NEXT MORNING, ABOUT TEN, Charles arrived at the place where the river road intersected the moss-hung lane leading to the great house. His rag robe, infernally hot, weighed heavily on him. His little bit of cigar-the last he had-went out while he stared up the lane at the familiar roof line, the upper and lower piazzas, the thick wisteria vines climbing the chimney.

Smoke rose from the kitchen building. He saw a Negro girl leave it and hurry to the main house. A crow went swooping across in front of him, and if he had been less tired, he would have laughed. He was home.

Not in a good season, though. Evening before last, he had passed near the route of march of General Sherman's vast army and seen fire in the heavens-Kilpatrick's horse leading the way and signaling its position to the infantry in the rear, a frightened farmer told him. Little Kil's riders were advancing toward Columbia through an avenue of burning pines. It was that conflagration filling the night sky with a furnace glow and that of the day with plumes of resinous smoke.

"I heard what them boys is sayin'," the frightened farmer declared as Charles drank from his well. "They say they're gonna wipe this hellhole of secession off the earth. The say here's where treason began and here's where it's gonna end."

"I wouldn't take that lightly," Charles advised. "I'd watch your womenfolk and expect the worst. This war's turned mean. Many thanks for the water."

It now appeared that Sherman, who had vowed to make Georgia howl, then done it, had kept on going due north, bypassing the Ashley district. Charles walked slowly up the lane with a weary wonder in his eyes; the place appeared untouched by the war. Then he began to change his mind. He saw noticeable wear on the buildings and a marked absence of slaves. How many of them had run away?

The signs increased as he drew closer. Tall weeds grew where lawn had spread before. A wagon without front wheels and axle lay abandoned near the office. He went all the way to the house, a dirty, bearded, ragged specter with a revolver on his hip, and no one opened a door or raised a window.

A few azalea bushes around the wisteria-clad chimney showed early buds; the weather had been unusually warm. He passed the chimney and continued along the half-oval of the hard-packed drive, spying a woman previously hidden by a pillar. She rose from her chair with a vague smile as he approached.

He stopped, thankful that he could soon pull off his boots and bathe his blisters. To the small, stout woman on the piazza he said politely, "Hello, Aunt Clarissa."

She frowned, studied him-especially the revolver and the wrapped sword under his arm-a few seconds more. Then she raised her palms to her cheeks and screamed in mortal fright to announce his homecoming.

"That brought people all right. Two of the house servants ran out to take charge of Clarissa. How grizzled and stooped they looked, Charles thought as he waited to be recognized. It took them a minute-they were hovering around his aunt, who struggled-and during the interval he wondered whether none but the old, tired blacks had stayed.

"Charles? Charles Main?"

He tilted his hat back but couldn't manage a smile, even though he was nearly as astonished as Clarissa had been. "Yes, Judith, it's me. What are you doing here?"

"I'm dying to ask the same of you." She rushed to embrace him; felt his arms and torso stiffen at her touch. His garments were filthy. They reeked.

The two servants, one so old he hobbled, helped Clarissa inside. The hobbling Negro gave Charles a curious stare but no greeting. Charles knew the man recognized him. In the old days, a stern master would have laid on the cane to punish such disrespect. Things had surely changed.

To answer Judith, he said, "I lost my horse up at Petersburg. I came all the way down here hunting a remount."

"Are the trains running?"

"Some. Mostly I walked. When I left North Carolina, I figured I'd find a horse-or a mule, anyway-before I got this far. Guessed wrong," he finished soberly, as Orry's older brother stepped onto the piazza. In shirt sleeves, a ledger under one arm, Cooper recognized Charles and let out his name with a whoop. Husband and wife shepherded the new arrival into the well-loved, well-remembered house, but Charles hardly saw it. One thought obsessed him. Do they know about Orry?

On the curve of the drive opposite the one where Charles had approached, motion stirred a tall, thick row of untended ileagnus. The motion suggested birds squabbling in the dense foliage. In the excitement of Charles's arrival, no one noticed.

On the other side of the shrubbery, after the front door closed, a narrow-faced young man with a smooth beige complexion crawled away through the weeds. He was barefoot, and his old jeans pants had a yellowing star on the rump. When the seat of his pants had worn through, his mother, who later died, had patched the hole with white flannel and imagination. The star was the North Star-the freedom star-and when his mama had sewn it on, he had still been property.

He had been sent to Mont Royal to estimate the number of men still present on the plantation. He had been born there and spent most of his life in the slave community. Now he had some real news to report.

Charles bathed in a big zinc tub in Cooper and Judith's bedroom-the same spacious chamber that once had belonged to Tillet and Clarissa and then, he presumed, to Orry and Madeline.

He had forgotten how it felt to have his long hair so clean it squeaked when he rubbed his palms over it. He put on a shirt and pair of pants borrowed from Cooper and went downstairs. His arrival had caused a great stir. There were nigras swarming all over the house-damn near as if they were Cooper and Judith's equals, he thought without animosity, just recognition of another remarkable change. He met a muscular, well-proportioned driver named Andy and a handsome black woman named Jane, who shook his hand in a grave way as she said, "I've heard of you."

Her steady stare, not hostile but not friendly either, conveyed meaning with perfect clarity. What it said was, I've heard you're in the army that's fighting to keep my people shackled.

Maybe he was being too thin-skinned, but he thought that was what she meant. Despite her attitude and her reserve, she still impressed him in a positive way.

Philemon Meek, the new and elderly overseer, shuffled in to join them for the midday meal-the most bounteous they could provide, Judith said with embarrassment. Each plate held a bit of saffroned rice, a few field peas, a one-inch square of corn bread, and two strips of chicken cooked for the second or third time.

"Don't apologize," Charles said. "Compared to the fare up North, this is a feast."

The dining room, its rich woods gleaming, was both familiar and comforting. He started eating rapidly. Meek watched him over his half-glasses, and it was from-the overseer that Charles presently heard of the guerrilla band operating in the neighborhood. Runaway slaves and army deserters, they were like the bummers traveling on the fringes of Sherman's army.

"But this bunch has stayed put in the low country," Meek said. "I'm told the leader is an old chum of yours-nigra named Cuffey."

Mildly startled, Charles finished the field peas and started to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. He noticed Marie-Louise, grown now and quite pretty, staring at him. The skin above his beard turned pink as he snatched his napkin from his lap.

"Cuffey," he repeated. "Imagine that. Think Mont Royal might be in for some trouble?"

"We've been preparing for that eventuality," Meek said.

"It appears to me you don't have many men left on the plantation. Except for your driver, those I've seen are gray as the moss outside that window."

"We're down to thirty-seven people," Cooper admitted. "Barely enough to run the place. I thought of closing the rice mill entirely for a while, but how would we survive? I don't mean just Judith and Marie-Louise and Mother; I mean everyone. Especially the older nigras. They're too worn out and frightened to run away."

"Which is what the rest did, I presume?"

Cooper nodded. "Liberty's a magnet for human beings. One of the strongest in creation. That's a point I frequently made to my father, to no avail. For a while I also forgot it myself, I'm ashamed to say. Ah, well. Why rake up the past? I want to hear the news from Virginia. Have you been in Richmond at all? Seen Orry or Madeline?"

To Charles's left, Clarissa sat with her meager meal untouched. Hands folded under the table, she studied him with the eyes of a threatened child. She had been doing so ever since they sat down. Those eyes held the kind of awe and fright with which long-ago European folk must have watched the pony-mounted Mongols storm out of Asia.

The thrice-boiled chicken pieces, so flavorful a moment earlier, suddenly had the taste of chewed paper. Well, he thought as he returned Clarissa's sad, alarmed stare, there's at least one blessing in a broken mind. She won't understand.

Cooper was awaiting an answer. Slowly, Charles placed his napkin to the left of his plate.

"I didn't expect to be the bearer of the bad news."

Judith leaned forward. "Oh, dear-is one of them ill? It is Madeline?"

Silence. Memories flashed by, including one from the time when Orry had been educating him for the West Point examinations. The hired German tutor had forced Charles to read Scripture for its literary value as well as its religious content. He remembered a passage he had never fully appreciated before: the moment during the Crucifixion when Christ asked His Father to let a cup pass.

"Charles?" Cooper said, almost inaudibly.

But of course it wouldn't pass, and he told them.

On his knees, Salem Jones heard the commotion beyond the blanket hung on a length of wisteria vine to afford a little privacy. He withdrew from the grimy, drunken white woman, who rolled her head from side to side and whimpered for him to start again. He was already buttoning his pants.

Picking up his shirt, he stepped around the great live oak to which he had spiked one end of the vine. The usual evening fires sent smoke and sparks toward the winter stars. He spied Cuffey seated on the stump he liked to occupy-as if he were some damn nigger chief in Africa, Jones thought with a flash of resentment. He put the bad feeling aside in order to learn the reason for all the excitement.

Men crowded around Cuffey while two tried to talk at the same time. One was Sunshine, who had been away scouting around Charleston. The other was a light tan Negro whose name Jones didn't know.

Hurrying to the group, Jones heard Sunshine say, "Hardee marched out. I seen it. By now the troops are all gone from the city."

"There ain' but a few protectin' my old home place," Cuffey mused, smiling. "Now they's no sojers to come help, either. That's what I been waitin' on. Hey there, Jones-you hear?"

A vigorous nod. "Yes, sir."

"Well, that ain' the only good part. Lon-" he poked a thumb at the beige boy with the flannel star on his pants "-he spied an old friend at Mont Royal this mornin'. Cousin Charles."

"Invalided home from Hampton's cavalry?"

Cuffey prompted Lon with a look. The boy shook his head. "Didn't see any sign of him bein' hurt. But he was walkin', not ridin'."

Jones nodded. "That's enough to bring him home."

A meditative look spread over Cuffey's face. "Cousin Charles an' me useta be friends. Useta fish together. Wrestle, too."

He spat in the flames. Men smirked and nudged each other, sensing the end of boring inactivity. Cuffey arose and hooked his thumbs over the bulging waist of his trousers. Like a king, he paraded around the huge sparkling fire. Jones loathed the ignorant oaf, but Cuffey had spared him and allowed him to join the band in anticipation of their next big raid. He had to be grateful for that, he supposed, reaching up to scratch the itching D.

"We wait one more day-maybe two," Cuffey announced. "Till we sure the sojers are gone." He peered past the leaping flames at Salem Jones. "Then we go to Mont Royal an' take it clean down to the ground. Kill every living thing."

In the raw amiability of the moment, Jones rashly said, "Young Charles may give you quite a fight."

Cuffey's face drained of good humor. "I'm waitin' for that. I'm jus' waitin'. Maybe we wrestle one las' time. We do, I know who gonna lose."

124.

INVALIDED HOME WITH A chest wound, Billy slept a good deal. He wasn't awake when Constance, ashen, brought the letter to Brett in the library.

"It's from George. Come sit down before you read it."

The news about Orry fell on Brett with the force of a sledge. Seated, she felt her whole body sag, and for a moment she labored to get her breath. Constance dropped to her knees beside the chair while Brett swallowed and made queer gulping sounds. She lifted the two sheets, gestured with them in a forlorn way, laid them down again, shaking her head.

"I don't understand. Madeline said he was still in Richmond."

"We all thought that."

Brett started to cry then, heaving sobs. Constance was startled because the manifestation of grief lasted such a short time. Less than a minute. Then a stark look came onto Brett's face. Constance saw the object of her sister-in-law's fierce stare: the prized meteorite in its place on the library table.

"Damn them. Damn their oratory and their precious rights and their generals"-Brett was up then, lunging-"and their weapons-" Constance was too slow to prevent her from snatching the meteorite, whose significance all those in the household understood. Spinning, Brett threw it like a discus at the nearest window.

It shattered glass and sailed away over the sunlit lawn. In panic, Constance thought, He'll never forgive me if it's lost. I must go find it this minute. She was immediately ashamed of the reaction; staying with Orry's sister was far more important.

Brett collapsed on an ottoman, the pages of the letter fluttering to the floor. She crossed her arms on her knees and bent her head, crying again. Constance barely heard the words amid the sobs.

" I'm-sorry. I'll-hunt for the star iron. I know it's-George's treasure. It's just-just that-"

Constance could make out nothing else.

What an admirable woman Billy had married, she thought half an hour later. In the face of a similar responsibility, would she be as strong? Brett had dried her puffy eyes, put back a few undone strands of hair, and recovered the letter, saying, "I must go up to Madeline. Is she in her sitting room?"

Constance nodded. "She wanted to read awhile. Would you like me to go with you?"

"Thank you, but I think it's best if I'm alone."

Slowly, Brett walked past the library table. After a ten-minute search, the meteorite had been found by the gardener and returned to its place on the gleaming wood. But Billy's wife, in a matter of an instant, had conceived a hatred of the object-what it meant, what it made possible-that would last until she died.

In the foyer, she reached out to grasp the freshly oiled banister, gazing upward. She fought back more tears and images of Orry. She lifted her foot to the first step.

It seemed to require hours to go up the staircase; she had never taken a longer or harder journey. At last she turned down the hall to the door of Madeline's sitting room, which was ajar. Through the opening Brett saw sunshine flooding the carpet; the room overlooked the laurel-covered hilltops behind the mansion. Her hand shook as she knocked.

"Yes, come in," Madeline called cheerily.

Go on, Brett thought. It became a silent scream. Go on. She wanted to run.

"Who's there?"

Underskirts rustling, Madeline walked to the door and opened it. The index finger of her other hand held her place in a slim, gold-stamped book. Her dress today was one of her favorites, a blue silk so deep and rich it almost looked black.

"Brett! Do come in. I was just rereading a few of Poe's poems. One is Orry's very favor-my dear, what's the matter?" She had been slow to note the signs that Brett had been crying. "Has Billy taken a bad turn?"

"It isn't Billy. It's Orry."

Madeline's dark eyes showed apprehension. So did her fading smile. She took her finger from the book, drew it against her breast like a shield. She saw the letter in Brett's right hand.

"Is there some problem in Richmond?"

"Orry isn't-wasn't-in Richmond." Why was she so slow to tell it? Delay would only prolong the anguish for both of them. "This is from George. I'm afraid it's very bad news."

With a forced look of skepticism, Madeline took the letter to the sunlit window bay. Brett waited near the door, noting the way Orry's wife moved the first page away from her face; her eyesight had begun to trouble her. She was turned toward the window.

She finished the first page and began the second. The initial indication of a reaction was a ripple of the dress material across her shoulders.

Her head whipped around. Angry, she said, "The Petersburg lines? How did he get to the Petersburg lines?"

"I wish I could tell you."

Madeline forced her eyes back to the letter. Watching her in profile, Brett saw the light glisten on a tear. The book dropped from Madeline's hand, striking the carpet with a soft thump. She seemed to tense and grow taller, as if straining on tiptoe for some reason.

Her hand crushed the letter. "Orry," she cried out and tumbled sideways in a spill of silk and petticoats.

"Kathleen," Brett exclaimed in the hall. "Kathleen-someone-bring the sal ammonia. Hurry!"

Voices downstairs said she had been heard. Brett turned around in the doorway, stricken by the sight of Madeline sprawled on the fine Persian rug. She was awake after the brief fainting spell, but she didn't get up. She lay on her side, awkwardly supporting herself with both hands. She trembled, her mouth half open. When she looked at Brett, there was no recognition.