THE FIRST THING JANET TODD noticed inside Hopemont was the absence of the servants. The place was like a haunted castle. The curtains were drawn against the August sun. In room after dim room there was not a sign of a familiar black face. Upstairs she found her mother in bed. Letitia gazed at Janet with only minimal recognition on her haggard face. Her hair was uncombed. The room smelled of urine and feces.
It was eleven o’clock in the morning. Normally, Letitia would be bathed and dressed and sitting in her chair. “Mother—what’s wrong? What’s happening?” Janet asked.
“Nobody comes when I call,” she said. “I’ve been calling you and your father and Sally. Nobody comes.”
Sally was Letitia’s personal maid. “Why? What’s going on?”
“Ever since your father whipped Lucy—”
She found her father in the gazebo in the garden, almost too drunk to speak a coherent sentence. She asked for Lucy. His face darkened. “Whipped the spyin’ black bitch! Whipped’er till there was ‘n’ inch of blood on th‘barn floor and shipped’er t‘Gentry. Rogers’ idea. He took her over th’river. Tole Gentry we were ready to fight any time he was, see?”
“Father I asked you not to whip her.”
“Not whip‘er? Janet darlin’, women don’ know how t’fight war. War is blood. Soldier doesn’ l’people insult’ m. Fights back—”
“I asked you not to do it!”
“Had to—Rog Jameson said had to. He wanted to kill’r. I said no. Let’r die on Gentry’s hands.”
“Why are you sitting here drunk while Momma is up in her room, neglected? She looks half-starved! Is this how we’re going to win the war?” She grabbed the half-open bottle of bourbon and smashed it against a tree.
Do you know what I’ve been doing, Father? I’ve been letting Paul Stapleton have me. Night after night after night. I’ve been selling myself for your stupid cause, ruining my reputation and my self-respect.
She did not say it. She could not inflict another wound on this man. Besides, she had not lost her self-respect. She was not a typical woman. She was an exceptional woman. An adventuress. That justified everything she had done, from bedding Paul Stapleton to plotting to overthrow Lincoln’s government. Maybe even whipping Lucy. She had known Gabriel Todd was going to whip Lucy. The most she tried to do was limit the number of stripes.
Janet strode down to the slave cabins and found a half-dozen women sitting around, staring disconsolately into space. Beyond them lay empty fields.
“What’s going on? Where are the hands?” she asked.
“Run away,” Milly, one of the housemaids, said.
“Where’s Lillibet?” Janet asked.
They gestured to the open door of her cabin.
“Where’s Sally?”
They gestured in the same direction.
She plunged into the hot cabin. Lillibet lay in bed, looking like a black mirror image of Letitia Todd in the main house. Her face was wasted, her eyes dazed with pain or woe or both. Sally sat beside her, bathing her forehead. She jumped up, trembling, when she saw Janet.
“What are you doing here while Mistress is up in her bed with nothing to eat or drink and her night stuff not emptied for the last week, from the smell of it?” Janet said.
“Momma’s been sick,” Sally mumbled. “She been sick since Master whipped Lucy so bad.”
“She deserved it!” Janet said. “Do you know what she did? She spied on me. She took money to spy on me!”
It was obvious Sally did not know what spy meant. She stared at Janet as if she were insane. “It tore up everybody, Miss Janet. We couldn’t understand it. We still don’ understand it. Everybody went sorta crazy. The hands all run away. No one lef’ but us poor women. Master—your daddy—got drunk and stayed that way. What’s happenin’ to us? We was the happiest niggers in Kentucky a lil while ago.”
Something seemed to collapse inside Janet. She could not retain her rage. It crashed through her body and lay in ruins around her. “Terrible things are happening to all of us,” she said. “Go up to the house and take care of Mistress. I’ll stay with Lillibet.”
She sat down beside Lillibet and dipped the cloth in the dish of water beside the bed. She bathed the mournful black face. “Lillibet, I’m so sorry. I asked Daddy not to whip her. But the war—the war has us all half-crazy.”
“Is Lucy dead and gone?”
“I don’t know.”
“She looked mighty near dead when Jameson took her away in his wagon. He throw her in the river?”
“No! He took her across the river to Colonel Gentry’s house.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she lied. “Maybe they thought he’d take care of her. She’s free now, one way or another.”
“If she ain’t dead.”
“I’ll find out.”
By nightfall she had restored a semblance of order to the house and the slave quarters. Her mother had been bathed and dressed in clean clothes and her bed changed. Sally prepared a halfway decent dinner of
fried chicken and yams for them. Janet had no idea what to do about the runaways. Neither did her father.
Gabriel Todd had sobered up enough to discuss her trip. She did not tell him about the desperation in besieged Richmond, the sordid deal with Femando Wood, the nearly fatal negotiations with the gunrunners. She cast a glow of hope over everything, especially the Spencer repeating rifles. After dinner he sent for Rogers Jameson, who galloped to meet them with only one question on his lips: “Did you get any guns?”
“Fifteen thousand Spencer repeating rifles.”
Rogers gave her an exultant bear hug worthy of his son Adam. His broken jaw had mended. He was his voluble self once more. He said he had 3,000 men ready to cross the Ohio the moment Adam and his men appeared. They had bribed the ferryboat captains at Owensboro. They had made a trial run last night. They could get everyone across in four hours. He wanted to know when the Spencers would arrive, what date Richmond had set for the insurrection.
When Janet told him Jefferson Davis had been immovable about keeping August 29 for the date, Jameson smashed both his huge fists on their dining room table. “I wish we didn’t have to depend on that broken-down old fool. You should hear what Adam says about him!” he roared.
“He has his reasons. Everything has to be coordinated with the men in Chicago and elsewhere.”
“Where’s your West Point hero?” Jameson asked. “Did he decide to stay in New Jersey with his momma?”
“He’s in Keyport. He had to report to Colonel Gentry. I wish you’d think better of him. Without Paul we would have gotten old worthless muskets from Mexico.”
“Get him over here. We’ve got this army about organized,” Jameson said. “We want to fit him in.”
The next morning Janet sent Sally across the river with a note to Paul, urging him to come as soon as possible.
Sally returned with a scrawled promise that he would be on the noon ferry.
Something is wrong, Janet thought the moment she saw Paul standing at the prow of the ferry as it approached the landing. For one thing, he was not wearing his uniform. Had he quit the Union Army? She wanted him to appear before Rogers Jameson’s Sons of Liberty brigade in that uniform. It would have an electrifying impact on the men in the ranks. She had never mentioned it to him. She had assumed he understood the value of such a gesture.
The grave expression on his face was wrong too. It was not the look of a man who was about to be welcomed back to a daring conspiracy by the woman he loved. She decided there was only one thing to do. She kissed him boldly on the mouth as he walked up to her. At least a dozen heads turned. Everyone on the ferry landing knew Janet Todd. But she did not care. She had stopped caring about everything except victory.
On the way to Hopemont in the buggy, Janet asked him about Lucy. “Is she all right? I asked my father not to whip her but—”
“But he did,” Paul said. “She’s still a mass of welts. Her arms are swollen. She can’t walk very well. Dr. Yancey thinks they damaged some nerves in her back.”
“How awful.”
“You can say that again,” Paul replied.
Janet refused to say it—or think it. “In a way she deserved a beating, don’t you think? She was spying on us. She watched us in the Happy Hunting Ground. She was in the bushes. Do you know that?”
“My God,” Paul said. She could not tell whether he was admitting she was right or was simply appalled by the ruin of that beautiful memory.
“In spite of that, I honestly tried to prevent her being whipped. But I had to meet you in Cincinnati—”
Paul nodded. They rode on through the suffocating
heat. Thank God the buggy had a top that gave them some protection from the relentless sun. “The slaves got into a state. Most of the field hands ran away.”
Paul did not seem to be listening. He stared into the sunbaked distance. They passed neighboring farms where other slaves were working. “If we don’t bring off this insurrection, every slave in Kentucky is going to run away. The handwriting is on the wall. Ours were just looking for an excuse,” Janet said.
“I heard about the battle of Saltville from Colonel Gentry,” Paul said. He spoke in a hurried way, as if he knew he was crudely changing the subject.
“Was it as bad as the newspapers said? For the federals, I mean?”
“Worse. He told me something else. Something I still can’t believe.”
“What?” Janet asked, feeling, sensing, it was going to be something similar to what Sally had said to her, something that would send things crashing inside her.
“They shot the black wounded. Murdered them in cold blood after the Union Army retreated. They killed all my men from Keyport—except for a handful.”
The horse, a big roan named Caster, continued his steady pace down the road. More fields with slaves hoeing and grubbing. A house or two in the distance. Above a distant copse a hawk wheeled slowly. The sky remained mercilessly blue. There was not a cloud anywhere.
“Isn’t that—just one more terrible thing—in this awful war?” Janet said.
Paul stared straight ahead. “When I see your friend Adam Jameson, I’m going to ask him for an explanation,” he said. “If he doesn’t have a good one, I may kill the bastard on the spot.”
“I’m sure—absolutely sure—he’ll have an explanation.”
“I doubt it.”
“Paul—calm down. You’re not even sure it happened.
You only have Gentry’s word for it. You know what a lyin’ sneakin’ scum he is. Who else but a Lincoln lover would set a slave to spy on his own kin? These people will do anything to get their vile way.”
“You may be right about that,” Paul said.
“Don’t bring this up with my father or Rogers Jameson, please. They won’t know how to deal with it.”
“I have no intention of mentioning it. I only wanted you to know about it.”
Why? she wondered. Did he enjoy tormenting her? No. Paul was remembering the night in New York when she had become an adventuress, when she had married her soul and body to the cause. Now the cause had been ruined for him by the slaughter of those nameless blacks at Saltville. Was that true for her, too?
No. No such obscenity could or would have been committed by a white Kentuckian before the abolitionists created hatred between the blacks and the whites. The Yankees had ignited this murderous rage against the blacks, the innocent source of the South’s woes. It only made stopping the war, giving the South a chance to deal with the blacks in an atmosphere of peace and forbearance, all the more essential. Why couldn’t Paul see that? Why was he letting this one unworthy act threaten their victory?
If she was wrong, Janet dared God to contradict her. She dared God to prove the South’s cause was wrong. She dared him to prove giving herself to Paul was wrong. She was ready to risk her soul as well as her body for victory.
At Hopemont, Rogers Jameson was waiting with her father. Gabriel Todd was sober and clear-eyed. Janet wondered if she was responsible for the change. Did she restore his sense of paternity, his hope for a future shaped around her children? Or was Rogers Jameson’s crude vitality the explanation?
On Hopemont’s broad veranda, they talked about the
guns. Jameson chortled about the damage a regiment of men could do with the seven-shot Spencers. “Them Yankees will dirty their pants, I guarantee you,” he said.
Gabriel Todd said the Sons of Liberty had issued commissions to the principal officers. He was a major general in command of the Kentucky troops. Rogers Jameson was a brigadier general in command of the Daviess County troops. They had appointed an overall commander in Indiana, a doctor named William Bowles. He had commanded a regiment in the Mexican War. The army’s top commander was the former chief justice of Kentucky, Joshua Bullitt.
“I’m hoping that you’ll serve as my chief of staff,” Gabriel Todd said to Paul. “That’s the best way we can all draw on your training and battle experience. You’ll have the rank of colonel.”
“I’m honored,” Paul said. “I’ve had some experience on staff. I think I can be of service. Who’s your quartermaster? Do you have a chief of artillery? A medical department? We should begin assembling supplies as soon as possible. How much ammunition do you have in reserve?”
“Whoa now!” Rogers Jameson said. “This ain’t no West Point operation, Colonel Stapleton. This here’s goin’ to be a quick campaign. A sort of rampage, you know? Every man’s got orders to bring a week’s rations with him in his haversack. We ’spect to be in Indianapolis in five days, where we can dine off the federal government. The town’s full of warehouses with all the chow an army can eat for a good year.”
“They’re only shipping five hundred and forty rounds of ammunition per gun,” Paul said. “That’s not a lot for even a week’s campaign.”
“We’ll capture all the ammo we need in ’Napolis the same way we’ll get the grub,” Jameson replied. “The town’s crammed with everything an army needs. Once we free the Confederate soldiers they got locked up
there, our boys can relax. There’ll be a trained rebel army in the heart of the state, ready to operate. My boy Adam will have the cavalry.”
“What about artillery?”
“We’ll get that in ’Napolis too,” Jameson said.
“Is this your thinking too, General?” Paul asked.
“Substantially, yes,” Gabriel Todd said.
“How many men do you estimate Governor Morton and General Carrington can put in the field?” Paul asked.
“We guess about six thousand,” Gabriel Todd said.
“Is this based on observation? Actual knowledge?” Paul asked.
“On the best information we have,” Gabriel Todd said.
“They’ll have artillery?” Paul asked.
“We’ll have Greek fire,” Jameson said.
“I don’t think much of that as a tactical weapon,” Paul said.
“There he goes again with the West Point lingo,” Jameson said. “You think people are gonna fight if we can send their houses up in smoke?”
“It might make them fight very hard. You might find Democrats and Republicans from Indianapolis fighting for General Carrington.”
“I don’t think so. General Todd don’t think so. Neither do the other leaders,” Jameson said.
“I consider myself overruled,” Paul said.
“With them Spencers, our worries are as good as over,” Jameson said. “The federals have got a coward for a general. Carrington won’t fight. He’ll run for cover and his army will follow him.”
“You talked of putting thirty to fifty thousand men in the field. Will any of them bring their own guns? We don’t have enough Spencers to go around.”
“A lot of’m have got guns,” Jameson said. “We’ll get the rest in ’Napolis.”
“What about battlefield exercises?” Paul asked. “Have you maneuvered your brigade as a unit?”
“How can I do that without givin’ the game away to every sneakin’ federal spy in the county?” Jameson said. “There ain’t goin’ to be any real opposition. We don’t have to worry about maneuvers.”
“I’m sure we can give adequate orders depending on the situation,” Gabriel Todd said. “The men are in high spirits. They’re eager to strike a blow against the Lincoln dictatorship.”
“I see we have almost nothing to worry about,” Paul said.
He looked at Janet, his face grave. She was back in New York, hearing him tell her the Mexican muskets were worthless. Was he telling her, silently, that her father’s and Rogers Jameson’s plans were also worthless? No—there was something more subtle in his voice. With an inner tremor, Janet recognized it. Paul did not care. He did not care if their plans were worthless. He did not care if the Sons of Liberty won or lost. The bodies of those murdered blacks had become a wall between them. She realized he was here for only one reason: because he still loved her.
“How do you plan to get the Spencers to the men?” Paul asked. “Fifteen thousand rifles are a lot of metal.”
“Each regiment’ll send wagons to rendezvous points along the river on certain nights,” Jameson said. “We’ll move ‘em from Evansville in flatboats. We can transport two or three thousand a night. By August twentieth we’ll have ’em completely distributed.”
“You’ve got the boats and the oarsmen?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t there federal gunboats patrolling the river?”
“They haven’t been seen since the water went down,” Jameson said.
“God is on our side,” Janet said.
“I’m more certain of it every day,” Gabriel Todd said.
Almost mechanically, her mind still gripped by her insight into Paul’s uncaring, Janet noted her father was
lying. Gabriel Todd did not believe in God. He was a man with nothing to lose. That was why he did not criticize Rogers Jameson’s haphazard plans. He wanted to do something, anything, to defy the raging futility the war had inflicted on him. She wondered if he hoped to die in this rampage—and fling in fate’s face a final snarl of defiance.
Janet trembled. Why did she always see so much, understand things it would be better to ignore? Her throat swelled with pity. She would somehow sustain Gabriel Todd—and Paul. Father and lover, she would sustain them both with her adventuress’s indomitable heart. Somehow.