North and South Trilogy Read online

  “Once before, I tried to explain the nature of things in the South. I told you we understand our own problems, our own needs, better than outsiders do. I told you we’d eventually solve those problems—so long as outsiders didn’t interfere. I reckon all of that made no impression. Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked me to let Priam go. I honored your request because we’ve been friends a long time. But if you want us to continue to be friends, don’t ever ask me to do something like that again.”

  George felt a flash of anger, but it was quickly gone. Orry’s quiet ferocity impressed him and made the terms of their future relationship absolutely clear.

  “Agreed,” George said. “I understand your feelings.”

  “I hope so.”

  Orry tucked his pistol under his arm and dug into his pocket for his watch. By the time the local came steaming up to the way station, he was calm enough to discuss other subjects.

  “I’m sorry your visit fell at a time when everything seemed to go wrong around here.” Orry’s eyes were less severe now. He held out a verbal olive branch. “Next time you come, it’ll be different. Until then, I’m eager to stand up with you when you marry Constance. That is, if you still want me to—”

  Relieved, George clasped his friend’s shoulder. “Of course. I’ll write you with a date and particulars as soon as I have them.”

  “Good. Safe journey—and say hello to your family.”

  “I will, Orry. Thank you.”

  The conductor called for him to board. Soon George was standing on the train platform, waving. Orry waved back, the gun still in his hand. Steam and smoke and the forest closed in. Orry disappeared from sight.

  George stowed his valise inside the coach and sat staring out the window at the pines shuttling by. Occasional breaks in the trees revealed vistas of marshland. But the image that stayed with him was something quite different. He kept seeing Priam at the moment he was dragged from the boxcar, the knowledge of his own death showing in his eyes.

  Priam had to be punished for wanting liberty; the same liberty Orry enjoyed because he was a white man. George had never considered himself a partisan of the Negro race, but he guessed he was now, especially in the matter of freedom. Why weren’t all men entitled to it? Especially in America?

  He hoped Orry was right about the South’s eventually solving its own problems. If the South did not, the rest of the nation would surely take action. He not only grasped that for the very first time, he also grasped the reason.

  15

  AT RESOLUTE SEVERAL DAYS later, Madeline stood in the shadows in her dressing room and touched herself. She hurt. Not from physical pain. From loneliness. A lack of love. A growing sense of isolation.

  She clasped her hands over her breasts as if she could end the pain that way. She stood a moment with her head back and her eyes closed, but it did no good. Despondent, she walked through the spacious bedroom to the second-floor piazza, where she shivered in the coolness of the dusk. From the kitchen building rose the rich smell of game birds roasting for Saturday dinner. Tomorrow was Saturday, wasn’t it? The days had little meaning any longer. Each one was like another: a trial.

  How she wished Maum Sally were still with her. But the old woman had gone back to New Orleans to attend Madeline’s father in his last days. Being Nicholas Fabray’s free employee rather than his slave, Sally had chosen not to return to South Carolina after Fabray died. Madeline could certainly understand the decision; a few months of the LaMottes were all Sally could take. She had no patience with anyone who was arrogant or unkind, and Justin and most of his family were both.

  Madeline had found one person who might someday take Maum Sally’s place. Nancy was a house girl, a beautiful yellow mulatto in her early twenties. She and Madeline got along well and had become confidantes of a sort. Twice Nancy had brought Madeline a verbal message from Mont Royal.

  Both times the message was short: “Salvation Chapel,” then a day and a time. No names were spoken, and there was no trace of a sly smile in Nancy’s eyes when she delivered each message. If anything, her gaze expressed sympathy, understanding.

  Madeline never asked how the message passed from the slaves of one plantation to those of another, and she took the discretion of the messengers on faith. What other choice did she have? Her acceptance of Nancy’s role as intermediary had built a bridge of trust between the two of them.

  Madeline had never answered either message—or gone to the chapel, though she literally ached to go, to be with Orry and hold and kiss him. Now, leaning on the rail of the piazza, she realized she could hear no conversation from the kitchen, even though the slaves were at work there. She wondered about the peculiar silence. Then she heard a sound in the plantation office—the small building in which Justin spent so little time. The sound was the smack of leather on a bare back.

  Clearly in the evening stillness there came another sound. A groan. Justin was thrashing one of the bucks. It had happened before.

  Repelled yet irresistibly drawn, she slipped downstairs and through the foyer, where an old, dented saber decorated the wall. The sword had belonged to the LaMottes for several generations. Justin said an ancestor had wielded it when he fought beside Gamecock Sumter in the Revolution.

  She ran along a path that would bring her to some shrubbery near the office. As she slipped behind the shrubbery there were more blows, more outcries. Then Justin’s hoarse voice:

  “My brother said for a fact that on the night Main’s nigger ran away, someone on this plantation helped him hide out. Who was it, Ezekiel? Tell me.”

  “Don’t know, Mr. LaMotte. Swear to God I don’t.”

  “Liar.” Justin struck again. Ezekiel wailed.

  Madeline held still, a shadow in deeper shadow. She was alarmed to learn that Justin was asking about the slave Priam. How had Francis LaMotte discovered that someone at Resolute had aided the runaway? Was it certain knowledge or merely a suspicion? How far would Justin’s investigation reach? All the way into the house? All the way to Nancy?

  Madeline knew she didn’t dare linger here. If anyone discovered her, she would be suspect. But there was a small pergola not far from the office, and she could sit inside as if taking the air. On a windless evening such as this, she might with luck hear more of what transpired in the office.

  She hid herself in the pergola and was rewarded. During the next three-quarters of an hour, Justin continued to interrogate various slaves, laying a few blows on each. What infuriated Madeline was her husband’s interrogation of some of the wenches. He beat them as hard as he beat the men. Over and over he asked the same questions.

  “Who did it? Who helped him? Who had sympathy for a runaway nigger? Tell me, Clyta.”

  Clyta? Madeline sat up as if struck. Her mind had been wandering. There was only one Clyta at Resolute, a single girl of eighteen. Madeline suspected Justin had slept with her a few times. She was carrying a child. Even as she remembered that, she heard Justin hit the girl again. Clyta yelped in pain.

  “Who did it?” he shouted. Madeline’s nails dug into her palms. The escaped slave had carried the answer to that question until a patrol picked him up a few miles this side of the North Carolina border. Priam had put up a fight and been mortally wounded by a patrolman’s pistol. The name of his secret benefactor had died with him.

  Madeline was freezing now. Her breath clouded in the air when she exhaled. Justin repeated the question at full voice. Then came another blow and a scream. Madeline dug her fingers deeper, till they cut like tiny knives.

  Who did it, Justin ? Your wife. It was your wife whom Nancy summoned the night Priam showed up, frightened and hungry. I’m the one who slipped out to help him. You were oblivious. Off with one of your horses or one of your slave sluts—as usual. I’m the one who helped him, you scum. I’m the one with the peculiar sympathy for niggers.

  She didn’t quite have the courage to rush to the office and say all of it directly to him. She was ashamed of that lack within herself. She fled fr
om the pergola, covering her ears to blot out the sound of Clyta’s cries.

  Most of the time Justin occupied a separate bedroom, coming to hers only when he felt the urge to rut. She was thankful he let her alone tonight. What she had heard in the pergola left her too upset to sleep. She was filled with a desire to revenge herself on her husband again. Revenge had been part of the reason she had gladly lent assistance when Nancy appealed to her about the runaway hiding in the loft of the sick house.

  Presently she calmed down a little, and thoughts of Orry crept into her mind. People said he was a changed man because he had lost his arm in Mexico. They said his frame of mind was dark, embittered. Yet he had twice sent a message asking her to meet him secretly.

  Still a creature of her past—still clinging to the remains of the code of right behavior that had once held absolute sway in her life—she had answered neither message. As if Justin deserved that kind of consideration. She slipped her hands downward, trying to suppress what she felt within herself. She couldn’t. She would call on Clarissa Main after dinner tomorrow. Justin wouldn’t go with her, of course; the mention of most social amenities started him yawning. When she visited the Main plantation, she would send a message of her own.

  Why had she waited this long? Why had she refused to allow herself even a moment’s happiness? Her misguided fear of Orry’s youth, her own strong conscience, the secret her father had conveyed as he breathed his last—those were the most compelling reasons. None seemed to matter any longer. She prayed Orry wouldn’t be so angry over her earlier rebuffs that he refused to answer now.

  In the morning, before daylight, she went to the kitchen in her robe. As she had hoped, she found Nancy there, alone, tending the plump turkeys by the light of a lamp trimmed low.

  “We’re going to Mont Royal this afternoon, Nancy.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Madeline was so pleased, so full of anticipation, that she didn’t stop to ask herself why Nancy had such a grave, drawn look. “Can you deliver a message there, by the same route the others came to me?”

  Nancy’s eyes opened a little wider. “A message to the gentleman?”

  “That’s right. It’s to be our secret.”

  “Yes’m. Surely.”

  “Nancy, what’s wrong?”

  The mulatto girl eyed the huge iron stove giving off savory odors. Madeline touched Nancy’s thin arm. Her skin was cold.

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s Clyta, ma’am. After Mr. Justin beat her last night, she lost her baby.”

  “Oh, no. Oh, Nancy,” Madeline said, taking the girl in her arms to comfort her.

  Tears spilled down Madeline’s face, but there were none inside her as she thought of her husband. Scum. Scum.

  Orry rode hatless to Salvation Chapel, even though drab skies hinted of rain. It began to fall during the last half mile. Not a hard rain but a chilling one. Winter rain: the signal that another growing season was over and Charleston’s high social season would soon begin.

  Nothing could lower Orry’s spirits this morning. He ducked beneath the last overhanging branches. The fallen foundation came into sight. Beyond, fog hid most of the marsh. He called Madeline’s name. “Here, my darling.”

  The voice came from his left. As she had the first time, she’d sought shelter under the trees near the perimeter of the marsh. He sprang down and tethered his horse, then hurried to her.

  He took hold of her left shoulder. She reached for his other arm, turning red as she realized her thoughtlessness. A sudden grin flashed like a beacon in the dark mass of his beard.

  “You’ll get used to its not being there. I have, almost.”

  The smile disappeared as he curved his arm around her. He pulled her to him, wanting to experience every soft contour, yet mindful of his own long-repressed need. She felt him through the layers of her clothing. She moved closer, uttering a small sound deep in her throat.

  She rested against his chest. He stroked her hair. “I thought you never wanted to see me again.”

  “Because I didn’t answer those messages? I didn’t dare.” She drew back. “I shouldn’t be here now. I love you too much.”

  “Then go away with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere.”

  There was great relief in being able to say that at last. In response, Madeline smiled and wept at the same time. She stood on tiptoe to kiss him, her palms pressed against his bristly face.

  “I’d give my soul to do that. I can’t.”

  “Why not? Surely you don’t think all that much of Justin.”

  “I loathe him. I’ve only just discovered how much. That’s why I called on your mother on Saturday. I couldn’t stand being separated from you any longer. I want you to tell me all about Mexico.” She was stroking his face now, her fingers lingering at each place she touched. “How you got hurt. How you’re getting along—”

  “I’d get along much better if we were together.”

  “Orry, it’s impossible.”

  “Because of Justin.”

  “Not him personally. Because of what I pledged when I married him. I made a lifetime promise. If I broke it—went away with you—I’d feel guilty forever. Guilt would ruin our lives.”

  “There’s no guilt in meeting me like this?”

  “Of course there is. But it’s—bearable. I can convince myself that I’m still living up to the letter of the marriage agreement.”

  Suspicion overcame him. She wasn’t being entirely truthful. She had some other reason for saying no. Then he decided he was only imagining that, perhaps to take some of the sting out of the refusal.

  She whirled away, walking rapidly to the edge of the marsh. “You probably think I’m a wretched hypocrite.”

  From behind he touched her hair, lifted it so that he could gently kiss the curve of her neck below her ear. “I think I love you, that’s all. I want you with me for the rest of our days.”

  “I feel the same way, darling. But you have responsibilities, too. No matter what you say, I don’t think you could run from them and be happy.”

  He tried to redirect the conversation, to give them both breathing space. “I’d be happy if my father came to his senses. Did you know he exhibited the body of Priam, the runaway, as an example to our people?”

  “No, I didn’t.” She rubbed her arms, not looking at him. “That’s vile.”

  “Unnecessary, certainly. Our people understood the meaning of Priam’s death long before they saw his corpse lying in ice. Sometimes I think my father’s already senile. Or maybe the damned abolitionists drive him to it. He’s a proud man. He can be defiant.”

  “It seems to be a local characteristic,” she said with a wry smile.

  He found it impossible to go on speaking as if they were acquaintances meeting in a parlor. The physical hunger was too strong, almost painful. He faced her, gazing down into her eyes.

  “No more talk. What I want is you. Come—please—”

  He took her hand and with unmistakable meaning drew her toward a level place where the leaves and pine needles looked dry.

  “No, Orry.” When she wrenched free, anger brimmed in his eyes.

  She flung herself against him, her arms around his chest. “Don’t you see we mustn’t go that far? Ever? If we do, the guilt will be almost as bad as if we had run away.”

  Roughly now, he handled her hair, kissed her eyes and the moist, warm corners of her mouth. “You want to make love, you can’t deny it.” He slipped his arm below her waist, astonished at his own boldness. But fevers were consuming him, and it seemed perfectly natural to pull her hips against his and kiss her again. “You can’t.”

  “No. I ache for you to hold me that way. But we mustn’t.”

  He released her. “I don’t understand you.”

  A strand of glossy black hair had fallen across her forehead. She dashed it back, then smiled again, sadly.

  “How can you expect to when I don’t completely understand myself
? What person ever does? I only know that a small amount of guilt is bearable, but more is not.”

  Orry’s face grew bleak again. The tension he had communicated through their embrace was diminishing. “If we can’t live together or love each other properly, what’s left?”

  “We can—” She drew a breath, facing down his scorn. Her voice strengthened. “We can still meet here occasionally. Talk. Hold each other for a little while. It would make my life endurable, at least.”

  “It’s still infidelity, Madeline.”

  “But not adultery.”

  “I thought they meant the same thing.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Well, it’s a subtle distinction. I doubt it’s one outsiders would appreciate.”

  “I can’t help it. Is love ever comprehensible to others?”

  He pressed his lips together and, with a sharp shake of his head, strode off toward the marsh, out from under the trees into the light rain. She was proposing an affair but under rules of her own design.

  He walked as far as he could, stopping when the ground grew mushy beneath his boots. His long strides left reeds trampled behind him. He turned, rain collecting in his beard. “Those are hard terms. I want you too much. I’m not sure I can stand constant temptation.”

  “Isn’t a little love better than none?”

  He almost blurted a no. She walked toward him slowly, the rain ruining her clothes and flattening her hair against her head. Even bedraggled, she was the loveliest woman in creation. He couldn’t deny her, even though her terms were nearly as painful as the situation that prompted them.

  She stood close to him, gazing into his eyes. “Isn’t it, Orry?”

  He smiled but without real joy. “Yes.”

  She let out a small cry and once more crushed against him. He put his arm around her, his smile hollow. “God, I wish you’d been raised a slut instead of a decent woman.”

  “Sometimes I do too.”

  The shared laughter eased their unhappiness. They returned to the trees and sat talking for almost an hour. He pointed out that the more often they met the greater became the risk of discovery. She said she willingly accepted that risk. They kissed and embraced again.