About twenty-two millions lived in the North. There, too, you found most of the old Union's industrial plants, rail trackage, telegraphic lines, mineral and monetary wealth. The eleven states of the Confederacy had a population of something like nine million; a third of those, slaves, would never be of use to the war effort except in menial ways.
Dubious, not to say dangerous, attitudes about the war prevailed these days. Fools like the LaMotte brothers snickered at the suggestion that the South could be invaded — or, if it were, that the result could be anything but glorious Confederate victory. From aristocrats to yeomen, most Southerners had a proud belief in their own abilities, which led to an unrealistic conviction that one good man from Dixie could whip ten Yankee shopkeepers anywhere, anytime, world without end, Amen.
In very rare moments of chauvinism, Orry shared some of those beliefs. He would match his younger cousin Charles against any other officer. He saw the same courage in Charles's commander, Wade Hampton. And he found truth — though not the whole of it — in the maxim he had memorized in his young, hopeful years. In war, Bonaparte said, men are nothing; a man is everything.
Even so, to imagine the North had no soldiers to equal those from the South was idiocy. Suicidal. Orry could recall any number of first-rate Yankees from the Academy, including one he had known personally and liked very much. Where was Sam Grant serving now?
No answer to that — and no way to tell which way this strange, unwanted war might go. He forced himself back to the occasionally baffling legalisms of the bond agreement. The sooner he finished work for the day, the sooner he'd see Madeline.
About four, Orry returned from surveying the fields. He wore boots, breeches, and a loose white shirt whose empty left sleeve was held up at the shoulder by a bright pin. At thirty-five, Orry was as slender as he had been at fifteen and carried himself with confidence and grace despite his handicap. His eyes and hair were brown, his face rather long. Madeline said he grew handsomer as he aged, but he doubted that.
He had signed the bond agreement. Having done so, he stopped worrying about repayment. A decision prompted by patriotism oughtn't to have any conditions on it.
He crossed the head of the half-mile lane leading down to the river road. Mossy live oaks hid it from the light most of the day. He walked around the corner of the great house, which faced a formal garden and the pier on the slow-moving Ashley. Light footfalls sounded on the piazza overhead but stopped as he moved out from beneath it. Above him he saw a small, plump woman in her late sixties gazing contentedly at the cloudless sky.
"Good afternoon, Mother."
In response to his call, Clarissa Gault Main glanced down and smiled in a polite, puzzled way. "Good afternoon. How are you?"
"Just fine. You?"
The smile broadened, benign. "Oh, splendid — thank you so much." She turned and drifted inside. He shook his head. He had identified himself as her son, but the prompt was wasted; she no longer knew him. Fortunately, the Mont Royal blacks, with one or two exceptions, loved Clarissa. She was unobtrusively supervised and protected by everyone with whom she came in contact.
Where was Madeline? In the garden? As he studied it, he heard her inside. He found her in the parlor examining a cylindrical package nearly five feet long and heavily wrapped. She ran to put her arms around him.
"Careful," he said and laughed. "I'm dusty and sweaty as a mule."
"Sweaty, dusty — I love you in any condition." She planted a long, sweet kiss on his dry mouth. Refreshing as water from a mountain well. She locked her hands behind his neck while they embraced, and he felt the lushness of her full figure against him. Though legal marriage was as yet denied them, they shared the easy physical intimacy of a couple wed a long time and still in love. They slept without night clothes — Madeline's kind and forthright nature had quickly rid him of sensitivity about the appearance of his stump.
She drew back. "How has the day been?"
"Good. War or no war, these past weeks have been the happiest I've ever known."
She sighed a murmurous agreement, twining her fingers in his as they stood with foreheads touching. Madeline was a full-bosomed woman with lustrous dark eyes and hair and a richly contrasting pale complexion. "Justin has the means to make me a tiny bit happier, I confess."
"I'm sure we'll overcome that obstacle." The truth was, he wasn't sure, but he never admitted it. Over her shoulder he studied the parcel. "What's that?"
"I don't know. It's addressed to you. It came up from the dock an hour ago."
"That's right, the river sloop was due today —"
"Captain Asnip sent a note with the package. He said it arrived on the last vessel into Charleston before the blockade began. I did notice it carries the name of a transshipping firm in Nassau. Do you know what's in it?"
"I might."
"You ordered it, then. Let's unwrap it."
Unexpected panic banished his smile. What if the sight of the contents upset her? He tucked the package under his right arm.
"Later. I'll show you while we have supper. I want to display it properly."
"Mystery, mystery." She laughed as he strode away upstairs.
For the evening, he replaced his bedraggled outfit with a similar but clean one. His dark hair, over which he had poured two pitchers of water before he toweled it, had a soft, loose look. It was dusk as they sat down to dine. Blurry candles, upside-down images of the real ones, glowed in the highly buffed plane of the table. A small black boy amiably stirred the air and whisked flies off with an ostrich fan. Clarissa had eaten in her room, as she usually did, and retired.
"This smells grand," Orry said, touching a fork to the golden crust of the delicacy cooked in half of a big oyster shell. "Blue crab?"
"Netted in the Atlantic yesterday. I ordered two barrels in ice. They came on the packet boat. So much for gastronomy, Mr. Main. I want to see the package." It lay on the floor near him, the outer wrapping gone; oiled cloth was visible.
Studiously digging into the freshly picked and baked crab, he teased her with his straight face and low-voiced "Delicious."
"Orry Main, you're intolerable! Will you show me if I tell you some news about Justin?"
Sober suddenly, he laid his fork aside. "Good news?"
"Oh, nothing concerning the divorce, I'm afraid. Just something funny and a little sad." She relayed what she'd heard from one of the kitchen girls who had done an errand to Resolute earlier that day.
"In the rear," Orry mused. "A direct hit on the seat of the LaMotte family's prestige, eh?"
She laughed. "Your turn now." He broke two red wax seals and unwrapped the package. When she saw what the oiled cloth contained, she gasped.
"It's beautiful. Where is it from?"
"Germany. I ordered it for Charles and hoped it would get through."
He handed her the scabbarded weapon. With great care, she grasped the leather grip wound with brass wire. She drew out the curved blade; the fan boy's eyes grew round as he watched the candlelight reflect on the filligreed steel. Orry explained that it was a light cavalry saber, the approved 1856 design: forty-one inches overall.
Madeline tilted the blade to read the engraved inscription on the obverse: To Charles Main, beloved of his family, 1861. She gave him a long, affectionate look, then examined the other side. "I can't read this. Is it Cluberg?"
"Clauberg of Solingen. The maker. One of the finest in Europe."
"There are many tiny engraved flowers and curves — even medallions with the letters C. S. in them."
"On certain versions of this model, the letters are U.S.," he said with a dry smile.
Still treating the sword as if it were glass, she returned it to the gilt-banded scabbard of blue iron. Then, avoiding his eyes, she said, "Perhaps you should have ordered one for yourself."