High Hearts (36 page)

It wasn’t until she curled up in her bedroll that she remembered it was her first wedding anniversary.

“She’s still a relentless gossip, but other than that, I’d say she has enacted a remarkable transformation.” Lu tie was writing to Poofy about Jennifer Fitzgerald among other subjects. The sun peeped over the horizon.

“Miz Lutie!” Sin-Sin barged into the room. “Boyd’s run off!” Sin-Sin reported this with equal measures of delicious malice and worry.

“What are you talking about?”

“Picked her room cleaner than a chicken! She’s packed up and gone!”

Lutie capped the inkwell, threw back her shoulders, and headed for the kitchen. The door hung open like a broken jaw. Ernie was kneading, her tears falling into the dough.

“Ernie, is it true?”

“Uh huh.”

“I can’t believe it.”

Sin-Sin, arms crossed over her bosom, leaned against the table like a grim, obsidian caryatid. “As is the way of Barabbas!”

Ernie picked up the dough and slapped it on Sin-Sin’s face. Sin-Sin, helpless while removing the stuff, was then knocked onto the floor by Ernie, who held her rolling pin over Sin-Sin’s head for the crowning blow.

Lutie grabbed Ernie’s huge arm and hung on with every ounce in her. “Don’t you dare, Ernie! You harm one hair on her head, and I’ll whip you before God and Chatfield.”

“I doan care!” Ernie screamed.

Sin-Sin rolled over, still frantically peeling the dough off her face. “You outta yo’ head!”

“Ernie, give me that pin,” said Lutie firmly.

Ernie pulled her arm away. “How do I know that nigger witch ain’t comin’ fo’ me?”

“Because she is leaving the kitchen this instant.”

Sin-Sin did not budge. “I can’t leave you ’lone with a crazy woman.”

“She’s not crazy. She’s suffered a terrible shock. Go on now. Please!”

Sin-Sin made a great show of storming out the door. She planted herself firmly on the other side, ear to the crack.

“Tell me what happened,” said Lutie in a calm voice.

“I gets up like always. I comes up and starts the bread. Calls my girl and she gone.”

“You must have had a warning.”

“My tongue too short to tell you all that I knows.”

“Would you like me to stretch it for you?” Lutie’s voice stiffened.

“Things go wrong since Sumner gone. Boyd, she got herself mixed up with that no-good buck Grizz over at the Fitzgerald place. Every time Miz Jennifer come to call upon you, he finagle a way to come along. He stuffs her head with crazy ideas. She like a rag doll, and he jes jammin’ in straw. That boy was carryin’ her fast.”

“What made her think she wouldn’t get caught?”

“When she talk crazy to me, I tell her ’member Peter and Tincia and she laugh and say they dumb. Her Grizz got everythin’ figgered out. He gonna get to the Yankee lines and offer hisself to do whatever they needs. He say if Bumba can do it, he can do it.” Ernie took a deeply ashamed breath. “And my girl done took that pass.”

Sin-Sin’s eyebrows flew up to her turban. She whispered to herself, “All this time she had it.” Boyd would never again be underrated by Sin-Sin.

“You know if she gets caught, I’ll have to make an example of her.”

“Doan beat her! I wants to do that myself!”

“I’m not going to beat her. She’ll be severely restricted. Naturally, I think Big Fitz, when he catches Grizz, will have that boy stretched on four stakes and whipped raw.”

“I hope he kills him.” Ernie snarled. “Foolin’ with my girl.”

“Where’s Braxton?”

“He got sense. He down at the stable.” She wiped her
eyes. “I knows Boyd was up to no good. She sweep out the house after sundown. She know that mean bad luck. She invitin’ bad luck.”

Lutie said in a resigned voice, “I suppose I had better check my jewelry and see what she stole.”

“She din’ steal nothin’ from you.” Ernie’s voice was raw.

“How do you know that?”

“ ’Cause she took every penny I save instead.” Ernie, devastated, began to cry again. “She took one thousand and two hundred dollars. Been savin’ for twenty-three years. Every time I gets a dime or a thank you, I puts it away, ’cept for the five dollars from Miz Vickers which I give to Boyd outright so as to encourage her.”

Stunned, Lutie’s voice cracked. “Twelve hundred dollars?”

“And some odd cents.”

“What were you going to do with that money?”

“I was gonna talk to Mr. Henley when the time be right. I was gonna buy Braxton free. Then he can work for Mr. Henley, save like I saves, and buy land. Back up where that trash Reddy planted corn. I was hopin’ Mr. Henley see things my way.”

Until now, Lutie had never appreciated the full extent of Ernie June’s ambition. “I believe that Mr. Chatfield would have agreed to your plan. He admires foresight and hard work.” Her throat was cottony. “Tell me, Ernie, did you hope to be free, too?”

“No, Miz Lutie. I’s too old.”

“Did you ever confide your plan to Boyd? Perhaps she was angry that Braxton would come first.”

“I never tell her sech a thing. Braxton the first born. Thass the way it is. She born to be the cook in a great house, the greatest house in the South.”

“Did you ever mention your plan to Braxton?”

“Yes, but only oncet.”

Lutie figured that he had told his sister in a weak moment or during a sibling fight. “I see. Ernie, would you like to rest today? We can manage.”

“No, if I sits home alone, I feels worse.”

Lutie handled the rolling pin. “Does this have anything to do with Reddy Neutral Taylor?” It was a hunch.

“No. My girl not mixed up in his scheme! Peter pay for messin’ with that man with his life.”

“Maybe Braxton was dealing with him.”

“Oh, Lawd, Miz Lutie, don’t say that!” Ernie trembled.

After further consoling of Ernie, Lutie withdrew to the library. She set aside her letter to Poofy and wrote one to Henley. Alafin, Peter, and Tincia were murdered, perhaps by the same hand and perhaps not. Now Boyd and her lover escaped. Furious though she was with Boyd, she didn’t want her to wind up dead. The next thing she did was to write a letter notifying the authorities that a servant from Chatfield had been abducted. Why condemn Boyd out of hand? Love, sometimes, is an abduction.

Lutie put down the letter. Geneva’s letters were more precious to Lutie than her jewelry collection.

She opened another letter. This one was from Colonel Jeffrey Windsor. He apologized for bothering her, and he knew that the loss of her son must still sadden her daily. However, he needed her if she could be spared. A great battle would be fought to defend Richmond sometime this summer. McClellan had to move up the Peninsula. Would she come to Richmond? He would send a telegram when he thought the contest was near at hand. Would she also ask her invaluable lady friends, too?

Scribbled on the bottom of Jeffrey’s letter was a postscript from Maud Windsor: P.S. Sir Walter Scott has a great deal to answer for!

Lutie agreed with her. Romances glorifying personal combat infected males of all ages, to say nothing of the ladies who thought themselves damsels of purity inspiring their heroes.

Folded in Jeffrey’s letter with apologies for not being sent under separate cover was a brief note from Kate Vickers. Lutie didn’t mind. Getting mail anywhere was hit or miss. Mrs. Vickers offered Lutie hospitality, and the other Charlottesville ladies were equally welcome. Her husband estimated that there would be a few thousand wounded from the projected battle. Experienced nurses would be a godsend.

“Sin-Sin,” Lutie called.

“What?”

“How would you like to go with me to Richmond? It will be more of the Delevan Hotel when we get there. Won’t be a pleasure visit.”

“When does we leave?”

“Whenever Jeffrey Windsor sends a telegram telling us the battle is nigh.”

“Why doan I pack today ’cept for the best dresses? Iffin’ we has to go in a hurry, we be ready.” Sin-Sin, thrilled to go
on a trip no matter how hard the work might be, thought a second and then carefully asked, “Does you think you wants to see more torn-up young mens?”

Lutie placed the letters on her desk, one on top of the other, and walked over to Sin-Sin. She put her arm around the older woman’s waist. “Nurse our sick, not our sorrows.”

Outside of Williamsburg, where King’s Mill Wharf Road intersects with the road leading into the College of William and Mary, were a handful of good clapboard houses and a small school. Mars halted his men near these dwellings where the tree line met the meadow. They could melt into the woods if necessary, but since McClellan moved at the rate of two miles per day, no one was immediately worried.

At the foot of the meadow, the children erected a maypole, gaily skipping around it, colorful streamers in hand. When they saw the cavalry, they jumped up and down, waving and shouting.

“I believe we are being summoned by the next generation.” Mars’s teeth glistened underneath his auburn moustache.

“Ain’t gentlemanly to refuse a lady’s invite.” Banjo waited for Mars to order him forward or to dismount.

“Why don’t we go down and water the horses?” Geneva suggested, riding forward. “Besides which, children know secret paths and swamps that adults never think about.”

“That’s right,” Banjo agreed. “The cavalry is the eyes and ears of the army.”

“Those are little eyes and little ears. Come on.” Mars briskly walked forward.

The regiment followed, and the tiny village was swallowed up in soldiers to the children’s delight.

“Horse soldiers! Horse soldiers!” shouted the children at the maypole. They couldn’t decide whether to drop their streamers and run to the soldiers or to keep singing.

Banjo was drawn to children like a fly to molasses. “How would you like to help the Confederate army?”

“Yay, yay!” they hollered in unison.

“You all finish runnin’ around the maypole and sing. You’ll make us right happy to see your celebration this day.”

Enthusiastically the children danced, their bright ribbons behind them. One by one, the men drifted over after seeing to their horses. Soon the children were surrounded and watched by several companies of silent men. A few swallowed hard. Most of them had not seen their own children for months. The poorer men had not seen their children for over a year.

When the children finished wrapping the maypole, they crowned their queen, a blonde girl of perhaps nine. The men applauded. An awkward moment of silence occurred when the planned festivities were over. The men stared at the children, and the children stared right back at them.

Benserade spoke up. “Thank you.”

“When I grow up, I’m gonna be a horse soldier just like you! I’m gonna kill hundreds of Yankees,” a husky boy called out.

“I hope you never have to kill anyone,” Nash replied. “That’s why we’re fighting this war.”

The husky boy, however, nurtured fevered dreams of glory. “Oh, please don’t end it yet!”

The men laughed.

Mars, having questioned a man at the dry goods store, rode into the group. The little May queen bounded toward him. “You are the first best!” Her crown wobbled on her curls.