The blade swept down.
The first strike nearly severed Lott’s head. The second chop finished the business.
Wheezing blood, Cupid bent over. Swaying, he clutched Lott’s beard, then straightened his dying body one last time. He waved the head above him like a banner, spraying blood across the soil of Beersheba. Lott’s blood and his own. He opened his mouth to shout, but no sound emerged. The part of him that made words had already perished. There was naught left but a human wreck triumphant, signalling his victory to the world.
Cupid swung the head down hard. Pounding it against the earth. Smashing it down to make it deader still. Then he fell to his knees and took up his knife again. And he hacked Lott and his son. In a slowing madness.
We all pulled back as the air drenched with their blood. Then Cupid gasped and crumpled. But he refused to die. He buried his face in his enemy’s flesh and rent him with his teeth. Until his own flesh slowed to a quiver then stopped.
Raines stood watching, empty pistol hanging at his side. Standing amid the carnage of a small affair at the far edge of a great war. I wished that the boy had gone to be a preacher, that his study of theology had held him, and that he had never raised a hand against his fellow man. I knew by his look he would never forget what he had seen.
I limped over and tugged him away. For I saw what he did not. The Negroes who had survived, intact or wounded, were having their revenge on those of Lott’s men who were not yet dead. It was no place for us.
ABRUPTLY, RAINES AWOKE to another concern.
“Where’s Mr. B.?” he said. Twas almost a cry. The fear of loss in his voice was a child’s for a father.
I quickened, too, for I had not thought on Barnaby since the tide turned. Now I feared that he had fallen wounded, if not dead. What if the Negroes mistook him for one of Lott’s pack?
But Barnaby was a splendid gentleman’s gentleman, and would not keep his master waiting long. As if he sensed our worry, the Englishman materialized from the shadows. And a great deal of materializing that was, I must say, with his globe of girth all stained with gore and powder, his Derby hat lost and his hair in disarray. He come limping along almost comical. At first I thought he was mocking my manner of walking.
Roland, the Negro who was unsound on the origins of Jesus, pranced at his side. Oh, Barnaby knew more of the Negroes than ever he told to us. There was a story there, as yet unfinished. But let that bide, for this tale is enough.
When the Englishman’s steps grew troubled, Roland helped him. As the two men closed toward us, I marked the woe on Barnaby’s face. His features were entranced by pain, and though he sought his master anxiously, his eyes would not stay fixed on any spot.
He had been shot. Sweat jeweled his forehead, streaking through the smear, and he looked faint.
We rushed toward him, but he sought to dismiss our alarm. Assured that Raines was well, he only shook his head and said:
“Poor Wylie . . .”
“Mr. B.?” Raines begged. “Where are you wounded? Where’s—”
Again, the Englishman refused our proffered aid. He even stepped free of Roland’s grip. A fellow of aplomb and stirring appetites he was, drawing strength from the presence of kindred souls. Though dirtied by the combat, he seemed a very Falstaff in his prime, lit by some English hearth, not burning shanties. Twisting to see behind him, he sighed and said:
“I fears I ain’t been mindful, Master Francis. Grazed me atop the walking muscles, the fellow did.”
He danced to get a look at himself, turning in the cast of the dwindling flames. The bullet had entered the Englishman’s mass at a spot that wants no telling. Suffice to say, he would not ride or sit nicely for some time.
“It ain’t gallant,” he cried out, near despair at his sharpened knowledge of the location of his wound. “Oh, ain’t it a wicked shame?” But another theme soon set his head to shaking. “Poor Wylie,” he said. “I tried me best to warn him, Master Francis. But the fates won’t mind us for a golden guinea, as me governor always said. That Bridie should be whipped, and I’ll say no more. Marking a fellow for death what done her no harm. A mix of goofer dust, no doubt, though Barnaby says no more.”
I looked at the fellow in wonder. “Surely, you don’t believe—”
“Indeed, I do, indeed! Deadly, deadly. Voodoo’s a right science of the darkness.”
“Sir,” I said, in genuine Christian alarm, “you surprise me.”
“You ain’t been to New Orleans,” he told me. “Proper folks get haunted twice a day.” Then he winced severely and grew quiet. We helped the English titan to the earth. With him muttering all the while that he wanted no fuss, and what would his governor’s governor think, the one who fought with Wellington and Pakenham?
I was the one who saw the devil. The evil man among the evil men. The Judas.
He dashed from the grove and threw himself atop Raines’s horse.
Hesiod. Known as Angel.
I raised my captured pistol to shoot, but Raines struck at my hand. Loyal to his horse, protecting the animal. He did not understand what he was seeing.
Angel fired back at us. Not aiming. Only trying to deflect our aims. Then he kicked the horse to life.
“You fool,” I told Raines. “He’s the one—”
Raines was an intelligent man. Realization crossed his face, then shame.
“I’ll bring him down,” he said.
Twas then I struck the poor boy on the jaw. Putting him out cold.
“Sorry, Mr. Barnaby,” I called, already scuttling for the horses clustered behind the smoldering ruins. “He’d only get himself killed, and I’ll not have it.”
The big man waved me on. He understood.
“I’m coming on along, too,” Roland declared. “I wants me a slice of that nigger.”
I let him come, and welcomed his assistance.
Now, you will say, “Why did he take the Negro and not Raines?” And I will tell you: Young Raines would have outridden me, and Angel would have killed him. For Raines was brave, but he was not yet skilled. Or hardened as you have to be for some things. And he had seen things that would render him unsteady for some days to come. But Roland had been a slave, and would be steeled to much.
Seconds, only seconds we had.
A limping little man I was, foundering among the horses. Yet, I found Rascal quickly enough. As if the horse found me. Usually, I had a time getting up on his back, but I’d got vinegar in my blood and fair vaulted into the saddle.
I had to bring this Angel down to earth.
I thought I knew my way, but it was dark. In but a moment, Roland took the lead. We galloped out the way I first had come into the camp.
If Angel was skilled as a rider, we might not catch him. For Raines’s mount was splendid, as such creatures go. And Rascal may have been a marvelous horse, but I was a bobbing fool set in his saddle.
Ahead, we heard a whinny, then a shot. And another whinny. Hoofbeats and hoofbeats, resounding.
The moon was young as we come to nature’s gate. Old Toby lay across the path in the light. Gone to his reunion with his son.
A horse has a certain tone when a whinny becomes a shriek. Such it was that we heard up ahead. Shrieking and stomping and curses.
Twas then I kenned it. Raines’s horse was his master’s horse, indeed. Angel had met difficulty managing him, despite the way he had with other horses, for the beast would have no stranger on his back.
“Come on,” I barked, as much to myself as to Roland.
“Goin’ to kill that nigger dead,” my companion swore. “Kill him dead, if it takes a month of Sundays.”
If he did not kill us. I remembered the giant muscles of the man, displayed in the wrestling match with the Swede at Shiloh. If Angel shot as well as he scrapped, there might be trouble waiting.
We thundered down the glen made by the mounds, with the trail snaking between moon-washed boulders.
I had no idea if I had any bullets left. I knew my Colt was emp
ty in its holster. Did the pistol I had captured have any rounds in its cylinder? I had counted four shots as I fired my captured weapon in the scrap, but knew not if the man from whom I had taken it had fired the rest away. Always check your ammunition. It is a fundamental matter, see. Yet, I had thought the killing done and neglected a duty the youngest soldier learns.
I chose to believe I had one shot left. If I had none, then that was God’s decree.
My shoe scraped on a rock-face as we rode. It sparked. My bad leg would be bruised the worse come morning.
Twas all I could do to stay atop the horse.
Our path tended downward. You felt the decline by night as you did not by day. Heading toward the marsh.
We had gained upon our quarry. As we burst from the defile, I saw a maddened oddity ahead, a creature newly forged of man and horse. Black in the moonlight. Black, but clear of outline. Splashing into the wet ground.
Angel raised his hand and brought it down. I heard the cut of leather on living hide.
I clutched the pistol in my hand, thumb upon the hammer.
The stolen horse would not obey its rider. Refusing to go on, it bucked and reared. Spiteful of the whip, the beast had spirit. Its hooves threw silver water in the moonlight. Angel damned the animal with shouts, and beat it madly.
“Don’t shoot until you’re sure of your mark,” I called to Roland. Uncertain if he even had a gun. “His aim’s worthless while the horse is like that.”
We plunged on through the shadows.
Then Angel fell. I saw him tumble backward. The horse dashed onward.
I pulled ahead of Roland, better-horsed. But Rascal, too, shied at the edge of the swamp. I was about to do some whipping myself, when I saw a wonder. By the pallor of the moon.
Angel sprang up from the marsh. But he was a transformed creature. He had gathered up a dozen ropes and, as he rose, he swung them left and right. They lashed from his limbs and torso.
He was screaming.
Snakes. Maddened, they had fanged so deep they fastened to him. He must have tumbled into a very congregation of serpents.
He tried to run. Some of the creatures dropped away. But others lashed and twisted around him. He stumbled. Dropped to his knees, he rolled backward, over-burdened. When he come up for the last time, a fat rope flew through the moonlight and struck his chest. He trailed a writhing arm as he sank down.
“I ain’t going in there,” Roland told me.
BACK AT THE CAMP, Raines stood guard over Barnaby. In case the thirst for blood had not been slaked.
But I could read the air. The danger was past. Now all was sorrow. Armed with torches, the Negroes searched for their loved ones. Sudden cries marked hard discoveries. As long as the torches moved, their light meant hope. But when one paused, then stopped, it marked a loss.
To hear those plaintive calls wrenching the night was to shed all doubt of the African’s humanity. He loves as we do, and his heart feels loss. I am not one to speak of revolutions, for I dislike disorder of all kinds, but slavery must be banished from our soil.
A thing had changed in me, see. For though I never wished ill to the Negro, I had felt no special care toward his plight. I pitied from a distance, but did nothing, with Christian lips, but not a Christian heart. Now things were altered, deep within, the way that never quite fits into words. I had become an abolitionist, I suppose, although I value quiet and circumspection, and would not have upheaval in the streets.
I just like things done fair.
No matter what the generals said, the war was over slavery. And slavery was all that caused the war. It was the plague upon our golden land. Twas clear. And the rest was blather.
Now, do not think me radical or wild, for I am not. I would not set the Negro on a pedestal. But I would make a little room at the table for the fellow, and give him honest work for his two hands. I would not give him more than I would you. But, fellow Christians, dare we give him less?
Let that bide.
The shacks were little more than embers now. The torches flickered on, scorching the dark. Barnaby sat in the light of red-veined logs and sparks.
“Mr. Barnaby?” I asked, “have you had a great deal of bleeding, then?”
“Well-staunched, I’m well-staunched, sir. All done proper, and little harm to come of it,” the game fellow said. “But ain’t it a beastly shame? That’s what I calls it. For scar it will, and where the sun don’t shine.”
“It will be an honorable scar,” I assured him.
He looked at me, with rueful eyes aglow. “But what if I was to marry again, I ask you? Not that I plans it just at the moment, sir. I don’t. But what if it come to that, what if it did? No proper wife would think such marks was got honorable. Sooner or later she’d see it and think I went running. And Barnaby B. Barnaby ain’t never run a step. And I’m vain enough to say it, that I am.” He quivered like a jelly made of sorrow. “Oh, the shame of it is more than a man can bear, sir. For see it the lady will, though the soul of modesty. It all comes out in the wash, as me governor always said. And seeing is believing, is what I says, and seeing that will set her mind to working.”
“First get the wife,” I advised him, “then worry.”
THEY BROUGHT THEIR DEAD OUT of the preaching ground, lighting the way with torches. They carried the bodies in ragged quilts and canvas scraps that had survived the fires, for few of the corpses were whole enough to loft over a shoulder. All were placed in a shed that had not burned. The quilts and scraps soon turned to blood-dark sops. Barnaby, Raines, and I kept off to the side, near our horses. We would not move on until the morning, but this was not our business. We watched the Negroes at their labors, their women crying and the menfolk grim.
As always, there were mothers loathe to part with children’s bodies, insisting they were sleeping and not dead. It is among the commonest sights of war, whether here or off in distant India.
In the morning, we would bury Wylie.
The tethered horses shuffled. Raines closed his eyes, pretending that he slept. I did not blame the boy, nor think him weak. He had so much to bear, and he was young.
The embers became ashes.
I thought that all the bodies had been gathered, for the Negroes who could walk formed ceremoniously, all but one who had gone raving mad. Expecting them to improvise a service, I clambered to my feet out of respect. Instead, they started for the preaching ground, in somber procession.
When they returned for the last time, they bore a single body on their shoulders. I saw a gashed face by the torchlight. The Negroes wept and sang.
Their hymn told of a stranger, travelling through a world of woe. Going home, he was, to see his loved ones, who had made the journey over Jordan before him. It was a simple tune and crudely sung, but not unmoving.
As they passed, I reached to doff my hat and realized I had lost it. I bowed my head and prayed as best I could. I, too, wished to go home, but to my wife and son. And I was not certain all the Jordan’s waters would wash me clean.
We must have faith, and go through.
They placed the Reverend Mr. Hitchens in the hut with their other dead. Then they set their torches to the shanty.
I could not bear the smell after a while. I have had my fill of burning flesh.
Kicking Raines on the heel, I told him to stay alert.
“You leaving?” he asked, in a voice come out of a drowse. And I heard fear. It is the minor things that trip our nerves.
“I am going for a little walk,” I said, then added, “to take the air,” for that was how a gentleman would put it.
But I had not gone far before I heard footsteps, and not familiar ones. I turned, hand on my pistol. Every chamber held fresh powder and ball.
Twas Roland, come to bid a last goodbye. Pale as milk in the moonlight he was.
“Guess we’ll be going on north after all,” he said. “Go call on Mr. Lincoln.” He smiled. And isn’t that a wonder and a blessing? You chain a man all his life, and still he
smiles. “Tell him how come Jesus was a Negro.”
Now, Mr. Lincoln liked a humorous tale, but this was irreverent.
“It is a long way to Washington,” was all I said, though. I could not find it in me to be stern.
“Major?” His smile faded. “What’s it like to be free up there?”
I opened my mouth to say a hundred things, to warn him against high expectations, to tell him men were never truly free, no matter the hue of their skin, that freedom was a matter of degree and a gift that asked responsible behavior, to explain that our armies found Negroes an encumbrance, to speak of faith as our only true liberation . . . but those were things that he would learn himself, and now he needed hope and not a lecture. I only said:
“Freedom is a great deal of work.”
My answer nonplussed him for a moment, but soon his smile rekindled. “Well, I guess I’d rather work for a piece of that than for nothing. The way I been doing.”
And then he shook my hand and walked away.
When I steeled myself to return to the smell of the bodies, the last of the Negroes had gone. Leaving only ashes. I sat me down by Raines and Barnaby, resting my back against a tree. There was no more to say. Not in the dark. We waited for the dawn, each man alone, and even the horses fell somber.
Yes. We must have faith. And go through.
In the grayness, at the first pure hint of light, a spirit appeared. Floating down out of the trees in her pale raiment.
I recognized a familiar lope. And the outline of a tattered hat. When she stepped up close, her dress was torn and soiled.
Twas Paddycakes, the simple girl. She swayed above us, thumb between her teeth, bare feet planted just before young Raines.
“See, Marse Drake?” she said. “I tole you there was devils.”
EPILOG
HE LED ME TO THE RIVER. WE PASSED THE LAST Confederate pickets and halted on a bluff above the Tennessee. The water ran brown and quick, dividing a green world.
Our horses tapped the earth, impatient with their masters. One path wound south along the river’s edge. My course, like the current, led north.
Call Each River Jordan Page 30
