High Hearts (54 page)

Humans are unwilling to believe that great suffering and disaster can be inflicted without moral justification. She had often told herself that. Lutie now knew that there was no moral justification for the maelstrom of events. The entire human race was swimming in a night sea of darkness.

The workload eased. The worst cases had died. Those with minor wounds had been moved to other locations. What remained were men too seriously wounded to move who nonetheless had a chance.

“Were you married?” Evangelista asked Sin-Sin as they sat on the back porch covered with trumpet vines.

“Ha! I wisht I had a halter on that husband of mine. Thass a long time ago.”

“I’d better find a man soon.” Evangelista wrinkled her pretty nose. “I want a man that’s bright. Can’t marry an ebony man. And he must have a good trade.”

“My Marcus was a blacksmith. Get you a big, strong man like that.”

“How’d you land him?” Evangelista thought of love as a form of fishing.

“I sashay ’bout that man ’til I wore out his indifference!” She laughed. “Course if you need love charms, I knows a few.”

“Like what?”

“If you wishes a man to fall in love with you, you got to take the small bow from the sweatband ’round his cap. You wears that under your clothes next to your body. That man be yours in no time.”

Not exactly convinced, Evangelista changed the subject. “Miss Kate says that you Albemarle people will be going
home soon. She says we’re gonna come visit in late August or September. Unless there’s another battle around here.”

“Doan look like it.”

“I never knew so many people could die at one time.”

“Not since the great flood, I reckon. Everybody died then.”

Evangelista watched the cook tend to her small herb garden. “The man I felt sorry for was that one had his”—she paused—“his manhood torn away.”

“Man can live without pleasure, but doan know if he can live without the future.”

“Do you think about the future, Auntie Sin-Sin?” Shrewdness was written all over her voice. The future meant the hope for freedom. “I do. Constantly.”

“Then I sees you at Chatfield. Thass enough future.” Sin-Sin smiled.

Evangelista thought, What a crafty old fox.

Lutie, Sin-Sin, and Di-Peachy returned to Chatfield on August seventh. Charlottesville, crowded with walking wounded, had so far escaped any other mark of war.

The drive up to the big house, its huge trees deep green in August glory, brought forth tears to their eyes. Every hand on the estate crowded on the graceful front steps to greet them. Ernie June, as happy to see Lutie as she was soured to see her nemesis, did the honors for Chatfield’s people by welcoming Lutie home. When she mentioned Henley’s name, she broke down. Even Braxton, a controlled man, cried. What would become of them now that the master was killed and Sumner, too?

Lutie, deeply moved at this outburst, assured everyone that Henley’s remains would be transferred to the quiet land
he loved. Once the war ended, the horse breeding program would continue under the direction of Geneva.

Walking the grounds with Sin-Sin, she noted with delight that the gardens were luxurious, the stables were as spotless as when Henley supervised them, and not one thing was missing from the big house except for a feather bed. Sin-Sin told Lutie to snatch it right back from Ernie’s little cabin, but Lutie informed her that Ernie had done her duty, and she deserved the mattress. No word from or about Boyd. Sin-Sin said she thought she’d come home by Weeping Cross. She meant that Boyd would come home with her tail between her legs.

Frederica was pregnant again, and Timothy had grown a foot or so. The air hummed with bumblebees, honeybees, sweat bees, yellow jackets, dragonflies, damselflies, and every variety of horsefly known to man.

What Lutie did not discuss was the persistent rumors that Abraham Lincoln was preparing a carte blanche document concerning all slaves. He had already made provisions for slaves in occupied territory, and these provisions had grown progressively more radical since the beginning of the war. Lutie knew a servant grapevine carried news quickly. Well, she wasn’t going to worry about the effect of such calculated bombast on her people. Much as she was opposed to it, she talked to her attorneys. She would fulfill Henley’s wishes on Christmas Day.

Since the Battle of Seven Days, as the battle around Richmond was being called, the Confederate generals squabbled like boys fighting over marbles. General Toombs challenged General D.H. Hill to a duel because he thought D.H. impugned his courage. Only the skillful intervention of the friends of each man kept them from depriving the army of one or both of their services.

A duel she understood. When men got hotheaded, she’d rather see a duel than one man dragging another to court. Henley used to say, “The law allows what honor forbids.” Henley was right.

What Lutie couldn’t believe was that Colonel H.L. Benning nearly got himself arrested and General A.P. Hill succeeded in getting arrested. The scandal was the talk of Richmond and the entire nation. Benning, violent in his protests against conscription, endangered himself. When it was pointed out to
him that the North had been employing conscription, he said that only further hardened his opinion against it. If a man doesn’t willingly volunteer to defend his nation, then he isn’t worth a damn. The conscripts will get in the way of the real men. The pungent phrase attributed to Benning was, The wheat are in the army; the chaff is at home. Even worse in Colonel Benning’s eyes was the fact that conscription was unconstitutional. Were we to become like our enemy? First conscription and then income tax? Lincoln had signed into law on July first a three percent tax on annual incomes of $600-10,000 and five percent on any income above $10,000. That, too, was unconstitutional. The South must keep to its standards of individual initiative and individual sacrifice. Benning’s superiors shut him up with difficulty. The unspoken feeling was that conscription might be unconstitutional but necessary.

The fact that the Yankees submitted to income tax further convinced every Southerner that they were a nation of sheep.

The other news from the enemy capital, news met with howls of derision in Richmond, was that on August 4, Lincoln refused to accept two black regiments from Indiana into his armed forces. Ernie June called him a “hippocat.”

But the Longstreet affair put every other misdeed in the shade. Generals Longstreet and A.P. Hill shocked everyone by challenging one another in the newspapers.
The Richmond Examiner
printed praise of A.P. Hill. Then Longstreet engaged his adjunct general to write a letter to
The Richmond Whig
that Hill was overpraised. This caused more uproar than McClellan’s cannonades. Longstreet, the senior officer, then had Hill arrested. The entire affair flourished out of petty jealousy. To further accent the humiliation, everyone in Richmond knew that everyone in Washington was laughing, too.

Finally, Lee, who didn’t have time for personal huffs, took Hill out of jail and sent him to Jackson, hoping those two could pull in harness. General Pope was on the upper Rappahannock threatening northern Virginia. His supply line was the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, and he might mean to cut up the Virginia Central Railroad, which was Richmond’s link with the west. The point of the Confederate compass was stuck in Richmond, but the pencil leg was swinging out into northern Virginia.

Jackson attacked Yankees at Cedar Mountain, driving them
off the field. The papers said it was the advance guard of General N.P. Banks.

What concerned Lutie more than the scandal or the battle of Cedar Mountain was the massing of Confederate troops at Gordonsville, just a holler from Charlottesville. Federal cavalry raided Beaver Dam Station in Louisa County last month. That was close, but Gordonsville was closer.

Geneva was out there somewhere. Lutie’s thoughts centered on Geneva more and more, not only because she was all that was left of the family, but because she knew her daughter was caught in a cross fire between Mars Vickers and Nash Hart.

Geneva’s destiny might be bizarre, but it was hers, and she grasped it. Lutie respected her for that, but she missed her strong presence at home!

Standing in the meadow, ankle deep in sweet grass, Lutie watched the sun disappear in the west, flooding the hills, the plains, the running streams with the pink and golden glow of life. Clouds rose up from the meadows like soft creamy wings seeking the bodies of gigantic birds. Watching the sun rise made her want to soar like the low clouds rising up to meet the sky, the sun, perhaps God.

Poor orphan God, she thought, as a brilliant red cardinal darted out of the struck chestnut tree. We have deserted you, haven’t we? Does man first desert God or other men? Where is the initial rupture in accord? Perhaps the initial rupture, the first drifting away from harmony, occurs inside the self.

As a young woman, she thought her marriage would be one long idyll. When Henley began his disastrous liaison with Di-Peachy’s mother, Lutie thought Henley’s unfaithfulness was her fault. Why didn’t she see then that Henley wasn’t responsible for her happiness? He could add or detract, but only she could create happiness.

The children brought some happiness, but they also brought trials. In Geneva, she wanted a replica of herself. She wasn’t always cheerful when she got it. Her first inkling that Geneva absorbed more than she realized was at dinner one night when Geneva was four years old. Henley led the family in a prayer of thanks for the abundant food. Geneva said, “Me and Sumner didn’t pray.”

Henley indulgently chided her. “Where is my good little girl?”

“She’s not here today.” A few mouthfuls later, Geneva added, “But she’ll be back in time for dessert.” Lutie’s irreverence stared at her from the face of her four-year-old daughter.

And I never appreciated her, Lutie thought. She had to find her way in her time. I was young in a different time. Why was I so hard on Geneva? Lutie felt she had no right to look for answers in her children when the answers should have come from inside herself.

As for Di-Peachy, how could she have taken out her hurt on an innocent child? But she had, and she still couldn’t warm to her. And as for Sin-Sin, she took her for granted. She never asked Sin-Sin what she wanted, even if Sin-Sin was her servant.

In subtle or blatant ways, she used everyone in her life to give her what only she could give herself: joy, meaning, peace.

Lutie held out her arms to the sunlight. Her anguish had brought her this form of resurrection. Her mistakes had brought her closer to God. She did not know God as much as she felt God.

A loud munching startled her. Decca, one of the big draft horses, had pushed open a paddock gate. “Come on, Decca, let’s go back to the stable, big girl.” She patted the mighty neck and was rewarded with an affectionate nuzzle on her cheek. “Decca, everything here is the same, but I have changed.”

Geneva scrawled “Master Sergeant James Chatfield, First Virginia Cavalry” in the register of the Warrenton Hotel when Stuart allowed his men to rest an hour. She thought she’d be grand and put her name in the register.

She’d ridden hard the last two days, rising with the moon at 4 A.M. Late in the afternoon at Kelly’s Ford on the Rappahonnock, her regiment skirmished with Yankee cavalry.

From that afternoon and all of Thursday, a series of dogfights entangled both the Yankee and the Confederate cavalry. The Yankees no longer ran at the sight of a gray horseman. Mars said they were watching the fords to catch early intelligence of their troop movements.

The entire cavalry in Virginia was now under the command of J.E.B. Stuart, who’d been jumped up to major general. He had three brigades, fourteen regiments, and two batteries for his cavalry division. Lee was using Stuart more efficiently, and Lee himself was becoming more efficient.

After the Battle of Seven Days, a great many promotions were handed out. Mars was promised a brigade when enough recruits were found to form one. Benserade was a major. Nash, to his surprise, was promoted to a sergeant. Mars asked Banjo if he wanted his name put forward for captain. Banjo said being a lieutenant was about as much officering as he could stand.

Every lady who could run, walk, or hobble under the overcast skies gathered down at the Warrenton Hotel to admire the cavalrymen. Von Borcke, now a major, swaggered to good effect for the damsels. Geneva leaned against the registration desk and laughed at his antics.

When a lady, seeing her alone, offered her a dyed feather
for her cap, Geneva graciously took it and kissed the lady’s hand.

Mars walked into the lobby from the serving room. He spied Geneva with the feather in her cap and the fluttering Warrenton girl. “What have we here? A little Stuart? How about a Stuartette? Or Stuart Minor? Why is it everyone wants a plume in their hat just like J.E.B.?”

“What’d you eat in there?” Geneva noticed the girl oogling Mars. “Oh, Miss …?”

“Rebecca Rifton.”

“Miss Rebecca, this is Colonel Mars Vickers, a military legend. When he isn’t beating up on the Yankees, he keeps in practice on his wife.”

Rebecca Rifton was shocked.

Mars bowed to the stupefied girl. “Jimmy has an overactive imagination, ma’am. But I think I’ll take a lesson from him and start beating up on this poor, sapskulled boy.”

He picked Geneva up under her armpits and carried her to the lobby amidst the laughter of the men. Putting her down, he addressed his comrades and the ladies.

“Boys, let’s mount up. Ladies, we will return to you as soon as we convince our former comrades in the United States Army to pay us proper respect and go home to their own ladies. You know, I believe the reason they are trying our patience with their presence is now that they’ve caught sight of you beautiful Virginia ladies, they don’t wish to return to the homegrown variety.”

Back on the road, the column turned east toward Auburn, seven miles from Warrenton. Once at Auburn they turned again toward Catlett’s Station. The clouds which threatened them throughout the day changed violet-black after sunset, hurling their fury earthward. In brutal darkness and lashing rain, the men halted outside of Catlett’s Station. Despite the weather, they kept in tight formation. They were in General Pope’s rear. At any turn they might encounter Yankees, and they knew without a doubt that Catlett’s Station was loaded with Yanks.