clutching one of the porch posts. For a moment, Brett pitied him. She said, 'You don't wish it any more fervently than I.'
He blinked, then pulled at his fine linen shirt where it stuck to his armpit. 'Know you'd like to see Billy home. So would I. 'Course — family loyalty isn't the only reason I want this blasted war over. Have some political ones, too. Nothing pers'nal, now' — a smarmy grin — 'but we Republicans are going to change ol’ Dixie Land forever.'
She fanned herself with a handkerchief, irked again by his alcoholic smugness, yet curious. 'Oh, you are? How is that?'
He put his finger over his lips to signal secrecy, then whispered, 'Simple. 'Publican party will pretend to be the friend of all the freed niggers down there. Ignorant lot, niggers. 'F we give 'em the franchise, they'll vote any way we tell 'em. With the niggers voting, our party'll be the majority party before you can say
With a broad, almost violent gesture, he managed to snap his fingers. Once more his balance was threatened. Brett caught his arm and steadied him until he lowered his heavy rear into a bent-wood rocker, which sagged and creaked loudly.
'Stanley, that's a very cold-blooded scheme you described. You're not making it up?'
The smarmy smile broadened. 'Would I lie to my own rel'tive? Plan's been drawn up a long time. By a certain — inner group.' He rolled his eyes. 'Better not say any more.'
Outraged, Brett retorted, 'You said quite enough. You're going to exploit the very people you purport to champion —?'
'Purport.' He dragged it out, savoring the sound. '
'That's utterly unscrupulous.'
'No, jus' politics. I —'
'You'll excuse me,' she said, her tolerance exhausted. 'I must go to supper.'
He started to say something else, but a sound much like the bleat of a billy goat came from an upstairs window. Someone had hit someone else. One of the twins screamed, 'Get out of my things, you thieving shit.'
Sickened by Stanley's drunken statements, Brett walked rapidly back to Belvedere. Though she considered Billy's older brother stupid and venal, she feared that the plan he had described could very well work. The blacks, except for a few of the well-educated ones like Scipio Brown, would logically put their trust in the Republicans. And if they were given the right to vote, they could indeed elect whomever their benefactors chose. Brett had no great liking for the Yankee President, but she couldn't imagine him being party to such a vile scheme.
Hot and angry, she ate supper alone. Maude, one of the serving girls, worked up nerve to say, 'Everyone's talking of a great battle. Will they come this far to fight?'
'I don't know,' Brett answered. 'No one's sure of the whereabouts of either army.'
In darkness reddened by the light of Hazard's, Brett walked into the hills, hoping to find cooler air. Where was Billy? She had had no letters for nearly three weeks. He was fighting for what he believed while Stanley cowered in Lehigh Station, sipping gin and boasting of his political plans.
She wandered higher, through the laurel that lay thick and dim on the heights. There was no wind to stir the deep green leaves, and in the hazy night the stars had a red cast.
By chance, her walk took her past the spot where a meteorite had struck one of the slopes. She and Billy had discovered the smoking crater only hours before his departure for Washington in the spring of '61. The crater had seemed to be a warning, and what it had warned of had come to pass. By the light of Hazard's furnaces and chimneys, she saw that the crater was shallower than before. New dirt had washed into its bottom, and the chunk of what Billy called star-iron was no longer visible.
The laurel grew all around the crater, to the very edge. But none grew within the crater itself. Curious, Brett leaned down for a pinch of loose earth from the crater well. It had a gritty, sandy feel. A strange, sour smell.
Was it somehow poisoned, like the nation was poisoned? Poisoned by hatreds, by loss of lives, by the punishment the land deserved because some of its people had chained up so many others for so many years?
Absently, she broke off a sprig of laurel. She remembered Billy likening the laurel to their love. He said both would survive these awful times. But would they?
Where was her husband tonight? Where were the armies? Could Harrisburg be burning and they not know it in this peaceful valley? Shivering under the red stars, she gazed away to the darkness in the southwest, imagining the unseen armies sniffing the hot night for scent of each other.
Upset and frightened, she flung the sprig away and hurried down the hill past the poisoned crater. She didn't fall asleep until the first light of morning.
84
Lee had disappeared into enemy country. A city, a government, a land held its breath in hope of good news.
There was none from the West, Orry told Madeline. Rosecrans was astir in Tennessee, and Grant's hand crushed Vicksburg more tightly by the hour. Orry's work was a blur of conferences, memorandums, constant arguments with Winder and his wardens over the increasing number of deaths among the war prisoners.
In the evenings, he and Madeline read aloud to each other. Now and then they indulged in sad speculations about their inability to conceive a child. 'Perhaps Justin wasn't wholly wrong to blame me,' she said once.
They studied and responded to occasional letters from Philemon Meek. And they entertained Augusta Barclay one day, enjoying her company while recognizing how anxious she was about Cousin Charles. She said she had traveled all the way to the capital to find some dress muslin, but she really wanted to inquire about him. She had received no letter in two months and feared he'd been wounded or killed in the cavalry clash at Brandy Station.
Orry assured her that he watched the casualty rolls, and so far the name of Major Charles Main had not appeared. Gus knew nothing of the field promotion. She said she was pleased, but she sounded unenthusiastic.
She accepted their invitation to supper. During the meal, they speculated on Charles's whereabouts. Orry knew that Hampton's horse had gone into Pennsylvania with Lee, but beyond that, he could provide no information. They said good-bye after ten, Gus intending to travel all night on lonely roads with only young Boz to guard her. Just before she left, she again expressed gratitude to the Mains for sheltering her during the Chancellorsville fighting and said she wanted to repay the kindness if ever she could. Madeline thanked her, and the women embraced; they had formed a liking for each other.
After Gus was gone, Madeline said, 'Something's wrong between her and Charles, though I'm not sure what it is.'
Orry agreed. Like his wife, he had detected a certain sadness in the visitor's eyes.
Something was wrong with Cooper, too. Orry saw his brother occasionally around Capitol Square. Cooper was abrupt in conversation and refused further invitations to dinner with a curt 'Too busy right now.'
'He's become a stranger to me,' Orry told Madeline. 'And not a very sane-looking one, at that.'
For some months, Orry had known that Beauchamp's Oyster House on Main Street was a postbox for illegal mail to the North. In late June he wrote a long letter to George, addressing it in care of Hazard's of Lehigh Station. He asked how Constance was faring, and Billy and Brett, told of his marriage to Madeline, and mentioned Charles's service with the Iron Scouts. He also described, briefly and somewhat bitterly, his work for Seddon, and his constant conflicts with Winder and the prison wardens. On a sultry evening, wearing the one civilian suit he had brought from Mont Royal, he nervously entered Beauchamp's and handed the wax-sealed envelope to a barman, together with forty dollars of inflated Confederate money. There was no guarantee the letter would get any farther than some
