"Don't be. Francis will mourn him, but no one else." He began to feel a mounting elation, an urge to laugh. "God will have to forgive me, too. It's funny in a grim way. The little peacock fatally shot in the ass — excuse me — by one of his own men —"
"There was nothing funny about Justin." Her back was toward the window and the burst of red light, making it hard to see her face. But he had no trouble imagining it as her voice dropped. "He was a vile man. They can fling me into hell, but I won't attend his funeral."
"Nor I." Orry leaned his right palm on the list for Fraser's; it no longer seemed important. "How soon can we be married?"
"It must be soon. I refuse to wait and play the grieving widow. After the wedding we can organize matters so you can accept that commission."
"I'm still determined to find an overseer before I decide." She glanced away as he went on. "Things are too unsettled around here. Geoffrey Bull came over from his place this afternoon very upset. Two nigras he considered to be his most loyal and trustworthy ran away yesterday."
"Did they go north?"
"He presumes they did. Read the Mercury and you'll see it's happening all the time. Fortunately, not to us."
"But we don't lack for problems. I can think of at least one — the young man you chose for head driver when Rambo died of influenza last winter."
"Cuffey?"
She nodded. "I've only been here a short time, but I've noticed a change. He's not merely cocky; he's angry. He doesn't bother to hide it."
"All the more reason to put off any decision till I locate an overseer." He drew her against his side. "Let's go to the house, pour some claret, and discuss a wedding."
Long after Madeline went to sleep that night, Orry lay awake. He had minimized the problems with the slaves because he hated to admit a plantation as humanely run as Mont Royal could be experiencing difficulties. Of course Cooper would have scoffed at his naïveté, arguing that no practitioner of slavery could rightly think of himself as kind, just, or morally clean.
Be that as it may, Orry felt a change in the atmosphere on the plantation. It had begun a few days after the start of hostilities. Supervising field work from horseback, Orry heard a name muttered and later decided he was meant to hear it. The name was Linkum.
Serious trouble had struck not long after Madeline's arrival. The trouble had roots in an earlier tragedy. Last November, Cuffey, in his middle twenties and not yet promoted to head driver, had become the father of twin girls. Cuffey's wife, Anne, had a hard confinement; one of the twins lived thirty minutes.
The other, a frail, dark little thing named Clarissa after Orry's mother, had been buried on the third of May this year. Orry had learned of it when he and Madeline returned from a two-night stay in Charleston, where shops and restaurants were thriving and spirits were high in the wake of the fall of the fort in the harbor. Orry drove their carriage back to Mont Royal in a thunderstorm, along a river road almost impassably muddy. They arrived at nightfall to find candles and lamps lit throughout the great house and Orry's mother wandering the rooms with a lost look.
"I believe there has been a death," she said.
Learning some of the details from the house help, he set off to walk the three-quarters of a mile to the slave community. The whitewashed cottages showed lights in the rain, but there was a noticeable absence of activity. Soaked, he climbed to the porch of Cuffey's cabin and knocked.
The door opened. Orry was shocked by the silence of the handsome young slave and by his sullen stare. He heard a woman crying softly.
"Cuffey, I just learned about your daughter. I am terribly sorry. May I come in?"
Unbelievably, Cuffey shook his head. "My Anne don't feel good right now."
Angered, Orry wondered whether it was because of her loss or something else. He had heard rumors that Cuffey mistreated his wife. Exercising restraint, he said, "I'm sorry about that, too. In any case, I did want to express —"
"Rissa died 'cause you weren't here."
"What?"
"None of them uppity house niggers would fetch the doctor, an' your momma couldn't understand I needed her to write a pass so's I could go get him. I argued and begged her most part of an hour, but she just shook her head like a crazy person. I took a chance and ran for the doctor myself, no pass or nothing. But when we got back it was too late; Rissa was gone. The doc took one look an' said typhoid fever and went away lickety-split. I had to bury her by myself. Little Rissa. Gone just like her sister. You'd been here, my baby would be alive."
"Damn it, Cuffey, you can't blame me for —"
Cuffey slammed the door. The rain dripped from the porch roof. The night pressed close, sticky and full of a sense of watching eyes.
Somewhere a contralto voice began a hymn, barely heard. Orry regretted what he must do but couldn't let the defiance pass, not with so many observing him. He knocked hard the second time.
No answer.
He pounded the door. "Cuffey, open up."
The door creaked back an inch. With his mud-slopped boot, Orry kicked it. Cuffey had to jump to avoid being struck.
"You listen to me," Orry said. "I am deeply sorry your daughter died, but I refuse to have you defy me because of it. Yes, if I'd been here, I would have written the pass instantly or gone for the doctor myself. But I was not here, and I had no way of knowing about the emergency. So unless you want to be replaced as head driver, curb your tongue and don't ever slam a door on me again."
Still silence, filled with rain sounds. Orry grabbed the door frame. "Do you understand me?"
"Yes, sir."
Two lifeless words. By the pale gleam of an interior lamp, Orry saw Cuffey's raging eyes. He suspected his warning had been wasted; he only hoped Cuffey would come to his senses quickly. If he didn't, his bad example could cause more trouble. That was why Orry had taken such pains to warn him loudly.
"Extend my condolences to your wife. Good night." He stomped off the porch, sad about the child's death, angry about Cuffey's interpretation of it, guilty about performing as he had for the unseen audience. The part didn't suit him, but he had to take it to preserve order. Cooper had once remarked that the masters and the slaves were equally victimized by the peculiar institution. On this foul night, Orry understood.
And that was the start, he thought, lying with Madeline's thigh soft against his. That was the first card yanked from the house. That set the others tumbling.
Four days after the confrontation at the cabin, Cuffey's Anne came to the office at twilight. A nasty welt showed beneath one eye, and the brown skin around it was turning black. She came to Orry hesitantly with a plea: "Please, sir. Sell me."
"Anne, you were born here. So were your mother and father. I know the loss of Rissa has —"
"Sell me, Mr. Orry," she broke in, taking hold of his right wrist, crying now. "I'm so scared of Cuffey, I want to die."
"He hit you? I'm sure he isn't himself either. Rissa —"
"Rissa got nothing to do with it. He hits me all the time. Done it ever since we got married. I hid it from you, but the people know. Last night he whipped me with a stick and his fist, then he hit me with the skillet."
Six feet two, the lanky white man towered above the frail black girl and seemed to grow an inch from anger. "I ran out and hid," she said, still crying. "He would have broke my head open, he was so crazy mad. I tried to take it like a good wife should, but I be too scared any more. I want to leave this place."