Rhett Butler's people (29 page)

"Why can't Helene do it?"

"Because you have strong, fat arms."

When Rhett inquired about Lisa, Minette dismissed the girl with a shrug. "Lisa took Captain Busy's advice and left our Chapeau Rouge for a ... a

sporting house.

Lisa is no courtesan!" Minette leaned forward con-spiratorially. "Captain Busy is gone from Atlanta. Captain Busy was distressed at his transfer. He blames you." She winked.

Rhett had a second glass before he went upstairs to bathe and shave.

That evening, Rhett took Belle Watling to dine at the Atlanta Hotel and over brandy afterward, he gave her the cameo.

"Oh Rhett! It's too fine! It's ... You've always been good to me! You know I -- "

He silenced Belle with a "Hush" and a smile.

"Rhett, why are you givin' me this? It's too grand for a woman like me."

He reached across the table to tilt her chin. "Because, dear Belle, I cannot give you a yellow silk scarf."

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Chapter

Chapter Eighteen

Fox on the Run

In the first year of the War, the Light Horse became Ravanel's Brigade in General Bragg's Army of Tennessee. The brigade raided behind Federal lines in Kentucky and Tennessee, ambushing Federal contingents, smashing supply trains, burning railroad bridges, and blowing railroad tunnels.

Loyalties in Border States were divided, and if some ladies spat at the Rebels when they rode by, others were eager to prove their devotion to the Cause in person, to the dashing young Colonel who embodied that cause.

Andrew Ravanel loved these ladies but never could remember their names.

While their Colonel was being entertained, Andrew's scout and his banjo picker would sleep in the stable, on the front porch, once in a broken-down carriage, and once, shivering, in a corncrib with lattice walls.

"She do squall," Cassius had remarked.

"Like a cat in heat," Jamie Fisher replied. "I wish I had another blanket."

"Don't believe I'll ever be warm again," Cassius said. "Damn! What the Colonel doin' to that gal?"

"I hate to imagine." Jamie lay curled, warming his hands between his thighs.

"How come you never get yourself a gal, Master Jamie? I mean, I seen some of them ladies lookin' at you." Cassius raised his head from his pallet. "Might be you could find yourself a gal wasn't so noisy."

"Listen! Do you hear horses approaching?" Jamie took his revolver and strode into the moonlight.

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In the glory days, their Federal foes were conscripts on their first horses and many of those horses had recently pulled plows. Federal commanders quarreled and postured like fighting cocks and the Confederate's awful rebel yells terrified many an incompetent federal commander to surrender without firing a shot.

Jamie Fisher was a tireless horseman with a keen eye for topography; he knew instinctively where the brigade should bivouac, which roads could be impassable in wet weather, when and where pickets should be stationed, when a ford was good and when, despite unriffled water and what seemed a hard gravel bottom, a crossing should not be attempted.

One night, as the scout and banjo picker lay in the loft of another patriotic lady's horse barn, Cassius confided that he'd once jumped the broomstick with a girl, Desdemona, just a slip of a thing. Cassius told Jamie, "When Master Huger sold my wife away, I bawl just like a baby."

At the Cynthiania skirmish, Federal cavalry killed Captain Henry Kershaw and very nearly captured Colonel Ravanel. Major Wilkes, the brigade's Georgia adjutant, criticized Colonel Ravanel for his failure to post pickets and for ill treatment of Federal prisoners captured after the brigade retook the town.

Ravanel's men took Major Wilkes's criticisms badly and the brigade's officers sneered that Wilkes was an "overly sentimental rustic aristocrat." When Wilkes left the brigade, Jamie Fisher accompanied him to the depot. Although Jamie hadn't spoken out as Wilkes had, Andrew's actions had distressed him, too. "The war has cost the Colonel too many friends," Jamie told Wilkes.

Ashley Wilkes shook his head no. Inadequate justification.

"Andrew is a good man," Jamie said. "Everybody loves him."

"Sometimes those who are easiest to love," Wilkes replied, "are hardest to respect."

Reputation often lags behind deeds, and Andrew Ravanel's fame grew even as his veterans wore out horses trying to replicate early, easier triumphs. They took risks they wouldn't have a year before.

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The Army of Tennessee's commander, Major General Braxton Bragg, was a crook-backed, bearded martinet whose dark eyebrows collided over his nose. Bragg had a bad stomach, bad nerves, and such painful boils, he could not sit his saddle. General Bragg was evidence for the theory that bad luck finds those who deserve it.

Bragg decided to send Colonel Ravanel to Atlanta and Charleston, where patriotic citizens were eager to applaud the Confederate hero. Bragg cautioned Andrew, "Sir, you must never forget you are my personal emissary; you are representing Braxton Bragg!"

As they left headquarters, Jamie said, "Dear God, Andrew. Bragg's

personal emissary

-- ain't you proud?" When Jamie broke up laughing, Andrew swatted him.

Jamie helped Andrew pack and gave him a new hat to replace the one the Federals had ruined at Cynthiania. "You'll want a feather," Jamie said. "For the ladies."

Andrew clasped his brother-in-law's shoulders. "I need no feather, Jamie. You are the feather in my cap."

"Give my love to dear Sister Charlotte," Jamie said happily.

Colonel Ravanel's men followed their leader's progress with great interest.

An Atlanta corporal's sister wrote, "Colonel Ravanel and his nigger banjo player came courting Charles Hamilton's widow, but she run him off. Everybody's laughing about it." His troopers were pleased their Colonel was up to his old tricks but were glad he'd been rebuffed. Some hadn't seen their wives or sweethearts since the previous spring.

The Colonel's assignation with Mrs. Haynes prompted rough jokes.

The color sergeant guffawed. "Two hours together not enough? Don't take me ten minutes."

To his troopers' surprise, Andrew came back from Charleston much subdued. Officers who joked about their Colonel's liaisons -- as had been their custom -- were brought up short and Andrew shunned his favorite drinking companions. Cassius took to playing slow, sentimental ballads.

When Jamie asked about the Atlanta widow, Colonel Andrew Ravanel had a rueful smile: "I'd rather face a Yankee division than Scarlett O'Hara

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Hamilton. 'Colonel Ravanel. Get out of here and take your orchestra with you.

Which is how Cassius was renamed "Andrew's Orchestra."

Andrew asked Charlotte's brother about his wife: what had Charlotte been like as a child? Was Charlotte present when he kissed Rosemary Butler at the Washington Racecourse? "I was so angry at Langston Butler, so humiliated, I would have done anything -- so long as it was rash!"

Jamie thought Andrew as faithful husband would take some getting used to, but was amused when ladies hoping to entertain "the celebrated Colonel Ravanel" were turned away with a smile and, "Madam, were I not a married man, your virtue would be imperiled."

Then came the Gettysburg, Vicksburg summer and newspapers that once lauded Colonel Ravanel changed their tune.

The Charleston Mercury

recalled the Cynthiania fight and how a Federal officer had strutted down a public street wearing Colonel Ravanel's hat.

General Bragg, who would soon lose his command to General Johnston, forbade raids and used Ravanel's Brigade as regular cavalry. That fall, Andrew took a second furlough in Charleston.

Mr. and Mrs. Ravanel were never at home to callers and they ignored all invitations. Juliet Ravanel was uncharacteristically reticent when friends asked about the couple.

On this occasion there was no scandal, and soon after Andrew returned to the army, Jamie got a letter from Charlotte. "Please don't let Andrew do anything rash. I fear my beloved husband does not think himself worthy of me. I fear Andrew will do something foolhardy to burnish a reputation which is already bright as the noonday sun! Please, Jamie, keep Andrew safe for my sake and for our son!"

Five weeks later, on a drizzly December afternoon, on a ridge overlooking Pommery, Ohio, Jamie Fisher was musing about church bells. "How could I ever have thought church bells were lovely? Didn't church bells mean families promenading Meeting Street on Sunday morning?" Through his glass, Colonel Andrew Ravanel studied the village, whose

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church bells clamored like terrified geese: "The rebels are coming! Alarm! Alarm!"

The interludes between Pommery's bells were filled with fainter bells from the countryside.

"They are God's bells, Jamie. Shame on you." Andrew snapped his glass shut. "Shall we ride through or around? Should we give the citizens of Pommery something to tell their grandchildren?"

"No, Andrew. There's bound to be some graybeard hugging his musket and dreaming of potting a Confederate."

Andrew Ravanel shifted in the saddle. "How close are the Federals?"

"Three battalions two hours behind."

"They won't get away this time."

"Ha-ha," Jamie said.

Andrew asked Jamie about their route home.

"Cobb's Ford was passable two weeks ago, but it's rained enough to float the Ark."

Absently, Andrew stroked his horse's neck. "Cassius can't swim."

Jamie leaned to him. "If we ride hard, we'll strike the Ohio River tomorrow night."

Andrew Ravanel stood in his stirrups to wave his men around this Yankee town. They were going home.

Two weeks earlier, Andrew Ravanel had crossed the Ohio into Yankeedom with two thousand fresh, well-armed Confederate cavalrymen intending to wreck railroads, torch army storehouses, steal horses, and enlist sympathetic recruits to the Cause.

The raid had gone badly. Alerted by telegram, Federal brigades pursued relentlessly. Only hard riding and Jamie Fisher's cleverness avoided the fixed battle they could not hope to win.

They'd run and ducked and fought through when they couldn't avoid it. Their dead had been left unburied, their wounded abandoned at crossroads. Exhausted men simply sat down and waited for the Yankees to take them. Of their four field guns, they had one left.

The three hundred survivors of Ravanel's Brigade were bearded,

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dirty, and festooned with guns; they looked more like bandits than soldiers. The horses they'd bought from Ohio farmers (paying with Confederate currency) hadn't the speed or endurance of the mounts they'd started with.

That evening it rained, a cold rain that plucked dead leaves off the trees and mashed them on the road. To spare their horses, the troopers walked, clinging to stirrups. As the blood slowed in Andrew Ravanel's veins, an all too familiar despair burdened Andrew's heart and he shouted to Cassius, "Pick us a tune, boy!"

Cross-legged on the gun's limber box, a tattered umbrella protecting his banjo, Cassius tried to please, but his tunes were off-key or tunes Andrew had tired of long ago.

Icy rain trickled off Andrew's hat brim and down his neck.

Cassius wrapped his precious instrument in his jacket and hunched over it, miserable and still.

There was just enough moonlight for a man to see the man in front of him. Sometimes the color sergeant had trouble keeping to the road. Men gnawed biscuits while they walked. They stepped out of the column to relieve themselves and then ran to catch up. The rain worked through their collars and shoulder seams and boot soles. Their slouch hats collapsed. Their souls retracted. Sometimes when a trooper remounted, his horse protested. Sometimes an exhausted horse crumpled and sent its rider sprawling before weary men dragged the horse back onto its feet.

When Andrew had left Charlotte at the Charleston depot, Charlotte had told him, "Dearest, I know you better than anyone on earth and do not doubt you have done things of which you are ashamed. Your shame proves you are a very good man."