by John Jakes
Late afternoon light the color of lemons fell through lace curtains into the bay where Mrs. Halloran had kept a vigil on randomly chosen days throughout the past month. To the spinster who owned the house, she had presented herself as the aunt of a young woman suspected of falling into sin with the gentleman living across the way. She needed to be certain before pressing a confrontation, she said. Whatever the elderly spinster thought of the story, the small sum Mrs. Halloran paid each time kept her silent.
Who was the slut? Burdetta Halloran wondered. She didn’t know, but she wouldn’t forget the face. With short, quick tugs, she pulled on ecru mittens and spoke to the woman hovering in the dusty shadow.
“Thank you so much for the use of your room. I won’t be needing it again.”
“You saw your niece—?”
“Alas, yes. Going into the house of that Mr. Powell.”
“I know him only by sight. He’s a very private gentleman.”
“He has a foul reputation.” She could barely refrain from saying more. She settled her small feathered hat on her head, smiled, and glided to the upper hall. “I shall go out by the back, as usual.”
“I have come to anticipate these little visits. I almost regret that your vigil has been successful.”
I’m sure you do, greedy old woman.
“If that Powell is as bad as you say, I do hope you can effect a separation between him and your niece.”
“I shall, don’t worry,” the younger woman assured her, hurrying down the stairs because she feared her face would betray her.
Betray—that was the proper word here. Lamar Powell had betrayed her love and trust. Burdetta Halloran had no intention of concerning herself with Powell’s current light of love. He was the one who merited her attention. He would get it.
Washington and Boz smelled the approaching spring in wet earth and night wind. A clergyman rode out from Fredericksburg to speak with Gus, and although the freedmen didn’t hear the conversation, they guessed the reverend’s purpose. He failed to accomplish it.
As the mounds of snow in the dooryard grew smaller, the two blacks began to notice bands of horsemen on the road at all hours. At night, the tree line glittered from artillery fire along the river; occasionally the explosions shook the windowpanes so hard the vibration produced an eerie whining sound. Washington and Boz conferred often about the seriousness of the situation and finally decided to approach their mistress.
They argued for an hour about who should do it. The job fell to the younger man. Boz went to the kitchen at suppertime.
“Ain’t no way to get around it, Miss Augusta. Gonna be fighting soon. Union Army might roll straight across this farm. Ain’t safe to stay here. Washington and me, we’d fight to the end for you. Die for you. But neither of us wants you killed, an’ we don’t much want to be killed either if we can help it.” He took a deep breath. “Won’t you please go to Richmond City?”
“Boz, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because if he came looking for me, he wouldn’t know where to find me. I could write him, but the mails are so poor he might never get the letter. I’m sorry, Boz. You and Washington are free to leave whenever you want. I must stay.”
“Stayin’s dangerous, Miss Augusta.”
“I know. But it would be worse to go and never see him again.”
When Billy left Lehigh Station at the end of his short furlough, Brett again found herself adrift in gloom. In part, her mood was a direct result of her husband’s preoccupation with the army. He said the sagging morale didn’t affect him; he was a professional. But she saw the changes in him—the tiredness, the cynicism, the simmering anger.
Just one medicine seemed to relieve her depression: long hours of helping the Czornas and Scipio Brown care for the lost children. She scrubbed floors, cooked meals, read stories to the smallest, and taught letters and numbers to the older ones. Each day, she worked until she was certain of falling asleep moments after she went to bed.
Late in the bitter winter, Brown took two of the youngsters out to Oberlin, Ohio, by train; he had located a black family who wanted to adopt a son and a daughter. He returned through Washington, bringing three new girls, ages seven, eight, and thirteen. On his first day in Lehigh Station, he took each for a horseback ride. Brown had spent so much time gathering up supplies, some purchased but most donated, and searching the packed refugee camps in Washington and Alexandria that he had found it useful to move faster than he could on foot. He had taught himself to be a competent rider. Horses seemed to sense an innate kindliness in him, as did the children.
That didn’t mean he had softened his spine or his militancy. Although Brett had grown to like Brown very much, she felt that he enjoyed provoking arguments with her simply because of who she was and where she came from.
One of these took place on an afternoon in March when she and Brown left the building on the hillside to buy corn meal and some other staples from Pinckney Herbert. Brown drove the buggy, and she sat beside him—something that would have caused no comment around Mont Royal, where it would be presumed that he was a bondsman. In Lehigh Station their appearance together inevitably generated hostile stares and sometimes ugly comments, especially from people like Lute Fessenden and his cousin. Both had thus far evaded military service.
They wouldn’t much longer. Lincoln had recently signed an act conscripting able-bodied males twenty to forty-six for three years of duty. A man could hire a substitute or purchase an exemption for three hundred dollars. That escape hatch for the rich had already infuriated the poor of the North—Fessenden and his cousin among them, she suspected.
In good weather the two men were almost always on the street, and that was true today. As Brett and the broad-shouldered black started their return trip up the hillside, the red-bearded Fessenden spied them and shouted an insult.
Brown sighed. “Wonder if this country’s ever going to change. I see scum like that, I have my doubts.”
“You’ve certainly changed since we first met.”
“How’s that?”
“For one thing, you hardly mention colonization any more.”
Brown turned to look at her. “Why should the Negro be packed off on ships now that the President’s granted us freedom? Oh, I know—the proclamation’s really a war measure. Not meant to apply anywhere except down South. But Mr. Lincoln still calls it freedom, and we’ll do more with it than even he can imagine. You wait and see.”
“I don’t believe Lincoln has changed his mind about resettlement, Scipio. The Ledger-Union said he has a program to ship a boatload of blacks to a new colony this spring. Nearly five hundred of them. They’re going to some tiny island near Haiti.”
“Well, Old Abe won’t send me there—nor Dr. Delany, either. I saw him in Washington—did I tell you? No more robes for Martin. He wants a uniform. He’s trying for a commission in a black regiment.”
Over the clop of the walking horses, she said, “Billy told me Negroes aren’t being received well in the army. Don’t take offense, now—these aren’t his words or mine—but most white officers protest that they’re being niggered to death.”
“Let them. For the first time I feel I’m close to real freedom. Anyone tries to deny it to me, I’ll expend every drop of blood in my body. Mr. Lincoln may not have intended his proclamation to say every black man and woman in the land is free now. But that’s how I take it.”
“That’s an extreme view of the proclamation, Scipio.”
“You say so because you grew up where it was all right to steal a man’s liberty. Own him like you would a side of bacon, a piece of lumber. But it isn’t all right. Either the freedom in this country is for every last man or it’s a fraud.”
“I still say you’re being extreme about—”
“Why are you defensive all the time?” he interrupted. “Because I jab a pin into your conscience deep enough to hurt?” He reined in at the shoulder. A baker driving his wagon down the hillside gave them a sco
rnful stare. “Look me straight in the eye, Brett. Answer one question: Do you think liberty’s just for persons of your color?”
“That was the intent of the authors of the Declaration.”
“Not all the authors! Anyway, this is 1863. So you answer. Is freedom for the white people and nobody else?”
“I was taught—”
“I don’t want to know what you were taught, I want to know what you believe.”
“Damn you, Scipio, you’re so blasted—”
“Uppity?” Thin smile. “That I am.”
“Southerners aren’t the only sinners, you know. The Yankees really don’t want black people free. Some abolitionists do, but not the majority.”
“Too late.” He shrugged. “Mr. Lincoln signed his order. And frankly, I don’t care much about what is. I care about what ought to be.”
“Pushing that attitude could set this whole country on fire.”
“It’s already on fire—or haven’t you read the news lately?”
“Sometimes I absolutely detest you, you’re so arrogant.”
“I detest you for the same reason. Sometimes.”
He reached over to pat her hand but held back; he feared she would misconstrue. Calmer, he went on, “I wouldn’t bother with you one single minute if I didn’t believe there was a sensible, decent woman inside you someplace, twisting and fighting to get out into the light of day. I think the reason you can’t stand me sometimes is that I’m a mirror. I make you look at yourself. What you believe—and what you have to become unless you want to mock all the dead of this war.”
Quietly, with tension; “You’re right. I guess that is why I despise you sometimes. Nobody wants to be shown his errors—be pushed along a path that’s hard and dangerous.”
“The only other path leads you down to the dark for sure. That the one you want?”
“No—no! But—”
Lamely, she finished there, unable to marshal arguments. Why must he hammer at her conscience all the time? He did, and so did the faces of his flock. Brown or saffron or polished blue-black, they worked on it every day. Worked on it and forced her to question her father’s dogmatic belief in the lightness of the peculiar institution. Worked on it so that she asked herself the kinds of questions Cooper had dared to ask their father aloud. What Brown didn’t know was that she already felt the pinch and pain associated with dissecting old beliefs. She resented him for fostering the process.
Sensing her mood, Brown said, “We better quit this talk before we stop being friends.”
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t want to stop being your friend, you know. You’re not only a good woman, but we’ve got two more walls to whitewash at the school. You’re mighty fine with a brush. Sure there isn’t slave blood in you somewhere?”
Uncontrollably, she laughed. “You’re impossible.”
“And bound and determined to change you around. That fine husband of yours won’t recognize you when he marches home after they disband the army and discharge all those poor suffering white boys who’ve been niggered to death. Tell you one thing sure—”
Smile gone, he stared into the sunshine. “This country better get ready to be niggered to death, because I won’t spend my life as a Dred Scott. Not a person. Nothing. A lot of my people feel the same. Our chains are going to break—the real ones and the invisible ones, too. I swear before God, the chains will break or the land will burn.”
“Maybe both will come to pass, Scipio,” she said in a small voice.
He, too, was quiet now. “It could be so. I do hope not.”
She shivered, knowing suddenly that he was right about liberty. The moment altered her, leaving a small, hard certainty; regret and a sentimental wishing for the old way; and much fear of consequences. She felt as if she had betrayed someone or something but could and would not change the fact. The argument marked a milepost on the road they had talked about. It was a road that allowed no turning back.
He picked up the reins, said “Haw” to the horses, and they went forward.
“So,” said the man with the red beard and the holstered pistols under his frock coat. “You believe you could help our special service bureau do the work I’ve summarized?”
“Very definitely, Colonel Baker.”
“I do, too, Mr. Dayton. I do, too.”
Bent felt faint. It was not merely because success had finally come after weeks of waiting. It was March now—Baker had postponed the interview three times, pleading emergencies. Bent was light-headed because he was starving. His own money had run out, forcing him to borrow a small amount from Dills. To conserve it, he ate only two meals a day.
Lafayette Baker had the build of a dock hand and the eyes of a ferret. Bent guessed him to be thirty-five. The past hour had consisted of a few questions followed by a rambling monologue about Baker’s history: work he had done for the exiled Cameron, his high regard for Stanton’s opinions and methods. He spent fifteen minutes on a period in the eighteen-fifties when he had been a San Francisco vigilante, proudly purifying the city of criminals with bullets and hang-ropes. On the desk between Baker and his visitor lay a splendid gold-chased cane, California manzanita wood with a lump of gold quartz set in the head. Nine smaller stones surrounded it, each from a different mine, Baker explained. The cane had been a gift from a grateful San Francisco merchant.
“The chief duty of this bureau, as I cannot stress too often, is the discovery and punishment of traitors. I carry out that task using the methods of the man whose career I have studied and emulated.”
Taking the cane, he pointed at a framed portrait on the wall. Bent had noticed it earlier, the sole decoration in the otherwise monastic office. The man in the daguerreotype had a stiff, severe countenance and small eyeglasses perched on his nose.
“The greatest detective of them all: Vidocq, of the Paris police. Do you know of him?”
“Only by name.”
“In his early days, he was a criminal. But he reformed and became the hated foe of the very class from which he sprang. You must read his memoirs, Dayton. They are not only exciting, they’re instructive. Vidocq had a simple and effective philosophy, which I follow to the letter.” Baker slid his palm back and forth over the head of the cane. “It’s far better to seize and hold a hundred innocents than to let one guilty man escape.”
“I agree with that, sir.” Expediency had been replaced by an eagerness to work for Baker.
“I hope so, because only those who do can serve me effectively. We do vital work here in the capital, but we also perform special services elsewhere.” Baker’s small, unreadable eyes fixed on Bent. “Before employing you in Washington, I would propose to test your mettle. Are you still with me?”
Frightened, Bent had no choice but to nod.
“Excellent. Sergeant Brandt will handle the details of placing you on our payroll, but I shall describe your first assignment now.” He stared, intimidating. “You are going into Virginia, Mr. Dayton. Behind enemy lines.”
72
FOR NEARLY A MONTH, they lived in a single room, a room fourteen by fourteen, which Judith divided by hanging blankets around Marie-Louise’s pallet, thus affording her a little privacy.
In the crowded city they had been lucky to get any room at all. A senior officer at Fort Fisher had found this, which had but one good feature—a pair of windows overlooking the river. Cooper sat in front of the windows for hours, a blanket over his legs, his shoulders hunched, his face reduced to gray hollowness by the pneumonia that had kept him near death for two weeks. Learning of Ashton’s involvement with Water Witch had done something to him, but the demise of his son had done something worse.
On the night Judah drowned, the Mains paddled and floundered through the surf and finally reached shore. They collapsed on a moonlit dune two miles above the earthwork that guarded the river mouth at Confederate Point. There were no other survivors on the beach.
Cooper had vomited everything, all the salty water he had swallowe
d, then gone wandering up and down the shore calling Judah’s name. Marie-Louise lay half conscious in her mother’s arms, and Judith kept her tears contained till she could stand it no longer. Then she wailed, not caring whether the whole damn blockade squadron heard her.
When the worst of the grief had worked itself out, she ran after Cooper, took his hand, and led him south, where she presumed they would find Fort Fisher. He was docile and burbling like a madman. The long walk under the moon had a dreamy quality, as though they were on a strand in one of Mr. Poe’s enchanted kingdoms. At last they staggered into the fort, and next morning a detail was sent out to search the dunes. Judah’s body was not found.
And so they had come twenty-eight miles upriver to the city, where Cooper had fallen ill and Judith had feared for his life. Now he was recovered, at least physically, and he sat by the windows, watching the piers where armed soldiers were on guard to prevent deserters from stowing away on outbound ships.
He spoke only when necessary. Blue-black shadows ringed his eyes as he watched the March sun shimmer on the river. Watched the flatboats of the Market Street Ferry put out for the opposite shore. Watched the little sloops owned by local rice planters darting over the bright water.
Wilmington was a boom town, full of sharps, sailors, Confederate soldiers homeward bound on furlough. The streets, even their room, smelled of naval stores: the pine lumber, pitch, and turpentine busy merchants sold to representatives of the British Navy. Managing to secure a letter of credit from their Charleston bank, Judith purchased new clothing for the three of them from the M. Katz Emporium on Market. Cooper’s suit hung in the wardrobe, still wrapped in paper.
Walking at the upper end of their street one day, Judith spied a splendid house with a great many prosperous young men in civilian dress coming and going. From an upstairs window she heard the singing of Negro minstrels. A peddler told her the place was the residence of most of the British masters and mates who ran the blockade. Flush with new money, they held all-night parties, wagered on cockfights in the garden, entertained women of ill repute, and. scandalized the town. Judith was glad Cooper wasn’t with her; the boisterous house would only make him angrier.
