Freedom's Banner

by Freedom's Banner (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  For the first little while Mattie was too uncertain of her control over the horse, quiet and well-mannered though the animal certainly was, to indulge in too much by way of conversation, though questions seethed in her mind. They rode single file southward along the narrow towpath, the mare Patsy following behind Arrow with a plodding concentration that at least enabled Mattie to focus all her efforts simply upon staying in the saddle and did not require her to guide the beast. In perhaps ten minutes they reached a pretty little clearing by the river and Johnny lifted her from her perch to set her upon the ground beside him. ‘There. We’ll make a horsewoman of you yet, you’ll see.’

  She shook her head, smiling.

  He spread wide his hands, indicating the glade in which they stood. ‘Well? How do you like it?’

  ‘It’s lovely.’ The words were absolutely sincere. Even on this dull day there was a beauty, a quality of peace about the place. The red-brown waters of the river swirled between wide, overgrown banks. The huge trees spread their canopies as if to shelter the ground beneath.

  Johnny reached for her, pulled her to him. ‘Wait till you see it when the magnolias are out. It’s the most beautiful sight in the world. This is where we’ll build our house, Mattie, and this is where we’ll raise our children.’

  Mattie said nothing.

  Johnny did not notice. ‘The land over yonder’s Brightwell land. Old Mr Brightwell’s talked often enough to Pa of selling. Added to Pleasant Hill, it’ll make us the biggest place in the county – it’s what Pa’s always wanted, what he’s worked all his life for, us boys here, together with him – working Pleasant Hill land.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think – of buying somewhere of our own?’

  ‘Why, heck, Mattie, it would be our own!’ In his own enthusiasm it did not occur to him, despite the quiet question, to doubt hers. ‘We’ll build the best house in the county, see if we don’t!’ His arms were about her, his laughing mouth on hers. He was irresistible. Her arms went about his neck and her body moulded itself to his, her face laid against his chest. A house here, in this lovely place, would be wonderful. Of course it would. A house in which to bear Johnny’s child. His children. A whole tribe of them! A house with a wide, shaded porch, like Pleasant Hill’s. A house filled with music, and laughter, and books. A house where the children read Byron, and Shelley, and had no nightmares because their father could banish fear. Could explain injustice, pain and suffering –

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Joshua?’ she asked.

  Johnny’s arms did not release their hold. His cheek was resting against the top of her head; she could not look at him. Only the sudden, subtle stillness of him spoke.

  ‘I’m afraid I made the most terrible mistake.’ Her voice was almost nervelessly normal. ‘I think I must have upset him badly. I thought he was you. I called him – called him Johnny. He was walking with Robert, you see, and I didn’t know – wasn’t expecting –’ Remembering the disciplined rage in Joshua’s dark eyes as he had turned to her, she flinched, and was silent. Then, ‘You should have told me, Johnny,’ she said, suddenly fierce. ‘You should have told me!’

  She felt Johnny take a long, slow breath, filling his lungs, loosening shoulders that had become tense. ‘I’m sorry, hon,’ he said, ‘honestly sorry. You’re right. I should have explained, warned you. It didn’t occur to me that you’d meet like that – and somehow it seems we’ve lived with the likeness for so long that we forget how strong it is.’

  ‘Forget? Oh, Johnny, how could you say such a thing? Forget?’ He is your brother. Perhaps fortunately she could not bring herself actually to speak the words.

  He put her from him, holding her by the shoulders. ‘Joshua’s mother was a slave, Mattie. Joshua was born into slavery, as was every other darky on the place –’

  ‘Darky?’ Mattie shook her head disbelievingly. ‘Johnny, how can you say that? Joshua’s white! His skin is lighter than yours!’

  ‘That’s as may be.’ There was a small, dangerous edge to the words. ‘But his mother was an octoroon. One eighth black blood. She was a lovely woman – Pa has a picture of her somewhere.’

  ‘A – picture?’ Mattie spread helpless hands. ‘I don’t understand this. I don’t understand anything about it.’

  ‘Of course you don’t! I’ve told you before. You’re an outsider.’ His hands tightened, almost he shook her. ‘Mattie – Mattie, honey – you can’t change these things – you have to learn to live with them! You married me. You have come to live in Georgia. And Georgia is the heartland of the South.’ He was now openly struggling to keep his patience. ‘By law the son of a slave woman is a slave. By law, Mattie. That Joshua’s mother was seven eighths white means not a thing. He’s black. He knows it and so do we. And he’s a Pleasant Hill slave. But I ask you, as I have asked you before, do you see an unhappy worker on Pleasant Hill? Have you seen drivers with whips? Drunken overseers to abuse our people? Do you talk of the children that crawl up the chimneys of London? Of the sweated labour, the coal mines, the cotton mills? I’ve seen those mills – you haven’t! You can’t judge, Mattie. You mustn’t! You must learn to live with it.’

  He was right, she thought suddenly, and her heart was leaden. It was she who was wrong; she who had knowingly married a man whose life and background was so at odds with her own. She who had deliberately blinded herself. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said; for it was all that she could say.

  He misunderstood entirely, as she supposed she had known he would. Relieved, he took her hand, turned to walk with her towards the bank of the river. ‘It’s all strange to you, Mattie darlin’, I know that. It’ll be all right, I promise you. Everything will be all right.’

  She walked in silence beside him.

  ‘Pa treats Joshua real well.’ There was a defensive note in his voice.

  ‘Yes. That’s what Robert said.’ And had he believed it? She could not be sure; that Johnny did she was certain. She turned her head to look at him. ‘Are Joshua and Robert particular friends? He said some such thing?’

  ‘They used to be thick as thieves. They were born within a couple of days of each other. Grew up together, I suppose. We all did; but Joshua always used to follow Robert around like a puppy.’ There was the faintest edge of impatience in Johnny’s voice. Perfectly obviously he wanted the uncomfortable subject dropped.

  ‘I see.’ She wanted all at once to ask: what did your mother think? How did she live with it? And are there others, less obvious in their paternity? And you, Johnny? Would you expect me to accept it too? She picked a twig from a tree, tossed it into the slow-moving waters. They both stood in silence and watched as it drifted, spinning, out into the current. ‘Is the river very deep?’

  ‘Pretty deep, yes. It’s navigable for shallow draught. We take the cotton down on barges.’

  ‘To Macon?’

  ‘Yes. Then it’s shipped on to Savannah by rail.’

  They fell again to silence. Then, ‘It’s a very pretty place to build a house,’ she said, quietly.

  He smiled.

  Mattie tossed another twig, watched it with apparent absorption as it drifted and eddied in the quiet waters by the bank. ‘Johnny?’ The twig had been caught by the current now and drifted, spinning, downriver. ‘What does your father – the family – think of us? Of our marriage?’

  The silence this time lasted for so long that she had to turn, had to look at him. He took her hands. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, steadily. ‘It does. Of course it does.’

  He hesitated for a moment longer, then shrugged. ‘He fears that perhaps I – we – married in haste.’

  Haste. That word again. She remembered, clearly, Lucy’s embarrassed confusion that morning. ‘That’s the word that Lucy used,’ she said. ‘Hasty.’

  He smiled, a shade too beguilingly. ‘What a word to use of a courtship that lasted all of five weeks.’

  She smiled a little, but her heart was not in it. ‘Johnny?’ sh
e asked after a moment, quietly. ‘There is something, isn’t there?’

  He looked down at their linked hands for a long moment, avoiding her eyes. Then lifted his head. ‘I suppose – yes. There is something I should have told you.’

  ‘Something else?’ The words were sharp.

  He shrugged. ‘Yes. I suppose so. Something else. But, Mattie, I swear it means nothing. Nothing! I only feel I should tell you at all because – well, because if I don’t then someone else certainly will, and you could – misunderstand. I can see why Pa and the others might think that I made a hasty decision. But, Mattie, I want you to know – to believe – that I love you and only you.’

  She spoke steadily through the discomfiting hammering of her heart. ‘Why wouldn’t I believe it?’

  ‘Because sooner or later somebody –’ he cocked a wry eyebrow ‘– and very probably a somebody called Cissy Sherwood – is going to tell you that a year ago I was engaged to marry someone else.’

  In silence she absorbed it. In silence she watched him.

  ‘Her name is – was – Charlotte Barclay. She is now Mrs Bram Taylor.’ No effort could keep the sudden bitterness from his voice.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  ‘She ran away with him. Just under three weeks before she was supposed to marry me. Lottie is a creature of impulse.’ The attempt at humour did not come off. His eyes were savage. ‘I was too – gentlemanly – for her. No excitement. She found Bram irresistible. For a while anyway. I hear it’s worn off. But then, with Lottie, it always would.’

  ‘You loved her?’

  ‘Yes, I loved her. No point in denyin’ that. I’d loved her since we were children.’ The words were perilously simple; the anguish behind them painfully clear.

  ‘And – after she ran away – you went to England?’

  ‘Yes. Pa thought it would be good for me to get away –’

  She drove relentlessly through the words.’ – went to England, and met me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And made this – hasty – marriage.’

  Silence.

  ‘No wonder your father has – reservations.’ She would not show her shock, her hurt. The words were tart. ‘Tell me, you don’t feel – didn’t feel – that perhaps you should have told me?’

  ‘Yes! Oh, of course I should! But, Mattie, I was afraid! Afraid you’d think that –’ He stopped.

  ‘– That I might think that, as they say, “many a heart is caught on the rebound”?’ In that moment she could not herself have said which was strongest: pain, humiliation or sheer rage. Joshua, for the moment at least, was entirely forgotten. This was a very personal hurt.

  ‘That isn’t true, Mattie, I swear it!’

  ‘Then why didn’t you tell me? Why let me face everyone without knowing? The Savannah cousins? Aunt Bess? They knew?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course! Of course they did! And you say you love me? Johnny Sherwood, I could kill you!’

  ‘Mattie, Mattie!’ He caught her to him, fiercely. ‘Stop it, now! I never dreamed you’d take it so badly –’

  She stood, shaking, against him. In the name of God how did you think I’d take it? Do you still love her?’

  ‘No.’

  She struggled free of him, to look him in the eye.

  ‘No,’ he said again.

  ‘You mean you didn’t marry me to – to spite this Charlotte? To show you didn’t care?’

  ‘No!’

  Mattie turned from him and walked to the water’s edge. A log was jammed against the bank, the red, muddied waters eddying about it. Numbly, she watched the patterns, the dull sheen of light on the water, her arms crossed tightly over her breast, her shoulders hunched against him, against his betrayal. Of all things, she had not expected this.

  She felt him come up behind her. Very gently he turned her to him, rocking her in his arms as she stood.

  ‘The fountains mingle with the river,

  And the rivers with the ocean –’

  He spoke the words clearly and strongly, against the rippling of the river. Fiercely she resisted him. Shaking still she tried to pull away from him, but he would not let her go.

  ‘Nothin’ in the world is single,

  All things by a law divine,

  In one another’s being mingle –’

  ‘Stop it!’ she snapped, through tears and gritted teeth. ‘Just stop it, Johnny Sherwood! Or I will kill you! I swear it!’

  His arms simply tightened. Once again, fiercely and in genuine fury, she struggled; he held her as easily as he might have held a child. ‘What are all these kissin’s worth, If thou kiss not me?’ He bent his head to hers. Forced her mouth to his. Kissed her very hard, and then again more gently, brushing his mouth against hers, over her wet eyes, the damp hair at her forehead. She stopped struggling. To her dismay it took every ounce of willpower she possessed not to kiss him back. She stood straight and still in his arms. ‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘what went before has nothing – nothing! – to do with us. But I’m sorry, truly sorry. I should have told you.’

  She took a breath. ‘Yes. You should.’

  ‘Forgive me?’

  She chewed her lip.

  ‘Mattie – sugar – forgive me?’

  ‘No!’

  He waited.

  ‘Well – not completely. You can’t expect that.’

  She saw him catch his lip between his teeth to prevent the laughter that, in love, can so quickly follow upon fury. She scowled at him, ferociously, trying to preserve her anger, trying not to see how very beautiful he looked with his dark hair awry across his brown forehead, his eyes bright with relief and with the laughter he was trying to suppress.

  ‘But you do forgive me a little?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Johnny made a fist and grazed it gently along her tense jaw. ‘Then why don’t you climb aboard that apology for a horse and come and see the rest of the plantation?’

  Knowing herself lost, she managed at least to make him wait. ‘Is it worth seeing?’ she asked, at last.

  He had produced a huge, snowy handkerchief, was shaking it free, laughing openly now. ‘Bits of it, I guess.’

  ‘Then I suppose I might as well.’ Mattie let him mop her face, submitted with charity to another kiss. His body was warm and strong against hers. He was her husband. She loved him. She did not want to quarrel – to spoil things. Above all she did not want to spoil things. She stood for a quiet moment, her head resting against him. Then they walked together to where the horses, reins trailing, were cropping grass companionably. As she stood, her hands on his shoulders, waiting for him to lift her to the saddle, she said, suspiciously, ‘I do hope I’m never going to be expected to meet this Charlotte Whatever-her-name-is, who has such a lamentable taste in men?’

  He had the grace to look faintly abashed. ‘Um. Well – as it happens – I’m afraid so. They’re – well, neighbours. Up you go.’

  Propelled by his – she suspected – deliberately overenthusiastic strength she scrambled with no grace at all for the saddle, hooked her leg awkwardly over the horn. Patsy moved a little. Mattie clutched at Johnny’s hand. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! Can’t you make the beastly animal stand still? What do you mean, you’re afraid so? When? When is this – this neighbourly confrontation to be?’

  ‘At the party.’ Johnny swung effortlessly into the saddle. Arrow danced with pleasure. Patsy tossed her head.

  ‘Johnny!’

  ‘Just hold her. Let her know who’s boss.’ He leaned over, took the reins, shortened them, handed them back.

  ‘That’s the problem. She does know. What party?’

  Johnny, urging Arrow on, did not reply.

  ‘Not – not our party? Not this wedding party that Joshua has so competently been arranging, and that the county can’t live without? Oh, Johnny – no! You can’t mean it!’ In her exasperation she drummed her heel into Patsy’s side, trying to catch up with her husband. Patsy, with a plaintive s
ideways look across her dappled shoulder, stopped dead. ‘Johnny!’

  One handed, and laughing again, he wheeled Arrow to bring her back.

  ‘You great junkhead! Stop laughing and do something!’

  He reached over and slapped Patsy’s firm haunch sharply. Like the outraged matron that she was, the mare snorted and set off at a dignified, swaying and very determined pace down the trail. And Mattie, as she knew Johnny had intended, had once more to abandon both elegance and conversation in favour of the serious business of keeping her precarious, jolting seat.

  * * *

  Cissy found them about half an hour later as they emerged from a stand of trees on the ridge of land above the house. Together they watched the small, flying figure perched upon a horse every inch the size of Arrow as it approached them across a wide swathe of hedged meadowland. Will’s young wife rode with the verve and confidence of a fearless child, putting her mount flat out across the grass, soaring apparently effortlessly over a hedge that even Mattie could see would have given pause to most grown men, to pull up beside them, bright-faced and laughing, eyes teasingly upon Johnny. ‘I’ll bet cash money that poor old Arrow’s forgotten how to do that while you’ve been away.’ Like Mattie, she rode side-saddle, but there, Mattie was well aware, any similarity between them stopped. Cissy sat straight and graceful, the velvet sweep of her riding skirt rich and dark against the bright chestnut of her mount. The only disarray caused by the wild ride across the meadow – strands of fine, fair hair curled about her cheeks and against the tiny feathered brim of her hat – actually enhanced the prettiness of the picture that she made, as Mattie was sure she well knew.

  ‘Arrow has better manners,’ Johnny grinned, ‘than to show off so in front of poor Patsy.’

  The girl’s laughter pealed; her horse danced close to Patsy. Mattie, with no small effort, resisted the temptation to drop the reins and make a grab for the saddlebow.