Infidelity: Manor (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read online

  The entire economy of Georgia was built on the backs of slave labor, and these folks, my neighbors, needed to blame someone. After all, they had now lost their entire livelihoods. They would all have to work their own farms, something most of them had never really done. They were angry, and they wanted to take that anger out on me. It would get worse, of course – this anger led to the forming of terror groups, but that was a few years up the road. Still, the anger and hate never left these people.

  1865 – Ghosts of the Past, Birth of the Future

  It was frigidly cold on January 2nd, and it matched the mood of the city. All around me, people moved about in the emptiness. It was like the Rapture had happened, and those of us left were faced with our sins. Without slave labor, men and women who’d lived life being catered to were suddenly forced to do things they’d never done. They had to buy their own food. Kill their own hogs. Pluck their own chickens. Some had not lifted a finger to care for themselves their entire lives. Though I hated them before, I now pitied them. They had become so dependent they were now staring at the destruction of their lives, the ashes of their very existence. So I pitied them instead. I’m not sure which is worse.

  But my story isn’t finished.

  That morning, I woke up ill again, and I was vomiting profusely. I had just cleaned up when I heard the carriage coming down the oak-lined path to the home. Though I didn’t know who it was, I felt the hair on the back of my neck raise up.

  I was on the front step when he stepped out of the carriage. In the few years since I had last seen him, he had aged a decade. He stepped out on uneasy legs. His head drooped forward, as if the weight of the world rested on his shoulders. His hands shook with palsy.

  “Colonel,” I said, as I stepped over to him.

  He looked at me as if he didn’t recognize me. I think he didn’t for a second or two. Then he put his arm over my shoulder, and I helped him up the stairs. I brought him in by the fire, and I made him soup. He wasn’t talking, but ate the soup ravenously, slurping as if this was his first meal in days. It turned out to be so.

  Over his second bowl, some color returned to his face. He began to eye me through his thick brows, which were white as snow. He finished the second bowl, then stood up. A bit of strength had returned, though his hands clearly continued to shake. His left hand seemed uncontrollable, so he stuck it in his pocket.

  “The house is quiet,” he said suddenly. “Where are my slaves?”

  “Gone, sir,” I said, suddenly fearful of his presence.

  “You freed them?”

  “No, the Union army did, sir,” I lied. “All our neighbors lost theirs as well.”

  His eyes were burning now. Dark. “Those Yankee bastards freed them?”

  “Yes.”

  “What else?”

  I again lied. “They took at least one of our ships. All the cotton, all the tobacco.”

  “Anything left?”

  “About half of the pigs and chickens. The rest were foraged to feed the army.” It suddenly felt easy to lie. After all, why hadn’t he been here? Why had he left his little wife to fend off the entire Union army?

  “We’re ruined then.”

  “I imagine so. If the South falls…” His head turned quickly as I said this. “…then our money will be worthless anyway.”

  “Simmons tells me you were consorting with a Union general. In my home.” His voice was taut, his teeth clenched. He was now missing a few more.

  “That lying Simmons said many things about me. I was forced to house General Bradley. All of us…all of our neighbors too…were forced to quarter soldiers.”

  “How could you have let this happen, Sarah?” He turned to face me. “How did you let this happen?”

  “How did I let this happen?” I guess the tension of the last couple of years finally boiled over inside me. My voice pitched higher. I put my hands on my hips. “How did I let this happen? I’m a woman, left alone by her husband for over three years with only a couple of letters, and I’m supposed to fend off the entire Union army? Where were you?” And now I pointed my finger at him, and I could feel my face burning. “Where was my husband, who is supposed to protect me?”

  “I was fighting the war…” he began, now faltering.

  “So was I! You were surrounded by men with guns. I was all alone! Fifty thousand soldiers were in Savannah, and I was supposed to fight them all myself? To what end?”

  He looked down, then into the fireplace.

  “And now you come back and your first words are accusations? You didn’t even stop to think about what I’ve been through. You never even considered that I’ve had to manage this plantation for years without you. That I had an occupying army in this city. That our supplies and animals were stolen by the army you said would be defeated two years ago.”

  He began to nod, and now his right hand shook too. He looked defeated, like our city had been. He moved back to the fireplace, and sat in the same spot Owen had sat many a night.

  “Fetch me some brandy, please…” he said, his voice low.

  I retrieved his last bottle. I didn’t want to tell him this was all he had left.

  He poured himself a glass and stared into the fire. He began to shrink in on himself, and he seemed to grow smaller by the second.

  After a few moments, he spoke again. Very softly. “I’m sorry for my words, Sarah. You’re right. I did leave you alone. I did think this war would be won some time ago.”

  I sat across from him. Whereas Owen had seemed so tall in that chair, the Colonel seemed so frail and sunken.

  “What will happen now?” I asked.

  He took another sip and stared into the fire. “The war is lost. I tried to tell Lee this, but he won’t listen. He’s holed up in Virginia, and the Union is pressing down. Sherman is now coming up from the south, and he’s going to be surrounded. He has lost half his army to desertion. There’s no way we can win this war now.” He took a hard swallow and then continued. “He still thinks he can maneuver the army around and hide out, but he’s going to continue to lose soldiers. I don’t see any way the war turns back to our advantage.”

  “Are you going back, Colonel?”

  “I have no choice. General Lee is like a brother to me. I have to support him.”

  “But if you’re going to be defeated…”

  “I’d rather be defeated fighting for what I believe in than live a long life as a slave to the North.”

  He honestly didn’t see the irony in what he just said. I wasn’t about to tell him.

  For the next few days, the Colonel was lost in his own thoughts. He would walk the farm. He would examine the cotton plants, now hibernating for the winter. He would pace about, mumbling to himself. The palsy in his hands would sometimes spread to his right leg, and it would twitch at the knee.

  I fed him and cared for him the best I could. He didn’t seem to hardly notice I was there. Perhaps he believed what he had heard. Perhaps he just didn’t desire female company anymore. I slept in the spare room Owen had used, and the Colonel slept in his old bed. I half expected him to pass away as he seemed so sallow and distant.

  But I was surprised when the carriage that had borne him home was again at the front of the house. It was January 6th. I had just fed him breakfast, and he came down the long spiral staircase in his gray uniform.

  “Colonel, you’re not leaving?” I protested.

  His voice sounded far away. “I must leave, Sarah. I’m joining General Lee in Virginia.”

  “Are you strong enough for the journey?” I was genuinely concerned that he might not survive a trip that far in a carriage.

  “I’m tougher than I look,” he said with a half-smile on his lips. “I’ll be fine.”

  No more words were exchanged. He climbed into his carriage, body quavering as he did and sat down heavily in the seat. The driver lashed the horses and off he rode. I never saw the Colonel again.

  My morning vomiting continued, so a few weeks later I asked the d
octor to visit. He told me I was pregnant.

  Thankfully, spring came early that year. I had enough money reserved that I was able to hire men to plant the tobacco and treat the cotton plants. I did much of it myself. I kept the animals fed, and the plants grew. Many of my neighbors didn’t know what to do, so I offered them assistance when I could. I saw many well-dressed ladies out among their fields, but most were overwhelmed by the amount of work they suddenly were responsible for.

  As the cotton began to blossom and the tobacco grew tall, I received a telegram.

  April 2, 1865

  Colonel Elijah Carmichael Montague was fatally wounded yesterday, April 1st. His remains will be shipped home via rail. The Confederate army expresses its condolences to his family.

  General RE Lee

  He had died in the Battle of Five Forks, often referred to as the American Waterloo. Such a waste of men and resources. The war had been lost, yet pride made men fight and squander their fragile lives. Another man gave up his life in that battle, I was to find out later. General Charles Owen Bradley was wounded in that same battle, and the infection that took him killed him slowly. He died on the 4th of April. Perhaps it was fitting that both of them died, locked in a final death struggle, though that does sound despicable of me to say that. The horror of the Civil War is that brother fought brother, father fought son. I lost the two men in my life, and I have never loved again.

  I buried the Colonel next to the home he loved so much. It was only fitting.

  On April 9th, cut off from his resupply and hopelessly outnumbered, General Lee surrendered to Grant at the McLean House in Appomattox, Virginia. At this point, I was showing. On April 15th, Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theater. Many refer to his death as the ugliest day of the Confederacy. I tend to agree.

  By the summer, I had managed to stretch my poor reserves of currency to the point where I could pay for a harvest. Though Confederate currency was worthless, and I was technically flat broke, I had horse-traded enough to get labor from the few remaining and returning men in Savannah. Your uncles Willie and Stefan even helped, though their carpentry business again thrived. I pulled every person I could into helping with the farm that first year, and that harvest saved me from starvation. Though two others had been pirated, I was able to save two of our ships, the best ones, and I shipped that cotton harvest to a reliable buyer in Liverpool, England. We then sold our tobacco up north, with Sallie helping broker the deal on that end.

  There was enough from those two sales to run the farm for another year, and the next year’s harvest was even better. While many of my neighbors had to sell their farms, or split their land, I was able to keep the entire farm, hire workers, and build on each successive harvest to the point that Montague Manor again housed the wealthiest residents in all of Savannah, and this time the gains are properly earned, not on the backs of slaves.

  And, of course, it wasn’t the Colonel who was the wealthiest person in all of Savannah. Instead, it was me and my beautiful son, to whom I now write. Charles Owen Montague, you were born during that first harvest in 1865. You came out kicking and screaming and fighting. And you were the reason I worked so hard for all these years. You have your father’s fiery blue eyes and my stubbornness. No mother could be prouder of her son than I am of you.

  People naturally assumed that the Colonel’s visit was the wellspring from which you issued, though you looked nothing like him. Thankfully, most of those who would have questioned that failed after the war and had to leave Savannah. The rest were just so happy the war was over that they didn’t care or even bother to ask. Though you don’t carry his surname, I’m so proud that you were conceived in a love I have difficulty explaining. Though it only lasted a few days, really, it has stayed with me my entire life. I could never love another after having loved General Bradley. He was a once-in-a-lifetime man, and no other man I’ve ever met measured up to him.

  And now you’re the man of Montague Manor. A proud Southern gentleman who, unlike most of your neighbors, believes in the sanctity of human life and compassion for all people. You’re as tall as your father, and your back is as straight. You probably don’t remember, but you used to play in the empty slave quarters when you were just a little boy. It made me so proud to have them torn down when you were about three years old, though you cried terribly at their loss. You didn’t realize how men, women, and children had suffered a miserable life in those shacks. Though we had fixed them up as much as possible, they were a physical reminder of the cruelty of slavery. The rose garden that replaced these shacks is my favorite part of our property, and when I walk among the beautiful bushes, I am reminded of the men, women, and children I grew to love and who now live free.

  As I write you from New York City during a lovely spring day, I know that the farm is in good hands. You’ve proven to have fantastic business sense, and I think you’re positioned to keep expanding. It’s in better hands than ever, I imagine. Your hard work will ensure that the manor stays in the family for the generations to come. Though it was once the site of cruelty and inhumanity, I now like to think it shines a light on how man, though often cruel, can help benefit those who need it the most.

  In the meantime, I’m enjoying strolls in the cool evenings with my dear Sallie. It has been so good getting reacquainted with her. After all these years, she still feels like a sister to me. We talk and laugh and tell old stories, sometimes all through the night. And her businesses are doing quite well, especially her textile mill. I’m finally able to see the cotton from Montague Farms being turned into clothing and other useful items. Hezekiah is now her plant manager, and he has a burgeoning family of his own. I’m so happy to see how many people began wonderful lives after leaving the farm. In memory of old times, Sallie put on a feast at her mill two days ago, and our numbers are nearly two hundred now. The bright smiling faces of the children made it all worthwhile.

  Time moves quickly, so I will close this writing. I hope to be home in the fall so I can see my own beautiful child and walk in the rose gardens with you.

  With love, always,

  Your mother,

  Sarah Montague

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  Also from Ted Persinger:

  Literary Fiction:

  Changes Series: The One Way, Book I

  Changes Series: The Juke, Book II

  Erotic Romance:

  Farfalla Series: Follow You Down, Book I

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