Love and War

'Earthworks,' he corrected, amused. 'Back there we're to build a timbered powder magazine.'

'Does this place have a name?'

'Fort Something-or-other. I forget exactly. They're all Fort Something-or-other.' They drove on.

Alexandria, a small town of brick homes and numerous commercial buildings, seemed nearly as crowded as Washington. Billy showed Brett the Marshall House, where Lincoln's close friend Colonel Ellsworth had been shot and killed. 'It happened the day the army occupied the town. Ellsworth was trying to haul down a rebel flag.'

Beyond Alexandria, they came upon tents, a vast white city of them. Around the perimeter, soldiers drilled in trampled fields. Mounted officers galloped in every direction. Bare-chested men dug trenches and dragged logs with chains. Brett could hardly hear Billy for the cursing and the bugling and the ubiquitous wagons.

She observed several squads drilling. 'I've never seen such clumsy men. No two are in step.'

'They're volunteers. Their officers aren't much better. They stay up all night boning on Hardee's Tactics so they can teach next morning. Even then they do a poor job.'

'I have no trouble recognizing you as a West Point man,' she teased.

On they went, through the vast changing landscape of mess tents smoking, horse-drawn artillery pieces racing and wheeling, regimental and national flags flapping, drums beating, men singing — it was all new, amazing, and festive, though a little frightening, too, because of what it signified.

They passed an unfinished redoubt and stopped before a tent exactly like the others. Billy led her in and saluted. 'Sir? If this is not an inconvenient time, may I have the honor of presenting my wife? Mrs. William Hazard — Captain Farmer.'

The white-haired officer rose from the flimsy table strewn with diagrams of fortifications. 'An honor, Mrs. Hazard. An honor and a privilege.'

He took her hand and shook it with slow formality. He had a powerful grip. Billy's right, she thought, delighted. He could personate one of the prophets on stage.

'I am delighted to make your acquaintance and mightily pleased to have your husband in my command. I hope that happy situation will continue indefinitely,' the captain said. 'Ah, but I am remiss. Please do sit down — here, on my stool.' He placed it in front of the desk. 'I deeply regret my furnishings are inadequate to the occasion.'

Seated, Brett observed the truth of that statement. The tent contained nothing but a table, a camp bed, and five crates, each bearing the words American bible society. On top of one lay a string-tied packet of tracts. In Charleston, she'd often seen similar four-page leaflets. The one in view was titled 'Why Do You Curse?'

Farmer saw her take note of it. 'I have thus far lacked the time to conduct Sunday school or evening prayer services, but I am prepared. We must build bridges to heaven even as we raise defenses against the ungodly.'

'Sad to say,' Brett told him, 'I was born among the ungodly.'

'Yes, I am aware. Be assured, I meant no personal slight. I cannot deceive you, however. It is my conviction that the Almighty detests all those who keep our black brethren in chains.'

His words irked her; they would have irked any South Carolinian. Yet there was a paradox. She found his voice and oratory unexpectedly stirring. Billy looked uneasy, as if thinking, They aren't my black brethren.

Brett said, 'I respect your forthrightness, Captain. I only regret the issue must be resolved by war. Billy and I want to get on with our lives. Start a family. Instead, all I can see ahead is a period of danger.'

Lije Farmer locked his hands behind his lower back. 'You are correct, Mrs. Hazard. And we shall confront it because the portion has been passed to us — God's will be done. However, I am persuaded the war will be brief. We shall emerge the victors. As Scripture tells us, the thoughts of the righteous are right, but the counsels of the wicked are deceit. The wicked are overthrown and are not — but the house of the righteous shall stand.'

Instantly, she was simmering again. Billy saw, and silently pleaded for restraint while Farmer continued.

'The wicked is snared by the transgression of his lips, but the just shall come out of trouble.'

Ready to retort, she didn't because he took her by surprise, defused the tension by stepping to Billy's side and dropping a fatherly arm over his shoulders. Farmer's smile shone.

'If there are perilous days ahead, the Lord God will see this good young man through them. The Lord God is a sun and shield. Even so, I shall look after him, too. When you return to your home, carry my reassurance in your heart. I will do everything I can to see that William rejoins you speedily and unharmed.'

At that moment, Brett forgot issues and fell in love with Lije Farmer.

16

Miles away in the South Carolina low country, another man lived with dreams of revenge as vivid as Elkanah Bent's.

Justin LaMotte, owner of the plantation named Resolute and impoverished scion of one of the state's oldest families, yearned to punish his wife, Madeline. She had fled to the Main plantation to expose the plot to kill the Yankee who'd married Orry Main's sister.

But Justin's grudge went back much further. For years, Madeline had disgraced him with her outspoken nature and disregard of accepted female behavior. Except, he recalled with some satisfaction, she had been submissive, if unexciting, when he exercised his connubial rights. He had curbed her offending activities for a while by secretly administering laudanum in her food. Now she was compounding past disgrace by living openly with her lover. The whole district knew she intended to marry Orry the moment she obtained a divorce. She'd never get one. But that wasn't enough. Justin spent hours every day concocting schemes to ruin Orry or imagining scenes in which he punished Madeline with knives or fire.

At the moment he lay submerged in tepid water one of his niggers had poured into the heavy zinc tub in his bedroom. Spirals of dark brown dye coiled away from dampened hair on the back of his head. The absence of any gray had a curious effect of calling attention to, rather than obscuring, his age; the color of his hair, so clearly artificial, lent him the look of a waxwork, though he was oblivious.

Justin was trying to relieve the tension that had bedeviled him lately. His wife wasn't the sole cause. There were problems with the Ashley Guards, the regiment he and his brother Francis were attempting to raise by expanding the home defense unit they had organized in the tense months of the Sumter confrontation.

Brown-spotted white silk, folded into layers and tied vertically, hid the left side of Justin's face. When he had tried to prevent Madeline from leaving Resolute, she had defended herself with an heirloom sword snatched from the wall of the foyer. One stroke of the nicked blade dug a red trench from his left brow through his upper lip to the midpoint of his chin. The scabrous, slow-healing wound hurt emotionally as well as physically. He had reason to hate the bitch.

It was late afternoon; stifling. Shadows of Spanish moss on water oaks outside patterned the bedroom's mildewed pine-block floor. Below the second-story piazza, his brother shouted drill commands. Fed up with trying to train white trash — all the gentlemen of the district except that one-armed scoundrel Main had mustered with other units — Justin had turned today's instruction over to Francis and retired.

His brother had spent lavishly to outfit the regiment. On a stand near the tub hung canary-colored trousers and a smart braided chasseur jacket of bright green, styled after the habit-tunique of the French. The outfit was completed by handsome top boots worn outside the trousers; the tops drooped above the knee, in the European manner.

It galled Justin that he and Francis couldn't find more white men who appreciated the value and distinction of such a uniform or what a rare opportunity it was to be led by LaMottes. That damned Wade Hampton had outfitted his legion as drably as cow­herds, and men had stampeded to sign up.

Justin loathed the Columbia planter for other reasons, too. LaMottes had arrived in Carolina years before the first Hampton, yet today the latter name was the more honored one. Justin lived on next to nothing, while Hampton appeared to increase his wealth effortlessly; everyone said he was the richest man in the state.

Hampton had refused to attend the secession convention — had even spoken publicly against it — and now