Somerset (33 page)

T
he war reached Howbutker in September of 1864 and took one of its most beloved native sons. Jessica, Priscilla, and Petunia were in the kitchen preparing cloth packets of corncob ashes as a substitute for soda to distribute to neighbors when Amy, eight years old and a “mother's helper,” was sent to answer the pull of the front doorbell. Wartime shortages and the Union blockade of supply ships had generated ingenious ideas for replacements of coffee, flour, pepper, sugar, and salt. Residents of Houston Avenue had formed a cooperative exchange. Individuals were assigned specific tasks of preparing large quantities of substitute items to be shared by all. As examples, Bess DuMont had become quite proficient at roasting and grinding acorns and okra seeds to make a fairly decent cup of coffee, and Camellia Warwick had refined the art of making passable flour from potatoes. The women of Houston Avenue made a morning social occasion of the exchange, taking turns entertaining the group in their homes. Jessica was to host the following day.

“That's probably Mrs. Davis bringing me an arrangement of her chrysanthemums for the table,” Jessica said.

“She sure been nicer to you since Mister Silas been proved right on all accounts, and her husband been proved wrong,” Petunia said. “You got to hand it to her. She eat crow without tryin' to sugar it.”

“A hollow vindication for Silas, though,” Jessica said. Silas's predictions had come to pass. The Confederacy had not been able to sustain itself against the military might of the North, and rumors flew that a major invasion was under way to lay waste to the Southland. France and Great Britain did not come to the aid of the Confederacy in exchange for its cotton as expected, and slaves were running away from plantations by the hundreds owing to the drain of their overseers to the war and having no incentive to stay. So far, Somerset's labor force, but for a few desertions, had remained intact.

But it was a neighborhood boy from down the street who burst into the kitchen, Amy hurrying after him, alarm written across her young face. The boy whipped off his hat, breathless, his face flushed. “Miss Jessica,” he panted, “the bluecoats have come.”

Jessica jumped up. “
What?
Where are they?”

“In the pasture in back of your house. They're stealing the horses.”

“Priscilla, you know where the pistols are. Arm the servants,” Jessica ordered. “Petunia, you stay here with Amy. Leon, do you know how to use a gun?”

“I sure do. My daddy taught me, just in case.”

“Priscilla, give him a pistol, too.”

“What are we going to do?” her daughter-in-law asked, eyes large with fright.

“I don't know.”

Jessica grabbed the flintlock standing at the ready by the door in the larder and headed for the back door. All the men on the street were at their places of work, the children in school. The question flashed through Jessica's mind why Leon, son of their banker, was home. She heard a cough from what sounded like a deep chest cold and understood why. Only the women were home, most napping this time of day, their servants oblivious to the scene that met her eyes when she stepped onto the high floor of the gazebo and peered toward the pasture.

A dozen or so men on horseback and wearing Federal army uniforms were twirling ropes in pursuit of Houston Avenue's carriage horses, let out from their stalls for the day. The horses were resisting capture, successfully dodging the rope nooses tossed at their heads. To her horror, Jessica saw Flight O' Fancy among them. The Thoroughbred had caught the attention of the officer in charge. She could clearly hear his orders to
“Get that horse!”

She stood helplessly. The soldiers mustn't get their hands on Nanette's horse, but what could she do, a lone woman with one flintlock between her and a dozen armed men? She must not risk injury to Leon or expose Priscilla to them. One look at her and no telling what those soldiers might do. She wished for Jeremiah, wise and strong, but he had died two springs ago. Her mind in a lock of indecision, she gasped as she saw Robert Warwick run out to the pasture, pistol in hand. She had forgotten he'd be home, working as he always did in his carpentry shop. He was building a desk for Thomas as a welcome-home gift.
Oh, good Lord, no!

Priscilla, Leon, and the servants had come outside, the collection from Silas's gun cabinet in their hands.

“Priscilla, run to the next-door houses and tell the neighbors what's happening and to arm themselves,” she said. “Tell them to send a runner to alert the house next to theirs and they in turn are to send somebody to alert the neighbor next to them and so on. Hurry now. No time to waste.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Priscilla said, looking relieved at her task.

The officer in command, a first lieutenant by the parallel bars on his yellow shoulder straps, swung his horse around at Robert's approach and withdrew his pistol from its holster. Without thinking but with enough presence of mind to leave the flintlock behind, Jessica flew down the steps of the gazebo and through the wrought-iron gate across the service road hollering
“No! No!”

Every man turned to look at her. Flight O' Fancy, seeing Robert, had stopped running and ambled toward him.

“Miss Jessica!” Robert said, his voice echoing his surprise when she reached the conclave. “What are you doing here?”

“Hoping to talk some sense into every mother's son here. Good afternoon, Lieutenant.”

The lieutenant recovered the use of his dropped jaw and said, “Madam,” and brought his gloved hand to the brim of his cavalry hat.

“Robert dear,” Jessica said, “please put your gun on the ground. It will be useless against so many here.”

Robert at twenty-three had never outgrown the whistle and rattle in his lungs. His bronchial condition had left him looking as if a strong wind could blow him away. He had no more wherewithal to challenge the mounted cavalry unit than a stick against a battering ram.

“I'd do what she says,” the lieutenant said, his tone and the steel in his eye receptive to no argument. Flight O' Fancy had reached them, her flanks quivering nervously.

“You can't have this horse,” Robert said, lowering his pistol but keeping it by his side.

“I am going to take her and all these horses here, so drop your weapon and both of you go back where you came from and no harm will come to you.”

“You are not taking her,” Robert said, his jaw set obstinately. “She'll be no war horse for the Union army.”

“She will be when I'm through with her.”

“No, never. I'd rather see her dead first,” Robert declared and positioned the gun to a spot behind Flight O' Fancy's ear and fired.

Jessica couldn't believe her eyes. From their stunned stares, neither could the mounted men. It took a moment while the horse thundered sickeningly to the ground and the smoke cleared from Robert's pistol for them all to realize what had happened.

“Well, now, you shouldn't have done that,” the lieutenant said and aimed his firearm at Robert's head.

“No, please!”
Jessica screamed, but it was too late. The bullet struck Robert in the middle of his forehead and he crumpled to a gangly heap beside the body of the fallen horse. Jessica dropped to her knees beside him and cradled his bleeding head in her lap. He had died instantly, defiance locked in his frozen stare. Jessica looked up at the officer through a glaze of shocked tears. “How could you do such a thing? He was just a boy.”

“Weren't we all once?” the lieutenant said. “A man who would shoot a beautiful horse like that for the reason he gave doesn't deserve to live.”

“The horse belonged to the girl he loved. She died at fifteen. Robert looked after her mare in memory of her,” Jessica said, eyes overflowing.

Remorse washed over the lieutenant's face. He looked away across the green space of the pasture for a moment, then back at Jessica. “War is nothing if not a series of tragic misjudgments, madam. My sincere regret for mine.”

Jessica heard a commotion behind her and glanced over her shoulder to see the mistresses of Houston Avenue and their servants taking position in a line of billowy hoop skirts and maids' uniforms stretching almost the length of the service road. They held guns and had been trained how to use them in defense of their homes. Among them were mothers whose sons had been lost or wounded in battles in Texas and all across the Southland. They seemed to be waiting for a signal from her about what they should do.

Camellia Warwick, small, delicate, broke through the file with a shriek and ran toward them, her hooped skirt almost lifting her from the ground. Jessica turned back to the lieutenant. “Leave now, young man, and go home to the mother who will never know the grief you've caused this boy's. Stay, and there will be further bloodshed, possibly yours.”

“I make no war against women and servants,” the lieutenant said, “but I aim to take the horses. Signal to your people to stand down, and we will be on our way.”

Silas had been in Dr. Woodward's office when the tragedy occurred. Afterwards he rode out to Somerset to his favorite vantage point overlooking his plantation and the result of his life's work. The peace that usually calmed his troubled mind and eased into his soul did not come. He did not hear of the grievous events in the pasture or of his wife's heroism until he returned home at dusk. There was sadness enough, he thought. He decided to wait until the brunt of Robert's death had passed to give Jessica the news of Dr. Woodward's diagnosis.

A
pril twelfth, 1865, would always be remembered in the family annals of the Tolivers, DuMonts, and Warwicks as the day “the boys” came home. The War Between the States was practically over. On April ninth, General Robert E. Lee, commander of Confederate Forces, recognizing its inevitable outcome, had surrendered his 28,000 troops to the Union commander, General Ulysses S. Grant, at Appomattox in Virginia to avoid further casualties and destruction of property in the Southland. Both were staggering. Sam Houston's words of warning that in case of war, the state would lose “the flower of Texas manhood” applied in devastating numbers to the Texas Confederates who had defended the South. Jake Davis was among them. Late in the war he had split off from Captain Burleson's unit to join the Texas Brigade that fought in the Eastern Theater under General Lee. It was Jake who sent back word to the Tolivers that Willowshire had been burned to the ground by one of the regiments under the command of U.S. Army general William T. Sherman during his flaming march through South Carolina. Jessica could easily picture the scene of its destruction from the description her brother Michael gave to Jake.

February in Plantation Alley was always a bleak time of year, the color of dusk, and one afternoon, Michael had been startled when one of the servants burst into the library and shouted that the bluecoats were coming. Her brother had stared out his window at a Union colonel on horseback leading a column of blue-coated soldiers at an unhurried gait down the leafless lane of Willowshire to the front of the mansion. Jessica was thankful their parents were not alive to see what happened next. According to Michael's report to Jake, her brother had gone out to meet the intruders and stood on the verandah while the officer in command dismounted and his men remained in the saddle and fanned out around him.

“Good afternoon,” the officer said to Michael, removing his gloves as he climbed the steps. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Colonel Paul Conklin. Perhaps you remember my aunt.”

Michael admitted he must have blanched white as a cotton boll, for of course he remembered Sarah Conklin.

The colonel allowed him to remove his family, servants, and hunting dogs from the house before the fires were lit, but he ordered everything else to be left behind. Jessica believed that it was for the sake of her friendship with his beloved aunt the soldiers were not permitted to loot the home of her childhood, and for that, she was grateful.

The boys came home on the eve Silas took to his bed, never able to rise from it again. Before then, he had managed to ride out to the plantation every day, see to his business affairs, and attend meetings of the city council, to which he'd been re-elected. Suspecting Silas's disease from his symptoms, Dr. Woodward had sent him to Houston to a doctor with special knowledge of cancer of the blood. The specialist concurred with Dr. Woodward's diagnosis: Silas was suffering from a condition known as leukemia. There was no treatment or cure.

Thomas was devastated. No grief he'd experienced in the war could compare to the sorrow of the coming demise of his father. He had returned home for Robert's funeral in September, and he had noticed how greatly his father had aged. Something had been amiss, but he attributed it to his father's years of worry that his only child would be counted among the war's casualties, and the death of Robert had left its mark. His parents, more dear to him than ever, his wife a stranger, suffered deeply for the Warwicks. On that visit to his home, he said to Priscilla, “I want a child, Priscilla, and now. Do you understand?”

She'd nodded, fearful, as usual, but Thomas did not care. For God's sake, what had the girl expected when she became a wife! That she would simply be set on a shelf and looked at? What use was she if she was no lover, companion, or helpmate and could not bear him children?

She submitted, and Thomas left her wondering where her tender, considerate, understanding husband had gone, but when he returned for good in April, he found her eight months pregnant. He prayed nightly for the safe delivery of his child and that his father might live to see a Toliver of the third generation who would someday become heir to the plantation of Somerset.

“I do not know how I can live without Silas,” Jessica said to Jeremy. They still met around ten o'clock some mornings for a cup of Bess DuMont's bitter acorn coffee in the gazebo when the laudanum had eased Silas's pain and allowed him to sleep.

“It isn't a matter of living,” Jeremy said, his voice throaty with grief. “It's a matter of staying alive for those left behind.”

He and Henri came every day to cajole with Silas, gossip, bring the latest war news, to assist in his baths, to sit with him when Jessica needed a break. Jeremy read to him as his sight weakened. Henri brought special treats from his store. Their pain behind their jocularity broke Jessica's heart.

Silas lived three weeks after Priscilla delivered a healthy, nine-pound boy. She asked that her son be named Vernon after an obscure member in the genealogy she'd resurrected to the status of hero on the basis of his participation in the War of the Roses.

“Vernon,”
Silas repeated, his voice hoarse from pain and medication as he propped up in bed to hold the baby for the first time. “I like the name. How clever of you, Priscilla. I see the little trooper has your fine ears. Do you mind that the rest of him has your husband's side of the family to blame?”

“I am thrilled about it,” Priscilla gushed, glancing at Thomas, who stood close to his father on the other side of the bed. Jessica caught the look. It was full of hopeless yearning:
I have performed.
Now love me.
But her husband's attention was on Silas, obviously impressing on memory his father's joy as he looked into the face of his grandson.

During his lucid periods, Silas called Thomas to his bedside, and they spent every minute in a huddle over accounting books and business papers and plans for the survival of Somerset. Silas warned that Texas and the South were in for a long period of turmoil. “Our state will be slow to bend its knee to Northern dominance and Texas may not be reinstated into the Union for a long time,” he predicted between moments of losing and regaining his voice. “Lawlessness will be rampant, and the old order of our social structure will be in ruins. Our money will be worthless and land values will drop drastically, but you must not despair, son. Hold on to the land. Better times will come, and Somerset will thrive.”

Unable to bear being beyond the sound of Silas's voice for as long as it was heard, Jessica sat in the sitting room next to the wall by their bed during these sessions and could hear the exchange of every word. She was torn between telling Silas of her bank account in Boston to ease his worry over money and the risk of his disfavor toward Jeremy when he learned of their pact to keep the money a secret from him.

“Don't take the risk, Jess,” Jeremy advised during one of their morning interludes in the gazebo. “For my sake, don't tell him.”

“You believe it would matter at this point that we were in cahoots together?”

“I'm sure it would.”

Jessica heard a strange note in his voice. “Why?”

Jeremy had discovered a loose nail in the swing. He diverted his attention to pushing it back into position with his thumb. “Just trust me, Jess. In some ways I know your husband better than you. He would mind that you took me into your confidence over him and that I acted upon it without his knowledge.”

“As you wish, Jeremy,” Jessica said. “I would do nothing to damage your lifelong friendship, not here at its end.”

Before his death, Silas had been cognizant of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination in April, the capture of Confederate president Jefferson Davis in Georgia in May, news that the possibility of natural gas might replace candles for lighting and wood for cooking, and Jessica's proud announcement that Maria Mitchell, an advocate in the women's rights movement, had become the first woman professor of astronomy in the United States when she was appointed to a teaching position at Vassar College in New York. Silas had grinned and said, “What in the world is the world coming to?” and earned an affectionate swipe at his arm from his wife.

The last day of his life, Jessica heard Silas gasp to Thomas, “Son, I'm aware…that your marriage is…not all you'd like it to be, but will you take…a word of advice from your father?”

“I always have, Papa.”

“You may…never grow to…love Priscilla, but you must…respect her love for you. It is not a…trifling thing. It is to be honored. Give her the grace of your…acceptance of it, if…nothing else.…”

Jessica rose to her feet, her hand pressed to her lips. It had been a struggle for Silas to get the words out of his mouth, among the last she believed she would ever hear from her husband. Her fear proved justified. Just as day broke the next morning, she woke from an exhausted sleep to feel Silas press her hand. “Jessica…” he gasped.

She was instantly awake and by his side. “Yes, my love?”

“It…was…” His lips formed a word beginning with
w
, but it was never uttered.

“Wonderful,” Jessica said. Gently she drew his lids closed and kissed his lips. “Yes, it was, my dearest love.”

Silas died at dawn on June 19, 1865, the day the Union commander of U.S. troops in the state issued the order that the Emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery was in effect in Texas.