Love and War

had no piazza. Hampton had brought a bottle of peach brandy in his saddlebag. They shared it, using a collection of unmatched cups and glasses.

Hampton questioned Charles about his last days in the cavalry. Charles had little to say. Hampton told them briefly of his own experiences. He had indeed wanted to continue the fight west of the Mississippi. 'What they did to my son and my brother and my home persuaded me that I was not morally bound by the surrender.' So he had ridden on in pursuit of the fleeing President and his party.

'I would have escorted Mr. Davis all the way to Texas. Even Mexico. I had a small company of loyal men, or so I thought. But they dropped away, gave up, one by one. Finally I was alone. At Yorkville, I chanced to meet my wife, Mary. She and Joe Wheeler — General Wheeler — persuaded me that trying to find the President was futile. I was tired. Ready to be persuaded, I suppose. So I stopped.'

Cooper asked, 'Do you know where Davis is now?'

'No. I suppose he's in jail somewhere — perhaps even hanged. What a disgraceful end to the whole business.' He tossed off the last of his brandy, which seemed to calm him.

Hampton went on to say he was living in a house belonging to a former overseer. 'My daughter Sally's to be married in June. I have that happy event to anticipate, along with the work of rebuilding this poor, wracked state. I'm glad you're on Mont Royal again, Cooper. I remember where you stood at the time of the secession convention. We're going to need men like you. Men of sanity and good will. Patience, strength — I think the Yankees will press us hard. Try us — punish us — severely. Booth did us incredible harm.'

'Has there been any word of him?' Billy said.

'Oh, yes. He was caught and shot to death a couple of weeks ago on a farm near the Rappahannock.'

'Well, gentlemen —' Charles stood up and set the fruit jar from which he had been drinking on the log that had been his chair '— I'll excuse myself with your permission. I have business in Virginia, and I want to be on the road by daylight. I leave you to your high ideals and the reconstruction of our glorious state.'

Billy was baffled by this sourness. His old friend stood out in memory as lighthearted, quick to laugh. This shabby, bearded skeleton wasn't Bison Main, but someone much older, of much darker temperament.

'Someone must champion the South,' Cooper declared. 'We must defend her with every peaceful means, or there'll be nothing left for generations but burned earth and despair.'

Charles stared at him. 'That isn't what you used to say, Cousin.''

'Nevertheless, he's right,' Hampton said, some of the old authority in his voice. 'The state will need many good men. Including you, Charles.'

With a bow toward the visitor, Charles smiled. 'No, thank you, General. I did my job. Killed God knows how many fellow human beings — fellow Americans — on behalf of the high-minded principles of the high-minded Mr. Davis and his high-minded colleagues. Don't ask me to do anything else for the South or its misbegotten cause.'

Hampton leaped to his feet, his stocky frame silhouetted against fading light in the west. 'It is your land, too, sir. Your cause —'

'Correction, sir. It was. I obeyed orders until the surrender. But not a moment longer. Good evening, gentlemen.'

Charles left before dawn, while Billy and Brett were still asleep with their arms around each other, squeezed onto the rickety cot provided for them. Billy had gone to bed saddened because his best friend had said so little to him. Charles had withheld something of great personal importance and had walked away every time Billy tried to mention his heroic behavior during the Libby escape. He had ridden off without a word of farewell, as Billy discovered soon after he awoke.

Smelling imitation coffee brewing, he gently touched Brett's middle — it was now certain that she was pregnant — kissed her warm throat, and slipped off the creaky cot. He lifted the cloth partition and found Andy at the stove. Andy confirmed that Charles had gone.

'Strange fella,' he said. 'Was he always so moody and glum?'

'No. Something happened to him in Virginia. Something other than the war. He was courting a woman. A widow. He cared for her very much —'

'Never heard a thing about any woman.'

'He didn't tell me, either. Madeline did.'

'Maybe that's it,' Andy said, nodding. 'If he thinks he lost her, that could account for it. A woman can tear up a man almost as much as goin' to war, I guess.'

He smiled, but Billy didn't.

The passing days showed Brett how radically conditions and relationships had changed in four short years. Cooper toiled in the rice fields like one of their father's people. Madeline, who had been the chatelaine for a time, tied up her skirts, wrapped her black hair in a bandanna, and sweated right alongside him. Despite Billy's protests, Brett did, too. She insisted it would be a few months yet before she was unable to do her share.

Despite the joy of the new life growing within her, Mont Royal disappointed Brett because there were no blacks who wanted or needed her help. The kind of teaching Jane had done for a while, for example.

'There's an entire state in need of help,' Cooper said when she expressed her feeling. 'You've seen all the people camped in the fields and along the roads —'

But she wasn't persuaded. Everything was different and, except for her life with Billy, unhappily so.

George felt much the same way on the thirteenth of May. It was Saturday, the end of a week that saw Davis and his small party captured at a woodland bivouac near Irwinville, Georgia. George was shocked at the widespread ruin in Charleston, to which a coastal steamer from Philadelphia had brought him, with Constance. He was grieved by the sight of so many burned homes and buildings, and even more saddened by the great numbers of Negroes everywhere. Rather than happy, they seemed uneasy and occasionally sullen in their new state of freedom.

'It's entirely fitting and right that they have it,' he said to Constance as they boarded the ancient sloop Osprey, which would take them up the Ashley. George wore a dark broadcloth suit; though not yet mustered out, he refused to wear his uniform. Nor did he need it to generate plenty of hostile stares and rude treatment.

'But there are practical problems,' he went on. 'How is freedom going to feed them? Clothe them? Educate them?' Even if practical answers could be found, would Northerners allow them to be implemented now that the military victory was won? Some would, of course; his sister, Virgilia, for example. But he believed such people were in a minority. The majority's turn of mind was illustrated by the telegraphic flimsy still folded in his pocket.

The message from Wotherspoon had been delivered to the pier in Philadelphia an hour before the coastal steamer weighed anchor: SIX MEN QUITTING TO PROTEST HIRING TWO COLORED.

He had immediately wired back: LET THE SIX GO. HAZARD. But that didn't alter the larger picture, and he knew it. His attitude was an atypical drop in the Yankee ocean.

Answering his questions of a moment ago, Constance said, 'That's the purpose of the Freedmen's Bureau, isn't it? General Howard is supposed to be a decent, capable man —'

'But look who wormed into the bureau as one of his assistants. Do you really believe Stanley did it for humanitarian reasons? There's some secret agenda — political, probably. We're in for a bad time for a few years, I'm afraid. It may last even longer if the wounds don't heal. Aren't permitted to heal —'

But the Ashley was smooth, and their short journey upriver on Osprey uneventful — until they had their first glimpse of the plantation. George exclaimed softly. Constance clutched the rail.

'My God,' he said. 'Even the pier's gone.'

'That's right, sir,' the master of the sloop called from the wheel. There was a slyly exaggerated politeness to the last word, saying the captain didn't really believe his passenger deserved the appellation. The overused, overblown sir was a common Southernism, George was discovering.

'You'll have to cross a plank to shore,' the man added. His eyes indicated that he might be pleased if husband and wife fell in the muddy water.

They had sent no advance word of their visit. They piled their valises on the grassy bank, including one old satchel that George had not let out of his sight since leaving Lehigh Station. As the whistle blew and the sloop