High Hearts (35 page)

Poofy put the letter next to her breast and pressed it against her heart. In the back of her mind like God’s whisper was the incantation “Love.”

Henley returned for a few days to Albemarle County to reach an agreement with Reddy Neutral Taylor over thirty-five horses Taylor was offering for sale. The lunatics running the army decided that when a cavalryman lost his mount, he would drop out of his company and fall in with a specially designated Company Q. There he stayed until he could purchase another mount as the state had no intention of supplying him with one. Granted, most cavalrymen were from well-to-do families, but yanking a man out of the ranks and sending him on a wild goose chase for a horse was stupid. Henley thought his heart would stop when he heard the news. Then, too, some cavalrymen lacked funds. What were they supposed to do, fall in with the infantry?

General Gorgas, no friend of the scheme, did stand by the notion that individual contractors had a right to sell horses. He thought that encouraging businessmen would get the job done. Henley agreed with him there. Christ, set up another government bureau to do a job, and they’d all die, choked in red tape. These enterprising types were to sell at approved government prices. Reddy Neutral Taylor, presenting himself as a friend of both Henley and the Confederacy, offered thirty-five horses at $150 a head. The nerve of the man galled Henley. After loathsome bargaining, he reduced the price to $100 a head, still highway robbery, but Henley paid the thieving skunk and arranged for the horses to be shipped to Colonel Vickers at camp. Through Kate he learned that Vickers was preparing for a major battle next spring, probably in defense of Richmond. Company Q was anathema to Mars so he collected monies from his men for a pool of horses. For those that could not pay, Vickers made up the difference.

Henley strode into his library, appalled at his dealings with Reddy Neutral Taylor and chilled from the cold weather. Snow clouds scraped the cupola atop Chatfield’s main stable.

“I could scoop the sky out with a spoon today,” Lutie said, as she took a seat next to him by the fire. “Henley, you look so tired. I know having to pass the day with Reddy is unpleasant. He’s swelling up like a slug in beer, that one! Try to put him out of your mind.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “It isn’t just that. We’re losing this war, Lutie. Ever since Sumner passed on, the portents and the events spell doom.”

“It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

“This is dark indeed. I think I knew following President Tyler’s funeral cortège that darkness was enveloping us. And when Captain O. Jennings Wise was carried through the town, people were distraught. I tell you I’ve never seen such an outpouring. You couldn’t get within a block of St. James Church, even in the slush and the snow. People shivered and wept.”

“He was a popular boy and a hero.”

“A hero? My God, we asked him to fight off seventy-five hundred Federals at Roanoke Island with one-third that number. He was a lamb led to slaughter! So many lambs.” Henley’s eyes clouded.

“Over so many centuries.”

“What, Lutie?” Henley blinked.

“The human race puts one bloody foot in front of the other and calls it progress.” She furiously knitted, her needles clicking. “History is a vile mess.”

“But this time we’re part of it. I’m part of it! Sometimes I wake up and I think of the Revolutionary War. Was it my father’s nightmare? Was it like this? Could the leaders have been as foul, as degraded, as monumentally stupid as that gaunt idiot in Washington?”

“I expect some were.”

“I knew we were on the way down when we lost Tennessee and Kentucky. Richmond is flooded with refugees. I don’t know where they sleep at night. The Union controls the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, and Judah P. Benjamin tries to weasel out of the blame. To think I once thought there was genius in that man!” Henley, disgusted, slammed
his hand on the arm of the chair. “They made the damn fool Secretary of State after he failed as Secretary of War. Fremont in Missouri is warning enough. Fremont’s ravings about emancipation ought to chill us to the bone, and he stole the property of any pro-Southern individual. Confiscation. People are thrown out in the streets in the dead of winter, their personal belongings ripped from them! That’s what’s going to happen to us if we don’t wake up.”

“It’s not going to happen to us.”

“I’d like to know why not?”

“Because I will stand at my bedroom window and fire until every last shell of ammunition is spent, that’s why. And then they can come and kill me, because I don’t think I’ll care anymore. I tell you this, husband, my pacifism died the day Sumner did. I am not going down without one hell of a fight. I owe that much to our son.”

“And our daughter.” Henley’s lips compressed.

“I have moments when I think I’ll dress up and join, too.”

“With your ample bosom I don’t think you’d get far.” He smiled.

Happy to see him smile, Lutie called, “Sin-Sin.”

Sin-Sin appeared in an instant. “Yes.”

“Standing around the corner, Sin-Sin?”

“No, I jes happen to be passin’ by.”

“What a notoriously rotten liar you are. Might you inform Ernie June that Mr. Chatfield and I would appreciate two toasty hot toddies?”

“Might could.” Sin-Sin walked toward the kitchen.

“I miss her,” Henley sighed.

“I know there was a time when I didn’t know Sin-Sin, but it is now so far back in my memory that it’s irretrievable.”

“You know what else worries me?”

“Henley, if you’d rest your mind.”

“It was suspending the writ of habeas corpus. Oh, how Jefferson Davis huffed and puffed like the big bad wolf when Lincoln did it at the beginning of the war. Not us! Not Southerners! We are a civilized people who respect the laws. And then he claps martial law on Norfolk and Portsmouth to boot!”

“Norfolk is very rowdy. It’ll get the drunks off the streets.”

“ ‘Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.’ Ha!
Even if we can end this war without losing too much territory, how we can repair the damage to our laws?”

“Henley, I have always thought that men paid entirely too much attention to law instead of to behavior. Take dueling for instance. You could outlaw it tomorrow, but the law isn’t going to stop it.”

“That’s a special case, Lutie. Dueling allows a man to defend his honor without going bankrupt in a court of law.”

Sin-Sin returned. “Hot toddies, jes the way you likes ’em.”

“Thank you, Sin-Sin.” Henley grabbed the cup and quickly put it down because it was hot.

“You can leave us.” Lutie smiled.

“I’s ’fraid I might miss somethin’.”

“Sin-Sin, that’s the point, isn’t it?”

Sin-Sin, grumbling under her breath, retired. Lutie leaned forward. “I hope they don’t know how bad it is.”

“Di-Peachy reads the newspapers and tells them.”

“Henley, how can you say such a thing?”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“The less they know, the better. It’ll confuse them.”

“Lutie, she’s one of them, after all. If you were a servant, wouldn’t you want to know how the war was progressing? If the North wins, the Negro race might be freed.”

“Lincoln is not Fremont. He knows such an action would harden the resolve of the South and turn ordinary citizens into fanatics,” Lutie replied.

“If we win, who is to say that this curse might not be lifted?”

“You and I will never see eye to eye about our special problem.”

“We have to free the slaves, Lutie. I don’t know what they’ll do in Louisiana or Alabama, but here in Virginia we must do it or be in peril for our immortal souls.” His chest heaved.

“Henley, where will they go? What will they do? Who would have them?”

“They can stay right here, but we’ve got to set them free.”

“For God’s sake, Henley, wait until this wretched war is finally over. You can’t leave me here without any authority. What if they leave?”

“You yourself said, ‘Where would they go?’ ”

“Be sensible! How can we pay them? Do we even know
what their labor is worth? How can I run this place? Answer me that! Let sleeping dogs lie.”

He ran his big hand through his thick hair. “I am drawing up manumission papers, effective December 25, 1862. I will instruct our servants that if they wish to leave us, to do so immediately and to be quiet about it. There’s no need in arousing the ire of our neighbors at this delicate time nor in raising false hopes in their servants. Those that wish to stay will be paid half the wage that a white man would get for the same labor. Under the circumstances I think that is fair.”

“Under the circumstances,” Lutie replied, “I would say it’s extraordinary. I don’t agree with you, Henley, but I have no way in which to stop you.”

“I must do this thing. I have talked about it since we were married. I must take the bull by the horns, and may God forgive me if I am mistaken and if I expose you to ridicule.”

“I can take the ridicule. It’s poverty I’m not so sure I can take.”

“We aren’t going to be poor.”

“Even if we are, we’ll manage,” Lutie said without enthusiasm. “You know what my mother used to say: ‘Worse things have happened to nicer people.’ ”

“Your mother also said, ‘What if God is a vegetable?’ ”

“Maybe we have to be crazy to be happy on this earth.” Lutie smiled ruefully.

“In the balance, my dear, have you been happy?” Henley swallowed his drink.

“I have enjoyed isolated moments of great happiness, some of them with you.”

“I think that’s all there is, Lutie. Isolated moments.”

“That’s good enough for me.”

Picket duty irked Geneva, but she didn’t complain. She, Nash, and Banjo watched the column as it rode in fours, followed by infantry, down the road to Yorktown. The three of them sat where a narrow wooded lane intersected Yorktown Road. Procedure was procedure.

When in hostile territory, a mounted man rode forward a half mile in front of an infantry or a cavalry column. Halfway between him and the column marched an advance guard, usually a squadron composed of two companies followed by the main column. Behind the main column about a quarter of a mile rode a rear guard. Once the rear guard passed, the soldiers on picket or vidette duty rejoined the rear guard. Pickets were always posted at intersecting roads and wooded areas.

Standing around made Geneva restless, but when her turn came up for this, she performed it without much complaint. The surrounding low country was good for cavalry except where swamps were located. The smell of brackish water assailed her nostrils. How anyone could live in this kind of terrain mystified Geneva. She pitied people who had no green rolling hills or mountains to guard them.

McClellan was reputed to have one hundred thousand men. Geneva knew, as did everyone, that if the Confederates under General Joseph Johnston had thirty thousand men, it was a miracle. The South waited anxiously behind an eight-mile front sparsely populated with redoubts, rifle pits, and whatever else the engineers could throw up. The situation appeared hopeless, although reinforcements trickled in daily. A drop in the bucket was better than no drop at all.

The lowlands, laced with rivers, streams, and swamps,
provided interesting territory in which to fight. McClellan, his headquarters less than one mile from the house in which Cornwallis had agreed to surrender to Continental forces, boasted that he’d drag Johnston and Davis to that very same house and reenact the surrender. Meanwhile, he talked instead of moved.

Geneva knew that outnumbered though they were, if they could get enough men to dig in and make life unpleasant for McClellan, Gorgeous George, as he was contemptuously called, might lose the opportunity for his desired historical reenact-ment. She figured that the cavalry would be used like a terrier to nip at the Federals’ heels.

The rear guard passed with the usual compliments concerning the vidette. “That’s right, sit on your butt, cavalry boy, while I get fallin’ arches!”

“Think we’ve seen the last of them?” Nash asked.

“Why don’t we wait a bit, as we’re downwind from the swamps.” Banjo knocked the dust off his cap. “If the Yankees don’t kill you, the smell will.”

“Do you hear something?” Nash was alert.

“More cavalry,” Banjo replied.

“I thought the rest of the cavalry was forward.”

“Maybe we’re getting units outside of Stuart’s brigade,” suggested Geneva. “Why don’t we catch them up?”

“Shouldn’t we notify the rear guard?” Nash was a stickler for rules.

“Take us fifteen minutes to reach them unless we go flat out,” said Banjo. “Let’s be hospitable. After all, these wretches might be from some outlandish unit like the Sixth Virginia Cavalry.” Banjo trotted toward the direction of the sound.

“You’re right. Let’s greet them and show them how to behave.” Geneva enjoyed the sun on her face.

Nash, less than enthused, trotted after them.

The sounds of soldiers drew closer. The three turned off of Yorktown Road onto a dirt road. About twenty Federals on a scouting mission bore down on them. They were surprised, too.

Just as Banjo pulled both his Colts, his horse shot toward the Yankees.

“There they are, boys!” Geneva shouted. She looked over her shoulder as though more Confederate troops were behind her.

Nash spurred his horse to join their wild attack. The Federals turned with difficulty on the narrow road, fired a few desultory shots, and beat a hasty retreat. Geneva, Nash, and Banjo chased them for a few hundred yards, then turned and bolted down the dirt road and onto Yorktown Road. They galloped back to the rear guard.

The major in charge of the rear guard posted fifteen additional mounted men in case the Yankees should return.

Riding with the rear, catching his breath, Nash sputtered, “Damned bravest thing I ever saw, Banjo!”

“Brave, hell. My horse ran away with me.”

That night as she made camp, Geneva watched each man perform his pre-battle ritual. Benserade polished and sharpened his sword repeatedly. Sam Wells became unusually hearty. Nash withdrew. Banjo whistled “The Bonnie Blue Flag.” Whether he knew it or not, the only time he whistled that tune was before a fight was coming. Mars studied maps and questioned anyone his men brought in who lived in the area. He wanted to know about every cow path. Geneva read and reread the Lesson of the Day. It was the 34th day of Lent, and Judges 2: 11–11 filled her eye but not her mind. She did note that Joshua lived to be one hundred and ten. She didn’t know if she’d live to be twenty. Her nineteenth birthday, December 21, had been lost in Sumner’s death. Twenty was a number not a reality.