The Titans Page 6

  Dilsey rammed his carbine in the scabbard. He reached down and snatched the Enfield from the dismounted trooper, then aimed it at Jeremiah’s chest, his smile humorless. “I’d have used your own weapon on you. Killed you where you stand.”

  He flung the Enfield. Jeremiah barely managed to catch it. Dilsey laughed at him, a hollow, unfriendly laugh.

  “As things worked out, however, you’re going to find yourself smack back in the war. Why, you may turn out to be the only young man within forty miles of that plantation. Commander of the whole resistance! Hope you can handle that. After running away, seems fitting you should be required to try.”

  Seething, Jeremiah watched Captain Dilsey and his men reorder themselves into a column of twos. Moonlight spilled across the officer’s back; his face was hidden. When he spoke, he sounded cheerful and cruel at the same time.

  “Good luck to you, Corporal. I hereby promote you to general in command of Jefferson County.”

  He wheeled his mount with a ferocious yank of the rein and galloped off along the country road, his men right behind. Their passing left another phosphorescent dust cloud that soon hid them from sight.

  iv

  Sixty thousand, Jeremiah thought, the barrel of the rifled musket shaking in his hand. Sixty thousand led by the wickedest soldiers in the whole damn Union army!

  By letting him go on to Rosewood alone, Dilsey had punished him. He too had failed to understand Jeremiah’s sense of duty and loyalty—

  How that soft-spoken man must have been laughing to himself all during Jeremiah’s babble about Colonel Rose. For a moment the humiliating anger was almost beyond bearing.

  It began to pass when he reminded himself that he was still alive. And Sherman’s coming would indeed give him a chance to fight again. All in all, despite thinking he’d fooled Dilsey and the shock of Dilsey’s announcement that he hadn’t, he concluded that things could have been a devil of a lot worse. The hand clasping the Enfield grew steadier.

  Jeremiah laid the weapon down, shelled and swallowed four of the goobers given him by the cavalrymen. They settled hard in his stomach, producing almost instantaneous pain. He was forced to sit down on the shoulder of the road, clutching his middle, praying for the pain to ease.

  It didn’t.

  A bird shrilled in the plum orchard. But miserable as he felt, he still believed his luck had taken a better turn. One Enfield would make no difference in Tennessee. It could make a lot of difference in Georgia.

  Under the black and silver sky, he jammed the butt of the Enfield into the grass and literally climbed hand over hand to get to his feet. He still felt shaky and frightened. Tortured by spasms of pain, he stepped onto the road, hurrying—

  He went only a quarter of a mile before he began to stagger. The goobers came up in a retching heave. He was forced to unfasten and drop his trousers and crouch dizzily awhile.

  Covered with cold sweat and aching from his breastbone to his groin, he eventually managed to start walking again. He passed another ramshackle farmhouse. A cow lowed in the vast dark. Pushing himself with every bit of his remaining strength, he kept trudging on.

  Toward Jefferson County.

  Toward two women he’d never met.

  Toward a chance to fight honorably again—

  Sixty thousand strong, he kept thinking. Jesus Almighty!

  Yet in spite of the terrifying numbers and his physical agony, his spirit wouldn’t break. Mentally, he felt stronger and more determined than he had in weeks.

  I’ll get there.

  I’ll get there before Billy Sherman—if I have to crawl every foot of the way.

  Chapter III

  The Slave

  i

  THE FIRST SENSATION WAS heat: stifling heat, too intense for November.

  An insect whined at the back of his neck. With his eyes still closed, he tried to raise his right hand to swat it. He couldn’t seem to summon enough strength to draw his hand from what felt like mud.

  The insect landed on his havelock, then on exposed skin. He clawed his hand out of the mud as the insect bit—a faint, nearly painless sting. The whine diminished.

  Panicky, he tried to recall where he was. That is, where he’d been when he sprawled on the ground at twilight on—

  Tuesday. Yesterday had been Tuesday.

  Late in the day he’d forded the Ogeechee River, bypassed the little town of Louisville, and tried to follow directions given him by a farmer’s boy. Somehow he’d taken a wrong turn at a crossroad. The road he was walking had petered out in brambles at the edge of a bare cotton field near the river.

  Still sick, he’d blundered ahead—straight into a maze of little tributaries of the river, a place of rank water and steaming gloom produced by huge cypresses and live oaks.

  He’d slopped across one shallow backwater and up the far bank, intending to lie down and rest only a few moments. That was all he remembered until now.

  He grew alarmed by a weightlessness in two places where there should have been weight. The precious Enfield no longer pressed against his shoulder; his cartridge box was missing from his belt.

  His face felt scorching, oily. He knew he had the fever again.

  He dragged his left hand back. Fumbled at his waist.

  The oilskin pouch was still there, thank God.

  He heard a foot squish down in mud. Heard a man breathing. His teeth started to chatter as he opened his eyes.

  Ten inches from his nose a small turtle lay upside down on the curve of its shell. The turtle had withdrawn its head and legs. He couldn’t tell whether it was alive or dead. A short distance beyond the turtle he saw a man’s feet, calves, and the bottoms of tattered trousers. His panic worsened.

  Thick, horny toenails were half hidden in rust-colored mud. But Jeremiah could see the skin well enough—

  Black skin.

  ii

  He heard a heavy, mellow voice, neither friendly nor hostile. “You ’wake, mister soldier?”

  Jeremiah’s head jerked up. His temples throbbed from the sudden move. His lips compressed, he jammed his fists into the red clay bank where he’d slept. Doubled his knees. Eventually staggered to his feet, his uniform filthy, his face and hair caked with mud.

  “Who are you? Where am I?”

  The black man was superbly built, with a slender waist and a broad chest. A ragged shirt cut off at the shoulders exposed thick arms. He was about thirty, Jeremiah guessed. His skin was so dark it had a blue cast.

  The man’s eyes were almost perfectly oval, with huge brown pupils. He stood in a placid, relaxed pose. Yet Jeremiah couldn’t escape an irrational feeling that the Negro was simmering with hostility.

  “Which question you want me to answer first?”

  Jeremiah saw a double image of the black’s curly head. He squeezed his eyelids shut and spread his feet, hoping to keep his balance.

  “Tell me where I am.”

  “This here’s a swamp down by the acreage we call the bottom.”

  “Who calls it that?” The black’s lackadaisical air angered him. “Don’t you know how to be civil to a white man?”

  “Why, ’course I do.” But Jeremiah thought he saw a corner of the man’s mouth twitch. “The bottom land belongs to Rosewood.”

  “Rosewood.” he repeated. “Colonel Henry Rose’s place?”

  The black licked his lips. Staring into those round brown pupils, Jeremiah thought, My Lord, he hates me. Or he hates the uniform I’m wearing, anyway. He was increasingly aware that he lacked any weapon except the sheathed knife in his boot. Without the Enfield he felt naked.

  “Reckon there ain’t another Rosewood in the county.”

  “It’s the place I’ve been hunting.” Fingers plucked at the pouch on his belt. “I’m carrying a message for the colonel’s wife.”

  The black stared, as if he didn’t comprehend.

  “Is this Wednesday?”

  It took a while for the black man to decide to reply. “That’s right, Wednesday. Ev
ery Wednesday Miz Rose gives me an hour in the mornin’ to come catch coolers.” His glance flicked to the turtle. “Can’t abide ’em myself. But I sell ’em to Miz Rose for soup. She’s real kind, lettin’ us niggers make a little money of our own.” The last words carried a faintly caustic edge.

  “Then you’re from the plantation. One of the slaves—”

  A quick, adamant shake of the head. “No more.”

  “Oh?”

  The man smiled. “Year ago January, Linkum said I wasn’t property. Jubilee’s come, mister soldier.”

  Yet he spoke the words joylessly, sounded angry. Jeremiah was growing increasingly angry with the man’s quiet arrogance. “If you think you’re free—”

  “I know I’m free.”

  “Then what the hell are you doing around here?”

  A shrug. “Waitin’.”

  “For what?”

  “To see who wins. If you boys lose, I can go off anyplace I choose. But if you win, an’ I leave ahead of time, I could be in a peck of trouble. Don’t appear likely that you’re goin’ to win, though. Still—can’t be too careful. Isn’t that right?”

  Smart bastard, Jeremiah thought. Smart, wily bastard. Getting out of this swamp alive may take some doing.

  He scanned the area, saw nothing but narrow watercourses winding between mud banks and the great trees. Sunlit insects flitted over green-scummed water like flakes of living gold.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Price.”

  “Which way’s the house?”

  “Yonder,” Price told him, with such a faint inclination of his head that he might have meant any point on a whole quarter of the horizon.

  “Your overseer anyplace close by?”

  Price smiled. “Don’t think so. He went off to fight jus’ like the colonel. Ain’t come back. Any overseein’ to be done, Miz Catherine does it.”

  “That’s the colonel’s wife—”

  “’Pears you know a lot about the Rose family, mister soldier.”

  “My name is Kent. Corporal Kent. You call me that, hear?”

  Silence. The black’s eyes wandered down to the turtle, which appeared to be dead.

  Even more sharply, Jeremiah said, “And lead me up to the house. I told you I have an important paper for your mistress. The colonel gave it to me before—”

  Abruptly, he held back from breaking the news of Rose’s death. The colonel’s wife and daughter deserved to hear it first.

  Price looked indifferent. God, what were those wicked Yanks in Washington City thinking about, granting freedom to men like this?

  Of course Jeremiah knew very well what they were thinking about: the possibility that the blacks might rise up against their masters and aid the Northern war effort. Lincoln’s detested proclamation in the first month of 1863 hadn’t been so generous as to free every black man in the land, not by a damn sight. The President and that vicious pack of Republicans he served had only declared blacks were free in the rebelling states.

  Lieutenant Colonel Rose had commented caustically on that limitation one time. “Old Abe has enough trouble on his hands without antagonizing the border states. Besides, I’ve read some of his speeches. He doesn’t believe nigras are the white man’s equal. He’d just as soon ship them all to Liberia and be shed of them. He’s freeing our nigras to make it hotter for us, that’s all. He’s no humanitarian, he’s a cheap politician who’ll use any available trick to beat us down.”

  Jeremiah had accepted that as gospel; it jibed with all the anti-Northern talk he’d heard as a boy. Lincoln’s proclamation was merely one more example of how dishonorably the enemy was conducting the war. Let the North—and nigras like this one—praise Abe Lincoln as a high-minded emancipator; Jeremiah knew that wasn’t the truth at all.

  With a move that rippled the muscles of his right forearm, Price reached up to flick sweat from his shiny blue cheek. He grinned, his eyes still mocking. “You don’ finish a lot of your sentences, mister soldier.”

  Sentences? That was a mighty fancy word for an ordinary field hand. The realization confirmed his feeling that this was a dangerous man. Price probably knew how to read and write—had no doubt learned in secret, in defiance of the law.

  “That’s my business.”

  The smile remained fixed. “Guess it is. You say you got a paper from the colonel ’fore somethin’ happened to him?”

  “Before I left him. Also none of your affair. You take me to the house—right after you tell me something.” He swallowed hard, trying to stand steady. Price cocked his head, waiting.

  “You tell me what happened to my musket.”

  Price blinked twice, his expression deliberately blank. Jeremiah wanted to hit him.

  “Musket?” Price turned his head right, then left. “Don’t see no musket anyplace round here—”

  “I had my Enfield and my cartridge box with me when I passed out! They’re gone.”

  “Can’t help that. I didn’t spy any such ’quipment when I come onto you lyin’ there. Guess somebody must have stole it during the night.”

  “Who the hell would wander through a place like this during the night?”

  “Oh, mebbe some of the other niggers from the neighborhood, mister—ah, Corporal,” Price corrected himself with an obviously forced politeness. “No, I surely can’t tell you what happened to that gun and that box. You didn’t have ’em when I found you, and since I was the only one awake right about then, guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.”

  Jeremiah took a step forward, almost falling. “You stole them. You hid them someplace. Didn’t you?”

  Price’s gaze admitted it. But his face grew pious. “Now that’s a frightful thing to ’cuse a man of, Corporal. Me, a field buck, steal a white man’s weapon an’ hide it? Why, I could be whipped half to death for such a thing, if Miz Catherine was the kind who whipped her niggers. No, sir, I jus’ don’t know what become of those things you’re talkin’ ‘bout. You’ll just have to take my word.”

  Price’s dazzling grin scorned him as a fool. Jeremiah concluded he might have been wrong about the cause of Price’s insolence. The man’s pigmentation might have nothing to do with it—

  I wouldn’t trust this son of a bitch if he were as white as me.

  Price leaned down to scoop up the dead cooter. He sounded almost obsequious. “Care to hang onto my arm, Corporal?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “You sure lookin’ poorly. It’s ’bout a mile to the house—”

  “I’ll manage!”

  The black watched him, the smile gone. Jeremiah felt increasingly threatened. He’s taken the Enfield and hidden it where he can go back and find it. Use it.

  “This way, then.”

  Jeremiah staggered after him, wondering whether Lieutenant Colonel Rose’s widow knew exactly what sort of treacherous rascal she was harboring. As if things weren’t bad enough with those sixty thousand bluebellies somewhere to the northwest and no male overseer on the place, the two women he was going to meet were threatened by a mean, devious nigra who now had a gun.

  Jeremiah’s head pounded. He was shivering uncontrollably. The path out of the swamp seemed an endless maze.

  He forced himself to keep up. Price might be older, but Jeremiah realized he couldn’t let the black man think he was stronger or smarter—even though Price had already outfoxed him by purloining the musket and ammunition.

  Price cast a quick glance backward. Jeremiah looked him straight in the eye. The black pretended to study a wild turkey roosting in a live oak, but Jeremiah thought he heard the man snicker.

  Got to watch out for that one, he thought.

  Walk behind him all the time.

  Behind him. Never ahead.

  Chapter IV

  Rosewood

  i

  PRICE AND JEREMIAH APPROACHED Rosewood from a gently sloping cotton field that had been harvested earlier in the autumn. Though he was dizzy and hot—particularly now that he and the black ma
n were into the full glare of the sunlight—he felt a peculiar sense of happiness at the sight of the plantation. To him it was very nearly a second home, so often and so lovingly had the slender, courtly Henry Rose described it.

  Rosewood’s land, accumulated by the colonel’s father and grandfather, totaled about a thousand acres. Something like sixty-five slaves had worked the property, three-quarters of which the colonel had put into cotton, the remainder going into corn.

  Originally Rosewood had been a rice plantation. But in the past two decades cotton had proved a far superior cash crop, even though the product of Rose’s fields never commanded the premium prices of the cotton grown in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

  The plantation had a prosperous if oddly deserted look this Wednesday morning. Directly ahead stood two large, immaculate barns. Beyond them Jeremiah glimpsed the end of the white-painted three-story manse that faced a dirt highway on his left. A half-mile road led from the highway to the house between rows of live oaks Rose’s grandfather had planted. Festoons of tillandsia hung from the branches, providing extra shade all the way to the white-painted fencing, the gate, and the bell with a rope pull.

  As he and Price approached, more of the house came into view. He saw the front piazza, shaded by lattices twined with cypress vines. Square pillars reached up to a second-floor gallery running the entire length of the house. Starting near a well at the back of the building and running away from it at a right angle stood two long rows of slave cottages. The paint on the cottages had peeled in a few places, but otherwise they looked well kept. Directly behind the last two was a small picket-fenced burial ground.