The Bride of Texas (12 page)

Howard stood engulfed in the smoke which filled the room, his knuckles white as he tightened his grip on his Bible.

The general went on. “Now you have that opportunity. Perhaps — I’m hoping — you ladies of the South, now that you’ve sampled a little of that bitter end, will use your celebrated persuasiveness to help shorten the course of this war. As I am trying to do with my” — the general made a face — “ragtag soldiery.”

Now it was the lady’s turn to be silent. She stiffened her proud back like someone whose pride had just been stung. The sergeant’s memories leapt back through the years —

“— our village idiot went there on a pilgrimage, and to the fair,” said Salek. “Well, he wasn
’
t Francek, the real village idiot,
but this farmer Matej fellow was a close second. He walks into the chapel and the first thing he sees is that all the statues of the saints have candles burning in front of them. So Matej buys a couple of candles from the monks, but then he sees the two stone devils and he gets feeling sorry for them. ‘The saints get all the attention here, and you’re stone for eternity and you get nothing’ is what he’s thinking. So he sticks a candle in each of their paws and kneels in front of them and says a prayer. That night, he dreams that these two critters come alive and get into his room and entice him out into the garden, where they tell him, ‘Matej,’ they say, ‘you’re the only one who
’
s ever lit a candle to us in a thousand years or so, and we’re going to make you rich. On this very spot is buried treasure. When you wake up tomorrow, come out here and dig.’ ‘But Your Eminences,’ says Matej, ‘how will I find this spot again? My head is full of holes.’ ‘You
’
ll find it, Matej,’ says one of the devils. ‘Pull down your pants and take a shit. In the morning you
’
ll find your treasure underneath it.’ There’s a cloud of smoke and sulphur, and the devils are gone. So the old fool pulls his trousers down and takes a squat. Suddenly, by the living Jesus, he feels a burning pain in his bunghole, like he’s sat in a hornet’s nest. His first thought is he should never have taken up with the devil, and now the fires of hell are burning him, but then he wakes up and what does he see? He sees himself sitting astride his wife, but not for the reason you think. He’s actually taking a crap on her, and she
’
s howling and holding a burning candle under his balls. Now, how about that, Zinkule?”

Zinkule shrugged his shoulders
.

“Did that stop Matej from believing in his dream? Not on your life. Next day, instead of going to work in the fields, he starts digging in his garden, and he keeps at it for two months, until his garden is one enormous hole — never found a thing, of course — and he finally stops believing in his dream. But by then it’s past harvest time and he doesn’t have his crops in, so that winter they all damn near starve to death.”

Everyone howled with laughter, but Zinkule looked as if he knew more than he was telling
.

“You misjudge me, general,” the lady said. “I was never in favour of this war. And I have suffered for that. I am not a lady of the South, as you say. I came to America as an adult, and I ended up in the South not by choice. My husband” — she swallowed, and the sergeant racked his brains but still found nothing — “my husband was not an American officer.”

She fell silent again. A gold crucifix rose and fell on her heaving bosom. The general was silent too. Finally she asked, “So will you not provide me with a guard detail to protect my school, general?”

“You won’t need one,” snapped the general, then added, “Unless something unforeseen happens, I’m leaving tomorrow, and all my soldiers must be ready to march out.”

“They must be, but they are not,” said the lady. “Unless, that is, you need them prowling around private homes, looting and stealing, and destroying what can’t be taken, and committing acts that I as a lady am reluctant to mention. I have two daughters who are barely twenty years old. And tomorrow is a long time away. But I won’t keep you any longer, general.”

She turned, and the crucifix glistened. The general’s face darkened and he opened his mouth as if to call her back, then caught the sergeant’s eye and wordlessly conveyed an order. The sergeant opened the door for the lady and walked out behind her.

The sergeant thought of the previous night, remembered yelling, “Stop it, men!” and pulling out his pistol. Five or six faces turned towards him with derisive laughter. He knew rank wouldn’t be enough on this drunken, barbarian night. He didn’t recognize the men, and looked in vain for any identifying insignia on their tattered uniforms. They started yelling back at him, “Bugger off, sarge!” Then they saw the pistol.
“Dismissed! Want me to make it plainer?” He swept the pistol in a broad arc so that, one by one, they stared down its barrel. The man who had been pumping away at the black woman like a steam piston froze, then his naked buttocks lifted slowly. “Dismissed!” shouted the sergeant again. “Easy, sarge! We’re going,” growled a plump one, buckling his belt. “What’s the problem? She was willing. More than willing. We emancipated her, didn’t we?” “
Move!
” he bellowed. The fellow with the bare buttocks climbed off the woman and pulled on his trousers. “We’re going, we’re going.” Drunken faces, weaving bodies, staggered out of the yard. The black woman lay on the bench, stunned, her legs apart, her skirt up over her belly. The sergeant walked over to her and pulled her skirt down over her knees. A pretty young face, African features mixed with heaven knows what. Her eyes were pinched shut, her lips sucked in, her mouth thin with restrained agony. “Can you get up?” he asked her gently. Her eyes opened, large, white with dark irises, but he couldn’t see what was in them. It was too dark. The voice sounded meek. “Yes, sir.” “You live here?” “Yes, sir.” She rose and stood there. What was she waiting for — an order? She couldn’t stop shaking. He thought of the old black man he’d met earlier that night, who’d called this a day of redemption and jubilation. The girl was quivering like an aspen. Day of redemption. An alabaster angel had cast aside its golden wig and lifted its white robe to reveal a cloven hoof. No, it wasn’t that simple. After all, he knew them. Today they advanced against the enemy, fearless in the face of exploding canisters; tomorrow they were beneath the earth, blown to pieces, dead. But how did this creature see them now? What could she be thinking? That her “massa”, the plantation owner, was right about them? He stuck his pistol back in its holster and touched the black girl’s smooth cheek. “Run home and hide. In a day or so we’ll be moving out.” “Yes, ’sa.” She turned and ran
towards the scorched house and disappeared in the shadows.

The sergeant shut the door behind him, then walked quickly to catch up with the lady. “Ma’am,” he said, “I’ll find a guard detail for you.”

She looked at him. His mind spun back through time. “Against your general’s orders?”

“He didn’t give me any orders. And he won’t mind.”

They walked outside into the yard. He looked around. Several soldiers were sitting on crates, puffing on looted cigars that still had gold bands around them.

“You say you run a school?”

“Yes. The Barnham Academy for Young Ladies.”

He glanced at the crucifix. “Catholic?”

“That’s right.”

“Wait here, please.”

He strode over to the soldiers. “Hi, sarge,” said a soldier with red hair, pleasantly. His cap bore the insignia of the Seventeenth New York. The sergeant knew they were mostly Irish.

“You fellows Catholic?”

“Sure are. You too?”

“See that lady?” the sergeant said. “She’s a Catholic. She’s got two young daughters and she’s worried about them.”

The redhead looked at the gold crucifix glowing in the light of the dawn and the burning buildings. He rose to his feet. “Pat!”

A second soldier got up. The sergeant took them both over to the lady. “These men are Catholics, ma’am.”

Her unhappy face brightened. “Are you Polish?”

“No ma’am, we’re Irish,” the redhead said politely.

The sergeant’s mind suddenly found what it was looking for.

It was snowing on the Congaree River. The Doric pillars of the Columbia statehouse were no longer holding up anything but the black sky. The gabled façade had received a direct hit from Captain DeGress’s cannoneers, who were as accurate with their Parrot guns as Logan’s sharpshooters were with their rifles. Sherman wanted to destroy the heart of Columbia, and on his order Captain DeGress had tried to smash it with an iron cannonball. The ball now lay on the street amid the ruins. A black tomcat was perched on it, staring with devilish eyes at the sergeant, the lady, and the two Irishmen. A blizzard swirled through the dark sky. A swarm of sparks shot out of the burning buildings, setting the flakes on fire.

The lady stopped. “Mr. Komarowski!”

On the sidewalk in front of an ornate building sat a row of bottles and pails filled with amber liquid that flickered in the light of the flames. A man in a black overcoat had raised a bottle to his lips, but at the sound of the woman’s voice the hand with the bottle dropped to his side. Two bearded, musket-bearing men in blue rags were holding him up on either side. He babbled something, then slouched precariously. A soldier at the end of the row of bottles took a swig and fell on his back. One of the bearded soldiers poked the man in the black overcoat in the ribs with his rifle barrel. With some effort the man raised the bottle to his lips again. Whisky dribbled onto his white shirtfront adorned with a red and white stick-pin.

“Mr. Komarowski!”

“You know him, ma’am?” asked the sergeant.

“Mr. Komarowski is General Wade Hampton’s major-domo,” said the lady. “This is General Hampton’s headquarters,” she added, indicating the house, which had white pillars topped with ornate capitals. “Mr. Komarowski has always been a teetotaller. I’ve known him since —” She stopped, her eyes welled with a bitter light.

“He’s drinking to forget the débâcle,” growled one of the Irishmen.

“What’s going on here?” the sergeant asked sharply.

One of the bearded soldiers looked at him closely. “He put poison in the whisky,” he replied. “He uncorked them bottles, lined them all up here on the sidewalk, and he was putting poison in them.” He glanced at the soldier lying on his back at the end of the row. “If that man dies, we’ll —”

The sergeant walked over to the supine figure. A snore emerged from his whiskers.

“He’s soused, not poisoned,” he said. The two Irishmen laughed.

The man leaning on his musket barrel waved his hand. “Maybe he is, maybe he ain’t,” he said. “He should’ve waited till this bastard tasted them all. If he don’t croak, we’ll know for sure.”

The burning snow arched across the black sky like a wide rainbow of ruby and gold. “If he’s a teetotaller and you make him drink all this” — the sergeant pointed to the long row of bottles — “he’ll croak, poisoned or not.”

The major-domo suddenly seemed to come to his senses. “It was my intention to pour them out. That’s why — I uncorked —” He turned pale and bent over. A gush of yellow-green liquid poured from his mouth, and the lady closed her eyes.

“Let him go,” ordered the sergeant, “and dump those bottles out.”

The bearded soldiers balked. “Aw, come on, sarge!”

Without a word, he kicked over the nearest pail, spilling the whisky onto the sidewalk. His two soldiers did the same. But as he turned his attention back to the lady, he noticed each of them corking a bottle and sticking it into his knapsack. He said nothing.

“Let’s go, ma’am.”

The lady looked at the major-domo. He weaved towards the house, where he collapsed on the marble steps. The sergeant felt she had wanted to say something to him, but she lifted her head, glanced at her escort, and said, “General Sherman’s great army.”

“They’re not my slaves, Your Honour. They’re my soldiers,” General Sherman had said to the trembling mayor of Columbia. “I cannot order them out of the city. They have fought bravely, and an old tradition says that the first units to enter the city have the right to police it.” The sergeant knew that “policing” meant clearing the streets of snipers and other obstinate champions of the cause who preferred death to surrender. But with all the whisky available, law and order had rapidly degenerated into brutal and drunken debaucheries in the streets and alleyways. As the sergeant and the lady walked eastward, they saw more and more bottles lined up along the sidewalks. The city, or at least its black population, had become an army of waiters offering the soldiers wine from plantation cellars and whisky imported from the hills of Scotland, and they sang and danced as they did so. The sergeant knew the songs were religious, but they sounded more like squaredance calling. Beneath its aurora of burning snow, Columbia was pulsing with music like a gigantic tavern. The sergeant and the lady walked on —

— and before Cyril, done in by plundered whisky, fell asleep in the house in Savannah where Kakuska was making spurs out of clock gears, he talked about his little sister, Lida the dragoness, and how her blue reptilian eyes had captivated Étienne de Ribordeaux the moment she walked into the parlour. She had looked around the room, at the paintings in gilded frames — portraits of gentlemen in which the painters had lavished at least as much attention on the lace shirt-fronts as on the fleshy faces set against landscapes more beautiful and ordered than any in this part of the world.
Then she looked back into the eyes of the man with the wooden leg and the lace shirt. She gazed at the many heavy candelabra, and then back at Étienne, her blue eyes brilliant with the splendour of the candlelight. It was as if she had always belonged here, surrounded by velvet and the fragrance of verbena, although she was tightly laced into a Moravian folk costume that caused her bosom to swell temptingly beneath the floral embroidery on her white blouse. The one-legged man didn’t know that those breasts had known the lips of an infant, and even had he known.…