by Джон Джейкс
Just one medicine seemed to relieve her depression: long hours of helping the Czornas and Scipio Brown care for the lost children. She scrubbed floors, cooked meals, read stories to the smallest, and taught letters and numbers to the older ones. Each day, she worked until she was certain of falling asleep moments after she went to bed.
Late in the bitter winter, Brown took two of the youngsters out to Oberlin, Ohio, by train; he had located a black family who wanted to adopt a son and a daughter. He returned through Washington, bringing three new girls, ages seven, eight, and thirteen. On his first day in Lehigh Station, he took each for a horseback ride. Brown had spent so much time gathering up supplies, some purchased but most donated, and searching the packed refugee camps in Washington and Alexandria that he had found it useful to move faster than he could on foot. He had taught himself to be a competent rider. Horses seemed to sense an innate kindliness in him, as did the children.
That didn't mean he had softened his spine or his militancy. Although Brett had grown to like Brown very much, she felt that he enjoyed provoking arguments with her simply because of who she was and where she came from.
One of these took place on an afternoon in March when she and Brown left the building on the hillside to buy corn meal and some other staples from Pinckney Herbert. Brown drove the buggy, and she sat beside him — something that would have caused no comment around Mont Royal, where it would be presumed that he was a bondsman. In Lehigh Station their appearance together inevitably generated hostile stares and sometimes ugly comments, especially from people like Lute Fessenden and his cousin. Both had thus far evaded military service.
They wouldn't much longer. Lincoln had recently signed an act conscripting able-bodied males twenty to forty-six for three years of duty. A man could hire a substitute or purchase an exemption for three hundred dollars. That escape hatch for the rich had already infuriated the poor of the North — Fessenden and his cousin among them, she suspected. In good weather the two men were almost always on the street, and that was true today. As Brett and the broad-shouldered black started their return trip up the hillside, the red-bearded Fessenden spied them and shouted an insult.
Brown sighed. "Wonder if this country's ever going to change. I see scum like that, I have my doubts."
"You've certainly changed since we first met."
"How's that?"
"For one thing, you hardly mention colonization any more."
Brown turned to look at her. "Why should the Negro be packed off on ships now that the President's granted us freedom? Oh, I know — the proclamation's really a war measure. Not meant to apply anywhere except down South. But Mr. Lincoln still calls it freedom, and we'll do more with it than even he can imagine. You wait and see."
"I don't believe Lincoln has changed his mind about resettlement, Scipio. The Ledger-Union said he has a program to ship a boatload of blacks to a new colony this spring. Nearly five hundred of them. They're going to some tiny island near Haiti."
"Well, Old Abe won't send me there — nor Dr. Delany, either. I saw him in Washington — did I tell you? No more robes for Martin. He wants a uniform. He's trying for a commission in a black regiment."
Over the clop of the walking horses, she said, "Billy told me Negroes aren't being received well in the army. Don't take offense, now — these aren't his words or mine — but most white officers protest that they're being niggered to death."
"Let them. For the first time I feel I'm close to real freedom. Anyone tries to deny it to me, I'll expend every drop of blood in my body. Mr. Lincoln may not have intended his proclamation to say every black man and woman in the land is free now. But that's how I take it."
"That's an extreme view of the proclamation, Scipio."
"You say so because you grew up where it was all right to steal a man's liberty. Own him like you would a side of bacon, a piece of lumber. But it isn't all right. Either the freedom in this country is for every last man or it's a fraud."
"I still say you're being extreme about —"
"Why are you defensive all the time?" he interrupted. "Because I jab a pin into your conscience deep enough to hurt?" He reined in at the shoulder. A baker driving his wagon down the hillside gave them a scornful stare. "Look me straight in the eye, Brett.
Answer one question: Do you think liberty's just for persons of your color?"
"That was the intent of the authors of the Declaration."
"Not all the authors! Anyway, this is 1863. So you answer. Is freedom for the white people and nobody else?"
"I was taught —"
"I don't want to know what you were taught, I want to know what you believe."
"Damn you, Scipio, you're so blasted —"
"Uppity?" Thin smile. "That I am."
"Southerners aren't the only sinners, you know. The Yankees really don't want black people free. Some abolitionists do, but not the majority."
"Too late." He shrugged. "Mr. Lincoln signed his order. And frankly, I don't care much about what is. I care about what ought to be."
"Pushing that attitude could set this whole country on fire."
"It's already on fire — or haven't you read the news lately?"
"Sometimes I absolutely detest you, you're so arrogant."
"I detest you for the same reason. Sometimes."
He reached over to pat her hand but held back; he feared she would misconstrue. Calmer, he went on, "I wouldn't bother with you one single minute if I didn't believe there was a sensible, decent woman inside you someplace, twisting and fighting to get out into the light of day. I think the reason you can't stand me sometimes is that I'm a mirror. I make you look at yourself. What you believe — and what you have to become unless you want to mock all the dead of this war."
Quietly, with tension: "You're right. I guess that is why I despise you sometimes. Nobody wants to be shown his errors — be pushed along a path that's hard and dangerous."
"The only other path leads you down to the dark for sure. That the one you want?"
"No — no! But —"
Lamely, she finished there, unable to marshal arguments. Why must he hammer at her conscience all the time? He did, and so did the faces of his flock. Brown or saffron or polished blue-black, they worked on it every day. Worked on it and forced her to question her father's dogmatic belief in the lightness of the peculiar institution. Worked on it so that she asked herself the kinds of questions Cooper had dared to ask their father aloud. What Brown didn't know was that she already felt the pinch and pain associated with dissecting old beliefs. She resented him for fostering the process.
Sensing her mood, Brown said, "We better quit this talk before we stop being friends."
"Yes."
"I wouldn't want to stop being your friend, you know. You're not only a good woman, but we've got two more walls to whitewash at the school. You're mighty fine with a brush. Sure there isn't slave blood in you somewhere?"
Uncontrollably, she laughed. "You're impossible."
"And bound and determined to change you around. That fine husband of yours won't recognize you when he marches home after they disband the army and discharge all those poor suffering white boys who've been niggered to death. Tell you one thing sure —"
Smile gone, he stared into the sunshine. "This country better get ready to be niggered to death, because I won't spend my life as a Dred Scott. Not a person. Nothing. A lot of my people feel the same. Our chains are going to break — the real ones and the invisible ones, too. I swear before God, the chains will break or the land will burn."
"Maybe both will come to pass, Scipio," she said in a small voice.
He, too, was quiet now. "It could be so. I do hope not."
She shivered, knowing suddenly that he was right about liberty. The moment altered her, leaving a small, hard certainty; regret and a sentimental wishing for the old way; and much fear of consequences. She felt as if she had betrayed someone or something but could and would not change the fact. The argument mark
ed a milepost on the road they had talked about. It was a road that allowed no turning back.
He picked up the reins, said "Haw" to the horses, and they went forward.
"So," said the man with the red beard and the bolstered pistols under his frock coat. "You believe you could help our special service bureau do the work I've summarized?"
"Very definitely, Colonel Baker."
"I do, too, Mr. Dayton. I do, too."
Bent felt faint. It was not merely because success had finally come after weeks of waiting. It was March now — Baker had postponed the interview three times, pleading emergencies. Bent was light-headed because he was starving. His own money had run out, forcing him to borrow a small amount from Dills. To conserve it, he ate only two meals a day.
Lafayette Baker had the build of a dock hand and the eyes of a ferret. Bent guessed him to be thirty-five. The past hour had consisted of a few questions followed by a rambling monologue about Baker's history: work he had done for the exiled Cameron, his high regard for Stanton's opinions and methods. He spent fifteen minutes on a period in the eighteen-fifties when he had been a San Francisco vigilante, proudly purifying the city of criminals with bullets and hang-ropes. On the desk between Baker and his visitor lay a splendid gold-chased cane, California manzanita wood with a lump of gold quartz set in the head. Nine smaller stones surrounded it, each from a different mine, Baker explained. The cane had been a gift from a grateful San Francisco merchant.
"The chief duty of this bureau, as I cannot stress too often, is the discovery and punishment of traitors. I carry out that task using the methods of the man whose career I have studied and emulated."
Taking the cane, he pointed at a framed portrait on the wall. Bent had noticed it earlier, the sole decoration in the otherwise monastic office. The man in the daguerreotype had a stiff, severe countenance and small eyeglasses perched on his nose.
"The greatest detective of them all: Vidocq, of the Paris police. Do you know of him?"
"Only by name."
"In his early days, he was a criminal. But he reformed and became the hated foe of the very class from which he sprang. You must read his memoirs, Dayton. They are not only exciting, they're instructive. Vidocq had a simple and effective philosophy, which I follow to the letter." Baker slid his palm back and forth over the head of the cane. "It's far better to seize and hold a hundred innocents than to let one guilty man escape."
"I agree with that, sir." Expediency had been replaced by an eagerness to work for Baker.
"I hope so, because only those who do can serve me effectively. We do vital work here in the capital, but we also perform special services elsewhere." Baker's small, unreadable eyes fixed on Bent.
''Before employing you in Washington, I would propose to test your mettle. Are you still with me?"
Frightened, Bent had no choice but to nod.
"Excellent. Sergeant Brandt will handle the details of placing you on our payroll, but I shall describe your first assignment now." He stared, intimidating. "You are going into Virginia, Mr. Dayton. Behind enemy lines."
72
For nearly a month, they lived in a single room, a room fourteen by fourteen, which Judith divided by hanging blankets around Marie-Louise's pallet, thus affording her a little privacy.
In the crowded city they had been lucky to get any room at all. A senior officer at Fort Fisher had found this, which had but one good feature — a pair of windows overlooking the river. Cooper sat in front of the windows for hours, a blanket over his legs, his shoulders hunched, his face reduced to gray hollowness by the pneumonia that had kept him near death for two weeks. Learning of Ashton's involvement with Water Witch had done something to him, but the demise of his son had done something worse.
On the night Judah drowned, the Mains paddled and floundered through the surf and finally reached shore. They collapsed on a moonlit dune two miles above the earthwork that guarded the river mouth at Confederate Point. There were no other survivors on the beach.
Cooper had vomited everything, all the salty water he had swallowed, then gone wandering up and down the shore calling Judah's name. Marie-Louise lay half conscious in her mother's arms, and Judith kept her tears contained till she could stand it no longer. Then she wailed, not caring whether the whole damn blockade squadron heard her.
When the worst of the grief had worked itself out, she ran after Cooper, took his hand, and led him south, where she presumed they would find Fort Fisher. He was docile and burbling like a madman. The long walk under the moon had a dreamy quality, as though they were on a strand in one of Mr. Poe's enchanted kingdoms. At last they staggered into the fort, and next morning a detail was sent out to search the dunes. Judah's body was not found.
And so they had come twenty-eight miles upriver to the city, where Cooper had fallen ill and Judith had feared for his life. Now he was recovered, at least physically, and he sat by the windows, watching the piers where armed soldiers were on guard to prevent deserters from stowing away on outbound ships.
He spoke only when necessary. Blue-black shadows ringed his eyes as he watched the March sun shimmer on the river. Watched the flatboats of the Market Street Ferry put out for the opposite shore. Watched the little sloops owned by local rice planters darting over the bright water.
Wilmington was a boom town, full of sharps, sailors, Confederate soldiers homeward bound on furlough. The streets, even their room, smelled of naval stores: the pine lumber, pitch, and turpentine busy merchants sold to representatives of the British Navy. Managing to secure a letter of credit from their Charleston bank, Judith purchased new clothing for the three of them from the M. Katz Emporium on Market. Cooper's suit hung in the wardrobe, still wrapped in paper.
Walking at the upper end of their street one day, Judith spied a splendid house with a great many prosperous young men in civilian dress coming and going. From an upstairs window she heard the singing of Negro minstrels. A peddler told her the place was the residence of most of the British masters and mates who ran the blockade. Flush with new money, they held all-night parties, wagered on cockfights in the garden, entertained women of ill repute, and scandalized the town. Judith was glad Cooper wasn't with her; the boisterous house would only make him angrier.
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! R
ead 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."
