"Too late." He shrugged. "Mr. Lincoln signed his order. And frankly, I don't care much about what is. I care about what ought to be."
"Pushing that attitude could set this whole country on fire."
"It's already on fire — or haven't you read the news lately?"
"Sometimes I absolutely detest you, you're so arrogant."
"I detest you for the same reason. Sometimes."
He reached over to pat her hand but held back; he feared she would misconstrue. Calmer, he went on, "I wouldn't bother with you one single minute if I didn't believe there was a sensible, decent woman inside you someplace, twisting and fighting to get out into the light of day. I think the reason you can't stand me sometimes is that I'm a mirror. I make you look at yourself. What you believe — and what you have to become unless you want to mock all the dead of this war."
Quietly, with tension: "You're right. I guess that is why I despise you sometimes. Nobody wants to be shown his errors — be pushed along a path that's hard and dangerous."
"The only other path leads you down to the dark for sure. That the one you want?"
"No — no! But —"
Lamely, she finished there, unable to marshal arguments. Why must he hammer at her conscience all the time? He did, and so did the faces of his flock. Brown or saffron or polished blue-black, they worked on it every day. Worked on it and forced her to question her father's dogmatic belief in the lightness of the peculiar institution. Worked on it so that she asked herself the kinds of questions Cooper had dared to ask their father aloud. What Brown didn't know was that she already felt the pinch and pain associated with dissecting old beliefs. She resented him for fostering the process.
Sensing her mood, Brown said, "We better quit this talk before we stop being friends."
"Yes."
"I wouldn't want to stop being your friend, you know. You're not only a good woman, but we've got two more walls to whitewash at the school. You're mighty fine with a brush. Sure there isn't slave blood in you somewhere?"
Uncontrollably, she laughed. "You're impossible."
"And bound and determined to change you around. That fine husband of yours won't recognize you when he marches home after they disband the army and discharge all those poor suffering white boys who've been niggered to death. Tell you one thing sure —"
Smile gone, he stared into the sunshine. "This country better get ready to be niggered to death, because I won't spend my life as a Dred Scott. Not a person. Nothing. A lot of my people feel the same. Our chains are going to break — the real ones and the invisible ones, too. I swear before God, the chains will break or the land will burn."
"Maybe both will come to pass, Scipio," she said in a small voice.
He, too, was quiet now. "It could be so. I do hope not."
She shivered, knowing suddenly that he was right about liberty. The moment altered her, leaving a small, hard certainty; regret and a sentimental wishing for the old way; and much fear of consequences. She felt as if she had betrayed someone or something but could and would not change the fact. The argument marked a milepost on the road they had talked about. It was a road that allowed no turning back.
He picked up the reins, said "Haw" to the horses, and they went forward.
"So," said the man with the red beard and the bolstered pistols under his frock coat. "You believe you could help our special service bureau do the work I've summarized?"
"Very definitely, Colonel Baker."
"I do, too, Mr. Dayton. I do, too."
Bent felt faint. It was not merely because success had finally come after weeks of waiting. It was March now — Baker had postponed the interview three times, pleading emergencies. Bent was light-headed because he was starving. His own money had run out, forcing him to borrow a small amount from Dills. To conserve it, he ate only two meals a day.
Lafayette Baker had the build of a dock hand and the eyes of a ferret. Bent guessed him to be thirty-five. The past hour had consisted of a few questions followed by a rambling monologue about Baker's history: work he had done for the exiled Cameron, his high regard for Stanton's opinions and methods. He spent fifteen minutes on a period in the eighteen-fifties when he had been a San Francisco vigilante, proudly purifying the city of criminals with bullets and hang-ropes. On the desk between Baker and his visitor lay a splendid gold-chased cane, California manzanita wood with a lump of gold quartz set in the head. Nine smaller stones surrounded it, each from a different mine, Baker explained. The cane had been a gift from a grateful San Francisco merchant.
"The chief duty of this bureau, as I cannot stress too often, is the discovery and punishment of traitors. I carry out that task using the methods of the man whose career I have studied and emulated."
Taking the cane, he pointed at a framed portrait on the wall. Bent had noticed it earlier, the sole decoration in the otherwise monastic office. The man in the daguerreotype had a stiff, severe countenance and small eyeglasses perched on his nose.
"The greatest detective of them alclass="underline" Vidocq, of the Paris police. Do you know of him?"
"Only by name."
"In his early days, he was a criminal. But he reformed and became the hated foe of the very class from which he sprang. You must read his memoirs, Dayton. They are not only exciting, they're instructive. Vidocq had a simple and effective philosophy, which I follow to the letter." Baker slid his palm back and forth over the head of the cane. "It's far better to seize and hold a hundred innocents than to let one guilty man escape."
"I agree with that, sir." Expediency had been replaced by an eagerness to work for Baker.
"I hope so, because only those who do can serve me effectively. We do vital work here in the capital, but we also perform special services elsewhere." Baker's small, unreadable eyes fixed on Bent.
''Before employing you in Washington, I would propose to test your mettle. Are you still with me?"
Frightened, Bent had no choice but to nod.
"Excellent. Sergeant Brandt will handle the details of placing you on our payroll, but I shall describe your first assignment now." He stared, intimidating. "You are going into Virginia, Mr. Dayton. Behind enemy lines."
72
For nearly a month, they lived in a single room, a room fourteen by fourteen, which Judith divided by hanging blankets around Marie-Louise's pallet, thus affording her a little privacy.
In the crowded city they had been lucky to get any room at all. A senior officer at Fort Fisher had found this, which had but one good feature — a pair of windows overlooking the river. Cooper sat in front of the windows for hours, a blanket over his legs, his shoulders hunched, his face reduced to gray hollowness by the pneumonia that had kept him near death for two weeks. Learning of Ashton's involvement with Water Witch had done something to him, but the demise of his son had done something worse.
On the night Judah drowned, the Mains paddled and floundered through the surf and finally reached shore. They collapsed on a moonlit dune two miles above the earthwork that guarded the river mouth at Confederate Point. There were no other survivors on the beach.
Cooper had vomited everything, all the salty water he had swallowed, then gone wandering up and down the shore calling Judah's name. Marie-Louise lay half conscious in her mother's arms, and Judith kept her tears contained till she could stand it no longer. Then she wailed, not caring whether the whole damn blockade squadron heard her.
When the worst of the grief had worked itself out, she ran after Cooper, took his hand, and led him south, where she presumed they would find Fort Fisher. He was docile and burbling like a madman. The long walk under the moon had a dreamy quality, as though they were on a strand in one of Mr. Poe's enchanted kingdoms. At last they staggered into the fort, and next morning a detail was sent out to search the dunes. Judah's body was not found.