by John Jakes
“That’s all right, I’ve heard the word damn before.”
“So confident. You have more brass than Jeb Stuart.”
“And it isn’t proper in a woman?”
“I didn’t say that, did I?”
“Then why take note of it?”
“Because it’s—surprising.”
“Is that the best you can do—surprising? How do you really feel about it, Captain?”
“Don’t get prickly with me. If you must know, I like it.”
She blushed, which stunned him. She stunned him a second time by saying, “I didn’t mean to be prickly. It’s a bad habit. As I think I told you when we met, I was never much of a belle, and I don’t always conduct myself in the approved manner.”
“Nevertheless, I approve. Wholeheartedly.”
“Thank you, dear sir.” The barrier was up again. Did he unsettle her with his attentions? His own attraction to this pretty but unconventional widow definitely unsettled him.
Yet he wouldn’t have left for anything. They stood in shy silence, watching the wagons and foot traffic below. Richmond swarmed with strangers these days, and he had heard that street crime was out of control. Robberies, murders, sexual assaults—
The orchestra resumed. “Will you dance with me, Augusta?”
The way he blurted it, with a slight hoarseness, alarmed her again. Well, we both have reason to be cautious. It’s the wrong time and place for anything but light conversations and casual friendships.
She felt soft and exactly right in his arms. He had been so long without a woman, he consciously had to maintain distance between them or she would feel the result of his deprivation. They waltzed past a group of officers; Fitz Lee applauded him in pantomime. They waltzed past Huntoon, who stared; Charles nodded. They waltzed past the First Virginia officer, whom Charles acknowledged by calling out a greeting: “Major Beastly.”
On they danced, Augusta laughing and limp against him for a moment. He felt her body through their clothing; slight plumpness made the contact more sensual.
With her eager consent, Charles kept her as a partner the rest of the evening, then walked her back to the boardinghouse where she had secured a room. Her freedman had been waiting outside the Spotswood with the buggy, but she had sent him on to sleep. Charles was glad for the extra time alone with her. His train left at three, nearly a whole hour yet.
The presentation saber bumped his leg lightly as they walked. The streets were quiet, empty of all but a few furtive figures or occasional carriages bound home from the ball. In some noisy saloons they passed, crowds of civilians and soldiers still roistered. But no one bothered them; Charles’s height and obvious strength deterred that sort of thing. Augusta seemed to like sheltering on his arm.
“I must tell you the truth, Charles,” she said when they reached the dark stoop of the boardinghouse. She took a step up, bringing her eyes level with his. “This evening we have talked about everything from my crops to General Lee’s character, but we’ve missed the one subject we ought to discuss.”
“What’s that?”
“The real reason I traveled so far. I am a patriot, but not that much of a one, thank you.” She drew a breath, as if ready to dive into water. “I hoped you might be here.”
“I—” Don’t entangle yourself. He ignored the inner warning. “I hoped the same about you.”
“I’m forward, aren’t I?”
“ I’m glad. I couldn’t have said it first.”
“You have not struck me as a shy type, Captain.”
“With men like Beastly, no. With you—”
In a far steeple, a bell chimed the quarter hour. The night was still warm, but he felt warmer. Her right hand closed on his left, tightly.
“Will you come visit me at the farm when you can?”
“Even if I forget and call you Gus?”
She looked at him; bent to him. Blond curls bounced softly against his face. “Even then.” She kissed him on the cheek and ran inside.
He strode off toward the rail station, whistling. The inner voice persisted. Be careful. Cavalrymen must travel light He knew he should heed it, but he felt tall as a house, and he didn’t.
36
AT TREASURY, JAMES HUNTOON came out of an emergency meeting convened by the secretary to discuss the counterfeiting problem. Huntoon sank into the pool of autumn light dappling his desk and laid before him a ten-dollar note that looked authentic but was not. He had been assigned to show it to Pollard, editor of the Examiner, so the paper could warn readers about all the bogus notes in circulation—notes printed more expertly, alas, than those from Hoyer and Ludwig, the government’s official engraving firm. Pollard would love the story, and Huntoon relished the thought of reporting it; he shared the editor’s dislike of the President, his policies, and the administration as a whole. The paper’s current target was Colonel Northrop, commissary-general of the army, rapidly becoming the most hated man in the Confederacy because of his mishandling of food procurement and distribution. Pollard’s anti-Northrop editorials never failed to mention that, once again, Davis was siding with a West Point crony. The only Academy graduate the Examiner supported was Joe Johnston; that was because the general and the President were wrangling bitterly over the rank to which Johnston felt entitled.
When speaking privately, editor Pollard was even more vindictive. He called Davis “a Mississippi parvenu.” Accused him of taking orders from his wife—“he is wax in her hands.” Reminded listeners that Davis had vetoed the congressional decision to move the capital to Richmond—“Does that not tell you how he feels about our beloved Old Dominion?”—and had appeared “stricken with grief,” according to his wife’s statement, when informed he had been chosen president.
Pollard was not an isolated case. A cyclone of enmity, some of it expressed in extreme and violent language, was rising in the South. Stephens, the elderly vice president, openly referred to his superior with words such as tyrant and despot. Many were demanding Davis’s removal—and the election to ratify his provisional presidency would not be held until November.
Huntoon’s disenchantment with the administration was one reason for his depressed state. Ashton was another. She spent all her time trying to maneuver herself higher on the social ladder. Twice she had forced him to attend dinner parties hosted by that shifty little Jew, Benjamin. They had much in common, those two. They trod warily, pleasing all, offending none—because who could tell from which direction the cyclone would be blowing next week?
One genuinely savage quarrel had marred Huntoon’s summer. Two weeks after the reception at the Spotswood, the flash gentleman with connections in Valdosta and the Bahamas had called at the residence into which Huntoon and Ashton had moved a few days earlier. The gentleman offered to sell Huntoon a share in what he termed his maritime company. On the Merseyside, at Liverpool, he said, he had located a fast steamer, Water Witch, that could be refitted at reasonable cost to run the blockade between Nassau and the Confederate coast.
“What would she carry?” Huntoon asked. “Rifles, ammunition, that sort of thing?”
“Oh, no,” Mr. Lamar H. A. Powell replied. “Luxuries. There’s much more money to be made from those. Risks to the vessel would be considerable, as you know. So we are looking to the short rather than the long term. My figures suggest that if the cargo is selected carefully, just two successful runs can produce a profit of five hundred percent—minimum. After that, the Yankees can sink the vessel whenever they please. If she continues her runs, the potential earnings of shareholders approach the astronomical.”
Just then, Huntoon noticed his wife closely watching the visitor. Huntoon feared handsome men because he wasn’t one, but he couldn’t tell whether it was the aloof stranger’s scheme or his good looks that titillated Ashton. Either way, he wanted nothing to do with Mr. L. H. A. Powell, whose background he had looked into after Powell had sent a note around requesting this meeting.
It was said Powell had been a mercenary sol
dier in Europe and, later, a filibuster in South America. Government records showed he claimed exemption from any military service by virtue of a rule excusing those who owned more than twenty slaves; Powell’s declaration claimed seventy-five on his family’s plantation near Valdosta. A telegraph message from Atlanta replying to one of Huntoon’s stated that the “plantation” consisted of a dilapidated farm cottage and outbuildings occupied by three people named Powell: a man and woman in their seventies and a forty-year-old hulk with a brain of an infant. A third brother had run off to the West. Hardly impeccable credentials, but they justified Huntoon’s response to his caller.
“I want no part of any such scheme, Mr. Powell.”
“May I ask the reason?”
“I have several, but the principal one will suffice. It’s unpatriotic.”
“I see. You’d rather be a poor patriot than a rich one, is that it?”
“Importing perfumes and silks and sherry for Secretary Benjamin is not my idea of patriotism, sir.”
“But, James, darling,” his wife began.
Goaded by some ill-defined but clearly felt threat the flash gentleman represented, he cut in, “The answer is no, Ashton.”
After Powell had gone, they screamed at each other long into the night.
Huntoon: “Of course I meant what I said. I’ll have nothing to do with such unprincipled opportunism. As I told that fellow, I have any number of reasons.”
Ashton, fists clenched, teeth, too: “Name them.”
“Well—the personal risk, for one. Imagine the consequences of discovery.”
“You’re a coward.”
He went red. “God, how I hate you sometimes.” But he had turned away before he said it.
Later, Ashton again, wilder than before: “It’s my money we live on, don’t forget. Mine. You scarcely make as much as niggers who pick cotton. I control our funds—”
“By my sufferance.”
“You think so! I can spend the money any way I wish.”
“Would you care to test that in court? The law says those funds became my property the moment we married.”
“Always the smug little attorney, aren’t you?” She tore blankets from their bed, opened the door, and hurled the bundle into the hall. “Sleep on the settee, you bastard—if you’re not too fat to fit.”
She pushed him out. Eyes watering behind his spectacles, he raised a placating hand. “Ashton—” The slamming door struck his palm. He leaned against the wall and shut his eyes.
They had made up the next day—they always made up—although she denied him physical contact for a period of two weeks. After that her mood improved remarkably. She was cheerful, as if Powell and his scheme didn’t exist.
But the memory of that quarrel existed and wouldn’t go away; it was one more troubling cloud on a horizon that seemed to be filling with them. Huntoon sat at his desk with the forged note, his eyes vacant, his expression unhappy. The clerk he worked for had to tell him pointedly to get going to the paper.
Richmond’s normal business day ended at three, with a large dinner, the main meal, served shortly thereafter. The schedules didn’t apply to households of those who worked for the government, however. Ashton seldom had to worry about planning menus with her black cook—a blessing, since it bored her. Most weekdays, James arrived home well after seven-thirty, the customary hour for a light supper.
On this particular autumn afternoon, Ashton again did not expect him until late. She spent an entire hour making herself attractive and was ready to leave at two; one hour remained of the period reserved for formal calls. Homer brought the carriage around, and they left the two-and-a-half-story house on Grace Street, in a respectable area which was nevertheless a bit too far from downtown to be fashionable.
The day was mild, but Ashton sweltered. The risk she ran was enormous, but she had been driven to it by a number of things, including her husband’s timidity and her growing frustration with their inability to penetrate Richmond society. She knew two reasons: they lacked position, and they lacked real wealth. James had failed her on both counts, just as he failed her whenever he tried to satisfy her with his wretched little instrument.
She leaned back against the velvet of the closed carriage, staring out the window into the dazzle of the day. Did she dare go through with this? It had taken a week merely to locate the man’s address, then another to phrase and properly polish a note announcing the date and time of her call “regarding a commercial matter of mutual interest.” She could imagine the amusement in his eyes when he read that.
If he read it. She had received no reply. What if he were out of town?
She had sent the note via an anonymous black boy she had hired on a corner opposite Capitol Square. How did she know the boy had delivered the wax-sealed envelope? Preoccupied with these doubts and with anticipations of disaster, she didn’t hear the clopping rhythm of the carriage horse slow, then stop.
Over the hoot of a train at the Broad Street depot, Homer called: “Here’s the corner you wanted, Miz Huntoon. Shall I pick you up in an hour?”
“No. I don’t know how long I’ll be shopping. When I’m finished, I’ll catch a hack or stop and see Mr. Huntoon and come home with him.”
“Very well, ma’am.” The carriage pulled out behind a white-topped army wagon. Briskly, Ashton entered the nearest store. She hurried out a few minutes later with two unwanted spools of thread. After a quick survey of the area to assure that Homer was gone, she hailed the first passing hack.
Perspiring, her heart racing, she got out in front of one of the lovely high-stooped houses on Church Hill. It was located on Franklin, a few doors from the corner of Twenty-fourth. The imposing residence looked closed against the warmth of the afternoon, asleep under the maples just starting to lose their green.
Glancing neither right nor left for fear she would see someone watching, she climbed the stoop and rang. Would there be servants—?
Lamar Powell answered personally. She nearly swooned from excitement.
He stepped back into the shadow. “Please come in, Mrs. Huntoon.” She did; the door closed with a tick like that of a clock.
The foyer was cool. Rooms were visible through doors on either side, rooms with opulent woodwork, furniture, pendant crystal. One night recently, James had again brought up Powell’s name, saying he had made inquiries about him. “It appears the fellow lives on nerve, self-promotion, and credit.” If the snide remark had any truth to it, Powell’s credit must be enormous.
He smiled at her. “I confess I was surprised to receive your note. I wasn’t sure you’d keep the appointment. On a chance, I sent my houseman off fishing and stayed home. There’s no one else here.” He gestured with one of those slender, curiously sensual hands. “So you needn’t worry about being compromised.”
Ashton felt awkward as a child. He was tall—so very tall—and appeared perfectly relaxed in his dark breeches and loose white cotton shirt. He was barefoot. “It’s a splendid house,” she exclaimed. “How many rooms do you live in?”
Amused by her nervousness, he said, “All of them, Mrs. Huntoon.” He grasped her arm gently. “When we were introduced at the Spotswood, I knew you’d come here eventually. You look lovely in that dress. I suspect you’d look even lovelier without it.”
Never hesitating, he took her hand and led her to the stairs.
They ascended silently. In a room where slatted blinds striped the bed with light—she noticed the top coverlet was already turned down—they began to undress; he calmly, she with jerky movements generated by her nerves. No man had ever put her in this state before.
The silence lengthened. He helped with her bodice buttons, kissing her left cheek with great gentleness. Then he kissed her mouth, slowly moving his tongue over her lower lip. She felt as if she were sinking into a bonfire. Began to hurry, fumble—
He pushed at the lace straps on her shoulders, baring her from the waist upward. His touch careful, tender, he lifted first one breast, then
the other, gently pressing his thumb against each nipple. He bent forward, still smiling in that curiously remote way. She flung her head back, eyes closed, loins damp, expecting to feel his tongue.
He smashed his open palm against her head, knocking her onto the bed. She was too terrified to scream. He stood with one leg against the tangle of her skirt, smiling.
“Why—?”
“So there is no doubt about authority in this liaison, Mrs. Huntoon. I knew when we met that you were a strong woman. Reserve your displays of that quality for others.”
Then, swiftly, he bent and began to strip her of the rest of her clothing.
Her terror transformed itself to an excitement that was so intense it resembled insanity. She ran wet as a river when he slipped off his cotton drawers. He was oddly shaped, smaller than she had expected, given his stature. He pulled her legs apart and bored into her without closing his eyes.
She couldn’t believe what began to happen to her. She beat the twisted damp sheets, excited to frenzy by his having struck her. She began to cry as he quickened the tempo; that had never occurred with other lovers. Tears flowed down her cheeks, and when he gave her the last ramming thrust, she sobbed, screamed, and fainted.
He lay propped on an elbow, smiling, when she woke. She was sweaty, spent, frightened by her loss of consciousness. “I passed out—”
“La petite mort. The little death. You mean it’s the first time—?”
She swallowed. “Ever.”
“Well, it won’t be the last. I’ve been watching you sleep almost twenty-five minutes. Enough time for a man to renew himself.” He pointed. “Put your mouth on me here.”
“But—I’ve never done that with any—”
He seized her hair. “Did you hear what I said? Do it.”
She obeyed.
They came to the next consummation a long time later. She slept again, and on the second wakening found herself free of earlier terrors. She thought vaguely of collecting the souvenir of this occasion but was too drowsy; she preferred to rest comfortably against his side.
The barred light changed, darkened. The afternoon was running out. She didn’t care. What had transpired in this room, the secret things, had transfigured her emotionally but at the same time had destroyed a long-cherished sense of her own sexual enlightenment. She had had more than her share of lovers. Her souvenir collection proved that. But Lamar Powell had taught her she was a novice, a child.
