Passion's Fury (46 page)

Her heart suddenly leaped with joy. “You would? Kaid, you would do that for me? Oh, I’d see that you were well paid, believe me. I mean, I know there’s probably no money at all now. Things were going down so quickly once Poppa got sick, but if you could see Pinehurst, you’d know that it can be a rich plantation again someday and—”

She fell silent, realizing how deeply she was involved in her dream. She hadn’t been paying attention to him.

Kaid was standing very still, his hands on her tiny waist, just staring down into her eyes as though trying to read her mind.

“You don’t have to pay me. I don’t want money from you. I want you to be my wife.”

She cocked her head to one side. “You…you want me to
marry
you, Kaid?

“I sure do, April. You and I both know the problem I have when…” He paused, swallowed hard, then continued, “…when I try to make love to you. It’s because I love you so much. I can’t just jump on top of you. It’s got to be because you
want
me. If you were my wife, everything’d be all right.”

He picked her up and swirled her around, then set her on her feet, a wide smile on his face displaying the chipped, blackened teeth. “You might even stop thinkin’ about what an ugly bastard I am, darlin’, when I show you how good I can be to you.” He winked. “You’ll never be sorry, I promise. Oh, it’s going to be the happiest day of my life when I stroll down the street with you on my arm, telling the whole world you’re my wife.”

“I can’t marry you, Kaid.”

“Why, sure you can.” He walked over to glance out the window, and a frown creased his forehead. “Those fools. I’m going to have to get out there and get them into the fields. If we don’t get them crops in, the army will take ’em, and I still stand to make some money sellin’ ’em myself.”

He glanced back at her. “It’s going to be wonderful, April. You’ll see. And I promise to take you back to Alabama, back to your home. I’ll get things straightened out with that sister of yours.”

He sat down and pulled her into his lap, squeezing her gently as she fought to hide her revulsion. “I’ve got it all figured out,” he said, “and I’ve had plenty of time to think about it, ’cause, like I said, I had an idea something like this was gonna happen. What I’ll do is, I’ll fix your prison records to say you died. I’ll say you tried to escape and got killed by a snake in the swamp. We’ll even fix you a grave, with your name on a headstone and everything. Meanwhile, you’ll be living in Richmond, as my wife, and nobody will know nothing.

“I’m not asking you to love me,” he went on in a rush. “I’m asking you to give me a chance, April. Maybe in time, you can love me, once you find out I’m not really so ugly.”

She took a deep breath and prayed for the right words. Looking away from him, she said, “I don’t find you ugly, Kaid. You showed me what a gentle person you can be when you risked yourself to save my dog. You’ve been good to me when we both know you could have had me any time you wanted. I would be most obliged if you would take me back to Alabama and help me reclaim my home. But I can’t marry you.”

“You can’t?” he roared. “Then, damn it you don’t want to go home very bad. You’d rather rot in prison than marry me? Hell, I don’t need you then!”

He stood so quickly that she fell to the floor. He made no move to help her up but strode to the window and stared out in angry silence.

April doubled up her knees and propped her head against them, clenching her fists. Finally, she could control herself no longer and screamed, “Damn it, Kaid, you just can’t see it, can you?”

He whipped his head around, stunned by the outburst.

“I could promise to marry you, get you to take me home, then change my mind, you fool! But even if I don’t love you, I’m your friend. I don’t want to use you, or hurt you. Can’t you see that? You say you don’t want to hurt me, but what do you think you’re doing when you blackmail me into marrying you, for God’s sake? How can you be so blind?”

He scratched at his beard. “I never thought of it like that. You could trick me, couldn’t you?”

“Yes,” she pleaded, “but you’ve been kind to me, and I don’t want to hurt you. Can’t you just help me, anyway, even though all I can promise is that I will try to desire you? I’ll try to give you what you want.”

They stood staring at each other, Kaid wearing a look of veiled hope.

Suddenly a fist began hammering against the door and a man’s voice called out frantically, “Sergeant, get out here, will you? We want to know what’s going on. The men are threatening to just get on their horses and run away. They’re afraid they’re gonna get in trouble for fuckin’ the prisoners.”

Kaid screamed so loud the walls quaked. “Get the hell out of here, boy. Don’t bother me right now!”

They heard the murmur of the soldier’s curses as he moved away from the door.

Kaid walked over to grip April’s shoulders. “You’re saying that you’ll try to desire me, but you won’t marry me?”

“If you agree to take me to Alabama.”

“But there’s a war.”

“As soon as you can. That’s all I ask.” She turned away, then glanced back at him sharply. “Oh, Kaid, it would be so easy to deceive you. Then, once I was free, I could refuse to keep my part of the bargain. But you’ve been too good to me. I can’t betray you. I know that, in your way, you do care for me.”

“Oh, hell, yes, I care,” he responded quickly, his tongue flicking over his lips once more. “You just don’t know how much. Maybe I’m a goddamn fool to even think a woman as pretty as you could ever want me to touch her, much less be my wife, but a man’s got to dream, darlin’. When he stops dreamin’, he might as well die.”

Swallowing hard, she slipped her arms about his neck.

“Oh, darlin’, darlin’, it’s gonna be so good. I just know it is. I may be ugly, but I know what a woman likes.”

She could contain herself no longer. “Will you just stop talking about how ugly you are, Kaid?” she cried, staring up at him. His hold loosened in surprise. “Will you stop telling me how ugly you are? I don’t see you that way—not till you remind me. Can’t you just for God’s sake stop talking?”

“Blackmon! Open up!”

April recognized Private Ellison’s voice, urgent and demanding.

“Open up or I’m gonna bust this door down.”

“You’re fixing for me to bust your head!” Kaid’s huge body was shaking with fury. “I said I’d be out there in a minute. Leave me alone.”

“You better get out here now if you want any men left by dark. They’re plenty upset. And the prisoners are givin’ us sass, too. They think we’re gonna get in a heap of trouble, so they’re actin’ real cocky. They say they ain’t goin’ in the fields and we don’t dare make ’em.”

Kaid muttered a vile obscenity, and moved away from her. “I’m gonna go straighten everybody out, darlin’. But I’ll be back later, I promise.” He grinned, and left her.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

It was a grim time for the South, that spring of 1864. After the battle of Gettysburg, during the previous July, forty-three thousand men on both sides had been listed as killed, wounded, or missing. Too, this was the first clear-cut victory for the Union. With the fall of Vicksburg on the fourth of July, Southern morale sank to a new low.

In addition, the Confederacy was suffering from low supplies of everything from food to drugs to men. Hospitals were so desperate for chloroform, morphine, quinine, paregoric, and laudanum, that profiteers were smuggling drugs through enemy lines in empty coffins. Women were also able to smuggle drugs by carrying them within the confines of their hoop skirts. For men were reluctant to search women.

Field medics learned to improvise. A concoction of dogwood, poplar, and willow bark was used as a quinine substitute. Opium was extracted from the red poppy flower, when the flower could be found at all.

Starved, often without shoes, many of the troops were covered with lice, filth, and dirt. The men did not want to bathe in the freezing air, even before a fire. As a result, they developed “camp itch” and were treated with a strong concoction of poke root and an ointment made from elder and sweet gum, lard, olive oil, and sulfur flour.

Some of the women imprisoned at the new Dobbsville Stockade had been assigned to make these ointments, as well as the concoction believed helpful in the treatment of venereal disease. They mixed poke roots, elderberries, wild sarsaparilla, sassafras, jessamine, and prickly ash to form a potion. Then there was silk weed root to put in whiskey, and rosin pills from pine trees.

If lack of drugs was a problem, lack of food was a desperation. Horse meat was being issued to some companies. The soldiers sometimes went for months without receiving any rations besides salty bacon, rice, flour, and tough horse beef. As a result, they were driven to slaughter mules and horses and eat them. Some men even ate large wharf rats. It was a last resort before starvation.

One company said they had cooked a cat for two days, but it was still too tough to eat. The only thing that kept them alive till rations finally arrived were the two wild dogs they found roaming in the woods, and they were skin and bones.

The meal they were given was sour, dirty, weevil-eaten and filled with ants and worms.

Many soldiers were turning to whiskey when they could get it, to dull their senses so they would not think about food so much. Whether they called it “busthead,” “popskull,” “red eye,” or “spill skull” it all meant the same thing—a little respite from the misery that seemed to have no end.

When whiskey also became scarce, they doctored it, concocting the brew from apple brandy, made up of a third of genuine alcohol, while the rest came from water, vitriol, and coloring matter. The old and mellow taste was developed by the addition of the raw flesh of wild game.

Desertion had become a serious problem. Many Rebel soldiers felt that their commitment to the Confederacy did not include the invasion of Northern soil. And after the twin disasters of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the number of unauthorized absentees was estimated at between fifty and a hundred thousand, from both sides.

The women at Dobbsville Stockade had better conditions than they’d known at Tarboro. They still mourned their lives, but at least they were not subjected to the lust of the guards.

The women were housed in small log huts, chinked and daubed after the fashion of pioneer cabins. There were no floors, just the bare earth. They slept in triple deck bunks. There was one door to each cabin, but no windows. A large fireplace was added for heat. All cooking was done in one large building where men and women prisoners ate together. Meals were the only time the men and women were together, and they were not allowed to converse.

On a sunny day in early March, a cold wind blew across the work-bent bodies of the women prisoners as they prodded the ground with their hoes. They would have preferred winter tasks—assigned to making lint and bandages—but with a hint of spring in the air, it was time to begin planting. They, like everyone else, desperately needed whatever food they could sprout from the earth.

They paused in their digging to stare at the man on horseback who approached along the outside of the fence. He was well-built, muscular but lean. Long dark sideburns were neatly trimmed to accentuate the firm, angular jaw. His nose was slightly aquiline, well formed, and beneath it were tightly set lips framed by the mustache and closely cropped beard. Brown eyes, as mellow and rich as Louisiana coffee, were fringed by lashes seemingly too thick and long to belong to a man. The face was golden-bronzed by the sun.

He wore a dress gray uniform with shiny brass buttons and gold epaulettes bearing the rank of captain. A red sash was bound about his waist, and he wore both a black gun belt and a scabbard. White-gloved hands held the reins of the great black stallion clipping his hooves at a determined gait.

“Now that’s a fine figure of a man,” Jewel murmured to Selma, who was working the row next to her. “A woman would never forget what it was like to have him inside her.”

“Is that all you think about?” Selma snapped. “I honestly think you miss all the mating you got to do at Tarboro.”

Jewel shot her a look of scorn. “And I think you miss mating at all since you got marked for having the clap.” She stepped over the lumps of upturned soil and moved closer to the fence as the man approached. “Hey, Captain. You’re a good-looking rogue, you know that? It’s not often we scum get to see a handsome gentleman like you,” she called out in challenge, hoping he would stop to talk.

Captain Rance Taggart reined Virtus to a stop beside the woman. He stared down at the ragged, torn nails, the long, bony fingers clutching the fence. Long, grimy hair clung to her lined face. What, he wondered, had been her crime? What had brought her to this end? Most of these women, he knew, were guilty of treachery to the Confederacy, and, since there was no cure for those who carried the clap, many of those afflicted were confined in stockades to keep them from the soldiers.

“Thank you for your kind greeting.” Rance tipped his hat politely and gave her a slight smile. “Perhaps you could be so kind as to help me. Where would I find the officer in charge of this stockade?”

Jewel looked him up and down, liking what she saw. Striking what she hoped was a seductive pose, her fleshy breasts thrust forward, she replied, “Well, now, Captain, you’d be looking for Major Whitley, and he ain’t never around much. Stays in Richmond, where it’s more comfy-cozy, he does. Look around and you can see we ain’t got much here in the way of comfort. No saloons. No place to gamble. No women except the likes of us, and we ain’t supposed to be messed with. Not that way.” She cocked her head to one side and gave him a leer. “Course, if a real smart officer knew what strings to pull, he could make arrangements to have the lady of his choice. There are ways…” She let her voice trail off in a husky drawl.