Pemberley Ranch (20 page)

“Daddy asked him, ‘If you leave, where are you going to go?’ Isaiah didn’t really know. He thought about New Orleans, because of all the freedmen there, or maybe he’d go west and meet up with a Mexican girl, or an Indian. He was scared of going east, not sure if the locals would believe that he wasn’t an escaped slave.

“So, Daddy asked Isaiah to wait a month before he made a firm decision. A few weeks later, Daddy came back from a trip east with a young former slave girl in the wagon.”

“Was that you?” Beth asked a smiling Mrs. Reynolds.

“Yes, indeed. I was a slave on a farm near Shreveport and the master was fixin’ to sell me ’cause he had too many slaves as it was. Mr. Darcy knew him and wrote, askin’ if there were any young female slaves for sale. When Mr. Darcy came by the house, the master looked at him funny.” She snorted. “I believe he thought Mr. Darcy was buying me for his own use. I was scared, too, but Mr. Darcy talked to me. He said, ‘Margaret,’— that’s my name, Margaret—‘Margaret, I need some help. I’ve got a good, hard-working freedman working for me, but he wants to leave me because he wants to go looking for a wife. He’s a free man and a good man, and I think he’d make a fine husband. I’d be willing to buy you off of your master if you would be willing to meet Isaiah and consider marrying him.’ I said, ‘Whoa, Mr. Darcy—you want me to marry a man I haven’t met?’

“He said, ‘No, I want you to meet him and give him a chance to convince you to marry him. If you marry a free man, you’ll be free.’ I told him, ‘Yes sir, I know that. But what if I meet him, an’ I don’t want to marry him?’ He told me I’d be free anyway—he’d give me my freedom, and there would be a job for me, payin’ money, at Pemberley.

“I tell you, Miss Bennet, I just broke down and cried right there. That good man was gonna buy me an’ set me free, an’ all I had to do was to ride back to Pemberley with him. I only asked if Isaiah was a good Christian man, an’ he said he was, an’ that was good enough for me. Mr. Darcy brought me, I said goodbye to my momma, an’ got in the wagon with him. A few days later,
we got to Pemberley, an’ I met Mrs. Darcy, an’ a better lady I’ve never met. I could cook, so she had me set up in the kitchen.

“Mr. Darcy was ready to give me my papers that would make me a free woman, but I said, ‘I haven’t met Mr. Reynolds, yet. A deal’s a deal.’ So, Mr. Darcy calls for Mr. Reynolds, and he come in, not knowing what was going on.” Mrs. Reynolds laughed. “He was so surprised to see me, and he was even more surprised when Mr. Darcy told him what he had done. He then left us two alone in the library to talk things over.

“And we talked. Isaiah was indeed a fine, good-looking man and as kind as he was good. We came to an agreement in short order, and Mr. and Mrs. Darcy couldn’t have been happier when we told them.

“The only problem was that the Baptist minister in town— that was before Mr. Tilney got here—wouldn’t marry no former slaves in the church. We was willing to have it someplace else, but that weren’t good enough for Mrs. Darcy. No, ma’am! She heard about that, an’ she took us right down to the mission church, askin’ the priest to marry us. He agreed, as long as we would join the church.

“So I became Mrs. Reynolds and Catholic on the same day, an’ that was the best day of my life.”

Beth was enchanted. “What a wonderful story!”

Mrs. Reynolds smiled. “Isaiah was a good man, and we were happy the five years we were married.” Her smile disappeared. “Then, he left on a cattle drive before the war, and he never came home. He was killed by rustlers tryin’ to steal the herd.” She turned her head to look out the window. “He’s buried out there, somewhere, under a shady tree, the other riders told me. That’s good—Isaiah always liked the shade, you see.” She
sighed. “Five years, but I’ve no regrets. I know he’s waitin’ for me upstairs, along with the angels.”

She wiped a tear from her face with her apron, while Beth and Gaby used their handkerchiefs. “Well, if’n you would excuse me, I’ve got to clean up in the kitchen. Good night, all.”

Darcy watched her go. “They never had children, but you’d hardly know it from her. She helped raise me, and she was like a mother to Gaby after Momma passed. Daddy always said buying Mrs. Reynolds’s freedom was the best purchase he had ever made.” He coughed, and to Beth it suspiciously sounded like he was covering up a sob.

“Gaby, I think you said you’d play for us?” Fitz broke in.

Gaby collected herself and moved to the piano.

An hour and a half later, Gaby announced a desire to retire, and she and Mrs. Annesley made their excuses. For her part, Beth was restless. She should be tired, she knew, but the revelations of the past few hours would not allow her to rest. The gentlemen showed no inclination to go to bed, so Darcy, Fitz, and Beth walked out to the veranda and, as the storm had abated, watched the now gentle rainfall. Beth sipped a sherry as the men shared brandy and cigars.

“You’re awful quiet, Miss Beth,” Fitz observed. “You’re sure you’re not tired?”

“No, not at all,” she said. Seeing the men stare at her expectantly, she continued, “You look like you think I should say something.”

“Sorry, Beth,” said Will. “It just seems there’s a lot on your mind. We don’t mean to pry. Sorry.”

“Although, if you need any help, you’ve come to the right place,” added Fitz.

“Why? Why would you want to help me?”

Fitz laughed. “Will here is always helping his friends. It’s a weakness o’ his.” Darcy simply glared at his foreman, who wasn’t cowed in the least.

Beth sighed. “I’m trying to understand… Oh! It seems everything I know is
wrong
.”

“What do you mean?” asked Darcy.

Beth put down her glass and turned to him. “You’ve told me you’ve never owned any slaves. Yet, you fought for the Confederacy. I don’t understand. Why did you fight for a cause you didn’t believe in?”

Will shared a look with Fitz before speaking. “Beth, the war was about other things besides slavery.” Will sat down next to Beth and collected his thoughts.

“The South’s economy has always been based on agriculture. There weren’t many factories down here before the war. We shipped out raw materials, be it cotton or tobacco or beef, to other places. The North, on the other hand, was becoming more industrial every day. They used our crops to make goods to sell overseas.

“The problem was, England and France wanted our crops, too. They wanted to trade directly with us, and sell us stuff, too, at prices less than what the factories up north charged.

“The big northern industrialists couldn’t have that. They screamed for protection, and the Congress passed high tariffs on overseas goods. We couldn’t sell our goods to anyone but those Yankee industrialists. We also paid top dollar for the goods they sold back to us. So, you see, the Yankees were taxing us
to save their businesses. It was a tax on Northerners, too, but Southerners were the ones getting mad about it.

“This had gone on for a long time before the Congress started thinking about lowering those tariffs. For twenty years it got a little better, but right before the war, the industrialists got together with the Abolitionists in the Republican Party, and they said they were going to raise tariffs again. In other words, they would take money from the South and give it to the North. It was in the Republican Party platform in 1860, and the South had had enough.

“You see, every time we made a deal with those Yankees, be it bringing new states into the Union or respecting property rights, it always seemed the Yankees would eventually renege on the agreement. It got so that we thought we just couldn’t trust them.

“We thought we had a lever to protect our rights. A lot of people figured that the Tenth Amendment gave the states the right to veto, or nullify, unfair federal laws. It was called States Rights. When the Republicans promised to raise tariffs again, the southern states said they had the right to declare their independence from the Union, since the Union didn’t respect their rights.”

“But what about slaves?”

Darcy grimaced. “It was part of it. Look, no matter what you think about slavery, it was legal. Most Southern folks never owned a slave, though I have to admit most supported it. We knew slavery wouldn’t last forever. The papers were saying how expensive they were getting, and some rabble-rousers wanted to begin the re-importation of slaves. But that would’ve never gotten through Congress. To be honest, we expected slavery to die a slow death. People’s hearts were changing.

“But the Abolitionists wanted it declared illegal—now—and without compensation to the slave owners. That would bankrupt thousands of farms. John Brown and his terrorist followers were willing to murder innocent people to free the slaves. With Mr. Lincoln’s election, the fire eaters in the South screamed that the Abolitionists who had backed Brown and their northern industrialist friends were in control of the country and that we had no voice in how things would go.”

“Slavery was still evil, Will,” Beth said.

“My momma agreed with you. You know, most folks around here were against secession.”

Beth was amazed.

Will went on. “We thought that the rabble-rousers were wrong, and that something could still be worked out with the Congress. After all, it was the government that put down Brown. But we were the minority, and Texas voted to throw in with the Confederacy. The Darcys’ loyalty always was to Texas. Your family loved Ohio when y’all lived there, right? Same thing here.

“So, when the call went out to defend our new country against the foe, we thought we were living in 1776 or 1835 again. Victory for the cause. Freedom.” Will looked out into the rain. “Well, you see how that turned out. And Congress did raise the tariffs, and they remain high today. And all the factories are still in the North. The whole damn thing was a waste.” He tossed the remains of his cigar into the rain.

But the slaves are free
, thought Beth, but she kept that observation to herself. She was digesting the view of the war from the Southern standpoint. Some northern newspapers had tried to make John Brown a hero, but Mr. Bennet called him a criminal who deserved what he got. She recalled something about the
issue of tariffs from those times, but it had been submerged under the calls for preserving the Union and freeing the slaves. She could never understand why the Rebels fought with such ferocity at Shiloh and Gettysburg and Cold Mountain. It made no sense to die to keep men enslaved. But to fight for what you believed was your freedom—
that
she could understand.

Was the whole war one big mistake? Did Samuel and six hundred thousand others die because of greedy and stupid men on both sides?

“The winners write the history, Miss Beth,” said Fitz as he blew a cloud of blue smoke. “I learned that at school.”

Beth didn’t respond, because Will suddenly stood up, peering into the rain. “Rider coming,” he said evenly. Fitz’s response was anything but calm. Jumping to his feet, he half-ran into the house, startling Beth by returning a moment later with a rifle in his hands. Staring out, he relaxed.

“It’s Peter, Will,” he said, lowering the weapon. Beth took a breath while Darcy moved forward as the rider jumped off his horse and came up the stairs.

Darcy looked at the man. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s trouble in town…” Peter looked first at Beth, then questioningly at Darcy.

“Go on,” his employer commanded.

Water pooled about Peter’s feet. “Something bad’s happened at the new settlement.” He glanced at Beth again. “Real bad.”

“How bad?” Darcy demanded.

“That Washington family…” his voice trailed off as he shook his head in silent communication.

“Oh, no,” Darcy breathed as terror gripped Beth’s heart. “All of them?”

A pause and Peter nodded.

“
No!
” Beth gasped, hands over her mouth.

Sheriff Lucas stood in the downpour, rain dripping off his hat, as the half-dozen men stared at the tableau before them. The scene was lit by the glow of the tall, burning object planted in the yard of the homestead, the flames implausible in the rain.

“Must be tar on it,” whispered Jones as the men remained frozen in horror. The dancing light and shadows made the figure hanging from the tree look almost alive. But that was not what held Lucas’s attention, nor the
thing
lighting the place. It was the two bundles at the foot of the tree, one smaller than the other.