"One of these days, I gonna take that tongue and cut it right out of your head."
"Shame," Cicero said softly but firmly. Others repeated it. "Shame—shame." Cuffey poked his head forward and spat on the floor, a big gob of bubbly white showing his opinion of them.
"I don' want your books," he said. "I don' want your jubilo neither. I want to burn this place. I want to kill the damn people who killed my babies and kep' me chained up all my life. That's my jubilo, you dumb nigger. That's my jubilo."
"You're crazy," Jane said, moving to Andy. The chance positioning, side by side, seemed to heighten Cuffey's anger. "Crazy. Miss Madeline's the best mistress you could have right now. She wants to help everyone in this room get ready for freedom. She's a good woman."
"She's a white woman, an' I'll see her dead. I'll see the whole place burned 'fore I'm done." Cuffey whirled and kicked the door open, stormed out of the sick house and into the dark.
Shaking their heads and muttering "Shame," Jane's pupils drifted away too. Andy stayed. Jane called, "Ned? The two of us can study alone any time you want."
Ned didn't turn or act as if he heard. He just walked straight ahead out the door. She put a hand over her eyes.
Only one candle remained, the one Andy had brought. It flickered in a cracked bowl near their feet. Jane uncovered her eyes and looked at him. "There's no helping Cuffey, is there? He's gone bad inside."
"Think so."
"Then I wish he'd run again. I wish Meek wouldn't go after him. I've never met a nigra who frightens me as much as he does." Hardly thinking of what she was doing, she bent her head against Andy's shirt. He put an arm around her waist, stroked her hair with his other hand. It felt natural and comforting.
"No need for Cuffey to scare you," he said. "I'll look after you. Always, if you'll let me."
"What?"
"I said — always. If you'll let me."
Slowly, he befit and gently kissed her mouth. Something happened within her then, expressed in a bursting, amazed little laugh. She knew they had sealed their future. With just that kiss. She admitted to herself she had been falling in love for weeks —
Visions intruded, staining the moment. Instead of Andy's face, she saw Cuffey's, and, in twisting shadows on the ceiling, Mont Royal afire.
"House Resolution Number 611," Senator Sherman said, tapping the document on his desk. "As you very well know, if it fails to pass both houses, the Academy will have no money to operate."
George sneezed. Outside the senator's windows, snow slashed horizontally. The winter was proving a savage one. George wiped his nose with a huge handkerchief, then asked, "When is the bill to be introduced?"
"Tomorrow. I expect the House will consider it as a committee of the whole."
The office smelled of old cigars. A gold clock ticked. At twenty past ten, most of the town was at home and beneath the blankets. George wished he were. Though he remained bundled in his blue army overcoat with caped shoulders, he couldn't get warm.
"What will the House do with it?" His clogged head lent the question an odd thickness.
"Tinker with it," replied the general's younger brother. "Pare down the ten thousand for roofing the academic buildings. Perhaps strike out the section about enlarging the chapel. The members of the Committee on Finance will want to show their authority, but I doubt they'll do any substantial damage. The hatchets will appear when the bill's reported over to our side."
"Wade is still determined?"
"Absolutely. He's a madman on the subject. You know his hatred of the South."
"Goddamn it, John, West Point is not the South."
"That is your view, George. All members of the Senate don't share it. A considerable number are on the side of Ben Wade, though a few are wavering. Those are the ones to whom I've spoken at some length. I know you and Thayer and the others have made a maximum effort, too — You've gotten sick from it, I'd say."
George waved that aside. "What are the chances of the bill going down?"
"It will depend on who speaks and how persuasively. Wade will hold forth at great length, and he'll offer every imaginable reason for defeat of the measure. Lane will join him —"
"That isn't an answer," George cut in. "What are the odds?"
Sherman stared at him. "At best — even."
"We should have done more. We —"
"We have done everything possible," the senator interrupted. "Now we can only await the outcome." He came around the desk, putting his hand on his visitor's shoulder.
"Go home, George. We don't need officers dying of influenza."
Gray-faced, George shuffled out.
In the snowstorm, it took him three-quarters of an hour to locate a driver willing to make the long trip to Georgetown. He collapsed inside the hack, his teeth chattering. He drove his fist into the side of the hack. "We should have done more!"
"What's going on down there?"
"Nothing," he shouted. By the time he reeled into his house, he was soaked with sweat and half out of his head.
66
Judah leaned across the starboard rail. "Look, Pa. Is that a Yankee?"
Cooper peered into the morning haze and spied the steam cruiser at which his son was pointing. She lay outside the entrance to the roadstead, her sails furled and her men idling on deck. Her ensign hung limp in the bright air. He could see nothing of it except colors — red, white, and a section of deep blue. He doubted it was the national banner of the Confederacy. "I suspect so."
A small boat put the pilot aboard. Soon the sound of the engines increased, and Isle of Guernsey steamed slowly into the roadstead. The harbor, protected by small islands to the north, was crowded with vessels driven by steam and sail. Beyond, Cooper saw the pale buildings of tropic latitudes and the green blur of New Providence Island.
The steamer had brought them down through towering seas and winter gales to drowsy warmth. En route, the British supercargo had shown Cooper the essential goods the vessel carried in her packed holds: long and short Enfield rifles, bullet molds, bars of lead, cartridge bags, bolts of serge. Now it must all be unloaded and placed aboard another vessel for the perilous run through the blockade — which extended even to here, Cooper realized when he saw the enemy cruiser.
Judith, pretty and cheerful in the new poke bonnet he had presented as an early Christmas present, joined him with their daughter. "There is another argument for the point I was trying to make last night," Cooper said to his wife. "That's a Yankee vessel standing watch. I would feel much better if you'd let me find a rental house in Nassau town where —"
"Cooper Main," she interrupted, "I have said my final word on that subject."
"But —"
"The discussion is closed. I won't stay here with the children while you sail blithely off for Richmond."
"Nothing blithe about it," he growled. "It's a very hazardous journey. The blockade's tightening all the time. Savannah and Charleston are nearly impossible to get into, and Wilmington's not much better. I hate for you to chance it."
"My mind's made up, Cooper. If you chance it, so shall we."
"Hurrah," Judah exclaimed, jumping and clapping. "I want to get back to Dixie Land and see General Jackson."
"I don't want to go on a boat if they're going to shoot at it," Marie-Louise said. "I'd rather stay here. This place looks pretty. Can I buy a parrot here?"
"Hush," said her mother, tapping her wrist.
Cooper loved Judith for her determination to stay with him, yet he did wish she would follow the more sensible course. He had been debating it with her unsuccessfully since they left the coaling stop at Madeira. He supposed he might as well desist. Perhaps they would experience no difficulty; many runners with good masters and experienced coastal pilots did slip through the net without being fired on or even sighted.