'Only in some respects. I loathe slavery as much as I ever did.'
'You know I feel the same way. When we win our independence, it will wither and die naturally.'
'Independence? Cooper, the cause is lost.'
'Don't say that.'
'But it is. You know it in your heart. You talked of resources in the North, and the lack of them in the South, long before this horrible war started. You did it the first day we met.'
'I know, but — I can't admit defeat, Judith. If I do, why should we go home? Why should I take any risks at all? Yet I must take them — The South's my native land. Yours, too.'
She shook her head. 'I left it, Cooper. It's mine because it's yours, that's all. The war is wrong, the cause too — Why should you or Bulloch or anyone keep fighting?'
The lamplight fell on her face, so beautiful to him, so beloved. For the first time, sitting there, he admitted her to the small inner chamber where he kept the truth she had already identified, the truth made manifest by the dispatches about Sharpsburg. 'We must fight for the best conclusion we can get. A negotiated peace.' 'You think it's worth going home to do that?' He nodded.
'All right, my dearest. Kiss me, and we will.' A gust set leaves chuckling around their legs as they embraced. They were still kissing when a constable coughed and walked by twirling his truncheon. They separated with muddled, chagrined looks. Since Judith wore gloves, the disapproving officer couldn't see her rings. He probably thought she was misbehaving with a lover. It made her giggle as they hurried back across the square. Full dark had come. It would be good to be inside.
In the gaslit foyer, Cooper paled and pointed to a drop of blood on the tile floor. 'Good God, look.'
Her eyes rounded. 'Judah?'
Marie-Louise popped her blonde head out of the parlor. 'He's hurt, Mama.'
Cooper flew up the stairs, his belly tied up like a sailor's knot, his head hammering, his palms damp. Had his son fallen into the hands of some thief or molester? The slightest threat to either of his children was like a barbed hook in his flesh. When they were ill, he stayed up with them all night, every night, until the danger passed. He ran toward the half-open door of the boy's room. 'Judah!'
He thrust the door open. Judah lay on the bed, clutching his middle. His jacket was ripped, his cheek bruised, his nose bloodied.
Cooper ran to the bed, sat, started to take his son in his arms but refrained. Judah was eleven and deemed such contact sissified. 'Son — what happened?'
'I ran into some Toxteth dock boys. They wanted my money, and when I said I hadn't any, they swarmed on me. I'm all right.' He made the subdued declaration with evident pride.
'You defended yourself —?'
'Best I could, Pa. There were five of them.'
Uncontrollably, he touched Judah's brow, brushed some hair back, fighting his own trembling. Judith's shadow fell over his sleeve. 'He's all right,' Cooper said as the fear began to run out of him like an ebbing tide.
59
In the occupied city of New Orleans, the weather was warm that morning. So was Colonel Elkanah Bent's emotional temperature. It matched that of the local citizens with whom he shared the corner of Chartres and Canal streets, watching the tangible evidence of General Ben Butler's radicalism.
The limpid air smelled as it always did, predominantly of coffee but laced with the Mississippi and the toilet water of gentlemen who had to be out because they were in commerce; gentlemen who had lived off cotton once and were perhaps doing so again, less covertly every day. Those of the better classes were still indoors. Perhaps they had received a hint of what they might see if they ventured out. Most on the corner had been caught there by chance, like Bent, though undoubtedly one or two watched by choice, to keep hatred stoked.
Fatter than ever and puffing a cigar, Bent was fully as angry as the civilians, though he dared not show it. The drums tapped, the fifes shrilled, and with limp colors preceding them, the First Louisiana Native Guards came parading up Canal.
Major General Butler had raised the regiment in late summer in the wake of other outrages, which included hanging Mumford, the man who dared to pull down an American flag from the mint building, and an order of May 15 stating that women who spoke or gestured to Union soldiers in an insulting manner would be arrested and treated as prostitutes.
Those were schoolboy pranks compared to this, Bent thought. He found the mere existence of the guards, officially mustered on September 27, both unbelievable and repulsive. He pitied the officers chosen to command this regiment of ex-cotton pickers and stevedores.
The town was abuzz with rumors generated by aspects of the Butler style. The Yankee general who pillaged private homes for salable silver pieces would be replaced because of such crimes against the civilian population. Lincoln would not allow the guards to serve in the federal army, wanting nothing to upset the delicate potentialities — the chance that a wayward sister might return — before the fateful proclamation deadline. Bent had heard those and many more.
The Negro regiment wasn't a rumor; it was right in front of him — yellow faces, tan faces, sepia and blue- ebony faces. How they grinned and rolled their eyes as they pranced past their old oppressors, who were standing still as statues, paralyzed by disbelief and disdain.
The fifes struck up the 'Battle Hymn' to heighten the insult. The black unit, one of the first in the army, tramped on toward the river. Bent flipped his cigar into the street. The sight was enough to turn a man into a Southerner — a breed he had always hated but now regarded with a deepening sympathy.
Bent's hands began to itch as he thought of a glass of spirits. Too early. Much too early. But he couldn't banish the desire, to which he gave in with increasing frequency these days. He had no friends among his fellow officers in the occupying army; few even spoke to him except in the line of duty. He cautioned himself not to give in to the temptation, knowing full well he would. Only a drink, or several, would relieve his misery.
Pittsburg Landing had sent his life spiraling downward. He had reached Butler's headquarters in New Orleans after a difficult journey to the East Coast and a steamer voyage around the tip of Florida to the reopened port. After a two-minute meeting with the cockeyed little politician from Massachusetts, Bent found himself attached to the provost's department. The duty was ideal, because it allowed him to give orders to civilians as well as soldiers.
Bent had been in New Orleans before. He enjoyed the city's cultured atmosphere and the delights it offered to gentlemen with money. It was in the bordellos of the town that he had gained a certain limited passion for equality; he would pay a high price to fornicate with a nigger girl, especially a very young one. He had enjoyed that experience last night.
He peered down the street after the regiment — the Corps d'Afrique, the presumptuous darkies styled themselves. White officers had to be coaxed, bribed with brevets, or threatened with a general court before they would accept command of so much as one company of a new Negro regiment — of which there were several.
What a remarkable about-face General Butler had done in organizing them. Initially he had declared himself against the idea. In August he changed his mind, persuaded, it was said, by his wife, his friend Secretary Chase, and perhaps by belated realization that the appearance of black regiments would make local whites apoplectic. At first Butler said he would recruit only the semitrained members of a black unit formed to defend the city before it fell. He reversed himself on that, too, and was soon signing up plantation runaways.
Bent started toward the old square, encountering unfriendly faces on the walks shaded by charming iron balconies. Ah, but the civilians did step aside for him. Indeed they did.
His thoughts drifted to the brothels again. There was one house he particularly wanted to visit at an opportune moment. He had chanced on the place before the war, on his way back from the hellish duty in Texas. In the madam's quarters there hung many fine paintings, including a portrait of a woman connected with the Main family in some way he did not as yet understand. The connection itself was certain. In Texas, in Charles Main's quarters, he had seen a photograph of a woman with virtually identical features.
