At ten o’clock on the morning of Saturday, April 15, Henry Strong and Ann Beecher were pronounced man and wife at the little, gray-brick Episcopal church of St Stephen’s in Culpeper. Before the same altar at which they took their vows David Strong had once knelt with his Joanna.
They rode back to the old house in open carriages, the bride and groom in a landau especially rented for the occasion. Its owner said it was the only one left intact in the county, and the odds were, Andrew thought, that he was right. Henry looked prosperous and befuddled in his full-dress uniform. Ann Beecher, the plainest of girls, was as pretty as she would ever be in a dress of white satin that had once belonged to her mother. With Andrew and Jessica rode the Reverend Stanton Beecher and his wife Selina. Behind them came Sam Strong, his daughter-in-law Louise, and her two little boys, Joab and Jonathan.
‘Not many,’ Andrew said to Jessica. ‘Not many of us made it home.’
She laid her hand on his and said nothing. She knew he was thinking of the ghosts who rode behind the third carriage. David Strong, Jedediah, Travis, Abigail. She felt sometimes as if she knew them better than her own parents, and in many ways it was true.
Aunt Betty was waiting for them on the porch of the house, hands on hips, beaming. There was a table on the front lawn, glasses, a bowl of punch. Toasts were drunk to the bride and groom. Henry made a little speech. Ann blushed and said little.
Andrew walked through the house while the guests chattered outside. It smelled of fresh-planed wood and paint. Jessica had transformed it from a ruin into something approaching its former beauty. There were only a few sticks of furniture in some of the rooms, but he had told her in his letters how the place had looked, and she had tried, wherever it was possible, to buy pieces like the ones which had been there before. The long table in the airy dining room was laid for the wedding breakfast with gleaming silver and shining crystal which Jessica had brought down from her family’s house in Washington. Through the tall Georgian windows, the terraced garden, falling away to the river valley below, was bright with spring flowers. The willows along Mountain Run were a pale, delicate shade of green.
Andrew felt tears prickling in his eyes. He could almost see his father sitting at the head of the table. I guess I’ve got as many faults as the next man, but bein’ wrong ain’t one of them. He turned away from the window and went into the library. There were books on the rebuilt shelves; not the ones that Andrew had read so avidly as a sixteen-year-old, but the same titles. He had written them all down, as many as he could remember. And Jess had bought copies from book dealers in Washington, New York and even as far afield as Chicago. The portrait of Davy Strong, repaired by expert craftsmen, hung again where it had always hung. He stood looking up at the smiling, sturdy figure.
‘I’ll bet you’d be surprised to see us all now, Davy Strong,’ he said. He turned to find Jessica watching him, a smile on her lovely face.
‘Jess, my darling, you’ve done marvels!’ he said. ‘Wonders!’
‘Shucks,’ she mumbled, pretending to kick at the carpet, hands behind her back like a farm-boy talking to his sweetheart. ‘It warn’t nuthin’.’
He laughed out loud and took her in his arms. ‘You know, this marrying business must be infectious. I keep on getting the strangest urge to ask you if you’ll marry me.’
‘What?’ she said. ‘Marry, a broken-down ex-soldier with no job and no prospects? You must be joking!’
‘I hadn’t thought of it like that,’ he said softly. ‘It’s true, isn’t it? That’s all any of us are now. The great men: Lee, Grant, all of us. Just broken down ex-soldiers.’
‘My father wants to talk to you,’ Jessica said.
‘Where is he?’
‘Outside.’
They went out into the warm sunshine. Senator McCabe was talking to the bride and groom. He saw Andrew and excused himself. Taking Andrew’s arm he led him to one side.
‘Well, young feller-me-lad,’ he said. ‘You’re looking healthy enough.’
‘Thank you, Senator. And how are you?’
‘Feel like I’m going to live to be a hundred!’ McCabe said, banging himself on the chest. ‘Andrew, what are you going to do?’
‘Rest up some,’ Andrew said. ‘Think. You don’t have time to think while you’re fighting a war.’
‘I saw Grant in Washington,’ McCabe said. ‘Just for a few minutes. Asked him about you. He said you were one of the best-organized men he ever met in his life.’
‘That’s very generous of him.’
‘Said you were reliable. Said he could always depend on you.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Andrew murmured, slightly embarrassed to think of the taciturn Grant delivering such encomiums. ‘Said you saved his bacon at Shiloh. That true?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Ahah!’ McCabe said. ‘That damned honesty of yours. He mentioned that, too. Said that was one of your worst faults, lad. Said you never knew when not to tell the plain damned truth. We talked of that once. Do you remember?’
‘I remember.’ And afterwards I made love to your daughter, beneath your roof, and with your knowledge.
‘I want you to come in with me, Andrew,’ McCabe said. ‘The years ahead are going to be difficult. We have to rebuild the nation. It won’t be easy and the government will need the very best men the country can provide. It’s my feeling you may be one of them.’
Andrew looked past the senator to the top of the hill where the main gate opened on to the road. There was a coach coming down the drive at a gallop, driven by a man in a dark cloak. He was shouting something.
‘My God!’ Andrew said. ‘Excuse me, Senator!’
The bearded man driving the coach was near enough for him to recognize now, and Andrew ran, scattering the guests on the lawn, shouting his brother’s name. Jedediah leaped down from the coach and hugged him, swung him around with his one arm, laughing, shouting with pleasure.
‘Jed, Jed, it’s so damned good to see you!’ Andrew said. ‘Where the devil have you come from?’
‘All the way from St Louis,’ Jed answered. ‘And before that, Texas.’ His face sobered. ‘I found the Maxwells, Bo. That chapter’s over.’ He walked to the door of the coach and opened it. A dark-haired woman got out and stood smiling at him. She was a classical beauty in the Spanish style, with great, dark, liquid eyes, and hair as black as ebony.
‘This is Maria,’ Jed said. ‘Maria Gonzales y Cordoba, from San Antonio, Texas. She has done me the great honor of consenting to be my wife.’
‘Then I am doubly delighted to make you welcome, señorita,’ Andrew said. ‘And to use the only Spanish phrase I know: mi casa es su casa.’
‘If you had to learn one,’ she smiled, ‘that was the best.’
‘You’ve come from St Louis, you say?’ Andrew asked. ‘Have you had a good journey?’
‘It had its moments,’ Maria said, with a smile he did not understand. Jedediah jerked his head towards the crowd on the lawn in front of the big house.
‘What’s going on, Bo?’
‘A wedding,’ Andrew said. ‘Cousin Henry and a lady from Cincinnati called Ann Beecher.’
‘ “Mary Ann” got married?’ Jed grinned. ‘Well, well! Wonders’ll never cease.’
‘Tell me, what the devil were you doing in St Louis?’ Jed’s face sobered.
‘I ran across a man who’d been up in Colorado,’ he said. ‘Told me he was at that Indian fight, Sand Creek.’
‘Massacre, you mean,’ Andrew said. ‘Damned drunken lynching party rode into a defenseless Indian village and butchered women and children.’
‘Maybe, maybe,’ Jed said. ‘I don’t know much about it. Only, this man I met, he said he’d seen Travis up there. ‘
‘Travis? Alive?’
‘Look, Bo, I don’t know for sure,’ Jed said, with an anxious glance towards Sam Strong, who was talking to Senator McCabe on the lawn. ‘It could have been some other fellow. But this man described him so well … and said he remembered him on account of him having been named for Travis of the Alamo.’
‘So you went up there?’
‘Wasted my time,’ Jed answered. ‘I never found hide nor hair of him. So I sent word to Maria to meet me in Independence and we came back home by train. I had no idea all this would be going on.’
Andrew glanced towards Sam. The last few years had taken their toll of his uncle. He found Louise among the crowd; she caught his look and nodded. No question about it, he thought. Louise was on her way to becoming a grand lady. She ruled Sam and the house on Clover Hill with a rod of iron. What would be served by telling them what Jed had just told him?
‘You think we ought to say anything?’ he asked his brother.
‘Hell, no, Bo,’ Jed said. ‘It wasn’t much more than a rumor. We don’t want to get their hopes up for nothing.’
‘You’re right,’ Andrew said. ‘And the Maxwells?’
‘I told you,’ Jed said. ‘I found them.’
‘He killed them,’ Maria interjected. ‘All three of them.’
‘Jed, Jed,’ Andrew put his hand on Jed’s shoulder. ‘Did you have to do it?’
‘Yes,’ said Jed. ‘I did.’
Andrew nodded and drew in a deep breath. ‘Well, you’re home now. Both of you. Home to stay?’
‘A while,’ Jed said. ‘We’ve made some plans.’
‘You can tell me all about them later,’ Andrew replied. ‘But for now, come on over and join the family again. This is one of the happiest days of my life!’
He put his arm around his brother’s shoulder and they walked across the lawn smiling. Maria watched them go, tears of pride in her eyes. At last, she thought, the war is over.
An hour or so after they had finished the wedding breakfast, someone brought word from Culpeper that President Lincoln had been assassinated. He had gone to the theater the preceding evening in Washington and had been shot in the back of the head, dying in the small hours of the morning. The news was stunning, unbelievable. It seemed almost sacrilegious to go on with the wedding celebrations; the news cast a pall of gloom across the entire household. No one knew what to do, what to say. They looked at Jed, sitting at the head of the table where old David had sat, as if waiting for him to tell them. His gaze went from face to face: Sam, tired, gray, old. Jessica, her lovely eyes on the man she loved. Pasty-faced Henry, his piggy eyes unreadable behind the thick lenses of his spectacles. Louise, stern and unbending. His brother, Andrew, matured by experience, confident and secure. He will carry on here, Jed thought. I can go away and know it will be in good hands. He smiled at them all and reached out to touch Maria’s hand. She nodded, understanding.
Maybe Pa was right, he thought. Maybe the others are all here, too, watching us: Grandpa Davy, Big Jed, Aunt Abby, Travis. And you, Pa? He remembered again the Latin phrase that had come into his mind that day in the cemetery up on the hill above the house. Non omnis moriar: I shall not altogether die. That, at least, would be true. That, if nothing else, was something they could all face the future with. He got to his feet.
‘Let us first thank God that we are gathered here safely today,’ he said slowly. ‘And remember those who were here before us, and those who have still to come. We have all been soldiers, one way or another. We have all fought wars and there is not one of us they have not marked. So let me ask this now of all of you, as we mourn the death of a great man. Let this be the end of it. Let there be no more wars!’
And solemnly, those who were left of the Strong family raised their glasses in a toast to the end of war. And to the future.