High Hearts

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Hungry?” She appeared in the front hall as he unbuckled his sword.

  “Yes. I rode past Belle Island. That place makes me doubly hungry, I guess.” The last slanting rays of the sun illuminated her golden hair. He could not help admiring how beautiful she was.

  “It’s just the two of us for dinner tonight, as you requested.”

  Shorn of her brilliant companions and a salon full of glittering braid and jewels, Kate ate quietly with her husband, trying to conceal the fact that she was bored. “Judah P. Benjamin, an engine of ambition, loathes Alexander Stephens.”

  Mars broke a flaky biscuit. “I thought Benjamin and the Vice-President were on good terms.”

  “Alliances are like mayflies in this town.”

  Clearing his throat, Mars said, “Speaking of alliances, have you given further thought to our having children?”

  Kate fixed him with a cobalt stare. “No, I haven’t thought about it. There’s a war on. It could get much worse. This is no time to have a child.”

  “What if I don’t come back?”

  “You?” She laughed. “You’re indestructible.”

  “I appreciate the compliment but—”

  “I’m not even thirty.” She threw down her napkin. She loathed this subject.

  “You’re getting damn close.” His eyes narrowed.

  “Let me have my youth, Mars Vickers. You had yours.”

  “It’s not the same for a woman.” His face reddened.

  “Precisely. Once I have children, I’ll be freighted down for twenty years.”

  “Why is it such a burden? We have help.”

  “You don’t understand anything!” she said, raising her voice.

  “I understand plenty. The thought of bearing my children, of bearing any children, displeases you.”

  “I am not yet ready to ruin my figure, just so you can have some hostages to the future.”

  “Hostages? Is that how you think of children? My God, woman, I want to love somebody. I want somebody to love me. I’ll never get it from you. At least my children might love me.”

  “If they’re like you, they’ll prove incapable of that much lauded emotion.” Kate icily got up and left her husband to finish his meal. She hoped he’d choke on it.

  OCTOBER 22, 1861

  Early the next morning, Mars left his house. Kate bade him good-bye and kissed him like a poisoned chalice.

  A few blocks away from the Vickerses’ house, Henley Chatfield prepared for another day’s work in the miserably entangled Commissary Department. A letter was delivered to him, and he absentmindedly placed it inside his tunic. Then he walked out into the bracing air.

  It wasn’t until later that evening, after he retired for the night and took off his tunic, that he saw the letter. Wearily he propped himself on the bed and opened it.

  October 20, 1861

  Dear Daddy,

  I’m giving this to one of the men going into Richmond tomorrow. I trust he’ll drop this off to you.

  I’m a sergeant in the First Virginia Cavalry. I have so much to tell you. I don’t know where to start, and I’m not much of a letter writer. I’ll tell you everything when I see you, whenever that might be.

  What it comes down to is everyone believes I am Jimmy Chatfield and I like the cavalry. I couldn’t stand being apart from Nash, so I joined up.

  I know from time to time Di-Peachy wrote to you and pretended it was from England. I got to thinking about that more and more and decided I can’t lie to you. I never have, so why start now? And I thought if something were to happen to me and you found out then what I had done, that would upset you.

  So that’s it, Daddy. Mother knows. She says I look like you with my hair cut off.

  Please don’t give me away.

  I love you.

  Geneva

  Henley reread the letter two times to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. Then he helped himself to a liberal shot of whiskey.

  With the curtains drawn back, the smokey lamplight gave the night a hazy look. The clatter of hooves and carriage wheels filtered through the window. How long he sat there he didn’t know, but he finally got up and sat down at his secretary. He pulled out a page of his white stationery and began.

  October 22, 1861

  My dearest daughter:

  You must live. Using the name Jimmy, you will break your mother’s heart twice over if you don’t.

  I am not a man unacquainted with passion, and I know throughout history women have contrived to follow their men. If you love Nash Hart that much, so be it.

  However, allow me to point out that your mother is alone at Chatfield and I would prefer you were there to help her. I’m sure she would prefer it as well.

  I take the blame for this caper of yours. You were more my son in many ways than Sumner. You have an exalted sense of adventure and enough willpower for two people. Instead of trying to curb those traits in you, I encouraged them. This is the outcome.

  Of course, I will not give you away. You’re old enough to take responsibility for your actions.

  My other word of caution is that war is not a game. However, if you serve with the First Virginia Cavalry, I expect you know that.

  You are my only daughter. You are the gladness of my heart, my dear child. I hope you will exercise a little caution, an emotion, I know, that has been foreign to you. Your father could not bear the thought of life without you.

  Love,

  Daddy

  Henley folded the letter and sealed it. To his astonishment, tears rolled down his cheeks. He was torn apart by the fear that his daughter could be killed, and yet at the same time, he was terribly proud of her. Wiping his eyes, he knew that she probably didn’t believe she could die. She was young and believed all her oysters would bear pearls.

  NOVEMBER 17, 1861

  “I doan hear you talkin’ to Emil no more.” Sin-Sin stirred the fire into action.

  “I think he was insulted.” Lutie sat next to the fire and opened the Bible. Today’s lesson in the Old Testament was Proverbs, chapter 11, and in the New Testament, it was John, chapter 11.

  “You did the right thing,” Sin-Sin pulled her heavy shawl around her shoulders, “settin’ Jennifer Fitzgerald’s mind to rest.”

  “She seems to have improved.” Lutie commented on Jennifer’s lifted spirits.

  “Even give up bein’ a cottonmouth.”

  “If she’s going to bite, she’s taking her time about it. Maybe she has changed. People do.”

  “I overslept.” Di-Peachy quietly came in.

  “It’s hard to get out of bed before the sun comes up.” Lutie thumbed through the thin, crisp pages. The Episcopal Church Almanac rested on her left knee while the Bible was on her right.

  A loud noise downstairs temporarily halted the morning’s devotion. Ernie June screeched, “You better has nine lives, you varmit!”

  Four little feet could be heard padding on the smooth floorboards. The cat, a small plucked hen in its mouth, streaked through the room with Ernie, broom in hand, following close behind. “I’s sorry, but, Miz Lutie, that cat be the devil hisself.”

  “It’s too late now, Ernie June. You’ll have to kill another chicken.” Lutie mollified her. Wasting food did not please her, but seeing Cazzie get the better of Ernie June was amusing. “Why don’t you sit down and join us?”

  Lutie read from Proverbs. “ ‘As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion.’ ”

  “Amen,” Ernie June added. “Tincia be alive today iffin’ she exercised discretion.”

  Sin-Sin glared at this religious outburst. Ernie lapsed into silence.

  Lutie then read about Lazarus of Bethany, dead in the tomb for four days. “ ‘I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’ ” Lutie smiled. “That’s one of my favorite passages.”

  “How could Lazarus walk out iffin�
� he had a napkin over his face and his hands and feet was bound up?” Ernie, of literal mind, was fascinated.

  “Hobbled out, I ’spect.” Sin-Sin was content with the story as it was.

  “How you know he doan stink? Says he was resurrected; doan say he repaired.” Ernie, not contentious, was truly curious.

  “Jesus restored him to health,” Di-Peachy answered. “It wouldn’t make sense to bring him back otherwise, would it?”

  “But it doan say so.” Ernie was stubborn.

  Lutie interceded. “You’re supposed to take it on faith, Ernie June.”

  “Thass hard, Miz Lutie.” Ernie was forthright.

  “Yes, I’m inclined to agree. It’s very hard.”

  Sin-Sin warmed up for her rapture. Lutie, Di-Peachy, and Ernie June got to listen to this tale once a year, sometimes twice. It was Sin-Sin’s revelation. “Faith. Yes. Faith kin move mountains but we blind most times. We thinkin’ only of usselves. I had me a mean streak in my youth.”

  Ernie thought, What do you mean, in your youth, you old bat? Prudently, she held her tongue.

  Sin-Sin’s melodic voice rolled like the tide. “My selfishness was big as a waddymellon. I growed with self-regard. I had no peace in my head. I wisht to be exalted before my kind. I wisht I could fly. I thinks only of myself. This conceit was an injury to me. I see it now. On the outside I say Christian things, but on the inside I say nothin’.”

  Lutie observed Sin-Sin’s dear, familiar face with contentment. Her oft-repeated tale provided reassurance, a sense of closeness.

  “My soul swam away from me like a gracey fish. Then a little white man come to me. He say, ‘Follow me.’ I walked a path no wider than a spider web. Down I scurry on my main lines of sorrow ’til I come to the center. A light blind me. I fall on my knees. Then a voice come to me outta the light, and it say, ‘You find God in people’s heart.’ ” Finishing her story, she put her hand on the Bible. “Thass the truth.”

  Ernie ran her apron between her thumb and forefinger. “Why it be a little white man?” What she wanted to say was, Why not a black man? Why was everything good supposed to be white?

  “I doan know.” Sin-Sin loathed Ernie anew.

  Ernie, irritated, looked at Di-Peachy. Mercer’s letters were under Di-Peachy’s dress next to her heart. As there was now quite a packet, her left breast looked both huge and square. “You gotta growth, girl?” Ernie asked with annoyance.

  “No.” Di-Peachy blushed.

  “Nothing good comes from mixed blood,” Ernie intoned.

  Furious, Sin-Sin kicked Ernie in the shin. “Doan be talkin’ that way.”

  Lutie held her breath.

  “That girl achin’ her heart over that white boy!”

  “Thass none of our business.”

  “Trouble be my business, and we gonna have a peck of it.” Ernie turned her round face to Di-Peachy. “Give him up. You gonna break your heart.”

  “He’s not mine to give up. I’m not married,” Di-Peachy said.

  “Doesn’t matter if a cat be black or white as long as it catches mice.” Sin-Sin’s teeth flashed.

  “The mens always foolin’ with the wimmins. You wan this boy to spoil her, after all the learnin’ and work? ’Zat what you want, Sin-Sin? I kill my Boyd iffin’ she make sech a fool of herself! And I knows the white man kill Braxton iffin’ he try it!” She stamped her foot and then delivered her crudest blow. “But why I think you’d watch over her I doan know. You nobody’s momma.”

  Enraged, Sin-Sin pushed Ernie off the chair. “You shut your trap.”

  Lutie’s sharp voice surprised them. “That’s enough! Love is like malaria. You never know when you’re going to catch it. It’s not her fault if she’s infected.”

  Di-Peachy, horrified, did not think of love as a disease. Ernie and Sin-Sin kept still.

  “Furthermore,” Lutie continued, “you could no more keep white men away from Boyd than I could. Stop such foolish talk.” Her voice increased in volume. “Do you think I like sitting in this house knowing what goes on? What has gone on? Do you think I live without anguish? I will not have us fighting about it!”

  Tears ran down Di-Peachy’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, Miss Lutie.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about. If you’ve fallen in love with Mercer Hackett, then God help you, because I cannot.”

  “I gots work to do.” Ernie, humbled by Lutie’s outburst, picked up her broom and left the room. Di-Peachy, her doe eyes large with tears, left, too.

  Only Sin-Sin remained. The two women glared at one another. “That was quite a show you put on, old woman,” said Lutie finally.

  Sin-Sin crossed her arms over her ample bosom. “That fat tub Ernie June’s so ugly she’s an elephant fart!”

  Despite herself, Lutie laughed. “You’re mean and hateful to say such a thing.”

  “When she start flappin’ her gums ’bout no good comin’ from mixed blood, I sees red!”

  “I don’t understand it. Ernie’s never been ugly like that before.”

  “Work her on Sunday. Show her!”

  “I am not going to work her on Sunday, Sin-Sin. Aside from the scandal, what would it show her?”

  “She doah know who’s boss ’round here.”

  Lutie, clutching her Bible more tightly than she realized, replaced it on the smooth, inlaid satinwood table.

  “You gots to talk to Di-Peachy,” said Sin-Sin softly.

  Lutie stared into Sin-Sin’s dark, disturbed eyes. “I know I do. I don’t know if I have the courage.”

  “Anyone can work like you did over them sufferin’ mens got courage.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sin-Sin rewrapped her shawl in preparation for her own day’s work. “You know what I really hates about Ernie June?”

  “No, what?”

  “She so petty she could find flyshit in pepper.”

  Around six-thirty that evening the rain crow hollered, and within the hour, silvery beads of cold rain beat down on the meadows, stables, and houses of Chatfield. The temperature was in the high thirties and caused the damp to cut to the bone. It would have been more tolerable had it snowed.

  Lutie was down at the main stable. One of the mares was giving birth, and she wanted to be there. If the foal was female, Lutie told Braxton to name it Elizabeth since this was Elizabeth I’s coronation day in 1558. Lutie kept odd dates in her mind, strange pieces of information. She thought that her brain was a catchall like sawgrass in fall. If a milkweed floated through, it stuck on the blades. The foal, strangely white, was male. Lutie dubbed him Count Blanc and left to return to the big house.

  Behind those low, fluffy rain clouds beamed a full moon giving the evening a noctilucent quality. Lutie felt that she parted silver curtains as she slipped over the wet grass. Despite the chilling damp she enjoyed evenings such as this; their magical quality excited her imagination.

  A strange light coming through the raindrops interested her. She stopped for a moment and peered skyward into the billowing mass. Overhead, she thought, the planets are a cosmic parasol, and the earth is no bigger than a teardrop in an inky sea.

  Suddenly a hound dashed before her. She hadn’t heard it. Then another followed and another and another. They were black and tans.

  “No. No!” Lutie cried out.

  The hounds bayed, leaping in a ballet of the chase. Out of a pool of liquid shadows thundered the huntsmen. Handsome men, laughing men, pressing their heavy-boned horses faster. Casimer Harkaway, his great chest to the wind, led the way. He cut away from the pack and rode to Lutie.

  She stood still, calmly facing this muscled phantom.

  “Is it my time?” she asked.

  Casimer removed his hat courteously and bowed. His horse pawed the ground. “You shall live a long life.”

  “Whose time is it then?” Her heart was in her mouth.

  “I don’t come to predict death, madam, but merely to prepare you for life, for the yoke Fate lays upon your back.” He replaced h
is hat.

  “Wait!” Lutie reached out to touch his boot but she withdrew her hand. “Do you believe in prayer, sir?”

  “Your existence is a prayer.” He smiled and rejoined his huntsmen, then disappeared into the rain.

  NOVEMBER 18, 1861

  At sunrise, Lutie hurried back onto the vast rolling lawn between the big house and the main stable. The rain stopped and curls of thick, white clouds clung to the sides of the Blue Ridge mountains like baby possums clinging to their mother’s tail. The sun turned them soft pink and deep pink and scarlet before banishing them.

  Breathlessly Lutie ran to the spot where she had seen Casimer Harkaway. She searched the earth and found the place where his horse dug into the soft turf.

  “It could have been one of our horses,” she thought. “I’ll bet Braxton or one of the boys exercised them out on the lawn.” However, she knew the horses were never exercised on the verdant expanse where she one day hoped to have fountains.

  She glanced back at the house. The first full day of brilliant sunlight assaulted Di-Peachy’s harp, and it glittered like the torn wing of a golden butterfly. It was true. Last night was true. Lutie pleaded, “Take me, dear God. Take me and let my people live.” She saw Sumner in her mind as well as Geneva, Henley, and her adored sister, Poofy. She saw her younger brother, T. Pritchard Chalfonte. She saw the people she loved, even Sin-Sin. She would willingly put down her life in exchange for their lives, especially her children’s lives. But she knew the dice were thrown. It was not her turn.

  Lutie thought of the women from the icy coasts of Maine to the sticky swamps of Florida. She thought of the women along the Mississippi from its northernmost waters to its exultant release into the gulf below New Orleans. And on the other side of that great river there were women weeping. Two nations were weeping for their dead, for what was lost, and for what would never be.

  Carefully she put the toe of her shoe into the churned earth. “I won’t weep,” she vowed. “I’ve been down this road before, and I won’t weep. I’ll fight!” She was determined to bear the yoke Fate laid on her back.