The Warriors (25 page)

“I still say you’re a damn fool.”

“Now don’t get all pettish just because you failed and I might not.”

Stung by the truth, he swung around and glared.

“Jeremiah, it’s not a case of man or woman, one better than the other. You tried—there’s no shame in trying and being tromped on, two against one. This is our trouble,
ours
—together. While you get your strength back, I’ll do what has to be done. At least make an effort—”

“What the hell happens if he starts to—to mistreat you?”

“Like the man who took Catherine?”

He nodded.

A small, sly smile curved her mouth. “I think I can handle him. I think I can make him do what I want and still keep myself out of a scrape.”

There it was again: the maddening implication of experience.

“You’re pretty sure of yourself.”

The smile disappeared. She was upset by his reaction.

“I’m not! I’m scared to death. But I’m still going to try.”

She glided close, letting him feel the contours of her body against his leg and aching chest. Her hand stroked his face again.

“I don’t want to spend two seconds with that man. But I will if there’s a chance to keep this house standing. It’s all we have.”

Softly he said, “You and Catherine—”

Arms around his neck. A light kiss on his mouth. “You and I. Don’t you see? I want something left for
us.”

“It’s her house too.”

Quick anger in her eyes was just as quickly hidden. “Oh, yes, I know it is! But I can’t help thinking of you.”

Another kiss, longer. Then she leaned her cheek against his shoulder. “I’m fond of you, Jeremiah. Fonder than you realize. We’re going to be together when this is over. This house is going to belong to us.” She pulled back, her eyes disarmingly wide. “Even if it takes some put-on sweet talk, with my knees banging together while I try to convince the major I believe he’s a wonderful, kind man who surely wouldn’t burn Rosewood to the ground.”

“You—you won’t do anything more than talk?”

“He lays one hand on me, I’ll scream till they hear clear over in Louisville!”

Another change of mood, the sly look returned. “Truly, I think I can handle that Indiana roughneck.”

“And find out what’s happened to your stepmother?”

“Yes, that too.” She sounded less than enthusiastic.

For a moment he almost believed she possessed the feminine wiles to pull it off. But the plan still struck him as unacceptably dangerous.

The protest he started to make was silenced by the feel of her body tight against his. Sore and anxious as he was, she could still reach him. Convince him with a brush of her lips. With words that carried promises—

We.

Us.

“Actually,” she said at last, “there’s no guarantee the major will even answer my message. So you’re worrying for nothing until—”

A hand rapped on the other side of the door.

“Until right now,” he said with a grim smile. -

Serena stepped to the door. Smoothed her hair.

“Yes?”

“Major Grace, ma’am.” He sounded quite friendly. “I was informed you wished to speak to me?”

“I do. Will you please unlock the door?”

“If that Reb’s awake, tell him to stand well back.”

“Do it, Jeremiah.”

When he hesitated, still tormented by fear for her safety, she clenched her teeth.
“Do it!”

He retreated to a corner, stumbling over ruined books.

“All right, Major.”

The key rattled. From his vantage point, Jeremiah couldn’t see the officer. Serena stepped out of sight behind the open door.

“Thank you for coming, Major. I’m anxious to speak to you because of the terrible things happening on this place. I want to plead with you to control your men. Not take such harsh measures. But I’d prefer to discuss it somewhere else, if we might. Privately?”

Jeremiah leaned his head against the wall and shut his eyes. How smooth and assured she sounded, in perfect control. He found himself admiring her nerve, and the ruthless way she went about manipulating Grace. There’d been an almost seductive lilt in her voice.

“Why, yes, Miss Serena. I believe I can spare a few minutes to listen to what you have to say. I must warn you, though. I’m not a man easily persuaded.”

“We’ll see. Shall we go to the sitting room?”

“By all means.”

The major took time to lock the door. His footsteps, and Serena’s lighter ones, faded slowly. Then someone’s weight made the door creak. The hall sentry, back on duty.

The guard outside the window remained motionless. Over the man’s shoulder Jeremiah saw an ecstatic celebration in progress down among the slave cabins.

Young women danced in Catherine’s dresses. One buck strutted with a torn Confederate battle flag draped over his head and shoulders like a shawl. Three of the foragers pursued a pair of girls across a ramshackle porch. The bummer in the lead had his hand up one girl’s skirt, from behind, as they disappeared inside.

Crouching, Jeremiah rubbed at his chest where it hurt the worst. He gazed at Henry Rose’s torn portrait.

The painted sections of the genteel, bearded face lay at right angles to one another. Broken apart—just the way everything at Rosewood was being broken by the actions of unprincipled men. Again he felt contempt for the pathetic soldier who’d tramped midnight roads, obeying an order, fulfilling a promise; believing he could fight honorably, meaningfully again on the plantation.

He did admire Serena’s determination. But he was positive her scheme would come to nothing. Ambrose Grace would no more listen to her than he’d jump to obey an order from Robert Lee. North and South, dishonorable men had seized any excuse—nigra freedom, defense of their homeland, punishment of the enemy—as a justification for indulging their worst impulses. The Franz Poppels of the world were rarities. Even Poppel himself had admitted as much by secretly giving him the Kerr.

He brushed glass aside. Knelt. Touched one of the ripped halves of Rose’s image. His fingertip rested on the rough-textured paint that created a melancholy eye.

I’ve failed you so far. But it isn’t over yet.

The yearning to race up to the attic became almost unbearable.

He drew deep breaths. His chance would come. Serena was bound to fail. The question was—how badly?

If she got through her interview without a physical assault by Grace, Jeremiah decided he’d bide his time. No more outbursts. No more foolish assaults when more than one man was present to beat him to the ground.

But if he heard the slightest alarm—a cry from her—then somehow he’d batter the damn door to pieces. He’d do as much as he could—go as far as he could toward the attic—before the sentry or one of the other Yanks shot him down.

Either way, the answer was his, not Serena’s. The answer was the hidden gun.

He licked his lips, increasingly sure. He’d only stopped arguing with her because she was so adamant, and because she’d linked her plan with other plans for their future together.

He
wanted
the future at which she’d hinted. He realized that despite everything—including Catherine’s spiteful warnings—he was falling in love with Serena.

Yes, there was a certain cruel edge to her personality. But there was a similar edge to his—sharpening moment by moment. To have denied her a chance to test herself—even though he felt she was foolhardy—well, it might have wrecked everything between them. She didn’t want any protection—
or
any suggestion that she was a simpering female incapable of independent action. Maybe that’s what had rankled poor Catherine so; she’d raised a child who didn’t conform to the acceptable standards of feminine behavior. Jeremiah was glad she didn’t conform. It made her a woman worth having.

He’d let her flirt and wheedle, and remain ready to act if Grace molested her. Even if Grace didn’t, he was sure to reject her appeals. Then Jeremiah could step in. He knew how, finally. The only thing that would make an impression on the Union officer was the Kerr revolver.

Impression
—

He laughed over the inadvertent aptness of the thought.

He’d make an impression, all right.

Three inches deep in the center of Grace’s forehead.

F
IFTEEN MINUTES PASSED
.

Twenty.

Jeremiah lingered close to the door, listening for an outcry from the front of the house. Once in a while he caught the soft sounds of the hall sentry shifting position. But that was all.

Growing more and more worried, he paced the office. He didn’t hear anyone approach outside. He started violently at the quick, hard rapping.

He rushed to the door. Pressed his ear against it.

“Serena? Are you all right?”

She sounded shaky when she answered. “Yes. He—he agreed.”

“What?”

“I talked my fool head off. Flattered him—practically crawled for him. But he agreed to leave the house standing.”

He couldn’t believe it. She was more persuasive than he’d ever imagined.

“Did he try to—?”

“No. Seems there are a few rules General Sherman’s pretty fierce about. His officers not harming women is one of them. Any man who’s caught—Well, I just got the feeling Grace wouldn’t chance it.”

“Serena, is anyone listening to this?”

“The guard’s a ways down the hall. The major told him to stay there while I talked to you.”

“But you’re sure the house is safe?”

“I don’t know how safe. There are men rampaging all over the place. But it won’t be burned. Jeremiah, the major ordered me locked in my room for the night.”

“Why not back in here?”

“Guess he’s worried we might cook up some kind of trouble for him.” A low laugh. “He doesn’t know we’ve already gotten what we wanted. Now you stay calm in there. I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t trust—”

“I tell you he’s scared white about
any
of his troopers injuring women!”

“Doesn’t make sense! He let Skimmerhorn—”

“Skimmerhorn’s not one of his men. He can always claim he had no control over him.”

“He’s a liar.”

“’Course he is. But he’s protecting himself.”

“What did you learn about Catherine?”

“Nothing yet. Skimmerhorn isn’t back. Maum Isabella promised to keep watch.”

“Damn it, Serena, we’ve got to find out about her!”

“I can’t!” She sounded close to tears. “I’ve done all I could. Now you—you rest. Don’t fret about me. Just remember”—she was moving away—“we’re going to be together soon. I love you, Jeremiah.”

The unbelievable words left him openmouthed. He banged a fist against the door in sheer surprise and happiness, overwhelmed by her unexpected success—and the whispered admission of her feelings.

A brief period of euphoria tempered his hateful feelings about Ambrose Grace, and distracted him from what was taking place outside. But before the night was over, he had spent a great deal of time at the window—

There, his hatred of Grace renewed itself, and grew stronger and stronger as the hours passed with no news of Catherine.

All that Monday night he watched the systematic ruin of Rosewood.

The part of the property visible to him swarmed with the enemy, coming and going on foot and on horseback. Once darkness fell, cook fires were started wherever the Union soldiers and foragers pleased. With the fires lit, the activity outside took on the aspects of a nightmare.

Figures of horses and men became specters of flame and shadow. It seemed to him there were more stragglers in castoff clothing than blue-clad cavalrymen. Foot by square foot, the bummers devastated the expanses of lawn between the main house and the head of the lane leading to the slave cabins. They used sabers and ramrods to jab the earth and tear out slabs of turf as they hunted for buried possessions.

By torchlight, eight or ten bummers worked the slaves’ burial ground in the same way, knocking over hand-hewn wooden markers and crosses of sticks and unearthing bodies—or parts of them. At one point Maum Isabella rushed at three of the men ripping up the cemetery. A spade glinted, swung by a pair of grimy white hands. The old black woman fell and crawled off into the dark before she could be hit again.

When digging up the grass and the burial ground yielded no treasures, forty or fifty of the enemy divided into two groups and staged a sort of sham battle with buckets of pine knots fetched from the woods. The knots were lighted and hurled at those on the other side. For a while the night sky was crisscrossed with arching traceries of fire and sparks.

Other men invaded the slave cabins, carrying out blankets, pans, or any other useful item. The few blacks who tried to stop them were knocked down, and if they resisted further, beaten.

A foul smoke from campfire garbage began to blur the scene, heightening Jeremiah’s feeling that he was gazing through a window at hell.

His thoughts kept returning to Catherine. Then to Serena.

To what she’d said.

“I love you.”

Those words foretold almost unimaginable happiness if he and Serena survived the night and the next few days.

Shortly after midnight, half a dozen cavalrymen converged on the three hog pens.

Two dismounted soldiers tore the first gate off its hinges. The horsemen milled just outside, revolver and rifle barrels catching the glare of the firelight. One pistol exploded. The hogs stampeded into the open, terrified by the snorting horses and whooping men. The office window shook from volleys of gunfire.

The sight of the dumb beasts falling, blood pouring from their snouts, bellies, brainpans made him turn away, nauseated. He listened to the shooting and the squealing for about twenty minutes, crouching in a corner with his hands clenched and his mouth a slit.

Is this what Grace calls sparing Rosewood?

He must have dozed. Daylight hazed by garbage smoke brightened the window as he roused to hear another urgent tapping from the hall.

The office smelled sour. In the night he’d been forced to urinate. Now his stomach hurt. He was starved.