Love and War

'The one I've mentioned before. I'm sick of the department. I'm considering asking for a transfer to George Pickett's staff.'

'Oh, Orry — no.'

Swift retreat: 'Here, not so serious. The word is considering. I've done nothing about it.'

'Why risk your life for a lost cause?'

'The cause has nothing to do with it. Pickett's a friend, I've had a bellyful of desk work, and officers are desperately needed in the field. Nothing to fret over — it's still in the speculative stage.'

'Let's hope it stays there. Even if it does, what you're really doing is banishing me. Well, thank you very much, but I'm not the coward you think I am.'

'Now wait, I never implied —'

'You most certainly did. Well, I intend to stay.'

'I insist that you go.'

'You'll insist on nothing!' She rose abruptly. 'Now if you'll excuse me, I must darn your stockings again. There are none to be had in the stores.' She stormed out.

Whenever he tried to restart the discussion that evening, she refused to listen. They went to bed barely speaking. But around three, she curled against his back, gently shaking him awake.

'Darling? I feel wretched. I behaved like a harpy. Forgive me? I was mad at myself, not you. I know I've brought shame down on you —'

Sleepy but suddenly lighthearted, he rolled over and touched her cheek. 'Never. Not ever while I live. I love you for what you are — everything you are. I just want you safe.'

'I feel the same about you. I hate the idea of your going off with George Pickett. The siege lines are dangerous.'

'I told you, I've done no more than think about it. Other matters come first.'

A low, short sigh. 'You want me to go home to Mont Royal, then?'

'That would be ideal, but I think it's impractical as well as too risky. South of here you'd encounter the whole Union Army, stretched from City Point clear to the Shenandoah Valley. The roads and rail lines are constant targets. You might slip through, but I believe I have a safer alternative. It may not sound so at first, but I've thought about it a lot, and I've concluded that it's feasible. I want you to go the other way. To Lehigh Station.'

The effect was the same as if he had said Constantinople or Zanzibar. 'Orry, our home is South Carolina.'

'Now wait. Brett's at Belvedere. She'd be happy to have your company, and I don't believe you'd be there very long. Not even a year, if I read the signs correctly.'

'I'd have to cross enemy lines —'

'The country north of Richmond is a no-man's-land. When Grant chased Lee to Petersburg, he took most of his army with him. Our reports show no significant troop concentrations around Fredericksburg, for example. An occasional cavalry or infantry regiment passes through, but that seems to be the extent of it. Furthermore, getting into Washington won't be hard. You simply say you're a Union sympathizer, and they'll think you're a woman of ill repute who decided —'

'What kind of woman?' She sat up, managing to convey mock wrath in the midst of a giggle.

'Now, now — you can stand it. The most you'll suffer are some insults and a brief detention. An hour or two. That bosom of which I'm so fond may be thumped to see if it pings.'

'Pings? What are you talking about? You've lost your mind.'

'No. Women who are, ah, less amply endowed than you resort to metal breast forms.'

'Since when have you become a student of metal breast forms?'

'Since those who can't fill them started smuggling medicines and paper money in the, ah, empty spaces. No ping — no search.'

He felt like an actor, playing a light role solely because the play demanded it. But he refused to have her know anything about the President's edict, refused to have the woman he loved shamed for something over which she had no control. Tar brush or no, she was worthier, finer, more valuable than a thousand Ashtons — or Davises.

'Best of all,' he continued, 'unless Augusta Barclay's abandoned her farm, you needn't make the trip to Washington alone. I'll get one of Augusta's freedmen to go with you as far as the Union lines. She promised a favor if we ever needed one, remember.'

'When are you going to see her?'

'This weekend.'

'A Confederate colonel can't go riding blithely to Fredericksburg. What if you should encounter one of those Yankee units?'

'Believe me, I don't intend to let anyone know I'm a colonel. Stop worrying.'

'Easy for you to say —'

He knew an old, conventional, but extremely pleasant way to stop such conversations and allay anxieties. He began to kiss her. Then they made love and fell asleep.

He replaced his uniform with his black broadcloth suit. He donned a wide-brimmed dark hat bought secondhand and tucked Madeline's Bible in one pocket. In another he placed a pass he had written for himself; that is, for the Reverend O. O. Manchester.

He set off on a hired nag at least twenty years old. Badly swollen hock joints indicated a case of bog or bone spavin; Orry hoped the animal could make it the forty-odd miles to Fredericksburg.

He had read reports of the devastation that had struck the town, but reality proved far worse. He saw burned wagons and a decomposing body in ruined fields on the outskirts. He glimpsed a small band of men at a smoky fire back in some woods. Deserters, probably. Fredericksburg itself had an abandoned air; half the houses were empty, and many business establishments boarded up. Some homes and commercial buildings had been blown down by artillery fire. Foundations remained, but the rest lay strewn along the cratered streets, together with shot-away tree limbs, pieces of glass and fragments of furniture.

With his Bible in plain view under his arm, Orry asked an elderly man for directions to Barclay's Farm. He reached it an hour later, appalled by what he found. Charles had described the place in some detail, and its most prominent features, the barn and the two red oaks, were gone, the former razed, the latter cut down. Only stumps remained in the dooryard.

Boz and Washington recognized and hailed him as he climbed down from his quaking mount. The black men were attempting to plow a trampled field. Washington guided the plow; Boz pulled it in place of a horse. That spoke of how completely the farm had been stripped.

He found Gus in the kitchen, listlessly churning butter. Her plain dress, its color gone in repeated launderings, fit her tightly at the waist; she was plumper than he remembered. Haggard, too, especially around her blue eyes.

'More than half the townspeople ran away when the Yankees came,' she said after she got over the surprise of his arrival. 'A good many who stayed took in enemy wounded. I did. I had one captain here, a polite fellow from Maine who was covered with bandages but acted very lively. He refused to let me help change the dressings. I had Boz watch him. He wasn't hurt. The bandages were borrowed from someone else. I have no idea how he got them, but he must have put them on and run away to avoid fighting. I turned him out and replaced him with a pair of real patients. New York boys. Irish — sweet and gentle and never in battle before. One left after eight days. The other died in my bed.' She resumed the slow, tired churning.

'I don't know why we hang on here,' she said, sighing. 'Stubbornness, I guess. And if I left, Charles wouldn't know where to find me. Have you — have you seen him?' That catch in her voice said much about her emotions.

'Once, before the spring campaign heated up.' Seated at the sun-drenched table with a cup of tasteless imitation coffee, he described Billy's escape from Libby.

'Remarkable,' she said when he finished. 'But Charles would do that. The old Charles.' The odd statement puzzled Orry. 'I imagine he hasn't had time to ride up this way. Have you had any further word from him since the escape?'