Freedmen's Bureau of the War Dept. now operating. Gen. Saxton at Beaufort the assistant commissioner for the state. Needed food is beginning to find its way to the destitute ...
A strange letter from Cooper. C. met a certain Desmond LaMotte of Charleston, whom I do not know. This D. L., whose profession is dancing master, said the LaMottes believe I cuckolded Justin, and they want reprisal. After so much bloodshed and privation, how can anyone find energy for such hatred? I would consider it ludicrous but for Cooper's warning that I must take it seriously. He thought this D. L. quite fanatic, therefore possibly a threat. Could he be one of those tragic young men whose nerves and reason were destroyed by the war? I shall exercise caution with strangers ...
Brutal heat. But we have harvested our rice crop and got a little money for it. Few Negroes want to work as yet. Many on abandoned plantations in the neighborhood are busy tearing down the old quarters where they lived as slaves in order to put up new homes, however small and primitive, as emblems of their freedom.
Andy and Jane continue to press me about a school for the local freedmen. Will decide soon. There are risks to be weighed.
Yesterday, in need of lamp oil, walked to the old store at the Summerton crossroads. I went the shorter way, through the lovely bright marshes, whose hidden paths you taught me so well. At the crossroads, a sad spectacle. The Gettys Bros, store is open but surely will not be for long — shelves are bare. The place is little more than a shelter for members of that large family, one of whom, an oafish old man with a squirrel rifle, keeps watch on the property ...
The noon sun shone on the Summerton crossroads. Three great live oaks spread shade over the store and its broken stoop. Near them, clusters of dark green yucca with spear-sharp fronds grew low to the ground. Madeline stood looking at the old man with the rifle on the edge of the porch. He wore filthy pants; his long underwear served as his shirt.
"Ain't nothin' here for you or anybody else," he said.
Sweat darkened the back of Madeline's faded dress. The hem showed dampness and mud left by her trek through the salt marshes. "There's water in the well," she said. "Might I have a drink before I start back?"
"No," said the nameless member of the Gettys clan. "Go get it from the wells of your own kind." He gestured to the empty tawny road winding away toward Mont Royal.
"Thank you so much for your kindness," she said, picking up her skirts and stepping into the blaze of light.
A half-mile down the road, she came upon a detachment of six black soldiers and a white leutenant with a downy, innocent face. The men lay at rest in the hot shade, their collars unfastened, their rifles and canteens put aside.
"Good day, ma'am," the young officer said, jumping up and giving a little salute of respect.
"Good day. It's a hot day for travel."
"Yes, but we must march back to Charleston all the same. I wish I could offer you water, but our canteens are empty. I asked that fellow at the store to let us fill up, and he wouldn't."
"He isn't a very generous sort, I'm afraid. If you'll come along to my plantation — it's about two miles and right on your way — you're welcome to use its well."
So it has risen to haunt me again. "Your own kind," the old man said. Cooper's letter said the dancing master made reference to my ancestry, too.
Went last night on foot along the river road to the Church of St Joseph of Arimathea, where we worshiped together. Have not been there since shortly after the great house burned. Father Lovewell greeted me and welcomed me to meditation in the family pew for as long as I wished.
I sat for an hour, and my heart spoke. As soon as possible I must travel to the city on three errands, one of which is sure to provoke people such as the dancing master and that old Mr. Gettys. Let it. If I am to be hanged regardless of what I do, why should I hesitate to commit a hanging offense? Orry, my love, I draw courage from thoughts of you, and of my dear father. Neither of you ever let fear put chains on your conscience.
5
Ashton let out a long wailing cry. The customer writhing on top of her responded with a bleary smile of bliss. Downstairs, Ashton's employer, Señora Vasquez-Reilly, heard the outcry and saluted the ceiling with her glass of tequila.
Ashton hated what she was doing. That is, she hated the act when she had to do it to survive. Being stuck in this flyblown frontier town — Santa Fe, in New Mexico Territory — was unspeakable. To be reduced to whoring was unbelievable. Moaning and yelling let her express her feelings.
The middle-aged gentleman, a widower who raised cattle, withdrew, shyly averting his eyes. Having already paid her, he dressed quickly, then bowed and kissed her hand. She smiled and said in halting Spanish, "You come back soon, Don Alfredo."
"Next week, Señorita Brett. Happily."
God, I hate greasers, she thought as she sorted the coins after he left. Three of the four went to Señora Vasquez-Reilly, a widow whose burly brother-in-law made sure the señora's three girls didn't cheat. Ashton had gone to work for the señora early in the summer, when her funds ran out. She'd given her name as Senorita Brett, thinking it a fine joke. It would have been an even better one if her sweet, prissy sister knew about it.
Ashton Main — she no longer thought of herself as Mrs. Huntoon — had decided to stay in Santa Fe because of the treasure. Somewhere in the Apache-infested wasteland, two wagons had vanished, and the men bringing them from Virginia City had been massacred. One man, her husband, James Huntoon, was no loss. Another, her lover, Lamar Powell, had planned to create a second confederacy in the Southwest, with Ashton as his consort. To finance it, he'd loaded a false bottom in one of the wagons with three hundred thousand dollars in gold refined from ore out of the Nevada mine originally owned by his late brother.
The massacre had been reported by a wagon driver who reached a trading station shortly before he died of his wounds. In his pain-racked, disjointed telling, he never revealed the site of the killings. Only one person might have that information now: the guide Powell had hired in Virginia City, Collins. Rumor said he'd survived, but God knew where he was.
When she first heard of the massacre, Ashton had tried to find a wealthy patron in Santa Fe. Candidates were few. Most were married, and if they philandered at the señora's, they also showed no desire to get rid of their wives. As for finding a man at Fort Marcy, the idea was a joke. The officers and men who garrisoned the run-down post near the old Palace of Governors weren't paid enough to support their own lusts, let alone a mistress. They had all the prospects of a hog headed for a Low Country barbecue.
Of course she could have avoided working for the señora if she'd written an appeal to her sanctimonious brother Cooper, or to the sister whose name she delighted in muddying, or even to the slutty octoroon Orry had married. But she was damned if she'd stoop to asking any of them for charity. She didn't want to see them or communicate with them until she could do so on her own terms.
Ashton put on her working clothes — a yellow silk dress with wide lace-trimmed shoulder straps, meant to be worn over a blouse with dolman sleeves. The señora had denied her the blouse as well as a corset, so that the bulge of her partly exposed breast would tempt the customers. The dress had been fashionable about the time her damn brother Orry went to West Point. She hated it, along with the coy black mantilla the señora insisted she wear, and the shoes, too — leather dyed a garish yellow, with laces, and thin high heels.