'Be quiet!' Constance spun and covered her eyes. She was stern but composed when she again faced Virgilia after a minute. 'You can stay only a short time.'
'All right.'
'A few months at most.'
'All right. Thank you.'
'And George mustn't know. Did William see you arrive?'
'I don't think so. I was careful, and he was busy with his archery —'
'I'm leaving to join George tomorrow and taking the children. They mustn't see you. So you'll stay in one of the servants' rooms until we go. That way, I'll be the only person required to lie.'
Virgilia shuddered; it was cuttingly said. Try as she would, Constance couldn't dam everything inside. She added, 'If George were to discover you're here, I know he'd order you out again.'
'Yes, I suppose so.'
'Brett is staying here, too. While Billy's in the army.'
'I remember. I'm glad Billy's fighting. I'm glad George is doing his part, too. The South must be utterly —'
Constance snatched the cleaver and slammed the flat of it on the block. 'Virgilia, if you utter so much as one word of that ideological garbage you've heaped on us for years, I will turn you out myself, instantly. Others may have a moral right to speak against slavery and slaveowners, but you don't. You aren't fit to sit in judgment of a single human soul.'
'I'm sorry. I spoke without thinking. I'm sorry. I won't —'
'That's right, you won't. I'll have trouble enough persuading Brett to let you stay at Belvedere while I'm gone and she's in charge. If she weren't a decent person, I'd have no chance of doing it. But you mustn't question my terms —'
'No.'
She struck the block with her palm. 'You must accept every one.'
'Yes.'
'— or you'll go out the same way you came. Do I make myself clear?'
'Yes. Yes.' Virgilia bowed her head, and the word blurred as she repeated it. 'Yes.'
Constance covered her eyes again, still confused, still wrathful. Virgilia's shoulders started to shake. She cried, almost without sound at first, then more loudly. It was a kind of whimpering; animal. Constance, too, felt dizzy as she hurried to the back door and made certain it was shut tightly so her son wouldn't hear.
29
'I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the day of judgment —'
Other voices suddenly rose to compete with that of the Reverend Mr. Saxton, rector of the Episcopal parish. Standing beside Madeline in the finest, and hottest, suit he owned, Orry looked swiftly toward the open windows.
Madeline wore a simple but elegant summer dress of white lawn. The slaves had been given a free day and invited to listen to the ceremony from the piazza. About forty bucks and wenches had gathered in the sunshine. The house men and women, being, and expecting to be treated as, members of a higher caste, were permitted in the parlor, though only one person was seated there now: Clarissa.
'— that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony —'
The quarrel outside grew noisier. Two men, with others commenting. Someone yelled.
'— ye do now confess it. For be ye well assured —'
The rector faltered, lost his place in the prayer book, coughed twice, exhaling a whiff of the sherry taken beforehand in company with the nervous bride and groom. Before bringing Madeline to the parlor, Orry had jokingly said that Francis LaMotte might show up to object to their marrying so soon after Justin's funeral.
'Be ye well assured —' the Reverend Mr. Saxton resumed as the volume of the shouting increased. A man started to curse. Orry recognized the voice. His face dark red, he bent toward the rector.
'Excuse me for a moment.'
His mother gave him a bright smile as he strode past and out into the hot sunshine. A semicircle of blacks faced the combatants in the drive. Orry heard Andy.
'Leave him be, Cuffey. He did nothing to —'
'Hands off me, nigger. He pushed me.'
'Was you that pushed me,' a weaker voice replied, a slave named Percival.
Unnoticed behind the spectators, Orry shouted: 'Stop it.'
A pigtailed girl screamed and jumped. The crowd shifted back, and he saw Cuffey, ragged and sullen, standing astraddle Percival's legs. The frail slave had fallen or been pushed to a sitting position against the wheel of a cart. In the cart, beneath a tarpaulin, were eight pairs of candlesticks and two sets of hearth irons, all brass; Orry was Sending them to a Columbia foundry in answer to the Confederacy's appeal for metal.
Andy stood a yard behind Cuffey. He wore clean clothes, as did all the others. It was a special day at Mont Royal. Orry strode straight to Cuffey.
'This is my wedding day, and I don't take kindly to an interruption. What happened here?'
'It's this nigger's fault,' Percival declared, indicating Cuffey. Andy gave him a hand up. 'He came struttin' in after the preacher had already started and the rest of us was listenin'. He got here late, but he wanted to see better so he pushed and shoved me.'
Cuffey was caught, which made him all the madder. Hate shone before he averted his eyes, trying to soften or prevent punishment by mumbling, 'I din't push him. Haven't been feelin' good — kind of dizzy, like. I just stumbled an' knocked him down. Haven't been feelin' good,' he repeated in a lame way.
Over derisive groans from some of the others, Percival said, 'He's been feelin' snake-mean, like every other day. Nothin' else wrong with him.' As protocol demanded, Orry glanced at his head driver for a verdict.
'Percival's telling it right,' Andy said.
'Cuffey, look at me.' When he did, Orry continued. 'Two tasks each day for a week. A task and a half every day for a week after that. See that he does them, Andy.'
'I will, Mr. Orry.'
Cuffey fumed but didn't dare speak. Orry wheeled and stomped back to the house.
Soon after, he and Madeline joined right hands while the rector said, 'That ye may so live together in this life that in the world to come ye may have life everlasting. Amen.'
In their bedroom that night, Madeline reached through the dark to find him. 'My goodness, you'd think the bridegroom had never been with the bride before.'
'Not as a husband he hasn't,' Orry said, sitting beside her, his hair-matted thigh touched the smoothness of hers. A bright, cloudless night filled the room with light that spilled softly over them while they sat kissing and touching. The tips of her breasts were as dark as her hair and eyes; the rest of her was marble.
She laid both arms over his shoulders and clasped her hands. Kissed him. 'Lord, but I do love you.'
'I love you, Mrs. Main.'
'It is real, isn't it? I never thought it would be —' She laughed low. 'Mrs. Main. How grand it sounds.'
Another long, ardent kiss, his hand on her breast.
'I'm sorry that muss happened during the ceremony. I ought to sell Cuffey. I don't want him causing trouble when I go to Richmond.'
'Mr. Meek will be here to handle him then.'
'Hope so.' No reply had arrived from North Carolina as yet. 'I trust Meek won't live up to his name. Cuffey needs a strong hand.'
Madeline caressed his cheek. 'As soon as you're settled in Virginia, I'll join you. Till then, everything will be
