man had fled.
With a nod toward the light and heat filling the dining room, Cooper gasped, 'Got to get everyone out before the whole place goes.' Remembering, Charles yelped and dashed in there. He snatched the scabbarded sword from the smoldering tablecloth with his red-smeared right hand.
Back in the foyer, he leaned against the wall. Blood ran down his leg into his boot. He supposed he should have expected something this bad. He really hadn't believed that all the Negroes he had armed with lengths of lumber or implements and posted around the house would stay and fight for Mont Royal. He wouldn't have, in their position.
Something struck the door on the driveway side. A bullet? No, louder. A post wielded as a ram? Hastily, he limped toward his cousin, who was again reloading.
The door burst in. Charles pivoted too fast and fell on his face — which saved his life. Shots whined through the space where he had been standing. Recovering, he fired until the revolver was empty. The attackers withdrew.
Sweat glazed his face above his beard. He struggled to his feet, noticing the glistening blood his leg left on the inlaid squares of wood. 'We have to get the women out,' Cooper said.
'All right, but you stay with them from now on.'
'We're done for, aren't we?'
'Not if —' Charles swallowed. Trying to reload, he found his fingers numb and thick-feeling. He couldn't grasp the shells properly. He dropped two. Kneeling to hunt for them, he finished, '— not if I can find Cuffey.'
'You foun' him, white man. He foun' you, too.'
Charles looked up to the head of the staircase and for the second time thought his mind had given way. Swollen with weight, there stood Cuffey. He shimmered in a ball gown of bright yellow satin.
Charles remembered hearing that Sherman's bummers and some of the freed slaves had donned women's clothing snatched from the closets of homes in Georgia. Cuffey must have heard it, too. He acted drunk and was an even more bizarre sight because of what he held in his right hand — a wide-bladed knife for cutting brush. The blade was two feet long.
Charles stared and stared, searching for the boy hidden inside the man. The boy with whom he had wrestled, fished, talked about women, and done most all the other things boys did. He couldn't find that lost friend, seeing only an apparition in yellow with a brush knife and insane eyes.
'You foun' him, an' he's obliged to kill you,' Cuffey said, descending the stairs while Cooper and Charles watched with unloaded guns in their hands and the great house began to blaze on the second floor. Charles felt heat from the ceiling, saw curls of smoke like an evil halo near Cuffey's head.
'Get the women out,' Charles whispered.
'I can't leave you to —'
'
'Yeh, go on,' Cuffey said, slurring it. 'It's Mist' Charles I wan' right now.' To men crowding the driveway piazza, he screamed, 'You all stay out till I'm finished, hear me? Stay out!'
Slowly, Charles slid the Colt back in its holster. He wiped his red hand on his shirtfront to dry it, then picked up the scabbard from the small table where he had laid it. The dress sword was too fine and slim to be of great use. But he had no time to get the fallen pitchfork, and Cooper, darting out of sight in the parlor, needed the Hawken.
Cuffey waddled on down the stairs, the yellow satin rustling. He held the flat of the long knife tight against his side, grinning.
'We useta be frens, din we?'
Taunting him, Cuffey slid the knife back and forth over the yellow satin, as if to burnish the metal. Charles stared at the blotched and bloated face touched with firelight.
'Used to. No more.'
Two men, one a giggling blond boy wearing a frock coat of Cooper's and on top of that a petticoat, slipped through the door from the serving pantry, bringing a cloud of smoke with them. Both carried stacks of china plates topped by red-glinting heaps of silverware. Cuffey shrieked at them from the bottom of the stairs. They staggered outdoors, the giggling boy spilling silver pieces, one after another, a continuous clatter.
A moment before they left, Charles saw a familiar figure pass in the driveway, walking in a slow, stately fashion, as if on a morning stroll.
'
She was already out of sight.
The slight turn of Charles's head gave Cuffey the advantage he wanted. He ran at Charles, both hands clasped on the brush knife. He brought it down from above, a whistling cut that would have cleaved Charles's head if he hadn't jerked aside.
His right leg muscles starting to spasm because of the wound, Charles at last managed to pull the too-fragile sword. Cuffey again raised arms over his head; huge sweat spots discolored the armpits of the dress. The brush knife jangled the pendants of the foyer chandelier.
Unreasonably enraged, Cuffey flailed at the chandelier, two great angry slashes. Pendants broke and the bits fell, a brief prismatic rain. Unable to think but one thought — at the Academy he had been graceless in fencing class — Charles lunged in, sword arm fully extended.
His boot skidded on a pendant. Cuffey kicked him in the groin, hard enough to make him grunt and lean forward sharply. His right leg gave out. He crashed down on that knee, an impact that hurt even more than the kick. The brush knife blurred down toward his exposed neck.
Charles brought the Solingen blade over and cut Cuffey's right wrist on the inside. Blood spurted. Cuffey released the knife, which sailed past Charles's ear, so close he felt metal touch the lobe.
Charles was still kneeling. Cuffey kicked his left arm. He tipped the other way and sprawled. With his heavy boot, Cuffey stomped on Charles's outstretched right arm. His hand opened. He lost the wired hilt of the saber.
Grimacing — it couldn't be termed a smile — Cuffey dropped on Charles's chest with both knees. Charles grappled with him. They rolled in a litter of pendants, prisms, table splinters, mirror chips. Cuffey clawed for his eyeballs. Charles held him back, but it took two white hands on the bleeding black wrist. Charles could feel his strength draining fast.
'Gonna — kill — you — white man.' Panting, Cuffey wrenched his arm back. Slippery blood on Charles's fingers enabled him to get loose. He fastened both hands on Charles's neck. Charles felt the drip of Cuffey's blood on his throat.
'You — all finished. Jus' like — this place —'
And so it seemed. Charles was succumbing to shock and pain. His vision blurred. His right hand flopped out, scurrying desperately around the floor like a sightless white spider. He wanted a shard of mirror, a piece of prism to attack Cuffey's face.
The hands choked tighter, steadily tighter. Charles's red fingers touched and closed on something he couldn't immediately identify because of its ridged texture —
From the corner of his eye Cuffey saw it coming. Charles rammed the light cavalry saber into Cuffey's left side under his arm. Simultaneously, Cuffey let go of Charles's bloodied throat and reared away from the sword. It had already pierced the yellow satin and now slid in two inches. Four. Six —
Charles felt the blade scrape bone and slide on. Twelve inches. Fifteen —
Cuffey shrieked then, leaping and writhing with the killing steel stuck through him. Charles held fast. Cuffey continued his violent contortions. The blade snapped below the hilt, three inches from the dress.
Still impaled on the part that was deep inside him, Cuffey plucked wildly at the stub of steel, teetering and twirling into the burning dining room. The belling yellow skirt caught. Flames encircled the hem, ran upward like a fringe going the wrong way. Turning, weaving, Cuffey completed the figure of his death waltz and dropped into the
