Master Of Paradise

by Virginia Henley

  Amanda welcomed the backbreaking labor that was necessary to harvest any crop on earth. The energy that she expended exhausted her physically, so that when nighttime arrived she was able to sleep for a few hours each night.

  She went straight from the garden crops to the cotton. Samuel prepared the food for the field hands they had left, and Amanda took over the job of ginning the cotton of its seed in their own mill. She hoped that when it was baled, Rafe would take it off her hands.

  At last the thing she had been waiting for came about. Her father arrived, and she felt a weight lift from her shoulders the moment she glimpsed his carriage. But as he slowly ascended the front steps, her hopes vanished.

  "Is there any news Father?" she begged.

  "Yes, but non of it's good I'm afraid." His shoulders sagged, his face had a grayish tinge, and he looked the very picture of defeat.

  "Nicholas?" she whispered.

  He shook his head wearily. "It pains me to have to burden you Amanda. Ah lived my whole life believing womenfolk should be protected from all unpleasantness. My abject apologies,child, but I could not locate him in any Union prison. I have access to the lists, but he simply isn't there. I feel in my heart that we must accept Nicholas's death. To do otherwise would be to deceive ourselves."

  Amanda sat silently. She knew her father's advice made sense, yet she also knew there was a part of her that might never be able to accept the death of the man she loved with all her heart and soul.

  Her father's head hung down as if he were too ashamed to go on. She searched her mind for a possible cause. "Lady Pamela is not with you?" she asked gently.

  He shook his head. "Made her way to Washington as fast as her legs could carry her. My wealth seems to be evaporating Amanda."

  "Don't worry about her Daddy, she'll sleep her way to the bottom. You were too good for her."

  Although he seemed shocked at Amanda's knowledge of that sort of woman, she could tell his heart wasn't the least involved in losing the woman. Though he was embarrassed, he seemed relieved. "Father, there seems to be a burden you are carrying about that will kill you if you don't share it with someone," she probed.

  "Oh little Mandy, you have enough to cope with." He broke down altogether, openly sobbing.

  She sank to her knees and gathered him in her arms, murmuring words of comfort. Strangely their roles were reversed; he the child, she the parent. She felt in part it was because she was going to become a mother. The nurturing instinct had already begun.

  Bernard produced a crumpled paper from his pocket. "Brandon is wounded."

  She took the paper from his shaking fingers and sat back on her heels. "B. Jackson.. Wounded... Hampden's Raiders."

  "It doesn't tell us much, but at least he was still alive when this was written." She did not try to varnish over the reality. Her mouth set in determination and her chin went up. "We'll go and get him. We'll bring him home."

  Her father raised his head, a ray of hope shining in his eyes. "You can't travel up where the fighting's going on."

  "I can, and I will," she said firmly. "We can do it you know, if we hold hands around the dark corners." Nicholas said that to me once. His words constantly come back.

  There was very little gold left in the safe, but what there was, she took. She tried to think of a good hiding place for the precious diamonds Nicholas had given her, but in the end decided the only safe place for them was on her person. She stitched a deep pocket into one of her petticoats and concealed them there.

  Amanda and Bernard went to Richmond by train, although it was an indirect route. They changed from one railway line to another at Florence, Wilmington, Goldsboro, Garysburg, and Petersburg. Though it was a long, tiring journey, it would have been worse by horse and carriage.

  The trains were overflowing with recruits going to the front lines. Amanda was appalled at how poorly they were dressed. Most of the boys were in butternut homespun, well-worn boots, and had nothing more than an old hunting rifle. But their spirits blazed with patriotism and their youthful energy made light of what lay ahead of them.

  It was very touching to see they were still growing boys, whose wrists and ankles stuck out of their uniforms. None of them looked as if he got enough to eat.

  When they reached their destination, Richmond was swarming with uniformed men from all the various army departments The remount depots overflowed with mules and horses, gathered from all over the south. All the hospitals were packed to the doors with the wounded and the sick, and large tobacco warehouses were now also filled to overflowing with casualties of the war.

  It seemed to Amanda that every second building was a barroom or a bawdy house. The streets were filled with prostitutes. She was shocked, but when she learned how much everything cost, she began to understand. Flour was a thousand dollars a barrel, and shoes were being sold for five hundred dollars a pair. She thought sadly that women could do worse things than sleep with a man to get food.

  One silver dollar was worth sixty Confederate paper dollars.

  Amanda and Bernard did not dare go further North by railroad, as the Union troops spent a deal of time blowing up the lines. Her father hired a carriage and driver to take them to Fredericksburg, but it took most of the coins he and Amanda had between them.

  Mandy began to fear for her father. He looked such a very old man. Perhaps he shouldn't have undertaken such an arduous journey. She did not let him know she was with child. Even though she had begun to show, he was too preoccupied to notice.

  They put up at a boarding house until they could locate Brandon, and when they arose the next morning, found their driver had deserted.

  Mandy knew if she faltered, Bernard would sit with his head in his hands, and the inevitable tears would follow. She made light of the defection, and they set out to go through the military red tape necessary to locate a wounded man.

  Though Bernard had spent years in politics, he seemed to get nowhere. Finally, Amanda insisted she would search each hospital and warehouse personally if that was the only way she could locate her brother. "Unheard of" she was told, until it dawned on her that a bribe would be necessary. Reluctantly, she produced a diamond bracelet and miraculously a young lieutenant was assigned to guide them through the hospital wards.

  Nothing on earth could have prepared them for the sights and smells they encountered. Wounded men lay on the floors with only a thin blanket to go under them. Half the men had lost limbs, and lay legless or armless, their great burning eyes waiting for death. Most were fevered with high spots of color on their prominent cheekbones. A lot of them weren't even men, they were still boys.

  A few women volunteers moved among the men, but they looked on the point of exhaustion from the endless washing, lifting, bandaging, and feeding.

  The men in these hospitals and warehouses died like flies from blood poisoning, gangrene, typhoid, and pneumonia. All had bloody flux from eating putrefied rations, and the miasma that arose from the blood, sweat, and dysentery was a stench that would stay in the nostrils for years.

  As Amanda bent close to each man, she saw lice on their bodies and blankets. Her first instinct was to recoil and pull her skirts tightly above her ankles, but then the absurdity of her actions hit her. What in God's name do a few lice matter compared with the agony these men are enduring?

  After a full day of touring hospitals, Bernard was almost finished. Amanda insisted that he rest and went alone the next day.

  In the middle of the afternoon she found him on the top floor of a warehouse, lying beneath the rafters. The stifling air must have been about a hundred and ten degrees. He had a leg wound that should have started to heal a week ago, if it had been properly attended.

  Brandon looked at her with disbelief, when he recognized her. If he hadn't spoken, she would never have known this filthy, bearded skeleton as her dashing Brandon.

  "Mandy, what are you doing here?" he whispered.

  "I've come to take you home, of course," she said briskly.

>   He grimaced at their surroundings. "It has all the charm of an abattoir."

  She laughed at his joke. If I don't laugh, I'll lose control and weep.

  With an air of authority she called to a hospital orderly and amazingly he obeyed her command to get her brother on his feet. Brandon's face went white with pain at the exertion of moving, but Amanda insisted, and almost propelled him toward the stairs. She knew the men lying around would think her a callous little woman to treat a wounded comrade so briskly, showing no sympathy whatsoever, but Amanda knew a compulsion to get Brandon away. The war has taken Beau, and perhaps Nicholas, but I'll not let it have Bran, not while there's still breath left in my body!

  At the boarding house the woman would not let Brandon in until his vermin-infested clothes were removed and boiled in lye. Bernard dressed his son in his own shirt and trousers, and put him into his own bed, but Amanda could see that her father was far from well.

  Bernard finally admitted that he had a sore throat and a fever.

  Lord God Almighty, whatever am I to do now? They had no money to even pay for their lodging. She made her father rest in her bed and set out to try to procure something to treat Brandon's leg wound. She went straight to the Provost Marshall's Office and by using all her feminine charms was finally ushered in to the thickset man in charge of supplies.

  "Good evening, Captain," she flattered him by raising his rank from sergeant. "My Daddy is Senator Jackson from the Richmond Congress. My poor brother is a cavalry officer with a suppurating leg wound. I wonder if you could spare me some quinine and calomel and some bandages?"

  "Honey, if your daddy was General Robert E. Lee ah couldn't give you any, for the simple reason we have none."

  "Oh please, just some iodine then, or any disinfectant," she begged.

  "Nothing at all honey, an' bandages are in such short supply they have to be washed and reused."

  Amanda looked at him with disbelief.

  "Little girl, if ah had anything that ah could use to wangle a few hugs and kisses from you, ah'd offer them."

  It was twilight when she departed the building, and she walked aimlessly away from the busy section of town. She became aware of her surroundings with a start. She had wandered into the Fredericksburg Cemetery. She wandered along the rows of softly piled earth with their newly carved small white crosses. Some had only a name and rank: Captain Franklin. Others gave a state: Jones, Sergeant, South Carolina Infantry.

  Amanda read every name and offered up a silent prayer for the souls of the men. She felt completely drained and defeated. She lay down on the grass in the dusk and thought about Nicholas. Before she'd always pushed it away, but now she could put off thinking about it no longer. She offered up a special prayer for the soul of her beloved husband and the tears flowed freely.

  I love him too much. I can't go on without him. Life without Nicholas isn't worth living. She was without hope. All were dead or dying.

  Suddenly Amanda felt a flutter, a quickening in her womb. She put her hand on her belly and held her breath. Yes, there it was again, as if her son had kicked. In that instant she realized that not all were dead and dying. Here was life! Here was Hope!

  As she lay on the earth she thought she could feel the pulse of the Universe beating solidly beneath her outstretched limbs. She lay there a long time, resting, feeling a peace descend upon her. Amanda lay there until the sky turned inky black, hung with diamonds, then slowly she arose and returned to the boarding house.

  She slipped through the darkened hall, toward the kitchen. Very quietly she searched for anything she could steal that would benefit Brandon. She picked up an empty berry pail and put in two cups of salt, and on top of that she put two cups of soda. Then she stole a bar of lye soap. She felt guilty because she knew how much these things cost, but she concealed it beneath her shawl and stealthily made her way upstairs.

  Both men were sleeping restlessly, and she could tell they were both fevered. She shook her father awake and told him to dress. As he did so she explained, "We have to leave now in the middle of the night because we have no money to pay our lodging."

  She awoke Brandon and was relieved to see recognition in his eyes. He was not yet delirious. "Bran, we have to get out of here without making any noise. Put these extra clothes on, we can't carry any luggage."

  Bernard and Amanda helped Brandon struggle into his newly-washed trousers and tunic, and they got him to his feet. Amazingly enough they were quit of the house and at the stable doors before they were discovered. Amanda, panic rising in her throat, babbled the first thing that came into her head.

  "They have the fever. The hospital was full of typhoid. I must get them out of here before the contagion spreads to others in the boarding house."

  "My God, let's get that horse in those buggy shafts and get the hell away from here, lady," ordered their host.

  Brandon lay sprawled across the back seat of the open carriage, half-unconscious from the pain he'd endured in moving him. Bernard sat up on the high front seat, but it was Amanda who picked up the reins and guided the horse from the stable and out into the darkened road in the direction of Virginia.

  She drove for about two hours before the dawn pinkened the sky. When it was full daylight, she reined in the horse by a stream and allowed it to graze on the rich green grass.

  Her father had dozed most of the journey, due to his fever and she knew she had nothing she could give him to relieve it. She helped him out of the carriage and sat him with his back against a tree.

  Brandon was a different matter. He needed attention fast. She got him out of the carriage and he lay on the grass. First she took one of her petticoats and with the help of her brother's Bowie knife, tore it into bandages. She spread out her shawl and carefully poured out the salt and soda. Then she filled the berry pail with stream water and took up the bar of lye soap.

  She had to soak the dirty bandages from the wound, and the moment she touched it, a sickening smell arose to assail her nostrils. Mandy washed the yellow matter from the wound with the lye soap, and marveled at Brandon's bravery.

  She examined the wound carefully. Thank God some army surgeon removed the ball. It was angry red with inflammation, but worse than this, the edges showed signs of gangrene. Her gorge rose in her throat, as she took the sharp Bowie knife and cut the dead, rotting flesh from the edge of the wound. Fresh blood sprang up from the cuts, so she scooped some salt and soda into fresh water and poured it into the wound.

  Brandon, screaming, rose up fast enough this time. But not until he was freshly bandaged, did she lie down to rest her weary body.

  Amanda repeated this operation twice before they reached Richmond. Bernard seemed a little recovered by this time and managed to get them railway passes back to Charleston. He was also able to procure a small amount of quinine to keep their fevers subdued, along with a few rations that would just barely keep them from starvation with the money he got from selling the horse and carriage.

  The trains were filled with soldiers. The gray-clad were wounded, the blue-clad were prisoners on their way to Andersonville prison in Georgia.

  She saw a Confederate Officer use his rifle butt on a Union prisoner. "Please don't do that," she said with quiet intensity. "A prisoner is at the mercy of his captors. My husband may be a prisoner, sergeant, and I pray to Almighty God that his captors are merciful."

  Amazingly, by the time the trio wound their weary way home to Paradise, Brandon's leg had begun the process of healing. Bernard had good days and bad, but he had aged rapidly in the last few months. Amanda was suffering from acute exhaustion when Mammy Lou tucked her into Nicholas's bed and did not let her up for three days.

  Jennifer was the happiest one in the whole household when Amanda finally showed her face downstairs. Jenny had shared in the burden of nursing Brandon and watching over her father. When this was added to the difficult business of planning meals while food was scarce, it all became too much for Jennifer Joy to cope with.

  As s
oon as Amanda felt rested, she took Samuel aside. "We have to go into Charleston to get money from the bank. What was the name of that banker, Samuel?"

  "Gabriel DuBose. Ah knows where de bank is. We go tomorrow. You plannin' on using dat lil' boat, Miz Mandy?" he asked nervously.

  "I'm sure as hell not getting in another carriage for awhile, Sam. Don't worry, I can handle the boat."

  When they got to the bank, Amanda found they had put restrictions upon the amount you could withdraw. Even though Samuel used his best powers of persuasion, Messire DuBose was adamant-- no more than one hundred dollars in gold, or a thousand in Confederate notes. They took the gold. When they returned to the bank two days later, the doors were locked and barred.

  The streets were filled with people begging for food and Amanda could clearly see the city was a dangerous place to be. On the way back to Paradise, Amanda spoke openly to Samuel. "I know you cared for Nicholas as if he were your own son, Samuel. I want you to go North. I want you to find out one way or the other if he is a prisoner; if he's alive or dead."

  "Miz Mandy, ah's almost gone a dozen times, but ah know Masta Nick wouldn't wan' me t'leave yo'"

  "That's the main reason I wanted money Samuel. You can't travel without it, I know, I've tried it, and you will be gone for months."

  "Yo' gonna need dat money chile. Dey ain't no more where dat come from."

  "Well split the money. When we get home we'll stitch five ten-dollar gold pieces inside your clothing. Be very careful Samuel; people would kill you for that kind of money."

  "Ha, folks kill me fer bein' black," he laughed.

  "I'm afraid the chances of Nicholas being a prisoner are very slim, and I know what I'm asking is a difficult task through strange Northern States you've never before visited, but there's no one else cares enough, Samuel."

  "We care-- dat enough," he said simply

  "If you don't locate him, perhaps I'll be able to accept that he's dead," she said softly.