CHAPTER 1
It was late afternoon of one of June's most beautiful days in 1850 when Edward Marquand heaved his six-foot frame into the hayloft of the horse barn behind his father's house. He threw himself upon a pile of hay remaining from the winter's supply, and lied with his eyes half closed, lazily watching the sparrows that flitted among the roof rafters.
His thoughts were not upon the beauties of the weather, except to be glad it was still cool enough to make the loft a comfortable lounging place. At the age of 18, fair weather, like the other good things of life, was something to be enjoyed as a divine right.
Instead, Edward was pondering whether or not Sally, the light skinned Negro slave girl, would be sent on her usual egg hunt in the outbuildings. He knew it was possible that old Mammy Tina, housekeeper and overlord of the household servants, could tie her up with other duties. He frowned at the latter possibility.
He did not have to wait long. The gangway door downstairs creaked on its rusty hinges and a few minutes later a golden brown Negro girl, perhaps a year younger than himself, came up the ladder with easy grace and set her egg basket on the floor of the loft. She appeared not to notice
him as she raised her cotton shift well above the knee, exposing her plump thigh. He watched her for a moment in silence then sat up with delight.
"Why, Masser Eddie! How yo' startled me," she giggled in mock astonishment, rolling her big black eyes.
"I'll bet I did," he laughed. "Come here, you golden Jezebel!"
Her silvery laugh mingled with his as he came to his feet and folded her in his arms.
"My Honey," he whispered, "I was afraid old Tina might take a notion to sidetrack you this evening."
"She woulda, but I chased li'l Neb down ta da cabins ta look fo' a comb I said I'd lef' there. Warn't nobody around ta send affer them eggs but me!"
"Well, the eggs can wait. She won't expect you back for a while and you know I can't do without my Brown Sugar."
He fumbled with the string ties that fastened her shift and she stepped out of it while he hastily rid himself of his own garments. Again they embraced, his white body entwined with her brown one. They tumbled upon the hay pile together, oblivious to everything but their passionate desires.
"Well, well! Fancy breaking in on anything as perfect as this!"
The voice was like a thunderclap from a cloudless sky. The lovers broke apart and sprang to their feet.
There beside the ladder opening stood another young man, identical to Edward in every respect except that he was fully clothed and his face wore a sneering grin.
"Masser John!" breathed Sally.
"Don't let me interfere with your amours, my dear brother," said the intruder. "I'll go back downstairs until you've finished, then I'll come back up and take my turn. Perhaps we should make a more thorough practice of sharing things. This would be a wonderful time and place to begin."
"We'll do nothing of the kind!" Edward replied angrily. "Sally's mine, and I'm not going to hand her over to you or anyone else!"
"Do tell! Yours, is she? Can't say I remember her being given to you. Seems to me she's still one of father's niggers and doesn't actually belong to either of us yet, though we do have the use of her.
"She never would give me a chance around the house, and now I know why. My dear twin brother has moved in and staked a claim. I had a notion to take her whether she liked it or not, but I thought old Tina might tell the judge and that wouldn't be so good.
"This makes it different—she can't tell on me without telling on you. I really like the field wenches better and wondered why you ducked them, but I see it all now. Well, get on with it my dear Edward. I'll be back in ten minutes for my turn."
"Like hell, you will!' yelled Edward, his rage breaking all bounds. He sprang at John with his fists flying. John gave ground, but defended himself well. The fight continued for a few moments while Sally sat half naked on the hay pile watching the spectacle of two white boys fighting over her like a pair of tomcats.
The encounter ended as quickly as it had begun. With a lucky punch, Edward floored his opponent and jumped in to finish him. John rolled out of the way and came up with a piece of broken pitchfork handle. He brought it crashing down upon his brother's head. Edward collapsed upon the floor and laid still, blood trickling from a gash above his ear.
"Good God! I've killed him!" gasped John. He flung his weapon aside, hurried down through the ladder hatch and was gone in an instant.
Sally had come to her feet with the blow to Edward's head and stood for a moment, petrified. She dropped to Edward's side and cradled his head in her arms. She placed her hand over his heart and found it was still beating.
"Oh mah Honey, mah Honey!" she sobbed, rocking her body back and forth as she tried to collect her scattered wits.
She pulled on her shift and ran out to the well behind the barn. Returning with a gourd full of water from the horse trough, she began bathing his forehead using a handkerchief she found in the pocket of his trousers. Within a few minutes he began to show signs of life with his moaning and twitching. She ran out to get another gourd of water and returned to find him sitting up staring dumbly at the blood that stained his hands and body.
"Are yo' all right, Honey?" Sally pleaded. "Say sumpin' ta me—tell me yo' ain't gonna die."
"Die? What—die?" he faltered, making an effort to rise, then sitting down again.
Sally mopped his head until he recovered enough to ask what had happened. She wasted no time explaining the situation while hurrying him into his clothes as quickly as possible.
"Did he hurt you, Sally? Did he get his hands on you?"
"No Masser Eddie, he got scared when he hit yo' an' he lef' right away. Don't know where he went," Sally replied, her brown cheeks flushing with pleasure that his first thought had been for her safety.
"What's goin' on up here?"
They whirled about to see a kinky black head and broad shoulders appearing just above the floor level on the loft ladder. It was the stableman, attracted by her sobbing and the sound of conversation.
"S'cuse me, Masser Eddie, didn't know it were yo'," he turned to go, as he recognized his master's son and realized it might not be well to intrude.
"Come up an' help! Masser Eddie is hurt! Hurry Ebenezer, yo' big ox," Sally's voice rang with quick assumption of authority.
Ebenezer turned around, and without hesitation he scurried down from the loft to assist his master. Together, he and Sally helped Edward into the aisle between the mangers.
"Help him to the house, Ebenezer, an' don't yo' dare tell nobody I was with him, or I'll claw yo' eyes out."
"Yeah, yeah, Sally. I do it jus' lak yo' say," Ebenezer agreed. "Come Masser Eddie, lean on mah arm."
Edward, who had been leaning weakly against the ladder, started to protest, insisting he could manage by himself. But suddenly the fog closed in on his brain again and he began to slide down toward the floor. Ebenezer picked him up in his great arms and carried him like a baby in the direction of the house. Sally picked up her egg basket and resumed her hunt, trying desperately to think of some way out of their trouble.
No one noticed John as he slipped quietly out of one of the box stalls at the other end of the barn, where he had hidden to watch what happened.
A dense growth of blackberry bushes screened one side of the barn. John quickly disappeared behind the bushes and made sure to enter the house through the front hall just as everyone was hurrying to the kitchen to see what had happened to Edward.
He reached his room without encountering anyone, but his relief in this accomplishment was tempered with fear that Edward might not hold his tongue.
His hope that his own injuries might evade notice was short lived. A look in the mirror convinced him there was no hope of disguising the fact that he had been on the receiving end of considerable punishment.
His lips were split and caked with blood; his left eye was almost swollen shut. By morning he predicted he would have a shiner of the first degree. His appearance and his brother's condition would supply an unmistakable clue that the brothers had engaged in a physical fight.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Edward was the center of attention. Mammy Tina bathed his bruised face and bandaged his head while his mother watched, nervously clasping and unclasping her hands. This patching up after a brawl was something foreign to her and she was wise enough to leave the operation in the hands of her housekeeper whose skill in such matters was well known.
The youth's head began to clear long before Mammy Tina had finished nursing his wounds. Trying to decide what story to tell was making his poor brain work overtime.
In spite of his aching head, he arrived at what was probably the wisest decision at the moment. He would pretend to be much worse than he was. He moaned, mumbled, and appeared not to understand the barrage of questions to which he was subjected. Just when he was beginning to fear he had overplayed it, his cousin Allen Boyd created a most welcome diversion.
Allen, Mrs. Marquand's orphaned nephew, had driven over to a neighbor's on an errand. Returning from this mission, he entered the kitchen singing at the top of his voice.
"For heaven's sake, Allen," cried his Aunt, "this is no time for singing! Edward has been hurt in a fight of some kind. He has a big gash in his head and seems dazed."
"Who has he been fighting with?" Allen wanted to know.
"We haven't found out yet. He's too dazed to tell us anything. I think perhaps you'd better drive him in to town and have Dr. Marshall take a look at him. He may need some stitches. You have the horse and rig all hitched up and you can take him at once. Hurry now, Mammy Tina will save you some supper."
"Where's John?"
"Out somewhere, we don't know where he is. Now don't stand around—hurry!"
"Well, all right," was Allen's reluctant reply.
The rig had hardly cleared the front gateway when Edward came out of his stupor and sat up with a silly grin on his face.
"Well," commented Allen, "for a fellow that was dyin' a while ago, to hear the women tell it, you got well mighty quick. What's this all about anyway? Who socked you?"
"Aw, I had a fight with John."
"The devil you did! But there's nothing unusual about that, only he really worked you over this time. Where'd it happen?"
"In the barn. I knocked him down and he grabbed a club and whacked me over the head with it."
"Humph! Too bad it wasn't him got crowned, but then you know how I feel about him."
"Oh, I got the worst of it so far as the cracked head goes, but I know he won't look so good when he shows up. Before I knocked him down, I got in one good punch—right in the eye! I bet he'll have a shiner."
"What'd y'all fight about anyway?"
"Never mind what we fought about."
"Sure, if that's the way you want it. I was just trying to be helpful."
They rode for a while in silence, and then Edward spoke. "Nobody can help much this time. I'll catch it when the judge gets back."
There was another period of silence. "I do wish I could help somehow," remarked Allen as if talking to himself.
"Oh, shucks! I might as well tell you. It'll all come out anyway when John comes home, or when the judge gets back," Edward poured out to his friend the whole sorry story. Allen grunted sympathetically from time to time as the tale unfolded.
"You sure are in a mess," Allen agreed when his cousin had finished. "How'd you and Sally get started? I ain't never been with a girl ... do you think it's worth all that trouble?"
"Don't know about the worth, 'cause I don't know about the trouble yet, but Sally's wonderful. Course you wouldn't understand, bein' younger and all."
"Maybe not, but how did you get started?"
"Oh, well, Sally and me been good pals ever since we were little kids. Ever since Mother brought her and her mama from your place when your folks died, we been pretty close. For the past few months we'd been sort of flirtin' a bit. One afternoon I played hooky from school and came home. I was afraid to let anybody see me so I went up in the barn loft and took a nap on the hay. Sally came up after a while, huntin' for eggs. I woke up and was sitting there talking to her and all of a sudden, she yelled there was a spider on her and it went down her neck. I grabbed her and tore her dress off; next minute she was huggin' me and kissin' me, and I was huggin' and kissin' her, and well, things sort of went right on from there."
"What did you do about the spider?"
"The spider? Well, I don't know. To tell you the truth, I never did see the spider."
They rode on in silence for a few more minutes.
"You know," grinned Allen, "I'd like to do what you did, but I wouldn't want to be in your shoes when the judge hears about it."
"Wish I could take my shoes somewhere's else for a while. Wish I was going to West Point like you are. Don't care much about soldierin', but I'd like to get away from the family for a while."
"Best thing about it for me," said Allen, "is that I wont have to put up with John anymore. You know, he's made me want to beat his head in with a club plenty of times. If he wasn't so much bigger and stronger, I would've done it before this."
"I know he's sure been rough on you," agreed Edward. "Course I've tried to make him lay off you, but I can't always be on hand."
"You're the best friend a fellow ever had," declared Allen. "I'll never forget how you came up just in the nick of time, when he had me tied to that tree and almost burned me alive. It's been six years since then, but it still gives me bad dreams once in a while."
"That really was a close call. I don't see what makes him so mean. If he wasn't my twin brother, I'd have done something awful to him before this."
Allen's reference was to an occasion when he was playing Indian with John and a pair of Negro lads. John had conceived the notion of making the game realistic, so with the help of the two Negro boys, he made Allen captive, tied him to a tree, heaped brush in front of him, and set it afire.
John had intended to release Allen after he had sufficiently terrified him, but the spectacle of his frightened cousin had most definitely appealed to his streak of cruelty as being the joke of jokes.
His plans went astray when he reached in his pocket for his Barlow knife, only to find that it wasn't there. John made a brief struggle to untie the rope with his fingers, but the knots were too tight. Overcome with sudden panic, he and his Negro assistants took to their heels, leaving their screaming captive to face the immediate prospect of being burned alive.
At the time, Edward had been detained at home on some task as punishment for failure in his lessons. Having completed his penance, he came dashing out to the pasture to play with the others when he heard Allen's screams. There was no sign of John or his companions, for they were cowering in terror in a nearby tobacco barn.
With God-given presence of mind, Edward picked up a piece of brushwood and pushed the fire away from the frantic victim. He then proceeded to work diligently at the knots in the rope until he had set him free.
The flames had not reached Allen, but the scorching heat had blistered the skin on his legs and feet. He escaped lasting injury, but spent a painful two weeks recovering from his burns. It was at this point that he had developed a perpetual hatred of John, while viewing Edward as his hero.
This was far from being the only time he had suffered at the hands of his evil cousin. He was younger than John and Edward and a quiet reserved sort of boy. John delighted in badgering him at every opportunity.
John lost no chance to remind his cousin that he was just a "poor relation." He refused to let Allen forget that he was a penniless orphan living on the bounty of his maternal Aunt, Mrs. Marquand. His mother, a younger sister of Mrs. Marquand, had married Allen's father against the wishes and advice of her family, only to find out that they were right after all. Her Prince Charming was a heartless adventurer who cared only for the money he could borrow against her cotton plantation, so that he might gamble it away.
When Allen's parents died in the fire that leveled their home in Mississippi, it was found that the estate consisted almost entirely of debts. Judge Marquand settled up the estate, bought in the household slaves himself and saved what little he could from the wreck so that Allen might have a start when he grew up. After a family consultation with her brother, Robert Lancaster, Mrs. Marquand brought her young nephew home to grow up with her own husky lads.
