by John Jakes
Cowed by the whipping he had received, Rex nodded and kept nodding until she finished her instructions. But as the boy slipped down the stairs to the back door, his eyes shone with a dull rage that expressed his hunger to pay her back.
Cooper’s crowded carriage reached Mont Royal late in the morning. The March sun was mild, the cloudless sky that soft, pure shade of blue that Brett believed to be unique to Carolina. Would she ever see it again?
The children scrambled out the moment the carriage stopped. Cousin Charles ruffled Judah’s hair affectionately, then took Marie-Louise by her waist, lifting her and whirling her around. She clung to his neck, squealing delightedly.
Judith followed Brett out of the carriage. Billy came next, feeling hot and awkward in the new broadcloth suit obtained from a German tailor Cooper had awakened at midnight. Billy was startled to see Charles in full uniform, buttons polished, saber hanging from his sash.
The friends embraced. “Why in the world are you all dressed up?” Billy wanted to know.
Charles grinned. “I’m dressed up in your honor, Bunk. I figured that if one officer asked another to be his best man, the best man should look the part. Truth is, I miss the uniform. The Army, too.”
Orry emerged from the house, his somber appearance enhanced by the long, dark coat he wore. To the noisy group on the piazza he announced, “The Reverend Saxton will be here at half past twelve. I told him to come early. He’s such a toper, I figured he’d want a stiff drink to see him through the ceremony.”
Laughter. Cooper hauled down a small leather trunk in which Billy had packed his revolver, his uniform, and the leather dispatch case. Cooper thumped the trunk on the ground beside Brett’s and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. Brett said to Orry, “How’s Mother?”
“About the same. I explained three times that you were being married. Each time she professed to understand, but I know she didn’t.”
Judah jumped up and down, pointing. “Someone’s coming.”
Sure enough, rolling up the lane between the great trees, a carriage could be seen in a dust cloud. “That’s Ashton,” Brett said—without great enthusiasm, Billy observed.
With a jingle of traces and another billow of dust, the carriage braked behind Cooper’s. From the driver’s seat, Homer regarded the white people impassively, while Rex sprang down to open the door for Ashton and her husband.
Huntoon’s congratulations were clearly perfunctory. Ashton darted from Brett to Billy, hugging each in turn and treating them to blazingly sweet smiles.
“Oh, I’m so happy for you and Brett. I can say that with complete sincerity, being married myself.”
Her eyes flashed like polished gems. Billy couldn’t tell how she really felt, but remembering past intimacies, he reddened as she pressed her cheek to his. Then she puckered her lips and gave him a loud, smacking kiss. Cooper noticed Homer gazing down at his mistress with sullen eyes. He wondered at the reason.
Charles scraped a match on one of the white pillars. It left a mark, to Orry’s visible displeasure. Billy pointed to the long green cigar Charles held between clenched teeth.
“When did you take up my brother’s habit?”
“Since I came home. Have to fill the time somehow. I’d rather be fighting, but I reckon you can’t have everything.”
It was a clumsy attempt at humor, ill timed and inappropriate, both to the occasion and to the background of essentially tragic events in Charleston. The remark was greeted by complete silence. Charles blushed and busied himself with generating smoke from the ten-inch-long Havana.
“Come on, you two,” Ashton trilled. She took Billy’s arm with her right hand, Brett’s with her left. “Aren’t you simply famished? I am. Surely there’s something in the house—” Orry nodded. “Oh, isn’t this an exciting day? Such memorable things are going to happen to both of you!”
And with that she swept them inside.
Charles lingered after the others had gone. He was embarrassed by his gaffe and curious about the high color in Ashton’s face. She seemed genuinely happy about her sister’s marriage. Why, then, did he have a troubling feeling?
A feeling that she was giving a performance.
62
THE HEAT OF THE day bathed Madeline with drowsy warmth. She had just come from the kitchen, where she had seen to the preparation of spiced ham for dinner. The kitchen girls said the weather was fine and rather cool. If that was true, why was she sweltering?
Justin chided her for complaining of being hot. In the last few years heat bothered her as it never had before. She wondered whether some internal change was responsible. But she felt too lazy, too sleepy, to think about the question for very long.
Drifting along Resolute’s downstairs piazza with no particular destination in mind, she tried to recall her husband’s whereabouts. Oh, yes. He had tramped into the fields with his old musketoon for some target practice. Justin took his service with the Ashley Guards very seriously. He predicted with great glee that in a matter of weeks he’d be shooting in earnest.
“—time is it?”
“Almost one. She should be sending another message in an hour or so.”
Three feet away from one of the open windows of the study, Madeline stopped to listen. It took her several seconds to recall the identities of the speakers: Justin’s nephew Forbes and his unpleasant, rail-thin friend Preston Smith. Both had arrived unexpectedly on horseback at mid-morning. Why Forbes had not ridden another ten miles up the Ashley to his father’s plantation he had failed to explain. Madeline received few explanations for anything anymore. She was treated as an object, a fixture. She was usually too spent and indifferent to care.
Now, however, a raw note of urgency in the voices pricked through the dull mental state in which she seemed to drift perpetually. Forbes had used the word she. Why would a woman be sending him a message at Resolute? To arrange an assignation, perhaps?
She rejected that possibility as soon as she heard him ask, “The pistols ready?”
“Yes.”
“You filled the powder flask?”
“I did. We’ll have to be mighty careful with the powder. Wouldn’t want to pour too much in one of those guns.”
“Damn right.”
Both young men laughed, a cheerless sound, almost brutal. Like a tiny ticking clock, fear began to pulse in Madeline’s mind.
She deliberately blinked several times. This needed her attention. Her full attention. She shifted her weight to her left foot. The boards beneath her creaked.
“Forbes, I heard something.”
“Where?”
“Not sure. Might have been outside.”
“I didn’t hear a thing.”
“You weren’t paying attention.”
“All right, go look if you’re scared,” Forbes said with a sneer. Dizzy, Madeline pressed sweating palms against the white siding. Sunlight through festoons of Spanish moss laid a shifting pattern of shadow on her pale, wasted face.
“Oh, never mind,” Preston grumbled, shamed. “Probably just one of the niggers.”
Madeline almost swooned with relief. She pushed away from the wall. Gathering her skirts as quietly as she could, she hurried toward the end of the piazza—away from the open windows. The conspiratorial voices speaking of messages and loaded guns had succeeded in piercing her lethargy. She must try to stay alert to learn more. It was no easy task. Languorous indifference was lapping at her mind again.
She fought it as she slipped into the house by a side entrance. She must not let down. Something was afoot at Resolute. Something peculiar and—if she could believe what she heard in those voices—something sinister as well.
Charles gave Billy an envelope.
“Train tickets to the—to Washington. I almost said capital. But it’s only your capital now. Old habits break mighty hard.”
Billy tucked the envelope into his pocket. Charles held out a small velvet box. “You’ll need this, too.”
Billy pressed the catch,
then reddened. “My Lord, I completely forgot about a ring.”
“Orry figured you might, with everything so rushed.” Charles prepared to light another mammoth cigar. “Wish I had a few of these to send to George. Don’t know if he’s man enough to smoke ’em, though.”
Billy laughed Orry opened the library door and looked in. “If the groom and best man are ready, we’d better start. The rector’s already consumed three glasses of sherry. One more and he won’t be able to read the prayer book.”
“Oh, you look just lovely,” Ashton said with a clap of her hands.
Brett was fussing in front of a pier glass. She plumped up one of the dolman sleeves of her new dress of dark orange silk. “I’m so glad I could be here to stand up with you,” Ashton went on. “I’m so grateful you asked me.”
Brett hurried to the older girl, took her hands, and felt affection flowing between them. “You’re my sister. I wouldn’t want anyone else. But I’m the one who should say thank you. I know how you felt about Billy once upon a time.”
“That was just a silly infatuation.” Ashton pulled away, then turned her back. Her voice rose slightly. “I have the man I want. James is a wonderful, considerate husband. He—”
Orry’s impatient call drifted up the stairs. Brett rushed to the bed for her bouquet of dried flowers. “We’d better go.”
“What time does your train leave the flag stop?”
“I think Billy said four-thirty. Why?”
“I want Homer to drive the two of you there in our carriage.”
“Ashton, that isn’t neces—”
“Hush,” Ashton interrupted, composed again. “I’ll have it no other way. Our carriage is ever so much more comfortable than Cooper’s old rattletrap. Besides, Cooper doesn’t have a coachman, It’s disgraceful to see a member of the Main family doing nigger work—”
Bombarding her sister with words, Ashton urged her out of the door. “You run downstairs, and I’ll be there in a jiffy. I just want to find Homer, so everything will be ready.”
It was Rex, not Homer, whom Ashton sought after she slipped down the back stairs. She ordered the boy to race to Resolute on foot, with instructions to deliver her message to no one but Forbes LaMotte. She reinforced the order by digging her nails into Rex’s thin brown forearm until she saw pain in his eyes. The nigger had been uppity ever since the whipping. She knew he was just itching to get even. If she kept him scared, he wouldn’t dare.
She wrote a pass and shooed Rex out through the pantry. Then she patted her carefully done hair, fixed a sweet smile on her face, and glided to the front of the house to participate in the last happy moment of Billy Hazard’s life.
“And now, you may kiss the bride.”
After this pronouncement, the Reverend Mr. Saxton exhaled in a way that carried sherry fumes to those seated nearby. Clarissa pressed her palms together like a delighted child. She had watched the ceremony with great interest, even though it involved strangers.
Behind her, Marie-Louise uttered a dreamy sigh, then murmured, “Oh, wasn’t it lovely?”
“It’s as close as you’ll ever get to the altar,” her brother Judah said with a leer. “You’re ugly as a fence post.”
The girl kicked his shin. “And you’re mean as a snake.”
From behind, Cooper flicked each on the ear with the tip of his index finger, then induced silence with a fatherly scowl.
Brett had heard scarcely a word of the reading from the prayer book. When they had to kneel, it had been necessary for Billy to give her a gentle nudge. She knew the ceremony was sacred and important, but her heart was beating too fast for concentration. In a couple of hours she would be leaving the land of her childhood to be a wife in a strange, even hostile country. The prospect was terrifying—until the moment she gazed into her husband’s eyes, so full of love and reassurance.
He put his arms around her. She felt his strength flood into her. With Billy beside her, she could suffer through the worst the North could offer. She would hide whatever longing or fear she felt and build a fine future for both of them.
Kissing him, she made that silent vow.
Orry had chosen to sit in the third and last row of chairs, fearful of how he might react during the ceremony. Fortunately, he remained dry-eyed, although he felt the churn of powerful emotions.
He thought of Madeline. Of old age and the days passing in lonely procession. He thought of the crisis at Sumter. Even a year ago it would have been inconceivable to imagine that an American family like the Mains would be living under a new flag.
Perhaps he was prey to so much turmoil because any wedding was a watershed. A joyous occasion, yet a marking of profound change from the way things had been. He was determined to emphasize the happy aspect. He kissed his sister’s cheek and congratulated her warmly after the ceremony.
“I hope you mean that,” she said, nestling against Billy, who held her protectively, one arm around her waist. “I’d like to think this marriage will help keep our families close, no matter what happens.”
Orry looked at the bridegroom. A handsome, competent young man, brother of his best friend. Yet this same young man with the broad, almost bemused smile normally wore not a fine broadcloth wedding suit but a uniform. “I’d like to think so, too,” Orry declared, trying to conceal the doubt suddenly engulfing him. “Come on, now—into the dining room while the wine is still cold.”
He shepherded them out. They passed Ashton, who clung to the arm of her bored, fretful husband. Ashton stared at the newlyweds with an intense gaze that fortunately went unnoticed.
In the foyer at Resolute, Forbes listened to Rex’s message, then sent him to the kitchen to claim a reward of some hot cornbread. Justin strolled out of the study with Preston Smith. The sleeves of Justin’s silk shirt bore signs of his tramp through the fields—bits of leaf and twig. Preston had a large saddlebag slung over one shoulder.
Both men glanced at Forbes, who nodded and said, “Four-thirty.”
Preston looked past his friend to an ormolu clock standing on a fine fruitwood chest, just below the old saber on the wall. “Then we have plenty of time.”
“But I’d just as soon saddle up and leave now. I don’t want to risk missing them.”
“Nor I,” Preston agreed with a sly smile.
Justin smiled too. He swaggered to the wall, moistened the ball of this thumb, and wiped away some speck only he could see on the nicked blade. The sun through the fanlight flooded the wall around the weapon, setting it afire.
“Boys, I wish you well,” Justin said as he drew his thumb back and forth along the blade. “You’ll be performing a public service by killing young Mr. Hazard. There’ll be one less officer in the Yankee army. It’ll be a fine comeuppance for that Mont Royal crowd, too.”
“My sentiments exactly.” Forbes grinned, but his eyes were hard.
“I’ll be waiting for news of your success,” Justin called as they tramped out. Giving a pleased sigh, he started back to the study. After he had taken only a few steps, he was distracted by a faint noise at the head of the staircase. When he spoke, his voice was unexpectedly hoarse.
“What the devil are you doing up there, Madeline?”
It was obvious what she was doing. She was listening.
Standing in the deep afternoon shadow, she clutched the stair rail tightly. Then she descended two steps with more than her usual animation, he thought. Sudden anxiety touched him. Had the recent doses of laudanum through some mischance been too weak?
She clung to the banister with white hands, coming down another step, and another. The black silk of her bodice rose and fell in a way that suggested great effort. Her shadow-circled eyes brimmed with disgust.
The situation called for a firm stand. He marched to the center of the foyer, planted his boots wide apart, and hooked his thumbs over his belt. “Eavesdropping on our guests, were you?” The question carried an unmistakable threat.
“Not intentionally. I”—her voice strengthened—�
��I was on my way to the sewing room. What were you talking about, Justin? Who are they going to kill?”
“No one.”
“I heard the name Hazard.”
“Just your imagination. Get back to your room.”
“No.”
She came down two more steps, then closed her eyes and caught her breath. Her pale forehead glistened with little sparkles of perspiration. He realized she was still struggling against the effects of the drug.
“No,” she repeated. “Not until you explain. Surely I misunderstood. You can’t be sending your own nephew out to murder someone.”
Panic engulfed him then. He blurted, “You stupid slut, get back to your room. Now!”
Again Madeline shook her head, gathering her strength to continue her slow, labored descent of the stairs. “I’m leaving,” she said.
It took her the better part of ten seconds to negotiate the next two risers. He knew then that he had been foolish to panic. She was too weak to do anything about what she had overheard. He managed to relax a little and let his amusement show.
“Oh? To go where?”
“That”—she rubbed her forehead with a handkerchief crushed in her left hand—“is my affair.”
Her mind had grasped the sense of desperate urgency a moment after Justin had spoken the name Hazard. Now she heard hoofbeats echoing down the lane as she reached the bottom of the stairs. Fear renewed her strength, helping to overcome the terrifying lethargy. She stumbled toward the front door. Justin sidestepped, blocking her.
“Please let me pass.”
“I forbid you to leave this house.”
At the end of the sentence his voice cracked and grew strident. That was the final proof that the plotting was altogether real. Someone at Mont Royal was to be slain. She didn’t know the reason, but she knew she must prevent it—if she could.
She started around her husband. He fisted his hand, moved deliberately to her left, and smashed her in the side of the head. With a cry, she sprawled on the floor.
