Heaven and Hell: The North and South Trilogy (Book Three) Page 4

  “Family is one of the few balms for pain,” Hampton murmured. He drank again. “Now tell me how you really are.”

  “As I said, General, surviving. No one’s raised the issue of my parentage, so I’m spared having to deal with that.”

  She looked at him as she spoke, wanting to test him. Hampton’s ruddy outdoorsman’s face remained calm. “Of course I heard about it. It makes no difference.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Madeline, in addition to asking about Charles, I called to make an offer. We all face difficult circumstances, but you face them alone. There are unscrupulous men of both races wandering the roads of this state. Should you need refuge from that at any time, or if the struggle grows too hard for any reason and you want a short respite, come to Columbia. My home and Mary’s is yours always.”

  “That’s very kind,” she said. “Don’t you think the chaos in South Carolina will end soon?”

  “No, not soon. But we can hasten the day by taking a stand for what’s right.”

  She sighed. “What is that?”

  He gazed at the sun-flecked river. “In Charleston, some gentlemen offered me command of an expedition to found a colony in Brazil. A slaveholding colony. I refused it. I said this was my home and I would no longer think of North and South; only of America. We fought, we lost, the issue of a separate nation on the continent is resolved. Nevertheless, in South Carolina we confront the very large problem of the Negro. His status is changed. How should we behave? Well, he was faithful to us as a slave, so I believe we ought to treat him fairly as a free man. Guarantee him justice in our courts. Give him the franchise if he’s qualified, exactly as we give it to white men. If we do that, the wandering crowds will disband and the Negro will again take up Carolina as his home, and the white man as his friend.”

  “Do you really believe that, General?”

  A slight frown appeared, perhaps of annoyance. “I do. Only full justice and compassion will alleviate the plight of this state.”

  “I must say you’re more generous to the blacks than most.”

  “Well, they present us with a practical issue as well as a moral one. Our lands are destroyed, our homes are burned, our money and bonds are worthless, and soldiers are quartered on our doorsteps. Should we make matters worse by pretending that our cause is not lost? That it somehow might prevail even yet? I think it was lost from the start. I stayed away from the 1860 special convention because I thought secession an impossible folly. Are we to start living our illusions all over again? Are we to invite reprisal by resisting an honorable effort to restore the Union?”

  “A great many people want to resist,” she said.

  “And if gentlemen such as Mr. Stevens and Mr. Sumner try to force me into social equality with Negroes, I will resist. Beyond that, however, if Washington is reasonable, and we are reasonable, we can rebuild. If our people cling to their old follies, they’ll only start a new kind of war.”

  Again she sighed. “I hope common sense prevails. I’m not certain it will.”

  Hampton rose and clasped her hands between his. “Don’t forget my offer. Sanctuary, if you ever need it.”

  Impulsively, she kissed his cheek. “You’re a kind man, General. God bless you.”

  Away he went on his fine stallion, disappearing where the half-mile lane of splendid trees joined the river road.

  At sunset, Madeline walked through the fallow rice square, pondering Hampton’s remarks. For a proud and defeated man, he had a remarkably generous outlook. He was also right about the plight of South Carolina. If the state, and the South, returned to old ways, the Radical Republicans would surely be goaded to retaliate.

  Something on the ground jabbed the sandal she’d fashioned from scrap leather and rope. Digging down in the sandy soil, she uncovered a rock about the size of her two hands. She and the Shermans had found many similar ones while cultivating the four planted squares, and had puzzled about it. Rocks weren’t common in the Low Country.

  She brushed soil from it. It was yellowish, with tan streaks, and looked porous. With a little effort, she broke it in half. Rock didn’t shatter so easily. But if it wasn’t rock, what was it?

  She brought both halves up to her face. As she grew older, her eyes were increasingly failing. Since she’d never broken open one of the peculiar rocks, she was unprepared for the fetid odor.

  It made her gag. She threw the broken pieces away and hurried back to the pine house, her shadow flying ahead of her over ground as deeply red as spilled blood.

  I wish I could believe with Gen. H. that our people will recognize the wisdom and practical importance of fair play toward the freed blacks. I wish I could believe that Carolinians will be reasonable about the defeat and its consequences. I cannot. Some kind of dark mood is on me again.

  It came this evening when I cracked open one of those strange rocks you pointed out once before the war. The stench—! Even our land is sour and rotten. I took it as a sign. I saw a future flowing with bile and poison.

  Forgive me, Orry; I must write no more of this.

  2

  AT TWILIGHT ON THE day of Hampton’s visit to Mont Royal, a young woman dashed around a corner into Chambers Street, in New York City. One hand held her bonnet in place. The other held sheets of paper covered with signatures.

  A misty rain was beginning to fall. She hastily tucked the papers under her arm to protect them. Ahead loomed the marquee of Wood’s New Knickerbocker Theater, her destination. The theater was temporarily closed, between productions, and she was late for a special rehearsal called by the owner for half after seven o’clock.

  Late in a good cause, though. She always had a cause, and it was always as important as her profession. Her father had raised her that way. She’d been an active worker for abolition since she was fifteen; she was nineteen now. She proselytized for equal rights for women, and the vote, and for fairer divorce laws, although she had never been married. Her current cause, for which she’d been collecting signatures from the theatrical community all afternoon, was the Indian—specifically the Cheyenne nation, victimized last year by the Sand Creek massacre. The petition, a memorial to be sent to Congress and the Indian Bureau of the Interior Department, demanded reparations for Sand Creek and permanent repudiation of “the Chivington process.”

  She turned left into the dim passage leading to the stage door. She had worked for Claudius Wood only a week and a half, but she’d already found that he had a fearful temper. And he drank. She smelled it on him at nearly every rehearsal.

  Wood had seen her play Rosalind at the Arch Street Theater in Philadelphia and had offered her a great deal of money. He was about thirty-five, and he’d charmed her with his fine manners and marvelous voice and raffish, worldly air. Still, she was beginning to regret her decision to leave Mrs. Drew’s company and sign with Wood for a full season.

  Louisa Drew had urged her to accept, saying it would be a great step forward. “You’re a mature and capable young woman, Willa. But remember that New York is full of rough men. Do you have any friends there? Someone you could turn to if necessary?”

  She thought a moment. “Eddie Booth.”

  “You know Edwin Booth?”

  “Oh, yes. He and my father trouped together in the gold fields when I was little and we lived in St. Louis. I’ve seen Eddie several times over the years. But he’s been in seclusion ever since his brother Johnny killed the President. I would never bother him with anything trivial.”

  “No, but he’s there in an emergency.” Mrs. Drew hesitated. “Do mind yourself with Mr. Wood, Willa.”

  Questioned, the older woman would not elaborate beyond saying, “You’ll discover what I mean. I don’t like to speak ill of anyone in the profession. But some actresses—the prettier ones—have trouble with Wood. You shouldn’t pass up this chance because of that. Just be cautious.”

  The young woman going down the passage in a rush was Willa Parker. She was a tall, leggy girl, slim enough for trouser roles, ye
t with a soft, full bosom ideal for Juliet. She had wide-set, slightly slanted blue eyes that lent her an exotic quality, and hair so pale blond it shone silvery when she was onstage in the limelight. Mrs. Drew, with affection, called Willa a gamine. Her charming Irish husband, John, called her “my fair sprite.”

  Her skin was smooth, her mouth wide, her face given an air of strength by the line of her chin. Sometimes she felt forty years old, because her mother had died when she was three, her father when she was fourteen, and she’d played theatrical roles since age six. She was the only child of a woman she couldn’t remember and a free-thinking, hard-working father she loved with total devotion until a heart seizure felled him in the storm scene of Lear.

  Peter Parker had been one of those actors who worked at his profession with ardor and enthusiasm even though he had realized as a young man that his talent would provide only a subsistence, never let him shine with his name above the title of a play. He’d begun playing child parts in his native England, growing into older roles done in the dignified classical style of the Kemble family and Mrs. Siddons. In his twenties, he’d performed with the flamboyant Kean, who won him away from classicism to Kean’s own naturalism, which encouraged an actor to do whatever the part demanded, even scream or crawl on the floor.

  It was after his first engagement with Kean that he forever abandoned the last name he’d inherited at birth, Potts. Too many unfunny uses of it by fellow actors—Flower Potts, Chamber Potts—convinced him to adopt Parker as more practical and more likely to inspire favorable recognition. Willa knew the family name, which amused her, although from her earliest years she’d thought of herself as a Parker.

  To his daughter, Parker had passed on various technical tricks of different acting styles and some other characteristics. These included the energy and idealism typical of actors, an encyclopedic knowledge of theatrical superstition, and the defensive optimism so necessary to survive in the profession. Now, going through the stage door, Willa called on that optimism and assured herself that her employer wouldn’t be angry.

  In the shadows just inside, the elderly janitor was struggling into a rubber rain slicker. “He’s in the office, Miss Parker. Shouting for you every five minutes, too.”

  “Thank you, Joe.” So much for optimism. The janitor jingled his keys, preparing to lock up. He was leaving early. Perhaps Wood had given him the night off.

  Willa dashed through the backstage area, dodging between bundles of unpainted prop tree branches—Birnam Wood, which would come to Dunsinane in the next production. The vast fly space smelled of new lumber, old make-up, dust. Light spilled from a half-open door ahead. Willa heard Wood’s deep voice:

  “I go, and it is done—the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell—that summons thee to heaven or to hell.” Then he repeated “or to hell,” changing the inflection.

  Willa stood motionless outside the office, a shiver running down her back. Her employer was rehearsing one of the leading character’s speeches somewhere other than the stage. This play of Shakespeare’s was a bad-luck piece, most actors believed, although some noted that it contained a great deal of onstage fighting, and thus the causes of a gashed head, a bad fall, a broken arm or leg were in the text, not the stars. Still, the legend persisted. Like many other actors and actresses, Willa laughed at it while respecting it. She never repeated any of the lines backstage, or in dressing rooms or green rooms. She always referred to it as “the Scottish play”; saying the title in the theater guaranteed misfortune.

  She glanced behind her into the darkness. Where were the other company members she’d assumed would be here for the rehearsal? In the stillness she heard only the tiniest creak—perhaps the playhouse cat prowling. She had an impulse to run.

  “Who’s there?”

  Claudius Wood’s shadow preceded him to the door. He yanked it fully open, and the rectangle of gaslight widened to reveal Willa with the petition in her hand.

  Wood’s cravat was untied, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his sleeves rolled up. He scowled at her. “The call was half past the hour. You’re forty minutes late.”

  “Mr. Wood, I apologize. I fell behind.”

  “With what?” He noticed the papers with signatures. “Another of your radical crusades?” He startled her by snatching the petition. “Oh, Christ. The poor wretched Indian. Not on my time, if you please. I’ll dock your wages. Come in, so we can get to work.”

  Something undefined but alarming warned her then—warned her to run from the silent theater and this burly man, whose handsome face was already giving way to patterns of veins in his cheeks and a bulbous, spongy look to his nose. But she desperately wanted to play the difficult role he’d offered her. It called for an older actress, and an accomplished one. If she could bring it off, it would promote her career.

  And yet—

  “Isn’t there anyone else coming?”

  “Not tonight. I felt our scenes together needed special attention.”

  “Could we do them onstage, please? This is the Scottish play, after all.”

  His bellow of laughter made her feel small and stupid. “Surely you don’t believe that nonsense, Willa. You who are so intelligent, conversant with so many advanced ideas.” He flicked the papers with his nail, then handed them back. “The play is Macbeth, and I’ll speak the lines anywhere I choose. Now get in here and let’s begin.”

  He turned and went back in the office. Willa followed, a part of her saying he was right, that she was infantile to worry about the superstitions. Peter Parker would have worried, though.

  Overhead, a rumbling sounded—the storm growing worse. The actor-child in Willa was convinced that baleful forces were gathering above Chambers Street. Her hands turned cold as she followed her employer.

  “Take off your shawl and bonnet.” Wood moved chairs to clear a space on the shabby carpet. The office was a junkshop of period furniture and imitation green plants in urns of all sizes and designs. Handbills for New Knickerbocker productions covered the walls. Goldsmith, Molière, Boucicault, Sophocles. The huge desk was a litter of bills, playscripts, contracts, career mementos. Wood pushed aside Macbeth’s enameled dagger, a metal prop with a blunted point, and poured two inches of whiskey from a decanter. Green glass bowls on the gas jets seemed to darken rather than lighten the room.

  Nervous, Willa put the signed petitions on a velvet chair. She laid her velvet gloves on top, then her shawl and bonnet. All in a pile in case she needed to snatch them quickly. She had started to mature at twelve, and men who worked around the theater soon began responding to her beauty. She’d learned to stand them off with good humor, even a little physical force when necessary. She was expert at running away.

  Wood strolled to the door and closed it. “All right, my dear. First act, seventh scene.”

  “But we rehearsed that most of yesterday.”

  “I’m not satisfied.” He walked back to her. “Macbeth’s castle.” Grinning, he reached out and ran his palm slowly down the silk of her sleeve. “Begin in the middle of Lady Macbeth’s speech, where she says ‘I have given suck.’ ”

  He relished the last word. The gas put a highlight on his wet lower lip. Willa struggled to suppress fear and a sad despair. It was so obvious now, so obvious what he’d wanted all along, and why he’d engaged her when there were scores of older actresses available. Mrs. Drew had done everything but tell her in explicit language. She wasn’t flattered, only upset. If this was the price for her New York debut, damn him, she wouldn’t pay.

  “Begin,” he repeated, with a harshness that alarmed her. He caressed her arm again. She tried to draw away. He simply moved and kept at it, blowing his bourbon breath on her.

  “I have given suck, and know—” She faltered. “How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me.”

  “Do you, now?” He bent and kissed her throat.

  “Mr. Wood—”

  “Go on with it.” He seized her shoulders and shook her, and that was when freezing terror
took hold. In his black eyes she saw something beyond anger. She saw a willingness to hurt.

  “I would—while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums—”

  Wood’s hand slid from her arm to her left breast, closing on it. “You wouldn’t pluck it from mine, would you?”

  She stamped her high laced shoe. “Look here, I’m an actress. I won’t be treated like a street harlot.”

  He grabbed her arm. “I pay your salary. You’re anything I say you are—including my whore.”

  “No,” she snarled, yanking away. He drew his hand back and drove his fist against her face. The blow knocked her down.

  “You blonde bitch. You’ll give me what I want.” He caught her hair in his left hand, making her cry out when he pulled her head up. His right fist pounded down on her shoulder, and again. “Does that convince you?”

  “Let go of me. You’re drunk—crazy—”

  “Shut up!” He slapped her so hard, she flew back and cracked her head on the front of his desk. “Pull up your skirts.” Lights danced behind her eyes. Pain pounded. She reached up, fingers searching for some heavy object on the desk. He stood astride her right leg, working at his fly buttons. “Pull them up, God damn you, or I’ll beat you till you can’t walk.”

  Out of her mind with fright, she found something on the desk—the prop dagger. He reached for her wrist, but before he could stop her she swung it down. Although the point was blunt, it tore through the plaid fabric of his trousers because she struck so hard. She felt the dagger meet flesh, stop a second, then sink on through.

  “Jesus,” Wood said, groping with both hands for the prop weapon buried two inches in his left thigh. He struggled with it, bloodying his fingers. “Jesus Christ. I’ll kill you!”

  Wild-eyed, Willa pushed him with both hands, toppling him sideways. He shouted and cursed as he overturned a fake palmetto plant. She crawled to the chair, snatched her things, and ran from the office and through the dark. At the door she struggled with the bolt, shot it open, and half fell into the rainy passage, expecting to hear him in pursuit.