Master Of Paradise (43 page)

Within the hour, Rafe departed and Amanda sat looking out the window and remembering the harsh words she had exchanged with Nicholas.
Paradise isn't big enough for both of us
, he had said angrily.
How prophetic his words were.
She began to cry and the servants left her alone. Suddenly she stopped.

My God, if I sit here doing nothing, I'll drown in tears.

"Lou, get Cleo and Fanny, yes and we'll need Porter too. I already know I can count on you, Samuel. Those garden crops at Jackson Plantation need gathering. Samuel, we'll need shovels and pitchforks and burlap sacks. It will take us days. I think there are yams, turnips and some yellow squash growing over there too. We've got to keep some of these things for ourselves, I know there are hard times coming."

The servants exchanged glances, wondering if the news of Nicholas's death had unhinged her mind, but they went off to get the things she had ordered.

Amanda's glance fell on Jennifer who huddled on a settee with her arm flung over her eyes. "Jenny, I'm sorry, I clean forgot about your trouble."

Jennifer let her arm fall from her face. The movement showed hopelessness and defeat. She looked at Mandy. "Well, what now? We're both in the same damned boat and it's sinking fast. Both our men are dead and we're both in a fix."

Hot words of denial rose to Amanda's lips, but she bit them back.
How cruel it would be to say Nicholas might be alive, when there is no hope for Beau.
"I'm going to the Jackson Plantation to get the garden crops in. I'll get the stuff from Jessie today while I'm at the cabins."

"Don't say it's for me, Mandy," Jennifer pleaded.

"No, of course not. Under the circumstances, Jessie will think I want it for myself."

"No, ah will not!" Old Jessie looked majestically down her wide nose. "Furst yo' wants a love potion t'make a baby, now yo' wants a hate potion t'kill it."

"I'll slap you flat if you don't give it to me," Amanda threatened.

Jessie just looked at her for a long time.

Amanda, her nerves screaming, sat down, suddenly very tired. "Jessie, my son was conceived in love. I would never do anything to harm him. He's part of Nicholas, perhaps the only part I will ever hold in my arms again. Having said all that, I still ask you for something that will abort an unwanted child. Trust me, Jessie, it's not for me."

Jessie weighed Amanda's words, then grinned. "Yore pretty sure it a boy, ain't yo'?"

"I'm sure," Amanda said simply.

Jennifer took the potion and stayed in her room for a whole week, keeping secret the terrible ordeal between herself and her sister.

When Mammy Lou and Cleo complained that Jennifer should be helping harvest the vegetables, Mandy said, "Leave her be. It's delayed shock from Beau's death. If we let her rest awhile, she'll be just fine."

Amanda welcomed the backbreaking labor that was necessary to harvest any crop on earth. The energy that she expended exhausted her physically, so that when nighttime arrived she was able to sleep for a few hours each night.

She went straight from the garden crops to the cotton. Samuel prepared the food for the field hands they had left, and Amanda took over the job of ginning the cotton of its seed in their own mill. She hoped that when it was baled, Rafe would take it off her hands.

At last the thing she had been waiting for came about. Her father arrived, and she felt a weight lift from her shoulders the moment she glimpsed his carriage. But as he slowly ascended the front steps, her hopes vanished.

"Is there any news Father?" she begged.

"Yes, but non of it's good I'm afraid." His shoulders sagged, his face had a grayish tinge, and he looked the very picture of defeat.

"Nicholas?" she whispered.

He shook his head wearily. "It pains me to have to burden you Amanda. Ah lived my whole life believing womenfolk should be protected from all unpleasantness. My abject apologies,child, but I could not locate him in any Union prison. I have access to the lists, but he simply isn't there. I feel in my heart that we must accept Nicholas's death. To do otherwise would be to deceive ourselves."

Amanda sat silently. She knew her father's advice made sense, yet she also knew there was a part of her that might never be able to accept the death of the man she loved with all her heart and soul.

Her father's head hung down as if he were too ashamed to go on. She searched her mind for a possible cause. "Lady Pamela is not with you?" she asked gently.

He shook his head. "Made her way to Washington as fast as her legs could carry her. My wealth seems to be evaporating Amanda."

"Don't worry about her Daddy, she'll sleep her way to the bottom. You were too good for her."

Although he seemed shocked at Amanda's knowledge of that sort of woman, she could tell his heart wasn't the least involved in losing the woman. Though he was embarrassed, he seemed relieved. "Father, there seems to be a burden you are carrying about that will kill you if you don't share it with someone," she probed.

"Oh little Mandy, you have enough to cope with." He broke down altogether, openly sobbing.

She sank to her knees and gathered him in her arms, murmuring words of comfort. Strangely their roles were reversed; he the child, she the parent. She felt in part it was because she was going to become a mother. The nurturing instinct had already begun.

Bernard produced a crumpled paper from his pocket. "Brandon is wounded."

She took the paper from his shaking fingers and sat back on her heels. "B. Jackson.. Wounded... Hampden's Raiders."

"It doesn't tell us much, but at least he was still alive when this was written." She did not try to varnish over the reality. Her mouth set in determination and her chin went up. "We'll go and get him. We'll bring him home."

Her father raised his head, a ray of hope shining in his eyes. "You can't travel up where the fighting's going on."

"I can, and I will," she said firmly. "We can do it you know, if we hold hands around the dark corners."
Nicholas said that to me once. His words constantly come back.

There was very little gold left in the safe, but what there was, she took. She tried to think of a good hiding place for the precious diamonds Nicholas had given her, but in the end decided the only safe place for them was on her person. She stitched a deep pocket into one of her petticoats and concealed them there.

Amanda and Bernard went to Richmond by train, although it was an indirect route. They changed from one railway line to another at Florence, Wilmington, Goldsboro, Garysburg, and Petersburg. Though it was a long, tiring journey, it would have been worse by horse and carriage.

The trains were overflowing with recruits going to the front lines. Amanda was appalled at how poorly they were dressed. Most of the boys were in butternut homespun, well-worn boots, and had nothing more than an old hunting rifle. But their spirits blazed with patriotism and their youthful energy made light of what lay ahead of them.

It was very touching to see they were still growing boys, whose wrists and ankles stuck out of their uniforms. None of them looked as if he got enough to eat.

When they reached their destination, Richmond was swarming with uniformed men from all the various army departments The remount depots overflowed with mules and horses, gathered from all over the south. All the hospitals were packed to the doors with the wounded and the sick, and large tobacco warehouses were now also filled to overflowing with casualties of the war.

It seemed to Amanda that every second building was a barroom or a bawdy house. The streets were filled with prostitutes. She was shocked, but when she learned how much everything cost, she began to understand. Flour was a thousand dollars a barrel, and shoes were being sold for five hundred dollars a pair. She thought sadly that women could do worse things than sleep with a man to get food.

One silver dollar was worth sixty Confederate paper dollars.

Amanda and Bernard did not dare go further North by railroad, as the Union troops spent a deal of time blowing up the lines. Her father hired a carriage and driver to take them to Fredericksburg, but it took most of the coins he and Amanda had between them.

Mandy began to fear for her father. He looked such a very old man.
Perhaps he shouldn't have undertaken such an arduous journey.
She did not let him know she was with child. Even though she had begun to show, he was too preoccupied to notice.

They put up at a boarding house until they could locate Brandon, and when they arose the next morning, found their driver had deserted.

Mandy knew if she faltered, Bernard would sit with his head in his hands, and the inevitable tears would follow. She made light of the defection, and they set out to go through the military red tape necessary to locate a wounded man.

Though Bernard had spent years in politics, he seemed to get nowhere. Finally, Amanda insisted she would search each hospital and warehouse personally if that was the only way she could locate her brother. "Unheard of" she was told, until it dawned on her that a bribe would be necessary. Reluctantly, she produced a diamond bracelet and miraculously a young lieutenant was assigned to guide them through the hospital wards.

Nothing on earth could have prepared them for the sights and smells they encountered. Wounded men lay on the floors with only a thin blanket to go under them. Half the men had lost limbs, and lay legless or armless, their great burning eyes waiting for death. Most were fevered with high spots of color on their prominent cheekbones. A lot of them weren't even men, they were still boys.

A few women volunteers moved among the men, but they looked on the point of exhaustion from the endless washing, lifting, bandaging, and feeding.

The men in these hospitals and warehouses died like flies from blood poisoning, gangrene, typhoid, and pneumonia. All had bloody flux from eating putrefied rations, and the miasma that arose from the blood, sweat, and dysentery was a stench that would stay in the nostrils for years.

As Amanda bent close to each man, she saw lice on their bodies and blankets. Her first instinct was to recoil and pull her skirts tightly above her ankles, but then the absurdity of her actions hit her.
What in God's name do a few lice matter compared with the agony these men are enduring?

After a full day of touring hospitals, Bernard was almost finished. Amanda insisted that he rest and went alone the next day.

In the middle of the afternoon she found him on the top floor of a warehouse, lying beneath the rafters. The stifling air must have been about a hundred and ten degrees. He had a leg wound that should have started to heal a week ago, if it had been properly attended.

Brandon looked at her with disbelief, when he recognized her. If he hadn't spoken, she would never have known this filthy, bearded skeleton as her dashing Brandon.

She laughed at his joke.
If I don't laugh, I'll lose control and weep.

With an air of authority she called to a hospital orderly and amazingly he obeyed her command to get her brother on his feet. Brandon's face went white with pain at the exertion of moving, but Amanda insisted, and almost propelled him toward the stairs. She knew the men lying around would think her a callous little woman to treat a wounded comrade so briskly, showing no sympathy whatsoever, but Amanda knew a compulsion to get Brandon away.
The war has taken Beau, and perhaps Nicholas, but I'll not let it have Bran, not while there's still breath left in my body!

At the boarding house the woman would not let Brandon in until his vermin-infested clothes were removed and boiled in lye. Bernard dressed his son in his own shirt and trousers, and put him into his own bed, but Amanda could see that her father was far from well.

Bernard finally admitted that he had a sore throat and a fever.

Lord God Almighty, whatever am I to do now?
They had no money to even pay for their lodging. She made her father rest in her bed and set out to try to procure something to treat Brandon's leg wound. She went straight to the Provost Marshall's Office and by using all her feminine charms was finally ushered in to the thickset man in charge of supplies.

"Good evening, Captain," she flattered him by raising his rank from sergeant. "My Daddy is Senator Jackson from the Richmond Congress. My poor brother is a cavalry officer with a suppurating leg wound. I wonder if you could spare me some quinine and calomel and some bandages?"

It was twilight when she departed the building, and she walked aimlessly away from the busy section of town. She became aware of her surroundings with a start. She had wandered into the Fredericksburg Cemetery. She wandered along the rows of softly piled earth with their newly carved small white crosses. Some had only a name and rank: Captain Franklin. Others gave a state: Jones, Sergeant, South Carolina Infantry.

Amanda read every name and offered up a silent prayer for the souls of the men. She felt completely drained and defeated. She lay down on the grass in the dusk and thought about Nicholas. Before she'd always pushed it away, but now she could put off thinking about it no longer. She offered up a special prayer for the soul of her beloved husband and the tears flowed freely.