North and South Trilogy

by John Jakes

  Philemon Meek, the new and elderly overseer, shuffled in to join them for the midday meal—the most bounteous they could provide, Judith said with embarrassment. Each plate held a bit of saffroned rice, a few field peas, a one-inch square of corn bread, and two strips of chicken cooked for the second or third time.

  “Don’t apologize,” Charles said. “Compared to the fare up North, this is a feast.”

  The dining room, its rich woods gleaming, was both familiar and comforting. He started eating rapidly. Meek watched him over his half-glasses, and it was from-the overseer that Charles presently heard of the guerrilla band operating in the neighborhood. Runaway slaves and army deserters, they were like the bummers traveling on the fringes of Sherman’s army.

  “But this bunch has stayed put in the low country,” Meek said. “I’m told the leader is an old chum of yours—nigra named Cuffey.”

  Mildly startled, Charles finished the field peas and started to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. He noticed Marie-Louise, grown now and quite pretty, staring at him. The skin above his beard turned pink as he snatched his napkin from his lap.

  “Cuffey,” he repeated. “Imagine that. Think Mont Royal might be in for some trouble?”

  “We’ve been preparing for that eventuality,” Meek said.

  “It appears to me you don’t have many men left on the plantation. Except for your driver, those I’ve seen are gray as the moss outside that window.”

  “We’re down to thirty-seven people,” Cooper admitted. “Barely enough to run the place. I thought of closing the rice mill entirely for a while, but how would we survive? I don’t mean just Judith and Marie-Louise and Mother; I mean everyone. Especially the older nigras. They’re too worn out and frightened to run away.”

  “Which is what the rest did, I presume?”

  Cooper nodded. “Liberty’s a magnet for human beings. One of the strongest in creation. That’s a point I frequently made to my father, to no avail. For a while I also forgot it myself, I’m ashamed to say. Ah, well. Why rake up the past? I want to hear the news from Virginia. Have you been in Richmond at all? Seen Orry or Madeline?”

  To Charles’s left, Clarissa sat with her meager meal untouched. Hands folded under the table, she studied him with the eyes of a threatened child. She had been doing so ever since they sat down. Those eyes held the kind of awe and fright with which long-ago European folk must have watched the pony-mounted Mongols storm out of Asia.

  The thrice-boiled chicken pieces, so flavorful a moment earlier, suddenly had the taste of chewed paper. Well, he thought as he returned Clarissa’s sad, alarmed stare, there’s at least one blessing in a broken mind. She won’t understand.

  Cooper was awaiting an answer. Slowly, Charles placed his napkin to the left of his plate.

  “I didn’t expect to be the bearer of the bad news.”

  Judith leaned forward. “Oh, dear—is one of them ill? It is Madeline?”

  Silence. Memories flashed by, including one from the time when Orry had been educating him for the West Point examinations. The hired German tutor had forced Charles to read Scripture for its literary value as well as its religious content. He remembered a passage he had never fully appreciated before: the moment during the Crucifixion when Christ asked His Father to let a cup pass.

  “Charles?” Cooper said, almost inaudibly.

  But of course it wouldn’t pass, and he told them.

  On his knees, Salem Jones heard the commotion beyond the blanket hung on a length of wisteria vine to afford a little privacy. He withdrew from the grimy, drunken white woman, who rolled her head from side to side and whimpered for him to start again. He was already buttoning his pants.

  Picking up his shirt, he stepped around the great live oak to which he had spiked one end of the vine. The usual evening fires sent smoke and sparks toward the winter stars. He spied Cuffey seated on the stump he liked to occupy—as if he were some damn nigger chief in Africa, Jones thought with a flash of resentment. He put the bad feeling aside in order to learn the reason for all the excitement.

  Men crowded around Cuffey while two tried to talk at the same time. One was Sunshine, who had been away scouting around Charleston. The other was a light tan Negro whose name Jones didn’t know.

  Hurrying to the group, Jones heard Sunshine say, “Hardee marched out. I seen it. By now the troops are all gone from the city.”

  “There ain’ but a few protectin’ my old home place,” Cuffey mused, smiling. “Now they’s no sojers to come help, either. That’s what I been waitin’ on. Hey there, Jones—you hear?”

  A vigorous nod. “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, that ain’ the only good part. Lon—” he poked a thumb at the beige boy with the flannel star on his pants “—he spied an old friend at Mont Royal this mornin’. Cousin Charles.”

  “Invalided home from Hampton’s cavalry?”

  Cuffey prompted Lon with a look. The boy shook his head. “Didn’t see any sign of him bein’ hurt. But he was walkin’, not ridin’.”

  Jones nodded. “That’s enough to bring him home.”

  A meditative look spread over Cuffey’s face. “Cousin Charles an’ me useta be friends. Useta fish together. Wrestle, too.”

  He spat in the flames. Men smirked and nudged each other, sensing the end of boring inactivity. Cuffey arose and hooked his thumbs over the bulging waist of his trousers. Like a king, he paraded around the huge sparkling fire. Jones loathed the ignorant oaf, but Cuffey had spared him and allowed him to join the band in anticipation of their next big raid. He had to be grateful for that, he supposed, reaching up to scratch the itching D.

  “We wait one more day—maybe two,” Cuffey announced. “Till we sure the sojers are gone.” He peered past the leaping flames at Salem Jones. “Then we go to Mont Royal an’ take it clean down to the ground. Kill every living thing.”

  In the raw amiability of the moment, Jones rashly said, “Young Charles may give you quite a fight.”

  Cuffey’s face drained of good humor. “I’m waitin’ for that. I’m jus’ waitin’. Maybe we wrestle one las’ time. We do, I know who gonna lose.”

  124

  INVALIDED HOME WITH A chest wound, Billy slept a good deal. He wasn’t awake when Constance, ashen, brought the letter to Brett in the library.

  “It’s from George. Come sit down before you read it.”

  The news about Orry fell on Brett with the force of a sledge. Seated, she felt her whole body sag, and for a moment she labored to get her breath. Constance dropped to her knees beside the chair while Brett swallowed and made queer gulping sounds. She lifted the two sheets, gestured with them in a forlorn way, laid them down again, shaking her head.

  “I don’t understand. Madeline said he was still in Richmond.”

  “We all thought that.”

  Brett started to cry then, heaving sobs. Constance was startled because the manifestation of grief lasted such a short time. Less than a minute. Then a stark look came onto Brett’s face. Constance saw the object of her sister-in-law’s fierce stare: the prized meteorite in its place on the library table.

  “Damn them. Damn their oratory and their precious rights and their generals”—Brett was up then, lunging—“and their weapons—” Constance was too slow to prevent her from snatching the meteorite, whose significance all those in the household understood. Spinning, Brett threw it like a discus at the nearest window.

  It shattered glass and sailed away over the sunlit lawn. In panic, Constance thought, He’ll never forgive me if it’s lost. I must go find it this minute. She was immediately ashamed of the reaction; staying with Orry’s sister was far more important.

  Brett collapsed on an ottoman, the pages of the letter fluttering to the floor. She crossed her arms on her knees and bent her head, crying again. Constance barely heard the words amid the sobs.

  “ I’m—sorry. I’ll—hunt for the star iron. I know it’s—George’s treasure. It’s just—just that—”

  Con
stance could make out nothing else.

  What an admirable woman Billy had married, she thought half an hour later. In the face of a similar responsibility, would she be as strong? Brett had dried her puffy eyes, put back a few undone strands of hair, and recovered the letter, saying, “I must go up to Madeline. Is she in her sitting room?”

  Constance nodded. “She wanted to read awhile. Would you like me to go with you?”

  “Thank you, but I think it’s best if I’m alone.”

  Slowly, Brett walked past the library table. After a ten-minute search, the meteorite had been found by the gardener and returned to its place on the gleaming wood. But Billy’s wife, in a matter of an instant, had conceived a hatred of the object—what it meant, what it made possible—that would last until she died.

  In the foyer, she reached out to grasp the freshly oiled banister, gazing upward. She fought back more tears and images of Orry. She lifted her foot to the first step.

  It seemed to require hours to go up the staircase; she had never taken a longer or harder journey. At last she turned down the hall to the door of Madeline’s sitting room, which was ajar. Through the opening Brett saw sunshine flooding the carpet; the room overlooked the laurel-covered hilltops behind the mansion. Her hand shook as she knocked.

  “Yes, come in,” Madeline called cheerily.

  Go on, Brett thought. It became a silent scream. Go on. She wanted to run.

  “Who’s there?”

  Underskirts rustling, Madeline walked to the door and opened it. The index finger of her other hand held her place in a slim, gold-stamped book. Her dress today was one of her favorites, a blue silk so deep and rich it almost looked black.

  “Brett! Do come in. I was just rereading a few of Poe’s poems. One is Orry’s very favor—my dear, what’s the matter?” She had been slow to note the signs that Brett had been crying. “Has Billy taken a bad turn?”

  “It isn’t Billy. It’s Orry.”

  Madeline’s dark eyes showed apprehension. So did her fading smile. She took her finger from the book, drew it against her breast like a shield. She saw the letter in Brett’s right hand.

  “Is there some problem in Richmond?”

  “Orry isn’t—wasn’t—in Richmond.” Why was she so slow to tell it? Delay would only prolong the anguish for both of them. “This is from George. I’m afraid it’s very bad news.”

  With a forced look of skepticism, Madeline took the letter to the sunlit window bay. Brett waited near the door, noting the way Orry’s wife moved the first page away from her face; her eyesight had begun to trouble her. She was turned toward the window.

  She finished the first page and began the second. The initial indication of a reaction was a ripple of the dress material across her shoulders.

  Her head whipped around. Angry, she said, “The Petersburg lines? How did he get to the Petersburg lines?”

  “I wish I could tell you.”

  Madeline forced her eyes back to the letter. Watching her in profile, Brett saw the light glisten on a tear. The book dropped from Madeline’s hand, striking the carpet with a soft thump. She seemed to tense and grow taller, as if straining on tiptoe for some reason.

  Her hand crushed the letter. “Orry,” she cried out and tumbled sideways in a spill of silk and petticoats.

  “Kathleen,” Brett exclaimed in the hall. “Kathleen—someone—bring the sal ammonia. Hurry!”

  Voices downstairs said she had been heard. Brett turned around in the doorway, stricken by the sight of Madeline sprawled on the fine Persian rug. She was awake after the brief fainting spell, but she didn’t get up. She lay on her side, awkwardly supporting herself with both hands. She trembled, her mouth half open. When she looked at Brett, there was no recognition.

  The effect was overpowering. Brett was paralyzed, unable to move or help her sister-in-law for the next few moments. She couldn’t even speak. Billy had been spared, but her brother was gone. The pain was unmerciful. How much worse it must be for Madeline. How would she find the strength to survive? Or even a reason to try?

  125

  CHARLES WOKE AT DAYBREAK on Sunday, the nineteenth of February. He had been dreaming of Gus.

  It happened often. Opening his eyes didn’t relieve the melancholy of the dreams or banish her image. She was a constant presence, stealing into his thoughts at intervals every day.

  Yawning, he picked up the light cavalry saber and trudged downstairs. In the kitchen building, he found a fresh pot of imitation coffee, concocted of God knew what, and not a single Negro. He drank half a cup of the stuff—all he could stomach; it tasted like wood shavings. He poured the rest out the door and hunted for a rag.

  He walked back to the weathered plantation house and braced an old chair against the wall on the piazza. From there he could watch the tree-sheltered lane leading to the river road and the road itself, brightened by winter sun. He pulled the rag out of his back pocket and reached down at the end of the piazza for a pinch of sandy soil. He dropped it on the rag and moistened it with spit till its consistency suited him. He sat down in the chair, drew the Solingen sword from its scabbard, and began to polish the dulled blade.

  The stillness had a quality of expectancy. It had been present since yesterday, when wild rumors swept the river district. Rumors that Columbia had been burned night before last.

  About eight o’clock, traffic on the river road began to pick up, men and an occasional military wagon coming from the direction of Charleston. Some butternut boys turned in, begging for a drink. Charles agreed to direct them to the well in return for information.

  “What’s going on in the city?”

  “A lot of it’s burned down. The mayor surrendered the whole place to some damned Dutchman, General Schimmel-something, right about this time yesterday. We are all going home. The South’s licked.”

  Could have told you that a year ago. He didn’t say it. They looked miserable enough—as did Cooper, who stepped onto the piazza wearing ragged slippers and a dressing gown with a large hole in one elbow.

  “What’s become of Sumter?” he asked one of the ragged soldiers.

  “Nothing left but a pile of rock.” The boy added bitterly, “That’s what the Yanks wanted more’n anything.”

  “I have a house on Tradd Street. Do you think it survived the fire?”

  “Couldn’t say, but I wouldn’t count on it. Is it all right if we stop talkin’ and find the well?”

  After they left, Cooper went inside, shaking his head. Charles returned to his chair and kept rubbing the steel. The engraved flowers. The medallion containing the letters C. S. The legend on the other side: To Charles Main, beloved of his family, 1861. That was another man. From another life, not this one.

  A dilapidated shay pulled in about noon. The driver was Markham Bull, a neighbor and member of the large and distinguished Bull family. Fifty-five or so, Markham was in a state. He had been in Columbia attending to the affairs of a lately deceased sister when Sherman arrived. He had barely escaped in the aftermath of Friday night’s fire, which he confirmed as fact.

  “Whole town’s gone, just about. The damn Yankees are claiming Wade Hampton lit the first match, to destroy the cotton rather than let them get hold of it. You can’t imagine the behavior of Sherman’s men. By comparison, the Goths and the Vandals were courtly. They even burned Millwood.”

  Charles raised his eyebrows. “Hampton’s Millwood?”

  “Yes, sir. All of his family portraits—his fine library—everything.”

  “Where’s the general now?”

  “I don’t know. I heard he planned to ride west of the Mississippi to continue the fight, but that may not be true.”

  The fighting part could be true, Charles thought as Bull climbed into his shay and rattled off. The death of his son had embittered Hampton. If beautiful old Millwood was gone as well, that would only enhance the bitterness. Charles had a dark feeling that much the same process would be taking place within a lot of people in Dixie during the
next weeks and months. Whether you construed it as punishment or suffering depended on your loyalties, but either way he was damn sure there would be plenty of bad blood left after the war.

  The stragglers on the road became fewer as the day wore on. Light clouds moved in, hazing the sun, then hiding it. Charles kept polishing. By four o’clock he had restored most of the blade’s original brilliance. He spat into an azalea bush, stretched and sniffed the wind’s marshy odor. A salt crow squawked somewhere on the river behind the house. It struck him that he had heard a lot of crows during the last hour.

  Around five, Cooper reappeared, gray-faced and. tense. “Charles, you’d better come inside.”

  In the library, he discovered Andy and a twelve-year-old Negro boy who was excited and perspiring. “This is Jarvis, Martha’s son,” Cooper said to his cousin, thus identifying the youth as part of the Mont Royal population. “Tell us again what you saw, Jarvis.”

  “I seen a bunch of white an’ black men in the marsh about a mile beyond the cabins. They was comin’ this way.”

  “How many is a bunch?” Charles asked.

  “Forty. Maybe fifty. They got guns. But they was laughin’ and larkin’ a lot. Sure not in any hurry. One buck, he was fat as a papa coon in the summertime. He was ridin’ an old mule and singin’ and joshin’ with everybody—”

  Andy scowled. “Got to be that damn Cuffey.”

  “Thank you,” Charles said to the boy.

  Cooper repeated the words, then abruptly added, “Wait.” He reached in his pocket and gave Jarvis a coin, which delighted the youngster. Charles was astonished at the persistence of old patterns, even in a man as free-thinking as Cooper. The little exchange was seen by the woman named Jane, who had appeared silently at the library door. She looked at Cooper with contempt as Jarvis ran out.

  Charles felt an old tension in his middle, the kind that always preceded a scrap. At the same time, there came an unexpected buoyancy. The waiting was over.

  Cooper said, “Wonder when they’ll come?”