In The Face Of Death (39 page)

“About what?” she asked, wishing she could read his silences better.

Again he did not answer her at once. “I . . . When this is over, and it will be over before many more months are gone, I . . . must return to my family. I should not have . . . started again with you. . . . But with the war, and the press of fighting and death so near. . . . When it’s finished, you and I must not. . . . They are my family, and as such deserve my first consideration, no matter what I. . . . It would not be suitable or honorable to . . . cause my wife any distress when she has given up so much of me to this war. My children, as well, need to know their father again. But if I return to them, I will not have a place in my life for . . . you, for us . . . as much as I will long for it. . . . I will not be able to see you, or not very often, and then so hurriedly. . . .” He leaned back so he could look down into her face. “It would be intolerable, living that way, making you into a mistress, covert. . . .” He could not take his eyes from hers. “I don’t want to lose you, Madelaine.”

“You won’t,” she said, and to keep him from going on, she freed one arm from his embrace and laid her fingers lightly against his lips. “You could not lose me if you wished to, whether we spend only tonight together, or years and years. Oh,” she went on in the same easy way, “you need not worry; I will not embarrass you. I didn’t in San Francisco, did I? Why would I now? Because you are the great General Sherman, the hero of Atlanta? Because the country takes note of all you do? Because it would be a great scandal? Do not interrupt me. Why would I want scandal for either of us? What would be the use of bringing such notoriety on you or on myself? I do not like being too much noticed, Tecumseh. Notice leads to questions that are not easily answered, and those of my blood have difficulties enough without subjecting ourselves to public scrutiny.”

“Are you finished?” When she nodded he turned her face up to his. “Now will you let me speak?” he demanded, his demeanor severe; his breathing was becoming labored.

“Not if you intend to threaten me, or bully me, or to talk nonsense,” she responded at once. “I love you. I will love you as long as I live.”

“However long that may be,” he interjected with an ironic tinge to his words. “It could be centuries, from what you’ve told me.”

“It could.” She bent to kiss his fingers. “If there is a forever beyond the True Death, then I will love you that long.”

“As you will love the others? You have admitted there have been others.” His challenge could not entirely conceal his fear of her answer. He pulled his hand away from her.

She did not change her stance or attitude. “Of course. It is our nature for those of my blood.”

He looked away, his anger revealed by the working of his jaw. “And somehow you will mark my place in line?”

“So that you will know to answer the long roll when it comes, for muster of my lovers? Is that how you think of yourself, as a man holding a place in line?” It was an effort not to answer his wrath with her own, but she contained her impulse; he was attempting to drive her away again, so that he would not have to face the pain of having her leave. “Tecumseh, love isn’t something doled out, like rations, with just so much of it to go around, all parceled and labeled. You don’t mete it out in portions, to starve when it is all used up. It doesn’t work that way. It isn’t something that comes in supplies. Love is not a quantity, it is a quality.” She searched her thoughts for an analogy he would appreciate. “When a painter makes a beautiful new work, is all the art in the world slightly less beautiful because of the new painting? Does the new work leach the beauty out of the old?”

“No,” he admitted grudgingly, touching her face in spite of himself, his thumb resting on her cheek. He was breathing more calmly now.

“And it is the same with love. It is not finite. It does not lessen with use, it increases. The more there is of it, the more there can be.” She put her hand on his chest and felt his heart beneath her palm.

“Like Juliet? ‘The more I give to thee / The more I have, for both are infinite’? For you, perhaps; I am more of ‘Even till now, / When men were fond, I smiled and wonder’d how,’” he allowed after he had studied her in silence.

“You are no Angelo, Tecumseh, and I no Juliet,” said Madelaine. “Their loves and their lives are plays, abstracts. We are as real as blood can make us.” She endured his careful scrutiny with as much aplomb as she could summon; she said without jealousy, “And you love your wife.”

“Yes, I do. But it is different than this. She is nothing like you.” At last he ceased his examination of her countenance. “I can see you are telling me the truth, at least as you understand it.” He laid his hand over hers. “If what you say is true, why do we fight.”

“And your children? You love them, I know you do; I can feel it in you,” said Madelaine, ignoring his last question.

“They are where all my hopes are gathered: how can I not love them,” he agreed with a faint, sad smile. “Why do we fight about these things?” he persisted.

“We
don’t fight,
you
do. I have no argument with you but those you insist we have.” This was not entirely accurate, and she knew it, but she would not be deterred from her purpose. “You want to wrangle and contend, you enjoy it; you are like a fencer testing his steel against any worthy opponent, for sport.”

“Very likely,” he said, his solemnity leaving him. “Most women know nothing of such sport, and fewer are capable of acquitting themselves well; those who try are sharp-tongued shrews, most of them.”

She wanted to shake him, and realized she could, if she used her strength. But that would serve only to increase the contest he sought, so she said, “I will not be taunted into upbraiding you, so give it up now; we are not likely to have another evening like this for some time.”

“And old campaigner that I am, I should make the most of any advantage I find.” He smiled; again the roughness left his face. “And you are nothing more than a peace-maker caught in the toils of a battle-hardened veteran.” He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tightly against him with renewed anticipation. “Well, then, Madame, you will have to do all that you may to . . . persuade me of the errors of my ways.”

“I was not aware you were in error; you do not admit to making any,” she said, taking the bantering tone from him, aware that he was anticipating their parting.

“Many would think I am in error now. Many have thought so before,” he appended more darkly, brows drawing down into a glower. “It has been a long road to this place.”

“And a long way yet to go,” she said, sliding her arms around him under his robe. “Give yourself respite, Tecumseh.”

“While I can?” he countered, and without intending to, relented. “How do you put up with me?”

“I don’t put up with you: I love you.” She spoke more briskly than he, as if she were purchasing herbs for her tinctures.

“God alone knows why. But I am thankful, whatever the reason.” He slid his hands up her back and began to loosen her hair, tossing the pins aside against her protests. “There will not be many more chances for us to be together.” Speaking this unwelcome truth aloud shook off his last hesitations. “I will have to rise early and I don’t want to waste the night,” he said as he leaned down to kiss her, his mouth open on hers, all his desire breathed into that kiss, and all his lost hopes, all his unrealized loneliness, all his sere despair. He held her, shivering with the onslaught of his need of her, his passion already combining with his dismay at their coming separation. And when he broke from her, he was seized with vertigo, and clung to her again, for fear of falling. “It is the food and the hour,” he said, then added ruefully, “And you.” He nodded toward his bed—one of the few left intact in the abandoned hotel—and whispered, “I’m afraid you’ll have to help me get there.”

If it was a ruse, Madelaine thought, it was not a typical one. She slipped under his arm so he could lean on her shoulder, as she had done so many times for wounded soldiers. “If you are ready?”

“You would do it, wouldn’t you?” he marveled, his usually clipped speech turned to a slow drawl. “You would support me. I am either very flattered or you are very hungry.” As soon as he said it, he regretted it, and a tic jumped in his cheek out of shame. “Pay no attention to me. I am a churl. I accept whatever reprimand you give me; I deserve it.”

“No reprimand. You will do it better than I could in any case,” she said, “But it stung. As you intended.”

He attempted to protest, then admitted it. “I wanted to make you angry, so I would not have to be accountable for
. . .
.”

Her eyes were steady, serious but without ire. “Our parting; yes, I know.”

He shrugged himself free of her, determined to move on his own. “I am no invalid, Madame; the spasm is passed.” As he walked, he moved with great care as if treading on a narrow beam or along a precipice.

Madelaine stayed beside him, letting him show them the way to the side of his bed. As she walked, she began to unfasten the three dozen tiny buttons down the front of her peignoir.

As he reached the side of the bed, Sherman turned and looked at her as she worked the silken loops. “I’ve been meaning to ask you for the last hour about that outfit of yours, if one calls such a silky, frilly thing an outfit. I like it. Where did you find it?”

“In a dressmaker’s shop; I had gone to find muslin for bandages and came upon this. I . . . I couldn’t pass it up. But I took the muslin bolts, as well,” she said, feeling that she needed to justify her actions.

“So this is
loot!”
he exclaimed in mock outrage. “And you dare to wear it here?”

“If it is so distressing to you, General, I will take it off,” she said simply, without any display or coquetry. “I would not like to earn your disapprobation.”

“You could not do that if you rode through the center of Atlanta beside that devil Forrest himself,” he said, his words low and soft. He fingered the silk, saying distantly, “You know, when I was a much younger man, after West Point, before I was married, I spent some time in Savannah. I thought then that I wanted to go to France and study to be a real artist, not just a competent sketcher, but something
more. . . .
But—”

“But you didn’t,” said Madelaine, unfastening the last of the buttons and letting the peignoir fall from her shoulders. “There is supposed to be a night-gown beneath, but I left that in the shop.”

“And damned good thing, too,” said Sherman, his breathlessness for once having little to do with asthma. “You may be old as the hills, my love, but you are newer than an April morning to me.” He touched her reverently, for once willing to linger over the curves and angles of her flesh. After a while, when his hands had roamed over her, he stepped back and tossed his robe aside, paying little heed to where it fell; he moved as if in a mesmeric dream, every motion slow and deliberate. “I never want to forget this, or you.” He turned and tossed back the ragged covers. “The sheets are clean,” he promised as he held the place for her.

Madelaine slipped into the bed, noticing that the mattress, as she had feared, was lumpy. In a while she knew it would not matter; she had been in far less comfortable places over the years. She lay back, looking up at him, seeing the excitement in every line of his lean flesh, and her compassion for this difficult, contradictory, brilliant, haunted man was as acute as her need of him.

“Do not bother with the covers,” said Sherman, his voice quiet and warm, “I will warm you.”

At this, Madelaine could not keep from smiling. She held out her arms to him, as he tossed the bedding back and sank down beside her, stretching his length next to her. His long hands quickly sought out the centers of her greatest pleasure, his mouth lingering to enhance what his fingers began. “You are becoming quite adept,” she said as his tongue stroked her nipple.

“Shush,” he replied, and resumed his determined campaign over the plains and valleys of her body, reveling in her sighs and starts of pleasure, and her soft moans of quickening need. The texture of her under his hands, against his body, was far more intoxicating than whiskey. He felt feverish and immensely well at once. He would not let her touch him, fearing that he would spend himself too quickly if she did. “Let me. This is my chance to.” He did not say
to what.

But Madelaine sensed that he wanted to blot all other loves from her memory, to supplant any possible rivals from the past or future, to be the only one she would think of in the empty nights ahead; under the waking passion she felt a melancholy that was as much her own as his. How strange, she thought in a distant, still part of her mind, that Tecumseh should feel their impending separation so poignantly. That anguish was familiar to her, yet she had not expected to encounter it in one who had not come to her life, and this fired her esurience as lust never could. She leaned her head back and gave herself over to him, feeling his jealousy vanish as his fervor and tenderness came over them both.

“Take. Me.” He moved inside her in long, deep strokes, striving to be part of her fulfillment as she was part of his. He knew he would never have enough of her, yet he tried to sate their common appetites. And then he did not think at all, but released himself to the ecstasy of abandonment and the thrill of her lips on his neck. A joy filled him so encompassing that it welled out of them together as fathomless laughter.

Madelaine came to herself again as Sherman moved off her, but only to lie immediately beside her, prone, his arm across her just under her breasts, his face turned toward her with a look of such awe that she could find nothing to say to him as splendid as the expression in his steel-colored eyes.

On the Decatur road, Georgia, 22 November, 1864

Today Captain Poe said he feared that Northern and Southern deserters may well flock to Atlanta, now the city is empty, and plunder it before its people can return and rebuild. He was given the task of destroying the arsenal and other such military stores as could not be carried away by the Union army. . . . From here it is possible to see smoke from the fires that have been set since the army left, so it may be that Captain Poe is right. . . . A great pity that such a lovely place as Atlanta must be sacrificed to war, though once it was turned from a town to a fortress, I suppose it was inevitable.