The Bride of Texas (64 page)

A group of officers walked over and stopped while a black-bearded colonel glanced at the platoon with the naked man in its midst and snapped, “What’s this?”

Then a breeze carried the smell to the officers. The colonel swallowed whatever it was he wanted to say, waved his hand dismissively, and spurred his horse. The rest of the staff followed him. They saw a long-haired captain pull out a handkerchief and press it to his nose.

When the sound of hoof-beats faded, Stejskal said, “No, it won’t work. You know why, Franta? Everybody will think we all shit our pants in advance.”

“On the other hand, we could blame it on Franta,” said Shake.

“Blame what?” asked Houska.

The Third Company marched up behind them and its captain was annoyed at them for just standing around and getting in the way. Then he got a whiff of the breeze himself and yelled a hasty order, and they set out. Zinkule tried to line up behind the last trio, but the captain of the Third Company yelled at him so loudly that he crept back into the ambulance cart. The card-players pulled up their handkerchief masks again and went on playing.

“Is it a big city?” asked Lida
.

“It’s a port city. Very impressive. The house is on Bay Street.”

“Does it belong to you?”

“Yes. Uncle Jean-Paul left it to me.” He paused. “But Linda —”

“Is it ready to move into?”

“The caretaker used to be overseer in our plantation in Louisiana. He and his wife are living there, in retirement.”

“Fine,” she said
.

He looked unhappy. “Linda, darling, I’m really not certain —”

“You want to or not?” she interrupted him pointedly. He had returned the ring to his fiancée. The lady and her father had left the very next morning. The arrogant footman had ridden in front, looking offended
.

“I want to,” he said. “My mother’s jewels are yours.”

She had seen them gleaming in their cases — necklaces, a diamond tiara, jewellery carried across the Atlantic many years earlier from a land that did not tolerate the faith of the women, now long dead, who had owned it. Rings, bracelets, some of them purchased later in the jewellery stores of New Orleans, a few of them for the more recent owner, now also deceased. “For your bride,” said Lida
.

“Linda —”

She broke in: “How much are they worth?”

“I don’t know. A lot.”

“Good,” she said. “We won’t sell them. Pawn money will support us until your papa changes his mind.”

She was gambling everything on that. Despite the distance across the Atlantic, she saw that it was the same the world over. If the old veteran Vitek’s father had hired hadn’t come hobbling up when he did, she might not even have had to go to America. Vitek was Mika’s only son. There were no other heirs
.

Pegleg’s sister, Hortense, was married and apparently expecting already. But Pegleg too was an only son. The old world and the new, as Papa de Ribordeaux had proved when he summoned her
father and gave him his ultimatum, were the same, though separated by oceans and continents. She was going for broke because she had nothing to lose
.

Nothing to lose and everything to gain
.

Fortune favours the fearless, as the Czech saying goes
.

She had been Mrs. de Ribordeaux for several months, bound in wedlock in a Savannah church — although in her mind only one thing in the world had bound her inseparably, and she had already been separated from that — when the letter arrived. She grinned; Papa must be changing his mind. But it was still too soon. The letter was just a first step towards getting back his inheritance
.

“Hortense,” her husband sobbed, “Hortense is dead.”

“How did it happen?” She could hardly conceal her pleasure
.

“In childbirth,” said Étienne. “The baby died too.”

Perhaps there is a God after all, thought Lida. The lovesick Father Bunata’s good and kind Lord God
.

Étienne was no longer just the only son. He was now the only living heir. Now it was a matter of time
.

Then the Lord God played another cruel trick on her
.

It was twilight. The eastern sky was turning dark and the stars were coming out. The smoke dissipated as night fell, but there were still flashes coming out of the woods and from positions near the ground. They were close to the battle now. Whenever there was a lull in the noise they could hear a tired echo of the Rebel yell, but it was soon drowned out again by the crack of muskets and the thunder of cannon. On they marched, at a half-trot, while Shake cursed. He was cursing because K Company of the Twenty-sixth Wisconsin had slogged through North Carolina like a pack of mules, and now they had to step
in and bail out a fop like General Carlin, doing the dirty work for his men so they’d be fresh and rested for the march into Washington and would look the way the ladies of Washington imagined Sherman’s great army to be. “And not like the pack of exhausted mules they actually are,” Shake complained.

“Calm down,” said Stejskal. “We’re worn down and worn out, but we’ll still look better in Washington than Carlin and his dandies.”

“If we look like anything at all,” stated Fisher.

For a while no one said anything, and they could only hear the occasional clink of a rifle against a canteen, and the breathing of men who were exhausted but sustained by a second wind.

The order to halt came down and the lieutenant trotted off to the head of the column. By now they were very close. They could hear officers’ voices nearby; units were beginning to spread out in the dusk, the first of them already disappearing among the trees. A shrapnel shell exploded, but it was still pretty far away.

“Neighbours, I got a premonition,” Houska ventured.

“You know where you can stick it,” growled Paidr.

Shake sniffed the air loudly. “We should have brought Zinkule along. We could have undressed some poor corpse along the road and made him decent. He’d come in handy now.”

“Is it a punch in the face you want?” said Houska angrily. “If anybody’s scared shitless here, it’s you!”

“Figuratively, you’re right,” replied Shake. “Neighbours, I often thought about it whenever I saw the rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in the air. If I’d a brave bone in my body, I’d have deserted long ago.”

Somewhere in the distance, not far away, several projectiles exploded one after another like flashes of lightning in the sky, and a weak Rebel yell sounded. The lieutenant came running back and commanded, “Follow me!”

They plunged into the forest but they were moving more slowly now. It was hard to see the ground. Then a few kerosene lanterns appeared up ahead. They soon reached an area cut out of the darkness by a yellow glow. Several men — in shirts so bloody they looked as if someone had poured a bucket of gore over them — were working in such a frenzy that they seemed like madmen. Saws rasped on bone. Without a word they advanced more quickly, because some of the light from this place of weeping and gnashing of teeth illuminated the ground between the moss-covered tress. As the flashes of light came closer, they could see a palisade occupied by a handful of ragged soldiers.

“We’re relieving the unit in this area,” said the lieutenant.

They flopped down on their stomachs.

“High time!” snarled a bearded soldier wearing an illegible insignia, as he walked quickly away from the palisade.

They peered over the rough, ill-trimmed log fortifications. Half a mile or so ahead of them they could see the flickering lights of battle. Small black figures were running across a meadow to the woods on the hill. The Rebel yell now sounded like the plaintive cries of dying men.

Shake leaned against the palisade beside Houska and philosophized, “No offence, Vojta. Let’s not leave this world in a state of disagreement. What do you say?”

“Who’s arguing?” asked Houska.

“Me,” said Shake. “The difference is that I’m shit-scared and pretty soon I’m going to need Zinkule here to cover up for me!”

“Just wait till after the battle,” Houska snapped at him, “I’ll bust your mouth like I’ve been promising since Savannah!”

“Tell the truth, Vojta,” said Shake. The shooting machine on the hill across the meadow rattled into action again. “You said you had a premonition.”

“That’s right.” Houska placed the musket on the palisade in front of him, pulled out a handkerchief, and blew his nose. “It’s a strong one, Amos. I think Ruzena is going to leave him.”

Shake was taken aback. “Leave who?”

“That Ferda fellow, the one she married,” said Houska, putting his handkerchief away. “When I get home from the war, I’ll be a hero. And what will he be? Nothing but a plain ordinary yellow-bellied war-dodger.”

“But what does it mean?” Lida wanted to know
.

“Lincoln’s getting cold feet,” said Captain Culloch. The empty sleeve of his threadbare uniform was tucked behind his faded gold belt, and he twirled a glass of bourbon on the smooth tabletop with his left hand, which had the three middle fingers missing
.

They were sitting in the Grenier Hotel and Lida was frowning
.

“It’s supposed to win him the full support of the abolitionists,” said the captain, “because discontent is spreading through his Yankee empire. Have you heard of the Copperheads?”

Lida shook her head
.

“They’re openly opposed to the Emancipation Proclamation,” said Captain Culloch. “They say the question of the peculiar institution is up to the individual states, not the federal government. So Lincoln has no choice, that’s why he’s betting on the abolitionists. We, Madame de Ribordeaux, can only watch with pleasure. When our enemies fight among themselves, we —”

She had stopped listening. In her mind she could hear Filly-face, the woman Cyril had jilted for his yellow rose, saying, “Daddy says the South can’t win. We live in an age of machines, and the North has machines and keeps inventing new ones. Have you heard about the one Mr. Gatling invented?” She had shaken her head. “It’s a rifle with ten barrels,” said Filly-face. “It shoots
more than two hundred rounds a minute, my daddy says —”

The Emancipation Proclamation did not bring Papa de Ribordeaux to his senses. They pawned the tiara. Months flew by. They argued more and more. Pegleg started drinking heavily. They stopped talking except to argue
.

Finally, the letter came
.