One Wore Blue (20 page)

A hush fell over the military crowd. Sheriff John W. Campbell pulled a white linen hood over the prisoner’s head, then set the noose around his neck. The jailor asked Brown to step forward onto the trap.

“You must lead me,” Brown said, his voice steady, “for I cannot see.”

The jailor availed him and adjusted the noose.

“Be quick,” Brown said.

A hatchet stroke sprang the trap, and with an awful sound, the body dropped through.

John Brown was dead.

There was complete silence. Suddenly, the voice of a militiaman broke the silence.

“So perish all such enemies of Virginia! All such enemies of the Union! All such enemies of the human race!”

Jesse felt no such sense of elation. By due process of law, John Brown had been hanged on a beautiful winter morning.

Brown had said little enough at the moment of his execution, but Jesse couldn’t forget some of the things that the man had said and written earlier—especially the words he had written to one of his guards not long before his date with the hangman.

“The crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away; but with blood.”

John Brown was dead. It was over.

It was just beginning.

Jesse turned his horse.

And in his heart, he rode north.

Nine

Near Cameron Hall, Tidewater Virginia
December 20, 1860

Kiernan sat on her dapple-gray mare high atop the forested ridge overlooking Cameron Hall.

The morning sun had just risen. Dewdrops played upon the sweeping lawn like a carpet of diamonds. The main house, regal with its soaring white columns, stood in the center of the manicured portion of the property. Behind the house were handsome gardens that in the summer were filled with the scent of roses. The house was one of the oldest in Tidewater Virginia, the original structure having been built soon after the Indian massacre of 1622. Jesse’s great-great-great—she really wasn’t sure how many greats—grandparents had lovingly laid the first brick and set their names upon it. They had built with beauty and a deep affinity for their new land.

The house had weathered the ravages of time to remain one of the most gracious plantation homes on the James River.

There was a wide breezeway, and on pleasant days, the doors on both ends of the house were cast open so that the soft cool air from the river whispered throughout the wide-open hallway and into the house. The porches became an
extension of the hallway, open, inviting, touched by the breeze.

Two large wings had been added to the house just after the Revolution, and they extended gracefully to either side. The kitchen, smokehouse, laundry, bakehouse, stables, and slave quarters entended from the right of the house toward the cliff, from which Kiernan now looked upon the activity of the busy plantation. Close to where she sat upon her mare, near a copse of trees and foliage and the river’s edge, was the family cemetery. Camerons had been buried there ever since Lord Cameron, who had built the place, and his beloved Jassy had been tenderly laid to rest by their heirs. Now handsome monuments stood in the plot, enclosed by an ornate wrought-iron fence, with beautifully sculpted angels and madonnas and renditions of Christ. The cemetery itself was beautiful and graceful and spoke of a rich heritage.

From where she sat her horse, Kiernan could see past the sloping lawns that fell from the left side of the house and to the numerous fields beyond, fields of the stuff that had built the South: cotton and tobacco.

No one could ask for a finer home or a more prestigious heritage. The sons of Cameron Hall had always been held up to gentlemen of the state and beyond as fine prospects for their daughters. It was a home that any woman would envy. From her sentinel upon the mount, Kiernan thought it embodied everything stately and gracious and beautiful in the world. How she had missed it during her year abroad! With a tinge of shame she realized that she loved Cameron Hall more than she loved her own home nearby. It too, was beautiful, built of brick and mortar and stone, and it was gracious and pleasant. But it was barely fifty years old. It hadn’t weathered the centuries as Cameron Hall had. It didn’t have the personality of its James River neighbor. It didn’t seem to live and breathe and be so much a part of this world.

She breathed in deeply. The air was sweet with the scents of early morning bread-baking and ham-smoking. The air that came in from the river was decidedly cold today, but she didn’t care. She knew the dampness and the cold of winter, just as she knew the humidity and heat of summer.
This was home. She had been away a long time, and this morning she wasn’t at all sure why she had tormented herself for so long.

At first, leaving had seemed to be the only way to escape marriage to Anthony without being downright cruel.

It had also been a way to escape Jesse. His assignment had been Washington when she left, and that had been far too close. She knew that Jesse had wanted his assignment to be close to home when he was just out of West Point. His father had still been living then, and his father had been military all of his life.

Then Jesse had traveled with the cavalry out west and had spent time fighting Indians at the tail end of the action in Mexico.

And he had spent time in “bleeding Kansas” as the government tried to put some kind of restraint on the horror there. Kiernan had known a great deal of what was going on in his life then. She and Daniel had always been good correspondents. He had felt the need to put things on paper to her, and she had been more than willing to keep him advised about things back home. She had always scanned his missives for information about Jesse. She had always known what he was doing.

And she knew now.

The year she had spent in Europe had been a tense one on this side of the Atlantic—electric, frightening. In London she had avidly sought every piece of information about the states that she could find. She had read political commentaries by the dozens.

Old John Brown had become a martyr. The northern abolitionists had rallied to make sure that his death would never be forgotten. They sang, “John Brown’s body lies a-moulderin’ in his grave.” And Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
Old Tom’s Cabin
continued to fan the flames of fury.

But the worse thing that had happened had been the election of Abraham Lincoln. The South just couldn’t stomach it.

Before the election, Kiernan had hoped that the political climate would quiet down, that various sections of the country
would manage to live with their differences—as they had been doing since the Revolution.

But as soon as she had heard the results, she had come home. She had arrived in time to discover that South Carolina was planning a convention and that it would vote on the matter of secession. Other states were following that example—Florida, Mississippi, and Tennessee, just to name a few. The feeling was that South Carolina would secede. So would the other states.

So far, though, Virginia seemed to be watching the action. Careful, cautious, dignified, the homeland of so many of the founding fathers, Virginia would watch.

Many Virginia sons, however, were not so cautious. Young men and old men everywhere were forming up into new militia units. Rich men were buying up horses and designing uniforms and purchasing arms. Poor men were seeking to serve beneath them.

If it came to war, they would be prepared.

Many of the South’s finest were either enlisted men or commissioned officers in the United States Army—Robert E. Lee and Jeb Stuart, among others.

And the Cameron brothers.

Daniel had written that he had been considering resigning his position, but neither he nor Jesse had done so as yet. Few men had resigned their positions. It remained to be seen just how many would. And of course, it remained to be seen what South Carolina and the other states would do.

The sun rose further into the sky as Kiernan sat upon her mare, surveying the scene below her. She had headed for home the moment that she had heard about the presidential election. From the time her ship had left the London docks, she had felt a growing excitement. Every step of the way, she had wondered why she had ever left home at such a crucial time. London was fascinating, her school for young ladies was entertaining, but she realized the moment she arrived that she had outgrown school. It had been a time of waiting for her, a time for reflecting.

And a time for dreams, for she had not managed to leave Jesse behind. She had been disappointed the previous November
to discover that she was not in the family way. Such a situation might have swayed her hand.
Would
have, she thought, a small smile tugging at her lips. Her father would have had Jesse walking down the aisle at gunpoint had it been necessary. But it was not necessary.

How had she slept through so very many nights, when all she could do was remember him? She thought endlessly of him, reliving all that had happened between them. She had met many young men in London, some of them titled, some of them very rich. She had played the games by all the right rules that a young woman should play, and she had tried to fall out of love with Jesse and into love with someone else. She watched as many of her friends were married off according to the dictates of their parents, and she had been extremely grateful for her father’s leniency. But none of it mattered. She didn’t need a wealthy man, for her father was a wealthy man. She was unimpressed by titles, and she was, in truth, far more fond of Anthony and Daniel than she was of any of the young men she met in London drawing rooms or chose as escorts for a night of London theater.

Perhaps Jesse was right about her, she mused. She had enjoyed the flirting. She had enjoyed having young men flock about her and marvel at her soft Virginia accent, lose their voices when they spoke with her, and tum beet-red in their attempts to be charming in turn. It had been fun to test her power, she reflected.

Except that she had returned to her small school bedroom every evening to feel a painful ache where she should have felt triumphant. Games could never again be as innocent as they once had been. If she tormented others, it was because she was tormented herself.

She was very afraid that she would be tormented until the day that she died. Jesse had done that to her.

She sighed softly and heard the whisper of her breath join with that of the breeze.

What now? What could she do? Stay in love with Jesse, hold Anthony off indefinitely, pray that he would find someone else himself?

Or give up her own beliefs?

No. She could never give up her passion for this place, for this land. Surely, surely, Jesse would never really be able to do that either.

Now that events were growing critical, Jesse would have to change his heart and his mind. This very place, Cameron Hall, could be in jeopardy. Everything that he loved.

“My, my. To what do we owe this fine pleasure?”

Kiernan nearly leaped from her side-saddle when she heard the husky drawl. Her heart thudded against her rib cage as she turned quickly with surprise. It was Jesse. She knew it long before she saw his face. She would know his voice anywhere, she had heard it in her dreams a thousand times, she had felt the sensual whisper along her spine in long cold nights when she had fought hard against the memories of that she had sworn she would forget.