To Jolly: "I endow you with the title, rights, and privileges of Grand Turk, charging you to assist the Cyclops in all regards, and serve as his loyal adjutant."
"Yes, sir, General." Jolly accepted the regalia, his eyes brimming with anticipatory pleasure.
Grand Sentinel, Grand Ensign, Grand Scribe, Grand Exchequer — each man had a responsibility. With great solemnity and a high sense of patriotism absent from his life since he'd mustered out of the Palmetto Rifles, Des donned the shimmering red robe and hood. So did the others.
The torches fumed and smoked. General Forrest surveyed the hooded den. Well pleased, he smiled.
"You are the newest knights of our great crusade. Begin your purge here, on your home soil, where the face of the enemy is known to you. Joined klavern to klavern throughout our great Invisible Empire, together we will sweep the debased government of certain evil men from this land we love."
Des licked his lips and exhaled, rippling the mask that hung below his chin. Again he felt the weight of his boon companion, Ferris Brixham, sagging dead in his arms.
Jolly felt the rolling gait of a war-horse, and heard the screams of the dying at Fort Pillow.
And Gettys grew stiff under his robe, thinking of Orry Main's widow, denied her sudden new wealth, abducted and brought to a remote clearing like this, stripped bare for whatever punishment, or pleasure, they chose.
Eerily, Des sensed his thoughts. "Certain white men, Randall," he whispered. "A certain white woman, too."
Slavery and imprisonment for debt are permanently barred.
Duelling is outlawed.
Divorce is made legal. The property of a married woman is no longer subject to sale or levy for a husband's debts.
Henceforth judicial districts are to be called counties.
A system of public schools shall be established, open to all and financed by uniform taxes on real and personal property.
Railroads and poorhouses shall likewise be built with tax monies, collection of which by municipalities, townships, counties and school districts is hereby authorized.
There shall be no segregation by race in the state militia.
Universal manhood suffrage is granted to all regardless of race or previous condition.
No person shall be disfranchised for crimes committed while he was enslaved.
Distinction on account of race or color in any case whatever shall be prohibited, and all classes of citizens shall enjoy equally all common, public, legal and political privileges.
Some provisions of the forty-one sections of the
40
Marie-Louise Main came into the springtime of her fifteenth year bothered by a number of things.
She was bothered at night by vivid dreams in which she waltzed with a succession of handsome young men. Each young man held her waist firmly and flirted in a Yankee accent she found wickedly attractive. Every face was different, but all the young men were officers in blue uniforms with bright gold buttons. The ending of each dream was similar, too. The young officer whirled her away to some dim balcony or garden path and there bent to kiss her in a highly forward way —
Whereupon she invariably awoke. She knew why. She was ignorant of what came after a kiss.
Oh, she had a general idea. She'd seen animals, and, well, she knew. But she hadn't the faintest idea of how it felt, or how she should behave. Mama had provided basic facts, but to questions about response she said, 'Time enough to talk about that when you become engaged. That will be some years yet." Of course Marie-Louise never mentioned the subject with Papa.
She was bothered by what she perceived as her inadequacy when she compared herself with her peers, the five other young ladies in her class at Mrs. Allwick's Female Academy. While she worked at her translation of selected passages from Horace or the Aeneid, the other girls passed notes and whispered about their beaux. Each had several, or claimed they did. Marie-Louise had none. Papa was so grim and preoccupied all the time, he wouldn't give her the slightest encouragement about boys. Not that it really mattered. She didn't know even one boy who might want to begin the courtship ritual with the customary small gifts and parlor visits.
She wondered if her looks contributed to this unhappy situation. She had to accept her height, and a slim figure; both parents were built that way. She'd inherited Mama's dark blond curls and a large mouth with good teeth. Her small bosom came in some mysterious way from Papa's side, she decided; Mama was flat.
When she felt good, she thought herself passably pretty. When something got her down — usually the lack of boys in her life — she was sure she was a homely horse. Objectively, she was considered an attractive young woman, with a pretty face suited to smiling and a natural warmth that invited friendliness, although it was true that she was a little too tall and thin ever to be deemed a beauty.
Marie-Louise was bothered by her father. He was stern and unsmiling, and although she had once been comfortable in his presence, she was no longer. Nor was Mama. Mama liked to entertain Aunt Madeline whenever she was in Charleston, but it could only be during the day, when Marie-Louise was at school; Papa refused to allow Uncle Orry's widow to eat supper at Tradd Street or call when he was at home. He never explained this intolerant behavior, but it wounded Marie-Louise, who was fond of her aunt by marriage. Mama said Aunt Madeline needed the affection and support of her family. Uncle Orry's best friend Mr. Hazard, the brother of Aunt Brett's husband, had lost his wife in some terrible accident. Aunt Madeline had gone to the funeral and was still upset about it, Mama said.
Papa didn't care. Papa was not himself; not the man Marie-Louise remembered from her early childhood. He was busy with all sorts of personal causes. For instance, twice a month he traveled on horseback to Columbia. He was one of thirty-eight trustees of the old South Carolina College, now reopened as a state university with twenty-two students. "If the Radicals and General Canby will leave us alone, we might make something of the institution." Exactly what he wanted to make of it, Marie-Louise couldn't fathom, but he was fiercely protective of the university, and of his position as trustee.
Papa was always delivering angry little sermons at meals. Marie-Louise knew there was turmoil in the state because of the new constitution that had something to do with public schools, one of the topics that most often prompted Papa's sermons. One evening he flourished a letter from General Wade Hampton. "He's chairing our special committee to write a protest to Congress about that damnable constitution." The next evening he waved some cheap inky sheet and declared, "The Thunderbolt is a trashy paper but in this case the editor's right. A property tax rate of nine mills per dollar would be thievery. The school scheme is nothing but a pauper's cause, engineered by approximately sixty Negroes, most of whom are ignorant, and fifty white men who are Northern outcasts or Southern renegades. Their tinkering with the social order will destroy this state morally and financially."
The new schools, to be attended by black as well as white pupils, were not the only issue that incensed Papa. He ranted about charges of treason brought against Mr. Davis after a long imprisonment. "Our caged eagle," Papa called him. As for the President of the United States, Mr. Johnson, Papa said he was "high-principled" and "the friend of Southerners," but he was apparently about to be driven out of office by a scheme Marie-Louise didn't understand at all. She only knew the fiendish Republicans were behind it.