High Hearts (8 page)

“No sunrise shone more radiant than yourself.”

She kissed him again and again, oblivious to the servants around her, each trying to prepare the food or take out Nash’s satchel and one trunk.

He had wrapped a plaid shawl around himself. She took it off. His uniform startled her.

“Where did you get this?”

“Jennifer Fitzgerald organized the women down at Town Hall. They’ve been sewing since April thirteenth, night and day, as I hear it.”

A tartness crept into her voice. “Why wasn’t I told about this?”

“Because we didn’t want to upset you, darling.”

“I could have sewn the uniform.”

“Geneva, look at the braiding on the sleeve. You’re not a professional tailor.”

“Neither is Jennifer Fitzgerald!”

“The ladies performed the cutting, and the tailors put on the colors, the braidings, and so forth. See, I even have a stripe on my trousers.”

“You look very handsome.” She choked back a sob. The uniform somehow made the war real. “Shall we enjoy our breakfast?”

Waffles and molasses languished on Geneva’s plate. Nash gobbled his food.

“How will I write to you? Where will you be?” Geneva’s voice forced through her constricted throat.

“As soon as we’re quartered, I’ll get word to you. Don’t worry, Geneva. The Yankees aren’t going to attack anytime soon. They’re probably as disorganized as we are.” He paused. “Thank God.”

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“Not exactly.”

Bumba, smart-looking in tight breeches, a heavy woolen jacket, and a cape, came into the kitchen from outside. “Everything’s ready.”

The sound of hoofbeats came through the open kitchen door with the cold. Bumba shut the door. Nash rose, drained his coffee cup, and put it down so forcefully it broke. “I’m sorry.” He was embarrassed at his own nervousness.

“Break it all.” Geneva smiled at him. He threw his arms around her and kissed her with all his might. “I will come home. Don’t worry.”

She hung on to him and sobbed. Bumba turned away. He nodded to the men outside. “Master.”

Nash straightened himself. “Yes, of course.”

Bumba handed him his Remington pistol and holster. Nash strapped it on. He snatched a navy greatcoat from a peg on
the wall and threw it over his shoulders. Geneva could see outside the kitchen window that her father and brother waited. “Let me walk you outside.”

He kissed her again, then they pushed open the door.

Sumner smiled at his sister. He, too, was in a uniform. The facings of his frock coat were bright yellow. Henley’s cuffs and collar were a soft blue.

“Little sister, you’ll catch your death!”

She raced over and kissed him, and then turned to her father, stiffly bent over. “Daddy, why are you wearing light blue on your sleeves and collar when Nash and Sumner are in yellow?”

“Theoretically, I’m in the infantry. They’re in the cavalry.”

“Just remember, I’m an engineer in the service of the cavalry!” Sumner burst with enthusiasm.

Geneva lifted her face up to her father, who seemed in his uniform as gray as the sky. “You won’t fight, will you?”

“Only if I have to, sweet lamb. But don’t fret over it. Look at me. I’m fifty. My eyes aren’t too sharp, and I’ve been given strict orders to find and transport provisions. I think I’ll be denied the whiff of gunpowder.” Slight regret laced his deep, resonant voice.

Bumba gave Nash a leg up and then joined Sumner’s servant with the string of extra horses and the two pack mules.

Henley gravely instructed his daughter. “See to your mother. You are her strength now.”

“Yes, Daddy.” She bowed her head. The tears wouldn’t hold back.

“Geneva, we’ll all be back by fall. Don’t cry. This is the most exciting thing to happen to me in my entire life! I wish you could come too!” Sumner thought this viewpoint consoling.

Her eyes glittered. “So do I.” She put her hand on her husband’s boot. Supple, he leaned down and kissed her one last agonizing time.

“What’s to become of us?” she cried.

Nash said gently, “Some things are in the hands of God. We’re like dice thrown on the plains of destiny.” With that he wheeled and trotted away, not looking back. Henley and Sumner followed. Geneva watched until the mist and the snow swallowed them up. Half-frozen, she went back into the house and cried until she thought she’d throw up.

* * *

As the men rode toward town, other men joined them, riding down the long country roads from their estates. Poorer residents of Albemarle County walked toward the train station. Sumner, joyous, chattered with friends, then mindful that he would soon be separating from his father, rejoined Henley and Nash who headed this scraggly, ever swelling column. The sun, pale and loitering, offered no warmth. The snow slowed. Sumner reached in his greatcoat and pulled out Darling Fanny Pan Cake. He cut a plug of this Myers Brothers tobacco and popped it into his mouth.

“Sumner, gentlemen smoke tobacco. They don’t chew it,” Henley chided.

Sumner, now in the army, such as it was, didn’t feel like taking any more orders from his father. “It calms my nerves. Besides, how can I get a light on horseback?”

Henley frowned. “What do you have to be nervous about, my boy? You have no rank, and therefore, you have no responsibility.”

Stung, Sumner replied, “If I earn a rank, I’ll accept it. We all decided to go in as privates.”

Henley couldn’t fathom why most of the sons of good families chose this path. Any man who had attended military school automatically received a junior officer’s rank. Any man formerly in the United States Army retained his rank. In Henley’s day, a scion enlisting could depend upon automatically being granted a lieutenancy. Now it was fashionable to be on the bottom of the heap. He shrugged his shoulders and ignored his son.

Sumner, determined not to let his father whittle him down, pressed on. “I’ll finish this war as a captain, the hard way.”

Henley turned slightly in his saddle to look at the set face chewing his Darling Fanny Pan Cake. “I hope so.” The braid of colonel gleamed on his sleeve and so did the three stars on his narrow collar band. Henley, not a military man, gladly accepted his status as senior officer. He needed weight in order to force some of these tight farmers and sly merchants to comply. He assumed that the government, once settled, would commandeer the railroads. He also needed authority over engineers, switchmen, and the riffraff that ran the trains. Rank was his only protection.

Sumner, so like his sister in many ways, bore no resemblance
at all to Geneva when it came to responsibility. Sumner, groomed to inherit a great house and a great stable, dallied with ladies of Richmond. He was happier throwing up a rough bridge over a friend’s creek or dancing all night than learning the rigor of scientific breeding and the management of an estate. Why Henley had to sit on him for three months just last year to get him to go to Kentucky to buy yearlings. Geneva, on the other hand, soaked up horse genealogies. Henley only had to tell her once. Her gift as a rider was the most remarkable talent Henley had ever seen. A pity Geneva was a woman. She couldn’t race, but she could train them at home. That was some consolation. He thought about changing his will before leaving today, but Sumner and Geneva loved one another. He found no fault with his son there. Sumner was a devoted brother. The children would never fight over the disposition of their inheritance. Sumner would care for Lutie if anything happened to him. God knows, the boy loved his mother. Natural, he supposed. Fathers and sons look out the same window but don’t see the same tree.

Nash noticed the sudden pallor on Sumner’s face under his father’s scrutiny. The loud and cheerful arrival of Greer Fitzgerald, Jennifer Greer Fitzgerald’s son, turned his attention away from the Chatfields. Greer rode up and down the line of men, shouting, whooping, slapping hands. He stopped short of Henley and saluted, then rode a trifle more quietly.

When they reached the outskirts of town, Henley bid his son, son-in-law, and friends good-bye. The men assigned to cavalry units, not yet named or numbered, turned north and rode toward Culpeper. Nash grumbled that they could have been loaded on a train; after all, this was 1861. The Culpeper train station was at least two days away, even riding at a reasonable pace.

Henley split off and rode into the town, which was buzzing with morning activity. At the station he handed over his mount to Timothy, one of the young stable boys he had brought along with him, and told him to return home to Lutie. He gave the boy money to buy a large box of sweets for Lutie. Timothy, a reliable twelve-year-old, would spare the candied peaches but demolish the chocolate. Henley, remembering Timothy’s weakness, rewarded him with two dollars to thoroughly indulge himself. The boy, thankful, pressed Henley’s hand and wished him a safe journey.

The small train station crawled with young men in various, ill-coordinated uniforms. Noise bounced off the walls. Henley accepted a few salutes with the air of one accustomed to deference. Their urgency for excitement would be fulfilled within twenty-four hours. Henley knew these boys would be loaded on a train headed for Harper’s Ferry. A secret communication from John Letcher, the governor, informed Henley about this. This was a courtesy due him as one of the senior officers in Albemarle. The legalities and formalities of secession as well as declaring war were not yet on paper, but Letcher, an intelligent man, grasped the importance of seizing the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. The South’s supplies of ball, cannon, gunpowder, and artillery were nil. Letcher said, “Go.” These boasting, high-spirited young men were going to do just that, unbeknownst to them. The authorities in Richmond tapped out false telegrams declaring the destination of the train as the Portsmouth Navy Yard.

When Henley finally boarded a train heading east for Richmond, he looked back at the youths crowded on the platform and wondered who would be alive tomorrow night. He slumped in his seat. He lied to his wife. He knew the war would never be over by the fall. Henley had spent too much time in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia not to understand what Northern industrial might would mean in a conflict. All we want to do is be left alone, he mused. Why in God’s name won’t they let us go in peace? We can be good neighbors.

These thoughts still haunted Henley Chatfield as he arrived at the Spotswood Hotel at the southeast corner of Eighth and Main Streets in Richmond. Without washing up he made his way to the capitol building. He suffered few illusions. He would choke in red tape, bureaucratic vanities, younger men hungry for name and fame, older men tired and irritable, all of them the woop and warf of politics. It was a game Henley Chatfield despised. But his country needed him, so if that meant working side by side with baboons, he was prepared to do it. Chatfields accept and discharge duty; they do not evade it.

The throng of people outside the governor’s office seemed tighter than the Gordian knot. Henley edged into it. Gregory Lawson, an old friend, shouted over the heads of others, “Chatfield, you’re here!” He pulled Henley outside the antechamber and handed him scribbled pages. The proclamation
wasn’t even typeset. When Henley read it, he felt that he had been handed a thunderbolt. Instinctively his right hand rubbed his chest. The repeal of the ratification of the United States Constitution was short and to the point. As the Constitution was ratified on 25 June, 1788, so it was dissolved on April 17, 1861, awaiting ratification by the voters of Virginia on the fourth Thursday in May. Henley read in disbelief. Of course, these things needed to be tied up, written down, but why did it hurt when the ordinance declared that the federal government had perverted its powers. Perverted? Well, if we are going to war, I guess we need strong words, he thought.

Henley handed the scrawl back to Gregory. “The western counties will go.”

Gregory shouted above the din, “I think so, too.”

“I’ve got to get as many supplies out of there as I can while they’re still under the laws of Virginia.” Henley ran his fingers through his thick, gray hair. “Who will command the armies of Virginia?”

“We haven’t anyone yet.”

“Jesus H. Christ on a raft.”

The fact that 120,000 followers of the two Midianite Kings Zebah and Zalmunna were killed by the sword and the remaining 15,000 were pursued by Gideon and his scant band of three hundred men failed to cheer Lutie. Given that the North boasted a much bigger population than the South, Lutie might have drawn a parallel. Instead, she snapped her Bible shut and glared at Sin-Sin.

“Don’t be rough with the Good Book. Your voice would soothe all the givin’ saints.”

“Flattery is a vice, Sin-Sin, and you’re riddled with it.” Nonetheless, Lutie read John, chapter 2, which was an improvement. This time Christ threw the money changers out of the temple.

“I likes that. I likes when Marse Jesus fluffs his feathers.”

“Still, it’s so full of anger and violence. What a bloodthirsty book this is. I really must take this up with the Very Reverend Manlius.”

“I don’t know how the Reverend keeps all that knowledge in his little head.”

“He does have a little head, doesn’t he?” Lutie put the book down. She peered out the window. “At least the snow’s
melting. I guess Henley’s in Richmond by now. Always a little warmer there.” She sighed and started to say something but changed her subject. “Geneva’s worked seven horses since this morning.”

“Got no sleep. Looks like a raccoon.”

Lutie’s delicate, small fingers touched her own face. “I didn’t sleep much either. Do you know, Sin-Sin, there’s not a man in this house? Not one. Poof! Gone.”

“They be back.”

“After breakfast I found myself in the library breathing great gulps of air. Henley’s pipe tobacco lingers there. Eventually the odor will disappear. I hated it when he smoked in the house. Now I miss it.”

Lutie strode into the kitchen with Sin-Sin close behind her. Ernie June and Boyd were sifting flour. Tincia washed pots. Ernie smiled at Lutie. Sin-Sin folded her hands across her breast. Ernie refused to acknowledge Unredeemable Sin.

“Ernie June, I’d like to ask your advice about something.”