High Hearts (17 page)

He was one of the few men taller than Geneva. He stared into her cognac eyes. “You’re right, Jimmy, I won’t hit him. If I did, I’d have to touch him.” He turned on his heel and stalked off.

“Let’s go back to the tent,” Nash growled.

They cut through the crowd. Banjo, wobbly as he was, watched the entire episode. Doe to stag, he thought to himself. Get ’em nothin’ but trouble.

Inside the tent Nash extinguished the lamp with one hand. Then he bit Geneva’s neck and backed her onto the cot. Angry at the scene he’d made, she refused him. Furious, he cursed and rolled over on his cot, turning his back to her. Geneva felt like the tent was spinning, but she also felt another kind of queasiness. She was learning some things about her husband which she didn’t like. He was different outside of their circle of friends, family, and servants. But then so was she. Did other married people harbor doubts about their mate?

“Man that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.

“In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for succour.” The Very Reverend Manlius’s voice floated up to the thin clouds.

The population of Chatfield gathered around Alafin’s grave. The tombstone of servants dating back to the very end of the seventeenth century bore mute witness to their claim on this land. Like the Chatfields, they were of Albemarle County. Unlike the Chatfields, they did not own any piece of it.

Last night, the women dressed Alafin. They tied his legs together and his arms to his side. They closed his eyes by placing pennies underneath the lids. They tied his jaw shut with soft ribbons. Rigor mortis would set in within seven hours and sometimes earlier, so they took care to dress him promptly and properly.

The nights were still cool so the body was left in the death house built inside the earth near the ice house. In the winter the ground was too hard to dig a grave. Bodies—as many as four—were placed in shelves on the mausoleum dug into the side of the hill. When spring thaws came, the bodies were removed and put into the ground. Winter deaths were not as dreaded as summer deaths. Even if the body was packed in ice, it would go off quickly. No matter how much money was offered to the children to fan the bodies to keep the flies off, they were too frightened to sit next to death. On a blistering July or August day, Lutie insisted the bodies be buried within three hours. If Father Manlius couldn’t preside, she or
Henley would do the honors. The stench so demoralized everyone that getting the body buried took precedence over an ordained minister. Alafin was lucky; he died in the springtime and got the benefit of the Very Reverend Manlius.

Big Muler moved the coffin to the grave site with no help from anyone. He hauled it on his back from the death house over the blooming meadows to the neatly maintained graveyard. His performance of power had the desired effect on other young men at the ceremony. Big Muler stood behind Di-Peachy. Her jaw was tight.

Lutie turned her head and glanced at them. Thank God for Big Muler, she thought. The murder of Alafin shook her. Not that she liked him. Alafin was obsequious to whites and treacherous to blacks, but he was also a young man in his prime, and his labor was valuable. Lutie surveyed the faces surrounding the grave. It occurred to her that news of the war might strike them differently than it struck her. Even though Jennifer Fitzgerald had hinted darkly at an uprising, Lutie did not believe her servants would murder her in her bed. Yet, one of her people had killed Alafin. She stared at each face: Braxton’s clean, strong features already creased with care; Sin-Sin; Tincia, creamy brown, pretty and empty-headed; Peter, too pretty for Lutie’s taste; Boyd, a fat little moon face; Ernie June, dark as walnut stain; Frederica, long and narrow like a silent flame, her baby in her arms. The others, heads bowed, wouldn’t kill anyone, but they might run off, one by one.

Lutie believed that these people had been entrusted to her care. She was the mistress of a great house, one of the finest homes in Virginia, which was to say in the civilized world. To her befell their religious training, assignment of duties, routine, and reward. It never once crossed her mind that the white race might not be superior to the black, indeed, to all other races on the face of the earth. Surely this was God’s will or why would the whites have conquered the others?

Henley had said that someday he wanted to free the servants. Lutie, whatever her reservations about slavery, had no reservations about the cost of such an action. How could they afford to pay these people a wage? Henley said that if you paid them, then you didn’t have to take care of them. In fact, it would be cheaper to free them. Lutie’s argument was, Free them for what? Where would they go, and what would they
do? One would pay them a wage, but still be responsible for them. With a few exceptions, such as Sin-Sin and Di-Peachy, these people couldn’t think for themselves. She, Lutie Chalfonte, was responsible for them to her peers and to God. Lutie never asked anyone if they wanted to be taken care of, but then she wouldn’t have gotten a straight answer. No, Lutie was convinced no matter what, no matter when, the white race would have to care for the black.

She hated funerals. Her mind went back to Jimmy’s funeral. The services for the burial of a child are exquisitely painful. She could hear Very Reverend Manlius intone, “O Merciful Father, whose face the angels of thy little ones do always behold in heaven; Grant us steadfastly to believe that this thy child hath been taken into the safekeeping of thine eternal love; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

A wail from Tincia brought her back to Alafin’s funeral.

The Very Reverend Manlius finished. “Suffer us not at our last hour for any pains of death to fall from thee.”

Peter placed a restraining hand on Tincia’s heaving shoulders. He had no sympathy for her grief. He was glad Alafin was dead. He wanted Tincia all to himself.

Frederica handed her infant over the open grave to Boyd, who was standing on the other side. The five other small babies of Chatfield were likewise passed over the coffin. The servants believed that if this ritual was not performed, the soul of the dead would snatch the babes and force them to accompany him on his journey to the afterlife.

Following the service, Lutie and the Very Reverend Manlius walked back to the big house. Sin-Sin and Di-Peachy followed at a discreet distance.

“Thank you for officiating, Father Manlius.”

“A duty, no matter how sad, that brings me to your beautiful home and your bracing company.”

“Thank you, Father. I, too, look forward to your company. I’m hoping we can discuss the scriptures over lunch.”

“Indeed. This is the twenty-ninth, is it not?”

“Yes,” Lutie replied.

“This is the day Noah was believed to have quit his ark.”

“I expect the poor man ate so much seafood his stomach rose and fell with the tide.”

Ascension Day may have gotten Christ off the earth, but Geneva was stuck right here. The smoke confused her. She didn’t mind the whine of cannon overhead, but she didn’t reckon with the huge clouds of smoke that artillery fire creates. Coughing and sputtering, she kept the reins in her left hand and held her empty pistol in her right. Her squad trotted through the noise of war games organized by Mars Vickers. Clods of earth were shot into the air on her left, just far enough away to give her a margin of safety.

“Tighter, boys!” Captain Brown shouted, rallying his group. They trotted on only to see Benserade’s men come riding toward them at a hard gallop. The earth rumbled underneath Geneva. Even though she knew another large cavalry force was coming, she wasn’t ready for the tremendous vibration or the shock of horse slamming into horse. She didn’t generate equivalent force. A horse at a trot is no match for a horse at a gallop. Dancer squealed. A forearm caught her on the chest, but she stayed mounted.

“Hard right!” Brown bellowed.

She heeled and moved through the throng at a diagonal. They’d never get out of this without getting the shit beat out of them. To her surprise, Captain Brown’s diagonal movement worked, and she was clear of the melee. The entire operation took only four minutes, but it seemed much longer.

“Assemble on the parade grounds,” Brown ordered.

The men, still on horseback, lined up by company on the parade ground. Mars, sweating, faced them on a roan he had picked up from a West Virginia farmer a couple of weeks ago.

“Brown, you did the right thing. You wheeled in time to make the blow a glancing one. If you’d met Benserade’s men
head-on, there wouldn’t be one of you sitting on a horse. Now I know some of you boys want to draw sabers and charge. Let the Yankees do that. They don’t know jack shit about cavalry warfare anyway.” Some men laughed. Mars wiped his arm across his forehead. “This time I want Brown’s men to reconnoiter Area Red. Okay, boys, ride on.”

As Geneva, Nash, and Banjo slowly rode off, they strained to catch word of their opponents’ war game orders. Today they bore the brunt of the action. Tomorrow it would be their turn to be the hunter.

Major Vickers displayed his genius by simulating every conceivable battle condition, short of live ammunition and death. He infuriated his men by insisting they no longer turn over their mounts to their servants. Each man had to rub down his own horse and inspect his own tack. Mars said repeatedly, “Your life depends on the condition of your body, the condition of your horse, and the condition of your tack. You can have the best horse in the company, but what good is it if your girth breaks while you’re under fire?”

One night during a hard rain and without warning, Mars ordered them to mount up. The men staggered out of their tents, saddled up, and rode in the driving rain for two hours. Vickers’s men were gaining a reputation as the toughest unit in the cavalry. They swaggered before the infantry and artillery. The sight of another cavalry command produced instant challenges, Mars finally had to forbid betting on racing or jumping against other cavalry units. He let it be known unofficially that he didn’t want to embarrass the other officers and men. This endeared him further to his troops.

Mars kept counsel. Any man in his command could walk in and present an idea or grievance. No need was too small for his attention. He walked the lines at night; he questioned the servants as to the health and condition of their masters. Moreover, he never asked a man to do what he himself wouldn’t do.

Area Red, thick with woods and hedgerow, was a cavalryman’s nightmare. Brown told the men to break formation and string out over the terrain. They were to search for any sign of the enemy. A low road cut through the woods. Geneva moved away from the others and headed toward the edge of the road. A rifle cracked over her head.

“You’re dead.” An infantryman spat tobacco on the ground. “Tie the red bandanna around your cap.”

Furious and somewhat frightened, Geneva shouted, “What makes you think you’d be that good a shot!”

“Like a demonstration, precious darling?” His voice dripped with sarcasm. He put his rifle to his shoulder and aimed it straight up. “Throw your cap in the air, snot nose.”

Geneva tossed her yellow cap up as high as she could.

The rifleman bagged it. Triumphantly, he retrieved the cap. “Tie a red bandanna around it!”

She did and trotted back to Captain Brown.

“Dead?”

The rules were that she couldn’t say how she had been killed. If the others didn’t see the death, then they would have to draw their own conclusions.

“You shouldn’t have strayed so far,” Nash chided.

As they emerged from the woods, three supply wagons rested on a road cutting through a meadow. A slight rise on the far side of the meadow could conceal troops.

Brown peered through his binoculars. “Could be a trap. Sam, take Nash and Banjo and investigate.”

Banjo and Sam led the way; Nash lagged behind.

No signs of life greeted them. Sam waved his hat, and the other men in the company joined them.

“Grab everything you can out of the wagons. Fast!”

Mars had told them never to try and move a wagon, but rather to sling grain and other supplies over the front of their saddles and ride off. Any papers or maps were often of the utmost importance and should be placed inside the saddlebags. Money or other valuables would be shared equally among the troops.

In the middle of pillaging their booty, Nash saw a movement in the woods. He called softly to Brown. “Ten degrees off your right, Captain.”

Brown looked through his binoculars. He saw infantrymen moving from tree to tree in the woods he and his men had just ridden through, but they were too far away to be a problem.

Suddenly Banjo shouted, “Here they come!”

A small detachment of cavalry appeared on the meadow’s rise. Brown’s unit couldn’t flee back into the woods. They’d have to make a run for it over open fields.

“Back to the camp!” Brown ordered.

Forty men and forty horses burnt the wind getting back to camp. They discarded much of their fake booty in the process. Their pursuers caught up with them in fifteen minutes’ time.

Mars, leading the pursuers, dismounted and clapped his hand on Brown’s back. “What’d you learn today, Captain?”

“To post a lookout. My eyes were bigger than my belly.”

Mars caught sight of Geneva. “Who killed you?”

“An infantryman hidden in the brush by the low road.”

“What were you doing that far from the others? That’s the edge of Area Red, Chatfield.”

“I didn’t hear anything, and I didn’t see the harm in extending the line a little.”

“Well, now you know, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And take that ridiculous bandanna off your cap. I don’t like to think of you dead.”

Last night at Kate Vickers’s home, Henley sparkled. He charmed the ladies while maintaining strict propriety. He felt young again. He adored Kate Vickers.

He also made some progress with other commissary officers yesterday. Everyone agreed that the state should be divided into districts of supply. Henley argued that certain wealthy businessmen and tradesmen should be made commissioners, civilian counterparts to the military officers. He thought that by using the businessmen as commissioners, the thieves would police the thieves.