The Warriors (20 page)

“You’ve been saying we wouldn’t.”

“I know. But the stories keep getting worse. Now there’s that fire—I thought the burnings would surely stop.”

Catherine’s nod was slow, grave. In contrast to her firmness with her stepdaughter, she looked almost beaten now.

Her shoulders slumped. She stared down the lane of live oaks toward the highway. Finally, grasping the arms of the chair as if to draw strength from them, she said, “For the moment let’s try to forget General Sherman. I sent Serena inside because I wanted to speak privately about another matter. One that’s very important. To you.”

Her faint intonation of warning set him on edge. Guardedly, he replied, “What is it?”

He already suspected the subject and wished he were somewhere else.

Her first sentence proved his suspicion was correct. “It shouldn’t have required so much time to hide the wagon.”

“Mrs. Rose, I told you—the darkness was a handicap. We—”

“Spare me your fibs, Jeremiah,” she broke in softly. “I’m not angry. You’re too young to know what you’re doing. Or, rather, what’s being done
to
you.”

He bristled. His tiredness, and the tumultuous emotions Serena had aroused, pushed him close to anger again. Catherine kept gazing at the red-tinged oaks while she continued.

“I dislike raising indelicate subjects. But I feel I must. I’ve noticed a change in Serena’s attitude toward you. A very rapid and abrupt change. You don’t lack intelligence. Surely you’ve noticed it as well?”

A nod admitted it.

“Do you know the reason for it?”

“I have an idea.”

“Tell me.”

“No, ma’am. You tell me.”

“Isn’t it obvious? She’s discovered you’re not a poor boy. In fact I expect you’ve more wealth and—if we survive this war—better prospects for the future than the half-dozen beaux Serena’s had since she was dismissed from Christ College. No, please don’t interrupt. I must say this while there’s time. Young men in the neighborhood know Serena’s character. Oh, she’s charming to the eye. But those same young men—before they all went off to the army—Jeremiah, there wasn’t one among them who called more than three or four times. Her behavior shocked them. I feel un-Christian saying this about my late husband’s child. But—”

A shrug. He knew she wasn’t telling the truth. She loathed Serena as much as Serena loathed her.

“—but it’s for your own benefit. I was a teacher, you know. I’ve worked with young people. You think you’re grown, but you’re not, Jeremiah. You’re still—unshaped. Malleable. You must understand one fact above all.” A long sigh. “Serena is—not possessed of a stable temperament.”

Catherine turned in her chair and gazed directly into his eyes. “Do you understand what I’m attempting to say?”

He wanted to swear, wanted to curse her for speaking against the girl who’d roused such intense feelings within him. He restrained the impulse and settled for a deprecating laugh.

“Think so. But my own mother used to say as much about me.”

Catherine shook her head. “I can’t believe that.”

“Oh, yes, ma’am. She did. She claimed my brothers and I all inherited what she called a cussed streak. We got it from our great-grandmother, a Virginia lady named Fletcher.”

“Well, you don’t strike me as cussed, as you call it. Just very young. Very susceptible to—”

Another pause. Somewhere inside, perhaps in the hall, he thought he heard a footstep.

“—to feminine ways.”

Catherine leaned toward him.

“I’m deeply appreciative of what you’ve done for us, Jeremiah. Just your presence—a male presence—has been a great comfort. And the loyalty to my late husband that brought you here is commendable. But the moment the trouble’s over—the moment the Yanks are gone and it’s safe for you to travel—you must leave. I won’t repay you by allowing you to become—entangled with Serena. You’re a decent young man. But still”—a gesture—“
malleable.”

Suddenly there was a raw sound to her voice. “I tried to raise her well! But Henry favored her too much. Overruled my discipline constantly!”

Because you despised her real mother, and he tried to make up for it?

He didn’t utter the question aloud. But he was becoming convinced Catherine Rose was striking back at a dead woman through her child.

“I hope you do understand what I’m trying to say, Jeremiah. I’m worried that you’ll allow Serena to”—again she searched for words—“to exert an influence you’re too inexperienced to resist.”

His resentment had become overwhelming. “Ma’am, I’m fully old enough to look out for—”

She refused to let him finish. “I won’t be so rude as to subject you to questions about why you took such an unusual amount of time hiding the wagon. Or why Serena came back so disarrayed. Frankly, I don’t need to ask. I simply want to beg you to leave as soon as you can. I’ve seen the way you look at her. She’s a handsome girl. I don’t deny that. But there are—depths to her that you can’t begin to perceive after such a short acquaintance. She has traits in common with her mother. She’s greedy. Lewd. She”—the momentary compression of Catherine’s lips pronounced final judgment even before she finished the sentence—“she is not moral.” A whisper then:
“Not a moral person.
All the young gentlemen who called soon realized it.”

Jeremiah exploded, “Mrs. Rose, I can’t believe you care so little about your own stepdaughter!”

Catherine didn’t take offense. “I told you I tried. For years! Finally I saw the truth I’d been attempting to avoid. That’s why I wouldn’t want Serena—associated permanently with a person I liked or respected. And I like and respect you.”

One hand reached out, clasping his fingers. The pressure was intense.

“Leave her alone, Jeremiah. For your own sake.”

The almost frantic clutch of Catherine’s fingers repelled him. Without realizing it, he’d become Serena’s partisan. It had happened, he supposed, during the frenzied kissing and fumbling an hour ago.

“Jeremiah?”

“What?”

“Give me your promise you’ll leave when you can.”

“No, ma’am, I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

How could he confront her with the fact that she’d become suspect on several counts? There was her talk of Christianity and kindness coupled with her hypocrisy about taking wine. There was the old animosity toward Rose’s first wife he’d learned about from Serena. And most of all, there was this quiet, venomous attack.

He couldn’t explain those reasons. Much as he resented all she’d said, and knowing full well that Serena’s new interest was most likely caused by the money, he still couldn’t turn on Mrs. Rose. She’d treated him well. Perhaps she’d convinced herself she was still doing so.

“Jeremiah—
why not?”

He was rescued when Catherine jerked around in her chair, to face the highway. Almost at once he caught the sound too. A lowing and bleating—out there in the darkness.

Then, muffled but unmistakable, the ragged rhythm of marching.

Catherine leaped up. “There’s livestock on the road!”

“And men,” he said, as she gathered up her skirts and ran along the piazza.

“If it’s the Yanks, they aren’t going to set foot on this property!”

All at once she was gone, dashing wildly down the lane between the live oaks whose trunks showed faint redness on their western sides.

Jeremiah didn’t follow her. He was too stunned and upset by her attack on Serena.

The lowing and bleating and out-of-cadence tramp of boots grew steadily louder. Finally he drove himself into motion, left the piazza, took three strides across the drive.

“Goddamn her vile tongue!”

He whirled.

Serena stood in the main doorway.

He might not have existed; the girl paid no attention to him. She gazed down the lane where Catherine had vanished. She was trembling.

Suddenly she riveted her eyes on his. He almost cringed at the hate he saw.

“I went into the sitting room to hunt for one last decanter.”

She needed to say nothing more. He remembered the open windows not far from the chairs and the sound of a furtive footstep.

Serena’s knuckles were white as she gripped the jamb. “You’re not going to listen to her, are you? I’m not half so wicked as she wants you to think!” She beat a fist against the wood. “Sometimes I wish one of those Yanks would come around here and
kill
her!”

Jolted, he exclaimed, “My God, you don’t mean that!”

She covered her eyes. “No. No. But—she makes me so blasted
mad!”

She rushed forward. “Jeremiah, she’s detested me since the day she married Papa. You know why? Because she detested my mama’s reputation. She felt that having me around all the time soiled her—even though I never did anything to make her feel that way!”

The girl seized his shoulders. “If you listen to her—to those vicious stories she makes up—it’ll ruin everything!”

Excited by her touch, he started to ask her to explain exactly what would be ruined.

Laughter—raucous male laughter—burst out down by the gate. For a moment he’d forgotten the strangers on the road. The laughter reminded him.

He spun, his heart hammering, just as Catherine’s faint cry of protest rang out.

“I think the Yanks are here. I have to go.”

“No. You wait!”

“Serena—”

“You
wait!
This is too important.” Her urgency, and her hand, held him at her side.

“Jeremiah, you have to trust me. It’s important to me that you do. I don’t want you to think I’m the sort of person she says. ’Course I’ve flirted with boys. I admit it.

Maybe I’ve even done more than flirt. But never anything truly wrong. Never! The rest—anything you thought I meant back in the woods—that was teasing. I’m not experienced.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “That was all teasing. Dumb, idiotic teasing!”

“Can I believe you?”

“Yes—and I want you to—I do!” She pressed against him.

But he asked what needed asking, “What’s the reason, Serena? The money?”

“I’d be a ninny to say no. Any girl’s anxious for a good catch. But that isn’t the only reason. If you were eighty years old and rich as Midas, I wouldn’t look at you. Not for a minute.”

Relief flooded through him. She’d caught him off guard by being so candid about the inheritance. What lingered to bother him was her claim of inexperience. The implication of chastity. Did he dare believe that—much as he wanted to—after what had happened in the pines?

Catherine’s faint cry sounded again. Someone had hold of the bell rope.
Clang!

“Serena, I can’t wait any longer!”

Clang! Clang!
The bell raised echoes across the smoky countryside. He gave the girl a last anguished look and ran for the road. Ran toward the woman who needed his help. Ran from the girl he wanted against all doubt and reason—

She is not moral.

That was a damning accusation. But where did the guilt, the immorality really lie? Who had been honest about her change of heart?

Serena.

Who had belittled—condemned—the very child she’d raised. And done it secretively?

Catherine.

The balance tipped, heavily and finally, in favor of the girl who’d stirred fierce new longings with her mouth, her hands, her body.

His long tawny hair streamed behind him as he raced down the lane beneath the festoons of tillandsia. Ahead, he saw a lantern bobbing like an immense firefly. He glimpsed men and livestock. Heard an altercation growing louder and more acrimonious.

SHE IS NOT MORAL.

For an instant, he was unsure of his decision. Then, equally swiftly, he was ashamed of the doubt. Above all, he
wanted
to believe Serena.

And he couldn’t flee—not later, and certainly not now. Directly ahead, where the lantern’s yellow light paled in a sudden drift of smoke, he saw the boisterous Yanks.

By the time he reached the closed white gate, Catherine had taken possession of the rope dangling from the bell post just inside. Two companies of scruffy, bearded men in Union blue had halted on the highway. The column of uneven ranks had come along the straight stretch leading out of the dense forest separating Rosewood from the Jesperson farm, which had evidently been torched. Thick, pungent smoke drifted from that direction.

In the cornfield on the highway’s far side, a herd of about two dozen cattle and as many sheep milled. By the lantern’s light, Jeremiah could just discern ragged drovers prodding the cattle into a steadily shrinking circle. The drovers’ shouts and profanity were loud in the night air.

The soldiers outside the fence jabbered at one another in a guttural foreign language. Jeremiah supposed they must be some of the Dutchmen serving with the Northern army. Among the miscellany of arms they carried he spied several of the new Spencer rifles. The deadly repeaters held seven balls and could be fired every three or four seconds by a practiced hand. He’d seen one of the pieces, captured after Chickamauga. Lieutenant Colonel Rose had once remarked that the Spencer’s rapid-fire capability would give the Yanks a final, decisive advantage in the war.

Some of the Union men had other, more unusual equipment with them: spades and axes, slung over shoulders or trailing in the dust. The lantern held by a burly sergeant with a bad complexion revealed the team and driver of a white-topped wagon stopped in the dark to the left. Some nigras clustered around the front of the wagon, clapping and joking. Jeremiah counted five—and was relieved that Price was not among them.

One of the nigras wore a top hat and an emerald-colored frock coat. The young woman with the group was gowned in shimmering orange silk. Undoubtedly the clothing had been stolen from a former master and mistress.

Beside the sergeant with the lantern stood two officers. One, the senior, was a square-faced, middle-aged man with mild brown eyes and a ragged uniform blouse. Hovering close to him, a younger lieutenant with a pointed chin eyed Jeremiah and wiped the heel of his right palm with the tips of his fingers. The nervous hand hovered beside the butt of his holstered revolver.

The older man addressed Catherine in heavily accented English. “Captain Franz Poppel, madam. This advance party of engineers is widening and corduroying roads for General Sherman’s army.”