In the lassitude afterward, a curious new thought occurred to her. The war had worked a change in much more than her appearance and the way she regarded herself. Her loathing for the South was as deep as ever, punishment of Southerners her abiding cause.
Yet there, too, she had changed. She now coveted the means as well as the end; the raw power to prosecute her cause or any other. Because of a chain of events, seemingly disconnected but which were not — they had a pattern, an inevitability she could clearly follow — the power was within her grasp. It was as near as the body of her lover slumbering beside her.
If this change in her prospects was the result of war, then war wasn't hell, as someone said Sherman had remarked, but one of God's greatest miracles. For perhaps the first time in her adult life, Virgilia fell asleep content.
127
Next morning, as clock hands at Mont Royal reached the final minute before six, a fiery light described a high arc out in the darkness, then descended, trailing sparks. "They've come," Philemon Meek exclaimed.
Thoughtlessly, he lifted the low-trimmed lamp from the dining table and rushed to one of the tall windows. Charles pushed his chair back. The scabbarded Solingen sword lay on the tablecloth. "Get away from there with that light!"
Frightened and excited, the overseer either didn't hear or ignored the warning. He lifted the swagged drapery for a better view. "They've torched the kitchen building. I can see them moving toward —" A gun blast broke the window, scattered glass, and hurled Meek backward over some chairs. The shattered lamp spilled oil that ignited instantly. Charles jumped up, swearing.
Shouts and taunts drifted from the darkness. Charles ran to the overseer, a pointless effort. The entire front of Meek's shirt bore oozing red spots left by the shotgun charge that had killed him.
Charles tore down a large section of drape and flung it over the oil fire eating the gleaming wood floor. Then he stamped on the drape, quenching the flames. A shot; the unseen bullet buried in the wall opposite the broken window.
The scorched drapes exuded a foul smell. Crouching down, he saw capering figures silhouetted by the fire consuming the kitchen building. Andy rushed in, then Cooper with one of the old Hawkens in hand. The other, Meek's, still lay on the table. Charles pointed to it.
"That's yours now, Andy. Take it upstairs, find a good vantage point, and start shooting. But make sure it's a place you can get out of quickly if they torch the house."
"Yes, Major," Andy said, snatching the old rifle and two of the small flannel bags Judith had sewn for powder and ball. Charles wasted no time pondering how remarkable it was to be arming a slave on a Carolina rice plantation. He had other things on his mind, chief among them survival.
"One more thing, Andy. You know what Cuffey looks like. Watch for him. He's the one we want taken out of action."
" 'Deed I do know him. They say he's all gone to fat and got himself a mule. Should make him easy to spot. I hope I'm the one who gets him."
He left. Charles crept to the window. A second fire was burning. The office.
"We'd better post ourselves in the hall," he said to Cooper. "You watch the door on the river side; I'll take the one by the drive." From these locations they would also be able to cover the locked doors of the parlor, where they had put all the women and children about five o'clock.
His face showing fear and strain, Cooper followed his younger cousin into the broad foyer that crossed the ground floor from front to back. "We had no warning, Charles. What happened to all those bucks you sent out as pickets?"
"Who the hell knows? They either got killed, ran off, or joined Cuffey's army." As any competent commander would have in a similar situation, he had spent most of the night outdoors, roaming from man to man, encouraging alertness in the pickets, jacking up their spirits. He had come inside the house half an hour ago to rest and collect himself, and this was the result. No warning.
"One side," he whispered suddenly, crouching again. A shadow passed a narrow vertical panel of glass at the left side of the driveway door. He drew his army Colt. A fire-limned figure appeared in the matching panel on the right side. Charles put a bullet into it. The figure sank down amid the tinkling of glass.
"That's one."
Behind him, a bolt rattled. He heard a child crying as the parlor door opened. Judith called, "Cooper? How many are —"
"Too many," Charles shouted. "Stay in there, goddamn it." The door slammed. The bolt shot home again.
In a flat, unemotional voice, Cooper said, "I don't think we'll live through this."
"Shut up with that kind of talk." Charles ran to the door on his side; he had seen a mounted figure fly past the narrow window lights. Smoke was drifting into the house. A defiant voice startled him.
"Hey, Charles Main, you in there? This here's one of your niggers come back to get you. Gonna burn you out, Mist' Charles Main. Roast you alive an' fuck your womenfolk."
"Cuffey, you son of a bitch —" Charles rammed his right arm through the broken window and fired. "Come in here and try."
Winged by the bullet, someone yelped. Charles heard the mule's hoofs rattling out there in the smoke and glare.
Then Cuffey's voice: "Pretty soon now. Pretty soon —"
Someone else had taken the bullet meant for him. Damn. It was a shot Charles could ill afford to waste.
"Over here," Cooper cried, an instant before the bolted door on the river side split apart, pounded by the butt ends of garden implements the raiders had found. As Charles waited for the door to give completely, brighter light outside the dining room drew his attention. There, beyond the trees, the whole sky glared.
He uttered a low, despairing syllable. They had fired the slave cabins. The sick house and probably the little chapel, too. They were warring on their own; the color of their victims no longer mattered. They were scum. Before they finished him, he would send some more down to tell Old Nick he was coming.
The river door burst apart. Four men crowded in, one with a fatwood torch that lit two white faces and two black ones. Cooper was struggling to aim the Hawken. Charles shot and hit no one. Three of the men leaped to one side, but one of the whites, a dumpy fellow with a pitchfork, lost his balance and lurched on toward the center of the foyer. The fatwood torch, thrown down, revealed the intruder's face, with a deserter's brand on the right cheek. Charles thought his mind had snapped. "Salem Jones?"
"Paying a call long overdue, you arrogant —" The rest was lost as Jones rushed him with the pitchfork.
Cooper fired. So did Charles, simultaneously throwing himself sideways to avoid the stabbing tines. Both shots missed. The momentum of Salem Jones's lunge carried him all the way to the other side of the foyer. The pitchfork tore through the fine flocked wallpaper, buried to a depth of two inches.
Charles ran at the former overseer, confused impressions assaulting him as they did in every battle. In the dining room, torches sailed through smashed windows, spreading fire again. In the parlor, breaking glass, frightened screams. The women had kitchen knives and cleavers for defense. Two of the men who had destroyed the river door beat at the doors of the parlor and yanked the knobs. All of this and a general background of gunfire, yelling, celebration registered during the seconds in which Charles dashed at Jones, who ranted incoherently while trying to free the pitchfork from the wall.
Charles knew he should shoot Jones in the back but couldn't. The men at the parlor doors succeeded in separating one door from the hardware of the bolt on the inside. Cooper's Hawken boomed. One man fell as Charles looped his free hand around Jones's waist and dragged him from the wall and the pitchfork. He saw a small, stout figure in the parlor doorway. "Mother — Jesus Christ, get back in there," Cooper cried at Clarissa, who was smiling in a puzzled way. Still pulling Jones, Charles failed to see the knife the panting man snatched from his belt. But he felt it when Jones slashed downward and back, stabbing his thigh.