“That’s right smart, Nate. I’ll do it,” Mollie promised. “I’ll hire me a wagon first thing tomorrow to take me to the Rocky Mount train station.” She grinned a grin that took him back to their days round campfires together. “Won’t Mr. Wren Tisdale be confused when I go downstairs in the mornin’?”
“Not unless you go barefoot,” he said, noticing a gap in her disguise. He kicked one of his shoes over to her. “Here—take these. I have another pair in my room. My feet won’t freeze on the way back. Reckon my shoes’ll fit you like socks on a chicken, but if you have to, you can get yourself some proper ones on your way north.”
“Oh, Nate, not your shoes!” But she saw the need for what he’d said as clearly as he did. She stooped, started to put them on, then stopped and stuffed the toes with wadded-up clothes from a carpet bag. “Just like I’d’ve done in the war, taking big ones off a dead Yankee.” She got up and hugged him. “Thanks for not thinkin’ I’m crazy on account of all this. Thanks for—” She hugged him again, hard. “For bein’ a friend, and more than a friend.”
He hugged her, too, felt the womanly shape of her through the uniform that masked it from the eye. More than a friend indeed, he thought. “Come back here when you can, if you care to,” he said. It was not any sort of promise, but it was as close to one as he could make himself come. Had she pressed for more, he might well have fought shy of the little he’d said. But she only nodded; maybe she’d not expected even so much.
Freezing mud squelched between his toes as he walked out of the Liberty Bell. His head, though, his head was in the clouds, and not just because he’d broken a long spell of abstinence. Not only had he held a willing woman in his arms, he’d somehow held a bit of the future in his hands.
Lee walked out of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. The shadow cast by George Washington’s equestrian statue, across Ninth Street in Capitol Square, shielded his eyes from the low, wan winter sun. Beside him, Jefferson Davis said,” A fine sermon, do you not agree?”
“Yes, as usual,” Lee said. “Mr. President, let me tell you again how grateful I am that you have agreed to. serve as my Secretary of War. I hesitated to ask it of you, lest you should feel it beneath your dignity to assume a Cabinet position after having held the Presidency.”
Davis snorted. “Nonsense, sir. I am ineligible under the constitution to continue as President; if I am to remain in public life, it must necessarily be at some lower level. The post you offered suits me well, and I am glad to have it.”
Lee was about to reply when a light, hesitant voice said, “Beggin’ your pardon, General Lee, sir—”
Frowning, he turned to deal with whoever had presumed to interrupt his conversation with President Davis. He saw a smooth-faced private in a worn uniform, clutching a parcel wrapped in coarse brown paper and twine to his chest. “Yes, Private—?” he asked, voice polite but frosty.
The soldier, who at second glance looked not quite young enough to be so free of beard, came to attention but held on to the parcel. “M-Melvin Bean, sir, 47th North Carolina. I got here a book you ought to see, sir.”
“Never mind that now, young man,” Jefferson Davis said impatiently. He walked on, looking back to see if Lee was following.
Lee was about to, when the private said something that made him stop in his tracks: “It’s a book from Rivington, sir.”
“Is it?” Lee said. Davis had gone too far to hear the half-dozen soft, nervous words, but, seeing that the ordinary soldier had somehow gained Lee’s attention, he shrugged and headed off toward the Presidential mansion.
“Yes, sir, it surely is,” Melvin Bean said. The private gulped, licked his lips, and then went on in a ragged whisper, “Other thing you ought to know, sir, is that inside this here book, it says it was printed in nineteen hundred and sixty, sir.”
“By God,” Lee said softly. Private Bean looked ready to bolt and run. Lee did not blame him in the least. He himself knew the secret of the Rivington men. But if this common soldier had somehow stumbled across it, not only would he have trouble believing it, he would have even more trouble believing anyone else would believe it. Quickly, Lee set out to ease his mind: “Private, you had better come back to the Powhatan House with me. This is most assuredly something I must see. Have you a horse?”
“No, sir—came up by train.” Melvin Bean gaped at him, blurted, “You—you mean you believe me, sir? Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Lee agreed gravely. “Wait here a moment, if you please.” He ducked back inside the church, spoke with a vestryman, then returned to Private Bean. “There—now Traveller will be seen to. Walk up Capitol Square and then to the hotel with me, if you would be so kind, and tell me how this book—”
“It’s called the Picture History of the Civil War, sir,” Bean said.
“The Picture History of the Civil War? From—1960, you said?” A shiver of wonder ran up Lee’s spine. How would the Second American Revolution look, from a distance of a hundred years? He and Melvin Bean turned right from Ninth onto Broad Street. “Tell me at once how it came into your possession.”
The story was less than clear, and left him imperfectly edified. He gathered a woman friend of Bean’s had actually gotten the book away from the stronghold of America Will Break, but a couple of times the private said “I” when he meant “she.” Lee did not press him. For the sake of a volume from Rivington—and from 1960!—he was willing to overlook a discrepancy or three.
Private Bean, by his accent, was a country boy. Lee expected him to gape at the red velvet and gold-leaf splendor of the Powhatan House’s lobby, but he took it in stride, merely muttering something Lee did not quite catch: to him, it sounded like “It’s not a not a hilton.” Lee led him to his own suite and closed the door after them. He turned on the gaslight, sat by it, and pulled up another chair for Melvin Bean. “Now, if I may, the Picture History of the Civil War.” In anticipation, he slipped on his spectacles.
Bean handed him the parcel. He cut the twine with a pen knife, undid the paper wrapper, and stared at the book for a long moment before he opened it. The unusual quality of the printing struck him at once. His lips shaped a silent whistle when he saw the copyright and publication dates. He turned the page, came to the introduction. For a moment, he was confused and jolted when he read of the war’s ending with the South’s surrender. Then he understood, and said quietly, “So this is how it would have been, had the Rivington men not come back to us.”
“Sir’?” Melvin Bean said. He was at the very edge of his seat, and still looked ready to flee at any moment. He also looked hungry: Lee had seen that expression too many times in the war ever to mistake it.
He stood up. Melvin Bean bounced to his feet, too. Lee took some bills out of a trouser pocket, handed twenty dollars to the private soldier. “Why don’t you buy yourself some dinner, young man? The cooks here are quite fine. Ask for my usual table in the dining room, and tell them to send a boy back here to me if they doubt your right to sit there. Later, perhaps, I shall have questions for you, but first I want to read awhile.”
Bean stared at the money without reaching for it. “I couldn’t take that from you, General Lee, sir.”
Lee pressed it into the private’s hand. “You can, and you shall.”