Love and War: The North and South Trilogy (Book Two) Page 29

  Quietly: “Since you brought up what you call the present arrangement, suppose we discuss it.”

  Virgilia nodded. “I know that my grace period here is running out. I’m anxious to leave. Anxious to get back into the stream of things. I don’t know how. Where can I go to earn a livelihood? What can I do when I have no training and very little education in practical things?”

  Virgilia slowly walked to the parlor window. A shower was in progress. Rain clung to the glass, casting patterns on her face like new pox scars. In a small, sad voice, she said, “Those are the questions I’ve never had to ask before. To wait for answers that don’t come is frightening, Constance.”

  She stared into the rain. Constance thought, Don’t wait—search! But the pique passed, and she again felt pity for George’s sister. Virgilia appeared a changed woman, but did the changes go any deeper than her skin? She began to doubt it.

  Two points clarified themselves as a result of the brief conversation. Virgilia had to leave Belvedere before George discovered her presence or Brett, goaded to anger, told him. But she was incapable of finding her way alone, so part of that burden, too, fell on Constance.

  39

  IN LATE OCTOBER, MRS. Burdetta Halloran of Richmond was a woman distressed.

  Two years a childless widow, she was thirty-three, statuesque, with gorgeous auburn hair, a stunning derrière, and breasts that were, in her opinion, merely adequate. But the package had been sufficiently enchanting to captivate the wine merchant who had wed her when she was twenty-one. Sixteen years her senior, Halloran had died of heart failure while struggling to satisfy her strong sexual appetites.

  Poor fellow, she had liked him well enough, even though he lacked the technique and stamina to keep her happy physically. He had treated her well, however, and she had only cuckolded him twice: the first liaison had lasted four days, the second a single night. His passing had left her in comfortable circumstances—or she had thought so until this wretched war came.

  Today, when the rest of the town was euphoric about a victory at some spot near the Potomac called Ball’s Bluff, she was upset by her tour of retail stores. Prices were climbing. Her pound of bacon had cost fifty cents, her pound of coffee an outrageous dollar and a half. Only last week the freedman who supplied her from the country with stove and firewood had announced that he wanted eight dollars for the next cord, not five. With such inflation, she would not long survive in her accustomed style.

  Born a Soames—the family went back four generations in the Old Dominion—she deplored all the changes in her city, her state, and in the social order. Bob Lee, finest of the fine, was being mocked with the name “Granny” because of his military failures; she had heard he would soon be shipped to one of the benighted military districts of the cotton South.

  Queen Varina was outraging members of local society by forming a court made up chiefly of those who were not. Oh, Joe Johnston’s wife belonged, but Burdetta Halloran suspected she did so to advance her husband’s career; she certainly had nothing in common with the rest of the upstarts who surrounded and influenced the First Lady: Mrs. Mallory, a flaming papist; Mrs. Wigfall, a vulgar Texan; Mrs. Chesnut, a Carolina bitch. Beneath contempt, every one. Yet they were favored.

  The city was too crowded. Harlots and speculators poured off every arriving train. Hordes of niggers, many undoubtedly fugitives, swelled the mobs of idlers in the streets. Captured Yankees filled the improvised prisons, like Liggon’s Tobacco Factory at Twenty-fifth and Main. Their unprecedented arrogance and contempt for all things Southern outraged solid citizens like Burdetta Halloran, who courageously bore the cross of Jeff Davis and spent every free hour knitting socks and more socks for the troops.

  She had stopped knitting two weeks ago, when her distress reached crisis proportions. This afternoon, covertly nipping on whiskey from a flask in a crocheted cozy, she was traveling in a hack to Church Hill. She had been contemplating the visit for days. Sleeplessness and mounting despair had finally pushed her to act.

  The hack slowed. She sipped again, then hid the covered flask in her bag. “Shall I wait?” the driver asked after he parked near the corner of Twenty-fourth. Some dismal premonition caused Mrs. Halloran to nod.

  She darted along the walk and up the stoop, so nervous she nearly fell. She had drunk the liquor for courage, but it only dulled her mind and sharpened her anxiety. She raised the knocker and let it fall.

  Her heart beat hurtfully. The slanting October light foretold winter—sadness and loneliness. God, wasn’t he here? She knocked again, harder and longer.

  The door opened six inches. She nearly fainted from happiness. Then she looked more closely at her lover. His hair was uncombed, and a wedge of skin showed between sagging lapels of claret velvet. A dressing gown at this hour?

  At first she assumed he was ill. Soon she realized the truth and the extent of her stupidity.

  “Burdetta.” There was no surprise and no welcome in the way he said her name. Nor did he open the door wider.

  “Lamar, you haven’t answered a single one of my letters.”

  “I thought you’d understand the significance of silence.”

  “Dear Lord, you don’t mean—-you wouldn’t simply cast me out—not after six months of unbelievable—”

  “This is an embarrassment,” he said, his voice lower and hard as his instrument when he took her in various ways, satiating her only after four or five hours. His eyes shunted past her to the curious hackman on his high seat. “For both of us.”

  “Who have you got now? Some young slut? Is she inside?” She sniffed. “My God, you have. You must have soaked in her perfume.” Tears filled her eyes. She extended her hand through the opening. “Darling, at least let me come in. Talk this out. If I’ve wronged or offended you—”

  “Pull your hand back, Burdetta,” he said, smiling. “Otherwise you’ll get hurt. I’m going to shut the door.”

  “You unspeakable bastard.” Her whisper had no effect; the sun-splashed door began to close. He would have broken her wrist or fingers if she hadn’t withdrawn her hand quickly. The door clicked. Six months of risking her reputation, of performing every conceivable wickedness for him, and this was how it ended? With indifference? With the sort of dismissal a man would give a whore?

  Burdetta Soames Halloran had been schooled in Southern graces, which included courage and the maintenance of poise in the face of social disaster. Although it would take days or weeks to compose her emotions—Lamar Powell had spoken to some animalistic side of her, and she had never loved any man more or more completely—it took less than ten seconds for her to compose her face. When she turned and carefully stepped down the first tall riser, her hoops raised in her gloved hands, she was smiling.

  “Ready?” the hackman asked, unnecessarily, since she was waiting for him to jump and open the door.

  “Yes, I am. It required only a moment to conclude my business.”

  In fact, she had only begun it.

  40

  TURMOIL SWEPT THE CAROLINA coast that autumn. On the seventh of November, Commodore Du Pont’s flotilla steamed into Port Royal Sound and opened fire on Hilton Head Island. The bombardment from Du Pont’s gunboats sent the small Confederate garrison retreating to the mainland before the sun set. Two days later, nearby, the historic little port of Beaufort fell. There came reports of burning and looting of white homes by rapacious Yankee soldiers and revengeful blacks.

  Each day brought new rumors. Arson would soon raze Charleston, which would be replaced by a city for black fugitives; Harriet Tubman was in the state, or coming to the state, or thinking about coming to the state, to urge slaves to run or revolt; for failure in western Virginia, Lee had been banished to command the new Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida.

  The last proved true. Unexpectedly, the famous soldier and three of his senior staff appeared on horseback in the lane of Mont Royal one twilight. They spent an hour with Orry in the parlor before riding on to Yemassee.<
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  Orry had met Lee once, in Mexico; yet because of the man’s reputation, both military and personal, he felt he knew him well. What a jolt, then, to confront the visitor and find he no longer resembled his published portraits. Lee was fifty-four or fifty-five, but his seamed face, shadowed eyes, white-streaked beard, and general air of strain made him appear much older. Orry had never seen a picture of Lee with a beard, and said so.

  “Oh, I brought this back from the Cheat Mountain campaign,” Lee said. “Along with a portfolio of nicknames I’d be happier to discard.” His staff men laughed, but the mirth was forced. “How is your cousin, young Charles?”

  “He’s well, the last I heard. He enlisted with the Hampton Legion. I’m surprised you remember him.”

  “Impossible to forget him. While I was superintendent, he was the best rider I saw at the Academy.”

  Lee fell to discussing the point of his visit. He wanted Orry to accept the commission in Richmond, even though he was no longer headquartered there and could not employ him directly. “You can be of great service to the War Department, however. It isn’t true, as the backbiters would have it, that President Davis constantly interferes or that he’s the person who actually runs the department.” Lee paused. “It is not completely true, I mean to say.”

  “I plan to go as soon as I can, General. I’ve just been awaiting the arrival of a new overseer to run the place. He’s due any day.”

  “Good news. Splendid! You and every West Point man like you are of infinite value to the army and the conduct of the war. The great failing of Mr. Davis, if I may in confidence suggest one, is his belief that there’s nothing wrong with secession. Perhaps in the South there is not. In Washington, I assure you, they consider it treason. I am not enough of a constitutionalist to state positively that the act was illegal, but I consider it a blunder whose magnitude is only now being perceived. But no matter what personal feelings you or any of us have about secession, one of its consequences is immutable. We shall have to win our right to it—our right to exist as a separate nation. When I say win, I am speaking of military victory. Mr. Davis, regrettably, believes the right will be awarded us if we merely press our claim rhetorically. That is the dream of an idealist. Laudable, perhaps, but a dream. What we did was heinous to a majority of our former countrymen. Only force of arms will gain and hold independence. Academy men will understand and fight the war as it must be fought, unless we plan to quit or be defeated.”

  “Fight,” one of the staff men growled. Orry nodded to agree.

  “That’s the proper spirit,” Lee said, rising; his knees creaked. He shook Orry’s hand, passed a social moment on the piazza with Madeline, then rode away to the duties of his obscure command. Orry put his arm around his wife and pulled her against him in the chill of the darkening sky. Parting was inevitable now. It hurt to think of it.

  Next morning, further news came. Nine blacks from Francis LaMotte’s plantation had used basket boats, woven in secret, to float down the Ashley on the ebb tide. They had abandoned the boats above Charleston and fled south, presumably to the Union lines around Beaufort.

  Along with that report, the day brought the overseer from North Carolina, Philemon Meek, mounted on a mule.

  Orry’s first reaction was disappointment. He had expected a man in his sixties, but not someone with the stoop and demeanor of an aged schoolmaster; Meek even wore half-glasses down near the tip of his nose.

  Orry interviewed Meek for an hour in the library, and the impression began to change. Meek answered his new employer’s questions tersely but honestly. When he didn’t know or understand something, he said so. He told Orry that he didn’t believe in harsh discipline unless slaves brought it on themselves. Orry replied that, except for Cuffey and one or two others, few at Mont Royal were troublemakers.

  Meek then made clear that he was a religious man. He owned and read only one book, the Scriptures. Any kind of reading was hard for him, he admitted, which perhaps contributed to his strongly stated opinion that secular books, and especially fiction, were satanically inspired. Orry made no comment. It wasn’t an unusual attitude among the devout.

  “I’m not sure about him,” Orry told Madeline that night. In a week, he formed more positive opinions. Despite Meek’s age, he was physically strong and brooked no nonsense from those who worked for him. Andy didn’t appear to like Meek but got along with him. So Orry packed his trunks and the Solingen sword, ready at last.

  The day before his train left, he and Madeline went walking. It was a dying November afternoon around four o’clock. The sun was slightly above the treetops, ringed by spikes of light. In the west the sky was a smoky white, shading away to deep blue in the east. Somewhere in the far squares of the rice acreage, a slave with a fine baritone sang in Gullah: spontaneous music of a kind seldom heard at Mont Royal any more.

  “You’re anxious to go, aren’t you?” Madeline said as they retraced their route from the great house.

  Orry squinted against the cruciform light around the sun. “I’m not anxious to leave you, though I feel better about it now that Meek’s here.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question, sir.”

  “Yes, I am anxious. You’ll never guess the reason. It’s my old friend Tom Jackson. In six months, he’s become a national hero.”

  “You surprise me. I never thought you had that kind of ambition.”

  “Oh, no. Not since Mexico, anyway. The point about Jackson is, we were classmates. He rushed to do his duty, while I’ve taken half a year to answer the call. Not without good reason—but I still feel guilty.”

  She wrapped both arms around his and hugged it between her breasts. “Don’t. Your waiting’s over. And in a few weeks, when Meek has settled in, I’ll be on my way to Richmond for the duration.”

  “Good.” Peace and a sense of events moving properly for a change settled on him as they drew near the house, long shadows stretching out behind them. Orry fingered his chin. “I saw a lithograph of Tom last week. He has a fine bushy beard. All the officers seem to have them. Would you like it if I grew one?”

  “I can’t answer until I know how badly it scratches when we—”

  She stopped. The houseman, Aristotle, was waving from a side entrance in a way that conveyed urgency. They hurried toward him. Orry was the first to see the rickety wagon and despondent mule standing at the head of the lane.

  “Got two visitors, Mr. Orry. Uppity pair of niggers. Won’t state their business to nobody but you and Miss Madeline. I packed ’em off to the kitchen to wait.”

  Orry asked, “Are they men from another plantation?”

  The irritated slave grumbled, “It’s two females.”

  Puzzled, Orry and Madeline turned toward the kitchen building, the center of a cloud of savory barbecue smells. Nearing it, they recognized the elderly Negress seated in an old rocker near the door. Her right leg, crudely splinted and bound with sticks and rags, rested on an empty nail box.

  “Aunt Belle,” Madeline exclaimed, while Orry speculated about the identity of the octoroon’s companion, just coming outside. She wore field buck’s shoes; the right side of one upper had been pulled away from the sole. Her dress had been washed so often, all color had been lost. She was an astonishingly attractive young girl, nubile and dark as mahogany.

  Madeline hugged the frail old woman, exclaiming all in a rush, “How are you? What happened to your leg? Is it broken?” Aunt Belle Nin had practiced midwifery in the district for a generation, living alone and free back in the marshes. She and Madeline had met at Resolute, where Aunt Belle came occasionally to assist with a difficult birth. It was to Aunt Belle that Madeline had taken Ashton when Orry’s sister got herself in a fix and begged Madeline’s help.

  “That’s a lot of questions,” Aunt Belle said, grimacing uncomfortably. “Yes, it’s broke in two or three places. When you’re my age that’s no blessing. I fell trying to climb into our wagon last night.” Bright eyes deep-set in flesh of mottled yellow studied Orry a
s if he were a museum exhibit. “See you got yourself a different husband.”

  “Yes. Aunt Belle, this is Orry Main.”

  “I know who he is. He’s a sight better than the one you had before. This pretty thing is my niece, Jane. She used to belong to the Widow Milsom, up on the Combahee, but the old lady perished of pneumonia last winter. Her will gave Jane her freedom. She’s been living with me since.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Jane said, with no curtsy or other demonstration of deference. Orry wondered if he could believe Aunt Belle. The girl might be a fugitive, gambling that no one would check her story in these disordered times.

  In the ensuing silence, someone dropped a pot in the kitchen. One girl spoke sharply to another. A third intervened; soft laughter signaled restored harmony. Jane realized the white people were awaiting an explanation.

  “Aunt Belle’s health has not been good lately. But she wouldn’t give up the marsh house till I convinced her there was a better place.”

  “You don’t mean here?” Orry asked, still not certain what they wanted.

  “No, Mr. Main. Virginia. Then the North.”

  “That’s a long, dangerous journey, especially for women in war-time.” He nearly said black women.

  “What’s waiting is worth the risk. We were just ready to start when Aunt Belle broke her leg. She needs doctoring and a safe place to rest and heal.”

  To the midwife, Orry said, “Your house isn’t safe any longer?”

  Jane answered; her presumption rather annoyed him. “A week ago Friday, two strangers tried to break in. Colored men. There are a lot of them wandering the back roads. I drove them off with Aunt Belle’s old hunting musket, but it was scary. Yesterday, when she had the accident, I decided we should find another place.”

  Aunt Belle said to Madeline, “I told Jane you were a good Christian person. I told her I thought you’d take us in for a while. We have all our goods in the wagon, but they don’t amount to much. Neither of my husbands left me with anything but good and bad memories.”