twenty-two
SOUTHERN CHIVALRY WAS ON SCHUYLER’S MIND while the world went to hell around him. He rode, brandishing a flaming torch, in the rear guard of the costumed and hooded men swarming toward the office of the Tupelo Journal.
This morning, when he’d updated Levi about what he’d seen so far, Levi had warned him that he’d eventually have to testify. He’d need to stay outside the violence, keeping eyes and ears open to identify participants.
But when he and Reese had arrived on horseback at the smokehouse and shouldered their way through the masked crowd inside, there was so much noise, the shadows so deep, he’d feared that identifying anyone or even recognizing individual voices might prove impossible. Shouts echoed, overlapped, grew more and more strident.
“We’ve got gentlewomen and children afraid for their lives and their honor!” someone yelled from behind Schuyler. “Are we going to let them live in fear, or are we going to stand up for them before some atrocity happens?”
“Now that they’re in power, how do we know the Yanks won’t come back down here and snatch everything away?”
“We all remember what happened during the war. Plantations burned. Women raped. Provisions stolen, crops destroyed. Businesses ruined.”
“They started it! They invaded. I say burn them out before they get a stranglehold on everything.”
“They’re not going to let our votes count until we speak up for ourselves.”
“Burn them out! Burn them out!”
The chant went up, roaring like wildfire through the little building.
To keep from drawing attention to himself, Schuyler raised his torch rhythmically and pretended to shout. Hixon stood just in front of him, with Jefcoat. He recognized the slant of Jefcoat’s beefy shoulders, the left higher than the right, the result of a broken collarbone. Freshman year, their fraternity, Sigma Chi, had gotten into a brawl with Delta Kappa Epsilon. Jefcoat, more sloshed than usual, had gotten the worst of it. Schuyler himself had a white scar on his forehead, just below his hairline, from a broken bottle. What had seemed like fun at the time now struck him as the utmost in stupidity. Friendship, justice, and learning. Ha.
He watched these two men, brothers he’d once trusted with his life, lean into each other, howling with manufactured rage. As far as Schuyler knew, neither of them had ever so much as talked to a Negro for more than the time it took to request a shoe shine or a horse from the stable. Neither had served in a blue or gray uniform. Neither owned any property or was likely to, as their fathers were both hale and hearty.
And that was when he first began to realize how upside down things had gotten. This madness, sweeping him from the building with an angry mob, out to mount waiting horses and gallop toward town, had twisted a former chivalric code into unrecognizable, almost demonic shapes. He prayed he could keep himself from being consumed.
They reached the outskirts of Tupelo, where the acknowledged leader reined in a big black gelding and raised his torch high. A tall man in black hood and cloak, whom Schuyler had yet to identify, he sat his horse with ease and authority. “Hold, men,” he roared in a harsh, commanding voice obviously trained on a battlefield. “From this point we must proceed with stealth. I urge you to exert your righteous anger in precise strikes. Waste no time or effort on surrounding innocent property. Courage, men! Let each one set his hand to the plow and not look back. Let no man reserve strength that could and must be utterly spent alongside his brothers. Let us urge one another on to good works, that on the other side we may stand together in having conquered an evil enemy of the Republic!”
A roar of approval went up from the mob. Schuyler took the opportunity to lean toward Gil Reese, whose sorrel mare now shifted beside his own bay stallion. “Who is that?” he shouted. “It’s not General Forrest.” He would have recognized Forrest’s cultured drawl among thousands. This man came from the hills, possibly Tennessee or Arkansas.
“Someone called Maney, they say. I’ve not met him personally. I understand Forrest requested that he come.”
Senator Maney? Maybe he hadn’t pulled the trigger, but Schuyler had good reason to believe this man had had his father shot in cold blood.
Sweat broke out on Schuyler’s brow.
“What’s the matter?” Reese asked. “You know him?”
“No, but I’ve heard of him.” Schuyler pushed his heels into the bay’s ribs and let out a whoop. “Come on, let’s go!”
His outcry stirred others, and the posse surged into motion.
As they rode through town, Schuyler kept Maney in sight. Now that the time for action had arrived, only the pounding of horses’ hooves on packed dirt streets broke the eerie quiet. Up Main Street the mob clattered, torches blazing, past the church and hotels, past the rail station and the taverns, then around the turn toward the newspaper office and bookstore. To Schuyler’s endless surprise, not a single townsperson opened a window or door, no candles or lamps burned, in curiosity as to the intent of these midnight invaders.
By the time they reached the brick building housing the Journal, Schuyler had moved up to the front of the crowd, riding on Maney’s left flank. The general-turned-senator slowed his mount, pulling to one side and forming his riders in a deep arch that spread all the way across the street. Lifting his torch, he addressed the crowd with a single word. “Attack!”
Quietly swinging behind the leader, Schuyler watched the row of men in the front—Jefcoat, Hixon, and Reese among them—boil from their horses, torches and weapons of all description flailing about. Metal pipes, hoes and rakes, broom handles, axes—all became tools of destruction, breaking the front windows and door in a fierce assault. Once the first few men broke into the office, the remainder of the mob dismounted and followed with a combined shout. Order became anarchy.
Schuyler realized he couldn’t have moved if he’d wanted to. This display of terrorism paralyzed him in a way that the beating he’d suffered hadn’t touched. He was here, he’d seen it, he couldn’t unsee it. But he could keep worse from happening, maybe.
Nudging his horse closer to the former senator, he pitched his voice just loud enough to be heard over the sounds of shattering glass, splintering wood, the horrible metallic noise of the printing press wrenching apart. “Senator Maney, a word.”
Maney’s head jerked around, the eyeholes of his hood spectral in the flickering light. After a startled moment, he said, “Who are you?”
Then he had the right person. Schuyler wouldn’t have said he was glad, but at least he knew how to proceed. “Schuyler Beaumont.”
There was another silence, a longer one. “Related to—”
“Ezekiel Beaumont was my father. I’m the younger son, something of a free agent.”
“What does that mean? What are you doing here?”
“The same as you, I imagine. Trying to right some wrongs.” Schuyler let that assertion simmer, then said, “And I’ve earned the trust of General Forrest, if that tells you anything. I know you’re looking for Lemuel Frye, and I know where he’s hiding.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. And I don’t know Senator Maney. At least, I know who he is, but he’s most likely at his home in East Tennessee. I certainly don’t recognize the name Lemuel Frye nor care why or where he’s hiding.” Maney—or whoever he was—signaled his horse to move.
Schuyler grabbed the reins. “Wait. I understand your reluctance to take my word. But ask Forrest about me. And if you decide you want to know Frye’s whereabouts, send word through Kenard Hixon. I’ll arrange to meet you.”
The big man laughed. “I’ll give you credit for a lot of nerve, young man. Now let go of my reins before I put a bullet hole in your arm.”
Realizing there was indeed a pistol aimed at his shoulder, Schuyler released the man’s horse and executed a mocking salute. “At your command, sir.” Giving the bay his heels, he wheeled and cantered off into the darkness, halfway expecting at any moment to be taken down by a bullet in his back.
He was almost 100 percent certain that man was Alonzo Maney. Whoever he was, he certainly knew Schuyler’s father. And he was a very forceful, dangerous, and influential man.
Now that Schuyler had actually talked to him, his dread oddly diminished. He knew he could not relax his guard. But a known enemy held less power. Perhaps there was hope that he might come out of this snarl with his life and reputation intact.
Joelle sat up in bed with a start. It was broad daylight, the sun streaming with obscene cheerfulness through the crack between the drawn curtains. Some noise had awakened her, but she saw nothing immediately amiss.
She had been awake, still writing, when the sun cleared the eastern treeline, and she’d fallen into bed at last, eyes grainy and body achy and weary, shortly after that. She glanced at the notebook on her bedside table next to the guttered candle. If she was doomed to insomnia for the rest of her life, at least there might be a novel to show for it one day.
Then the noise came again, a shower of plinks against the windowpane. Someone was throwing pebbles at her window. Only one person would do something so nonsensical and unnecessary.
Scrambling out of bed, she snagged her robe off the bedpost and yanked it on over her nightdress. She jerked the curtains open, squinting against the onslaught of sunshine. “Why didn’t you just come to the front door and knock like a normal person?”
Schuyler leaned on the open windowsill. “They wouldn’t wake you up, and I needed to talk to you.” He was hatless, his hair a wild and uncharacteristic mess. His clothes looked like they’d been unearthed from the bottom of the rummage bin at church. The bruises on his face were now a livid purple, and he smelled distinctly horsey.
A host of excoriating remarks lined up on her tongue, but she was so relieved to see him that she found herself unable to respond in an appropriately irate fashion. “Where have you been?”
“Out and about.” He gestured in the direction of town. “Reese said you ended the engagement. Is that true?”
“When did you talk to Gil?”
“Last night. There was a . . . man thing in town. He was there, I was there, it’s not important. But I wanted to hear it from you. Are you upset?” His eyes were red-rimmed, but they were steady on her face. He seemed to care about her answer.
She moderated her tone in the direction of nonchalance. “I’m fine, just really tired. I couldn’t sleep last night. You either?”
He rubbed his hand over a chin bristling with blond stubble. “Yes. I mean no. I’m sorry I woke you up—I was just worried. Did you hear about the newspaper office?”
“Oh, right. Well, there’s been a break-in at the Journal office. Some mob destroyed the press and wrote awful things on the walls. I know you like Mr. McCanless, so I thought you’d want to see what you could do for him.”
Joelle stared at Schuyler. “Broke in? Destroyed the press?” How could she comprehend such a thing? “That’s—that’s—I don’t know what to say! Why? Mr. McCanless is such a nice man! Who would do such a thing?”
“Someone who doesn’t like the things he’s been printing since the new legislature took office. An article by someone named Hanson apparently hit a nerve with the Klan, and it’s pretty obvious they’re behind this attack.”
Feeling the blood drain from her face, Joelle dropped to her knees. “Oh no. No no no.”
“Joelle? Don’t faint! I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have sprung that on you, but I wouldn’t have thought—”
A roaring sound filled her ears, and the next thing she knew, Schuyler was inside the room. She lay across his knees with her head cradled in the crook of his arm, and he was dripping water from the basin onto her forehead with a washcloth.
“Are you all right? I’m so sorry!” He dropped the cloth into the basin.
She blinked up at him. “I’m T. M. Hanson.”
“I’m going to get ThomasAnne. You’re delirious.”
“No, I’m—I really wrote those articles.” She struggled to sit up, swiping away the water dripping down her face. “Mr. McCanless said he wouldn’t tell anybody it was me, but somehow Mrs. Whitmore found out, and she went right to Gil . . . What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“So that’s what Reese meant. He said something about the newspaper being caught up in trouble, right after he mentioned your speech in church, but I didn’t have any reason to connect the two.” Under his breath he called Gil a very uncomplimentary name. “He knew you were in danger, but he decided to hang you out in the wind and run for the hills.”
She sighed. “That is the most mixed metaphor I’ve ever heard. Never mind. I knew what I was getting into when I wrote those pieces. I didn’t think about anyone retaliating against the newspaper itself, though. Not physically, anyway.” She put her hands to her face, sick all over again. “Sky, it’s just words. Words on a page.”
His mouth was grim. “Words on a page started a revolution back in 1776, remember.”
“I suppose you have a point.”
“Of course I do. And I’m serious—you are in big danger. If that Whitmore woman knows you’re the author of those articles, the whole town knows by now. I wish you’d told me.” He looked more hurt than angry.
“You told me not to—”
“I know. I already told you I’m an idiot.” He looked around uneasily. “And I’m in your bedroom. I’m going to climb back out, and we’ll pretend this conversation never happened.” He got to his feet. “You didn’t tell anybody about the bathhouse, did you?”
Should she lie to him? The silence went on too long. “I might have told ThomasAnne.”
His blue-gray eyes widened. “Joelle! I’m going to have to marry you and make an honest woman of you! Which is criminal, since I never even got the benefit—”
She grabbed the washcloth out of the basin and threw it at his head.
He caught it, laughing, and slung one leg over the windowsill. “Don’t leave the house without one of the men with you. I mean it.”
“Where are you going to be?”
“I have a short trip to make. But I’ll be back before you can say ‘I’m a loose woman.’”
“I am not! Wait, Schuyler!”
“What?” He paused, looking impatient.
“Levi told me to write an article, announcing your candidacy for Congress. I have some questions.”
“I’m a little busy right now,” he said. “We’ll do that some other time.”
He disappeared, and she had to content herself with cursing his birthright as she mopped up the water he’d slopped all over the floor. He came and went whenever he pleased, leaving her lonesome and anxious and . . . itchy. A very dissatisfactory state of affairs.