"Gonna — kill — you — white man." Panting, Cuffey wrenched his arm back. Slippery blood on Charles's fingers enabled him to get loose. He fastened both hands on Charles's neck. Charles felt the drip of Cuffey's blood on his throat.
"You — all finished. Jus' like — this place —"
And so it seemed. Charles was succumbing to shock and pain. His vision blurred. His right hand flopped out, scurrying desperately around the floor like a sightless white spider. He wanted a shard of mirror, a piece of prism to attack Cuffey's face.
The hands choked tighter, steadily tighter. Charles's red fingers touched and closed on something he couldn't immediately identify because of its ridged texture —
The wired hilt.
From the corner of his eye Cuffey saw it coming. Charles rammed the light cavalry saber into Cuffey's left side under his arm. Simultaneously, Cuffey let go of Charles's bloodied throat and reared away from the sword. It had already pierced the yellow satin and now slid in two inches. Four. Six —
Charles felt the blade scrape bone and slide on. Twelve inches. Fifteen —
Cuffey shrieked then, leaping and writhing with the killing steel stuck through him. Charles held fast. Cuffey continued his violent contortions. The blade snapped below the hilt, three inches from the dress.
Still impaled on the part that was deep inside him, Cuffey plucked wildly at the stub of steel, teetering and twirling into the burning dining room. The belling yellow skirt caught. Flames encircled the hem, ran upward like a fringe going the wrong way. Turning, weaving, Cuffey completed the figure of his death waltz and dropped into the consuming fire.
Finding something to feast on, it rose higher. Charles saw no more of him.
The smoking ceiling creaked and sagged, Charles struggled to his feet, the remaining part of the sword — it resembled a metal cross — gripped in his right hand. Most of the engraved inscription was gone. All that remained was amily, 1861.
Blood soaked his right pants leg and squished in his boot when he walked. He spied his fallen Colt and retrieved it. He found the parlor as yet largely untouched by the fire. The windows had been knocked out, presumably so Cooper and the others could escape. He had to find them. The great house was lost.
He ripped down another drapery, cut it by stabbing and sawing with the stub end of the sword until he had a strip long enough to wind around his thigh several times. He snapped off the leg of a taboret, broke that in two, and used half to finish the tourniquet, hoping it would suffice.
His lungs hurt, an abrasive feeling throughout his chest. Smoke grew thicker every moment. He ducked through a window to the piazza, the empty revolver in his left hand, the broken sword in his right.
Daylight was coming. Cuffey's followers had managed to find most everything of value before the fire claimed the house. The evidence littered the drive. They had emptied the wine and spirit racks, the wardrobes, the kitchen cabinets. He saw seedy, bearded men, white and black, slipping away in the smoke between the trees, arms laden with loot.
Not all of them had been equally successful. The blond boy wearing Cooper's frock coat and the petticoat' lay facedown amid silver and smashed plates. A bullet hole showed between his shoulder blades.
There was little shooting now. But all it took was one bullet, so Charles cautiously remained behind one of the white pillars as he shouted, "Cooper?"
Silence.
"Cooper!"
"Charles?"
The distant voice provided the guidance he needed. They were hiding in the mazy plantings of the formal garden by the river. He crept along the side of the house, careful to avoid touching it; the walls were hot. He turned the corner, passed the chimney, and scrutinized the lawn.
No one. He readied himself to make a dash, then remembered to announce something important with another shout.
"Cuffey's dead, Cooper. Cuffey — is — dead. I killed him."
The sounds of Mont Royal burning filled the stillness. But no voices. Yet he knew they had heard him. He drew air into his pained lungs, stepped away from the house, and ran as fast as he could on his injured leg down the grassy slope toward the Ashley.
Someone shot at him. He heard the bullet splat the dewy grass to his right, but no second report followed. In the garden he found himself surrounded by familiar faces. Without so much as a word to anyone, he fell forward in a faint.
They hid all day in one of the rice squares, resting with their backs against the dirt embankment that held back the river until the wood gates were opened to let it flow in. The band of survivors consisted of Cooper, his wife and daughter, Clarissa, Jane, Andy, a young kitchen wench named Sue and her two small boys, and Cicero, the elderly, arthritic slave with curly white hair. Cicero had managed to fill his two big coat pockets with rice. He passed it around as the sun approached noon. It was their only food.
Others, including Cooper, frequently spoke of wanting to go back to assess the damage. Clarissa was the most insistent. Charles was adamant.
"Not until dusk. Then I'll go first, alone. No use risking any more lives."
The tourniquet had helped. The thigh cut had clotted. He didn't feel good, but he was able to stay awake. He did wish he had some bourbon for the pain.
Cooper seemed prone to argue with his last remark. Charles forestalled it. "Look at the sky. That tells you what's happened." Above the embankment and the live oaks and palmettos bordering the rice acreage, black smoke banners flew.
Cicero was visibly affected by it. After watching the smoke for a length of time, his tension evident in the set of his lips and the glint of his eye, he exploded. "What happened to those boys we put on guard?"
"They didn't stay there," Cooper replied. It was a statement, not an accusation. But it enraged the old Negro.
"Cowards. Wouldn't fight for their home —"
Squatting and drawing patterns in the dirt with a stick, Andy said, "Wasn't their home by choice, remember."
Cicero glared. "Damn skunk-belly cowards, that's what they are. Nigger trash."
"Don't be so hard on them," Charles said. "They knew the South's beaten — that they'll have their liberty the minute it becomes official. Why should they stay here and die when all they had to do was run a mile or so and be free men right away? Tell you one thing. Thousands and thousands of fine, high-principled white Southern boys ran away from the army with a lot less reason." He put two grains of rice in his mouth and chewed.
Clarissa was particularly displeased by the need to stay in the field most of the day. Shortly after noon, she had to relieve herself and cried because there was no privacy. Jane bent close to her ear, whispered, then gently helped her all the way across the square and over the next embankment. She waited on the near side until the elderly woman reappeared.
Clarissa's familiar cheery smile had returned. When Jane brought her back, she said, "How sweet the air smells. Spring's coming. Isn't that lovely?"
"Yes," said Judith, putting an arm around her mother-in-law and patting her. "Yes, it is." Andy gave Jane a swift, almost chaste kiss on the cheek. Charles thought he heard the black man whisper, "Thank you."
Charles drowsed awhile during the afternoon. Eyes half closed, he visualized bits of the writhing struggle with Cuffey. His eyes flew open and he shuddered, reminded of another day, at the slave cabins, when they had both been only six or seven. Friends, they had wrestled for possession of a fishing rod. This time it had been two enemies contesting one life. My God, how far the wheel had turned.