steamed into Port Royal Sound and opened fire on Hilton Head Island. The bombardment from Du Pont's gunboats sent the small Confederate garrison retreating to the mainland before the sun set. Two days later, nearby, the historic little port of Beaufort fell. There came reports of burning and looting of white homes by rapacious Yankee soldiers and revengeful blacks.
Each day brought new rumors. Arson would soon raze Charleston, which would be replaced by a city for black fugitives; Harriet Tubman was in the state, or coming to the state, or thinking about coming to the state, to urge slaves to run or revolt; for failure in western Virginia, Lee had been banished to command the new Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida.
The last proved true. Unexpectedly, the famous soldier and three of his senior staff appeared on horseback in the lane of Mont Royal one twilight. They spent an hour with Orry in the parlor before riding on to Yemassee.
Orry had met Lee once, in Mexico; yet because of the man's reputation, both military and personal, he felt he knew him well. What a jolt, then, to confront the visitor and find he no longer resembled his published portraits. Lee was fifty-four or fifty-five, but his seamed face, shadowed eyes, white-streaked beard, and general air of strain made him appear much older. Orry had never seen a picture of Lee with a beard, and said so.
'Oh, I brought this back from the Cheat Mountain campaign,' Lee said. 'Along with a portfolio of nicknames I'd be happier to discard.' His staff men laughed, but the mirth was forced. 'How is your cousin, young Charles?'
'He's well, the last I heard. He enlisted with the Hampton Legion. I'm surprised you remember him.'
'Impossible to forget him. While I was superintendent, he was the best rider I saw at the Academy.'
Lee fell to discussing the point of his visit. He wanted Orry to accept the commission in Richmond, even though he was no longer headquartered there and could not employ him directly. 'You can be of great service to the War Department, however. It isn't true, as the backbiters would have it, that President Davis constantly interferes or that he's the person who actually runs the department.' Lee paused. 'It is not completely true, I mean to say.'
'I plan to go as soon as I can, General. I've just been awaiting the arrival of a new overseer to run the place. He's due any day.'
'Good news. Splendid! You and every West Point man like you are of infinite value to the army and the conduct of the war. The great failing of Mr. Davis, if I may in confidence suggest one, is his belief that there's nothing wrong with secession. Perhaps in the South there is not. In Washington, I assure you, they consider it treason. I am not enough of a constitutionalist to state positively that the act was illegal, but I consider it a blunder whose magnitude is only now being perceived. But no matter what personal feelings you or any of us have about secession, one of its consequences is immutable. We shall have to win our right to it — our right to exist as a separate nation. When I say win, I am speaking of military victory. Mr. Davis, regrettably, believes the right will be awarded us if we merely press our claim rhetorically. That is the dream of an idealist. Laudable, perhaps, but a dream. What we did was heinous to a majority of our former countrymen. Only force of arms will gain and hold independence. Academy men will understand and fight the war as it must be fought, unless we plan to quit or be defeated.'
'Fight,' one of the staff men growled. Orry nodded to agree.
'That's the proper spirit,' Lee said, rising; his knees creaked. He shook Orry's hand, passed a social moment on the piazza with Madeline, then rode away to the duties of his obscure command. Orry put his arm around his wife and pulled her against him in the chill of the darkening sky. Parting was inevitable now. It hurt to think of it.
Next morning, further news came. Nine blacks from Francis LaMotte's plantation had used basket boats, woven in secret, to float down the Ashley on the ebb tide. They had abandoned the boats above Charleston and fled south, presumably to the Union lines around Beaufort.
Along with that report, the day brought the overseer from North Carolina, Philemon Meek, mounted on a mule.
Orry's first reaction was disappointment. He had expected a man in his sixties, but not someone with the stoop and demeanor of an aged schoolmaster; Meek even wore half-glasses down near the tip of his nose.
Orry interviewed Meek for an hour in the library, and the impression began to change. Meek answered his new employer's questions tersely but honestly. When he didn't know or understand something, he said so. He told Orry that he didn't believe in harsh discipline unless slaves brought it on themselves. Orry replied that, except for Cuffey and one or two others, few at Mont Royal were troublemakers.
Meek then made clear that he was a religious man. He owned and read only one book, the Scriptures. Any kind of reading was hard for him, he admitted, which perhaps contributed to his strongly stated opinion that secular books, and especially fiction, were satanically inspired. Orry made no comment. It wasn't an unusual attitude among the devout.
'I'm not sure about him,' Orry told Madeline that night. In a week, he formed more positive opinions. Despite Meek's age, he was physically strong and brooked no nonsense from those who worked for him. Andy didn't appear to like Meek but got along with him. So Orry packed his trunks and the Solingen sword, ready at last.
The day before his train left, he and Madeline went walking. It was a dying November afternoon around four o'clock. The sun was slightly above the treetops, ringed by spikes of light. In the west the sky was a smoky white, shading away to deep blue in the east. Somewhere in the far squares of the rice acreage, a slave with a fine baritone sang in Gullah: spontaneous music of a kind seldom heard at Mont Royal any more.
'You're anxious to go, aren't you?' Madeline said as they retraced their route from the great house.
Orry squinted against the cruciform light around the sun. 'I'm not anxious to leave you, though I feel better about it now that Meek's here.'
'That doesn't answer my question, sir.' 'Yes, I am anxious. You'll never guess the reason. It's my old friend Tom Jackson. In six months, he's become a national hero.' 'You surprise me. I never thought you had that kind of ambition.'
'Oh, no. Not since Mexico, anyway. The point about Jackson is, we were classmates. He rushed to do his duty, while I've taken half a year to answer the call. Not without good reason — but I still feel guilty.'
She wrapped both arms around his and hugged it between her breasts. 'Don't. Your waiting's over. And in a few weeks, when Meek has settled in, I'll be on my way to Richmond for the duration.'
'Good.' Peace and a sense of events moving properly for a change settled on him as they drew near the house, long shadows stretching out behind them. Orry fingered his chin. 'I saw a lithograph of Tom last week. He has a fine bushy beard. All the officers seem to have them. Would you like it if I grew one?'
'I can't answer until I know how badly it scratches when we —'
She stopped. The houseman, Aristotle, was waving from a side entrance in a way that conveyed urgency. They hurried toward him. Orry was the first to see the rickety wagon and despondent mule standing at the head of the lane.
'Got two visitors, Mr. Orry. Uppity pair of niggers. Won't state their business to nobody but you and Miss Madeline. I packed 'em off to the kitchen to wait.'
Orry asked, 'Are they men from another plantation?'
The irritated slave grumbled, 'It's two females.'
Puzzled, Orry and Madeline turned toward the kitchen building, the center of a cloud of savory barbecue smells. Nearing it, they recognized the elderly Negress seated in an old rocker near the door. Her right leg, crudely splinted and bound with sticks and rags, rested on an empty nail box.
'Aunt Belle,' Madeline exclaimed, while Orry speculated about the identity of the octoroon's companion, just coming outside. She wore field buck's shoes; the right side of one upper had been pulled away from the sole. Her dress had been washed so often, all color had been lost. She was an astonishingly attractive young girl, nubile and dark as mahogany.
Madeline hugged the frail old woman, exclaiming all in a rush, 'How are you? What happened to your leg? Is it broken?' Aunt Belle Nin had practiced midwifery in the district for a generation, living alone and free back in the marshes. She and Madeline had met at Resolute, where Aunt Belle came occasionally to assist with a difficult birth. It was to Aunt Belle that Madeline had taken Ashton when Orry's sister got herself in a fix and begged Madeline's help.
'That's a lot of questions,' Aunt Belle said, grimacing uncomfortably. 'Yes, it's broke in two or three places.
