by Джон Джейкс
"I'll send for the doctor to look at him, Missy," he said as he rejoined her on the porch. "I'll also see this matter is put to rights before the day's done."
She caught his hand and pressed it. She was crying too hard to speak.
By afternoon, it was broiling. Orry nevertheless built a fire in the iron stove in his office before summoning Cuffey from the fields. When Cuffey walked in — he had his truncheon, as Orry had anticipated — there were no formalities.
"I should have sold you instead of Anne. I'll take this."
He yanked the truncheon from Cuffey's hand, opened the stove door, and threw the stick into the fire.
"You are no longer head driver. You're a field hand again. I saw what you did to Cicero, for God knows what ridiculous reason. Get out of here."
Next morning, an hour after sunup, Orry again spoke to Andy in the office.
"I want you to be the head driver." Andy gave a small, quick nod of consent. "I'm putting a lot of trust in you, Andy. I don't know you well, and these are difficult times. I know some of the people feel a strong pull to run away to Yankee territory. I won't be forgiving if anyone tries that and I catch him or her — as I most likely will. I don't engage in cruelty, but I won't be forgiving. Clear?"
Andy nodded again.
"One more thing. You remember that our former overseer, Salem Jones, whom I caught stealing and discharged, carried a stick. Evidently the late Mr. Jones impressed Cuffey. He adopted the idea. I should have taken Cuffey's truncheon away the first time I saw it."
Andy's lids flickered as he stored the new word in memory. Orry finished by saying, "Carrying a stick shows a man is weak, not strong. I don't want to find you with one."
"I don't need one," Andy said, looking him straight in the eye.
That was how the delicate card house had collapsed. Orry had started to build another when he put Andy in Cuffey's place.
He had soon learned that most of the people liked the change. Orry was well satisfied, too. Not only was Andy quick-witted and hardy enough to work long hours, but he also had a knack for leading rather than driving the others. He was neither craven nor truculent; he had somehow acquired an inner strength in which he had absolute confidence. He didn't need to dramatize it to convince himself of his worth.
The trust Orry had placed in him — on a hunch and an impulse, mostly — created an unspoken but real attachment between the two men. Once or twice Orry had heard his father speak of loving certain of his people as he would love a child of his own loins. For the first time Orry began to have some comprehension of why Tillet Main might have said that.
Much of this flowed through Orry's mind as he lay beside Madeline, but what came last was a disturbing image. Cuffey's face. Wrathful — far more so since the end of his short tenure as driver. Cuffey had to be watched now; he would spread discontent. Orry could easily identify half a dozen of the people who might be receptive.
On balance, the situation, while not ideal, was not as bad as it had been a week ago. Orry believed that if he accepted the post in Richmond, Andy would protect Madeline in the event of trouble. Feeling good about that, he fell asleep.
A week later, he received an unexpected letter.
Deir Sir,
My cozin who resides in Charleston, S.C., shewed me your advertisement for job of overseer, I have the honr to prezent myself to your atention, Philemon Meek, age 64 yers but in the prim of helth and gretly experienced —
"There's a big one he got right." Orry laughed as he and Madeline strolled through the formal garden to the river at twilight of the day the letter came. "He didn't get many of the others."
"Could you take a chance on a man so poorly educated?"
"I could if he's had the right experience. The rest of this seems to suggest he has. He says I'm to get a letter of reference from his present employer, an elderly widower with a tobacco plantation up near Raleigh; no children and no will to keep the place going. Meek would like to buy it but can't afford it. The place is to be broken into small farms."
They reached the pier jutting into the smooth-flowing Ashley. On the other side, in shallows beneath Spanish moss, three white egrets stood like statuary. Orry slapped a mite on his neck. The smack sent the birds swooping away into the river's dark distances.
"There's only one difficulty with Mr. Meek," Orry continued, sinking down on an old cask. "He won't be at liberty until sometime in the fall. Says he won't leave until his employer is properly settled with a sister who's to take him in."
"That kind of attitude recommends him."
"Definitely," Orry agreed. "I doubt I'll find anyone better qualified. I think I should write him and begin salary negotiations."
"Yes, indeed. Does he have a wife or a family?"
"Neither."
Quietly, her eyes on the smooth water specked occasionally by insects too small to be seen, she said, "I've been wanting to ask — how do you feel about the latter?"
"I want children, Madeline."
"Considering what you know about my mother?"
"What I know about you is far more important." He kissed her mouth. "Yes, I do want children."
"I'm glad to hear you say it. Justin thought I was barren, though I always suspected the fault was his. We should find out soon enough — I can't imagine two people working harder at the question than we've been doing, can you?" She squeezed his arm, and they laughed together.
"I'm so glad you heard from that Mr. Meek," she went on. "Even if you can't leave till autumn, you can write Richmond and accept the commission."
"Yes, I suppose I could do that now."
"So you have decided!"
"Well —" The very way he prolonged it was an admission.
"The bugs are getting fierce down here," she said. "Let's go back to the house for a glass of claret. Perhaps we can even find a second way to celebrate your decision."
"In bed?"
"Oh, no, I didn't mean that —" Madeline blushed, then added, "Right now."
"What, then?"
Impossible to hide her smile any longer. "I think it's time to unwrap the sword you've kept carefully hidden upstairs."
19
"Our Rome," old residents called it. As a girl, Mrs. James Huntoon had preferred the study of young men to that of old cities, but a certain amount of enforced education in the classics enabled her to dismiss the comparison as merely another example of Virginia arrogance. That arrogance permeated Richmond and raised barriers for those from other states. At the first private party to which Ashton and her husband had been invited — to have their persons and pedigrees inspected, she felt sure — a white-haired woman, clearly Someone, overheard Ashton remark crossly that she simply couldn't understand the Virginia temperament.
Someone gave her a smile with steel in it. "That is because we are neither Yankees nor Southerners — the South being a term generally used here to signify states with a large population parvenu cotton planters. We are Virginians. No other word will suffice — and none says so much."
Ignorance thus exposed, Someone sailed away. Ashton seethed, imagining she'd faced the worst the evening had to offer. She was wrong. James Chesnut's wife, Mary, a South Carolinian with a bitchy tongue and a secure place in Mrs. Davis's circle, had greeted her by name and refused to stop for conversation. Ashton feared that gossip about her involvement with Forbes LaMotte and the attempt to kill Billy Hazard, had followed the Huntoons to Virginia.
So she had failed two tests in one night. But there would be others, and she was determined to triumph over them. Although she had little except contempt for the well-born gentlemen who ran the government, and for their wives who ruled society, they held power. To Ashton there was no stronger aphrodisiac.
Like the ancient city, Our Rome had hills, but, by comparison the city was tiny. Even with all the office seekers, bureaucrats, and riffraff swarming in, the population was little more than forty thousand. Richmond had its Tiber, too — the James, looping and winding south and then east to the Atlantic �
�� but surely the air on the Capitoline had smelled of something finer than tobacco. Richmond stank of it; the whole place had the odor of a warehous
Montgomery had been the first capital, but only for a month and a half. Then the Congress voted in favor of the move to Virginia — though not without argument. Richmond lay too near the Yankee lines, the Yankee guns, opponents said. Numbers votes overwhelmed them, as did logic: Richmond was the South’s transportation and armament center, and had to be defended whether the government was there or not.
Those who had resided in Richmond a long time spoke with pride of the fine old homes and churches, but never mentioned the teeming saloon districts. They boasted of families of exalted ancestry, but never acknowledged the degraded creatures of both sexes who sauntered the shady walks of Capitol Square in the afternoons, silently offering themselves for sale. The women, a hard lot, and seldom young, were said to be rushing here from Baltimore, even New York, in search of the opportunity a wartime capital offered. God knew from what sewer their male counterparts had crawled.
Old Rome — with Carolina Goths and Alabama Vandals already inside the walls. Even the provisional President — not yet formally confirmed for his single six-year term — was regarded as a Mississippi primitive. He had the further misfortune of birth in Kentucky, the same state that had given the world the supreme incarnation of vulgarity-on-earth, Abe Lincoln.
Although Ashton was glad to be near the center of power, it couldn't be said that she was happy. Her husband, though a competent lawyer and a staunch secessionist — "Young Hotspur," they had called him back home — could find no better job than clerk to one of the first assistants in the Treasury Department. That was in keeping with the contempt shown South Carolinians by the new government. Very few from the Palmetto State had been named to high posts; most were considered too radical. The exception, Treasury Secretary Memminger, wasn't a Carolina native. Fathered by some low-born German soldier, he had been brought to Charleston as an orphan. Never considered one of the so-called fire-eaters, he was the only kind of Carolinian Jeff Davis deemed safe. It was insulting.
Ashton and James Huntoon were squeezed into a single large room at one of the boardinghouses proliferating near Main Street; that, too, displeased her. They would find a suitable house eventually, but the wait was galling — especially because she was required to sleep in the same bed as her husband. He always left her unsatisfied on those rare occasions — initiated by her when she wanted him to do or buy something for her — that she let him maul and heave and poke her with that pitiful flaccid instrument of his.
Richmond might be a tarnished coin, but it was rare and valuable in a few respects. There were important people to be cultivated; power to be acquired; financial opportunities to be seized. There were also quite a few attractive men — in uniform and out. Somehow she would turn all of that to her advantage — perhaps starting tonight. She and James were to attend their first official reception. As she finished dressing, she felt faint from the excitement.
Orry's sister was a beautiful young woman with a lush figure and an innate sense of how to take advantage of those assets. She had insisted they hire a carriage, to create the proper impression from the moment they arrived. James whined that they couldn't afford it; she allowed him marital privileges for three minutes, and he changed his mind. How glad she was when he handed her down from the carriage outside the Spotswood Hotel at Eighth and Main, and she heard approving murmurs from a crowd of loungers on the walk.
The July evening was hot, but Ashton wore everything that fashion dictated for a woman of elegance, beginning with the four tape-covered steel hoops under her skirt; all but the top one had an opening in front, to facilitate walking. A web of vertical tapes held the rig together.
Over this, underskirts, and then her finest silk dress, a deep peach color she offset with little jet spangles on her silk hair net, and with black velvet ribbons tied to each wrist. Fashionable women wore a great amount of jewelry, but her husband's income confined her to a pair of black onyx teardrops hung from her ear lobes on tiny gold wires. So she had arranged her dark hair and chosen her wardrobe to let simplicity and her own voluptuous good looks be her devices for drawing attention.
"Now pay attention, darling," she said as they crossed the lobby in search of Parlor 83. "Give me a chance to circulate this evening. You do the same. The more people we meet, the better — and we can meet twice as many if you don't hang on me constantly."
"Oh, I wouldn't," Huntoon said, with that automatic righteousness that frequently cost him friends and hurt his career. James was six years older than his wife, a pale, paunchy, opinionated man. "Here — down this corridor. I wish you wouldn't treat me as if I were some witless boy."
Her heart raced at the sight of the open doors of Parlor 83, where President Davis regularly held these receptions; he had no official residence as yet. Ashton glimpsed gowned women mingling and chatting with gentlemen in uniforms or fine suits. She fixed her smile in place, whispering: "Act like a man and maybe I won't. If you start trouble now, I'll just kill you — Mrs. Johnston!"
The woman about to enter the parlor ahead of them turned with a polite though puzzled expression. "Yes?"
"Ashton Huntoon — and may I present my husband, James?
James, this is the wife of our distinguished general commanding the Alexandria line. James is in Treasury, Mrs. Johnston."
"A most important position. Delightful to see you both." And away she went into the parlor. Ashton was glad they'd exchanged words out here; Joe Johnston ranked the other general on the Alexandria line — the one who captivated everyone — but his wife was not one of Mrs. Davis's intimates.
"I don't think she remembered you," Huntoon whispered.
"Why should she? We've never met."
"My God, you're forward." His chuckle conveyed admiration as well as reproof.
Sweetly, she said, "Your backwardness demands it, dear — Oh, Lord, look. They're both here — Johnston and Bory." Thus, on a wave of unexpected joy, Ashton swept into the crowd, nodding, murmuring, smiling at strangers whether she knew them or not. On the far side of the packed room, she spied the President and Varina Davis. But they were surrounded.
Memminger greeted the Huntoons. The Dutchman brought Ashton champagne punch and then, responding to her request, introduced her to the officer everyone wanted to meet — the wiry little fellow with sallow skin, melancholy eyes, and an unmistakably Gallic cast to his features. Brigadier General Beauregard bent over her gloved hand and kissed it.
"Your husband has found a treasure, madam. Vous êtes plus belle que le jour! I am honored."
Her look deprecated the flattery and at the same time acknowledged the truth of it; Carolina women knew coquetry, if nothing else. "The honor's mine, General. To be presented to our new Napoleon — the first to strike a blow for the Confederacy — I know that will be the high point of my evening."
Pleased, he replied, "Près de vous, j'ai passé les moments les plus exquis de ma vie." Then, with a bow, the Creole general slipped away; many more admirers waited.
Huntoon, meantime, anxiously eyed the crowd. He feared someone had overheard Ashton. Was she so stupid that she didn't know the high point of the evening should be an introduction to President and Mrs. Davis? In such states of terror over small things did James Huntoon pass most of his life.
Huntoon's study of the crowd soon generated a new emotion — anger. "Nothing but West Point peacocks and foreigners. Oh-oh, that little Jew's spotted us. This way, Ashton."
He tugged her elbow. She jerked away and, with a glare and a toss of her head, sent him off to mingle. This left her free to greet the small, plump man approaching with a genial smile and a hand extended.
"Mrs. Huntoon, is it not? Judah Benjamin. I have seen you once or twice at the Treasury building. Your husband works there, I believe."
"Indeed he does, Mr. Benjamin. I can hardly believe you'd take notice of me, however."
"It's no disl
oyalty to my wife, presently in Paris, to say that the man who has never noticed you is a man who has never seen you."
"What a pretty speech! But I've heard the attorney general is famous for them."
Benjamin laughed, and she found herself liking him — in part because James didn't. A good deal of opposition to the President and his policies had already arisen; Davis was especially scored for allegedly favoring foreigners and Jews in his administration. The attorney general, who presided over a nonexistent court system, was both.
Benjamin had been born in St. Croix, though raised in Charleston. For unexplained offenses said to be scandalous, he had been expelled from Yale, which her brother Cooper had attended. A lawyer, he had moved with ease from the United States Senate, where he had represented Louisiana, to the Confederacy. His critics called him a cheap and opportunistic machine politician — among other things.
Benjamin escorted her to the buffet table and gathered little dainties on a plate, which he handed to her. She saw James, in the act of sidling up to the President, throw her a furious look. Delightful.
"An ample repast this evening," Benjamin commented. "But not first quality. You and your husband must join me some other night and sample my favorite canapé — white bread baked with good Richmond flour and spread with anchovy paste. I serve it with sherry from Jerez. I import it by the cask."
"How can you possibly get Spanish sherry through this blockade?"
"Oh, there are ways." Benjamin smiled, an innocent, airy dismissal. "Will you come?"
"Of course," she lied; James wouldn't.
He asked for their address. Reluctantly, she gave it. It was clear he recognized the boardinghouse district, but it didn't seem to diminish his friendliness. He promised to send a card of invitation soon, then glided away to pay court to General and Mrs. Johnston. They stood by themselves, displeased by the fact and by the crowd around Old Bory.
Ashton thought of following Benjamin, but held back when she saw Mrs. Davis approach the attorney general and the Johnstons. She didn't have nerve enough to join a group that formidable; not yet.
