The Guns of the South

* XIX *

The door to the Presidential mansion stood open for the fortnightly levee. Moths got in with the people, but to close the door would have made the place stifling: along with June, summer had come to Richmond. More moths fluttered hopefully against the window screen, looking for their chance to immolate themselves in the gaslights within.

Robert E. Lee and his daughter Mary stood just inside the front hall, greeting visitors as they arrived. “Good evening, sir and madam…How are you today, Senator Magoffin?… Well, Mr. Secretary, what brings you here?”

Jefferson Davis allowed himself a thin, self-deprecating smile. “I just thought I would drop by to see how this house was getting along without me. It seems to be doing quite well.”

“You also expressed a certain small interest in hearing the latest gossip, as I recall,” Varina Davis said with a twinkle in her eye.

“I?” Davis looked at Lee. “Mr. President, I submit myself to your judgment. Can you conceive of my making such a preposterous statement?”

“No, but then I cannot conceive of your lovely wife lying about it, either,” Lee replied.

“I never knew you were such a diplomat,” Jefferson Davis exclaimed, while Varina’s creamy shoulders shook with merriment. The former President went on, “Had you shown this talent previously, I might have sent you to Europe in place of Mason and Slidell.”

“In that case, sir, I am glad I hid my light under a bushel,” Lee said, which won him a small laugh from Davis and a bigger one from his wife.

Mary Lee said, “You both seem happier now that you are out of this house.”

“Happier?” Jefferson Davis soberly considered that, and after a moment shook his head…No, I think not. Easier might be a better word, in that the full weight of responsibility now lies on your father’s broad and capable shoulders.”

“The full weight of thirst now lies on my narrow, parched throat,” Varina Davis said. “With your kind consent, gentleman, Mary, I aim to raid the punch bowl.” Her maroon skins, stiff with crinoline, rustled about her as she sailed grandly toward the refreshment table set against the far wall of the room. With a final bow, Jefferson Davis followed his wife.

Once he was out of earshot, Lee said, “Let him claim what he will, my dear Mary—I am certain you are right. I’ve not seen such spring in his stride since our days back at West Point.”

When the stream of guests slowed, Lee claimed a goblet of punch for himself and drifted through the crowd, listening. That, to him, was what was most valuable about the levees: they let him get a feel for what Richmond thought—or at least talked about—which he could have had in no other way.

Two things seemed to be on people’s minds tonight: the recent surrender of the last America Will Break rebels down in North Carolina and the continuing congressional debate on the bill that weakened slavery. A plump, prosperous-looking man approached Lee and said, “See here, sir! If we are to set about turning our niggers loose, why then did we shed so much blood separating ourselves from Yankeedom? We might as well rejoin the United States as emancipate our slaves.”

“I fear I cannot agree with you, sir,” Lee answered. “We spent our blood to regain the privilege of settling our own affairs as we choose, rather than having such settlements enforced upon us by other sections of the U.S. which chose a way different from ours and which enjoyed a numerical preponderance over us.”

“Bah!” the man said succinctly, and started to stomp off.

“Sir, let me tell you something, if I may,” Lee said. The fellow stopped; however much he disagreed with his President, he recognized an obligation to listen to him. Lee went on, “When I went into Washington City after it fell to our arms, Lord Lyons, the British minister to the United States, asked me a question I have never forgotten: as we had made the Confederate States into a nation, what son of nation would it be?”

The man had an answer ready: “The same sort as it was before the war, of course.”

“But we are not the same now as then, nor can we again become so,” Lee said. “As the minister pointed out, commerce demands we playa role in the wider world, and the war was hard on us and harder on our institutions, including that of Negro servitude. I would sooner make some small accommodations now, give the Negro some stake in the South—which is, after all, his country, too—than face, perhaps, servile insurrection in ten years’ time, or twenty.”

“I wouldn’t,” the man snapped. This time, he did leave.

Lee sighed. He’d had similar conversations before at these levees. Every one of them saddened him: how could so many people be unable to see past their own noses? He did not know the answer to that, but it was demonstrably true.

He cheered up when Mississippi Congressman Ethelbert Barksdale came over to him and said, “I heard the last part of your talk with that fat fool, Mr. President. Of course he doesn’t fear fighting in a slave uprising; by the look of him, he probably didn’t fight in the Second American Revolution, either—or don’t you think he’s the kind who would have hired a substitute?”

“I shouldn’t care to impugn the courage or patriotism of a man I do not know, sir—but you may very well be right,” Lee said. Sometimes a small taste of malice was sweet. The pleasure swiftly faded, though. “But there are so many with views like his that I fear for my bill.”

“It will pass, sir,” Barksdale said earnestly. He was a Confederate party man through and through, having backed Jefferson Davis in war and peace and Lee after him (he’d barely kept his own congressional seat in the past election, just riding out Forrest’s Mississippi landslide). Now he lowered his voice: “If you’d told him what the AWB was really working toward, he would have turned up his toes.”

“With men of his stripe, I wonder even about that,” Lee said gloomily. But Barksdale had a point. Without the Richmond Massacre and the books in the AWB’s secret room, no bill limiting slavery in any way would have had a prayer of getting through the Confederate Congress. In the aftermath of the murders and of the revelations from the AWB sanctum, his legislation did have a chance, maybe even a good one.” As often happens with those who would do evil, the Rivington men proved their own worst enemies.”

“That they did.” Barksdale looked left, right, back over his shoulder, let his voice fall even further, so that Lee had to lean close to hear him: “And speaking of the Rivington men, Mr. President, what shall be done with the ones captured in the fighting round their home town?”

“Home base,” Lee corrected. “You pose an interesting question, Congressman. They were, of course, taken in arms against the Confederacy: a prima facie case for treason if ever there was one. Were we to hang them, not a voice could be raised against us.”

Barksdale stared at him. “You mean they might not hang? You startle me.”

“Nothing is yet decided. They fall under military rather than civil jurisdiction, both on account of their rebellion and because Nash County, North Carolina, where they were captured, had had the right to the writ of habeas corpus revoked and fell under the administration of General Forrest.”

“Ah, I see.” Barksdale’s face cleared. “The question is whether to hang ‘em or shoot ‘em? I don’t much care one way or the other; they’ll end up equally dead with either, which is the point of the exercise after all, eh?”

“As I say, nothing is yet decided. But ldo want to thank you again for your sterling work in support of the bill regulating Negroes’ labor. Have you any idea yet when it might come up for a vote?”

As was his habit, Ethelbert Barksdale licked his lips while he thought. “The vote in the House might be as early as next week. If it passes there…hmm. Senators having fewer limits on their debate than representatives, the bill may well encounter considerable delay in the upper house before it goes up or down.”

“I mislike delay,” Lee said fretfully. The longer legislators had to bury in their memories the Richmond Massacre and the truth about the AWB, the likelier they were to revert to comfortable, traditional Southern thought patterns—into which slavery fit only too well. “I trust, sir, that you will do your best to move the bill forward in the House with the utmost expedition.”

Barksdale puffed out the chest of his starched white shirt till he looked like a pouter pigeon. “Mr. President, you may rely upon me.”

If he was pompous, he was also sincere. Lee gave him credit for that, replying, “I do, sir; believe me, I do.”

The Mississippi congressman preened. Then his eyes narrowed in calculation. “One way to influence the tally might be the well-timed execution of a Rivington man or two.”

“I shall bear your advice in mind, I assure you,” Lee said. Barksdale swaggered off, pleased and proud to have influenced events. But Lee, though he would remember the advice, had no intention of taking it. He did not object to executing felons; he’d ordered rapists and looters in the Army of Northern Virginia hanged. To kill a man for the sake of political advantage, though—he rebelled at that, however richly some of the Rivington men deserved it.

He talked for a while with a veteran who had a hook where his left hand should have been. “Gettysburg, the third day,” the fellow said when Lee asked him where he’d been hurt.

He’d heard that too many times. “I should never have sent you brave lads forward then.”

“Ah, well, it came right in the end, sir,” the veteran said, smiling. Lee nodded, touched by his devotion. But he would have been equally mutilated had the South lost, without even the pride of victory to show for it. That would have been his bitter portion had the Rivington men not come, just as it was now for thousands of maimed men in the North.

Chatting with a couple of pretty girls helped restore Lee’s spirits. He’d always had an eye for women, had corresponded with several for years, but never did anything more all through his long marriage. Now the girls were also eyeing him, with a frank feminine speculation he’d never noticed before. He suddenly realized he was an eligible man once more. His face heated. The idea frightened him more than any two battles in which he’d fought. He retreated to the less intimidating company of Jefferson Davis.

“You’re rather flushed,” the former President observed. “Perhaps you should have the front door opened again in spite of the insects.”

“The heat is not what troubles me,” Lee said, with such dignity as he could muster. Davis, though far from a savvy politician, knew better than to ask what did.

As Lee’s carriage rolled east along Cary Street toward Libby Prison, it passed a mule team hauling a barge down the City Canal. In the James River, the twin stacks of the light-draft gunboat C. S. S. Bealeton sent pencils of smoke into the sky.

The prison was a three-story brick building, cream-colored up to the bottom of the second-floor windows and red above. A warehouse before the war, it had housed as many as a thousand Federal prisoners during the winter of 1863-64. Many of them managed to escape not long after Lee first met the Rivington men, but the chimney through which they’d gained access to the basement was long since sealed up. Moreover, more guards kept an eye on the fifty-one Rivington men on the third floor than had watched all those Yankees.

Lee’s own bodyguard nevertheless looked nervous as he preceded his charge up the stairs to the second-floor Chickamauga Room. “I shall be quite safe, Lieutenant, I assure you,” Lee said. “Only the one prisoner will be brought in, and not only you but several from the force here will be present to make certain nothing goes wrong.”

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said, eloquently unconvinced. After a moment, he added, “With the AWB men, sir, how do you propose to make certain of anything?”

“That is the question,” Lee admitted.

“Yes, sir,” his guard repeated, fiercely now. “I mean, after what happened at your inauguration—” He broke off, not wanting to hurt Lee by reminding him of the ill-omened day. His expression said he would have executed all the captured Rivington men without a second thought.

The Chickamauga Room, as headquarters for the prisoners, interrogation, had been fitted with a desk by one of its nine-paned windows and a few chairs. Guards snapped to attention when Lee came in. While he settled himself at the desk, a couple of them hurried off to fetch a captive for him to question.

The man who returned between the guards was slim and dark and walked with a limp. In plain gray shirt and pants—slave’s clothes, actually; the prison warder saved a dollar where he could—he did not look like one of the fearsome Rivington men. “Good morning, Mr. Lang,” Lee said. He pointed to a chair a few feet in front of the desk. “You may sit if your wound still troubles you.”

“It’s healing well enough,” Benny Lang said. He sat all the same. Lee’s bodyguard, AK-47 ready to fire from the hip, interposed himself between chair and desk. The men from the Libby Prison detachment stood off to one side, their rifles equally ready. As he looked from one of them to another, Lang’s mouth shaped an ironic smile. “I suppose I should be flattered at how dangerous you think I am.”

Lee’s answer was serious: “The Confederacy has learned, to its cost, how dangerous you Rivington men are.” He watched Lang’s smile fade, went on, “I also wish to inform you, so you may pass it on to your fellows upstairs, that the House of Representatives yesterday passed by a vote of fifty-two to forty-one the bill regulating the labor of this nation’s colored individuals. The way in which you sought to turn us from that course succeeded only in putting us more firmly upon it.”

Lang set his jaw. “Get rid of us, then, and have done.” The bodyguard’s back seemed to radiate agreement with the suggestion.

Lee said, “You must understand beyond any possible doubt that the direction in which you intended to go is not the one we have chosen for ourselves. Those of you who grasp that and are able to fully accept it may yet gain the opportunity to redeem your lives despite your treason.”

“How’s that?” the Rivington man asked scornfully. “Say we’re sorry and go scot-free? I’m not a big enough fool to believe it. I wish to heaven I could.”

“You needn’t,” Lee said. Benny Lang gave a mordant chuckle. Ignoring it, Lee went on, “If you were ever to regain your freedom, you would earn it, I assure you.”

Lang studied him. “You’re not a man in the habit of lying,” he said slowly. “Tell me more.”

Lee still wondered if he should. As his bodyguard had said, being certain about anything that had to do with the Rivington men was impossible. Even though they’d been stripped of all their gear from the future, right down to their very clothes, he couldn’t be sure that, knowing something of which 1868 was ignorant, they might not yet find a means to escape and give the Confederacy more grief. He felt, in fact, rather like a fisherman who had rubbed a lamp, seen a genie come forth, and was now wondering how—or if—he could control it.

If he could, though, how much good that would bring his country! And so, cautiously, he said, “You know, Mr. Lang, that in capturing the AWB offices here in Richmond and your headquarters down in Rivington, we have come into possession of a large quantity of volumes from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Our scholars, as you may imagine, have fallen on these with glad cries and will spend years gleaning what they can from them.”

“If you have the bloody books, what do you want with us?” Lang said.

“Primarily, to serve as bridges. A complaint I have heard repeatedly is that your volumes take for granted matters about which we know nothing. I confess that, having seen your works in action, I find this unsurprising: we are speaking, after all, of a gap of a hundred fifty years. You men may well prove of great value by helping us understand—and perhaps helping us use—your, ah, artifacts. Performing that task faithfully and well could, in time, possibly even expiate the crimes of which you are surely guilty.”

“You’d use us, eh?” Lang cocked his head. “From your point of view, I suppose that makes good sense. But how would you know you could trust us?”

“There lies the rub,” Lee admitted. “I am glad you can see it. We would be taking a risk; with your greater knowledge, you might delude the men with whom you work in the same way you sought to delude the entire Confederacy as to the path the future would have taken without your intervention—and as you tried to do with your speaking wireless telegraph.” Learning of that device still irked Lee. He said, “We could have done great things with it in the late war…had you seen fit to reveal its existence.”

Lang said, “We would have, I swear it, if you’d been in trouble. As it was, as we thought, the AKs turned out to be plenty to win your freedom.”

“And so you concealed a potentially vital tool from us, for your own advantage. I promise we shall do our best to prevent any future episodes of that sort. Your Rivington men would be split up, not permitted to know where your fellows are nor, save under most unusual circumstances, to communicate with them. Further, you would be required to explain fully to the scholars or mechanics with whom you will be working every step of every process you demonstrate. Even so, we recognize the risk remains, though we shall do our utmost to minimize it.”

Benny Lang made a sour face. “We’d be just like the poor damned German technicians hauled off to Russia at the end of World War II.” Lee did not understand the reference. Seeing that, Lang went on, “Never mind. Whatever you propose is better than hanging. I think most of us will be willing to go along. I know I will.”

“The reason I chose to put the question to you first, Mr. Lang, is that you are one of the Rivington men likeliest to be chosen to help us comprehend the products of your time. By most accounts, you have comported yourself well here in the Confederate States: you fought bravely on our behalf—and then later, it must be said, against us—and, while living the planter’s life in Rivington, you treated your Negro servants relatively well. This lets me hope, at least, you will be able to accommodate yourself to your changed circumstances.”

“I’ll manage. Given the alternative, you can bet I’ll manage,” Lang said.

“Yes; that would offer considerable incentive—so much so, in fact, that we shall carefully examine every man’s sincerity and credentials before even considering his release. Your sentences may possibly be suspended; they shall not be forgotten.”

“You’d be stupid if you did forget them,” Lang said, nodding. “The other thing that worries me is, not an of us know the kinds of things you will want to learn. Up in our own time, we weren’t professors, you know. A lot of us were soldiers or police. Me, I repaired computers.”

“There. You see what I meant about the gap between your time and mine?” Lee said. “I haven’t the faintest idea what a, ah, computer is, let alone how to repair one.”

“A computer is an electronic machine that calculates and puts information together very quickly,” Benny Lang said.

Lee almost asked him what sort of machine he had said, but decided not to bother, as he doubted the answer would have left him enlightened—the gap again. He chose a simpler question:, ‘What does a computer look like?” When Lang explained, Lee grinned like a small boy—one mystery solved! “So that’s the proper name for the qwerty.”

“For the what?” Lang’s confusion lasted only a couple of seconds. “Oh. You named it for the keyboard, didn’t you? That’s not bad. Give me a steady supply of electricity and I’ll show you things with that machine the likes of which you’ve never imagined.”

Lee believed him. The Rivington men had already shown him—shown all the South—a great many things whose likes had never been imagined. Some of them, he thought, should have remained unimagined. He wondered if the computer would prove to be one such. Time alone would tell. He said, “If the device be as useful as you say, will you teach us to manufacture more like it? We have commenced production of our own AK-47s, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know that, but it doesn’t matter anyhow. Genera! Lee—” Three guards growled at the same time. Lang looked briefly nonplused, then realized his mistake. “Sorry. President Lee, if you want me to build you a bloody computer, you may as well hang me now. I can’t do it, or rather, you can’t do it. You not only lack the technology you need, you lack the technology to make the technology you need, and likely a couple of more regressions before that, too. Give me electricity and I’ll show you how to use however many computers you’ve captured. You can do that until they break down. When they do, they’re gone for good.”

“But you repair computers,” Lee objected. “You just said as much.”

“So I do, when I have the proper tools and parts. Where am I to come by those in 1868?”

“And if repairing one becomes a condition for your continued freedom—for your survival?”

Benny Lang stared bleakly at him. “Then I’m dead.”

Lee liked the answer; it bespoke a certain basic honesty. If any Rivington men ever saw the outside of Libby Prison, he resolved that Benny Lang would be one of them. For now, though, he said only, “Tell your comrades what I have said to you, Mr. Lang. Before long, you will be furnished paper and pens. I want a complete listing of the types of knowledge each of you possesses. Warn the rest not to lie; you have lied to the Confederacy far too much, and any claim one of you proves unable to substantiate will result in his being considered a full-fledged traitor once more. Do you understand that and agree to it?”

“I understand it. As for agreeing, what choice have I?”

“None,” Lee said implacably. “Be warned also that your crimes and your likely trustworthiness will be weighed against what you know when we consider whether to release any of you. Also, Mr. Lang, do pass on to your friends the vote of the House of Representatives. If you are set at liberty, you shall not be permitted to meddle in politics. Is that quite clear?”

The resentment that flared in Lang’s eyes showed it was. “You give us few choices.”

“Would you, in my position?” Lee said, and Lang would not meet his gaze. He turned to the prison guards. “Take him back upstairs.”

As they marched off with Benny Lang, Lee walked back down to the street. His bodyguard said, “Sir, if it was up to me, the only time those bastards ever saw the sun again except through iron bars would be the day we took ‘em out to hang ‘em.”

“Believe me, Lieutenant, I sympathize with you there,” Lee said, “but they may yet prove of great value to our country. And it is our country, Lieutenant. We shall shape it to our ends, not theirs, I promise you that.”

“But if they do meddle, sir?”

“Then we hang them,” Lee said. Satisfied at last, the bodyguard raised his repeater in salute.

“Ain’t gonna be easy, Nate,” Mollie Bean said. The closer the wedding day came, the more nervous she got. She stooped down, tossed a pebble into Stony Creek.

“We’ll do fine,” Caudell said stoutly, watching the ripples spread. “Your hair is growing out nice as you please; pretty soon you’ll be able to pack away your wig and just say you’ve changed your style.”

“My hair’s not what I’m fret tin’ about, an’ you know it perfectly well. Ain’t gonna be easy livin’ in this town with some of the people knowin’ I used to be a whore.”

“I wish you wouldn’t be so blunt,” Caudell muttered.

“How come? Don’t you like bein’ reminded, neither?”

“You know it’s not that,” he answered quickly; they’d had this discussion before. He continued, “Once we’re married, do you want to move back to Rivington, then?”

“God almighty, no!” Mollie threw up her hands. A startled blue heron leaped into the air with a loud whuff, whuff, whuff of wings. “In Rivington, everybody knows I was—doin’ what I was doin’—till first part o’ this year. Hereabouts, it’s only some of the men who remember back to the war—leastways, I hope that’s how it is.”

“Nobody’s ever given me a hard time about it.” Caudell made a fist. “Anyone who tried, I’d give him this. Now you tell me straight out, Mollie, have you ever had any trouble from the women in town, any at all?”

“No-o,” she said; he judged she was telling the truth but didn’t quite trust it. As if to confirm that, she went on, “sometimes, though, I just don’t feel like I can look them fine ladies in the eye.”

“They’re no finer than you are,” he insisted, and meant every word of it. “Come to that, do you want me to tell you which ones had great big babies six or seven months after they said their ‘I do’s’? I can name three or four right off the top of my head.”

That won a giggle from her. “Can you? It don’t surprise me. “

“There, you see?” he said triumphantly.

“Ain’t gonna be easy,” she said again, brief confidence deserting her.

He took a deep breath. “How’s this, then? We’ll stay here as long as everything is good, as long as everybody treats us the way they’re supposed to. The first time anybody doesn’t, we’ll Pack up whatever we happen to have and move someplace where nobody’s ever heard of either one of us, and we’ll make ourselves a fresh start.”

“You don’t want to do that, Nate.” Mollie sounded worried. “Hard pullin’ up stakes when you’ve been somewheres a long time, An’ you like Nashville; you know you do.”

“I like you more,” he said, and intended to add, “And I want you to be happy, too.”

Before he had the chance, Mollie pulled his face down to hers and kissed him. Her eyes were shining as she said, “Nobody never told me nothin’ like that before.” Some of her fear seemed to leave her once more, for she looked around and then waved, and this time she surprised no birds. “It’s right pretty here—the willow there, the jasmine just across the creek that’ll be all full o’ sweet flowers tonight…Nate! Whatever is the matter, Nate?”

“Nothing, really, I reckon.” But Caudell still felt as though he’d seen a ghost; the sensation was almost as strong as when he’d fired through the Rivington man on the time machine platform. After a moment to steady himself, he explained: “I was fishing under that willow when poor Josephine—remember Josephine?—stuck her head out through the jasmine. Piet Hardie had the hounds out after her.”

“Him.” Mollie’s face changed; her voice needed only the one word to turn flat and hard. “I’ve prayed more than once that he didn’t get away when we took Rivington. It ain’t Christian, but I done it. ‘Fraid I’ll never know, though.”

“Oh yes, you will.” Caudell told how he’d huddled behind Hardie’s body after Henry Pleasants touched off the mine outside Rivington.

Mollie clapped her hands together when he was done. “He got what was comin’ to him, by God.” Caudell felt as if he were a bold knight who’d slain the Rivington man in single combat, not just stumbled upon (almost stumbled over) his corpse. By the way Mollie flushed and pressed herself against him, she had something of that same feeling herself. She looked up and down the creek. Her voice went low and throaty. “Don’t seem to be anybody around, Nate”

“So there doesn’t.” Grinning, he laid her down on the thick, soft grass, then quickly stooped beside her. With practiced fingers, he undid the buttons and eyelets that held her dress closed; the process would have gone even faster than it did had he not paused every few seconds to kiss the flesh he exposed. But soon she lay bare, and he as well. Their sweat-slick skins slid against each other. “Oh, Mollie,” he said. She did not answer, not in words.

He got back into his clothes reluctantly; no matter what a preacher might say, early summer was easier to take without them. He felt at peace with the whole world as he and Mollie kept walking slowly along the creekbank. But after a few paces, she said, “Reckon we can try what you said, Nate. I hope it works, I purely do. But if it don’t, I’ll be glad for the chance to pull stakes, and that’s a fact.”

“All right,” he answered, pleased and a trifle annoyed at the same time; he might have wished her to stay happy and distracted rather longer.

Before he could say anything (later, he thought that just as well), the two of them rounded a bend in the creek. On the far bank, by a thicket of water oaks, a gray-haired black man sat fishing. He waved with his left hand, called, “How do, Marse Nate, Miss Mollie?”

“Hello, Israel.” Nate looked over his shoulder. No, the Negro couldn’t have seen him and Mollie cavorting in the grass. Relieved, he turned back. “Catching anything?”

“Got me a couple catfish.” Israel held them up. Stony Creek was so narrow, he hardly needed to raise his voice to talk across it.

“How’s it feel, workin’ for the famous Colonel Pleasants?” Mollie asked.

“Now the fightin’s done, Marse Henry, he took off the uniform fast as can be,” Israel said. “The railroad he was workin’ for, they send a man out to the farm the other day, askin’ him to take back his old job at twice the money. He say they make it back by usin’ his name, an’ I expect he be right.”

“What did Henry tell him?” Caudell said, bumping into a new set of mixed emotions. He wanted his friend to do well, but he didn’t want him moving back down to Wilmington. As far as seeing him went, that would be almost as bad as if he went home to Pennsylvania.

Israel answered, “He tol’ that man to git off his land and never come back, that he had better things to do with his name than sell it to a railroad that hadn’t wanted the man who was wearin’ it. His very words, Marse Nate; I was there to hear ‘em.”

“Good,” Caudell said. Mollie nodded. So did Israel. Just then, the line the black man was holding gave a jerk. He pulled in a fat little sunfish, let it flop away its life on the bank. Nate added,” As long as that’s settled, I think I’ll call on Henry some time in the next few days.”

“Always glad to see you, Marse Henry and me too,” Israel said. As he spoke, he got another bite. “You come tomorrow, maybe some of this nice fish be left.”

“I wouldn’t mind if there was,” Caudell said agreeably. “I won’t be going up there just to eat it, though. I want to ask Henry if he’ll be my best man.”

Taken by surprise, Mollie gasped and clung to him. Israel smiled across the creek at the two. of them. “That’s fine,” he said. “Marse Henry, he always goin’ on about how happy you two be, so I know he be happy to do that for you.”

“Don’t tell him ahead of time,” Caudell warned. “I want to do it myself.”

“I won’ say a word,” Israel promised. “Miss Mollie, Marse Henry, he go on too about how much your brother or cousinI ain’t quite sure which—Melvin looks like you. He be at your weddin’?”

“I—don’t think so,” Mollie answered after a moment’s hesitation. “Now that the fighting’s done, I don’t think we’ll see Melvin much around these parts.”

“Travelin’ sort o’ man, is he?” Israel said. “Some folks is like that. Too bad he won’t be there to see you wed, though.”

“We’ll do fine without him.” Mollie leaned against Nate again. They started walking along the creek once more. Israel’s farewell wave was interrupted by yet another catch. Caudell knew mild envy; he’d never pulled so many fish out of Stony Creek so fast.

Mollie said something. His mind on fish, Caudell missed it. “I’m sorry?”

“I said, maybe it’ll work out all right after all. You start talkin’ about get tin’ a best man and things like that, it makes the wedding start to seem real.”

“It had better seem real.” He slipped his arm around her waist, pulled her close, kissed her. Israel was no doubt watching from the far bank. Caudell couldn’t have cared less.

The upstanding wings of Nate’s collar brushed against his beard and tickled. He felt slightly strangled; he wasn’t used to the tightness of his cravat. Even without the black silk tie, he suspected he would have had some trouble breathing: few men go calm to their wedding. The still, sultry air inside the Baptist church gave him an excuse for sweating.

As men will, he tried to tell himself he was being foolish—he’d marched into battle with fewer palpitations than he had right now. But the inside of his mouth stayed dry.

Ben Drake was well into the wedding service. The preacher’s big voice boomed, “If there be any who know of any reason this marriage should not take place, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.”

Caudell tensed. Preachers intoned those words at every wedding. But here—some of the men listening here knew who—and what—Mollie had been. He didn’t think anyone held that sort of grudge against him or her, but—The prescribed pause passed. No one spoke. The service went on. Caudell eased, a little.

Much too quickly, or so it seemed, Drake turned to him and said, “Do you, Nathaniel, take this woman Mollie to be your lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, until death do you part?”

“I do.” Caudell was used to outshouting a room full of school children. Now he wondered if even Henry Pleasants beside him, resplendent in full colonel’s uniform—Confederate, though he had threatened to scandalize everyone by wearing blue—could hear. Pleasants beamed—he must have spoken out loud. He tried on a smile. It fit.

“Do you, Mollie, take this man Nathaniel to be your lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish and to obey, until death do you part?”

From behind her veil, Mollie’s words rang clear: “I do.”

“Then under the laws of God and those of the sovereign state of North Carolina, I pronounce you man and wife.” Ben Drake smiled. “Kiss your bride, Nate.”

Awkwardly, Caudell moved aside the filmy veil. The kiss was decorously chaste. In the third row of pews, Barbara Bissett started to sob. His landlady cried at any excuse, or none. This time, she was not alone. By the time Nate and Mollie walked up the aisle to the church door, half the women who’d watched the ceremony were dabbing at their eyes. Caudell wondered why they did that. Weddings were supposed to be happy times, but the little lace handkerchiefs always came out.

He and Mollie stood in the doorway while their friends filed past. As far as he could remember, he’d never shaken so many men’s hands, hugged so many women, in so short a time. “A beautiful wedding, just beautiful,” Barbara Bissett said, squeezing him against her ample bosom. Then she started crying again.

Dempsey Eure came up, his wife Lucy beside him. He slapped Caudell’s back, planted a loud smack of a kiss on MoIlie’s cheek. “Now all you two have to do is wait till the sun goes down,” he said, adding mischievously, “Fool thing to do, too, if you ask me, gettin’ married near the longest day—and the shortest night—of the year.”

The men who heard him guffawed; the women tittered and pretended they had no idea what he was talking about. Mollie said, “You’re terrible, Dempsey.”

“Oh, I’m not quite as bad as all that,” he answered, grinning.

Just for a moment, some of Nate’s joy leaked away. Dempsey had shared a winter cabin with him during the war. He’d also gone over to Mollie’s cabin then, a few times or more than a few. Was he reminding her of it now? She might have had a point when she said this wouldn’t be easy.

But there by Dempsey stood Lucy Eure, blonde and slim and pretty in a birdlike way. She had one hand on the top of their son’s head; a sleeping baby filled her other arm. By the proud way Dempsey smiled at them, he was happy enough right where he was. Caudell decided he worried too much. If he read things into every chance remark, he and Mollie would have trouble.

Raeford Liles said,” All them letters you got from this lady here, Nate, and all them times you told me you weren’t sweethearts, I reckoned the two of you would join up sooner or later.” He cackled.

“You were right, sure enough,” Caudell admitted, determined now not to be teased. He put an arm around Mollie. “I’m glad you were.”

Two big elms shaded the street in front of the church. The guests stood in small groups there. “Don’t anybody leave quite yet,” Henry Pleasants said loudly. “You may just possibly have noticed some trestle tables there. Hattie, who cooks for me and my farmhands, has set up a little spread for you all.”

“You still talk like a Yankee, Henry,” Caudell said. “You’re supposed to say that as one word.”

“They weren’t goin’ away anyhow,” Mollie put in. “Seems more like they was tryin’ to keep from chargin’ them tables.”

“Hattie will hold them at bay, “,Pleasants said. Sure enough, the big black woman lashed out with a serving spoon at a man who got too close to a platter of roasted chicken. He hastily drew back.

Hattie used the spoon to beckon to Caudell and Mollie. “De new husband and wife, dey eats first,” she proclaimed, as if daring someone to argue with her. Nobody did. Caudell hurried over, grabbed a plate and fork, and foraged among chicken and ham and turkey, corn bread and sweet potato biscuits and beans cooked with salt pork. Carolina fruitcake, peanut brittle, ‘and peaches candied in honey also looked tempting, but the plate had only so much room.

Another trip; he told himself, attacking the ham. His ‘eyebrows leaped up as he tried to figure out what all Hattie had done with it. He tasted brown sugar, mustard, and cloves, molasses, honey, and something that had him puzzled until he finally identified it as the liquor from brandied crabapples. He was sure there were more flavors than he was noticing, too. He took another bite, and another. Pretty soon the ham was gone, but some of the mystery remained.

“Here you go.” Henry Pleasants pressed a glass of whiskey into his hand.

“Thank you, Henry.” Caudell paused, then repeated himself in a different tone of voice: “Thank you, Henry—for everything.”

“Me? What’s there to thank me for?” Pleasants waved the idea away. “Hadn’t been for you, I’d’ve just gone back to the life I went into the army to escape. I dreaded having to do that when the war was over, and thanks to you, I had no need.”

He would have said more—he’d had a glass of whiskey or two himself, while Caudell was eating—but Wren Tisdale came over to him and asked, “How much do you want for that nigger wench, Pleasants? I’ll give you top dollar, by God—the business her cooking will bring into the Liberty Bell ought to make her worth my while pretty quick.”

“She’s not for sale, sir,” Pleasants said. “She—”

“Will you hire her out to me, then? How much would you want for two weeks of her time out of the month?”

“If you’d let me finish, I’d have told you she’s not for sale because she’s free,” Pleasants said. “If you want her to cook at the Liberty Bell, you’ll have to worry about making it worth her while.”

The saloonkeeper’s pinched, sallow features darkened with anger. “I ain’t no Yankee—I don’t hold with free niggers.” He stalked off.

“That’s peculiar,” Caudell said, watching him go. “Hattie’s cooking isn’t going to change just because she’s free.”

“True enough, but if he took her on as a free woman, he’d have to treat her that way.” Pleasants lowered his voice. “A lot of you Southerners have trouble with that.”

Caudell pointed to the three stars on the collar of his friend’s gray jacket. “You’re a Southerner yourself now, Henry, like it or not, even if you can’t say ‘y’all,’ and come to that, the blacks in the U.S.A. aren’t having an easy time of it, either, if you can believe the papers.”

“That’s so.” Pleasants sighed. “If Lee’s bill ever gets out of the Senate, it will put this country on the right track, at any rate;”

“I can’t see why they’re taking so long over it,” Caudell answered. “Even Bedford Forrest said he wouldn’t have voted for himself if he’d known the truth about the Rivington men.”

“After politicians listen to their own speeches for a while, they start forgetting what they know, if you ask me.” Pleasants tapped Nate’s glass with a forefinger. “Can I fill you up again?”

Caudell pointed to a punch bowl. “Why don’t you get me some syllabub instead? It should go nicely with the fruitcake.” And sure enough, the sweetened mixture of Madeira, sherry, lemon juice, and cream, all spicy with mace and cinnamon, perfectly complemented the candied orange peel, cherries, raisins, figs, and pecans in the cake. When he was through at last, Caudell said, “You can just roll me back home, Henry. I’m too full to walk.”

“Or for anything else?” Pleasants asked with a proper best man’s leer.

Caudell glanced over at Mollie. Her smile brought one to his own lips. “You needn’t worry about that,” he said firmly.

When the trestle tables were as bare of food as if an invading army had swept over them, and shadows lengthened toward evening, Raeford Liles drove the newlyweds to the widow Bissett’s in his buggy. Everyone pelted them with rice as they climbed up onto the seat. “You have some in your beard,” Mollie said.

“I don’t care,” Caudell answered, but he brushed at himself anyhow. Half a dozen grains cascaded down onto the front of his jacket. The buggy started to roll. More rice flew.

The house was quiet and empty when Liles pulled up in front of it; all the Bissetts were going out to sleep at Payton Bissett’s farm, to give Caudell and Mollie one private night. Reining in, the storekeeper said, “You got to pay me my fare now.” Before Caudell had a chance to get angry, he explained, “I’m going to kiss the bride.” He leaned over and pecked Mollie’s cheek.

Caudell slid down from the buggy, held out his arms to help Mollie. “Like I told you back at the church, Mr. Liles, I’m glad you were right and I was wrong.”

“Heh, heh.” The storekeeper’s grin showed his few remaining teeth. “Reckon I don’t need to wish you a good evenin’, now do I?” He flicked the reins, clucked to his horse. The buggy turned in the middle of the street, headed back toward Liles’s rooms over the general store.

“Why don’t you come with me, Mrs. Caudell?” Nate said.

He hadn’t called her that before. Her eyes slowly widened.

“That’s sure enough who I am now, ain’t it?” she said, perhaps half to herself. “Mr. Caudell, it’d be purely a pleasure.” They walked to the doorway arm in arm.

He carried her over the threshold twice, at the front door and again at the doorway to his upstairs room. The second time, he didn’t put her down right away, but walked over to the bed and gently laid her upon it. Then he went back and closed the door behind them. As he began to untie his cravat, he said, “One day before long, we’ll have to find another place to live. This room isn’t going to be big enough for the both of us.”

She was sitting up, reaching around to the back of her neck to undo the fastenings of her wedding gown. She interrupted herself to nod. Then she smiled that glowing smile of hers. “Reckon you’re right, Nate. But it’s big enough for tonight, don’t you think?”

He hurried to her. “I’m sure of it.” He had no idea whether they would live happily ever after. He’d start worrying about that tomorrow. Tonight, he did not care.

Robert E. Lee angrily jerked his head to one side, as if he were snapping at his own ear. “Twenty-four men,” he growled. “Twenty-four men holding our country’s future in their pocket—and they will not let it out.”

“Our Senate, like that of the United States upon which it was modeled, is leisurely in debate,” Charles Marshall said.

“Leisurely?” Lee rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling of his office, and toward the heavens that ceiling hid. “Mr. Marshall, I have been raised from childhood with the firm conviction that the republican form of government is the finest ever devised, but the dilatory tactics I have seen in connection with this bill tempt me to doubt my faith therein. Had the Army of Northern Virginia campaigned in the manner in which the Senate debates, AK-47s would not have sufficed to gain our independence.”

“Had the Army of Northern Virginia campaigned in the manner in which the Senate debates, it would have been McClellan’s Army of the Potomac instead,” Marshall said.

Caught by surprise, Lee let out a short bark of laughter. “I will not say you are wrong, sir, but that is no way for a proper army—or a proper government—to conduct its business.”

“The vote must surely come in the next few days, Mr. President,” Marshall said.

“Must it? So people have been claiming for weeks now, yet still the debate goes on, and on, and on.” Lee’s open hand came down with a thump on a pile of the day’s Richmond newspapers. “And still this—this twaddle continues to be printed.”

Charles Marshall raised a sympathetic eyebrow. “It is pretty dreadful, isn’t it?”

“Dreadful? I wish I were a fine profane swearer like General Forrest, so I might more appropriately express my feelings.”

Lee whacked the pile of papers again. Every sort of argument the South had devised over the years to justify slavery was coming out anew in the course of the Senate debate—and in the newspapers. Arguments taken from the Politics of Aristotle lay cheek by jowl with those borrowed from the Book of Genesis and its condemnation of the children of Ham. Tucked in alongside both were modern, allegedly scientific claims that aligned blacks with the great apes and purported to prove them inferior to whites.

In the papers, the counterarguments adduced by supporters of Lee’s legislation seemed feeble by comparison. Those senators had to be circumspect, to keep from sounding like homegrown abolition fanatics. Much of their public argument was based on the evidence of the past few years, evidence that showed the Negro in a light different from that in which he had been viewed before. Could helpless Sambo, they said, have made first a soldier and then a rebel so dangerous that de facto emancipation already existed over broad areas of the Confederacy? The answer, they maintained, was obviously no.

But their foes turned that answer against them. If the Negro could make a soldier and a dangerous rebel, why, then, all the better reason to grant him no concessions; indeed, to tighten control on him harder than ever.

The real trouble was, half the arguments in favor of Lee’s bill could not be stated publicly. Its backers could rail at the Rivington men, could point out how they had murdered to try to force the Southern government away from any step toward emancipation and had revolted when the murders failed to achieve their purpose. That was fine, as far as it went.

It did not go far enough, though. Lee did not want the lesson of future history paraded through the newspapers for Northerners and Englishmen to read. Those secrets were an ace in the hole against the ambitions of nations larger and more powerful than the Confederate States.

If they did not stay secret…Late reports from the war in the Canadas said that some U.S. forces were beginning to carry repeating rifles patterned after the AK-47. That worried Lee. One day before too long, the United States might try a war of revenge against the Confederacy. If they did, he wanted things like buried torpedoes and endless repeaters to stay dark and quiet, the better to surprise the invaders. Trumpeting the knowledge from out of time would only make that harder. In public, then, his supporters had to watch what they said.

He sighed. “When the Second American Revolution began, our bold Southern men said they could beat the North with one hand tied behind their backs. We found out it was not so soon enough. Now I wonder if we can pass this bill while using only one hand.” He explained what he meant to Charles Marshall.

His aide thoughtfully pursed his lips. “If the only way to rally popular support for the legislation would be to allow everything to come out, are you willing to do that?”

“Now there’s a pretty problem!” Lee exclaimed. “I confess I had not thought of it in quite those terms. Which weighs for more, a nation’s safety or justice for its inhabitants?” He considered the question for three or four minutes before continuing, “I believe, sir, the answer must be no. Once a secret is gone, it is gone forever and cannot be restored. But even if my bill fails of passage in this session of Congress, it may be introduced again in future sessions, and one day will surely be approved. How say you?”

“Mr. President, your views generally strike me as sensible, and this instance is no exception. You remind me that you are fighting a war here, not merely a single battle.”

“Well put,” Lee said. “When caught up in the excitement of a single battle, it is important to bear in mind the campaign of which it forms a part.”

“True enough, sir,” Marshall said, “although I had not envisioned your Presidential term as analogous to a military campaign.” He ventured a chuckle. “I suppose that if I spoke with Jefferson Davis, he would say he had spent a good part of his time in office campaigning against our Congress.”

“I do hope to avoid some of the difficulties he had. He was and is a most able man, but also one who sees disagreement as an affront, if not a betrayal. I do not think he himself would disagree with my assessment. I still have hope, at least, that a more conciliatory approach will yield better results.”

“And if not?” Marshall asked.

“If not, I shall bellow and froth at the reprobates until steam starts from my ears as if from a locomotive engine’s safety valve.” Lee caught his aide staring. “I see you do not believe me. Too bad—if I cannot fool you, how am I to deceive the Congress?”

Still shaking his head, Charles Marshall walked out of the office. Lee settled in to his daily paperwork. He had never cared for it, and the Presidency brought far more of it his way than he’d had to deal with even as general. But regardless of whether he cared for it, it was part of his duty, and so he conscientiously undertook it.

A report from the Virginia Military Institute caught his eye. Hendrik Nieuwoudt, one of the Rivington men ordered there, had been found hanged in his room, apparently a suicide. He’d left a note on his bed: “I can’t stand being watched anymore.”

Lee’s mouth tightened. Constant surveillance was the price those AWB men who had been released paid, and would continue to pay, for being suffered to live. That phrase, with its Biblical overtones, echoed in his mind. He’d thought of the Rivington men as captive genies before. Witches, though, made as good a description for them: they had curious powers and they were dangerous. Benny Lang and most of the others appeared to understand and accept that. But Nieuwoudt was the second of their number to kill himself.

Lee had a horror of suicide; to him it seemed the ultimate abandonment of responsibility. Yet the Rivington men were already abandoned like no others in all the world, cast adrift even from their proper time. What had they to live for? He wished he could make their lot easier, but would not put his nation in he’s way for their sake. If that made him partly to blame for their deaths, he would accept the burden. An officer had to learn to do that, else he would never be able to give an order that brought his men within range of the enemy’s shot and shell. And now he was not merely general, but commander in chief.

Reminding himself of that brought his thoughts back to the Senate. How easy it would be if he could simply order the men of the upper house to approve his legislation! But he could not; the Constitution did not permit it. They would make up their own minds in their own good time…and quite probably drive him mad in the process.

Commotion on the grounds of the Presidential mansion. Lee looked up from a letter he was writing to the British minister. Running feet, a sentry’s cry of, “Halt! Y’all halt right now, do you hear me?” After the Richmond Massacre, sentries took their duties more seriously than they had in times past.

Several voices shouted back at the sentry. That garbled any single reply, but one word was repeated often enough to come through clearly. “Vote! The vote!” Lee jumped to his feet and hurried out, the letter forgotten. He’d hoped the vote might finally come today, but past delays had forced caution on him.

Guards stood before the front steps with extended bayonets, holding a squad of reporters out of the residence. The reporters’ yells redoubled when Lee appeared in the doorway. “Fourteen to ten,” one of them bawled above the general din. “Fourteen to ten, President Lee! What do you have to say about that?”

“Fourteen to ten which way, Mr. Helper?” Lee asked, doing his best to hold anxiety from his voice. “You must be aware your response to that question will have some small bearing on the comments I make.”

The man from the Richmond Dispatch laughed, which meant Rex Van Lew of the Examiner got to tell Lee what he needed to know: “Fourteen to ten/or, Mr. President!”

Lee’s breath whooshed out in one long, happy sigh. He’d had remarks ready for this occasion (and another set ready in case he lost), but they all flew straight out of his head. He spoke the first thought he had: “Gentlemen, we are on our way.”

“On our way where, Mr. President?” asked Virgil Quincy of the Whig.

“That we shall all discover in due course,” Lee answered. “But I am heartily glad we have begun the journey.”

“You’ve given up owning slaves yourself, President Lee,” Quincy said. “How will the passage of this bill affect you personally?”

“Aside from making me the most relieved man in Richmond, do you mean?” Lee said, which raised more laughter among the reporters. Through it, he went on,” As you may know, the Constitution sets my salary at $25,000 per annum. I aim to contribute the tenth part of that sum each year into the emancipation fund this legislation establishes, to show I favor it with more than words alone.”

That quieted the reporters, who bent over their pads to write down his reply. After a moment, Edwin Helper said, “How do you feel about the prospect of no more niggers being born into slavery after December 31, 1872?”

“The date I proposed originally to Congress as the terminus ad quem was December 31, 1870,” Lee said. “I accept, with a certain amount of reluctance, its decision to delay that day two years further, but I am forced to concede that the additional period will let us prepare more adequately. I am pleased that Negroes will begin to be freeborn during my term in office, and even more pleased that they shall begin to enjoy their full liberty before the commencement of the twentieth century.”

Rex Van Lew stiffened. at that, like a bird dog corning to point. “There’s been a good deal of talk about the twentieth century all through the debate of this bill, sir. Why worry so much about it now—why talk so much about it now—when it’s still more than thirty years away?”

“Any conscientious legislator naturally has in mind the future of his country, Mr. Van Lew, and speaking of the twentieth century is a convenient way to indicate our course toward that future.” It was, Lee knew, less than half an answer. The twentieth century—and the twenty-first—loomed large in the debate because senators and congressmen were actually able to judge their views, not merely guess at them. But that was a story which ought not to appear in the newspapers.

Van Lew, both clever and persistent, recognized that Lee had been imperfectly frank. He waved his hand again, but Lee pretended not to see him. He pointed instead to Virgil Quincy, who asked, “What will you do with masters who refuse to accept part payment so their slaves can start working to buy themselves free?”

“Congress has passed this bill, I will sign it, and it shall be enforced,” Lee said. “I might add that a majority of our citizens, knowing my views on the matter, chose to invest me with Presidential authority. I construe this to mean they will comply with the law.”

“Don’t you think they voted for you because of who you are rather than your views about slavery?” Quincy asked.

“Who I am includes my views on slavery,” Lee answered. “With that, gentlemen, I fear you will have to rest content.” He went back into the Presidential mansion.

“What about the Constitution, President Lee?” someone shouted after him.

By then, Lee had already closed the door. He could pretend not to hear the question, and he did. He felt brief shame at using a politician’s trick, but stifled it. The plain truth was that his bill violated the spirit of the Confederate Constitution and very likely its letter as well. Opponents of the law had been saying—bellowing—as much for months. He did not care to admit publicly that they were right.

Before he took office, he’d hoped to see Congress get around to establishing a Supreme Court during his term. Now, all at once, he wondered if that was a good idea. Justices would probably overturn the law, or important sections of it, if it came before them for review—and it would. They’d have a harder time doing that if the legislation was well established and working smoothly before they ever got a chance to examine it.

Another politician’s trick, he thought; his mouth twisted in distaste. But however much he hated the idea, he was a politician now, maneuvering against his foes in Congress as he had against the Union army. Deception and misdirection had served his strategy then; no reason not to employ them now.

His servant Julia came into the reception room, a feather duster in her hand. She must have heard the reporters: when she saw Lee, she dropped him a curtsy as elegant as any he’d ever received from a highborn white lady. Without a word, she turned and began dusting the bric-a-brac on a table.

Thus she did not see the deep bow Lee gave in return. Most of the nearly four million blacks in the Confederacy remained slaves; that would be so for many years to come. But Lee tried to look into the misty future, to see how his country would change as more and more Negroes gained their freedom.

He was, at bottom, a deeply conservative man; the principal reason he’d supported the slow beginning of emancipation was in the hope that gradual change would lead to less long-range disruption than the periodic explosions of hatred that had to follow any effort to pretend the time from 1862 to 1866 had never happened. He hoped that blacks, once free, would come to be, and be recognized as, good Southerners like any other.

But just what even so simple a phrase as “good Southerners like any others” meant would have to be redefined in the years ahead. Would free Negroes be able to join the army? How would that look, black faces in Confederate gray? In 1864 it had been a counsel of desperation, and averted by victory. Now it would have to be seriously considered.

Would free blacks be able to testify against whites in court? For that matter, would they be able to gain the right to vote? Looking ahead, he suspected those things; unthinkable now, might well come with the passage of time. He wondered how many of the congressmen and senators who had voted with him believed they or their successors would ever have to worry about black voters. Few, he was sure: most thought they were giving the Negro just a little freedom.

“But there is no such thing as possessing just a little freedom,” Lee mused. “Once one enjoys any whatsoever, he will seek it all.”

“You got that right, Marse Robert,” Julia said. He started slightly; he hadn’t noticed he was speaking aloud.

He wondered how much change he would get to see himself. When Andries Rhoodie asked if he wanted to learn on what day he would die, he’d answered no without thinking twice. But the Picture History of the Civil War and other volumes from the AWB hoard let him know he ought to have only a little more than two years left: not even enough time to see the first black babies freeborn.

Yet he still had hopes of proving the volumes from the future wrong. The world to which they referred was no longer the one in which he lived. Here and now, he had nitroglycerine pills to lend his heart strength; his hand went to the jar in his waistcoat pocket. That hadn’t been so in the other world, the vanished world, the world where the Confederacy went down to defeat.

Watching his beloved South beaten had probably also helped break his heart in the more usual sense of the phrase. He remembered that unbearably somber photograph of him in the Picture History. What point could his life have had, lived out among the ruins of everything he’d held dear? Even losing Mary could not be a greater grief.

In truth, though, he had purpose as well as medication. If he took care of himself, why shouldn’t he live longer than the vanquished Lee of that vanished world? If God was kind to him, he might yet see Negroes start growing up toward freedom, might even see the end of his term in 1874.

And if not—not. It lay in God’s hands, not his own; God would do as He willed, and against God’s judgments there was no appeal. Lee would go on doing his best for as many days as the Lord chose to grant him. A man could do no more. When he was gone, however far ahead that might be, others would carry on after him.

He looked over his shoulder toward the doorway in which he’d stood when the reporters brought word his bill had passed. “I shall have given those others a fair foundation upon which to build,” he said quietly. Then he started back to his office. Despite the happy nature of the interruption, that letter to the British minister remained to be written.