North and South Trilogy

by John Jakes

  Farmer saw her take note of it. “I have thus far lacked the time to conduct Sunday school or evening prayer services, but I am prepared. We must build bridges to heaven even as we raise defenses against the ungodly.”

  “Sad to say,” Brett told him, “I was born among the ungodly.”

  “Yes, I am aware. Be assured, I meant no personal slight. I cannot deceive you, however. It is my conviction that the Almighty detests all those who keep our black brethren in chains.”

  His words irked her; they would have irked any South Carolinian. Yet there was a paradox. She found his voice and oratory unexpectedly stirring. Billy looked uneasy, as if thinking, They aren’t my black brethren.

  Brett said, “I respect your forthrightness, Captain. I only regret the issue must be resolved by war. Billy and I want to get on with our lives. Start a family. Instead, all I can see ahead is a period of danger.”

  Lije Farmer locked his hands behind his lower back. “You are correct, Mrs. Hazard. And we shall confront it because the portion has been passed to us—God’s will be done. However, I am persuaded the war will be brief. We shall emerge the victors. As Scripture tells us, the thoughts of the righteous are right, but the counsels of the wicked are deceit. The wicked are overthrown and are not—but the house of the righteous shall stand.”

  Instantly, she was simmering again. Billy saw, and silently pleaded for restraint while Farmer continued.

  “The wicked is snared by the transgression of his lips, but the just shall come out of trouble.”

  Ready to retort, she didn’t because he took her by surprise, defused the tension by stepping to Billy’s side and dropping a fatherly arm over his shoulders. Farmer’s smile shone.

  “If there are perilous days ahead, the Lord God will see this good young man through them. The Lord God is a sun and shield. Even so, I shall look after him, too. When you return to your home, carry my reassurance in your heart. I will do everything I can to see that William rejoins you speedily and unharmed.”

  At that moment, Brett forgot issues and fell in love with Lije Farmer.

  16

  MILES AWAY IN THE South Carolina low country, another man lived with dreams of revenge as vivid as Elkanah Bent’s.

  Justin LaMotte, owner of the plantation named Resolute and impoverished scion of one of the state’s oldest families, yearned to punish his wife, Madeline. She had fled to the Main plantation to expose the plot to kill the Yankee who’d married Orry Main’s sister.

  But Justin’s grudge went back much further. For years, Madeline had disgraced him with her outspoken nature and disregard of accepted female behavior. Except, he recalled with some satisfaction, she had been submissive, if unexciting, when he exercised his connubial rights. He had curbed her offending activities for a while by secretly administering laudanum in her food. Now she was compounding past disgrace by living openly with her lover. The whole district knew she intended to marry Orry the moment she obtained a divorce. She’d never get one. But that wasn’t enough. Justin spent hours every day concocting schemes to ruin Orry or imagining scenes in which he punished Madeline with knives or fire.

  At the moment he lay submerged in tepid water one of his niggers had poured into the heavy zinc tub in his bedroom. Spirals of dark brown dye coiled away from dampened hair on the back of his head. The absence of any gray had a curious effect of calling attention to, rather than obscuring, his age; the color of his hair, so clearly artificial, lent him the look of a waxwork, though he was oblivious.

  Justin was trying to relieve the tension that had bedeviled him lately. His wife wasn’t the sole cause. There were problems with the Ashley Guards, the regiment he and his brother Francis were attempting to raise by expanding the home defense unit they had organized in the tense months of the Sumter confrontation.

  Brown-spotted white silk, folded into layers and tied vertically, hid the left side of Justin’s face. When he had tried to prevent Madeline from leaving Resolute, she had defended herself with an heirloom sword snatched from the wall of the foyer. One stroke of the nicked blade dug a red trench from his left brow through his upper lip to the midpoint of his chin. The scabrous, slow-healing wound hurt emotionally as well as physically. He had reason to hate the bitch.

  It was late afternoon; stifling. Shadows of Spanish moss on water oaks outside patterned the bedroom’s mildewed pine-block floor. Below the second-story piazza, his brother shouted drill commands. Fed up with trying to train white trash—all the gentlemen of the district except that one-armed scoundrel Main had mustered with other units—Justin had turned today’s instruction over to Francis and retired.

  His brother had spent lavishly to outfit the regiment. On a stand near the tub hung canary-colored trousers and a smart braided chasseur jacket of bright green, styled after the habit-tunique of the French. The outfit was completed by handsome top boots worn outside the trousers; the tops drooped above the knee, in the European manner.

  It galled Justin that he and Francis couldn’t find more white men who appreciated the value and distinction of such a uniform or what a rare opportunity it was to be led by LaMottes. That damned Wade Hampton had outfitted his legion as drably as cowherds, and men had stampeded to sign up.

  Justin loathed the Columbia planter for other reasons, too. LaMottes had arrived in Carolina years before the first Hampton, yet today the latter name was the more honored one. Justin lived on next to nothing, while Hampton appeared to increase his wealth effortlessly; everyone said he was the richest man in the state.

  Hampton had refused to attend the secession convention—had even spoken publicly against it—and now he was a hero. He was already in Virginia, with companies of foot, artillery, and cavalry slavishly panting after him while Justin languished at home, cuckolded by his wife and unable to find more than two companies of men—and those ruffians who were always drinking, punching, or stabbing one another or handling their old muskets and squirrel rifles in an unmilitary way.

  God, how it depressed him. He sank another half an inch in the water. Then he realized he no longer heard Francis cracking out orders. Instead, the sounds coming up from below were shouts and yelps and unfriendly obscenities. “Damn them.” The oafs were brawling again. Well, let Francis settle it.

  He anticipated a quick end to the noise. Instead, the laughter, the encouraging yells grew louder; so did the swearing and the thump of blows. The bedroom door opened. A black youth named Mem—short for Agamemnon—shot his head in.

  “Mr. Justin? Your brother say come, please. They’s trouble.”

  Furious, Justin heaved himself out of the tub. Dye-tinted water dripped from his nose, fingers, half-melon paunch. “How dare you come in here without waiting for permission!” He hit Mem a hard blow with closed fist.

  The boy yelled. His eyes opened wide, and for an instant Justin saw such rage he feared an attack. A new, unhealthy spirit was stirring among slaves in the district now that the black Republican Yankees had begun to prosecute their war to rob decent men of their property. Lately there had been an unexplained sharp rise in nigger funerals; some said the coffins being buried contained firearms for an uprising. Old white fears of black skin blew across the low country like the pestilential breezes of summertime.

  “Get out,” Justin shouted at his slave. Whatever brief rebelliousness Mem had felt was gone now. He ran, slamming the door. From the bed, Justin picked up his stomach-cinching corset. Francis shouted his name; he sounded frightened.

  Cursing, Justin flung the corset down and tugged on his tight canary trousers. Patches of dampness immediately appeared on thigh, crotch, and rump. He buttoned his fly as he tore down the main stairs, stopping only to yank the old saber from its pegs.

  He rushed into the sunshine and found the fight in progress at one end of the ramshackle house. The Ashley Guards, their fine uniforms carelessly soiled, encircled two men wrestling for possession of an ancient Hall breechloader: the Lemke cousins, ill-tempered cretins who ran a prosperous farm nearby.<
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  Wizened Francis hurried to his brother. “Drunk as owls, both of them. Better fetch some of the niggers—these boys are enjoying themselves too much to help us stop it.”

  No doubt about that. A couple of the guards sniggered at Justin’s sopping pants and the visible quarter-globe of his paunch above. “Christ, can’t you discipline them?” he whispered to Francis. “Must I always be the one?”

  He wasn’t going to be the one this time. Each of the Lemkes had two powerful hands on the contested weapon, and each pulled hard on it. One Lemke rammed his head forward and sank teeth into the other’s shoulder, biting deeply enough to bring blood through the uniform. No, thank you, thought Justin, and walked away; he’d find four or five bucks and make them take the risk.

  One Lemke changed the position of his hands while the other forced the barrel down. Men near the muzzle backed clear. The piece went off with a smoky boom.

  Justin felt a hard hit that began to burn as he pitched toward the ground. He struck chin-first, screaming in pain and outrage. A great red flower bloomed on the yellow field of his buttocks.

  17

  AT MONT ROYAL, THE large rice plantation on the west bank of the Ashley River above Charleston, the present head of the Main family faced a decision similar to the one confronting his friend George Hazard.

  From boyhood, Orry Main had wanted to be a soldier. He had graduated in the West Point class of ’46 and taken part in some of the hottest action of the Mexican War. At Churubusco, outside Mexico City, he had lost his left arm, partly because of the cowardice and enmity of Elkanah Bent. The injury had forced Orry to abandon his cherished dream of a military career.

  Difficult years followed his return to South Carolina. He fell helplessly in love with Justin LaMotte’s wife, and she with him, though honor had restricted their long affair to occasional secret meetings without the physical consummation both of them wanted.

  Now, tangled events had brought Madeline under his roof to stay. Whether they’d be able to marry legally was another question. The state’s divorce law was complex, and LaMotte was doing everything possible to prevent Madeline from gaining her freedom. He was doing that despite a circumstance that would have driven most white Southern men to a directly opposite course. Madeline’s mother had been a beautiful New Orleans quadroon. Madeline was one-eighth black, which mattered little to Orry. Though the truth would have been a powerful weapon against Justin, she had lacked the cruelty to use it. But she had certainly imagined the scene of revelation, particularly his reaction, often enough.

  In the small office building from which his father and his father’s father had run the plantation, Orry sat at the old, littered desk confronting still another issue: papers he must sign if he were to show his loyalty and support the new Confederate government with part of his earnings. It was a humid afternoon, typical for the low country in July. In peacetime, he and Madeline more than likely would have escaped to a summer residence upcountry, where cooler weather prevailed.

  Hazy sunshine splashed the office windows. The air smelled of violets and the perfume of the sweet olive, which he could always bring to mind no matter how far from Mont Royal he traveled. Wishing he didn’t have to wade through the document in hand, he watched an inch-long palmetto bug scurry along a light-burnished sill near his desk, bound from dark to dark. As are we all.

  He shook his head, irritated with himself. But the mood refused to pass. Melancholy times brought melancholy feelings.

  Conversation, occasional laughter or singing reached him from the nearby kitchen building. He comprehended none of what he heard. His thoughts had turned from the papers to the commission that had been offered to him—staff duty in the Richmond office of Bob Lee, the veteran officer whose loyalty to his native Virginia had forced him to leave the federal army. Lee was presently the special military adviser to Jefferson Davis.

  The prospect of desk duty didn’t thrill Orry, though he supposed it was unrealistic to expect a field command. Not entirely so, however; not if Richmond was inclined to follow the example of the enemy. An officer Orry had heard about but never met in Mexico, Phil Kearny, had also lost his left arm there—and he was now a brigadier commanding Union volunteers.

  Though his sense of duty was strong, he hesitated to accept the commission for a number of other reasons. Davis was said to be difficult. A brave soldier—a West Point man—he was notorious for wanting to lead troops and, in lieu of that, for maintaining tight control of those who did.

  Further, Orry’s sister Ashton and her husband, James Huntoon, were in Richmond, where Huntoon held some government job. When Orry had discovered the malicious part Ashton played in the near-murder of Billy Hazard, he had ordered her and her husband to leave Mont Royal and never return. The thought of being anywhere near them repelled him.

  Next, he had no overseer. Younger men he might have hired had all rushed off to serve. An older one with brains and enough physical strength for the job couldn’t be found. He had advertised in the Charleston and Columbia papers and heard from three applicants, all unacceptable.

  Most important, his mother was in poor health. And he hated to leave Madeline. That was not merely selfishness. If he were gone, Justin might try to strike at her for the damage she had done to his face and his reputation.

  The slaves might pose a threat as well. He hadn’t discussed it with Madeline—he didn’t want to alarm her unnecessarily—but he had begun to detect subtle changes in the demeanor and behavior of some of the bucks. In the past, harsh discipline had seldom been necessary at Mont Royal and never condoned, except once—a cat-hauling ordered by his late father. In the current situation, Cousin Charles’s boyhood friend Cuffey was the most notable offender; he bore watching.

  Reluctantly, Orry redirected his attention to the thick, blue-backed document ornamented with seals impressed in wax. If he signed, he would be agreeing to surrender a substantial portion of his rice profits for the year in exchange for government bonds of equal value. This so-called produce loan had been conceived to help finance the war for which Orry, like his friend George, had scant enthusiasm. Orry understood the futility of the South’s military adventure because he understood some simple figures first called to his attention, dourly, by his brother Cooper.

  About twenty-two millions lived in the North. There, too, you found most of the old Union’s industrial plants, rail trackage, telegraphic lines, mineral and monetary wealth. The eleven states of the Confederacy had a population of something like nine million; a third of those, slaves, would never be of use to the war effort except in menial ways.

  Dubious, not to say dangerous, attitudes about the war prevailed these days. Fools like the LaMotte brothers snickered at the suggestion that the South could be invaded—or, if it were, that the result could be anything but glorious Confederate victory. From aristocrats to yeomen, most Southerners had a proud belief in their own abilities, which led to an unrealistic conviction that one good man from Dixie could whip ten Yankee shopkeepers anywhere, anytime, world without end, Amen.

  In very rare moments of chauvinism, Orry shared some of those beliefs. He would match his younger cousin Charles against any other officer. He saw the same courage in Charles’s commander, Wade Hampton. And he found truth—though not the whole of it—in the maxim he had memorized in his young, hopeful years. In war, Bonaparte said, men are nothing; a man is everything.

  Even so, to imagine the North had no soldiers to equal those from the South was idiocy. Suicidal. Orry could recall any number of first-rate Yankees from the Academy, including one he had known personally and liked very much. Where was Sam Grant serving now?

  No answer to that—and no way to tell which way this strange, unwanted war might go. He forced himself back to the occasionally baffling legalisms of the bond agreement. The sooner he finished work for the day, the sooner he’d see Madeline.

  About four, Orry returned from surveying the fields. He wore boots, breeches, and a loose white shirt whose empty left slee
ve was held up at the shoulder by a bright pin. At thirty-five, Orry was as slender as he had been at fifteen and carried himself with confidence and grace despite his handicap. His eyes and hair were brown, his face rather long. Madeline said he grew handsomer as he aged, but he doubted that.

  He had signed the bond agreement. Having done so, he stopped worrying about repayment. A decision prompted by patriotism oughtn’t to have any conditions on it.

  He crossed the head of the half-mile lane leading down to the river road. Mossy live oaks hid it from the light most of the day. He walked around the corner of the great house, which faced a formal garden and the pier on the slow-moving Ashley. Light footfalls sounded on the piazza overhead but stopped as he moved out from beneath it. Above him he saw a small, plump woman in her late sixties gazing contentedly at the cloudless sky.

  “Good afternoon, Mother.”

  In response to his call, Clarissa Gault Main glanced down and smiled in a polite, puzzled way. “Good afternoon. How are you?”

  “Just fine. You?”

  The smile broadened, benign. “Oh, splendid—thank you so much. She turned and drifted inside. He shook his head. He had identified himself as her son, but the prompt was wasted; she no longer knew him. Fortunately, the Mont Royal blacks, with one or two exceptions, loved Clarissa. She was unobtrusively supervised and protected by everyone with whom she came in contact.

  Where was Madeline? In the garden? As he studied it, he heard her inside. He found her in the parlor examining a cylindrical package nearly five feet long and heavily wrapped. She ran to put her arms around him.

  “Careful,” he said and laughed. “I’m dusty and sweaty as a mule.”

  “Sweaty, dusty—I love you in any condition.” She planted a long, sweet kiss on his dry mouth. Refreshing as water from a mountain well. She locked her hands behind his neck while they embraced, and he felt the lushness of her full figure against him. Though legal marriage was as yet denied them, they shared the easy physical intimacy of a couple wed a long time and still in love. They slept without night clothes—Madeline’s kind and forthright nature had quickly rid him of sensitivity about the appearance of his stump.