination of her homeland—and she would hate him forever for it.

  A few hours later, forced by rain and nightfall to stop their demolition work, David and his fellow cavalrymen were back in the saddle heading for the James River. Water ran off his new hat and down his back. It was difficult to keep sight of each other in the blinding sheets of rain and total darkness. Mostly he let Napoleon have his head. Horses could smell each other and instinctively sought the company of other horses, even in the rain.

  His heart continued to pound hard in his chest from the day’s activity as he tried to settle into the rhythm of the brigade again. He laid his hand against Napoleon’s wet neck, stroking the sleek hair, gathering his humanity back around him as they rode away from the wreckage.

  It was just so damned disturbing. Ordinary, civilized, disciplined human beings, including him, had become wild, untamed beasts. David was just grateful that none of the men under his leadership had been chosen to come on this mission and witness what he had become.

  When they first arrived at the railway station, the workers had taken one look at the blue-coated soldiers and abandoned their posts without a single shot fired on either side. That had started it all. A thrill of power had gone through David and the other cavalrymen, too. He could see it in their eyes and on their haggard faces—a dangerous, reckless light that began as a slow, but mounting flame. Then Colonel Kilpatrick had ordered them to burn and destroy everything.

  Shouts of enthusiasm and imitation Rebel yells had come with each window smashed in the depot, each rail torn from its bed, and each telegraph pole pulled down. David took part in it all. He too reveled in the wanton destruction; it could not be denied. Anger at the war, anger at the South for forcing them into the killing and maiming of fellow human beings, and anger at being kept away from loved ones fed the men like the wood fed the flames.

  The thing that made him human slipped away until all that remained was a red, blinding rage. He chopped at the tall, dark telegraph poles savagely with a strength born of frustration and fury.

  “This is for Jack!” He swung the sharp axe and brought it across the splintering pole with a thudding crunch. Swing again, “This is for Riley,” smash again, “…for each dead soldier I have known or seen.” Again and again the axe did its work. Over and over it slashed, the pure hatred growing with each swing of the axe until his blood burned, and sweat and tears blurred his sight.

  Fires sprang up everywhere. With the darkness came torrents of driving rain, as if God himself was crying at what he saw in the hearts of these struggling men.

  Finally they had mounted their horses once more, riding away from the burning fires and twisted steel that had been a lifeline of supplies for the Confederacy. One more awful blow had been struck in the all-important name of victory.

  * * *

  Jenny hunched on the stool and tried again to coax milk from the co
w for Benjamin. Her hands were cold, and the cow mooed her protest at being touched with the icy fingers. Sighing deeply, she stuck her hands under her armpits to warm them. She was bone tired again. Not that she minded a little hard work, but this was a lot of hard work. With Papa taken off to prison and all the slaves but the two oldest running away, she was left with big problems.

  Yankees were the cause of it all. If they hadn’t come to the plantation to take their horses, Papa would not have killed that poor young soldier. Dear Papa. Just thinking of him made her want to cry again. Why hadn’t she noticed the change in him?

  She should have tried to help him with the anxiety that had apparently been growing in him until he had been pushed over the edge enough to commit murder when the soldiers came. Where was Papa now? Was he in some cold prison cell being mistreated? Was he hungry or sick? How she wished she had some way of knowing he was all right.

  Everything had changed. She had been living a life of privilege one minute and plunged into near poverty the next.

  Then one day she woke up and all of the slaves but Kizzie and Jebediah, the two oldest slaves, had run away during the night. Those Jenny had thought of as family—Isaac, Luther, Patsy, Cordelia, Nate, and even little Madeline—they had all left without a word. Anger, resentment, and hurt filled her when she thought of them. She wished she could ask them, “How could you do this? How could you abandon us after all we have done for you?”

  She stifled a sob and pulled the teat, squirting warm milk into the bucket. Was she just a silly fool to have loved them? Nate and Madeline had been her students; she had known them and nurtured them from tiny babies. They had been like a cherished brother and sister to little Ben.