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Ashley sat in one of the wicker rockers across from him. “Last-minute details in the stables,” she told him. “Charles Osgood didn’t want to be a Yankee.”
Frazier rolled his eyes and shook his head. “It works, you know, for the property, it works. But why on earth everyone always wants to be on the losing side, I’ll just never know. Did he finally accept his assignment?”
“He did—but Ramsay Clayton stepped in at the last minute to let him play Marshall Donegal,” Ashley said.
“Oh?”
“I don’t think Ramsay cares. It’s all play to him,” she said.
“Ramsay is a good fellow. You think he was trying to appear magnanimous in front of you?” Frazier asked.
Ashley shook her head. “There’s never going to be anything between Ramsay and me, Grampa, there just isn’t.”
He lifted his hands. “I was just asking about his motives.”
Ramsay had asked Ashley out the previous year; she had always liked him. He was a good artist, and a handsome man, but she had never felt the least bit of chemistry with him. He had accepted her wish that they just maintain a good friendship. Ramsay had been on the rebound, having broken up with his longtime lover. She wondered if she was still on the rebound—even if she had been the one who had run from Jake.
“I honestly believe Ramsay just doesn’t care,” Ashley said. “I think he’ll have fun saying, ‘Oh, Lord! I had to be a Yankee.’ No, Ramsay isn’t trying to impress me. Griffin even asked me to be his friendly companion for a dinner he had—and I said no. They all understand that the friendships we have are too important.”
“Well, then, good for Ramsay. And you—you better get dressed,” Frazier told her.
“Yep, I’m on it.”
She rose and walked into the house from the riverside.
The original architects had taken advantage of the river and bayou breezes when they had built the house. It hadn’t been changed much since the day it had been built. One long hallway stretched from the front of the house to the back, and before the advent of air-conditioning, the double doors on each end had often been kept open. The house had one unique feature: double winding staircases to a second-floor landing that led to the six bedrooms, three on each side of the house on that floor. The stairway to the third floor, or attic, where there were still two rooms that could be guest rooms or let out to renters, was on the second floor, bayou side, of the house.
Beth Reardon was in Ashley’s room, sitting at the foot of the bed and drawing laces through her corset.
Her skin was pure ebony; she was tall, regal and beautifully built. But she had chosen to get into the action. She was wearing a cotton skirt and cotton blouse and her hair was wrapped up in a bandana. She gazed over at Ashley. “Hey! Time is a-wasting, girl. Where have you been?”
“Settling an argument over who had to be a Yankee,” Ashley told her.
“Yankee. That’s the North, right?” Beth asked. Beth was from New York, and before that, her family had lived in Jamaica. Her accent, however, was all American, and none of her ancestors had been in the United States during the Civil War.
Ashley frowned.
Beth laughed. “Just kidding! Come on, I took history classes.”
“Sorry!” Ashley said.
“You should be. Let’s get you in this ridiculous contraption. So, people really churned butter in these things? No, wait—your relatives sat around looking pretty while the slaves and servants churned the butter, right?”
“Actually, in our family, everyone worked. And I think that everyone had to sweat when churning butter. Most of the time, the plantation mistress had to work really hard.”
“Supervising?”
“And making soap and doing laundry and all the rest,” Ashley said. “Well, maybe if you were really, really, really rich you just sat around. We were rich, but not that rich, and if we’re ever going to be rich again, it’s up to you, since I can barely boil water.” Beth had come to work at Donegal as the chef less than a year ago, determined to make the restaurant one of the most important in the South.
“Anyone can boil water,” Beth assured her. “And you cook okay. You’re not great, but, then, you are one hell of a storyteller. Step into the skirts already, I’m dying to see this show.”
Arranging the layers of clothing that constituted the formal dress of a Southern plantation mistress took some time. They both laughed over the absurdity of the apparel that had been required in Louisiana despite the heat and the humidity. Ashley told Beth, “It’s worse for the guys. The authentic uniforms are wool—those poor little puppies just die out there.”
“Well, honey, I think I’m glad that I’m the unpaid help for this shindig, then,” Beth told her, grinning.
“Cotton like this—it’s nothing. And I do love the bandana! Poor Emma.”
“Yes, it really was poor Emma,” Ashley told her. “Lots of the soldiers left journals about what happened at the battle. It was only after the war that the rumors about Emma having killed her husband got started. It’s as if someone wanted to sully her name. Of course, nothing that we can find was written about her having been charged with the crime.”
“But it was a different time. Maybe she did the unthinkable. Maybe she took a lover. Maybe even, God forbid, he was a Yankee or a carpetbagger!”
“Maybe,” Ashley agreed. “From all the family lore, she loved her husband, she was devastated when he died, and she managed to hold on to the property and raise her children here, even though the South lost and carpetbaggers did sweep down on the South. Carpetbaggers were even more despised than Yanks,” she explained. “They were the people who weren’t fighting for a cause—their cause was just to prey off the vanquished and get rich.”
A few minutes later, Ashley was ready, and they headed back to the porch that faced the river. A crowd had already gathered, since the schedule for the day was printed out on brochures that attendees could pick up at the entrance to the property. A high-school student, seeking extra credit in history, was usually given that job.
Ashley came out to stand next to her grandfather, looking out over the property as she could see it from the back porch. Bright tape in blue and gray cordoned off the areas where the reenactors would move during the events, though they no longer went into the cemetery for the moment of Marshall Donegal’s death and the tactical retreat of the two surviving Union soldiers.
She found herself staring at the cemetery off to her left again. An odd tremor washed over her, but she quickly forgot it and looked at Frazier.
“Nice crowd today,” he said quietly. Ashley squeezed his hand.
The small band—posing as the military band that had been part of Marshall Donegal’s cavalry unit—launched into the haunting strains of “Dixie.”
Frazier Donegal began to speak midway through, giving an excellent history lesson. He didn’t shy away from the slavery question, admitting that cotton was king in the South, and sugarcane, and both needed workers. The citizens of the South had not invented slavery; many had clung to it whether, in their hearts, they accepted the injustice or not. Few men like to admit they were wrong or cruel to their fellow human beings. And they had hardly been magnanimous when it meant they would also lose their livelihood. It wasn’t an excuse, but it was history. Then as now, prejudice was not something with which a man was born—it was something that was taught. He spoke with passion, conviction and sincerity, and a thunderous round of applause greeted his words; he would have been a great politician, Ashley thought. Except that he had never cared about politics; he had always cared about people.
The first roar of close fire sounded from the stables area, and people screamed and jumped. It was all sound and black powder. There was no live ammunition at the reenactment.
The Yankees, mounted on their horses, rode in hard from the east, dismounting at the stables to use the buildings as defensive positions as they began their attack.
Ashley went on to introduce herself as Emma Donegal. She told about the beginning of the war, and how her husband, Marshall Donegal, famed for his exploits in the Mexican-American War more than ten years earlier, had returned to the military, raising a cavalry unit for the Louisiana militia that would be ready to join the Confederate army at any time. But federal forces were always spying in Louisiana. It would be the Union naval leader, David Farragut, a seasoned sailor, who would assault New Orleans and take the city in 1862, but before that time, Union forces snuck down regularly to survey the situation and report back on the Confederate forces guarding the city. The battle at Donegal Plantation began when the federal spies who had participated in the bar brawl rode swiftly to the plantation in uniform, hoping to engage the Confederates before they could summon more men. At Donegal Plantation, however, four of the spies died at the hands of the small Confederate force to be found there, and the only Confederate casualty was Marshall Donegal himself, who had succumbed to the onslaught of the federals, killing three before falling in a pool of his own blood. She explained that history longed to blame her—Emma Donegal—but she was innocent. Truly, she was innocent! The world hadn’t changed that much; people loved to talk, and everyone wanted there to be more to the story. There simply wasn’t. She and her husband had been married thirteen years; they had four children they were raising happily together. She was heartsick at her husband’s death and survived her grief only because she had to keep food on the table for her children.
Of course, she knew the story like the back of her hand. She told it well and was greeted with wild applause when she pointed across the yard. “There! It all begins!”
And thus began the round of shots that made the expanse of land between the stables and the house rich and ripe with black powder. The federals had been traveling with a small, easily maneuvered six-pound howitzer, and in their attempts to seize the property, they sent their bronze cannon balls sailing for the house and ground. In fact, they had missed. At the time, their attempts to use the small cannon had done little but rip up great chunks of the earth. Today, it caused the air to become heavy with black powder.
“The Confederates had to stop the attack before the barn, stables and outbuildings could be set afire,” Frazier Donegal announced from the porch, with a microphone, his voice rich and deep and rising well above the screams and shouting.
Though there was no live ammunition, the small fight clearly taught onlookers just how horrendous it must have been for men in major battles. As the Confederates and federals fought here with guerilla tactics, Ashley asked the crowd to imagine thousands of men marching forward side by side, some of them able to reload three times in a minute. The carnage was terrible. The Civil War was considered to be the last of the ancient wars—and the first of the modern wars.
The defenders split, most of the men rushing the stables from the front. But the Yankees had come around the other side, and in their maneuvering they escaped the body of men they had been determined to fight. One of the attackers was killed at the stables; the others made it around to the cemetery, attempting to use the old vaults as shields. But Marshall Donegal had come around the other side, and while his men were held up, he met up with the attackers at the cemetery.
The fighting originally ended inside the cemetery, but now they ended it just outside, the only difference from that day to this. First, the crowd wouldn’t be able to see any of the action if it occurred there, and, with that many people tramping through, historic funerary art could be destroyed. And so, Charles Osgood, as Marshall, brought down several of the enemy and perished, brutally stabbed to death by bayonets, in front of the gates. The two surviving federal men—Justin Binder and Ramsay—raced toward the stables, whistling for their mounts. They leapt atop their horses and tore for the river road.
Frazier announced, “And thus did the fighting at Donegal Plantation come to an end.”
They said the Pledge of Allegiance, and then the band played “Dixie” and then “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” After the burst of applause that followed the last song, people began to surround the actors—who had remained in the battle positions where they had fallen—as they came to their feet, and they all seemed to disappear into the crowd as they were congratulated, questioned and requested for picture-taking opportunities. Then, at last, the crowd began to melt away, and the sutler began to close down his shop.
Darkness was falling in earnest.
It had been a tremendous success; standing on the porch and watching the crowd ebb, Ashley told herself that she’d been an idiot, letting a dream get to her.
But, as she looked out, it seemed that the plantation was covered in a mist again.
It was the remnants of the black powder from the guns, she told herself.
The mist bore a reddish color. Bloodred.
The sun had set in the west; it was due to the dying of the day.
Whatever the explanation, the entire scene was eerie.
A breeze lifted, and she had the odd feeling that somehow everything had gone askew and changed, and she had somehow entered into a world of mist and shadow herself.
“Well, old girl,” Frazier said quietly, smiling as he set a hand on Ashley’s shoulder. “Another wonderful day. Thank you for all your hard work on this.”
Ashley smiled. Her grandfather was happy. She adored Frazier, and she was always glad when he was happy. She worried about him constantly—driving him crazy, she knew. He had always been somewhat bony—though dignified! But now he seemed thinner, his cheeks hollow. He was old; but a man’s life span could be long, and she wanted him with her for many more years. Now he was smiling, basking in the pleasant glow of the day’s success.
“Come on. Let’s head into the parlor,” Frazier said. “I think we should probably be there to toast our actors and friends, eh?”
The family and some friends—including the soldiers for the day—traditionally retired to the riverside parlor for drinks and unwinding.
“You go on,” Ashley said. “I’ll be right there, I promise. I just want to see that everyone is really moving on.”
Her grandfather gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I’m sure Beth has already put out all manner of delicious little snacks, despite the fact we told her that chips would do. I’ll go supervise my liquor cabinet,” he said, wiggling his white brows.
She grinned. “You’d better do that. Ramsay will say that he deserves your hundred-year-old Scotch for being so generous!”
Frazier pantomimed real fear and then walked on into the house. Ashley was exhausted and ready for a fine glass of hundred-year-old Scotch herself.
But she left the porch to walk around to the front for one last look. Jerry Blake, one of the off-duty officers they hired for traffic and crowd control, was still out by the road, waving at the last of the cars to get them safely on their way. She lifted a hand to him and shouted, “You coming in, Jerry?”
He waved back at her and shouted in return, “No, thanks! I’m on my way home. I have an early patrol shift tomorrow. See you, Ashley!”
A minute later, she saw him check that the day visitors’ cars were all gone. Then he headed for his own car.
The buzz of chatter from inside filled the new silence. She followed the sound to the front parlor, where the reenactors were gathering. Looking around, she had the same strange sense of time encapsulated that she had felt before; none of the soldiers had changed out of their uniforms yet, and she was still in her Emma Donegal attire. Even Beth, who had seemed to get a tremendous sense of entertainment out of the day, was still in her 1860s garb. Some of the men had cigars, and they were allowed to smoke them in the house that night. Only the beer bottle in the hand of Matty Martin, the sutler’s wife, provided a modern note.
Matty came over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Why, Mrs. Emma Donegal, you do create a mighty fine party, a mighty fine party! What a day!”
“Why, thank you, Mrs. Martin,” Ashley said, inclining her head regally as a plantation mistress of the day might have done.
Matty dropped the act for a minute. “Oh, Ashley, we sold so much! And I can’t tell you how many people ordered custom uniforms. I’ll be sewing my fingers to the bone for the next months, but what a great day we had.”
“I’m so glad,” Ashley told her. She walked for the buffet with its crocheted doily and poured herself a Scotch whiskey—it wasn’t a hundred years old, but it would do. Others came up to her and she responded—so many friends, and everyone involved in the reenactment. The men bowed and kissed her hand, still playing elite gentlemen of the era.
Ramsay grinned when he was near her. “I’d say ninety percent of the fighting men never tasted a good brandy, so I’m sure glad we get to be the rich of the past.”
She smiled, and agreed. “Wouldn’t it be something if we could have Lee and Grant, and Davis and Lincoln, and show them all that the war created the country we have now?”
Griffin walked over to them, lifting his glass. “Grant was an alcoholic. A functional one, but an alcoholic. No relation, of course. My Grant family was Southern to the core. Cheers!”
“You’re a cynic, Mr. Grant,” Ashley said, inclining her head.
Griffin laughed. “Not at all. We strive for an understanding of history around here, right?”
“We do,” Ashley agreed. “And, historically, many of them were truly honorable people. Can you imagine being Mrs. Robert E. Lee—and losing a historic family home, built by George Washington’s stepgrandson and filled with objects that had belonged to George and Martha? Remember, Arlington was a home long before it became a national cemetery!”
“Cheers to that, I suppose,” Griffin said. “Whiskey, Mrs. Donegal? Why, my dear woman, you should be sipping sherry with the other wives!”
“I need a whiskey tonight!”
Ramsay and Griffin laughed, and she joined them while she listened to her guests chatting. Some of the other men argued history, too—and she saw that everyone involved in the actual reenactment had shown up. Cliff, Ramsay, Hank, Griffin, Toby and John—and the Yankees, Michael Bonaventure, Hadley Mason, Justin Binder, Tom Dixon and Victor Quibbly, along with John Martin, of course, and Dr. Ben Austin.
Everyone but Charles Osgood. She couldn’t imagine that he wasn’t there. He must have been thrilled to death with the day.
“Hey, where’s Charles?” Ashley asked, interrupting a rousing discussion of Farragut’s naval prowess.
A few of those close to her quit talking to look around.
“I haven’t seen him since he very dramatically died of his wounds,” Ramsay said. “I ‘skedaddled’ right after and rode out with Justin, before we rode back to take our fair share of the applause.”
“Cliff?” Ashley asked.
Cliff shook his head. “No, I was with the soldiers who came rushing in too late when Charles was being besieged by the enemy. I thought he just stood up and bowed when everyone was clapping. I don’t remember seeing him when you and Frazier started talking … or when the band played.”
“He’s probably outside somewhere. I’ll call his cell,” Ramsay said. He pulled out his phone and hit a number of buttons.
Ashley watched him. She realized the others had already turned away and were becoming involved in their conversations again.
Ramsay shook his head at her. “No answer.”
Cliff cleared his throat. “Not to be disrespectful in any way, but maybe he met a girl and—got lucky.”
“Yeah for Charles!” Justin Binder said, lifting his glass. He was somewhat tipsy—if not drunk—Ashley thought. Good thing he was staying on the property. The others were all still playacting; they were entrenched in the past.
They didn’t want to look for someone they obviously believed was just off enjoying his own star turn. But …
“He would have wanted to be here tonight,” Ashley said stubbornly. “He was so thrilled to be taking the part of Marshall Donegal. I’m going out to see if his car is still here.”
Ramsay lifted a hand. “Sorry, don’t bother, Ashley. He didn’t drive. He came with me. I told him that I couldn’t give him a ride back since I was going to stay at the house out here for a while, but he told me he’d hitch a ride back in with someone. Said he didn’t have to be back to work until Tuesday morning and for me not to worry.”
“Gentlemen, perhaps a search is in order,” Frazier said. “A Civil War parlor game of sorts.”
They all stared at him blankly.
“Exactly,” Ashley said, relief coloring her tone. “Find the lost rebel. Beth will create a five-star private meal for a party of four, payable to the man—or woman—who finds Charles!”
“I will?” Beth said. She looked at Ashley. “Um, it will be—sumptuous!”
