by John Jakes
For he was angry. His silence told her. So did the queer glitter of his eyes. They shone like metal hemispheres as he sat staring into the March sunshine. They belonged to no man she knew.
At night, Judith often cried for a long time, thinking of Judah; he could not even be given a decent burial. The sorrow was increased by Cooper’s remoteness. He no longer put his arm around her or touched her or said a single word when they lay side by side in the hard bed. Judith only cried more, ashamed of the tears but unable to stop them.
One day toward the end of March, Marie-Louise burst out, “Are we going to stay in this awful room the rest of our lives?” Judith wondered that herself. For the first week or so, she had refrained from pushing Cooper about leaving; he was still weak, and tired easily. Prompted by her daughter’s question, she suggested to him that she telegraph Secretary Mallory and report their whereabouts. He answered her with a bleak nod and another of his peculiar, indifferent stares.
A few days later, she ran up the stairs of the rooming house with a sheet of flimsy yellow paper. Judith had left Marie-Louise in the parlor with a February number of the Southern Illustrated News; she wanted to read the romantic serial and work the word puzzle.
Cooper sat, as usual, watching the piers and darting sloops. “Darling, splendid news,” she said. Three steps carried her across the cramped room. “There was a message from the secretary at the telegraph office.”
Smiling, hoping to cheer and encourage him, she held out the yellow flimsy. He wouldn’t take it. She laid it in his lap. “You must read it. Stephen sends condolences and pleads with you to travel to Richmond as soon as you can.”
Cooper blinked twice. His gaunt face, so curiously alien lately, softened a little. “He has need of me?”
“Yes! Read the telegram.”
Bending his head, he did.
She almost wished he hadn’t when he looked up again. His smile had no humanity and somehow made his glaring eyes appear, to sink deeper into their blue-black sockets. “I reckon it is time to go. I must have an accounting with Ashton.”
“I know you’ve been brooding about that. But she isn’t really responsible for—”
“She is,” he interrupted. “Ballantyne said it explicitly—the owners wanted no delays. They wanted cargo delivered at all hazards. He gambled with Judah’s life because of greed. His own and Ashton’s. She is very much to blame.”
A shiver shook Judith’s slim frame. The gay, brightly barbed speech of the old Cooper was gone, replaced by pronouncements, bitterly made. She began to fear the consequences of his rage.
“Help me up,” he said suddenly, flinging off the blanket.
“Are you strong enough?”
“Yes.” The blanket fell. He wavered and took her arm, grasping so hard she winced.
“Cooper, you’re hurting me.”
He relaxed his grip without apology, and with a curious, stony indifference. “Where’s my new suit? I want to go to the depot for train tickets.”
“I can buy them.”
“I will! I want to get to Richmond. We’ve stayed here too long.”
“You were ill. You had to rest.”
“I had to think, too. Clear my head. Find my purpose. I have. I intend to help the secretary prosecute this war to the full. Nothing else matters.”
She shook her head. “I hear you, but I don’t believe you. When the war started, you detested it.”
“No longer. I share Mallory’s view. We must win, not negotiate a peace. I’d like to win at the expense of a great many dead Yankees—and the more of them I can be responsible for, the better.”
“Darling, don’t talk that way.”
“Stand aside so I can find my clothes.”
“Cooper, listen to me. Don’t let Judah’s death rob you of the kindness and idealism that always—”
He slammed the wardrobe open, startling her to silence. Pivoting, his head thrust forward like some carrion bird’s, he stared with those awful eyes.
“Why not?” he said. “Kindness couldn’t save our son’s life. Idealism couldn’t prevent Ballantyne and my sister from murdering him.”
“But you can’t mourn him for the rest of your—”
“I wouldn’t be mourning at all if you’d stayed in Nassau with the children as I begged you to do.”
The shout drove her back from him. Pale, she said, “So that’s it. You must have people to blame, and I’m one.”
“Please excuse me while I get dressed.” He turned his back on her.
Crying silently, Judith slipped out the door and waited with Marie-Louise till he came down twenty minutes later.
73
ASHTON HEARD THE SOUND, a cry of many voices, before its significance became clear.
She was just entering Franzblau’s Epicurean, a fine shop on Main Street that only the wealthiest patronized, never being so indelicate as to ask the sources of its merchandise. Some had come in on the last successful voyage of Water Witch. There would be no more such voyages. The steamer had been trapped and sunk near the entrance to the Cape Fear River, Powell said. It didn’t matter. The profits already realized were enormous.
Last night, while Huntoon once again worked late, a messenger had brought a note from Ashton’s partner. Slyly worded to give an air of courtliness and propriety, it requested that she visit him in the morning so they might give a proper farewell to their late vessel and plan their strategy. Powell loved to tease her with such pretexts—as if she needed any. Already, thoughts of the meeting filled her cheeks with a pink that matched the fluffy dyed marabou trimming the cuffs and collar of her black velvet dress.
Although it was the second of April, a Thursday, the morning was cool. She had arrived at the Epicurean shortly after ten-thirty and now addressed the frail, gray-haired proprietor.
“Mumm’s, if you have any, Mr. Franzblau. And a pot—no, two—of that wonderful goose-liver pâté.”
As she counted out a hundred and twenty Confederate dollars, Franzblau wrapped the two crocks in butcher’s paper, which everyone saved and used for writing letters these days. Again the noise intruded. Franzblau raised his head. So did the black man seated by the door to bar undesirables.
Franzblau put the bottle of champagne beside the wrapped foie gras in Ashton’s wicker hamper. “What are those people shouting?”
She listened. “‘Bread.’ Over and over—‘bread.’ How peculiar.”
The black man jumped up as Homer bolted through the door. “Mrs. Huntoon, we better get out of here,” the elderly houseman said. “There’s a crowd comin’ round the corner. Mighty big and mighty mad.”
Franzblau paled and whispered something in German, reaching under the counter for a six-barrel pepperbox revolver. “I have feared something like this. Will, draw the blind.”
Down came the canvas on its roller, hiding Ashton’s open carriage at the curb. Homer motioned with urgency. Ashton’s heels clicked on the black-and-white ceramic diamonds of the floor. Halfway to the entrance, she heard a crash of glass. She had seen the sullen faces of Richmond’s poor and hungry white women, but she had never expected them to take to the streets.
Homer took the hamper and went outside, pausing in the shop’s recessed entrance. From that vantage point Ashton saw twenty women, then twice that many, storming down the center of Main Street. More followed. Inside, Franzblau said, “Lock the door, Will.” It closed and clicked.
“I run for the carriage,” Homer said. Some of the women had the same idea.
“I’ll follow you,” Ashton whispered, terror-stricken at the sight of hundreds of shabbily dressed women pushing, screaming, hurling rocks and bricks at plate glass, ripping shoes and clothing from the shop windows. “Bread,” they chanted, “bread,” while helping themselves to apparel and jewelry.
A produce cart trapped in the center of Main was lifted by a pack of women. Its cargo of crated hens tumbled out with a splintering of slats, a fountaining of feathers, a ferocious flapping and squawking. The farm
er cowered underneath the wreckage of the cart.
Jumping into the open carriage, Ashton was horrified to see the women drag the man out and swarm over him. They punched, clawed, and kicked. He yelled, but the cries were quickly submerged in the chanting.
More rioters rounded the corner of Ninth Street, some pouring up from Cary, some down from the direction of Capitol Square. They were not all impoverished householders; ratty boys had joined the mob, and some older toughs as well.
Homer fumbled with whip and reins. Half a dozen women rushed the carriage, hands extended, ugly mouths working.
“There’s a rich one.”
“Got food in that hamper, I bet.”
“Hand it over, dearie—”
“Hurry, Homer,” Ashton cried, just as a gray-haired woman in smelly rags jumped onto the carriage step. A dirty hand clasped Ashton’s wrist and yanked.
“Get her out, get her out,” the other women chanted, pressing around the rag woman. Ashton writhed, struggled. It did no good. Marginally aware of Homer flicking the whip at two boys holding the horses, she bent and bit the woman’s filthy hand. The woman screamed and fell off the step.
“Bread, bread!” More windows shattered. Women charged the door of Franzblau’s Epicurean, broke it, tore down the blind, and jumped through the opening edged with glass. A pistol went off; someone cried out.
Homer whipped one of the white boys, then the other. He got the team started, only to have two women seize the rear of the carriage and hang on. A third attempted to leap in and grab Ashton again. The street was in tumult. “Shoes, shoes!”
“Police down there—”
“Jeff’s coming out to speak.”
“Let him. We’ll cook him for dinner.”
“Give me, little Miss Rich,” panted the woman as she put her hands on the hamper. Ashton’s mouth set. She flipped the hamper open, took the champagne bottle by the neck, and swung it, breaking it squarely across the side of the woman’s head.
The woman howled and let go, falling back, covered with foaming champagne and bits of glass. Ashton jabbed the broken bottle at those nearest the carriage. They melted back. Damned dirty cowards, she thought.
Grimacing, she knelt on the seat, reached over, and struck at the hands of the women holding the carriage. She slashed left and right with the bottle neck, cutting veins in the backs of their hands. Blood pumped out. “Homer, goddamn you, get moving!”
Like a wild person, he whipped horses and rioters alike. He turned the carriage and charged another group of women, who scattered. Many were running, Ashton noticed as the carriage careened around a corner into Eleventh Street. She heard shrill whistles, gunshots. The metropolitan detail had arrived.
The unexpected violence wrecked Ashton’s schedule for the morning. By the time the carriage reached Grace Street it was twenty past eleven, and another impatient hour went by before she felt she could leave by herself. The servants suspected she had a lover, or so she believed; whenever she went out alone, she was careful not to confirm the suspicion with haste or any kind of outrageous behavior. So she lingered at the house, feigning a case of nerves. Curiously, once she was out of danger, recalling the riot induced a state of arousal.
The war had that same kind of stimulating effect on Ashton. It sharpened every pleasure, from totting up the profits of Water Witch to clasping Powell with arms and legs as he drove into her—love was too soft a word for the nearly unbearable sensations he created. In what other time but wartime could she have brought her husband and her lover into the same business enterprise? It was macabre; but it was exhilarating.
Finally, having washed and refreshed herself, she drove to the Queen Anne house on Franklin Street. She arrived at half past twelve, carrying the hamper with the two pots of foie gras.
“I had a bottle of Mumm’s, but I had to break it to escape the mob,” she explained to Powell in the parlor. He was barefoot, wearing only breeches.
“When you didn’t come on time, I decided not to answer the door if you did arrive,” he said. “Then I heard a drayman shouting something about a riot downtown. So I forgave you.”
“It was the maddest confusion. Hundreds of ugly, utterly filthy women—”
“I’d like to hear about it.” He guided her hand. “But not now.”
A clock was chiming two when Ashton came swimming up through sleepy satiation. The bedding had been tangled and torn loose. Powell dozed beside her. She brushed hair from her eyes and drowsily studied two surprising objects on a taboret near his right shoulder: a map of the United States and, resting on it, his favorite gun—a rim-fire Sharps pocket pistol whose four blunt muzzles gave it a menacing look. The custom grips were carved with an intricate leaf pattern. She had seen him handling and cleaning it on several occasions.
In a few minutes he woke and asked about the riot. His hand idled between her legs while she described it. “They chanted for bread, but they were stealing anything in sight.”
“They’ll do more than steal if King Jeff continues to run amok. The situation in Richmond—the whole Confederacy—is disastrous. It can’t be borne.”
“But we have all the money we need to replace Water Witch and perhaps buy a second vessel. We needn’t worry about the President.”
“We do if we give a damn about Southern principles.” He said it softly, yet with passion. Alarmed, she realized she had unintentionally angered him. “I do. Fortunately, there is a way to curb Davis and preserve them.”
“What do you mean?”
In the silence, the bedroom clock went tock-tock. Iron wheel rims rumbled over cobbled Franklin Street. Powell’s thin, strong mouth turned upward at the ends, though his eyes remained chill.
“How much do you love me, Ashton?”
She laughed nervously. “How much—?”
“It’s a simple question. Answer it.”
“My God—you know the answer. No man has ever made me feel the way you do.”
“I can trust you, then?”
“Hasn’t the partnership taught you that you can?”
“I believe I can,” he countered, “but if I shared a confidence, then found I’d made a mistake—” he snatched the Sharps and pushed the muzzles into her breast “—I’d rectify it.”
Ashton’s mouth opened as she watched his finger whiten. Smiling, he pulled the trigger. The hammer fell—on an empty chamber.
“What—Lamar—what is—?” Confused, inwardly wild with fright, she could barely form the words. “What’s behind all this?”
He put the pistol aside and laid the map on the tangled bedding. In the southwest corner of the map, he had inked a vertical line through the Territory of New Mexico and to the left of it had inscribed several small squares, none overlapping, with dotted lines.
“What you see right here, love. Our inept generals in Texas lost the Southwest. The Union has it all. Including this—” he tapped the section of the map containing the squares “—the new Territory of Arizona. The Yankee Congress created it with the Organic Act, passed in February. A few regulars from California and some New Mexico volunteers are expected to guard this entire area, which of course is impossible. It’s too large, and, beyond that, the red savages keep the soldiers dashing hither and yon to protect isolated settlements. The new territory is perfect for a plan conceived by myself and some other gentlemen who realize King Jeff will ruin us if we allow it.”
The maddening smile stayed as he rolled up the map and dropped it on the floor. Ashton jumped out of bed on the other side, her buttocks bouncing as she crossed to the window above the garden. She folded her arms over her bosom.
“You’re being mysterious to torment me, Lamar. If you won’t explain what you mean, I’ll dress and go.”
He laughed admiringly. “Nothing mysterious about it, love. Those squares on the map are possible sites for a new confederacy.”
She whirled, a figure white as milk save for the blackness of her hair. “A new—?” She shook her head. “My God. You mean it
, don’t you?”
“Absolutely. The idea is certainly not new.” She nodded. She had heard discussions of a third country to be formed in the Northwest, and of a Pacific Coast Confederacy. “What I have done is find the ideal location for a new state, small but impregnable. A law unto itself. A place where each can prosper according to his wishes and ability, and where the breeding and holding of slaves will be encouraged.”
The idea was so awesome she couldn’t quite get hold of it. She padded back to the bed and sat on the edge. “How long have you been hatching this scheme?”
“For over a year. It gained impetus after Sharpsburg, when European recognition became a lost cause.”
“But Davis wouldn’t have any part of such a plan, Lamar. He’d use every resource of the government to block it.”
“My poor, witless Ashton,” he said, stroking her cheek and working his thumb into the little valley beside her nose. “Of course he would. Why do you think I had to satisfy myself that you’re trustworthy? When we establish our new state, the government here will be headless. Mr. Jefferson Davis will have gone to his reward—in hell, I hope. The first order of business is to send him on his way.”
“You mean—assassinate?”
“The President and key members of the cabinet,” he concluded. “Those who might rally forces to oppose us.”
“How—how many others are involved?”
“You need know only that I’m in charge and that we mean to go forward. Now that you’re aware of the plan”—his thumb pressed her cheek; his fingers closed on the back of her neck, turning it ever so slightly, bringing a touch of pain—“you are part of it.”
After the first shock passed, questions began to flood her mind. She asked the most obvious first. How would this new state or country be financed? Small as it was, it would have to be defended. How would its army be paid?
