The Titans Page 9

  Catherine walked toward the door. Serena hesitated, then followed.

  “Good night, Jeremiah,” Catherine said in a strained voice. “Maum Isabella will look in presently to see whether you need anything.”

  “I am feeling a wee bit hungry—”

  “Then I’ll send her up immediately.”

  Opening the door, she reached for Serena’s arm a second time. The girl gasped as the older woman literally dragged her out.

  Jeremiah sank back in bed, disturbed. In his opinion, Catherine Rose’s ideas about handling the situation with Price were all wrong. He’d need to be watchful. Very watchful.

  And those two women—they were certainly a puzzlement. They might be related by marriage, but they clearly weren’t related by temperament.

  Settling himself against the pillows, he inhaled the sweet scent of the blossoms outside the house. Just what kind of hornet’s nest had he blundered into on this plantation?

  Chapter VI

  Shadow of the Enemy

  i

  “MR. KENT?”

  The whisper brought him bolt upright in bed, surprised and terrified. Then the terror varnished as he realized who had spoken. But bewilderment lingered.

  The candles had gone out. From the angle of the November moonlight falling across the gallery, he judged the hour to be very late. Serena Rose was kneeling beside the bed, her face no more than a blur in the silver-blue gloom.

  She repeated his name. He mumbled, “I’m awake,” although he was still drowsy. Turning on his side, he could feel the warmth of her breath on the back of his hand.

  “Catherine doesn’t know I’m in here. You won’t say anything?”

  “Won’t say—?” He fought a yawn, knuckled his eyes. Answered more coherently: “No, ’course not.”

  “I wanted to tell you I went down to the cabins.” Her voice was low, the words rushed. “I asked Leon to help me. Leon’s a buck who was born at Rosewood, he’s trustworthy. We talked to Price.” Her tone hardened. “I ordered half a dozen laid on him out by the burial ground.”

  “Laid—?” His lethargy left him. “You mean the whip?”

  She nodded. “We don’t use it often, but we have one.”

  “You did the right thing,” he said with conviction. His mouth had that bloodless, cruel look for a moment. “Did Price confess?”

  “Not on your life! He just took the whipping without a word. But you should have seen the way he looked at me!”

  She clutched his wrist. He felt something wet on her fingers when they brushed the cuff of his nightshirt.

  “He stole the musket, Mr. Kent. I know he did!”

  “What if your stepmother discovers that you—”

  “She won’t. Leon won’t say anything to Catherine. I forced him to promise. I doubt Price will say anything either. He’s scared of me,” she hurried on. “He understands I’m not soft the way Catherine is. And tattling, that’s not his style. He’ll wait for a chance to get back at me.”

  “Then you took a risk you shouldn’t have taken. I’d have been on my feet soon. I could have—”

  “I didn’t want to wait a minute longer. I had to find out whether he was up to something. Now I’m sure he is. Catherine’s wrong and you’re right. But now there are two of us to keep a sharp eye on him. Catherine’s too trusting, Mr. Kent. She still believes some of those pretty words they taught her in church when she was a girl. She doesn’t realize how that nigger hates us!”

  Her fingers closed tighter on his wrist. The tips still had that curious wet feel.

  “I just wanted to say you’re right—and I’m glad you’re here to look after us.”

  He didn’t quite realize what had happened until it was over. She came off her knees and leaned near, planting a quick kiss on his cheek. For a moment her breast brushed his forearm. Under the coverlet his body responded quickly and automatically.

  He could see very little of her face in that moment when it was close to his—half of it was in darkness, half a pale blur. In the moonlight her red hair glowed almost white.

  With a rustle of gathered skirts, she scrambled to her feet. Why the devil was she so interested in him all of a sudden? he wondered. The first time she’d come into his room she’d hardly paid any attention to him. Why had she reversed herself? Was it because she and her stepmother were at odds? Because she wanted to win him to her side?

  Serena squeezed his hand. “I’d better scat out of here. I think Catherine’s asleep, but I’m not sure. Her room’s down the hall just beyond mine. I know some of the house niggers are still up. If one of them sees me, by this time tomorrow people all over the county will be calling me a scarlet woman.” She uttered a low laugh, sounding more amused than worried.

  He had no time to say anything as she hurried away. The door clicked shut before he knew it.

  He was still mightily confused—downright stunned, in fact—by the swift secret visit. Of course he was gratified that the girl had swung over to his side of the argument about Price. But she’d indeed taken a scandalous chance—risked compromising her reputation by slipping into his room. Apparently she wasn’t afraid of such gambles.

  Serena’s eagerness to punish the black bothered him, too.

  Not that Price didn’t deserve punishment. He did—if only as a warning. What troubled Jeremiah was her tone of voice during parts of the conversation. She’d sounded as if she’d actually enjoyed ordering the man lashed. Puzzling over her curious nature, he drifted into sleep.

  When he woke in the morning, he happened to glance at the sleeve of his nightshirt. He caught his breath.

  He gazed at the brown stain on the cuff and realized why Serena’s hand had felt wet. Leon hadn’t been the only one who had touched the whip.

  He spent ten minutes naked in front of the washstand, scrubbing at the stain. He couldn’t get it all out because the blood had dried. A telltale blotch remained. Not too noticeable, he hoped.

  He poured the discolored water into the chamber pot and hastily put the lid in place with a hand that shook just a little. He’d have whipped Price dispassionately, for the sake of prudence. She’d apparently whipped him for pleasure.

  Lord! An angel face like that—what was behind it? Part of him was drawn toward discovering the answer. Another part warned he’d be into dangerous depths if he did.

  ii

  “O God, our help in ages past,

  Our hope for years to come—”

  Jeremiah moved his lips, unfamiliar with the words of the hymn sung with such lusty confidence by the people in the sitting room of Rosewood just after eleven o’clock that same Thanksgiving morning.

  Outside, a brilliant sun shone. During the past hour, some twenty white neighbors had arrived. The men were all elderly, the women of varying ages. Dressed in Sunday clothes, the visitors stood unselfconsciously among the plantation’s blacks who filled the rest of the room. More of the slaves packed the entrance hall and part of the front piazza near the main door.

  Even Price had come to pay tribute to the departed colonel. Jeremiah could see him just outside the sitting room arch, bellowing the hymn as if what Serena had described last night had never happened.

  “Our shelter from the stormy blast,

  And our eternal home.”

  Noting Price’s erect posture and cheerful expression, Jeremiah wondered if he’d dreamed the nocturnal visit.

  Serena had again dressed like her stepmother—in black crepe. As the group sang, she played the London-made pianoforte. For a number of reasons Jeremiah was decidedly uncomfortable in the midst of the gathering.

  Just after he’d washed out the blood, Maum Isabella had delivered a pair of the colonel’s linen trousers and a luxurious white silk shirt, as well as underclothing. Everything was too small. He looked and felt like a bumpkin in the ill-fitting garments. Neither did he like wearing a dead man’s clothes.

  And before the service, he’d been required to meet all the guests and repeat an involved series of
falsehoods about his wounds and fictitious discharge. Grave-faced people, among them a couple named Jesperson, had bobbed their heads sympathetically in response to his romanticized description of Henry Rose’s death.

  “Under the shadow of Thy throne,

  Still may we dwell secure—”

  Pretending to sing, he found his mind returning to the crosscurrents that seemed to be aswirl in the house. There was a curious, secretive quality about them. For instance, while standing at Catherine’s elbow and speaking with two of the visitors, he’d picked up the unmistakable tang of blackberry wine again. If she’d drink before company came, she was under greater tension than she permitted others to see.

  The right hand of the Congregational pastor, the Reverend Emory Pettus, arced back and forth as he led the hymn to its loud climax. Pettus was an immense, paunchy man in a warm-looking black alpaca coat with a secession rosette in the lapel. He kept his eyes on the ceiling and sang in a bellowing baritone.

  “Sufficient is Thine arm alone,

  And our defense is—”

  Abruptly Serena lifted her fingers from the keyboard and turned toward the open front windows nearby. Her net-bound chignon glowed even with the morning sun muted by the gently stirring lace curtains.

  The various singers straggled on to a weak finish. Pettus frowned as Catherine took her hand from the hymnal she’d been sharing with the minister.

  “Serena, why did you stop?”

  The girl pointed outdoors. “I heard the bell ring. Twice.”

  “Nonsense.” Catherine smiled frostily. “No one would ring the bell and disturb—”

  She was interrupted by a commotion on the piazza. A white-haired old fellow with palsy tottered to a window, mumbling complaints. Outside, a black shouted, “Miz Catherine? Buggy comin’ up the lane!”

  “I told you someone rang the bell!” Serena was vindicated.

  Catherine ignored her, looking concerned. A slave boy of fourteen or fifteen slipped through the crowd in the sitting room, an apologetic expression on his face.

  “Who is it, Zeph?” Catherine asked.

  “Marse Claypool, ma’am.”

  The one referred to as the judge? Jeremiah wondered. Catherine had already commented on the surprising absence of the Claypools.

  Jeremiah heard a rattle of wheels and the sound of hoofs scattering small stones. The nigras outdoors shouted questions as the vehicle halted. The horses of the other rigs pulled up in front began to neigh and stamp. Catherine hurried to one of the open windows, thrust the curtains aside, and stuck her head out, not a little annoyed.

  “Theodore, we’re right in the middle of the service!”

  “My profound apologies.” The man had a wheezy voice, sounded out of breath. “I’d have been here sooner, but I was waiting for Floyd to come back from another trip to Milledgeville. Those folks indoors—all of you—better pay attention! The Yanks are in the capital!”

  The guests all began talking at once. The slaves murmured among themselves. Over the noise, Catherine called, “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. The first of them arrived day before yesterday. Two whole corps of Union infantry, the Fourteenth and the Twentieth. Sherman’s with their commander, General Slocum.”

  Absolute pandemonium then. A portly woman near Jeremiah gasped, closed her eyes, and started to faint. Her male companion tried to catch her, failed, and knelt beside her, chafing her wrists and whispering, “God preserve us. God preserve us.”

  Jeremiah shoved his way to the windows to hear the rest.

  “—wouldn’t believe what’s happening in Milledgeville, Catherine. The Yanks are tearing up the railroad tracks! Heating the ties and bending ’em around trees. Sherman’s hairpins, that’s their clever little name for ’em. Floyd said he saw soldiers destroying books from the state library. And Secretary of State Burnett’s wife”—the unseen man paused to suck in another breath as the guests and the blacks fell silent—“she had to bury the state seal under her house and hide documents from the legislature in her pigsty.”

  Catherine leaned halfway out the window. “In heaven’s name why?”

  “Because that infernal Sherman has issued orders that his men can forage liberally on the country. Those were his exact words—‘forage liberally!’ Of course the sanctimonious devil’s also announcing that he hasn’t authorized his men to enter homes or molest citizens unless there’s guerrilla resistance.”

  “But the Home Guards are mobilized!” someone exclaimed.

  The judge snorted. “Precisely. That qualifies as resistance. So Sherman looks the other way while his scalawags rob private dwellings and burn farms and plantations where the owners have tried to hide some of their crops. Evidently that’s guerrilla resistance, too! Believe me, Floyd saw barns and gins being put to the torch—houses being gutted in Milledgeville—he talked to one family whose whole place was torn down! They had to take refuge in an overturned boxcar in the rail yards.”

  Jeremiah pressed up beside Catherine and lifted the curtain. In the drive he saw a bony, perspiring old man seated in a two-wheeled hooded chaise. Red dust covered the man’s frock coat and trousers.

  “Can’t the militia stop them?” Jeremiah asked.

  “Old codgers like me? Boys? A few cavalrymen?” Claypool harumphed. “I doubt it.”

  “Are they headed this way?”

  “Well, they seem to be after rail junctions and the larger towns, so I expect they are. They’ll probably come right past here on the way to Millen.”

  Consternation again.

  The man whose wife had fainted helped her to her feet, muttering apologies to Catherine. She didn’t hear, standing with one hand shielding her half-closed eyes. The man and his wife edged through the crowd toward the hall. Reverend Pettus announced that they’d better end the service and return to their homes at once.

  The words were superfluous. A small stampede had already started, guests jabbering and pushing the blacks aside to get to the buggies and phaetons outside. Jeremiah was suddenly thankful he still had the sheathed knife tucked in his boot. Sherman’s shadow was growing longer. Touching Rosewood now.

  Still, he had a hard time believing the Yanks would destroy undefended private property on any large scale. Surely they couldn’t be that dishonorable. The outbreak in Milledgeville must be an isolated case. Even the razing of Atlanta had had some strategic purpose. But the incidents the dusty old man in the chaise described had none at all, unless you counted the kind of thing Jeremiah was witnessing at this moment: the creation of utter panic among defenseless civilians.

  One phaeton was already gone, clattering down the lane in a cloud of sunlit dust. The driver lashed his team as though Satan were three feet behind.

  “Catherine? What are we going to do?”

  Jeremiah and the older woman both turned at the sound of Serena’s voice. The girl didn’t appear worried, merely curious.

  Judge Claypool came struggling in against the tide of the exodus, talking first to one person, then another. “—swear to Jesus—oh! Excuse my language, Reverend—it’s all true! They’ve got a flock of runaway niggers dogging ’em wherever they go. Disloyal, disreputable niggers, every one!”

  The judge’s announcement in the hall caused another, somewhat more restrained stir, this time among the blacks. Claypool fanned back his dusty coat to display a holstered horse pistol. “Thank God we have none of that kind around here. If we did they’d be candidates for shooting. And I don’t mean by Yanks.”

  Serena prodded her stepmother. “Well, Catherine?”

  “If they come,” Jeremiah said abruptly, “we’ll stand up to them.”

  “Really?” Serena inquired. “How?”

  “War or no war, they have no right to ruin private property. We’ll make them understand that.”

  Serena’s blue eyes grew amused. “My, you certainly have faith in the decency of Yankees.”

  The sarcasm rankled. He had to believe the cruelty of the battlefield couldn’t spr
ead into civilian territory. He had nothing else to believe in any longer. It was his last article of faith. He tried to justify it.

  “I just don’t think any army would go on burning and looting that way. Sherman’s men have probably done it around Milledgeville because that’s the capital.”

  Catherine took encouragement from the words. “I’m sure he’s right, Serena. Provisioning an army off enemy land’s one thing. Ruining civilian property is another. They certainly won’t continue—”

  “Don’t be too damn sure, Catherine,” Judge Claypool warned.

  “By God, we won’t stand for it,” Jeremiah blurted. “It’s against all the laws of decency!”

  Someone laughed.

  He spun, his eyes locking with those of Price.

  The slave’s face was blank again. But Jeremiah was positive Price was the culprit. A young woman with her hair covered by a bandana was backing away from him. And Maum Isabella was staring at him too, lips pinched tight together.

  Jeremiah glared at the slave but drew no response. Price’s pupils might have been brown stones.

  A few remaining guests clustered around Catherine, offering apologies and empty condolences before they departed. Jeremiah drew Serena aside.

  “We’d better get your stepmother working on her list.”

  “What list?”

  “The one she mentioned last night. Covering anything on the place that ought to be hidden. Are there firearms in the house?”

  “No, none. Papa took everything.” With her back to Price, who hadn’t changed his position in the hall, she whispered, “There’s a musket somewhere—” She seemed to be goading him.

  “We’ll do the best we can without it,” Jeremiah declared, even though the lack of the Enfield left him feeling less than whole.

  The vehicles belonging to the guests rattled down to the highway one after another. Maum Isabella had put grief behind her and was shooing some of the nigras through the house toward their cabins. At last Price turned and strolled off in the same direction.

  Dust boiled through the open windows of the sitting room, billowing the curtains and settling on the polished wood of the pianoforte. A last visitor tipped a table and spilled back issues of the Southern Literary Messenger in his haste to depart. As the copies plopped on the carpet, Jeremiah heard faint laughter again, then Maum Isabella’s voice, loud and scolding.