High Hearts (37 page)

“Why, thank you, queen.”

Her adoring eyes grew larger. “You are the handsomest man in the world!”

The men howled with laughter and catcalled. Mars held up his hand. “The lady exhibits peerless judgment.”

They laughed even longer.

“May I get on your horse?” she inquired.

“If you tell me your name.”

“Elizabeth Pember.” She curtseyed. “And what is yours, sir?”

“Mine,” Mars said, grandly sweeping his cap off his head,
“is Mars Elige Vickers. Now if you hold my hand, Lieutenant Cracker will lift you up.”

Banjo picked her up as if she were a treasured heirloom. Mars put her in front of him in the saddle.

“Can we charge now?”

The other children crowded around. “Let’s play cavalry! Oh, please, Mr. Vickers.”

“I am hopelessly outnumbered. I surrender,” Mars gaily called out. “Banjo, Nash, Jimmy, hey, Sam, come on! Grab a little Confederate, and we’ll show them maneuvers.” He called to a few others until each of the seventeen children was sitting with a cavalryman.

They walked, trotted, and cantered. The children squealed with delight. The men showed them how to ride in a line, in twos, in fours, and what a regimental alignment was. They drew sabers and mock charged one another. Mars told Elizabeth that when in danger if you could wheel right, and he executed the maneuver, you had a chance because you could fire with your right hand. After a half hour of this, he trotted to the schoolhouse door.

Geneva rode up next to him with the husky boy.

“Jimmy, what do you think of my youngest recruit?”

“I think she proves, Colonel, that a lady can fight as effectively as a gentleman.”

He kissed Elizabeth on her head. “This lady can.”

Elizabeth twisted around and wrapped her arms around Mars’s neck. “I love you, Mr. Mars Elige Vickers, and when I grow up, I’m going to marry you.”

He kissed her in return. “Honey, you can do better than me.

Kate Vickers’s rooms emitted a golden glow. Filled with officers bedecked in gold braid, gold epaulettes, gold sashes, red sashes, green sashes flecked with gold, her world reeked of riches. Here and there a Richmond lady in her finery, wearing a spot of mint green or lively peach satin, stood out like a sugared gumdrop. Contrasted to this brilliantly dressed crowd were the politicians, correctly dressed in evening black. They looked like undertakers.

Henley managed to extricate himself from an inebriated general who was decrying the fact that his wife, a simmering volcano, at last overflowed when the price of tea hit $18 a pound. Calico was $1.75 a yard. The general’s domestic battle occupied him more than anything in the field.

Moving quickly away from the old windbag, Henley backed into Kate and almost knocked her down.

“We seem destined to collide,” she said with good humor.

“I’m a clumsy ox.” He smiled apologetically.

“You have met our esteemed Vice-President, Alexander Stephens, I trust.”

The Vice-President, a man much shorter than the titanic Henley, nodded perfunctorily, then launched into his favorite subject to Henley and a small group of officers whose faces glistened with ambition and self-congratulation.

“Our President, a physically courageous man, lacks the gift of administration.” Alexander Stephens, a ruthless monologist, dropped his poison in the well. The Vice-President implied that he himself possessed vast administrative skills.

“I cannot presume to judge a man when I lack the essential knowledge of his task,” Henley demurred.

The other men liked that reply. Stephens did not.

“Modesty may be a virtue in other times, Colonel, but in this crisis where we have lost everything gained last summer, those men who can lead must come forward.” He frowned, then remembered Kate and added, “And our ladies, too. If we had a political leader to equal your social majesty, I should harbor no fear for our fledgling nation.”

A dazzling smile was his reward. But before the Vice-President could continue, Henley firmly said, “We must each play our part.” He glanced at the other officers. “For myself, as a soldier, I am removed from politics. I believe firmly, sir, that the military must never influence the civilian branches of government.”

Vice-President Stephens sighed mockingly, “Ah, the military—every man a hero.”

“You’re in no danger,” Henley replied. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen.”

Kate followed him. “You can’t expect any assistance from him in the future.”

He was grateful she liked him enough to be direct. “Mrs. Vickers, even if I had the brains to be a politician, I don’t have the stomach.”

“People are imperfect instruments, but they must be coordinated for the greater good, even the pompous buffoons.”

“That man is not a pompous buffoon, he is a virtuoso of discontent!”

She touched his sleeve. “You’re worried, Colonel Chatfield.”

“The Yankees are moving toward us like a cloud of gilded locusts. I don’t know how we can withstand their superior numbers or their wealth,” he whispered.

“We’re living inside a question mark.” She smiled seraphically.

Lutie finished reading chapter 25 in the first book of Samuel. David takes the heroic Abigail to wife as well as Ahinoam. Michal, his other wife, was given away by Saul to another man, Phalti. The chapter ended there, so Lutie tried to remember from past readings if David had done anything about this. She could understand a man going to bed with different women, but marrying them! The feeding and care of multitudes of wives and subsequent children must have brought more worries and squabbles than happiness. She thought that monogamy was the beginning of democracy. Monogamy might go against nature, but it certainly made one’s social and emotional life infinitely easier. Easier on the purse strings, too.

The news from the front was finally turning for the better. The exciting episode on everyone’s lips was General J.E.B. Stuart’s ride under the broadside of Federal gunboats on the York River. His cavalry was blocked by a large force of Pennsylvania cavalry on Telegraph Road between Yorktown and Williamsburg. He and his men escaped by brazenly tearing along the beach under the noses of both the army and navy.

Geneva wrote that she was on the other side of Telegraph Road and her unit had missed the fun.

General Joseph E. Johnston, in charge of all Southern troops on the peninsula, faced two-to-one odds. But he still held his ground, giving the people hope.

Henley wrote that last Thursday at Kate Vickers’s soiree, the Vice-President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, publicly criticized President Davis to such a degree that Henley felt compelled to defend Davis even though he himself
loathed the man’s policies. The Confederates had one party, namely the government. The Union had two parties, Republican and Democrat, the defunct Whigs scattering according to personal preference. Since the Confederacy lacked a party out of power, there was no effective way to channel criticism or develop alternate plans. Lutie thought in jest that she could form a ladies’ party. They couldn’t do any worse than the men in power.

The other concern for Henley was the state’s tobacco crop. Hard currency vanished, and Virginia needed tobacco to trade with Europe.

Her evening lesson read, her mail attended to, Lutie donned her shawl to go for an evening stroll. A light cool trend followed a day of rain, and Lutie hated to be cold.

The huge weathervanes on top of the stable pointed east. Foals nuzzled their mothers’ flanks, the light breeze flopped their little tails.

She wandered down to Sin-Sin’s kiln. After three days of firing, Sin-Sin was ready to remove her new pots.

One of the little girls assisting Sin-Sin stumbled.

“Slue-foot!” Sin-Sin barked. “Watch yo’ step!”

“Good crop?” Lutie peeked inside the long oven.

“Oncet I gets the ash off—well, mebbe.” Sin-Sin never counted her chickens before they hatched.

A monumental pot, four feet high, sat on a ledge at the end of the kiln. “How are you ever going to get that monster down?”

“Braxton and Big Muler’ll do it.”

“I love the shape. You must have been an ancient Greek in another life.”

“Well, I’s an old woman in this one!”

“You’ll be pleased to know that Ernie June soaked burdock roots in whiskey. She’d perish before she’d admit she was trying your cure for headache.”

“Ha!” Sin-Sin clapped. “I’d soak it in hemlock fo’ her.”

“You two are like oil and water.”

“No, us two’s like right and wrong. I’s right and she’s wrong.”

“Sin-Sin, you’re incorrigible.”

“Ow wee!” Sin-Sin gazed with joy at the huge pot. The glaze, a streaked blue over dragonfly green, was perfect.

The sound of running footsteps brought both women out of
the kiln. Timothy, out of breath, grabbed Lutie’s hand. “Miz Lutie, Miz Lutie! Come to the big house. Di-Peachy been hurt!”

They found Di-Peachy seated at the kitchen table. Big Muler, scratches over his face, was dabbing at the corner of her mouth which was bleeding. As it was after sunset, Ernie was in her cabin.

“What did you do to her!” Lutie screamed to Big Muler.

“He didn’t do anything,” Di-Peachy replied. “He saved me, Miss Lutie. Don’t yell at him.”

Muler, mute, kept dabbing at her mouth.

“I’m sorry, Big Muler.”

“Thass all right,” he said in his curiously soft voice.

“You look like the dogs got at you under the porch,” Sin-Sin blurted.

“Let me get some alcohol to put on your mouth, and Muler could stand some on his face, too.” Lutie hurried upstairs, grabbed her medicine kit, and came back to the kitchen, where she took care of Di-Peachy and Sin-Sin doctored Big Muler. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“I was on the way back from town,” Di-Peachy explained. “Reddy Neutral Taylor, in his delivery wagon, drove out of the Fitzgerald road. He stopped his wagon, then he stopped mine and wouldn’t let me pass. He said ugly things to me, and I slapped him. Then he grabbed me and tried to have his way with me.” She began to cry. Lutie patted her shoulder. “Big Muler was down at Rives Mill and heard me screaming. He flew out of the woods and pulled Reddy off of me … and then …”

“Is he dead?”

“Yes. Big Muler broke his neck.” Di-Peachy began to sob.

“Mercy of God!” Sin-Sin knew if Big Muler was found out, he’d be killed himself.

“Did anyone see you?” Lutie asked Big Muler.

“No, ma’am.”

“What did you do with the body?”

Di-Peachy regained control now. “We rolled him off the road. I told Big Muler to drag him through bramble to make it look like he was caught in his own traces. Then we drove the wagon off the road, twisted the traces, and Big Muler turned the wagon over on top of Reddy’s body. We tried to make it look like an accident as best we could.”

“Even if it was an accident, the constable will ride up this hill.” Lutie sat down.

“Go to Richmond,” Sin-Sin said. “He can come with us.”

Lutie turned to Big Muler again. “We’ll have to get you out of Richmond eventually, Muler. If anyone puts two and two together, you’re very hard to hide.”

Lutie observed Di-Peachy’s mouth. “Here, hold this on. Doesn’t want to stop bleeding. Do you think you can travel?”

“Yes.”

“Did Reddy—force you?”

“Big Muler got there first.”

“Tell me, whose idea was it to make this look like an accident?” Lutie probed. Sin-Sin grew alert.

“Mine,” Di-Peachy lied.

“You showed great presence of mind.”

Lutie and Sin-Sin looked at one another. Both knew in their bones that Muler was the one who had killed Alafin.

“They’re like ants swarming up a hill.” Lutie was commenting on the mob shouting and pushing outside the passport office.

“You should have seen them last week before you arrived.” Kate interlocked the fingers of her right and left hands to tighten the soft ivory gloves. “Odd, Mrs. Chatfield, that so many are clamoring to escape Richmond while you and your ladies clamor to get in.”

“These aren’t real people, Mrs. Vickers. These are the flotsam and jetsam of the Confederacy.”

Kate laughed. “Our cabinet couldn’t scurry away fast enough.”

“Just so.”

“President Davis made Varina leave, of course, because of her delicate condition.”

Lutie said, “It’s bad enough to bear a child in tranquil circumstances. I’d hate to do it with bombs bursting all around me. The little thing would be blown out like a percussion cap!”

“I regret that your daughter isn’t here so that we could all go to the pedigree parties before McClellan descends upon us with his hordes.”

“The Lees, the Randolphs, the Harrisons, Cabells, Ritchies, Standards, and Valentines—I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I haven’t seen Martha Pierce Standard since I was twenty-six.”

“Do you know she boasted that she had never read a book!”

“As I said, Kate, I haven’t seen Martha since I was twenty-six.”

“Lutie, why don’t you move to Richmond? You could spend half the year here and half the year at Chatfield. You affect me like a tonic.”

“Better a tonic than a purge, my dear.” Lutie cherished the praise. Kate Vickers was twenty years younger than Lutie if she was being honest about her birthday, thirteen years younger if she was not. Being friends with such a young woman gave her a lift. She’d grown weary of being the august matriarch of a great estate, and if she heard one more woman her own age complain about gallstones, fallen arches, or tipped female organs, she would surely perish of tedium. “Is it true that poor Mrs. Lee is a martyr to arthritis?”

“Must be a trial for her and for him, of course. What a handsome man, and he stays quite faithful to her. Do you know that when this war started, he had more dark hair than gray?”

“Show you what worry will do to a man—or woman, for that matter.”

Kate glanced over her shoulder to check on Sin-Sin and her own servant, Evangelista Settle Egypt, a fine-looking woman who spoke with a French accent and told everyone she was from Haiti, even though she was born and bred in Augusta County. “Mars says he thinks Lee might prove to be an inspired man in the field, but Johnston is thorough. Lee will never get the chance, of course. President Davis finds Lee is
the only man who can talk to our conflicting and ambitious officers.”